JohnC
ironist-jc.bsky.social
JohnC
@ironist-jc.bsky.social
Spend lots of my life looking at and thinking about moving pictures and sounds, and making my own. Cats are endlessly fascinating and I like having them on me. The pleasure of listening to music can make me cry. I live in Chicago. Gayyyyyyyyy. He/Him.
Pinned
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all

The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry, baby, don't cry
Don't cry
Seth Remembers Rob Reiner
YouTube video by Late Night with Seth Meyers
youtu.be
December 16, 2025 at 11:34 PM
Reposted by JohnC
This article isn't political, but you can tell exactly who these people voted for, even if the estrangement wasn't about politics.
These Moms Are Done Being ‘Doormats’ for Their Estranged Children
Parents publicly blast their adult offspring for cutting them off, drawing tens of thousands of online followers.
www.wsj.com
December 16, 2025 at 6:43 PM
Reposted by JohnC
For your collective delectation this holiday season:
Quite possibly the silliest thing I've ever written (and definitely the most ridiculous graph I've ever made!)

loreandordure.com/2025/12/16/j...
Jingle Bells (Batman Smells): an incomplete festive folk-rhyme taxonomy
Gather round the fire, everyone, and let me tell you a story. It has everything you could want in a Christmas blockbuster: superheroes and villains, a car crash, children singing, a mystery to solv…
loreandordure.com
December 16, 2025 at 5:06 PM
Reposted by JohnC
I interpret this as "someone told dad that you'd been talking with a counselor who does interventions and he's super mad at you so you better go to him and tell him it's not true and that you know he only has one or two beers after work on most nights." bsky.app/profile/chad...
*Frantic backpedaling*.
December 16, 2025 at 4:41 PM
Reposted by JohnC
We can’t fix our democracy without fixing our media crisis. Deregulation, disinvestment, and disregard for press freedom are all policy choices—@bilalb.bsky.social, @shahrzadshams.bsky.social, & @victorpickard.bsky.social explain the need to reverse course on all three fronts.
https://bit.ly/4rUvr01
The Political Economy of the US Media System: Excavating the Roots of the Present Crisis - Roosevelt Institute
Bilal Baydoun, Shahrzad Shams, and Victor Pickard trace the roots of the US media crisis to decades of deregulation and commercial capture, outlining how consolidation, news deserts, and platform dominance threaten democratic infrastructure and sow fert...
rooseveltinstitute.org
December 16, 2025 at 3:19 PM
Reposted by JohnC
When he meets his end, I think we really have to do it up right. Imagine a combination of Thanksgiving, Christmas, Juneteenth, and Cinco de Mayo. Fireworks, presents, a turkey, a cookout, a taco bar, decorations, piñatas, mistletoe, bonfires, communion, and a fuckin wicker man.
December 15, 2025 at 8:31 PM
Reposted by JohnC
Dr Russell D. Moore is a theologian, pastor, and the editor in chief of Christianity Today.
December 15, 2025 at 6:03 PM
Reposted by JohnC
Just so I'm clear on this, computer memory has tripled in price because a bunch of it that hasn't been produced yet has been ordered to populate GPUs that aren't installed in data centers that aren't built yet in order to service a demand that doesn't exist to make profits that don't happen.
December 15, 2025 at 12:21 PM
Reposted by JohnC
tesla owners admitting without shame they don’t know how to drive anymore
December 14, 2025 at 10:07 PM
Reposted by JohnC
The loss of Rob and Michelle is devastating. The stuff of Greek tragedy.
December 15, 2025 at 4:09 AM
Reposted by JohnC
Oracle added $148bn of lease agreements to make sure it can provide the compute to OpenAI for a deal that OpenAI cannot afford to pay for. OpenAI is probably like $30bn+ of the $52bn of revenue Oracle is meant to book from its backlog. We’re setting up for an existential threat!
December 14, 2025 at 11:22 PM
Reposted by JohnC
Brooklyn Brueghel, 2025
December 14, 2025 at 4:08 PM
Reposted by JohnC
“The goal is to translate the Christmas story into a modern context … If the Holy Family had been in Charlotte two weeks ago, they would have been putting the baby Jesus in handcuffs because he wouldn’t have his papers.”
Across Illinois, Massachusetts, and North Carolina, faith communities are refusing to stay silent. Churches are using their nativity scenes to call out the Trump administration’s cruel and chaotic anti-immigrant policies that are tearing families apart right now.

