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switchbackasaurus.bsky.social
@switchbackasaurus.bsky.social
340 followers 120 following 210 posts
At the intersection of conservation and recreation. “Heavy, serious, solid earth. The earth that is worked upon, scratched, written upon.” (Derrida, “Force and Signification,” n23)
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switchbackasaurus.bsky.social
switchbackasaurus.bsky.social @switchbackasaurus.bsky.social · 1h
Fantastic mapping of state capture
gilduran.com Gil Durán @gilduran.com · 5h
Please take a minute to scroll through this—and share it.
It's the story of our time.

The Authoritarian Stack: How Tech Billionaires Are Building a Post-Democratic American—And Why Europe Is Next.

www.authoritarian-stack.info
The Authoritarian Stack
How Tech Billionaires Are Building a Post-Democratic America — And Why Europe Is Next
www.authoritarian-stack.info
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iansociologo.bsky.social
Ian Carrillo @iansociologo.bsky.social · 3h
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...
Why Underachievers Dominate Secret Police Organizations: Evidence from Autocratic Argentina Adam Scharpf and Christian Gläßel https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ajps.12475 Autocrats depend on a capable secret police. Anecdotal evidence, however, often characterizes agents as surprisingly mediocre in skill and intellect. To explain this puzzle, this article focuses on the career incentives underachieving individuals face in the regular security apparatus. Low-performing officials in hierarchical organizations have little chance of being promoted or filling lucrative positions. To salvage their careers, these officials are willing to undertake burdensome secret police work. Using data on all 4,287 officers who served in autocratic Argentina (1975-83), we study biographic differences between secret police agents and the entire recruitment pool. We find that low-achieving officers were stuck within the regime hierarchy, threatened with discharge, and thus more likely to join the secret police for future benefits. The study demonstrates how state bureaucracies breed mundane career concerns that produce willing enforcers and cement violent regimes. This has implications for the understanding of autocratic consolidation and democratic breakdown.
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jonseidel.bsky.social
Jon Seidel @jonseidel.bsky.social · 1h
'It's a disgrace': Chicagoans describe jarring encounters with feds as judge prepares to rule on 'blitz'

