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Association for Political and Legal Anthropology / PoLAR journal

@polar-journal.bsky.social
813 followers 1.1K following 962 posts

Devoted to the ethnographic and interdisciplinary study of law and politics, broadly conceived. Journal: PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review. polarjournal.org politicalandlegalanthro.org/

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Reposted by Association for Political and Legal Anthropology / PoLAR journal
David Roberts @volts.wtf · 4h
Holy shit.
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Reposted by Association for Political and Legal Anthropology / PoLAR journal
mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 17h
One thing that Trumpism has made clear over and over again is that the global far right understands itself to be in a ideological alliance the helps itself across borders, and the center and left largely do not.
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Reposted by Association for Political and Legal Anthropology / PoLAR journal
Social Media Lab @socialmedialab.ca · 05/10/2026
Looks like Brazil’s flirtation with strongman politics is not over. Brazilians seem hell-bent on turning democratic backsliding into a recurring feature. But it's still early in the process. www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...
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Reposted by Association for Political and Legal Anthropology / PoLAR journal
Feena van @feenavan2099.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
"Before Stonehenge was raised, before Egypts first pyramid broke ground,before the Nazca people drew their famous lines across the Peruvian desert,someone in what is now southern Arizona shaped a 272-foot fish into the earth On April 23,2026,"a border-wall contractor drove heavy equipment across it"
gadgetreview.com
Trump's Border Wall Construction Destroys 6,500-Year-Old Arizona Geoglyph – Older Than Stonehenge
Arizona's 6,500-year-old Las Playas Intaglio, the oldest dated geoglyph in the Americas, was irreparably damaged by border wall construction in April 2026.
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Reposted by Association for Political and Legal Anthropology / PoLAR journal
David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
I don’t think everyone realizes how bad things are for US science: For the fiscal year that just ended, the Trump regime withheld $1.4 billion from the National Science Foundation’s research budget, which is about 1/5 of its primary research budget.
nytimes.com
National Science Foundation Diverted $1.4 Billion in Science Funds Mandated by Congress (Gift Article)
The move, affecting about one-fifth of the National Science Foundation’s primary research budget, is the latest sign of how the White House is asserting more control over grants.
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Reposted by Association for Political and Legal Anthropology / PoLAR journal
ve, the ghost of info past @vortexegg.com · 01/10/2026
People need to understand the people leading the AI industry, transhumanist/longtermist/EA movements, and tech broadly, as died-in-the-wool pseudoscientists, denialists (climate change, the holocaust), and crank purveyors of conspiritualist woo of the highest order. The height of Rationalism.
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Reposted by Association for Political and Legal Anthropology / PoLAR journal
Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
some descriptive statistics here on the civility industrial complex on college campuses that I haven’t seen analyzed before www.uncivilcollective.org/resources
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Jeremy Kun @jeremykun.com · 29/09/2026
3rd circuit rules AI training on copyrighted material is NOT fair use. Wow! chatgptiseatingtheworld.substack.com/p/breaking-n...
chatgptiseatingtheworld.substack.com
BREAKING News: Third Circuit affirms summary judgment rejection of fair use defense by ROSS Intelligence in AI training
Opinion under seal for now.
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Zoomer Antimillenarian @surcomplicated.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
This isn't a court at all. They're literally not even reading the fucking briefs before making "decisions".
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Semafor @semafor.com · 30/09/2026
Visitors to the US are on track to drop by almost two million year-on-year. “We’re the only major country in the world losing visitation,” the head of the US Travel Association said. “It’s mind-boggling.” www.semafor.com/article/09/2...
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Reposted by Association for Political and Legal Anthropology / PoLAR journal
404 Media @404media.co · 30/09/2026
BREAKING: The Trump administration is using a grant program from the 1980s to force cities around the US to funnel their ongoing collection of Flock, Axon, and other ALPR data into large federal surveillance centers that fall under the White House’s jurisdiction, 404 Media has learned
404media.co
How Cities Are Forced to Funnel License Plate Data to a Massive Federal Surveillance Program
How the federal government built a massive database of license plate reader data through an anti-drug trafficking program.
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Reposted by Association for Political and Legal Anthropology / PoLAR journal
Jessica Valenti @jessicavalenti.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
BREAKING: Republican attorneys general from Louisiana, Alabama, and Arkansas have filed two sweeping lawsuits targeting dozens of providers who ship abortion pills—and the blue states that protect them.
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Amrk @amrk.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Peter Magyar is currently enacting a Liberal Currents fantasy where he amends the constitution to ban anyone associated with the old regime from ever holding office again and is somehow polling at 68% (he won with 53%) and I’m not saying that’s possible anywhere else but Dems should like, ask him
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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 29/09/2026
Wrote about the decline and fall of SCOTUSblog, which used to be the single best resource for Supreme Court stuff, and (thanks to some intervening crimes committed by its co-founder) is now a weird platform for conservative pundits to talk about what a good job the conservative justices are doing
slate.com
It Was the Essential Home of Supreme Court News. Now It’s a Joke. What Happened?
How high-stakes poker brought down a pillar of Supreme Court coverage.
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Reposted by Association for Political and Legal Anthropology / PoLAR journal
Dan Diamond @ddiamond.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Russell Brand, who's awaiting trial in London next month on rape and sexual assault charges, will moderate a panel at DC's MAHA summit tomorrow on reforming a U.S. health agency
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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 28/09/2026
"The evidence continues to grow. Social media, as it is currently constructed, redounds to the net benefit of illiberal regimes and their allies in democracies. The question is what to do about it." www.liberalcurrents.com/social-media...
Social Media Has Not Brought Liberation

