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siminiblocker.bsky.social
Simini Blocker
@siminiblocker.bsky.social
170 followers 140 following 41 posts
Freelance illustrator and sewing enthusiast. 🏳️‍🌈💕
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Reposted by Simini Blocker
kattenbarge.bsky.social
Senators on the brink of retirement who lived full, wealthy lives and never feared the loss of their own healthcare voting for their constituents to die from their inability to afford the same is treasonous
November 10, 2025 at 2:20 AM
siminiblocker.bsky.social
Feeling sick about not having ACA option. My current day job is very likely to last a few more months. And it feels even more unlikely that I’ll ever be able to go back to freelancing. These fucking senators.
mollycrabapple.bsky.social Molly Crabapple @mollycrabapple.bsky.social · 1d
So every freelancer you know is going to lose their insurance or be bankrupted by premiums because Schumer is an invertebrate
November 10, 2025 at 3:44 AM
Reposted by Simini Blocker
kashana.blacksky.app
Just imagining the meeting where they must have been like “they might cancel my flight? Time to kill the sick.”
November 10, 2025 at 1:03 AM
Reposted by Simini Blocker
santiagomayer.com
Schumer (NY) 202 224-6542

Booker (NJ) 202 224-3224

King (ME) 202 224-5344

Hassan (NH) 202 224-3324

Durbin (IL) 202 224-2152

Ossoff (GA) 202 224-3521

Shaheen (NH) 202 224-2841

Gillibrand (NY) 202 224-4451

Masto (NV) 202 224-3542

Warner (VA) 202 224-2023
November 9, 2025 at 10:54 PM
Reposted by Simini Blocker
gregpak.net
Find your senators at reps.fyi or call 202-224-3121
graphic in the mamdani font/colors saying: CALL YOUR SENATORS and TELL THEM NO SHUTDOWN DEAL WITHOUT ACA FUNDING 202-224-3121
November 9, 2025 at 11:04 PM
Reposted by Simini Blocker
bencollins.bsky.social
“I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time.”

aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...
I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time. Every day my phone buzzes. It is a neighborhood group: four people were kidnapped at the corner drugstore. A friend a mile away sends a Slack message: she was at the scene when masked men assaulted and abducted two people on the street. A plumber working on my pipes is distraught, and I find out that two of his employees were kidnapped that morning. A week later it happens again. An email arrives. Agents with guns have chased a teacher into the school where she works. They did not have a warrant. They dragged her away, ignoring her and her colleagues’ pleas to show proof of her documentation. That evening I stand a few feet from the parents of Rayito de Sol and listen to them describe, with anguish, how good Ms. Diana was to their children. What it is like to have strangers with guns traumatize your kids. For a teacher to hide a three-year-old child for fear they might be killed. How their relatives will no longer leave the house. I hear the pain and fury in their voices, and I wonder who will be next. Understand what it is to pray in Chicago.
November 9, 2025 at 5:26 PM
Reposted by Simini Blocker
robertdownen.bsky.social
“Walmart was the top employer of SNAP recipients in five states and one of the top four employers in the remaining four states. McDonald’s was among the top five employers of Medicaid enrollees in five of six states and SNAP recipients in eight of nine states.”

www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/w...
anthonymkreis.bsky.social Anthony Michael Kreis @anthonymkreis.bsky.social · 15d
Whenever people complain about the number of folks relying on food stamps, it is worth reminding them that SNAP is, by too large of a degree, a subsidy for corporations that refuse to pay a living wage and their political allies who reject public policy prescriptions to reduce income inequality.
October 27, 2025 at 2:10 AM
Reposted by Simini Blocker
karnythia.bsky.social
If you have it please donate cash to the food banks. $10 in their hands will feed more people than the $10 worth of canned goods you can buy for retail prices. Also check on your elders. Many of them will not admit they rely on these programs so grocery gift cards or a surprise bag of staples
October 26, 2025 at 3:37 PM
Reposted by Simini Blocker
runwithskizzers.bsky.social
You can find your local food bank here!

