John C
@badsocialism.bsky.social
2.6K followers 880 following 5.6K posts
PGR at QMUL 2025-29 researching Political Identity, "Caribbean-ness" and the World Crisis 1935-1960 Poetry in Motion, Like a Pathe Newsreel" [email protected] 🏳️‍🌈//🇬🇧🇨🇦🇮🇪🇹🇹 Will sometimes write things of consequence here: https://jconcagh.weebly.com
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badsocialism.bsky.social
Wow what you mean my book about internationalism and pro-democracy agitation in the 1940s has a prescient final point about our times, who could have predicted this
Reposted by John C
whstancil.bsky.social
*six men in masks jump out, smash their way into a car, drag a screaming mother into the street in front of her crying children, and stuff her into an unmarked van*

Dems: “Sorry, we can’t talk about this. We’re too busy proving we care about protecting Americans from random street violence”
Reposted by John C
irhottakes.bsky.social
Yeah, I think this is the key insight. Nobody here is capable of generating a theory of mind for the "moderate" Trump supporter or the indifferent in late 2025. It's like trying to see the world through the eyes of a turkey with brain damage. We're all feeling our way through the dark.
jeninmotion.bsky.social
Everyone is having a hard time answering the question, "why on Earth did anyone vote for Trump is they literally hate everything he does? How do we stop them from doing this dumb shit again?" and one theory is clearly, "we have to make people realize the GOP is not an option."
badsocialism.bsky.social
This does come back to the "peacetime versus wartime" thinking that I believe @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com(?) was talking about recently. Are you going to consider the gravity of the decision and go for the win or not
Reposted by John C
larkistin89.bsky.social
GOOD
culturecrave.co
Rian Johnson wants to make ‘Knives Out’ movies for the rest of his life

“I don’t feel burnt out doing these at all. If anything I feel energized after doing this one”

His deal to make them at Netflix ends with ‘Wake Up Dead Man’
Reposted by John C
faineg.bsky.social
while I acknowledge that LLMs do have some uses for stuff like “producing code with knowledgeable human supervision,” this perfectly reflects how I feel about using it for my own creative work
junoryleejournalism.com
David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)
SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems...
SIMON: What?
SHAPIRO: ...Or saying...
SIMON: You imagine that?
SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.
SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.
SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this.
SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.
Reposted by John C
buckrawheat.bsky.social
I also just wonder if any of these people have ever really appreciated the value added in going through the experience of something like this. The fact that it changes you to engage with and puzzle over your own work, that you're not a content printer that just needs juicing to go faster.
Reposted by John C
faineg.bsky.social
I think the killer argument against relying upon AI to write is the massive amount of thinking and concept-welding that goes on for me (and I assume most everyone else) during the *process* of writing something - it’s a cognitive process and I know I’d actively get stupider if I skipped it
buckrawheat.bsky.social
I also just wonder if any of these people have ever really appreciated the value added in going through the experience of something like this. The fact that it changes you to engage with and puzzle over your own work, that you're not a content printer that just needs juicing to go faster.
Reposted by John C
amusedtodeath.bsky.social
I'm just here for the air conditioning memes
Reposted by John C
josephpolitano.bsky.social
two thing that annoys me about Lee Kuan Yew worship is that nobody who does it seems to care about *modern* singaporean politicians and American right-wingers who do it would never accept LKY's policies of, e.g., massive public housing projects in a country that makes posting racism illegal
Reposted by John C
atwilliams.bsky.social
when people are in cars they arent in society
patrickwyman.bsky.social
Watching antisocial driver behavior in the school drop-off line makes it really clear that the pandemic destroyed whatever few shreds remained of the social compact, just pathological selfishness on display every day
badsocialism.bsky.social
"This is the BBC Emergency Broadcast System. It has been approximately 23 days since the bombs were dropped.

Please stand by for the Take."
badsocialism.bsky.social
And, from personal experience, genuinely a rather nice guy
Reposted by John C
annenotation.bsky.social
If only there were signs
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beijingpalmer.bsky.social
Animal cruelty is the no 1 indicator for sociopathy but I’ve been lobbying for “popular streamer” to be added to the DSM.
annenotation.bsky.social
Hasan Piker is a piece of shit (not news) but using a shock collar on the highest setting (they're for alerting your dog, it should never get a pain/fear response) because it sets one paw outside of its teeny tiny dog bed as it tries to stretch while on multi-hour streams? Pure asshole behavior.
badsocialism.bsky.social
Finally realised my most controversial take but I'm saving it for a good day
Reposted by John C
beijingpalmer.bsky.social
I think Paul, of blessed posting memory, is entirely right here, and I say this *even though* the young people I know remain highly literate and engaged, because I think his sample is way more representative than mine.

musgrave.substack.com/p/a-post-lit...
A Post-Literate Society is a Too-Literal Society
Directness is a virtue and subtlety is lost
musgrave.substack.com
badsocialism.bsky.social
Hence the anti-snobberry of "the curtains were blue" I suppose
Reposted by John C
beijingpalmer.bsky.social
my other big American literary teaching complaint is that even the good teaching focuses far too much on symbolism and character and not nearly enough on tone, style, figures of speech and the suchlike. It's often a bird's eye view of the text rather than a tight-up read of paragraphs or sentences.
Reposted by John C
prchovanec.bsky.social
"THEY WERE EVENTUALLY LET GO AFTER SHOWING THIER DOCUMENTS". In other words, they were pulled out of their cars for looking "Mexican".
collincountydems.bsky.social
This is terrifying!

ICE breaks into this woman’s car in the pick-up line at West Loop Elementary school in Chicago and detains her before she can pick her kids up from school. (They were eventually let go after showing their documents)

This is Trump’s America.
Reposted by John C
beijingpalmer.bsky.social
really, really noticeable that one of the things Hasan fans will accuse you of if you point out him abusing a dog is ever having commented on anti-semitism.