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mtbindurham.bsky.social
MTBinDurham
@mtbindurham.bsky.social
180 followers 300 following 700 posts
Durmite, pain in the ass. Reconstituting this handle from birdsite after period of dormancy for purposes of posting about sporting things, politics, religion, vulgarity, music, antifascism, and horrible, horrible puns.

Avi: Biscuits + Banjos fest
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mtbindurham.bsky.social
I was 14 but anyway.
Cover art for They Might Be Giants album Flood
November 17, 2025 at 2:52 AM
mtbindurham.bsky.social
I love this season so much.
October 28, 2025 at 3:17 PM
mtbindurham.bsky.social
This is the kind of stupid shit my friends and I would have come up with in a dorm room when we were staying up too late. . . and then laughed at ourselves for how fucking stupid it actually was when we said it out loud.
Using the lofty language that has typified Mr. Musk’s A.I. dreams for more than a decade, he told employees that he wanted to build systems that were “maximally truth-seeking” while previewing plans to build a Microsoft competitor called Macrohard.
September 18, 2025 at 11:40 PM
mtbindurham.bsky.social
Kash and Bongino on the case
September 12, 2025 at 1:12 AM
mtbindurham.bsky.social
A still from the notoriously bad B movie, Manos, The Hands of Fate. An actor wearing a black robe with giant red hands on them stands with his arms stretched out.
September 12, 2025 at 12:27 AM
mtbindurham.bsky.social
I put this over on Mastodon but when you put these two quotes from two very different writers side by side, I feel like there's a lot going on here.

(first image is from the @davidgraeberinst.bsky.social)
I think there has been a war of the imagination over the last several years. I was thinking a lot about what there might be to be optimistic about and I came to the conclusion that this feeling of hopelessness that everybody has is a manufactured product, and that’s what Neo-Liberalism is really about. Neo-Liberalism isn’t just an economic program, it’s a political program designed to produce hopelessness and kill any future alternatives." David Graeber Image of Bruno Latour. Text: "Especially troubling to me is the feeling of helplessness that is associated with any discussion of economics and that I have so much trouble reconciling with what I consider science’s and politics’ main effects, these being the opening of new possibilities and the provision of margins to maneuver. Why is it that when we are asked or summoned to combat capitalism, we feel, I feel so helpless? Faced with such a question, I will start with this idea—that one of the affects of capitalism, that is, of thinking in terms of capitalism, is to generate for most of people who don’t benefit from its wealth a feeling of helplessness and for a few people who benefits from it an immense enthusiasm together with a dumbness of the senses." - Bruno Latour, On some of the affects of capitalism
September 5, 2025 at 4:21 PM
mtbindurham.bsky.social
I mean not quite but
Gif of three animated dogs from the show Bluey riding bicycles with headbands, leg warmers, big hair waves, and other 80s styles. The caption reads, "THIS WAS THE 80'S, MAN!"
August 31, 2025 at 1:57 AM
mtbindurham.bsky.social
This is kind of a funny one. Yes, we have an absolutely abhorrent record on road safety . . .

. . . but all US states, last I checked, require a vision test for everyone when renewing a license. For everyone.
The death toll on American roads is over 40,000 a year. We had just over 1,600, in a population around one-fifth of that in the US, and with a road network that has far fewer wide, straight roads. Their road-death toll is around five times ours per head of population. We could do better, but we could do a whole lot worse.
August 14, 2025 at 11:14 AM
mtbindurham.bsky.social
Damn this is good. NY's LG Delgado going absolutely gloves off against his own governor in his own party.

Brutal, constructive, and specific.

🎁🔗
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/o...
Mr. Trump’s appeal isn’t rooted in policy; it’s rooted in style. He uses delusional bravado to cosplay as a rebel against a broken system that both parties helped to rig. The Democratic establishment’s timid, survivalist politics can’t compete with that. You can’t beat an immoral agent of chaos with risk aversion. You beat him with moral clarity — the kind that’s willing to sacrifice corporate donations, political comfort and maybe even your own career for the sake of the greater good. Mr. Trump doesn’t win because people love his ideas. He wins because people stop believing in what Democrats have to offer.
July 30, 2025 at 4:39 PM
mtbindurham.bsky.social
Reading @tressiemcphd.bsky.social's op-ed on Mamdani and the panic around him and good Lord, professor, that's a kicker that leaves a bruise!

