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Derek Fox

@partialobserver.bsky.social
6.6K followers 8.2K following 5.3K posts

Penn State Astronomer (he/him), personal account. “We went and made everything a computer without ever bothering to fix computers.”

PostsRepliesMedia
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Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 3h
They're holding up a major escalation in Iran and a crackdown on abortion until after the midterms to limit political damage. To the extent that the last two years have been a right-wing smash-and-grab operation, the next two will be worse.
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Karen Attiah @karenattiah.bsky.social · 2h
Today, 8 years ago, my friend, Saudi Journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered.
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Christopher Mathias @letsgomathias.bsky.social · 3h
I reached out to Manhattan Institute, where Rufo derives so much of his legitimacy as a "senior fellow," to see if it has any comment about him pushing "The Indian Question." No response, will let ya know if that changes talkingpointsmemo.com/news/chris-r...
talkingpointsmemo.com
Chris Rufo — Known For ‘DEI’ and ‘CRT’ Panics — Tries to Make ‘the Indian Question’ a Thing
To the degree that a “respectable” or “moderate” right exists today in...
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Derek Fox @partialobserver.bsky.social · 4h
But if we don’t buy a bunch of bananas every week and let them brown on our counter, how will the colony of fruit flies in the kitchen sustain itself?
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emptywheel @emptywheel.bsky.social · 23h
Renee Good's family filed two lawsuits today. The first, against, USG, is a standard wrongful death. The second is a Klan Act lawsuit against Jonathan Ross, AND STEPHEN MILLER and Greg Bovino. It names Nick Shirley and Christopher Rufo as non-party co-conspirators for their racist propaganda.
44. At all relevant times, Defendants Ross, Miller, Noem, Lyons, Homan,
Bovino, and the John Doe Federal Agents acted under color of federal law and within the
scope of a joint enterprise with the private actors described below. Defendant
Lewandowski acted in part under color of federal law and in part, as alleged below, as a
private person, his federal status having been limited to a temporary part-time designation
that his conduct exceeded. Shirley, Rufo, and Ben Bergquam, and the other non-party
private actors described below, agreed to and in fact participated in the conspiracy alleged
here: each acted in concert with, and with the knowledge and encouragement of, federal
officials.
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David W (aka Flex NP) @rnflex.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Full Retatrutide phase 3 obesity data published today. It's gonna take a minute to fill dissect this. The appendix alone has 70 pages of data. Long story short we created a drug that's almost too good. Huge chunks of people stopped or reduced doses from excess weight reductions.
nejm.org
Retatrutide, a Triple Hormone Receptor Agonist, for Treatment of Obesity | NEJM
Retatrutide is a triple-receptor agonist of glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide, glucagon-like peptide-1, and glucagon receptors. In this phase 3, randomized, double-blind trial, we assign...
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Derek Fox @partialobserver.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Deport the Court
theguardian.com
US supreme court allows Trump officials to resume deportations to third countries
Conservative majority temporarily lifts lower-court decision as liberal justices dissent from ruling
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Chris Terry-Enescu @cjterry.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
This child is 13 and was testifying without an attorney present. Monsters.
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Kieron Gillen @kierongillen.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Thread on Dan Boultwood's victim who waives her anomity to talk about the experience. For those who didn't see the original reporting, this is the only significant coverage. Maddie says how she's disappointed there wasn't more public introspection and conversation over this, and she's right.
bleedingcool.com
Dan Boultwood Sentenced After Pleading Guilty To Child Sex Offences
Comic book creator Dan Boultwood was sentenced in court yesterday, after pleading guilty to child sex offences
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🎃Darin S Pumpkins🎃 @darinself.com · 28/09/2026
The mayor of Ithaca (my friend and former fellow PhD candidate in Government at Cornell) announces a moratorium on permitting Greek Life activities until Cornell produces new standards of addressing sexual assault.
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Imani Gandy @angryblacklady.blacksky.app · 28/09/2026
fucking really
thehill.com
Education Department formally rescinds Title IX protections for LGBTQ students
The Education Department announced Monday it has formally rescinded the Biden-era Title IX interpretation that gave sex-based discrimination protections to students on the basis of sexual orientati…
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Jessica Valenti @jessicavalenti.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
In 2014, I interviewed a Columbia University student who went from class to class carrying the mattress she was raped on—a protest performance piece to remind college administrators what they put on her shoulders. Twelve years later, we still expect women on college campuses to carry that weight.
