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ecppdx.bsky.social
ECP
@ecppdx.bsky.social
2.7K followers 490 following 12K posts
Classical pianist, composer, and theorist from New England living in Portland, OR. Queer, leftist, pro-trans, pro-Palestine. I post about politics, music, film, and whatever else I'm thinking about.
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northsquatch.bsky.social
Ukraine caught Trump, and the US Maga regime funneling intelligence to Russia. #Rebel
January 18, 2026 at 9:23 PM
ecppdx.bsky.social
Does he support the abolition of ICE?
atrupar.com Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 9h
Van Hollen: "I am not going to cast a vote -- not one dime -- to support this lawless, brutal Trump ICE operation"
January 18, 2026 at 10:38 PM
ecppdx.bsky.social
I keep watching in anger and frustration as prominent Democrats continue to defend Israel even though *the vast majority* of their voter base is against them on this point.

Democrats have an overwhelmingly negative view of Israel; the genocide of the Palestinians is utterly beyond debate.
maxgranger.info Max Granger @maxgranger.info · 1d
Ben Shapiro: "Israel did not commit a genocide in Gaza"
Gavin Newsom: "I agree with you."
January 18, 2026 at 6:43 PM
ecppdx.bsky.social
Much of this can be traced back to, or at least through, Clinton-era changes in immigration enforcement that created more brutal consequences and less oversight and restraint.

Both parties seem to love this. It's their voters who don't.
victorerikray.bsky.social Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 13h
ICE actions are not a radical break but an intensification and extension of bipartisan consensus on the need for punitive immigration policy. Since its post-9/11 creation, people have warned that the tools given to ICE would eventually be turned on citizens.
January 18, 2026 at 6:39 PM
ecppdx.bsky.social
Sometimes I catch angles in my apartment that create incidental compositions that I find interesting.
An angled view out of my bedroom into the hall corner: in the foreground, a wooden console table with marble knobs, on it a black carafe with a yellow ginkgo branch in it, a small reddish plant in a white cup and a yellow bowl; under the table a black crate with yellow throw pillows and a yellow throw next to it. In the hlway, a round wooden table with a small beige vase and a picture book (In Search of Unicorns) displayed underneath; above, a tri-globe brass lamp, a square case, a photo (of my parents), a candle, and a small brass figure of a lighthouse and 3 flying gulls. Two black framed posters can be seen partially on the wall above the table.
January 18, 2026 at 12:24 AM
ecppdx.bsky.social
If Democrats nominate a centrist that loses because progressives stay home, it's the progressives' fault they lose.

If Democrats nominate a progressive that loses because centrists vote Republican, it's ... the progressive's fault they lose.

