Mechanical Freak

The boys are back on the boat to do a post-mortem of the 2024 presidential campaign. How much more flawless could Kamala’s flawless campaign been? What minority group in America is to blame for Trump’s victory? And, finally, which blue check libs are going to lead the march on the capitol in January to stop the steal?

Listen to the episode in its entirety on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/posts/109875108

Greg and Brian get together to discuss the innovative new solution to the homelessness crisis before discussing the Council’s bold new plan on where to put all the poor people they are going to be arresting. Read about the last time Seattle had banishment zones in Katherine Beckett and Steve Herbert, Banished: The New Social Control in Urban America https://global.oup.com/academic/product/banished-9780199830008 Read about Seattle’s previous efforts to police their way out of the capitalist-created housing crisis on the Mechanical Freak website: https://www.mechanicalfreak.website/island-nightmares https://www.mechanicalfreak.website/seattle-and-its-discontents

The boys lost big by going long on Biden staying in the race and have been busy scouting buildings to jump off of in the local area. But in the meantime, some news also happened!

The boys stare into the abyss and discuss terminal imperial decline, the Trump vs. Biden debate, and ask the burning question: what exactly do they disagree on? Read the debate transcript

Greg and Brian get together to discuss an eventful week in both Seattle and international politics. We talk exciting new developments in children’s rights, dive into the new Danny Westnut piece at the Times, and look into the future of vigilantism in the city. Then we duck beneath the iron curtain of Patreon to talk the latest developments in Ukraine and then stare into the abyss that is the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Become a Patron and get all the sweet paywalled content here: https://www.patreon.com/mechanicalfreak Read Brian’s 2018 article on the bipartisan effort to turn the US-Mexico border into a sight of horrifying human cruelty: https://jacobin.com/2018/05/united-states-mexico-border-immigration-deportation-military

The boys talk about the Trump conviction and Eve Fartlow’s latest retirement announcement before getting into some exciting local news. Would you believe that the President Ana Mari Cauce blatantly lied about claims of antisemitism on the UW campus? Or that a new Seattle City Council member completely flubbed gutting a popular program in the name of austerity? Or that after 12 years of being under the consent decree, that the culture at SPD is so rotten that our cop-loving mayor is having to hold a national pageant for chief of police? All this and more! Read Hannah Krieg’s story about the Ana Mari Cauce’s latest flub here: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2024/05/31/79538609/uw-president-provides-proof-of-antisemitic-graffiti-from-out-of-state And her reporting about the Council’s failed attempt to defund the EDI program: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2024/05/28/79535106/city-council-delays-last-minute-attempt-to-pull-money-from-black-and-brown-community-development-projects

Munya & Brian get together to discuss the beauty of cultural exchange with the Irish before looking back at the 100 Divorced Dad March on the University of Washington. Finally, they discuss some of the biggest winners of the new SPOG contract. Check here for a wonderful look back at the cultural exchange between NYC & Dublin: https://twitter.com/AlertaMundoNews/status/1789819410527535558 Learn about the role of Evangelicals in defending Zionism here: https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/15/washingtonmarchfor_israel For more on Jonathan Choe’s work around antisemitism, why not check out this tweet he liked: https://twitter.com/FlowerLeftist/status/1791856443777597723 Check out some of the key lottery winners at SPD and how much they are going to get: https://www.divestspd.com/p/top-spog-back-pay-recipients-include Check out this database to see how big a check you are about to cut to each of your favorite cops: https://sea-kelp.github.io/backpay/ Finally, donate to DivestSPD, they do excellent work: https://ko-fi.com/divestspd

Greg and Brian get together to talk about the meaning of the mass repression of protest on college campuses as well as uncover what happened to a suburban staple. Become a Patron and get all the extra Freak content here: https://www.patreon.com/mechanicalfreak

Greg & Brian catch up on all the exciting news from the past couple of weeks, from the constant need to struggle against revisionism to the new SPOG contract. Check out The Stranger’s writing on the proposed SPOG contract: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2024/04/05/79457408/in-new-police-union-contract-seattle-gives-cops-huge-pay-raises-but-gets-little-accountability-in-return

Friends of the show Ryan Archibald and Brendan McElmeel are back to finish our discussion of the Byzantine structure of higher education institutions. We uncover the rot at that core of higher education and, guess what, it’s the same rot that is hollowing out everything in America! Want to learn more about the onset of neoliberalism? Check out Ending the Myth! https://www.mechanicalfreak.website/podcast/episodes/ending-the-myth-ep-23-rollback-pt-2-neoliberalism Want to learn more about the way that neoliberalism has hollowed out higher education, see the work of Chris Newfield: https://chrisnewfield.org/?page_id=93 For more on the Byzantine funding of the university system, see The Dig podcast’s interview with Dennis Hogan: https://thedigradio.com/podcast/higher-ed-crisis-w-dennis-hogan/ Get more Mechanical Freak content by becoming a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/mechanicalfreak

