Jesse Farrell
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jfarrell.eurosky.social
Jesse Farrell
@jfarrell.eurosky.social
2.5K followers 2.6K following 3.5K posts
🏳️‍⚧️ powerlifter, unfree software repairbot, cat mum.

🏉: UBB/Leinster/🇮🇪 (♂️) 🇼🇸/🇹🇴/🇫🇯/🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 (♀️).

@_jfarrell on Twitter; @pingouin@tech.lgbt in fediverse.

🇧🇧🇲🇸

Pro-democracy, antifa-scist.

Capitalism is a choice.
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jfarrell.eurosky.social
...but I wasn't around for the baking part.
The finished loaf in the breadbox, the stuff of future sandwiches.
February 11, 2026 at 11:12 PM
jfarrell.eurosky.social
Due to scheduling issues, I've been deputized into keeping tabs on the bread this week.
The dough for a loaf of Clay's Multigrain Sourdough Sandwich Bread (from King Arthur Baking's February magazine), after a rise in the mixing bowl. The dough for a loaf of Clay's Multigrain Sourdough Sandwich Bread, sitting in a loaf pan, almost ready for the oven.
February 11, 2026 at 8:36 PM
jfarrell.eurosky.social
The cats take turns perching on my chest each morning, as a way of keeping me from work and/or coffee; they have a sixth sense for knowing I want to get out of bed.

Lambchop was second today.
Lambchop, a mostly-black shorthair, stares drowsily at the camera, while giving us a glimpse of his fangs.
February 9, 2026 at 1:31 PM
jfarrell.eurosky.social
It’ll be at least a year before we can begin assessing whether what we’re seeing is anything more than a stronger-than-usual backlash against an incumbent, and that’s assuming elections still work the way they’re supposed to. But this analysis verbalizes a hypothesis I’ve been contemplating, the first of two I’ll present in this post. Since Clinton, since LBJ even, Republicans have become increasingly unbeatable in many rural areas and the South, especially poorer areas, entirely through cultural affinity. Since the moment when Trump beat Evangelical Ted Cruz in South Carolina’s 2016 primary, Trump began to coopt that preexisting culture, until he turned Red State political culture entirely MAGAt. So if Trump becomes toxic, then that entire culture, the continuation of the culture the right wing has used to stay in power for decades, may be tainted as well. If Everything Trump Touches Dies, will right wing political culture he coopted in his own image, also die? And if so, will it make these formerly red areas newly contestable?
February 8, 2026 at 7:14 PM
jfarrell.eurosky.social
So forget all the shootouts and cattle drives and fancy roping. The real foundation of the western genre was moral authority. And Hollywood never let you forget it—that’s why heroes wore white hats and villains dressed in black. The audience didn’t even have to think about it. In some ways, it’s like the superhero movies of today. You just see the cape, and you know that Superman is fighting for justice. And the same is true of Batman and Spiderman and all the rest. But imagine what would happen if the audience lost confidence in the moral authority of these caped and costumed do-gooders? Could the Marvel Universe survive if we no longer knew the difference between heroes and villains? Because that’s exactly what happened to the western. Just consider the unsettling film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly—which came out around the time the western genre died. Despite the movie’s title, it’s hard to identify any character in this film as good—instead they merely differ in their degrees of badness and ugliness. And the same is true of The Wild Bunch or Once Upon a Time in the West and so many other films from that era. There are no heroes on display here, only various pathways into nihilism. So long John Wayne. Hello Friedrich Nietzsche. But this made perfect sense. The entire US of A was traumatized by the Vietnam War, and then Watergate—along with assassinations, riots, sex, drugs, and rock & roll. The moral sureness of the Eisenhower years, along with the complacent righteousness of so much of the public started to erode. At first it happened slowly, and then rapidly. The classic western could not survive this.
February 7, 2026 at 8:11 PM
jfarrell.eurosky.social
As someone who grew up enjoying (with a grain of salt) Joe Adamov and Vladimir Posner on Radio Moscow (which begat Voice of Russia, which begat RT/Sputnik), Zorin's work is interesting. It wasn't until adulthood that I got that I wasn't really the target audience for RM, but certainly was for RT.