✍️ @tusk81.bsky.social
‘The Holy Family Were Refugees’: Church Nativity Scenes Push Back On Trump’s Ugly Mass Deportation Agenda
“If the Holy Family had been in Charlotte two weeks ago, they would have been putting the baby Jesus in handcuffs because he wouldn’t have his papers,” said one faith leader.
americasvoicecnn.substack.com
December 14, 2025 at 7:16 PM
Reposted by JohnC
I think if a few elected officials in San Francisco (17th most populous US city) had just done one or two things differently, maybe ONLY the policy of making math class easy because Asians were doing too well or whatever the hell it was, the earth would have been saved from fascism
December 14, 2025 at 6:35 PM
Reposted by JohnC
The real divide in America isn’t whether or not you believe this. Literally no one believes this.

The real divide is between the people who think lying should matter—and the people who’ll make an exception for our Great Leader.
Trump suggests he actually won California last year but it was “rigged”
December 14, 2025 at 6:41 PM
Reposted by JohnC
An amazing @runforsomething.net win in TX yesterday -- capping off our best year yet.
Houston just elected Alejandra Salinas, a progressive lesbian, over Boykins, a failed candidate for mayor and former city council member. Salinas hit Boykins over a moment from his past when he told a group of teenage girls to "keep their legs closed."

www.chron.com/politics/art...
December 14, 2025 at 6:56 PM
Reposted by JohnC
It’s just amusing that with these AI tools and agents we seem to be getting back to this truth:

A team of strong software engineers who care about the quality + maintainability of the codebase >> A team of devs using powerful AI coding agents rather mindlessly
December 14, 2025 at 2:28 PM
Reposted by JohnC
This is what he says when doesn’t care about the people who died
December 14, 2025 at 6:49 PM
Reposted by JohnC
probably the most efficient way for a future administration to deal with Bovino is to send him to a conference in Germany, and then tip off the Bundespolizei to search his laptop for illegal Nazi paraphernalia, then not work very hard to secure his release.
December 14, 2025 at 6:30 PM
Reposted by JohnC
US bet: Ai, China bet: Green
“In 2024, the country invested an estimated $940bn in clean-energy capex, broadly defined as renewables, electricity grids and energy storage (batteries), dwarfing its AI investments” ft.com/content/1258...
Presented basically this argmnt last wk @basakkus.bsky.social
Could America win the AI race but lose the war?
The US has gone all-in on artificial intelligence. But the idea of an end-of-times battle with China over tomorrow’s key technology is part delusion, part lobbying tool for Silicon Valley
ft.com
December 14, 2025 at 4:01 AM
Reposted by JohnC
Ahmed al Ahmed, a Lebanese Muslim who owns a Sydney fruit shop, risked his life to disarm one of the Bondi Beach shooters.

His courage gives me hope amidst the horror and darkness. Muslims and Jews are not enemies. Our futures, in the Middle East and beyond, are intrinsically bound.

A true hero.
December 14, 2025 at 1:41 PM
Reposted by JohnC
To me this is Australia

Tattooed surfer comforts wounded Muslim shopkeeper who single-handedly tackled and disarmed one of the Bondi shooters

www.middleeasteye.net/news/praise-...
Praise for Lebanese-Australian man who tackled Bondi Beach shooter
Sydney businessman Ahmed al-Ahmed was left in hospital after being shot by the Bondi Beach gunman
www.middleeasteye.net
December 14, 2025 at 5:42 PM
Reposted by JohnC
The thing you need to understand about the Right is that they are absolutely fine just plain burning down higher education if taking it over ideologically doesn’t work. They’re perfectly happy reducing it to ashes.
From the Oklahoma U student paper: the school is now saying it will automatically suspend faculty (with pay) in response to student complaints
www.oudaily.com/news/ou-poli...
December 14, 2025 at 1:08 AM
Reposted by JohnC
We are citizens of a country in which someone might be expected to survive two school shootings thousands of miles apart before they have finished their education
Parkland survivor, current Brown student being interviewed 💔
December 14, 2025 at 1:04 AM