Dr. Holly Walters
@manigarm.bsky.social
11K followers 290 following 5.7K posts
Anthropologist 👣 • Ethnographer of Shaligrams 🐚 and Robot Religion 🤖 • Novelist of "The Way By" 🦄 • TTRPG Storyteller ✨ • (Genderqueer 🤷‍♀️ She/They)
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manigarm.bsky.social
Well hello everyone! Welcome to Bluesky!

I'm an anthropologist (PhD).

My ethnographic research is on Hindu/Buddhist pilgrimage and sacred fossils (called Shaligrams) in the Himalayas of Nepal.

My new project focuses on robot religion in South Asia.

I also wrote "The Way By."
Reposted by Dr. Holly Walters
rds773.bsky.social
Research doesn’t work this way either, nor probably most creative endeavors

Your mind needs to play around with the bits in order to build a gestalt in your head that you can then think with
resnikoff.bsky.social
Also, a lot of the hypothetical use cases people bring up about LLMs and writing assume that creative writing can be compartmentalized into high-level conceptual tasks and more rote tasks that you can farm out without losing anything substantial. This is absolutely not how writing works.
manigarm.bsky.social
And even when I am struggling, something incredible still happens. What appears on the page is often not what I expected, characters come alive in ways I didn't anticipate, scenes play out differently than I had planned, and it all becomes something both from me and beyond me.
resnikoff.bsky.social
I write because I love writing. I love writing even when I'm struggling with a writing problem that is killing me. Finding a way through that problem is both intensely rewarding and also helps me become a better writer. There is no reason for me to ever outsource that.
faineg.bsky.social
there’s this weird idea a lot of people seem to have about how all of us writers and artists must secretly want to use AI and are merely resisting temptation for ethical reasons, and like, no, it’s not hard for me to resist drinking the bowl of Piss With Glass In It actually
manigarm.bsky.social
I can do this too. Ahem.

No, God has not forgiven him. And won't forgive him for as long as he remains in his blasphemous ministry. I am absolutely, fervently, certain of it.

There, now that's what is true and no one gets to claim otherwise.
manigarm.bsky.social
We don't have any actual evidence and it's all based on a quack theory but look, we have supplements to sell. So we're just going to make some shit up and call it "proof."
atrupar.com
RFK Jr on Tylenol and autism: "It is not proof. We're doing the studies to make the proof."
Reposted by Dr. Holly Walters
melissagiragrant.com
I wrote about Chicago: "Is this city burning? There is a definite answer to the question. In all these cities, the answer is no. No American city is currently on fire, and if Chicago is a war zone, it’s because it’s being invaded by the president."
Trump Is Waging War on an American City
The real threat to people in Chicago ​(and Los Angeles and Portland) is our maniacal president.
newrepublic.com
Reposted by Dr. Holly Walters
annabower.bsky.social
You’ve gotta be kidding me.

This WaPo editorial presents a misleading revisionist history of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s criminal cases against Trump.

Then it has the gall to compare that to Trump’s overt targeting of his perceived enemies.

Really embarrassing stuff.
But the mere fact that a legal tool might be available does not mean it should be used. The
current rage over Grassley's revelation shows why. Smith showed little restraint in his pursuit of a former president. He charged Trump for official acts he took as president. He sought a gag order to limit Trump's ability to criticize the prosecution. He tried to accelerate the case to try a leading presidential candidate before the 2024 election.
Reposted by Dr. Holly Walters
manigarm.bsky.social
Ah, the truth reveals itself. Users of AI image generators don't want it to be "creative." They want it so that they can take control of other people's work and puppeteer it do what THEY want it to do.
Reposted by Dr. Holly Walters
audrelawdamercy.bsky.social
🥴

I understand why people *want* the police to intervene--normies are like, 'I thought cops are supposed to arrest people doing crimes, ICE is right there doing crimes, go do your thing'

but police organizations take nearly every opportunity to be like, 'oh you misunderstood what our thing is'
manigarm.bsky.social
Ah, the truth reveals itself. Users of AI image generators don't want it to be "creative." They want it so that they can take control of other people's work and puppeteer it do what THEY want it to do.
Reposted by Dr. Holly Walters
manigarm.bsky.social
I mean, I know I'm preaching to the choir half the time but, come on. The first shield says "Policia." No US department has riot gear printed in Spanish.
carlquintanilla.bsky.social
“.. On closer inspection, however, it turned out that the image was not a photograph of a real event in Portland, but instead a fabrication created by combining two photographs of scenes that unfolded in South America nearly a decade apart ..”

