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Thomas

@quintonthomas.bsky.social
2.2K followers 6.4K following 448 posts

New Yorker in London 🌹 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 "Socialism – with its promise of freedom, its larger hope for humanity, its triumph of peace over war, its binding of the races of the earth into one all-embracing brotherhood – must prevail."

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Roger Sollenberger @sollenbergerrc.bsky.social · 3h
This is objectively psychotic and every member of Congress and Senate should be ashamed if they don’t try to remove him from office before this happens
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Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 3h
This is the proper response & the energy Democrats need to matching. ICE is kidnapping, maiming, & killing people over administrative civil infractions. Like… Imagine getting gestapoed for expired tags on your car. This shit is unconscionable & ICE must be destroyed. Good on Mamdani for saying so.
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Drew Harwell @drewharwell.com · 5h
The last public execution in America was in 1936. A young black man in Kentucky was hanged by a drunk executioner; a news story said "They Ate Hotdogs While a Man Died." Was such an embarrassment that the governor outlawed it 18 months later www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...
washingtonpost.com
Fort Hood shooter’s execution will be live-streamed, Defense Dept. says
“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday about the firing squad execution of convicted Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan.
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e.w. niedermeyer @niedermeyer.online · 12h
the more Musk spends on the midterm elections, the more ubiquitous this image needs to be
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Thomas @quintonthomas.bsky.social · 12h
"A woman known only as Jane Doe 4 claimed in four FBI interviews after Epstein’s 2019 arrest that he had assaulted her during his visits to [Hilton Head] in the 80s, when she was still a teenager. She has also claimed [that Epstein] trafficked her to other men, including Donald Trump."
theguardian.com
British billionaire warned Epstein was a ‘sexual deviant’ decades before FBI closed in on the abuser
Sir James Goldsmith’s links to Hilton Head, South Carolina, add to mystery of Jane Doe 4, who claimed she was abused by Epstein in the 1980s
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Evan @ereller.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
I dunno, this feels more antisemitic than anything Piker has said
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Casey Seiler @caseyseiler.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
“Is (Jane Doe) for me, or are you keeping her for yourself,” asked an email sent to Jeffrey Epstein in May 2014. When DOJ released a trove of Epstein docs in January, the identify of the sender was redacted. The sender was Bard College President Leon Botstein. Nora Mishanec reports.
timesunion.com
‘Is (Jane Doe) for me’: DOJ, FBI urged to investigate Leon Botstein as potential Epstein co-conspirator
Newly reviewed Epstein files raise questions about the former Bard College president’s interactions with a young woman Epstein trafficked.
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Mel Buer @melbuer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
I…got nothing. Feeling just wave after wave of absolute revulsion and white hot rage at the violence that poisons every centimeter of this cursed country
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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
What we can understand about the global far-right through examining the state of Brazilian politics. buff.ly/qKUTpsm
buff.ly
What Brazil’s Political Convulsions Reveal About the Global Far-Right
If there is one thing that the last decade ought to have taught us, it is that strong objective factors do not automatically translate into powerful movements, let alone into the spontaneous discov…
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Lex McMenamin (they/them) @lexmcmenamin.com · 07/10/2026
I found this video really moving, it reminded me of the many professors who put themselves in harm's way to protect their students during the encampments for Palestine, but I can't really think of an elected official here in the US doing the same
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Ron Filipkowski @ronfilipkowski.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Hilarious. Mike Rogers is now running against … Donald Trump.
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Thomas @quintonthomas.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
"... through a series of by-now-unconscious reflexes engineered by large technology companies, this content just sort of *happens* to people, like a food-borne illness." www.nytimes.com/2026/10/06/m...
nytimes.com
Secret Billionaires, Mafia Brides, Alpha Kings: The Insane World of Microdramas
Vertical soap operas for your phone have taken over film and TV production, and they may soon need no humans at all.
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Roger Sollenberger @sollenbergerrc.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
DOJ hired these prosecutors: -A gambling exec turned conspiracy theorist podcaster -A guy found liable for selling fraudulent insurance leads -A guy who violated attorney-client privilege in a high-profile murder trial -A guy currently facing animal neglect charges www.nytimes.com/2026/10/06/u...
nytimes.com
Justice Dept. Turns to Partisans and Conspiracists to Fill Depleted Ranks
The civil rights unit has recruited people whose questionable work histories and dearth of education and experience might have disqualified them in the past, former officials said.
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Alex Hanna @alexhanna.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Why isn't this on every TV screen and not the fairy tale of killer robots
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 07/10/2026
SUSAN COLLINS: I was successful in getting road salt removed from the Canada tariff list TROY JACKSON: What about everything else? We can't eat road salt
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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
(Politico) - ABC programs are already tempering their election coverage ahead of the midterms to avoid angering President Donald Trump, a lawyer for the broadcast company told a federal judge on Tuesday .. @politico.com $DIS www.politico.com/news/2026/10...
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Chris Murphy @chrismurphyct.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Something unprecedented happened during my visit to the Gulf. For the first time in 20 years in Congress, I was denied entry to U.S. military facilities and even meetings with military leaders. An order from Hegseth - that applies to both parties - to hide the cost of the war.
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Thomas @quintonthomas.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
I'm really baffled (and repulsed) by the journalists and allegedly left-of-center pundit types who sprang into action today to spin up elaborate explanations for why the comments are less bad than they seem. What the fuck are we doing here?
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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
one of the ways the media shows which side they prefer, is which politicians they quote uncharitably out-of-context and which they clean up for even when what they actually say and do is offensive (the Biden story ran on the front page less than a week before the 24 election)
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Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
I'm just gonna bookmark this for future reference when Dem pundits complain about how the party has trouble communicating its message to voters. The reason you keep running into trouble with your branding isn't campus radicals. The reason is that your opponents purchased all the media outlets.
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Joel S. @joelhs.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Seems like if you're going to make a national story out of Hasan Piker, who campaigned a few times with the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan, saying Israel causes antisemitism, you should also make a national story out of the favorite intellectual of the US Vice President supporting Hitler.
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Andrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
every republican president destroys the economy and starts a war in the middle east
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Lex McMenamin (they/them) @lexmcmenamin.com · 05/10/2026
it is interesting that I can't find any mainstream media coverage of Altman's sister Annie going viral on social media over the weekend for uploading footage of the first hour of her deposition in her lawsuit against him (one of two) in which she is alleging years of CSA
theguardian.com
Accept ‘bad things’ in return for benefits of AI, says Sam Altman
Boss of OpenAI calls for a regulatory light touch because of the ‘good stuff’ the technology can deliver
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Radley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Just a reminder: Tillis persuaded the woman Hegseth allegedly raped to come forward with her story, and told her that if she did, it would sink the nomination. She did. At great risk to herself. Tillis then cast the deciding vote for Hegseth. Because he’s a goddamned coward.
ms.now
Outgoing Sen. Tillis regrets pivotal vote for Hegseth: ‘He’s an actor. He’s not a manager’
Outgoing Sen. Thom Tillis spoke to MS NOW about regretting his vote to confirm Pete Hegseth and his strained relationship with Trump.
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the babahuck @tylerhuckabee.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
yes. the big takeaway from the crucifixion of Jesus is that capital punishment is good.
Jack Posobiec

