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Red Rock Deserts

@redrockdeserts.bsky.social
146 followers 255 following 71 posts

Trans public servant. Background investigations and security clearance adjudications.

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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Yes, there are better agricultural practices that are often being ignored. Ag irrigation is often extremely and unnecessarily wasteful because it's cheaper for them to waste enormous amounts of water than to convert to a more efficient irrigation technique, e.g. drip irrigation.
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
A hyper-specific but not funny issue is that in northern NM, some Pueblo people feel about statues of conquistadores roughly the same way Black folks in the South feel about statues of Confederates. Dem candidates need to prepare for questions about whether statues of Oñate should be torn down.
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Revising the Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988 to exempt THC. (Or just federal legalization of pot.) For all those post-docs with security clearances.
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
I love black tea but sometimes cannot tolerate caffeine, so I massively appreciate all your decaf options! So much that your store has become my default place to order all my tea because I can add a few interesting decaf blacks to have on hand for my no-caffeine times.
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
Heat, maybe, but Nevada completed a new intake straw in 2015 so downstream water use will run dry (e.g. Southern California) before Las Vegas loses the ability to draw from Lake Mead.
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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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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
Make them all get childcare checks as part of their BI and require that the full BI be completed before they can EOD. Any conviction ever of domestic violence, harm to a child, or felony involving violence makes them ineligible. Require polygraphs.
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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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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 21/12/2025
This person calling it "the garbage that you don't need to read" shows a striking lack of curiosity. I read a lot of things for my PhD dissertation that I didn't *need* to read. Every page of it made me more informed about my field, and sparked questions I wouldn't have otherwise known to ask.
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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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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
I was recently getting instruction from my coach to prepare for pullups and this is everything he was saying not to do, technique-wise.
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 27/11/2025
Don't worry, we're pissed about the golf courses and Maricopa County's development sprawl with insufficient long-term water planning, too. And also alfalfa and basically everything about CAP and the Colorado River Compact.
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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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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 04/11/2025
LOLing at the "without complaint." I can guarantee there are complaints, even if she's not hearing them.
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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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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
Yes. Sermon at the local Episcopal church a few weeks ago stated something along the lines of since people are made in God's image, those who deny other people's humanity are denying the face of God.
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
This exactly! I'm trans and old enough to remember when the discriminatory laws of DADT and separate but "equal" civil unions were considered LGBTQ victories because the other side wanted to ban queer people from participating in civil life *entirely* and not just partially.
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
Candidates didn't used to run on anti-trans policies because basically most of society was transphobic so no one needed to run on it. Instead, they ran on anti-gay policies. Like, trans rights are being attacked *now* because we didn't used to have many rights to attack!
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
Add to this that "prior criminal record" could include e.g. smoking a joint, minor in possession of alcohol for drinking a beer when 19 years old, a single poor-judgement DUI from 20 years ago, etc. "Prior criminal record" does not mean "violent criminal."
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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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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
I now have a lot of updated systems that suck a lot more than the old ones did (which is quite an accomplishment because the old systems sucked rather a lot). In one of them, they took away the search function making the updated system practically unusable for its purpose.
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
I can't speak to what HR in every agency does with USAJobs postings, but I've seen it before. And citizenship status gets asked on the OF306 and SF85/85P/86 and it's been an employment requirement for half a century. There's plenty of bizarre things about this posting but that bit isn't one of them.
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
Aside from it being horrible, this is also a weird-ass way of advertising a position that is the most deskiest of desk jobs.
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
That's been a requirement of federal employment since 1976. Everything else about the job announcement is wacked but that bit is a long-existing statutory requirement. www.federalregister.gov/executive-or...
