New Issue of The Wire! For the David Lynch special issue, I contributed a piece about the backward speech in Twin Peaks as mediated doppelgänger: the uncanny reverse-presence of the human voice made possible via recording technology.
The Wire 486 is out now!
David Lynch & Chrystabell: The director and singer
unpack their dream-like songs over a damn fine cup of coffee. By Britt Brown.
Plus: 19 pages on The Sound World Of David Lynch, Dhangsha Invisible Jukebox, Discreet Music + more!
According to folks on the ground, the Seattle Police are currently using a moving truck to empty things out of East Precinct. A lot of people who live and work in the area are afraid that the police are planning to set fire to their own precinct and blame the community.
TONIGHT’S PLAN: Chief Carmen Best calling this an exercise in “trust and de-escalation.” Some barricades will be removed near East Precinct and fewer officers will be in area. She’s hoping marchers proceed peacefully.
#seattleprotest
#seattleprotests
#seattle
#CapitolHill
@HowardSchultz
If you're looking for ways to "make us better," might I humbly suggest that you start here in Seattle, home to several of the richest people on earth while 1 in 13 public school students is homeless?
@PerJansen
@HowardSchultz
Oh yes. I should clarify for those who don't follow Seattle politics that Schultz was one of a handful of billionaires who killed a unanimously-passed tax on big businesses that would have raised money for low income housing & homeless services here. We don't need him anywhere.
I see that Ben Shapiro is trending but I'm not going to click it to find out why; instead I'm going to start a conspiracy theory about how the forest fires are his fault because nothing can hold moisture in his presence.
This is astonishing: a new lawsuit contends that the no-knock warrant issued for
#BreonnaTaylor
's apartment had to do with targeting a holdout in a multimillion dollar development plan to rebuild (re: gentrify) her block.
[thread] There was a shooting at 3am in the CHOP. Medics acted quickly to transport victims to the hospital. 1 of the 2 victims died. Police are now spinning it as evidence that the protesters are dangerous. But what it actually shows is how vulnerable they are to attacks.
This piece of shit, Mike Solan, is already on Fox News using this tragedy (and his Department's failing) to drum up even more nationwide violent sentiment against protesters.
I've said this before, but "centrism" in US discourse doesn't actually represent the center of anything, but rather dominant systems attempting to maintain dominance by constantly re-centering themselves & asserting that all challenges to their power come from a radical fringe.
I remain in awe of the centrism of U.S. discourse where one side calls for attacks on children's hospitals and the other side says that police should get less money, considering they keep killing people and all that, and millions of people apparently think both are extremists.
The only "explosives" were thrown by police. The SPD has sent a blatant lie to KIRO, which is reporting the press release without fact checking it. This is how police states control narratives. When the press becomes their propaganda arm, any illusion of democracy is over.
The House Judiciary Committee has introduced a bill specifically aimed at punishing antifascists but our government definitely isn't fascist. Nope nope.
From the outside, cities like Seattle and San Francisco look like places where "progressive" policies are failing. From the inside, they feel like places where "progressive" policies never actually get a foothold because those who oppose them have virtually unlimited resources.
Not only was he a generation-defining artist, Steve Albini made it seem cool to try to learn and grow and become a better person instead of doubling down on dumb bullshit. He will be missed.
Watching media narratives around CHOP unfold in real time is surreal. One thing is certain: Never again will I read a headline that ends in "...police say" and not question (1) its veracity and (2) the ethics of whoever is amplifying whatever police say without fact checking it.
Saw Oppenheimer last night and it occurred to me how much Burning Man is basically a ritualization of the Manhattan Project: a temporary city in the middle of the desert, full of elites flush with R&D cash, creating a huge pillar of fire on someone else's sacred land.
By a tragic coincidence, Steve Albini passed away the same day my interview with Shellac for The Wire hit newsstands.
Here's a transcript of that interview, with lots of things that didn't make it into the print feature for lack of space.
“I wanted it to be for keeps”: an Oral History of Shellac
On 15 April,
@emilypothast
interviewed Shellac for the cover story of The Wire 484. Following the death of Steve Albini on 7 May, here we publish the full transcript with an introduction by Emily:
This is very good: "White men are the only people allowed to fully believe in the American dream and perhaps that is the cruelest thing to have ever been done to them and the world that has to suffer their anger as they refuse to let go." -
@IjeomaOluo
If walking costs you $1, we all pay $0.01. If biking costs you $1, we all pay $0.08. If bussing costs you $1, we all pay $1.50. If driving costs you $1, we all pay $9.20. Via
@thediscourse
study.
This isn’t just about choice. It’s about who pays for your choice.
#citymakingmath
@ContraPoints
I think our models of what "accountability" means are often warped because they come from a punishment and retribution mindset and not a restorative justice mindset.
@daveloach2
@meakoopa
I recently went down a wikipedia hole on the origins of the wearing-a-barrel trope and I learned that it has two distinct lineages, the 'bankruptcy barrel' and the 'drunkard's cloak.'
What "cancel culture" discourse often obscures is that making content that is deemed "controversial" because it dehumanizes whole populations is very much a thriving business model. [1/8]
Something that I think should be much more foregrounded than it currently is in discussions of recent events involving 'Antifa' in Portland (and the Pacific Northwest more broadly) is the Northwest Territorial Imperative. [a thread]
I am happy to inform all of the people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream that you will no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built in your neighborhood...
A lot of people who have never lived in the PNW seem to have a misguided idea of who lives there. The whole reason there are so many antifascist groups is because, as this feature put it in 2015, the Northwest is home to "America's Worst Racists."
