@mdbento
Native San Diegan. Humanities professor Kentucky (Film Studies, Peace/Conflict Studies, and Writing/Rhetoric). Think, share & live fully - stay awake, stay wild, inspire others! Anti-Authoritarian, Dialogic, Nemophilist, Radical Democracy, Wanderer/Wondere
Chris Murphy: "We're gonna have Americans dying, and the end result is going to be hard line leadership continues in Iran and we don't get rid of their nuclear program. That's a moral and strategic disaster for the country."
just saying
This is going to be the response of countries around the world. The bully will leave you alone if you get them.
A group of right-wing Congressional Representatives has introduced a federal book banning bill in Congress.
Every month the United States provides even more reason to boycott its products and companies — the strikes on Iran being just the latest.
In light of that, it’s a great time to ditch the products and services of US tech companies. I made a comprehensive guide to help you.
Calling it AI and saying its "handling" this is participating in the nonsense, it is at its core a statistical model that spits out words based on its training set nothing less nothing more, in the case of Grok a particularly poorly constructed one. It will never be "ready to handle breaking news"
Ezra Klein: Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way
Charlie Kirk: Jail every doctor who has treated transgender children.
(Source: www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk...)
New book on the 90s film 'The Crow' newbooksnetwork.com/it-cant-rain...
Everyone seems allergic to the word, but Charlie Kirk was not an activist, he was a propagandist. Turning Point was a meme factory backed by a billionaire designed to steer kids towards Christian Nationalism. He didn’t advocate for policy; he spun narratives to change beliefs. Propaganda.
Snip from https://archive.org/details/americanviolence0000hofs/page/n5/mode/1up?view=theater&q=exceptional "While we may find violence undesirable, we can hardly find it unnatural. The United States, even with its considerable record of violence, appears not as some mutant monster among the peoples of the world but rather as a full-fledged and somewhat boisterous member of the fellowship of human frailty. What is most exceptional about the Americans is not the voluminous record of their violence, but their extraordinary ability, in the face of that record, to persuade themselves that they are among the best-behaved and best-regulated of peoples."
“What is most exceptional about the Americans is not the voluminous record of their violence but their extraordinary ability in the face of that record to persuade themselves that they are among the best behaved and best regulated of peoples.”
- Richard Hofstadter, American Violence, 1970 🗃️
RIP Charlie Kirk. May all who mourn find solace in knowing that he believed gun deaths were “worth it,” “prudent,” and “rational.”
19 people have been killed in the protests in Nepal
peoplesdispatch.org/2025/09/09/n...
I don't use ChatGPT or knowingly any AI service (I'm constantly refusing them), just passing it along for those that do ai.plainenglish.io/the-digital-...
The Supreme Court is allowing Trump to pause billions in foreign aid spending appropriated by Congress. www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...
Thinking about difference, while living under a government that fears it
internationalfilmstudies.blogspot.com/2025/09/mich...
If you are not ready to say goodbye to summer, but you are looking forward to Spooktober letterboxd.com/journal/unde...
Inspiration? The youth have to step up when their aging elites turn anti-democratic! I hope both American parties are paying attention; its clear why they fear student protests.
www.bbc.com/news/article...
Need this to get national attention, this is such a massive victory for people in Atlanta.
Teaching this film tonight - online archive of resources for my students:
internationalfilmstudies.blogspot.com/2025/09/pans...
Ben Wheatley crafts a suitable John Wick spin with the Bob Odenkirk-led #Normal.
Read @jaredmobarak.com's TIFF review: thefilmstage.com/tiff-review-...
Director Joe Wright's new series on MUBI US looks great and timely!: "Traces the birth of Fascism in Italy and Mussolini’s ascent with an innovative approach that has sparked debate about the Fascist dictator’s legacy in Italy and abroad."
mubi.com/en/us/series...
The judge who overturned Trump's freeze of funding to Harvard is Jewish and described the administration's exploitation of antisemitism as a "smokescreen"
BREAKING: Trump orders the military to fly fighter jets over anyone demanding the Epstein files.
"... Han's alternative to classic western ideas abt subjectivity. We talk about Zen as a religion without God. Substance and emptiness. Alternatives to the reified self. Dwelling nowhere. Original friendliness. And death as an event we desperately try to control."
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...
"world’s leading genocide scholars’ association has approved a resolution establishing that Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide as found in the Genocide Convention, constituting war crimes and crimes against humanity."
www.democracynow.org/2025/9/2/ram...
An online archive of resources for the film I am teaching tonight:
internationalfilmstudies.blogspot.com/2025/09/blac...
