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pseudospectre.bsky.social
Pseudospectre
@pseudospectre.bsky.social
900 followers 850 following 1K posts
post photos and philosophical/political musings - trans rights are human rights - black lives matter - free palestine - he/him - check out my blog twilliambell.wordpress.com
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pseudospectre.bsky.social
Finally read this piece on ICE/CBP’s recruiting and it didn’t disappoint www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/pol...
One of the ICE applicants I spoke with seemed to have an insatiable desire for conflict in line with this hypothesis. All his life, he said, he had hoped to fight in America's wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. He'd joined the army hoping to fulfill this desire, but the wars had wound down by the time of his enlistment. He never got a chance to fight abroad. He said his wife had almost been assaulted in Texas, and when she called the police they arrested a man who turned out to be an "illegal alien" and who was promptly deported. He said he'd seen videos of a member of the Taliban getting into an argu- ment at a fast-food restaurant in California (I couldn't find any evidence of this-not even as a conspiracy), and that he wanted to join ICE to protect his family. "I learned all these skills in the army- smash and grabs, site exploitation-and never got to use them," he said. "So I'm here to kind of do what I learned to do over there, but this time here, defending my country?" Previously impressed by the connections between war and domestic policy elucidated by the historians Kathleen Belew and Stuart Schrader, I found this man's account almost embarrassingly transparent. It was the most straightforward articulation I'd ever heard of someone bringing the war home. Other applicants offered similar explana- tions for their motives. There was the young, taciturn southerner managing a batting cage in Louisiana, and the pimply youth from Kentucky, churning out Yahoo Finance content for $20 an hour. Both said they were tired and bored. The lat- ter said his father had been in ICE, but he "didn't really know what he did." I spoke to a gregarious New York police officer who was fed up with patrolling Times Square and all the "savages" there. Another applicant said he was sick of installing office furniture in properties subleased by the United States Marines. A blind man I spoke to, who was hop- ing to find a data-centric position with ICE, said he was sick of his current job colle…
November 10, 2025 at 11:26 PM
pseudospectre.bsky.social
I wasn’t expecting commentary on the weaving trade in Middlemarch
I see Vincy, the mayor of Middlemarch; they are probably his wife and son,' said Sir James, looking interrogatively at Mr Brooke, who nodded and said - 'Yes, a very decent family - a very good fellow is Vincy; a credit to the manufacturing interest. You have seen him at my house, you know.' 'Ah, yes: one of your secret committee,' said Mrs Cadwal- lader, provokingly. 'A coursing fellow, though,' said Sir James, with a fox-hunter's disgust. 'And one of those who suck the life out of the wretched hand- loom weavers in Tipton and Freshitt. That is how his family look so fair and sleek,' said Mrs Cadwallader. Those dark, purple-faced people are an excellent foil. Dear me, they are like a set of jugs! Do look at Humphrey: one might fancy him an ugly archangel towering above them in his white surplice.'
November 7, 2025 at 4:16 AM
pseudospectre.bsky.social
Family jumping their dying relative to negotiate their inheritance in Middlemarch
of half-mourning purple; while Mrs Vincy with her pink cheeks and pink ribbons flying was actually administering a cordial to their own brother, and the light-complexioned Fred, his short hair curling as might be expected in a gambler's, was lolling at his ease in a large chair. Old Featherstone no sooner caught sight of these funereal figures appearing in spite of his orders than rage came to strengthen him more successfully than the cordial. He was propped up on a bed-rest, and always had his gold-headed stick lying by him. He seized it now and swept it backwards and for- wards in as large an area as he could, apparently to ban these ugly spectres, crying in a hoarse sort of screech - 'Back, back, Mrs Waule! Back, Solomon!' 'Oh, Brother Peter,' Mrs Waule began - but Solomon put his hand before her repressingly. He was a large-cheeked man, nearly seventy, with small furtive eyes, and was not only of much blander temper but thought himself much deeper than his brother Peter; indeed not likely to be deceived in any of his fellow-men, inasmuch as they could not well be more greedy and deceitful than he suspected them of being. Even the invis- ible powers, he thought, were likely to be soothed by a bland parenthesis here and there - coming from a man of property, who might have been as impious as others. Brother Peter,' he said, in a wheedling yet gravely official tone, it's nothing but right I should speak to you about the Three Crofts and the Manganese.2 The Almighty knows what I've got on my mind...' 'Then He knows more than I want to know,' said Peter, laying down his stick with a show of truce which had a threat in it too, for he reversed the stick so as to make the gold handle a club in case of closer fighting, and looked hard at Solomon's bald head. There's things you might repent of, Brother, for want of speaking to me,' said Solomon, not advancing, however. 'I could sit up with you to-night, and Jane with me, willingly, and you might take your own time to spea…
November 6, 2025 at 8:43 PM
pseudospectre.bsky.social
The rest
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory. All this was a long time ago, I remember, And I would do it again, but set down This set down This: were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death. bas
November 4, 2025 at 1:50 AM
pseudospectre.bsky.social
Journey of the Magi by TS Eliot
