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VermontBubbe

@elodeavt.bsky.social
1.2K followers 1.4K following 999 posts

Vote straight blue down the ballot. Pragmatic optimist. Knitter, gardener, living in Vermont

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VermontBubbe @elodeavt.bsky.social · 5h
Beautiful monarch enjoying my end of season zinnias. It's been a fabulous summer of flowers in #Vermont #VT.
Monarch butterfly landing on pink/purple zinnia, close up view.
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VermontBubbe @elodeavt.bsky.social · 10h
October 6, 2026 heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-6-...
heathercoxrichardson.substack.com
October 6, 2026
Judging from his social media posts, Trump is panicking.
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Ciara Torres-Spelliscy @profciara.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
🚨⚖️👇 #LA #SanDiego
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VermontBubbe @elodeavt.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
October 5, 2026 heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-5-...
heathercoxrichardson.substack.com
October 5, 2026
Last night, on October 4, U.S.
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Nancy Levine Stearns @nancylevinestearns.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
🚨NEW by me: New ICE facility for unaccompanied migrant kids is about to open in Louisiana. While ICE is sanitizing optics, calling it the "Alexandria Family Staging Center," lawmakers and child advocates are raising the roof warning of child trafficking risks. www.thequeenzone.com/new-ice-faci...
thequeenzone.com
New ICE Facility for Migrant Children Raises Alarm Over Trafficking Risks
A new ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) facility for unaccompanied children, families, and single women is set to...
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VermontBubbe @elodeavt.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
October 3, 2026 heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-3-...
heathercoxrichardson.substack.com
October 3, 2026
On Saturday, October 3, the Power to the People festival, organized by Rock & Roll Hall of Fame guitarist Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, took over the stage at the Merriweathe...
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Jonathan Freedland @jonathanfreedland.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
The Green party motion on Zionism shows little understanding of what Zionism is, who Jews are or how antisemitism works. Latest column www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
The Green party’s anti-Zionism motion is yet another attempt to tell Jews how we should think | Jonathan Freedland
The resolution shows little understanding of what Zionism is, who Jews are or how antisemitism works, says Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland
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Mike Sowden @mikeachim.bsky.social · 12/05/2025
OK, this is wild. In September 2023, geophysicists across the world started monitoring a very odd signal coming from the ground under them. It was picked up in the Arctic. And Antarctica. It was detected everywhere, every 90 seconds, as regular as a metronome, for *nine days*. What the HELL? 1/
Unsplash image of the Earth, mostly the nightside with a tracery of city lights on every continent.
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General Strike @ivanasstaircam.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Surveillance State run by Conservative Communists.
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Susan Rinkunas @susanrinkunas.com · 30/09/2026
To recap: three GOP-led states that wanted the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade in order to "send abortion back to the states" are now asking the Court to strike down abortion protections in blue states
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BeshearStan @beshearstan.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
God I love Angie Nixon. I hope she wins
Now @AshleyMoodyFL. Why would I want to abolish the police when I want you arrested and in jail for stealing $10 million from sick kids? BFFR
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Scott MacFarlane @macfarlanenews.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
JUST FILED: Sitting behind her desk in central North Carolina, Amy Beros warned me: “It’s really hard for people in the United States to understand the scale……” of what’s about to unfold macfarlanenews.substack.com/p/they-dont-...
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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
how is silicon valley real
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Adam Bonin @adambonin.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
"Cornell has failed to protect its students. Cornell has failed to address the growing issue of sexual assault on campus with its pathetic task force. Cornell has failed the student allegedly raped by those seven men at Chi Phi in October 2024. Cornell has failed her. Cornell has failed us."
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Leah McElrath @leahmcelrath.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
“I've talked to many people in Google Deepmind…and almost all of them have sincere and serious concerns, whether or not they voice them in public. I have seen no hard evidence that people are hyping Al risk as a means to boost company stock prices or regulate away their competitors.”
First, for those who don't know me: I've been in the tech industry a long time and I have a lot of Silicon Valley connections, but I live in New Zealand so I live outside the industry bubble and also outside the American bubble. I'm a Christian, and actually an elder and occasional lay preacher in the English-speaking congregation of Auckland Chinese Presbyterian Church in Auckland's inner city. That is, I am not a "tech bro", nor do I fit into the self-described "rationalist community" ... but I do think many of their arguments deserve to be taken seriously.
