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Beverley

@bevfromcapetown.bsky.social
687 followers 495 following 1.1K posts

Lover of music and art. Servant to a rescue cat and dog. Mostly Cape Town. Occasional Istanbul. Flâneur. Crafty person. Warning - Posts might contain typos.

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Beverley @bevfromcapetown.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
A sober long deep read. Fascinating and needs a few readings.
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Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 25/09/2026
I have blamed The agents That hacked Your website And which You probably Reasonably thought I controlled Forgive me I am rich And unaccustomed To taking responsibility
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Beverley @bevfromcapetown.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Interesting post. AI rhetoric that's hard wired into the algorithm.
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Beverley @bevfromcapetown.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
It's a gift article and I'm enjoying reading and listening along.
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New Lines Magazine @newlinesmag.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
NEW: New U.S. visa restrictions are deepening tensions with South Africa, as false claims of “white genocide” continue to shape Washington’s policy and fuel disputes over race and land, reports Nick Alexandra from South Africa for @newlinesmag.bsky.social newlinesmag.com/reportage/th...
newlinesmag.com
The False ‘White Genocide’ Claim Reshaping US-South Africa Relations
New visa restrictions introduced by Washington are raising the stakes in a yearlong dispute over allegations of white persecution
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Past Present Future Podcast @ppfideas.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
🚨 Check out the new courses we've just launched to accompany our Philosophers and Great Essays series! For anyone wanting to go deeper into some of what we cover. Completely free for anyone to use. And more to come. Do please spread the word! www.ppfideas.com/courses
ppfideas.com
Courses | Past Present Future
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Rest of World @restofworld.org · 23/09/2026
The AI infrastructure boom hits the same wall in Africa that it’s hitting in Northern Virginia: local resource limits restofworld.org/2026/south-africa-a…
restofworld.org
South Africa joins the global resistance against American data centers
“A massive data center is trying to jump the queue and take our land, water, and energy.”
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Beverley @bevfromcapetown.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026... Emily Hobhouse... a pacifist, feminist, humanitarian, and most of all, a whistleblower. At great personal cost, she exposed the falling conditions in the British concentration camps run by men. Alone, she challenged a powerful empire .
dailymaverick.co.za
Bloemfontein event to re-enact state funeral of pacificst Emily Hobhouse 100 years later
A century after the state funeral of British pacifist, feminist and humanitarian, Emily Hobhouse, in Bloemfontein, the Emily100 movement is planning to re-enact the event. The recreation, taking place...
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Beverley @bevfromcapetown.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Reading (thanks to Cape Town Library Libby) the latest New Scientist. The sorry, "sordid" AI in mathematics issues.
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Patrick Iber @patrickiber.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Sounds like somebody has been reading @simontorracinta.bsky.social dissentmagazine.org/article/arti...
dissentmagazine.org
Our Technological Wager - Dissent Magazine
The AI investment boom is a gamble of epic proportions. Yet on both sides of the wager, it seems, the house wins.
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Jason Leopold @jasonleopold.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
HUGE EXCLUSIVE from @bloomberg.com Inside the US ‘Kill Chain’ That Destroyed an Iranian School Pentagon investigators discovered that flawed intel, outdated imagery & overreliance on AI contributed to a missile strike that killed 123 children in Minab 🎁 www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...
bloomberg.com
Inside the US ‘Kill Chain’ That Destroyed an Iranian School
Pentagon investigators have discovered that flawed intelligence, outdated imagery and an overreliance on AI contributed to a missile strike that killed 123 children in Minab.
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Beverley @bevfromcapetown.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Read whole thread.
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Massimo (mirror) @rainmaker1973-m.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
This ancient Roman marble is a delicate representation of four sleeping puppies. It was found in Pompeii's Casa del Fauno (House of the Faun), and dates back to the first century CE. Today in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale of Napoli. [📷 Davide Ferro] Original post
Image 1
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Franglaise @franglaise.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
This deserves to be reposted widely
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Beverley @bevfromcapetown.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Read this. I have thoughts. I would like to be positive but...
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Nezaroo. I'm not an ism or an ist. @nezaroo.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
You may want to start using this, pass it on. noai.duckduckgo.com
noai.duckduckgo.com
DuckDuckGo No-AI: Private Search Without AI
DuckDuckGo private search with all AI features turned off. The classic results you expect. Always private.
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kottke.org @kottke.org · 10/09/2026
The Chicago Public Library informs patrons of how much money they’ve saved borrowing from the library instead of buying. “You just saved $58.94 by using your library. You have saved $231.79 this past year and $1,107.24 since you began using the library!” [salon.com]
salon.com
My library card has saved me $1,330 — and I want more
Chicago Public Library tells patrons exactly what they’ve saved. I’ve become obsessed with running up the score.
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Bowie's dad @80incognito.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
An incredibly interesting article, by Vivienne Gunning: "The Islands That Insects Built." "I want you to understand it. It is this: the Okavango does not have a single author. Nobody planned it. Everybody built it." viviennegunning.substack.com/p/the-island...
viviennegunning.substack.com
The Islands That Insects Built
The Secrets of the Okavango Delta — Article No. 10
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Maya Media @mayamedia.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Yes, capitalism is torture.
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Jeffrey Wuhl @jeffreywuhl.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
@brianbeutler.bsky.social it is WILD that the Democrats can’t muster 1/100th of this outrage and seem to be unable to understand how much righteous anger like this inspires people. Whoever this guy is should be out there every day saying this stuff somewhere
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Howard Eissenstat @heissenstat.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
