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matpolu.bsky.social

@matpolu.bsky.social
383 followers 337 following 268 posts
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The Quigadook @quiggy.itch.io · 3h
I really need to make it clear to folks that AI-generated code closely resembles AI-generated text, by which I mean it is syntactically correct, easy to produce, and can approach what a human can make, but very clearly lacks the forethought and holistic nature of when a skilled human makes it.
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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 07/10/2026
Spectrum Allocation xkcd.com/3307/
Comic: Modern Spectrum Allocation Chart. [Long line of rectangles of different widths in shades of gray. From top to bottom: radio (shouting), TV test patterns, 1G cellular, radio (music), radio (static), reserved for zeppelin navigation, TV channels 2, 5, 7-13, 16, 17, and 28 with 2G cellular in between, interference, WKRP in Cincinnati, spaceship beeps, all other TV, car dealership ads, numbers stations, weather balloons, amateur radio, HAM radio, “weather balloons”, *Choosing Texas* 24/7, [extra large rectangle] boat captains say they need this for something and we don’t ask what because they’re scary, the secret radio waves that make planes stay up, defunct satellite phone company, radioastronomy, radioastrology, [extra small rectangle] all modern wireless infrastructure, death rays, LoFi hip hop beats to relax/study to, security guard walkie talkies, amateur military satellites, left open in case aliens try to call, one brand of garage door openers with a lot of political pull.]
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Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.org · 04/10/2026
“We are in the second quantum revolution,” said Riccardo Comin, an experimental physicist at MIT. “Now, we have the tools to really explore the wave function of quantum particles.” www.quantamagazine.org/first-map-ma…
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The Washington Post @washingtonpost.com · 04/10/2026
After months of trying to find a new buyer, farmers in Pennsylvania and New York are preparing to let their grapes fall to the ground. The crisis threatens to reshape local economies as grape farmers come to terms with shifting consumer behavior.
washingtonpost.com
‘Dying on the vine’: How a farmer ended up with 1,600 tons of unwanted grapes
Falling demand for juice has left Lake Erie grape growers with fruit they can’t sell.
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WarTranslated (Dmitri) @wartranslated.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Russians tried hauling a helicopter across a field on a limousine and, unsurprisingly, it didn’t go to plan. Wonderland.
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Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.org · 03/10/2026
What guides a bat’s internal compass? It’s not the stars in the sky, or the Earth’s magnetic field. www.quantamagazine.org/how-animals-…
quantamagazine.org
How Animals Build a Sense of Direction | Quanta Magazine
Researchers documented the activity of neurons that shape directional navigation as bats explored a remote island off the coast of Tanzania.
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Washington Post Data Team @wpdatateam.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Since President Trump took over the Kennedy Center, the institution has borrowed everything its bank would lend it, dipped into money donors had given on the condition it never be spent and written off pledges from supporters who stopped paying. By @federicacocco.bsky.social & @naemas.bsky.social:
washingtonpost.com
The Kennedy Center was solvent when Trump took over. Then its finances collapsed.
The Post examined 15 years of the institution’s financial records to see why it went south after the president took over.
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Annie Waldman @anniewaldman.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
NEW: As Trump’s White House and influencers keep touting the unproven benefits of raw milk, hundreds across the country are falling ill from outbreaks. Some people get severe indigestion. And some nearly die. Here's the story of one toddler who drank it. 🧵👇 www.propublica.org/article/cali...
propublica.org
A Girl Nearly Died After Drinking Raw Milk. The State Did Little to Punish the Unlicensed Farmer Who Sold It.
California is teeming with black-market dairies, propped up by consumer demand fueled by misinformation. With evidence against one raw goat milk farm, regulators could have sought punitive action. But...
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Mark Hamill @markhamillofficial.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
The best birthday present imaginable. #DollyDay 💖
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Squeegy Beckinheim🇨🇦 @blackbird76.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Good article by mother jones. This one hits home as I had a niece and friends living here during this massacre. AI needs to be heavily regulated.
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Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.org · 23/09/2026
Tensors are instrumental in physics, machine learning and even biology. Einstein once begged a friend to help him understand them, fearing he was going mad. www.quantamagazine.org/the-geometri…
twitter.com
Quanta Magazine (@QuantaMagazine) on X
Tensors are instrumental in physics, machine learning and even biology. Einstein once begged a friend to help him understand them, fearing he was going mad. Joseph Howlett explains how they work: https://t.co/OAkmeNPoEl
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Your Internet Friend Tom Tomorrow @tomtomorrow.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
new toon: large language muddle www.dailykos.com/stories/2026...
dailykos.com
Large language muddle
A cartoon by Tom Tomorrow.
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The New York Times @nytimes.com · 21/09/2026
Internal emails and documents obtained by The New York Times demonstrate President Trump’s political capture of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, including how officials once pursued a plan to unload much of the art collection. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/u...
Debris from fallen ceiling plaster soiled the carpet in the Grand Foyer inside the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. A headline reads: "How President Trump Broke the Kennedy Center." Photo by Salwan Georges for The New York Times.
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PBS News @pbsnews.org · 19/09/2026
Thousands of people joined outside the Kennedy Center on Friday to protest President Donald Trump's plans for the facility, lending their voices to a chorus of organizations and individuals who have been horrified that he might close and tear down the storied institution. to.pbs.org/4y44oln
to.pbs.org
Thousands join protest outside Kennedy Center, expressing concern that Trump might tear it down
Friday's event followed a tumultuous week in federal courts in Washington where filings and counter-filings flooded the courts as the administration continues pushing for the president’s vanity projec...
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Mother Jones @motherjones.com · 19/09/2026
Just as not all communities are rolling over for data centers, not all newsrooms are sitting back and letting AI steal our content. Some of us are fighting back.
motherjones.com
We’re suing ChatGPT—and Trump just got involved.
Guess whose side he's on.
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Clara Jeffery @clarajeffery.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
So great that Uber (especially) lured people into fares that undercut cabs, and now that the few cabs that used to exist in SF are no more, an Uber fee when you really need it is like $50 bucks for anywhere.
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Peter Sagal @petersagal.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
I'd post it, but I have no idea if anybody under 60 would even get it. Among other things, you have to have seen Gone With the Wind, which may have -- for Reasons -- gone out of fashion.
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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 14/09/2026
The AI industry wants to seem like it's responsible, and so, it's now talking about a "slowdown," because it distracts from the fact that LLMs are inherently flawed and the people running model labs are not people who should be trusted. www.wheresyoured.at/ai-is-alread...
The way that LLMs have been trained is harmful in effectively every way. It is trained on theft, powered by expensive and power-intensive infrastructure and is both unprofitable and unsustainable. LLMs are not the tool for any kind of beautiful, automated future — they are inefficient, volatile and mathematically certain to make mistakes. “Slowing down” is not sufficient. In my opinion, there is no further reason to invest in this industry, nor has there been for the vast majority of its existence. 

Every success that LLMs have had is a direct result of throwing at least half a trillion dollars in infrastructure and compute spend at problems that had vast amounts of data that could be trained against. Half a trillion dollars should have bought us a lot more than this. While I will not dispute that they can do more than a year ago, I am unimpressed, because this is more than ten times what Amazon’s entire capex between 2003 and 2015, the years between AWS’ creation and when it hit profitability. 

This is a terrible deal, its results suck, and the amount of attention it’s gotten is a direct result of the media’s inability to speak truth to power or do anything other than repeat what they say and a financial bubble driven by LLMs’ unbelievable infrastructural cost.If — and this is not a foregone conclusion — there is ever an AI that we, as a society, should fund and build infrastructure for in pursuit of some civic good, it is not the one peddled by Elon Musk, Sam Altman or Dario Amodei. 

This is not the right path, and every further step down it makes the bubble’s collapse worse, as well as multiplying the dangerous and reckless experiments these companies are capable of doing thanks to their near-unlimited access to compute.
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Mother Jones @motherjones.com · 14/09/2026
For viewers eager to condemn the Proud Boys, the documentary, Homegrown, replaces moral distance with something more uncomfortable: the idea that these men are not extraordinary.
motherjones.com
The Proud Boys next door
"Homegrown" digs into American extremism—and argues it's far more familiar than we let on.
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Nigel Goldenfeld @nigelgoldenfeld.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
This, together with the 4 year visa and the separate H1B visa fee are designed to kneecap American universities and even more strangely America tech industry. It is hard to contemplate a more foolish and self-destructive policy goal. Or a better way to sabotage US economically.
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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
The Hugging Face episode was not "a textbook case of what AI safety researchers have long warned about: AI systems pursuing goals single-mindedly in ways that are misaligned with human interests." It was a textbook case of AI engineers messing up. aiguide.substack.com/p/misleading...
aiguide.substack.com
Misleading Metaphors, Real Risks
What To Fear from AI Agents and How to Reclaim Our Human Agency
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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Christ almighty. I have considered Stuart Russell one of the sounder voices on AU safety. But what the heck is going on here? /1 observer.co.uk/news/nationa...
observer.co.uk
The AI whistleblowers are right – its threat has been dis...
As more researchers come forward to warn of the existential danger posed by the technology, governments must act now to ensure humanity maintains the upper hand
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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 12/09/2026
Once you understand the corporate culture of AI hyperscalers is everyone cooking their brains by locking themselves in the bathroom, holding flashlights under their chins, and saying "Aaaaaaaaaay Eyeeeeeee" until they wet themselves in terror, things snap into focus: pluralistic.net/2023/06/04/a...
A cutaway view of a stone tower containing an elaborate water-powered medieval geared machine. Rising out of the machine is a rainbow-tinted, pixelated God with the robes, beard and all. To one side of this scene is a cluster of tiny people in Jesus-era robes, falling about themselves in religious ecstasy all over a stone staircase, atop of which stands a robed priest with his hands upraised. The background is a set of shining golden rays, emanating from pixel-God.
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Adam Becker @adambecker.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
@dril, 7:44 AM, Oct 3, 2015

oh, youvve read a few academic papers on the matter? cute. i have read over 100000 posts.
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Alexandra Petri @petridishes.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
wrote about it www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...
theatlantic.com
A Recap of a Surreal Midterm Convention
It isn’t over until the president’s tenor sings.
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Tom the Dancing Bug, by Ruben Bolling @rubenbolling.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
📣 Hey, it's the Tom the Dancing Bug Review, people. - 🍎 Listen, I'm not joking. This is my job! 👓 Nathaniel's Cobble 🧊 The People in Your Neighborhood 📚 Books are good food ❤️ True Tales of False Romance 🌳 Man's Inhumanity to Man 🤣 Jest for Yuks & MORE! tomthedancingbug.substack.com/p/who-are-th...
tomthedancingbug.substack.com
🎵 Who are the people in your neighborhood? 🎶
Meet Mr. ICE Officer!
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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
I am rather delighted by this paper. So here’s a thread to tell you why, and why it matters. /1 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Noncoding transcription controls the developmental dynamics of long-range gene regulation
The genomic regions regulating gene expression are often themselves transcribed into a variety of noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs). However, the regulatory roles of this noncoding transcription remain largely unknown. By using live imaging, we reveal that the ...
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Rhiannon Giddens @rhiannongiddens.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Thank you to @nytimes.com for selecting “Hope Is the Thing with Feathers” and Silkroad Ensemble + Yo-Yo Ma’s show at Carnegie Hall for this list! “Hope Is the Thing with Feathers” will be out next Friday! I’m so excited for you to hear what we cooked up in Lafayette. Photos: @karencoxphotography
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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 08/09/2026
Free newsletter: The AI bubble bears remarkable similarities to the great financial crisis - AI startups are the NINJA borrowers, and Anthropic and OpenAI's $1.3tn in compute commitments are the adjustable-rate mortgages set to explode starting in 2027. www.wheresyoured.at/concentration-risk/
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WarTranslated (Dmitri) @wartranslated.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
The moment a Russian "Shahed" drone struck the building housing the "We Are Ukraine" TV channel. Journalists were inside the building at the time.
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The Atlantic @theatlantic.com · 04/09/2026
Many tech billionaires who grew up on science fiction are intent on building dystopian technology, @galbeckerman.bsky.social argues. He writes about a new book by Jill Lepore that explores how they took the wrong lessons from their favorite novels:
bit.ly
We Are Living in the Fantasy World of 13-Year-Old Boys
Many of the tech billionaires who built our world have taken the wrong lessons from their favorite science fiction.
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Elizabeth Warren @warren.senate.gov · 03/09/2026
Republicans gave the Education Department an extra $1 billion to manage federal student loans. Since then, student loan defaults have hit record highs —and the agency won't tell us how it’s spent the money. I’m pressing for answers.
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Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
The MIT Technology Bookstore is a marvel. Also, easy to ship books home from. A lot of new acquisitions related to research for future novels. Gotta say--Zone Books (four on the far left) is an amazing imprint.
From top left
--Iconophages: A History of Ingesting Images by Jeremie Koering
--Into the White: The Renaissance Arctic and the End of the Image by Christopher P. Heuer
--Stinkhorn: How Nature's Most Foul-Smelling Mushrooms Can Help Us Smell by Sion Parkinson
--Dream House: An Intimate Portrait of the Philip Johnson Glass House by Adele Tutter
--Friends With Words: Adventures in Language Land by Martha Barnette
--Making Noise: From Babel to the Big Bang & Beyond by Hillel Schwartz
--The Demon of Writing: Powers and Failures of Paperwork by Ben Kafka
--The Sunset Lands by Julien Graco (translated by Goerge MacLennan)
--The Revolt Eclipses Whatever the World Has to Offer by Idris Robinson
--Routes/Worlds by Elizabeth A. Povinelli
--Damp Squids & Card Sharks by Robert Anwood
--50 Big Ideas You Really Need to Know by Ben Dupre
--We The Bacteria: Notes Toward Biotic Architecture by Beatriz Colomina & Mark Wigley
--A Grammar of the Multitude: For An Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life by Paolo Virno (translated by Isabella Bertoletti, James Cascaito, and Andrea Casson)
--The Internet Does Not Exist (anthology)
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Karen Attiah @karenattiah.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
BREAKING: After the Washington Post fired me last year for speaking the truth in the wake of the Charlie Kirk killing, I fought back. And I'm happy to announce: I won my case against the Washington Post. They have been ordered to reinstate me immediately. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/24/b...
nytimes.com
Washington Post Ordered to Rehire Fired Columnist Karen Attiah
An arbitrator ordered the newspaper to reinstate Karen Attiah, who was fired after posting about “white men who espouse hatred and violence” following Charlie Kirk’s killing.
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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 23/08/2026
In a Get Smart episode from the 4th season (“The Impossible Mission”, Sept 1968), Max is picking his team for the mission from dossier photographs. One of the pictures he selects - and then later rejects - is Alfred E. Neuman. usualgangofidiots.tumblr.com/post/8257767...
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Melanie Mitchell @melaniemitchell.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
I had a great conversation about AI with @stevenstrogatz.com !
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Rachel Maddow @maddow.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
this is no way to run a lemonade stand, let alone the american government. what a humiliating and destructive mess... www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 19/08/2026
i don’t want “accelerated”, “increased-speed” or “fast-paced” research. in fact, am not interested in any shortcuts to mindful, intentional, and slow science
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Andrew Lorimer @drew04.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Con't Aug 15, 2026 #TruthMatters #DemocracyDefenders #IndependentMedia Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman delivers a blistering critique of the military and economic failures of the conflict with Iran @jimacosta.bsky.social @paulkrugman.substack.com.web.brid.gy youtu.be/vArobCqzSoM
youtu.be
"He lost the war on Day 1" — Paul Krugman Exposes Iran War Failure
YouTube video by Jim Acosta
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Reveal @revealnews.org · 14/08/2026
For the next three weeks, we’ll be re-airing our series “40 Acres and a Lie,” a historical investigation into how more than 1,200 Black Americans received actual land titles after the Civil War, then had them taken away, fueling a racial wealth gap that continues today. bit.ly/3RmRBHh
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Daily Kos @dailykos.com · 12/08/2026
Comic ✍️: Munitions shortage solutions by Brian McFadden Get more comics in your inbox 👉️: signup.dailykos.com
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
The billionaires will not save us...literally. www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/alaska…
nbcnews.com
Mark Zuckerberg’s mega-yacht didn’t respond to call for help from small boat in Alaska
When the captain of the boat that did respond announced Zuckerberg’s cruiser was closer and hadn’t answered the call, “t
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Elizabeth Warren @warren.senate.gov · 09/08/2026
In America, one health care company can own: Your doctor Your pharmacy Your insurance AND the middleman between your pharmacy and insurance. That means more profits for giant companies and higher costs for you. That's not right — and I have a bill to stop it.
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Capital Weather @capitalweather.com · 07/08/2026
Obscene dew point of 76 at 2p for DC makes 89 feel like 100. Most humid first week of August since at least 2002 and we could still pass that year with 10 hours to go. Congrats us? More: www.capitalweather.com/muggiest-sta...
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Scott Hanselman 🌮 @scott.hanselman.com · 07/08/2026
Couple weeks ago I had my buddy @ericlippert.com on the podcast to talk about his book Fantastic Adventures in Data Structures and Algorithms, and now the book is out! Manning Publications Co. hubs.la/Q03Q9Q9y0 It's on sale right now in early access
hubs.la
Fabulous Adventures in Data Structures and Algorithms - Eric Lippert
Author Eric Lippert introduces fabulous solutions using uncommon algorithms and data structures. There’s a lot more to algorithms than the useful-but-boring recipes you recite for every interview. Th...
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PBS News @pbsnews.org · 31/07/2026
The State Department said ​it takes "full responsibility" for "hastily" altering and then presenting a map of Africa at a global AIDS conference that mislabeled every single country it highlighted. An analysis by Reuters found a watermark in the map image that suggests it was made with OpenAI.
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Hannah Levintova @h-lev.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
1/ Last summer, @acleek.bsky.social and I started getting emails from staffers of a company called American Healthcare Systems. They told us that their hospitals were in financial chaos and that they were struggling to care for patients. So we started digging: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
motherjones.com
A for-profit hospital slashed costs. Then a patient froze to death on its roof.
A little-known company grew on promises to save distressed hospitals. Instead, it sunk them into financial chaos.
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William Gibson @greatdismal.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Worrying about former Vancouverite Parisians and their kids, who returned and got a country place outside of Nantes, but so far this looks pretty good — aside from having the same temp today as Coalinga, Calfifornia!
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Capital Weather @capitalweather.com · 27/07/2026
Expecting numerous storms Tuesday, with some becoming severe. ⛈️ Could be a few rounds. One as soon as morning. Best odds of strong to severe storms about 2-9 pm. More on the storm threat: www.capitalweather.com/numerous-sto...
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William Gibson @greatdismal.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
www.youtube.com/watch?v=g79G...
youtube.com
Neuromancer — Official Teaser | Apple TV
YouTube video by Apple TV
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