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Irina

@irinam.bsky.social
1.3K followers 1.2K following 2.5K posts

Wish I could just be writing or in nature with my creatures but fasc-flavored technofeudalism or whatever. 🇺🇦 Слава Україні! 🪖🚫 No tribes Mom of 2 🐕 and a 🦜+ some humans 👩‍🏫 Phil prof 🌎 From everywhere and nowhere, currently the North of the South

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Irina @irinam.bsky.social · 2h
This is quite good actually
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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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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Wilber Rafael Garces Perez was shot by ICE 10 days ago. The bullet is still lodged in his back. He’s been forced to sleep on the floor and hasn’t been given medication, according to his attorney. Now DHS is claiming he assaulted an agent. Can we trust anything DHS says given its track record?
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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 27/09/2026
The bizarre culture that’s sprung up around Silicon Valley AI companies - which overlaps hugely with rationalist and effective altruist circles - appears to be seriously pressuring some women into attending sex parties for the sake of networking. This is, needless to say, horrifying.
taco belle
@ animalologist
Multiple things can be true at once
22h
The purpose of SlutCon is to help ease men who are scared of approaching women, and for women who simply enjoy flirting to be in an environment where that happens a lot, since there's generally a dearth of that
At the same time, many - probably most! - women do Not want to be flirted with or propositioned by men they don't know. When a small scene only has a handful of large, well-known events, each one has disproportionate impact on everybody's ideas of acceptable behavior among other members of their milieu.
Attending the same events = specific shared context. Means
you're somewhat on the same page.
I suspect that the men who publicly raised concerns about SlutCon's impact on the scene are being megaphones for private objections and distresses they've heard from women in the scene who would NOT be comfortable at an event like that, but who don't voice it publicly because they suspect they'd suffer socially for doing so. That going to SlutCon to be flirted with gives women social cachet, and squirming at the idea means you're [not cool, can't get with the program, are probably a wokescold or a prude etc etc other pejoratives] and therefore, that you'll be excluded or held at a distance
Now, if this scene were purely a social scene, that'd be perfectly fine. Don't go to parties that don't suit you!! The issue arises because it's NOT purely a social scene. This scene is inarguably tied up with Al safety, research, and the SF tech scene in general.
When consistently being invited to the right parties is professionally advantageous, and when SlutCon itself **is** going to be an excellent networking opportunity for people in those fields, it's not neutral that {sexual proclivities} are the filtering mechanism that determines who's in the room. It means that promiscuity & forwardness is explicitly professionally advantageous.
And, if the norms of SlutCon influence the norms of that milieu outside of the e…My suspicion is that men come out of the event more bold, more forward, and with the expectation that events attended by former flirt-girls are fair game for SlutCon-style forwardness. This creates a hostile environment for women who just want to socialize and work with these men, without being propositioned. And without pretending that they're cool with being sexualized for the sake of their inclusion in the scene.
I don't think we have solutions yet, but it's important that we can talk about it, at least.
Jakeup • @ myhandle
Sep 25
the purpose of SlutCon is to help men who are scared of women to start liking women, by putting them in proximity to women who like men and aren't scared of men
I'm not attending or involved in any way, but this is very aligned to my own mission and I'm rooting for their success
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Governor Josh Stein @ncgovernor.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
In honor of Dolly Parton’s life and work, it is an honor to proclaim 9/25 “9 to 5 Day – or Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library Day of Reading.” Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library has helped millions of children discover the joy of reading, including more than 240,000 children across North Carolina.
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Alison Willmore @alisonwillmore.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Blood boys OVER we’re out here Renfieldmaxxing now
He’s on a quest to live forever.
Mr. Emanuel’s morning routine involves waking up at 4 a.m., stretching for 40 minutes and then doing breath work, sauna, meditation, an ice plunge and infrared light therapy before ingesting a protein shake and a cup of live worms to fight off “the bad bacteria in my gut.” He describes a recent lunch with his old CAA boss, Michael Ovitz. Mr. Emanuel writes: “He goes to the gym; he thinks that means he’s taking care of himself. But it doesn’t. I scold him. He hasn’t gotten his blood work done in years, he isn’t doing ice plunges, he isn’t doing daily breath work, he isn’t fasting. And he needs to be eating worms.”
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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Oligarchs. The word for very rich businesspeople directly connected to the top of the government and playing a role in high-level government functions is “oligarchs.” Way beyond lobbying, donating, and advisory councils. Trump brought them on his trip to China too. America has oligarchs now.
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Radley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
"RKF took money earmarked to provide health care for Black infants and spent it on his personal security detail" is a ludicrous headline. Comic book villainy.
wsj.com
Exclusive | RFK Jr.’s Enhanced Security Was Funded With Money From Minority Health Office
The cost of the health secretary’s security grew from roughly $10 million in fiscal year 2025 to $17 million in fiscal year 2026.
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
In 9 months, Zohran Mamdani has: -Secured millions in worker restitution from DoorDash and UberEats -Launched the first stage of his universal childcare program -Cracked down on bad landlords -Balanced NYC's budget without cutting major social services This is what leadership looks like.
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g0m @g0m.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
A world where a twist ending is repurposed as a video title. where a thing's climax has been removed, leaving an advertisment for the gap where it used to be. such things are commonplace in. the twilight zone
