Ithaca fam: my dear friend @mollycrabapple.bsky.social is speaking at Cornell TODAY, hosted by @jvp.bsky.social … you don’t want to miss this rare chance to see this brilliant artist and author in person events.cornell.edu/event/book-t...
Stephen and Sandra Glass Annual Humanities Lecture "Your 'Right to Die' v. Your 'Right to Live': Necropolitics and Liberal Governance" Steven W. Thrasher, PhD Tuesday, April 21, 4:15 - 5:30 Broad Performance Space In a single week in December 2025, the Democratic governors of New York and Illinois both signed bills into law which legalized medically assisted suicide. Upon noticing this, journalist and scholar Steven W. Thrasher began to study how many "right to die" bills had passed in Western countries since the Covid-19 pandemic. These laws were often passed despite the objections of disabled activists and with the support of liberal politicians-even as those same politicians were killing legislation which would create a right to housing or a right to universal medical care (ie, a "right to live"). Using Canada's 2016 "MAID" (Medical Assistance In Dying) law, recently passed bills in the United States and Europe, the daily occurence of suicide in U.S. jails, the films The Bridge (2006) and Life After (2015), the writings of Alice Wong, and Achille Mbembe's Necropolitics (2011) as analytics, Prof. Thrasher will challenge a liberal rights framework of independence with a disability rights framework of interdependence to theorize medically
East side of LA County: I’ll be debuting new research and thinking tomorrow at Pitzer College
"The Overseer Class is a deeply rooted yet approachable analysis of how race in America is often a telemetric shorthand for class and interest, but remains only a shorthand." Grateful for this thoughtful review of THE OVERSEER CLASS in @inkstickmedia.com inkstickmedia.com/steven-thras...
pet treats? khakis???? white people going after poc when amazon’s race war on what white people need to survive is right in the open
Like even the @theonion.com can't make up how EVERY SINGLE FUCKING THING in Yankeland is a fucking fascist late-stage capitalism dystopia. As if these people are literally injecting Black Mirror into their veins 24/7 with absolutely zero imagination of anything better being possible.
Correction: Audio can be stored on a server (then set to public/private) or just locally. Still, the whole point here is to lure people to upload family convos onto a servcer, on "private" (still likely mined) public, with a puck ppl don't notice...creepy bsky.app/profile/thra...
This is a total indictment of the non-profit industrial complex: "successful" non profits ending up as tools for for-propfits to do their evil shit. Susan Komen for the Cure pinkwashes KFC. StoryCorps listenwashes Campbell's soup. It's all bullshit! bsky.app/profile/dawn...
(Alice Wong blasted StoryCorps from beyond the grave at her memorial last month—they wanted her "diverse" stories but didn't want to broadcast any disabled voices on NPR that might make (abled bodied) people "uncomfortable" if they heard a stutter or such... so she started disability visability)
what a folly it had been to think that a more diverse police force would lead to a less violent police force.”
"what a folly it had been to think that a more diverse police force would lead to a less violent police force.” inkstickmedia.com/steven-thras...
“ Not every sibling is a sibling,” [Romero] said. “Just because someone shares an identity doesn't mean that they will go to bat for that community and their priorities and their needs.”
👀 Boy, if that ain't the truth. 💯
Next time, run a gay candidate who's a solid ally to folks of modest means. 💁🏼
"The Overseer Class is a deeply rooted yet approachable analysis of how race in America is often a telemetric shorthand for class and interest, but remains only a shorthand. That, as Thrasher says, “skinfolk ain’t always kinfolk (and that people who don’t share the color of our skin might still fight for the values of our kin).” That the racism, the various oppressions of today’s world, won’t be solved with one person climbing the ladder to receive the nuclear codes. Instead, Thrasher pushes for a solidarity that is so encompassing, so solid, that the overseer class is rendered impotent and irrelevant." Grateful for this thoughtful review of THE OVERSEER CLASS in @inkstickmedia.com by an Athenian journalist (I have never met), Moira Lavelle https://inkstickmedia.com/steven-thrashers-impassioned-call-to-oust-the-overseer-class/
Really appreciated this passage inkstickmedia.com/steven-thras...
