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calanthe milton

@melodioustear.bsky.social
843 followers 490 following 1.2K posts

she/her. disabled, autistic/adhd & queer. PhD @ university of kent, researching embodied Madness in interactive media through a Mad and crip lens. occasional nerd musician & twitch streamer. recklessenough.com aka rebecca milton

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Reposted by calanthe milton
Project LETS @projectlets.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Support our comrade Chantal ❤️‍🩹 Chantal is a psych survivor and an incredible advocate for Mad Liberation, particularly for mad Black folks. They should have *never* been held in involuntary psych confinement. Please donate & share Chantal's post!! Abolition MUST include psychiatric incarceration.
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Destination: Toast! @destinationtoast.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I have been given a ✨🎁 gift link 🎁✨ to share with y'all -- read my article free for one week! But also support Fansplaining if you can, because they do great fandom journalism (like publishing me obvs 💅), and it's a bad economy for such things right now. fansplaining.com/crunching-th...
fansplaining.com
Crunching the Fandom Numbers
In 2013, curiosity about Johnlock fic led me to pull my first fandom stats. Today, the world of fandom data analysis is thriving.
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calanthe milton @melodioustear.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
no stream today my loves, I'm in the worst pain flare I've had in a long while. (maybe delayed from my trip at the start of the month).
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Prem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
New: Macklemore says Robert Kraft — who owns Gillette Stadium, where Macklemore & Ed Sheeran were to perform later this month — called Sheeran. Kraft rallied other owners together behind an ultimatum for Sheeran: if Macklemore stays on the tour, you won't be allowed in our venues.

I'm not sure how to start this. So I'm going to speak from the heart and share the truth. Ed Sheeran and his team have made the decision to remove me from The Loop tour.
But before I get into it, I want to say something that should be obvious. In this moment I think it matters. I am not a victim. Ed Sheeran is not a victim. Pink is not a victim. We have careers, money, opportunities, safety and audiences around the world. Whatever consequences any of us face for what we say, we get to go home to our families.

The victims are the Palestinian people. The men, women and children who have been killed, starved, displaced and forced to live through unimaginable violence. More than 20,000 children have been killed in Gaza alone. People are being killed today, and people will be killed tomorrow. I want to make sure that as I tell this story, we don't lose sight of that.

Ed is my friend. I've known him for 13 years. We've shared late nights, studio sessions and stages. He has this infectious magic about him that I've grown to love. I consider him a brother. And because of that, we've had some difficult conversations this past week. The type of talks rooted in love and respect for one another that still end in a place of fundamental disagreement. Nothing I'm writing here is out of spite or because I want to tear down his character. But as I told Ed multiple times on the phone, our friendship can't change my responsibility to tell the truth about what happened.

Last Monday, in the middle of all the media attention surrounding Pink and what I said at MetLife, Ed told me that Robert Kraft called him. We were scheduled to play Gillette Stadium later this month, which is owned by the Kraft Group. Ed told me that Kraft said I would not be allowed to perform in his stadium. Ed also told me that Kraft had rallied some of the other
stadium owners and collectively they gave him an ultimatum: if Macklemore stays on the tour, you will not be allowed to play in our venues.

Ed was in …What I said at MetLife I have been saying on stages around the world for almost three years. So why is it an issue now? Because now I'm sharing a stage with one of the biggest artists in the world, in some of the biggest stadiums in America. At a certain level of exposure, "Free Palestine" becomes too much of a risk. If I kept doing the shows, saying Free Palestine, with Ed implicitly supporting it, the crowd getting loud and showing undeniable support for Palestinian liberation, what artist might speak out next? The stage becomes resistance. Maybe that's why this time it became so important to silence me.

And one of the most effective ways to enforce that silence has been to weaponize the accusation of antisemitism. Antisemitism is real. And that is exactly why the word matters too much to be used as a shield against criticism of the Israeli state. When criticizing Israel, opposing Zionism or saying "Free Palestine" gets conflated with hatred of Jewish people, it doesn't protect Jewish people. It protects Israel from accountability.

I hope this isn't the end of my relationship with Ed.
Thirteen years of friendship doesn't disappear because of one painful disagreement. I hope we both continue listening, studying what is happening in Palestine and wrestling with what neutrality means in a moment like this. My door will always be open to continuing that conversation.

When my brother Omar was doing the subtitles for the video I posted from MetLife, I thanked him. He told me there's a phrase in Arabic:
لا شكر على واجب
"La shukra ala wajeb." There is no thanks for a duty.
That stayed with me. Because that's what this has become for me and millions of others around the world. A duty. Not something deserving of praise or gratitude. Not brave. Human.

