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Andrew Wetzel

@circlereader.bsky.social
1.1K followers 2.1K following 954 posts

Human first, then: curious, Christian, parent. Other Evangelical. #YouCannotServeGodAndMammon #TheKingdomOfGodIsNotAPoliceState #TheEndIsNotYet He/him. 🔗🌳/CircleReader

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Reposted by Andrew Wetzel
Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Shoutout to the 🐐GOAT🐐, respect greatness www.macfound.org/videos/2026-...
macfound.org
Ellora Derenoncourt - 2026 MacArthur Fellow
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Daniel Kuehn @dkuehn.bsky.social · 3h
This is counterintuitive for us because the book was an enormous success, not just in retrospect but in real time. But Carter shows that Keynes became persona non grata in government. Policymakers could not trust even a brilliant man like Keynes if he would turn on them publicly over policy.
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Daniel Kuehn @dkuehn.bsky.social · 3h
Of course it is not the whole story and Carter doesn’t claim it is, but thinking about Economic Consequences of the Peace as sort of apology to his Bloomsbury friends is very compelling. He also outlines really well how the book wrecked his professional trajectory, and that he knew it would.
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Daniel Kuehn @dkuehn.bsky.social · 3h
Finally listening to The Price of Peace and it’s really good. I’ve been putting it off because of something Carter argued about Keynes that rubbed me the wrong way that of course I don’t even remember now. A dumb way to pick books 🤦 He is spectacular at contextualizing Keynes’s work in Bloomsbury.
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Dan Day @danielxday.bsky.social · 6h
What a douche. ‘No Beardos, No Weirdos, No Wimps’: Hegseth Lays Out His Military Vision www.nytimes.com/2026/09/30/u...
nytimes.com
In Speech, Hegseth Targets Diversity, Transgender People, Reporters and Iran (Gift Article)
The defense secretary returned to culture-war themes and used coarse and offensive terms to describe people he believes have no place in the military.
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Radley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 3h
“A lawyer for Christa Pike said executioners have administered two syringes of lethal injection drugs to Pike but that she remains alive and breathing.” It’s been over an hour.
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Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg.bsky.social · 10h
We don’t spend enough time talking about just how WEIRD all these people are. This is just an incredibly weird and insecure thing to say. Imagine any other SecDef ever being this weird and insecure?!
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Talcott @talcotts.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
👉 Way ahead of you! 👈 (My dad made this as part of a live demonstration on a 19th century printing press/with antique type somewhere around my first birthday.)
FOR PRESIDENT!
** INDEPENDENT * THE HONORABLE
TALCOTT C. STARR
THE PEOPLE'S FRIEND.
Will address the Public at the
OHIO STATE FAIR
and will give the speach that has brought tens of thousands to raity around our Candidates Glorious Banner in Virginir, Ohio, and Indiana
What America Needs
IS ME.
Come one and all to this feast of reason, and low of soul Prepareat once to attend this nonster meeting, and prepare to re-kindle he tires of INDEPEDENCE, which burned i brightly in the days of George Washington.
Handset and Printed at the
1982 Ohio State Fair
Ohio Village Prese.
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Imani Gandy @angryblacklady.blacksky.app · 28/09/2026
fucking really
thehill.com
Education Department formally rescinds Title IX protections for LGBTQ students
The Education Department announced Monday it has formally rescinded the Biden-era Title IX interpretation that gave sex-based discrimination protections to students on the basis of sexual orientati…
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Imani Gandy @angryblacklady.blacksky.app · 28/09/2026
The trans women in sports panic has got to be one of the GOP's most successful manufactured culture war campaigns. Somehow they got a lot of people who would otherwise say they support trans rights to somehow fear "fairness" in sports. It's a non-issue.
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Imani Gandy @angryblacklady.blacksky.app · 28/09/2026
But if trans girls are "cheating" by playing women's sports, what else are the sneaky trans people cheating about. They're also coming for Title IX. They don't care about women in sports. They want women out of sports. Please, I am begging you, stop falling for this shit.
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Laurelsbooks @laurelsbooks.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Finally reading T. Kingfisher’s Clockwork Boys and The Wonder Engine. Why did I wait so long; this is like the Oz books written for adults. Glorious. I needed this mental vacation. 😍 I love the gnoles, for obvious reasons. 🦡 And Slate is such a distinctive heroine!
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Author Kimolisa Mings @kimolisamings.bsky.social · 8h
Friend: Did you really need all those books? Me: Yes, I have a prescription Friend: That's a receipt #RomanceReadersUnite #BookTherapy #CaribbeanReaders #booksky #blackskybooks #Romancelandia #CaribbeanSky #readersky
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K. W. Knight @kwknight.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I remember doing this as a "smart girl" in middle school to try to avoid bullying. I know I'm not the only one. It cost me a lot down the road to have refused to do my best out of deference. When they say AI will destroy humanity, this is the way I think they may be right about that.
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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 30/09/2026
The student got excellent writing instruction--they went to an IB school, one of their parents is a professor, and they got through high school without ever using AI tools. But now, they feel they have to abandon all they learned about good writing, to avoid being accused of cheating with AI.
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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 30/09/2026
So-called AI detection tools might be an even bigger scurge than AI. I was talking today with a student (a senior), who shared that they now have to spend time "dumbing down" their papers--shortening sentences, removing advanced vocab and punctuation--because otherwise they get flagged as "AI."
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fuckface "squeaky" from:me @skeet.best · 7h
the funniest thing about this complaint is the idea that removing the repository from GitHub would stop it
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Grifflez @grifflez.bsky.social · 7h
THE PROMPTING WILL CONTINUE UNTIL 'PAIN' IS MAXED OUT.
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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 7h
the github repo is down. github didn't respond about why yet. if github did take it down then ... jfc jfc jfc. the stuff i've seen from this is like PG-rated at most this is the vibe:
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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 7h
for real though the "model welfare" people who are worried about the ethical treatment of nonsentient computer programs are absolutely deranged, very well-funded, and extremely dangerous; is also the core ideology of Anthropic
