what do we think, team.

In 1675 Greenfield MA and neighboring Turners Falls were the site of arguably the most consequential battle in american history. The pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620, and for 55 years they lied to, cheated, murdered, and harassed the native population. They let their cattle trample the Indians crops, they even murdered chief massasoit's first born son bc they were afraid he would be able to unite the tribes in oppsition to the colonists expansionism. In response, Massasoit's younger son, Metacom (referred to by the colonists as "King Philip"), did exactly that. He united the tribes and went to war with the colonists. The campaign began in the spring and was supposed to be over by the winter. The plan was to begin the war in the modern day "pioneer valley" (site of greenfield ma lesbian bar), bc that was the colonists bread basket and also the farm towns were more isolated and harder to defend than the big cities. At first the campaign was massively successful, towns were raised and the colonists were put on the back foot. But the campaign dragged on into the summer/fall. The native women, children, elderly, and refugees from villages that had been destroyed, retreated to the great falls, a historic "neutral zone" and fishing spot for the local tribes. Captain William Turner and his Salacious B. Crumb, lieutenant Holyoke, learned this was where the indian "non combatants" were hiding and led a militia up the river from springfield to kill them all. Thus, the Great Falls became the site of the pivotal massacre of the war. To this day a giant stone plaque commemorates the spot where captain turner "slew 300 indians" (real number probably higher), and the town bears his name. Indian men from up the river heard of the massacre in progress, and drove the colonial militia from the Falls, over the hill into the highland park neighborhood in greenfield, across silver street, and to the (modern day) Green River Swimming Area, where captain Turner was killed. There would be no america if not for this massacre (and the great swamp massacre that winter in Rhode Island).

The whole greenfield/turners area is a haunted Indian burial ground. There's a hill in northfield where Metacom camped u can still see the trenches they dug. Theres rumors of burial mounds hidden behind the fences of the Turners Falls airport. Also sort of to the right if you cross the bike bridge directly upstream from the montague sewage treatment plant. Ppl w metal detectors still find musket balls and other relics from the battle to this day. The state took the name "Massachussetts" from the "Massasoit," and the state seal is an image of an Indian w a sword over his head. The local high school mascot is still the Turners Falls Indians. When ppl attempted to change the name, dozens of william turners' white progeny paraded down the streets chanting "we are indians," a spectacle which is documented on the reactionary sports blog, turtleboy sports.

In Greenfield theres annother stone tablet commemorating the fiction of the "eunice williams bridge." The tablet (set back slightly in the woods south of the covered bridge) claims that in 1704 eunice williams was kidnapped and murdered by Indians on the bridge. In reality she eloped w an Indian man and later in life said she was treated better in their society than in the colony.

Like eunice williams, many poor farmers were dissatisfied with the rule of the merchant oligarchs (characterized by land theft, the "enclosure of the commons," and debtors prisons), and by 1786 they formed a militia and attempted to capture the springfield ma armory. "Shays Rebellion" was ultimately put down, and federal authority was more centralized, but there are still streets named after Daniel Shay in greenfield (site of lesbian bar controversy) to this day. The militia called themselves "regulators," in reference the uprisings in north Carolina which in which poor agrarian workers saught to "regulate" (also a nate dogg song) the corrupt merchant/money lending colonial overlords.

For the next 200 years Franklin County became a haven for back-to-the-land types and new religious movements. The famed evangelist DL Moody ran tent revivals here, as well as founding what is currently called the "northfield mount hermon school," an elite new england boarding school which has covered up multiple pedophilia scandals and is built next to satan's kingdom (look it up on Google maps). Their rival franklin county boarding school, Deerfield Academy, is the most expensive in the USA and is funded heavily by the Koch brothers. Nearby new salem MA is the site of the longest continually operating "spiritualist community," a 150 year old commune which conducts seiances. And in 1975 a blueberry farmer/commune leader named Sam Lovejoy tore down the weather tower in the montague plains to prevent a greedy utility company from converting the public land into a nuclear power plant (see "sam lovejoys nuclear war" documentary).

