Teacher & writer of fiction. Speaking for myself, not for any institution. (he/him) Author of “Atty at Law” & “Tell It True,” a Whippoorwill Book Award winner.
Jacksonville, Ala.
Joined June 2011
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Tim Lockette retweeted
I want to point out that this woman has an entire media company for a show that pulls in 100 views an episode. AL politicians appear on it.
Rightwing media is the easiest, most well-funded grift imaginable. If I was a bad person I'd also try to get in on all that dark money
Tim Lockette retweeted
In Fahrenheit 451, the chief book-burner, Captain Beatty, describes how reading became obsolete because the public demanded increasingly fast-paced entertainments, and those entertainments slowly corroded their ability to think. “Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests, tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending. Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column … Many were those whose sole knowledge of Hamlet was a one-page digest in a book that claimed, ‘Now at last you can read all the classics.’ … School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches?”
In this passage Ray Bradbury foretells the intellectual hollowing out of the working class, the advent of AI-generated “summaries” of classic novels, the attention-frying culture of short-form video, the relaxation of educational standards into non-existence. All of this in a book published in 1953.
Tim Lockette retweeted
Donald Trump gave us Darline Graham, Ken Paxton, Vivek Ramaswamy, and... loss after loss after loss. And he serves Putin as if he is the Russian's manservant. Please rid us of this pestilent hysteric.
Tim Lockette retweeted
Donald Trump is the single worst thing that ever happened to the Republican Party & to the conservative movement. He should resign and get out of our lives. Now. @jaketapper @DanaBashCNN @wolfblitzer @Kasparov63 @brithume @realDonaldTrump @RpsAgainstTrump @mattklewis @marctshort
Tim Lockette retweeted
A fake Doug Jones Pride rally. Real texts sent to Alabama voters.
The texts appear to trace back to Southeastern Conservative PAC, which has ties to Tommy Tuberville. The rally didn’t exist.
Apparently, someone thought rainbows and the word “Pride” would scare people.
You know how we combat this crap? VOTE WITH PRIDE.
Pride in our neighbors. Pride in standing up for each other. Pride in refusing to let deception decide Alabama’s future.
Vote November 3.
BREAKING — The political text campaign last night promoting a nonexistent Doug Jones Pride rally appears to have been commissioned by a PAC with ties to Tommy Tuberville.
lagniappemobile.com/news/ala…
Tim Lockette retweeted
No one should want a future in which all creative & intellectual work is done by machines, where humans are kept as pets playing games in their homes. All literature & mythology warns against such a fate. Don't go gently into the dystopia they seek.
Tim Lockette retweeted
So Vivek Ramaswamy and his campaign found a homeless woman in desperate need of help, cleaned her up just long enough to exploit her for a political attack ad against her own daughter, and then sent her right back onto the streets? These people aren’t just cruel. They’re fucking monsters.
Tim Lockette retweeted
Same old rhetoric about locking people up. The real question is what does "behind bars" provide in the way of harm reduction and future crime prevention? If I was governor of Alabama, I would not brag about sending people to prison. ADOC operates like active crime scenes run by an inept, drug-trafficking gang.
If you’re committing crimes in Alabama, our law enforcement has a place for you — behind bars.
Today, I hosted a reception honoring the final @ALEAprotects trooper class of my Administration.
I’m proud to see these 44 troopers joining the ranks to keep Alabama safe. #alpolitics
Tim Lockette retweeted
The largest businesses in the state are bankrolling a campaign in which they themselves ADMIT to fabricating claims.
And then people like Alabama Power wonder why no one trusts them and they have to run goodwill ads that aren’t moving the needle.
Maybe try not being crappy?
Tim Lockette 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.
Tim Lockette retweeted
Fox: Why are you here this morning?
Trump rally attendee: Well, in the late 70s, I was a little too young to go to South America for the Jonestown Massacre. But this is as close as I'll ever get, so that's why I'm here. There's nothing like seeing a cult right up front.
Tim Lockette retweeted
Elon Musk’s DOGE was a disaster. Now, Tuberville wants to bring that same approach to Alabama state government. That would mean cutting jobs, programs he doesn’t like, and threatening the retirement security of our teachers and state employees. Pay attention, folks.
Tim Lockette retweeted
Comment from Beth on my reporting of Katherine Robertson’s statements —
1700 plus dead bodies in the prisons since 2019 isn't hype. Alabama prisons have the highest death rate in the nation. The status quo denial of this truth is a damn shame & an insult to the hundreds of families victimized by this system every day through extortion, drug addiction and threats of harm and real harm to their families.
al.com/politics/2026/10/kath…
Tim Lockette retweeted
One thing social media has done is really make me see what a fuck job voting in Alabama is. We are allowed ONLY one day to vote and that’s it and if you can’t make it? Well fuck you, that’s the GOP point. Watching folks vote at their leisure, for weeks, hurts my fucking feelings. Vote blue god damnit
Tim Lockette retweeted
Alabama's legislative prison oversight committee meets just four times a year and cancelled the last meeting of the year this week due to "scheduling conflicts." The state will go to trial with the DOJ next month over persistent unaddressed horrific prison conditions. The state's position is the harms aren't systemic, despite maintaining the highest prison death toll of any state system in the most incarcerated country in the history of humanity.
Tim Lockette retweeted
There’s a reason the great dystopian novels envision a world without literacy. Those books warned about the very age we’re now living in. Those who abandon reading & writing are surrendering their powers of thinking. What’s shocking is that so many would surrender so readily.
Tim Lockette retweeted
It’s wild that we continue to frame AI regulation as a task that’s racing against an impossible clock. None of these dangers are inevitable - they could all be prevented by an international agreement to pause new releases. This is nukes 2.0, this time with zero restraint.
Tim Lockette retweeted
What I find insulting is that many of the people running Google claim to be fans of Tolkien. If they were, they would know it’s generally not a smart idea for wizards of tech and industry to attack an ancient forest.
ALT Guardian essay describing how Google illegally felled 250,000 trees to build a datacentre.