I’m fond of a mordant book called The Infernal Library, which asks why so many of the 20th century’s dictators started out as wannabe writers and editors. The author, Scottish-born Texan Daniel Kalder, took it upon himself to read Hitler’s terrible tomes, Lenin’s screeds and Mussolini’s editorial diatribes as a literary genre (unaffectionately, dic lit). Kalder undertook this awful task, he says, because we need to better understand the relationship between media and monstrosity. “Many people regard books and reading as innately positive, as if compilations of bound paper with ink on them in and of themselves represent a uniquely powerful ‘medicine for the soul,’” he writes. “However, a moment’s reflection reveals that this is not even slightly true: books and reading can also cause immense harm.” Over the next few posts, I want to do with radio/tv/podcasting what Kalder has done with dic lit — pick apart some bad examples to better understand the foundations of their diabolical success. There are two big reasons to do this: As a listener and viewer, it’s good to know how you are being worked on. And if you are a producer, it’s good to avoid becoming a moral monster. Because the very things that make propaganda a success are temptations for us all. Today we’ll consider the work of Soviet “Americanist” Valentin Zorin, and in particular, one film he made about my hometown.
February 5, 2026 at 6:36 PM
jfarrell.eurosky.social
Portuguese professor Mario Campolargo flipped the equation around. Any part of the EU paying for software should be sharing the code it's paying for: If the money is public, the code should be public. Of course, this isn't just a European problem. It applies just as much to the nearly 200 countries of the United Nations. A short item, oddly described as an "intervention," talked about the upcoming UN Open Source Week 2026 and the UN Open Source Principles – including that the city of Barcelona just adopted them. To most people working with FOSS, they probably seem simple and reasonable, but having the UN on board adds considerable clout, and spelling them out is the sort of thing that reassures technophobic politicians: The UN Open Source Principles Open by default: Making open source the standard approach for projects. Contribute back: Encouraging active participation in the open source ecosystem. Secure by design: Making security a priority in all software projects. Foster inclusive participation and community building: Enabling and facilitating diverse and inclusive contributions. Design for reusability: Designing projects to be interoperable across various platforms and ecosystems. Provide documentation: Providing thorough documentation for end-users, integrators and developers. RISE (recognize, incentivize, support, and empower): Empowering individuals and communities to actively participate. Sustain and scale: Supporting the development of solutions that meet the evolving needs of the UN system and beyond.
February 4, 2026 at 3:08 PM
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These are just some of the preparations that residents of Springfield, Ohio, have made in recent days as the country barrels toward the end of an immigration program that has allowed some 330,000 Haitians to legally live and work in the United States because of the rampant violence and political volatility in Haiti. Though conditions there have not improved — and perhaps only worsened — Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, ends for Haitians on February 3. There are as many as 15,000 immigrants in the Springfield area, many of them Haitian, and the city of about 60,000 is ramping up efforts to try to protect their community from the type of chaotic, violent assault by federal immigration agents that claimed two lives in Minneapolis in recent weeks.
February 2, 2026 at 4:06 PM
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From the book’s description: Over the last fifty years, women have made extraordinary advances in athletics. More women than ever are playing sports and staying active longer. Whether they’re elite athletes looking for an edge or enthusiastic amateurs, women deserve a culture of sports that helps them thrive: training programs and equipment designed to work with their bodies, as well as guidelines for nutrition and injury prevention that are based in science and tailored to their lived experience. Yet too often the guidance women receive is based on research that fails to consider their experiences or their bodies. So much of what we take as gospel about exercise and sports science is based solely on studies of men. The good news is, this is finally changing. Researchers are creating more inclusive studies to close the gender data gap. They’re examining the ways women can boost athletic performance, reduce injury, and stay healthy.
