Blue Shift Barney
3.8K posts
Blue Shift Barney
@BarneyShift
Thoughts on the Thin Blue Line. I have served; I will be of service.
Katılım Mayıs 2021
341 Takip Edilen279 Takipçiler
What single classic film would you recommend to someone who never watched older movies?
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@AdamPlantinga As a fellow descendant of Netherlanders, aren’t the Dutch literally the opposite of “itinerent hill people?” Aren’t they more accurately described as “firmly planted in the lowlands?”
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I've been submitting bios for upcoming writerly appearances. Thinking of starting one with "Born under a hunter's moon to itinerant hill people, Plantinga pens his books inside an abandoned blast furnace using an old, overturned coffin as a desk" just to see if anyone notices.
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@EsotericCD I have never never ever been able to shake the feeling that the chorus was a direct steal of U2’s “Stay (Faraway, So Close!)” off Zooropa.
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Meh. It has three chords that cycle through over and over again. It's nice and all (and rock simple to play/sing) but it sounds like PABLO HONEY outtake it is. (The song was actually recorded during the sessions for their forgotten 1993 single "Pop Is Dead" and discarded.)
All 90's Alternative Rock@all90saltrock
Radiohead doing “High and Dry” live on Later… with Jools Holland is peak The Bends era restraint. It started as an old Thom demo, almost got tossed, and somehow became the quiet gut-punch that helped crack Britpop’s swagger open. Not trying to sound bigger, just trying to sound honest.
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@lymanstoneky I once read a membership survey from the biggest PCA church in Philadelphia and was shocked to see that a majority of respondents had post graduate degrees. A majority!
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A significant reason for this is that evangelicalism has become increasingly estranged from its roots!
Evangelicalism was originally a more-or-less elite religious movement in the late 18th and into the 19th centuries.
Its capture by 20th century fundamentalism destroyed it.
Matthew Schmitz@matthewschmitz
Evangelicals make up about 25 percent of the US population. There isn’t a single one on the Supreme Court, or in many other leading institutions. washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/…
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False. Rancid's Time Bomb disproves your theory
Nick Gillespie@nickgillespie
@glukianoff Fun fact: Any song that namechecks Cadillac sucks, by definition.
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@DPearsonPHL Same deal with the Olney Times. I remember it being surprisingly substantial.
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My neighborhood growing up actually had its own newspaper, the Frankford News Gleaner. It had more staff than some still existing outlets currently have.
Robinson Meyer@robinsonmeyer
If you want to feel like you live in “the ruins of a once great civilization,” then read a newspaper from the middle of last century — our predecessors had more and better information about their neighbors, their governments, and their local democracies than we do about ours.
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@Jed_Trott And the Coens are from the Land of 10000 Lakes; the circle remains unbroken.
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@PeterMoskos @dmtrubman 3, 4, 1, 2, 5. Third goes over the top on the strength of the Bunk/Omar confrontation at the train station.
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The third season of The Wire is only the fourth best season of the show
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@Jed_Trott @DellAnnaLuca This relates to how the governor of our state has decided that the quest for higher elective office is going to require him to wage war on his side almost to the same extent as waging it on the opposition.
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“At the exact moment they were trying to convince the world they were the reasonable alternative, [the American left] went completely nuts.”
Of course, something similar later happened at least to some extent on the right, too. Because:
1.polarization is always mutual
2.therefore, sanity must pass through depolarization first.
That means resisting the temptation to immediately correct past wrongs (beyond high-legitimacy cases), and instead prioritizing depolarization.
wanye@xwanyex
I was this kind of voter in 2016. I took it very seriously. The left had a real opportunity at that moment to be sane and normal and to create a real divide on this issue. Instead they went insane with social justice nonsense, culminating in peak weakness and riots in 2020. At exactly the moment they were trying to convince the world that they were the same alternative, they went completely nuts. And then their next “reasonable, normal candidate” let in unprecedented numbers of illegal immigrants. I don’t believe that there are any reasonable candidates, anymore. You had me. And you lost me. For at least right now, it looks like it’s just the bad choice that aligns with my policy preferences, so far as I can tell. The disconnect here is that the center left still thinks it’s their very reasonable guy against the morally corrupt asshole. But nobody thinks your guy is the reasonable guy, anymore. Nobody thinks that. You completely lost the voters on that front. You had a golden opportunity to be better, and you blew it. And I just think that’s completely your fault.
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@Jed_Trott It’s kinda Soviet: “we pretend to work and they pretend to to pay us.” They pretend to teach and we barely pretend to log in.
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@AyeRishPirate @PeterMoskos His influence lives on. Kevin Bethel, yhe current (and pretty damn good) PPD Commissioner, was one of Ramsey’s leadership crew.
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@BarneyShift @PeterMoskos The theory was Daley Part Deux felt threatened by his charisma and public speaking abilities. Saw him as potential great black hope for mayoralty.
Maybe.
GIF
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Tony Barksdale saved Baltimore.
Just imagine, in 2000 we were given an actual friggin' medal for bringing murders below 300. In 2022 there were 333. In 2025 there were 133, the fewest since 1965.
Justin Fenton@justin_fenton
I asked Mayor Brandon Scott how he would mark this year’s historic decline in violence; he got choked up and said, “I’ll probably talk to Tony,” referring to Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and former deputy police commissioner Tony Barksdale, who died unexpectedly in November
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@AyeRishPirate @PeterMoskos I was always shocked that you didn’t yoink Ramsey back after he came to Philly.
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@PeterMoskos He's one of four cops I wish had run Chicago Police
Bratton, Joe McNamara, Maple and Barksdale.
Throw in Timoney.
GIF
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@AdamPlantinga 1992 Bono called to say “it’s awright, it’s awright, it’s awwwwwright.”
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I got these sunglasses for free somewhere. My daughter took one look at them and said, "you look like a German tennis coach."
I consider that high praise.
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The first rated R movie I saw in the theater was Witness in '85. Harrison Ford as two-fisted Philly homicide detective John Book. He was tough and smart and got to make out with a hot Amish gal. I recall my 12-yr-old self thinking, I want to be that guy.
And a seed was planted.
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@barstoollaw @AdamPlantinga His novels? Oh yeah. They focus on different characters but all exist in the same fictional midwestern city that is definitely not Chicago. Sandy is a major character in at least three of them and makes an appearance in almost all.
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@BarneyShift @AdamPlantinga I haven't watched any of those -- decent?
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@barstoollaw @AdamPlantinga Been running the whole Turow series and Sandy is hands down my favorite character. The second I learned that he’s not in the new Apple TV adaption, I was out.
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@AdamPlantinga I read Presumed Innocent when I was probably in 8th grade. Wanted to be Sandy Stern. Got a Time to Kill maybe a year later, that was a lot closer to my lived experience, was sold.
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@SteveBellow Not perfect but a vast improvement over her predecessor.
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No idea if she’s a good Mayor but her self deprecating humor is good for a change.
Breaking911@Breaking911
HOLY MOLY: The Mayor of Philadelphia asks her constituents to teach her how to spell the word 'Eagles' It seems she still doesn't know.
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