randy r. potts
@thephatic.bsky.social
journo + editor; Hromadske, TVPWorld, New Yorker, AJE, VQR, et al 🏳️🌈
Tulsa / Baltimore / Warszawa
Signal: thephatic.39
Tulsa / Baltimore / Warszawa
Signal: thephatic.39
and while we're at it, the state needs to seize those universities' endowments on the grounds that they are made up of taxes they should have been paying for centuries
Ban charters, magnet schools, and private schools and turn all Ivy League schools over to their respective state systems.
"my least woke opinion is---"
That's enough. We've had enough people indulging in the "thrill of a little conservatism", as a treat. Of considering reactionary thought to be a salacious and taboo in a world descending into reactionary mania.
Give me your MOST woke opinions. We're bringing it back.
That's enough. We've had enough people indulging in the "thrill of a little conservatism", as a treat. Of considering reactionary thought to be a salacious and taboo in a world descending into reactionary mania.
Give me your MOST woke opinions. We're bringing it back.
December 29, 2025 at 2:48 PM
and while we're at it, the state needs to seize those universities' endowments on the grounds that they are made up of taxes they should have been paying for centuries
Reposted by randy r. potts
Ban charters, magnet schools, and private schools and turn all Ivy League schools over to their respective state systems.
"my least woke opinion is---"
That's enough. We've had enough people indulging in the "thrill of a little conservatism", as a treat. Of considering reactionary thought to be a salacious and taboo in a world descending into reactionary mania.
Give me your MOST woke opinions. We're bringing it back.
That's enough. We've had enough people indulging in the "thrill of a little conservatism", as a treat. Of considering reactionary thought to be a salacious and taboo in a world descending into reactionary mania.
Give me your MOST woke opinions. We're bringing it back.
December 29, 2025 at 1:59 PM
Ban charters, magnet schools, and private schools and turn all Ivy League schools over to their respective state systems.
Donald's favorite President, Andrew Jackson, was also very generous in his feeling toward the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Shawnee, the Chickasaw, and the Muscogee Creek -
Trump: "Russia wants to see Ukraine succeed. It sounds a little strange but President Putin was very generous in his feeling toward Ukraine succeeding, including supplying energy, electricity and other things at very low prices."
December 29, 2025 at 2:40 PM
Donald's favorite President, Andrew Jackson, was also very generous in his feeling toward the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Shawnee, the Chickasaw, and the Muscogee Creek -
Reposted by randy r. potts
In Mount Pleasant, a tight-knit D.C. neighborhood where immigrants are deeply embedded into the social fabric, the Trump administration’s targeting of migrants has shaken the community.
This poignant story about the impact from @samdelgado.bsky.social was one of our team's favorites this year.
This poignant story about the impact from @samdelgado.bsky.social was one of our team's favorites this year.
Mount Pleasant’s sidewalk astronomer might have to leave his home
But Gael Gomez wants people to keep looking up — at the sky and in life.
51st.news
December 29, 2025 at 2:02 PM
In Mount Pleasant, a tight-knit D.C. neighborhood where immigrants are deeply embedded into the social fabric, the Trump administration’s targeting of migrants has shaken the community.
This poignant story about the impact from @samdelgado.bsky.social was one of our team's favorites this year.
This poignant story about the impact from @samdelgado.bsky.social was one of our team's favorites this year.
as a teacher it is really cool that the chief task of adolescents/early 20-somethings is to reassess, reject, and hold a cynical lens up to the society they find themselves in - and then it's even better to watch your best students transform that cynicism into constructive ways of remaking the world
Realizing cynicism doesn't equal intelligence was a hard lesson i learned in my 20s
December 29, 2025 at 2:30 PM
as a teacher it is really cool that the chief task of adolescents/early 20-somethings is to reassess, reject, and hold a cynical lens up to the society they find themselves in - and then it's even better to watch your best students transform that cynicism into constructive ways of remaking the world
Reposted by randy r. potts
I need a really really fun and easy novel in German.
December 29, 2025 at 2:11 PM
I need a really really fun and easy novel in German.
as the Trump and Putin positions on Ukraine continue to publicly coalesce I'm guessing a lot of anti-Ukrainian western leftists' heads are truly going to spin
December 29, 2025 at 2:24 PM
as the Trump and Putin positions on Ukraine continue to publicly coalesce I'm guessing a lot of anti-Ukrainian western leftists' heads are truly going to spin
it's so rare that decades of scholarship and the resulting book perfectly match the times they are published in - but - it's happening with @unlawfulentries.bsky.social's book coming out in March - here's a link if you want to pre-order:
December 29, 2025 at 12:11 PM
it's so rare that decades of scholarship and the resulting book perfectly match the times they are published in - but - it's happening with @unlawfulentries.bsky.social's book coming out in March - here's a link if you want to pre-order:
Reposted by randy r. potts
Prigg v PA (1842) a slavery case, that I learned in Con Law I, is about enslavers going into free states to retrieve people. It shows the human cost of slavery and the conflict of federal/state laws. Prof. Shapiro draws parallels in current politics.
