John Leavitt
@leavittalone.bsky.social
30K followers 720 following 32K posts
@Leavittalone from Twitter . Writer and cartoonist. Seen in The Toast, New Yorker, The Awl, The Nib, Racked, The Rumpus, The Baffler, etc. That guy you met at that party once. http://www.leavittalone.com/
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Reposted by John Leavitt
boneysoups.bsky.social
they're playing my song (Marx and vampires, Moretti and Dracula)
"Marx, as is well known, was fond of comparing capital to vampires, most famously in the passage in Capital that reads: ‘Capital is dead labour, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.’ In ‘Dialectic of Fear’, Franco Moretti argues that the figure of Dracula in particular, which Marx did not live to see, refers to a more specific set of anxieties, experienced by the British bourgeoisie at the height of what the Budapest-born social theorist Karl Polanyi called ‘the international system’ – held together by the balance of power, the self-regulating market, the gold standard and the liberal state – and what we might call the ‘first era of globalization’. According to Moretti, the Romanian Count represents the threat of monopoly, and thus of backsliding from market liberalism into ‘feudal’ despotism." "Because Stoker does not recognize that the self-regulating market is a utopian myth, and that unfettered market competition is itself what generates monopoly, it is necessary that he frame the threat to economic liberalism as ‘oriental, tyrannical. It cannot be a part of that very society he wants to defend.’ His solution to the threat of backsliding is to forge an ideological collectivity that is strong enough to fend off the ‘foreign’ vampire without compromising existing individual property relations, represented in the novel by marriage. The panacea he arrives at is nationalism – albeit with a little help from such free-market friends as Dutch academic Abraham Van Helsing and Texan financier Quincy P. Morris. But as Moretti reminds us, Dracula does not end with the death of the Count, it ends with the death of Morris, a pre-emptive narrative strike against the rising American empire that doubles as a bit of wishful thinking on Stoker’s part."
Reposted by John Leavitt
melbuer.bsky.social
There are a number of accounts on Tiktok and IG that do extremely important work walking viewers through AI-generated slop videos like this and help them think critically about what they are seeing, how to spot it, etc. It’s a new era of critical media literacy instruction and I am happy to see it
paleofuture.bsky.social
That TikTok account has a few fake videos of reporters getting detained. They make these videos because it’s a big story in the news. Real reporters are getting arrested. And so people are making AI videos to get engagement on TikTok.
dontbeonline • 1d ago
Journalist gets detained while doing her job #ForYou, #viral, #foryoupage, #tikto... more
• Contains: Bad Boys (The...
leavittalone.bsky.social
like this is probably a fascist's outfit but now a commie is wearing it
leavittalone.bsky.social
I always considered Paris the Menswear Heaven cause I found an entire 50s Hugo Boss outfit in my size with SHOES for like 60 euros
Reposted by John Leavitt
insortediaboli.bsky.social
Marx developing the labor theory of value:
jesawyer.bsky.social
browsing clothes on french sites is hard because they have so many different words for types of coats
Reposted by John Leavitt
eternalcatwar.bsky.social
steal his look, Magneto was right
leavittalone.bsky.social
I just need the purple turtleneck to complete "Casual Magneto"
Reposted by John Leavitt
jesawyer.bsky.social
browsing clothes on french sites is hard because they have so many different words for types of coats
leavittalone.bsky.social
black trousers, dark purple turtleneck, herringbone blazer, firm conviction
leavittalone.bsky.social
I can feel the long hair on the back the neck lets complete the circle
leavittalone.bsky.social
I just need the purple turtleneck to complete "Casual Magneto"
Reposted by John Leavitt
leavittalone.bsky.social
I saw this movie in the best possible condition, a cabin the woods with a CRT TV
leavittalone.bsky.social
there;s like a lot of Omasake near me and I'm going okay fuck it maybe
leavittalone.bsky.social
everywhere fucking sucks now
leavittalone.bsky.social
there's no reason to go out anymore
leavittalone.bsky.social
be my friend you can have a chicken stew of figs and grapes and not also a bunch of tik toks for some reason
leavittalone.bsky.social
no one knows how to do service anymore this duck is about as good as I could make from whole foods and there's a guy playing loud tik-toks at the next table, why am I here?
leavittalone.bsky.social
It might be an industry indicator that me, the person who would go out to eat three times a week at buzzy venues if they could is just like totally off-putt by the whole thing and ready to go back to lockdown home-cooking
leavittalone.bsky.social
eventually everything becomes everything else
Reposted by John Leavitt
jeremycshipp.bsky.social
Fall snacks are so fun. I love unhinging my jaw to swallow whole pumpkins and dry leaves.