Matt Rowan
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veryrealbatman.bsky.social
Matt Rowan
@veryrealbatman.bsky.social
Dad, teacher, editor, student of the history of autocracy, anti-fascist, “Nazis ain’t got no humanity,” and author of HOW THE MOON WORKS. Stories in @havehashad.com, @bluestemmag.bsky.social, @barrelhouse.bsky.social, @vol1brooklyn.bsky.social, etc.
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We need stories. We need to try to know each other better. Fighting against fascism means exploring our emotional and rational selves deeply. Sharing my latest attempt at that in @bulbregion.bsky.social. Many thanks to @sarpsozdinler.bsky.social for giving it a home: bulbregion.com/You-Can-Keep...
You Can Keep That, If It Falls on You, You Get to Keep It, by Matt Rowan — The Bulb Region
You Can Keep That, If It Falls on You, You Get to Keep It — Matt Rowan Part I:...
bulbregion.com
Reposted by Matt Rowan
We need stories. We need to try to know each other better. Fighting against fascism means exploring our emotional and rational selves deeply. Sharing my latest attempt at that in @bulbregion.bsky.social. Many thanks to @sarpsozdinler.bsky.social for giving it a home: bulbregion.com/You-Can-Keep...
You Can Keep That, If It Falls on You, You Get to Keep It, by Matt Rowan — The Bulb Region
You Can Keep That, If It Falls on You, You Get to Keep It — Matt Rowan Part I:...
bulbregion.com
January 25, 2026 at 6:48 PM
This story at @necessaryfiction.com by Ivan Davenny is absoutely outstanding, "Horse Girl" - necessaryfiction.com/stories/hors...
Horse Girl – Necessary Fiction
necessaryfiction.com
February 12, 2026 at 9:16 PM
I'm extremely excited to have a piece coming out in the latest (and final in this format) issue of TRNSFR. I've loved TRNSFR from the earliest days of my budding literary adventures. Thank you, @alban-fischer.bsky.social! Here is a sneak peek of my story:
February 12, 2026 at 1:22 AM
I'm so fucking tired of these Trump bigots.
The real news here is Peter Navarro saying lower jobs numbers *are good* because they (supposedly) indicate fewer immigrants are working in the US. Trump-MAGA ideology values sheer numbers of removals over pretty much all else because their top priority is ethnic reengineering.
Peter Navarro: "The jobs report comes out tomorrow. We have to revise our expectations down significantly for what a monthly job number should look like ... Wall Street has to adjust for the fact that we're deporting millions of illegals out of the job market."
February 10, 2026 at 11:11 PM
I love this one by Joe Aguilar.a great best of micros list by Scaffold, once again: www.havehashad.com/hadposts/thr...
three tinies by Joe Aguilar
Rot in Hell On the sidewalk is a crumpled yellow wrapper that says, in red letters, “Rot in Hell.” Looking closer, I see it now says, “Cheeseburger.” The wrapper can’t fool me: I know as soon as I ...
www.havehashad.com
February 8, 2026 at 6:50 PM
Reposted by Matt Rowan
"For years, a cottage industry of political observers has contorted itself to obscure and occlude the obvious. That regardless of what others see in him, Trump’s entire political career...cannot be understood outside the context of his bitter, deep-seated racism." (gift link)
Opinion | This Is Just Who Trump Is
www.nytimes.com
February 7, 2026 at 4:49 PM
It really sucks that we have a man who’s named something like 3000 times in the files on a super predator pedophile while also being adjudicated as liable for sexual assault and who is nakedly, abusively racist and sexist as president. I hate anyone who enabled or continues to enable this.
February 6, 2026 at 5:18 PM
Oh you don’t have the first issue of @electricliterature.com?
February 3, 2026 at 4:15 PM
Reposted by Matt Rowan
In the eve of a nightmare:

