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Melissa

@melissagayle.bsky.social
2K followers 1.6K following 3.6K posts

Writer. NU/VCFA WCYA alum. One day some little fat girl in ohio could be the next Mozart & make a beautiful film on her father's camera-corder -Francis Ford Coppola. rep @LindaCamacho she/her

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Reposted by Melissa
BUM CHILLUPS AKA SPENCER HALL AKA PRESIDENT FOOTBALL @edsbs.bsky.social · 4h
This Mike Collins ad against Ossoff wants me to think this doesn’t look relaxing as hell 
AI Jon Ossoff thriving
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boonque @kwstzhaderbonch.bsky.social · 4h
Meta leaves up aggressively evil antisemitic, Islamaphobic, and racist material, but it draws the line at gays?
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Amy Mode Activated 🪷 ᓚᘏᗢ ಇ. @activateamymode.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
This is an excellent explanation.
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Melissa @melissagayle.bsky.social · 4h
thinking about this by @schraubd.bsky.social today for Reasons dsadevil.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-...
But for Jews, things land differently. Disassociating from Israel may or may not, depending on the circumstance, abandon privileges some Jews possess; but it almost always does represent cutting oneself off from a live, vibrant, and meaningful aspect of Jewish identity -- again, not the whole identity, and not one shared by all to the same degree, but also not a concocted or invented identity either. So at one level, we can see how for the White non-Jews, it is essential that the Jew = White conflation be retained -- that's how Israel can serve as this ideal, cost-free mode of disassociating from Whiteness. But even to the extent White non-Jews do offer a pathway for diaspora Jews to follow them, it's demanding a very different form of sacrifice. "Join us," they say, "all you need to do is cut yourself off from Israel, just as we cut ourselves off from Whiteness." But these choices are not the same. Non-Jews are asked to remove themselves from an identity they do not care about in order to dislodge privileges they have not earned. Jews are asked to remove themselves from an identity they are absolutely within their rights to care about in order to dislodge privileges that are, to say the least, far more ambivalently held.At the end of the day, there's almost no chance that Jews will be able to do this. For one, non-Jews actually don't want Jews to do it since, to reiterate, Jews successfully disassociating ourselves from Whiteness threatens the coherency through which being not-like-the-Jews lets other White people work through & past their own Whiteness. The pressure from progressive non-Jewish Whites is not for Jews to cease "doubling down" on Whiteness, it is for Jews to obediently accept their new anointment as the paradigmatic Whites. For 2, the forcible conflation of Jews and Whiteness makes the implied demand that we slough off not just our Whiteness but a large part of our Jewishness (almost half the world's Jewish population! A land that is & always has been the centerpiece of Jewish liturgy, theology, & cultural reference!) an impossible one to realize -- to quote Du Bois, we would not leave it if we could, & we could not leave it if we would. And of course, the functional impossibility of the "choice" on offer is in service of the implied desire that the choice not be made; it is better for non-Jewish Whites that Jews remain White, so they can serve as an exemplar of the demon they've successfully wrestled within themselves.
So what we're left with, perhaps, is a world where everybody but the Jews is able to successfully work through and past their Whiteness. Whether this would actually entail diminution of those privileges hitherto associated with "Whites", or if it would be closer to the aforementioned radical colorblindness, is an exercise I'll leave to the reader. The point is, when the music stops & the reshuffling is complete, the only people who the left can agree are still unambiguously White will be the Jews. Just as historical antisemites viewed modern Jewry as a fossilized relic that contrasts to Christianity's superior evolution, Jews-as-White will stand as the paradigm case of that which the more civilized, enlightened (former) White people have left behind.
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Claudia Conway @ukseennotseen.bsky.social · 5h
I find it fascinating to ask fellow Brits how many Jewish people they think live in the UK. Most people are like 'A million? A couple of million?' That there's fewer than 300,000 of us totally floors people.
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Maggie Tokuda-Hall @maggietokudahall.bsky.social · 5h
Here's the thing: most books that are banned don't make the lists that get circulated each #BannedBooksWeek. If you're a book creator and your book gets banned, please respond to this post with your book and its buy link on bookshop.org. That way we can support indies and banned books 💛
bookshop.org
Bookshop.org: Buy books online. Support local bookstores.
A better way to buy books online. Every purchase financially supports local independent bookstores.
