Brent

@bk4us

Cold War Liberal. Peace if possible, truth at all costs.

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Brent@bk4us· 16d

Post a perfect album from the 90s that isn't nirvana, soundgarden, pearl jam, or alice in chains.

Album cover for "Flood" by They Might Be Giants

Brent@bk4us· 24d

Stop scrolling and post two characters who bring you happiness

Screenshot of SecUnit and Gurathin from "Murderbot"

Brent@bk4us· 29d

I like to think the CIA faked his death and set him up as a paleontologist, so he did get to see Montana after all

Screenshot from Jurassic Park showing the location of Dr. Grant's dig site as "Badlands, near Snakewater, Montana". Sam Neill played Dr. Grant.

Brent@bk4us· Jul 8

Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_th...

From Wikipedia: Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan on 16 November 1581 is a painting by Russian realist artist Ilya Repin made between 1883 and 1885. It depicts the grief-stricken Russian tsar Ivan the Terrible cradling his dying son, the Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich, shortly after Ivan the Terrible had dealt a fatal blow to his son's head in a fit of anger. The painting portrays the anguish and remorse on the face of the elder Ivan and the shock and heartbreak of the dying Tsarevich, who sheds a tear at the unexpected betrayal and shock of having been killed at his father's hands.

Brent@bk4us· Jul 4

This Onion headline lives rent-free in my mind: theonion.com/trump-claims...

Trump Claims He Can Overrule Constitution With Executive Order Because Of Little-Known ‘No One Will Stop Me’ Loophole

Brent@bk4us· Jun 13

My experience with "diversity stress": sometimes it's a little awkward trying to have a conversation with a non-native speaker. I would gladly live with that awkwardness for the rest of my life if it meant I never had to live with *fascism stress* ever again.

Post by Sohrab Ahmari, saying: Diversity stress may be difficult to quantify. But it thought of as a negative externality or transaction cost that must be reckoned in any cost-benefit analysis about mass migration. My Diversity Stress—and Ours

Brent@bk4us· May 19

Hans Morgenthau used that anecdote in "Politics Among Nations" to demonstrate the power of prestige. Morgenthau defines "presitge" as a reputation for both unchallengeable power and restraint. US lost the latter in Iraq, now we're losing the former in Iran.

Image of the paper jacket for the fourth edtion of Politics Among Nations by Hans Morgenthau. First published in 1949. Fourth edition published in 1967.

Brent@bk4us· May 19

In 1813, while retreating from Russia, Napoleon angrily threw down his hat in front of Chancellor Metternich of Austria, expecting him to pick it up for him. Metternich pretended not to notice, so Napoleon had to pick it up himself. That snub showed Napoleon how far he had fallen.

A painting of the moment Napoleon threw down his hat in front of Chancellor Metternich, and the Chancellor refused to pick it up. I don't know who did the painting.

Brent@bk4us· May 9

Just reached an important milestone

Image from Duolingo. Duo the Owl looks like what I can only describe as a fiery angel, celebrates day 3,000 of my learning streak.

Brent@bk4us· May 7

A mock-up of an Onion headline. Point / Counterpoint: Trump-stacked Supreme Court presents increasing threat to the rule of law vs. No, it doesn't. Inspired by the famous Onion Point / Counterpoint about the Iraq war.

Brent@bk4us· May 1

Wish I knew who to credit:

Screenshot of a tweet from 2018: Think I probably missed out being an extremely successfuly monk, seeing as my two greatest talents are being very quiet and not having sex.

Brent@bk4us· Apr 17

Three bookshelves, each seven feet tall and three feet wide, totally packed with books

Brent@bk4us· Mar 27

Three part screenshot from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 1) A demon says 'No weapon forged can stop me!' 2) Buffy says 'That was then.' 3) Buffy says 'This is now' and lifts up a rocket launcher.

Brent@bk4us· Mar 18

Um...

Brent@bk4us· Mar 16

"It has declined" is a verbatim quote from the FDA notice:

Screenshot of text from the FDA notice. "FDA has recommended that RAW FARM, LLC voluntarily remove their raw cheese products from the market, and the firm has declined."

Brent@bk4us· Mar 12

1) Oh, yeah... I forgot about that! 2) That was just two weeks ago? www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/trump-surp...

It was barely two weeks ago, remember, that Donald Trump announced out of the blue that he was sending a US Navy hospital ship to Greenland to provide medical care for “sick” islanders. The Danish and Greenland governments were baffled by what he meant; the US government never even bothered to try to explain the presidential announcement; and, at the time, both US hospital ships were in dry dock undergoing repairs. Let’s check back on that, shall we? Today, there’s only one hospital ship at sea — and it recently transited the Panama Canal and is now off the west coast of Mexico, apparently heading toward a long-term repair and overhaul in Portland, Oregon. There’s been no further mention of Trump’s tweet. The entire episode just came and went, as baffling as ever.

Brent@bk4us· Mar 11

That was fun! www.keithcirkel.co.uk/whats-my-jnd/

Screenshot of my score from the "Just Noticeable Difference" color test. My score is 0.0033, which is quite good, though I'm not sure what it means.