Social media has been a boon to autocratic regimes and their allied movements in democracies.
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Reposted by Association for Political and Legal Anthropology / PoLAR journal
ghost malone ergo propter bones @proptermalone.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
just a quick reminder that this fuckhead was the proximate trigger for thousands of National Guardsmen being deployed to DC
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Ryan Goodman @rgoodlaw.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Responding to some Qs in the comments (@edwells.bsky.social @guernser.bsky.social @howardgordon.bsky.social) Here's the best reporting explaining how the US sanctions can cut off the Court from the dollar-based global financial system, and US employees/contractors who work with the Court Gift link
wsj.com
Exclusive | Trump Ramps Up Bid to Dismantle International Criminal Court
The U.S. administration is preparing sweeping sanctions that would cut the court off from much of the global financial system.
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Reposted by Association for Political and Legal Anthropology / PoLAR journal
Ryan Goodman @rgoodlaw.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
President Trump-Rubio are reportedly preparing to unleash sweeping sanctions to cripple International Criminal Court. One potential consequence: The release of some of the world's worst criminals held by the Court. Case 1: Philippines' Duterte held for crimes against humanity
justsecurity.org
Proposed U.S. Sanctions Against the ICC Could Lead to Detainees’ Release
A list of individuals currently in ICC custody awaiting trial or judgment, who could be released if U.S. sanctions dismantle the Court.
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Ian Carrillo @iansociologo.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
www.theguardian.com/world/2026/s...
theguardian.com
Lula says Trump wants to ‘colonise’ and capture Brazil’s resources by meddling in election
A TV spot claims the US president is trying to sway October’s presidential vote in favour of Lula’s far-right opponents
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Reposted by Association for Political and Legal Anthropology / PoLAR journal
Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Remember when they said (lied) that USAID was corrupt? $400 million was handed out to 30 countries, with no real oversight and with workarounds to bypass human rights safeguards typically given to U.S. foreign assistance payments. Immigration is just a giant trough of corruption right now.
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the most stereotypically Tory conservative man of the 21st Century, responded to Suella Braverman with a long-form video criticizing her position and rejecting a race-based theory of Englishness, and in response has been ratioed by the increasingly feral British online far-right.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
@Jacob_R...•22h
The English are a mongrel people, not an Aryan master race.

Underneath is an extremely English-looking man in a suit sitting in front of a large bookshelf.

