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Davis X. Machina

@ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social

640 followers 380 following 4.9K posts

Curmudgeon. Retired pedagogue. Lapsed philologist. Maneiac. Likes: Sparrows. bridges, cardboard boxes, curtain rods Dislikes: Most everything else. All power to the soviets of car dealers and regional vice presidents!

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Davis X. Machina @ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social · May 25

Decoration Day tomorrow.

Remember the reason for the season...

Detail of Augustus St. Gaudens memorial for Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts (Colored) Regiment on Beacon Hill in Boston.
Bronze relief of Black infantrymen on the march. One of the figures has had someone place a bouquet in the crook of the elbow of an infantyrman with a shouldered musket.

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Davis X. Machina @ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social · 11h

They don't fit on screens. And it's all screens now.

Davis X. Machina @ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social · 12h

I think "No kings! No olds! No fatties!" is something we can all march for.

Davis X. Machina @ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social · 12h

I think "No kings! No olds! No fatties!" is something we.vsn all march for.

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Davis X. Machina @ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social · 12h

This is why it's imperative that the rising generation of Democrats make better screens, and look good on them.

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Davis X. Machina @ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social · 13h

Tired: Immanentize the eschaton!
Wired: Trigger the Insurrection Act!

Davis X. Machina @ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social · 14h

"He shouldn't have to, though. He's cool."

Reposted by Davis X. Machina

Stephen West @stephenwest.bsky.social · 1d

How W. E. B. Du Bois responded to government policing of "anti-American" sentiment during the 1910s:

"I took great satisfaction in being able to sit back in my chair and answer blandly, 'We are seeking to have the Constitution of the United States thoroughly and completely enforced.' ”

Federal agents invaded even the offices of The Crisis and the National Association for the advancement of colored people and asked searching questions: " just what, after all, were our objects and activities?” I took great satisfaction in being able to sit back in my chair and answer blandly, “We are seeking to have the constitution of the United states thoroughly and completely enforced.” It took some ingenuity, even for Southerners, to make treason out of that.

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Davis X. Machina @ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social · 15h

I'm making a "No Ship Money!" sign for Saturday.

No one will get it, but I like it.

Davis X. Machina @ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social · 1d

Hegel remarks somewhere that all world-historical events happen as it were three times - what he forgot to add was first as tragedy, then as farce, and finally as a series of podcasts.

Davis X. Machina @ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social · 1d

No WS wins for a whole 16 years? A tragedy.

The annoying AF "There are only Six Real Clubs" mentality that afflicts top flight English football certainly has an American equivalent.

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Davis X. Machina @ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social · 1d

Senate Democrats basically did all the blocking McConnell really needed for those two years.

Something, something, while your enemies making a mistake...

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Davis X. Machina @ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social · 1d

Said in January that there were three things the US produced for export that the whole world wants to buy - soybeans, STEM PhDs and Treasury paper. And that Trump would bollix up all three.

Two down, one to go.

Davis X. Machina @ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social · 2d

Fractally wrong. Each wrong bit is made up of wrong sub-bits.

Davis X. Machina @ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social · 2d

It's going up in a *narrative* kind of way, though.

The stories we tell each other beat the pants off any index, right up until they don't.

Then we get new stories, in which we never believed the old stories anyways.

Davis X. Machina @ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social · 2d

Saying something makes it so.
Agreeing with something that that just ain't so is a key that opens doors, cements friendships...

And the "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities" treadmill needs a constant supply of absurdities to keep functioning...

Davis X. Machina @ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social · 2d

They wouldn't be teenagers otherwise.

The good news: adolescence is a chronic but self- limiting neurological condition for most of its sufferers.

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Davis X. Machina @ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social · 2d

The "Trump FBI" predates the first time he was elected and I enter into evidence the behavior of the NYC field office in the summer and fall of 2016.

Davis X. Machina @ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social · 3d

Littlefield's "The Strange Death of Liberal England" is due for a revisiting. Hobsbawm kind of gestures towards drawing such a picture in "The Age of Empire" One's a bit narrower than that, the other is broader.

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Davis X. Machina @ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social · 3d

With a whiff of "Why won't he start a civil war for my delectation, and the confirmation of my priors?"

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Davis X. Machina @ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social · 3d

If politics in the sense of 'ethics, epistemology, aestetics', the traditional divisions of philosophy, is the collected answers we've come up with to "How then should we live together?" these people have no politics.

Because their answer is "We don't. And who's this 'we' anyways?"

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Davis X. Machina @ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social · 3d

In a *narrative* way the consultants did tell him, and that's all that matters now.

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Davis X. Machina @ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social · 3d

I'm still trying to think of a problem we face that doesn't have a huge Congress-shaped hole in the middle of it.

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Davis X. Machina @ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social · 3d

(lyrics are James Russel Lowell, "The Present Crisis", written WRT the Mexican War. FWIW can be sung to the tune known as the Austrian Hymn, better known to us as the melody used for "Deutschland Über Alles")

Davis X. Machina @ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social · 3d

"Once to every man and nation
comes the moment to decide,
in the strife of truth with falsehood,
for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, some great decision,
off'ring each the bloom or blight,
and the choice goes by forever
'twixt that darkness and that light."

is right there in the hymnal

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Davis X. Machina @ogdavisxmachina.bsky.social · 3d

bsky.app/profile/coll...

collin cornell @collincornell.bsky.social · 5d

“One of the chants that has become ubiquitous at these protests at Broadview is, ‘Love your neighbor, love your God, save your soul and quit your job,’” said Black, who pastors at the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago. “Everybody chants that.”

RNS @rns.org · 6d

The pastors’ efforts are part of rising faith-based pushback to the Trump administration as the president seeks to implement plans for mass deportation of immigrants.
religionnews.com/2025/10/07/i...

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