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John Leavitt 
@LeavittAlone
Writer and cartoonist. Seen in The Toast, New Yorker, The Awl, The Nib, Racked, The Rumpus, The Baffler, etc. That guy you met at that party once.
John Leavitt 🌹’s posts
These moms got tear gassed btw
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Incredible scene in Portland right now. A group of Moms are chanting, “Feds stay clear! Moms are here!” at the federal courthouse.
twitter.com/LindseyPSmith7
You gotta admit, having an entire magazine devoted to your 100th birthday hit the racks and then dying before that birthday is excellent comic timing
Reminder that “jaywalking” was invented by car manufacturers to criminalize using the street after their products kept killing people, usually kids.
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San Francisco way back. A lot of jaywalking before it even had a name 
twitter.com/Unexplained/st
twitter.com/Unexplained/stWe have 205 days for the funniest thing to happen
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So we accidently ran an experiment where we did the most any individual can do to reduce carbon emissions and it’s not enough.
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Individuals are currently doing about as much as you could ask for in terms of reducing consumption: no air travel, much fewer car trips, less take-away and home delivery food, etc. Carbon emissions have dipped but not by much. Individual action is not the answer
Turns out a shockingly large number of those were money laundering fronts
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remember when cupcakes had this huge moment in like 2010 and cupcake shops opened everywhere and you couldn’t get normal desserts anywhere u had to eat gigantic dry cupcakes that were $15 each
Good work 47 now try to find an exit
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Billionaire diamond trader, 65, dies during penis enlargement surgery at private Paris clinic dailym.ai/2TzTBzw
I’m sure there’s some sociological term for “a society that is becoming hysterical about unreal threats they made up because actually addressing real threats would upset the power structure too much so they’d rather die” but all I know is that it sucks
Tumblr invented a fake 73 italio-soviet crime thriller complete with posters, gifs, rough scene descriptions to analyze themes and homosexual undertones, essays on its costume design, dueling movie reviews and arguments over wether or not it’s Marxist enough.. never change
Our best Covid tracking metric
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reminder that, within the popular imaginary, Spider-Man is the only working class superhero.
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We really need to stress to the younger generation that may not remember it but the immediate post 9/11 World was completely unhinged
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in 2002 People named Donald Rumsfeld one of the Sexiest Men Alive. CNN's Pentagon reporter called him a "big flirty pussycat"
Cameron rips cause he comes from a multi-trade background and that’s why his crews treat him like he’s Napoleon twitter.com/somebadideas/s
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.....oh they mean a dog
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At Carnegie Mellon University, where the group continues to make their way down Forbes. This video includes a furry demonstrator.
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CA is hilarious cause it's ruled by like 5 families Game Of Thrones Style with an economic base in agricultural slavery and also gave us Nixon and Reagan and a libertarian tech-cult founded with government money but everyone insists it's some kind of Norway on the Pacific
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The narrative that CA has been a far left experiment gone wrong is so powerful despite being total fiction. Every single one of the social problems in CA is a product of it being a deeply unequal & racist capitalist experiment. Marginally higher taxes does not socialism make
The fight for 15 has gone on so long it’s no longer a living wage.
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President-elect @JoeBiden:
It’s Thursday so please know that if the minimum wage had increased at the rate of productivity since 1960, it would be $22.50. Instead, it’s $7.25.
That's $15.25 per hour that's been stolen from the pockets of low income workers the past 60 years.
Columbine was about budding nazis, the Menendez case was about abuse, that mcDonald’s hit coffee case about thrid degree burns and we all owe Sinaed O’Connor an apology
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what are some notable things that we, a terrible society, collectively misremember?
again, the one species trait humans SHOULD get in a space opera is that we're chirpy, friendly super diplomatic social apes who WILL turn everything we meet into a client species or pet or domestic animal and everyone else thinks this is super creepy. twitter.com/CryptoRanger_/
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A lot of people are like “the conditions are right why haven’t we seen an absurd explosion in cults?” but we have, for a while, they’re just dressed up as business opportunities, CEO worship, tech optimism, and blind belief in investment and eternal growth
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I watched that WeWork docu last night and what struck me is how these essentially competent adults are so unfamiliar with what "meaning" tastes like that they will fall for a child baking mud pies as if it's a gourmet meal of cosmic purpose.
