Zeb Larson

@zeblarson.bsky.social

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Freelance writer with a PhD in history. Ex-academic; studied the anti-apartheid movement. Emeritus adjunct. Became a software engineer in 2020.
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This is up there with the most aggressively stupid things I’ve ever read. Aaron Sorkin would laugh this shit out of the room. I cannot believe these folks have platforms. How does our “elite” underperform this much? (I know, I know).

Hey you guys wanna see the dumbest plan to replace Biden possible? www.semafor.com/article/07/0...

Time to grapple with my impostor syndrome, i.e. Zeb is working on his freelance writing resume.

I have *lots* of opinions about great covers, but this one takes a Beatles song that I think is fairly mediocre when they do it and massively levels it up. (Yeah, I think "Let It Be" is overrated)

Other than Hurt by Johnny Cash and any version of The Sound of Silence, what are your favorite cover versions of famous songs?

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filmfreakcentral.net/2024/07/beve...

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024) - FILM FREAK CENTRALfilmfreakcentral.net *½/**** starring Eddie Murphy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Taylour Paige, Kevin Bacon screenplay by Will Beall and Tom Gormican & Kevin Etten directed by Matt Molloy by Walter Chaw Two things about Beverly ...

We needed a Yugo for rich engineering managers who are hated by all of the other engineering managers

I for one am glad the Cybertruck exists bc what other vehicle is out there providing nonstop hits like this

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Zeb Larson

Idk, maybe listening to folks who said we shouldn’t support people who defend Assad or dismiss women in pink hats out of hand instead of viciously attacking them as tools of imperialism or centrists is instructive here

Ken Klippenstein is streaming with George Galloway. The Young Turks are hosting RFK Jr. One ex bernie spokesperson is streaming with candace owens and another is defending Nick Fuentes. Brianna Wu is hanging with lauren southern. Maybe now is the time to re-evaluate how the left chooses celebrities.

I mean, faculty have basically presided over the destruction of their own profession thus far. Why change course now?

Also known as “training your replacement.” 😩

Morehouse to be the first university to use virtual AI teaching assistantswww.axios.com The Atlanta HBCU will have AI teaching assistants this fall.

Jesus, 2024’s election memes are going to be excruciating

Between the election sucking up all the oxygen in the room AND editors getting slammed with LLM nonsense 24/7, I can barely get people to send me rejections on my pitches right now. Even people I have a relationship with aren't getting back to me.

I see my fellow millennials panicking because we're not cool anymore (if ever we were) and here's the thing: THIS IS COMPLETELY NORMAL. Things would be truly fucked if a bunch of 21 year-olds thought a bunch of 37 year-olds with crippling student debt, jobs, and no houses were cool.

Some Millennials in my timeline are insecure because Gen Zs are telling them their ankle socks age them. I can't stress enough that you don't need to care about what a bunch of 20-somethings think about your clothes, mainly bc you don't have to care about what ANYONE thinks about your clothes.

I have this vivid memory of visiting General Pickett’s Buffet in Gettysburg in 2002. Yes, we’re going to see so much more of this. (Also, General Pickett’s Buffet did not have 20th Maine Lobster anywhere on the menu and this was a grievous miss)

This tweet just made me think of that Virginia restaurant’s 9/11 menu from 2022. I have to believe we’re going to get so much more of this as the years drag on.

I worry about the Boomers

go into your photo roll or whatever and post the first image that makes you laugh literally out loud

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Zeb Larson

The GOP’s nominee to run the 9th most populous state just called for killing people who disagree with the far-right and that sentiment was echoed by the head of Heritage and the man behind Project 2025. But like 90% of all political news is about Democratic hand-wringing over Biden’s debate flop.

Why do we need bots talking to bots? I can already watch career coaches on LinkedIn do that 24/7.

There’s a weird pleasure in muting annoying or obnoxious accounts before I interact with them, because I like to imagine them angrily typing to me three months later and I can’t see a goddamned thing.

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yikes dot com

Honestly, everything with Biden feels like a mass hysteria. We've gone from him seeming old on a debate stage to the New Yorker sending me a piece asking whether the 25th should be invoked. What the fuck is even happening? Did somebody drug me?