Who is winning the internet, who is getting canceled, who gets to play the stadium and who doesn't, all of it becomes so small when held against what we are actually witnessing in Gaza and the West Bank. An entire people be…
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Rachel Charlton-Dailey @rachelcdailey.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
I'm actually shaking, I can't believe it's been voted down. I'm so proud of every single disabled person who made this happen
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daryl "rupert pumpkin" b 🏳️‍⚧️ @hypercubexl.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
GDT's reddit AMA spitting fire www.reddit.com/r/movies/com...
reddit comment: 

Hello! Did you intend the ending of Pan’s labyrinth to be real or in Ofelia’s mind?

Guillermo Del Toro's reply: 

My interpretation, and it's exclusively mine, is that it's real.

Because there's two things. One is what people call “The Shining Question.” The Shining Question is, Who opens the door for Jack to get out of the fridge? And Ofelia is in an attic with a guard outside her door, and she draws the door with the magic chalk, and she shows up in the labyrinth. So, the only way she could have gone into the labyrinth is the magic chalk. And the flower is real at the end. The flower that blooms in the dead tree. And the reason I think it’s real is because—and this is why I'm in favor of the human factor in art—I think that art does transform the world. You know?

Think about it for a second. One of the goals, with all this movement, is to make you believe that art is vulgar. That art is nothing special, and anybody can do art. That is like me telling you that I'm faster at running than Usain Bolt but I “run” in my motorcycle. Well, that's not the same. That’s not the same at all.

Art is important, and they want you to believe it isn't. It's part of the idea of control. The goal is not to have artificial intelligence. The goal is to foster natural stupidity. The goal is to foster you not looking for answers, and to trust yourself entirely to an engine. Look at the way we are dipping our toes into these things. We are starting to ask the machine, Is this true? For now, there's a correlation between reality and what the answers of the machine are. For now. But soon, we won't even investigate further. We will be told it's true. And if the machine is in the hands of somebody who should not be trusted, then your reality has been completely and utterly fucked. Because your intelligence ends at the question. You don't seek the answer. It's given to you.Q: You recently mentioned that AI creates 'semi-compelling screensavers' and that you'd 'rather die' than use it. As a filmmaker who relies heavily on practical effects and creature design, what do you think is the biggest thing lost when a computer generates an image instead of a human hand?

GDT:

The three quarters of the process that gave you the chance to think of the idea that people don't think about without that process. Meaning, AI can get you to the middle really fast, but there's a dialectic with the process that gets you to that top 10%. I'll give you an example with the Pale Man.

We sculpted it as an old man, with a face. And then I said, Let's take out the face. This happened because I saw a photo of a manta ray and the poster for Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm. That combination, which happened at two different times during a week or a month, are not permutations that are chemically part of an equation. They are alchemy. And then I said, Take out the face, and then I said, Let's put the eyes on the hands. This triangulation happens because I spent a month or two months living with the idea of this creature. And it's not linear.

AI is like a super-fast engine that makes semi-sentient permutations of things that are already done. Creation is things that have never been done. Coming to exist.

And the second thing is the loss of the apprenticeship that one has as an artist. You're never a master; you're always an apprentice. This is a kinship I have with, for example, Chris Nolan. When he showed me The Odyssey, there’s a scene when Matt Damon is floating in the stormy ocean and I asked him—because we were talking about practical effects, and how great it is and that we both always use a maquette or a model—and I asked him, How did you do it? He said, “We put him in a storm in the ocean.”

