Geoff A.

@pseudonymice.bsky.social

612 Followers 430 Following

Been ill, missed the conversations. He/him. Have degrees in history and law. Had a career in politics and research. Mostly just coping with matters beyond my control these days.

Screenshot of the concurrence from the Supreme Court's ruling in Barnes v Felix, which reads in relevant part: "The question when a driver flees, therefore, is not merely whether the underlying traffic violation “presents risks to public safety”—it is also “whether flight,” and what that flight might indicate or enable, “does so.”"
A screenshot of the seance scene from the Tim Burton movie, Beetlejuice, where the living characters are trying to summon the film's spectral protagonists.
Screenshot from an Internet Archive translation of Sun Tzu's Art of War that reads: Now the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose.
Photograph of a highway road sign indicating an exit to "Secret Town Road"
Photograph of an empty lot with rundown buildings framing a beautiful orange sunset.
Picture of a paved street ending at a gravel drive, fenced off with orange traffic cones and a sign reading "Road Closed to Thru Traffic"
Picture of a Winnemucca side street. It is short and ends at a motel with a bright neon sign that reads "Scott Shady Court"
Photograph of the main street in Winnemucca, Nevada. At the left of the frame is a flashing sign for the Winnemucca Casino. Towards the center is a large "No Parking" sign. Towards the bottom right is a misspelled sign that reads "We'er Your Sip 'n Shop STOP"
Photograph of a book cover, Black AF History, by Michael Harriot
Photograph of a cornbread muffin torn in half to show the corn kernels baked inside.
Fake Star Trek Next Generation title screen, with a caption reading "The Captain Finally Does Enough Screwing and Shooting"
Star Trek Next Generation title card with a caption reading "Charmed Lives, Doomed Romance"
Title screen to Deep Space Nine, with a caption reading "MORN!!!"
Star Trek Enterprise, Original Series, orbiting a planet (title screen) with caption reading "This Topia?"
Next Generation title card featuring the Enterprise at a distance, caption reads "Do Dilithium Starships Dream of Model Trains?"
Voyager opening title shot of the ship from beneath. Caption reads "Holodeck Elections"
Star Trek Next Generation Enterprise dodging an asteroid as it approaches a star, caption reads "No, but you MAY have nice things."
Star Trek Next Generation title screen, long range shot of the Enterprise. Caption reads "Wesley Crusher Solves the Missing Muffin Caper"
Star Trek Original Series title screen, Enterprise orbiting a planet. Caption reads: "The Dommes of Subspace"
Star Trek Original Series title screen, close up shot of the Enterprise from the top down. Caption reads "What's Our Vector, Victor?"
Star Trek Next Generation title screen (Enterprise over a planet) with a fake caption reading "The Prime Directive Factor"
Star Trek Original Series title shot of the Enterprise orbiting a planet. Fake caption says "Uhura Reads Swedish"
A Star Trek Next Generation title shot of the Enterprise, with a caption reading "I, Q: A Tragi-Farce in Higher Dimensions"
Star Trek Enterprise (Original Series) orbiting a planet. Fake title reads "Tender is the Tentacle"
Cover of a Star Trek book shsowing a cratered planet against a starry backdrop. The caption quotes Yoda from Empire Strikes Back "This Is Why You Fail"
Voyager title card showing the spaceship, caption reads: "The Merch for Spock"
Image of an Original Series Star Trek title card, with the caption: "Celebrity Hike: Universal Translator Outtakes Episode"
Fake title card screenshot from Star Trek Next Generation depicting the Enterprise in front of a planet, with the title reading "Prime Directive, Long Division"
A fake title superimposed over the opening credit card from Deep Space Nine that reads "All Your Base Belong To Us"
Screenshot of a page from the referenced report describing the total financial assets of median workers, and showing the median bank account level for various classes of workers.
