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Isaac Javier Rivera

@irivera.bsky.social
83 followers 56 following 16 posts

Xicano from Denver’s North Side Geographer, Teacher, Musician and Organizer Assistant Professor @CUBoulder Geography www.colorado.edu/geography/isaac-ri…

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Reposted by Isaac Javier Rivera
"Justice for Keith Porter Jr." Butter🏳️‍🌈 @mysterybutter.blacksky.app · 09/02/2026
Really good interview!
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Isaac Javier Rivera @irivera.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
I'm happy to see this paper out! This paper is about hope. Its about what social movements teach us and how to see their work as expressions of counter-media. They help us see a world and future worth fighting for. www.tandfonline.com/eprint/GAN7W...
tandfonline.com
Settler Colonialism, GeoMedia, and the Geographical Imaginary
Geographical imaginaries are always in a state of struggle, rooted in logics of exception, dispossession, and radical possibility. This article connects the theoretical, methodological, and politic...
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UTK Geography & Sustainability @utkgeography.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
At AAG Detroit in 2025, Dr. LaToya Eaves was in dialogue with Drs. Katherine McKittrick, Willie Jamaal Wright, and Kevin Grove about the pathbreaking book, Black Geographies and the Politics of Place. @spacedemands.bsky.social @blackgeographies.bsky.social @geographers.bsky.social
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Daniel Denvir @danieldenvir.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
New Dig covering the US attack on Venezuela and kidnapping of Maduro. An expansive conversation analyzing Trump’s imperialist project and assessing Chavismo and its oppositions from Chávez through Maduro with Alejandro Velasco, Gabriel Hetland, and Yoletty Bracho. www.thedigradio.com/podcast/vene...
thedigradio.com
Venezuela w/ Alejandro Velasco, Gabriel Hetland, Yoletty Bracho
Featuring Alejandro Velasco, Gabriel Hetland, and Yoletty Bracho on the US attack on Venezuela and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro. An expansive conversation analyzing Trump’s imperialist proje...
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Jason Takes Man-Adams @jamnpp.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
One hundred thousand people a year and y'all using past tense when you talk about Covid now jfc
gizmodo.com
Covid-19 Is Still Killing a Disturbing Number of Americans, Study Finds
Between 2022 and 2024, covid-19 killed roughly 100,000 Americans annually, new research by CDC scientists shows.
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Lydia Jennings, PhD @1nativesoilnerd.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
Data centers popping up on Indigenous lands everywhere, but especially perilous to us desert tribes where water availability for crops and for communities have new competition.
technologyreview.com
The data center boom in the desert
The AI race is transforming northwestern Nevada into one of the world's largest data-center markets—and sparking fears of water strains in the nation’s driest state.
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Department of Geography, CU Boulder @cugeography.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
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dylan m. harris @dylanmharris.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
new article! how might the emergence of the 'new' carbon economy be disrupted, shifted in favor of communities rather than serving as another round of capitalist accumulation? thanks to @landpolicy.bsky.social for supporting this work! here's a link: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 01/11/2025
SNAP assistance makes Page One in Boston .. .. Chattanooga .. .. Palm Beach .. .. Asbury Park, NJ.
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Puff the Magic Hater @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 30/10/2025
"It’s important to figure out how to weave ourselves into the ecosystems that we are a part of in a way that doesn’t destroy ourselves and in a way that doesn’t destroy the other living things that we are in network with." truthout.org/audio/resist...
“We are parts of different communities, we have different tolerances for risk, we have different responsibilities. So it doesn’t look like one thing, but I think we have a responsibility to be engaged and present and working towards making the lives of our neighbors and our friends and our families, our students slightly better ... It’s all hands on deck and we have to fight. This is the only way.” — Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
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Robin James @robinjames.bsky.social · 19/07/2025
AI rebrands humanistic skills like writing, drawing, creativity, which have all been *thoroughly feminized,* as hard and macho, letting bros who fear nothing more than the whiff of femininity and feminization access creativity without the stench of girliness
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Dr. Asmeret Asefaw Berhe @aaberhe.com · 19/07/2025
Gutting scientific research at EPA means less protection for our air, water, and health. The consequences of this decision will be felt for generations. Deeply concerning. Unreal! www.nytimes.com/2025/07/18/c...
nytimes.com
E.P.A. Says It Will Eliminate Its Scientific Research Arm
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Melanie D’Arrigo @darrigomelanie.bsky.social · 18/07/2025
$30B in new funds to hire 10,000 new ICE agents, $45B to expand detention centers, and no one stopping them from denying due process, trafficking and detaining people indefinitely… Trump built a domestic army to keep himself in power indefinitely. www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-coup...
publicnotice.co
The emerging coup
Lawless authoritarian regimes don't give up power willingly.