federalregister.gov
Executive Order
Search, browse and learn about the Federal Register. Federal Register 2.0 is the unofficial daily publication for rules, proposed rules, and notices of Federal agencies and organizations, as well as e...
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 28/09/2025
As far as I'm aware, I-130 petition is still a path. That's always been the most common immigration pathway (but can take an outrageously long time depending on the petitioner's relationship to the petitionee, and the country of origin).
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 08/09/2025
A picture of a page that says "D, all of the above"
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 21/08/2025
Possible explanation is that ICE and CBP positions likely require a higher level background investigation (T3 or T5). Those often take a long time. They're probably hoping DoD civs who already have T3/T5s can fill the ICE/CBP positions for the 6-12 months while the BIs are carried out.
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 01/08/2025
I'm nominating a dark horse: Black Sails. Bit of a rocky start but starts to hits its stride in mid-season 1 and just gets better from there, stays strong, and lands the series finale beautifully in a way that Game of Thrones utterly failed to do.
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 21/07/2025
Guatemala has immigration laws. Like, if Guatemala didn't admit him, he can't just stay and also bring his wife there without that potentially becoming a problem.
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 19/07/2025
Long time since my USCIS days, but I remember people coming to the office to get a document (I-94?) stamped when they had a pending I-90 and needed temporary documentation. And an ISA could have looked him up in CIS in literally 30 seconds and seen he was an LPR. ICE *must* have known.
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 19/07/2025
16 years old, in my high school office making photocopies, and Ted Danson walks in. An adult offers to introduce me to him, but I was culturally illiterate at the time and had no idea who he was so I shrugged indifferently and returned to my photocopying. Teenagers, man.
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 28/06/2025
Nonsense, we'd tie babies to eight-lane freeways. (trying to dark humor my way through the horrors here...)
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 27/06/2025
(Disclosing that I'm very much not an immigration lawyer. I worked with immigration records for a brief time a very long time ago, so I picked up a little knowledge but definitely not an expert. Learned just enough to learn that US immigration law is a labyrinthian hellscape.)
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 27/06/2025
The CRBA is filed by the US citizen parent with the State Department and not by the doctor. And also can be filed at any point before the child is 18. (Eligibility for CBRA vs N-600K has to do with the parent's physical presence in the US prior to living abroad.)
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 27/06/2025
Seems like, but not necessarily N-600K paperwork. That's typically filed by expat Americans. Children born on military bases usually get a Consular Report of Birth Abroad (CRBA). The CRBA makes a person a citizen at birth, the N-600K does not. (e.g. John McCain situation vs Ted Cruz situation)
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 27/06/2025
Not choose at 18 exactly, but children born abroad to US citizens have to file for US citizenship (N-600K form) before their 18th birthday in order to claim that citizenship. (And they can still keep citizenship of their birth country, becoming dual citizens.)
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
Yes, but that's because most Federal law enforcement have security clearances and part of having a security clearance is signing an NDA (technically an SF-312).
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 22/06/2025
www.govexec.com/management/2...
govexec.com
Feds from IRS agents to refugee officers are deploying to assist ICE conduct raids
President Trump is tapping unusual parts of the government immigration enforcement, and offering unprecedented roles.
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
The Federal government is perfectly capable of obtaining undercover license plates registered to a person and address that doesn't exist, so no license plate at all is a deliberate choice.
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
I had suspicions before, but reading this makes me even more sure that DOGE is responsible for our new eOPF that does not do any of the things I need it to do, and also for the government-wide security clearance background investigation system going haywire for an entire week this month.
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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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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
I'm sure the USFS will do everything they can to keep people safe. It's a shame thousands of them have been harassed into resigning after months of threatening DOGE emails telling Federal employees to quit before mass layoffs happen.
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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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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
Waiting for some clever VA employee who was forced to RTO to request a RA to work from home on account of their Christian faith. Sure, there's nothing in scripture or theology about that, but same with vaccines. Claim a sincerely held belief and tell them to prove you don't believe it.
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Red Rock Deserts @redrockdeserts.bsky.social · 13/04/2025
This is honestly exactly what I plan to do if I get RIFed. I don't want this, but I need health insurance and income and have a weird and specialized skillset that's pretty specific to government operations.
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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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