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Angus Johnston Profile picture
Angus Johnston
@studentactivism
Historian of, and advocate for, American student activism. CUNY prof. Former yacht chef. https://t.co/5biUl4VczI
28 subscribers
Jul 21 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
As the thread suggests, this is an example of a larger problem in politics. "One person should change his mind" is an actionable demand. "Ten million people should change their minds" is not. Anytime you ask someone what should happen next and their answer is "everybody needs to..."? You can stop listening. That's not a strategy. It's not a plan. It's a wish.
Nov 1, 2023 • 25 tweets • 4 min read
Okay, let's take a look at the free-expression issues raised by how this confrontation went down. (I tweeted about it last night, but as I sometimes do, I frontloaded conclusions rather than explanation, so I'm rebooting.)
Jun 6, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I ran the first paragraph of Orwell's 1984 through ChatGPT, asking it to fix any "spelling, grammatical, or usage errors."

I think my copyediting gig is safe. Check it out: Orwell: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions..."
Jun 6, 2023 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
It's only—the quoted text—not dangerous because it's so ignorant. If your goal is to "evaluate grammar" in order to determine whether a manuscript is publishably competently written, all you need to do is have a copy editor spend three minutes reading a random page. (1/?) It's not an onerous task. But it's not also a useful task. Because lots of books that get published are written by authors who have a shaky grasp of grammar. Lots of GOOD books are written by such authors. Such manuscripts are the baby, not the bathwater.
Jun 5, 2023 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
"Meryl Streep is grievously miscast in Postcards from the Edge." My view: Streep was perfect in the breakup scene with Dennis Quaid and a few others, but she needed to (1) be meaner to, and more like, her mom and (2) give the impression that she'd be a fun person to get high with.
Apr 1, 2023 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
It would have been SO EASY to leverage the cachet of the celeb blue-checks in monetizing the new buy-in system. It really is astonishingly perverse how far he’s gone to do the opposite. Obvious Step One: Give the legacy blue-checks access to the paid features for free. Get them talking up the product, beta-testing it, debating it.
Mar 25, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
When people ask me why I think decency is a better organizing principle than civility, I'm going to point to this right here. Seems like this may be about to reach exit velocity, so to be clear: I'm applauding Megan Hunt here. She is upholding and insisting upon decency by refusing to reciprocate empty civility from her colleagues.
Mar 19, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
A thing I say to my students on the first day of class:

"Let's say your childhood best friend moved away, and they're visiting town for the first time since then, and the only time they could see you was during a class time. That'd be a pretty good reason to miss class, right?" They agree—usually a little hesitantly, suspecting a trick. And then I ask how many of them would ever ask a professor for an excused absence in that situation.

And they look at me like I've lost my mind. And then a light goes on over their heads.
Mar 19, 2023 • 33 tweets • 7 min read
This is a cool thread, and this map is a great illustration of how much the standard Mercator projection presentation has lied to us over the years. Look how far down the equator is! Half of our actual, real-life planet is below the line of red dots. Map from above tweet with equator line highlighted to show t
Mar 16, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
It's kind of wacky to me that this thread, from a philosopher no less, boils down to nothing more than "as long as you don't violate the written policies of your workplace, you're ethically in the clear for whatever you do there." I mean. she occasionally gestures vaguely at the idea that the particular rules of her specific institution are necessary and/or sufficient to ensure ethical behavior if followed, but at no point does she actually make anything resembling an argument for that proposition.
Mar 15, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
The “being gay is hard so it’s better to try to be straight” argument ABSOLUTELY included, and at times centered, strong claims about morbidity and mortality, including from medical interventions. To say otherwise is completely ahistorical. If you want to claim that "being trans is hard, so it's better to try to be cis" is different from "being gay is hard, so it's better to try to be straight," go for it. But "one involves sincere fears of morbidity and mortality and the other didn't" is a non-starter.
Mar 11, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This is a great thread, and also a great reminder of the ongoing, sometimes invisible, cultural influence of the generation of men who were teenage boys in and around World War II. Game design logic looks the way it does because of the cultural contexts in which its premises were articulated. And American boys & young men were obsessed with military strategy, tactics, & hardware during WWII in ways that they never had been before and never would be again.
Mar 11, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I don't know how I never came across this Oscar Wilde quote (from De Profundis) before like a week ago, but it's tremendous. (And it's far better than the apparently-far-better-known paraphrase.)

Long quote, so short thread: "A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably succeeds in being what he wants to be. That is his punishment."
Mar 5, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Just came across a historical reference that indicates that the social stigma against scratching yourself in public may have derived, at least in part, from a fear of transmission of fleas or lice. (The idea being that if you make a habit of scratching yourself in public, the people around you are going to worry that you're infested and it's going to make them uncomfortable.)
Mar 1, 2023 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
It blows my mind that this phrasing is still in use after what, a century? POST NO BILLS “POST NO BILLS” was old-times to the point of indecipherability when I was a kid, and when I was a kid Mae West was still making movies.
Feb 20, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Honestly, I don't think this follows at all. There are likely folks who don't think he should run who will vote for him if he does, for instance. And a strong plurality in a big field is often enough to win a nomination. If you're the candidate with the most support in the nomination process, AND you're the incumbent, you're a very strong favorite to get the nomination even if a majority of voters would prefer you didn't run for re-election.
Jan 11, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
If you haven't seen this, it's still going on—Kim is a good friend, and she's seeking authors to use her husband's name as a character in an upcoming book in exchange for donations to charity. She's not just looking for fiction authors, either—last time I checked in, she had one non-fiction book, law review article, and one scientific paper signed up.
Jan 11, 2023 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
There's a thing I sometimes do in my World History I classes where I talk about the unspoken conventions of charity and generosity that govern even dense, anonymous, capitalist societies. (Students sometimes find the idea of a society that functions smoothly on the basis of a gift or sharing economy hard to fathom, so this serves as a reminder that such structures exist in OUR culture, and that we rely on them for OUR society's smooth functioning.)
Jan 6, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Alfred Hitchcock: Failed Realist More bad weird silly no-stakes viral tweets, please.
Jan 2, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Just entirely appalled and mortified @grammar_girl in this bar by admitting unbidden that I may actually think that Werewolves of London is the best song ever recorded. “I mean, Bill Withers exists!” — @grammar_girl
Dec 23, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Doctors: "He'll die if he doesn't have sex with her."

Sages: "Okay."

Doctors: "Okay, he can have sex with her?"

Sages: "Okay, he can die." Doctors: "Can he at least see her naked?"

Sages: "Nope. Let him die."

Doctors: "Can he at least talk to her, maybe just through a fence?"

Sages: "Let him die."