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Feena van @feenavan2099.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
"Before Stonehenge was raised, before Egypts first pyramid broke ground,before the Nazca people drew their famous lines across the Peruvian desert,someone in what is now southern Arizona shaped a 272-foot fish into the earth On April 23,2026,"a border-wall contractor drove heavy equipment across it"
gadgetreview.com
Trump's Border Wall Construction Destroys 6,500-Year-Old Arizona Geoglyph – Older Than Stonehenge
Arizona's 6,500-year-old Las Playas Intaglio, the oldest dated geoglyph in the Americas, was irreparably damaged by border wall construction in April 2026.
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Rootless Suburbian @rootless.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Boycott the Browns. I'm not kidding.
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ike, son of mike @i-bresnick.bsky.social · 13h
The sleight of hand around "zionism" is so exhausting. Few gentiles who use the word actually seem to mean to refer to zionism itself. It's always a stand-in for "pro-Israelism" or "the Jews." I don't think the ambiguity of the usage is accidental.
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Josh Yunis @joshyunis.bsky.social · 6h
To understand this, the movement would have to get genuinely curious about Israeli and Jewish life (especially Jewish life that is connected to Israel), which they are incapable of doing
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Josh Yunis @joshyunis.bsky.social · 7h
The ambiguity is a feature not a bug, because vilifying “Zionists” and “Zionism” allows the movement to (1) set the terms of the debate back to a time before 1948 and (2) target any Jew in the diaspora who doesn’t recite the proper slogans
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RNS @rns.org · 9h
OPINION: (The Conversation) — For many people, Jewish American history is synonymous with northern cities like New York and Chicago. But the South played an important role, especially in the early 1800s.
religionnews.com
As Jewish college students look South, some discover a long but overlooked history
(The Conversation) — For many people, Jewish American history is synonymous with northern cities like New York and Chicago. But the South played an important role, especially in the early 1800s.
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Daniel Sugarman @danielsugarman.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I want you to imagine people deciding you are unworthy of a basic level of standing in general society, based on a belief you hold specifically *because the last 2,000 years of the history of your people has shown, repeatedly, that it’s not just rational, but vital, for you to hold it*.
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Brianna Ashby @briannaduggan.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
🎃🍂A few seasonally appropriate prints available in ye olde shoppe!🍂🎃 www.brianna-ashby.com/new-products
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Matt Baldwin @thisbrokenwheel.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
We made up our minds that "AI is Bad" because IT'S BUILT WITH THE STOLEN SUM TOTAL OF OUR LIFE'S WORK, for which we have received no real recompense or restitution. Our labor is being blatantly exploited to create these products, and I have increasing contempt for people who elide that fact.
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Sam @samd.bsky.social · 11h
the clear throughline behind every Trump voter is a refusal to believe that their behavior has consequences
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Crooked Marquee @crooked-marquee.bsky.social · 10h
The cult favorite that marked Tom Hanks' directorial debut is best remembered for its eponymous song and beloved late songwriter, even if he missed out at winning the Oscar statuette. A look back at “That Thing You Do!,” released 30 years ago today: buff.ly/ctmSjqK
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Chuck Wendig @chuckwendig.bsky.social · 11h
“GOTTA LEARN AI OR BE LEFT BEHIND.” Good. Fuck off! Leave me behind! Enjoy your artbarf rapture, your janky Temu future. I’ll be back here looking at real birds and writing weird, also real, books.
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TX FReadom Fighters @freadomfighters.bsky.social · 12h
It’s Banned Books Week this week. At FReadom Fighters we are beginning our sixth year of supporting the freedom to read and the librarians and students who defend it. We applaud all the small and large acts of courage that it takes to stand up for the right to read. 💕💕💕💕💕💕💕
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Rodger Sherman @rodger.bsky.social · 11h
i just want her back
Northwestern's lakeside field
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Elizabeth Taylor @elizabethtaylor47.bsky.social · 12h
People on the left who’s primary focus in politics is to root out ‘Zionists’ (which often seems to include anyone who disagrees with their methods even if they’re not Zionist) as well as being often antisemitic are just completely toxic and draining.
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Joel S. @joelhs.bsky.social · 13h
This is because most Gentiles assume Jews are just Christians without Christ, and miss the fact that there are a lot fewer of us and that being in community as one people, even with people you disagree with or even hate, is a big part of what it means to be Jewish. Peoplehood, not just religion.
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Mike Goodman @themlg.bsky.social · 12h
And lots of Americans who make that assumption about American diaspora Jews just kinda view Israels as American diaspora jews who decided to do a colonialism. Which, you can take the most morally correct stance on palestinians in the world, if your grasp of facts is that wrong youre gonna be lost.
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ghost malone ergo propter bones @proptermalone.bsky.social · 12h
like we can slice the numbers up a few different ways but basically over the last century the vast majority of world Jewry either 1) were murdered 2) migrated to America or 3) migrated to Israel.