@JackPosobiec
Christ Himself accepted the death penalty
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Hamilton Nolan @hamiltonnolan.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
We need a lot more explicit talk from elected officials and others about how nobody should join the US military while Trump is in charge. Continued, zombie-like veneration of military service today is a danger to our democracy. www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/friends-do...
hamiltonnolan.com
Friends Don’t Let Friends Join the Military
Donald Trump’s hired gun is a bad thing to be.
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Thomas @quintonthomas.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Quote from the linked piece: "MAGA can be understood as an elite counterrevolutionary project that serves the interests of capital by using the state to impose violence on its enemies and redistribute wealth upward. The goal is to overturn the legacy of the New Deal order and the civil rights that came with it. MAGA’s Greater North America is the overseas extension of this project: providing aid to reactionary governments, subverting progressive and socialist ones, and repressing organized labor by any means across the hemisphere."
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Thomas @quintonthomas.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
"'People become real to us by frustrating us,' psychoanalyst Adam Phillips once wrote. 'If they don’t frustrate us they are merely figures of fantasy.' A chatbot gives us what we want — or what we think we want. It isn’t programmed to challenge us the way humans invariably do. It aims to please.'"
nytimes.com
Why Confiding Your Woes to a Robot Isn’t Going to Help
In “Artificial Intimacy,” Sherry Turkle warns that we seek comfort from A.I. devices at the peril of our well-being and even our democracy.
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Mark Kersten @markkersten.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
UN human rights chief @volker_turk says that the remains of what appeared to be entire families were being unearthed from sites in #Gaza destroyed during Israeli attacks, adding that many victims were women and children: www.cbc.ca/news/world/u...
cbc.ca
UN rights chief says uncovered remains in Gaza raise concerns of war crimes | CBC News
The recovery of hundreds of bodies from the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli strikes in Gaza during the war that began nearly three years ago has raised fresh concerns about possible war crime...
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Thomas @quintonthomas.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
"When we focus on polarization as the problem, the solution is for everyone to quiet down and be 'civil' — an outcome that benefits those who are willing to grab as much power as they can without concern for legality or civility"
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Mark Harris @markharris.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I feel like the debate about what parts of AI are good and what parts are bad should wait until we solve the worldwide crisis caused by the fact that almost of all of its evangelists in both tech and govt are morally, intellectually, and ethically unequipped to oversee it, when not downright evil.
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Thomas @quintonthomas.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
"This idea of a human merger with machines has been a motif in Musk’s intellectual life, which has remained in many ways (and with many terrible results) that of an arrogant and cloistered adolescent boy."
nybooks.com
Space Oddity | Mark O’Connell
Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff’s Muskism examines how Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire, by selling a vision of the future that very few people would want to inhabit.
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Dustin A. Chacón @lingdustin.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I've heard people make claims that AI would lead to a new Renaissance, but I didn't imagine it'd happen like this:
Screenshot of a Tweet from Pope Leo XIV. It reads: 

