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joshfrai.bsky.social
Joshfrai
@joshfrai.bsky.social
2.3K followers 780 following 4.8K posts
Just sitting here with a big bowl of popcorn.
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joshfrai.bsky.social
For the Union Dead.
For the Union Dead BY ROBERT LOWELL The old South Boston Aquarium stands in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded. The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales. The airy tanks are dry. Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass; my hand tingled to burst the bubbles drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish. My hand draws back. I often sigh still for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom of the fish and reptile. One morning last March, I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage, yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting as they cropped up tons of mush and grass to gouge their underworld garage. (part 2) Parking spaces luxuriate like civic sandpiles in the heart of Boston. A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders braces the tingling Statehouse, shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry on St. Gaudens' shaking Civil War relief, propped by a plank splint against the garage's earthquake. Two months after marching through Boston, half the regiment was dead; at the dedication, William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe. Their monument sticks like a fishbone in the city's throat. Its Colonel is as lean as a compass-needle. He has an angry wrenlike vigilance, a greyhound's gentle tautness; he seems to wince at pleasure, and suffocate for privacy. (part 3) He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man's lovely, peculiar power to choose life and die— when he leads his black soldiers to death, he cannot bend his back. On a thousand small town New England greens, the old white churches hold their air of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic. The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier grow slimmer and younger each year— wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets and muse through their sideburns . . . Shaw's father wanted no monument except the ditch, where his son's body was thrown and lost with his "niggers." The ditch is nearer. There are no statues for the last war here; on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph shows Hiroshima boiling (part 4) over a Mosler Safe, the "Rock of Ages" that survived the blast. Space is nearer. When I crouch to my television set, the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons. Colonel Shaw is riding on his bubble, he waits for the blessed break. The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere, giant finned cars nose forward like fish; a savage servility slides by on grease.
November 11, 2025 at 4:22 PM
joshfrai.bsky.social
🍾
Excerpt from Forbes article: Recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) suggests that a fifth of startups fail within their first year, and up to 65% of startups will fail within 10 years of opening for businesses. 1 While this is a significant failure rate, it offers business owners and entrepreneurs a little more hope than the commonly quoted and somewhat misleading headline that 90% of startups fail in the long run.
November 11, 2025 at 11:24 AM
joshfrai.bsky.social
Okay, you want to talk about shame? Let's talk about shame.
Part of James Fallows post: Sen Hassan, asked what will happen if Republicans don't carry out the deal, "Well, shame on them."
November 10, 2025 at 2:49 PM
joshfrai.bsky.social
Analysis: Back and to the left . . . . Back and to the left . . . . Back and to the left . . . .
November 9, 2025 at 1:22 PM
joshfrai.bsky.social
Into the silvery wood.

#SilentSunday #Stunday #photography #LandscapePhotography #BlackAndWhitePhotography
Vertical black and white photo of a ragged area of forest with thin-trunked evergreens and mostly bare deciduous trees. with broken branches and shrubbery along the bottom with a subtle kind of silvery glow, and a hazy pale gray background visible between the trees. There is part of the trunk of a much larger tree rising along the left edge.
November 9, 2025 at 11:01 AM
joshfrai.bsky.social
if you see this post an album cover with a motor vehicle on it. Bonus points for sheep.
Album cover of Tonio K.’s Life In The Foodchain, with a grainy photo of an old 50s era car surrounded by a flock of sheep, overtaking a brown grassy hillside.
November 8, 2025 at 12:05 PM
joshfrai.bsky.social
Rainy #Evening

#BlueSkyArtShow #photography #UrbanGaze #cityscape
Photo of slighty out of focus groups of people in coats and mostly dark clothing walking along a crowded city street in front of a nondescript building with sections of orange and clear glass storefront walls on the ground floor that are illuminating the nighttime scene, shot at an angle through a window speckled with rain drops.
November 8, 2025 at 11:36 AM
joshfrai.bsky.social
I’m sure wows them on the Hill.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Thunderbolts
November 7, 2025 at 5:40 PM
joshfrai.bsky.social
File under Headlines I Will Never Finish
Newspaper headline: Meet the billionaire trying to save college football from itself with everything after “billionaire” crossed out
November 7, 2025 at 5:30 PM
joshfrai.bsky.social
Dems Stand For Something Challenge Day # You Can Also Listen To @hamiltonnolan.bsky.social

www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/do-what-yo...
Excerpt for essay: At the risk of stepping too firmly on The Rake of Obviousness, I want to suggest a different mental model of politics - a different way of engaging with the political process. It is this: Think about what you want to happen. Then fight for that thing.
November 7, 2025 at 2:57 PM
joshfrai.bsky.social
November 7, 2025 at 2:31 PM
joshfrai.bsky.social
Be ashamed. Be very ashamed.
Excerpt from AR Moxon post: Yet I do think it's not only appropriate but absolutely crucial to be ashamed of shameful things. And I don't think you solve problems without naming them, so I don't believe that naming equates to condemnation. I'm told that naming people Nazis because of their alignment with Nazi ideals and tactics condemns them as irredeemable, which leaves them isolated with no path for redemption. This would seem to suggest both that 1) it is the job of others to redeem people engaged in abuse and harm, and that 2) the only way to get careless people to care is to tell them they're already OK and nothing they're doing is wrong. That doesn't seem right; I would hope that nobody well-meaning is suggesting that. I don't think the lesson history teaches us about Nazism is that Nazis weren't accommodated and validated enough. I suspect the people issuing warnings about shame are not saying that, if they are well-meaning. I think they're saying something else. I sure hope so.
November 7, 2025 at 2:26 PM
joshfrai.bsky.social
Mountain view.

