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Maria Bustillos

@mariabustillos.com

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Maria Bustillos @mariabustillos.com · Mar 10

I'm a founding member of FLAMING HYDRA, a cooperative of the best independent journalists and artists around, making a superfine newsletter for you each weekday.

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Jill Lawrence @jilldlawrence.bsky.social · 1h

ME's Senate field includes at least 3 plausible younger Democrats, most notably the viral populist oyster farmer Graham Platner, 41. Janet Mills is 77. Why are top Dems so set on her? So resistant to new blood? @danpfeiffer.bsky.social asks the right questions. www.messageboxnews.com/p/are-democr...

Are Democrats About to Blow It in Maine?

By backing Janet Mills over a grassroots outsider, party leaders may be repeating the same mistakes from 2024

www.messageboxnews.com

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Maria Bustillos @mariabustillos.com · 24m

Most inept literary critic I've ever seen, bar none

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 2h

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.

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southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 1h

The deportation order is based on Vedam’s conviction for murder—a crime he did not actually commit and for which he’s now been wholly exonerated. He entered the US at 9 months old and was a legal permanent resident before his conviction. We are so, so, so far from the light of justice.

Lynn Becker @cmgiulini.bsky.social · 13h

After spending 43 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, evidence hidden by the prosecution reversed his conviction. Rather than finally enjoying freedom, ICE abducted him for deportation

Depraved.

www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

He was wrongfully imprisoned for 43 years. Moments after being released, ICE took him

Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam now faces deportation.

www.miamiherald.com

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Maria Bustillos @mariabustillos.com · 54m

ahaha I love the cut of @hels.bsky.social's jib.

Helen Rosner @hels.bsky.social · 1h

Obsessed with photographer Thea Traff’s stark, color-blocky images that run alongside my restaurant review this week. Also, tbh, very pleased by my opening graf www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

THE FOOD SCENE
HOW FRENCH SHOULD A
RESTAURANT BE?
Chateau Royale, from the team behind Libertine, pulls out all of the Gallic stops without, for the most part, feeling ostentatious or conceited.
By Helen Rosner
October 12, 2025
Chateau Royale both plays its Frenchness straight and wears it lightly.
Photographs by Thea Traff for The New Yorker

Maria Bustillos @mariabustillos.com · 56m

Flaming Hydra IS the name of a great band
(of writers and artists)

Check out some free work at flaminghydra.com/free

follow us at @flaminghydra.com

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Bettina Struff #Woke #FBPE #FBPR #NHS #RejoinEU @bettinastruff.bsky.social · 12h

"Both in opposition and in Government, the Labour frontbench has, in my view, with its language and policies, directly contributed to the resurgence of authoritarian politics in this country."

An excellent interview by @peterjukes.bsky.social and @hardeepmatharu.bsky.social

Byline Times @bylinetimes.bsky.social · 17h

Peter Jukes and Hardeep Matharu speak to the backbench Labour MP to understand why the Government is focusing on how to ‘stop the boats' rather than fixing people's everyday lives

Clive Lewis MP: ‘I Never Thought I’d Hear Myself Say I Think My Party is Making this Country Weaker in Preparation for an Authoritarian-Right Government’

www.bylinesupplement.com

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Maria Bustillos @mariabustillos.com · 4h

Yes, we have free samples at

flaminghydra.com/free

Flaming Hydrant - Flaming Hydra

Share these stories freely, no paywall! If you love them, please subscribe to Flaming Hydra to receive more each weekday.

flaminghydra.com

Maria Bustillos @mariabustillos.com · 13h

Real human art writing music and craftsmanship of all kinds will only increase in value, the longer this goes on

Humanities departments may be coming back sooner than we think

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 15h

really striking the degree to which not a single person working in the trump administration appears to be interested in serving the american people

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Science and Freedom Alliance - SAFA @safa-science.bsky.social · 10d

Federal workers are speaking out on how the Trump regime is harming Americans:

"We stand here today at a moment of the greatest assault of our lifetimes on our freedoms. The US Constitution is being shredded... We are here to call on Congress to stand up and stop it."

youtu.be/uw1KwIBgrCw?...