Her autobio (newly reissued) is wild - she was a professional fake mistress when there was no no-fault divorce. She’d be hired to be *seen* going into a hotel room with a married man so the wife could save face. She said they mostly played cards or listened to the radio.
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Elsa Lanchester plays a dual role in The Bride of Frankenstein 1935
My husband, who grew up during the Maggie thatcher milk snatcher era and didn’t watch the Streep movie out not wanting to humanize a monster, approves of Anderson’s take on her on the Crown “she’s playing her like a serial killer”
Unemployment is so low some people have 3 or 4 jobs twitter.com/ryanaboyd/stat
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finally the cool parts of the cyberpunk dystopia
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NEW: Dozens of hacked printers across the internet are printing out an anti-work manifesto. It encourages workers to discuss their pay with coworkers, and pressure their employers to pay them more. vice.com/en/article/qjb
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The House & Senate should IMMEDIATELY Approve 25 Billion Dollars for Airline Payroll Support, & 135 Billion Dollars for Paycheck Protection Program for Small Business. Both of these will be fully paid for with unused funds from the Cares Act. Have this money. I will sign now!
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Me circa 2002 Brooklyn: a cupcake delivery service? How whimsical
Friend, flatly: that’s the expensive drug dealer
Changes the power dynamic, csn’t withhold paying for colledge for your gay kid if its free, can’t force someone to stay in a bad situation for healthcare if everyone gets it, can’t hold a relationship hostage cause they need a place to stay if housing a right
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What’s so scary about meeting people’s basic needs?
The black orb of gender: unknowable, untethered, indestructible twitter.com/AwardsDarwin/s
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Some moms got this
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Jesus Christ feds came out of the courthouse in Portland and fired a flash bang at the moms against police brutality. At least one of these mothers is pregnant.
twitter.com/LindseyPSmith7
Also Seoul has a population similar to NYC, is denser and with a more extensive subway system: 9 deaths.
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Wuhan is denser than NYC and stopped its virus problem in a few weeks. the problem isn’t density. The problem is the United States.
I still can't believe but for the low low price of hundreds of millions of dollars we put a largely empty Mall in the middle of valuable Manhattan real estate that's also technically a mass grave
At dinner with the rich people there was some moaning about how bad service had become and I said, well a million people died. They said wasn’t it just old people? I said no the deadliest job was line cook. Then they kind of sniffed and said it could’ve have been as bad as that.
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Replying to @pderevere
according to a 2020-21 ucsf study of covid-related death certificates in california, for example: line cooks had a 60% increase in excess deaths. they were mostly latino immigrants. cnbc.com/2021/02/02/job
If Parker Posey was the Riddler this is what she’d wear
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Morrissey: wears pin on talk show of group considered too extreme and far right by Nigel Farage
George Michael: member of the young communist league, gave extravagant tips when dining out, when arrested for public sex made an entire music video about how it’s cool actually
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Meghan: the royal family has close ties to tabloid journalists and uses them to further their ends and control narrative
Royal Family:
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Prince William named as ‘world’s sexiest bald man’ indy100.com/people/prince-
the best things America ever came up with are the national parks , the postal service, and the public library system and they should all be given more money and expansion then they know what to do with
Me at 15: The Dead Kennedys are right about everything
Me at 20: Actually these issues are way more complex
Me at 28: But really it comes down to larger, systemic issues
Me at 35: The Dead Kennedys where right about everything
If stabbing one hedge fund lead to these gains imagine if we killed them all
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You can not convince me this isn't hilarious and ompletely worth a hedgefund going out of business.
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It’s beyond obvious we’re living in cyberpunk times and all I ask is that you people start dressing like it
...and then what happened?
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Lincoln in first inaugural, 1861: "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection."
Honestly naming your deeply suspicious electoral app company SHADOW is just some fucking final fantasy level writing, just real badly translated from the orginal Japense vibes
ITS OUR YEARLY BOAT CONTENT
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BREAKING: A giant cargo ship "Felicity Ace" is on fire in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
It's carrying a cargo of Porsche and VW automobiles.
The crew safely abandoned ship in lifeboats. Under maritime law the ship is now "finders keepers."
