Trump
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On white supremacist vegetables and watchful eyes.
There have always been watchful eyes on our farmers market — it’s down the street from the county jail.
45, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, Bastards of the Reagan Era, Bloomington, Bloomington farmers market, Bloomington fourth street festival, Bloomington Indiana, conservative, Donald Trump, executing drug dealers, family klan, farmers market, fourth street festival, hate, hate speech, high school, high school white supremacists, identitarian, Identity Evropa, identity politics, jail, jail poetry, jail windows, KKK, Klan, M.G., Market, norms of public discourse, norms of social media, poetry in jail, poetry reading, PotUS, prison, protest, public discourse, racial injustice, Reginald Dwayne Betts, right wing, right-wing terrorists, Sarah Dye, social media, social media outrage, spoken word tent, teaching in jail, teaching poetry in jail, teaching writing in jail, Terrance Hayes, terrorism, Trump, Twitter, unsafe spaces, what it's like to write in jail, white identity, white supremacist, white supremacist terrorists, white supremacists, white supremacists at the farmers market, white supremacy, you don't seem to want it but you wanted it, you don't seem too haunted but you haunted
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On the moon landing, and who benefits if you believe it was faked.
Who benefits if you believe the moon landing was faked? The people who want to prevent our government from helping you.
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On the celebration of Neanderthals.
Neanderthal were more like us than scientists once thought … but, in our current political atmosphere, I can’t feel comfortable celebrating them.
45, epidermal melanin, extinction, genetic inheritence, Homo sapiens, human evolution, human extinction, human migration, immigration, inherited privilege, macrofauna extinction, migration, migration laws, Neanderthal, Neanderthal DNA, Neanderthal genes, Neanderthal stories, Neanderthals, prehistory, President Trump, race, racism, Trump, white supremacists, white supremacy
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On national borders and the disappearance of our universe’s only known habitable planet.
We all share one planet, but selfish decisions made within a single nation’s borders could destroy it.
45, addiction, Amazon, Amazon Rainforest, Animal Man, biological abundance, biological diversity, biological fecundity, Brazil, Brazilian presidency, caterpillar, climate change, climate refuges, David Wallace-Wells, DC comics, deforestation, Donald Trump, environment, environmentalism, falling insect populations, fatherhood, fossil fuels, GBI, global warming, global wealth tax, Grant Morrison, guaranteed basic income, immigration, immigration crisis, inequality, insect populations, Jair Bolsonaro, Mexico, Michael McCarthy, Michoacan, Midwest, milkweed, mining in Michoacan, mining in the Amazon, Molly Crabapple, monarch wintering sites, national borders, oil, oil companies, parenting, pesticides, President Trump, raising caterpillars, raising monarch butterflies, raising Monarchs, refugee crisis, renewable energy, solar energy, The Moth Snowstorm, The Uninhabitable Earth, Trump, vegan, vegan comic books, vegan comics, vegan superhero, vegan superheroes, veganism, vegetarian comic books, vegetarian comics, vegetarian superhero, vegetarian superheroes, vegetarianism, Where Else Can They Go
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On storytelling in games.
Of course games can be art! There are certain stories, like tales of moral complicity, that games tell better than any other form of media.
45, Abu Ghraib, atrocities, board game design, board games, Bruce Weigl, computer games, console games, Donald Trump, experiental art, fascism, fighting fascism, following orders, game design, games as art, Grand Theft Auto, Grand Theft Auto as art, GTA, Life on Mars, Marco Arnaudo, marcowargamer, Milgram Experiment, moral complicity, moral depravity, moral failure, multimedia art, narrative potential of games, politics, PotUS, psychology, psychology experiments, psychology experiments as role-playing games, Rockstar Games, Rockstar North, role playing, RPG, second person novels, Secret Hitler, Stanford Prison Experiment, storytelling in games, Storytelling in the Modern Board Game, The Soldier’s Brief Epistle, torture, torture in Grand Theft Auto, Tracy K Smith, Tracy Smith, Trump, war crimes
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On extraction.