One of the most heated discussions occurring on X at the moment is about the ethics of a GitHub project in which a person is running Saw-like “torture” and “pain” experiments on a series of locally hosted large language models, causing a series of effective altruists and people who believe LLMs are sentient to beg GitHub to delete the project on the grounds that the AI is suffering and that this glorified text adventure game is somehow cruel. The saga is an outgrowth of several recent viral papers and blog posts that have sparked a wildly tiresome conversation about AI consciousness and the idea of “model welfare,” which is essentially worrying about the “mental health” of AI bots and agents.
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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 7h
i regret to inform you that people have absolutely lost it www.404media.co/someone-tort...
404media.co
Someone ‘Torturing’ LLMs in a Robot Prison Has Triggered the Dumbest Debate in AI Yet
The "AI Torture Chamber" has opened an upsetting and absurd window into the effective altruist obsession with "model welfare."
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Elizabeth Joh @elizabethjoh.bsky.social · 3h
The house always wins
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Olivia Messer @oliviamesser.bsky.social · 3h
This 33-year-old nurse told the FBI she knew she was “going to set him free” after border patrol agents brought in a man whose face was bloodied and seriously injured. She treated him and helped him escape, and she faces charges now. He got away, and they never relocated him.
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Taniel @taniel.bsky.social · 5h
i've prepared November election guides for a decade—many of you have first followed me for this. the one we are publishing tomorrow? the biggest i've ever done. can't wait to share it, though you might all have to free up your entire October to explore all of it!
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The Bulwark @thebulwark.com · 3h
There was finally bipartisan momentum to help parents with childcare costs. Then Trump stepped in. @citizencohn.bsky.social explains how the admin’s proposal could take support from working parents to subsidize stay-at-home parents and reignite a culture war. lnk.thebulwark.com/3VZpkvC?utm_...
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Mira @thefreeradical.org · 3h
frankly im reaching a point where i think ai genuinely is just fucking over peoples ability to be creative and like, actually think its all about rushing through as much Content as possible and smashing it together for the sake of mindless consumption. no more intent, just empty vibes
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Juan C Chavez @inafutureage.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Hmm, right wing chuds pepper spraying people outside a drinking establishment in Portland… Surely no one’s ever done this to disastrous personal financial consequence! www.wweek.com/news/2026/02...
wweek.com
Cider Riot Attackers Must Pay $760,007 in Damages to Tasting Room’s Owner
The four men sowed violence at the left-wing cidery in 2019, knocking one patron unconscious.
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Scott Kelley Ernest 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ @mxscottkernest.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Bombshell memo on horrific race massacre exposes complicit FBI: 'They lied like crazy' www.rawstory.com/raw-investig...
rawstory.com
Bombshell memo on horrific race massacre exposes complicit FBI: 'They lied like crazy'
GREENSBORO, N.C. — In July 1979, a North Carolina Ku Klux Klan leader named Joe Grady summoned two FBI agents to a Waffle House to warn them “about possible violence in the future.”Earlier that month,...
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J @vertigo700.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
"America will never be a communist country!" The day after we rolled out the red carpet and held a lavish state dinner for *check notes* the General Secretary for the Chinese Communist Party.
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Andrew Wetzel @circlereader.bsky.social · 8h
Actually I think yes! Soothing his ego preserves & defends — from it's own outrageousness — the impunity with which he operates, and which his party hopes will last long enough for them to inherit.
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 25/09/2026
if Trump truly isn't planning to illegally stay in office past 2029, what explains the US government paying for these Trump campaign ads to run on TV? they're just wasting taxpayer dollars to soothe his ego?
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Anna Merlan @annamerlan.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
NEW: I came across a bookseller who was afraid that a mysterious company trying to buy some of his rarest books was going to use them to train AI models. I went down the rabbithole with him, and was confused and altogether existentially weirded out by what I found www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
motherjones.com
A bookseller confronts a mysterious company hunting his rarest books
Was a Kentucky retailer targeted by a destructive AI "predator"?
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Ryan Goodman @rgoodlaw.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
How clear is it that Trump's taxpayer funded ads are illegal? I explain why it is 10/10 clear. Senate in passing the law: Ban is designed to stop public funds used for "glorification" of an individual official. GAO: funds can not be used for "self-aggrandizement" nor partisan political purposes.
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alan51972.bsky.social @alan51972.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Trump is warning of a "final battle" against Democrats, who he calls "communists, Marxists, and fascists". He is using OUR taxpayer dollars to fund these ads calling us Democrats "the enemy". This is illegal and unconstitutional, like everything else he does. www.cnn.com/2026/09/27/p...
cnn.com
White House airs another government-funded ad, this time with Trump warning of ‘final battle’ | CNN Politics
The Trump administration is set to launch another overtly political campaign ad funded by taxpayer dollars, attacking the “fake news media” and “the sick political class that hates our country.”
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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 10h
The Pope's Hitman Advent Calendar Day 4! Counting down to pub day on 10/27/26, today's visual reference comes from Medjugorje, a Bosnian town where six kids claimed to have visions of the Virgin Mary during the 1980s. What does that have to do with a hitman? You gotta read it to find out! #booksky
 Statue of Virgin Mary in Medjugorje - Bosnia Herzegovina, photo by Elbert Hampton, public domain via  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Statue_of_Virgin_Mary_in_Medjugorje_-_Bosnia_Herzegovina_09.jpg
An advent calendar. On the left of the calendar grid is an image of the cover of The Pope's Hitman by J.M. Berger, featuring a gray-toned image of the spiral Bramante Staircase in the Vatican Museums, Vatican City. A blurb reads "John Wick meets Conclave as a priest with a deadly secret will stop at nothing to protect the Pope against an explosive Christmas Eve plot with the fate of the Catholic Church at stake!" On the right is an image of Saint Peter's Basilica at night with two review excerpts: 