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Seth Masket @smotus.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Oh fuck
cpr.org
‘Just a big rock pile:’ St. Mary’s Glacier has melted
An abnormally hot summer following record snow drought has melted one Colorado’s most iconic natural landmarks.
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merr-itt came from outer space @merrittk.com · 20/09/2026
going back in time to tell my teenage secular atheist self that when the war comes i am fighting on the side of the pope against the libidinous rationalist forces
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 19/09/2026
“our ai broke out and hacked some organisations” = "we failed to set up appropriate safeguards, failed to continuously monitor our experiments, and ignored a basic principle of reinforcement learning: if hacking gets rewarded, the system learns to hack"
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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Fears of small AI drones autonomously killing civilians are a great example of this distortion. People are using small drones to kill civilians. Right now! I'm not saying no one should ever think about the possibility—I've written about it—but way more should focus on what's already happening.
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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 19/09/2026
It’s people - not AI systems - who are choosing to murder civilians with small drones at ever escalating rates around the world, as I recently wrote about with Yale’s Nathaniel Raymond for @foreignpolicy.com:
foreignpolicy.com
Civilians Need Better Protections in the Drone Age
Hunting noncombatants from the sky is growing disturbingly common.
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Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
GENEVA (AP) — UN-backed human rights experts find 'reasonable grounds' to believe US committed war crimes in 2 deadly strikes on Iran.
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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 17/09/2026
Great piece illustrating how sick, sad, and depraved the "effective altruist" movement - which is extremely intermeshed with the massively powerful U.S. AI industry - has become.
strangecosmos.substack.com
The sad decline of effective altruism
A once wholesome and inspiring movement has become entangled with cults and has lost years chasing dead-end ideas
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SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
This all most recently came together over the weekend, and they got Dario Amodei and Sam Altman and Elon Musk and Demis Hassabis all onto the same page to say they wanted to WAIVE ANTI-TRUST LAWS so that they could "pace", or slow down, research.
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Irina @irinam.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Omg
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Allison Gill @muellershewrote.com · 16/09/2026
NEW: Judge Sullivan isn't buying Todd Blanche's excuses for refusing to hand over handwritten FBI notes underlying four Epstein survivor FBI interviews. He's ordered Blanche to hand them over for in camera review by 9/24. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
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Simon Rosenberg @simonwdc.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Under his eye.....
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Alan Elrod @aselrod.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
I’m going to keep making this point: liberalism vs the far right is the defining fight of our era. It’s not going away easily or soon. Yes, we can win. But I’m sick and tired of all the obituaries every time Le Pen, Farage, et al face a setback. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/s...
theguardian.com
Far-right AfD wins key German state election but may fail to secure majority
Exit poll shows Alternative für Deutschland on 44.5% of vote in Saxony-Anhalt after huge turnout, with votes still being counted
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Irina @irinam.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
#Monarch
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Irina @irinam.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Everyone enjoy this photo that my 5 year old took this week.
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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Past 72 hours. 🇺🇸 @cnbc.com @bloomberg.com www.cnbc.com/2026/09/04/w...
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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 04/09/2026
An incredible image, and overall winner of this year's Australian Geographic Nature Photography award. Using a DJI Mavic 3 Pro (drone), Matt Deakin captured an extremely rare moment - seeing a critically endangered Sawfish in the wild and passing by a Turtle, off the Pilbara coast in WA.
Aerial image of a Sawfish as it swims below and past a turtle
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
We are projected to spend $268 BILLION on deportations — costing the average American taxpayer about $2,358 (according to @epi.org). But somehow we “can’t afford” to make sure hungry children can eat or ensure everyone, no matter their income, can access healthcare. Priorities.
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Steve Vladeck @stevevladeck.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
The Trump administration has filed 36 emergency applications since last February, which have generated 31 conclusive rulings. In those 31 rulings, the Court has voted *for* Trump in whole or in part 27 times (87.1%), and against him four times (12.9%). Here's a chart covering all of these rulings:
A (messy) Excel spreadsheet tracking all of the Trump administration's emergency applications, when they were filed, when they were decided, what kind of ruling they produced, and how each justice voted.
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Ryan Goodman @rgoodlaw.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Extraordinary, powerful and heart-wrenching. Active duty Marine Colonel Zach Schmidt, speaking in his personal capacity, about Khalil, an Afghan national whose family helped U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Khalil was deported by the U.S. on Friday to a conflict zone.
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Food companies wanted deregulation. Now there are dozens of recalls across the country. Mining companies wanted deregulation. Now the black lung rate is at a 45-year high. Financial companies wanted deregulation. Now financial losses to fraud are the highest on record. Noticing a pattern?
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Stephanie Carvin @stephaniecarvin.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Wake up, babe. The Prime Minister just dropped “hydronym”.
The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big”.