www.feedingamerica.org/find-your-lo...
October 26, 2025 at 6:35 PM
Reposted by Simini Blocker
adamisacson.com
34 people killed in 50 days. Their guilt or innocence unknown, for an alleged crime that doesn't carry a death sentence. That's a lot of death.

adamisacson.com/boat-strikes/
Known Lethal U.S. Attacks on Civilian Vessels in the Caribbean Total reported killed: 34 people Notification Date Number Reported Killed Approximate Location Notification URL September 2, 2025 11 “in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility” (later revealed as between Sucre, Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago) View September 15, 2025 3 “in International Waters… in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility”; Colombian president claimed it was a fishing boat in Colombian waters View September 19, 2025 3 “in international waters… in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility” near the Dominican Republic View October 3, 2025 4 “in international waters just off the coast of Venezuela” View October 14, 2025 6 “in International Waters… just off the Coast of Venezuela” View October 16, 2025 2; 2 reported survivors “in the Caribbean” View October 17, 2025 3 “in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility” View October 21, 2025 2 “in the Eastern Pacific” View
October 22, 2025 at 7:42 PM
Reposted by Simini Blocker
nilahmagruder.com
I'm back on my bullshit~

The bullshit: trying to convince kidlit imprints that five years to illustrate a 200-page graphic novel is a fully reasonable and actually excellent time frame considering publishers neither offer artists health insurance nor pay enough for artists to live on.
August 12, 2023 at 8:49 PM
Reposted by Simini Blocker
rebeccasolnit.bsky.social
Wrote a thing. www.thenation.com/article/acti...
The CSIS report declares, “Radicals will argue that peaceful politics will inevitably fail and that only violence will make a difference,” but I have no idea who these radicals are because in my 40 years around direct action organizing, I’ve only encountered theoretical enthusiasm for violence from the sidelines and the occasional young hothead (almost always white and male) in movements whose vast majority and leadership are committed to nonviolence. I do know someone who was part of a violent group in the early ’70s and then became wanted fugitive; he’s since become an ardent advocate of nonviolence. What too often gets described as left-wing violence at protests is property destruction, which can be dangerous and intimidating and is usually opposed by protest organizers, but should be regarded as distinct from harming human life. For example, at the 1999 protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle, the Black Bloc, a small cadre among the 50,000 protesters smashed a lot of shop windows quite spectacularly. But there are no reports of activists harming human beings. Police, on the other hand, used tear gas; pepper spray; rubber, plastic, and wooden bullets; concussion grenades; and armored vehicles against protesters bystanders resulting in many injuries. Nonetheless, for years afterward, mainstream media outlets portrayed this event as an occasion of shocking activist violence.
October 16, 2025 at 5:06 PM
Reposted by Simini Blocker
gregpak.net
Every part of this sentence describes an abomination before God. People are going to hell for this.
brendannyhan.bsky.social Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · Oct 8
Monstrous.

"federal agents detained nearly every resident of the 130-unit building—including children and babies—placing them in zip ties and separating them by race into vans for more than two hours early Tuesday morning."
dlknowles.bsky.social Daniel Knowles @dlknowles.bsky.social · Oct 8
Good reporting on the South Shore raid from South Side weekly here.

Confirms one thing I was told but didn't put in my own piece because I didn't have a second source and it seemed too insane: border agents segregated arrested residents by race

southsideweekly.com/federal-agen...
October 8, 2025 at 3:30 AM
Reposted by Simini Blocker
kojamf.bsky.social
Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.
October 5, 2025 at 9:08 AM
Reposted by Simini Blocker
hagofbolding.bsky.social
The federal govt wants to rescind the Roadless Rule, which would open 45 million acres of public land for private interests - disrupting wildlife habitat, destroying carbon sinks, and imperiling outdoor recreation in the places we love

TODAY is the last day for public comment - file yours now!!
September 19, 2025 at 4:02 PM
Reposted by Simini Blocker
ndrew.bsky.social
the kimmel thing is bad but as long as they arent rounding people up indiscriminately based on race, building concentration camps and talking about eradicating those they deem sexual deviants, i think we’ll be ok
September 18, 2025 at 3:09 AM
siminiblocker.bsky.social
Was reminded I needed to cancel by Hulu subscription by *waves hands* and hmm the cancel button is not working.
September 18, 2025 at 2:05 AM
Reposted by Simini Blocker
chriswarcraft.bsky.social
Fucking finally. Fight back against the bullshit framing that tries to make Dems responsible for everything.

