Jason Read 's avatar

Jason Read

@jasonread.bsky.social

1121 followers 668 following 1479 posts

Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern Maine, Author of The Double Shift: Spinoza and Marx on the Politics of Work from Verso Books:
www.versobooks.com/products/2920-the-double-shift
More here:
www.unemployednegativity.com

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Dani cRabaiotti 🦀's avatar Dani cRabaiotti 🦀 @danirabaiotti.bsky.social
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So I want to talk about this from the perspective of someone who does professional fact checking as part of my work. For some years now I have been paid to check TV and written content themed around animals to make sure it is factually accurate. Chat GPT & AI has made that job so much harder.

9 replies 213 reposts 408 likes

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Michael Tae Sweeney's avatar Michael Tae Sweeney @mtsw.bsky.social
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lmao FUCK THIS. Trump's Project 2025 wants to take money out of your wallet and give it to your boss

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Jason Read 's avatar Jason Read @jasonread.bsky.social
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It is not that the Democrats don’t know that one of the best ways to fight fascism is with a broad popular front encompassing leftist reforms. They know, that is why they are not fighting.

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Jason Read 's avatar Jason Read @jasonread.bsky.social
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I included this footnote in The Double Shift because I did want to give credit where credit was due, and One Dimensional Woman was an influential book for me. I knew that Nina had changed quite a bit then, but if I knew what I know now I would have cited someone else.

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Jason Read 's avatar Jason Read @jasonread.bsky.social
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I know a lot of people who just thought that the best that could happen in the run up to this election is that one or both of them die: it is, however, unsettling to learn that this is basically the Democratic Party’s plan.

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Kelsey Atherton's avatar Kelsey Atherton @atherton.bsky.social
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Can't stop thinking about the McSweeney's Sad Dad Bands, (first published January 14, 2022.)

Back on Twitter, I started a thread of my own riffs on Sad Dad Bands on January 17, 2022. Here is that thread, recreated.
www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/wha...

24 replies 72 reposts 243 likes

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D.N. Schmidt, Space Opera Author 🛸's avatar D.N. Schmidt, Space Opera Author 🛸 @writepop.bsky.social
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Happy hundredth anniversary of this news headline from The Daily Times, New Philadelphia, Ohio. (July 9, 1924.)

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Jason Read 's avatar Jason Read @jasonread.bsky.social
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I would love to learn how City Lights ended up publishing the little book on Spinoza. I assume it has something to do with Robert Hurley (translator and one of the translators of Anti-Oedipus) living in SF and being part of the literary/publishing scene there, but it still seems like an odd choice.

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Jason Read 's avatar Jason Read @jasonread.bsky.social
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t is funny to me that Deleuze's two books on Spinoza were published by two para-academic publishers, especially given how scholarly the Expressionism book is at least for Deleuze, and it says a lot about the status of Spinoza scholarship in the US at that time.

1 replies 0 reposts 5 likes

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Chantal James's avatar Chantal James @chantalalive.bsky.social
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One month of being activist in the most cringey & performative ways possible after George Floyd years ago is the last time the white mainstream pretended it cared about Black issues. Since then, crickets.

1 replies 5 reposts 17 likes

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Puff the Magic Hater's avatar Puff the Magic Hater @mskellymhayes.bsky.social
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I don't get it when people point out that Project 2025 is "nothing new." Yes, obviously, right-wingers have been fanatics for decades. They were blowing up abortion clinics and shooting doctors when I was a kid. But, as you may have noticed, their political vision has kind of been coming together.

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Jason Read 's avatar Jason Read @jasonread.bsky.social
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Texting my brother in Houston as he shelters in place through Beryl, losing power for the fourth time this year, makes me think of the absurdity that we are doing nothing about global warming even as global warming has already begun to profoundly affect our lives.

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Jason Read 's avatar Jason Read @jasonread.bsky.social
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I was invited to present on my book The Double Shift at Chantal Jaquet’s seminar Spinoza en toutes circumstances at the Sorbonne. This is a huge honor because I think the work that she and her colleagues are doing on Spinoza and social relations is very interesting.

2 replies 0 reposts 5 likes

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Shiv Ramdas's avatar Shiv Ramdas @nameshiv.bsky.social
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People hate the guy so much it overcame Jaws.

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Jason Read 's avatar Jason Read @jasonread.bsky.social
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That sounded too dismissive; it is a fine piece, but answering who Foucault really was does not address the question of how his name functions in contemporary “discourse” about the university. They are two separate questions

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b-boy bouiebaisse's avatar b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social
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one of the most dishonest things people in my profession do is pretend as if “the story” and “the narrative” isn’t something they have direct control over

42 replies 431 reposts 2054 likes

Jason Read 's avatar Jason Read @jasonread.bsky.social
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I thought that this was going to be a history of how the name "Foucault' often figures prominently in right wing critiques of the university, seen as the creator of everything from deconstruction to identity politics, but it is just a review of some recent books.
www.chronicle.com/article/mich...

