Sam Bergman
@violanorth.bsky.social
musician, arts administrator, Quaker, baker, Granite Stater; he/him
"A curmudgeonly joy" — @doodlyroses.com
"Fancy with an element of surprise" — @dalanie.bsky.social
"A curmudgeonly joy" — @doodlyroses.com
"Fancy with an element of surprise" — @dalanie.bsky.social
Pinned
Sam Bergman
@violanorth.bsky.social
· Apr 29
Almost my only life goal at this point is to slowly age into the guy who shows up at the general store every morning for black coffee and then sits at one of the two tables making uninvited conversation with anyone who walks in for three hours.
You don't say.
NEW: The first two years of Massachusetts' millionaire tax has raised $3 billion more than expected.
And rather than driving the rich away, IPS researchers found that the number of millionaires has *increased.*
Tax the rich. Greg Ryan in @bloomberg.com:
And rather than driving the rich away, IPS researchers found that the number of millionaires has *increased.*
Tax the rich. Greg Ryan in @bloomberg.com:
Millionaire Tax That Inspired Mamdani Fuels $5.7 Billion Haul in Massachusetts
A millionaire levy in Massachusetts that New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani holds up as a model for taxing the rich has generated $3 billion more in revenue than expected without forcing...
www.bloomberg.com
November 14, 2025 at 3:08 AM
You don't say.
Reposted by Sam Bergman
TV conspiracies: we’ve hacked their computers but they’ve perfectly cleaned up the evidence!
Real conspiracies:
To: conspirator
From: famous person
Attachment: evidence.png
Real conspiracies:
To: conspirator
From: famous person
Attachment: evidence.png
November 12, 2025 at 8:19 PM
TV conspiracies: we’ve hacked their computers but they’ve perfectly cleaned up the evidence!
Real conspiracies:
To: conspirator
From: famous person
Attachment: evidence.png
Real conspiracies:
To: conspirator
From: famous person
Attachment: evidence.png
I do miss living in a city where there's great live music happening more or less constantly, but also, living in a small place makes me appreciate it all the more when I get to go see shows like this one a few blocks from my house.
American Railroad: Silkroad Ensemble featuring Wu Man
YouTube video by FirstWorksRI
youtu.be
November 13, 2025 at 11:39 PM
I do miss living in a city where there's great live music happening more or less constantly, but also, living in a small place makes me appreciate it all the more when I get to go see shows like this one a few blocks from my house.
Reposted by Sam Bergman
damn these epstein emails are crazy
November 13, 2025 at 1:32 PM
damn these epstein emails are crazy
Reposted by Sam Bergman
Going back in time to bargain with the random black kid who was mean to TCW:
Look, you're not wrong but we will pay you to apologize. You want a car? We can get that. Please. He's so annoying. I've collected $100k during a recession to buy your silence.
Look, you're not wrong but we will pay you to apologize. You want a car? We can get that. Please. He's so annoying. I've collected $100k during a recession to buy your silence.
November 13, 2025 at 11:33 PM
Going back in time to bargain with the random black kid who was mean to TCW:
Look, you're not wrong but we will pay you to apologize. You want a car? We can get that. Please. He's so annoying. I've collected $100k during a recession to buy your silence.
Look, you're not wrong but we will pay you to apologize. You want a car? We can get that. Please. He's so annoying. I've collected $100k during a recession to buy your silence.
Good mini-thread about boys and books
This is another consequence of the colonization of New Adult, esp of the romantasy variety, into YA. Publishers aren't just selling YA to adults, they're selling YA to adult women (usually cisallohet and white). That category doesn't want a book about 14yo boys playing basketball. My teen boys do.
November 13, 2025 at 11:07 PM
Good mini-thread about boys and books
Reposted by Sam Bergman
NEW: @propublica.org investigated the Chicago apartment raid where kids were zip-tied and citizens detained for hours. They find:
- NONE of the arrested were criminally charged
- NO evidence the building was "filled with TdA terrorists."
- ZERO legitimate reason for DHS to rappel from a Blackhawk.
- NONE of the arrested were criminally charged
- NO evidence the building was "filled with TdA terrorists."
