Statue of Trump and Epstein holding hands appears on National Mall. www.wusa9.com/article/news...

The enduring image of #TheGreatGatsby is of Gatsby's party lifestyle. It's the way we seem to remember the book, as a culture. We forget that in the 1920s, drinking alcohol at a bar like this one was not only against the law, but against the U.S. Constitution. 🧵 www.masslive.com/destinations...

We have to build horizontal bonds between people, to counter authoritarianism.

A new indoor tennis facility in #WesternMass! www.hatfieldrallyhouse.com

This is Marion, OH. It’s the town that won the #StrongestTown competition in 2025. So @strongtowns.org did this video about Marion’s comeback from a dying rust-belt community to a revitalization success story. 🧵https://youtu.be/C4BByDJ9w-M?si=OzhTCfBvlusZCdRP

My most-read stuff lives downstream of posts by people with the wattage of @mattseybold.bsky.social apparently. #TrollLife

Canceling speech because a corporation is scared that an administration won’t let them do a corporate merger makes you less free

"You need the peculiar, meandering, hyper-specific stories about the oddball texture of life - the very stuff the right wants to scrub out with power-wash morality. The long form of lingering wasn’t a luxury. It was democracy in print." slowcivilwar.substack.com/p/the-longfo...

Can you trust Wikipedia? MAGA says no. But what they don't want you to trust is actually engaging in academic research. slate.com/technology/2...

All of our knowledge of history is viewed through the lens of empire.

Patriotism has been cast as an unquestioning support for the empire and its military adventuring. But military adventuring has real costs that weigh heavily on the foot soldiers who serve the empire's ends, whether that is overseas or in the empire's own cities.

This thread resonates with my thoughts. But also, the other side is that our culture of compartmentalization, all of the tiny little boxes we've built and silo-ed ourselves in have created the environment for this sort of media to thrive.

“Harrison Bergeron,” by Kurt Vonnegut www.tnellen.com/cybereng/har...

Start planning now to attend a No Kings protest on Oct. 18. We need this one to be even bigger than the last one. Invite your family and friends, and ask them to invite their family and friends. People power can defeat fascism.

We were talking about what America means, which makes me think about Louis Menand's book "The Free World." Many reviews talk about the book as flawed, as if it could not have been. But I admire the effort to try to sum it all up.

“Political violence is not random.” www.politico.com/news/magazin...

I have a cousin who lives in rural Ohio. He posted on IG a meme about the “intolerant left.” And I decided to reply to him, because it’s the most genuine way I can take action and express myself in the wake of the killing of Charlie Kirk.

Today's assignment in history is to familiarize yourself with "Horst Wessel"

We have to work hard to fight for a future where technology enables Freedom.

I watched the original Robocob recently, and I put Running Man in my watch list. And they both seem very prescient. But, in part, they ask very simple questions that we haven't answered in decades. The lesson of the 20th century might have been that our technological knowledge outran our wisdom.

It seems to me that when we teach American history and civics in middle school, we don't do a very good job talking about the political situation in Britain at the time of the revolution. The Whig and Tory parties, their history and evolution, is quite interesting. www.britannica.com/topic/Whig-P...

I just finished this book, “Two Coots in a Canoe.” It’s an account of a 400+ mile trip down the whole length of the Connecticut River, from the lakes of Northern New Hampshire to the Long Island Sound. 🧵

Our bizarre times: in 2025, the media doing essential reporting on fascism include Wired, Teen Vogue, and.. Bounces, a tennis newsletter. Bounces reports not just that Trump is will attend the US Open (his first air travel in weeks) and that USTA is trying to censor the boos he'll get. 1/

I’m trying to be better than the bear, but it seems like my demographic is letting us down.

I heard "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" on the radio this morning, and it caught me, having read "The Broken Heart of America." Suddenly, I listened to the lyrics with a context of the story of "Frankie & Johnny" songs and black, urban neighborhoods. #BigMessyAmerica www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTrs...

“I think you’ll want to listen to this poem more than once, letting it lap at you like water, letting it rise around you like smoke from a beach bonfire, letting it sing to you like an aria,” shares @maggiesmithpoet.bsky.social in today’s ep. Read “Bonfire Opera” by Danusha Laméris: bit.ly/45owPyC

If this article is to be believed, our founders (as flawed as they were as human beings) are being reduced to sock puppets for MAGA ideology.

“So, Taylor Fritz and Novak Djokovic had a heavy task in front of them once they finally got on court to end Tuesday’s slate: they had to power this stalled freighter ship of an event back into motion.” That’s quite a sentence, @benrothenberg.bsky.social #USOpen #tennis #writing

“Be loud for America.”🇺🇸

Having lived through the Bush II years, there was a time when the sentence I'm about to write would have been uncharacteristic of me. But @maxboot.bsky.social is not wrong here.

When a fawning underling hangs a garishly large banner of the boss’s face on the building, it does put a certain spin on the place of “labor.”

Concerned that we are losing the necessary ratio. 15% of teachers/faculty should be irretrievably strange eccentrics. Every learning experience should have some element where in later life you can reflect with former classmates about how bizarre at least one (1) class per year was.

Taxes are responsibility. To pay taxes is to accept your responsibility within the community where you live.

This is Walter Johnson, author of “The Broken Heart of America.” wjohnson.scholars.harvard.edu

Walter Johnson talks about this “16 in Webster Goves” documentary in his book “The Broken Heart of America.” 🧵https://youtu.be/rAB_2LXJUjA?feature=shared

This is a dystopian summary of what we're up against.

"Townie accents cut through the din," John Micek in a reported article on MassLive about Market Basket, the discount supermarket. www.masslive.com/news/2025/07...

"The president’s military occupation of the capital has escalated in recent days into something not seen since British troops marched the streets of colonial Boston." Garett Graf in Doomsday Scenario @vermontgmg.bsky.social www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/america-ti...

White Stadium in Boston: Women's Soccer ✅ Urbanism ✅ Walkability/Transit ✅ www.masslive.com/boston/2025/...

Are we living right now amidst the great capitulation?

We went to the Greenfield Harvest Supper yesterday. It was a gorgeous day and it was uplifting to participate in such a benevolent community celebration. They had a tent remembering Juanita and Wally Nelson, two civil rights activists who founded the supper. www.nelsonhomestead.org/home/about-t...

Do we make a mistake to think of social media as a place where real discussion can happen? Clearly there are powerful forces that have different ideas about what this place is for.

The opposite of woke is somnambulance. The people who want America to sleepwalk through life are the real groomers, hucksters, shysters and thieves. No 👑s. Wake up!

Birds. Window.

I don’t think domination is pragmatic. #BigMessyAmerica

It is lonely to think, to formulate thoughts in your head that you might not ever say out loud, that might never be shared. Maybe it is helpful to know that there are other people thinking thoughts, too, and it is not just you.

That’s what Franco’s Spain looked like.

Politics, in this case, means democracy. We are a country that has valued spectatorship over participation, consumption over production, efficiency over humanity. We have to get our democracy mojo back. #BigMessyAmerica

Extend the Valley Flyer further north, into Vermont? Okay, but how about adding another train?

“Archer, I am my errors. /Arching, I erred / In desire. Am I my target? Expect no / mercy.” - Paul Tran, “Eros” poets.org/poem/eros-0