Maria Bustillos
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mariabustillos.com
Maria Bustillos
@mariabustillos.com
31K followers 1.7K following 9.3K posts
I help run @flaminghydra.com and its parent cooperative, the Brick House.

Digital ownership rights, archives and libraries, fun, and press freedom are some things I love.

maria | at | flaminghydra | dot | com
mariabustillos.com | thebrick.house
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x.com/bourdain/sta...
Twitter post from @Bourdain: Wonderful Maria Bustillos piece on the great Lester Bangs
November 27, 2025 at 3:32 PM
mariabustillos.com
Most wildly addictive snack in history (to me) I'm gonna have to duct tape the bag shut

also my mouth
November 24, 2025 at 1:34 PM
mariabustillos.com
Here is @katz.theracket.news, sanely explaining why the Epstein case matters a lot (pace David #$*&@#)(*$ Brooks)

The chaos and noise all around makes it real hard to focus on the obvious, which is why everyone needs real journalists like @katz.theracket.news

theracket.news/p/why-the-ep...
The late Marxist literary critic Fredric Jameson once described conspiracy as “the poor person's cognitive mapping in the postmodern age; it is the degraded figure of the total logic of late capital, a desperate attempt to represent the latter’s system, whose failure is marked by its slippage into sheer theme and content.” When people can’t access or even learn about the actual mechanisms by which elites control our lives and fortunes, they resort to stories. Those stories are often wrong — they can, in fact, be dangerous — but they come from a genuine and rational impulse to make sense of a world in which power really does operate through networks of personal relationships and constantly evades democratic accountability. The Epstein case is fascinating precisely because it collapses those distinctions. It was an actual elite network, operating through personal relationships and mutual protection, flying on private jets and meeting on an exclusive tropical island — more or less what the paranoid style typically imagines. And — and this is really key — it involves, in ways we are getting glimpses of but do not yet fully understand, the sitting president of the United States, whose former chief political adviser, former labor secretary, current attorney general, and others were all tied in.
November 22, 2025 at 5:30 PM
mariabustillos.com
For rational, informed, justly incensed commentary on current events, nothing beats a conversation with @katz.theracket.news

Here's our chat at @flaminghydra.com

flaminghydra.com/issue-447/
And then you have Jeremy Peters in the Times, in the lead of that story about Mamdani at Bowdoin, reporting that Mamdani pronounced Haïti like Haitians do (“near-perfect Creole elocution”). And the fact that he said it correctly, that’s an indication that Zohran Mamdani is effectively like a sleeper agent for the Comintern and Al-Qaeda mixed together. And there was this sense that went into what Peters wrote, this horror of revolution. An information revolution in Haiti, a class revolution in France, which have suffused American life and American consciousness at a unique level. And the elites who are having these thoughts, they’re thinking, “We are better than the poor, right? We are better than all of the people, and we can do whatever we want to them. But there are a lot of them. And if they were able to get their shit together, or if they get onto us, if they learn what we’re actually doing… ” MB: They’re vulnerable. JK: Then the scaffolding will come down, and they’ll storm the gates, and it’ll be 1793, or 1804, or 1917. MB: But instead they’ve just fucked everything up all by themselves, and nobody even needs to. I mean I don’t know who killed Jeffrey Epstein, but nobody stormed any gates.
November 21, 2025 at 2:22 PM
mariabustillos.com
A long talk with @katz.theracket.news, it really fixes me, knowing there are principled and sane people. Also PLEASE we are srsly so mad
K: It’s just so bad, and Olivia Nuzzi’s writing is so bad! And Trump can’t fucking talk. These people can’t think, they imagine they’re world-historical geniuses who can literally burn down the rest of the world and replace it with their own children, and robots made in their image, and they’re all fucking dumb. MB: They can’t read! They can’t read. They can’t read Tolkien. JK: That’s right!! They think a Palantir is like… a cool thing that makes people smarter when they use it! They’re such an unreliable tool in the books—Saruman is deceived by his, and another drives Denethor insane. MB: This guy went crazy looking in the fuckin’ thing, man. JK: Yes, yes. MB: The most amazing part is that here it is, here is Tolkien’s story happening right in front of you in real life, in the Ross Douthat interview with Peter Thiel. Here is a man who has looked in the fucking rock for too long. He’s literally going around talking about the Antichrist. It’s really alarming.
November 20, 2025 at 8:07 PM
mariabustillos.com
Not just fine prose but sanity, human perspectives, and humor; @flaminghydra.com is the best $3/month you can spend.