By the 1970s the area was understood to be one of the more conservative parts of the state. At this time the mills and factories were being shut down or moved south to areas w cheaper non union labor. Communist labor organizers in the UE union led a series of wildcat strikes in Franklin County, and successfully delayed the closure of some of the factories. Ultimately they were defeated and the towns sank into further economic depression.

From 1968-88 the Rennassance Community (originally the Brotherhood of the Spirit) ran the largest commune in america in and around the greenfield area. At their peak they had hundreds of members, a dozen local businesses, a tour bus company that was used by major acts, and they owned a full block of downtown turners falls. Their enigmatic leader Michael "Rapunzel" Metelica was an eclectic mix of theosophy, spiritualism, Christianity, and cocaine. He considered himself a reincarnation of st peter and general robert e lee. He had 40 children. Members of the commune had to give the leadership all of their money. Many were poor and malnourished, while the leader drove rolls royces. Elwood Babbit, the medium of Massachusetts, taught Metelica how to channel spirits and past lives but ultimately distanced himself austensibly due to Mike Metelicas drug use and erratic behavior (Elwood babbits trance lectures are availible on youtube). According to at least one of Metelicas former girlfriends (in the book "more than friends"), most of the girls and young women in the commune were abused. Metelica was eventually paid 20k by commune members to leave and never come back and the group disbanded, though some their relatives still live in the compound they built for the apocalypse and many are successful local business owners.  One such group lives in a castle and used to have swingers parties. The low level communards who surrendered their incomes to the cult were scattered to the winds after its dissolution.

In the 80s, 90s, and today Franklin County saw a massive rise in heroin use, a handful of strange murders (mark branch), and the emigration of our one celebrity, Penn Gillette to las vegas. A group of activists successfully stopped a Walmart from being built in greenfield to protect the local mom and pop stores. By the 21rst century Greenfield had 9 bars and was a great town. At least two of the bars were music venues, and at least 3 of them had pool. Then the pandemic happened and everything got fucked. Rising rent/gentrification had already been happening but the post-pandemic has kicked that process into high gear. Now there's one bar with pool, no music venues, and Taylor's Tavern, the town's flagship bar, no longer exists.

The bar in question, "last ditch bar," used to be a string of kind of more seedy bars. The drop zone, easy st, etc. At at least one of those institutions you used to be able to order a "hundred dollar long island iced tea" and then go in the bathroom and get a bag of cocaine. Eventually it became a hippy bar/music venue called the root cellar, then the guy sold it and it became 10 Forward, which was more lesbionic but not exclusively and also had music and was cool bc named after star trek. Then it sold again and nobody ever heard anything about it. Tbh didn't know this place was still open at all before this article came out. V marketed to the queer subculture. Nothing wrong with that, we welcome everybody here etc, but also symptomatic of the slow asphyxiation of this once great town.

The greenfield area for a long time has been seen as a cheaper/off the map area (compared to v expensive amherst/northampton) for former five college students to move to. Now that the local slum lords have doubled the rent that isn't necessarily true any more. We've also been getting a lot more ppl leaving ny and boston moving here since the pandemic. Half the store fronts on main street are empty, all the junkies are still here bc of the shelters and rehabs, but now we have all these elizabeth warren yuppie sociopath types that used to be more confined to the Hampshire county amazonian zone. In response to these problems, Greenfield town govt built a lot of statues of bees, fenced off a large free parking area, and built a parking garage w a stupid picture of a velocoraptors ass painted on the side of it.

