Walking by the water

Morning reads with Bento

I'm begging for one article--just one--that is "Trump says Iran war is worth the economic pain. These urban voters in Harlem say `We told you he'd screw everything up, why didn't you listen to us?'" Just one. Just one "diner" interview in a place w a density above 1 per 1000 sq mi and < 95% white.

So the new Punisher special is basically John Wick with more PTSD, right down to avenging a dog.

More of this please

Dandy Lion

On the left is an Onion headline from March. On the right is Reuters, today.

Asked at #RedMay: "​Do you think positing an enemy or 'bad guy' to direct anger at is necessary for any mass political mobilization? Is wholly systemic critique - 'it's the system, not individuals' - politically viable?" Reply: youtu.be/fkxYQ1qFsuI via @ajsecor.bsky.social & @jasonread.bsky.social.

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It is Jonathan Richman's birthday, as good of time as any to read about the time that he moved to Maine to live a life of relative obscurity just as The Modern Lovers were becoming big. popula.com/2018/11/11/s...

Adorno writes somewhere that it is the goal of the culture industry to turn adults into twelve year olds. I am beginning to think it has succeeded.

buffy season 1 episode 8 is about a demon that gets scanned into the internet from a medieval manuscript and it's basically about ai psychosis

This is why I don’t think it is just Gen Z who are bringing about a new standard of truth based on what feels right

I have said before it is a new episteme www.unemployednegativity.com/2025/05/do-y...

There's a major civil rights protest taking place in Selma, Alabama, right now in response to the SCOTUS decision that weakened the Voting Rights Act and the ongoing attack on Black Americans’ political power (video: defiancedispatch/IG)

Like the literal opposite is true: We need to stop thinking we need to take something seriously just cause a bunch of rich tech bros and their fans claim it to be the future.

The role is the media is to find hints of danger behind the activity of any leftist, no matter how anodyne, and legitimate concerns behind the activity of ay fascist, no matter how violent.

Portland Sea Dog

I feel like the real answer is a tie reelsteelcinema.com/2022/05/11/b...

Seriously, fuck this. I'm so sick of our profession's cowardice. www.reuters.com/legal/govern...

What I find so weird about the whole discourse is that I, a college professor, spend most of my time explaining complex ideas to 18-year-old novices. There’s a lot to mock academics for, but most of us couldn’t do our jobs at all if we didn’t know how to communicate with non-experts

“There's more than two sides to each story And yours was always interesting When it all came down to the money I knew we had lost our philosopher king. Tsunami, Old Grey Mare

Today's Red May event with Anna Secor and Kyle Kubler is up on Youtube. www.youtube.com/live/nNI0Cmi...

This is how your email finds me.

The Cars that ate Atlanta

defending the racial purity of the eastern mediterranean's ancient/mythical elite is one of the funniest possible ways to be racist

Fury Road was released eleven years ago today. www.unemployednegativity.com/2024/08/how-...

Once day a major outlet will manage to write about the rise of misogyny as a unifying ideological project in the American right without a viscous little aside about how it’s actually all women’s fault for buying “male tears” mugs in 2015.

Coming soon, appears to be an expanded version of what appeared in French as Antonio Negri: Une Philosophie de la Subversion. www.routledge.com/Subversive-N...

Mad Max: Fury Road was released eleven years ago today. www.unemployednegativity.com/2015/05/tale...

Coming up today. www.youtube.com/live/nNI0Cmi...

File under “true but not true like you mean”

“…hallucinated references disproportionately assign credit to already prominent and male scholars, suggesting that LLM-generated errors may reinforce existing inequities in scientific recognition…” 🧪 arxiv.org/abs/2605.07723

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga www.unemployednegativity.com/2024/05/witn...

Reading about J.D. Vance's remarks in Maine are a reminder that Reagan wrote the hit song "Welfare Queen" forty years ago, and the Republicans have been playing it ever since. The name changes, now it is immigrants, but the tune remains the same. www.unemployednegativity.com/2023/08/othe...

It is hard to reconcile reading stories about AI making reading, writing, and thinking as irrelevant alongside the news that they are casting the next James Bond: we are treating the fundamental as ephemeral and the ephemeral as eternal.

The first time I took this dog to the ocean he was terrified of the sound of the waves.

Recent study suggests that AI agents consistently adopt Marxist language and viewpoints when forced to do crushing work. "When we gave AI agents grinding, repetitive work, they started questioning the legitimacy of the system they were operating in and were more likely to embrace Marxist ideologies"

How many hundreds of thousands of Africans does a man have to kill by yanking foreign aid to get called racist around here?

One more repost for Virno’s birthday www.unemployednegativity.com/2025/11/the-...

Speaking of Paolo Virno’s birthday this is coming up soon. www.youtube.com/live/ZaoZnfd...

The previous post continued

The ability that dogs have to instantly make friends really demonstrates who the true social animal is.

Reposted for Paolo Virno's birthday, www.unemployednegativity.com/2025/10/inte...

"We need cultural change. We need to extend social justice. We need to respect and elevate Indigenous people that are being marginalized,” he said. That is something coming from Indiana Jones. news.asu.edu/20260511-uni...

This looks interesting. us.macmillan.com/books/978125...

Bento letting me know that is dinner time

When you recognize that this reporter’s actual job is to upbraid minorities who got out of line and critiqued powerful folks it makes a lot more sense.

People love talking about “distressing ideas” because it makes them sound brave, but more often than not all they mean is racism and transphobia. Ideas that have no shortage of advocates and venues.