“Berger (Optimal), a senior research fellow at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, puts his background to good use in this riveting action thriller.”
-- Publisher’s Weekly

“This is ridiculously over-the-top and I loved every second of it ... great characters ... fun premise ... crazy situations.”
-- The Optionist
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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 29/09/2026
To read more about the many killings and confessions of Father Francis Loyola, pre-order The Pope's Hitman today! B&N: www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Pope's%20H... Bookshop bookshop.org/a/125012/979... Amazon amzn.to/4ojzmC6
"The Pope's Hitman by J.M. Berger" over a gray-toned image of the spiral Bramante Staircase in the Vatican Museums, Vatican City.
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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 29/09/2026
The Pope's Hitman Advent Calendar, Day 3! Very early in the book, Father Francis Loyola makes the first of many confessions at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston. Confession is a major theme of the book, which I guarantee has more confessions than in any hitman book before it!
 Interior of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Boston. The church is darkened, as it is when seen in the book. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cathedral_of_the_Holy_Cross,_Boston_3.JPG

An advent calendar. On the left of the calendar grid is an image of the cover of The Pope's Hitman by J.M. Berger, featuring a gray-toned image of the spiral Bramante Staircase in the Vatican Museums, Vatican City. A blurb reads "John Wick meets Conclave as a priest with a deadly secret will stop at nothing to protect the Pope against an explosive Christmas Eve plot with the fate of the Catholic Church at stake!" On the right is an image of Saint Peter's Basilica at night with two review excerpts: 

“Berger (Optimal), a senior research fellow at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, puts his background to good use in this riveting action thriller.”
-- Publisher’s Weekly

“This is ridiculously over-the-top and I loved every second of it ... great characters ... fun premise ... crazy situations.”
-- The Optionist
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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 28/09/2026
Day 2 of The Pope's Hitman Advent Calendar! Counting down to pub day, here's a visual reference from the book's first act -- the Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire, UK, which I used as model for a Western MA location visited by Father Francis Loyola. #booksky #thrillers @crookedlanebooks.bsky.social
An open corridor inside the ruins of Fountains Abbey. Located in Ripon, Yorkshire, England, UK. Photo by	Michael D Beckwith in the public domain via Wikimedia. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fountains_Abbey_Corridor.jpg

An advent calendar. On the left of the calendar grid is an image of the cover of The Pope's Hitman by J.M. Berger, featuring a gray-toned image of the spiral Bramante Staircase in the Vatican Museums, Vatican City. A blurb reads "John Wick meets Conclave as a priest with a deadly secret will stop at nothing to protect the Pope against an explosive Christmas Eve plot with the fate of the Catholic Church at stake!" On the right is an image of Saint Peter's Basilica at night with two review excerpts: 

