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helen

@helensmith.bsky.social
968 followers 414 following 407 posts

Early medievalist PhD candidate #actuallyautistic (they/them & she/they)

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Reposted by helen
Mike Bithell @mikebithell.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
It is absolutely preferable to not pick up the cigarette in the first place news.berkeley.edu/2026/10/09/u...
news.berkeley.edu
Using AI for just 10 minutes erodes your ability to persist at hard things - Berkeley News
A UC Berkeley researcher co-authored a study that raises profound questions about how we interact with artificial intelligence in education — and daily life.
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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Part of why I don't like the AI-or-bust economy is the constant flopsweat of people on the news who say this HAS to work. Quit making everyone so anxious. Goddamn. If this is the next Google then why are you acting like this? I don't remember being told to buy an iPhone at gunpoint.
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ceej @ceej.online · 30/12/2024
certain posters online are a government psyop designed to keep you giggling instead of angry. “Whimsy is the opiate of the masses…”
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helen @helensmith.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
💔 Pushing through the heartbreak to say that I am running in honor and memory of the 27 campers and counselors who died at Camp Mystic, among the 130+ who died in the floods across the state! It's thru Team 27, raising $ for the kids' memorial foundations and running to remember them together.
Aerial shot of Camp Mystic, home to me for ten summers and site where my extended family member died as a 9-year-old during the July 4, 2025 floodsHeaven's 27 in memoriam pic alphabetically featuring the 27, who are: Janie Hunt, Cile Steward, Lucy Dillon, Mary Grace Baker, Sarah Marsh, Mary Kate Jacobe, Margaret Bellows, Margaret Sheedy, Mary Barrett Stephens, Eloise Peck, Wynne Naylor, Abby Pohl, Linnie McCown, Lila Bonner, Katherine Feruzzo, Chloe Childress, Hanna Lawrence and her twin, Rebecca Lawrence, Molly DeWitt, Ellen Getten, Kellyanne Lytal, Lainey Landry, Hadley Hanna, Greta Toranzo, Virginia Hollis, Renee Smajstrla, and Blakely McCrory. Heaven's 27 is the group comprising these girls and young women, who were the campers and counselors that died at my childhood camp.
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Joe Mason @moreorloess.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
"we're going to lose some fine intellectual dexterity": Knowing your address, finding your way to and from home, ability to read a map or work from a mental map, see details in the patterns of tree bark or the shape of leaves or the shapes of the landscape that let you identify trees and landforms,
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mean things I say to myself @meantomyself.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Is it more appropriate to ask the gentleman in the middle seat for a sip of his Bloody Mary on a 7 am flight, or to lean over him and ask his wife?
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jessamyn @librarian.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
I work at a public library. People who want to use AI seem to have no trouble doing so. People who don't want to use AI have a harder time. I crowdsourced and then finalized this document "How to disable or avoid intrusive AI" and then gave it a short URL: notoai.org Please pass along if it's useful
An aircraft passenger oxygen mask: a drop down passenger mask with air bag and yellow plastic mouth and nose cover, oxygen tube has been cut; Demonstration model used by flight attendant crew for passenger instruction. Has text on the side indicating that it's non-functional.
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Richard Meredith @rtm223.me · 01/09/2026
Do you think if we all larped an apocalypse hard enough we could trick the billionaires into fleeing to their underground bunkers and then just... Seal them in?
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Jack @wakeupangry.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Breakfast at Tiffany’s presents: Breakfast at Tiffany’s 2: Lunchtime
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helen @helensmith.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
TK Jewelers is a scam
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Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/w... oh come on.
And there is his height. Pascaretta, who said he is 5-foot-6 (“5-7 on a good day”), knows it can be a deal breaker for some women — certainly on the dating apps. “That’s a big deal for some of these girls,” he said.

A match he recently went on a few dates with mentioned, while they were at dinner, that she wanted to be with a tall guy — even though the team screens for women who are open to shorter men.

