Watched Taxi Driver again tonight - last saw it in college probably. Just astoundingly, disturbingly good.

Ah, le beau modèle anglo-saxon qui nous arrive très vite... #ESR

Rather beautifully, Professor Mahmood Mamdani's dedication in "Neither Settler Nor Native" is to his trail-blazing son, @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social. He quotes the revolutionary Chinese writer Lu Xun's famous concluding lines in "Hometown": 「其實地上本沒有路，走的人多了，也便成了路。」 -魯迅，故鄉 #everynightapoem

Thinking of #zohranmandani ‘s father #MahmoodMamdani ‘s quote on the May Fourth writer Lu Xun. Hope is perhaps one of the best examples of #cogencytheory; it’s a thing with feathers, it’s an intellectual passion, the youthful spirit that animates how we envision a new world

I spoke to Donovan Hohn of @laphamsquarterly.bsky.social for their Moby Dick podcast. We talked about Chapter 4, my Queequeg and Ishmael fanfic (Quishmael for my fellow old Tumblr heads) and Melville’s unrequited love for Nathaniel Hawthorne. www.laphamsquarterly.org/content/epis...

really Angel of History-maxxing right now

this is rather terrible news. "All modern language and music courses are being suspended for new students at the University of Nottingham." www.bbc.com/news/article...

"We are the leaders we've been waiting for." -Grace Lee Boggs

I'd missed this: Democratic-endorsed candidates *swept* the 6 school board races in Mecklenburg County, one of North Carolina's largest counties (home to Charlotte). This means there won't be a Republican on the board anymore; the sole GOP incumbent was ousted.

This is horrible news. This program is a huge success, identifies brilliant scholars and gives them a transitional landing place that can help them land a tenure track job in the system. It’s a win for students, their programs, and all the schools in the system. Why end it?

Go Fund Me for the teacher who was kidnapped in front of children in her classroom today: www.gofundme.com/f/stand-with...

Degenerates

"We are the leaders we've been waiting for." -Grace Lee Boggs

This is so true, and so well stated

Oh. Wow.

Both recovering from the plague, but wouldn’t miss a vote. Actually 15yo gave me informed opinions on the slate, and helped me make up my mind on a key vote #nc #vote

What we know so far, 9:30pm —Dems flip VA-Gov & VA-LG. —BIG Dem gains in VA House —Dems win NJ-Gov —Mamdani up —Dems seem to flip 2 statewide offices in GA —JD Vance's half-brother loses in Cincy. —Dems sweep Orlando council —PA: Dem justices up big —Maine anti-mail vote measure down —Krasner wins

Zohran Mamdani has won, & will be the next mayor of NYC.

This is shaping up to be a spectacular night for Democrats. Still. a long way to go, but hard to find a bright spot the GOP can count on at this moment.

The best electoral coverage, as always

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. -FS Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, published 4/10/1925.

Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was published April 10, 1925, a hundred years ago today. I have always been struck by its prescience - to write this tale at the height of the Roaring Twenties, with a clear-eyed view of its total rotting core and impending demise.

via @notoriousrsg.bsky.social: "Holding a Roaring Twenties party for your billionaire friends while you’re doing everything you can to make Americans relive the 1930s."

This is why I love this place—I learn such interesting things!

in blog form: substack.com/home/post/p-...

The complexity and contradiction of Lu Xun's ideas remain - both fiercely leftist, and fiercely critiqued by the Party for his lack of revolutionary clarity (esp. by Mao, in his Yan'an Talks). During Occupy Central, Lu Xun's lines were seen hanging proudly on a banner in Hong Kong.

Both recovering from the plague, but wouldn’t miss a vote. Actually 15yo gave me informed opinions on the slate, and helped me make up my mind on a key vote #nc #vote

"Yet I could not erase all possibility of hope, for hope lies in the future. I could not rely on my own present evidence in its lack, to refute his assertion that it might exist one day." -Lu Xun, from Preface to Call to Arms, 1922. #everynightapoem #ofsorts #救救孩子

“Imagine an iron house, with absolutely no windows, indestructible, with many people asleep inside who will soon die of suffocation…Would you think you are doing them a good turn [by waking them before they perish]?” “But if a few awake, you can’t say there is no hope.” Lu Xun

all the staffers at teen vogue who just got laid off I hope yall feel how appreciated your work has been by so many.

Bolts does incredibly important work. Subscribe if you can.

Goodness. Closing beautifully with Vito Marcantonio: “If it be radicalism to believe that our natural resources should be used for the benefit of all, and not for the purpose of enriching just a few, then I plead guilty to the charge.”

They are destroying what SHE built. #TeenVogue

Deciduous indecisiveness

the gorgeousness of november light

As a November baby, hard disagree. February is Norway. November is Scotland.

Durham County Government, in collaboration with local partners, has created a food and nutrition resources page that contains important information and links for residents who are impacted by the federal government shutdown. #Durham #NC #food ➡🔗 dconc.gov/Public-Infor...

#NC list of #foodbanks to donate to www.newsobserver.com/news/local/a...

“It is also November. The noons are more laconic and the sundowns sterner...November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.” -Emily Dickinson, letter to Elizabeth Holland (Nov 1865) #everynightapoem #november

I just love that Otani shared this Yamamoto lion’s roar #大谷翔平 #山本由伸 #WorldSeries

Wrote about the World Series. danieldrezner.substack.com/p/thank-you-...

Today would be a good day to shop our 50% off sale! Use coupon FALL25 to save on in-stock and pre-order books and journal issues. buff.ly/c9nsWVf

he’s so babygirl coded

I love for everyone that this is now the baseball app

Appetency [AP-ih-ten-see] (n.) - A longing desire or hunger; a natural tendency or affinity. Used in a sentence: “There are many of us. Some have an appetency for dreams, some for memories, some hunger for emotions—such as fear. Those are the ones I avoid.”

We're each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?

My tsundoku 積ん読 to be read book pile costume was originally crowned with a nightstand reading lamp on my head, but it toppled over… #halloween

I was going to attend the ball of ghosts and witches, A delegation would appear there in masks and wigs, And dance, unrecognized, in the chorus of the living. Czeslaw Milosz, All Hallow's Eve #everynightapoem