Anarchic Squid
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leahanelson.bsky.social
Anarchic Squid
@leahanelson.bsky.social
Knower of things about Alabama, public finance as related to mass criminalization, fines and fees, healthcare access. Chair of the Praline Matzo Committee. Actively fearful of the Mariana Trench.
Pinned
In a postage stamp of a town at the southernmost tip of Appalachia, a minister and self-described anarchosocialist operates Alabama's only Narcan vending machine. I wrote about his lifesaving work in this, my first piece for @oxfordamerican.bsky.social.
oxfordamerican.org/oa-now/the-o...
The Only Narcan Vending Machine In Alabama
oxfordamerican.org
This Thanksgiving, I am grateful that I don’t know the context into which these sentences fit and that media atomization is such that I can choose to remain ignorant of if I really want to
Just ran face-first into Bobby kissing a rosary in The Atlantic, the introductory photo of another lengthy meditation on this man. Can we not be done? Post-felching, can we not, for five minutes, stop attending to him?
November 25, 2025 at 5:14 PM
Share a 90s movie you think deserves more love
November 25, 2025 at 3:53 AM
Reposted by Anarchic Squid
I have a testimonial for @sarahmackattack.bsky.social's Eel Facts Advent calendars (which can also be any old b-day countdown calendars!) 2 13-year-olds walked into our kitchen (first time visiting us), shouted "Eel facts!" simultaneously and started reading the facts together
November 24, 2025 at 1:05 AM
So I was married to a comedian but the more successful he got the less successful our marriage was.

So I thought: What is the most intensely sincere, unfunny thing I can do that involves reading, talking and writing, my only 3 skills?

I moved to Alabama to be an investigative reporter
What’s the lore behind choosing your career path ?
November 24, 2025 at 1:11 AM
As a society we do not talk enough about how The Godfather (the novel) is, like, a real banger
November 24, 2025 at 12:21 AM
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It is so very easy to offer non alcoholic beverages - just buy some fancy sodas or pop some regular apple cider on the stove, everyone will cherish your kindness, I promise.
Just a friendly reminder as we go into the holidays:

Folks don't have to explain to you why they don't drink.

If you offer them a drink and they decline, don't ask them why. It's not your business.

Just offer them something without alcohol to drink instead. And move on.
November 23, 2025 at 11:10 PM
I take 1, 1, 1 'cause you left me
And 2, 2, 2 for my family
And 3, 3, 3 for my heartache
And 4, 4, 4 for my headaches
And 5, 5, 5 for my lonely
And 6, 6, 6 for my sorrow
And 7, 7 for no tomorrow
And 8, 8, I forget what 8 was for
But 9, 9, 9 for the lost gods
10, 10, 10, 10 for everything, everything
November 23, 2025 at 5:34 PM
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You will never in a million years guess to whom this post is referring
The damned in hell are not more powerful for the fact that the fires do not consume them; it is part and parcel of their torment.
November 23, 2025 at 4:08 PM
Reposted by Anarchic Squid
DOGE was created for data theft and infrastructure dismantling and it wildly succeeded on both counts within the first few weeks of its existence. It will take a generation to rebuild what it destroyed and the breach of data is unprecedented.
Bye bye, “DOGE”.

It no longer exists as a “centralized entity”, according to the Office of Personnel Management.

@reuters.com
www.reuters.com/world/us/dog...
November 23, 2025 at 3:01 PM
Reposted by Anarchic Squid
Joe, I have a million dollar idea! A “historical event thesaurus,” where journalists and commentators can look up the common event they know and the listing will offer them a number of alternative parallel events with a brief explanation of each. Educate the commentariat and also beat bad analysis!
This metaphor is simply irresistible to mediocre pundits.
November 23, 2025 at 3:01 PM
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Difficult to overstate how profound a failure DOGE was. Spending in FY2025 was not only than in FY2024 – but higher than it was projected to be when Trump first took office.*

The little bit of spending DOGE cut has already killed hundreds of thousands and will eventually lead to millions of deaths.
Bye bye, “DOGE”.

It no longer exists as a “centralized entity”, according to the Office of Personnel Management.

@reuters.com
www.reuters.com/world/us/dog...
November 23, 2025 at 2:02 PM
Reposted by Anarchic Squid
Bye bye, “DOGE”.

It no longer exists as a “centralized entity”, according to the Office of Personnel Management.

@reuters.com
www.reuters.com/world/us/dog...
November 23, 2025 at 1:03 PM
Reposted by Anarchic Squid
Look, my father was a loud sneezer. And his father before him. I come from a long line of loud sneezers. It’s not much, but it’s honest work. (We get paid for how loud our sneezes are.)
November 23, 2025 at 4:51 AM
🎶 “As I walk through
This wicked world
Searching for light in the darkness
Of insanity
I ask myself
Is all hope lost?
Is there only pain, and hatred, and misery?
And each time I feel like this inside
There’s one thing I wanna know-ow
What’s so funny about peace love and understanding?” 🎶
November 23, 2025 at 2:22 AM
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🔁
November 20, 2025 at 9:31 PM
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hey guys i made a seasonal meme
November 22, 2025 at 5:41 AM
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First, an earthquake hit Alaska. Then it was a typhoon. People turned to public radio for lifesaving information. Sen. Lisa Murkowski tried to get her colleagues to understand the importance of stations.

They voted to defund public media anyway.
In rural America, public radio saves lives
In remote Alaska, public radio station KYUK is crucial during natural disasters. Without federal funding, how will it survive?
revealnews.org
November 22, 2025 at 10:27 PM
A bop for sure
I’ve often called this song—“Just Like Heaven”—the finest single of the 80s and meant it. This cover’s arrangement only confirms it for me 💜🔥
November 22, 2025 at 8:29 PM
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here is my horse: www.lawdork.com
i promise i don’t mean to high horse this but if you’re thinking about giving lizza ten bucks there are a lot of good independent journalists whose work you could subscribe to for a month instead
November 22, 2025 at 8:12 PM
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I think the Trump-Mamdani photos are a Rorschach Test.

To anti-doomers like me, they look like a guy too impulsive and easily swayed to consolidate authoritarian power.

To more-doomer types, they show that he still knows how to use the media to coop opposition.
November 22, 2025 at 5:01 PM
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I don't mean this in an "I told you so" way, but it was very obvious to me that the Mamdani/Trump meeting would go the way it did, because Mamdani is ascendant, popular, powerful and charismatic, all things that Trump wants to glom on to. Trump has no principles; it's not like he has converted.
November 21, 2025 at 11:44 PM
Yes. I also think there is something irreducible about what two people from the same outer borough, both of whom truly love NYC, might find to connect over
Trump’s affection for Mamdani has nothing to do with his political ideology, of which he has almost none; it’s entirely a function of his narcissistic personality disorder, which perfectly explains every single decision he makes, but is somehow left out of “serious” political discussions
November 22, 2025 at 4:55 PM
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Couldn’t do all the good, but this crew did a LOT
November 22, 2025 at 3:02 PM
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It is 10 to 9. Our giveaway was supposed to start at 9. By 7:30 there were already more people than bags. By 8:30 I’d already given away all our Christmas gift cards because we ran out of the ones for thanksgiving.

$4500 worth of goods and we could have done twice as many…
November 22, 2025 at 2:53 PM