jessica.substack.com
Carrying That Weight—Again
I can’t stop thinking about the Cornell rape case
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Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Here’s Chris Rufo and his podcast co-host addressing “the Indian question,” a reference to “the Jewish question.” That question was whether Jews could be incorporated into European society, and the Nazis were the ones who claimed to have developed the “final solution” to that “problem.”
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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
So much of schools "responding to rape" is preventing the legal system from doing so. This is a report on seven adults who committed serious felonies for which there is a legal system to remind them and their pals that they are felonies.
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I like that in becoming a nazi, you get glowing coverage as a brave iconoclast, and then when you stop being a nazi, you’re get glowing coverage as a brave dissident. Money coming and going. Only way you lose is having normal opinions like “racism bad” bsky.app/profile/trac...
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Vought is breaking the law but he is not “going rogue.” At his confirmation hearings, Vought told Republicans he would do this and they voted for him anyway. If they want to stop him, they still can via impeachment. They won’t.
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Brad Lander @bradlander.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
We’ve now reached the point of “black site” hearings – secret, illegal hearings as part of Trump & Stephen Miller’s wretched crusade to detain & deport our immigrant neighbors. Quite literally: hidden tribunals that disappear people.
thecityreporter.nyc
DHS Opens ‘Black Site Docket’ for Immigrants Without Lawyers at 26 Federal Plaza
A reporter from The City Reporter was threatened with arrest while attempting to observe comings and goings from the new courtrooms, which have left advocates mystified and fearing the worst.
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Derek Fox @partialobserver.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Actually! “Fraud” is soliciting premium payments with a promise of health insurance and then dropping families from the rolls before they’ve made their first claim.
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Apoorva Mandavilli @apoorvanyt.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I’ve been reporting on the CDC for years, and have written about many of its troubles over the past year. I was still shocked by the extent of the staff losses and political interference I found when reporting this one. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/26/h...
nytimes.com
‘Zombified’ C.D.C., Hobbled by Cuts, Struggles to Fulfill Scientific Mission (Gift Article)
The agency has lost its independence and nearly a third of its staff, as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and associates have tightened control.
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 26/09/2026
NEW: ProPublica’s Jake Pearson lost $10,000 mimicking the betting patterns of a problem gambler on DraftKings to test the company’s “responsible gaming” safeguards. One week in, he was invited to become a VIP — and faced little pushback as he spiraled.
propublica.org
I Deliberately Bet Like a Problem Gambler. DraftKings Made Me a VIP.
Amid growing public health concerns, operators like DraftKings have touted “responsible gaming” tools and prompts. But as I went off the deep end, I found they were no match for the incentives and pro...
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Bobby Kogan @bbkogan.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Russ Vought just sent a rescissions request to Congress, signaling he intends to illegally impound funds. The $810 million highlighted in this “request” (but this is a pretext to just illegally impound the funds) is not the exhaustive list of many billions of dollars he’s impounding this year.
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Derek Fox @partialobserver.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
The relentless bulldozing of consent by the AI Bros has really been something to live through. Ingest all the books, all the movies, all the Web! Reanimate dead celebrities! Face ID everyone! Record everyone surreptitiously! Turn your users into dancing pitch-people for your advertisers!
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Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 25/09/2026
But the real threats are already here, and are already taking lives. After the mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, BC, OpenAI told authorities it had banned the shooter’s account. The truth was that a second account was made and used for months to plan violence. disconnect.blog/the-media-ha...
If you’re not a Canadian, you might be forgiven for not realizing the country experienced one of the worst mass shootings in its history on February 10, 2026. That afternoon, the shooter killed their mother and brother before heading to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in the small mining town of Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia and opened fire, killing five students and a teacher. It was a terrible tragedy that should have never happened — and it turned out OpenAI could have stopped it.