Journey of the Magi *A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter.' And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory, Lying down in the melting snow. There were times we regretted The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, And the silken girls bringing sherbet. Then the camel men cursing and grumbling And running away, and wanting their liquor and women, And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters, And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly And the villages dirty and charging high prices: A hard time we had of it. At the end we preferred to travel all night, Sleeping in snatches, With the voices singing in our ears, saying That this was all folly. Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley, Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation; With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness, And three trees on the low sky, And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow. Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel, Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver, And feet kicking the empty wine-skins. But there was no information, and so we continued
November 4, 2025 at 12:30 AM
pseudospectre.bsky.social
People really want the project and its marketing to be put on equal footing
Talia Ringer I really wish I knew of good sources that reconciled the colonial statements of early Zionist leaders with the actual collective understanding among Jews of a return home, of how something can be at once colonial and decolonial, of how a group can be both indigenous and settlers
October 28, 2025 at 7:11 PM
pseudospectre.bsky.social
This handling of disability-based critiques of sabotage tactics really gives me a framework for understanding disability’s relationship to tactics generally
But not everyone can mix a Molotov cocktail or fill a coffee canister with motor oil! This is the objection from demography, averring that non-violence is inherently 0 attractive to the masses and violence exclusionary. At fir sight, it also seems disingenuous, for we do not normally think that activities requiring special skills and physical competences should, for that very reason, be renounced; no one saved by a firefighter would complain that he should have stayed at home, because not everyone has his fitness and agility. Social processes tend to involve divi- sions of labour. At a closer look, however, the objection carries more force, for it deals not with technical but with political relations and arrangements, and here mass ipation is a value in itself, unlike in an operating theatre. partic And empirically speaking, overall, Chenoweth and Stephan are correct in claiming that 'barriers to participa tion are much lower for non-violent resistance than for violent insurgency'. The festive atmosphere in a square taken over by protesters has more to speak for it and less to scare people away than a mayhem of stone-throwing. This is one reason why 1.) non-violent mass mobilisation should (where possible) be the first resort, militant action the last; and 2.) no movement should ever voluntarily suspend the former, only give it appendages. That said, the mass appeal of the civil disobedience gone out of its way to etiquette can be overblown. XR has shower the police in love. 'Police, we love you - it's for your children too', ran a common chant in London. After the action in Malmö in September 2019, the local branch of the Rebellion posted a picture of an activist and a cop having a tête-à-tête, all smile and affection, and confirmed that 'at the end of the day, we're all in the same boat'. In the handbook, we learn that Rebels should seek to 'actively try to get arrested' and that this desire is 'at the heart of Extinction Rebellion'. Well this appeals to some people. As VD after the London
October 26, 2025 at 1:54 PM
pseudospectre.bsky.social
A really fascinating response to the idea that violent resistance is fighting on terrain where we are disadvantaged
asymmetry: as soon as a social movement engages in violent acts, it moves onto the terrain favoured by the enemy, who is overwhelmingly superior in military capa bilities. The state loves a fight of arms; it knows it will win. Our strength is in numbers. This is a pet argument for strategic pacifists, but it is disingenuous. Violence is not the sole field where asymmetry prevails. The enemy has overwhelmingly superior capabilities in virtually all fields, including media propaganda, institutional coordination, logistical resources, political legitimacy and, above all, money. If the movement should shun uphill battles, a divestment campaign seems like the worst possible choice trying to sap fossil capital by means of capital. There is a centuries- or even millennia-long history of slingshots downing Goliaths and other tactics ingenious enough to find cracks in the enemy's armour. As part the mass resistance in of
October 25, 2025 at 9:12 PM
pseudospectre.bsky.social
Malm’s account of pipeline sabotage by Palestinian resistance fighters during the British mandate
For the British Mandate in Palestine, the central industrial project became the construction of a pipeline, cutting straight from Kirkuk across the Jordanian desert into the northern West Bank and Galilee and all the way to the refinery in Haifa, from which Iraqi oil could be delivered to the world market. When the Palestinians rose in a general strike in 1936- the most formidable anti-colonial uprising of the era – much of the action came to revolve around the pipeline. Two months after the strike commenced, rebels blasted it for the first time. At the zenith of the three-years-long revolt, they tore it apart almost every night: set it ablaze or punctured it with pot-shots; along the sections where it was buried underground, bands of five or six would dig into the soil, expose the pipe, break it and throw in flam- ing rags wrapped around stones. Forced to close the line again and again, the British colonisers were deprived of their main source of revenue and energy. As it stretched unguarded over long distances, they were unable to defend this vital pipeline, and admitted so much', in the words of Ghassan Kanafani, the wordsmith of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), while 'the "pipe" as the Palestinian Arab peasants called it was enshrined in the folklore which glorified acts of popular heroism'.
