calebcrain.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Just sent the government my accomplishments

submitted 14 hours ago • 103 comments

11 March I'm talking about ancient biography at the CUNY grad center in NYC...looking at the big question "what on earth did it feel like to be a human being in the ancient world?" (with a cameo walk on part for Caligula + horse). Free but registration essential here (& online) tinyurl.com/3bnhy2v7

submitted 10 hours ago • 4 comments

Today is Terminalia, the festival of Terminus, Roman god of boundaries, whose credo CONCEDO NVLLI ("I yield to no one") I offer without comment. Photo by Humphrey Bolton, 2013 (Wikimedia Commons)

submitted 11 hours ago • 1 comment

“He proposed a three-pronged solution: Ban off-street parking requirements, letting developers dictate how much to supply; employ dynamic pricing for on-street parking, raising prices when demand is highest; and spend the resulting revenue to spruce up sidewalks, encouraging more walking.”

submitted 10 hours ago • 1 comment

“Edmund’s Turkish Delight stands in for every lost and longed-for glory. What child forgets the seismically disappointing discovery that the English version tastes like jellied flowers dusted in soap powder?” Katherine Rundell on the appetite for children's literature:

submitted 10 hours ago • 0 comments

“Apart from their loathing of his Peronista credentials, the traditionalists hate him because he has done more than anyone since Martin Luther to undermine the monarchical papacy itself.” A. N. Wilson on Francis's autobiography:

submitted 10 hours ago • 1 comment

Boys' Love fanfiction “isn’t really about homosexuality (and few gay men read it). It’s an escape for women… With two men as protagonists, everything is possible and no reader feels offended.” Yun Sheng on pseudo-homo Chinese fanfiction:

submitted 10 hours ago • 0 comments

“In this paradigm, the ideal worker is less like a corporate ally or a trusted collaborator and more like a subject of an authoritarian regime.” @annawiener.bsky.social on dissolving life into self-branding:

submitted 10 hours ago • 0 comments

The DOGE gang that can't shoot straight: If this is true, it means that not only have the DOGEbros sent an email with a demand of questionable legality to all executive branch workers, but they have sent it to judicial branch employees who are constitutionally beyond their reach.

submitted 1 day ago • 25 comments

1. Monday - fell apart 2. Tuesday - broke my heart 3. Wednesday - same 4. Thursday - didn't even start 5. Friday - I'm in love

submitted 1 day ago • 64 comments

All about the design choices that went into those #Severance cars

submitted 2 days ago • 12 comments

I figured out how I'm going to get rich: Male Polish. It's just regular nail polish, but for men. The colors will have names like charred denim, lumber stank, and sea-dude. The applicator will look like a brush for bbq marinade

submitted 2 days ago • 14 comments

“Like a man in the street, calling out to a passing woman, the world seemed to be saying to Janet Malcolm, ‘Smile, baby.’ ” @katieroiphe.bsky.social on Janet Malcolm:

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Really appreciating the Teen Beat–style foldout poster of Bad Bunny in the print issue of The Cut/New York magazine that came in the mail today. Complete with twinkly font.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

“Seek out content with a clear beginning and end, something you can pick up and put down at will.” Caitlin Dewey on preserving your sanity by only reading news vehicles that have “edges” (i.e., not Bluesky):

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

“To walk into a CVS now, or ‘Carceral Vibes Store’—as a young friend calls it—is to enter at the tail of an absurdist teleology: ‘When they came for the razor blades, I said nothing, for I did not need to steal razor blades.’ ” Marco Roth, reading Joseph Roth in a CVS:

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

🚨 SCOOP: DOGE is seeking personal taxpayer data at IRS, sources tell me. 🚨 Trump admin is pushing IRS to agree to an MOU that would give DOGE access to granular data on every taxpayer, business and nonprofit in the country.