From yesterday's post about Musk and Epstein, from @zachrabiroff.com

flaminghydra.com/issue-445/
It was, for Oates, a small killing. JCO is a remarkable creature: a literary author who, having shed her former skin as a regular contributor to the New Yorker, found her true calling in her eighth decade of life as the most extraordinary shitposter who has ever lived. She is a born predator: she quote-tweets, she annihilates, and she moves on. She kills without malice or anger, but only because it is her nature, like the lion sweeping down the savannah upon the doomed gazelle in her path. She is the most savage trash talker since Gore Vidal. She awes me.
November 19, 2025 at 1:42 PM
mariabustillos.com
Good analysis of the wildly creepy Bannon-Epstein alliance shown in Epstein emails, dissecting their plan to create a global far-right political machine to "stave off 'Time's Up' for the next decade plus"

Why would Republicans release these documents? Why now?

bylinetimes.com/2025/11/14/s...
Bannon’s response outlines the coalition he believes can power the next decade of right-wing politics: “Populist/Nationalist first. Conservative Christians (catholic/evangelical) next. Reverse Alabama. This coalition staves off ‘Times Up’ for next decade plus.”
November 16, 2025 at 3:45 PM
mariabustillos.com
Is it a bit of a coincidence that this comes out the moment GB News-allied forces at the BBC toppled leadership??
BBC News headline: Major Corruption Scandal Engulfs Top Zelensky Allies
November 13, 2025 at 6:18 PM
mariabustillos.com
Also, why Peter Thiel made sure Gawker ceased to exist
post by ‪it's gita time‬ ‪@xoxogossipgita.bsky.social‬ the fallout right now with epstein emails and people being shocked at just how much people knew is pretty much why gawker existed
November 13, 2025 at 5:54 PM
mariabustillos.com
The kids sent me this and I love it so much, I hope it is real. Made me miss my mom a lot (though she was not a fan of Pin Floi, nor even of Maiker Yarson)
Insta post: "Can you guess these music artist names my aunt wrote down? *crying emoji*" [IMAGE] CDs in a zippered case labeled PiN FLOi, FiL COLIN, BAS STRIK BOY y BRiRNi, and MAiKER YARSON
November 12, 2025 at 8:25 PM
mariabustillos.com
This is the last guy who should be telling anybody how to Be a Man imo better alternatives abound

flaminghydra.com/issue-439/#a...
November 11, 2025 at 2:34 AM
mariabustillos.com
he has nothing to say about these, either

Human Compatible, Stuart Russell
Zero to One, Thiel / Masters
Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes
Life 3.0, Max Tegmark
The Big Picture, Sean M. Carroll
Lying, Sam Harris
Superintelligence, Nick Bostrom
Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith
Radical Candor, Kim Scott
from ratboy genius (dogprom_2) on Twitter: LMFAO this fucking ad i just got. joyce BBQ'd his illiterate ass so bad he's pushing ads about how he reads books actually [QUOTE POST] from blinkist about '9 nonfiction books Elon Musk thinks we should all read.'
November 10, 2025 at 9:34 PM
mariabustillos.com
Are you a @flaminghydra.com subscriber?? if YES don't forget to VOTE for your favorite HYDRANYM on the theme:

FLY

some hilarious ones this week, people are getting really good at this

flaminghydra.com/hydranym-no-...
hot pink hydras breathing FIRE around the legend: HYDRANYM
November 9, 2025 at 5:14 PM
mariabustillos.com
Pleasurably vitriolic, super bracing takedown by Jessica Winter of the pestilential 'Notes on Being a Man' by shirtless centrist Scott Galloway

Thank you!

