Sam
@sltrmn.bsky.social
120 followers 410 following 82 posts
physics phd student in quantum information • lead steward, tufts university grad workers union (seiu 509) • this is not a "professional" account • they/them
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Reposted by Sam
donmoyn.bsky.social
One reason to support @aaup.org in this case is that they are not Harvard the institution, even as they are defending Harvard faculty and student rights. AAUP will not stop if the administration and Harvard leadership come to an agreement that still undercuts those rights.
aaup.org
AAUP @aaup.org · 11d
BREAKING: WE WON!!!
💥 💥 💥

Federal Judge William G. Young ruled today in our lawsuit against the Trump administration that the policy of arresting, detaining, & deporting noncitizen students & faculty members for their pro-Palestinian advocacy violates the 1st Amendment.

Full ruling here:
Findings of Fact & Conclusions of Law – #261 in American Association of University Professors v. Rubio (D. Mass., 1:25-cv-10685) – CourtListener.com
Judge William G. Young: ORDER entered. FINDINGS OF FACT AND RULINGS OF LAW, PURSUANT TO FED. R. CIV. P. 52(A)(Sonnenberg, Elizabeth) (Additional attachment(s) added on 9/30/2025: # 1 Main Document) (J...
www.courtlistener.com
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roxanegay.bsky.social
I cannot tell you how grim the AI in higher ed situation is. Many of the students have completely surrendered to letting AI do their homework, badly, I might add. How do you fix this? Truly, what the hell do we do, beyond what grading can address, which isn't a solution?
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annameier.bsky.social
I would love to name names! The SMFA at Tufts (art school), after months of contract negotiations, is still refusing to pay visa expedition fees for international faculty as a matter of policy.

More about what faculty are facing & how folks can help fight back: link.seiu509.org/savetheSMFA
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iwriteok.bsky.social
another case of people reading a headline and either not reading or misreading an article. the actual reporting does not say anything like "all trans people are being classified as terrorists"

i understand why people are scared. i also feel like reading comprehension is at an all time low
sltrmn.bsky.social
wow I am such a baby in this picture...
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swordsjew.bsky.social
*watching innocent people rapidly acquire the cursed knowledge that has driven me to madness* oh no
sltrmn.bsky.social
Derek I want you to know I'm being very good and not replying "Jack, are you Jewish? Because many of the speakers in favor of the resolution are Jewish, Councilor Ewen-Campen is Jewish, and I'm Jewish. But you seem to think you know better than us about our own community."
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annameier.bsky.social
Anecdotal, but: trust in Dem politicians who aren't pro-union is also crumbling.

Pro-union means more than paying lip service to working people. It means making policy that supports them & not slashing gov't budgets for essential services for & staffed by the working class.

Happy Labor Day!
fightforaunion.bsky.social
Trust for labor unions is 20 points higher than trust for either the Democratic or Republican party.
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maplecocaine.bsky.social
Entire group of feds couldn't outrun this lollygagger. Slow ass drunken polo ad boater out for a jog vs four FBI agents in urban tactical uniforms
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charliejane.bsky.social
We've had a perfect experiment in ending rent control: Massachusetts abolished it in the early 2000s.

Rent in Boston did not go down at all, and in fact kept shooting upward. All that happened was working people being driven from their longtime homes.
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melbuer.bsky.social
LAPD fucked us all up, multiple journos bloodied, aggressive push, video when able
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ryanlcooper.com
"Mr. Mamdani’s Jewish supporters said they resented the implication that they should back a candidate for local office based on how strongly that candidate supported the Israeli government." www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/n...
Many Jewish Voters Back Mamdani. And Many Agree With Him on Gaza.
www.nytimes.com
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sevier.io
isaac @sevier.io · Aug 3
Not for nothing I think this is precisely why @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social’s encouragement to find people who are DOING something rather than telling you to BELIEVE something is pretty right on. Tenant, rank and file worker, pro-Palestine, etc organizers are on the move & seeing real opportunity.
Reposted by Sam
lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com
you absolutely cannot cross the nonbinary farmer's market workers, they run those stalls all up and down the east coast. only bigger mistake you can make is insulting the mushroom farm trans femme which is basically a death sentence
jbenmenachem.com
Wait, the cops were trying to make sure Dershowitz didn’t misgender anyone 😭
Eventually during the disagreement, a third party came up and told Dershowitz to use the pronoun “they” for the pierogi salesperson. When the police arrived, they also advised Dershowitz to use non-gendered pronouns. Dershowitz was hesitant. “I’ll use whatever language I choose to use,” he told the police. “That’s a matter between me and my grammarian — not anything the police should have anything to say over.”
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gamerstavernshow.com
If you want a weird but true fact to talk about:

Dexter Holland, lead singer of The Offspring, was instrumental in this. His doctorial thesis in molecular biology was sequencing mRNA in HIV. The paper was also heavily cited in creating the COVID-19 vaccine.
faineg.bsky.social
It feels like we should be making a bigger deal of “we actually did in fact find a cure for AIDS”
wired.com
WIRED @wired.com · Aug 1
Evidence is growing that some HIV-infected infants, if given antiretroviral drugs early in life, are able to suppress their viral loads to undetectable levels and then come off the medicine. www.wired.com/story/the-fi...
Reposted by Sam
fleerultra.bsky.social
fellas, i am gonna be rectify this. the keys:
1- gotta look good, so engage in preening
2- need to be a provider, so gather nesting materials
3- to get her attention, point your beak at her
4- gotta be healthy, so raise up one foot to show it’s vibrant blue color, the lower it and raise the other
iandunt.bsky.social
The left is completely silent on the subject of men getting laid - which, generally speaking, they are v.interested in doing and will continue to be interested in regardless of whether progressives want to talk about it. So the stage has been left entirely clear for the far-right.
sltrmn.bsky.social
Another one for my "SEIU is the most important union in the US" file
sltrmn.bsky.social
Pretty sure this should be Andy Kim of NJ? There's no Senator Robert Kim of Hawaii
Mazie Hirono, (D-Hawaii)
Robert Kim, (D-Hawaii)
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chanda.blacksky.app
I’m super annoyed by how much press Avi Loeb’s latest bit is getting

It’s not aliens, no one agrees with him, and he’s only getting this attention because he’s a Harvard professor
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parkermolloy.com
These three paragraphs are so spot on
The trajectory of all this is well rehearsed at this point. Progressive posters register their genuine outrage. Reactionaries respond in kind by cataloging that outrage and using it to portray their ideological opponents as hysterical, overreactive, and out of touch. Then savvy content creators glom on to the trending discourse and surf the algorithmic waves on TikTok, X, and every other platform. Yet another faction emerges:
People who agree politically with those who are outraged about Sydney Sweeney but wish they would instead channel their anger toward actual Nazis. All the while, media outlets survey the landscape and attempt to round up these conversations into clickable content-search
Google's "News" tab for Sydney Sweeney, and you'll get the gist. (Even this article, which presents individual posts as evidence of broader outrage, unavoidably plays into the cycle.) Although the Sweeney controversy is predictable, it also shows how the internet has completely disordered political and cultural discourse. Even that word, discourse—a shorthand for the way that a particular topic gets put through the internet's meat grinder—is a misnomer, because none of the participants is really talking to the others. Instead, every participant-be they bloggers, randos on X, or people leaving Instagram comments—are issuing statements, not unlike public figures. Each of these statements becomes fodder for somebody else's statement. People are not quite talking past one another, but clearly nobody's listening to anyone else. Our information ecosystem collects these statements, stripping them of their original context while adding on the context of everything else that is happening in the world: political anxieties, cultural frustrations, fandoms, niche beefs between different posters, current events, celebrity gossip, beauty standards, rampant conspiracism. No post exists on an island. They are all surrounded and colored by an infinite array of other content targeted to the tastes of individual social-media users. What can start out as a legitimate grievance becomes something else altogether-an internet event, an attention spectacle. This is not a process for sense-making; it is a process for making people feel upset at scale.
Reposted by Sam
meredithshiner.com
You can watch this Green Beret describe this experience in his own words to @vanhollen.senate.gov, and for us, and I cried. I’m not sure how you could watch this veteran tell this child’s story and not feel all of the emotions at once.
Reposted by Sam