What an annoying pattern.
January 17, 2026 at 9:00 PM
ecppdx.bsky.social
While I'm not mad that it's dry, sunny, and temperate today here in Portland, OR, photos like this do still make me miss Vermont a lot.
christinehallquist.bsky.social Christine Hallquist @christinehallquist.bsky.social · 25d
A barn and fresh snow for Christmas in Richmond, Vermont
📸 Ken Rachlis
January 17, 2026 at 7:57 PM
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mattythemouse.bsky.social
There, I summed up the homelessness issue in one BlueSky post. And I had characters to spare! This was also in response to @brian-goldstone.bsky.social, who wrote a whole-ass book about it which, get this, is longer than a BlueSky post, I’m told.
January 17, 2026 at 6:46 PM
ecppdx.bsky.social
Working my way through more of Tori's singles--her maxi-single of Cornflake Girl has Sister Janet, Daisy Dead Petals, and Honey on it, making it one of my favorite releases of hers. In the queue are her Talula singles, also with excellent B-sides.
A portable CD player sitting in a surface next to a yellow linen lamp, with Tori Amos' Cornflake Girl CD5 maxi single on top and a stack of CDs (also Tori singles) in front of the lamp
January 17, 2026 at 6:47 PM
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ositanwanevu.com
Apropos of nothing, let's check in with how things are going at Bari Weiss's free speech university. www.politico.com/news/magazin...
Most people didn’t think much of it when the university dean, Ben Crocker, called a student named Dan into his office on Monday, Sept. 9, the first day of classes. But at 7:44 in the evening, they received an email from three administrators saying that Dan had been removed from campus, “transported to his home out of state,” and barred from further access to the university. The nature of the allegations concerned, at their core, a pair of charged statements Dan allegedly made that would be familiar to any Title IX officer. The first was a general statement implying that UATX girls carried themselves physically in a way that invited sexual assault. The second was a suggestion to a specific female student that she had carried herself in a way that invited sexual assault. Dan had already been the subject of some negative attention on campus because of provocative statements he’d made in a UATX-based Discord “introductions” chat. These included a challenge — “If I catch any of you guys in my stuff, I’ll kill you” — which was a reference to the 1981 movie “Stripes” and likely misunderstood by fellow students. In another exchange, a discussion of transgender issues, Dan expressed reservations about hormone treatment and said that he couldn’t wait “to play devil’s advocate for legalizing pedophilia.” Between 8:30 and 9:00 p.m., Crocker visited the dorms, where he hosted a meeting on the roof to discuss the issue with students. Crocker’s message was that Dan’s conduct had been evaluated to be a “credible threat” — a phrase that would be repeated by the administration many times over the following days. Crocker then faced what one student attendee recalled as a “firing squad” of questions. Some students said that Dan had seemed off, but others saw his hasty removal as an example of the very cancel culture to which UATX was supposed to be the antithesis. Several students noted a lack of diversity. Consistent with its emphasis on “merit-based admissions,” UATX doesn’t publish demographic data. The students with whom I spoke said their classmates — and the college’s leadership — were overwhelmingly white, disproportionately came from wealthy families and had an overrepresentation of apparent neurodivergence. They found ideological diversity to be particularly lacking. “I didn’t realize exactly how conservative it would be,” one current student told me. “You know, when I hear free speech and open debate and all that jazz, I assumed that there was going to be a more equal amount of political views, and there wasn’t.” Classes weren’t as innovative as most students expected. “Year one was exceptionally boring,” the student said. “They did great books, they just didn’t do it in a great way,” said another student, who lamented the amount of memorization required. “I thought we were going to be intensely debating,” he said. Several students shared course syllabi with me. Most are easy enough to imagine being offered on any campus — with the notable exception of math and science. “The math classes go over algebra you learned in ninth grade,” a student told me. “There was just nothing there.” He described the offering as “schizophrenic” and described a class he’d taken at University of Texas at Austin as “exponentially more important.” Indeed, the syllabus I reviewed for a class called “Intellectual Foundations of Science II” covered a range of topics unusual for a science class including “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.” A student who’d taken the course shared a slide with me on “ensoulment” — the principally religious question of when a soul enters the human body — and said that the class had been told that IVF but not abortion could be consistent with the Catholic belief about ensoulment. The poor quality of the science offerings had bothered Heying and Pinker. “Others thought I was the token liberal,” Heying told me, “but I came to understand myself as the token scientist.” In an email, Pinker wrote, “They should have hired a widely esteemed scientist and proven program builder to set up their science division.” Another surprising similarity with other colleges stemmed directly from Dan’s expulsion: The students feared cancellation. “At any moment a frivolous Title IX complaint could be filed against you,” a former student told me. “I’ve never felt my speech was so chilled as it was in the classroom at UATX.” During the many conversations I had reporting this story, two questions came up more than any other. The first: Where was Bari Weiss? Many of the people I interviewed told me about internal conversations and shared internal emails. Weiss, who remains on the board of trustees, was almost never present in the conversations as they were related to me, and while I saw many emails on which Kanelos and Ferguson were copied, I never saw any including Weiss. speaks onstage during an event in New York City, on Nov. 19, 2024. | Noam Galai/Getty Images for The Free Press One person I spoke to, who was present during the early planning stages, told me that Weiss was “very elusive” and almost never present in person. This was ironic since UATX was closely associated with Weiss — a bust of whom now resides in the school library. Weiss, meanwhile, has only risen further during the Trump 2.0 era and is now editor-in-chief of CBS News, where she has been criticized as genuflecting to the Trump administration. A spokesperson for CBS News did not respond to a request for comment from Weiss. One former member of the development team told me that they would routinely ask prospective donors how they got to know UATX. “Eighty percent of the time, the answer was Bari Weiss,” they said. “It was very often referred to as Bari Weiss’ University, or Bari Weiss’ University Project, or Bari Weiss’ University of Austin.” For several people, this was a source of resentment. “I don’t care whether she wants to pretend this is all gone now — she is the reason that this place exists. She was huge, she was held in such high regard, she had such an enormous impact,” the former staffer said. “I want her to be held to account,” she added. “I’m pissed.”
January 16, 2026 at 4:40 PM
ecppdx.bsky.social
If you don't want to see any federal government accounts, here's the moderation list for you.
January 17, 2026 at 4:07 PM
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wajali.bsky.social
If you keep bending the knee to a fascist, they will keep bullying you. They see weakness as opportunity, complicity as agreement.

