Sammy Feldblum
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sammyfeldblum.bsky.social
Sammy Feldblum
@sammyfeldblum.bsky.social
83 followers 110 following 33 posts
Geographer
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Reposted by Sammy Feldblum
cape-aag.bsky.social
📢🚨👉 AAG Unruly Natures 2026!!
Thursday 3/19, 7:30-10pm @ Standard Deviant Brewing
January 29, 2026 at 5:27 AM
Reposted by Sammy Feldblum
the-breakdown.bsky.social
"If only it were as simple as de-privatization."

The unraveling of Britain’s largest water utility is not just a corporate scandal but a case study in how privatized water systems strain under climate pressure and the limits of market governance.
Nothing to Lose but Our Mains
The unraveling of Britain’s largest water utility is not just a corporate scandal but a case study in how privatized water systems strain under climate pressure, aging infrastructure and the limits…
www.break-down.org
January 22, 2026 at 9:15 AM
Reposted by Sammy Feldblum
notalawyer.bsky.social
i do think the combination of Trump and an AI-driven tech bubble could crash the markets, but it’s very important to remember that “what are online leftists saying?” is probably the worst possible way to approach investing
m00pie.bsky.social DataWithBangs @m00pie.bsky.social · 13d
should i take everything out of my 401k
January 20, 2026 at 11:03 PM
sammyfeldblum.bsky.social
Happy to see this story now in print at the @indyweek.bsky.social. I imagine he'd be pleased to find himself in Durham's paper of record talking trash about Coach K.
January 16, 2026 at 5:29 PM
Reposted by Sammy Feldblum
tobiasjones.bsky.social
Fascinating, forensic, wise.
And a moving tribute to Karen Bakker:
"Essential to life, imbued everywhere with cultural and spiritual import, water is, she writes, 'a final frontier for capitalism'.”
the-breakdown.bsky.social The BREAK—DOWN @the-breakdown.bsky.social · 22d
"There is a perversity to its very existence as an economic good: water falls from the sky, for free, and its daily availability is crucial to human survival, yet it is everywhere subject to the convolutions of political economy."

@sammyfeldblum.bsky.social on Thames Water and the politics of water
Nothing to Lose but Our Mains
The unraveling of Britain’s largest water utility is not just a corporate scandal but a case study in how privatized water systems strain under climate pressure, aging infrastructure and the limits of...
www.break-down.org
January 13, 2026 at 2:52 PM
Reposted by Sammy Feldblum
sammyfeldblum.bsky.social
I went long on England's largest water utility failing, the history of global water privatization, and the late geographer Karen Bakker. Excited to see it now live in @the-breakdown.bsky.social:

www.break-down.org/nothing-to-l...
Nothing to Lose but Our Mains
The unraveling of Britain’s largest water utility is not just a corporate scandal but a case study in how privatized water systems strain under climate pressure, aging infrastructure and the limits of...
www.break-down.org
January 12, 2026 at 7:01 PM
Reposted by Sammy Feldblum
ositanwanevu.com
I wrote about Renee Good, Venezuela, Greenland, and what it means to be a human being. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
America, JD Vance tells us, is merely a nation like many others ⁠– a “homeland”, he said upon accepting his nomination to the vice-presidency, for “people with a shared history and a common future”. That’s a vision of American identity that would have described bands of cavepeople in skins just as well or better. Stephen Miller’s proleptic defense of seizing Greenland last week suggests the Trumpists themselves know this. “We live in a world, in the real world ... that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he declared. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” Miller’s laws are the laws of animals. It is true, obviously, that high ideals have long been deployed to obscure or justify predation, here and elsewhere. But Miller’s stance and the stance of the administration is that there aren’t, actually, any high ideals worth pursuing or even pretending to – that the human being, in itself, is nothing so much ⁠and that we are, fundamentally and forever, primitives. Against the demands and best aspirations of civilization – western or any kind – they tell us the human being is a creature that yearns for nothing more than blood and soil, which is, of course, just mud. The lust for mud has taken up many guises in our history and has been many given names of late – neo-reaction, post-liberalism, fascism. But the name familiar to most is evil. It was evil – the standpoint that only might matters, that human morality, and our sense of reality itself, must yield to the turfism of the primates with the biggest clubs – that ginned up the propaganda that provoked an act of terrorism against our legislature and the policemen defending it five years ago. It is evil that undergirds pronouncements from the same voices responsible for that attack, in defense of the man who shot Renee Nicole Good, that those who disobey the commands of law enforcement, however unsound or unjust, deserve summary execution – that implies, as Fox’s Jesse Watters and others have, that Good’s killing was of trivial significance because she was a lesbian “with pronouns in her bio”. It is evil that sends innocent men to foreign gulags, evil that condemns hundreds of thousands of destitute people abroad to death without a moment’s discussion or debate about what the country they had depended on might owe them, or the furnishing of alternative arrangements for their wellbeing. The gutting of USAID remains this administration’s worst and least surprising offense against the human conscience – a president who rejects the idea that we might have obligations to all within our society can’t be expected to wonder or worry about whether we have obligations to those outside of it. This is also why, after all the noise and nonsense about the need to depose the Maduro regime, the Venezuelan people are now being told that regime will be left in mostly in place for as long as it takes to secure and extract the country’s resources on our terms – that Venezuela will not see democracy unless and until it is profitable for the United States. Democracy has always been a useless abstraction to those who deny we have basic human entitlements – for those who believe, instead, that the idea of human liberty is a luxury for those wealthy and powerful enough to consider themselves our betters rather than the birthright of all. As many who’ve taken to the streets in protest have noted, the Trump administration’s assaults on liberty here at home are the kinds of abuses that spurred the revolution we will commemorate this year. But no grand revolution is in the offing this time around. The only just and plausible recourse for our situation is politics – understood not merely as the contest to win any given set of elections but as the broader fight to forge a republic that honors and strengthens our humanity. The American project must and will succeed. Its enemies stand for too little. Our lives are worth too much.
January 14, 2026 at 3:26 PM
sammyfeldblum.bsky.social
I went long on England's largest water utility failing, the history of global water privatization, and the late geographer Karen Bakker. Excited to see it now live in @the-breakdown.bsky.social:

www.break-down.org/nothing-to-l...
Nothing to Lose but Our Mains
The unraveling of Britain’s largest water utility is not just a corporate scandal but a case study in how privatized water systems strain under climate pressure, aging infrastructure and the limits of...
www.break-down.org
January 12, 2026 at 7:01 PM
sammyfeldblum.bsky.social
I wrote about my dad, and loving basketball

indyweek.com/news/culture...
Requiem for a Hoop Dream
A writer remembers his late father through a shared love of basketball, from the scuffed courts of Durham YMCAs to the hallowed stands of the Dean Dome.
indyweek.com
January 10, 2026 at 8:45 PM
Reposted by Sammy Feldblum
justinlaidlaw.bsky.social
I'm confident the @ringernba.bsky.social family will enjoy this beautiful essay by my dear friend @sammyfeldblum.bsky.social about his late father's love for the game and what basketball can give us over a lifetime.

indyweek.com/news/culture...
Requiem for a Hoop Dream
A writer remembers his late father through a shared love of basketball, from the scuffed courts of Durham YMCAs to the hallowed stands of the Dean Dome.
indyweek.com
January 9, 2026 at 5:52 PM
Reposted by Sammy Feldblum
barryyeoman.com
Our @us.theguardian.com investigation of widespread overcharging by Dollar General and Family Dollar has caught the attention of 30 members of Congress, who have written to the CEOs requesting documents and demanding answers. @jocelynzuck.bsky.social @michaelwhudson.bsky.social @budzinski.house.gov
Congress members demand answers on price disparities at dollar-store chains
A letter from 30 lawmakers criticizes recurring overcharges at Dollar General and Family Dollar stores – questioning ‘how seriously’ the companies prioritize ethics and affordability
www.theguardian.com
December 19, 2025 at 8:46 PM
Reposted by Sammy Feldblum
thebaffler.com
As president of Uruguay, José Mujica expanded personal freedoms and aided a rapid increase in renewable energy—and left behind a country better than he found it. @sammyfeldblum.bsky.social follows his journey from militant to prisoner to head of state.
Free Radicals | Sammy Feldblum
Though José Mujica did not publish much writing, his views on life and politics live on through the corpus of interviews.
thebaffler.com
October 3, 2025 at 6:22 PM
sammyfeldblum.bsky.social
For @thebaffler.com I wrote about the late Pepe Mujica, one of my favorite guys, in conversation with Noam Chomsky, with some thoughts on degrowth and the Chill Revolution along the way. Please enjoy:

thebaffler.com/latest/free-...
Free Radicals | Sammy Feldblum
Though José Mujica did not publish much writing, his views on life and politics live on through the corpus of interviews.
thebaffler.com
October 2, 2025 at 6:30 PM
sammyfeldblum.bsky.social
Had the pleasure of contributing a couple suggestions to @thedialmag.bsky.social's summer reading list, linked below. A dreamy—bad dream-y—novel for the Latam and politics heads; a polemic for the river lovers. Both great.
July 16, 2025 at 1:17 AM
Reposted by Sammy Feldblum
lastpositivist.bsky.social
This should absolutely be a scandal which people lose their jobs over. You'd have to assume that anyone in power actually cares though to think that would happen, which obviously would be a bold assumption in present circumstances.
May 29, 2025 at 4:56 PM
sammyfeldblum.bsky.social
New article surveying recent developments in the political ecology of water. I look at legal geographies of water, Indigenous scholarship on relationality, everyday and infrastructural practices of making water, and hydrosocial territories. Hop on in:

compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Emerging Currents in the Political Ecology of Water
The ravages and disruptions of anthropogenic climate change have sparked renewed interest in water and its social worlds. This review paper examines four key emerging directions in political ecologie...
compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
May 26, 2025 at 5:14 PM
sammyfeldblum.bsky.social
New article in Geoforum: building from a historical case study of the place of water law in the colonization of New Mexico, I show how recent social movements based around acequia irrigation have refashioned the law to reassert communal control:

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Liberal water law against itself: Acequias and legal contestation in New Mexico's South Valley
The passage of New Mexico’s water code of 1907 enshrined water as a publicly owned good distributed to individuals via private use rights. This system…
www.sciencedirect.com
May 12, 2025 at 5:57 PM
Reposted by Sammy Feldblum
ositanwanevu.com
Every so often, it just comes back to me in full force. The political and economic order that allowed this man to come to power is obviously no longer tenable. The leaders who let it happen obviously have to be replaced. This is an epoch defining failure and we have to turn the page completely.
April 2, 2025 at 8:24 PM
Reposted by Sammy Feldblum
lucecaroline.bsky.social
a must read for all UC workers @ucaft.bsky.social @sammyfeldblum.bsky.social @trevorgriffey.bsky.social
March 25, 2025 at 5:01 AM
sammyfeldblum.bsky.social
Trump to the American people:
March 31, 2025 at 8:31 PM
sammyfeldblum.bsky.social
Starbucks trabajadores in Chile on huelga, vamos!
March 10, 2025 at 4:06 PM
sammyfeldblum.bsky.social
As inflation licenses the demolition of the US state, I interviewed historian Margarita Fajardo about structuralist Latin American economic schools of thought offering alternative diagnoses and policy prescriptions. For
@phenomenalworld.bsky.social:

www.phenomenalworld.org/interviews/m...
Inflation in the World-System | Sammy Feldblum
An interview with Margarita Fajardo on CEPAL
www.phenomenalworld.org
February 28, 2025 at 4:07 PM
sammyfeldblum.bsky.social
Enjoyed sitting down with Margarita Fajardo to talk about the history of dependency theory and think through alternative possible responses to inflation. Lord knows we could use some.
phenomenalworld.bsky.social Phenomenal World @phenomenalworld.bsky.social · Feb 27
"CEPAL was the 'IMF of the left.' Certain cepalinos like Prebisch would say that such an oppositional approach would actually undermine an understanding of the true social costs of inflation."

New: @sammyfeldblum.bsky.social interviews Margarita Fajardo on CEPAL
Inflation in the World-System | Sammy Feldblum
An interview with Margarita Fajardo on CEPAL
www.phenomenalworld.org
February 27, 2025 at 8:57 PM
Reposted by Sammy Feldblum
cape-aag.bsky.social
Mark your calendars for the 2025 Unruly Natures Party
@geographers.bsky.social!
February 24, 2025 at 2:26 PM
Reposted by Sammy Feldblum
lucecaroline.bsky.social
I’ve seen too many higher ed folks wave away the threat to our universities. We need to understand what is coming and get organized right now to fight back. Join your union, form a union, join your AAUP chapter, talk to your colleagues. Do it now @ucaft.bsky.social
olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · Feb 14
leaving this here:

"The bill, known as SB 1, would also establish post-tenure reviews, ban strikes by full-time faculty, and require colleges to publish a syllabus with the instructor’s professional qualifications and contact information for every class."

www.highereddive.com/news/ohio-se...
Ohio Senate passes bill to ban DEI and faculty strikes at public colleges
The legislation would also establish post-tenure reviews and require all instructors to share their contact information and syllabi publicly.
www.highereddive.com
February 14, 2025 at 9:55 PM