Screenshot from the linked article, reading in relevant part: "Their trouble is that they must constantly change the falsehoods they offer as a substitute for the real story; changing circumstances require the substitution of one history book for another, the replacement of pages in the encyclopedias and reference books, the disappearance of certain names in favor of others, unknown or little known before. And though this continuing instability gives no indication of what the truth might be, it is itself an indication, and an all-important one, of the lying character of all public utterances concerning the factual world. It has frequently been noticed that the surest long-term result of brainwashing is a peculiar kind of cynicism—an absolute refusal to believe in the truth of anything, no matter how well this truth may be established. In other words, the result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lies will now be accepted as truth, and the truth be defamed as lies, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth vs. falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed."
Article screenshot reads: “I thought, there's the evidence. And the police said to me, ‘Well, we can't use that, that isn't clear evidence, because it looks like you're pretending to be asleep.’” Survivor Amanda Stanhope Police eventually charged Stanhope’s former partner. But her experience underscores why victims of domestic abuse often do not report these crimes
A crude image of a spreadsheet with a bunch of images pasted onto it. Top left is a My Little Pony unicorn - "very magic, not very human." Top right is a handsome demon, "very magic, very human". "Space Marines go Here" are at the bottom towards the right, just under "Vampires" and to the right of "Here Be Zombies." The bottom left has an image of a snake dangling in front of a woman. Between that and the zombie is a big bear with a rose in his teeth.
Shot of a page from Montaigne reading in relevant part: "Tis a sign of crudity and indigestion to disgorge what we eat in the same condition it was swallowed; the stomach has not performed its office unless it have altered the form and condition of what was committed to it to concoct."
Meme of Trump yelling at a child pushing a lawnmower on the White House lawn. Text reads "Tell them hos kids love me!"
Screenshot of a poem by Sharon olds named "The Pope's Penis." It is very short and reads in full: It hangs deep in his robes, a delicate clapper at the center of a bell. It moves when he moves, a ghostly fish in a halo of silver seaweed, the hair swaying in the dark and the heat—and at night while his eyes sleep, it stands up in praise of God.
Screenshot of my own input of the same prompt "how many es in nonsense economic" and getting a count of 6. "Including results for how many es in nonsense economics Search only for how many es in nonsense economy AI Overview There are 6 "e"s in the phrase "nonsense economy". Here is the breakdown: Nonsense (2) economy (3) e (1) Total: 2 + 3 + 1 = 6. "
Screenshot of rhe text from Alex Shepard's article in the New Republic: "Let’s get this out of the way: Graham Platner isn’t a Nazi. He had a Nazi tattoo, sure, but he doesn’t anymore. He got it covered up in October, a few days after the world learned about the Totenkopf symbol he got inked on his chest in Croatia while on military leave two decades ago. If one can get a Nazi tattoo innocently, then Platner almost certainly did. He says he didn’t know its true meaning at the time, and there’s little reason to doubt him. There is nothing in any of the statements that Platner has given in town halls, interviews, or other campaign events to suggest that he’s a bigot either, though he did write some bad stuff about Black people and women on the internet a few years ago. (For what it’s worth, he also said white rural voters were stupid and racist.)"
Screenshot of the linked executive order from Trump's first administration reading: (c) “Classical architecture” means the architectural tradition derived from the forms, principles, and vocabulary of the architecture of Greek and Roman antiquity, and as later developed and expanded upon by such Renaissance architects as Alberti, Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, and Palladio; such Enlightenment masters as Robert Adam, John Soane, and Christopher Wren; such 19th-century architects as Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Robert Mills, and Thomas U. Walter; and such 20th-century practitioners as Julian Abele, Daniel Burnham, Charles F. McKim, John Russell Pope, Julia Morgan, and the firm of Delano and Aldrich. Classical architecture encompasses such styles as Neoclassical, Georgian, Federal, Greek Revival, Beaux-Arts, and Art Deco. (d) “Deconstructivist” means the style of architecture generally known as “deconstructivism” that emerged during the late 1980s that subverts the traditional values of architecture through such features as fragmentation, disorder, discontinuity, distortion, skewed geometry, and the appearance of instability.
