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Matthew Cheney

@melikhovo.bsky.social

2.2K followers 820 following 820 posts

Writer, teacher, person. Books from Black Lawrence, Bloomsbury Academic, punctum, Third Man, Lethe. Horror fiction, modernism, pedagogy, weirdness. (Would love to post less about politics, but, well, look outside...) https://matthewcheney.net

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Matthew Cheney @melikhovo.bsky.social · Aug 29

Kirkus gives Moon Songs a star!

"This compellingly assembled retrospective gives longtime Emshwiller fans a chance to savor her unique sensibility again, while lucky newcomers enjoy the thrill of discovery."

@thirdmanbooks.bsky.social

www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews...

MOON SONGS | Kirkus Reviews

A greatest hits collection of unclassifiable speculative fiction.

www.kirkusreviews.com

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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 20h

I prefer “anti-fascist“ for a host of reasons and this is a nice practical one.

Ify Nwadiwe @ifycomedy.com · 21h

I think we really should stop using antifa and just fully say anti-fascist and get them saying they are against anti fascism. Using antifa is giving them some distance and I genuinely think some of their base don’t even know that’s what it stands for.

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Katelyn Boo-urns @katelynburns.com · 1d

I wrote a little about some of the little details you might have missed in this video and why it hit me so hard as a trans person this morning:

www.burnsnotice.com/you-have-to-...

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Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 20h

This heartfelt and meaningful statement by Portland resident and author Cristina Breshears on another social media platform bears reposting here. I don't think the intent is to idealize Portland but to remind all of us what is important and why. (Posted here with permission.)

For nine nights now, the steady thrum of Black Hawk helicopters has circled over Portland. The sound is constant, invasive; a low mechanical beating above our homes. It’s expensive. It’s intimidating. And it’s unnecessary.

Our protests have been largely peaceful. There is no insurrection here. Yet this federalized military presence makes us feel like we are living in a war zone (the very kind of chaos this administration claims to be protecting us from).

The irony is painful: it is only this occupation that makes Portland feel unsafe.

Each hour of helicopter flight costs taxpayers between $2,000 and $4,000, depending on crew, fuel, and maintenance. Multiply that by multiple aircraft over multiple nights, and you’re looking at hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars burned into the sky.

Meanwhile, the Woodstock Food Pantry at All Saints Episcopal Church — which feeds working families, elders, and people with disabilities — has seen its federal funding slashed by 75%. How can we justify pouring public money into intimidation while cutting aid to those who simply need to eat?

This is waste, fraud, and abuse in plain sight:
* Waste of public resources on military theatrics.
* Fraud in the name of “public safety.”
* Abuse of the communities that federal agencies claim to protect.

Portland is a Sanctuary City. A sanctuary city is not a fortress. It’s a promise — a living vow that a community will protect the dignity and safety of everyone who calls it home. It means that local governments and ordinary people alike will refuse to criminalize survival. That schools, clinics, churches, and shelters will remain safe spaces no matter who you are or where you were born. But the term reaches far beyond policy. It’s an ethic of belonging; a refusal to criminalize need, difference, or desperation.

Sanctuary isn’t weakness. It’s courage. It takes moral strength to meet suffering with care instead of punishment, to believe that our neighbors’ safety is bound up in our own, to insist that safety is not achieved through force but through community, inclusion, and trust. It is living Matthew 25:40 out loud and in deed. It is an act of moral imagination and moral defiance. To hold sanctuary is to say: you belong here.

When we hold space for the most vulnerable — refugees, the unhoused, the undocumented, the disabled, the working poor, the displaced — we become something larger than a collection of individuals. We become a moral body. We do more than offer charity. We offer witness. We declare that the measure of a nation is found not in its towers or tanks, but in its tenderness.

Sanctuary cities are not lawless; they are soulful. They represent the conscience of the nation, a place where the laws of empathy still apply. To make sanctuary is to affirm that the United States is not merely a geographic territory, but a moral experiment: a republic that must constantly choose between fear and compassion, between domination and democracy.

A nation’s soul is measured not by the might of its military, but by the mercy of its people. When helicopters circle our skies in the name of order, while food pantries struggle to feed the hungry, we are forced to ask: What are we defending, and from whom? The soul of a nation survives only when we make sanctuary for one another. Not through walls or weapons, but through compassion and collective will. If we allow intimidation to replace compassion, we will have traded our conscience for control.

Please know that despite the hum of war machines overhead, the conscience of our city — whimsical, creative, stubbornly kind — can still be heard.

Portland is not the problem. Portland is the reminder. A reminder that a city can still choose to be sanctuary. That a people can still choose to be human.