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Mike Goodman @themlg.bsky.social · 12h
One stat I use all the time, there are about as many Christians living in Egypt as there are Jews in the entire world. People who are not Jewish simply don’t understand how few Jews there are in the world (this will happen when half of all Jews were exterminated within living memory).
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Turing Police Andúnië Branch 🇺🇦🇱🇹🇵🇸🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @dov.bsky.social · 13h
the other thing is that a lot of gentiles, from what i can tell, simply do not understand that asking a jewish person, even an anti-zionist, to never interact with members of the community who are in fact zionists, is really fundamentally antithetical to the nature of jewish communal life
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Nick Tortelli’s Ignominious Legacy @nick-tortelli.bsky.social · 11h
What a lot people these days don't realize is that Jews being considered "white" is only a very recent occurrence. As late as the 1970s, Jews (even wealthy Jews) weren't allowed to stay in some hotels. As late as the 90s, Jews were OPENLY forbidden from joining certain country clubs.
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Yair Wallach @yairwallach.bsky.social · 11h
What people fail to understand is also that Zionism was not just a plan/ideology for Jews in Palestine, it was also a vision for Jewish *diasporic* identity. Much of Zionist activity has always taken place outside Palestine/Israel and was about communal identity and politics. Hence the attachment.
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Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin @ecmclaughlin.bsky.social · 11h
I’m just going to say one other thing to men: stop posting memes in response to this shit. It’s not cute. We aren’t going to give you props for posting a graphic. Go talk to your sons, your grandsons, your nephews, your friends. Do something that actually might work to change things.
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Mae Nick Phra Khanong @nickjbrumfield.bsky.social · 23h
The Chinese characters in Sinners explicitly speak Taishanese (a southeast Chinese language not mutually intelligible with Cantonese spoken by a very disproportionate number of Chinese migrants to the US) which I thought was an incredibly niche but very accurate note
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elias isquith @eliasisquith.blog · 03/10/2026
watch til the end and think about what this joke on this show at this time says about what social norms used to be when someone openly said nazi shit.
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Jacqueline Antonovich @jackiantonovich.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
"After measles swept through her household, the young woman wanted to get vaccinated. Her doctor said she couldn't because she had leukemia and the treatments had weakened her immune system" @bachynski.bsky.social
inquirer.com
A 20-year-old Amish woman with leukemia got measles and died in Pa.’s largest outbreak in three decades
After measles swept through her household, the young woman wanted to get vaccinated. Her doctor said she couldn't because she had leukemia and the treatments had weakened her immune system.
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Joel S. @joelhs.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
The reason we need more religious studies education is because the "New York Times" can just allow someone to say in an interview that wokeness is like the Old Testament, which supposedly has no forgiveness, and the assertion goes unchallenged.
"I mean, you happen to be right. And by the way, I’m not being dismissive of you. I’m just saying that my friends have tested me more than yours, and maybe I’ve tested them. I’m not religious, but I’m a Christian, and God forgives. That’s what it’s all about. The problem with quote, unquote, wokeness — and don’t get me wrong, it is great that marginalized people have a voice; it is great to advocate for anybody that feels marginalized — but the problem is we’re in the Old Testament right now, and the Old Testament has no forgiveness. The Old Testament didn’t work, so they had to write a remix called the New Testament.

There’s been discussion lately about how the Woke 1.0 era, which refers to the immediate post-George Floyd era, was “crazy.” Do you see that moment in time as just “crazy?” Was there anything redeeming about it? I think I just answered. Again, it’s great to help those that need help. We need more of that. The problem is when you institutionalize it. My half a joke: The Salem witch hunts — I’m sure the first three witches they caught were actually witches. But then you open up a witch office, and now you gotta start lying because you got overhead. You gotta justify the witch hunters’ pensions and [expletive]. I’m glad that all of this stuff happened, it needed to happen, and because it happened, maybe I’ve heard some voices that I probably wouldn’t have heard otherwise."
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PortiaMcGonagal @portiamcgonagal.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
He needs to go before a review board. This is beyond professional misconduct. "Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said he based his decision not to pursue charges on the accuser’s initial six-page statement given to police." www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...
nbcnews.com
DA did not review witness statements and other evidence Cornell police collected in alleged gang rape of student
Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said he based his decision not to pursue charges on the accuser’s initial six-page statement given to police.
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Professor Power @powerofacademe.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
The fact that we are here trying to debunk what should be obvious ahistorical, irrational gobbledegook of figural Judaism is a symptom of how far along into epistemic collapse we already are.