Image of the ideological plot map showing this poster's account (Geoff A., pseudonymice.bsky.social) lying in a space between "intellectually curious English-speaking Progressives" and "Creative and Tech-Minded Europeans"
Photo of an excerpt from Montaigne's "Essays": "And freely to speak my thoughts, it arguess a strange self-love and great presumption to be so fond of one's own opinions that a public peace must be overthrown to establish them, and to introduce so many inevitable mischiefs, and so dreadful a corruption of manners, as a civil war and the mutations of state consequent to it, always bring in their train, and to introduce them, in a thing of so high concern, into the bowels of one's own country. Can there be worse husbandry than to set up so many certain and knowing vices against errors that are only contested and disputable?"
Photo of an excerpt from Montaigne's "Essays" "What can be more savage, than to see a nation where, by lawful custom, the office of a judge is bought and sold, where judgments are paid for with ready money, and where justive may legitimately be denied to him that has not wherewithal to pay; a merchandise in so great repute, as in a government to create a fourth estate of wrangling lawyers, to add to the three ancient ones of the church, nobility, and people; which fourth estate, having the laws in their own hands, and sovereign power over men's lives and fortunes, makes another body separate from nobility: whence it comes to pass, that there are double laws, those of honour and those of justice, in many things altogether opposite one to another; the nobles as rigorously condemning a lie taken, as the others do a lie revenged: by the law of arms, he shall be degraded from all nobility and honour who puts up with an affront; and by the civil law, he who vindicates his reputation by revenge incurs a capital punishment"
Photo of a passage from Montaigne's "Essays" which reads: "I find that our greatest vices derivr their first propensity from our most tender infancy, and that our principal education depends upon the nurse. Mothers are mightily pleased to see a child writhe off the neck of a chicken, or to please itself with hurting a dog or cat; and such wise fathers there are in the world, who look upon it as a notable mark of a martial spirit, when they hear a son miscall, or see hom domineer over a poor peasant, or a lackey, that dares not reply, nor turj again; and a great sign if wit, when they see him cheat and overreach his playfellow by some malicious treachery and deceit. Yet these are the true seeds and roots of cruelty, tyranny, and treason; they bud and put out there, and afterwards shoot up vigorously, and grow to prodigious bulk, cultivated by custom. And it is a very dangerous mistake to excuse these vile inclinations upon the tenderness of their age, and the triviality of the subject"
Photo of a page from Montaigne's "Essays" recounting the story of a woman transforming into a man through the power of imagination: "Myself passing by Vitry le Francois, saw a man the Bishop of Soissoms had, in confirmation, called Germain, whom all the inhabitants of the place had known to be a girl till two-and-twenty years of age, called Mary. He was, at the time of my being there, very full of beard, old, and not married. ... It is no wonder if this sort of accident frequently happen; for if imagination have any power in such things, it is so continually and vigorously bent upon this subject, that to the end it may not so often relapse into the same thought and violence of desire, it were better, once for all, to give these young wenches the thing they long for."
Screecapture of an excerpt from the linked essay (Federalist No. 36) which reads in full: "As to the suggestion of double taxation, the answer is plain. The wants of the Union are to be supplied in one way or another; if to be done by the authority of the federal government, it will not be to be done by that of the State government. The quantity of taxes to be paid by the community must be the same in either case; with this advantage, if the provision is to be made by the Union that the capital resource of commercial imposts, which is the most convenient branch of revenue, can be prudently improved to a much greater extent under federal than under State regulation, and of course will render it less necessary to recur to more inconvenient methods; and with this further advantage, that as far as there may be any real difficulty in the exercise of the power of internal taxation, it will impose a disposition to greater care in the choice and arrangement of the means; and must naturally tend to make it a fixed point of policy in the national administration to go as far as may be practicable in making the luxury of the rich tributary to the public treasury, in order to diminish the necessity of those impositions which might create dissatisfaction in the poorer and most numerous classes of the society. Happy it is when the interest which the government has in the preservation of its own power, coincides with a proper distribution of the public burdens, and tends to guard the least wealthy part of the community from oppression!"
Photograph of a passage from Montaigne's "Essays" reading in relevant part: "Let the philosophers say what they will, the main thing at which we all aim, even in virtue itself, is pleasure."