From @chicago.suntimes.com: chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/...
'It's a disgrace': Chicagoans describe jarring encounters with feds as judge prepares to rule on 'blitz'
U.S. Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino testified on video that the use of force by federal agents in Chicago has been “more than exemplary," but also said he would have used more tear gas in Litt...
chicago.suntimes.com
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switchbackasaurus.bsky.social
switchbackasaurus.bsky.social @switchbackasaurus.bsky.social · 1h
“It’s the future, Pikul”
switchbackasaurus.bsky.social
switchbackasaurus.bsky.social @switchbackasaurus.bsky.social · 7h
Gardein makes some. Haven’t tried them as it’s not something I ate before going veg. (TBH don’t care if my plant protein is any kind of meat analogue.)
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switchbackasaurus.bsky.social
switchbackasaurus.bsky.social @switchbackasaurus.bsky.social · 8h
I’ve always loved this passage from near the end of Vineland, the heart of the Traverse clan annual reunion:
Page 369 of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland: “It was the heart of this gathering meant to honor the bond between Eula Becker and Jess Traverse, that lay beneath, defined, and made sense of them all, distributed from Marin to Seattle, Coos Bay to downtown Butte, choker setters and choppers, dynamiters of fish, shingle weavers and street-corner spellbinders, old and beaten at, young and brand-new, they all kept an eye on the head of the table, where Jess and Eula sat together, each year smaller and more transparent, waiting for Jess's annual reading of a passage from Emerson he'd found and memorized years ago, quoted in a jailhouse copy of The Varieties of Religious Experience, by William James. Frail as the fog of Vineland, in his carrying, pure voice, Jess reminded them, "'Secret retributions are always restoring the level, when disturbed, of the divine justice. It is impossible to tilt the beam. All the tyrants and proprietors and monopolists of the world in vain set their shoulders to heave the bar. Settles forever more the ponderous equator to its line, and man and mote, and star and sun, must range to it, or be pulverized by the recoil.' " He had a way of delivering it that always got them going, and Eula wouldn't take her eyes off him. "And if you don't believe Ralph Waldo Emerson," added Jess, "ask Crocker 'Bud' Scantling," the head of the Lumber Association whose life of impunity for arranging to drop the tree on Jess had ended abruptly down on 101 not far from here when he'd driven his week-old BMW into an oncoming chip truck at a combined speed of about 150. It'd been a few years now, but Jess still found it entertaining.”
switchbackasaurus.bsky.social
switchbackasaurus.bsky.social @switchbackasaurus.bsky.social · 8h
Zoyd Wheeler’s lack of genealogy always seemed to me a deliberate foil to Frenesi’s extended Traverse clan. Just a “gypsy roofer” who grew up in the San Joaquin. But here we have it: Francis Floyd “Skeet” Wheeler and Zinnia. His parents, Depression kids from Milwaukee who took a train out west.
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switchbackasaurus.bsky.social
switchbackasaurus.bsky.social @switchbackasaurus.bsky.social · 15h
Also a banger:
kendrawrites.com Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 17h
I knew it would take less than a day for a tiktok dj to make something.
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acyn.bsky.social
Acyn @acyn.bsky.social · 1d
AOC: I have to tell you, in my traveling across the country, I am hearing and have been seeing consistent things from everyday people. And it is that they are terrified, they are frustrated, they are angry, and they are shocked by a president violating the values that we hold dear
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switchbackasaurus.bsky.social
switchbackasaurus.bsky.social @switchbackasaurus.bsky.social · 1d
“Pynchon is genuinely a writer of historical fiction….[M]any Americans are…committed to remaining ignorant of the way their country’s wealth, culture, and geopolitical strength were, and are, founded on violence carried out in defense of capital accumulation and white supremacy.”
switchbackasaurus.bsky.social
switchbackasaurus.bsky.social @switchbackasaurus.bsky.social · 1d
Gets at a key difference between Hicks McTaggart and Pynchon’s previous protagonists.
Richard Beck: “Thomas Pynchon Is Angry”
In Shadow Ticket , the novelist takes on America’s indifference to history
yalereview.org
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gregsargent.bsky.social
Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 1d
What the Tucker/Nick Fuentes fiasco really reveals is that the "white nationalist wing of the GOP" is "a major force within internal GOP politics," says @davidaustinwalsh.bsky.social.

On the pod, David is so good on the GOP's 50-year refusal to police its extremists:
newrepublic.com/article/2026...
MAGA Rages at Tucker Carlson after “Nazi” Shocker Reveals Too Much
As Tucker faces criticism for hosting white nationalist Nick Fuentes, an expert on conservatism decodes how this tells the bigger story of the American right’s refusal to police its extremists for the...
newrepublic.com
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drlisacorrigan.bsky.social
Dr. Lisa Corrigan @drlisacorrigan.bsky.social · 1d
Black shoppers and wine moms said no more after the anti-Black, anti-LGBTQ policy shift. 🤷🏻‍♀️
jenlucpiquant.bsky.social Jennifer Ouellette @jenlucpiquant.bsky.social · 2d
Target just sent up a giant red flag about the U.S. consumer. A 30% stock plunge, collapsing store traffic, and margin pressure all point to the same thing: Affluent shoppers are rattled and recession fears are rising qz.com/tgt-wmt-earn...
Target just sent up a giant red flag about the U.S. consumer
A 30% stock plunge, collapsing store traffic, and margin pressure all point to the same thing: Affluent shoppers are rattled and recession fears are rising
qz.com
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switchbackasaurus.bsky.social
switchbackasaurus.bsky.social @switchbackasaurus.bsky.social · 1d
Except that it’s not only Republicans who own guns. I recommend sociologist David Yamane as a starting point for anyone actually interested in moving beyond stereotypes:

news.wfu.edu/2024/05/30/u...

