Andrew Varnon

I built a lamp for 3 am, for when it’s raining and the year of COVID schooling is almost done. 1/

A quarter of the U.S.'s roughly 30,000 United Methodist churches — which once dominated the country's religious landscape — have left the denomination, according to the church's news agency. At issue is the question of ordaining and marrying LGBTQ people. nyti.ms/41rbqRC

"Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty." — Hannah Arendt

@SaratogaNHP @Boston1775 Ooh. This sounds like fun!

246th Anniversary Commemorative Encampment Sat.-Sun., 10/7 - 10/8 Rain, maybe, but the show goes on! No musket / cannon firing Sat., but hopefully Sun., but still lots to see and do! MORE: facebook.com/saratoganhp (Photo: Saratoga NHP)

Florida is now the book-banning state.

@MichaelSocolow Because the current Nobel Prize winner is also Norwegian?

Today, we probably shouldn't forget Nobel literature laureate Knut Hamsun (1920), the Norwegian who centered racism, xenophobia, & misogyny in his fiction, and who partied with Hitler and Goebbels in the Bavarian Alps (and remained committed to Nazism). uwapress.uw.edu/book/978029598…

@MrRural It’s depressing. But what do we do about it? We have to build a way forward that is broad-based and inclusive, not based on grievances and revenge fantasies.

@ServerFairy On Mastodon, I’m @andrewvarnon@mastodon.social

@SachemHead Which server did you go with on Mastodon? I'd like to follow you back over there. Also, this list might be of interest: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…

I feel like I’m hanging on at X out of inertia. Other people are leaving. But I haven’t left yet.

@mysteriousrook I’ve created an account on Mastodon, but I haven’t really used it.

@InstantKarma510 Good sleep helps!

I bought a new mattress and I think my depression might be...cured?

“My anti-phonics perspective took root in 1991, when I wrote my first feature story as an intern for the Greenfield Recorder in Massachusetts.” 🤔 kappanonline.org/ghezzi-russo-h…

Tennis is a Hobbesian struggle for aspiring pros. youtu.be/STff_wOQHn4?si…

@HartmanAndrew @jacobin @NelsonLichtens1 “…much of the new wealth floated to the top of society, obscuring a period of labor weakness and capital flight. Subsequently, the United States became a good place for the wealthy to house their cash, but not to be a working person.”

Good review in @jacobin of Judith Stein & @NelsonLichtens1's new book, "A Fabulous Failure: The Clinton Presidency and the Transformation of American Capitalism." jacobin.com/2023/08/a-fabu…

"Clinton attempted to provide a new basis for a reestablishment of the New Deal social contract, but it was a project undertaken without any serious analysis of the political or economic forces that had undermined the closest the United States had ever come to social democracy."

@nowthisnews This reminds me of the documentary “My Architect” about Louis Kahn. Kahn’s buildings could be categorized as Brutalist, but they seemed more thoughtful, complex than the stereotype. youtu.be/0HxB9Iu3Hbc?si…

Step foot on a college campus, and there's a good chance you'll run into one of them: a bulky, towering, fortress-like structure with an architectural style that has been misunderstood for years.

@OurShallowState “They’ve shot all the horses.”

Molly Jong-Fast has a piece in Vanity Fair which quotes Adam Kinzinger: "(Republicans) want a post-Trump future. But they have no courage to make it happen. Everyone is just hoping the other guy is riding in on a white horse to save the party. But they’ve shot all the horses.”

"It's the shape of the world all around you that causes your blues. And your blues is caused by some things you want and can't have."

@TrueFactsStated You put out treats?

Hope in the early morning.

@jayrosen_nyu “And if volume is the name of the game, ex-leftist crossover stars who find new levels of celebrity on the right aren’t lost – they are found.”

"We are not having disagreements about differing interpretations of reality – we are having disagreements about who is in reality and who is in a simulation." —Naomi Klein. theguardian.com/books/2023/aug… It's really, really hard to write a good sentence about this condition. (I know.)

Naomi Klein on following her ‘doppelganger’ (Naomi Wolf) down the conspiracy rabbit hole. theguardian.com/books/2023/aug… This is an excerpt from her new book.

@TheCivilWarDoc1 @_NatParkService Cool! Thanks!

@SachemHead @_NatParkService Odd. Here you go: nps.gov/people/cwillia….

Meet Private Cathay Williams, the only woman to serve in the US Army as a Buffalo Soldier. #civilwar #twitterstorians The @_NatParkService has an article about her here: nps.gov/peoplecwilliam….