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Alex

@alexforscience.bsky.social
275 followers 580 following 85 posts

For science, democracy, justice and progress. Opinions and repost choices my own.

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Reposted by Alex
Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 7h
If care about free markets, you not only get more from center-left Dems than the party of Trump, you get more *from professed democratic socialists* like Mamdani than you do from the party of Trump. Those who deny this only think of it as an anti-left cultural totem and not a real policy agenda.
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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 5h
As always with Rs, the sense is not so much that they deny the physical phenomenon of climate change as the presence or absence of the phenomenon simply never enters their thinking. They interact with it *purely* as a partisan matter, something libs care about. No awareness of a world beyond.
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Catherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 9h
Trump admin's new rule adding prohibitively expensive new fees for "OPT"—temporary work authorization program for international students and new grads in the United States—is out. Would require colleges to pay $70,000 for year one. $30,000 for years two and three combined for STEM fields.
public-inspection.federalregister.gov
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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 7h
"Trump has moved the ethical line" drives me crazy. It pretends there are no other actors with agency in 🇺🇸 politics or the media. You could have treated this as a nonstop five-alarm scandal & crisis for democracy. You didn't do that. You did for EMAIL & BIDEN OLD. Other choices were right there.
nytimes.com
An Outrage in 2019. No Problem in 2026. Trump Has Moved the Ethical Line.
The president’s decision to hold an international summit at his own private golf club, an idea rejected in his first term, illustrates how much he has shattered norms.
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Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · 18h
What is very clearly going to actually happen is that Ellison will succeed entirely in knocking out key load-bearing parts of television, making it much much less resilient. Think about how reality tv was created in response to a writer's strike, how you can see exactly when it happened in series
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Fine. I’ll update with a word count when I start writing again. @legalminimum.bsky.social · 22h
These should be making their way into national ads run by the Democrats. Republicans think this kind of stuff is popular because the groypers think it shows they're "tough". Ads saying "Republicans want ICE to give electric shocks to children" will hit them where they live.
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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 21h
anti-trust anti-trust Anti-Trust Anti-Trust ANTI-TrUST ANTI-TRUST ANTITRUST ANTITRUST ANTITRUST When the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 banned mergers that threaten to significantly reduce competition, this is the sort of thing they had in mind.
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The Editorial Board @editorialboard.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Trump is doing to America what Pete Wilson did to California. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/22/u...
nytimes.com
Hispanic Voters, Abandoning Trump, Are Transforming the Midterm Map (Gift Article)
Texas and even Florida are the places to watch in November if a polling pattern holds.
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 22h
SUSAN COLLINS: I was successful in getting road salt removed from the Canada tariff list TROY JACKSON: What about everything else? We can't eat road salt
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Hemry, Local Bartender @bartenderhemry.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
This thing where reporters simply do not check trump supporters' public social media posts at all, and editors don't give a shit either, has to stop
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zenlike @zenlike.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
So, this very sympathetic piece where the subject is “a lifelong Democrat who had voted for Trump for the first time in 2024”. 5 minutes of checking his facebook shows pro Trump posts as far back as 2019, and a post saying that he “stands with Trump” posted just a couple of days after Trumps coup.
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
One thing I find endlessly funny about the rise of AI is that it has revealed that there is a large number of people who believe that the reason they wrote essays at school or university is their teachers were desperately waiting for them to provide a definite answer to “Lear: what’s up with him?”
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Dr Dean Burnett @drdeanburnett.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
"By using AI, tasks like essays that used to take hours can be completed in minutes!" Sure, like how if I arrive at the gym and immediately go for a shower, my workout is done in record time. And if I throw my sandwiches straight in the bin, I can finish my lunch in under 10 seconds.
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Anna Bower @annabower.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Ed Martin says that Tina Peters met with Trump in the Oval Office today to discuss election integrity and “the plans” for the upcoming midterms elections.
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Karl Deisseroth @deisseroth.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Thank you to everyone sharing in this moment! I’m so grateful to all my trainees & collaborators… dlab.stanford.edu/group-members (pic: Peter and I together in 2017) Reading for all those asking: for technical details: dlab.stanford.edu for everyone: deisseroth.org/projections
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Jordan Uhl @jordanuhl.com · 04/10/2026