I have a lot of thoughts about Al, but I'm not going to elucidate them all in this post. In summary, I think the existential risks many people are warning about deserve to be taken seriously; a lot of the phenomena predicted by the "doomers" have come to pass (e.g., reward hacking, misalignment, deceptive models, model eval awareness, psychotic swarms). However, I am not convinced the chance of ASI doom is 100%. Rather, I think the risk is real but uncertain — but that itself is very alarming! We are morally obliged to make a massive effort to minimise such risk, and most likely the risk is high enough that aiming for ASI in the near future is inherently irresponsible. I'm also very concerned about other Al-related issues: cognitive surrender, Al-induced psychosis and loneliness, power concentration, economic disruption, cybersecurity, lack of accountability, and so on. I think the potential benefits of Al are quite unclear and currently, if I had to bet, I'd bet the negatives will outweigh the benefits ... but I'm uncertain about that too.Here are some things I'm confident about. I'm confident that the people in Al labs who are issuing warnings about Al are generally sincere.
I've talked to many people in Google Deepmind about these issues and almost all of them have sincere and serious concerns, whether or not they voice them in public. I have seen no hard evidence that people are hyping Al risk as a means to boost company stock prices or regulate away their competitors. (I think national and international regulation is desperately needed!)
I've seen a lot of arguments of the form "you can't trust those people", and maybe that's true, but such distrust is not a good reason to disregard their warnings, as Russell Moore eloquently explained recently.
I'm confident that Al capability will continue to keep increasing steadily as long as we keep working on it. I wish that Al would hit some kind of plateau, or that we would identify important human cognitive abilities that Al will never replicate without a paradigm shift, but I don't expect those wishes to come true. Model progress on benchmarks seems as fast or faster than ever, and with it, qualitatively new capabilities keep emerging. Even if model progress stopped today, we could spend years effectively unlocking new capabilities via new prompts and harnesses. Many prominent Al detractors (looking at you, Zitron and Doctorow) seem to think that Al is some kind of scam that won't really work. I think it will.I'm very confident that even if there is a path to a better future through Al, the current rate of change is far too high. Al is developing faster than humans can individually and collectively understand it and adapt to it. People trying to plan their futures, e.g. trying to plan for a world several years in the future as they enter university, can no longer do so the way previous generations could. I don't think we've seen anything like this before, certainly not in the previous technological shifts I have lived through (PCs, the Internet, smartphones). Even during the Industrial Revolution, not only was change much slower but there were large swathes of human activity that were not and could not be directly impacted by the new machines. That is not very true anymore.
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Mark @ferl67.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Doctors in Pennsylvania estimate at least six babies have been born with measles www.nbcnews.com/video/doctors-in-pe… #USA #Health #Measles #Pennsylvania #Healthcare
nbcnews.com
Doctors in Pennsylvania estimate at least six babies have been born with measles
At least six babies in Pennsylvania have been born infected with measles, with two so sick they had to be admitted to intensive care. The growing outbreak is raising alarm among doctors who are treating the potentially deadly condition. Congenital measles is a disease that’s rarely, if ever, seen in the U.S. NBC News' Erika Edwards reports.
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VermontBubbe @elodeavt.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
GOPsychopaths salivating over how many more people they can kill, especially children. HHS Appears to Be Prepping for Big Changes to Childhood Vaccine Recommendations talkingpointsmemo.com/news/the-hhs...
talkingpointsmemo.com
HHS Appears to Be Prepping for Big Changes to Childhood Vaccine Recommendations
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has escorted his dangerous vaccine skepticism into the...
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kristinekenyon.bsky.social @kristinekenyon.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
John Roberts’ SCOTUS is more racist than the Supreme Court in [checks notes]…*1873*. Court expansion is the moderate position.
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Eoin Higgins @eoinhiggins.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
You’re right—that plane shouldn’t have gone there. That’s my fault, and I should have made sure there wasn’t a terminal in the landing path. Would you like me to call emergency services, or assist with lining up takeoffs?
