yelena917.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

I got laid off today, with the rest of 18F. 18F was an elite federal software shop. We made gov't websites work better, more efficiently for the American people. We saved taxpayers from getting screwed over by contractors. And were fired for it. We made this website to tell our story: 18f.org

submitted 1 day ago • 3282 comments

America's workers are not "falling" into homelessness. They're being pushed. My essay for @nytopinion.nytimes.com:

submitted 2 days ago • 49 comments

Thousands of federal workers performing essential functions—from food safety to forestry and fire management to nuclear safeguards—have been illegally fired. The Department of Justice has abandoned more than 150 years of independence. The president has claimed that he is a king. It is day 31.

submitted 11 days ago • 8 comments

New: DOGE's spending has been secret. No longer. My colleagues have uncovered it. www.propublica.org/article/doge...

submitted 11 days ago • 860 comments

Oh, look what normal countries do when a former president leads a far right coup attempt.

submitted 12 days ago • 1193 comments

This is so fucking horrible, and also oh so very 2025 🤦🏻

submitted 12 days ago • 1 comment

Trayvon Martin would have been 30 years old today had he not been hunted down and killed by George Zimmerman in 2012.

submitted 25 days ago • 10 comments

Judge rules that Black church in DC, which won a $2.8 million default judgment against the Proud Boys, now gains control over the trademark “Proud Boys.” The far-right group is barred from selling any related merchandise or symbols without the consent of the church. Gift link:

submitted 27 days ago • 1186 comments

This Fiona Apple narrated explainer PSA on how to film (and release footage from, not livestream) ICE arrests is exactly what we need from people with production skills right now and is worth about 3 million celebrity “imagine” covers in terms of survival utility

submitted 29 days ago • 86 comments

👇🏽🎯

submitted 28 days ago • 143 comments

This isn't my first or even second time at the rodeo. I dealt with Ronald Reagan & George Bush trying to kill my community by ignoring the AIDS epidemic. It happened again when I lived in South Africa with Thabo Mbeki. And we won twice. So: courage. We will beat them too. Stay focused. Get to work.

submitted 28 days ago • 56 comments

If us Cassandras seem bitter, we're just exhausted.

submitted 29 days ago • 10 comments

Officials at USAID have been put on administrative leave after refusing to allow Elon Musk’s team to access systems at the agency. Musk's crew reportedly demanded access to security systems, personnel files, and classified information.

submitted 29 days ago • 11 comments

BREAKING NEWS: CDC orders mass retraction and revision of submitted research across all science and medicine journals. Banned terms must be scrubbed. Goes beyond MMWR +other CDC pubs. Applies to research already submitted to top medical journals. Take a look. open.substack.com/pub/insideme...

submitted 30 days ago • 602 comments

Lessons to be learned: 1. Centrists align with far-right to look tough on immigration 2. Centrists gain nothing 3. Far-right wins more power

submitted 31 days ago • 192 comments

Black Lives Matter fundamentally broke these people’s brains. They couldn’t bear the idea that they might have to tell a different story about this country and thus tell a different story about themselves. They hated it, and now they are using everything they have to never feel that way again.

submitted 32 days ago • 90 comments

Those who’ve been warning us for years, like @imarajones.bsky.social and @sarahkendzior.bsky.social and @tatyanastroika.bsky.social, will be having too many “i told you so” moments over the coming months & years. And I hate that for all of us. None of this is surprising, and all of it is awful.

submitted 33 days ago • 0 comments

All the "merit" talk has always been BS... www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

submitted 33 days ago • 96 comments

Incredibly important lessons from @yelena917.bsky.social and @tatyanastroika.bsky.social of Stroika. The third rail won’t hold unless Philanthropy changes its operations model. We need to throw money at good NGO’s the way the robber barons toss money at politicians and lawsuits.

submitted 33 days ago • 1 comment

Drawing on our direct experience from global authoritarian contexts, @tatyanastroika.bsky.social and I authored this op-ed to provide the US donor community with practical, actionable steps for the current moment. Read more at @chronphilanthropy.bsky.social - www.philanthropy.com/article/civi...

submitted 34 days ago • 0 comments

I don’t know what is more sickening - that people in low income countries are being blocked from getting their life-savings meds or the fact that a single country can determine whether millions of people get their life-savings meds or not. The system was built broken.

submitted 34 days ago • 3 comments

2025 has been my least favorite decade so far.

submitted 38 days ago • 753 comments

The point of the firehose of Executive Orders is to disorient and to demobilize. It's to instill maximum fear. If we know this, then that's already half the battle. This means that we have to respond with focus on those most vulnerable & targets. It means we have to refuse their attempt to scare us.

submitted 41 days ago • 80 comments

He made a Nazi salute. Then to be sure he made a second Nazi salute. And ADL of all orgs calls it “an awkward gesture” and whitewashes it. Incredible. Absolutely incredible.

submitted 41 days ago • 98 comments

ACT UP, 1990

submitted 42 days ago • 53 comments

Yes, it ended beyond too late. And yes, there are more stages before this ends truly, let alone a just solution is reached. And also, every life saved is a world. Every moment of peace is inherently divine. Every breath of relief is a breath without bombings.

submitted 43 days ago • 2 comments

The tech industry was already pretty bad at recruiting black people to begin with. Making a public announcement they are ending DEI is about sending a message.

submitted 49 days ago • 32 comments

<sarcasm> This doesn't seem familiar or relevant at all.</sarcasm> www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

submitted 49 days ago • 6 comments

For all the talk about Octavia Butler and The Parable of the Sower being on the nose, I hope that the lesson people are taking from this is:

submitted 52 days ago • 5 comments

LA Sanitation posted an encampment sweep notice yesterday for our local unhoused neighbors to take place at 8:30am tomorrow, in case anyone's wondering where the city's priorities are

submitted 53 days ago • 14 comments

how can everything be so dumb and dangerous

submitted 55 days ago • 74 comments

Who is up for a short thread on the intriguing parallels between OpenAI and Enron, as told by one of Enron's investment bankers -- that is to say, me? Here goes...

submitted 56 days ago • 48 comments

During the Holocaust, the Nazis and their collaborators paid bounties for every Jew they turned in. academic.oup.com/ehr/article-...

submitted 55 days ago • 47 comments

Octavia E. Butler signed this copy of Parable of the Sower for my late mother, Patricia Stephens Due. The power of these Black women inspired me to write an essay after Tr*mp's inauguration in 2017. I've reposted a slightly revised version I hope will bring you hope today. tinyurl.com/mwazxrb4

submitted 115 days ago • 40 comments

The Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes has resigned from her position at the Washington Post after her cartoon depicting Jeff Bezos and other billionaires genuflecting toward Trump was killed. Her piece here: https://bit.ly/3Pk1g07

submitted 58 days ago • 76 comments

Just the beginning. Every single act in the news, from mass shootings to terror attacks to every day crime will be used as justification for what they're planning. Movements and activists need to be ready for the way anything they do will be twisted in the same way as well.

submitted 61 days ago • 6 comments