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Dr. EJ Nielsen

@direjackalope.bsky.social
1.1K followers 224 following 13 posts

Academic looking at visual culture, gender, fans, and monsters. They/them. Sometimes I make stuff. Frequently fannish. Retweets & likes =/= endorsements.

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Reposted by Dr. EJ Nielsen
Joel S. @joelhs.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
The use of extremely online memetic aesthetics to support far-right political goals is like something out of Walter Benjamin’s nightmares.
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Nico Mara-McKay 🦇 (they/iel) @nicomaramckay.com · 21/06/2026
"The gender critical movement in the UK is scapegoating trans people for invented problems and using that as justification to erase them from public life. This is consistent with the 9th Pattern of Genocide: Denial and/or Prevention of Identity."
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Fansplaining @fansplaining.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
“It was hard to get pitches placed about other shows, but editors still wanted the dragons. … What started as a hobby and became a job soon turned into a life raft I quietly resented.” @michejaw.bsky.social writes about the Game of Thrones media industrial complex from the inside:
fansplaining.com
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dragons
Recovering from the Game of Thrones content mines.
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Dean Leetal @deanleetal.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
OK! Thank you <3 <3 It's "Ableism in the service of transphobia: J. K. Rowling as a case study" journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/tw...
journal.transformativeworks.org
Ableism in the service of transphobia: J. K. Rowling as a case study | Transformative Works and Cultures
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Dave Andress @davidandress.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Our society has spent the entirety of teenagers' lives systematically destroying every alternative to online interaction, from youth-clubs to broadcast TV, and now wants to cut off their access to the one thing that was sold as replacing it all.
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🎃 Killy Witches 👻 @tillybridges.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
CIS PEOPLE TIME TO STEP UP it’s once again time to yell at our bad government via online comment form the FCC is trying to make trans and nonbinary content require special ratings on shows GLAAD has a good writeup on it below TELL ‘EM NO direct link to comment form: www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filings...
glaad.org
Tell the FCC that LGBTQ Stories Don’t Need a Warning Label | GLAAD
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is targeting LGBTQ stories. They are trying to control what you see on television. This government overreach is dangerous...
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Michael Damian Thomas @michaeldthomas.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
Fun fact! Land-grant public universities were opposed by the southern states and only happened due to the The Morrill Act of 1862 while they were off being the Confederacy. I WONDER WHY THE MODERN GOP HATES THEM NOW?!?! It is a DEEP MYSTERY!
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Amy Rae Hill @amyraehill.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Well well well looks like those art degrees aren't so useless after all
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Chuck Tingle @chucktingle.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
amazing that our own small creations connect us directly to the moment of our universe erupting out of nothing and the unfathomable power of existence itself and yet we look at our drawings or stories and are like 'this is bad.' bud it is not bad it is the leading edge of a billion years of beauty
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Brian Phillips @brianphillips.lol · 02/05/2026
The president of Cornell backed his car into a student and a recent grad after a campus debate on Israel-Palestine. Then he lied about what happened in an email claiming he'd been the victim of harassment. Then, magnificently, Cornell's student newspaper found a video of the incident
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Common Dreams @commondreams.org · 28/03/2026
Nationwide General Strike Planned for May 1: No Kings Organizer
commondreams.org
Nationwide General Strike Planned for May 1: No Kings Organizer
Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin announces nationwide general strike on May 1 in next No Kings mass action.
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Dr. Lisa Corrigan @drlisacorrigan.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
Social movement scholar here to comment on No King again. a 🧵: These protests are important b/c: 1.) as sustained image events, protests offer evidence of continued disapproval of the direction the country is going and disavowal of the country's leadership.
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Nick Ulivieri @nuphoto.com · 28/03/2026
Chicagoooo 🚫👑
View of street full of marchers in Chicago for the No Kings protest
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Iron Spike @ironspike.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
Re: my last reposts “Do not put money in the pocket of a woman who has sworn publicly to use it to disenfranchise vulnerable populations” is the smallest ask imaginable. It’s not oxygen, it’s not food. It’s television. You can do without. There are thousands of other shows for you to watch.