The name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.

We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms. 

Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario – then, now and always.
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Jen Rubin @jenrubin.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Canada Hires 48 Scholars Away From Top U.S. Universities ... Trump and MAGA are making US dumber, 2nd rate power www.nytimes.com/2026/08/27/w...
nytimes.com
Canada Hires U.S. Scholars From Harvard and Other Top Universities
A crackdown on American academia by the Trump administration has handed Canadian universities a rare opportunity to lure some top researchers north.
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Mark Hamill @markhamillofficial.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
So much more than a Country Music Superstar. Philanthropist, humanitarian, defender of diversity & fierce advocate for the working class, she helped fund the Moderna Covid vaccine & donated 332+ million books to children. Thank you, Dolly. We will always love you.♥️ #RIP
shorturl.at
Dolly Parton, Hardscrabble Storyteller Turned Global Entertainer, Dead at 80
Dolly Parton, country music legend, dead at 80.
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Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
A man who aided US authorities by testifying against Mexican cartels was illegally removed *three times* in recent weeks — including to Mexico, where he had protection from deportation due to threat of torture/death. A judge in MD has ordered his return. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
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Jennifer Shin - WTAF @jennifershin.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
When science wins over ignorance...
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Adam Kinzinger @adamkinzinger.substack.com · 24/08/2026
I have had multiple Air Guard/Reserve pilots/aircrew reach out to me about the deployment rates and lengths. Guardsmen and reservists are part time, and have civilian jobs. Retention in the flying ranks is going to be atrocious, and they were already down pilots and aircrew. More this week
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Irina @irinam.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
That feeling when you come across old photos of long-lost drawings. (2011-2013ish)
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Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Most of our current awful policies are attributable to either simple corruption or gutter racism, but a shocking amount of the remainder comes down to “Some guy told Trump a random crackpot thing, he decided it was true, and no amount of evidence or argument can disabuse him of it.”
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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 14/08/2026
Two married professors and their son are being held in ICE detention, despite being legal permanent residents and having no criminal records. All, apparently, because their mom/MIL was a translator for the Iranian hostage takers in 1979, before they were even born. www.thenation.com/article/soci...
thenation.com
One Woman’s Message From the Hell of ICE Detention
My husband, son, and I have been locked up for months—despite being permanent residents with no criminal record. It is an unendurable, unending nightmare.
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Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 12/08/2026
Incredible. When E—n M—k & his crew obliterated USAID in a weekend, they deleted a vast trove of publicly-funded knowledge: the Development Experience Clearinghouse. A Canadian high school student (!) happened to have downloaded the entire thing for a project. AidData has now posted it for all.
aiddata.org
Before reimagining development data, remember what we’ve learned
Why we’re publishing a free, searchable, and ungated archive featuring a quarter-century of USAID evaluation reports.
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Brian Finucane @bcfinucane.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
"When I asked current and former U.S. officials what had to be done to win, the most common first response was a primal scream of sorts that translated into, “We never should have started this war.” That was followed by: “What do you mean by ‘win’?” Pretty much. www.politico.com/news/magazin...
politico.com
The Iran War is a Whole New Level of Quagmire for the US
There are three main camps emerging with proposals, all of which have downsides.
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Matt Pearce @mattdpearce.com · 11/08/2026
I’m learning that the people who gamified paragraphs are having trouble reading books. www.axios.com/2026/08/11/r...

