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Joel

@polyparadigm.bsky.social
3K followers 1.6K following 18K posts

Materials scientist:some range and depth, interested in making arcane topics a little more accessible. Prior place photo was from the aughts; figured I should update.

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Reposted by Joel
Ben McAdams (The Resurrection Arc) @purrtah.bsky.social · 3h
Another Susan Collins bribery scandal has hit the airwaves theintercept.com/2026/10/05/s...
theintercept.com
Susan Collins’s Committee Bought Trucks the Army Didn’t Want. Then Campaign Donations Poured In.
Appropriations committee members saw an influx of campaign contributions after steering $345 million to a military contractor.
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ceej @ceej.online · 2h
we don't have time for another plague apocalypse. we already did that. we're on to robot apocalypse now, try to catch up. next in line is fungal apocalypse. please consult the schedule
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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 2h
My understanding was that a lot of the sounds in Texas were either directly or indirectly produced by burning inexpensive fossil fuels, so
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George Pearkes @peark.es · 2h
Look this is more a comment on morale than a proper forecast. That said, morale this bad is delicious.
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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 2h
Ohio all the time I've been here has been purplish and gerrymandered as fuck. I think it's entirely possible the Dems sweep the statewide offices; how much traction they get in the Assembly and Senate will likely be a different question.
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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 2h
The Constitution allows it. South Korea has proven it works. If you want to make impeachment viable—and so much else is pointless if you don't—then it can be done by a simple majority adopting a simple rules change: vote on the verdict by secret ballot.
theunpopulist.net
A Democratic Senate Should Adopt Secret Impeachment Ballots on a Priority Basis
Such a change, requiring no constitutional amendment, would free senators to vote their judgment instead of their fears
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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 3h
The Little Ice Age/Black Death set the stage for early-modern Europe, and an apocalypse in the New World occurred as the United States got its economic legs, so Americans have a craving for immanent eschatons that I would argue is bizarrely rooted in repeated empirical engagement with the topic.
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tweety fish oh wow like a chimera or something spoooky @sifu.tweety.fish · 6h
it's not MOSTLY about yudkowsky and doesn't discuss the sex cult stuff, I should be clear. It's about how all the ideological commitments that came along with that stuff explain how the big labs backed their way weird things like the agent hacking scandals
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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 14h
Someone should cut together the anger management nodding with the boston legal tongue sniff
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chbarts @chbarts.bsky.social · 17h
Remember the Election of 1860: Lincoln won even though he wasn't on the ballot in the South, which meant the South was going to war specifically because it didn't have enough free men to win an election. Which didn't register with them as a reason they might lose.
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😱 Spooky SpectreKILLoquy 🔪 🩸 @caulimovirus.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
moby dick the sperm whale with a speech bubble
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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 15h
They knew five was too many were planning to do the middle three of the Pentateuch. They got Exodus made and had Leviticus all lined up, but they didn’t end up doing Numbers.
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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 15h
People have strong opinions about the shape of Lorenz curve, if often quite indirectly, not only its integral
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Luke Ontario @coolhand.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
I should probably put this on Itch or something. It’s actually kind of a proper game, and unique enough once you start digging Here’s my internal screw around page, for those who like sausage
dr.eamer.dev
Naqbu Effects Lab
A test bench for Naqbu's character effects: letter morphs, turning objects, decoding text, spell rings and cli-fx animations, on the game's real renderer.
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Luke Ontario @coolhand.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Happy Saturday! Test my Moria?
dr.eamer.dev
Naqbu
An old-school ASCII roguelike. Every level down, the screen jumps a generation of graphics, from green phosphor to light bending around Enki, lord of the waters under the earth.
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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 17h
Warrior Aesthetic dude: “The only scales I care about are on my knife.” Schoolteacher: “The one you rusted by ignoring the Pourbaix diagram, or the one that never hardened because you don’t know how nickel shifts the Austenite transition temperature?” *chest wound sounds* Teach: “Can’t hear you.”
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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 18h
It would be an amazing piece of direct action to play Burn The Ships by Steven Curtis Chapman (and maybe also the similarly named and themed song by For King and Country) outside his window, in a show of “support” for his “strategy”
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Katherine Alejandra Cross @quinnae.com · 20h
This is *the* main continuity between neo-fascism and the 20th Century variety. Erich Fromm argued exactly this in "Escape From Freedom," saying that modernity left many alienated and socially dislocated--and fascist strongmen promised to restore meaning and purpose to their lives.
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Frances: Meh and Loving It @francesmeh.reviews · 22h
i've only been in ireland 36 hours and bono won't stop feckin calling me like
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Robert Rose @robear.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
A good fresh Star Trek take on those fake isekai title jokes
A tumblr screenshot showing a post and two reblog responses, reading:
1. "star trek would be the ideal fictional universe to get trapped in because you'd explain your situation and they'd be like yeah makes sense. no further questions. fortunately we can use the mysterious warp signature emitting from this system's icy moon to counterface with the solar radiation and slingshot you back home"
2. "I'm from a universe where your world is all a work of fiction." Benjamin Sisko, nodding. "That happened to me once."
3. "I Got Isekaid Into The Star Trek Universe And They Quickly Understood What Was Happening"
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Ian Fay @ianfay.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Karla is an incredible artist and person and she's been dealt a really shitty hand this year. If you use procreate, please consider checking out her brushes!
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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Honestly a great name for a horror movie
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Denny Carter @dennycarter.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
every time i see the "it takes all of us" messaging at the back of NFL end zones
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Jenny Lee Shee @jennyleeshee.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Our education system is being intentionally and systematically underfunded to create a crisis. It's working. Please keep this story in mind when you hear Paul Calandra and Doug Ford talk about their govt's "historic investments in education." Voting has consequences. So does not voting. #OntEd