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Jason Read 's avatar Jason Read @jasonread.bsky.social
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There is nothing that the Democratic Party loves to do more than place party sinecure over the will of its constituents.

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Jason Read 's avatar Jason Read @jasonread.bsky.social
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I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by online fame, shitposting edgy nakedly racist.

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Jason Read 's avatar Jason Read @jasonread.bsky.social
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All of this would make more sense if Biden was Bernie, and at least talked about raising tax rates on the Manhattan bankers the NYT caters to.

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Dr. Johnathan Flowers, Blade Wielding Bisexual (Lordean arc)'s avatar Dr. Johnathan Flowers, Blade Wielding Bisexual (Lordean arc) @shengokai.bsky.social
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Over at the Bad Place, I made a tradition of posting Douglass' "What, To The Slave, Is The Fourth of July," and I intend to carry on that tradition here. Since most versions you read in classes or in textbooks have parts omitted, the link below has the full text of the speech.

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Jason Read 's avatar Jason Read @jasonread.bsky.social
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Many white people think that racism is bad in the way that picking your nose is bad, if you are caught people will be grossed out, but it is actually bad in the way that shoving an ice pick up your nose is bad, it scrambles your brain and makes you an idiot.

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Jason Read 's avatar Jason Read @jasonread.bsky.social
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The “founding fathers” had lots of terrible ideas, such as racism, genocide, and patriarchy, but also some good ones, like the idea that the unchecked power of a king is bad. This Fourth of July it is worth noting that we threw out the latter in order to preserve what is left of the former.

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Jason Read 's avatar Jason Read @jasonread.bsky.social
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Day 47: Exposure to radioactive material producing more harmful tumors than beneficial mutations. Turtles seem incapable of grasping even the basics of ninjitsu. They mostly just eat the pepperonis off of the pizza.

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Jason Read 's avatar Jason Read @jasonread.bsky.social
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The confidence that everything is ultimately going to be okay is what makes it almost guaranteed that everything will not be okay.

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Alsvid Wotansdottir's avatar Alsvid Wotansdottir @alsvid.bsky.social
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I maintain that the brief moment when a few people stopped working and the government handed out money worked so well, it frightened the worst people in the world down to their bones. They glimpsed a better world momentarily and it scarred them.

4 replies 12 reposts 37 likes

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Andy Craig's avatar Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social
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LLMs are useless for lawyering and other tasks involving actual analysis and understanding not because the technology hasn't gotten there yet, but because that's fundamentally not what statistical word association is capable of doing. Not only can't it understand, it's not even trying to understand.

52 replies 392 reposts 1630 likes

Jason Read 's avatar Jason Read @jasonread.bsky.social
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Yes, it is written for a broader audience than Marx in the Anthropocene which might make it more or less appealing to some. I am teaching it in a public philosophy class

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Jason Read 's avatar Jason Read @jasonread.bsky.social
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No it doesn’t mention Power, but it does a good job of showing how the appeal of anti-trans arguments leads to other “natural hierarchies.” Some of the stuff on labor and gender in One Dimensional Woman are interesting in my opinion. It could have gone in a different direction

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Wagatwe Wanjuki's avatar Wagatwe Wanjuki @wagatwe.com
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surged 48%. for a mass plagiarism tool that tells you to eat rocks and glue.

13 replies 379 reposts 984 likes

Jason Read 's avatar Jason Read @jasonread.bsky.social
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Hegel famously said that for modern man reading the paper replaced morning prayers; he did live to see that ritual being replaced by doomscrolling. Perhaps each of these rituals should be seen as a different moment of spirit.

1 replies 0 reposts 9 likes

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Vicky ACAB's avatar Vicky ACAB @vickyacab.bsky.social
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A summary of my thoughts on the current moment, on the brutality of the flailing counterrevolution, of the weakness of the MAGA movement, and thoughts about how and where to start fighting back

3 replies 15 reposts 27 likes

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Joshua Foust 🪖🎮's avatar Joshua Foust 🪖🎮 @joshuafoust.com
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It can’t be repeated enough: transphobia is a warning sign for fascism. The rights of trans people are a canary in the mine, and when they’re assaulted it means we are all under assault.

6 replies 207 reposts 476 likes

Jason Read 's avatar Jason Read @jasonread.bsky.social
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I feel like the arguments about Biden dropping out are really a proxy conflict over the real issue and that is that many people wish we had a democratic party that was standing up to fascism (instead of using it as a fundraising device).

0 replies 1 reposts 15 likes

Jason Read 's avatar Jason Read @jasonread.bsky.social
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I saw my first cybertruck in person today and let me tell you that nothing, no amount of memes mocking it, prepares you for how ridiculous it looks.

2 replies 0 reposts 7 likes

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Derf Backderf's avatar Derf Backderf @derfbackderf.bsky.social
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Well.... so much for fleeing in exile to France.

2 replies 3 reposts 28 likes