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Folk Puritan Mary Jane Watson

@bettybitter.bsky.social

150 followers 170 following 1.5K posts

Journalist writing songs for a better world. Re-cancelling Bob Dylan. She/her, Popular Front TradWife (in waiting). Join a union.

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Folk Puritan Mary Jane Watson @bettybitter.bsky.social · May 15

Say hi to Ralph again. Ralph is 5 years old. He has been reposted endlessly across reddit, facebook, twitter, and every memedump clickfarm you can imagine. He was made to inspire existential dread, but our empathy for him keeps him alive as we continue to bring Ralph into each others' minds.

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Folk Puritan Mary Jane Watson @bettybitter.bsky.social · 1m

This actually makes sense to me. The repeated cuts to social security take quite a toll on middle class Boomers and the recent campaign to raise the retirement age must be weighing heavily on people in their late 60s who waited on retirement for better benefits.

Rachel Cunliffe @rmcunliffe.bsky.social · 3h

Hollow laughter

Folk Puritan Mary Jane Watson @bettybitter.bsky.social · 12h

Anyone who's heard a Swiftie explain which of Taylor's exes their favorite song is about will know what I mean.

Folk Puritan Mary Jane Watson @bettybitter.bsky.social · 13h

Hoping that the Trump Admin opens a DHS investigation into locating the rogue Antifa operative Habeas Corpus if only cause I don't want SCOTUS revisiting that time Roger B Taney ruled against Abraham Lincoln and leaving us wishing they'd followed Taney's ruling...

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 15h

Q: Have you given any more thought to possibly suspending habeas corpus?

TRUMP: Suspending who?

Q: Habeas corpus

TRUMP: I don't know. I'd rather leave that to Kristi.

Folk Puritan Mary Jane Watson @bettybitter.bsky.social · 14h

Bouncing back and forth between Red Scare research and modern news like I do can be disorienting. The modern right wing is more delusional and detached from reality than it's 1950s ancestors but it kinda took even more audacity to do shit like this when most Americans still had scars from the war.

Folk Puritan Mary Jane Watson @bettybitter.bsky.social · 14h

From Bertolt Brecht's 1947 testimony before HUAC. Brecht had been subpoena'd as one of the 19 writers who were whittled down into The Hollywood Ten. The very next day Brecth boarded a plane for Switzerland and never returned to the States.

"Stripling - Uh, Mr. Brecht... is it true that you have written a number of very revolutionary poems, plays, and other writings?

Brecht - I am uh written a number of poems, songs, and plays, in the fight against Hitler, and, of course, they can be considered, therefore, as revolutionary, cause, I, of course, was for the overthrow, of that government.

Unidentified voice - Mr. Stripling, we're not interested in

Stripling - Yeah

Unidentified voice - any works that he might of written, uh, going for the overthrow of Germany,

Stripling - Yes, I,

Unidentified voice - the government there

Stripling - Uh well, from the examination of the works which Mr. Brecht has written, particularly in collaboration with Mr. Hanns Eisler, uh he seems to be a person of international importance to the, Communist revolutionary movement. Now Mr. Brecht, uh, is it true, do you know whether or not you have written articles, for

( Gavel bangs three times )"

Transcript from https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Brecht_HUAC_hearing_(1947-10-30)_transcript

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Folk Puritan Mary Jane Watson @bettybitter.bsky.social · 14h

Rest In Peace Karen Lebens you would've been the most entertainingly crotchety Boomer on Bluesky. One of these days I'll use that edible recipe in the '60s drug pamphlet and take them in your honor. I would try to connect with you via DMT but I'm pretty sure that recipe's dangerously bunk.

Folk Puritan Mary Jane Watson @bettybitter.bsky.social · 14h

I inherited a trove of vintage Zines from someone my dad met on Twitter. 20someodd issues of Backstreets dating back '79, two issues of a short lived Springzine from '78, an original print of Sniffin Glue #6, and a 1969 pamphlet titled "How to make DMT in your kitchen."

Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · 1d

Has anything great happened in your life because of social media?

Folk Puritan Mary Jane Watson @bettybitter.bsky.social · 14h

I am perennially surprised that he is still the Senate Whip. He proved himself to be as effective as a pair of poorly knit wool mittens back in the first Obama admin. The Dems have Senators who are better at this than him why is he still in this position?

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Reposted by Folk Puritan Mary Jane Watson

🎃 Sid Oozeley 🎃 @oozeley.bsky.social · 18h

this reminds me of this one guy in the french revolution who was up for sentencing during guillotine times and the judge got his last name wrong by adding the de and the fella was like "hey judge i'm here to be made shorter, not longer" and the judge thought that was so funny that they let him go

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Folk Puritan Mary Jane Watson @bettybitter.bsky.social · 18h

At one point I tried to view an apartment in Queens but the landlord first said it was on 61st St, then 61st Rd, and then 61st Ave. I went to all three and he wasn't at any of them. I still don't know where I would've viewed.