The fact Schumer is still willing to fund DHS should OUTRAGE all of you.
January 17, 2026 at 12:31 AM
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paddywolfe.bsky.social
i like how abolishing ICE is seen by dems as extreme. like, a world without murderous cops is such a fanciful concept.
January 17, 2026 at 1:57 AM
ecppdx.bsky.social
It sure is nice seeing a Democrat actually do something with their powers (and influences) of office.
samshirazi.bsky.social Sam Shirazi @samshirazi.bsky.social · 2d
Wow

The night before Spanberger’s inauguration

She’s cleared house at UVA

Top Youngkin appointees resign

Spanberger should be able to easily replace them given Dem trifecta

The former CIA officer asserting her control
January 17, 2026 at 1:59 AM
ecppdx.bsky.social
It is EXTREMELY VERY LITERALLY YOUR JOB to know what's in these bills, you feckless, complicit assholes.
January 17, 2026 at 1:56 AM
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thehousered.bsky.social
every single successful general strike in US history has had union backing through the local AFL-CIO

this is the first time it’s been called for since the 1940s
January 16, 2026 at 9:24 PM
ecppdx.bsky.social
It's a nice day out, and I get to enjoy a little bit of it between rehearsals.
Me in a denim jacket, orange plaid flannel, grey cap, and blue aviator glasses, sitting in front of a leafy hedge on a sunny day
January 16, 2026 at 10:48 PM
ecppdx.bsky.social
Again, Bari Weiss is a garbage person.

I'm so very sick of the absolute worst queer people (over)representing us in politics, business, and the media. Weiss ... Peter Thiel ... Krysten Sinema ... Richard Grenell? Fucking why? Let them all die horrible deaths.
January 16, 2026 at 10:37 PM
ecppdx.bsky.social
Imagine if our media were run by and staffed by disadvantaged social minorities: people of color, queer people, women, immigrants, people with disabilities, the unhoused. Imagine how it would read and look.
January 16, 2026 at 9:40 PM
ecppdx.bsky.social
"I'm tired of this shit where Dems nominate shitty candidates then put it on the rest of us to carry their hopelessly-mid Gores/Kerrys/Clintons/Bidens/Harris across the line. Ordinary voters can build grassroots support around *good* candidates, but they can't make bad candidates good." - anonymous
January 16, 2026 at 8:07 PM
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prognews.bsky.social
Federal judge denies qualified immunity to LAPD officers who shot unarmed man. "The July 18, 2022, shooting followed a dispatch call describing [Jermaine] Petit as a transient carrying a stick and lighting trash on fire in a residential neighborhood." www.courthousenews.com/judge-reject...
Judge rejects qualified immunity for LAPD officers in Jermaine Petit shooting
“Decisions well before this shooting put it beyond debate that use of deadly force in these circumstances, where the suspect does not directly threaten the officer or others and just continues walking...
www.courthousenews.com
January 16, 2026 at 12:40 AM
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chibole.bsky.social
NEW: The Starbucks Workers Union has threatened their Starbucks with walkouts, if Starbucks keeps allowing the entry of ICE. 👏
January 16, 2026 at 3:24 PM
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mindfulhedgehog.bsky.social
Only 15 days in and we have a strong contender for most embarrassing headline of the year.

Ben. Shapiro. The guy who can't get his wife wet. The guy who needs an old person to open the pickle jar for him.
Gavin Newsom being an utter little bitch and backing down from calling fascistic ICE agents "terrorists".
January 16, 2026 at 6:37 AM
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marcelias.bsky.social
A federal court dismissed the Trump Justice Department’s lawsuit seeking access to California’s full voter registration database Thursday, warning that the government’s bid for the voter records “threatens the right to vote which is the cornerstone of American democracy.
Federal court shuts down Trump DOJ bid for California voter rolls
Read more here.
www.democracydocket.com
January 15, 2026 at 9:56 PM