Patrick John Gillam

@patrickgillam.bsky.social

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I’m not Christian in any conventional sense, but I love this thought in John 9:3:

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”

A good thought whenever I behold something needing fixing.

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When I see developmental hierarchies such as those from from Lawrence Kohlberg and Ken Wilber, I see liberalism arising out of conservatism. For that reason, I’m surprised liberals can’t relate better to conservatives. Liberals have been there. Maybe no patience for something they’ve left behind?

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Patrick John Gillam

we were now in that enchanted calm which they say lurks at the heart of every commotion

I condemn this attack on President Trump.

There’s a scene in 1983’s “The Big Chill” where Jeff Goldblum’s college friends tease him for becoming a reporter for People magazine. Let’s pretend this Project 2025 rundown is his reply.

NYT: Biden’s Age Raises Concerns That Biden Old People Fucking Magazine: Detailed but accessible explanation of Trump’s governing agenda people.com/what-is-proj...

What Is Project 2025? Inside the Far-Right Plan Threatening Everything from the Word 'Gender' to Public Educationpeople.com Donald Trump's far-right allies created Project 2025 as a blueprint for his possible second term. The controversial plan would push a Christian nationalist agenda that dramatically reshapes the U.S. g...

Listening to “A Brief History of Everything” yesterday I heard Ken Wilber (via the narrator) say every solution to an old problem creates a new problem, which is at once the world’s worst d’oh observation and its most profound. Just admit that a proposed fix will need fixing in turn.

Girls on Top Hat

Merge two films Run Logan's Run

These Lincoln Project people are so good at messaging. youtu.be/NpLpOtFNFWg “Aftermath”

Aftermathyoutu.be Donald Trump’s plan for America is no secret. Beating Trump this November is the only mission. The Lincoln Project invites you to take a peek at the terrible...

Leave it to the Germans to have a word for it: the unitary executive + the Alito court + Project 2025: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichs...

Gleichschaltung - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

@wlknsn.xyz Next time you’re in New Hampshire, hit me up for a hike. A fellow Marshalltonian, I.

“There are no such things as errors. How can there be errors if everything comes from divine sources? There are spheres where all errors are transformed into truth.” —from “Errors,” by Isaac Bashevis Singer #errors

Pretty wild to hear Lou Reed’s 1972 David Bowie-produced “Walk on the Wild Side” today while conservatives are trying to outlaw the queerness the song celebrated *52 years ago.*

I don’t think Chief Justice Roger Taney ever regretted his Dred Scott decision, and he died before the Civil War closed, so he never saw the decision’s full impact. But former President James Buchanan actually took heat from fleeing war refugees. I think John Roberts may be like Buchanan.

Yes, he’s an asshole, but in this callout quote, he’s correct. We libs need to make damn sure we don’t get violent. Don’t get violent first, and with luck, don’t get violent at all, no matter how bad things get. When Trump refuses to leave office in 2029, then we can talk about it.

Heritage Foundation president celebrates Supreme Court presidential immunity ruling: "We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be" www.mediamatters.org/project-2025...

Heritage Foundation president celebrates Supreme Court immunity decision: "We are in the process of the second American Revolution"www.mediamatters.org

My wife watched all the seasons of “Breaking Bad” except the last one, the final eight episodes. It was just too stressful, she said. That’s how I feel about the news. I’ve been devoting hours a day to the news for the last nine years, but now it’s just too much.

I’ve been listening to Hilary Mantel’s “A Place of Greater Safety,” her book about leading figures in the French Revolution. Turns out the guillotine was actually a practical and humane improvement on having the mobs hack the privileged to pieces.

Not making any threats here, just thinking out loud as a historian — do they people brazenly pushing for impunity for the wealthy elites not know what traditionally comes next?

It’s a good day to remind myself how prospects appeared dark for the United States of America early in the Revolutionary War, early in the Civil War, and early in World War II. Then we won all three. Not that we’re in a shooting war. Not that it must come to that. But as crises go, that’s a pattern.

The Obama interregnum relieved some anxiety for a while, but mostly this century has felt like I’m riding a train whose tracks are headed off a cliff. So I’ve been bingeing Strauss and Howe’s work on historical cycles. Howe says we’re in a crisis cycle, which’ll get worse before it gets better.

Neighbors recycled their Trump yard sign from 2020. All it took was some black tape over irrelevant information. I checked the back of the sign, facing away from the road, and sure enough, there he is. It’s tempting to write “Hang Mike“ in matching letters and flip the sign around.

The Big 3 generic meditation practices—focused attention, open awareness, and automatic self-transcending—are NOT methods for quieting thoughts. Rather, they create opportunities for awareness to be aware of itself.

ok i have another quote tweet prompt. what's something, big or small, related to your job or hobby, that most people don't know that you would like to have them know? it can be a concept, a piece of history, some vocabulary, or something else.

The ageism against Baby Boomers on social media, especially TikTok, surpasses simple prejudice. It dances between vitriol and outright despising. I understand that technically it’s punching up and hence “OK,” but with some half of us unable to retire and growing frail, it unsettles one.

The Unguents and Future King #MakeABookGreasy

Nineteen Eighty 10w40 #MakeABookGreasy

Mourning Becomes Olestra #makeabookgreasy

If u see this post a wolf

if u see this post a wolf

Show a picture from your phone that has your energy that’s not a selfie.

show me a picture on your phone that has your energy that's not a selfie

I’ve seen this observed on social media, so it’s fun to have data back it up: Everybody’s idea of The Good Life is the way life was before they grew up. “The good old days when America was ‘great’ were whatever decade you were 11.” wapo.st/3WXd9xS

Analysis | America’s best decade, according to datawapo.st When pollsters asked Americans when America had the best economy, most moral society or best music, one variable best predicted their answers. It wasn’t race, gender or politics.

Updated variations: “Great artificial intelligence imitates and improves, whereas small AI steals and spoils.” —After W. H. Davenport Adams “Immature AI imitates; mature AI steals.” —After T. S. Eliot quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/a...

Good Artists Copy; Great Artists Steal – Quote Investigator®quoteinvestigator.com

I need to start tracking the segues that life hands me. The latest has been to finish watching a series about a Russian count the Soviet state deemed a “former person” to almost immediately listen to a podcast that just happens to talk about other categories of suspect people.

“The Visual Display of Quantitative Information” meets “How Not to Be Wrong”

As a designer, I want to tell you why charts like this are bullshit. But it'd be a lengthy thread, and Bluesky hates threads, so I'm not sure if I'd be wasting my time.

After a year of following dog training videos I finally watched one that explains why my efforts have been so disappointing. I avoid leashing up, but the trainer doesn’t let a dog off leash until Fido is sure to obey. Otherwise, it learns obedience is optional. Time to decide how serious I am.

What would your totem, inscription, and name be? Mine would be a mug imprinted with “Patrick son of Skip could scroll for hours over a series of hot beverages.”

300 pound ancient Greek rock carved with "Bybon son of Phola could lift this over his head" I want to know, is he single?