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Ricardo Levins Morales Art Studio @rlmartstudio.bsky.social · 4h

This week in 1988: 1,000+ ACT UP demonstrators shut down the FDA headquarters, demanding (and eventually winning) action on developing HIV/AIDS treatments. ACT UP's militant and creative actions always included powerful visual artwork, and paved the way for movements in the decades to come.

A photograph from the 1988 ACT UP demonstration outside the FDA. Many people are participating in a die-in on the front steps, holding mock tombstones with messages like "RIP - killed by the FDA" and "Dead from lack of drugs." A line of police officers (some with classic 80s mustaches) wearing riot helmets stands between them and the building; one cop wearing white gloves is walking through the demonstrators. Affixed to the 2nd story windows of the building is a series of posters and a large blank banner reading Silence = Death.

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Matthew Cheney @melikhovo.bsky.social · 6h

Thanks, Mark -- and thanks for coming to hear it in person!

Matthew Cheney @melikhovo.bsky.social · 8h

This is my paper from the 2025 @moderniststudies.bsky.social conference in Boston, just finishing up today. It was heartening to be able to have thoughtful discussions with folks about the difficult, painful realities of higher education today.

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Matthew Cheney @melikhovo.bsky.social · 8h

"Shall I ask them to rebuild the college on the old lines? Or shall I ask them to rebuild it, but differently? Or shall I ask them to buy rags and petrol and Bryant & May’s matches and burn the college to the ground?" —Virginia Woolf

matthewcheney.net/blog/on-not-...

On Not Knowing Professors: Virginia Woolf’s Outsider Pedagogy for Common Readers

I delivered the following essay as a paper at the 2025 Modernist Studies Association conference in Boston. (There are actually a couple more paragraphs here than in the paper as delivered, since I cut...

matthewcheney.net

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Sophie Carr @sophiecarr.bsky.social · 10h

The forecast fog didn't materialise, but it's still nice to get out into the woods early in the morning :)

#wellingtonia #redwoods #Hockeridge #Berko #Berkhamsted #CanonR6II

A view down an avenue of young wellingtonia trees (Sequoiadendron giganteum, or giant redwoods). At the top of the frame are some orange beech leaves from a tree above.

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Kevin Gannon (now a Moo Deng fan account) @thetattooedprof.bsky.social · 9h

Bar associations need to start disbarring. There's immediate precedent with Giuliani. To the point @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social has repeatedly made, a polity that allows elites to repeatedly lie, obviously and with impunity, is not sustainable. Feels like the legal profession is at the same juncture.

Dante Atkins @danteatkins.bsky.social · 18h

The case against Comey is beyond weak. The case against James is worse. It is based on a lie, and they know they're lying because exculpatory evidence that contradicts the indictment had already been presented to a grand jury in another jurisdiction. Everyone involved with this needs to be disbarred

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Ryan J. Reilly “paints a vivid and urgent portrait of… disarray” @ryanjreilly.com · 1d

PORTLAND, Ore. — A small group of federal agents in camouflage and face masks watched from atop the immigration processing center Thursday night as a unicorn, peacock, dinosaur and raccoon danced to Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time.” www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

Costumed protesters in Portland defy description of the city as a 'war zone'

Dancing frogs, peacocks and unicorns outside the federal immigration building present a joyful contrast to the Trump administration's portrait of the Oregon city, they say.

www.nbcnews.com

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kat, ghost of helenruthsghost @chaoskat.bsky.social · 21h

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 · 22h

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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Dan Sinykin @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social · 1d

i am feeling, i am seeing, i am hearing, i am getting the vibes, that students this sem are better than they've been in years because learning offers a rare haven from authoritarianism, a place to convene, commune, think together, refuel for the fight

Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 2d

week 7, in a city under siege for 32 days and counting, and the students who are able to come to class despite the blitz are showing up like their lives depend on those 50 minutes of togetherness, poetry, and big questions

Miriam Posner @miriamposner.com · 2d

IDK, man. School started 2 weeks ago for us, and once again students remind me that they’re so curious and interested in the world and anxious to ask big questions. We hear that these questions are no longer useful or relevant, but wherever that’s coming from, it’s not what students believe.

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Matthew Cheney @melikhovo.bsky.social · 1d

Rare that a politician's post brings tears for me (in a good way, at least!) To see the potential next mayor of NYC embrace the legacy of Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson in this era is astonishing and beautiful.

Zohran Kwame Mamdani @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · 1d

UNTIL IT’S DONE, Ep. 4: Sylvia Rivera

In the 1970s, queer New Yorkers had been pushed to the margins of NYC. Our trans neighbors faced immense cruelty. But in Sylvia Rivera, they found a champion.

As we combat Trump’s politics of darkness, her legacy can light the path forward.