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Isaac (proud small hat wearer) Gantwerk Mayer @isaacgantwerkmayer.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
if you think Jewish peoplehood is an artificial construct invented in 1902 then kindly block me ahead of time so i don't have to see your posts
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Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I went to the grand reopening of the African American Civil War museum this week and the timing is just right — its mission to preserve Black history is more relevant now than ever
huffpost.com
The African American Civil War Museum Reopens To Honor The Black Soldiers Who Changed History
The museum recently held its grand reopening in Washington’s historic U Street Corridor.
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AkivaMCohen @akivamcohen.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
For all the conspiracy theorists JAQing off about how the passengers were able to enter the cockpit
timesofisrael.com
‘I couldn’t let all of them die’: Flydubai captain recounts opening cockpit door with ‘last push’ after copilot stabbed him
Smit Machchhar tells India's Modi he collapsed from wounds but was determined to save passengers as Tel Aviv-bound plane dropped 14,000 feet; his actions enabled Israelis to enter cockpit, tackle the ...
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Razzball @razzball.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Announcing the merger with Titanic footage is an incredible bit
David Ellison • @ellisonskyd... 2h
What once was the peak, is now just the beginning.
Paramount and Warner Bros. shaped over a century of culture. By combining them, we aren't rewriting history — we're equipping these iconic studios with a more powerful engine. Together, we are Skydance: a creative-first ho Show
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🐈‍⬛️כעלעמער קאַץ @orphanim.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
one of the most common kinds of antisemitism is assuming we are just perfidious liars
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CURSE BOWL (look it up) @excited.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Like. Why wouldn’t we feel nervous or angry about this shit.
jewishreviewofbooks.substack.com
Cancelling the Book Jew
Why a Spanish culture festival launched an inquisition against a Jewish writer
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Christian Skotte @skooter.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I live next door to two day care centers. One is religious Jewish. The other completely secular. The Jewish one always has a security guard. The secular one doesn't. Being forced to budget for staffing security is pretty clearly systemic antisemitism.
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Brandon Sheffield @brandon.insertcredit.com · 01/10/2026
Several weeks ago, Phil Tippett's legendary animation studio in Berkeley, CA closed. An anonymous hero noticed a folder of CDs. This turned out to be hundreds of unseen hi-res images and videos from Star Wars, Robocop, Jurassic Park, etc. ~90 isos for you to browse: archive.org/details/tipp...
A casual Star Wars alien fella at the cantina, in a sun faded, reddish photo. Someone will be mad at me for not knowing who this is. Phil, a balding Caucasian man, poses a model of the garthok, an antagonist from the Coneheads movie.Phil, a balding caucasian man, points at some CG on a CRT computer monitor, as a younger man looks on. The screen shows a model of a dinosaur attacking a jeep, while there's an actual physical model of that event in the foreground for reference.an isolated shot of a star wars vehicle. Sorry, I don't know star wars lol
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Melissa @melissagayle.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
A lot of people have brought up PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN this week but I’m thinking about ALL I WANNA DO and how it’s the townie boys that actually step in when girls are being assaulted and the only reason they’re there is that they disguised themselves as prep school boys by putting on their uniforms
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Melissa @melissagayle.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
variety.com/2026/film/ne...
variety.com
‘Making Marie Antoinette’: A Mother’s Love Letter to Sofia Coppola’s Genius Charms NYFF
Sofia Coppola opened up about her late mother Eleanor’s intimate, fly-on-the-wall doc about the making of her 2006 film ‘Marie Antoinette’ at NYFF.
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Colette Delawalla, PhD @cdelawalla.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
People have asked why we aren't involved with Neil deGrasse Tyson...this is why. @standupforscience.net does not endorse candidates with accusations of sexual misconduct and we do not collaborate with people who have accusations of sexual misconduct. PERIOD. Welcome to the matriarchy.
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accidentalflyer 🇨🇦🇹🇼🇺🇸🇺🇦 @accidentalflyer.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
BTW 121.5 is the International emergency frequency and Always monitored. In case off-duty pilot not available, use that frequency to communicate and air traffic will talk you down, i.e. give instructions to land the plane.
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ghost malone ergo propter bones @proptermalone.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
sorry, i don't yet understand what happened on the plane to Israel either but if your kneejerk is that this is a perfidious Israeli false flag you are just absurdly cooked and you need to change your life
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Laurasaurus @laurasaurus.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I want the people who did this to never know a moment’s peace again.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
this really is impeachable for any president, but really grotesque coming from a regime that cut life-saving development aid because they said it was not efficient
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