The discourse around Tom Morello, a California voter, leaving President blank in 2024 is wild. There’s a massive freakout yesterday accusing him of supporting Trump, while at the exact same time he’s hosting an explicitly anti-Trump music fest with Jack Smith & the Bullwark lady in the crowd. Lol.
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 05/10/2026
feels like at least part of what is happening is that a lot of people want politics to solve the "my life feels empty" problem and the populist right is directly appealing to them
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William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
I do think this should put some of the hand-wringing over the uniquely sinful American electorate, uniquely feckless institutions, etc in perspective. The truth is that there is a large trans-national constituency of people who actively want this. They aren’t deceived. They want this.
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Mrs. Detective PikaBOO, Esq. @clapifyoulikeme.favrd.social · 05/10/2026
On the one hand, it’s comforting to know that Americans aren’t uniquely stupid, voters everywhere have skulls filled with mush and worms. On the other hand, global fascism is probably not an ideal state of affairs.
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Raffi Melkonian @rmfifthcircuit.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
The Abbott ads blaming the democratic nominee for the (very high) Texas property taxes Abbott is responsible for are pretty impressive in a shamelessness way.
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Matt Negrin still host of Hardball on MSNBC @mattnegrin.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
republicans: we are nazis media: do democrats have a Hasan Piker Bin Laden problem?
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Patrick "Inverted Vibe Curve" Blanchfield @patblanchfield.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
new wolfenstein looks like shit
its pete hegseth splaying his arms christlike at a podium with all sorts of americana bunting thats got a distinct fash aesthetic
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Impossible to understand how anyone could look at Rufo's career and conclude he was someone engaged in a "forthright defense of meritocracy." Rufo's entire career is built on the idea of purging people who don't think or look like him from positions of power.
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Adam Gurri @adamgurri.liberalcurrents.com · 03/10/2026
What’s up with right wingers and whipping up pogroms against their own families
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Tim Carmody @tcarmody.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
This is the funniest thing I've seen today, possibly ever
A tweet by SarahStarberry that says "oh god read the vertical axis" on top of a chart measuring AI models' release dates and model numbers rather than any real capabilities
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Rich Raho @richraho.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
The Keynote Speaker at the Annual National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in March, folks.
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Waschesalon Grammy Campaign Manager @reginageorgebush.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Texas is basically saying it wants to encourage fraud as a matter of public policy and you should keep that in mind whenever you see a large firm incorporated in Texas
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Chance the Lawyer @chancethelawyer.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Texas bragging about eliminating the "Delaware-style" implied covenant of *good faith and fair dealing* in contracting is about all you need to know concerning where we are in the race to the bottom.
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Jeff Stein @jeffstein.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
News - Trump is set to attend another dinner at his resort for the biggest buyers of his meme coin You can probably get in to see the president for $1 million Trump has pocketed $635 million Investors down +$4 billion on Trump crypto www.washingtonsun.com/whitehouse/t...
washingtonsun.com
Want Dinner With the President? Buy His Meme Coin.
The $Trump meme coin is offering buyers a new "exclusive" opportunity to meet the president.
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Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
It's hard to fathom that, let alone be OK with the fact that, the six people who allowed tonight to happen will start hearing cases next week, the outcome of which will affect us all.
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404 Media @404media.co · 30/09/2026
BREAKING: The Trump administration is using a grant program from the 1980s to force cities around the US to funnel their ongoing collection of Flock, Axon, and other ALPR data into large federal surveillance centers that fall under the White House’s jurisdiction, 404 Media has learned
404media.co
How Cities Are Forced to Funnel License Plate Data to a Massive Federal Surveillance Program
How the federal government built a massive database of license plate reader data through an anti-drug trafficking program.
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The Questionable Authority @questauthority.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
This man is doing more harm to the US military through screaming incompetence than most foreign adversaries could manage through the use of force.
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Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
There is a moment at the very very end of Abdul El-Sayed's podcast with Ezra Klein (book recommendation section) where he talks about the idea of "speaking truth to pain" and this will be staying with me for an extremely long time. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...
But there’s also something about truth to pain. We talk a lot about truth to power, but I think it’s actually a lot harder to speak truth to pain. I say that as someone who went to medical school, realizing that in a lot of our politics right now, we’ve got to get a lot better at speaking truth to pain if we’re going to get through some of these challenges that we have.