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Arrianna Marie Planey, PhD MA @arrianna-planey.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
During my time as a PhD student at UIUC, there were multiple incidents of right-wingers leaving racist flyers all over campus, including images of people being dropped from helicopters (ref to Pinochet's "death flights"). At one point, a group of them swarmed me w/ cameras to try to "gotcha" me.
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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
Media outlets can't pivot to AI to save themselves. It's not a business strategy and it's not going to work. The only path forward is for journalists to lean into their humanity, to do things AI can't, and to make clear they are writing for people, not algorithms: www.404media.co/the-medias-p...
404media.co
The Media's Pivot to AI Is Not Real and Not Going to Work
AI is not going to save media companies, and forcing journalists to use AI is not a business model.
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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
"Universities have become increasingly dependent on a proliferation of outsourced services, database providers + info mgmt systems, w/ spiraling costs... Understanding [the uni as an infrastructure stresses] that the tech it chooses to adopt follow a colonial + extractivist model...
culturemachine.net
CM Vol 25 CfP University as Infrastructure
Culture Machine Vol. 25 Call for Papers: University as Infrastructure  Guest-edited by: Alexandra Anikina, Johannes Bruder, Megen de Bruin-Molé, Stephen Cornford, Kwame Phillips & Geoff Cox  …
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American Association of Geographers @geographers.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
For July 4th, the Los Angeles Review of Books dove into the archives to bring a timely episode with Ruth Wilson Gilmore. She joins Kate Wolf and Eric Newman to talk about her new collection, “Abolition Geography.” Listen to the episode: buff.ly/USk0SLL #AbolitionGeography #GeoSky #Geographers
Headshot of Ruth Wilson Gilmore with text "Listen Now!"
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Andrew Zolides, Ph.D. @zolides.bsky.social · 13/07/2025
The ultimate goal of Generative “AI” in almost all capacities is to remove agency and accountability entirely. Shift blame from people to machines, ignoring the machines are made and deployed by people.
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Nikki McCann Ramírez @nikkimcr.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
Padilla: If this is how DHS responds to a senator with a question you can only imagine what they're doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California.
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JPWeiland @jpweiland.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
June 6th update: A slight uptick this week. This is probably the lowest it'll be nationally for a few months, as XFG and "Nimbus" are forecasted to drive a summer wave. 🔸167,000 new infections/day 🔸~1 in 201 currently infected 🔸~1 in 502 are reasonably infectious
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W. Carson Byrd @wcbyrdphd.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
‘the school will reduce its staff by about 5% over the next year & reduce its faculty by about 25% to 30% over the next two years, including part-time faculty who have not been renewed. The personnel decisions will affect non-tenure track faculty, pre-tenure faculty, & adjunct faculty.’
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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
I'm repeatedly struck that all the scenarios the critical data studies / algorithmic bias / smart cities scholars warned us about over the past 10-15 years are now manifesting simultaneously
bloomberg.com
ICE Moves to DNA-Test Families Targeted for Deportation with New Contract
Advocates worry the tests will pave the way for the Trump administration to separate children from their caregivers.
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Rolling Stone @rollingstone.com · 07/05/2025
"Capitalism has entered a radical and apocalyptic phase. There is no utopian vision in any of this." Interview ⤵️
rollingstone.com
Naomi Klein: 'What They Want Is Absolutely Everything'
The ‘Shock Doctrine’ author explains the dark logic of Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s path of destruction and why billionaire oligarchs are so angry.
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Anxious Rage @anxiousrage.blacksky.app · 31/05/2025
This conversation between @mskellymhayes.bsky.social and @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social is right on time. I always appreciate that you can find the podcast and the transcript at the link, and use whatever works best for you
truthout.org
Awareness Protests Won’t Threaten the Richest, Most Well-Armed People on Earth
“Making durable changes isn’t always about the raw numbers,” says Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò.
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American Association of Geographers @geographers.bsky.social · 26/05/2025
Decolonial worlding is a place-based endeavor. @irivera.bsky.social & Eagle trace the un/making of settler imaginaries in Denver, CO, and how the Native community refuses otherwise. (Re)Mapping Native Denver shows how #Indigenous #geographies are expressed through #mapping practices. buff.ly/RfSZG6r
Screenshot of the journal abstract.
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Dr. Lucky Tran @luckytran.com · 25/05/2025
5 years ago: “An incalculable loss” Today: Banning masks and restricting vaccine access
NEW YORK TIMES (2020): U.S. DEATHS NEAR 100,000, AN INCALCULABLE LOSS
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Gillian Branstetter @gbbranstetter.bsky.social · 10/05/2025
The cost of Grok: "I can't breathe at home, it smells like gas outside. How come I can't breathe at home and y'all get to breathe at home?"
