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So Mayer

@suchmayer.bsky.social

5K followers 1.9K following 5.8K posts

They/them. Overthinker. Reads things, writes things. BAD LANGUAGE out now with Peninsula Press 🐉 THE WORD FOR WORLD (co-ed) out now with @silver-press.bsky.social 🌳 Website & newsletter: somayer.net. Won't age-verify so no DMs.

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So Mayer @suchmayer.bsky.social · 22d

It's here.

BAD LANGUAGE
13/11/25

"made with love and horror, & a guidebook for our time" — @adamzmith.bsky.social
"Mayer's words & a gift and a gateway" — @elizabethlovatt.bsky.social
"incantation & spell distil a complex argument" — Lola Olufemi

Pre-order: peninsulapress.co.uk/products/bad...

Cover of Bad Language by So Mayer: hand-drawn illustration of an illuminated capital B, which is a grey dragon wrapped around a blue tree. The dragon has a red eye and smoke rising from its nostrils. The author's name and book title are written in a simple, non-joined-up cursive, as if on a chalkboard.

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Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · 7h

Van Jones, two NYT journalists and Michael Powell (of The Atlantic, formerly NYT) are among 16 "scholars and journalists" serving as mentors for a journalism fellowship with the mission to "support a secure State of Israel,” and which the founder says exists to win an "information war."

Other fellowship mentors include CNN’s Van Jones, who recently issued an apology after drawing intense criticism for comments he made on HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher on Friday making light of images of dead Palestinian children and saying they were part of an Iran and Qatar disinformation campaign; and Michael Powell, a staff writer at the Atlantic and a former national reporter at The New York Times, whose recent articles include “The Double Standard in the Human-Rights World,” that criticizes groups like Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders for becoming “stridently critical of Israel.”

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Prism @prismreports.org · 7h

Israel calls us “human animals,” never understanding that our bond with animals is the deepest proof of our humanity, writes Hend Salama Abo Helow in an op-ed. Like all of us Palestinians in Gaza, our animals have been displaced, starved, bombed, & terrorized, yet we refuse to abandon each other.

Israel calls us “human animals,” never understanding that our bond with animals is the deepest proof of our humanity

Like all of us Palestinians in Gaza, our animals have been displaced, starved, bombed, and terrorized, yet we refuse to abandon each other

prismreports.org

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Shelagh Rowan-Legg @shelaghrowanlegg.bsky.social · 7h

I'm honoured to have twqo audio commentaries, an essay, and a role in a documentary on this stellar box set release from Severin Films, Exorcismo: Defying a Dictator & Raising Hell in Post-Franco Spain. Available now for pre-order. severinfilms.com/en-ca/produc...

Exorcismo: Defying a Dictator & Raising Hell in Post-Franco Spain [10-Disc Blu-ray Box Set + Book]

19 FEATURE FILMSON 10 DISCS Including the award-winning documentary EXORCISMO: The Transgressive Legacy of Clasificada “S” Plus 168-Page Bookand 21+ Combined Hours of Special Features Under the Franco...

severinfilms.com

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Katharine Khamhaengwong @katharinegk.bsky.social · 3d

i'm participating in an inaturalist project where anyone in europe can get their specimens dna tested for free, would be cool to have some more participants in some of the countries w/o little orange square on them (download the app! take photos of mushrooms!)

www.inaturalist.org/projects/myc...

a map of europe showing participants in the uk, netherlands, a few other western european countries, and russia

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So Mayer @suchmayer.bsky.social · 7h

Maybe I'm shit at social media (the only time I ever went semi-viral ended with me on a security list at an institution where I'd previously worked). But I feel like: it's the people not the platform.

So Mayer @suchmayer.bsky.social · 7h

FATHER.

M3GAN is a CGI film character.

Why do all these guys have to be embracing their gross inner Dr Frankensteins all the time?

britt hayes @britthates.bsky.social · 7h

Jason Blum's take on AI sucks. an AI takeover isn't inevitable, and treating it as such (while also referring to filmmaking as "content creation," smdh) helps AI companies promote the lie that their deeply unprofitable, destructive tech is more powerful and useful than it actually is.

So Mayer @suchmayer.bsky.social · 7h

Lots of great things have happened in my life b/c thinking & expressing & sharing & connecting to other ppl. Social media has been one of many spaces where that's happened. But those things happened b/c of expression & connection, curiosity & generosity & mutual aid. It's an amplifier not a cause.

Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · 20h

Has anything great happened in your life because of social media?

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Silver Press @silver-press.bsky.social · 7h

THE WORD FOR WORLD:
Ursula K Le Guin’s maps of imaginary worlds are charted in a new exhibition opening this Friday 10 October @ursulakleguin.com
www.wallpaper.com/architecture...

Ursula K Le Guin’s maps of imaginary worlds are charted in a new exhibition

Ursula K Le Guin, the late American author, best known for her science fiction novels, is celebrated in a new exhibition at the Architectural Association in London, charting her whimsical maps, which ...

www.wallpaper.com

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So Mayer @suchmayer.bsky.social · 7h

Just... wages for work, any work, seems increasingly impossible.

