Angus Johnston
@angus.bsky.social
CUNY history prof. @studentactivism from Twitter.
A good NYT overview of what the students did and didn’t win this spring, and what may be coming in the fall. www.nytimes.com/2024/05/17/u...
Good lord, what an evening I’ve had. Sometimes you just offer yourself up to the universe and things just … transpire.
I’m here to tell you that Gennifer Flowers runs a hell of a piano bar.
Nobody gets credit for Ent who didn’t put an exclamation point on it.
I beat to you ENT by a few minutes and I will not be looking for everyone who beat me to it
Just got asked by a tourist from overseas to take a photo of him and his mom. On Bourbon Street.
America: We ain’t done yet.
letterboxd.com/studentactiv...
Review of ‘Being There’ (1979) ★★★★
I really disliked this movie when I was a young Peter Sellers fan. Not because it "wasn't funny," or because it wasn't what I wanted from him, but ... well, for all the reasons it's not a very good…
letterboxd.comIt is possible that I rewatched Being There not many hours before posting this.
Anyone who is mad about what a student encampment settled for in its negotiations should bear in mind that summer is coming. And after that, autumn.
Coming up at the top of the hour. And yes, as promised, I will be wearing fae-appropriate attire.
I’m going to be on WFAE, Charlotte’s NPR station, for an hour tomorrow morning with the editor of UNC Charlotte’s student paper.
A look at this spring's campus protests and what may lie ahead
Protesters have impacted many schools including UNC Charlotte and UNC-Chapel Hill. Some graduation ceremonies have been disrupted; others canceled. Schools have taken different approaches to the prote...
www.wfae.orgThe cops at UCI have set up a perimeter around ... the cops.
There are at least four agencies at UCI (UC Irvine) right now, and it's just all ridiculous and unnecessary.
It’s easy to underestimate what a shock to the system Obama’s victory was.
From 1964 to 2004—eleven straight presidential elections, dating back to the dawn of the US’s era as a multiracial democracy—no Democrat won without being a white man from the South. Not one.
Yes, it truly is a mystery why a presidential ticket consisting of a guy from Arkansas and a guy from Tennessee did better in Arkansas and Tennessee than a presidential ticket (three decades later) with a guy from Delaware and a woman from California.
Cab into town from the New Orleans airport: $36, flat rate.
Lyft into town from the New Orleans airport: Currently $55-60.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
(I’m not flying to Charlotte. I’m taking a quick pre-college vacation trip with my younger daughter.)
I didn’t notice the call letters until I was in the air. Good thing I packed my lavender leaf-print shirt.
I’m going to be on WFAE, Charlotte’s NPR station, for an hour tomorrow morning with the editor of UNC Charlotte’s student paper.
A look at this spring's campus protests and what may lie ahead
Protesters have impacted many schools including UNC Charlotte and UNC-Chapel Hill. Some graduation ceremonies have been disrupted; others canceled. Schools have taken different approaches to the prote...
www.wfae.org
“I fucking love winning! It's, like, better than losing.”
—Ebby Calvin Nuke Laloosh.
I make it a rule not to give student organizers unasked for advice, but speaking generally, it’s better to conclude an action than let it wither away, and better to conclude it having gained something than not.
I’m going to be on WFAE, Charlotte’s NPR station, for an hour tomorrow morning with the editor of UNC Charlotte’s student paper.
A look at this spring's campus protests and what may lie ahead
Protesters have impacted many schools including UNC Charlotte and UNC-Chapel Hill. Some graduation ceremonies have been disrupted; others canceled. Schools have taken different approaches to the prote...
www.wfae.org(Note: The “anyone” in that first skeet refers to outside observers. If you were in an encampment and you’re mad about the settlement, I’m in no position to argue with you.)
Very few of these agreements constrain student organizers’ tactics in the fall, so it’s hard for me to see what they’re giving up by hitting the pause button until the fall semester starts.
I make it a rule not to give student organizers unasked for advice, but speaking generally, it’s better to conclude an action than let it wither away, and better to conclude it having gained something than not.
Anyone who is mad about what a student encampment settled for in its negotiations should bear in mind that summer is coming. And after that, autumn.
“To whom are you referring when you refer to the South?” is one of the all-time great simple questions.
My favorite was the part where he pointed to Obama’s good statewide southern numbers as evidence against white racism. If only there were some other available explanatory factor…
And kept the majority who didn't die out of restaurants (and in many cases out of the city itself) for a disproportionately long time.
We’ve still got hole-in-the-wall formica-and-plexiglass takeout places, but they’re mostly dire. Haven’t found a reliable eat-in/takeout place since mine went under in 2022 or so.
The pandemic decimated the American Chinese joints of the Upper West Side of Manhattan to a degree I wouldn’t have thought possible a decade ago.
you would think that there would be ONE good American Chinese place on the entire west side of LA
and yet
I’ve also got a joke about Meleager, but it’s a slow burn.
I’ve got a joke about Atalanta, but honestly I don’t think you can keep up.
I’ve got a joke about Atalanta, but honestly I don’t think you can keep up.
I've got a joke about Pegasus, but it would go over your head.
JFK can be swapped out for QE2 here, which means MLK’s number is also four.
mine is basically the same
Me
Barack Obama
Elizabeth II
Edward VIII
Hitler
Kansas last night.
Cops are now searching buildings for protesters. This is ridiculous. Police are saying the students are still trespassing (even though they are students and many live on campus).
This skeet brought to you by someone on Twitter who thought he was saying that high-density housing should look good but who actually said that replacing low-density housing with ugly high-density housing should be illegal.
How about this: He should stop gratuitously being an asshole to the thousands of students on the nation's campuses who are peacefully protesting a brutal war." Good?
So many times when someone is like "I said something entirely reasonable, and everyone got mad at me," what they really mean is "I was speaking casually and I said something that when read literally is preposterous and obnoxious."
One of my favorite tasks as a copyeditor is untangling verb tenses in narration.
This ties into something I keep mulling over as I’m working on my novel, which has a first-person protagonist/narrator—what is the space from which she’s describing events? It’s specific—it has very clear rules—but also ineffable.
Casey reports that the administration's crackdown on the encampment on her campus has caused far more disruption in two days than the encampment itself had in two weeks.
Yeah. This is an attempt to blackmail Columbia as an institution. If it weren’t, they’d be announcing their plan to do this in three years, so as to let the classses of 2027–29 enroll somewhere else.
Dang.
I once worked on a book of short stories in which some were unpublished, some were from fly-by-night magazines, and some had been published multiple times, apparently from non-identical submitted drafts, with haphazard editing every time.
I felt like a fucking Shakespeare scholar.