David M. Perry Profile picture
Journalist & historian. Pub musician. Dad. Husband. I also do dishes. Read: #TheBrightAges https://t.co/wfGI5STSg2. @lollardfish@spore.social. he/him
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Jun 20, 2023 11 tweets 1 min read
Time to watch The Monuments Men. I like it when Nazis are bad guys
Jun 19, 2023 5 tweets 2 min read
The way it works with bad ideas like antivax is this: Your primary goal is to deplatform them. (1) When they appear, though, you should refute them in ways that might help dissuade third persons* from becoming more curious about the bad idea, while not promoting the bad idea to a wider audience. (2)

* h/t Sartre
Jun 1, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
I thought about writing this up but lack time: Ted Lasso is a rom-com. Rom-com operates as metatext in seasons 2 and seasons 3, and so at the end characters get what they (the writers think) they merit. It's an interesting rom-com as it defines love as communities of care, with lots of bromance, romance, siblings/sibling-surrogate, parental-child repair, independence, and more. But it's fundamentally a rom-com. And it tells you so.
May 31, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
I enjoyed the final season of Mrs. Maisel, which honestly I got in screeners and binged in about three days. It was a cheerful lovely victory lap of a season. Apparently the actual finale date is this week!

cnn.com/2023/04/14/opi… finales are hard, rarely good, and I think the way this show undercut its own core drama by revealing how the big stakes resolve was smart. the show has been up and down over the years, and the Stephanie Hsu scene in ep 1 was, well, ruinously bad. But overall pretty good!
May 31, 2023 6 tweets 2 min read
you can report on peter singer without platforming him and I wish Vox had made that choice instead. Singer is very good at slipping past any data that contradicts his positions, waiting a day, then reverting to previous positions. it's a giant fuck you to everyone who has written about his eugenic reasoning which is a) evil but b) falsified by lived experiences he will acknowledge in the moment and then pretend he never heard the next time he's given a microphone.
May 30, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
i hope that guggenheim complainer has sand in his underpants, wet socks, and writers block. I hope something in his house smells really bad but he can't figure out what it is.
May 9, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
Donald Trump is credibly accused of serial sexual harassment, abuse, and assault by over 20 women. Donald Trump has admitted serially assaulting women, on tape, in a manner consistent with the testimony against him. Donald Trump has been found liable for sexual assault by a jury. I once again would like to ask our political media to care. To not treat him as "any other candidate." He is not like any other candidate and we all know it.
May 8, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
"Post the same actor in two roles that show their range."
May 8, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
I thought my essay on mythical link between gun violence and mental illness from 2015 was pretty good. (I am far from the first, was far from the only at the time, many have written similar since)

america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/… I thought my essay on mythical link between gun violence and mental illness from 2017 was pretty good. (I am far from the first, was far from the only at the time, many have written similar since)

cnn.com/2017/10/05/opi…
May 7, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
Rain lifted. Boats draining. Dawn was twenty minute ago. It’s time. A lake in the gray. Peaceful. Look at these two, um, lovebirds.
May 3, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
It is not too late for @CNN to cancel their plan to host Donald Trump for a town hall, or indeed to “treat him like any other candidate.” And they should cancel it. Donald Trump is unique in American history: he is a credibly accused rapist and serial sexual harasser who admitted to serial sexual assault on tape. He attempted a coup and called for an insurrection that left multiple people dead and our halls of power fouled.
May 1, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
If you turn out the lights in the bathroom and close your eyes and chant “apartheid Clyde” three times in a row then turn on the light a blue check will appear by your name. My bio says “very tired” an... What I think is interesting about this is that it shows yet again how badly held together the site is. Kludge on kludge on kludge.
May 1, 2023 7 tweets 2 min read
I swear to Jupiter that I typed “former blue check” into my bio and one appeared next to my name … but only for me. My profile page with a blue... My wife can’t see it on her account. That’s hilarious. Broke ass code.
Apr 30, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
please stop making the "attract top faculty" argument as state legislatures destroy tenure. Most phds given R1 resources would produce R1 work.
Apr 30, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
The solution, as far as I'm concerned, to the peer review issues (gendered labor, difficulty finding, etc.) is this: stop fucking paying so much to Elsevier, taylor and francis, SAGE, and all those other thieves and shift the money to the labor instead. labor /certainly/ included editing, typesetting, printing, shipping, and all the other direct costs. But it also includes writing and reviewing.
Apr 16, 2023 6 tweets 1 min read
So here's why these Very Serious People want you to know that today's right wingers are Not Fascists (tm). It's because they were raised on the narrative that 20th century fascists were bad and could have been stopped. If that's true today, well, by Jove, they must do something! What's more, they were raised on the history that in the decades prior to fascist takeovers there were Very Serious People who didn't take the fascist seriously enough, and so are complicit in many horrors.
Apr 14, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
This is illegal. EEOC rules you cannot simply arbitrarily disqualify a whole protected class of people even if your then offer accommodation. I’ve been covering this for years. My favorite was a French professor who was required to climb ladders america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2016/…
Apr 12, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
It’s been interesting watching a very nerdy group of tweens shift from “we can separate Potterverse from the vile author” to simply ending their fandom and moving on. Not aggressively. Not discarding all their books. But simply never touching them or talking about it. also it may be a very online conversation, but that's also where the audience for this (assuming it's not original fans of the series/movies, but rather trying to grab a new generation) lives.

Mar 11, 2023 8 tweets 2 min read
It's striking to me that nowhere in this article did the three reporters, who clearly put a lot of time and resources into reporting this, think to talk to a historian about company towns and/or the history of American "utopias" and how they've worked out. As many others have noted, there's a rich history. Prophetic compounds. Company towns. Utopian experiments. Hippy communes. There's no shortage of places to look for context.
Mar 10, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
my son loves driving games, but only full size in the arcade where he gets to sit down and has a wheel and pedals. So I'm trying to decide what to do about that.

Anyone got a spare 3500 lying around?

primearcades.com/products/107-r… I gather this could be connected to a PS4?

wayfair.com/furniture/pdp/…
Mar 10, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
#NotAllPhilosophers of course but there is something about philosophy that attracts people who want to explore ideas (and in some cases even act) without regard for other actual humans, huh. Philosopher: A principle!
Humans: That's going to hurt people? That doesn't work? That's terrible? Like in the real world? You get that right?
Philsopher: In theory my principle is sound I shall hear no dissent you are simply not endowed with my superior wisdom!