"In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgen to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity."
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Patrick Wyman @patrickwyman.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
At a really fundamental level Leo XIV is just a person with sound, well-reasoned, moral stances on the world and how life should be lived who isn't afraid to say those things in public. That kind of person simply does not make sense to business leaders and politicians for whom speech is convenience.
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Thomas @quintonthomas.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
"Above all, Trump learned one very big thing from [Roy] Cohn: that the veneer of morality in the American upper class is very thin. Cohn proved conclusively that there is no limit to its tolerance for corruption. Trump got that message—and so did Jeffrey Epstein."
nybooks.com
Devils in America | Fintan O’Toole
Toward the end of his biography of Roy Cohn, written with his wife, Susan Goldmark, Kai Bird quotes the editor and publisher Jason Epstein: “In a way,
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brent 🌹🗽 @therealbrent.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
remarkable thing to admit
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Angie Nixon @angieforfl.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Wanting lower property insurance and healthcare for everyday families isn't un-American; it’s what working people deserve. They can take their tech-bro cash and their weird, intrusive agenda somewhere else, because I'm not going any damn place. /3
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Asawin Suebsaeng @swin24.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
“LMAO” zeteo.com/p/top-republ...
zeteo.com
📉 Top Republicans Privately Admit Their Hasan Piker Attacks Are a Dud
Swin’s conversations with Trumpworld insiders reveal alarm at just how badly the plan to make the leftist streamer the main midterms character is misfiring. Also, Pete Hegseth beclowns himself again.
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James Fallows @jfallows.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Somehow not everyone is aware of fact alluded to below. So one more time: John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett were all on GWBush 2000 'Florida Recount' team. (Which made GWB first prez in 112 yrs to 'win' after losing popular vote. Now they 'impartially' rule on our future.)
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James Hell Brooks @kleinman.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
A forgotten media moment from earlier this year was that Olivia Reingold embedded with ICE agents in Minnesota and never wrote about what it was like because doing so would turn Free Press readers into No Kings marchers.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
America today is a country where regulators won't allow private companies to air interviews of the opposition on TV, but declare that taxpayer funded propaganda is fine.
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Matthew Dowd @matthewjdowd.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Latest WSJ poll: "63% want to pause AI development 61% want a billionaire wealth tax 59% want Medicare for All 57% want a $20 minimum wage 58% want to end U.S. military aid to Israel" This is the center of the country politically. it is time all adjust to this political spectrum, esp. media.
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Perry Bacon @perrybaconjr.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
"For America to right itself, we need changes on the scale of Reconstruction and the New Deal. And I worry that’s not going to happen if Democrats and the broader anti-Trump left are taking their cues about what’s necessary and politically possible from the Times." newrepublic.com/article/2160...
newrepublic.com
The Left Must Fight The New York Times’ Monopoly Too
The paper’s editorial vision is out of step with the robust liberalism needed today.
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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 01/10/2026
The death penalty is a moral abomination. State-sanctioned barbarism pushed by incompetent morons and sanctioned by the Supreme Court. Absolute ghoul shit. www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...
The lone woman on Tennessee's death row was still alive after she was administered two lethal injections, her lawyer said in a motion seeking to halt her execution Wednesday night, a stunning development after the Supreme Court had stepped in to allow the state to put her to death.
At 8:26 p.m. local time, witnesses said
"executioners had injected both syringes of lethal injection chemicals and Pike is still alive and snoring," her lawyers said in a federal court filing.
They said Pike "has not lost consciousness and still has a heartbeat," and that curtains to the death chamber "have gone down twice."
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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
But also this heroine: "Cereese Qusba, 22, a senior and reporter for The Sun, couldn’t shake her concerned curiosity about the case. This month...Ms. Qusba was ready to hit publish on her investigation, which was 23 months in the making."
nytimes.com
Students at Cornell Daily Sun Pursued Sexual Assault Case for Two Years
The student newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun, covered the allegations of rape at a fraternity party since they were first made in 2024 and led the reporting on the case.
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Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
There is a moment at the very very end of Abdul El-Sayed's podcast with Ezra Klein (book recommendation section) where he talks about the idea of "speaking truth to pain" and this will be staying with me for an extremely long time. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...
But there’s also something about truth to pain. We talk a lot about truth to power, but I think it’s actually a lot harder to speak truth to pain. I say that as someone who went to medical school, realizing that in a lot of our politics right now, we’ve got to get a lot better at speaking truth to pain if we’re going to get through some of these challenges that we have.

