That’s one of the things I’ve been meaning to do—Mastodon. Totally forgot about it. DL’d it and never opened it. So it’s still Post for now but it’s not winning many over either.
It’s August. If ever there was a month for ignoring typos it would be August.
I signed up on Mastodon with as many journalists as I could find on topics I like, but it's thin on the ground compared to Twitter, where you can just read free journo quips and snarks all day. My supply was cut in half when some service called "bird.makeup", which echoes Twitter posts to Mastodon, stopped working a few weeks back. (And it was probably a good thing, people like Dan Froomkin simply snark at bad journalism all. day. long.)
Most of what I've signed up for now is just jokes ("Meanwhile in Canada" and "Mostly Harmless" are not to be missed for daily smiles, and occasional searing commentary, a la political cartoons.) and "Polling Canada", daily polls - the global warming argument is *quite* over, no need to engage any more - and posts from my own chosen server, 'urbanists.social' - highlighting every good deed of bikes and transit, every evil of cars and SUVs, the world over. ("Kid hit by an SUV is 8X as likely to die as one hit by a car", just today.)
It's fun, and Mostly Harmless. I've gone from being angry at journalists endlessly griping about Twitter, but not leaving it, to being glad about it. I have enough journalism via substack, honestly. Maybe Twitter should just die, and Mastodon not replace what it was.
Justin, Thank you for subjecting yourself to the GOP debate, so I didn’t have to. I didn’t watch Tucker and the D except for the short snippets others have put up. Highlights of the interview I suppose you could call them. It’s far more fun to watch the bizarre msgs out of Russian propagandist's mouths. When covering Prigozhin’s plane spiralling down to earth they used footage of a much earlier crash of an entirely different plane that had propellers! Why do they do that? A rhetorical question. No one knows why they do anything.
In the original draft of this newsletter, I was going to get into the warnings of civil war coming from the Wagner Group remnants. But I figured I'd save it for a future week. But the parallels are very interesting!
I am not sure if civil war is in the cards, but I do think that Canadians have a hard time understanding Americans.
During the run up to the 2016 election, right after the LPC swept Harper out of power in a landslide, I was wandering around Utah and Colorado with a group of South Africans. They were trying to understand the appeal of DT and we informally polled servers and other people we came in contact with about who they were going to vote for. If I remember correctly it was 60/40 DT/Clinton.
There is a large disenfranchised segment of the american population who will never achieve the american dream. Their response to this has played out in several formes in the last decade.
I don’t think we Canadians are headed to a civil war based on a cultural narrative, but the declining standard of living brought on by the looming energy crisis, current climate crisis, international debt and general lack of leadership is putting a strain on our national identity.
“Empty factories to the east and all our waste
The shape of things that came show on the broken worker's face
To the west you'll find a silicon promised land
Where machines all replace their minds with systematic profit plans
The course of human progress staggers like a drunk
It's pace is quick and heavy but it's mind is slow and blunt
I look for optimism but I just don't know
Its seeds are planted in a poison place where nothing grows”
To topic, colour me skeptical. Physical uprisings really do require millions to commit and stay committed - Egypt found out that support dies the moment the New Team gets even slightly radical. Pow! Back to the safety of the dictators they know - and those are actual dictators.
The most heartwarming moment of the Convoy story was when the RCMP posted up the table-of-guns at Coutts (for some reason, no need to hide them for years while investigating their source, like Portapiq, something no newsie asked them about) the next image on TV was a line of tractors packing up and leaving, because the supportive local farmers dropped all support when guns were seen.
Some cops were murdered in the middle of 2020, and nothing did more damage to the BLM efforts; "Defund" proved politically toxic. Look at the 2021 election, turning in the same parliament after all the intense drama of 2020: people don't *like* revolutionary change, shy away from it unless they're starving or otherwise desperate.
Making your party out to be some kind of revolutionaries, demanding rapid change, is a loser campaign, unless you are running for king of the National Post comments columns.
The latter half of the 20th century tells us that this kind of, yeah, loser rhetoric doesn't work well in Western democracies. But I can't think of many instances where it has become this entrenched. Which isn't to say that I think civil war is actually coming — I don't think it is! But I don't think we know what comes next. Having people believe that the unimaginable is, actually, possible — and likely — is a very strange thing that can produce some unexpected results.
They never properly finished the first civil war. The South kept coming back like that not-quite-dead guy in Monty Python.
Tried DM about typos a month ago, and it wasn't noticed, so I'll put them here:
"it bears nothing" => "it bears noting".
Sentence starting "The accelerationists are either..." loses me with the ending "...is subjugation".. missing word?
"dour pessimisims" should be "dour brands" earlier in that sentence?
Whoops. That's what happens when you write most of your newsletter the night of.