#Scape #photography #LandscapePhotography
Panoramic photo of the Teton mountains in the background, with a line of yellow aspen trees, shrubs and a few firs in the middle ground, and a field of grey-green prairie grass in front, under a vibrant blue sky
November 7, 2025 at 12:19 PM
joshfrai.bsky.social
Dahlia.

#FridayFlower #FloweringFriday #FlowersOnFriday #floralFriday

#bloomscrolling #flowerphotography #macrophotography

#BlackAndWhitePhotography
Black and white extreme closeup of an off-center dahlia blossom that looks like a charcoal drawing; there is a barely visible section of dark grey disk floret on the right side surrounded by concentric circles of of tightly curled white inter petals and grayer more open outer petals, most prominent on the left
November 7, 2025 at 11:06 AM
joshfrai.bsky.social
Agreed! I have several of those.

#BlackAndWhitePhotography #photography
Black and white photo of an old, dilapidated cell at Eastern State Penitentiary, with a plastered barrel ceiling that has a small skylight, and crumbling plastered side walls that reveal brick beneath. There is a small wooden stool in the foreground. The back wall is almost completely gone, with just a few large stones remaining on the bottom left, revealing a stone wall with broken windows outside it. There is some vegetation growing outside the cell, with some vines making their way inside along the moss-covered floor.
November 7, 2025 at 11:02 AM
joshfrai.bsky.social
Put it in the Louvre, part 2.
Consecutive posts: - 1 by Patrick Cosmos @veryimportant.lawyer my dog on the daycare webcam With the photo of Trump standing by his desk in the Oval Office while people behind him attend to the guy who fainted - followed by a post from scoob ascoooydoucnedaa.dsky.social It's Toki Thursday With a photo of a small black and tan dog sitting in a bed in a messy room
November 7, 2025 at 12:09 AM
joshfrai.bsky.social
As I was saying.
New York Times RSS feed headline and summary: Republicans Retire Pelosi as a Villain, and Turn to Mamdani Searching for another liberal boogeyman, Republicans have zeroed in on Zohran Mamdani. Whether their strategy will work in the midterms is less clear.
November 6, 2025 at 10:32 PM
joshfrai.bsky.social
Let’s try it!

#UrbanGaze #HumansOfBlueSky #photography #BlackAndWhitePhotography #FiguringItOut
Black and white photo of two people standing in front of a row of self-serve train ticket machines in Japan. There are a lot of instructions in both Japanese and English. On the wall above the machines is an additional sign that says in Japanese and English “Simple for foreigners. Let’s try it!”
November 6, 2025 at 11:43 AM
joshfrai.bsky.social
True facts.
Excerpt from blog post: But to a large extent, Trump and his party behaved the way they did in the run-up to the election because they hate Democrats. They hate the left, they hate liberalism, they hate any group they identify with Democrats -- Blacks, Hispanics, people of non-European descent, immigrants, LGBTQ people, feminists, librarians, teachers, professors, anyone from Hollywood or the mainstream media -- and they've simply stopped trying to govern as if this is one country that includes groups they despise as full citizens.
November 5, 2025 at 4:47 PM
joshfrai.bsky.social
I see stuff like this* and it still boggles the mind. It really feels like an alternate reality.

*Speaking in this case about the office specifically; save the conversation about the attendees for another time.
Getty Images photo showing part of the newly gold-encrusted Oval Office: US President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Apple CEO Tim Cook speak in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on August 6, 2025 after announcing that Apple will invest an additional $100 billion in the United States, taking its total pledge to $600 billion over the next four years. (Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP) (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
November 5, 2025 at 3:40 PM
joshfrai.bsky.social
Put it in the Louvre.
Consecutive posts" - Gary Legum talking about Nat Cohn trying to explain away the legitimacy of Dem wins in the New Jersey and Virginia governor's races - Jamelle Bouie: "I close out my column this week with this preemptive jab at basically every commentator currently looking for ways to say that last night didn't count"
November 5, 2025 at 3:28 PM
joshfrai.bsky.social
This is objectively hilarious:
Today’s Third Way home page: THIRD WAY MEMO Published November 4, 2025 • 6 minute read Ten Reasons Why Mamdani Politics Won't Win Outside of NYC
November 5, 2025 at 11:58 AM
joshfrai.bsky.social
Let there be light.

#WindowsOnWednesday #photography
Desaturated photo looking up at a barrel ceiling with cracked and peeling paint, revealing bare plaster in spots, with the rectangular opening of a skylight with glass-panel roof illuminating the bottom part of the image.
November 5, 2025 at 11:50 AM
joshfrai.bsky.social
Just this morning I was thinking that Gahan Wilson doesn't get enough love and lo, the universe must have heard me.
Gahan Wilson cartoon showing a hunter holding a shotgun with a bloodthirsty smile on his face, with blood splatters all over his hunting clothes, on the hills behind him and all over the ground in front of him; a man crouching behind him says, smiling, "Congratulations, Baer – I think you've wiped out the species!"
November 4, 2025 at 4:35 PM
joshfrai.bsky.social
They grow up so fast.
Disaster Girl meme photo, showing a young child turning her head toward the camera and slyly smiling in the foreground while a house burns behind her in the background.
November 4, 2025 at 3:43 PM