Mark Histed, NIH Scientist *speaking in personal capacity

YouTube video by Civil Servants Coalition

youtu.be

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kat, ghost of helenruthsghost @chaoskat.bsky.social · 15h

Salvation Army seen feeding ICE today. For anyone who doesn't already know about their bigotry, here is more, No need to give them your money this Christmas, or ever.

unraveled @unraveledpress.com · 16h

It’s dinner time for the police. Appears to be pizza from a Salvation Army van.

Broadview’s “free speech” curfew starts soon, at 6pm.

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Maria Bustillos @mariabustillos.com · 15h

So many people have written about this, as @greenwell.bsky.social did in her recent book 'Bad Company'

flaminghydra.com/the-public-i...

Here's one I wrote in 2016 about Sheldon Adelson's secret takeover of the Las Vegas Review-Journal

www.newyorker.com/business/cur...

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Maria Bustillos @mariabustillos.com · 15h

Nate Silver: just one person weighin' in here

Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 15h

AI has lost the dunce vote. It’s over

Nate Silver
@NateSilver538 • 5h
•.°
I'm just one person, and my programming needs are somewhat unusual (building various kinds of statistical forecasting models). But I'm just not seeing the consistent productivity gains from LLMs that I would have expected if you'd asked me 6 months ago.

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Anna Merlan @annamerlan.bsky.social · 15h

One time I looked out the window of the thrift store I worked at and saw a beautiful woman hopping down the street on one leg. A second later she burst in the front door and it was Diane Keaton with a broken high heel in her hand. You’ve never seen someone get served by half the staff faster

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Maria Bustillos @mariabustillos.com · 16h

Your work is valuable and important and also you should take the rest you need, because the end result will be better and come faster than if you overdo it.

Reposted by Maria Bustillos

StrictlyChristo 🇺🇦🌻❌👑 @strictlychristo.bsky.social · 3d

Portland is so good at trolling these fascists.

I ❤️ Portland

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Maria Bustillos @mariabustillos.com · 16h

"We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”

Lord Palmerston didn't mean global equality, as I do, by "our interests," but this is true all the same

Maria Bustillos @mariabustillos.com · 17h

freaking bizarre

Maria Bustillos @mariabustillos.com · 17h

Unusual!

The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 1d

Imagine that

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Maria Bustillos @mariabustillos.com · 18h

Filming began in January 2024, amazingly.

Maria Bustillos @mariabustillos.com · 18h

so much sympathy for this man, as a hella old

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Maria Bustillos @mariabustillos.com · 18h

Ceding the field to Big Brother doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

Consider the good that mixed-bag practitioners like Edward R. Murrow were able to do. What about that??

Reposted by Maria Bustillos

Governor JB Pritzker @govpritzker.illinois.gov · 19h

Texas is preparing emergency resources for wildfires and floods. The Texas National Guard should be THERE — not in Illinois.

We stand ready to support their return home so they are best positioned for helping Texans respond to any natural disasters.

Abbott activates emergency resources ahead of growing wildfire threat, flood risk in Texas

With expected growing wildfire danger across Texas and the potential for a flood risk this weekend, Gov. Greg Abbott is activating more state emergency response resources Friday.

trib.al

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Maria Bustillos @mariabustillos.com · 19h

yeah!

The U.S. right has claimed all the following are bad and/or contemptible:

- empathy
- virtue
- antifasciscm
- social justice
- sharing food and medicine with people in need

utopia deferred @utopia-defer.red · 1d

anyone else notice that the west took a turn for the worse once the concept of signaling one’s own social virtue became derogatory, almost as if cynically deriding all displays of charity and good will is indicative of a deeply cynical and nihilistic society capable of collaborating in genocide

larry @larrrrrry.bsky.social · 1d

her advocacy for Palestinians doesn't bother me nearly as much as she is so desperately doing all this as an actual act of transparent virtue signaling, to fill the absence she has in depth of character

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Maria Bustillos @mariabustillos.com · 19h

that is really well said

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