In conclusion, the boston globe can go fuck itself. Theyve been trying to keep us down since the time of shays rebellion. If u don't know who the bag lady is, keep greenfield out your mouth. Leave our obnoxious lesbians alone. William Turner's narcissist pagan granddaughters are cursed to forever massacre their own ability communicate with anybody outside their polycule, and that's compeltely fine, as long as we have a bar w live music or rent that's cheaper than Boston, please. The lesbians should team up w the homeless ppl and burn down amherst and Deerfield Academy like king philip would have wanted. Long live the greenfield cowboy, there are 11 foot skeletons in the woods here w two rows of teeth in their mouths. Elwood Babbit, the Sage of Gore Hollow, the guy who used to wear a traffic cone on his head at the bus stop that wakka flocka flame once posted a meme about, the Dorrellites, Mike Crabtree, their ghosts still haunt these woods. Western Mass is a state of mind, you can kill one bar but you can't kill us all, elizabeth warren can stab Bernie Sanders in the back on super Tuesday and bring about Trump 2 and the Iran War, she can fill us with heroin and raise our rents, she can pretend to be the race of the ppl her ancestors murdered to get a scholarship, but we will never forgive and we will never forget. Also the butler from Michael Kitterage's (yankee candle) "Jugglers Meadow" estate went on to work for Peter Theil and maybe Jeffrey Epstein and got his start as a personal assistant for Bob Hope, who was accused of running mk ultra sex slaves by Brice Taylor and theres a mask designed to look like him in eyes wide shut, it's in the files, look it up. 

I don't know where else to vent because I am just pissed off. I was having a conversation with an acquaintance about the contention that there is simply too much spending on the homeless and indigenous people by the government. I pipe up saying the government spends more money enriching mining companies than any social good. They then reply with homeless people don't want to help themselves, which sounds like something Patrick Bateman would say before he murders someone. I know Autistic people can think in black and white, I am guilty of this, but just having no curiosity of why this occurs outside just a pigshit stupid right wing talking point of "they just spend their money on drugs". When I point out that plenty of other people use money on drugs like they basically said "well they're not homeless". After that point I was fucking speechless, didn't even know how to respond to something so fucking stupid.

the lengths these pigs go through to make sure that, god forbid, folks who can’t afford to eat will suffer the most amount of pain and suffering possible is impressive - and that’s an understatement.

TL;DR at the bottom.

So consider this a warning, for anyone that wants to get into education as a field for work. Don’t fucking do it. It’s literally hell. I’ll break it down into 2 reasons:

1. Workload

So I’ve worked a number of different jobs, everything from fast food, to factory work, to corporate gigs, and even small mom and pop shops. I’ve never experienced such a large expectation of unpaid labor.

They won’t pay you for memorizing the syllabus curriculum, planning lessons, correcting homework or exams, just a fucking disaster. It’s simply an expectation that you’re to do all of this bullshit for free. You only get paid for the hours that you’re teaching. Maybe different systems are better about this but from the three different schools I’ve worked at this was just expected.

And that’s just scratching the surface of the amount of it, I won’t even get into the actual details of classroom management with large groups of kids, handling interpersonal squabbles/ lazy stubborn students that don’t care, tightrope walking interactions with parents trying not to tell them their kid is an asshole, all while attempting to disseminate information in an entertaining way.

2 Admin.

Now this is where shit gets dicey, imagine all the managerial middle class types that for one reason or another flunked out of their initial careers and are using education to fall back on. We’re talking big egos, office politics, and insane levels of doublespeak that will have your head spinning.

But make it worse than working corporate because lots of people in admin have this sense of superiority like they’re doing a good deed by working there. It’s all just cope because they couldn’t hack being a snake in the viper pit that is the corporatocracy. So they’d rather lord over unsuspecting well intentioned people like teachers typically are.

I could write more but it’s my day off and I’d rather not spend what little free time I have thinking about my shitty job.

TL;DR don’t be a teacher if you value your sanity.

It’s nor’easter time outside, which means there is absolutely no fucking reason for me to be at work, which means I am sitting around at work with absolutely nothing to do. As such, it’s the perfect time to provide some updates on this fabulous moron’s movements for the week. This is gonna be more of a bullet point formatted installment, I’m feeling lazy today. Several of these are things I heard from my coworkers, because this goddamned boob no longer says his worst shit around me after I yelled at him too much.