thehill.com/opinion/civi...
thehill.com
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billmckibben.bsky.social
Bill McKibben @billmckibben.bsky.social · 2d
Australia has so much clean energy they're literally giving it away. Meanwhile, GOP is in all-out war to stamp out solar

www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11...
Australian households to get free electricity three hours a day
Saying there is enough solar power for everyone in the daytime, the federal government will direct retailers to provide three hours of free power every day to consumers.
www.abc.net.au
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switchbackasaurus.bsky.social
switchbackasaurus.bsky.social @switchbackasaurus.bsky.social · 2d
“[W]hat’s a hundred miles to the streamlined velocities of the 1930s?”
"Sure there isn't some way we could just do this all out of the office?
Shortwave radio or something?"
"Too slow."
"Radio waves, what's faster'n that?"
"A live op who's there already, on the spot."

#ShadowTicket
switchbackasaurus.bsky.social
switchbackasaurus.bsky.social @switchbackasaurus.bsky.social · 2d
One thing about reading Pynchon is how often what one takes to be an absurd fiction turns out to be actual history. For example, Gleb Bokii:
Screenshot excerpt of the Wikipedia entry for Gleb Bokii
switchbackasaurus.bsky.social
switchbackasaurus.bsky.social @switchbackasaurus.bsky.social · 3d
Parts of southern Indiana are quite beautiful. Braun is widely disliked. It’s a more purple state than you might imagine and there are many good people organizing and fighting to make it better—as there are everywhere.
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switchbackasaurus.bsky.social
switchbackasaurus.bsky.social @switchbackasaurus.bsky.social · 4d
3/ But huh, I wonder how a novel set in the 30s, full of nazis and gangsters and a “newer type of federals” (“nobody knows yet exactly how bad they can be”) could possibly speak to our time.
switchbackasaurus.bsky.social
switchbackasaurus.bsky.social @switchbackasaurus.bsky.social · 4d
2/ …and if there’s not, so what? “Against the Day” followed by not one but three detective novels isn’t enough for ya?
I doubt that the novel was written during “our present political moment,” unless “moment” means the last decade.
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switchbackasaurus.bsky.social
switchbackasaurus.bsky.social @switchbackasaurus.bsky.social · 4d
Bad, weird take on several counts.

Why is it Pynchon’s job to meet any of these expectations?
How is it not satirical?
Novels aren’t “survival manuals.”
The 12-year gap is not unusual (17 years between GR and Vineland, another 7 before M&D), and rumor is there may yet be a “swan song”…
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newrepublic.com
The New Republic @newrepublic.com · 4d
Yet in 2010, Noem—then a congressional candidate—had “20 speeding tickets, three stop-sign violations, two seat-belt violations and a citation for driving with no driver’s license.” She had six court notices for failing to appear, and had two warrants out for her arrest. trib.al/uQSDaqR
ICE Barbie Says Immigrants Are Too Dumb to Drive Semitrucks
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem made the inane claim while bragging about arresting immigrant truck drivers.
trib.al
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switchbackasaurus.bsky.social
switchbackasaurus.bsky.social @switchbackasaurus.bsky.social · 4d
Good to see multiple recommendations to read @george-lakoff.com. See also @gilduran.com and FrameLab
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lawfaremedia.org
Lawfare @lawfaremedia.org · 5d
"I have never seen a set of pretrial motions quite like this one in its power and breadth and its attempt comprehensively to dismember the legitimacy of, process behind, and substance of an indictment."

@BenjaminWittes.lawfaremedia.org summarizes Comey's recent motions to dismiss the indictment.
The Situation: James Comey Is Just Asking Questions
So many motions; so many options for dismissal.
www.lawfaremedia.org
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mskellymhayes.bsky.social
Puff the Magic Hater @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 5d
"Department of Defense (DOD) officials told Democratic lawmakers in a brief on the U.S. military’s strikes against boats off the coast of northern South America that the military is not identifying the occupants of the boats before they bomb them."
Pentagon Admits to Striking Caribbean Boats Without Identifying Victims’ Purported Drug Links
The White House cannot “satisfy the evidentiary burden” to prosecute those they have been killing, one lawmaker said.
truthout.org
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