Ben Birdsall
elephony.bsky.social
Ben Birdsall
@elephony.bsky.social
Who even knows, man.
You know how good it feels to finally do something you've been putting off for a while? Took me all of about an hour to decompose my Spotify account into separate Qobuz and Pocket Casts accounts and lose basically nothing important
January 2, 2026 at 10:15 PM
Reposted by Ben Birdsall
Anyone Else Here

xkcd.com/3188/
January 2, 2026 at 8:35 PM
Reposted by Ben Birdsall
While we can point to the vast environmental and social consequences as the reasons for doing away with genai, I still feel that the evil at its core is convincing people that words and ideas are something they need help with.
January 2, 2026 at 3:28 AM
Reposted by Ben Birdsall
Obsessed with this juxtaposition
January 2, 2026 at 12:43 AM
Reposted by Ben Birdsall
Car traffic is a DDoS attack on cities.
August 13, 2024 at 1:20 AM
You know, I'll take it:
January 1, 2026 at 9:18 PM
Reposted by Ben Birdsall
It's worth reading the whole interview in full. It basically verifies that the NYT has spent the past decade-plus doubling down on top-down narratives for coverage, getting more intense over time.

Sulzberg personally picked & chose whom the news apparatus would target and whom it would kiss up to.
In this in-depth interview Billie Jean Sweeney — a former editor at The New York Times — details how the paper shifted towards openly promoting anti-trans hatred, why this was directed from the very top, how some staff pushed back and the immense damage done by the NYT legitimizing bigotry.
'A directive from above': Former NYT editor lays out how the paper pushes anti-trans bigotry
In this in-depth interview, former New York Times editor Billie Jean Sweeney details how the paper shifted towards openly promoting anti-trans hatred, how some staff tried to stop it, how it's directe...
transnews.network
January 1, 2026 at 7:30 PM
The Mamdani inauguration really feels like a sea change, the wave of neoliberalism in American politics finally starting to break
January 1, 2026 at 8:11 PM
Reposted by Ben Birdsall
Mamdani: For too long, those fluent in the good grammar of civility have deployed decorum to mask agendas of cruelty
January 1, 2026 at 8:00 PM
Reposted by Ben Birdsall
If we get to the other side of this present moment of attempted fascist takeover, I'm fairly sure that we'll get major social democratic reforms to our government.

The Bernie campaigns will probably be looked at the way the Goldwater campaigns are looked at today, but, you know...good, & not evil.
January 1, 2026 at 7:46 PM
Reposted by Ben Birdsall
In this in-depth interview Billie Jean Sweeney — a former editor at The New York Times — details how the paper shifted towards openly promoting anti-trans hatred, why this was directed from the very top, how some staff pushed back and the immense damage done by the NYT legitimizing bigotry.
'A directive from above': Former NYT editor lays out how the paper pushes anti-trans bigotry
In this in-depth interview, former New York Times editor Billie Jean Sweeney details how the paper shifted towards openly promoting anti-trans hatred, how some staff tried to stop it, how it's directe...
transnews.network
January 1, 2026 at 6:32 PM
The main nice thing I'll say about my 2025 is that it was better than my 2024. May 2026 be kinder yet to all of us
January 1, 2026 at 6:14 AM
Reposted by Ben Birdsall
in 2026 we are going to kill INSTAGRAM the dogshit prison for peoples photographs
December 31, 2025 at 9:57 PM
Reposted by Ben Birdsall
used to be just Pinterest that fucked up looking for old images on computer but its solidifed to be 100% instagram and facebook. mark zuckerberg wrecked online, whipped up genocides and made stupid people even more obnoxious but on top of that i cant find old photographs in decent resolution
December 31, 2025 at 10:00 PM
You could make hay remaking Juzo Itami's A Taxing Woman but replace all the weird horniness with social conscience
If I had more time, I'd write a thriller called THE TAX MAN, about an IRS Special Investigator who uses everything from math and spreadsheets to disguises and daring undercover operations to fight the billionaire baddies doing crime.
make the IRS woke ICE
December 31, 2025 at 8:23 PM
Reposted by Ben Birdsall
It makes perfect sense that the idea of the Crusades appeals today to the exact kind of loud, adolescent-brained, self-aggrandizing, just-rich-enough-to-cause-problems idiot that the actual Crusades were designed to siphon out of the body politic like the snake venom they were, and are.
December 29, 2025 at 7:08 PM
Reposted by Ben Birdsall
I just don't know how anyone could think this is a compelling portrayal of "revolutionaries" when How to Blow Up a Pipeline exists
One Battle After Another var en frustrerande dålig film på väldigt många plan. Alla som gillar den har fel.
December 27, 2025 at 7:09 PM
Reposted by Ben Birdsall
it's my so called wonderful life
December 27, 2025 at 6:14 AM
Reposted by Ben Birdsall
This quote is from a piece that’s 8 years old now.
Thinking about that time I got quoted in the National Review about Bari Weiss
December 26, 2025 at 2:51 AM
I found a vintage 90s brand of pants ai really like this year and have a couple of pairs. This morning on w dog walk I bent over and split the entire ass of my pants, so it seems there are some downsides to my old pants plan
December 24, 2025 at 5:54 PM
Reposted by Ben Birdsall
!! Here’s a link to full video of the 60 Minutes segment that Bari Weiss killed last minute, via @jasonparis.bsky.social:

is.gd/paU8Ko

(It was uploaded to the Global TV app in Canada, seemingly by accident, and has now been taken down)
December 22, 2025 at 10:39 PM
Reposted by Ben Birdsall
Now seems like a swell time to point out that Frontline just released this excellent 11-minute mini-documentary about what happened inside CECOT.
Surviving CECOT (full documentary) | Deported to a Maximum-Security Prison | FRONTLINE + ProPublica
YouTube video by FRONTLINE PBS | Official
m.youtube.com
December 21, 2025 at 10:26 PM
Every time I give my dogs marrow bones they spend ~5 minutes doing a little le Carré routine of figuring out the ideal spot to chomp down safe from the other dog's interference
December 19, 2025 at 10:36 PM
Reposted by Ben Birdsall
just an fyi for portland ppl, this ursula exhibition is going on until february, it's free, and has a ton of her maps. plan for spending over an hour if you really want to take it all in

www.oregoncontemporary.org/a-larger-rea...
December 18, 2025 at 9:31 PM