www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
What these pundits are nudging us to do, ever so politely, is accept that women, in the main, are accustomed to being a little degraded, a little underpaid and ignored and dampened in their ambitions, in ways that men are not and never will be. The “female-coded” person, to borrow Krugman’s terminology, may feel overwhelmed by child-care costs, ashamed that she can’t acquire a mortgage, or hollowed out by long hours as an I.C.U. nurse, but such feelings do not disturb the order of the universe.
November 9, 2025 at 1:28 PM
mariabustillos.com
JMJ means Jesus Mary and Joseph?!??!?!!!! I just found out

this is dazzling
reddit post with Catholic Nativity scene: J.M.J. I remember writing those initials at the top left of every wide-ruled looseleaf paper in Catholic grade school. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph are the Holy Family and they are a model for all families. P.S. I'm a bit early for the Feast Day but it's not too early (or late) to reflect on their h [word is cut off in post]
November 7, 2025 at 9:59 PM
mariabustillos.com
thesaurus.com shows 'nerd' and 'dork' as synonymous with 'moron' 'half-wit' and 'dolt' but not with e.g. 'brain' or 'egghead'

used to be pretty good!! becoming unusable now
GEEK as in odd person; computer expert noun as in odd person; computer expert Strongest matches buffoon freak nerd weirdo Strong matches curiosity dolt dork goon guru techie
November 7, 2025 at 1:54 AM
mariabustillos.com
Great work from @404media.co tracing the the multi-pronged attack on culture: book bans, slopification, and the sabotage of libraries, universities, and schools.

www.404media.co/ai-is-superc...
Librarians, teachers, and government workers have had to spend an increasing amount of their time and emotional bandwidth defending the work that they do, fighting against censorship efforts and dealing with the associated stress, harassment, and threats that come from fighting educational censorship. Meanwhile, they are separately dealing with an onslaught of AI slop and the top-down mandated AI-ification of their jobs; there are simply fewer and fewer hours to do what they actually want to be doing, which is helping patrons and students.
November 6, 2025 at 7:16 PM
mariabustillos.com
For decades establishment Dems have moved heaven and earth to prevent progressives from winning primaries (and elections!) but the centrist line remains the same.

This exchange is buried downthread someplace but it is kind of amazing
[empath75.bsky.social] Progressives can’t win everywhere, but if they win the primary they should get the same support from the party establishment as everyone else. ‪[@mariabustillos.com‬] You must not have followed Mamdani's campaign very closely.
November 5, 2025 at 4:01 PM
mariabustillos.com
^^^ this times infinity

They consider the left a useful tool, a way to burnish their intellectual credentials and increase their 'cool' quotient, nothing more.
Lincoln Project social post: Dick Cheney was a genuine conservative, a patriotic Republican, and a man who made hard calls in tough times, even when it meant being excommunicated from the GOP. Our thoughts are with his family.
November 5, 2025 at 3:54 PM
mariabustillos.com
Ekko Astral's Jael Holzman with the media perspective that democratic societies need to get with right away. A piercing and valuable talk between her and @parkermolloy.com
After I came out, Politico poached me from S&P Global, and then I was hired to build a newsletter for Axios. I still excelled as a journalist. But all that time, it became difficult for me to reconcile whatever romance I had left about my profession with the utter failures I was witnessing in terms of media coverage of people like me. And then once I saw that flaw, it became easier for me to see the many others. It’s really easy to view media as fair when you’re within the in-group of who’s producing the information. But if you’re in the out-group, it’s always just stunning and obvious how off the mark and divorced from reality the news coverage is. Who wasn’t spoken to? Who wasn’t listened to?
November 5, 2025 at 1:02 AM
mariabustillos.com
Was worried I might get detention at the @flaminghydra.com shindig but then my teachers relented, whew
Rabiroff, Scocca, and David Roth at the Hydra wingding last night Rabiroff, Scocca, and David Roth at the Hydra wingding last night looking quite a bit less stern
November 2, 2025 at 9:08 PM
mariabustillos.com
Relaxium!!! I'VE BEEN USING IT FOR YEARSSSSS
furious O'Reilly in famed 'WE'LL DO IT LIVE!' meltdown
November 2, 2025 at 8:55 PM
mariabustillos.com
Most terrifying and politically resonant movie ever made, THE WICKER MAN (1973) and then read about it at Flaming Hydra we have a whole week of scholarship on it
final scene of THE WICKER MAN (1973) with pagan madness on the cliff's edge
October 25, 2025 at 11:23 PM
mariabustillos.com
dang this is what it would look like if it were finished
October 25, 2025 at 4:11 PM
mariabustillos.com
Remember Katy Perry was so excited to live in SPACE she literally kissed the earth upon her return after like 11 minutes of SPACE
Katy Perry in Blue Origin jumpsuit kisses ground upon return from all-lady flight
October 25, 2025 at 4:02 PM