February 2, 2026 at 3:38 PM
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The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., they note, served as The Nation’s civil rights correspondent from 1961 to 1966. When he received the Peace Prize in 1964, he declared it recognizes those “moving with determination and a majestic scorn for risk and danger to establish a reign of freedom and a rule of justice.” King believed it is vital to show nonviolence as “not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation...Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace (and) transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood...The foundation of such a method is love.” “We believe that the people of Minneapolis have displayed that love,” the editors conclude. “That is why we are proud to nominate them and their city for the Nobel Peace Prize.”
February 1, 2026 at 3:00 PM
jfarrell.eurosky.social
A spider, hanging by a thread.
January 29, 2026 at 5:55 PM
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Images of heavily armed, unidentified, and masked individuals beating people protesting their presence — a right protected by the First Amendment, which generously guarantees freedom of speech in the U.S. — and arresting citizens solely because of their accent or skin color — including children like little Liam Conejo Ramos — are incompatible with a fully democratic society. The shooting deaths of two civilians, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, with images that appear to show an extrajudicial execution in the latter case, sparked global outrage and a wave of references to what happened in Europe in the last century, when Mussolini’s Blackshirts and Hitler’s Brownshirts took over the streets of Italy and Germany.
January 29, 2026 at 2:05 PM
jfarrell.eurosky.social
One journalist I knew (who worked for a far bigger outlet as a political correspondent) once told me that the news was the first thing she read when she opened her eyes, and the last thing she saw before falling asleep. Perhaps this is how some journalists need to live their lives. If reporting the daily news is their calling, they must be deeply aware of what is going on. Even if it means watching and reading all the time. But it is not for you and me, friends. This sort of news consumption will reign your emotions: it will drive you to anger, terror, annoyance, and despair. It will make you feel helpless. It will divorce you from the daily, real things happening in your own home. Take it from someone who’s lived it: knowing absolutely everything that is happening right now—whether in Iran, or Ukraine, or Washington, D.C., or Minnesota—is not your calling. It can actually serve as a dangerous distraction from the vocations of your own life, neighborhood, and community. This does not mean, however, that we should ignore what is going on in the larger world. This is an argument not for ignorance or unplugging. Rather, I hope it is a call to prudence, perspective, and an active vs. passive orientation toward the happenings of our nation and world. Here are some boundaries I’ve set in place for my news consumption since 2020. They have been very helpful. I pray they are helpful to you.
January 27, 2026 at 7:17 PM
jfarrell.eurosky.social
Happy 71st birthday to the man who achieved rare heights in government, only to use his position to roll back decades of societal progress and human-rights gains. Then he placed an evil, mentally-ill old man above the law, to help put the finishing touches on the destruction he initiated.
January 27, 2026 at 1:33 PM
jfarrell.eurosky.social
The changes in artwork/threads between their two Blue Note LPs—Introducing (1968) and Multidirection (1969)—are not unlike the changes from Miles' suit-and-tie Second Great Quintet of '67 to the Last/Lost Quintet of '68/'69. But Cox's LPs seemed tailor-made for those already nostalgic for Nefertiti.
The album cover for Kenny Cox and the Contemporary Jazz Quintet's Blue Note Records debut, from 1968. They've graduated from the stereotypical Brooks Brothers look, but haven't quite made the move to the beads-and-dashikis Charles Lloyd vibe. Photo apparently shot in an investment-bank lobby. The quintet from 1969, slightly hipper clothes, slightly more non-traditional cover layout, and the inspired decision (likely by Frank Wolff) to photograph them inside what looks to be a large greenhouse.
January 26, 2026 at 5:22 PM
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The aforementioned Christmas lights, now with extra winter wonderland.
The neighbor's house, with the Christmas lights on; the visible street and sidewalks are covered in snow.
January 26, 2026 at 3:18 AM
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Shoveling nearly a foot of snow made for a nice unscheduled upper-body workout, now that I'm emerging from a two-month offseason, but the *real* highlight was seeing our Perpetual Halloween Spider covered in its first substantial snow. (The neighbors still have Xmas lights up, which will look nice.)
A Halloween-decoration spider, still attached to a front porch-rail, now covered in snow, as is the rail.