The case is discussed in my forthcoming book.
The case is discussed in my forthcoming book.
December 29, 2025 at 11:15 AM
Prigg v PA (1842) a slavery case, that I learned in Con Law I, is about enslavers going into free states to retrieve people. It shows the human cost of slavery and the conflict of federal/state laws. Prof. Shapiro draws parallels in current politics.
The case is discussed in my forthcoming book.
The case is discussed in my forthcoming book.
Reposted by randy r. potts
Do I have any followers who cover the Comic-Con world for the UK media? (Fantasy, sci-fi, graphic novels.) My friend Zdenek Strnad is organizing the 2026 Prague Comic-Con in March and would be keen to bring in a UK based journalist.
December 29, 2025 at 11:30 AM
Do I have any followers who cover the Comic-Con world for the UK media? (Fantasy, sci-fi, graphic novels.) My friend Zdenek Strnad is organizing the 2026 Prague Comic-Con in March and would be keen to bring in a UK based journalist.
but then it is far easier for a cozy western leftist in Maryland or Connecticut to preach about white supremacy and corruption in Ukraine than to look around and try to tackle the versions of the same all around them
December 29, 2025 at 12:00 PM
but then it is far easier for a cozy western leftist in Maryland or Connecticut to preach about white supremacy and corruption in Ukraine than to look around and try to tackle the versions of the same all around them
one thing that always struck me about the western leftist pretense that Ukraine is especially corrupt or fash is that hey, Texas exists! the fash never got more than 2% of the vote in Ukraine whereas in US red states like Texas they get a majority every 2 years - and Texas corruption, well, um -
The U.S. has totally lost the right to ever again complain about Ukrainian corruption.
December 29, 2025 at 11:58 AM
one thing that always struck me about the western leftist pretense that Ukraine is especially corrupt or fash is that hey, Texas exists! the fash never got more than 2% of the vote in Ukraine whereas in US red states like Texas they get a majority every 2 years - and Texas corruption, well, um -
Reposted by randy r. potts
This speech is over 400 years old. It is gripping even now. He could be speaking of Steven Miller, Donald Trump, JD Vance, Tom Homans. It is devastating: "This is the strangers’ case
And this your mountainish inhumanity." Share. www.youtube.com/watch?v=DceE...
And this your mountainish inhumanity." Share. www.youtube.com/watch?v=DceE...
Ian McKellen performs speech about immigrants by Shakespeare from Thomas More (23/4/2016)
YouTube video by TFotF
www.youtube.com
December 29, 2025 at 11:27 AM
This speech is over 400 years old. It is gripping even now. He could be speaking of Steven Miller, Donald Trump, JD Vance, Tom Homans. It is devastating: "This is the strangers’ case
And this your mountainish inhumanity." Share. www.youtube.com/watch?v=DceE...
And this your mountainish inhumanity." Share. www.youtube.com/watch?v=DceE...
thankfully what's still missing so far in Continental fash movements - Poland, Italy, France, Germany, etc - is this explicit permission structure for revolutionary violence - but, hey, that could change - and fast!
for Brits who haven't watched the last decade of politics in the US: they are laying the foundation for a fascist revolution focused on ethnic cleansing - to do that you have to create a permission structure for revolutionary fascist violence while ratcheting up hate towards those you want to purge
The Conservative Party is simultaneously arguing people shouldn’t be jailed for social media posts directly calling for violence, but also that people’s citizenship should be revoked over social media posts they don’t like.
Make it make sense.
Make it make sense.
December 29, 2025 at 11:48 AM
thankfully what's still missing so far in Continental fash movements - Poland, Italy, France, Germany, etc - is this explicit permission structure for revolutionary violence - but, hey, that could change - and fast!
for Brits who haven't watched the last decade of politics in the US: they are laying the foundation for a fascist revolution focused on ethnic cleansing - to do that you have to create a permission structure for revolutionary fascist violence while ratcheting up hate towards those you want to purge
The Conservative Party is simultaneously arguing people shouldn’t be jailed for social media posts directly calling for violence, but also that people’s citizenship should be revoked over social media posts they don’t like.
Make it make sense.
Make it make sense.