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Calvinball Congress @emericanjezebel.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
just a helpful hint to all you university administrators getting some bad press out there: this is what many zoomers see when they look at college now. if you don’t want to keep bleeding money, maybe consider not oppressing the constitutional rights of your faculty, staff, and students.
tweet from the gaza encampment days, when Indiana University deployed snipers on their students for protesting a genocide
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Dr Rebecca Williams @augustaquarius.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
cstonline.net/cfp-edited-c...
cstonline.net
CfP: edited collection “Opening Sequences: The Narrative Architecture of TV Titles”. Deadline: May 04, 2026
Opening Sequences: The Narrative Architecture of TV Titles This edited volume proposes the first critical anthology devoted to television title sequences as a distinct and influential mode of visual…
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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
The House of Lords Digital & Communications Committee just published their report on AI, copyright & the creative industries, and their conclusions could not be clearer. 🧵 1/5
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The Sociological Review Foundation @thesociologicalreview.org · 06/03/2026
Do universities fail to protect researchers when their public-facing work receives backlash? @lauraclancy.bsky.social @hannahyelin.bsky.social take a closer look at academic labour, the risks of public engagement and the politics of visibility. #OpenAccess @journals.sagepub.com buff.ly/1UkhPWs
Laura Clancy and Hannah Yelin
Digital hate, health and safety, and the labour politics of public academia: ‘Universities don’t value this sort of work at all’
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00380261261420671 
The Sociological Review #OnlineFirst
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Alex Ip 葉清霖 @alexip718.com · 17/12/2025
Behold: the first-ever list of news outlets that have banned generative AI in their reporting. As of today, this is literally information that you cannot find on Google. My goal is to fill the starter pack, so please send over suggestions with supporting evidence! go.bsky.app/8cn1XfT
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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 20/02/2026
The worst figures on campus arguing that campuses had become overrun with wokeness were all best buddies with Epstein. Quelle surprise. www.salon.com/2026/02/19/j...
salon.com
Jeffrey Epstein helped fuel the campus culture wars
The academics in the Epstein files aren’t all criminals, but they shared beliefs about whose work matters.
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AAUP @aaup.org · 17/02/2026
"In recent months, Texas universities have inflicted some of the worst repression of academic freedom we’ve ever witnessed at American colleges, with gag orders, speaker bans and arbitrary firings of dissenting faculty."
insidehighered.com
Censorship Is Bigger in Texas
Texas officials apparently think Texas students are stupid snowflakes who must be protected from hearing controversial ideas.
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Diane Duane @diane.dianeduane.com · 15/02/2026
Speak. The fuck. UP.
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Prof Deborah Lupton, MPH PhD @dalupton.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
Unpopular opinion - there is no way to use GenAI ethically, and AI literacy should involve helping people to understand why (hint - stolen IP, devastating environmental impacts, exploitation of workers, loss of learning, writing and thinking skills) #AcademicSky #sociology
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Elise Wang @elisewang.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
I propose to make universal the old policy of the Blackfriars conference at the American Shakespeare Center: If you do not end your paper on time, you will be forced to exit, pursued by a bear. Literally, a bear will come take your paper from you.
The organizer, introducing the bear on stageA tardy speaker, trying to fend off the bear as he/she leans forward patiently.
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Dr. EJ Nielsen @direjackalope.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
I'm available for indexing academic volumes. Areas of specialization include fan studies, media studies, gender studies, visual culture, art history. DM if interested! Please share if you know someone who may need their monograph or edited collection indexed!
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Allenk_81 @allenk81.bsky.social · 08/02/2026
FAMU can't use the word Black on anything posted around campus related to Black History Month, to stay in compliance with Florida state laws against DEI. Black students can't use the word Black at their Historically Black College during Black History Month.
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Greg Pak @gregpak.net · 29/01/2026
All of these senators pushing "reforms" need to explain how they will enforce them given the fact that ICE is a lawless band of Klansmen that breaks the law constantly.