What does “truth to pain” mean?

It’s one thing to look power in the eye and say: You’re wrong about this. But there’s a way in which pain is very difficult to reason with. Because when somebody is in their pain, they’re in their trauma. They see that pain, and they may not see what’s causing it.

I remember just very explicitly being in a trauma ward with a gunshot wound patient and watching this big guy with his hand on his gunshot wound. All the folks are trying to pull his hand off his pain, that point of his gunshot wound, this clear vulnerability.

And this emergency room doctor had the presence of mind to be like: Everyone, stop. And she looks him in the eyes, and she’s like: I get that really hurts, and I’m so sorry that you’re here. You don’t want to be here. We don’t want you to be here. But if you don’t let us fix this, you could die. So I’m going to take your hand, and I’m going to move it off, OK? Because I need to get there so that you can live.

She was speaking truth to pain. He understands he’s at the hospital, he needs care, but he also doesn’t want anybody to touch the wound. Which is a natural thing. And I think it is a really great metaphor for how we think about a lot of these challenges we talked about today.
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Thomas @quintonthomas.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
"Multiple websites?" You don't think Twitter plays a unique role, here?
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Bill McKibben @billmckibben.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
We need affordability. And also just a smidgen of serenity? www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | I’m Exhausted. You’re Demoralized. We Weren’t Built for a World Like This.
A greatly underappreciated virtue of other presidents was that you could forget about them for weeks at a time.
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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Actually you did vote for this, dipshit
Erick Erickson: Talked to a friend whose business has been hit hard by diesel and tariffs. He vented, "I voted for him, but I didn't vote for this." Real frustration out there.
1:16 PM • 9/29/26 • 5.5K Views
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