And you're gonna find that 30% of a great image occurs accidentally. You know, either a drop of water hits the lens, or the camera shakes. I remember when in 1993, '94, Jim…
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calanthe milton @melodioustear.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
knocked myself fully into a flare with the weekend, so no stream today whilst I give myself an extra day to recover - but will be back on Thursday and Saturday! <3
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calanthe milton @melodioustear.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
no streams this week after all, been dealing with a lot of stress with the trip away and I need to just focus on that. will be back next week <3
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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
we have immigrant concentration camps, diarrhea lettuce, zillion dollar gas, suicidal soldiers, measles resurgence, national park land sold to the highest bidder and teachers crowdfunding school supplies, but the real problems facing our country are a muslim senate candidate and an influencer
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doodlemancy ✨ @doodlemancy.com · 30/08/2026
brain, i understand that you'd rather do Preferred Activity, but right now we have to do Task. if we finish task we can do Preferred Activity WITHOUT feeling weighed down by the need to do Task. do you see how that works ah it's biting me my brain is biting me
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Kelly @broadwaybabyto.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
I recently had my first doctor refuse to wear a mask for me. They confidently told me “new science shows you only have to wear one when you’re sick”. I reminded them that asymptomatic transmission is real and that I’m immunocompromised & have been hospitalized for a cold… 🧵
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s. e. smith @sesmith.lol · 31/08/2026
the number of times i spot an article on the skyline that looks like something i would want to read and share and then it's on substack is...still way more frequent than it should be. what are you people still doing on there?! let me help:
leavesubstack.com
You Should Probably Leave Substack
You should probably leave Substack. Here’s why and how.
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Kelly @broadwaybabyto.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Most people know Tim Curry from his iconic movies, but he was a hell of a stage performer. Here he performs one of my favourite Sondheim songs… Losing my Mind from Follies. People often ask about my handle. It came from a song in this show. RIP Tim Curry. Thank you for helping me embrace my weird
youtu.be
Tim Curry singing Losing My Mind - Sondheim, A Celebration
YouTube video by eleanorpowell2007
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calanthe milton @melodioustear.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
really concerned about this from the perspective of the people who are cited in fandom media. because when I ask someone for perms to cite their meta, their fic, etc, I am telling them it's for a set audience. they are trusting me with that citation. ...now a bigger outlet could just steal it.
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Jaya Saxena @jayasaxena.com · 26/08/2026
The best way to honor the two who have left us recently, imo, is to keep being as gay as possible
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marina grlica 🌱 @dovesplants.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
this week is homophobic
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Wylder 🏳️‍⚧️♿ $100/$2300 @wylder.myatproto.social · 26/08/2026
Hello if you're mourning Dolly, please know that you can carry on her legacy by investing in mutual aid, boosting posts for free & making sure NO ONE perishes asking for help. We HAVE to break the cycle of consumption over community if any of us are going to survive! A single boost can save lives!
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Micah @rincewind.run · 26/08/2026
if these things come in threes the universe absolutely owes us you know what as the third at this point
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Aftermath @aftermath.site · 25/08/2026
All the biggest announcements from Gamescom Opening Night Live aftermath.site/gamescom-openi...
keoff geighley
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William Shakespeare @shakespeare.lol · 25/08/2026
[Exit Queen.]
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Alex Zalben @azalben.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Dolly Parton, among a thousand other amazing things she did in her life, gifted over 330 million books to kids through her Imagination Library program. Her passing is a tremendous loss to the world, but you can support the program today to keep it going imaginationlibrary.com
imaginationlibrary.com
Dolly Parton's Imagination Library | USA, UK, IE, CA, AU
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is a book gifting program that mails free books to children from birth until they begin school in participating areas.
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calanthe milton @melodioustear.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
sorry for the late notice folks, no stream today. I don't even know if anyone that watches my streams will read this but this is the only place I have to tell anyone. hospital appointment this afternoon was much harder than I thought. I'll be back on Thursday.
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alyson “end journalism” greaves @badambulist.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
much as the murder of Brianna Ghey mysteriously stopped being about the climate of transphobia in the UK and became about teen access to social media, the death of Jason Arday is, equally mysteriously, no longer about racism and is becoming about free speech in academia
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calanthe milton @melodioustear.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
note: the images in the thread do not contain alt text, but the website for the letter itself has the list in text form. I do not think we can trust anyone who has signed this letter. Cofnas is a eugenicist, not someone pushing the boundaries of academic freedom. he's just a white supremacist.
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roterote @roterote.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Here is the full suspension letter from UGent that was sent to Nathan Cofnas, it shows ample reason for his suspension and potential termination. Including breach of contract, using the University of Ghent’s name and legitimacy to promote his racial supremacist views and causing reputational damage.
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calanthe milton @melodioustear.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
in an hour on twitch I am streaming as part of the #Titancraft stream weekend, where we're doing a Team Rocket bedrock breaking "podcast"! come meet the lovely people who are behind the rocket farm, learn about TC & laugh at our antics. www.twitch.tv/melodioustear
twitch.tv
melodioustear - Twitch
Hi! I'm Callie (she/her). I'm from England, and I'm a PhD candidate in the health & medical humanities, looking at embodied Madness in interactive media. I don't stream regularly anymore &lt;3 — melod...
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Chantal James @chantalalive.blacksky.app · 23/08/2026
Y’all I guarantee you. Any person you see asking for mutual aid online, if they could see any other possible way to get what they need to live, they definitely would not be posting their mutual aid online. It’s degrading, humiliating, & most seek every last recourse before they’d ever ask for help.
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Jonaya Kemper @violetriotgames.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