October 25, 2025 at 9:04 PM
pseudospectre.bsky.social
Love this, from Malm’s How to blow up a pipeline
Pipelines are very easily sabotaged. A simple explosive device can put a critical section of pipeline out tion for weeks', the Pipeline and Gas Journal lamented in February 2005. At that point, the Iraqi resistance against US occupation had executed nearly 200 attacks on pipe- lines. 'The sabotage campaign has created an inhospitable investment climate and scared away oil companies that were supposed to develop its oil and gas industry', the Journal snivelled; to make matters worse, similar offences were committed in the part of Kurdistan under Turkish control and in Chechnya, Assam and Colombia, where leftist guerrillas had pierced a key pipeline so frequently that 'it became known as "the flute".
October 25, 2025 at 6:08 PM
pseudospectre.bsky.social
Very relatable commentary on viewing paintings from Dorothea (reading Middlemarch)
That was really my ignorance,' said Dorothea, admiring Will's good humour. 'I must have said so only because I never could see any beauty in the pictures which my uncle told me all judges thought very fine. And I have gone about with just the same ignorance in Rome. There are comparatively few paint- ings that I can really enjoy. At first when I enter a room where the walls are covered with frescoes, or with rare pictures, I feel a kind of awe - like a child present at great ceremonies where there are grand robes and processions; I feel myself in the pres- ence of some higher life than my own. But when I begin to examine the pictures one by one, the life goes out of them, or else is something violent and strange to me. It must be my own dulness. I am seeing so much all at once, and not understanding half of it. That always makes one feel stupid. It is painful to be told that anything is very fine and not be able to feel that it is fine- something like being blind, while people talk of the sky.'
October 23, 2025 at 2:20 AM
pseudospectre.bsky.social
George Eliot murdering Mr Casaubon
as rapid: in these cases too we begin by lieving much, and we sometimes end by inverting the quantities. Still, such comparisons might mislead, for no man was more incapable of flashy make-believe than Mr Casaubon: he was as genuine a character as any ruminant animal, and he had not actively assisted in creating any illusions about himself. How was it that in the weeks since her marriage, Dorothea had not distinctly observed but felt with a stifling depression, that the large vistas and wide fresh air which she had dreamed of finding
October 23, 2025 at 1:44 AM
pseudospectre.bsky.social
Thomas Mann’s (familiar I think) account of antisemitism
A man joined the ranks of Berghof society, a thirty-year-old former businessman, who had wandered from sanatorium to sanatorium for years now with his fever. The man was an anti-Semite, on principle and as a matter of sport. His opposition to Jews was a cheerful obsession-this acquired hostility was the pride and content of his life. He had been a businessman, he was one no more, he was nothing in this world, but he had remained an anti-Semite. He was seriously ill, his cough sat heavy on him, and at times it sounded as if a lung were sneezing, a singular, high, brief, uncanny sound. But he was not a Jew, and that was the positive thing about him. His name was Wiedemann, a Christian name- nothing unclean about his name. He subscribed to a newspaper call The Aryan Light, and made speeches, as follows:
October 21, 2025 at 3:24 AM
pseudospectre.bsky.social
Stormy searching for that dang sound in the couch
October 21, 2025 at 12:45 AM
pseudospectre.bsky.social
Stormy being sleepy
October 16, 2025 at 8:07 PM
pseudospectre.bsky.social
I love this talking while giving zero shits about being heard (The Magic Mountain - context there is a loud waterfall in the background)
it. Holding his man! It was impossible for him to hear his own voice, let alone for anyone else to understand a single syllable of what he expressed without expressing his left arm out, the palm raised at an angle-and his mouth formed words s goblet in his right hand, he lifted one forefinger, stretched that he would immediately cease this pointless activity, to which they that remained soundless, as if spoken in an airless room." the all-devouring din. His left hand made compelling, riveting, cultured gestures that demanded their attention; his little, weary, pale eyes were opened wide under the raised creases of his brow; and he directed his gaze now at one member of his audience, now at another, so that each of them was forced to nod with mouth open and eyebrows