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Erin McElroy

@erinmcel.bsky.social
910 followers 391 following 58 posts

Associate Professor of Geography at University of Washington www.erinmcelroy.net; Anti-Eviction Mapping Project antievictionmap.com; Silicon Valley Imperialism www.dukeupress.edu/silicon-valley-i…

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Erin McElroy @erinmcel.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
For those in Miami!
Technofuedal Fever Dreams talk at FIU Sept 11 2:30pm
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Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
People are actually pretty difficult to kill! They don’t just sit still and die off! They tend to fight back or run away and they’re frankly pretty good at surviving. It feels like there’s a kind of spiritual death of faith in human capacity for life that is being projected into reality here.
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 30/08/2026
Pathetic -- Google is now referring to Lake Ontario as "Lake America"
screencap of Google Maps showing "Lake America"
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Maurizio Guerrero @mauriziogro.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Facial recognition is a major threat to immigrants in NYC. Federal agents have requested, subpoenaed, or obtained biometric data through a warrant. Databases have been hacked  documentedny.com/2026/08/03/n... @shahanafrombk.bsky.social @socialists.nyc @erinmcel.bsky.social @stopspyingny.bsky.social
documentedny.com
Fearing Threat to Immigrants, Advocates Push for New Regulations on Facial Recognition
As face and voice scans appear at NYC businesses and residences, new bills take aim at reining in the new technology.
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Texas Conference of the AAUP @texasaaup.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Dr. Iván Chaar López: “If you want a productive university…that supports the state, its citizens, its neighbors, I’m not sure that you want the workers in this institution to be nervous, to be looking over their shoulders… Academic freedom is not under duress—it’s being dismantled.”
insidehighered.com
Prof Denied Tenure: Academic Freedom at UT Being Dismantled
Border-surveillance researcher Iván Chaar López received a near-unanimous recommendation from faculty and outstanding external support letters. Still, he was denied tenure without explanation.
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Sarah T Roberts, PhD @ubiquity75.xyz · 22/07/2026
Please share my post, share my outrage and sign, and share this petition: actionnetwork.org/petitions/op...
actionnetwork.org
Open Letter Concerning the Tenure Denial of Dr. Iván Chaar López
The denial of tenure to Dr. Chaar López has become a national concern because it raises questions that extend far beyond one faculty member or one institution. Scholars across disciplines depend upon ...
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Chicago Reader @chicagoreader.com · 16/07/2026
The art school built its art therapy program around social justice, then claims of anti-Semitism devastated the department. bit.ly/4fEo7Bf
chicagoreader.com
SAIC's Palestine problem - Chicago Reader
The art school built its art therapy program around social justice, then claims of anti-Semitism devastated the department.
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Liz Neeley @lizneeley.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
More news about lawsuits: court sides with fired professor on free speech grounds. Dr. Shirinian will not be reinstated, but she is closer to getting paid for her trouble (State officials must now approve the settlement). www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-t...
insidehighered.com
U Tennessee to Pay Millions to Prof Fired for Kirk Comments
The University of Tennessee System will pay $1.9 million to settle a lawsuit brought by a former professor who was fired for comments she made about the late conservative pundit Charlie Kirk, Knox New...
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Tech Policy Press @techpolicypress.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
The techlash needs a target close to home, say Arjun Hassard and Erin McElroy, arguing tenant screening—with its algorithmic discrimination, junk fees, and lifelong digital stigma—is the bold, common-sense tech fight candidates should pick.
buff.ly
Populist Candidates Need More Tech Policy—Reforming Tenant Screening Is A Good Start
The regulation of tenant screening software presents a tailor-made policy opening, write Arjun Hassard and Erin McElroy.
