george costanza: I gotta focus. I'm shifting into Bullies mode. (crude flyers hat)

to me the pitt is a love letter to new york city – a town it lovingly accepts, warts and all. in a sense, new york is almost the show's main character

Only half the chart is actually relevant to day to day org politics. Which does not make it any less what it is, but does tone down the hyperbole a little.

i have explained subcreation. i will explain it one more time, if you do good. i will explain it... two more times, if you do bad.

Anyway, back to Wang Huning.

But for all that, I think it's an interesting thing for a DSA guy to read. Because it's pretty weird that the only people who talk about the Const. in DSA are MUG, who misapply European analysis to it and think it's the kind of thing you can dispense with easily. Us on DSA right should fix that.

--have a Warren-y "I'm an elite for the people!" aftertaste in what they want and how they think things work (idealism, discourse as politics, etc.) that leaves me wanting.

As a work of legal scholarship, its main claim is that lawyers should spend time not lawyering (at least in court) but lobbying the public and legislators to do political work for them. This is less than inspiring. And as a political text, lefty law professors trying to speak politically always--

-make existential claims on what our country is and ought to be. I am also sympathetic to the idea that our elite discourse should not leave something so important as the Constitution to the pit of vipers that is the contemporary judiciary. But I also found it pretty unsatisfying in a lot of ways.

- historically progressive forces in the US have been able to use that sort of argument to their benefit. Fine enough for all that. In some sense I am immensely sympathetic (even as a demsoc who holds libs and progs at some distance): I do believe that the broad left should and is entitled to-

The basic pitch is that libs and progs should argue about what they believe the Constitution *to be* or what the Founding demands in a civilizational sense rather than conceding the Constitution to the courts, with a (generous, self-admittedly cherrypicked) historical argument that -

Alright, will get back to America Against America soon (though reading nonfiction during the school year is *brutal*) but I read enough (~60%, including intro and conclusion) of this for my campus job to count IMO:

but, one must admit, the clearest to date manifesto of the online left

definitionally untrue:

55 CLASSES 150 NPCS 100 ILLUSTRATIONS 55 SENTENCES 5,555 WORDS

(That said Vineland does it better. Balanced out by the *extended* riff on ninjas/martial arts film genre conventions that imo is just a little too silly for me such that it and OBAA stand side by side. But still.)

I am ofc a Lib, and find "individuals and families preserve themselves against/within History" stories good when I should be denouncing them as bourgeois sentimentalism. But missing the narrative bc you need the "looks at the camera and says hes the same kind of communist i am" moment... oof.

It just seems like people want the movie to be directly agitational because it invokes politics, else the "politics" of the movie are unserious in some sense. And so the actual stakes--- how individuals relate to movements and history and each other---goes right over their heads.

Like I do get where this comes from, but the choice to place Bob (and Zoyd for that matter) on the outside of political movements such that they feel out of place in them / surf between them (and for us to hold pretty closely to bob's perspective) is deliberate.

I do not think you really understand the movie if you think this.

(And at any rate, it shares the particular way in which the protagonists interface w/ political movements with Vineland)

The arkenstone!

there was this small business owner in Shenzhen who once posted on X. It was something like: many of your electronics (and garments, and other products) are made by people who see their children once a year.

my favourite new year video genres on Chinese social media is the family reunion videos (this one is from 2023). so heartwarming, but also cruel.

Blizzard Quality Assurance Workers Ratify Video Game Union Contract With Microsoft A strong majority of quality assurance workers at Blizzard’s Albany and Austin locations overwhelmingly voted to ratify a union contract at Microsoft, ensuring lasting protections in the workplace.

Quality assurance testers at Blizzard Albany and Austin offices have reached a groundbreaking contract at Microsoft, marking the third union contract across the company's gaming studios.

Solidarity!

In solidarity with today's ICE OUT OF MINNESOTA blackout, MinnMax is donating $1 to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota for every share of this Bluesky post for the next hour.

Dialectics