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Meg Pillow

@megpillow.bsky.social

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Meg Pillow @megpillow.bsky.social · Jul 31

My essay is up at @literaryhub.bsky.social about the late, great Lana Clarkson and other promising young women whose lives have been derailed or destroyed by men. It’s also about my childhood sexual abuse and how I have tried, and failed, to reckon with it.
lithub.com/on-promising...

On Promising Young Women (and the Nameless Men Who Get in Their Way)

“The woman is a footnote in the man’s history.” –Rebecca Hazelton * There’s this photo of Lana Clarkson that I think about often. She’s outside, backed by a blue sky, the green and brown spotted hi…

lithub.com

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Meg Pillow @megpillow.bsky.social · 1h

I’ll say again that there’s a big difference for me between art and entertainment, and in almost all cases, what I consider art just isn’t being produced by billionaires. It’s totally fine if you disagree - this is just where things land for me

Meg Pillow @megpillow.bsky.social · 1h

This. I decided a few years ago that a lot of art produced by absurdly rich ppl doesn’t do it for me anymore. I’m not saying it’s all bad. I’m saying I’m not attached to or invested in it. I don’t care what their commentary is because it’s so divorced from my everyday life. Rax says it better here

rax ‘levon honkers’ king @raxkingisdead.bsky.social · 4d

i had an opinion about the new tswift record after all
www.patreon.com/posts/140377...

“Eldest Daughter" is a symptom of my overall issue with Taylor Swift: the scale of her music just feels fucking off. In 2025, she's no longer a lovelorn kid singing about Romeo and Juliet; she's a 35-year-old billionaire who's played sold out stadiums all over the world. She's Taylor Swift. That's her name. Damn near every living person knows who she is, and she's singing about the internet? About the fucking comments section? When she sings "I'm not a bad bitch," is she even aware that she's lying, that she's worshipped by more girls and women than almost anybody else? Even her love songs feel incorrect to me on these grounds. When I think about the real circumstances of her life, I just start wondering where the songs are about the housekeepers, the assistants, the cooks, the drivers, and every other person who's changed her life way more than the man in the Musso and Frank's booth in "Elizabeth Taylor." I struggle to trust her as the lyrical steward of ordinary human experiences. I am certain it's been many years since she's had one the way I have them, with all the waiting for a table that implies, and the navigating of customer service phone trees, the dithering over $35 travel insurance that I can never decide if I actually need, the frantic emails about unpaid freelance invoices, the trip back to the grocery store for the thing I forgot when I went earlier in the day, and all the other boring crap I have to do because I can't buy up other people's lifetimes so they have to do it for me.

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Aaron Burch @aaronburch.bsky.social · 2h

Free shipping on @bookshop.org today!

I'd recommend picking up anything you've had yours eyes on, but here's some specific, recent indie press story collections I've loved:

Magic Can't Save Us, Josh Denslow
Girl on Girl, Emily Costa
My Prisoner and Other Stories, Tyler McAndrew
Sad Grownups, Amy Stuber
Horsegirl Fever, Kevin Maloney
The Nothing, Lauren Davis
Cheap Therapist Says You're Insane, Parker Young
Where the Pavement Turns to Sand, Sheldon Birnie
Hey You Assholes, Kyle Seibel
Are You Happy?, Lori Ostlund
This Is the Afterlife, Jeff Chon
Birds Aren't Real, D.T. Robbins
Survival Tips, Miriam Gershow
Delinquents and Other Escape Attempts, Nick Rees Gardner
Early Sobrieties, Michael Deagler

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Rust Momster @cambrianera.radical.town · 2h

"Why won't you put aside your ideals for the sake of coalition so we can stop Trump?"

Because I don't trust that you can stop him if I do. Because you're losers with no moral center. Show me you can win at the very least or there's no point in even discussing it.

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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 3h

MTG for one takes the socialism part of National Socialism more seriously than her comrades www.yahoo.com/news/article...

MTG Turns Against Republicans in Shocking Flip on Government Shutdown

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks Democrats have a point on the Obamacare fight at the center of the government shutdown.

www.yahoo.com

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Rob @rvsg1.bsky.social · 2h

As a currently furloughed federal worker, home without a paycheck, 100% agree. While there is an enormous amount of good, normal government work not getting done right now, there should not be a single dem vote in favor of funding the fascist apparatus.