There are 6.2 thousand comments compared to 6 thousand likes.
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Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie @audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app · 23/09/2026
who once what
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
You can read the full investigation here, and you can get a tiny glimpse into the world of surveillance, profiteering, and overriding focus of U.S. policing on crushing any remotely progressive social movements. www.thisisbydesign.com/how-mpd-buil...
thisisbydesign.com
How MPD Built a Police Surveillance Operation Around Renee Good’s Memorial — and What It Cost the Community
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Ambassador Ken Fairfax (ret) @portlandken.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
The accounting is in: In Oregon there are 111 data centers. The TOTAL number of people employed at data centers is just 2,630, or 0.1% of the labor force. Those 100 data centers consumer 23% of all electricity used in Oregon. Meanwhile, electricity rates skyrocket as more centers are built.
opb.org
Oregon data centers by the numbers: 111 facilities consume nearly one-quarter of state’s power, according to new report
A first-of-its-kind report details the footprint of the controversial facilities.
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Reposted by Association for Political and Legal Anthropology / PoLAR journal
Hakeem Jefferson @hakeemjefferson.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Nikole Hannah-Jones w/ a sobering follow-up on her decision yrs ago to enroll her daughter in a poor, majority-Black public school rather than a wealthier, whiter private school. You leave heartbroken for the kids being failed by this grossly unequal system. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/m...
nytimes.com
In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own? (Gift Article)
A decade ago, I made a decision about my daughter’s education that I hoped would challenge New York City’s separate and unequal school system. Now 16, she thinks I made the wrong choice.
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Reposted by Association for Political and Legal Anthropology / PoLAR journal
Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Anthropic employees: NEXT-GEN AI COULD WIPE OUT HUMANITY WITH A SUPERVIRUS! Normies: that seems like a big leap. How would this AI disseminate such a virus in the real world? Anthropic employees: oh, through the wet labs we built and hooked it up to, of course. Normies: …😬😤
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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 19/09/2026
Innocent civilians are being murdered with dirt-cheap and essentially impossible to ban tiny flying robots at shocking numbers globally (read our piece below). We have REAL, CURRENT cyberpunk horrors to deal with right now, and we don’t need to waste our time on hypothetical AI basilisks.
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Reposted by Association for Political and Legal Anthropology / PoLAR journal
Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 18/09/2026
So about that batshit insane AI millenarian Silicon Valley sex cult running much of big tech….from Sonia Joseph: siliconvalleynotes.substack.com/p/agi-cnc-an...
Sonia Joseph y @soniajoseph_
To the journalists contacting me about the AGI consensual non-consensual (cnc) sex parties—
During my twenties in Silicon Valley, I ran among elite tech/Al circles through the community house scene. I have seen some troubling things around social circles of early OpenAl employees, their friends, and adjacent entrepreneurs, which I have not previously spoken about publicly.
It is not my place to speak as to why Jan Leike and the superalignment team resigned. I have no idea why and cannot make any claims.
However, I do believe my cultural observations of the SF Al scene are more broadly relevant to the Al industry.
I don't think events like the consensual non-consensual (cnc) sex parties and heavy LSD use of some elite Al researchers have been good for women. They create a climate that can be very bad for female Al researchers, with broader implications relevant to X-risk and AGI safety. I believe they are somewhat emblematic of broader problems: a coercive climate that normalizes recklessness and crossing boundaries, which we are seeing playing out more broadly in the industry today. Move fast and break things, applied to people.
There is nothing wrong imo with sex parties and heavy LSD use in theory, but combined with the shadow of 100B+ interest groups, leads to some of the most coercive and fucked up social dynamics that I have ever seen. The climate was like a fratty LSD version of 2008 Wall Street bankers, which bodes ill for Al safety.
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 18/09/2026
but again, genuinely hilarious (derogatory) for a guy whose father was a klansman to say "the presence of nazis in the republican party is because black people wouldn't shut up." oh, is that why nazis immediately began organizing in the wake of donald trump's 2016 victory too?
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🌈Dr. Frizzle @swilua.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
my new favorite conspiracy theory about why all the AI bros are asking everyone to back off on developing AI
From threads:

thetheori 11h
+
They probably asked it how to fix the world and it said the only way was to eliminate the billionaires.
• 120
> 3
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Reposted by Association for Political and Legal Anthropology / PoLAR journal
SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I'm back, I missed you all. Since this is an important subject I know too much about, here's a 🧵 explaining that AI Safety Is Mostly A Sex Cult. I don't think these people should make policy. (1/?) (alternative title: Time For Some Cult Theory)
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 17/09/2026
As I warned you: the superstar media darling AI quitter is explicitly agreeing with Trump and claiming climate threats are "overplayed". Effective altruism / rationalism is a cult of broken priorities that denies the threat of fossil fuels. This is why Anthropic loves burning gas for power.
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Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
"The amount of time it takes now to go from companies claiming an AI breakthrough to Bernie Sanders proposing a bill is really short, and that’s not a good thing." -@timnitgebru.blacksky.app 👆🔥 www.wired.com/story/one-of...
wired.com
One of AI’s Fiercest Critics Says All the Doom Talk Is ‘Meant to Distract Us’
Timnit Gebru argues that AI companies are stoking fears of extinction to avoid discussing actual harms, like autonomous weapons.
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Reposted by Association for Political and Legal Anthropology / PoLAR journal
Richard J @preachypreach.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
quite something this paragraph.
After meeting with delegates from the two sides in South Florida, Kushner and Witkoff emerged with a peace plan that would have required Ukraine to accept nearly all of Russia’s demands: ceding territory, promising never to join NATO, and drastically shrinking its army. Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s press secretary, hailed the proposal as “a good plan for both Russia and Ukraine.” But, when the plan became public, it collapsed under a wave of outrage. Even Rubio reportedly derided it as “Russia’s wish list.”
Some observers suspect that Russia has effectively offered the Americans business deals in exchange for a favorable peace agreement. “This is the generally held view,” the former U.S. official in the region told me. A classified report produced by a European intelligence agency states that Trump and people around him have discussed several potential contracts in Russia. The report is not dated, but the European official who gave it to me said that the details were first discussed sometime after Trump invited Putin to Anchorage, in August, 2025. Twice that year, Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, was allowed to enter the U.S., where he talked about investment opportunities. “The privatization of American foreign policy is quite far along,” the official who gave me the report said. (A spokesman for Kushner denied that U.S. officials would profit from the deals under discussion.)
The document lists ten potential ventures, which it says appear to “have been originally designed by the Kremlin’s political and business elites.” They include reopening the Nord Stream 2 pipeline under American control, resuming ExxonMobil’s operations in Sakhalin, and drilling for oil in the Sea of Okhotsk. According to the report, there was discussion of unfreezing Russian assets that are held under American sanctions. The document mentions people who might participate, including Trump, Witkoff, and Kushner. It also names Richard Grenell, the former Presidential en…
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Reposted by Association for Political and Legal Anthropology / PoLAR journal
Anat Shenker-Osorio @anatosaurus.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
You gain & *retain* power running against your opposition and governing for the people - not by adopting your opposition's arguments against you.
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Nate Schenkkan @nateschenkkan.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
The list of detained and raided here is all the LGBTQ movement groups I can think of at least, which despite everything have been working in Turkey for decades
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Robert Evans (the Only Robert Evans) @iwriteok.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
in a similar manner, i have agreed to stop my habit of snorting crushed Faberge eggs for reasons that have nothing to do with my looming bankruptcy
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jess m. ☕🍂 @jametc.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
I am watching this AI drama like I'm TMZ right now so after getting exposed for sniping that physics prize by stealing some legit mathematicians' work, and that one quitter who was like "it's gonna kill us all" suddenly elon and sam altman are both are like "hmm maybe we should scale back"
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Ryan Mac 🙃 @rmac.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Child sex abuse material, some created by Grok, continues to spread on X. An incredibly disturbing read. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/11/t...
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Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
I find it infuriating and unnerving how liberals are unable to recognize brownshirts when they see them, or understand that brownshirts exist along a separate axis of public mobilization than “protesters,” which is how they’re always described. These aren’t protesters, they’re paramilitaries!
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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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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 10/09/2026
As an AI-adjacent network neuroscience person who has also studied bits of media structure and political economy, I strongly agree with @karlbode.com: The biggest threat, by far, isn’t “superintelligence will soon kill us all!” but instead “information control by oligarchs will crush our society”
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Reposted by Association for Political and Legal Anthropology / PoLAR journal
Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Expanded these comments into a blog post. These warnings from the A.I. industry are an opportunity, but the opportunity is wasted if we focus only on the solutions they have in mind. The A.I. Industry will never rein itself in davekarpf.beehiiv.com/p/the-a-i-in...
davekarpf.beehiiv.com
The A.I. Industry will never rein itself in
On the latest AI-doom discourse.
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Groundwork Collaborative @groundwork.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
In New York, tax opponents have repeatedly claimed – without evidence – that any new taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers would cause tax flight. Fact: NY added ~2,000 millionaire tax filers in a single year, shortly AFTER the state raised its top tax rate on high earners.
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I Scare You Like Sound Dog @chadstanton.blacksky.app · 10/09/2026
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, we won’t be able to address mass deportation without addressing policing.
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David J. Bier @davidjbier.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
I have an oped discussing ICE arrests at USCIS offices, focusing on one spouse of an American www.ms.now/opinion/ice-...
ms.now
Opinion | ICE is weaponizing a baseless arrest-and-detain strategy. It’s working.
Arresting legal immigrants at their immigration appointments has become part of a new and terrifyingly common strategy for immigration enforcement.
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Honestly, I'd say the most disastrous decisions of Obama and Biden were not really holding anyone accountable for crimes committed under the previous administration. Obama wanted to "turn the page" on Iraq and the financial meltdown while Biden never put any urgency behind the January 6th cases
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Joanna Grossman @joannagrossman.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Another unconscionable result of the GOP’s war on women. www.propublica.org/article/ecto...
propublica.org
Ectopic Pregnancy Deaths Have Nearly Doubled. It’s Worse in States With Abortion Bans.
With prompt and appropriate medical care, experts say, people shouldn’t die from an ectopic pregnancy. Women in Texas and Oklahoma have sued over delays in care, which, coupled with our new analysis, ...
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ve, the ghost of info past @vortexegg.com · 08/09/2026
One of the reasons people are viscerally mad about AI is that it is constantly publicly being used to violate millennia-old but today-largely-unspoken social taboos.
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