What does “truth to pain” mean?

It’s one thing to look power in the eye and say: You’re wrong about this. But there’s a way in which pain is very difficult to reason with. Because when somebody is in their pain, they’re in their trauma. They see that pain, and they may not see what’s causing it.

I remember just very explicitly being in a trauma ward with a gunshot wound patient and watching this big guy with his hand on his gunshot wound. All the folks are trying to pull his hand off his pain, that point of his gunshot wound, this clear vulnerability.

And this emergency room doctor had the presence of mind to be like: Everyone, stop. And she looks him in the eyes, and she’s like: I get that really hurts, and I’m so sorry that you’re here. You don’t want to be here. We don’t want you to be here. But if you don’t let us fix this, you could die. So I’m going to take your hand, and I’m going to move it off, OK? Because I need to get there so that you can live.

She was speaking truth to pain. He understands he’s at the hospital, he needs care, but he also doesn’t want anybody to touch the wound. Which is a natural thing. And I think it is a really great metaphor for how we think about a lot of these challenges we talked about today.
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Al Jazeera English @aljazeera.com · 29/09/2026
Google Maps images show scale of Israel's destruction of Gaza, where more than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed.
aljazeera.com
Satellite images show Gaza in ruins three years into Israel's genocidal war
Google Maps images show scale of Israel's destruction of Gaza, where more than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed.
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Andrew Schreck @andrewschreck.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
i don't think cis guys realize how much power they can shift in a conversation just by casually telling their friends
"that's fucked up, man" when someone says something
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Matthew A Kraft @matthewakraft.com · 28/09/2026
New @nytimes.com piece ranks 30 education interventions on both effectiveness & costs. For me, the key takeaway is NOT about what academics (including myself) rated as most effective or least costly. It is about the decision making process districts use. 🧵 www.nytimes.com/2026/09/28/u...
nytimes.com
30 Ideas for Fixing U.S. Schools, Ranked by Experts
Math and reading scores are in a decade-long slump. We asked three dozen experts: What could turn things around?
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ponder @ponder.ooo · 27/09/2026
so much of "alignment" rn consists of ignoring existing knowledge of how to responsibly build and manage automated systems and doing this instead:
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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
lol holy shit I wouldn't talk about literally anything else if I was the guy running against him. —"What do you think about trans kids in sp-" —"Did you hear my opponent had his patient, who was 8 months pregnant, arrested in front of her son because she didn't pay a $50 medical bill?"
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Meredith Shiner @meredithshiner.com · 23/09/2026
I had not seen this clip where Tammy Duckworth advises Democrats to "not impeach anybody," "get back to work" and "allow" Donald Trump to "save face" and I would just like to remind the senator from IL that the federal government took 4,000 Chicagoans and murdered a 38-year-old father last fall.
c-span.org
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ceej @ceej.online · 24/09/2026
impeach them all. fuck em. why should they get to fly around on our dime and hurt people? “they’ll never actually removed from office” who gives a shit? I want them miserable every day for the rest of the term. I hope they have nightmares. air their dirty laundry. make em sweat
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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
That's just fraud, my dude. Even if you use an AI agent. It's just fucking fraud.
Nikita Bier: Hello computer,

Find every Amazon purchase I ever made. 
Call the number of the manufacturer. 
Say you’re not satisfied.
Request a refund. 
If they decline, threaten to leave a bad review.
If they decline, find the CEO’s phone number and ask him for a refund.

Now, repeat the same process for items I never even purchased and see if you can get  them to send me money.

If they ask for a recipient, generate an image of one and send that.

Do not stop until you’ve collected $1 million in refunds.
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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
👇🎯 Today in “neither our media nor our political system is designed to deal with a far right authoritarian party”
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Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
NYT has now independently corroborated all the major allegations against Susan Collins in the ProPublica report, including that investigators were prepared to move against her and then Trump intervened to shut it down. This put Trump in a position of exceptional and extortionate leverage over her.
nytimes.com
F.B.I. Shut Down Inquiry Into Top Ally of Senator Susan Collins
The inquiry was closed last year because senior bureau officials questioned the veracity of a campaign donor’s account, according to current and former officials.
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Dean Baker @deanbaker13.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Needless to say, if this air traffic outage had occurred with a Democrat in the White House, every Republican in the country would be screaming about incompetence in front of any TV camera they could find www.bbc.com/news/live/c6...
bbc.com
Flights delayed at major US airports after cable cut by construction workers
A US aviation official says the damage was caused in New Jersey, prompting delays in New York City, Boston and Philadelphia.
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The Volatile Mermaid @ohnoshetwitnt.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
From the people who told you that straight white male privilege doesn’t exist…
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Alex Ip 葉清霖 @alexip718.com · 21/09/2026
Well well well, someone said the quiet part out loud
60 Minutes (@60Minutes) on X:

“This is the first time in my adult life where there's been an issue that's come up that I feel like is going to directly impact me,” says Dave Lowe, a lifelong conservative Republican who lives near a proposed data center in Texas.

A middle-aged white man with a white beard, a cowboy hat, and a shirt stares at the camera
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Will Bunch @willbunch.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
A billionaire dictator who'll lose everything if the opposition replaces him on Jan. 20, 2029 is stockpiling killer drones and high-powered rifles on towering monuments and ballroom roofs I'm sure it's nothing to worry about
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David Burbach 🇺🇸 @dburbach.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
National security expert here, and speaking strictly personally, what the f#ck???
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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
every day of my life I think about the people using “she” to describe this computer program who still need to be convinced to use it for trans women
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