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abovoadmala.bsky.social

@abovoadmala.bsky.social
721 followers 503 following 4.3K posts

Previously: monitoring and evaluation for international democracy promotion Now: civil engineering

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Reposted by @abovoadmala.bsky.social
Stephen Jacob Smith @stephenjacobsmith.com · 6h
Crazy how much of a powerhouse NIST (formerly NBS) used to be in building code research. Pretty much every topic you'd want to know about up until certainly the 1970s and in some cases the early 2000s, they did some of the highest-quality research there is. And now, almost nothing.
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abovoadmala.bsky.social @abovoadmala.bsky.social · 19h
www.smbc-comics.com/comic/ai-12
smbc-comics.com
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - AI
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - AI
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Bex is WEAK on crime @bextraordinary.bsky.social · 20h
I know this is soooo far from the point, but how are they allowed to be so fucking rude? Props to Smith and anyone else who has to appear before these clowns, because I would not be able to keep calm. "You've already perjured yourself." Excuse me? Fucking excuse me?! You can't just SAY WHATEVER!
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Carey @careylikemariah.bsky.social · 23h
No Kings includes Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn
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Mikhail Gorbaechev @mikhailgorbaechev.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The Trump era has really fucked everyone up in profound ways. Turns out electing the physical embodiment of the most demonic things about American society to the Presidency was a mistake
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grapesmoker @grapesmoker.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
there's a kind of pundit type whose entire raison d'etre is coming up with narrow objections to improving anything at any point and even if you were to somehow defeat their current objections they'd just come up with new ones. we just have to be able to tell these people to fuck off
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EmmanuelSPV @emmanuelspv.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Before (2024) / After (2026) Avenue de la Porte Chaumont in the 19th arrondissement of Paris. The new bike lane is used by a family with two kids on their own bikes. Before, they would probably have ridden on the sidewalk.
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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Smith never tried to prosecute a member of Congress, even though some probably should have been (Graham, at least). But that his investigation even glancingly touched their bubble infuriates them. Not even J6-ers themselves care about that, but they do. Thus their how dare you huffing and puffing.
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Bill Kristol @billkristolbulwark.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
One obvious point about the Republican rats desperately deserting the sinking Trump ship: They're still rats.
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In Medias Malone @professormusgrave.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I don’t want self driving cars I want people to want the ultimate commuting machine (trams)
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The Fact of Other Minds Stan Account @csilverandgold.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
People taking Rahm Emanuel seriously are simply not from this century politically speaking.
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abovoadmala.bsky.social @abovoadmala.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
For other people curious about the whole arc of Chartbook: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
docs.google.com
Chartbook Reader
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abovoadmala.bsky.social @abovoadmala.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Schama's "Citizens" is OK - I'm going to finish it because I need French Revolution 101 - but really throwing into sharp relief by contrast Tooze's enormous skill
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William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
again, i would not yet trust Muse or meta to do this, but yes, I would rather just be given an adress rather than run a SQL query or sue someone to find out where to get my medicine. congrats on being built different if the appeal of that is not obvious to you, i guess.
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Better Things Are Possible @internethippo.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
It's good that we invented things like "government" and "the economy" but we can't meaningfully participate in them if the people in charge are constantly rubbing in our faces that these things are fake, and in fact you are a naive doofus if you think otherwise. That's a society on life support
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Cat Manning @catacalypto.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
oh this one is mine
Sappho 16 translated by Cat Manning as thus:

you: it's horses, a whole swarm of 'em. you: no-soldiers, definitely. lots. you: no, obviously, the best thing on this dark earth is a fleet of ships.
me, an intellectual: whatever it is — you love to see it.
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abovoadmala.bsky.social @abovoadmala.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
All-in I've had 10 jobs in 11 years and during the Biden administration I worked a (State and USAID funded) job for 3.5 years
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abovoadmala.bsky.social @abovoadmala.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
SNP's Stanford Letters and Ultimate Humiliation remain, imo, the outstanding 2010s college sexual violence essays www.nplusonemag.com/issue-26/pol... www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...
nplusonemag.com
The Stanford Letters | Sarah Nicole Prickett
Emily Doe’s account is like an episode of Law & Order: SVU with the victim’s face and body blurred out and her voice turned up. Given that she remembers nothing between midnight (when she wandered awa...
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Oliver Willis @owillis.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
its part of the reason younger dems like aoc and maxwell frost and others are so much more hard edged vs the gop than establishment dems. when aoc was 14, bush invaded iraq. for her entire life she's seen gop going buck wild and then try to tear down a dem president. they know its war
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Kori Schake @kschake.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
“the question for Americans is not whether Trump is our Caesar. Our bigger concern should be if this is more like our age of Marius and Sulla, the generals and magistrates (Rome had no clean division between the two roles) who inflicted wounds on the republic that proved fatal in the long term.”
theunpopulist.net
America Can Pull Back From the Slippery Slope to Rome
The decline of the rule of law and our republic is not inevitable
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Moby Dick @mobydickatsea.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.
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abovoadmala.bsky.social @abovoadmala.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
LRT I think a lot of an old rebuttal from when David Brooks was selling "resume virtues vs character virtues": with severe inequality and decreasing ways to move up, teenagers are making a reasonable choice to prioritize being accomplishment machines
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the abbot of unreason (a returned archaeologist) @merovingians.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
😍😍😍
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Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 28/09/2026
That being said, I really hope this is the last lesson people'll need to to stop purchasing or at all trusting meta's or other "AI" companies' products. bsky.app/profile/wolv...
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abovoadmala.bsky.social @abovoadmala.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Man my basic chem lab was like, if you heat water up it evaporates
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abovoadmala.bsky.social @abovoadmala.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Whoa most of Coralilly's music is off spotify
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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
This strikes me is a common misunderstanding of the argument for humanities education, which is not that it serves as some sort of individual inoculation, but rather than it produces a citizenry more capable of self-governance when distributed widely, especially for decision-makers of every kind.
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abovoadmala.bsky.social @abovoadmala.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
First election i could really follow was 2008 and first I could vote in was 2012. In hindsight set the baseline way too high for how serious and non-charlatany politics is
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abovoadmala.bsky.social @abovoadmala.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Richard Spencer really lost the battle won the war on spinning media coverage of open Nazis into more influence
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I like that in becoming a nazi, you get glowing coverage as a brave iconoclast, and then when you stop being a nazi, you’re get glowing coverage as a brave dissident. Money coming and going. Only way you lose is having normal opinions like “racism bad” bsky.app/profile/trac...
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abovoadmala.bsky.social @abovoadmala.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Depressing that its hard to imagine the US economy getting substantially better
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abovoadmala.bsky.social @abovoadmala.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Gessen's great
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abovoadmala.bsky.social @abovoadmala.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
poets.org/poem/we-who-...
poets.org
We Who Are Your Closest Friends
we who are
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abovoadmala.bsky.social @abovoadmala.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
About halfway through Schama's Citizens and he seems to think the Marxist account is that the revolution was driven by *aspiring* bourgeois
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abovoadmala.bsky.social @abovoadmala.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8Uw...
youtube.com
Big Daddy Kane: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert
YouTube video by NPR Music
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Starbury v. Madison @zachserickson.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
“THE GAME IS OVER!” “the game is not over…” Welcome to the big house babyyyy
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I don't disagree with the thread below but frame it somewhat differently as an academic who regularly sees people who read for a living fail in the way described here. From that perspective it seems more a cultural crisis than an educational one
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Fathel @fath0039.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
There are a lot of bad comparisons of the Israeli settler colonial project to the US and other settler states like Canada and Australia, or even South Africa. The main place for European settler colonialism in the first part of the 20th century was the Mediterranean.
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Starfire’s Deranged Neocon Foreign Policy Podcast @irhottakes.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I suppose in the abstract, I'm a "China hawk" in that I don't think Taiwan ought to be conquered and think the Chinese should have elections and stuff over there, but we probably should've thought of our free and open Indo-Pacific whatsits before we made our little fucky-wucky, so concretely...
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Starfire’s Deranged Neocon Foreign Policy Podcast @irhottakes.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
The thing about Sino-U.S. relations is that they're the ones using their super-secret oil stash to keep the world economy from blowing up so at this point, China is less our rival and more our bewildered coworker who has to clean up our fuckup.
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abovoadmala.bsky.social @abovoadmala.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Book collection getting unmanageable. Idly thought I'd read the Anne Carson translation of Sappho 31 today (mistakenly thought it had sweetbitter in it). Took a long time to find my copy
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Ed Maibach @maibached.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Happy Stanislav Petrov Day He passed in 2017. As Encyclopedia Britannica puts it, “He is survived by his two children, two grandchildren, and the entire human race.” If you don't know his story, please take 3 minutes now to learn it. @gchalliance.bsky.social @docsforclimate.bsky.social
sammatey.substack.com
Happy Stanislav Petrov Day
Take five minutes to not destroy civilization
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#StupidSuez @diplomatofnight.com · 26/09/2026
Has any left-wing member of Congress ever praised Trump's foreign policy so directly and so unequivocally as the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate?
prospect.org
Hillary Clinton and Trump’s Board of Peace for Gaza - The American Prospect
Why would the former Democratic presidential nominee endorse one of Trump’s more grotesque ventures?
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Sam @samd.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
it’s genuinely fascinating how establishment democratic politics in big cities has become so ossified and incompetent that they’ve created a huge lane for the left to embrace good government reforms and build a broad coalition of socialists and technocrats
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Mikhail Gorbaechev @mikhailgorbaechev.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Bernie and Hillary Clinton somehow had the exact same problem (loyalty to the point of insanity to personal hangers-on) in ways that seriously hurt both sets of their political ambitions.
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abovoadmala.bsky.social @abovoadmala.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Anthropeum.com · Sep 25 2026 🟨🟦🟨🟩🟦🟨🟩🟥🟩🟩 65,981 · top 24% of players today!
anthropeum.com
Anthropeum
A daily game that challenges our understanding of human cultures. Ten objects. 5,000 years of human history. Guess where and when each artifact was made. See how you rank.
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abovoadmala.bsky.social @abovoadmala.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
lol
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Nick Brumfield @nickjbrumfield.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
The Trump regime is actually honest-to-god trying to dismantle Canada one of the closest relationships in the history of international relations is dead for the rest of my lifetime damn but seriously get the nukes Ottawa
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