T Hester

Love lives beyond
The grave, the earth which fades like dew.
I love the fond,
The faithful and the true.

[Austin 0.1875 @MikkelsenPads]

@willmenaker Layabouts, Slugabeds!

[Joaquin Sapien @jbsapien]

A few weeks ago, after two years of work, I published a story unlike any I’d encountered in my 18 years at ProPublica. I’ve been off social media for a while, but I felt compelled to come back to share some of my reporting journey here. 🧵

[Greener Waldringfield @GreenerWfield]

What makes Albrecht Dürer's 'The Large Piece of Turf,' (1503) extraordinary is we can identify species such as plantain, dandelion, meadow grasses, yarrow, and speedwell. Rather than idealising nature, Dürer observed it with remarkable precision.

[Mairav Zonszein מרב זונשיין @MairavZ]

"If the plans that are currently being elaborated for Gaza go forward, genocide may come to be seen by some nations as the legitimate and lucrative extension of politics by other means." https://t.co/l8o0202i1Y

[Nathan J Robinson @NathanJRobinson]

Sometimes the plutocrats are remarkably honest. Here an OpenAI executive describes his horror at the Chinese idea of treating AI as a "public good" provided free to all as "digital public infrastructure." This is ultimately why they want to stop Chinese AI: profits would shrivel.

[IncarcerNation.com @IncarcerNation]

On this day in 1973, Mossad agents kill Ahmed Bouchikhi in the Lillehammer affair. Israeli agents hunting Palestinian leader Ali Hassan Salameh mistakenly identified Bouchikhi, a Moroccan waiter with no connection to Black September, and shot him outside his home in Norway. 1/2

[Chris Hedges @ChrisLynnHedges]

The United States is not a fascist country yet. But the process to become one is unfolding rapidly. The primary reason for this is the capitulation of the Democratic Party to the corporate donor class. The liberal class — intent on crushing any attempts to subvert the agenda of its oligarchic masters — has ushered in this new dark age.

[Mohammad @MargBarAmerica]

It’s concerning that so many take this at face value instead of what white nationalists actually mean: denaturalizing and deporting whoever they deem an ‘illegal citizen’.

[IncarcerNation.com @IncarcerNation]

7/21/2012: Anaheim PD officer Nick Bennallack killed Manuel Diaz. Bennallack shot the unarmed Diaz in the buttocks and head while Diaz was moving away from police. Officer Bennalack, who was known as "Backshot Bennallack," had shot multiple people and was never convicted.

[T Hester @THester72770534]

@willmenaker @GarlicCorgi

[T Hester @THester72770534]

@willmenaker @GarlicCorgi Yes! As a kid, even, I was charmed by the esthetic. It especially lended itself to gritty backdrops like in "The Rescuers". It's wonderful when children's entertainment can reach the level of high art.

[Will 🦥 Menaker @willmenaker]

@mcmansionhell The ancient truth of "Get Money, Fuck Bitches" has been passed down to us through mythology

[T Hester @THester72770534]

@Hanatoivonen @DailyClassicArt It's silly, but I didn't think of that. Either way I like the weirdness of it.

[Seth Harp @sethharpesq]

Deep cut here by the Reuters team on who exactly is supplying Sudan's genocidal RSF with weapons and mercenaries. Turns out a former Green Beret, now based in Singapore, is running the supply lines. JSOC fingerprints everywhere.

[TrueAnon @TrueAnonPod]

EPISODE 563: REQUIEM FOR A NUN

We hitch a ride to Heaven for a steamy sit-down with South Carolina’s latest angel, the now-perished Lindsey Graham.

[Nathan J Robinson @NathanJRobinson]

The Vietnam War was not conducted out of good motives by "men of high integrity." It was conducted to protect U.S. dominance by men who saw Vietnamese lives as worthless.
https://t.co/SjtpG5BwZA

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

In 2009, @VanJones68 was forced to "resign" from the Obama Admin after 6 months because Fox News and establishment Democrats denounced him as "the radical left": due to his prior support in the 1990s for Mumia Abu-Jamal, calling a GOP member an "asshole," allegedly signing a petition suggesting Bush did 9/11, etc. His glaring, oozing career ambitions lay in ruins as he was kicked out of decent DC power centers for transgressing too many ideological lines and comportmental rules.

That's when he realized that wealth and celebrity awaited him only if he were willing instead to transform himself into a vehement defender and guard of establishment dogma, a useful tool for those who had just struck him down.

So that's exactly what he did. He renounced his prior "radical" views, repeatedly apologized for his transgressions, became a stalwart, weepy advocate of deary DC media conventional wisdom, and began playing the new TV character his script required: the moderate, sensible liberal who just wants to bring everyone together in the safe, status-quo-perpetuating middle.

His real function: to begin every sentence with "I'm a progressive Democratic" -- the subtext: a black progressive Democrat! -- and then denounce the populist left (and populist right) for crossing the political and ideological lines that he was told to vigorously police and uphold: the lines which nobody is permitted to cross without being denounced and excluded the way he once was. "Look: they're too extreme even for Van Jones!" He was there to protect his establishment bosses by punishing the excesses of the "extremes on both sides": just as he had once been punished by them almost to the point of career destruction.

His service as the "black progressive policeman" for the DC establishment and its dual religious planks of corporatism and militarism were predictably very valuable to them, and very lucrative for him. He got larger and larger CNN contracts. Jeff Bezos gave him $100 million to hand out however he wanted. Jay-Z hired him to lead a new group, etc. etc. Book deals from large NYC publishing houses flowed in, etc. etc.

Since October, 2023, he saw the real opening, one that would catapult him upward even further into the top echelons of establishment servitude: turn himself into the most devoted "liberal media" loyalist to Israel, the most militant defender of Tel Aviv's reputation, as global support for that country collapsed. He dutifully wore his little yellow ribbon pin every day for years on TV as if it were tattooed onto him. He cackled with Bill Maher about how annoying it is to keep hearing all this whining about "dead babies in Gaza." With his patented fake TV tears in his eyes, he heralded Israel as our great ally, and talked about how worried he was for his beloved Jewish friends as anti-Semitism grew on the left and right.

Now he's here to boast that "leaders in both parties" called him this week to profusely thank him for his service to the bipartisan DC agenda. The once-wannabe radical has fully transformed into a prime media instrument for the establishment that once threatened to destroy him. Both parties are now grateful to him for defending their prerogatives and positions.

One thing is for sure: other than Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, nobody's future is brighter at CNN once Larry Ellison's son buys up Warner Brothers and CNN and puts Bari Weiss in charge with the sole mandate to turn the network into an even more vigorous Israeli propaganda network than CBS News has become.

[Nathan J Robinson @NathanJRobinson]

if Trump rounded up thousands of leftists and put them in detention camps, the Atlantic would run Jon Chait and James Kirchick columns arguing that while they disapprove of concentration camps it was ultimately "the chickens of left illiberalism coming home to roost"

[Andrey X @the_andrey_x]

They threw rocks at a pregnant woman and poured gasoline onto a sleeping baby through the window...