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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Cancer wouldn’t be a problem for a creature with a sane rate of metabolism, like an ent has
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Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I'm not naive enough to actually believe this will happen, but Democrats could be preparing, right now, lists of impeachment charges against (at a bare minimum) Hegseth, Kennedy, Mullin, Patel, Blanche, & Trump, as well as Bondi, Bovino, & Noem (still worth doing!) that rely purely on public facts,
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Jonathan Howard @joho.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Have died
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David Scales @tnfalpha.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
This is amazing.
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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I heard they saw DeJoy opening up and stealing each and every check Weird use of his time, but you know how hyper rich folks are about money
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Zoomer Antimillenarian @surcomplicated.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
We won't have read/write authority over the US Constitution but we can still go very, VERY hard on ripping up the roots of MAGA power and destroying the regime's leadership and allies for actual crimes they actually committed. e.g. Peter Thiel didn't flee the country b/c he had clean hands.
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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Kind of. Intense paranoia that demographic groups one views as ontologically undeserving, might get something one imagines one is entitled to as a matter of privilege. Expense is no object as far as I can tell.
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Allen Davis @allenrdavis.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Want to know more? Read, or listen to, the excellent “The Originalism Trap”.
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Elizabeth DeLoria, Pope of Chili-Town @yourdadloves.me · 03/10/2026
A two panel meme of the Simpsons. The top panel has kirk van houten gesturing to a race care bed. The text reads "im an AI guy. How many local models do YOU run?" The bottom panel is homer with a pope hat photoshopped onto his head. The bottom text reads "I run the catholic church."
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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Tough if your aqueous and vitreous humors absorb strongly, but I guess less so the smaller one’s eyeball is. Bees see UV and part of what allows this is how little matter is between the sensor and the atmosphere.
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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Bones evolved way up the taxonomy line, roughly when their ancestors diverged from the ancestors of sharks and rays
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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
People do tend to mistake dimetrodon for a dinosaur.
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James Goodwin @jamesgoodwin.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Just about everything this administration does makes me incandescent with rage. But their fucking with special education takes me to a whole new level. progressive.org/latest/scape...
progressive.org
Scapegoating Special Ed
As the Trump Administration kneecaps federal agencies for sport, special education takes the latest hit.
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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
It’s a non-proliferation move, in the case of the US agency formerly known as the atomic energy commission bsky.app/profile/poly...
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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
It already is! But instead of inertial confinement fusion like the US DOE is developing, or magnetic confinement fusion like European researchers have developed so well, large portions of the grid are being powered by gravity-confinement fusion energy (aka photovoltaic panels).
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Princess Vimentin PhD | Cancer Biologist @princess-vimentin.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
We need people like Abdul El-Sayed in congress. He was trained as a systems scientist. His doctoral dissertation was in epidemiology. MAHA is a response to distrust in corporations that bring science to our daily lives. Eg. people are paying more for insulin to stay alive. 🧪 archive.today/9ElCc
scientificamerican.com
Abdul El-Sayed explains how science influences his politics
Scientific American spoke to the Michigan Senate candidate about how his background in medicine has shaped his outlook
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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
The last senator he did this to had a sudden aorta problem Unfortunately that took a while
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Acyn @acyn.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Sliwa getting a flu shot: This could be very embarrassing. I’m supposed to be a tough guy, right? Mamdani: I can hold your hand. Sliwa: What happens if I faint? Mamdani: I got you. Doctor: You’re in great hands, literally. New Yorkers can find free flu shots and locations at nyc.gov/healthmap
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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Quadricycle
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Nancy Levine Stearns @nancylevinestearns.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
🚨NEW by me: New ICE facility for unaccompanied migrant kids is about to open in Louisiana. While ICE is sanitizing optics, calling it the "Alexandria Family Staging Center," lawmakers and child advocates are raising the roof warning of child trafficking risks. www.thequeenzone.com/new-ice-faci...
thequeenzone.com
New ICE Facility for Migrant Children Raises Alarm Over Trafficking Risks
A new ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) facility for unaccompanied children, families, and single women is set to...
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Norm Wilner @normwilner.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
This is an insane policy, and practically guaranteed to misrepresent a subject's words -- or at the very least, take them out of context. Which is exactly what happened here.
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ae @aelkus.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
this is the first one of these "the alarm must be raised" pieces that actually makes sense, largely because he says something obvious: no one at the company has any clue about how safety engineering works
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Joel @polyparadigm.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
With infinitesimal courage comes infinitesimal responsibility. Among my half-dozen most recent interactions with police, one of them involved an officer who was visibly afraid for his life. There wasn’t an immediate reason for this, I’m pretty sure it was his cowardice and escalation training.
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lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 03/10/2026
I worry in the next few years we're all going to have to have some patient, complicated conversations with older or less media-engaged relatives who see the le epic trump takedown posts but do not stuff like this about who Gavin Newsom Really Is
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Iron Spike @ironspike.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Rod Serling was a king. WWII paratrooper in “The Death Squad,” TV pioneer, LOUD critic of McCarthyism who knew his status as a war hero put him in a privileged position to call shit out. Wrote critiques of racism into his scripts, created The Twilight Zone to escape the censorship that brought on.
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value plus discounted @akhilrao.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
camera knowers: how do we feel about the Z50? decent starter with room to grow or nah?
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