AXIOS

Al has become my reading buddy as I've plowed through my summer book list, helping me keep track of plots and characters, unpack themes, and make sense of wordy, old prose.
• Why it matters: The way many of us actually read books - a few pages before bed, a chapter at the beach, another on a plane - makes it easy to lose the thread. Al can help you pick it back up without starting over.
Ш I really got into using Al while reading James Fenimore Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans." The text was far too dense for casual vacation reading. My first prompt asked:
• "T'd like a guide as I read The Last of the Mohicans who can help me understand what I've read and where the story is, without giving spoilers or getting ahead of my progress. Can you do this, chapter by chapter?"
• The robot agreed: "Cooper's sentences are long and his diction is archaic."
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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 11/08/2026
every day, every hour, brings us images that are totally beyond the powers of parody
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Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
Take away the black fish and you get the John Birch Society ca. 1962. Change the label on the black fish to “the Jews” and you get the American Nazi Party or Gerald LK Smith ca. 1962.
Oregon Republican Party reposting a meme depicting four fish eating each other, islamists eating communists which are eating the DSA which is eating the Democrats.
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 09/08/2026
El-Sayed: "Imagine if instead of paying that to your health insurance company, whose CEO makes $20m a year, you paid a little bit more in taxes for healthcare you wouldn't lose. I think all of us would a lot more interested in that system if we knew our healthcare would be free at point of care"
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Colette Delawalla, PhD @cdelawalla.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
OK FOLKS! We all know the Fauci hearing was meant to intimidate scientists…holding him in contempt of court was a HUGE BAD PRECEDENT. So, we are yelling. @standupforscience.net SIGN OUT PETITION TO SENATE TO REVERSE HOLDING DR FAUCI IN CONTEMPT: zurl.co/SLjT8
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Seva @seva.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
imagine the arrogance it takes to be a marine mammal. you crawl out of the vast dark ocean and onto green sunny land and decide to crawl back in again?
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Sneering about the "faculty lounge" is deeply funny. Most departments don't have one, but if they do, it's like a wall of mailboxes, a coffee maker and maybe a mini-fridge. You're basically sneering about the break room on The Office. "Oooh, look who has a *vending* machine! Excuse me, m'lord!"
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Bryce Covert @brycecovert.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Yikes. Women accounted for all of the job losses and all of the labor force decline in July, according to @nwlc.org
WASHINGTON — Women accounted for 100 percent of the decline in the labor force in July, according to a National Women’s Law Center jobs analysis of monthly data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That brings the total net number of women who have left the labor force since January this year to 845,000. In comparison, there are 406,000 fewer men in the labor force now than in January. 

A total of 165,000 women, aged 20 and over, left the labor force last month — meaning they are neither working nor looking for work — while men's labor force participation was unchanged. Overall, the economy lost 23,000 jobs in July. Women accounted for all of these losses, losing 32,000 jobs, while men gained 9,000 jobs. Women make up 50.1% of the workforce.
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