The more that I read about the "Hugging Face" AI hack, the more I feel like we are on the precipice Gift link www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/t...
nytimes.com
Why the Hugging Face Hack Should Make You Worry More About A.I. (Gift Article)
The attack by an aggressive “collective” of OpenAI agents shows the danger of artificial intelligence systems that organize themselves.
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Sky News @news.sky.com · 04/09/2026
Countries vote at UN to back new world map that shows Africa's true size
news.sky.com
Countries vote at UN to back new world map that shows Africa's true size
Over 160 countries have voted at the United Nations to move away from a traditional global map that is nearly 500 years old towards a newer one that more accurately reflects Africa's true size.
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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
I like this Japanese artist that hand paints vintage American clothes. He turns things such as vintage hunting jackets into “animal appreciation” jackets using motifs that celebrate animals. Some of his stuff is currently up for sale at Maiden's Shop in Tokyo. IG takuro917 and maidens_shop
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The Mouthy Renegade Writer @mouthyrenegade.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
The wonderfully talented Marsh Family has a new parody of Alanis Morissette's song "Ironic." This will piss off Crybaby Caligula yugely. Isn't he moronic? Don't you think?😅
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Beverley @bevfromcapetown.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
A profoundly disturbing and devastating read. The first chapter on Prussian Blue has taken me a week to read in small doses because , well, just read this page for example. Borrowed from CT library via Libby.
Fritz Haber’s 1907 breakthrough allowed nitrogen to be extracted directly from the air, successfully mitigating a global fertilizer shortage that threatened hundreds of millions of people with famine.Before Haber's discovery, agriculture relied on limited natural fertilizers like guano, saltpetre, and bones.Desperation for nitrogen led 19th-century European tomb raiders to despoil ancient Egyptian tombs for human skeletons, having already exhausted continental Europe's battlefields (such as Austerlitz, Leipzig, and Waterloo) and bone reserves to supply English fertilizer mills.In North America, a similar practice occurred where over thirty million slaughtered bison craniums were scavenged from the plains and sold to be processed into fertilizer and pigment.Carl Bosch ultimately scaled Haber’s laboratory achievement into a mass industrial process for the German chemical company BASF.
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Alison Fisk @alisonfisk.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Roman clay hot water bottles in the shape of human body parts used for therapeutic purposes some 2,000 years ago! Found in a building which may have been a healing centre. Paphos Archaeological Museum, Cyprus 📷 by me #Archaeology
My photo shows a museum display at Paphos Archaeological Museum of ancient Roman red clay vessels shaped like human body parts each of which has a spout with a handle either side, allowing it to be filled with hot water or oil. The clay walls of the vessels are only 3 mm thick so that heat would be conducted to the body. They are comparable in size to the corresponding human parts of the body including ears, torso, groin, hands, thigh, knee, shin, and feet. They are mounted for the display over a simple outline of a human figure, illustrating their possible therapeutic use around 2,000 years ago.
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Jason Song Quinn (Comms Open) @hulkhoquinn.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Think about Miss Piggy. She lost a best friend and now an ex-lover in matter of 24 hours.
Miss Piggy and Dolly Parton in fancy dresses posing together photo of Tim Curry surrounded by muppets, smiling for a photo. A quote from curry is added “it didn’t go very well. It didn’t survive the shoot. She felt I wasn’t being faithful to her” it’s him discussing his ill fated affair with miss piggy
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Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 25/08/2026
In a world of dreadful billionaires, be Dolly
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Jacobin @jacobinmag.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Left to their own devices, tech giants would capture every last second of our attention, drawing us down rabbit holes of endless doomscrolling and envy-scrolling. We have the right to rein them in and a recent wave of lawsuits shows that we can.
jacobin.com
Do Not Go Gentle Into Silicon Valley’s Dark Night
Silicon Valley has built platforms that colonize our attention, prey on children’s vulnerabilities, and damage mental health. Lawsuits that could cost Meta as much as $1.4 trillion are showing that society can use state power to fight back.
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Beverley @bevfromcapetown.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Prrrrrrrr
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Beverley @bevfromcapetown.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Ella Baron on AI and the drought – cartoon www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
Ella Baron on AI and the drought – cartoon
While the use of water-hungry AI becomes normalised, many areas of Britain are suffering from drought
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Beverley @bevfromcapetown.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
The ocean woke up soft today. Misty at the edges, flat like a secret. But the ocean isn't empty... Dolphins laughing below and she's in it now. Free. Wild. Home. Missing. Remembering. Becoming.
Beach reporr from Hout Bay 22 August 2026
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Beverley @bevfromcapetown.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Sober, respectful. And a call to action. Needed this calm island of decency.
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Beverley @bevfromcapetown.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Me now checking for flights to Lithuania.
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Beverley @bevfromcapetown.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
The levels of vileness was staggering. So very sad, for his friends and family.
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ACLU @aclu.org · 14/08/2026
Colin Kaepernick said it best: Our freedoms won't defend themselves — it will take all of us to protect our civil rights and liberties. The future we deserve is worth fighting for.
A two-panel graphic with photos of Colin Kaepernick giving a speech. The top photo is captioned "The next chapter of history has not been written. It is being written right now by every choice we make,..." and the bottom photo is captioned: "...every silence we keep, every truth that we tell, every neighbor that we defend, and every institution we build."
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Beverley @bevfromcapetown.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
@80incognito.bsky.social up your way
Advert for music performance at NG kerk  on 28 August 18.30
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
A tool used to rephrase plagiarised text changed "final solution" to "mass killing of an ethnic group" in a chemistry paper. Now retracted thanks to a PubPeer user who spotted this. pubpeer.com/publications...
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Beverley @bevfromcapetown.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Thanks to Karin Schminke for this.
Questionnaire