The GOP is *choosing* to create this kind of societal environment. They could stop it at any time. They have agency as well.

They’re not fucking children (except when, well, you know)
atrupar.com Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · Sep 11
Elizabeth Warren on people who say Dems needs to tone down their rhetoric: "Oh, please. Why don't you start with the president of the United States? And every ugly meme he's posted and every ugly word."
September 11, 2025 at 12:36 AM
siminiblocker.bsky.social
Just realized I've been thinking Charlie Kirk and Kirk Cameron were the same person this whole time.
September 11, 2025 at 12:44 AM
Reposted by Simini Blocker
scalzi.com
Fuck RFK jr and fuck this administration
September 4, 2025 at 5:34 PM
Reposted by Simini Blocker
davelevitan.bsky.social
I know, I know, but: The president of the US saying, literally, "we're going in" in reference to sending the military to an American city for no reason beyond terrorizing the local population should be the most immediately impeachable shit imaginable
September 2, 2025 at 8:57 PM
Reposted by Simini Blocker
julietemckenna.bsky.social
Surely this makes techbro claims of 'training' their generative AIs on illegally obtained copyright work inaccurate to the point of lying. 'Training' implies retention of knowledge/skill. If genAIs retain nothing and search copyright work afresh for every query, that's ongoing use and exploitation
naomialderman.bsky.social Naomi Alderman @naomialderman.bsky.social · Aug 30
Very very good letter in the FT magazine this morning pinpointing what humans definitely do when we “learn” and why machine
LLM “learning” isn’t that. (And also why LLMs take up so much more energy than we do for thinking.)
Human learning isn't like how machines learn. Merleau-Ponty pointed out that when we first tie our shoelaces, we follow instructions (and likely look at another human too). Left over right etc. But when we later tie our laces on the way to a job interview, we just embody all that learning. It's not even in our subconscious (until we get dementia). After all, when you learn to ride a bike with training wheels, you need those wheels. When you actually ride that bike later, those training wheels are not in your subconscious at all. They are gone. A bit like Wittgenstein's ladder, which we discard after climbing to a higher level. Imagine a large language model telling me how to tie my laces. It would look through every written piece about the process and start with left over right, or right over left, and would perform this giant search every time... for ever. Without "learning" as humans do. SIMONJB VIA FT.COM
August 30, 2025 at 4:55 PM
Reposted by Simini Blocker
theintercept.com
“The daily cost of the D.C. troop deployment is more than four times what it would cost to operate affordable housing for D.C.’s entire unhoused population.” interc.pt/45PvcJf
A photo of District of Columbia National Guard members arriving at Union Station in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 15, 2025, overlaid with the headline, "Price Tag for Trump’s D.C. Military Surge: At Least $1 Million a Day" and the DEK, "An analysis conducted for The Intercept found that the militarization of D.C. could end up costing hundreds of millions."
August 21, 2025 at 9:31 PM
Reposted by Simini Blocker
prisonculture.bsky.social
For those who asked. The link tree for the Sameer Project is here: linktr.ee/thesameerpro...
July 22, 2025 at 6:33 PM
Reposted by Simini Blocker
kendrawcandraw.bsky.social
Thinking about the Cave of Hands, some of the art dating back to 7,300BC, where 25% of the hand prints are thought to be that of children. Imagining those people gently holding their child up to the cave walls, and using their tiny little hands as a stencil. Art = love = the human soul
A photograph of the Cave of Hands Another photograph of the Cave of Hands, featuring warm terra cotta and cream and brown stenciled hand prints on a rock wall
July 3, 2025 at 8:58 PM