"The Overseer Class is a deeply rooted yet approachable analysis of how race in America is often a telemetric shorthand for class and interest, but remains only a shorthand." Grateful for this thoughtful review of THE OVERSEER CLASS in @inkstickmedia.com inkstickmedia.com/steven-thras...
It's weird! The "puck" isn't a Siri/Alexa style tool yet, but I haven't read the ToS...maybe it is! Maybe it converts at some time. Doesn't really matter: the Prego/StoryCorps branding work is being done NOW, Wired fell for it, the spying and passive surveillance is the point of the article!
You nailed it. Also, as I found out talking to all the candidates, Lindsey is the only one who seems to give a shit about anything besides: 1) Keeping things exactly the same; or 2) Burning everything down to stop the demolition of the Chelsea-Fulton Houses with no tangible back up plan.
Wow, yikes. 🧵
This is a lazy story, trying to stoke a fight between Mamdani & LGBT NYers.
@lindseyboylan.bsky.social will be a GREAT legislator for LGBTQ NYers.
Former speakers Corey Johnson & Christine Quinn were tools of the ruling class & not v good for most LGBTQ NYers.
gothamist.com/news/mamdani...
Audio is stored on a server, you can set public or private. Haven't read ToS, but kind shit ALWAYS leads to more surveillance...normalizes spying socially, may even train on "private" settings & Trojan Horses concept of increased passive surveillance > active listeneing bsky.app/profile/tekn...
will represent rent control for small businesses, economic security for New Yorkers...
ie, policies that will HELP LGBTQ ***New Yorkers*** (who need economic help the most) and not policies that will help some LGBTQ politicos (who try to help themselves and their corprotate backers)
The upset (just by a few rich people) over Mamdani throwing his weight behind @lindseyboylan.bsky.social is NOT a matter of who is or is not LGBTQ...
It is a fear that Lindsey Boylan will NOT represent the wealthy white real estate interests Johnson, Quiin at all represented under rainbow cover but
communities economically. They are wealthy. And that they've had two gay and lesbian council speakers (Quinn and Johnson) from this seat was NOT a move to give LGBTQ New Yorkers power over the council, it was a move to give wealthy (white) real estate interests power over the council.
THUS...
I haven't fully thought this out for a column, but I'll try to spell it out here briefly.
That district may have once been created to get a gay voice on the council, but it has long since existed as one of the wealthiest, real-estate friendly seats on the council. Chelsea?HK are not marginalized
Thank you!!!
I did read the article! I think the concept is grotesque. It is encouraing spying on your family (the device is meant to be tucked away), using the StoryCorps name for advertising Prego (yuck) and is a Trojan Horse to make passive surveillance > active listening bsky.app/profile/vira...
Not familiar? Send me your article on it?
What the Fuck? Do these companies not recognize that these devices always eventually devolve into something that hurts customers or society in general? The evidence is all around us. The reports are legion.
Just stahp!
this thread articulates a little more about what that bad taste is, for me: active listening/memory vs passive surveillance
bsky.app/profile/thra...
Yes, it is bizarre - 100 only, a "puck"...as others have pointed out, anyone over the last 50 years could have done this with a tape recorder... I think it's a) an ad for Prego (which @wired.com shamelesslty delivered), b) a selloff of StoryCorp's name c) a Trojan Horse bsky.app/profile/amie...
🧵!
Every detail of this so bizarre, and I am frankly shocked @wired.com fell for how this is meant to be a Trojan Horse for ever more surveillance. keep people off their phones? Small and tucked away???? So as to secretly record???
Well, at least I have my new @literaryhub.bsky.social colum subject lined up! bsky.app/profile/prop...