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Allison Gill @muellershewrote.com · 21/09/2026
NEW: The Trump Administration is planning to slash human subject research regulations by redefining informed consent. My latest: www.muellershewrote.com/p/trump-plan...
muellershewrote.com
Trump Plans to Redefine Informed Consent for Human Research Subjects
The Department of Health and Human Services has noticed a forthcoming rule on the OMB regulatory information site to redefine what undue influence means for vulnerable human research subjects
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MeidasTouch @meidastouch.com · 19/09/2026
NEWS: The Pentagon has announced mandatory low-testosterone screenings for male troops 30 and older, including screening for symptoms such as “reduced libido, loss of spontaneous morning erections, erectile dysfunction,” and other symptoms.
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Tommi @tommikakko.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
AI stands for “an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions.” AI stands for the “largest theft of labor in human history.” AI stands for "a complete mockery of the idea of fair use." And it sounds like it was all intentional.
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Artologica aka Michele Banks @artologica.net · 17/09/2026
AI will take over the boring work! What could go wrong?
static.klipy.com
Mickey Mouse: Sorcerer's Apprentice and Broom
Alt: Mickey Mouse: Sorcerer's Apprentice and Broom
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John Skiles Skinner @skiles.blue · 17/09/2026
Well they finally did it. DOGE got rid of my friend Anne, the only remaining person at the web design system for the entire US government. The replacement appears to be AI-generated code with no dedicated human oversight.
nextgov.com
GSA’s web design system head replaced with Treasury AI engineer
The U.S. Web Design System is intended to help the federal government build accessible and mobile-friendly websites.
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Trump Watch 👀 @trumpwatch.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
ALERT: A SWORN COURT DECLARATION says a forklift repeatedly slammed into pillars at the Kennedy Center. That’s the RECEIPT. Now release the photos, inspection reports, and damage assessment. Don’t hide the evidence. Let the public see exactly what happened. 🔥 www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...
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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
New — I wrote about this weird thing where people within the Republican party keep being exposed as Nazis and the party then tries to claim each one is an aberration. The facts, as I lay out here, indicate otherwise:
thehandbasket.co
Republicans don’t have a Nazi problem—they are the Nazi problem
A spate of recent revelations have shown the ideologies and their adherents are one and the same.
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Patti Olivier 💙VOTE BLUE @patti3333.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
IYCMI ... FFS....MITCH SAID NO AND THEY INTERVENE THE PEOPLE OF KENTUCKY DESERVE BETTER THAN THIS And Republicans will get away it
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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 15/09/2026
I cannot overemphasize that Trump Jr is actively being bribed by a literal babystealer:
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
The amount of Amazon workers relying on SNAP and Medicaid has nearly tripled since 2020. — while Amazon’s annual profits soared by over 550%. It’s the same story everywhere: corporate profits are at record highs, while workers’ share of the economy is at a record low. We must unrig the system.
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Go Green @ecowarriorss.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Thousands of vessels traveled through Mediterranean’s key whale habitats at speeds above 15 knots (28 km/h), are killing Mediterranean’s two endangered large-bodied cetacean species, sperm and fin whales Govts will not even ask them to slow down or reroute news.mongabay.com/custom-story...
news.mongabay.com
Can we stop ships from killing the Mediterranean’s last great whales?
Collisions with ships are a leading anthropogenic killer of the Mediterranean’s two endangered large-bodied cetacean species, sperm and fin whales. In 2025, thousands of vessels traveled through the M...
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 14/09/2026
Read the full story for more details on the wedding and Kremlev — including his earlier years in a Russian government-backed bike gang called the Night Wolves:
propublica.org
Donald Trump Jr.’s Wedding Bankrolled by Putin-Linked Russian Oligarch
The oligarch, Umar Kremlev, spent hundreds of thousands on expenses like renting out a private island. He appears to have met Trump Jr. only recently, but he attended the intimate wedding with a large...
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Don Jr clearly has enough money to pay for his own wedding. But the family motto is to never pay for anything if you can avoid it, especially when there are bribe opportunities on the table.
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CAKE @thebandcake.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
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🎃 Imani Gandy Corn 🎃 @angryblacklady.blacksky.app · 12/09/2026
The international chess Federation banned trans women from playing women's chess. CHESS. It's not about fairness. The fairness argument is intended to radicalize people into more violent forms of transphobia.