- ZERO legitimate reason for DHS to rappel from a Blackhawk.
November 13, 2025 at 2:08 PM
NEW: @propublica.org investigated the Chicago apartment raid where kids were zip-tied and citizens detained for hours. They find:
- NONE of the arrested were criminally charged
- NO evidence the building was "filled with TdA terrorists."
- ZERO legitimate reason for DHS to rappel from a Blackhawk.
- NONE of the arrested were criminally charged
- NO evidence the building was "filled with TdA terrorists."
- ZERO legitimate reason for DHS to rappel from a Blackhawk.
Reposted by Sam Bergman
ordering six orders of jalapeño poppers on a first date as a power move
November 13, 2025 at 8:08 PM
ordering six orders of jalapeño poppers on a first date as a power move
Reposted by Sam Bergman
This is what Axel Foley did in Beverly Hills Cop to gain access to Victor Maitlands shipments sitting in Customs
November 13, 2025 at 5:48 PM
This is what Axel Foley did in Beverly Hills Cop to gain access to Victor Maitlands shipments sitting in Customs
Reposted by Sam Bergman
What just kills me about every one of these stories is how self-inflicted the damage is. Every one of our states can easily afford an excellent public university system, and across the board (albeit to different degrees) they just don’t want to.
Real bad news for my little town.
Keene State to lay off staff positions, asking faculty to retire after state cuts
A round of layoffs is coming down the pike at a college in Keene NH after state-level cut to the state university system left the school with a $4 million gap to close by the end of next fiscal year.
www.keenesentinel.com
November 13, 2025 at 1:21 PM
What just kills me about every one of these stories is how self-inflicted the damage is. Every one of our states can easily afford an excellent public university system, and across the board (albeit to different degrees) they just don’t want to.
Real bad news for my little town.
Keene State to lay off staff positions, asking faculty to retire after state cuts
A round of layoffs is coming down the pike at a college in Keene NH after state-level cut to the state university system left the school with a $4 million gap to close by the end of next fiscal year.
www.keenesentinel.com
November 13, 2025 at 12:52 PM
Real bad news for my little town.
Lot of people are already passing this around with the usual "WHY ISN'T ANYONE DOING ANYTHING" shrieks, while ignoring the fact that the article literally says that this is a *significant* decrease from the warming that we were on track for even a few years ago.
World still on track for catastrophic 2.6C temperature rise, report finds
Fossil fuel emissions have hit a record high while many nations have done too little to avert deadly global heating
www.theguardian.com
November 13, 2025 at 12:39 PM
Lot of people are already passing this around with the usual "WHY ISN'T ANYONE DOING ANYTHING" shrieks, while ignoring the fact that the article literally says that this is a *significant* decrease from the warming that we were on track for even a few years ago.
Reposted by Sam Bergman
Music is basically a detective novel where the musicians are the suspects/criminals, the listener is the detective and of course the music is the crime. The listener tries to determine what happened and what was the motivation, while the musicians try to obscure this, so they can get away with it.
November 13, 2025 at 7:23 AM
Music is basically a detective novel where the musicians are the suspects/criminals, the listener is the detective and of course the music is the crime. The listener tries to determine what happened and what was the motivation, while the musicians try to obscure this, so they can get away with it.
Reposted by Sam Bergman
This is far worse than anyone expected.
Trump's HUD plan would cut *two-thirds* of permanent housing and push as many as 170,000 formerly homeless people back onto the street—redirecting funds to work mandates, forced treatment, and encampment sweeps.
All as mass internment camps are being built.
Trump's HUD plan would cut *two-thirds* of permanent housing and push as many as 170,000 formerly homeless people back onto the street—redirecting funds to work mandates, forced treatment, and encampment sweeps.
All as mass internment camps are being built.
Trump Administration to Drastically Cut Housing Grants
www.nytimes.com
November 13, 2025 at 3:21 AM
This is far worse than anyone expected.
Trump's HUD plan would cut *two-thirds* of permanent housing and push as many as 170,000 formerly homeless people back onto the street—redirecting funds to work mandates, forced treatment, and encampment sweeps.
