Sam Roberts

@thesamroberts.com

207 Followers 278 Following

Dad, husband, dino master. Philly-based. 🦖 https://samnite.itch.io

A Duolingo screenshot. The text is “Hoy Empire una nueva vida. / Today I start a new life.”
A screengrab of a prompt that says "Name A Character | Hero Name (Real Name)|*" and my answer is "Superman's Pal (Jimmy Olsen)".
Screengrab of my phone playing Heresy by Nine Inch Noize
Flyers fight coach and bareknuckle brawler Johnny ‘Cannoli’ Garbarino sparked a melee. It was caught on video. Last offseason, the Flyers hired John Garbarino to help younger players hold their own during fights on the ice. He had an ideal resume for the job: The South Philly native is an undefeated middleweight in the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship. But early Sunday morning, the fight venue was a narrow street in Center City, where the closing-time bar crowd watched Garbarino pummel the plexiglass vestibule of Barstool Sansom Street and scream obscenities. Garbarino, aka “Johnny Cannoli,” then destroyed an onlooker’s cell phone, sparking a seven-person fracas in the middle of the street. Part of the incident was captured in a two-minute video obtained by The Inquirer on Wednesday.
It's the DARE to resists drugs and violence shirt, but instead it says "T.H.A.C.0. TO HIT ARMOR CLASS 0" (Yes, I know the 0 in THAC0 isn't an abbreviation)
A screenshot of a jukebox app that is playing 45:33 — the LCD soundsystem workout track that is, you guessed it, 45 and a half minutes long
A photo of two squishmallow tombstone characters on a table next to each other. The girl squishmallow is about 2 ft. tall. The boy squishmallow is about 2 in. tall.
A screengrab from the news section of the Duolingo app. It says “surprise! Duolingo’s first anime series puts the characters to the ultimate test.” with a button to watch now.
Kid koala DJing in front of a screen at Union Transfer
Text from an email I received: You are eligible for up to a $1.00 credit to be applied to ParkMobile’s service fees. The code provides a $0.25 discount on ParkMobile’s service fees and may be used up to four times for a total discount of $1.00. The code will expire on October 8, 2026.
Throughout the country and on many campuses, it is too easy to retreat into silos, reject nuance and seek out only those courses, speakers, colleagues, friends and environments that buttress our existing worldviews. The campus disruptions I’ve seen over the past two years — disruptions that have interrupted classes, destroyed property and restricted access to libraries — reflect this siloed mind-set. Protest should not silence others, and advocacy of political views should not undermine our academic mission.
Yet new strategies are also needed. Some on social media have attempted to minimize the broader implications of Mr. Kirk’s assassination by pointing to his extreme views, such as his arguments that some gun deaths are an acceptable price to pay for the right to bear arms. These attempts are like blaming a victim of sexual assault for going to a party wearing provocative clothing.
The handshake meme. One arm is "90s Batman Comics". The other arm is "2010s Batman Video Games". Where they shake is "Assassin's Creed Vibes."
A quote from me in a discord saying, “I am so furious that I’m going to have to check out The Critical Role Game”
Ny times news alert: Breaking News. President Trump plans to accept a luxury Boeing 747 from Qatar that he will use as Air Force One and will keep using after he leaves office.
One asks, Why should such disparate groups as the Soviet Union and the U.S. intelligence community back the same man? I am no political theoretician, but Nicholas one time said. “They both like figureheads who are corrupt. So they can govern from behind. The Soviets and the fuzz, they’re all for shadow governments. They always will be, because basically each of them is the man with the gun. The pistol to the head.” No one had put a pistol to Ferris Fremont’s head. He, was the pistol itself, pointed at our head. Pointed at the people who had elected him. Behind him stood all the cops in the world, the left-wing cops in Russia, the right-wing cops in the United States. Cops are cops. There are only divisions of rank, into greater and lesser. The top cop is probably never seen.
A screencap of a New York Times push notification that reads, “Breaking News: the S&P 500 surged 9.5 percent, its best day since October 2008c after President Trump backed down on ‘reciprocal’ tariffs for 90 days.”
After these explanations he returned to the analogy of the religious church. The citizens who build such a church and pay for it probably have in mind that they're doing this for the community. A good sermon can put the parishioners in a right frame of mind for the coming week. Sunday school will help the children grow up right. The minister who delivers the sermon and directs the Sunday school understands these goals and normally goes along with them, but he also knows that his primary goals are not to serve the community. His primary goal is always to serve God. Normally there's no conflict but occasionally one creeps in when trustees oppose the minister's sermons and threaten reduction of funds. That happens. A true minister, in such situations, must act as though he'd never heard the threats. His primary goal isn't to serve the members of the community, but always God. The primary goal of the Church of Reason, Phædrus said, is always Socrates' old goal of truth, in its ever-changing forms, as it's revealed by the process of rationality. Everything else is subordinate to that. Normally this goal is in no conflict with the location goal of improving the citizenry, but on occasion some conflict arises, as in the case of Socrates himself. It arises when trustees and legislators who've contributed large amounts of time and money to the location take points of view in opposition to the professors' lectures or public statements. They can then lean on the administration by threatening to cut off funds if the professors don't say what they want to hear. That happens too.