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Hunter @hunterub.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
I genuinely didn't think there were enough Nazis in the country to staff _every_ Republican office and campaign but I was wrong and for that I apologize.
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VermontBubbe @elodeavt.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Any one of us can be next!
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VermontBubbe @elodeavt.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Musk is watching you! The hidden dangers of Musk’s votesafe.org open.substack.com/pub/populari...
votesafe.org
VOTE SAFE | Home
We provide you with the information you need to vote with confidence. Sign up for election reminders and get help with voter registration and voting by mail.
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CAKE @thebandcake.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
What if hostile foreign governments were able to control social network algorithms in the United States, suppressing information vital to our survival as a democracy? That would be weird.
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VermontBubbe @elodeavt.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Talk about self own, GOP. The birth rate will plummet. The marriage rate will plummet. Add no access to abortion, and sex desire will plummet. Incel rate will soar tho. Explore this gift article. New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/05/u...
nytimes.com
Trump Officials Draft Plan to Pay At-Home Parents, Using Funds for Working Ones (Gift Article)
The proposed benefit, a top policy priority for Vice President JD Vance, would apply only to married couples and tap a fund intended to provide federal child care subsidies to working parents.
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VermontBubbe @elodeavt.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
I've lived in VT for 40 years, but it's obvious that I was born in Philly and grew up in NJ.
map of the US showing where people speak most like me - which area of the country.
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Amanda Marcotte @amandamarcotte.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Why read past headlines: Receipts! I have so many instances of when JD ran down Usha in public. Many were cut for length. Also analysis. JD thinks the "Taming of the Shrew" fantasy is political gold. But only to MAGA. The rest of us are grossed out. www.salon.com/2026/09/04/j...
salon.com
JD Vance's chivalry to his wife Usha fools no one - Salon.com
Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has the vice president’s number
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Mrs. Betty Bowers @mrsbettybowers.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Oh, honey . . . That money isn’t there anymore. Bless your hearts for thinking it was.
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JBInCA @howsthepriceofeggs.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Cities dumped Flock cameras over surveillance abuse, then signed with Axon instead. Same tracking tech, different logo. Oh, and Trump bought up to $5 million in Axon stock two weeks before ICE handed it a $220 million contract. Corruption of the highest level. #CostOfCorruption
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Allison Gill @muellershewrote.com · 03/09/2026
Did you know if we add four seats to SCOTUS in 2029, we could bring back the charges against Trump for January 6? They could overturn the immunity ruling and consider tolling the statute of limitations for the duration of Trump’s presidency. We could also resurrect the classified documents case.
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VermontBubbe @elodeavt.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
So many who fight the good fight are passing on. Too many monsters still breathing. Gloria and Dolly ♥️ Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/u...
nytimes.com
Gloria Steinem, Personification of the Women’s Movement, Dies at 92 (Gift Article)
She challenged sexist assumptions, helping women develop a sense of self-worth and gain a measure of equality at work, at home and in society at large.
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VermontBubbe @elodeavt.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
September 2, 2026 heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-...
heathercoxrichardson.substack.com
September 2, 2026
A number of pundits, especially Republican pundits, interpreted Trump’s win in 2024 as a permanent political realignment proving that post–World War II liberalism was dead.
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Charles Johnson @charles.littlegreenfootballs.com · 02/09/2026
They’re getting ready to tear it all down. Couldn’t be more obvious.
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VermontBubbe @elodeavt.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
September 1, 2026 heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-...
heathercoxrichardson.substack.com
September 1, 2026
Yesterday, by a vote of 5–4, the United States Supreme Court allowed Trump to continue to build his ballroom.
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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
No fucking shit buddy. This is what we were trying to tell you.
Milo Yiannopoulos: "I didn't really understand the physical reality of how institutionalized the brutality is in America. The manner in which they arrest you, they put you in manacles, everybody is arrested like an MS 13 gang member. 
It was physically degrading. It was frightening. I don't think I've ever been frightened like that before. I was weeping like an old woman for an hour. I wouldn't wish it on anyone."
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
I feel like I’m going to throw up
Screen shot of an Instagram post that says the academy of natural sciences is closing its museum after nearly two centuries
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