We owe designers of environmental storytelling a huge apology t.co/z8x5VX4RQb
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Okay so this is a good example of what was worrying me yesterday about the efficacy of the “Gandhi Trap” - throwing flash bangs at nice middle class white moms should fit perfectly, but not if the media doesn’t cover it or outright lies
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“Calls for nonviolence are not calls against violence, but a preference for who the violence should happen to” twitter.com/NelsonPecora/s…
This is the culture they’re willing to kill the world for twitter.com/oneweirdoldtip
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It’s so common among people who have farms, for whatever reason, to go “yeah the donkeys don’t really DO anything but they are friends with every animal and chill them out and the first ones in the barn to form thr let’s all get warm pile in winter.”
Hot take: the smartest thing the ruling/owner class did was to make the upper middle and professionals think they’re like junior members of the aristocracy and should have solidarity with the rich, when in fact they’re just a fancier kind of servant and the fractures are showing
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He makes 1.2 million dollars a year.
He’s unhappy because his work feels meaningless.
He can’t take a pay cut because he feels locked into the lifestyle.
He's one of America's many wealthy elite who are miserable with their lives. nyti.ms/2SQ6W74
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It took me til today to know the only found the Titanic wreck when looking over another ship, by accident, 70 years later
Lis Smith, who is pretending to be a black supporter of Pete, was also instrumental in getting the IDC elected which effectively put New York in republican control for years and blocked a mountain of progressive legislation twitter.com/DavidKlion/sta
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Truth Coming Out of Her Well (1896, Jean-Léon Gérôme)
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So yeah I’d be real interested to see if this breaks into the national news and/or is spun as “well actuslly the moms are trained agents of George Soros who just dressed in Anne Taylor outfits so they could smash more windows for communist Russia.”
Burning down a police precinct led to a higher dem turnout then trying to appeal to swing voters
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If "Defund the Police", was as toxic to Democrats in 2020 as some contend, why did Minnesota, George Floyd's home and the beating heart of the abolitionist movement in 2020, go from Dem +1 in 2016 to Dem +7 in 2020? They literally burned down a precinct and the Dem vote went *up*
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Oh frozen yogurt was infamous for that, almost zero overhead, no real way of tracking output etc
It’s nearly the 20s, everyone is starting a leftist magazine and we keep arguing over which radio programs are the best.
Happy FDR’s birthday and a reminder this used to be national politics
Interesting that credit scores appeared just as it became obvious that if you wanted to keep spending and consumption up without raising wages you’d have to make credit real easy to get even if it was clear they could never pay it back. Funny that.
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33 years ago, credit scores didn't exist.
I run a free book shelf in a bar and you have to be ruthless with the curating and trimming or it just turns into old travel guides and hardcover books about how to lose weight the Dali lama way
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Little Free Libraries are a lovely little community feature and also a fun snapshot of the very worst books to have ever entered your neighborhood
Low key reminder the fight for 15 is taking so long that it’s now under living wage
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It’s Monday so you should know that if the minimum wage had increased at the rate of productivity since 1960, it would be $22.50. Instead, it’s just $7.25.
Meanwhile tens of millions of Americans today head to a second or third job because they can’t afford life’s basic needs.
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In historical terms this is just the end up an accumulation cycle but never before has the cycle been this global, with nowhere else to expand into, with actual civilization ending threats looming
The headline “FDA begs billionares to stop injecting themselves with the blood of the youth” just goes by without a blink huh
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The fact that “cereal place” is a fixture of modern downtowns is a sign we don’t have enough white collar cops
Imperial decline is historically understood as when a bridge washes away and never gets rebuilt, when taxes go to local lords rather then the greater state, and when networks and systems fall into private hands twitter.com/jimmyMSN_CNO/s
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I can’t believe the anti-vax people trying to tangle with horse people, people who have given their entire lives to bonding with and understanding a willful one ton beast that walks on its fingernails and dies if it sees a hat it doesn’t like, They will crush you.
That’s it, everybody get in the cube
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It is theoretically possible to cram every human into this blue cube, sitting atop Manhattan. Computation is here: waitbutwhy.com/?p=3475
Hey remember when people asking to see people's papers was shorthand for an authoritarian regime
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A plain-clothed ICE agent approached three men and requested to see IDs. Two of the men provided their IDs.
The third man exercised his right to refuse to show ID.
Then the ICE agent fired his weapon at the man who refused to show ID.
#AbolishICE
latinorebels.com/2019/09/06/ice
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Also I didn’t at the time realize how young Monica Lewinski was cause I was like ten and all adults were the same but oh god she was like 23 I coukd barely read at 23.