by Wendell Berry

How much poison are you willing

to eat for the success of the free

market and global trade? Please

name your preferred poisons.

For the sake of goodness, how much

evil are you willing to do?

Fill in the following blanks

with the names of your favorite

evils and acts of hatred.

What sacrifices are you prepared

to make for culture and civilization?

Please list the monuments, shrines,

and works of art you would

most willingly destroy.

In the name of patriotism and

the flag, how much of our beloved

land are you willing to desecrate?

List in the following spaces

the mountains, rivers, towns, farms

you could most readily do without.

State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,

the energy sources, the kinds of security;

for which you would kill a child.

Name, please, the children whom

you would be willing to kill.

"Questionnaire" by Wendell Berry from Leavings. © Counterpoint, 2010. Reprinted with permission. Writer's Almanac
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Kanchan @kayehm.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
There's also a massive knowledge gap: 66% of drivers didnt know large SUVs pose higher risks for VRUs More shockingly - 86% of current SUV owners don't know that a child hit by an SUV is 82% more likely to die than one struck by a smaller car, with the risk increasing to 130% for under 10.
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Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcculloch.com · 05/08/2026
"The best thing for being sad is to learn something. This is the only thing that never fails." I swear I'm going to memorize this quote (and possibly also reread The Once and Future King)
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avidreader8.bsky.social @avidreader8.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
#booksky #books #Kindleunlimited #thriller #suspense #romance #novels #geopolitical #mythological #darkromance #women #contemporary #fiction #fantasy #crime #amazon #sifi #readingcommunity #writingcommunity #author #readers #indie
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Beverley @bevfromcapetown.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Wonderful talk. Hero.
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Richard Stupart @richardstupart.com · 28/07/2026
This has been a rough week for AI submissions at the journal, but it's also led to some reflection around why I seem to react so strongly to academics using AI to write their papers and make up references for them. 1/9
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Beverley @bevfromcapetown.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Lawd...
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Timothy Snyder @timothysnyder.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
Lecture 2: "A World of Empire" Totalitarianism did not emerge from nowhere. It was a response particularly to empires that Europeans had created. Free online course: "Hitler and Stalin Today" Hosted by the Munk School @utoronto.ca Full lecture: youtu.be/PDOGV5Gl6SE?...
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Karen K. Ho @karenho.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
I keep thinking about how often the mass layoffs in media, government and big companies, especially women and people of color, will lead to poorer outcomes for years because the people who would point out potential problems or blind spots were deemed non-essential, a "bad fit", and/or too expensive.
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Beverley @bevfromcapetown.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgjs... My prediction. Like many former ANC supporters couldnt hold their nose and vote ANC many Capetonians who supported the DA and G Hill Lewis, will not vote DA and rather stay away. Citizens have been sidelined & suffer the questionable planning tribunal decisions.
youtube.com
Clean Break: Inside the Capture of Cape Town’s Planning Tribunal
YouTube video by Daily Maverick
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Beverley @bevfromcapetown.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Nelson Mandela held a mirror to humanity – and showed us what solidarity means | Zohran Mamdani www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
Nelson Mandela held a mirror to humanity – and showed us what solidarity means | Zohran Mamdani
In a speech given on Wednesday in honor of Nelson Mandela Day, New York’s mayor reflects on what Madiba can teach us in a fractured era
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Beverley @bevfromcapetown.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
Our household enjoyed and were enlightened by the History of The Ukraine. Look forward to this lecture series.
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