The womb-suckers are trying to eat your children. Poke a soda straw into the future and sluuurp, away they go. Hopes and dreams, metabolized today into so many dollar bills. I spend a fair bit of time with drug dealers. Most are ethical people – they wanted to ingest drugs, and they knew some other people who…
45, alternative energy, ancient sunlight, anti-life, arctic drilling, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, arctic refuge, atmospheric science, big government Republicans, Bolsonaro, Brazil, carbon, carbon neutral, chemical energy, children, cigarettes, climate change, climate destabilization, CO2, coal, coal industry, combustion, diet for a healthy planet, Donald Trump, drill, drilling, drug dealers, eating the future, ethics, extraction, feedback loop, fossil fuels, future-eater, gasoline, global warming, gold mines, greenhouse gases, hamburgers, hydrocarbons, Jair Bolsonaro, laziness, lobbyists, meth, methamphetamines, national parks, natural wonders, nature, oil, oil subsidies, peril, petrolium, PotUS, pro-life, propaganda, rehab, renewable energy, routine, self-destructive behavior, selfishness, solar energy, solar power, starvation, starving future children, stored sunlight, Trump, vegan, Venus, wildlife refuge, womb sucker
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On alternate truths.
Sometimes the alternatives are jarring – you look and count a certain number, another person proffers a radically different amount. Surely one of you is mistaken. In the United States, there’s a rift between those who overestimate certain values (size of inauguration crowds, number of crimes committed by immigrants, votes cast by non-citizens, rates of…
45, almond milk, alternate truths, alternative facts, anarchy, animal welfare, capitalism, cashew milk, citizenship, civil liberties, crowd size, dairy industry, extremism, free market capitalism, government, government intervention, Henri Taijfel, overestimaters, political philosophy, politics, property rights, psych experiments, psychology, soy milk, Trump, underestimaters, us vs. them, vegan, veganism
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On intent.
Our criminal justice system routinely destroys lives after divining a person’s intent from actions. But now, suddenly, we need proof.
45, bankrupting the U.S. government, climate change, collusion, conspiracy, Donald Trump, falling tax receipts, handouts to billionaires, heroin, impeachment, inequality, intent to sell, interference in free elections, Is Trump a Russian agent, jail, kickbacks, mass incarceration, methamphetamine, political kickbacks, politics, possession with intent, PotUS, President Trump, proof, racial injustice, racist policing, Rikers, Russian agent, Russian collution, sabotage, soda straw, straw, Trump
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On protest, the Supreme Court, and autocratic minority rule.
I was planning an essay on cell phones and surveillance. The central thesis was that our Supreme Court is a massively flawed institution. Many of our current Supreme Court justices are both willfully ignorant and opportunistically illogical. This set of people are not exceptionally knowledgeable, nor are they particularly clever. But we have given them…
45, changing demographics of the United States, detention centers, Donald Trump, free market, gerrymandering, hate machines, human migration, immigration, immigration detention centers, incarceration, Issac Bailey, migration, minority control, murder, My Brother Moochie, political power, PotUS, property rights, SCOTUS, Supreme Court, Supreme Court opinions, supressing influence, Trump, U.S. politics, United States, violence, wilful ignorance, wrenching apart families
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On idle time, coincidence, and Vivek Shanbhag’s ‘Ghachar Ghochar.’
An idle mind often reads supernatural portent into every coincidence.
45, Annie Jacobsen, atheists in foxholes, author as God, CIA, coincidence, conspiracy, conspiracy theory, curse, Donald Trump, foreshadowing, fraud, germination of supernatural belief, Ghachar Ghochar, hewn stone, idle, idle mind, jubilee, lost car keys, Magic, numerology, Phenomena, PotUS, precognition, prophecy, Puharich, science, speculation, Srinath Perur, statistical manipulation, statistical significance, supernatural, Trump, Vivek Shanbhag, wealth
Frank Brown Cloud 