Meredith Shiner @meredithshiner.com · 5h

Bridging my current life in Chicago and my past life in D.C., I argue today at @newrepublic.com that Democrats should ~never~ vote to fund this government. Make John Thune blow up Senate rules and Republicans wholly own the U.S. extra-military military doing war crimes against us, funded by us.

The Case for the Forever Shutdown

Senate Democrats actually allowing the GOP to stop funding the government is only the first step. Now they have to make the case that Trump’s government is illegitimate.

newrepublic.com

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Prisonculture @prisonculture.bsky.social · 2h

This very very very bad. I cannot stress this enough. I said that they crossed the Rubicon with arresting Ras Baraka several months ago. This is very bad and portends more bad things for regular people.

Gregory Pratt @royalpratt.bsky.social · 3h

The President of the United States is calling for the mayor of Chicago and governor of Illinois to be jailed.

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Meg Pillow @megpillow.bsky.social · 2h

This is the Trump administration. This is Elon Musk. Death, starvation, the destruction of land and families - this will be their legacy. Absolute monsters.

Amanda Katz @katzish.bsky.social · 6h

Horrific reporting from the AP on the Myanmar families watching their kids starve to death from Trump and Musk’s aid cuts apnews.com/article/myan...

Starving children screaming for food as US aid cuts unleash devastation and death across Myanmar

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly said “no one has died" because of his government’s decision to gut its foreign aid program.

apnews.com

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May “Bunny” Peterson 🦄 (Mostly Updates ) @goddessblade.bsky.social · 2h

Please share and help if you can!

shimaa85.bsky.social @shimaa85.bsky.social · 4h

🚨🚨For two years, since October 7
we've lived in tents, hungry, scared, and forgotten. I'm dying of pain. I was hit by quadcopters and lost my husband, my home, and everything. My daughter is suffering from severe malnutrition. I don't want to lose her. Please help me survive🙏🙏😭

gofund.me/bec64b33

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Molly Shah @mommunism.bsky.social · 5h

Doaa started this fundraiser mainly for her sister who is really struggling mentally after the death of her husband and son. Doaa and her husband have been trying to help her as much as they can but they are displaced now 💔

Molly Shah @mommunism.bsky.social · 8h

I’m sharing a Palestinian account every day and today is Doaa. Doaa is the mother of 3 children Omar, 10, Yasmine, 8 and Youseff, 4 but she primarily started this fundraiser to help her sister Amal who lost a husband and son and is trying to support her children Hiam, 13, Omar, 12 and Jawad, 7.

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Meg Pillow @megpillow.bsky.social · 18h

I am an expert in a couple niche areas, but I know my fucking lanes. I’ve met some of the smartest ppl I’ve ever known both here and on Twitter, and the smartest egghead in Silicon Valley doesn’t hold a candle to their wisdom and knowledge

Meg Pillow @megpillow.bsky.social · 18h

One thing I think we know for certain now is that tech ppl look at us like we’re leeches and treat us routinely with disdain because they truly are convinced they’re smarter and more important than everyone else. Time to show them how little they know about the world beyond tech

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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.bsky.social · 21h

The audacity to anthropomorphize machines being built by corporations
--stealing data
--exploiting the labor of the people who are actually the "undesirables" under eugenic thought
--killing the environment,

and then compare criticisms of such eugenic practices to, wait for it, eugenics.

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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.bsky.social · 21h

A someone who has written extensively about the eugenic roots that permeates those who claim to be building so-called artificial general intelligence, I'm here to tell you to please NOT compare criticism against corporations claiming to build a machine god, with eugenics. The audacity.

if you're writing a sentence that sounds like eugenics but you go "oh that's fine to say because it's not a real person" (whatever that means) you may want to consider what made you okay with saying that.

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Meg Pillow @megpillow.bsky.social · 22h

Please donate and help this family today if you can.