Terrible Maps @terriblemapshq.bsky.social · 18h

Queens - The Bermuda Triangle of New York

Reposted by Folk Puritan Mary Jane Watson

Ghostly Bree @mostlybree.kitrocha.com · 22h

The fact that they can't get a random sampling of citizens from any city to indict people for interfering with ICE seems more informative than any political poll, tbh

Seth Stern @sethstern.bsky.social · 1d

A federal grand jury declined to indict two people charged with assaulting law enforcement agents outside a suburban Chicago ICE facility, an attorney for one of the defendants said, Megan Crepeau and @benjaminpenn.bsky.social report

news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/...

Grand Jury Declines to Indict Two Chicago-Area ICE Protesters

A federal grand jury declined to indict two people charged with assaulting law enforcement agents outside a suburban Chicago ICE facility, an attorney for one of the defendants said.

news.bloomberglaw.com

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Folk Puritan Mary Jane Watson @bettybitter.bsky.social · 1d

Yoko got the tickets right? I can easily imagine John seeing and enjoying DEVO, but mostly cause Yoko must've loved them.

Folk Puritan Mary Jane Watson @bettybitter.bsky.social · 1d

Gene Autrey may have heard "Smells Like Teen Spirit"

rax ‘levon honkers’ king @raxkingisdead.bsky.social · 1d

you ever think about those real weird overlaps. like tennessee williams might have listened to the ramones

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Folk Puritan Mary Jane Watson @bettybitter.bsky.social · 1d

Oh I'll have to check that out. Hadn't heard of it, maybe that's how this Mandela Effect about Strangers In The Night happened.

Folk Puritan Mary Jane Watson @bettybitter.bsky.social · 1d

Dust Bowl Ballads is arguably more of a concept album than Ziggy Stardust on the grounds that its a literal album - it was a collection of 78s that came in a binder.

Woltergeist II: The Other Side @wolter.bsky.social · 1d

I always find it hilarious that Boomer rock n roll fans get all on their high horse about inventing concept albums when Woody Guthrie and Merle Travis released concept albums before the vinyl lp even existed.

Folk Puritan Mary Jane Watson @bettybitter.bsky.social · 1d

Are you thinking of Strangers In The Night? It's become popular to cite that album as an early concepr album but it's from 1966, very much in dialogue with works like Pet Sounds and Revolver, altho the Mandela Effect around it has grown such that even Dylan thinks it was earlier than it was.

Folk Puritan Mary Jane Watson @bettybitter.bsky.social · 1d

I know that if Lindsay Graham had golden parachuted into MSNBC's token Gay Republican he'd still be saying reprehensible shit in some other way but I still yearn for the timeline where we get that Southern Dandy being a bitchy queen right now.

Folk Puritan Mary Jane Watson @bettybitter.bsky.social · 1d

Stewart then asks "do you have anything to add to that?" and Lindsay Graham, like a champ, says "I don't think you realize how much I hate Donald Trump." He went on to liken Cruz to a rattlesnake bite and Trump to a cobra bite.

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Folk Puritan Mary Jane Watson @bettybitter.bsky.social · 1d

Oh no you misremember - when he was on TDS in 2016 Jon Stewart was still the host. Graham was then endorsing Ted Cruz and Jon played the clip of him saying "if you killed Ted Cruz on the Senate floor and the trial was in the Senate nobody would vote to convict."

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Folk Puritan Mary Jane Watson @bettybitter.bsky.social · 1d

It seems like hard drugs were a tension point with the ESB in the 70s and early 80s -- Bruce nearly kicked lifetime organ player Danny Federici out for having coke on the tour bus, and Van Zandt's said that the ESB was doing rails in the bathroom during the Darkness sessions under Bruce's nose.

Folk Puritan Mary Jane Watson @bettybitter.bsky.social · 1d

Despite this proximity Bruce never partook. He didn't even have alcohol till he was 22. Later he would say of his psychedelic abstienance "they said itd show you the parts of your mind that it hides from you, but I could barely handle the parts I'd already seen."

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Folk Puritan Mary Jane Watson @bettybitter.bsky.social · 1d

Springsteen is the same on the drugs front. The first drug raid in the history of Freehold NJ was a concert by his first successful band Steel Mill trying to raise bail money for their drummer who had gone home after a gig with a weed trafficker. Also spent 2 weeks on a hippie commune in SF in '69

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Folk Puritan Mary Jane Watson @bettybitter.bsky.social · 1d

Misread "Roy Wood" as "Ron Wood" and ngl the misread makes more sense to me. I don't know a ton about either Fogerty or Roy Wood biographically but in terms of artistry I just don't really hear The Move in Fogerty's work.

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Reposted by Folk Puritan Mary Jane Watson

Kendorablood 🩸🧛🏻 @kendorable.bsky.social · 5d

Who gave them the right to have the nerve to have the gall to have the audacity

the FRIGHTENING marnix @dragom.bsky.social · 5d

WHY DID THEY GENTRIFY THE AUDACITY LOGO

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Folk Puritan Mary Jane Watson @bettybitter.bsky.social · 1d

I want to know what blackmail they hit him with cause he could've had such a cozy comfortable career by just sticking by his Never Trump shit, losing reelection, finally coming out of the closet, and becoming MSNBC's Token Gay Republican. What happened?

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