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Curious Jon

@jmbroad.bsky.social
167 followers 369 following 238 posts

Librarian, technologist, Special Circumstances Branch. Amateur collector of difficult truths. “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.” @jmbroad@mastodon.xyz as well.

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Curious Jon @jmbroad.bsky.social · 4h
How much slack do you cut a President evidently talking himself into a… nuclear strike? some attack on civilian infrastructure? I’m sure getting shellacked in the midterms won’t further aggravate this his Dark Triad personality traits or anything
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Curious Jon @jmbroad.bsky.social · 4h
The domination and enslavement of women by men is so ancient an evil it casts a shadow over the concept of civilization itself and reasserts itself as soon as that is forgotten, as if from dormant cancer cells rendered invisible by familiarity. The personal is fucking political.
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Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 9h
There is a moment at the very very end of Abdul El-Sayed's podcast with Ezra Klein (book recommendation section) where he talks about the idea of "speaking truth to pain" and this will be staying with me for an extremely long time. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...
But there’s also something about truth to pain. We talk a lot about truth to power, but I think it’s actually a lot harder to speak truth to pain. I say that as someone who went to medical school, realizing that in a lot of our politics right now, we’ve got to get a lot better at speaking truth to pain if we’re going to get through some of these challenges that we have.

What does “truth to pain” mean?

It’s one thing to look power in the eye and say: You’re wrong about this. But there’s a way in which pain is very difficult to reason with. Because when somebody is in their pain, they’re in their trauma. They see that pain, and they may not see what’s causing it.

I remember just very explicitly being in a trauma ward with a gunshot wound patient and watching this big guy with his hand on his gunshot wound. All the folks are trying to pull his hand off his pain, that point of his gunshot wound, this clear vulnerability.

And this emergency room doctor had the presence of mind to be like: Everyone, stop. And she looks him in the eyes, and she’s like: I get that really hurts, and I’m so sorry that you’re here. You don’t want to be here. We don’t want you to be here. But if you don’t let us fix this, you could die. So I’m going to take your hand, and I’m going to move it off, OK? Because I need to get there so that you can live.

She was speaking truth to pain. He understands he’s at the hospital, he needs care, but he also doesn’t want anybody to touch the wound. Which is a natural thing. And I think it is a really great metaphor for how we think about a lot of these challenges we talked about today.
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404 Media @404media.co · 9h
The Trump administration is using a program from the 1980s to force cities around the country to funnel their ongoing Flock, Axon and other ALPR data into federal surveillance centers that fall under the White House’s jurisdiction. @jasonkoebler.bsky.social reports: www.404media.co/how-cities-a...
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Incredible. The 11th Circuit, in a 3-0 opinion (two Obama appointees and one Trump 1.0 appointee), agrees that Trump and his lawyers have failed to rebut the judge's finding that the entire IRS settlement was collusive, highlighting that no other explanation for their conduct was even offered.
IV
The appellants mount two main attacks on the district
court’s speech-related sanction. First, they argue that the court
lacked a sufficient basis to find that the lawsuit and the settlement
were collusive and that Messrs. Brito and Epstein acted in bad faith.
Second, they contend that the sanction is a broad and impermissible gag order which constitutes a prior restraint and violates the
First Amendment. We conclude that the appellants have not made
a strong showing that they will succeed on either of these grounds.The appellants did not submit or offer any evidence to explain their litigation conduct or demonstrate that the lawsuit and the settlement were not collusive. Given the record before us, the
appellants have not made a strong showing that the district court
committed clear error in its collusion and bad faith findings
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Drew McKevitt @drewmckevitt.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
It's a bit of a bummer that the story today has been "look at this absolute doofus of a senator" and not "Jack Smith once again credibly accuses the president of many serious crimes"
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Curious Jon @jmbroad.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
The Republican Party is dead as one of the two (2) parties necessary for the workings of the US constitutional order. Never-Trumpers are allies but lack a constituency. In the end, it’ll be Democrats vs. Democratic Socialists. That’s the best case! Certainly the only remaining Constitutional one.
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Theodore Grunewald @tedgrunewald.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
JCO for the win.
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Curious Jon @jmbroad.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Transparent loyalty purge.
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Curious Jon @jmbroad.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
SCOTUS deference to the irreparable harm argument when it applies to the imperial executive vs. the hundreds of thousands of people actually being disappeared into countries they’ve never known is grounds for impeachment for assenting Justices, and obviously this shadow docket bullshit must go too.
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marttikaarik.bsky.social @marttikaarik.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
"The point of a risk factor in an IPO prospectus is that, if something bad happens and your stock falls below the IPO price, shareholders will sue you for securities fraud, but if you’ve already warned them about the bad thing with reasonable specificity in a risk factor, they’ll have no case."
bloomberg.com
Is Existential Risk Securities Fraud?
Also agentic bank runs, 351 ETFs and abandoned Nvidia options.
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David Forbes @davidforbes.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Hey, remember how us radical trans extremists were warning that you have to go on the attack against transphobic Dems immediately because otherwise other politicians will take the lack of consequences as permission and the bigotry will spread? Yeah...
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Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
This is one of the most maddening thigns about this court: Not just the substantive rulings, but how they think about “irreperable harm.” If the Most Special Boy has to wait a month to do a thing he REALLY wants to, that’s irreperable harm. Actual large-scale human suffering? Meh.
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
One thing that’s interesting about this is that it shows that despite insisting the wokes overinterpet everything, conservatives are actually aware of and agree with their critics about how coded racist appeals work, they just like them bsky.app/profile/newr...
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joe @shariauncle.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
increasingly feels like my Perfectly Fine liberal arts education was an artifact grabbed fleeing a burning temple
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Justin Sherin @wychstreet.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Mike Leigh at NYFF tonight: ‘I’ve said it before, and I don’t mind saying it again: film directors who make long speeches about their film before a screening should be taken round the back & shot in the head.’
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bkmacd @bkmacd.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
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hammancheez @hammancheez.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
GOP Consultants : what do you mean she just fucking tweeted it out
Marjorie Taylor Greene
We have not seen a caravan headed to the U.S.
southern border in several years, why now?
Oh yeah, there is an election coming and the
GOP needs to scare you into voting because
nothing else is working.