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Andrew Aurand @agaurand.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
7 of every 8 renters who lost housing assistance in the past 2 years still needed it. For many, their assistance stopped because of time or assistance limits or the program ran out of money. This and other findings in @nlihc.org's new National Renter Survey nlihc.org/national-ren...
nlihc.org
2025 National Renter Survey
Learn more about NLIHC's 2025 National Renter Survey.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 20/06/2026
After spring 2024’s revival of the student protest movement at a scale not seen since the 1960s, reactionary administrators & faculty got together to opportunistically discredit & try to reverse intellectual trends they didn’t like and blamed for creating the encampments like Vandy report & this one
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Public Books @publicbooks.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
“We question the ‘study’s’ purpose in a time of institutional capture by political actors that prohibit independent inquiry and dissent.” New at PB: Iván Chaar López & @erinmcel.bsky.social on Richard D. Kahlenberg and Lief Lin’s critique of American Studies.
publicbooks.org
Who Benefits from Distorting American Studies? - Public Books
“There is a movement undermining, constraining, and eradicating those who document, understand, and name the experiences of systematically marginalized communities in US history.”
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Erin McElroy @erinmcel.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Excited for this to be out in the world!
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Erin McElroy @erinmcel.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
For those in Montreal!
Technofeudal fever dreams - talk in Montreal
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Data Justice Hub @datajusticehub.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
@erinmcel.bsky.social , co-founder of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project and author of Silicon Valley Imperialism, will be speaking as a part of our Data Activism in the Age of Trump webinar on April 28. Register at the link below.
concordia.ca
Data Activism in the Age of Trump | Events - Concordia University
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Erin McElroy @erinmcel.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
Thank you so so much to @muybarra.bsky.social, @desireefields.bsky.social, @liviu-chelcea.bsky.social, Ananya Roy, and Magie Ramirez for their generous reflections on Silicon Valley Imperialism! @dukepress.bsky.social doi.org/10.1080/2325...
Silicon Valley Imperialism: Techno Fantasies & Frictions in Postsocialist Times
Erin McElroy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2024, 296 pp. $27.95 paper (ISBN 978-1-4780-3021-8); $104.95 cloth (ISBN 978-1-4780-2596-2); $27.95 electronic (ISBN 978-1-4780-5921-9)
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 09/04/2026
Our PhD student Kennedy Orwa, who studies applications of AI to health care, was hastily deported today to Kenya along with his 13-year-old son without opportunity to speak to legal counsel. King 5 reports that he held a valid visa that was rescinded without explanation.
king5.com
UW graduate student deported through SEA as protesters demand answers
A union representing University of Washington graduate student workers says Kennedy Orwa’s student visa was rescinded without explanation.
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Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 07/04/2026
While we can’t levy sanctions as individuals, we can try to make US tech companies feel the pain a bit
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Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
The U. of Washington stripped its Director of Middle East Studies of his position for writing an email that said “Israeli actions tell us that they seek the destruction of the state, not just its ruling class” and that Iran had not been pursuing nuclear weapons. In other words, for stating facts.
The professor reportedly wrote in a March 18 newsletter, which he sent via the center’s listserv, that “Israeli actions tell us that they seek the destruction of the state, not just its ruling class.” The email, titled “More notes on the Iran war,” reportedly added that it “was always BS” that the Islamic Republic was pursuing nuclear weapons.
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Rima I Anabtawi @rimaanabtawi.bsky.social · 04/04/2026
University of Washington professor fired from director job after sending email criticizing Iran war
theguardian.com
University of Washington professor fired from director job after sending email criticizing Iran war
Aria Fani of University of Washington’s Middle East Center is latest critic of Israel to lose position at US university
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404 Media @404media.co · 31/03/2026
NEW: Thomson Reuters, the media company which is also a data broker, has long provided personal data for ICE tools, according to documents obtained by 404 Media and sources. There are also indications its data is now part of the Palantir system ICE uses to find which neighborhoods to target.
404media.co
How Thomson Reuters Powers ICE and Palantir
Thomson Reuters’ data, which can include peoples’ addresses and details on their ethnicity, is linked to tools used ICE.