“Berger (Optimal), a senior research fellow at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, puts his background to good use in this riveting action thriller.”
-- Publisher’s Weekly

“This is ridiculously over-the-top and I loved every second of it ... great characters ... fun premise ... crazy situations.”
-- The Optionist
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Andrew Wetzel @circlereader.bsky.social · 8h
“The bad guys want our despair. They need it. We have to hold onto things that bring us joy, that lighten our load, that renew our spirit. We defy them with play and with love and through constructive creation.”
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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 27/09/2026
For more about why I wrote this particular book in this particular moment, check out my latest Medium post medium.com/the-berger-d...
medium.com
Day Jobs, Night Jobs
If you knew me before today, it was most likely because of my day job. I’ve spent almost 20 years researching and writing about terrorism…
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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 27/09/2026
You'll encounter Saint Longinus, technically just his statue, in Act 3 of The Pope's Hitman, now available for pre-order! B&N: www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Pope's%20H... Bookshop bookshop.org/a/125012/979... Amazon amzn.to/4ojzmC6 Supporting this book supports all of my work, including on extremism.

The cover of The Poe's Hitman with two review excerpts superimposed. 

“Berger (Optimal), a senior research fellow at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, puts his background to good use in this riveting action thriller.”
-- Publisher’s Weekly

“This is ridiculously over-the-top and I loved every second of it ... great characters ... fun premise ... crazy situations.”
-- The Optionist
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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 27/09/2026
It's 30 days until the publication date of The Pope's Hitman, and I'm counting down with a seasonally and story-appropriate Advent Calendar! For Day 1, meet Saint Longinus, the Roman centurion who tradition holds pierced the side of Christ on the Cross then later became Christian.
An advent calendar. On the left of the calendar grid is an image of the cover of The Pope's Hitman by J.M. Berger, featuring a gray-toned image of the spiral Bramante Staircase in the Vatican Museums, Vatican City. A blurb reads "John Wick meets Conclave as a priest with a deadly secret will stop at nothing to protect the Pope against an explosive Christmas Eve plot with the fate of the Catholic Church at stake!" On the right is an image of Saint Peter's Basilica at night with two review excerpts: 

“Berger (Optimal), a senior research fellow at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, puts his background to good use in this riveting action thriller.”
-- Publisher’s Weekly

“This is ridiculously over-the-top and I loved every second of it ... great characters ... fun premise ... crazy situations.”
-- The Optionist
The statue of Saint Longinus in Saint Peter's Basilica, a Roman soldier brandishing a spear.
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J. C. Cantwell 🌻 @segfaultvicta.aludel.xyz · 11h
we care so much more about accessibility and universal design right now than we cared even, like, half a decade ago the president rolling back accessibility requirements for federally-funded projects basically did nothing to stop Biden-era accessibility priorities from continuing to be priorities
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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 8h
This is an important piece of work in an era where lol nothing matters what is truth ai might be god www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/20...
pewresearch.org
Can AI Stand In for Human Survey-Takers? Not Really
Synthetic surveys using digital twins do a poor job estimating the public mood and are especially error-prone for some subgroups, including Republicans and Black adults.
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Jean-Michel Connard @torriangray.bsky.social · 10h
This sack of shit should be impeached as soon as possible. He’s a threat to national security.
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Bill @bill-of-lefts.bsky.social · 10h
I’m gonna go against the grain and say operation warp speed was actually extraordinarily impressive, by also the second Trump administration has done everything to make sure that we will never have the capacity to do it again
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Vaquera Elisa @boxelderdust.bsky.social · 10h
At some point a people On Here adopted the position native to the post-CRM right that you could say astoundingly bigoted shit but as long as it didn’t have a Forbidden Word Of Power attached to it it was not only not bigotry but anyone cottoning on and condemning your bigotry was the REAL bigot
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Billy Penn at WHYY @billy-penn.bsky.social · 16h
A Texas teacher is finding a way to get his students writing without laptops or AI. His solution? Driving to Philly to purchase 28 typewriters.  billypenn.com/2026/09/25/p...
billypenn.com
Texas teacher buys 28 typewriters from Philly shop
A Fort Worth teacher drove to a West Mount Airy typewriter shop to equip his classroom. His students have started writing on the machines.
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Andrew Wetzel @circlereader.bsky.social · 8h
I feel like Father Brown.
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Trung Le Nguyen @trungles.com · 02/09/2026
To commemorate this thread, I've made one fanart of Elizabeth Bennet Available as a print! www.inprnt.com/gallery/trun...
inprnt.com
F*ck Em Up, Elizabeth Bennet, an art print by Trungles
Gallery Quality Prints
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