Anthony Aguero Live
Over 400 aliens predominantly from
Honduras entered Mexico on Thursday,
ready to make their way to the US southern
border ... Here's footage of the caravan.
Someone is incentivizing this movement, t ...

@mt ... . 1d

@Anth ... . 1d
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Super Shoe @shoe.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
static.klipy.com
Man's Hilarious Confused Look
ALT: Man's Hilarious Confused Look
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Daniel Solove @daniel-solove.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Technological Design Is Power danielsolove.substack.com/p/technologi...
danielsolove.substack.com
Technological Design Is Power
Technological design is power.
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Andy Karlson @andykarlson.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Dr Volts understood Trump better than almost everyone else in media years ago. Trying to apply a "typical political figure" theory of mind to him is like a Matryoshka of category errors.
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tante @tante.cc · 28/09/2026
Silicon Valley brain: They literally don't understand that political action exists. Everything has to be an engineering problem or it's unsolvable. Weird broken men tante.cc/2026/09/24/the-test
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Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Mathematicians and biologists used ChatGPT and Claude for their work only for those companies to later claim AI had discovered solutions to unsolved problems similar to their work. The concern that frontier labs will use your data to compete with you is sounding more like fact than fiction.
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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
A provocative article in Rolling Stone titled "What some folks really mean when they claim to have never done the Humpty Hump."
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Tanya Floaker @floaker.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I keep saying this, but we have been in a long golden age of game creation, and it isn't done yet. I can't think of a better time to be into ttRPGs across my lifetime than now.
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ponder @ponder.ooo · 27/09/2026
so much of "alignment" rn consists of ignoring existing knowledge of how to responsibly build and manage automated systems and doing this instead:
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
This is like accusing someone of robbing a bank because they deposited money and never withdrew it
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Curious Jon @jmbroad.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
“If you know not how to die, never trouble yourself; nature will fully instruct you upon the spot; she will exactly do that business for you; take you no care.” ~Montaigne ...from John Crowley's lovely meditation on death www.laphamsquarterly.org/medicine/mid...
laphamsquarterly.org
In the Midst of Death | John Crowley
If the universe can’t outlive or transcend individual consciousness, does death even really exist?
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Brendel @brendelbored.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I feel like Arnold was the one guy to truly hold the republican line about what the great goodness of America means in his heart and when they stopped pretending to believe any of it he looked around and was like fuck it I’m Bernie I guess
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Chicago Tribune @chicagotribune.com · 25/09/2026
‘Broadview Six’ prosecutor pens fiery resignation letter saying US attorney pushed for felony charges
chicagotribune.com
‘Broadview Six’ prosecutor pens fiery resignation letter saying US attorney pushed for felony charges
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Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 25/09/2026
The first season of the HBO Perry Mason reboot is one of the best things I’ve ever seen on television, just saying, no particular reason at all.
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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I had to check just to make sure this photo wasn’t altered to make the Trumps look even more deranged and it’s not. This is real.
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John Heaton (not the World War II veteran) @jheaton416.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Who else but
Sesame Street's Grover wailing, "YOU TURNED THE PAGE!"
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weeder @weeder.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
God, grant me the courage to change the things I can and incredible new powers to change the things I can't.
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Incredible. First Secretary Mullin claimed that DHS had identified 15,903 noncitizens on Nevada’s voter roll. Then DHS officials told a skeptical Nevada, no no no, that’s just people we flagged. Here are the names of 185 people we KNOW aren’t citizens. All 185 were citizens. DHS got 100% wrong.
When the Department of Homeland Security sent Nevada a list of 185 names last month that it claimed identified noncitizens who had been improperly allowed to register to vote, state election officials got to work.
On Tuesday, the state sent a strongly worded rebuke to the federal government: Every single person on the list was a lawful citizen.
"As for the 185 individuals, our records indicate that they were citizens," Greg D. Ott, a deputy attorney general in Nevada, wrote, according to a copy of a letter sent to Department of Homeland Security officials obtained through open records requests.