January 25, 2026 at 7:53 PM
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What we are witnessing is not simply another protest cycle. It is the result of a decades-long erosion of belief in the ideological foundations of the Islamic Republic. It is about the slow disintegration of a worldview that once claimed to explain everything: how people should dress, think and live. Totalitarian systems rarely fall through dramatic revolutions alone. More often, they unravel from within, as the distance grows between what the state demands and what people actually live by. Today, if you walk through Tehran, you’ll see many women not wearing the hijab. Even when they walk past morality police – who, by law, should enforce its wearing – nothing happens.
January 25, 2026 at 2:01 PM
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More 2019 stuff: some sculptures outside the Hirshhorn in DC.
Rear view of an old black Chrysler LeBaron, with a large rust-colored boulder on top of it, as if it had just landed there. Side view of the LeBaron, with the old, iconic SILENCE = DEATH logo in neon, behind a window at the Hirshhorn, visible in the background. A close-up of the SILENCE = DEATH neon sign.
January 24, 2026 at 4:46 PM
jfarrell.eurosky.social
From 2019, inside a cathedral in or outside of London (like I'm supposed to remember?): MLK in oratory mid-flight.
A sculpture embedded in a cathedral wall: the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King testifying on a balcony, with actual greenery protruding from it. The caption underneath, carved in a stylized cathedral-oid font, says "I have a dream"
January 24, 2026 at 4:32 PM
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What does it mean to treat people’s needs as holy? Hendricks writes in The Politics of Jesus that “Jesus simply taught the men and women who heeded his call to put their love for God into practice by loving their neighbors as themselves.” In the Lord’s Prayer, Hendricks says, Jesus told his followers that we are to treat our neighbors and their needs as holy, “striving to fulfill their needs as if serving God.” Women and girls’ bodies must be treated as if they are holy — because they are. Trans and nonbinary bodies are holy. Poor bodies are holy. Black women and girls especially need to be treated with respect and dignity, regardless of their social location or economic status; whether they have a college degree or a GED diploma; whether they are quiet or speak with a boldness that makes people uncomfortable. We must treat women and girls’ needs as if they were God’s needs. Women need access to healthcare without the fear that they will go to jail. Women who miscarry need emotional and medical support, not accusatory questions from a doctor or nurse. Women need love manifested in actions, not superficial platitudes. Same goes for the needs of trans men, nonbinary folks, and pregnant people who are poor: Their needs are God’s needs.
January 23, 2026 at 12:25 PM
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The original post in question, since the author chose to remove, but not delete, it.
Like every other MLK Day, today I’m reminded of the passage from Letter from a Birmingham Jail about the white moderate, the greatest enemy of progress in modern America. An evergreen take if ever there was one
January 19, 2026 at 4:23 PM
jfarrell.eurosky.social
The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre once quipped that, in politics, “not one game is being played, but several. . . . The problem about real life is that moving one’s knight to QB3 may always be replied to with a lob across the net.” Politics is fundamentally unpredictable because humans are capable of creatively and radically changing the nature of the game being played. Drawing on his humanistic training, MacIntyre knew that the patterns we associate with politics are not ahistorical but always form in a particular culture that itself is always mutating. The institutions studied by political scientists do not exist outside ideology but are simply patterned instances of ideology—and if ideology changes drastically enough, the institutions change with it. Viewed from this perspective, what makes MAGA so vexingly difficult for political scientists to grasp is that it represents a break with the ideological world of liberalism. The discipline has built a vast array of empirical theses deep inside this single ideology—liberalism—and, in doing so, has naturalized it. In other words, political scientists have made a “science” out of studying chess. They have assumed that all political actors play by the rules of chess and treat the board and pieces as established fact. But in 2016, as liberal politicians continued moving pieces on the chessboard, MAGA picked up a racket and began playing a set.
January 17, 2026 at 2:58 PM
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www.harpercollins.com/products/kin...
The cover of Howard Bryant's book Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America (2026).
January 17, 2026 at 1:58 PM
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Jasmine Crockett, beginning her opening remarks.
Jasmine Crockett takes the mic.
January 16, 2026 at 5:21 PM