“I’m like, You’re 5-foot-1! I’m tall compared to you,” he said. “It made me sensitive to it.”Pascaretta also sent the team an Excel spreadsheet cataloging his must-haves: an accomplished professional, ideally a doctor, lawyer or executive, “someone like me who has been ‘heads down’ career focus, but now is ready for a serious relationship.” Someone who has never been married or is at least amicably divorced. Someone shorter than him. And someone between the ages of 25 and 43. It also detailed his strong preference for a woman who is, among other things, “naturally pretty” and “stylish,” “loyal, classy, ambitious, elegant, feminine, emotionally stable,” from a “well-respected family” and who went to a top-tier school.
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Soraya Nadia McDonald @soraya.press · 20/08/2026
Wait a damn minute. The things Arday did, like the marathons, had been previously covered, with first hand primary sources, by English news orgs, contemporaneously?!?! And yet the Telegraph and others just kept repeating that he'd lied about them, despite tons of documentation they happened?! 🤬🤬🤬
middleeasteye.net
Jason Arday's marathon challenge and football claims found to be true after his death
Claims the late academic made which were widely derided as false in media and online discourse this month appear to be true, an MEE analysis has found
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Joe Mason @moreorloess.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Showed this corner to my wife and kid a few days ago, noting that I regularly hitchhiked home late at night from that very spot that very summer, though apparently not the night this happened. I only learned of it many years later. wisconsinlife.org/story/martia...
wisconsinlife.org
Martial Arts Elvis: When the King broke up a fight in Madison - Wisconsin Life
Throughout his career, Elvis Presley mastered so many talents. He was a musician, actor, dancer and — of course — martial artist. Elvis’ passion for karate played out on the streets of Madison in the ...
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isaac @sevier.io · 16/08/2026
My general rule is to assume good faith when we meet; to validate as we build a relationship; but to recognize what those limits are when I find em and not assume that _i_ am the one to effectively change that. Some people are comfortable in being a mark and will put in work to stay there.
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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
i'm seeing a lot of people (right and left) give nathan cofnas "credit" for the campaign against jason arday, and he's reveling in that attention, but cofnas is just a halfwit with a shitty substack who received leaked information and posted it. he is a cretin, but first and foremost he's nobody.
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Monica H Green @monicamedhist.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Medievalists/Europeanists: if these two historic years of flooding are not already on your teaching timelines, they need to be. New narratives of the climatic & epidemiological histories of the late Middle Ages are forming, & this kind of evidence will be central. #MedievalSky #ClimateHistory 🧪🗃️
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Grant Lorrell @grantlorrell.blacksky.app · 15/08/2026
Basically the last time plagiarism existed as a "Very Serious Issue" in national media was during the Claudine Gay episode*. A total coincidence I'm sure 🙄 (*never mind that the actual committee overseeing the issue deemed that she hadn't committed a violation serious enough to merit that label).
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the Mountain Goats @themountaingoats.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
a guy digitized some old 80s Italian ambient tapes and one of the guys who made the music saw it and swung into the comments to say thanks for doing this, we loved making music back then maybe we’ll do it again & man that’s a good feeling youtu.be/2XwkPbBtiAQ?...
youtu.be
TERRA DELLA SERA - 1980's ITALIAN AMBIENT SYNTH TAPES collection - 6,5 hours long
YouTube video by Jeroen van de Sande
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helen @helensmith.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
So much of this on the classroom side (which the article doesn't attend to as much but which is more familiar to me) always seems like a time thing, where my students will glance at sentences then expect me to walk them through the material instead of showing up ready to discuss and ask questions
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Michael Jay McClure @mjmimages.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Every time someone says to take a risk I remember that the one time in a club I decided to buy a guy a drink because he was mysterious & very stylish & I’m cute & why not & I got nervous & crazily shy & I finally approached him & he turned out to be a mannequin.
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FR🎃 V🎃 @frovo.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
ME: pepper is just goth salt WAITER: um ok do you want ground goth salt on your salad
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ACARS Drama @acarsdrama.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Air to Ground Message: JUST SITTING HERE LOOKING AT ALMOST BLUE SKIES WONDERING WHAT IM GONNA DO WITH MY LIFE... MAYBE REFI MY HOME... BUY A NEW CAR... PROBABLY JUST INVEST IN MY WIFES 401K... Area: Philadelphia, PA, USA A: #a4318e73ba4 F: #ffaf708e6d1
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helen @helensmith.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
I always thought that my good friend Will was one in a million, but it turns out he was one in 7,080... how sad.
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isaac @sevier.io · 08/08/2026
I am the way I am because I've seen so many ways people are simply abandoned. Gotta do something radically different as the planet heats up beyond recognition if we want to make it.
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Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
WaPo making same claim that’s been disproven again & again. Who do they imagine these people are, willing to pay the price of abandoning home, friends, lives they’ve built. “Sorry, kids, we’re leaving the only home you’ve ever known & all our friends to pay 7% state tax instead of 8%.”
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Jennifer Crawford @ournewhomecoach.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
I don’t want to Do mY OwN rEsearCh. I want really clever researchers to do the research because that’s what they are good at and correctly advise politicians and people in power to make the right decisions for the benefit of all of us. I’ll bring snacks.
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helen @helensmith.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
“Don’t worry, I’m not gonna crash the bus” - this bus driver, inspiring confidence
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Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Running out of body bags, using forklifts to transfer corpses into makeshift morgues, a mortician conducting 200 funerals in a month when he usually does 30, crematories running at double capacity… And these senators just want to memory-hole it all www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/n...
nytimes.com
‘We Ran Out of Space’: Bodies Pile Up as N.Y. Struggles to Bury Its Dead (Gift Article)
The coronavirus crisis is overwhelming New York’s system for burying the dead.
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Alex Wenzel @alexwenzel.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
They asked for non-healthcare volunteers to help with visitor screening and my job became making families choose who would see their relative on their last day of life, and I usually don’t mention that anymore because I expect people to be dismissive about the circumstances in Spring 2020.
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isaac @sevier.io · 29/07/2026
"when experts suggest abandoning New Orleans, we have to ask: Whose city is considered worth saving? What is being framed as inevitability is, in many ways, future-framed environmental racism. But what if we refused that frame?" - Maddison Wells
nextcity.org
Solarpunk or Sink: Who Gets To Decide New Orleans’ Future?
Op-ed: New Orleans is sinking, but Black people have always known how to live in the places we were never meant to survive.
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heaumeau e. rotacism @vashwood.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
joining the war on taco bell on the side of taco bell
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Coach Rusty @coachrusty.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
might start selling a line of long division workbooks for adults who just wanna fucking RELAX
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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
fields. Instead, he apparently laced into the company. According to the Financial Times, Eggers told the staff:

“The effect of ChatGPT on educators’ lives is catastrophic. Whether you intended to do it or not, you’ve made every teacher’s life infinitely more difficult than it was two years ago. So, just let that settle in… If students are using it to compose, which is the biggest tragedy of all, they’ll never learn to write. And their voice is stolen from them. They’ll never have the ability to say their truth and tell their own story. And that’s silencing an entire generation or two.”
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helen @helensmith.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Still punk I say as I mute “diarrhea” on Bluesky
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helen @helensmith.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
If you see this today, take a moment to write a few sentences on this proposed rule! Public comments have made a difference recently and there are so many reasons to be against subjecting scientific grant approval to political approval.
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Kathleen E. Kennedy @themedievaldrk.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Actually want to amplify this further--95% haven't been digitized and even beyond that, archival CATALOGUING is its own patchy horrorshow of varying strategies, standards, and funding levels. To DIGITIZE something you have to FIND IT first!
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the invisible man @theinvisible-man.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
aaaaaaa
This lends culture an oppressive, unpleasant aspect. There's a feeling that we're choiceless in the matter. An illusion of freedom rises to meet this. "Children in play can bear with laughter physical pains that would overwhelm them if inflicted as punishment," wrote Weil. This is obviously true. Irony. Detachment. Humor that becomes ever darker and more self-referential.
Seeking catharsis and imitations of justice in moral crusades. These seem to me to be mere coping mechanisms for addiction, and for crude obedience.
There is resentment for anyone who thinks themselves above obedience.
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Nate's Scary Myth @natesmith.dev · 11/07/2026
one day I will perform two-factor authentication for the last time and won't even know it
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isaac @sevier.io · 09/07/2026
When i see the word 'unprecedented' about what's going on, i wonder, 'really?' Proclaiming this time to be uniquely bad compared to every other time in even recent history, does that discourage more understanding of the tactics & history of how people fought back then? We could use those tools.
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nora "the tea kobold" rude (they/them ze/hir) @nora.zone · 09/07/2026
the reason that people are being so loud about "i told you so" with platner is that it sucks shit to have to spend your entire life doing an uncredited minor in how to avoid being the victim of sexual violence and then have that expertise dismissed as you being a shrill hysterical bitch
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Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 08/07/2026
Lemme explain what the words BELIEVE WOMEN should mean. They don't mean you have to believe women no matter what. They do mean that you have to treat women as a source the same way you'd treat a man.
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Mel Brooks @officialmelbrooks.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Thank you so much for all of your happy birthday wishes. Honestly, I don’t really feel 100. I feel pretty good. I feel like I’m only 98!
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David Forbes @davidforbes.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Reviving the TNN thread on panicslop today, because the actual news is bad enough and the last thing we need is bs about how we're all going to be thrown in asylums tomorrow. Stop treating our communities as automatically powerless. We have a long history of survival and resistance.
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San Antonio Express-News @expressnews.com · 28/06/2026
He met his wife at Camp Mystic. Generations of his family attended. Then he lost his granddaughter there in the Hill Country floods. bit.ly/4etVKW4
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helen @helensmith.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
Feeling like an empty gogurt (grief genre)
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helen @helensmith.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
🧵
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Lupita Nihongo @otsumamiboy.blacksky.app · 26/06/2026
I don’t understand how now, in a time where the material suffering around us is harder to ignore than in most of our lifetimes & the reasons why are as clear as they have ever been, we still have so many for whom the very easy position of ‘we can & should help people unconditionally’ is unfathomable
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helen @helensmith.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
Subway Takes: for when you want Labov to start haunting you but don’t have the time for a seance
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Tyler, from the Internet (Haunted) @tylerfromtheinternet.com · 06/06/2026
Staying alive today is the most punk rock thing you can do, and after that it's to create things and help others. I don't care what people say, I see this on bluesky in spades every day. There is joy and comfort and hope in people's days because of you, I'm glad you're here. Thanks for existing.
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helen @helensmith.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
some of this blistering stress is due to the final stages of pulling off an intricate wedding and someone harshly asserting their professional boundaries when I inadvertently texted them about work last night, having lost all track of time, but the Spurs' missed attempts may be most to blame
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