Tightly cropped photograph of a section heading from Montaigne's "Essays" which reads "THAT TO STUDY PHILOSOPHY IS TO LEARN TO DIE"
Photograph of Montaigne,s "Essays" the passage contains an extended Latin quote but reads in relevant part: "And although there yet remain amongst us some practices of divination from the stars, from spirits, from the shapes and complexions of men, from dreams and the like ... yet they are of much less authority now than heretofore."
Photograph of a page from Montaigne's "Essays", section titled "of idleness." Opens with a metaphor about uncultivated fields wasting fertility on weeds, then transitions into women's anatomy: " as we see women that, without knowledge of man, do sometimes of themselves bring forth inanimate and formless lumps of flesh, but that to cause a natural and perfect generation they are to be husbanded with another kind of seed."
Photograph of an excerpt from Montaigne's "Essays" about princes of his age habitually conducting affairs of state from their toilet: "The Emperor Maximilian, great-grandfather to the now King Philip, was a Prince endowed throughout with great ajd extraordinary qualities and amongst the rest with a singular beauty of person, but had withal a humour very contrary to that of other princes, who for the despatch of their most important affairs convert their close-stool into a chair of State, which was, that he would never permit any of hos bedchamber, how familiar soever, to see him in that posture, and would steal aside to make water as religiously as a virgin, shy to discover either to his physician or any other whomsoever those parts that we are accustomed to conceal."
Photograph of a book page from Montaigne's "Essays" reading in relevant part: "We find this great precept often repeated in Plato, 'Do thine own work and know thyself.' ... for who will do his own work aright will find that his first lesson is to know what he is, and that which is proper to himself."
A cartoon drawn by famous illustrator Maurice Sendak (author of children's book "Where the Wild Things Are") of five orphans outside of Trump Tower who have been cheated out of their clothes. One says "Tricked", another says "Trumped" and a third says "Dumped!" while two barefoot paupers hug each other.
Screenshot quote from referenced article: "In 2015, as Epstein’s visit drew near, Cohen instructed his staff to insure that Zuckerman, if he unexpectedly arrived while Epstein was present, be kept away from the glass-walled office in which Epstein would be conducting meetings. According to Swenson, Ito had informed Cohen that Epstein “never goes into any room without his two female ‘assistants,’ ” whom he wanted to bring to the meeting at the Media Lab. Swenson objected to this, too, and it was decided that the assistants would be allowed to accompany Epstein but would wait outside the meeting room"
Image of an angry goose asking "Why is a cild in detention Dick?" Second panel, the goose is chasing a man running away, asking loudly "WHY IS A CHILD IN DETENTION, DICK?!?!?!"
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.
Screenshot from "A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps" by Nikolaus Wachsman showing a page that discusses camp populations in 1939 at the run up to the war. The relevant figure in this case is that by September of 1939, the camp system held 21,400 priosners.
Image of two overlapping outlines of cats supermiposed against a background of outer space. One cat is alive and standing, the ohter is laying down and dead. The figures reference the quantum paradox known as "Schrodinger's Cat." The caption beneath the figures reads "Measurement Problem."
A quote from Plato's Republic: "‘What do you find the most absurd thing about it? Isn’t it obviously the b idea of women taking exercise naked, along with men, in the wrestlingschools?7 Not just young women, but older ones as well, like the old men you find in the gymnasiums. They’re all wrinkled, and by no means a pretty sight, but they still retain an enthusiasm for taking exercise.’ ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘That would certainly look pretty absurd — at least the way things are at present.’"
Screenshot of a passage from the linked paper quoting a law on racial categorization listing terms that could be used to describe a "person of color"
Photo of a book page: "Beckett was quick to pick up on the absurd, such as the story he heard involving a servant and a milkman. In order to prevent racial impurity, no Aryan servant under forty-five was allowed to work in a Jewish household. When a puzzled milkman asked Herr Levi's Gentile housekeeper how come she worked for him, she replied that she was partly Jewish. When subsequently her even more perplexed employer asked her why she had lied to the milkman, she replied that she could not possibly admit to being forty-five."