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michellemartin.bsky.social
English educator. Ph.D. in theory/Am lit. Small-time farmer, sometimes banjo-picker, and Appalachian native. Lover of sci-fi, film, high modernism, and goats. Political junkie.
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As a big fan of not having prisons anymore, seeing Indigenous people block a prison by buying the land out from under the state is very satisfying.

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

If it weren't a Nazi salute, they'd be mortified at the very suggestion and would be vigilant about making absolutely any other gesture (fist pumps, v-signs, etc) instead of "oops, I did it again." Ergo - it's a fucking Nazi salute.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

French photographer Denise Bellon Part of the French Alliance-Photo agency she was associated with the Surrealist movement and was photographer for all the International Exhibitions of Surrealism. Andre Breton and his Surrealist Group at the Gates of the Desert, 1960 #AndreBreton #BOTD

submitted 4 days ago • 2 comments

JD Vance owns AcreTrader, an app that lets wealthy—often foreign—investors buy up U.S. farmland. Guess who’s deliberately tanking farm economies so JD and his billionaire tech buddies can scoop it up for pennies. civileats.com/2024/09/18/j...

submitted 4 days ago • 549 comments

Yep

submitted 4 days ago • 9 comments

Pro-natalist tech bros and Christian Quiverfull practitioners (or whatever they call themselves these days) seem like strange bedfellows until you remember that a fundamental part of their psyches is their sense of superiority or Chosenness.

submitted 4 days ago • 5 comments

One side of this "memento mori" features a human face crawling with worms and insects; the other side shows a skull - the flesh eaten away. Date unknown. This unusual object is from the Wellcome Collection in London.

submitted 5 days ago • 11 comments

A French way of saying something is tip-top, especially a fine wine, is c’est le petit Jésus en culotte de velours. It means “it’s the baby Jesus in velvet underpants.”

submitted 5 days ago • 24 comments

did you know the Vietnamese Cao Dai religion specifically reveres Victor Hugo www.grunge.com/1250387/why-...

submitted 5 days ago • 6 comments

Wonder what those guidelines were.... Probably to make it as bland as possible.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

UPDATE: Judge CHUTKAN has called a 4pm hearing on the lawsuit over Elon Musk's authority to run DOGE.

submitted 8 days ago • 317 comments

There's probably 200,000 new employees in the feds. The largest single layoff in US history was probably IBM '93--60,000 people. Litigation permitting, Musk probably beats it.

submitted 8 days ago • 9 comments

I don't think anyone is demanding that every person needs stacks of film, VHS, DVDs and Blurays but the fact is, owning physical media is the only way to guarantee access to what you wish to see in the future. We are seeing streaming getting yanked on a whim and it's only going to get worse.

submitted 9 days ago • 97 comments

Elon Musk thinks the poor are a "Parasite Class", & his philosophical guru Curtis Yarvin has "joked" that they should be melted down into biodiesel. But this is a fascist ethos, & some say the true "Parasite Class" are those who have become grotesquely rich off the labor of others.

submitted 9 days ago • 144 comments

Mitch McConnell's vote against RFK Jr. is not surprising. Republican leaders vote contra party line only when it touches on their immediate personal experience. Their sympathy does not extend past their noses - they suffer from a poverty of imagination.

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

#booksky

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment

TLDR: 1. Universities have been hiding their financial research shortfalls. 2. Indirect costs (whose funding is on the chopping block) are crucial to supporting research. 3. The commercial model of university research isn't working, and culturally we've forgotten the value of a public good.

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

Wordsworth, in his Prelude from 1805, described the coronation of Napoleon (and the implicit reprise of monarchism) as "the dog / Returning to his vomit." Which pretty accurately sums up Trump's second term.

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

Remembering Haskell Wexler on his birthday🎂 📷 Susan Meiselas, Nicaragua, 1984 When he won his first #Oscar for Cinematography, for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Haskell Wexler's entire speech was this: "I hope we can use our art for peace and for love. Thanks."

submitted 16 days ago • 1 comment

You can guarantee that if we somehow manage to avoid falling off the precipice into totalitarianism, if we manage to elect Dems in 2 or 4 years, then clawing back publicly-funded services that have been privatized will be next to impossible. Even Dems will preserve privatization because capitalism.

submitted 17 days ago • 1 comment

Trump's tariffs and trade war threats are not just part of his typical Barnum and Bailey Strongman act, but are designed to provoke fear and anxiety in a populace which just endured dramatic inflation.

submitted 17 days ago • 0 comments

In 2018, Beattie was fired from the 1st Trump administration after CNN published an article about his attendance at a conference where prominent white nationalists were also in attendance. What once got you fired by Trump's team is now given tacit approval and you're elevated to positions of power.

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

this is incredibly cool work and good news. prion diseases in humans are horrifying -- like alzheimer's but fatal, and condensed into a year or two of rapid degeneration. the treatment is currently only in mouse trials, but what a beautiful implication for the future of medicine

submitted 19 days ago • 5 comments

The doublethink is so strong here that it hurts. And the naivete. This fb page, The Appalachian Podcast, has 109k followers. #appalachia

submitted 19 days ago • 2 comments