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Markus Sam Merin

@markussammerin.bsky.social

400 followers 200 following 110 posts

PhD Candidate, UMich History. Studying the death of Italian Communism. I saw a werewolf drinking a piña colada at Trader Vick's. His hair was perfect. 🕎

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Markus Sam Merin @markussammerin.bsky.social · Nov 19

"My dear son, my late great joy, am I thus leaving you without a father? An entire people - no, that is still too small - the human race will be a father to you"

-letter of a victim of the Nazi prison camps, reproduced at the 'Museo Monumento al Deportato politico e razziale' in Carpi

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Markus Sam Merin @markussammerin.bsky.social · 17h

The curse of being a researcher in Italy is that the archival process is just as lonely as it would be anywhere else but because you work in a picturesque Mediterranean country no one will ever feel bad for you (and maybe they shouldn't)

Markus Sam Merin @markussammerin.bsky.social · 17h

It's funny more than anything

Markus Sam Merin @markussammerin.bsky.social · 17h

It's not that I have problems with people asking about things only kinda relating to my work , and I get the appeal of going to someone you think is an expert on something instead of trusting the internet. It's just that these are those kinds of questions we'll probably never have good answers to

Markus Sam Merin @markussammerin.bsky.social · 17h

Haven't watched it actually! Need to get around to it but I need to watch RAI's series "The Night of the Republic" first

Markus Sam Merin @markussammerin.bsky.social · 2d

Opening a folder in the Gramsci institute on the crisis in Modena's ceramics industry and a handwritten letter falls out

"Dear society,

I did it.

-Giulio Andreotti"

Markus Sam Merin @markussammerin.bsky.social · 2d

Being "the Italy guy" in my social circles means a lot of people reach out to me with questions about Operation Gladio/the years of lead I'm not equipped for.
"Did the French blow up the Ustica flight?"
"Did the CIA/KGB/Mossad kill Aldo Moro?"
Dude. I spent today reading about fishing cooperatives.

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Reposted by Markus Sam Merin

The Flenser @theflenser.bsky.social · 5d

Agriculture’s new album The Spiritual Sound is available everywhere today.

The record is a study in joy and intensity, carrying forward the ecstatic spirit of their debut while pushing deeper into grief, transcendence, and renewal.

Listen: youtu.be/k9yMIboriEY
@agriculturemusic.bsky.social

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Markus Sam Merin @markussammerin.bsky.social · 4d

Do you have examples you'd be willing to share?

Reposted by Markus Sam Merin

Hell Gate *subscribe today!* @hellgatenyc.com · 4d

You now have ***less than 24 hours*** to take advantage of Hell Gate's Biggest Year Ever, Biggest Sale Ever! 34 percent off all annual subscriptions until the end of the day. Do NOT miss it! hellgatenyc.com/membership/

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Markus Sam Merin @markussammerin.bsky.social · 5d

Which is also funny because when I was here two years ago the same people complained about big strike actions because of the notion that they were the cause of wage stagnation

Markus Sam Merin @markussammerin.bsky.social · 5d

At least in relation to the strikes here today, the biggest form of anti-strike discourse seems to be people cynically pointing at Italy's terrible history of wage stagnation and going "OH BUT IT'S GAZA YOU STRIKE FOR"

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Markus Sam Merin @markussammerin.bsky.social · 15d

I don't understand how every person interviewed by this man doesn't commit harakiri after it goes to press

Markus Sam Merin @markussammerin.bsky.social · 15d

It feels like Miller's country sometimes these days

Markus Sam Merin @markussammerin.bsky.social · 18d

I would stand for the national anthem if they made it something cool, like "Tip Your Bartender" by Glassjaw

Markus Sam Merin @markussammerin.bsky.social · 18d

That's an incredible set of talent

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Markus Sam Merin @markussammerin.bsky.social · 25d

My girlfriend who is a clinical psychologist is currently reading contemporary psychoanalytic critical theory for the first time and

Message "i envy the ability to just say stuff in this article"

Reposted by Markus Sam Merin

The New York Review of Books @nybooks.com · Sep 5

Trevor Jackson on the liberal “abundance” movement’s combination of reheated deregulation and Internet YIMBYism

How to Blow Up a Planet | Trevor Jackson

What happened to the future? When did we lose it, and what has taken its place? Political scientists have found a continual decline in visions of a shared

buff.ly

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Reposted by Markus Sam Merin

BERGΛMΛX @bergamax.bsky.social · Sep 5

Midtown Manhattan in 1967
007 James Bond add.

#movies #cinema #oldtimes

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Markus Sam Merin @markussammerin.bsky.social · Sep 4

Won't comment on the former point but I think the latter point can be understood via the real and (esp.) perceived transfer of PMC types back into urban life over the past couple decades. Technically he got that wrong but only insofar as suburbia was a signifier

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Markus Sam Merin @markussammerin.bsky.social · Sep 4

Some parts might be a bit utopian but also he starts the book with a mass death event on par with WW1 so it might be slightly unfair to Robinson

Markus Sam Merin @markussammerin.bsky.social · Sep 4

But really, I am desperately curious what sort of shit he was putting in that folder?

Markus Sam Merin @markussammerin.bsky.social · Sep 4

Finding a folder on your friend's desktop titled "immaturity and blameworthiness of the Italian people" and it's just thousands upon thousands of photos of you

Screenshot from unknown text: "But Mussolini's most vehement invective was reserved for the Italian people in general and their failure, after nearly twenty years, to absorb the central tenets of fascist education. He denounced their levity, their egoism, their cowardice, their corruption, their disobedience, their indiscipline, their disorganization, their lack of faith and their materialism... And to support his case he maintained a dossier in his private archives which he labelled 'immaturity and blameworthiness of the Italian people.'"

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Markus Sam Merin @markussammerin.bsky.social · Sep 3

Picked up a couple novels to keep me occupied during this long research trip in Italy and somehow I missed that Cary Grant is a main character in Wu Mimg's Cold War spy novel 54

Two italian novels on a desk: Se non ora, quando? by Primo Levi and 54 by Wu Ming. The latter has a picture of Cary Grant as the cover

Markus Sam Merin @markussammerin.bsky.social · Sep 3

University of Michigan is currently doing the same thing to be honest, here they've developed their own AI system they constantly push on students. It's not clear to me that any of them have thought much about how it is meant to fit into our pedagogy

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Reposted by Markus Sam Merin

l'Humanité @humanite.fr · Aug 31

« Je suis un autarcique » de Nanni Moretti : l’arte povera de l’incorruptible

Au moment où ressort en salles « Palombella Rossa », nous vous conseillons de revoir en VOD son premier film tourné à 23 ans
➡️ https://l.humanite.fr/X6s

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