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Academe @academemagazine.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
The fight against the University of Michigan–Los Alamos data center reveals the “political and planetary stakes” of AI and the threat of “tech-enhanced militarism,” @tisjune.bsky.social , @shreyachowdhary.bsky.social & @nathanckim.bsky.social write in #Academe:
aaup.org
AI as a War Issue, War as a Workers’ Issue
The fight against the University of Michigan–Los Alamos data center.
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Erin McElroy @erinmcel.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
"Siliconization, technofascism, and their unbecomings" journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1... Thanks to Kavita Dattani, Manissa Maharawal, Daniela Rosner, @nassimparvin.bsky.social, @profgillian.bsky.social and @michelelancione.bsky.social @societyandspace.bsky.social @dukepress.bsky.social
In this response essay, I reflect upon how some of the central themes of my book Silicon Valley Imperialism: Techno Fantasies and Frictions in Postsocialist Times (Duke University Press, 2024) speak to the contemporary technofascist moment, as well as ongoing practices of attempting to de–siliconize the future. I also offer fascist transformations currently transpiring on both sides of the former Iron Curtain, as well as the landscapes of gentrification upon which they take place, a deeper and transnational genealogy–one rooted in historic technologies of racial banishment, heteromasculinism, and anticommunism. At the same time, I celebrate the ongoing freedom struggles against fascism, racial banishment, and genocidal technologies that organizers in both the United States and Romania continue to commit themselves to, all in an interconnected effort to unbecome Silicon Valley. Throughout this essay, I engage with the insightful comments made by Kavita Dattani, Michele Lancione, Manissa M. Maharawal, Nassim Parvin, Gillian Rose, and Daniela Rosner here, each of whom offer brilliant interventions and generous reflections in this forum.
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ijurresearch.bsky.social @ijurresearch.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
🌉 IJURR at AAG 2026 | San Francisco Join us for the IJURR Lecture by Erin McElroy and explore our new Virtual Issue on San Francisco. Check it out 👇 www.ijurr.org/ijurr-at-the...
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Erin McElroy @erinmcel.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
For those at the AAG, come say hi today! @ijurresearch.bsky.social "Technofeudal Fever Dreams: Silicon Fiefdoms, Doom Loop Dystopics, and the Emancipatory Posssibilities of Failure."
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Democracy Now! @democracynow.org · 16/03/2026
Palestinian activist Leqaa Kordia was released on bond Monday after more than a year in ICE detention.
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 04/03/2026
Daily reminder that calling ai dead labor and stolen labor is literal.
futurism.com
Grammarly Offering Manuscript Reviews by AI Versions of Recently Deceased Professors
The Grammarly "Expert Review" feature uses AI to provide feedback on papers using the name and work of real professors, dead or alive.
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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 12/02/2026
This is a travesty. African and African Diaspora Studies at UT Austin has been one of the best programs in the country. And for historical context, this is explicitly about reversing the gains of student movements in the 60s and 70s. www.statesman.com/news/educati...
statesman.com
UT to consolidate gender and ethnic studies programs into one new department
Affected departments include those that focus on African and African Diaspora Studies, Mexican American Studies, Women and Gender Studies and American Studies.
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
ICE has now spent over half a BILLION dollars just on purchasing warehouses around the country to convert into detention camps. If these mega-camps are utilized to the full capacity ICE intends, they'll be the largest prisons in the country, with little real oversight. www.ajc.com/politics/202...
ajc.com
ICE to begin detaining immigrants inside Social Circle warehouse in April
Homeland Security plans to build warehouse detention facilities in other cities being met with opposition.
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Journal of Engaging Science, Technology, and Society (ESTS) @estsjournal.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
📢Issue 11.3 out now! 2 Engagements, 2 ORAs + the Final Editorial of the 2020-25 ESTS Collective on the difference & promise of leading and running a diamond open access journal #ClimateChange #TransnationalSTS #Retooling #Openness #HousingJustice #OpenScience 👀https://bit.ly/3LoiLxT
Screenshot of ESTS webpages and all the content listed as PDF and HTML content.