This Winter I'll be teaching an Experimental TTRPG course and I'll be focusing on solo journaling games. If you have a game you think I should read, or you have a game you really love, please plug it and tell me about it. ✨ Also please share widely. I want some non US perspectives.
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calanthe milton @melodioustear.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
going to one of Dr Milton's talks (no relation btw) early in my MA was a huge influence on me going into Mad & neurodivergent studies. this is a lovely article <3
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alex antics @alexeverette.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
HEARTBREAKING: artist on bluesky is creating EXACTLY your kind of shit but never uses alt text
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Jonaya Kemper @violetriotgames.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
I mostly agree with this, and I'd go further in one place. If you're going to have things like slavery in a game, you owe it to your players to know the purpose of it being there and to not half ass it. Let's talk about the horror of what it really is and what it means. Or don't do it at all.
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Lee Hurley @hleehurley.com · 20/08/2026
They segregated jumping on shit
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Buzbee @buzbee.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Hey y'all! I finally finished and uploaded my "AI Opted Out" graphic asset for Twitch! It can be used as a panel and/or an overlay element. It is 100% free but if you'd like to help me afford some HEPA filters for my asthma you can tip my ko-fi! Download: ko-fi.com/s/d80815996b Examples in 🧵
A square promotional graphic. The background is a pale yellow geometric honeycomb pattern. In the center is a frame with a thin brown outline, rounded corners, and a transparent white background. At the top of the frame in bold tan lettering is the title which reads "Free Twitch Panel & Overlay Asset". Underneath the title is significantly smaller text that reads "320x250". Below that is the subtitle that reads "multiple color options". Under the subtitle is the advertised graphic asset design. A large bold black text "AI" with a red crossed out circle above it. Just below it is slightly smaller, bold and bubbly red text that reads "opted out". The design is outlined in white, and then outlined in a slightly thinner black.
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Nadine Batchelor-Hunt @nadinebh.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Less than one per cent of professors in the UK black, this is a fact - not a debating point Despite this, the British media - particularly columnists - have spun a narrative that academia is full of unqualified black people at the top who are there simply because of they are black This is racist
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Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 18/08/2026
I feel this way about more and more things every day
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Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Professor Jason Arday's former students want to "gather everything good about Jason Arday, in the words of the people who were there" to make their contribution to the public record about him (rather than to debate events + controversies of recent months) leilacancode.github.io/everythinggo...
leilacancode.github.io
Everything Good About Jason Arday
First-hand accounts from people who knew him. Collected by his students.
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Good Law Project @goodlawproject.org · 17/08/2026
“There is no doubt at all that this was a racist attack on a working class black man.” We're taking action – ask the PM to commission an immediate public inquiry: goodlaw.social/n1ck
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calanthe milton @melodioustear.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
a solid portion of today's UCU branch meeting was discussing what to do about academia killing us. not metaphorically. literally.
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Jess O'Thomson @jessothomson.co.uk · 15/08/2026
We are writing to the Prime Minister, and the Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, calling for an immediate public inquiry into the British press, following the tragic death of Jason Arday. Sign here 👇
goodlaw.social
Jason Arday Letter | Good Law Project
Commission an immediate public inquiry into how to ensure a responsible press given its contribution to Dr Arday’s tragic death.
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Dr Zara Bain @zaranosaur.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
And, AND, it needs to be REALLY FUCKING CLEAR that whatever Cofnas’s role in this and his explicit self description as a white supremacist racist, this was a public lynching of a Black autistic academic perpetrated by multiple actors and institutions acting in concert, whether intended or not
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Rachel @rrowanolive.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
I could OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD name 10+ white male academics with long records of one of the below who are still alive and working btw: - serial sexual misconduct - serious data breaches and/or unethical trials - plagiarising female colleagues' research ideas - "scientific" racism and/or eugenics
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Robert Chapman @drrobertchapman.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
I know that people who are both Black and neurodivergent will be especially struggling right now, including aspiring academics who will rightly be concerned about being targeted by both the press and fellow academics. Sending my solidarity and love, and urging those in power to step up.
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Rachel @rrowanolive.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Rest in peace Jason Arday.
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CN Lester 🏳️‍⚧️ @cnlester.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
I genuinely don't know how Britain can move forward as a society with our toxic press culture dragging us down at every step, poisoning everything.
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MissVadams @missvadams.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Streamers: if you have opted out of Twitch's genAI training policy, please consider adding the 'aiOptedOut' tag to your streams. It will help easily indicate safe spaces to myself, and other streamers/viewers who don't want to spend time in or raid into spaces that haven't opted out 💜 #twitch #genai
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Haymarket Books @haymarketbooks.org · 12/08/2026
Ruthie Wilson Gilmore recommends three books every radical should read
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Chantal James @chantalalive.blacksky.app · 13/08/2026
It's important what @ladyartaud.bsky.social said in her comment on carceral psychiatry. A reason this system is so dangerous aside from the fact that it actually tortures humans is that it requires no trial, no judge, no jury. Only an accusation is needed for involuntary commitment, it can be a lie.
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calanthe milton @melodioustear.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
no stream today folks, my capacity is pretty minimal. hoping to be back on friday <3
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Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 10/08/2026
Put another way: likening being dangerously all-in on "AI" to mental illness serves to further stigmatize mental illness & disability in general, while blaming That Person for their circumstances. Likening it to being intentionally tricked & driven to that state casts it as a Done Thing with causes
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