submitted 7 days ago • 289 comments

I’ll be at the Union Square Protests tomorrow. Join us! #50501 #BuildtheResistance #NotMyPresidentsDay #Resist @bkindivisible.bsky.social @marisolnyc.bsky.social @jonbarrett.bsky.social @calebcrain.bsky.social

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

Corporate Dems being outflanked on the left by Bill Kristol - who is saying what should be obvious.

submitted 7 days ago • 10 comments

On Friday night, HHS ordered CDC to take down all flu vaccine campaign materials from its website. Materials are starting to come down. For example, a campaign explaining that flu shot can reduce flu severity from "wild to mild" is now offline. Left image is from Friday, right is now Meanwhile...

submitted 7 days ago • 479 comments

Another way the dictatorship might kill you. This is from a friend who is a retired air traffic controller.

submitted 7 days ago • 273 comments

Bernie Wagenblast, the iconic voice of @mta.info subways, has a message, the day after the feds took the letter "T" referring to trans people, off websites about the Stonewall National Monument. @thecity.bsky.social

submitted 9 days ago • 26 comments

“Bad ideas do a lot of the work of building autocracy. By conjuring the unimaginable, they plunge us into an anxious state in which thinking is difficult. That kind of anxiety is key to totalitarian control.” @mashagessen.bsky.social on the need for good ideas to counter Trump’s many bad ones:

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

A fun thing to do with this supposed Napoleon quote is to do a google search to see what forums it appeared on with this exact wording before 2022. I'm no computer whiz, so maybe I messed up, but the only hits I got were these two...for Stormfront, a neo-Nazi forum.

submitted 8 days ago • 67 comments

Herman Melville's "Moby Dick" has perhaps the most memorable opening line in all of Western literature: "I hope you motherfuckers like reading about whales"

submitted 8 days ago • 503 comments

Engraving on the exterior of the United States Department of Justice headquarters.

submitted 8 days ago • 302 comments

absolutely so fucking mad that we're shredding Atlanticism, abandoning the Atlantic Charter, all for absolutely fucking nothing

submitted 8 days ago • 30 comments

I know it's small in the whole scheme of things, but the bloodbath at NPS in Hawaii is almost certainly going to lead directly to the extinctions of no fewer than 4 native Hawaiian songbirds in the next 4-5 years.

submitted 8 days ago • 14 comments

The Schmitt has hit the fan.

submitted 8 days ago • 24 comments

Thanks to @animulavagula.bsky.social, it at least has a source: a book of maxims attributed to Napoleon. Not a smoking saber, but as close, I bet, as we're going to get.

submitted 8 days ago • 8 comments

The closest I can trace that "He who saves his country" quote to the actual Napoleon is to the 1970 film Waterloo: "He who saves a nation violates no law."

submitted 8 days ago • 26 comments

the federal government is explicitly acting as if jim crow is the law!

submitted 8 days ago • 77 comments

The measles outbreak in Texas is reminding me of the public letter Roald Dahl wrote about losing his daughter to measles in 1962, just before the vaccine was publicly available.

submitted 8 days ago • 410 comments

I started a Substack that is only kind of promoting a book. Please check it out if you're interested in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte! brumaireland.substack.com?r=49u0ze&utm...

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

COME ON JUST THROW THE FUCKING RING INTO THE FIRE FRODO WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS SHIT

submitted 10 days ago • 18 comments

Using your science fiction phone to take video of people standing in a long line in the cold to buy eggs is chef’s kiss dystopian

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

NOAA is reportedly on the DOGE chopping block. The National Weather Service, which is part of NOAA, provides life saving weather forecasting in the US. A study found that for every $1 invested in NWS, it produces $73 in value to Americans. Again, this isn't about efficiency.

submitted 9 days ago • 545 comments

It’s important to sustain our rage with joy, and to that end, I think we should start planning the party we’re gonna throw when he’s dead.

submitted 9 days ago • 2 comments

There is going to be so much finding out.

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments