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Luminiferous Aether

@luminiferousaether.bsky.social
175 followers 282 following 142 posts

An occasional birder, a constant reader, and a general dork.

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Luminiferous Aether @luminiferousaether.bsky.social · 10h
Congress has so many funding levers over the Court, all the way down to their access to A/C. How long do you think SCOTUS would last in DC summer before deciding maybe they weren’t lords over us all?
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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 12h
There is nothing at all in the Constitution about how many Justices there must be, let alone that Congress must fund a building, clerks, etc. If the Wizards want to play Calvinball with the law & the words in the Constitution, then Congress can & should play hardball with all the stuff that isn’t.
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Moira Donegan @moiradonegan.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
You know when public attention can reverse a prosecutorial decision like this you almost get the sense that the decision to shrug it off in the first place was not based on an assessment of the quality of the evidence so much as an assessment of the seriousness of the crime.
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Kylie Cheung @kylietcheung.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I can't recommend @nbedera.bsky.social's book 'On the Wrong Side' enough. I interviewed her in 2024, this part really stuck with me. Rapists often don't just not face consequences but reap benefits bc the school is so sorry for even investigating them/afraid of seeming 'biased':
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Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈 @joshlukedavis.com · 27/09/2026
what pisses me off about the endless conversations on how to develop and scale carbon capture is that we already know of a very good way to do this: bogs if a company was really interested in capturing carbon, they'd simply pump lots of money into peatland and bog restoration projects, and yet...
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Seth Masket @smotus.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
That's a full 0.5" of direct democracy
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Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Fuck ChatGPT flyers. The future is broadsheets.
A crowded broadsheet with way too many fonts. It says:
Forget ChatGPT Flyers
Say it with 
Broadsheets
Unlimited fonts
Stretch them
Or cram a really long sentence into one line for no good reason
No whitespace
Mix capital and lowercase
Pointing hands
(They're called manicules!)
Don't be left behind
Broadsheets are the future
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Bryan 🌐 🇺🇦 Slava Ukraine personal opinions only @papootx.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
What Happened Texans renewing a driver's license or state ID online could register to vote in the same DPS portal. DPS didn't properly process those applications, so counties never got them. County officials say the backlog goes back to October 2025 — almost a year of voters in limbo.
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Sophie Carr @sophiecarr.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
A turquoise iceberg on Fellsfjara beach at Jökulsárlón in south-east #Iceland on a very stormy day back in Feb 2022.
A very turquoise iceberg on a beach with long exposure slowing the waves a little. Black sand beach to bottom left and very grey stormy skies above.
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David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
“That’s right: We can no longer have towering, absurdly hirsute, functionally deranged drainpipes made from bears murdered with medieval weaponry on the heads of our rigidly immobile palace guards, because of Woke.” Amazing. Read the footnotes.
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David Ryan Miller @davidryanmiller.com · 25/09/2026
If the ballroom construction is such a sensitive national security matter, why is Trump inviting the Chinese delegation on a tour???
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David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈 @whysharksmatter.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Have you ever tried to read a scientific journal article and been told “you don’t have access, pay to download this article?” Did you know that the author of that article gets $0 if you pay? Instead, you can email the author and ask for a free copy! I’d be delighted to help and answer questions!
Screenshot of a scientific journal paywall
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Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
🚨Susan Collins at the center of a donations for contracts scheme that the feds were investigating until Trump returned to office and purged FBI/DOJ www.propublica.org/article/fbi-...
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
NEW: @apnews.com confirms that ICE has begun electronically "disappearing" people in the agency's custody who have final orders of removal. As of last week, anyone jailed by ICE with a final order of removal will NOT appear in the ICE Online Detainee Locator System, making them effectively vanish.
apnews.com
AP Exclusive: ICE hides locations of thousands of detainees with final removal orders
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has stopped publicly revealing where it is holding most detainees who are subject to final deportation orders, in a move that has made it harder for lawyers an...
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Sara Pritchard @sarabpritchard.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Delighted to share that I'll be on @askhistorians.bsky.social to talk #ArtificialLight #LightPollution #Night #Darkness 🌌💡🌃🛰️ tomorrow, 9/22 -- the day that #TransformingNight drops! 🥳🤩 #envhist #envhum #histtech #histsci #sts #histSTM
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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 20/09/2026
when the fascists say we just need to get rid of people, if your response is to argue about which people and how, you have already stepped into their frame to play their game of make believe you need to eat their frame: nobody goes!
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Imani Gandy @angryblacklady.blacksky.app · 20/09/2026
I just honestly can't get over that Save Women Sports, an anti-trans group could only find five trans athletes competing K through 12. Five. The NCAA president testified a year and a half ago or so that there were less than 10 college level trans athletes. What the fuck are we doing, people
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The Denver Post @denverpost.com · 19/09/2026
St. Mary’s Glacier is gone. Colorado’s ongoing drought and record-hot summer, which scientists attribute to global warming, caused the snowfield to completely melt for the first time in at least 100 years.
denverpost.com
St. Mary’s Glacier melted away. Will Colorado’s iconic snowfield ever return?
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
make the John Brown season of Reacher you cowards
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BoulderCAST Weather 🏔️⛈️ @bouldercast.com · 19/09/2026
St Mary's snowfield will likely return annually, as the terrain is favorable to collect/shade snow despite its low elevation. But will it go another 100+ years without disappearing? Not a chance.
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Sarah Gilbert @sarahagilbert.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
This article by @nathaliemarechal.net couldn't be better timed. My mum was asking me the other day if she should trust the bros' calls for regulation, so I sent this to her today for more background to my answer: no. This is such a great, detailed primer about what's actually driving the tech bros
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Comfortably Numb @numb.comfortab.ly · 18/09/2026
Post from Amy @lolennui.bsky.social

So cool that whenever someone asks the president, "did you eat the Lindbergh baby" he's like, "no but I'd be allowed to, I have the right to, I might do it later"
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The Onion @theonion.com · 18/09/2026
Trans Teen Hatches Nefarious Plot To Undergo Years Of Medical Treatments And Counseling To Win At Swimming theonion.com/trans-teen-hatches-nef…
Trans Teen Hatches Nefarious Plot To Undergo Years Of Medical Treatments And Counseling To Win At Swimming
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 18/09/2026
RFK Jr. wants people to get sick. He wants them to get sick and he thinks it is a good thing if they die, since those who live will have "natural immunity" and emerge stronger and fitter.
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Chase Woodruff @chasewoodruff.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Well this is very weird: Phil Anschutz's Gazette appears to have published a pro-Amendment 87 piece by sponsor Chris Kennedy earlier today, but the link now 404s and there's no trace of it on either the Denver or Colorado Springs Gazette websites.
Google results page showing cached version of "GUEST OPINION: Graduated tax pushes back on growing inequality" in the Colorado Springs Gazette404 page on Denvergazette.com
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Jacqueline Antonovich @jackiantonovich.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
The last time the U.S. reported 4 measles deaths was in 1992.
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Micah @rincewind.run · 14/09/2026
I’m so good at not watching television I don’t watch television all the time I was made for this
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Hannah Riley Fernandez @hannahcrileyy.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Georgia is set to execute a man named Stacey Humphreys in 3 days. 11 of his jurors voted for life without parole; the one holdout altered the foreperson’s note to the judge to hide the deadlock (!!) - because under Georgia law, a deadlock in a capital case automatically means a life sentence.
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A New Reconstruction @burleyzack.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Colorado Dems been going about countering this all wrong. They keep offering deals to limit the # of bad measures on the ballot, but I say load up the ballot with counterpunches. They run a tax cut? Put three tax the rich proposals out there. Make clear the consequences of escalation.
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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
If Hugo continues to grow at this rate, by 2030 he will no longer fit in the barn. By 2050 he will have grown to the size of Godzilla and could crush humanity. But if we let the Chinese grow their own Hugo first that would be bad. This is why we must invest 100 trillion dollars in Hugo immediately.
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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Making a Hugo Haters labeler to tune out neighsayers claiming Hugo is "just a horse" and "can't save and/or destroy the planet." It is early days and the technology is constantly getting better. Those kinks will get ironed out somehow. We are asking the entire food supply to be redirected to Hugo.
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Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
For those who are new, Joe DiGenova has spent the last 30 years baselessly accusing Democrats of committing crimes. If he is saying publicly the Trump administration pushed him out because he wouldn’t bring cases because there was no evidence, things are really bad.
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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Protect trans kids.
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Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
I really wish more Dems would go meta on this and ask whose interests it serves that candidates for the United States Senate are being asked about how they would micromanage the eligibility rules for local youth sports leagues.
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Jake Laperruque @jakelaperruque.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Someone could write an awesome book on the evolution of American politics over the past two decades centered around the divergence of Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla
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SK Winnicki, PhD 🏳️‍⚧️ @skwinnicki.bsky.social · 07/09/2024
pleased to report I saw the gigantic snapping turtle for a second day in a row, and it is still hanging out with the Great Egret it almost looks like the egret is preferentially following the turtle around, snagging fish that it stirs up
Four photos of a large Common Snapping Turtle in a shallow wetland with a large white wading bird
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Lee Cronin’s Pablo Hidalgo @infinata.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Comic Sans saying “well well well look who comes back begging…” Seriously, I miss clip-art flyers.
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Patrick Wyman @patrickwyman.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Realizing the extent to which this is true wildly changed my opinions about how to deal with Trumpism, since they're never going to be satisfied unless they're actively dominating everyone else. You can't give them some concessions and go back to the status quo: they're reactionary revolutionaries.
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Jamie : ジェイミー : dʒeɪmiː @jspieve.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
And, if the future role of mathematicians is just to validate machine-generated proofs, why would anyone want to be a mathematician? Surely, the point of (pure) mathematics is _doing_ it, not just the results you get
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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 07/09/2026
Speaking of plagiarism: www.scientificamerican.com/article/open...
scientificamerican.com
OpenAI’s latest math breakthroughs commit research misconduct, experts say
OpenAI released 10 AI-generated results over the weekend. Some mathematicians are unhappy with their approach
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Rosemary Mosco @rosemarymosco.com · 06/09/2026
I’m going to need everyone who’s reporting on AI psychosis and how it’s making people, especially men, come up with theories of everything to please talk with the scientists who have been getting multiple emails from “theory of everything” guys for decades
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Martha Smith @mostlymartha.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Teenage girls rocking the roof off are so important.
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Patrick @watchinthesky.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
I hear it’s #NationalHummingbirdDay! They have flight feather structures that can play games with sunlight in the right conditions. #birds #RainbowWings
From a year ago, an image of a hummingbird in flight with a rainbow of colors seen in one wing that is backlit by the late afternoon sun.
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Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
This “game” on the White House website, a version of Snake where you play as a white man in a suit and you run around picking up identifiably black, Asian, and Latino men and putting them in orange jumpsuits, might be the most openly white supremacist thing I’ve ever seen the US government produce
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 02/09/2026
i think the "flyover country deserves representation" is a low-key strong talking point. "we don't want a court dominated by harvard and yale."
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Patrick Wyman @patrickwyman.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
It doesn't really sink in how insane the Roman Empire was until you write a sentence like "We have the skeleton of a man in York who was bitten by a lion."
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
So many of the supposed divides in the Democratic caucus simply boil down to "this one will fight for all of us, this one will not" and for the past two years Team Fight is sweeping the board.
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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 29/08/2026
I would watch this
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Janet Hill @saskajanet.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Went for a little bird walk on campus. Not too many birds but there was this Hummingbird Clearwing Moth (Air Shrimp!). Excellent compromise for a birder during #invertefest 😂
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