I too would love to chain smoke Thai sticks and be encouraged to publish whatever the fuck came out of my addled mouth.

Opinion: It’s Time for the Biden Campaign to Embrace AIwww.huffpost.com After the president's dismal debate performance, he noted that he “might not walk as easily or talk as smoothly as I used to.” AI could help with this.

Any time I publish something with Teen Vogue, the fact-checkers lay siege to me. EVERYTHING has to be backed up. And you know what? As exhausting as it is in the moment, it makes a better piece.

I have published hundreds of opinion essays (as well as reported features and other kinds of pieces). But just for opinion essays – and they have always required a certain minimum level of evidence, and sometimes a ton of evidence.

I know this makes me a weird Columbus townie, but people in the neighborhood that borders where I live set out lawn chairs for their 4th of July parade two weeks ahead of time. It is still one of the weirdest fucking things I've seen and I mock Upper Arlington for it on the regular.

Let’s stop pretending that parades are fun amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/07/...

Let’s stop pretending that parades are fun | CNNamp.cnn.com They’re an American pastime, but we can do better.

It is also not a surprise to learn that a faux-monarchist looks like somebody who wandered in from a Magic: The Gathering tournament.

Suprise: unwashed fascist ghoul Matthew Walther - who wrote a column that the New York Times just published advising Americans not to vote - did in fact vote in 2020 and 2022. It’s time for us to stop tolerating these ratfucking liars.

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People showing up to the PAWG meeting are going to be seriously disappointed

Now we're in "damned if we do, damned if we don't" land. If he stays in but can't immediately assure everybody he's fine, it's very bad. If he lingers too long and then bows out, it perpetuates the dems in chaos narrative. If there's a fight over the candidacy, we all lose.

I think the freakout has been absurd and overblown and far more damaging than the debate itself, which would have been survivable if everyone had been willing to circle the wagons and push back on it I am, from a purely pragmatic standpoint, extremely concerned that the damage cannot be overcome

This is one of the problems with the Supreme Court in this country, or rather, the Fourth Estate and the Supreme Court. This is the kind of coverage we get days after somebody voted to make presidents above the law: a fucking puff piece.

People showing up to the PAWG meeting are going to be seriously disappointed

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Zeb Larson

It makes me feel very much unmoored from reality to see all this *buying into* the Biden Too Old ratfuck narrative, days after the Supreme Court ruled that Trump gets to be dictator for life, just weeks after Trump became a convicted felon (oh, and there’s the Epstein stuff that just came out).

It really is making *me* feel crazy to see a bunch of other Democrat voters running around screaming about how Biden is now unelectable, on the basis of one bad debate and an incredibly obvious ratfucking campaign by America’s most craven newspaper.

I say this as somebody emotionally and politically unattached to Biden, as well as somebody who has been, eh, pretty sanguine about November: this week has been a fucking horror show politically. Also, I had a lot of shit I needed to do this week, and lost a lot of it to doomscrolling.

My pride about my piece in Diplomatic History is ever-tempered by who I see citing me. Glad to see a year and a half of work going to...the Legatum Institute... (But please cite me anyway, I'm using my citation count to taunt somebody at work)

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Ohio won’t vote on a minimum wage measure after supporters failed to get enough signatures in 44 of 88 counties—which burdens liberals but not conservatives. Trump won half the counties by 40 points or more. He won Ohio by just 8. The 7 Biden counties cast 42% of 2020 votes. The reddest 44 had 15%

$15 minimum wage advocates fail to meet signature requirements for November ballotwww.wosu.org Advocates for a $15 minimum wage needed to collect more than 413,000 valid signatures from at least half of Ohio's 88 counties by Wednesday’s deadline. Ohio Fair Wage said it wouldn’t meet the 44-coun...

What emerges is that there’s an editorial class that wants to do anything other than write articles about Trump being a threat to democracy and Biden being the obvious choice in comparison, so they’ll green light the absolute stupidest takes on this issue.

Wild to watch horserace journalists suggest the most politically suicidal shit and pretend it's savvy. www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...