Bi.lal @abood57.bsky.social · 11d

In Gaza, hunger doesn’t knock — it moves in.
It tucks the children into bed with empty stomachs.
It whispers through the night louder than the bombs.
We need food. We need safety. We need the world to care.
Please don’t scroll past our pain 💔🙏🏻
gofund.me/d14cbe76

Reposted by Meg Pillow

Sarah Kendzior @sarahkendzior.bsky.social · 1d

Excerpts from my essay "A Government Shutdown, A Social Breakdown" in my book "The View from Flyover Country". Unfortunately relevant now as ever.
us.macmillan.com/books/978125...

four pages of text from THE VIEW FROM FLYOVER COUNTRY essay A Government Shutdown, a Social Breakdown

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Erin Keane @erinkeane.bsky.social · 1d

LOUISVILLE: The Louisville Anthology, edited by me, is ON SALE for $15 through the publisher! An entire book's worth of Louisville-centric essays and poems, in time for you to get a jump on your holiday shopping. Many other city anthologies available, too!

www.arcadiapublishing.com/collections/...

The Louisville Anthology

A book that looks to stir emotions. It holds a lot of anger.--LEO Weekly. Part of Belt's City Anthology Series.What is Louisville's identity in the twenty-first century? Is it the southernmost midwest...

www.arcadiapublishing.com

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Meg Pillow @megpillow.bsky.social · 1d

Definitely! And I used to be a journalist, so I’m realistic about how editors/media moguls feel about winning - they all want it. But my experience has been when that’s at the top of their list, and they verbalize it? Your work environment is about to get a lot more hostile

Meg Pillow @megpillow.bsky.social · 1d

Prepare yourselves for great and copious veneration of Dear Leader and a red carpet rolled out for fascism. I’m going to hope we all have the privilege of watching it eventually crash out like the Hindenburg

Meg Pillow @megpillow.bsky.social · 1d

So many things to say, but one is that any “journalist” whose first instinct is to tell her staff that she wants to win is going to throw anyone and everyone under the bus in order to make money and ratings. Facts and accuracy are irrelevant to a person gunning to win this media landscape

max tani @maxtani.bsky.social · 1d

Bari Weiss introduced herself to CBS News staff today on the network's 9AM call, saying she wants to "win," which requires restoring trust to CBS. She also said she was excited for staff to get to know the Free Press, and ended her remarks by saying: "Let's do the fucking news."

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Sarah Kendzior @sarahkendzior.bsky.social · 1d

Wait, we yokels shouldn't be taking voting advice from the people who elected Eric Adams, Andrew Cuomo, Rudy Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg, George Santos, and Anthony Wiener and also birthed Donald Trump's rise to power? It turned out so great for them and for the whole country!

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Meg Pillow @megpillow.bsky.social · 1d

Funny, ain’t it, how quick they are to mock us and yet how very slow they are to take accountability for their own colossal fuck-ups

Meg Pillow @megpillow.bsky.social · 1d

We chose Andy Beshear. We know what good governance is. We’ve been trapped by Mitch McConnell and his slimy back room deals for decades - the same man who has thwarted the entire Democratic Party for decades! Do not ever fucking talk down to me and tell me we have to accept a candidate like this

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Meg Pillow @megpillow.bsky.social · 1d

Really pisses me off how blue staters will continually call us ignorant hicks who don’t know how to vote right and yet we elected one of the best Dem governors in the country. Yet the Dems keep giving us candidates we don’t want as our only alternative to far-right fuckwads

Politico @politico.com · 2d

Amy McGrath has announced a second bid for Mitch McConnell’s Senate seat.

McGrath announces second bid for McConnell’s Senate seat

The retired fighter pilot said she is “battle-tested and ready to fight.”

www.politico.com

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FREE ŁINK @lindli.bsky.social · 1d

this is very very cool

time to start reimagining the possibilities this moment offers: within, around, and through the brutality

Indigenous and Black knowledges *must* be central—it’s the only way within, around, and through the white supremacy that has a chokehold on this land

Kevin Carson 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇹🇯 @kevincarson1.bsky.social · 2d

Indigenous Nations Plan Tariff-Free Trade Corridor Across US-Canada border ino.to/agDxSX2

Indigenous Nations Plan Tariff-Free Trade Corridor Across US-Canada border

“We’re not begging for crumbs anymore. We’re demanding what’s rightly ours."

ino.to

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