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Gabriella "Biella" Coleman @biella.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
Props to the developers behind ICE Map, cataloguing all known ICE incidents www.icemap.dev
icemap.dev
ICE Map
ICE Map - Visualizing ICE activity
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Yelena Gluzman @gluzmania.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
New issue of ESTS out, including an interesting article by Luis Felipe R. Murillo and Erin McElroy @erinmcel.bsky.social on possibilities for creating “'political software' aligned with the goals of housing action research" estsjournal.org/index.php/es...
estsjournal.org
View of When ‘Open’ is Still Far from Good Enough: The Work of Counter-Mapping with Political Software | Engaging Science, Technology, and Society
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Harsha Walia @harshawalia.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
Conflicting info about whether Pretti was murdered by ICE or CBP makes it clear that ICE is not single "rogue agency" ICE, CBP and ALL policing & borders must be abolished. This isn't just one agency; its an entire infrastructure of carceral control, illegalization & criminalization, and fascism.
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Harsha Walia @harshawalia.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
There is no "immigration problem" There is no migrant problem There is no problem with illegals There is no border crisis Only a problem of the border and the machinery of death that upholds it.
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Prem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
New: Alex Pretti, the man killed by the Trump-Vance mob of agents was an outdoorsmen, a mountain biker, an ICU nurse who "would go out of his way to help," say Veterans Affairs colleagues. Cheerful. Funny. Gentle. And still, per sources, Trump officials are urging staff to call him a "terrorist."
zeteo.com
DHS Shooting Victim in Minneapolis Was a ‘Sweet’ and ‘Principled Person’
Zeteo spoke with two doctors who worked with Alex Pretti, a nurse who is the latest victim of Trump’s violent invasion of Minnesota.
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Unicorn Riot @unicornriot.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
NEW: ICE Agents Fatally Shoot Observer in Minneapolis unicornriot.ninja/2026/ice-age...
unicornriot.ninja
ICE Agents Fatally Shoot Observer in Minneapolis - UNICORN RIOT
ICE fatally shot a woman acting as an observer to their immigration actions in Minneapolis.
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Erin McElroy @erinmcel.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
Excited to have this out in the world “Disciplining Through Landlord Technologies: Why the Carceral Logics of Tenant Surveillance Require Abolition” onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @antipodeonline.bsky.social
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Disciplining Through Landlord Technologies: Why the Carceral Logics of Tenant Surveillance Require Abolition
Facial recognition and other surveillance systems are increasingly being deployed in low-income housing across the United States, adding new scopic regimes into an already carceral propertied landsca...
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 14/12/2025
‘They’re trying to get rich off it’: US contractors vie to rebuild Gaza, with ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ team in the lead
theguardian.com
‘They’re trying to get rich off it’: US contractors vie to rebuild Gaza, with ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ team in the lead
Exclusive: group behind notorious Florida immigration detention center created bid for reconstruction deal Trump administration insiders and well-connected Republican businesses have been jostling to dominate pending humanitarian aid and reconstruction logistics in the shattered Gaza Strip, according to sources and documents reviewed by the Guardian. With three-quarters of Gaza’s structures damaged or destroyed by two years of Israeli strikes, the rebuilding effort to come – estimated at $70bn by the United Nations – could be a rich prize for companies that specialize in construction, demolition, transportation and logistics. Continue reading...
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David Palumbo-Liu @palumboliu.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
Join us as we “reflect on what bringing abolitionist and ant- imperial geographies together in post-socialist contexts can do. Just as global capital connections mapped the Siliconizing moment, other connections scaffold the very possibilities of unbecoming Silicon Valley.”
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Josh Spero @joshspero.ft.com · 07/12/2025
I would say this because I edited it but @mshannahmurphy.bsky.social's piece on tech bros founding their own for-profit cities really is unmissable reading www.ft.com/content/b127...
ft.com
Tech elites are starting their own for-profit cities
They want to escape from regulation and ‘failing’ democracy — but are they more opportunistic than libertarian?