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Andrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
i have just gotten off a productive call with sauron where i laid out our requests - nazgul bodycams - morgul knife must remain sheathed unless suspect is determined to be carrying the one ring - shelob will be the new point of contact
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Michael DeForge @michaeldeforge.bsky.social · 10/06/2025
very generous of zoe, and as always, all agitprop i've drawn is available to print for whoever wants it drive.google.com/drive/folder...
drive.google.com
agitprop dump - Google Drive
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
I'm not sure Democrats in D.C. are aware that their base's rage against ICE has reached a level of blinding white-hot intensity. They're worried about "looking weak" for voting "against law enforcement" when they should be worried a mob of housewives is going to come beat them to death if they do.
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Thomas Leeper @thosjleeper.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
National media should really be covering the fact thay every major school, museum, and arts institution in the Twin Cities, and hundreds of local businesses are closed tomorrow to protest federal occupation. Nothing like this at this scale has happened anywhere in America anytime in living memory.
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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
Don't call it a "bubble." OpenAI, Microsoft, & Alphabet are just fine with that term because they get to tell you that all the dot-com bubble or the railroad bubble or the whatever bubble was, was a shaking out the greats after an intense period of mania. This isn't a bubble. This is a time bomb.
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 09/01/2026
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
This approach, of course, is quite familiar to communities that have been dealing with police abuses for as long as there have been professional police forces. In 2000, then–New York City Mayor and future Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani justified the killing of the Haitian American Patrick Dorismond by police by quipping that he was “no altar boy.” Embarrassingly for Giuliani, whose capacity for shame was overestimated even then, it turned out that Dorismond had literally been an altar boy. Dorismond’s mother responded to the campaign to justify her son’s killing with an observation that continues to haunt me decades later.

“They kill,” Dorismond said, “and after that, they kill him the other way—with the mouth.”

Taking Good’s life wasn’t enough. The moment she died, it became imperative for the administration to also destroy her memory.
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#BLM/#NMP/#ANTIFA🇲🇽 @sinnu1.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
What he says…
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WIRED @wired.com · 08/01/2026
We've removed the paywall from this guide so everyone can access it. 👇 Stay safe.
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Nick, the Melanated Magician (they/them) @melanatedmagus.blacksky.app · 09/01/2026
If you are cishet I NEED you to read this thread and do your best to understand the overlapping tragedies that Claire is describing here.
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Evan Hayles Gledhill @gothicbodies.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
Just look how gorgeous, how hopeful and uplifting good people and their art are!! Thanks to this artist, and people with spare cash go give some to marginalised creatives who are doing so much to get us all through!!
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 07/01/2026
keep thinking of a vocally anti-woke reporter who insisted that the term "environmental racism" was nonsense
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Dr Surekha Davies, Historical Monster Consultant (she/her) @drsurekhadavies.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
London book talk on HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY! I'll be speaking on Thursday 5th May, 6pm, at @linneansociety.bsky.social More info and registration below. A free exhibition, "Wonder" is now on and ends the next day. 1/2 💙📚 🧪 🗃 #medieval #earlymodern #histsci #histmed #18thC #HAMH
eventbrite.co.uk
HUMANS: A Monstrous History
Monsters aren’t fantasy. They built our ideas of race, gender, nations, and ‘normal.’ This is history through monsters.
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AAUP Texas A&M-College Station Chapter @tamu-aaup.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
From an email to one of our faculty members.... Not even Plato can escape censorship at Texas A&M!
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Dr Rebecca Williams @augustaquarius.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
This looks like a fantastic new book (includes some chapters on fandom and participatory cultures too) link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
link.springer.com
#TrueCrime: Digital Culture, Ethics and True Crime Audiences
The book considers the large and varied true crime community, outlining their at times contradictory needs and desires
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K. Morrissey @katiedidnt.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
This “trap” is often what admin wants. They put the onus onto individual instructors, tell them it’s their responsibility to meet the student/handle the situation, and they refuse to offer clear guidance/support. Then admin is insulated from blowback & the instructor bears the burden.
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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 02/12/2025
Every dollar JK Rowling makes from Harry Potter is going into bankrolling an extortion racket issuing legal threats to organizations across the UK to purge themselves of trans people or face ruinous lawfare.