"HOW come can't breathe at home and y'all get tO breathe at home?""I can't breathe at home, it smells like gas outside," Boxtown resident Alexis Humphreys said through tears, holding up her asthma inhaler during a public hearing about the turbines on A April "HOW come can't breathe at home and y'all get tO breathe at home?"
Alexis Humphreys holds out her asthma inhaler while asking the Shelby County Health epartment rO deny a permit for XAl'S methane gas turbines. | Ariel Wittenberg/POLITICO's E&E News
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Antipode @antipodeonline.bsky.social · 07/05/2025
Intervention — “533 Geographers Call for Action on Transphobic Developments in the UK, its Supreme Court, and the EHRC” antipodeonline.org/2025/05/06/5...
antipodeonline.org
Intervention — “533 Geographers Call for Action on Transphobic Developments in the UK, its Supreme Court, and the EHRC” - Antipode Online
Jay Todd, School of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow In the UK and globally, we are witnessing eliminationist attacks on trans and gender diverse people that are attempting to cr...
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Max Berger @maxberger.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
Aziz Rana's book, "The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document That Fails Them" is one of the most important books on the constitution for leftists, progressives, and anyone who is pro-democracy. In a fantastic 4 part series, @danieldenvir.bsky.social goes deep on the ideas.
open.spotify.com
Settler Empire w/ Aziz Rana
The Dig · Episode
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A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
So you’re saying we could solve all the financial problems of 379 million of us and impact just 19 households. What an interesting fact. Fun little bit of trivia.
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Pantéa Javidan, JD, PhD @pjavidan.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
ICYMI Scientists warn H5 Bird Flu is spreading with growing risk to people and threat of pandemic www-cbsnews-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.cbsn...
www-cbsnews-com.cdn.ampproject.org
Bird flu, feared as a possible pandemic, poses growing risk to people as pathogen spreads, scientists warn
More than 100 federal scientists who track bird flu, including vaccine and food safety experts, have been laid off. This comes as the deadly pathogen rips through dairy herds and poultry flocks.
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Haymarket Books @haymarketbooks.org · 26/04/2025
Reconsidering Reparations: Why Climate Justice and Constructive Politics Are Needed in the Wake of Slavery and Colonialism by @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2538-r...
Reconsidering Reparations
Why Climate Justice and Constructive Politics Are Needed in the Wake of Slavery and Colonialism
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
With a new preface by the author
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Thanasis Kinias @tkinias.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
I might extend it to “‘writing’ with so-called ‘AI’ is like buying a microwave burrito from 7-11 and claiming you cooked dinner—it’s embarassing to claim that you made it yourself, and it’s just not good food”
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Haymarket Books @haymarketbooks.org · 22/04/2025
Happy Publication Day, @biidaasamose.bsky.social! 💧 Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead is a genre-bending exploration of that most elemental force–water–through Indigenous storytelling, personal memory, and the work of influential artists and writers
book cover:
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead
"If we are serious about decolonization, we need a theory of water."
—Robin D. G. Kelley
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Puff the Magic Hater @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
I talked with @ejeris.bsky.social about fascism, coalition building, and the compassion and shared knowledge we need to create safety and justice in these times. Listen wherever you get your podcasts, or access a transcript + audio here:
truthout.org
Fascism Isn’t Coming — It’s Here. Now What?
“We don’t get to choose the people who show up for us and who save us sometimes,” says Ejeris Dixon.
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Pantéa Javidan, JD, PhD @pjavidan.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
Covid.gov is a litany of Covid-related lies splayed on an official government website; US taxpayer money wasted to feed Americans propaganda against scientific consensus and public health. Anti-science is an official tenet of Trumpism and the far right globally—a universal threat to humanity.
covid.gov
Lab Leak: The True Origins of Covid-19
THE ORIGIN “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” publication — which was used repeatedly by public health officials and the media to discredit the lab leak
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Department of Geography, CU Boulder @cugeography.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
Congratulations to all our award and scholarship winners, and certificate certificate recipients in Spring 2025! Thank you for coming out in the snow to celebrate with us.
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Tao Leigh Goffe | 道 | PhD @taoleighgoffe.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
Earth Day - online - webinar! 🌍
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gaby :) @gabydvj.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
thought i was writing a story about an app that pays crypto bounties for reporting undocumented immigrants. but i was actually writing a story about something worse: a crypto pump-and-dump disguised as an app that pays crypto bounties for reporting immigrants www.theverge.com/tech/650015/...
theverge.com
This ICE-snitching app is actually promoting a meme coin
‘It’s like a citizen’s arrest, but with Wi-Fi.‘
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Ashton Pittman @ashtonpittman.bsky.social · 13/04/2025
THREAD: The Trump administration's DOJ has removed a study from the NIJ website that found that immigrants, and particularly undocumented immigrants, commit crimes at significantly lower rates than U.S. citizens. The study is at odds with the Trump regime's propaganda about immigrants & crime. (1)
Google search results says: National Institute of Justice (•gov)
https://nij.ojp.gov › topics › articles › undocumented-im..
immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than U.S. citizens.