Springfield OH braces for impact.
February 2, 2026 at 11:07 PM
Tapping this sign once again (gun rights have always been indirectly and in some ways directly connected to white supremacy). They will justify your killing if you stand against them on this point:
January 30, 2026 at 11:37 PM
Reposted by Matt Rowan
Very important vote. It makes repealing ICE surge funding the mainstream position in the party, with bipartisan support.
👀 Every Senate Democrat + Collins and Murkowski just voted for the Bernie Sanders amendment to repeal the $75 billion in additional ICE funding under Trump’s “big beautiful bill.” The measure failed 49-51.
January 30, 2026 at 11:26 PM
How the fuck are any of us still standing?
January 30, 2026 at 5:54 AM
Well this is a comforting vision of one potential future for those of us of the laboring class (from Robert Gellately’s BACKING HITLER):
January 30, 2026 at 3:46 AM
Democracy dies at The Washington Post. It’s dead. Rip the Post
January 30, 2026 at 12:54 AM
Evil incarnate. Anything that needs to happen to ICE to stop them is on the table.
Here's what ICE is up to in Northeast Minneapolis today. Absolutely heartbreaking.

Warning: video is hard to watch
January 27, 2026 at 8:37 PM
Sarp is a phenomenal writer and editor and if you haven’t seen the @bulbregion.bsky.social you need to get on it now, because it’s going places. Strange places I’ve deeply enjoyed so far.
Love promoting TBR writers’ older work through the other account, but I’ll make an exception here and highlight the story Matt (@veryrealbatman.bsky.social) and I had co-authored for a HAD call back in the day, which eventually got rejected but was so much fun to work on (and work with Matt), and…
In today’s new piece, Matt Rowan (@veryrealbatman.bsky.social) wants you to know that if anything that falls hits you, you’re allowed to keep it, legally speaking. Read “You Can Keep That, If It Falls on You, You Get to Keep It” in The Bulb Region.

bulbregion.com/You-Can-Keep...
January 27, 2026 at 3:33 AM
Reposted by Matt Rowan
As seen on r/nursing

Alex Pretti's coworkers taking a moment of silence to honor him
January 26, 2026 at 10:01 PM
Thank you to all who have been publishing my weird little stories of late. I love you all very much!
We’ll return with two new pieces tomorrow, but before then, give a read to The Bulb Region writer Matt Rowan’s (@veryrealbatman.bsky.social) (un-)thinking little story in @somewordslit.bsky.social.

somewords.boards.net/thread/46/ma...
January 26, 2026 at 6:00 PM
Drake Maye has not looked all that good against top-quality competition. To some extent, that has to be included in MVP consideration. I hope this at least puts to bed that Maye is obviously better than Caleb Williams.
January 25, 2026 at 10:39 PM
Cats and dogs living together level stuff.
Our government's atrocities are bringing together Bears fans and Packers fans.
January 25, 2026 at 10:22 PM
The American right wing has believed that a very specific type of person should own guns. It won't surprise you that this is someone who is oriented in upholding their ideology above literally everything else. They're motivated exclusively by raw power, and they essentially always have been.
Folks have been noting the creepiness of this NRA statement on the Minneapolis murder that DOESN'T affirm Alex Pretti's right to have a gun at a protest, instead blaming "radical progressive politicians lie Tim Walz" who have "incited violence against law enforcement officers" for his death....
January 25, 2026 at 8:29 PM
In a land where the law is whatever the arbitrary whim of an ailing pedophile in cognitive decline says it is, there's no point in trying to keep your hands clean.
They are trying to criminalize everything we do regardless of whether we have a constitutional right to do it, so you might as well hop in.
January 25, 2026 at 8:04 PM
We need stories. We need to try to know each other better. Fighting against fascism means exploring our emotional and rational selves deeply. Sharing my latest attempt at that in @bulbregion.bsky.social. Many thanks to @sarpsozdinler.bsky.social for giving it a home: bulbregion.com/You-Can-Keep...
You Can Keep That, If It Falls on You, You Get to Keep It, by Matt Rowan — The Bulb Region
You Can Keep That, If It Falls on You, You Get to Keep It — Matt Rowan Part I:...
bulbregion.com
January 25, 2026 at 6:48 PM
Things can be both awful for their own sake AND meant to distract us. I believe the Epstein Files reveal nothing less than Trump actively profiting from child sex trafficking, possibly into the present day.
January 25, 2026 at 6:34 PM
Anyone saying any of these people murdered by ICE were murdered for some reason other than they went against the fascists currently in charge is an idiot, a fascist or probably both.
January 25, 2026 at 4:39 AM