Brian Hawkins

@brianhawkins.bsky.social

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Durham, NC.

Interested in: ideas large and small; ethics and tech; pedestrian and bicycle safety; food and cooking; horror, sci-fi, and comics; metal; politics when necessary

Day job: multidisciplinary programs in sustainability and global health

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Brian Hawkins

If the shooting was “not related to the RNC,” why would cops from Columbus, Ohio be involved in the first place? Also, pretty on the nose for cops from a red state to come to a blue city and kill a homeless black guy on the second night of the RNC. www.jsonline.com/story/news/c...

Milwaukee man dead after being shot by 5 Ohio police officers near RNCwww.jsonline.com The man killed by Ohio officers near the RNC on Tuesday was well-known in the neighborhood, several witnesses told the Journal Sentinel.

The term of justices is (arguably) set by the constitution. The number of justices is absolutely not. Just saying.

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Brian Hawkins

Just a reminder: Trump inherited the lowest homicide rate of any president in 50 years. He was the first president in 30 years to leave office with a higher homicide rate than when he entered. And the rate has dropped every year since he left. www.foxnews.com/video/635815...

RNC day 2 to focus on crime and safety as victims' families speak out | Fox News Videowww.foxnews.com Erin Rachwal, who lost her son to fentanyl poisoning and Sheri and Aaron Sparks, who lost their son in the Waukesha parade attack, on the need to hold criminals accountable and stop the influx of illi...

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Brian Hawkins

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump does not erase the crimes that Trump himself has committed against American democracy, or the crimes he would commit if given the chance, and no one is obligated to pretend otherwise www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

Nothing About the Attempted Assassination Redeems Trumpwww.theatlantic.com This crime does not erase what the former president has done, or what he has promised to do.

Big shout-out to the City of Durham’s bulk brush collection service. I had a ~30-ft branch fall this weekend, did what I could with my temperamental 16” chainsaw in this heat (which still left some big pieces). One Call yesterday, all gone this morning!

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Brian Hawkins

This is the best book review ever written and it took 15 seconds to do.

Good day to revisit this

Hillbillies Need No Elegy — THE BITTER SOUTHERNERbittersoutherner.com In the new book “Appalachian Reckoning,” dozens of mountain voices combine to talk back to J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” arguments. Today, an exclusive story from its co-editor and a powerful essay...

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Brian Hawkins

time to dust this one off. amen.

Vance is, you guessed it, an adult Catholic convert

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Brian Hawkins

Yes but back then he thought it was a bad thing.

Trump’s VP pick also once called Trump “America’s Hitler”

“The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.”

There is a certain symmetry between a guy who's spent his entire public life pretending to be ultra-wealthy choosing a guy who's spent his entire public life pretending to have been ultra-poor

Guys I don't think that flesh wound softened him up

The Supreme Court launched what little faith I had left in American institutions into the sun two weeks ago.

WSJ this morning. lol at the last bit. "Leaders on both sides need to stop describing the stakes of the election in apocalyptic terms. Democracy won't end if one or the other candidate is elected. Fascism is not aborning if Mr. Trump wins, unless you have little faith in American institutions."

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Brian Hawkins

I learned today that I am now the same age as "Old Batman" in Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns" and I confess to having some feelings about that

I really resent having to play phone tag with someone to give them (a very large sum of) money.

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Brian Hawkins

Artist Duke Riley uses discarded bottles of engine coolant, bleach and Gatorade to bend the rules of an artform that’s become illegal to practice using the customary whalebone. A piece of his recently acquired by the New Bedford Whaling Museum depicts a grim scene of industrial pollution.

Not your grandfather’s scrimshaw: Duke Riley engraves pollution scenes on ocean plasticwww.wbur.org Artist Duke Riley uses discarded bottles of engine coolant, bleach and Gatorade to bend the rules of an artform that’s become illegal to practice using the customary whalebone. A piece of his recently...

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Brian Hawkins

my biggest creative passion in life is ‘the project I’m not supposed to be working on right now’

This is really good, @anamariecox.bsky.social

Ok, Doomeropen.substack.com Some thoughts on the benefits of hopelessness.

I don’t think this makes anything worse but that’s mostly because of how bad it was already

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Brian Hawkins

Good illustration of two points: 1) American political history is a lot more violent than we're taught in schools, and the era that's ending now is the aberration 2) one reason why that higher baseline level of political violence is left out of the narrative is because of who the victims were.

#tdih July 13, 1863: New York City Draft Riots and Massacre “[Rioters] set the city’s colored orphan asylum on fire…[and] shot, burned, and hanged African Americans…[and many] people were thrown into the rivers to drown.” www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/dr...

July 13, 1863: New York City Draft Riots and Massacrewww.zinnedproject.org The New York City Draft Massacre (“Riots”) were the largest civil insurrection in U.S. history besides the Civil War itself. White mobs attacked the African American community — committing murder and ...

No other single person in the modern era is more responsible for normalizing political violence than Donald Trump.

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Brian Hawkins

I’ll say one other thing; I don’t care how many hours have passed since the assassination attempt, there are just some people I’m not willing to take lessons on violent or irresponsible rhetoric from, or hear them out in good faith ever on this issue. Get fucked, fuck off, next.

apnews.com/article/jan-...

Trump posted what he said was Obama's address, prosecutors say. An armed man was soon arrested thereapnews.com Federal prosecutors say former President Donald Trump posted on his social media platform what he claimed was the home address of former President Barack Obama the same day a man with guns in his van ...

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Brian Hawkins

Area man’s chickens arrive home to roost.

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Brian Hawkins

Just a reminder: it’s good to oppose assassinations. But you are under absolutely no obligation to treat Trumpists and Trump-apologists as people who are honest, or acting in good faith, when they purport to condemn political violence or violent rhetoric. They’re not sincere.

You don’t have to have an opinion. You don’t have to seek out terrible opinions. And you don’t have to wish anyone well if you don’t.

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Brian Hawkins

Dr. Ruth “defended abortion rights, suggested older people have sex after a good night’s sleep and was an outspoken advocate of condom use … In the 1980s, she stood up for gay men at the height of the AIDS epidemic and spoke out loudly for the LGBTQ community.” apnews.com/article/ruth...

Dr. Ruth Westheimer, America’s diminutive and pioneering sex therapist, dies at 96apnews.com Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the diminutive sex therapist who became a pop icon, media star and best-selling author through her frank talk about once-taboo bedroom topics, has died.

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Brian Hawkins

a new life awaits you in the offline colonies

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Brian Hawkins

Anti-Blackness on Bluesky shows up in a HUGE way again. First Tressie then Jamelle. The South has something to say and its Black intellectuals are being harassed here repeatedly. It's fucking bullshit.

Folks, most of y/our employers are problematic. That’s who has the money.

More people just need to be told to fuck off into the sun, loudly and more often