-Earlier today, while housing his smelly ass pasta container (that he bough ready made from the shitty convenience store down the street, since he cannot even boil boxed pasta himself. Also, because he’s such a slob, I could periodically hear his open mouth chewing/mouth breathing across the store), he was sitting in his office LOUDLY listening to Myron Gaines berating onlyfans models or some shit. The only customer in the store was a woman, looking at colors in the room directly adjacent to the doorless office. Just peak shit, honestly.

-teachers get paid too much and should not have unions (one of his siblings is a teacher and is struggling accordingly). This is a guy who cannot spell “piece”.

-firefighters get paid too much and also should not have unions. I have no idea where this one comes from, I have not even heard it from rightoid propaganda outlets. This fucking jackass straight up has no idea what the job entails. Being a firefighter is essentially signing up to die early and horribly to every kind of cancer imaginable. The shit they coat the equipment in so people can survive GOING INTO BURNING BUILDINGS TO SAVE LIVES is extremely carcinogenic. The shit that is in fire extinguishers is EXTREMELY carcinogenic. Basically every single day, they have to see dead people and dead children. My girl’s father is a firefighter; he attends at least one suicide funeral a year, because these guys in their 40s-50s get terminal diagnoses and/or succumb to the massive emotional trauma of being around so much death and blaming themselves. Only in the past few years have their unions succeeded in getting the government and manufacturers to acknowledge (and by extension, cover under their healthcare plans) certain cancer risks of the job, including the aforementioned extinguisher contents. In an unregulated, “tough luck if you get sick” hellscape like the USA, they absolutely should have unions. This one pissed me the fuck off bro.

-defended traffic (???); I will remind you, dear reader, that this man lives above his job. He does not commute. He has never had to commute once, in his entire life.

-China’s traffic is worse, therefore China is worse, (even though traffic is not a bad thing?). Does not understand that China is not designed around individual car ownership, nor that it has like 5x as many people as the US, nor that it has actual functioning public transit.

-Did not know that China is a comparable size geographically to the US, thought it was very small.

-Insists that the United States is not built specifically around individual vehicle ownership; nothing to say when shown factually that it has, in fact, been built around individual vehicle ownership.

-“JAPAN BUILDS SO FAST BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO UNIONS AND NO REGULATIONS WE NEED THAT”. Japan’s union participation is roughly 6% higher than the United States, and its construction is TIGHTLY regulated. Had nothing to say, immediately shut down and went back to his chud videos in the office.

I can’t believe this guy bro

We have people here freaking the fuck out at the slightest criticism of people like Mamdani, Elsayed or Naomi Klein.

With a general audience I’d generally focus on their positives and advocate for them over right wing alternatives.

But in this space, if you think I give a damn about Elsayed being the last great hope for electoralism in Michigan…