December 29, 2025 at 11:45 AM
for Brits who haven't watched the last decade of politics in the US: they are laying the foundation for a fascist revolution focused on ethnic cleansing - to do that you have to create a permission structure for revolutionary fascist violence while ratcheting up hate towards those you want to purge
Reposted by randy r. potts
I also rather liked this long and thorough take on what it means to be on the Left after the Russian full scale invasion of Ukraine and October 7
leftrenewal.org/lraw-en/
leftrenewal.org/lraw-en/
December 29, 2025 at 10:06 AM
I also rather liked this long and thorough take on what it means to be on the Left after the Russian full scale invasion of Ukraine and October 7
leftrenewal.org/lraw-en/
leftrenewal.org/lraw-en/
in so many ways what made the medieval era "medieval" was shit like this
We just had an incident in NZ where several newspapers published the top 10 NZ books for kids and 5 of them didn’t exist - the papers lifted the list straight from a press release from the so-called World Literacy Foundation
December 29, 2025 at 10:29 AM
in so many ways what made the medieval era "medieval" was shit like this
Reposted by randy r. potts
Our photographer Alex Kormann captured the exact moment the presses stopped for the last time in Minneapolis, ending a 158 history of locally printed newspapers.
December 28, 2025 at 3:25 PM
Our photographer Alex Kormann captured the exact moment the presses stopped for the last time in Minneapolis, ending a 158 history of locally printed newspapers.
Reposted by randy r. potts
Lavoro e sessualità. . . [gli industriali americani e le relazioni sessuali dei loro dipendenti]: non può esserci lavoro inbis tenso produttivo senza una regolamentazione dell’istinto sessuale.
— #AntonioGramsci, 1929 Qdc 22
*img 1938 #CândidoPortinari Ferro
#lesfolliesdeshommes
— #AntonioGramsci, 1929 Qdc 22
*img 1938 #CândidoPortinari Ferro
#lesfolliesdeshommes
October 27, 2025 at 7:01 PM
Lavoro e sessualità. . . [gli industriali americani e le relazioni sessuali dei loro dipendenti]: non può esserci lavoro inbis tenso produttivo senza una regolamentazione dell’istinto sessuale.
— #AntonioGramsci, 1929 Qdc 22
*img 1938 #CândidoPortinari Ferro
#lesfolliesdeshommes
— #AntonioGramsci, 1929 Qdc 22
*img 1938 #CândidoPortinari Ferro
#lesfolliesdeshommes
for those like me obsessed with Pasolini, a nice piece on how and why his 1950s Roman novel Una vita violenta using a Roman dialect spoken by street toughs was translated using a Brooklyn dialect with echoes of both Dreiser and the Beats:
‘The Pasolini Translation Problem’: From Una vita violenta to A Violent Life
This article provides a microhistorical analysis of the English translation of Pier Paolo Pasolini's Una vita violenta, penned by William Weaver and published by British publisher Jonathan Cape in ...
www.tandfonline.com
December 28, 2025 at 11:46 AM
for those like me obsessed with Pasolini, a nice piece on how and why his 1950s Roman novel Una vita violenta using a Roman dialect spoken by street toughs was translated using a Brooklyn dialect with echoes of both Dreiser and the Beats:
I entreat people to pick up Zubok's Collapse which showcases one of history's strangest Satanic heroes, aka Boris Yeltsin, who unlike his USSR contemporaries saw a vision of carving out the RFSR and thereby putting Gorbachev, his only real rival, out of a job; a masterful, devilish, personal strike.
The ussr collapsing the way it did is the fault of decades of mismanagement and corruption but also like if one singular republic that is the most responsible for the union’s death it’s the Russian SFSR and the post collapse Russian state/polis has continued to make it everyone’s else’s issue
December 28, 2025 at 11:42 AM
I entreat people to pick up Zubok's Collapse which showcases one of history's strangest Satanic heroes, aka Boris Yeltsin, who unlike his USSR contemporaries saw a vision of carving out the RFSR and thereby putting Gorbachev, his only real rival, out of a job; a masterful, devilish, personal strike.
every NYT foray into every western Pennsylvania diner
Mandatory quote in coverage of far right towns: “I am normal, my neighbours vote for Nazis but I am not someone who would be friends with Nazis so my neighbours are not Nazis. The foreigners are not like me and so I am indifferent to their fate compared to the hurt feelings of my neighbours.“
December 28, 2025 at 11:38 AM
every NYT foray into every western Pennsylvania diner
Reposted by randy r. potts
Mandatory quote in coverage of far right towns: “I am normal, my neighbours vote for Nazis but I am not someone who would be friends with Nazis so my neighbours are not Nazis. The foreigners are not like me and so I am indifferent to their fate compared to the hurt feelings of my neighbours.“
December 28, 2025 at 9:27 AM
Mandatory quote in coverage of far right towns: “I am normal, my neighbours vote for Nazis but I am not someone who would be friends with Nazis so my neighbours are not Nazis. The foreigners are not like me and so I am indifferent to their fate compared to the hurt feelings of my neighbours.“
this is only difficult to comprehend if you center the vast universe around decisions made in Washington, D.C.
this is the simple answer to people who keep saying NATO expansion matters. Sure, it matters because it presented an obstacle to Russian imperial ambitions. Putin didn't invade because he hated NATO expansion, he hated NATO expansion because he wanted to invade
December 28, 2025 at 11:35 AM
this is only difficult to comprehend if you center the vast universe around decisions made in Washington, D.C.