🎁
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/o...
Their panic implies that the education credentials we trust for any other candidate are now suspicious for an ungrateful minority. We cannot trust that minority’s political prescriptions without peering into the core of that person’s racial identity. That’s where we think the “real” them is, in a set of murky loyalties that could turn on America at the drop of a dime. Divining Mamdani’s race is a way to see past his pretty-standard-for-a-politician upbringing and to point to the “something” in Mamdani that makes him untrustworthy. When both sides of the political spectrum share an obsession with interrogating one’s racial purity, maybe it’s time to confront an uncomfortable truth: A lot of us are exactly who Donald Trump believes that we are.
July 28, 2025 at 4:26 PM
mtbindurham.bsky.social
Scripture passage from worship this morning is an entire damn Word
Hebrews 13 13Let mutual love continue. 2Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. 3Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.*
July 20, 2025 at 3:33 PM
mtbindurham.bsky.social
AI accounts getting … worse at impersonating real people.
I am a Democrat from California. Generation X! I like to express myself by creating images (also known as Memes’). I love animals and plants. I block 🚫 people that try private chats with me (mostly scammers anyways.) jerks and creeps!
July 19, 2025 at 12:13 AM
mtbindurham.bsky.social
Yeah for the ones throwing insults . . .
Meme image: "ooh, self-burn! Those are rare!"
July 18, 2025 at 4:03 AM
mtbindurham.bsky.social
If you see this, quote with a robot that isn't from Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, or Transformers.
The giant robot Gort, from the 1951 movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, standing outside the flying saucer
July 7, 2025 at 12:47 AM
mtbindurham.bsky.social
Goldman's full quote is here, which in my opinion is worth sharing in full not just for accuracy, but because it's a much more explicit rebuke of the joy-scolds that still haunt BlueSky to this day.

en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emma_Go...
At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause. I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things." Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal. (p. 56)
June 27, 2025 at 11:43 PM
mtbindurham.bsky.social
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Nobody in the Democratic establishment is quite so delusional that they think the party is doing great. Everyone knows there is a need for change and yet they seem keen to sabotage anyone who might bring that change. Instead of rallying around fresh talent like Mamdani that can clearly mobilize young voters, the Democrats are mulling a $20m plan to try to manufacture a “Joe Rogan of the left” who can connect with young men, rather than support an authentic grassroots candidate who is already connecting with them. Will centrist interests prevail in New York? We won’t know until, at the very earliest, late on primary night, 24 June. Whatever happens, though, you can bet that Democrats will continue to do their very best to kneecap anyone who wants to drag them way from their obsession with doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
June 18, 2025 at 6:43 PM
mtbindurham.bsky.social
Star wars meme. First panel has young Anakin saying "If they can do this to a Senator, they can do it to anyone." Second Padme, smiling: "So what' the Plan?" Third: an image of Chuck Schumer Fourth: Padme looking startled
June 13, 2025 at 4:10 PM
mtbindurham.bsky.social
Chuck Shumer cannot continue as majority leader. He should have been dumped months ago, he doubly needs dumped now.
post from Eli Clifton (@EliClifton) Picture of Chuck Shumer. Caption"My job," Chuck Schumer told Bret Stephens, "is to keep the left pro-Israel." The job of a U.S. Senator is to maintain support for a foreign country with his left-wing constituents? link to nyt article
June 12, 2025 at 3:30 PM
mtbindurham.bsky.social
Without downloading any new pics, where you at mentally?
June 10, 2025 at 4:45 PM
mtbindurham.bsky.social
My sign skills are, to put it kindly, not great. But I wanted to make sure I had an anti-ICE sign at the overpass today.
A cardboard box top, fairly tattered, has “ICE HANDS OFF OUR NEIGHBORS” in red magic marker. A hand holds it up with a 4 lane highway running under it in the background.
June 10, 2025 at 12:57 PM
mtbindurham.bsky.social
An image of a car driver's console with the steering wheel missing. Caption says "Very funny, Jesus. Give it back." From bsky user @uncleduke1969.bsky.social‬
June 8, 2025 at 9:40 PM
mtbindurham.bsky.social
www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?da...
Speech balloon from Girl Genius. Text reads "Oh. Oh, MY. Can... Can it be CHRISTMAS?"
June 5, 2025 at 7:37 PM
mtbindurham.bsky.social
Don't you mean stinking up the Scottish Prem *and* the Conference?
Textless still from the Simpsons. Homer is smiling and explaining something to Bart.
June 4, 2025 at 9:37 PM
mtbindurham.bsky.social
It's going to continue to be my bullshit that anti-reactionary movements are going to keep failing in rural areas until they get this deeply incorporated into core theory.

It doesn't fit well with conventional 20th century modernist Leftism though so some can't do it.

www.npr.org/2025/06/01/n...
"You're connected to thousands of years of wisdom, people learning how to live in cooperation with the land and hopefully improve it," he says. Looking out into the distance, Cooper says, "You are getting that wisdom from your local community. The people that farm or garden are very interesting, very resourceful, very astute."
June 2, 2025 at 3:15 PM
mtbindurham.bsky.social
Yesterday was officially the day to decorate the front of the church for Pride.

We had fairly new materials with because last year someone decided to come trash our decorations, so we had to go out and buy more. As fellow congregant Matthew said to me, ". . . and they can die mad."

#church #pride
Oblique shot of granite steps and front arches of First Presbyterian Church in Durham, NC, festooned with rainbow banners, wraps, and bunting for Pride Month. Children and adults can be seen working to decorate the steps.
June 2, 2025 at 2:16 PM