partly cloudy with a chance of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
mighty Midwest
Joined September 2009
- Tweets43.7K
- Following5K
- Followers1.1K
- Likes207K
sharpemcelroy retweeted
Hey, everybody. The reason you can't afford your dream home is because Pedro, who carried everything that he owns on his back and walked to the USA to pick strawberries, is outbidding you. 🙄
JD, it's not "Pedro," you ignorant race baiter, it's "BlackRock" who is outbidding Americans for their dream home!
sharpemcelroy retweeted
"It took Rodrigo Duterte six months to collapse our institutions, and the Philippines has a Constitution patterned after the United States," says Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa. "Don't normalize it. Realize it is death by 1,000 cuts. If you do not act, if you do not reclaim your rights, you will lose it." to.pbs.org/4yWyI0Z
sharpemcelroy retweeted
Hello @elonmusk and @tylercowen ,
You have just decided to publicly attack our research, six days before the vote on the California billionaire wealth tax.
Your attempt to discredit our work and that of our numerous academic colleagues is pathetic.
Let’s take a look. 🧵
sharpemcelroy retweeted
What’s a polite way to tell someone, “I’m not discussing this with you because your entire understanding of the subject is built on so many interconnected misconceptions that correcting them would require uninstalling your current worldview and starting the tutorial from birth”?
sharpemcelroy retweeted
"The rage that defines so much modern politics, in the developed world and the global South, on the right as well as the left, can be understood as a reaction to the feeling that something we once had is gone. Grief manifests itself as grievance." A.O. Scott nytimes.com/2026/10/18/magaz…
sharpemcelroy retweeted
When we look back in fifty years and ask ourselves how democracy gave way to tyranny, a huge part of it will be that everyone voluntarily abandoned reading, and it turns out you can’t have a modern, developed, free state without a highly literate population.
sharpemcelroy retweeted
[Violence against women is the] "single greatest human rights violation of our generation."
"I do what I do in my mother's name, because I couldn't help her then. Now I can."
-Sir Patrick Stewart
sharpemcelroy retweeted
I did not and would never consent to this administration running my fanart through AI and posting it. Can’t even believe I’m saying these words.
There’s Magic in Learning 🪄
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
This image is an AI recreation of an artwork done by @DevinElleKurtz and Devin further stated they did not give the
U.S. Department of Education permission to use their artwork.
x.com/DevinElleKurtz…
sharpemcelroy retweeted
Let me get this straight.
@GregAbbott_TX gives $2B in tax breaks to his largest campaign donor Musk, then appoints his hand-picked comptroller to administer & oversee compliance of those incentives, who also has financial stake in Musk’s companies.
They really are selling Texas
Comptroller Don Huffines is manager of a venture capital firm that invests in SpaceX.
He didn't include it in his personal finance disclosure required of candidates.
The Comptroller administers upward of $1.7B in tax breaks for SpaceX.
@taygoldenstein
texastribune.org/2026/10/28/…
sharpemcelroy retweeted
Americans are starting to realize how deep the Russian infiltration has been to attempt the takedown of the United States of America. And all these tech bros are very, very dangerous. I interviewed Gil Duran for my podcast- out Monday- Cults, Culture & Coercion on MeidasTouch
This is this most damning thing in the Epstein files and the media has still ignored it. Peter Thiel created the group that turned Russian hacked emails into conspiracy theories about Hillary—MAGA3X.
Thiel coordinated with the Russians through Jeffrey Epstein—for YEARS.
Trump, Thiel, and Musk are all so thoroughly compromised by their own treason they are effectively Russian agents.
Putin must be defeated. Traitors must face consequences.
Russia, Russia, Russia
sharpemcelroy retweeted
They are joined at the hip, don’t kid yourself. This has been clear to intel professionals for 5+ years.
How much is Musk, who holds billions of dollars in federal contracts, sharing with Putin? trib.al/6GJbhnU
sharpemcelroy retweeted
This is the official White House outlet. Posting a clearly racist, demonizing, and dehumanizing picture. All to further stoke hatred and fear towards others.
Stop calling this administration Christian.
Stop calling this administration American.
They are white nationalists.
sharpemcelroy retweeted
it is kind of interesting that the united states government is racist in ways that are completely inscrutable to me now. like i used to at least understand what the idea was
sharpemcelroy retweeted
We sought to be a Bulwark for liberal democracy and against MAGA authoritarianism. And that’s exactly what we’re doing. With a supine congress, captured institutions, blatant corruption, a weaponized DOJ, etc, there’s only one real lever to check Trump’s power. Dems winning. And we’re pulling it.
sharpemcelroy retweeted
It’s easy to take Jane Austen for granted because we live in the world that she created. We struggle to see how groundbreaking and innovative her novels are because they set the template for all modern fiction. Pride & Prejudice, to cite the most obvious example, did more than invent a genre. Anyone who now writes a story in which two people fall in love is either inspired by her or reacting against her. She’s like Tolkien in that sense.
But she did much more than that. She perfected a method of narration known as “free indirect discourse” that’s now used by virtually every writer. You have only to read the novels of pre-Austen writers to see what a tremendous difference she made through her use of this technique. Literary scholar John Mullan argues that Emma launched a revolution in form & technique that’s comparable to the innovations of Joyce and Proust. It is the favorite novel of Susanna Clarke and of Katherine Rundell, who calls it “a book that shows as much of the sweep of the human heart, of fear, love, morality, untruth, foolery and triumph as a Shakespearean drama.” It is also, arguably, the novel that invented the mystery genre, having what J. K. Rowling has called the biggest twist in literature. You don’t notice the greatness of Austen for the same reason a fish doesn’t know that it lives in water.
I've read Pride and Prejudice and to this day I have no idea what the hell people see in it. It's not a bad book but I don't see it as being much beyond a glorified romcom. Pointing out foibles? Yeah, every half-decent writer does that. So what is Austen so good at?
Liz Bennet hates her mother and thinks her father, while well meaning, is an idiot (Austen doesn't seem to consider there to be anything wrong with any of that). Then there's Mr. Collins the clergyman whom the girls dislike despite his status in life. Okay, no one's entitled to someone else's romantic love but what great insights does the book contain on that?
What about any of this is supposed to be so impressive? Dickens would handle a failed courtship more efficiently and entertainingly. Just compare with Mr. Stryver's attempt at marrying Lucie Manette in A Tale of Two Cities.
sharpemcelroy retweeted
To the various people telling me Jane Austen was an overrated hack who never wrote anything of note: I can only say, in the words of Mrs Bennet, that you are such a disagreeable person that it would be quite a misfortune to be liked by you.
It’s easy to take Jane Austen for granted because we live in the world that she created. We struggle to see how groundbreaking and innovative her novels are because they set the template for all modern fiction. Pride & Prejudice, to cite the most obvious example, did more than invent a genre. Anyone who now writes a story in which two people fall in love is either inspired by her or reacting against her. She’s like Tolkien in that sense.
But she did much more than that. She perfected a method of narration known as “free indirect discourse” that’s now used by virtually every writer. You have only to read the novels of pre-Austen writers to see what a tremendous difference she made through her use of this technique. Literary scholar John Mullan argues that Emma launched a revolution in form & technique that’s comparable to the innovations of Joyce and Proust. It is the favorite novel of Susanna Clarke and of Katherine Rundell, who calls it “a book that shows as much of the sweep of the human heart, of fear, love, morality, untruth, foolery and triumph as a Shakespearean drama.” It is also, arguably, the novel that invented the mystery genre, having what J. K. Rowling has called the biggest twist in literature. You don’t notice the greatness of Austen for the same reason a fish doesn’t know that it lives in water.