Brian is joined by old friend of the show Ryan Archibald and new friend of the show Brendan McElmeel for a Labor Day exploration of higher education’s Byzantine labor system. Will we find light at the end of the maze or will we be killed by the Minotaur of adjunctification and budget cuts on the way? Only one way to find out! Read more about the CSU contract debacle here: https://truthout.org/articles/my-faculty-union-leadership-claims-a-win-but-their-compromise-eroded-our-wages/ Check out our interview with Ryan on Ending the Myth here: https://www.mechanicalfreak.website/podcast/episodes/ending-the-myth-ep-12-the-politics-of-travel-w-ryan-archibald Become a Patron and get all the extra Freak content here: https://www.patreon.com/mechanicalfreak

The boys take a look into the future of high tech, literally! Then they discuss the JET taskforce’s raid of four Seattle gay bars over the weekend. Does the arrow of progress always bend toward justice? Or is reality more complicated than a story you tell children? Follow Vivian McCall’s reporting on the JET raids at The Stranger here: https://www.thestranger.com/authors/78925422/-vivian-mccall For more on the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights in Seattle, check out our 2019 interview with Dr. Kevin at: https://www.mechanicalfreak.website/podcast/episodes/dr-kevin-s-feel-good-rainbow-power-hour-pt-i Become a Patron and get all the extra Freak content here: https://www.patreon.com/mechanicalfreak

Greg and Brian catch up on some stories that we have been covering on the show. Tanya Woo, elected! (kind-of). Alec Baldwin, indicted! Boeing, the struggle continues! All that and more! If you never want to fly on a plane again, check out this breakdown of the lawsuit against Spirit Aerosystems made by a plane-crank: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSGujNq4bVM For more on the bipartisan effort to turn the US-Mexico border into a charnel house, see Brian’s article “A War in the Desert” here: https://jacobin.com/2018/05/united-states-mexico-border-immigration-deportation-military Become a Patron and get all the extra Freak content here: https://www.patreon.com/mechanicalfreak

This week on Mechanical Freak we’ve got Hannah Krieg from The Stranger to help us say our farewells to Andrew Lewis, the wettest council member ever to lose reelection. Check out Hannah’s city reporting in The Stranger and her Lewis retrospective in particular: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2024/01/08/79333251/drugs-hotel-workers-waffles-what-happened-to-council-member-andrew-j-lewis

The boys get together to recap the UW National Championship debacle, lady problems at SPD, and an exciting new student outreach program at Florida State. Finally, we discuss South Africa’s case against Israel at the ICJ. Read South Africa’s case against Israel here: https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf Become a Patron and get all the sweet paywalled content here: https://www.patreon.com/mechanicalfreak

The boys get back together in the new year to talk about all the exciting new Seattle news. We check the help wanted ads at the Seattle Times before speculating on the new council and finish with a hot new cop-editorial in the Tacoma News Tribune. All that and more!! Catch the rest of this episode by becoming a patron on Patreon! patreon.com/MechanicalFreak

Listen to the episode in its entirety on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/posts/94801190

The boys are joined by journalist and author Vincent Bevins to discuss his new book, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution. We have a wide ranging discussion about how the decade that produced the largest mass protests in human history, saw virtually nothing but setbacks for the Left internationally. Get a copy of Vincent Bevins’ new book, If We Burn https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/vincent-bevins/if-we-burn/9781541788985/?lens=publicaffairs Also, check out Vincent Bevins’ previous book, The Jakarta Method https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/vincent-bevins/the-jakarta-method/9781541724006/?lens=publicaffairs Oh, and read his article about the American origins of the internet, “Surfin’ USA,” in The Baffler https://thebaffler.com/latest/surfin-usa-bevins Finally, become a Patron and listen to our interview with The Stranger’s new police-beat reporter Ashley Nerbovig at patreon.com/MechanicalFreak

The boys share their thoughts on the death of Henry Kissinger and the resumption of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Finally, we talk with friend of the show Carl about what life is like under Israel’s unique brand of Apartheid. Maybe now is a good time to go back and listen to our 5th Annual Thanksgiving Pageant Spectacular! https://www.mechanicalfreak.website/podcast/episodes/5th-annual-thanksgiving-pageant-spectacular Come join us on Patreon, where this week we will be interviewing The Stranger’s new reporter covering the bad-cop-beat: patreon.com/MechanicalFreak