The only upside to the second gilded age is our robber barons are like, weeping hothouse weirdos who could be undone by an unchapperoned trip to Costco t.co/7tyvQOUNY7
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Every “hot new trend” post 08 has this feel of soft-peddling the survival strategies of the poor as fun new options - it’s a tiny home! It’s unaged bourbon! It’s car-life! Its flexible gig work! Rent your furniture to shake it up! Easy foods orders to work through lunch!
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“Actually it’s good to never be able to afford a home of your own shut up."
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Like remember how there were no weapons of mass destruction or connection to 9/11 and we destabilized the entire region and produced new extremist groups and a million Iraqis died for no reason and no one involved for pushing for it had so much as their feelings hurt?
I find myself dropping this fact in conversation randomly now, Wall Street bonuses totaled $27.5 billion last year, more than 3 times the combined annual earnings of *all* American workers employed full-time at the federal minimum wage.
upside of lockdown is developing parasocial relationships with other people’s cats
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Humans aren't the default middle they're the PARTY RACE everyone else warns their children about. We're a frat house the size of a planet.
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Not even one of the traditional ways an accumulation crisis is broken up and excess capital destroyed - a massive outside shock like say a global plague, has done much to change things
People aged 27-37 can’t get enough of this hot new craze “living indoors” twitter.com/kennedytcooper
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I know we’re all just kind of numb to this but is the exactly the kind of detail you read in a history book and go “how did they not know what was coming?” twitter.com/CarolBlymire/s
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If Amazon doesn’t want to pay taxes or have competition then it should be nationalized as a co-op and run for the benefit of people of the United States.
You did it, you radicalized the makeup people, you have no idea the level of dedication and patience you’ve just unearthed.
*looks right, looks left* NPR is a conservative leaning station completely beholden to its corporate donors full of people who think they’re left wing cause they’re on the right side of some social and cultural issues.
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There's like a solemn consortium of crystalline entities and slime mold collectives and warish space hogs and symbiotic fungus groups and telepathic whales and gracile alien greys and just humanity going SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS
The original promise of the internet was a way around middlemen, then it became a machine for making middlemen, and now it’s collapsing cause none of the middlemen know what a business is.
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how the fuck do you fuck up a money-printing business like this. Litteraly all you do is be a middle man for money, how the fuck are you failing at that
theverge.com/2022/9/13/2335
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This remains the best insight on US politics in years
The best part about Philly is that this could be the response to literally anything
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scene report: someone put on kate bush in clark park & fireworks are going off & ppl are yelling GO BIRDS & everything smells like weed
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There is now shippy fan art for a movie that doesn’t exist
Brilliant, wonderful, full marks
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"They turned a major predator into a client species and they fucked their sibling species into extinction , look what they did to CORN, they don't realize they're biological colonialists cause they're so good at it. Its like fish and water."
the cat walks right up to us in the middle of eating dinner, stare us straight in the eyes, and immediately starts giving birth
Missing from the Extremly dumb “why should we pay for rich kids to go to colledge” is that some rich kids have shitty parents who only let them go conservative religious colleges/only if they stay in the closet. Universal public services like free colledge are liberators.
That he died on World AIDS Day is a sign history has a grim sense of humor. Reagan and Bush perpetuated a genocide vis neglect for an entire generation. May thier bones have no peace. twitter.com/queer_history/
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Anyway, if you love crime thrillers, unrequited m/m/f love triangles, grim soviet 70s realism mixed with noir metaphors for the Italian and soviet governments and editing that screws with time I recommend
Goncharov (1973)
So this is a 4 bedroom in Mnsas in the market for 180k who wants to go in on forming a coven slash paranormal investigation agency out of it
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Everyone *Likes* humanity in the big Space UN and they're a backbone of the diplomatic core but there's an agreement not to let them get too powerful cause dear fucking god.
except the eusocial space ants, they like us, oddly.
This is not stealing this is just asking t.co/uH24onT30I
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People finding out a massive hotel chain got a chunk of the small business funds as basically a personal favor going “well Im never staying at those chains ever again!” Have not internalized the scale of what we are dealing with.
You can view the entire 20th century though the lens of the automobile. From the bitter lake agreeement to atmospheric lead to sit-down strikes developed in unionized auto plants to white flight to chain stores to exurbination to climate change to defunding public transit
Oh hey Ragnarok is on US Netflix if you want a candy colored extremely horny bisexual superhero movie with a synth soundtrack