Maria
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merluza.bsky.social
Maria
@merluza.bsky.social
Ethnographer working in tech; walking makes me happy
The line keeps moving on who counts as a citizen. And it will continue to move as we allow it. Citizenship is a piece of paper.
December 8, 2025 at 11:39 PM
So you turn off smart features and then your inbox filters go away, and you get a million notifications on your phone from your marketing inbox? This is a design choice.
November 22, 2025 at 4:14 AM
Please someone smarter than me help me make sense of this!

Is this the culmination of politics as simulacrum?

Is it an admission?

Is fascism is now an acceptable thing?

What is this crap?!?
A reporter asks if Mamdani stands by calling Trump a fascist. Mamdani starts to give a delicate answer.

Trump (smiles, pats Mamdani's arm): "That's OK, you can just say yes. It's easier. I don't mind."
November 21, 2025 at 9:39 PM
Mamdani and Trump's press conference is wild. Now Trump loves Mamdani and Bernie?!? Smells like sheer opportunism.
November 21, 2025 at 9:09 PM
In my kid's school, the school secretary has built a musical theater program for the kids because she loves Broadway. The kids build sets, act, sing, manage the shows. It has been an AMAZING gift to the community. A person with an idea and the drive to follow through can do so much good.
November 21, 2025 at 7:41 PM
Reposted by Maria
Trust in science will increase when we stop all the money being used to fund anti-science political attacks and spread disinformation.
November 19, 2025 at 9:51 PM
Reposted by Maria
615 of the estimated 3,000+ detained immigrants who were kidnapped in Chicagoland during Midway Blitz are expected to be eligible for bond this week. The Midwest Immigration Bond Fund shows up for people in detention who need bond, but it costs, at minimum, $1,500 per person. Pls help them.
A Midwest Bond Fund Is Helping Detained Chicago Immigrants Return To Their Families
The Midwest Immigration Bond Fund launched in 2020 to provide bond assistance to people navigating the complex immigration legal system. That mission has become more difficult under the second Trump a...
blockclubchicago.org
November 17, 2025 at 10:08 PM
Even beyond that, there are two political worlds: one where politics is abstract, a game of numbers, margins and electoral strategy, where politics has no consequence. And there's the one where politics directly impacts existence in very concrete ways. The latter has very little representation.
There’s a two party duopoly in this nation.

Is it great? No! Is it reality? Yes.

Creating a third party means building up an entirely new infrastructure from scratch and then fighting both R & D.

Taking over the Dem Party is an easier and more effective route. It’ll take time, but it’s worth it.
November 10, 2025 at 11:19 PM
Reposted by Maria
The average SNAP benefit per month is $177 a person.

The average ACA benefit per month is up to $550 a person.

People want us to hold the line for a reason. This is not a matter of appealing to a base. It’s about people’s lives.

And working people want leaders whose word means something to them.
November 10, 2025 at 1:49 AM
In the grand scheme of things, my little town council elections don't matter, but the progressive candidates won! The old guard anti-housing candidate is out.
November 5, 2025 at 2:58 AM
Reposted by Maria
If you boycott elections, candidates logically ignore you and focus on the voters they can still get.

There’s a reason pundits keep nudging Dems to a mushy middle. Those folks are idiots, yes, but they’re idiots who show up to vote.

And that matters more to a candidate than your smart apathy.
October 29, 2025 at 7:46 PM
This is the time of the year I start dreaming about summer vacation. Book a bunch of weekends, and then summer rolls around and I complain about how busy it is.
October 23, 2025 at 8:21 PM
The AWS outage shows why monopolies are not good. Much of our Internet infrastructure, including the government's, is owned by Amazon.
October 22, 2025 at 10:46 AM
We are eroding the social stability necessary for capitalism to work. This is not a "leftist" issue. If I was a business owner, I'd be very worried.
October 20, 2025 at 2:00 PM
Very normal, very stable.
and another thing: he’s not mad. please don’t put it in the newspaper that he got mad.
October 19, 2025 at 10:51 PM
Reposted by Maria
6/ Sure the House isn't here so Rs don't have to explain why they want premiums to go up and why they want to fund Trump's corruption.

But also because they don't want to swear in member-elect Adelita Grijalva. Since she would be the deciding vote to RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES.
October 14, 2025 at 10:56 AM
I honestly believe these folks do not understand the world that they live in. They are so clouded by dogma, they can't stand to learn and witness the world as it is. That's ultimately their weakness.
i'm sure duffy is just lying here but also i'll say again that they hard time conceptualizing relations between people that aren't strictly hierarchical.
Sean Duffy: "The No Kings protest, Maria, really frustrating. This is part of antifa, paid protesters. It begs the question who's funding it."
October 13, 2025 at 10:32 PM
I wasn't prepared for having to download an app for every soccer tournament that my 10yo goes to. Each town's soccer league has their own app.
October 11, 2025 at 11:17 AM
It's been 9 months of this shit, and things keep getting worse. I listened today NPR talking about everyday joy as resistance and a
I felt so sad and disillusioned. I want justice. I want accountability. I want change. I want the powers of the enfranchised not the powers of the oppressed.
October 10, 2025 at 1:25 AM
Traveling by train is one of the highlights of living in the Northeast.
October 2, 2025 at 5:22 PM
Something I'm learning as I age: there is no repeat. That event you really enjoyed? That was it. It won't happen again in the same way. I'm more conscious of enjoying in the moment and it's also easier to let go.
September 24, 2025 at 1:47 PM
I love living in a city that actually has a public transportation system so I can complain about how bad it is.
September 4, 2025 at 12:49 PM
I'm increasingly convinced that standing in line, experiencing inconvenience in public spaces along with people who have more and less than you is the great equalizer and essential to building a shared sense of reality. These spaces are dwindling in the US.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/o...
Opinion | Disney and the Decline of America’s Middle Class
www.nytimes.com
August 28, 2025 at 2:37 PM
I stopped using Instagram and I have not missed it at all. Every now and then I will open the app, and I have missed nothing.
August 20, 2025 at 1:46 AM
What if the grift is to release these updates, and stoke all these fears how AI will take our jobs, to force us to adopt it because otherwise no one would want to use it?

#AI #chatgpt5 #thisveryweirdrealitywefindourselvesin
August 9, 2025 at 2:19 AM