Brent@bk4us· Mar 10

If you see this, post a robot.

Johnny Five from the movie "Short Circuit".

Brent@bk4us· Jan 30

Screenshot from Community s03e06: Old man Cornelius Hawthorn dismisses a white woman's Swedish heritage. 'Swedish dogs! Your blood is tainted by generations of race mixing with Laplanders! You're basically FINNS.'

Brent@bk4us· Jan 24

Quote skeet a gif with a clue of where you're from...

Brent@bk4us· Jan 19

🧵To celebrate MLK Day, I want to talk about one of my favorite books, "The Politics of Nonviolent Action" by Gene Sharp. People like to praise nonviolence, but how does it actually work in practice? Why does it work? (1/16)

Book cover. The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Part 1: Power and Struggle. By Gene Sharp.

Brent@bk4us· Jan 18

I made sure Paramount knows that their relationship with Trump is the reason I canceled.

Screenshot of the cancellation screen from Paramount+, asking why I'm canceling. I chose the option marked other, then wrote in the text box: Paramount is an ally of the Trump administration, and I'm not giving my money to that.

Brent@bk4us· Jan 15

And since the word "prescient" gets used a lot when talking about B5's politics:

Screenshot of a paragraph fro the article: "The literal text of the show suggests that the natural result of Capitalism’s decay is a re-emergence of Fascism, and Earth is already locked in what we can now recognize as a familiar pattern of increasing technocratic censorship paired with a loss of political efficacy on the part of normal people when the series begins. There’s an election going on in the first episode and the conservative party wins on the basis of what we are to assume is reactionary rhetoric. He’s not the guy our protagonists were supporting, but the whole thing is treated with a shrug. It eventually leads to a civil war. We’re immediately thrust into a cynical world wracked with bureaucratic inertia and callow appeasement. Our heroes emerge as heroic because they choose to reject apathy, normalization and compliance. Watching Earth inexorably slip further into violent authoritarianism is gripping stuff, brilliantly played as background noise for the first two and a half seasons and just as novel as it was in 1994 even when expressed in the silliest possible terms (Earth Gov is really out there literally quoting Nineteen Eighty-Four on its propaganda posters, huh?). But I’m not sure how cognizant the show is of its own political subtext, or, y’know, text in general."

Brent@bk4us· Dec 16

Was reading this paragraph (first pic) by @annaleen.bsky.social when a thought occurred to me, so I did a quick web search (second pic): buttondown.com/thehypothesi...

Screenshot of a paragraph by Annalee Newitz. Make no mistake: AI people, if they emerged in this current moment, would be oppressed. Companies trying to develop “artificial general intelligence” — or human-equivalent cognition — do not deign to call these potential creatures “people” or even “creatures.” Sometimes they’re called a “superintelligence,” reducing them to a very specific, economically valuable function. The idea is that we can make money on these future artificial people, if we imprison or abuse them correctly with software.

Screenshot from the domain name omelas.ai. Someone has already registered the domain name, and they're trying to sell it for twenty-thousand dollars.

Brent@bk4us· Dec 13

Brent@bk4us· Dec 11

No book; I like to practice a very literal interpretation of Matthew 5:33-37.

A screenshot of the Book of Matthew, Chapter 5, Verses 33 through 37: Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’ But I say to you: Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.

Brent@bk4us· Nov 25

Finally reading www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/kash-patel... I think this part should get more attention:

He’s lost our foreign allies. The biggest story of this week was about how Patel broke an important personal pledge to the head of MI5, the British domestic intelligence agency and, arguably, the FBI’s closest partner in the entire world. MI5’s head had asked Patel personally to preserve an FBI liaison officer in London who was vital to certain advanced surveillance tools the Brits relied on for monitoring Chinese activities in the UK. In the face-to-face meeting, Patel agreed and promised — but then reneged when the White House wanted to cut the position as part of its misguided efforts to trim the FBI budget, “leaving MI5 officials incredulous.” It is almost impossible to capture how critical the intelligence relationship between the US and the UK has been over the last eighty years, as well as the larger English-speaking intel partnership known as “Five Eyes,” which includes the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The idea that you would break a promise to a Five Eyes leader would normally be an anathema to any competent US intelligence leader — and the episode also clearly demonstrates both inside and outside the bureau that Patel doesn’t have the political juice to run the FBI, if he can’t fight and win at the White House for a key position requested by our closest ally.

Brent@bk4us· Oct 21

stop scrolling and post two characters who bring you happiness

Alexander Skarsgård as Murderbot with David Dastmalchian as Gurathin.

Brent@bk4us· Oct 18

A Cold War liberal at #NoKings, celebrating the Four Freedoms and FDR, the Democratic President who led America in its first victory over fascism

A picture of myself at a local No Kings protest waving the Four Freedoms flag (four vertical red stripes on a white background)

Brent@bk4us· Aug 4

I had to use highlighters to parse this sentence. First, nine lines in red for a single clause starting with "even though". Then five lines in green for the subject of the sentence. The blue shows the verb and object of the sentence—just two lines.