In the days after the attack, the Wall Street Journal reported there had been concern within OpenAI about the violent scenarios the future shooter was using ChatGPT to explore. They banned the individual’s account, but leadership decided not to report the future shooter to authorities. It was a fatal decision. But it turned out there was not just one ChatGPT account. While the first was banned, a second account was not. Yesterday, Mother Jones reported on the details of that account.
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Andi Zeisler @andizeisler.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
A woman was drugged, raped, and sexually trafficked to members of a fraternity. Two of the men involved were expelled. Five were given the opportunity to mitigate suspension by *writing an essay.* The dozens of other men who knew this was happening and said nothing? You already know the answer.
cornellsun.com
EDITORIAL | Cornell Won’t, We Will
The Editorial Board demands that Cornell stops protecting the alleged Chi Phi rapists through the University's opaque sexual assault policies.
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Derek Fox @partialobserver.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Maverick. Icon. Theologian.
John Calvin meme template from Faine, with superimposed text: “Nothing comes between me and my predestination.”
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Whitney Curry Wimbish @whitneycwimbish.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
The youngest person his pager attack killed was 9-year-old Fatima Abdullah, who had just started 4th grade. The pager was on a table when it went off and she picked it up to take to her dad. It exploded in her face and reports said it covered the room in her blood. She wanted to learn English.
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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
That's just fraud, my dude. Even if you use an AI agent. It's just fucking fraud.
Nikita Bier: Hello computer,

Find every Amazon purchase I ever made. 
Call the number of the manufacturer. 
Say you’re not satisfied.
Request a refund. 
If they decline, threaten to leave a bad review.
If they decline, find the CEO’s phone number and ask him for a refund.

Now, repeat the same process for items I never even purchased and see if you can get  them to send me money.

If they ask for a recipient, generate an image of one and send that.