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Lara Alonso Corona (they/them) @laraacorona.bsky.social · 10h

It's a general problem, totally. We cultural workers are so very good at exploiting ourselves and believing our precariry doesn't matter because art is not "really work" or some such toxic nonsense. We need our own Wages for Housework moment

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Blue Heron Farm @blueheronfarm.bsky.social · 11h

🎃 October 8 🎃
My little brony

Fluffy white dog with My Little pony ears and rainbow bangs

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Queen of Swords Press @qospress.bsky.social · 4d

#Booksky Know what you can get if you preorder M.Christian’s terrific gay vampire with a twist novel, RUNNING DRY, direct from us before 10/20? One of these fab and hilarious stickers while supplies last! Preorders are love! queenofswordspress.com/product/runn...

Sticker that says “Ambiguously Gay Vampire” on a white bat, black background.

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Alex Brown 🇵🇸 (they/them) @bookjockeyalex.bsky.social · 11h

But frankly, if your business is entirely run on Stealing Things That Don't Belong To You And Selling Them, I'm fine with you not having a business anymore.

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Maggie Hennefeld @hennefem.bsky.social · 14h

Today Léontine will return to the Teatro Verdi in Pordenone!! 🤩 She raises a ruckus as Musidora's cook in a parody of Les Vampires directed by Feuillade -- followed by Jane Gaines' lecture on Imagining silent film history with only women..... ⁉️🎞️

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So Mayer @suchmayer.bsky.social · 11h

As ever, I direct your good gazes to the "Structurally F'cked" report on gallery visual arts, but widely applicable on extractive labour practices. All arts degrees should teach this report.

www.a-n.co.uk/research/str...

Structurally F–cked - a-n The Artists Information Company

An inquiry into artists’ pay and conditions in the public sector in response to the Artist Leaks data.

www.a-n.co.uk

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So Mayer @suchmayer.bsky.social · 11h

Grrrrrrrr

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Xtra @xtramagazine.com · 13d

LGBTQ2S+ archives like @arquives.ca, @ottawatranslibrary.bsky.social, @invisiblehistories.bsky.social and @leatherarchives.bsky.social preserve our past. They can also drive our future, writes @ainopihlak.bsky.social.

Among the archives, you can find love, community and history | Xtra Magazine

Queer and trans archives preserve our past—they also offer community space that is essential to our future

xtramagazine.com

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So Mayer @suchmayer.bsky.social · 11h

bsky.app/profile/bren...

Brent Toderian @brenttoderian.bsky.social · 2d

For every €1 provided through a Basic Income For Artists pilot program in Ireland, the government got €1.46 back. So it’s being made permanent.

Over and over we see it. It saves public money to provide public housing. And it makes public money to provide basic income.

We can’t afford to NOT do it.

Mike Sowden @mikeachim.bsky.social · 2d

Damn. This is amazing. £325 per week, paid monthly, for 3 years - and the result was a profit for the Irish economy:
www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employmen...

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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 11h

and when I said “the violence is already here” I also meant: the actual police

Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 23h

What we’re seeing now is not people “[beginning] to view their own government’s security forces as an occupying army”—the federal agents are becoming an occupying army, and the violence is theirs. The violence is already here.

Caleb Crain @calebcrain.bsky.social · 1d

Chilling insight by @barbarafwalter.com: "Once citizens view their own government’s security forces as an occupying army, violence becomes inevitable. Trump’s team knows this… They’re trying to trigger the very unrest that would justify further crackdowns."

via www.nytimes.com/2025/10/07/o...

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Dorothy, a publishing project @dorothyproject.bsky.social · 1d

Congrats to all the National Book Awards finalists! It was so much fun to see Lana's book make the longlist, and we're grateful that that no doubt helped get the book into more readers' hands.

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So Mayer @suchmayer.bsky.social · 11h

One of the most galling things about AI is its scraping of academic papers that I, a freelancer, did not get paid for writing & have to pay to access - but only the publisher can claim in the lawsuit. The model is already broken: we shouldn't revert to status quo ante, but demand genuine equity.

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adamatomic @adamatomic.bsky.social · 12h

the most powerful people in the world: "it is the least powerful people in the world who are the REAL problem"

everyone: "ah i see, that makes sense"

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Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg @theradr.bsky.social · 12h

And @daanis.ca also has a new one out!!!!

👇👇👇👇

Bad Indians Book Club: Reading at the Edge of a Thousand Worlds

Reading at the Edge of a Thousand Worlds

bookshop.org

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Oisín McGann @oisinmcgann.bsky.social · 1d

It’s really hard to describe to people who are not artists how survival mode does *not* inspire creativity, as the myth would have us believe. It suppresses creativity as you try to limit every possible risk – and the opportunities that come with them.

Aliette de Bodard @aliettedebodard.com · 1d

It turns out building habits and stuff actually requires not being in survival mode, who knew?!
(Yeah yeah I did)

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So Mayer @suchmayer.bsky.social · 11h

Would buy postcards of all of these!!