"bUT wHo wiLL pRoseCuTe thE rAPiSTs?" has got to be the most tone deaf, ignorant argument against defunding the police.
Look at the statistics. Cops *don't* prosecute rapists. You're using survivors to try to make a point, and it's a factually inaccurate point. Knock it off.
Some rhetorical discussion questions for the anti-choice Christians in your life:
1) Fertility clinics throw away viable embryos all the time. Is this something that concerns you as much as abortion does? If not, why not?
The correct word for what happened today is 'demonstration.'
It was a demonstration of what law enforcement will let white supremacist terrorists get away with, and how the media, the criminal justice system, and our elected officials will treat them during and afterward.
"Racism is not necessarily an intention or a feeling. It is a system that produces predictable results."
@IjeomaOluo
is a treasure and this interview is a good introduction to her work.
"Law and order" is a euphemism for allowing one group of people to have the power of life and death over another group of people and it always has been.
I've lived in Seattle 15 years this summer. The difference between what the weather was like when I got here and what it's like now is *astounding.*
We did not used to have these sweltering hot, dry, sunny summers. The climate has shifted noticeably. Dramatically.
Cambridge has rescinded a fellowship offered to Jordan Peterson. They shouldn't have offered it to him in the first place—not because he's controversial, but because he's a bad researcher whose sources contradict the very claims he uses them to make.
@MayorJenny
I feel like the most respectful thing for you to do right now would be to keep Summer Taylor's name out of your mouth, given your personal responsibility for their death. They were literally protesting *you.*
The Twitter account cited by
@KToropin
here for
@CNN
is in absolutely no way affiliated with the actual
#CHOP
protests. CNN has fallen for, and is perpetuating a hoax.
Seattle and Portland friends: I'm compiling a list of links to help explain to people who aren't from the Northwest the extent to which the police have been aligning themselves with white supremacists against protesters. What should be on the list?
What if instead of going to Burning Man, people invested in creative projects in their own communities that nobody had to drive through the desert to get to?
I wrote this because I've noticed a pernicious tendency to erase the Black labor in Northwest activism in favor of a white "antifa" stereotype. This erasure allows centrists to dismiss the protests while imagining themselves on the side of racial justice.
There are experienced organizers that Durkan could have met with today. Instead she met with people she picked to fit the narrative that CHOP representatives were unprepared. The demands never changed but the people in the meeting did. History will not remember this mayor kindly.
The mayor's meeting with protesters this afternoon is being presented as if protesters were inexperienced, asking for things that weren't in her jurisdiction, etc.
This was by design. From what I can tell, not a single established organization was invited to the meeting.
The Three Little Pigs is a fable designed to justify wealth by disguising it as 'smart choices'. The pig who ~decided~ to build a house out of durable, firesafe bricks wasn't smarter than the pigs who could only afford sticks and straw. His dad was a hedge fund manager.
And this is precisely why protesters don't trust police. Because of these lies, they don't trust the police to fairly investigate violence committed against protesters, and I don't blame them.
Meanwhile, the medics who acted quickly are heroes.
@NeryaFrey
@Fred_Delicious
That ability has already existed for decades; it's called "high-speed trains," and every civilized country already has them.
The Wire 484 is out now!
Shellac: The US noise rock survivors are hard as rails on long awaited new album To All Trains. By Emily Pothast.
Plus: Arnold Dreyblatt, Robyn Steward, Zoh Amba, Iceboy Violet, Kalia Vandever, Normil Hawaiians, and much more!
Since the 1970s, neo-Nazi groups have intentionally encouraged settling in the Pacific Northwest, with the intention of eventually establishing a white nationalist ethnostate.
Groups like Patriot Prayer must be read in this context.
This is one of the best political ads I've ever seen.
If "no human is illegal" then it's time to stop stigmatizing our homeless neighbors the way conservatives stigmatize immigrants.
Seattle, it's time to vote with the values those "in this house, we believe..." signs claim.
When you knock as many doors as we do, you see the "In this house, we believe.." signs a lot.
It dawned on me recently while canvassing that this election cycle is about having Seattle live up to the values we proclaim on paper. (And, as it turns out, yard signs.)
@B_Ehrenreich
Given your politics, I think it's obvious that you were attempting a joke. It's just a joke that falls extremely flat in 2019, when ppl are being harassed + worse for not speaking English in public, and when actual fascists are trying to pin the "decline of empire" on immigrants.
.
@NikkitaOliver
has written the single most important piece of writing on the departure of Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best in the context of the "youth- and Black-led movement" to
#defundSPD
and invest in the health and safety of all.
#seattleprotest
The purpose of organized caravans of far-right gangs riding into Portland is to instigate violence.
The purpose of that violence is propagandistic.
The ultimate goal is a white nationalist homeland as spelled out in Northwest Territorial Imperative.
This new footage proves definitively that it was Seattle Police who started the physical confrontation yesterday. I just found out that the person they arrested is not only still in jail away from their child, they are being kept in solitary confinement because they are trans.
@CJIngalls
@K5Investigators
@KING5Seattle
1) First of all, it's "pored over"; I'm not usually one to correct grammar and spelling but you represent a news org, hire a damn editor.
2) You have essentially produced a hit list for far-right terrorists. Will King 5 be liable if any harm befalls these individuals? Will you?
Today
@GovInslee
had a live conversation with multiple WA State DACA recipients including Washington Census Alliance director Kamau Chege.
Chege asked him about the detention center & to call on
@JoeBiden
for a moratorium on deportations.
Inslee cut his mic.