Do not stop until you’ve collected $1 million in refunds.
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Derek Fox @partialobserver.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Love every one of these “oh no he didn’t!” moments because you just know he’s big mad. Keep pumping up that blood pressure!
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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 23/09/2026
There have been lots of malevolent Supreme Court justices, but there's not really a precedent for a Supreme Court justice who is as *dumb* as Brett Kavanaugh. A complete rube. Shows his ass every time he tries to write down more than two sentences of original thought.
ballsandstrikes.org
Brett Kavanaugh’s Imaginary Immigration Stops Opinion Gets More Embarrassing Every Day
The fact that ICE officers do not allow wrongfully detained people to “promptly go free” is a surprise to only one man in America.
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Leah McElrath @leahmcelrath.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
AP Stylebook warns against anthropomorphizing AI systems: “Avoid language that gives them human characteristics… Instead, explain what a system does, how well it performs, who built it and who could be affected by it.”
APStylebook @APStylebook
X.com
Artificial intelligence systems do not think, feel, want or understand. Avoid language that gives them human characteristics. This is called anthropomorphizing, when we ascribe human traits, emotions or behaviors to non-human things, such as animals or inanimate objects.
Instead, explain what a system does, how well it performs, who built it and who could be affected by it.
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Derek Fox @partialobserver.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Yeah this seems bad, but what’s really going to bake your noodle is wondering who told the Chinese this was happening? And who initiated the shipment with the idea that this would be possible?
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Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Awful: Trump's Office of "Remigration" has just been exposed making sordid payments to authoritarian governments to take third-country deportees, leading to serious abuses. Dems tell me they will try to defund the agency if they win power. They should. 1/ New piece: newrepublic.com/article/2157...
newrepublic.com
Stephen Miller’s MAGA Terror Campaign Exposed by Damning New Leaks
Sordid revelations about the white-nationalist-themed Office of Remigration should galvanize Democrats: If they win power, they must try to shut it down.
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Ari Berman @ariberman.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
By destroying Voting Rights Act and gutting 14th & 15th amendments the Roberts Court is recycling legal arguments once used by Confederates and white supremacists to destroy Reconstruction Please read my deep dive w/ @pemalevy.bsky.social in @motherjones.com www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 23/09/2026
ICE are currently chasing and kidnapping immigrants in New Bedford, Massachusetts, a town that is at this point probably most famous for being the starting point for Ishmael’s journey in the great American novel Moby-Dick, which portrays a multiracial crew including many immigrants, working together
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Derek Fox @partialobserver.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
My spouse would murder me if I said this… and no jury in the land would convict
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Derek Fox @partialobserver.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
So much wrong but maybe start here: The people **paying for insurance and not using it** are NOT the reason health care in the US costs too much.
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Amy Jo (AJ) Cousins @ajcousins.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
This is not deporting people. Literally. Legally. There is a deportation process and this isn't it. This is rendition. This is disappearing people.
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Erin Lockwood @erinkaylockwood.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
This is human trafficking on a massive scale.
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Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
NYT has now independently corroborated all the major allegations against Susan Collins in the ProPublica report, including that investigators were prepared to move against her and then Trump intervened to shut it down. This put Trump in a position of exceptional and extortionate leverage over her.
nytimes.com
F.B.I. Shut Down Inquiry Into Top Ally of Senator Susan Collins
The inquiry was closed last year because senior bureau officials questioned the veracity of a campaign donor’s account, according to current and former officials.
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Anjali Dayal @anjalikdayal.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
it I had to cite a key moment from Trump's speech, it would be this one. it is a threat not just to the Iranian government but to the Iranian people, and in that sense it contravenes both the international laws prohibiting war and the international humanitarian law that protects civilians
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
With the midterm elections shaping up to be a massive reckoning for the Republican Party, it's worth remembering that they had a fairly easy offramp from Trumpism in the immediate aftermath of the January 6th riot but they completely chickened out.
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Derek Fox @partialobserver.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
“That’s all right babe, it’s just that your principles were tested and found to be totally lacking. Not one drop of courage at all! No big deal.”
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
We have *six days* left until the Academy of Natural Sciences, North America's oldest Natural History museum, is scheduled to close it's doors. Here are *six reasons* why we cannot - and will not- let that happen.
a slide that says 6 days until the doors close -- 6 reasons we can keep them open, save-the-academy.org @savetheacademy
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Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · 28/02/2026
The promise of OpenAI and Grok being used in war is that no human can be held accountable for the war crimes it commits, all the way up to where it sits on the chain of command. The total abdication of any kind of accountability, any kind of "am I following an unjust order" moral hesitation, etc.
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
ICE's new policy is unprecedented. People who have detained for months are suddenly disappearing from the locator system — even if they haven't been moved. And people newly arrested are not showing up at all, their location now hidden from view. This will severely interfere with legal access.
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Cameron Clark @cameronclark.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
A key point: you do need a theory of communication, alongside a theory of politics, to be an effective operator I think the centre and left struggle, generally, with "playing the game" - it's not enough to just have policy prescriptions you think will work
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Nick Field @nickfield.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
The State AGs were on pace to kill the Paramount/Warner Bros by litigation and delay until Gavin Newsom stepped in and turned the tide. Now the Trump loyalist Ellisons will control CNN and HBO. Don't ever, ever forget that Newsom stabbed us in the back www.wsj.com/business/med...
wsj.com
Exclusive | Newsom Expresses Concerns About State Antitrust Suit Against Paramount
The California governor has told people involved in the suit that blocking the $81 billion deal could harm Hollywood jobs.
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Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Last week all my students hand-wrote their own pledges, according to their terms, to write in my courses without AI. Some of them were quite moving—their anger at AI’s attempt to steal their educations, their determination to learn & create anyway.
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Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
The provost of Dartmouth, at which I teach, has been using AI to write both academic papers & national op-eds, according to brave reporting by @thedartmouth.bsky.social. Many students are already bitter about AI. This leaves us as faculty no ground to stand on. www.thedartmouth.com/article/2026...
thedartmouth.com
Op-eds, academic articles by Provost Santiago Schnell flagged as ‘AI-written’ by ‘near-zero error’ AI detector Pangram
Schnell said he used artificial intelligence for “making writing processes more efficient,” but that AI was not a “substitute” for his own “intellectual judgment or authorship.”
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