Also, I never received a DM. On here?
No, it was the clearly-not-winning-over-X Mastodon, way back July 6:
http://brander.ca/DM_JL.png
It's possible some July 5 substack still has a few typos. I went on vacation the next day and an internet-fast.
Ach! I see it now. It's very easy to miss those notifications. Apologies!
That’s one of the things I’ve been meaning to do—Mastodon. Totally forgot about it. DL’d it and never opened it. So it’s still Post for now but it’s not winning many over either.
It’s August. If ever there was a month for ignoring typos it would be August.
I signed up on Mastodon with as many journalists as I could find on topics I like, but it's thin on the ground compared to Twitter, where you can just read free journo quips and snarks all day. My supply was cut in half when some service called "bird.makeup", which echoes Twitter posts to Mastodon, stopped working a few weeks back. (And it was probably a good thing, people like Dan Froomkin simply snark at bad journalism all. day. long.)
Most of what I've signed up for now is just jokes ("Meanwhile in Canada" and "Mostly Harmless" are not to be missed for daily smiles, and occasional searing commentary, a la political cartoons.) and "Polling Canada", daily polls - the global warming argument is *quite* over, no need to engage any more - and posts from my own chosen server, 'urbanists.social' - highlighting every good deed of bikes and transit, every evil of cars and SUVs, the world over. ("Kid hit by an SUV is 8X as likely to die as one hit by a car", just today.)
It's fun, and Mostly Harmless. I've gone from being angry at journalists endlessly griping about Twitter, but not leaving it, to being glad about it. I have enough journalism via substack, honestly. Maybe Twitter should just die, and Mastodon not replace what it was.
Justin, Thank you for subjecting yourself to the GOP debate, so I didn’t have to. I didn’t watch Tucker and the D except for the short snippets others have put up. Highlights of the interview I suppose you could call them. It’s far more fun to watch the bizarre msgs out of Russian propagandist's mouths. When covering Prigozhin’s plane spiralling down to earth they used footage of a much earlier crash of an entirely different plane that had propellers! Why do they do that? A rhetorical question. No one knows why they do anything.
In the original draft of this newsletter, I was going to get into the warnings of civil war coming from the Wagner Group remnants. But I figured I'd save it for a future week. But the parallels are very interesting!
I am not sure if civil war is in the cards, but I do think that Canadians have a hard time understanding Americans.
During the run up to the 2016 election, right after the LPC swept Harper out of power in a landslide, I was wandering around Utah and Colorado with a group of South Africans. They were trying to understand the appeal of DT and we informally polled servers and other people we came in contact with about who they were going to vote for. If I remember correctly it was 60/40 DT/Clinton.
There is a large disenfranchised segment of the american population who will never achieve the american dream. Their response to this has played out in several formes in the last decade.
I don’t think we Canadians are headed to a civil war based on a cultural narrative, but the declining standard of living brought on by the looming energy crisis, current climate crisis, international debt and general lack of leadership is putting a strain on our national identity.
“Empty factories to the east and all our waste
The shape of things that came show on the broken worker's face
To the west you'll find a silicon promised land
Where machines all replace their minds with systematic profit plans
The course of human progress staggers like a drunk
It's pace is quick and heavy but it's mind is slow and blunt
I look for optimism but I just don't know
Its seeds are planted in a poison place where nothing grows”
To topic, colour me skeptical. Physical uprisings really do require millions to commit and stay committed - Egypt found out that support dies the moment the New Team gets even slightly radical. Pow! Back to the safety of the dictators they know - and those are actual dictators.
The most heartwarming moment of the Convoy story was when the RCMP posted up the table-of-guns at Coutts (for some reason, no need to hide them for years while investigating their source, like Portapiq, something no newsie asked them about) the next image on TV was a line of tractors packing up and leaving, because the supportive local farmers dropped all support when guns were seen.
Some cops were murdered in the middle of 2020, and nothing did more damage to the BLM efforts; "Defund" proved politically toxic. Look at the 2021 election, turning in the same parliament after all the intense drama of 2020: people don't *like* revolutionary change, shy away from it unless they're starving or otherwise desperate.
Making your party out to be some kind of revolutionaries, demanding rapid change, is a loser campaign, unless you are running for king of the National Post comments columns.
The latter half of the 20th century tells us that this kind of, yeah, loser rhetoric doesn't work well in Western democracies. But I can't think of many instances where it has become this entrenched. Which isn't to say that I think civil war is actually coming — I don't think it is! But I don't think we know what comes next. Having people believe that the unimaginable is, actually, possible — and likely — is a very strange thing that can produce some unexpected results.
I doubt very much that full on, country engulfing civil war is coming but it wouldn't surprise me in the least to see a pretty big uptick in violence.