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Red Rock Deserts

@redrockdeserts.bsky.social
142 followers 269 following 71 posts

Trans public servant. Background investigations and security clearance adjudications.

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Jay Rosen @jayrosen.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
"When in doubt, draw a distinction." Not sure where he got it, but in grad school one of my teachers taught me that. This (long) thread is about the key distinctions I rely on as a critic. There's a Twitter version from 2021. This one builds on that one. I will post them one at a time. Ready?
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Gillian Brockell @gillianbrockell.com · 24/12/2025
Hey, if you are generally supportive of trans people and self-determination but don’t necessarily know much about it, let me explain something that a trans friend & roommate explained to me in 2004. This is why health care for trans kids is so important.
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Matthew Downhour @matthewdownhour.bsky.social · 13/12/2025
So, El Fasher looks like one of the worst single event atrocities to happen this century so far, but the evidence has come in such a trickle it seems to only now be getting verified
irishtimes.com
At least 60,000 murdered in Sudanese city, which resembles ‘a slaughterhouse’
Satellite evidence shows extent of paramilitary massacre in El Fasher
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 12/11/2025
Great piece by Zadie Smith. When the right talks about classics or "Western" culture, these works are only important to the extent that it demonstrates their superiority, they have no interest in art in and of itself beyond that www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
You know a country by its values. By what a country values. And it turns out that what a country values can change over time. Sometimes, though, there’s a sort of cognitive delay between the country you think you are in, and the country you’ve actually become. For example, you can keep selling yourself, to foreigners, as the country of William Shakespeare and Jane Austen, and luring busloads of tourists to Stratford-upon-Avon and Bath, and put a statue of George Orwell in front of the BBC, and imagine yourself a cultured and literate nation, which the rest of the world admires for its devotion to the written word – but if you then chronically underfund your cultural institutions, and treat your cultural workers with contempt, many people will suspect you of being full of it. And as the decades pass – and fewer and fewer Shakespeares and Austens and Orwells emerge from your little island – even more people will begin to suspect that in truth you do not value culture at all, and are in fact running a giant heritage museum in which the only cultural workers you respect are the dead ones.
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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
Gonna take a moment to expand on a footnote on "a truly intellectually defensible definition of 'the West.'" The tendency for historians has been to abandon the term as it is mostly used in indefensible ways to 'other' the Islamic world. But I think 'what could this term do' is a useful exercise.
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Katherine Alejandra Cross @quinnae.com · 05/11/2025
The thing to understand about the wave of transphobia plaguing our politics right now is that it does not nourish itself on the hatreds of ordinary voters. It nourishes on their indifference.
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Dan the Gnome @brewergnome.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
As a biologist, It really is a great analogy. Also trees. It's like saying, "There are trees and grass, you have to be one or the other." Ok... where is the line that defines "is a tree?" what about bush-like grasses? Palm trees? NON-tree palms? What about horsetails and their tree-like ancestors?
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Bobby Kogan @bbkogan.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
It’s not just that they don’t have to turn off SNAP benefits — they’re not legally allowed to. They legally must use the contingency fund. The admin is pretending they can’t use it even though their own guidance from a month ago (that they’ve since deleted) contradicts that.
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Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 26/05/2025
We don’t need to wait for permission. We need to act like democracy is ours to reforge. Because it is.
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Todd Jones @toddrjones.bsky.social · 18/05/2025
Here are some ways the world has gotten better.
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The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 30/03/2025
CARTOON OF THE DAY #2 🇺🇸 (From @adamzyglis.bsky.social )
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Jonathan Ladd @jonathanmladd.com · 27/03/2025
I can’t emphasize enough that cynicism is a dictator’s best friend. Stay outraged. Believe in and work for democracy.
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Resistance Rangers @resistancerangers.altgov.info · 26/02/2025
Park rangers want YOU to help us protect our parks! This Saturday, 3/1, in solidarity with the 50:50:1 movement, plan a protest in support of your closest national park. Do it at 12 noon your time, or whatever best fits your secret plan 👀🤠😏 #ProtectOurParks #SaveOurParks #RehireRangers
A WPA-style poster in shades of brown, black, tan, and blue shows a park ranger in silhouette looking at Horseshoe Falls at El Capitan in Yosemite National Park – an upside-down American flag hangs from the cliff. Text reads “Stand up for National Parks & Public Lands Saturday, March 1 – Nationwide day of action - @ResistanceRangers” Text at the bottom reads “433 Park Sites, 433 Protests, 1Day – Worth Fighting For”
 
Yellow text on an olive background reads “Protect your parks protest – March 1st at noon, @ResistanceRangers”Yellow text on olive background read “Protest ideas: hand out flyers to cars, put up a sign in front of webcams, hang a banner, hand a flag upside down, march in a gateway town, or rally inside the park. Picket around the park sign, share photos online - #ProtectOurParks #RehireParkRangers - @ResistanceRangers”Yellow text on an olive background reads “Noon on Saturday March 1st Protect your parks protest – protest at your closest National Park site. Demand that parks and park rangers be protected. With your help, there will be protests at all 433 park sites. @ResistanceRangers”
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 17/09/2024
Bluesky graphic that says "Celebrating 10M users. Number 461,541. First 10%."
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Lydia Polgreen @polgreen.bsky.social · 26/08/2024
To anyone who thinks the right wing war against trans people is a fringe issue, please follow this terrific series by The 19th. The core aims of this movement, if achieved, will have a profound impact on all of us. 19thnews.org/2024/08/the-...
19thnews.org
The toll of America's anti-trans war
To understand how the anti-trans agenda could reshape all of our lives, The 19th set out to examine how the laws and rhetoric behind it are impacting Americans.
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 14/08/2024
I have nothing in particular worth saying, just felt like I should have at least ONE post here, so here's a picture of the Mojave Desert.
Rocky orange and brown ridges with very scarce vegetation under a brilliantly clear blue sky. Sun rays streak down from the top left.
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