"You have provided nothing of substance to suggest otherwise."Following the meeting, Ms. Vogt sent a clarifying email to Nevada officials. "I also wanted to be sure I clarified that we did not reduce the 15,903 to 185," she wrote. "We've manually reviewed some of the 15,903 and confirmed 185 are not U.S. Citizens."
Now, Nevada officials are saying even that 185 number is wrong. They also took issue with a letter D.H.S. sent them in early September, in which the agency reiterated its initial claims about nearly 16,000 noncitizens on the rolls and pressured state officials to review each case in a letter to Nevada officials in early September.
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Mrs. Detective Pikajew, Esq. @clapifyoulikeme.favrd.social · 24/09/2026
Court orders aren’t something you “defy,” they’re something you violate
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leon @leyawn.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
ceo of burger king: our burgers have gone rogue again and infected people with e coli
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Curious Jon @jmbroad.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Oh, systems thinking, eh? Rich coming from a person currently facilitating civilization-scale brain surgery sans even a theory of mind or methodology that would qualify it as experimental.
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William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
imagine being the low level govt employee reading the "sorry our demons did an oopsie" email they sent to the fucking generic contact address
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Tim Price @timprice.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
You joined "grand vizier chat (secret)" You: dark rumors from aboard You: abroad* fuck Sssnakecharmer: mf said aboard WhispersintheChapel: ahoy matey lol PonderMyOrb changed the group name to "rumors from aboard"
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Charlotte Garden @charlottegarden.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
OMG
Mr Albanese said he had a "frank" discussion with OpenAI's chief executive Sam Altman, saying the company took three months to notify the government of the breach and, when it did, the notification was in an email sent to the Services Australia public inbox.
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Cheryl Lynn Eaton @cheryllynneaton.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Let me show you something Boomers were 100% right about:
Werther's Original candies
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roy 朗井 @live.from.roys.house · 23/09/2026
btw i think the reason i like magical sigils and worlds based around them is because magical sigils are actually real. you open up a satellite LNB and what you find is shapes wrought from metal to manipulate unseen forces. you can't tell me they're not magical sigils
picture of the inside of a satellite low-noise block downconverter (LNB), the circuit in the focal point of a satellite TV dish. this one's a rectangular metal case with inside of it a printed circuit board full of gold-plated traces. many have strange shapes you wouldn't find in other electronics. scientifically you might call them microstrip filters, but really they're nothing more than a well-understood magical rune
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TW @twesq.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
this is fantastic and I learned something new
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TED 🇺🇸 @epicureandealmaker.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
For those of you who saw this unsourced screen grab, here is the source: bsky.app/profile/that... Support the artists who made it; e.g., @thatpetewoods.bsky.social.
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 23/09/2026
i think you can fairly say that the second trump administration is the most racist federal administration since woodrow wilson and honestly i'm not sure that it isn't more racist than wilson's
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 23/09/2026
Renee Good's mom: "I am a registered Republican. I voted for President Trump under the impression that these agents were here to protect citizens -- innocents like our family and the others here. Certainly not to accuse those of us here of being terrorists and take precious lives. This is madness."
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Rosemary Mosco @rosemarymosco.com · 22/09/2026
Happy mushroom season!
A comic titled "Types of mushrooms" with 12 mushroom species. A wrinkly-looking morel is labeled "creepy but tasty". A brownish deadly galerina is labeled "boring but deadly". A witch's butter on a branch is labeled "jiggles if you poke it". A large puffball is labeled "egg". A creepy red-dripping bleeding tooth fungus is labeled "deeply disconcerting". A fly agaric with a green treefrog sitting under it is labeled "frog umbrella". A black chanterelle is labeled "chalice for forbidden elixers". Three straight-stemmed entolomas are labeled "haha, nipples". A bright purple viscid violet cort is labeled "purple is nice". A birch polypore sticking out of a birch trunk is labeled "tree nose". A complex yellow-tpped coral fungus is labeled "cursed citadel where dwells a fairy queen". A Ravenel's stinkhorn is pixellated at the top for your safety, and labeled "NSFW".
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evacide @evacide.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
German agencies use the linked-device features in WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram to receive messages without breaking encryption. cybernews.com/privacy/poli...
cybernews.com
German police read WhatsApp messages without cracking encryption
45 days of Signal history may be exposed by German police messaging surveillance using linked devices, Netzpolitik says. Read what the documents reveal
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