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onion person @junlper.beer · 01/12/2025
the onion newspaper is worth it for the ads alone they always kill me
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gwen howerton @kissphoria.bsky.social · 29/11/2025
idk not to mention how very nuanced and normal the actual response here was
Trans Professors comment
Mel Curth (She/They)
November 16, 2025 at 2:04 PM
Please note that I am not deducting points because you have certain beliefs, but instead I am deducting point for you posting a reaction paper that does not answer the questions for this assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive.
While you are entitled to your own personal beliefs, there is an appropriate time or place to implement them in your reflections. I encourage all students to question or challenge the course material with other empirical findings or testable hypotheses, but using your own personal beliefs to argue against the findings of not only this article, but the findings of countless articles across psychology, biology, sociology, etc. is not best practice.
You argue that abiding by normative gender roles is beneficial (it is perfectly fine to believe this. but to then say that evervone should act
TPUSA OUTrans Professors comment
the same, while also saying that people aren't pressured into gendered expectations is contradictory, especially since your arguments reflect a religious pressure to act in gender-stereotypical ways. You can say that strict gender norms don't create gender stereotypes, but that isn't true by definition of what a stereotype is. Please note that acknowledging gender stereotypes does not immediately denote a negative connotation, a nuance this article discusses.
Additionally, to call an entire group of people
"demonic" is highly offensive, especially a minoritized population. You are entitled to your own beliefs, but this isn't a vague narrative of
"society pushes lies," but instead the result of countless years developing psychological and scientific evidence for these claims and directly interacting with the communities involved. You may personally disagree with this, but that
TPUSA OU
2Trans Professors comment
doesn't change the fact that every major psychological, medical, pediatric, and psychiatric association in the United States acknowledges that, biologically and psychologically, sex and gender is neither binary nor fixed.
I implore you apply some more perspective and empathy in your work. If you personally disagree with the findings, then by all means share your criticisms, but make sure to do so in a way that is appropriate and using the methodology of empirical psychology, as aligned with the learning goals in this class. If you have any additional questions or concerns about this or would like some additional educational resources, I would be happy to discuss this further and provide you with them.
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TPUSA OUAdditional professor
Megan Waldron (She/Her/Hers)
November 16, 2025 at 3:09 PM
Samantha, I am the other instructor for this course, and I have also taken the time to read your paper. I concur with Mel on the grade you received. This paper should not be considered as a completion of the assignment.
Everyone has different ways in which they see the world, but in an academic course such as this you are being asked to support your ideas with empirical evidence and higher-level reasoning.
I find it concerning that you state at the beginning of your paper that you do not think bullying ("teasing") is a bad thing. In addition, your paper directly and harshly criticizes your peers and their opinions, which are just as valuable as yours. Disagreeing with others is fine, but there is a respectful way to go about it. That goes for discussion posts as well as reaction
papers.
Please employ more thoughtfulness in your future assignments
TPUSA OU
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The Onion @theonion.com · 13/11/2025
"Mark my words, one wrong step in this town’ll land you in a whole heap of social services."
theonion.com
Not Sure How They Deal With Criminals In Your Town, But ’Round Here We Use A Restorative Justice Process
Well, well, well. What have we got here? Another city slicker who thinks he can waltz into my town and start causin’ all sorts of trouble. I’d be careful if I was you, fella. Because however they do t...
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Dr. EJ Nielsen @direjackalope.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
Excited to report that two new Cryptids have been sighted at my location. This is the best photo evidence we have collected so far. Research (and cuddles) are ongoing.
Behind a rack of shoes and ties a cat can just barely be seen.A blurry close up of a black cat head
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Rachael P @plussone.bsky.social · 18/10/2025
Helicopter view of Chicago #NoKings in Grant Park via @cbschicago.bsky.social
View from the sky of tens of thousands gathered in Chicago's Grant Park for the No Kings protest
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Andrew A. Gill @andrewagill.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
It occurs to me how scared she looks & yet she's protecting her constituents. I'd much rather see Chuck Schumer scared & trying something than his cool, all is well shtick. Bravery isn't not being afraid, that's insanity. Bravery is beimg scared & saying fuck it we gotta do something anyway.
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