No information is available for this page.
Learn why
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Eoin Brodie @elbrodie.bsky.social · 11/04/2025
US students. Looking to apply to graduate school? Had an offer rescinded recently? The University of British Columbia in Canada will re-open the application portal in some departments for US students from April 14-18. Details: www.grad.ubc.ca/us-applicant... #ubc #AcademicSky #PhDSky #ScienceSky
grad.ubc.ca
US Applicant Week
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Radley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 12/04/2025
They’ll do it in a few high profile cases to set examples. People will say, “No way this holds up in court.” Maybe. But we now know the plan: they’ll do it first, then dare the courts to stop them. And this too will be very difficult for courts to undo. This is end of democracy stuff.
rollingstone.com
Team Trump Is Gaming Out How to Ship U.S. Citizens to El Salvador
Donald Trump’s administration is talking internally about denaturalizing American citizens — and potentially sending some to El Salvador.
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Charles Louis Richter @richterscale.bsky.social · 12/04/2025
RFK is using "healthy" here in a moralistic and eugenic sense if you die of an infectious disease, that just tells him you weren't healthy--in the sense that either you were irresponsible about your health and thus deserve to die, or you are defective and thus are a drain on society while you live
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Mel Buer @melbuer.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
Pulling Nikolaus Wachsmann's "KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps" back off the shelf this week. I haven't read this since 2016, but it's time. It’s not a 1-to-1 comparison, but enough seems to rhyme. A dark road lies ahead. A few pages that feel especially prescient these days:
Screenshot text:.
Class was not all-decisive, of course. There were middle-class professionals who knew all about the camps. Also, some reports by left-wing prisoners reached beyond the organized working class, sometimes circuitously. When the Dresden professor Victor Klemperer heard about the abuse of Erich Müh-sam, for example, it was from a friend who had met up with exiled German Communists in Denmark. 257 On the whole, however, the middle classes— who largely supported the Nazis by 1933—knew less about the reality of Nazi terror.258 They were also more inclined to dismiss rumors about abuses as lies spread by enemies of the new state.259 Still, Nazi followers were largely aware of the early camps' dark side. So how did they react?
Nazi supporters from all classes and backgrounds hailed the regime's crackdown on the Left. "You have to have order," one factory foreman told his son in spring 1933, regarding the arrests of left-wingers.260 Many followers also welcomed harsh measures in the early camps; the Left's danger justified brutal means, they believed, and "terrorists" deserved all the violence that came their way. Some even screamed abuse as prisoners were paraded through the streets. In Berlin, spectators egged on the brownshirts, shouting things like: "Finally you've got the dogs, beat them to death, or send them to Mos-cow." But support for attacks on left-wing organizations did not always translate into support for violent attacks on left-wing activists.261 Looking back at the prewar years, Heinrich Himmler later admitted that the establishment of the camps had been greatly condemned by "circles outside the party."262 Himmler may have embellished for effect, but still, some Nazi sympathizers…
To cement the camps' standing, Hitler agreed to place them on a firm financial footing. Funding had been a contentious issue since the start, with different state and party agencies trying to pass the buck. In autumn 1935, Hitler approved a proposal by Theodor Eicke: from spring 1936, the Reich would pay the SS Guard Troops, while all other KL costs were borne by individual German states. Eicke regarded this as a temporary arrangement only. Now that the camps were fixtures of the Nazi state, he fully expected the Reich to pick up the whole bill.' He soon got his way. From spring 1938, the camps and their SS troops were allocated funds within the Reich Ministry of the Interior budget, with almost sixty-three million Reichsmark that fiscal year alone.'! Thanks to Hitler, the financial future of the KL was secure.

Hitler also confirmed that the SS concentration camps would largely operate outside the law. On November 1, 1935, he told Himmler that protective custody prisoners should not be granted legal representation. On the same day, he brushed away as irrelevant concerns by the legal authorities about suspicious prisoner deaths. Only a few weeks later, Hitler pardoned the convicted Hohnstein SA men, sending a chilling message to the judiciary: even the most sadistic camp guards could count on his backing? On paper, the courts could still investigate unnatural prisoner deaths at the hands of the SS.
But in practice, such cases were now generally dropped.'* Prosecutors knew that there was little chance a sentence would stand, even if they could overcome the usual SS obstruction.
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