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Ana Brandusescu @anabrandusescu.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
Advancing techno-fascism, the EO edition.
whitehouse.gov
Launching the Genesis Mission
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1.  Purpose.
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Howard Zinn Book Fair @howardzinnbookfair.bsky.social · 15/11/2025
Don’t give up. Don’t give in. Let’s be inspired together on December 7!
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David Palumbo-Liu @palumboliu.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
inthesetimes.com/article/gaza...
inthesetimes.com
This Is What Genocide Looks Like When Silicon Valley Writes the Brochure
Corporate, tech oligarchs are providing the infrastructure for and profiting off genocide in Gaza. But accountability is closer than you think.
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Puff the Magic Hater @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 08/11/2025
My latest is a love letter to Chicago. "I see you stumbling through the stubborn, awkward rhythm of showing up, again and again. I see you fighting alongside people who sometimes frustrate and confuse you, and defending neighbors you may have never met, because you know they’re all your people."
organizingmythoughts.org
In Chicago, We Run Toward Danger Together
"Faced with unrelenting state violence, Chicagoans have refused to be cowed," says Mariame Kaba.
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Erin McElroy @erinmcel.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
For those in San Diego tomorrow! Political Technology: Silicon Traps and Cartographic Contradictions Wednesday, October 29 · 4 - 5pm PDT www.eventbrite.com/e/political-...
Wednesday, October 29
Political Technology: Silicon Traps and Cartographic Contradictions
By UC San Diego Design Lab

Design@Large is a UC San Diego course powered by The Design Lab that is open to the public.
Wednesday, October 29 · 4 - 5pm PDT

About Political Technology: Silicon Traps and Cartographic Contradictions

In this talk, McElroy will explore the hopes and struggles of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project-- a data visualization, counter-cartography, and digital media collective that produces tools, maps, reports, murals, zines, oral histories, and more to further the work of housing and spatial justice. While the collective emerged to design research that could be mobilized to combat gentrification and racial banishment resulting from Siliconization, it nevertheless has continually been forced to navigate the contradictions and complexities inherent in mobilizing data, digitality, and software to organize against Silicon Valley-instigated geographies of dispossession. As we have found, even attempts to create “open” technology and mapping projects often end up reproducing Silicon Valley dynamics. In this talk McElroy discusses the technological and technocultural tensions, visions, and ecosystems inherent in navigating these spaces in today’s techno/racial capitalist conjuncture, historicizing these struggles within a longer arc of attempts to craft anticapitalist and anti-imperial politically grounded technology projects.
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St. John Barned-Smith @stjbs.bsky.social · 25/10/2025
BREAKING: Dozens of Northern California immigrants abruptly summoned to ICE office for weekend check-ins www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...
sfchronicle.com
Dozens of Northern California immigrants abruptly summoned to ICE office for weekend check-ins
Several dozen people reported to the Stockton office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Saturday afternoon after receiving summons, immigrant advocates said.
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Erin McElroy @erinmcel.bsky.social · 09/10/2025
For those in DC!
Technofascist Fever Dreams. Talk at the Tenley-Friendship Neighborhood Library Oct 9th 3-4:30pm
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College of Arts and Humanities at UMD @umd-arhu.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
Join the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies on Wed, Oct. 8 at 4 p.m. for the launch of Technocreep and the Politics of Things Unseen—a feminist take on why our ties to tech often feel “creepy.” go.umd.edu/technocreep
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Puff the Magic Hater @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
This explains a lot. For a moment, I wondered why they'd do something as ridiculous as drop agents on the roof of the apartment building from helicopters, but of course, they did it for this footage. The same reason they were marching in formation downtown and snatched a family in Millennium Park.
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Veena Dubal @veenadubal.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
WE WON: "This case -– perhaps the most important ever to fall w/in..this district court squarely presents the issue whether non-citizens lawfully present here in US..have the same free speech rights as the rest of us. The Court answers this Constitutional question unequivocally “yes, they do.”"
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