All as mass internment camps are being built.
Trump's HUD plan would cut *two-thirds* of permanent housing and push as many as 170,000 formerly homeless people back onto the street—redirecting funds to work mandates, forced treatment, and encampment sweeps.
All as mass internment camps are being built.
Reposted by Sam Bergman
so glad the child sexual abuse panic was squarely pointed at folks like me by the people actually doing it & the public was like “yeah, seems right—freaks did it. not the men with all the money & fighting to keep child marriage legal, the women that are legal to kill in 30 states if you’re nervous.”
What a great day for finding out that a lot of things people thought were conspiracies are actually backed up by emails that are like hey pedo, let us pedo together in pedoland on the second day of the pedo month
November 12, 2025 at 11:20 PM
so glad the child sexual abuse panic was squarely pointed at folks like me by the people actually doing it & the public was like “yeah, seems right—freaks did it. not the men with all the money & fighting to keep child marriage legal, the women that are legal to kill in 30 states if you’re nervous.”
It is the rare night where @coolhandkas.bsky.social and I are hockey enemies, but truly we can still be friends and bond over the way both our teams are hella annoying
November 13, 2025 at 3:22 AM
It is the rare night where @coolhandkas.bsky.social and I are hockey enemies, but truly we can still be friends and bond over the way both our teams are hella annoying
Look, I'm sorry, that is not applesauce.
November 13, 2025 at 2:23 AM
Look, I'm sorry, that is not applesauce.
It is true that there is a difference between someone who preys on prepubescent kids vs. someone who preys on postpubescent kids, but you need to realize that bringing this up every time we're talking about someone who preyed on postpubescent kids sounds a LOT like you defending predation of kids.
November 13, 2025 at 1:45 AM
It is true that there is a difference between someone who preys on prepubescent kids vs. someone who preys on postpubescent kids, but you need to realize that bringing this up every time we're talking about someone who preyed on postpubescent kids sounds a LOT like you defending predation of kids.
Reposted by Sam Bergman
I did not have "Not Like Us" on daily rotation for an entire year for the American media to start carrying water for middle-aged dudes creeping on high school sophomores.
in case you're wondering how the cope is going www.mediamatters.org/megyn-kelly/...
November 13, 2025 at 1:14 AM
I did not have "Not Like Us" on daily rotation for an entire year for the American media to start carrying water for middle-aged dudes creeping on high school sophomores.
Reposted by Sam Bergman
What’s going through your head as the Chief of Staff as you watch the President make personal calls to prevent the release of information about a child sex trafficking operation?
November 12, 2025 at 7:58 PM
What’s going through your head as the Chief of Staff as you watch the President make personal calls to prevent the release of information about a child sex trafficking operation?
Reposted by Sam Bergman
Reposted by Sam Bergman
“Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter.”
The sound you hear is women everywhere primal screaming.
The sound you hear is women everywhere primal screaming.
Jeffrey Epstein advised Steve Bannon that the lawyers representing Brett Kavanaugh in his confirmation hearing should accuse Christine Blasey Ford of being on medications that cause false memories or memory loss.
November 12, 2025 at 11:42 PM
“Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter.”
The sound you hear is women everywhere primal screaming.
The sound you hear is women everywhere primal screaming.
Reposted by Sam Bergman
big ol article about me in GQ, if you go in for that sort of thing www.gq.com/story/john-d...
The Story John Darnielle Lived to Tell
When he was a teenager, the Mountain Goats founder never expected to live to 21. He has since become one of this century’s best songwriters. The lessons of his survival, life, and work feel endless.
www.gq.com
November 12, 2025 at 8:16 PM
big ol article about me in GQ, if you go in for that sort of thing www.gq.com/story/john-d...
Reposted by Sam Bergman
“Oh wow, how bad could a rebranding be?”
[two paragraphs into the story]
“Oh.”
[two paragraphs into the story]
“Oh.”
November 5, 2025 at 2:17 PM
“Oh wow, how bad could a rebranding be?”
[two paragraphs into the story]
“Oh.”
[two paragraphs into the story]
“Oh.”
Reposted by Sam Bergman