@theguardian.com
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
manigarm.bsky.social
I could write this exact same thread about academia right now. Just....down to the letter. Oof.
Reposted by Dr. Holly Walters
karnythia.bsky.social
You could just talk about Jim Crow. I promise you, there's no need to leave America's shores to talk about life in a fascist state
motherjones.com
Under the Third Reich, most Germans generally lived in the law-bound normative state, while Jews and other disfavored people were victims of the arbitrary and violent prerogative state.

The dual state is characterized by the facade of normalcy obscuring the fact of an authoritarian state.
The “dual state” theory was invented to describe Nazis. The Supreme Court could take us there.
Authoritarianism—but make it look like the rule of law.
www.motherjones.com
manigarm.bsky.social
I mean, I know I'm preaching to the choir half the time but, come on. The first shield says "Policia." No US department has riot gear printed in Spanish.
carlquintanilla.bsky.social
“.. On closer inspection, however, it turned out that the image was not a photograph of a real event in Portland, but instead a fabrication created by combining two photographs of scenes that unfolded in South America nearly a decade apart ..”

@theguardian.com
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
manigarm.bsky.social
Nice catch. Definitely a kind of "frame shift." Imitating whoever this grateful subservient is in his mind.
Reposted by Dr. Holly Walters
boozybadger.lawyersandliquor.com
Dunno man, seems a little misleading to write an article about Trump describing activity in Portland and Chicago as “insurrection” with a 33 year old photo of a burning donut shop taken in the 1992 LA Riots (sans caption explaining that) as the header on all your posts about it.
The picture from
The article with a picture of an armed men standing in front of a burning donut shop. You must click through to read the caption “
Two National guardsmen stand guard outside a burning donut shop in Los Angeles on April 30, 1992.
The National Guard was called in to aid police during the second day of rioting in the city.”
manigarm.bsky.social
It's like whenever I see f*ck.

Oh, no, an asterisk! However will I figure out what the word means?!?! The children! The children!

Anyway, seriously. The words aren't the problem. That's like being mad someone called you a racist and not being mad about the actual racism.
leenmcbeans.bsky.social
It will never not bother me to hear “unalived” or “graped”. We’ve more than proved that banning language only creates different words for the same topics that we absolutely need to be talking about. Stop making serious issues sound less serious by banning the real heavy words. They’re not the issue
manigarm.bsky.social
Ah, yes, right, the tariff shelf. Just next to the.....ballroom and airplane shelf.
manigarm.bsky.social
It's almost like a tic at this point. Whenever he "quotes" someone starting with Sir, it's pretty much an entire fabrication.
manigarm.bsky.social
This is exactly what they wanted done for them. They might not like how visible it is to everyone, but it's what they wanted.

Fascism didn't arrive quietly. It came in to trumpets and parades and applause. It commits its sins on national broadcast. But merely being called a racist frightens them.
disabilitystor1.bsky.social
Counterpoint: they voted for exactly this.
They might be occasionally uncomfortable with the openly sadistic violent aesthetic of fascism this administration takes such glee in (only aesthetically, mind) but this is what they voted for/what they want.
Rogan especially can stfu forever.
rollingstone.com
“I voted for none of this."

Prominent influencers, including Theo Von, Joe Rogan, and Andrew Schulz, are starting to distance themselves from the president they helped propel to the White House.

Story: www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...
Reposted by Dr. Holly Walters
disabilitystor1.bsky.social
Counterpoint: they voted for exactly this.
They might be occasionally uncomfortable with the openly sadistic violent aesthetic of fascism this administration takes such glee in (only aesthetically, mind) but this is what they voted for/what they want.
Rogan especially can stfu forever.
rollingstone.com
“I voted for none of this."

Prominent influencers, including Theo Von, Joe Rogan, and Andrew Schulz, are starting to distance themselves from the president they helped propel to the White House.

Story: www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...
manigarm.bsky.social
Oh, look. Another "sir" story.
manigarm.bsky.social
My writing career summed up in one image:
A live cockroach followed by a dead cockroach. Editors have marked the inclusion of a comma between them in red.
manigarm.bsky.social
Yes, but you haven't truly grasped the magnificent things I can do with this "junk."
nytimes.com
Our Halloween-obsessed writer found the best decor to make your home feel festive and spooky. nyti.ms/4nsWfla
Headline: Most Halloween Decor Is Junk. These Items Will Charm and Spook You. A photo shows three candles with black hands as bases.