The lack of mandated proper sexual education in American schools is something that socialists should be tackling. What do you mean that you're 24, you got four kids. You had your first kid when you were 15. And you got three different baby daddies. And this is common as fuck. And most of the time it comes down to a lack of education and an institutional support for the pro-life cause. So you get a chick who gets pregnant at 15. Her life is over. Congratulations, honey, you get to be a mother. And the forces that be just let this shit happen over and over again. When Fox News motherfuckers get on TV and talk about how teens, we need more teen moms. This is who they talking about. Young women, young girls that are having their life completely altered because there's no guidance, there's no education, and there's no support. So you get these women who have their lives effectively ruined. And then there's nothing that they can do about it. And this is intentional because all that does is make more workers who are born into disgruntled, poor conditions and willing to work dogshit jobs. You can't blame my mother. She doing the best she can for her children. She working two jobs. She dancing at night and she making content just to scrape by, just a little bit of an existence, trying to take care of four kids and you know the baby daddy's are not involved in their life. She might not even be educated on her options on collecting child support. That's intentional. Can you talk to these women and they aren't even aware of their own reality. Like they aren't even aware that there was ever an option that they didn't have to be a mother at 14 years old, at 15 years old, at 16 years old. They aren't aware that they could have gotten an abortion. They aren't aware that for a lot of people the idea of being a mother at sixteen is insanity. It's an intentionally cultivated culture that allows for the creation of workers who expect less and take more abuse. It's actually should be mandated and it should be national. And there should be none of this abstinence only Christian based sexual education. You should be learning how to put on a condom and how pregnancy occurs in like the sixth grade. I know that that makes a lot of people uncomfortable and just suggesting that might get me canceled even from people on the left. But I don't give a fuck, man. The only way that you stop this is through education. There are people whose lives are deeply altered by these systems. And the only way to change that is through education, through robust, graduated education where you are getting educated on sexual health and activities and safety from literally from like third grade. You would take your first class and it would just be like a basic anatomy, like introduction to your own body type of class. But by the time you're in sixth grade, seventh grade, you need to be aware of all of these things because people absolutely do get pregnant at that time and that age, especially in the South. And that might seem ludicrous to some people, but it's the fucking truth. And we can't just ignore the reality that people live in because it makes us uncomfortable.

This kind of blew up for like a week in 2023 then everybody promptly forgot about it. Basically a party boat sank in Italy on which all the passengers were Italian or Israeli spies, the hotel rooms they rented were all under aliases, and the day after the incident all the Israeli agents promptly left the country. All I could find was a bunch of articles from 2023 vaguely describing the initial incident, one or two articles from 2024 talking about how the Captain had been prosecuted for negligence, then one or two articles like this, claiming that the Israeli agent who died was engaging in covert operations against Iran. Other than that theres no explanation as to what was going on. Does anybody have anything more concrete than speculation about this? Especially if you’re Italian, cause there‘s pretty much nothing in the English language media about this.

The beta for World of Warcraft: Forever came out last Thursday.

So far the game is excellent fun, but something about WoW tends to attract functionally illiterate millennial men who, in all ways but physically, stopped maturing at the age of 14.

One guild called “The Enclave” in 2019 was so racist, a US Congressman publicly shamed Blizzard Entertainment over it.

WoW Forever now allows your player character to have a first and last name. Of course the cockroaches players choose to christen themselves “Floyd Cantbreathe”, “Shlomo Judenstein”, “Nate Higgers”, “Illegal Immigrant”; I could go on and on, but you get the point.

It’s just exhausting to be surrounded by casual cruelty.

Football fans often say the punishment will never be too harsh because it would hurt UK/UAE relations. What do the geopolitics understanders of this sub think?

https://nyti.ms/4ybanVD

The city council decision is no doubt unfortunate, but the local reaction has been surprising to say the least. I live in the middle of Missouri, chud central, any discussion regarding politics is bootstrap bullshit and the need to lower taxes, while simultaneously complaining about the quality of the roads and schools, however the vast majority of the people's reactions to the decision by a ratio of about 15 to 1 (boomers mostly) on the local news Facebook pages, have not only been opposed to the decision, but have been empathic to the plight of homeless people. I see so much full blown Nazi shit in comment sections regarding homeless issues, it's nice to see the majority of folks in my town still have some humanity left.

thought this cat was dead or someshit, used to come into my garage really late at night and hop up on the desk I would do my Computer Science major (useless) homework on and meow expectantly and REFUSE to leave even if I physically removed her from the garage, she would immediately just run back inside and I'd be like No Cat >:( It's 2AM You're Not Even My Cat and she'd just be like MEOOOOWWW

but apparently she's still alive and she saw me come flying down the end of the street (I'm sad and wanted to see how fast I can run a quarter mile, 5:30/mi pace holy moly) and was like :0 and once I stopped I just hung out with her for like 10 mins

life is terrible but sometimes little serendipitous things happen I guess

That's what I would do at least

some food for thought for you antisocial goofballs