raised and to hold one hand up to an ear, as if that would somehow improve a hopeless situation. Now he even stood up! Goblet in hand, bareheaded, the collar of his wrinkled, almost floor-length overcoat turned up, his idol-like creased brow encircled by flames of white hair-there he stood beside a boulder, and his face grew more animated as he held the ring of thumb and forefinger up to it, finger lances jutting into the air, and lectured, punctuating his vague, inaudible toast with the spellbinding token of precision. They recognized the gestures and could read the individual words they were accustomed to hear from his lips: "Agreed" and "Set- tled"--but nothing more. They saw his head tilt to one side, saw the ragged bitterness on his lips, the image of the Man of Sorrows. And then they saw that luxurious little dimple blossom-sybaritic roguishness, a dancing hitch of the robes, the holy lewdness of the heathen priest. He lifted his glass, passed it in a semicircle before the eyes of his guests, and downed it in two, three gulps, to the last drop, the foot of the goblet Javan upended in the air. Then he handed it wil
October 16, 2025 at 2:36 AM
pseudospectre.bsky.social
A Victorian Romanticist Incel in The Magic Mountain
I've had to endure-thirsting, craving for her. If only I could say it would "Horribly," Wehsal answered, shaking his head. "I can't tell you what kill me, but a man can't live with it or die from it. While she was gone, things began to get a little better, I was gradually forgetting her. But since she has returned and I see her every day, it's so bad sometimes that I bite my arm and flail my hands in the air and don't know what to do. It's a craving that shouldn't even exist, and yet you can't wish it didn't exist. Once it has hold of you, you can't wish it away, because you'd have to wish your life away, it's so bound away, it's so bound up with it, and you can't do that what good would dying do? Afterward-with pleasure. In her arms- only too gladly. But before? That's nonsense, because life is desire, and desire is life, and life can't be its own enemy. That is the damned hole I'm boxed into. And although I say 'damned,' it's just a turn of phrase; it's as if I were someone else—it can't apply to me. There are so many different tortures, Castorp, and if a man is subjected to one torture, all he wants is for it to end, that is his one and only goal. But you can be rid of the torture of fleshly desire by only one means, and under one condition-by its being satisfied. Otherwise-no, not for any price! It is an instrument of torture, and if it hasn't got hold of you, then you don't bother with it, but whoever it does get hold of soon gets to know our Lord Jesus Christ and the tears roll down his cheeks. Good God in heaven, what an instrument, what a piece of business it is. Flesh desires flesh, simply because it is not your own, but belongs to another soul- how strange and yet, when viewed in the right light, how unpretentious, how unabashedly benign. You could almost say: if that's all it wants, then in God's name, let it have it. What is it I want, Castorp? Do I want to murder her? Do I want to spill her blood? I just want to fondle her! Castorp, dear Castorp, forgiv…
October 16, 2025 at 2:33 AM
pseudospectre.bsky.social
Hans distinguished as subtle but perhaps not deep
"Are you so sensitive, Hans? Don't be. To hell with sensitivities- agreed? I used to be sensitive at one time. I admit it, since we're sitting here together this evening. I was annoyed by your detachment, and that you were on such good terms with him for the sake of your own egoistic experience. And yet I was delighted, too, even grateful to you, that you showed him such respect. There was a great deal of loyalty in your con- duct. And even if it was mingled with some impertinence, I still had to give you credit for it in the end." "That was very kind of you." the She looked at him. "It appears you are incorrigible. I will tell you straight out: you are a subtle young man. I don't know whether you have any depth, but you definitely have subtlety. Which is a good thing, by way-one can live with that. It can provide the basis for friendship. Shall we build a friendship, establish an alliance for someone, instead of against someone as is usual? Will you give me your hand on it? I am afraid sometimes of being alone with him, emotionally alone, tu sais. He can be frightening. I'm afraid sometimes that something may happen to him. It makes me shudder. I would love to have some good person on my side. Enfin, if you would like to hear it, perhaps that is why I came back here with him." afraid .