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Gwenda Bond @gwenda.bsky.social · 1d

This -- seeing the books that are being targeted most NOW really makes what is being done hit harder. It actually undercuts the real threat to show books that are famous and still selling fine.

Nathan @nathandunbar.bsky.social · 1d

A call to bookshops when setting up banned books displays. Feature alive authors who could be struggling due to this. Yes, Stephen King gets banned but he's doing ok financially. So many others are not.

Maris Kreizman @maris.bsky.social · 1d

Just a reminder that Banned Books Week isn’t about selling more copies of 1984. It’s about keeping authors and teachers and librarians safe and making sure all of us have the freedom to read widely. www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

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Pat Inverted Vibe Curve Blanchfield @patblanchfield.bsky.social · 1d

people online are constantly saying shit like "the average person is now post-literate and returning to medieval peasant mindset" while neglecting the corollary, namely that our elite aristos are once again scrying for angels, summoning demons, distilling elixirs of eternal life, etc.

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Brooke Harrington @ebharrington.bsky.social · 1d

Coincidentally, religious delusions are a known side effect of ingesting psychedelics--a practice now apparently de rigeur among the Broligarchs.

Sources--

Wall Street Journal: www.wsj.com/tech/silicon...

Nature Scientific Reports: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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Matthew Cheney @melikhovo.bsky.social · 1d

"Generative AI use is a labour issue. It’s an information literacy issue. It’s a privacy issue. It’s a capital issue. It’s a power issue."

Open Access Tracking Project @oatp.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 1d

Resisting “AI” // LLMs in Library Labour https://ahemnason.notion.site/resisting-ai

The AI workspace that works for you. | Notion

A tool that connects everyday work into one space. It gives you and your teams AI tools—search, writing, note-taking—inside an all-in-one, flexible workspace.

ahemnason.notion.site

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Roland Meyer @bildoperationen.bsky.social · 5d

So-called #genAI means the abolition of the future through the proliferation of endless streams of stochastically rendered generic pasts. Having turned large parts of the cultural archive into training data, it now traps us in a foreverized pastness, a 24/7 nostalgia for a past that never existed

QuoProQuid @quoproquid.bsky.social · 6d

have just come across a YouTube account that has been using Sora to upload reels of fake, AI-generated “90s sitcoms” every few hours

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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 1d

Is it cancel culture when they threaten to kill you?

www.nj.com/news/2025/10...

Sold-out Ta-Nehisi Coates speaker appearance in N.J. canceled over security reasons

Organizers canceled a sold-out Ta-Nehisi Coates event in Montclair citing undisclosed security concerns.

www.nj.com

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Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 1d

For some context the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly report in addition to being just a good read, to quote wikipedia, "is the main vehicle for publishing public health information and recommendations that have been received by the CDC from state health departments. "

Sheryl Gay Stolberg @sherylnyt.bsky.social · 1d

BREAKING: Friday night massacre underway at CDC. Doznes of "disease detectives," high-level scientists, entire Washington staff and editors of the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) have all been RIFed and received the following notice:

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Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 1d

Democrats don’t believe protest is patriotic, tho. They believe obedience is patriotic. They beat the shit out of, arrested, deported and blacklisted college students, staff and faculty over Gaza. For a year and a half!

Schooley @schooley.bsky.social · 1d

Democrats need to go as hard branding protest as patriotism as Republicans are labeling it all insurrection.

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Alan Baxter @alanbaxter.bsky.social · 2d

"Put simply, only the extremely wealthy appear to be benefiting from all of this."

Bank of England Warns of Impending AI Disaster

The Bank of England has sounded the alarm, warning of an intensifying risk of a "sudden correction" due to an AI spending frenzy.

futurism.com

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James Hell Brooks @kleinman.bsky.social · 2d

We have reclaimed the humble frog from the right

The Oregonian @oregonian.com · 2d

Things are happening at Portland's ICE facility tonight.

Read more of our protest coverage here: www.oregonlive.com/crime/2025/1...

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Alex A. Pagliuca @alexpagliuca.bsky.social · 2d

Just going to repost one of my favorite threads of all time.

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · Aug 20

It seems to me that the time is ripe for a Bluesky thread about how—and maybe even why—to befriend crows.

(1/n)

Beautiful crow against a black background

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𝔻𝕖𝕔𝕝𝕒𝕟 𝕆'𝔻𝕣𝕚𝕤𝕔𝕠𝕝𝕝 @jacqbetula.bsky.social · 3d

It's a great day to remember how important a translator like @ottiliemulzet.bsky.social is for those of us who can only read in English.
Without her superb translations, we would have missed so much of the great work of László Krasznahorkai.

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