The real University, he said, has no specific location. It owns no property, pays no salaries and receives no material dues. The real University is a state of mind. It is that great heritage of rational thought that has been brought down to us through the centuries and which does not exist at any specific location. It's a state of mind which is regenerated throughout the centuries by a body of people who traditionally carry the title of professor, but even that title is not part of the real University. The real University is nothing less than the continuing body of reason itself. In addition to this state of mind, “reason,” there's a legal entity which is unfortunately called by the same name but which is quite another thing. This is a nonprofit corporation, a branch of the state with a specific address. It owns property, is capable of paying salaries, of receiving money and of responding to legislative pressures in the process. But this second university, the legal corporation, cannot teach, does not generate new knowledge or evaluate ideas. It is not the real University at all. It is just a church building, the setting, the location at which conditions have been made favorable for the real church to exist. Confusion continually occurs in people who fail to see this difference, he said, and think that control of the church buildings implies control of the church. They see professors as employees of the second university who should abandon reason when told to and take orders with no backtalk, the same way employees do in other corporations. They see the second university, but fail to see the first.
Phædrus said the same confusion existed about the University and that was why loss of accreditation was hard to understand. The real University is not a material object. It is not a group of buildings that can be defended by police. He explained that when a college lost its accreditation, nobody came and shut down the school. There were no legal penalties, no fines, no jail sentences. Classes did not stop. Everything went on just as before. Students got the same education they would if the school didn't lose its accreditation. All that would happen, Phædrus said, would simply be an official recognition of a condition that already existed. It would be similar to excommunication. What would happen is that the real University, which no legislature can dictate to and which can never be identified by any location of bricks or boards or glass, would simply declare that this place was no longer “holy ground.” The real University would vanish from it, and all that would be left was the bricks and the books and the material manifestation.
The newly elected governor was trying to fire the college president for both personal and political reasons. The college president was not only a personal enemy, he was a Democrat, and the governor was no ordinary Republican. His campaign manager doubled as state coordinator for the John Birch Society. This was the same governor who supplied the list of fifty subversives we heard about a few days ago. Now, as part of this vendetta, funds to the college were being cut. The college president had passed on an unusually large part of the cut to the English department, of which Phædrus was a member, and whose members had been quite vocal on issues of academic freedom. Phædrus had given up, was exchanging letters with the Northwest Regional Accrediting Association to see if they could help prevent these violations of accreditation requirements. In addition to this private correspondence he had publicly called for an investigation of the entire school situation. At this point some students in one of his classes had asked Phædrus, bitterly, if his efforts to stop accreditation meant he was trying to prevent them from getting an education. Phædrus said no. Then one student, apparently a partisan of the governor, said angrily that the legislature would prevent the school from losing its accreditation. Phædrus asked how. The student said they would post police to prevent it.
The Google Maps page for the “Gulf of America”. Posting is currently turned off.
A screen grab of google maps. I’ve searched for the Gulf of Mexico and the map is showing me the Gulf of America.
Screengrab of Fantastic Four: First Steps. The Thing is talking to Herbie. With the caption "I'm not like this because I'm in the Fantastic Four. I'm in the Fantastic Four because I'm like this."
Screengrab of The Fantastic Four: First Steps trailer with The Thing, dressed in a Fantastic Four suit, talking to HERBIE the robot. The caption says "I wear suits now." (It's a quote from The Bear.)
My top artists of 2024: 1. The Laurie Berkner Band 2. Raffi 3. cocomelon 4. Vampire Weekend 5. Kamasi Washington