October 16, 2025 at 2:30 AM
pseudospectre.bsky.social
AI making things up because two people have the same name
October 14, 2025 at 1:45 AM
pseudospectre.bsky.social
Stormy digging for gold
October 12, 2025 at 7:03 PM
pseudospectre.bsky.social
Mynheer Peeperkorn a confirmed Lockean
try to he "Naturally, I have expressed myself poorly. The whole thing is a matter of stature, nothing more. Whatever has stature cannot be called vice. Vice never has stature. Over-refined tastes have no stature. But since time immemorial, the human striving for feeling has in fact had one means ready at hand, one drug, one intoxicant, that belongs to the classic gifts of life and bears the stamp of the simple and holy, and thus is no vice- one means of stature, if I may put it that way. Wine-the gods' gift to man, as the humanistic peoples of antiquity claimed, the philanthropic invention of a god who is in fact associated with civilization, if I may be permitted the allusion. For we learn that it is thanks to the art of planting and pressing the grape that man emerged from his savage state and achieved culture. And even today nations where the grape grows are considered, or consider themselves, more cultured than wineless Cimmerians-a most
October 12, 2025 at 4:51 PM
pseudospectre.bsky.social
How neighbours come to understand a strange doctor in Middlemarch
Middlemarch. For surely all must admit that a man may be puffed and belauded, envied, ridiculed, counted upon as a tool and fallen in love with, or at least selected as a future husband, and yet remain virtually unknown - known merely as a cluster of signs for his neighbours' false suppositions. There was a general impression, however, that Lydgate was not altogether a common country doctor, and in Middlemarch at that time such an impression was significant of great things being expected from him. For everybody's family doctor was remarkably clever,
October 12, 2025 at 3:42 AM
pseudospectre.bsky.social
Some very fun banter in Middlemarch about slang and dialects
s no "Excuse me, mamma - I wish you would not say, "the pick of them".' 'Why, what else are they?' 'I mean, mamma, it is rather a vulgar expression.' 'Very likely, my dear; I never was a good speaker. What should I say?" The best of them.' Why, that seems just as plain and common. If I had had time to think, I should have said, "the most superior young men". But with your education you must know.' 'What must Rosy know, mother?' said Mr Fred, who had slid in unobserved through the half-open door while the ladies were bending over their work, and now going up to the fire stood with his back towards it, warming the soles of his slippers. Whether it's right to say "superior young men",' said Mrs Vincy ringing the bell. 'Oh, there are so many superior teas and sugars now. Superior is getting to be shopkeepers' slang.' 'Are you beginning to dislike slang, then?' said Rosamond, with mild gravity. 'Only the wrong sort. All choice of words is slang. It marks a class.' There is correct English: that is not slang.' 5 'I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.' 'You will say anything, Fred, to gain your point.' 'Well, tell me whether it is slang or poetry to call an ox a leg- plaiter.' 'Of course you can call it poetry if you like.' 'Aha, Miss Rosy, you don't know Homer from slang. I shall invent a new game; I shall write bits of slang and poetry on slips, and give them to you to separate." alk I said
October 10, 2025 at 1:36 PM
pseudospectre.bsky.social
I love Middlemarch’s portrayal of a naive character finding that religious men don’t care about philanthropy, and concluding she needs to understand theology better
could be seen more truly. As it was, she constantly doubted her own conclusions, because she felt her own ignorance: how could she be confident that one-roomed cottages were not for the glory of God, when men who knew the classics appeared to conciliate indifference to the cottages with zeal for the glory? Perhaps even Hebrew might be necessary- at least the alphabet and a few roots - in order to arrive at the core of things, and judge soundly on the social duties of the Christian. And she had not reached that point of renunciation at which she would have been satisfied with having a wise husband; she wished, poor child, to be wise herself. Miss Brooke was certainly very naïve with all her alleged cleverness. Celia, whose mind had never been thought too powerful, saw the emptiness of other people's pretensions much more readily. To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion. Howeve
October 10, 2025 at 4:26 AM
pseudospectre.bsky.social
German pronoun rules are so funny
The grand man was highly gratified. "Young man," he said, "agreed. Permit me to say--but not one word more: I beg you to drink with to quaff our glasses down to the last drop, arm in arm. That does not mean that I am offering you the brotherhood of informal pronouns-I was about to do so, but have reconsidered. That would be a bit too hasty. I shall more than likely do so, however, within the foreseeable future. Depend on it! But if you wish and insist on it now-" Hans Castorp's gesture implied that he seconded the delay Peeperkorn had proposed.
October 4, 2025 at 12:01 AM