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Regina Rini

@reginarini.bsky.social
1.7K followers 110 following 215 posts

I teach Philosophy at York Uni in Toronto. I also write the 'Morals of the Story' column for the Times Literary Supplement. Work on norms, disagreement, and the role of tech in society.

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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
in case useful, I wrote about exactly this a couple months into the pandemic : www.the-tls.com/regular-feat...
the-tls.com
Coronavirus: it's just not fair
Ethics essay | Why it’s so hard to accept that you can’t negotiate with a virus: Fairness, blame and an amoral scrap of RNA, by Regina Rini
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Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
The three stages of life: 1. Too young 2. Too busy 3. Too old
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
You're asking for a steelman? Iran has been severely degraded, in human leadership, weapon systems, and proxies. It will take 5-10 years to build back to regional hegemony aspirations. Meanwhile the inexperienced new leadership may not be able to stop the next internal anti-regime uprising.
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
when you are desperately struggling to figure out how to keep a losing war from becoming a complete quagmire, the worst thing you could do is send signals that all but boot-licking yesmen will be fired
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
genuine indictment of US Senate. It was obvious from start that this guy is a made-for-TV empty suit with no ideas beyond smirking culture war symbolism. Completely unqualified for the position, and the Senate had a duty to say so
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
I wonder what he gave up for Lent.
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
It is unclear to me what logical relation your question does or even is meant to have to the post I made. Great big plate of non sequitur spaghetti.
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
frank sinatra has a code
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
I skim-read read it as 'repeatedly' rather than 'allegedly' and it was even more fun. A spree!
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
It is a problem when the president of the United States sounds like a used car salesman trying to hook the country on a pre-owned war.
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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
In a talk right now which takes it as obvious it's wrong not to pay for public transport as a user. I agree! But this would absolutely be incredibly spicy on Vaguely Antisocial Leftist Internet. Gonna ask the speaker what they think of BasedLenin6942067's counter argument that they deserve a swirlie
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
Ugh. I'm not a fan of MJS, but this is absurd. If you try to destroy people for using words imprecisely, you'll end up with no one speaking but those who have nothing interesting to say and those who actively enjoy verbal bloodsport.
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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
My "We don't allow bets on assassinations and murder" ad campaign has people asking a lot of questions already answered by the ad campaign
A Kalshi ad that says "We don't do death markets"
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Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
Philosophical thought experiment meets gothic horror, in rhyme.
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Richard Pettigrew @wiglet1981.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
Eastern APA tenure track job interview, circa 1997
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
time travel movie where these people go back to ask Mayors John Purroy Mitchel, John Francis Hylan, and John P. O'Brien why they haven't said anything about British Mandate Palestine
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
a bell curve for bell curves
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Jared Pechaček @vandroidhelsing.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
godzilla "it may sound primitive and unscientific, but through the fairies, we could ask Mothra to help" quote
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
We're beyond posting misinformation now. People are unleashing autonomous systems that create new misinformation, targeted against innocent people. There seem to be many people who never learned that you must take responsibility for your toys, even when shiny and new theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-...
theshamblog.com
An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me
Summary: An AI agent of unknown ownership autonomously wrote and published a personalized hit piece about me after I rejected its code, attempting to damage my reputation and shame me into acceptin…
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
readymade concentration camps
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nitasha tiku @nitasha.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
My story on Elon Musk cutting safeguards at xAI is on the front page of today's @washingtonpost.com. I’m also among 100’s of reporters laid off. I absolutely loved my job my brilliant coworkers & the thrill of reporting @ the center of forces upending the world: AI & Silicon Valley’s political power
cover of The Washington Post on Wednesday Feb 4, 2026. Headline on bottom, right: Musk wanted to hook users; his chatbot got more sexual
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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 31/01/2026
Venn diagram of had friendly email correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein and argued that wokeness is a dire threat to civilization that must be stopped before it finishes destroying freedom.
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
this week in the TLS I ask whether Trump can really has his own morality - and whether laws are good for Kantian autonomy www.the-tls.com/regular-feat...
the-tls.com
Kant and external law
What, if anything, can stop Donald Trump? Not international law, as the President made clear in a recent New York Times interview, the week he declared
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
source: www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/0...
washingtonpost.com
Trump’s Board of Peace has divided the globe. Here are the participants.
Invitations to join the board have prompted a wide range of responses, from eager assent to hedging, wait-and-see statements from bewildered world leaders.
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
Board of Peace as contentious middle school sleepover
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
"hundreds of years ago... we had boats landing there, also" is a remarkably efficient view into the current presidential mindset
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
it's like an 80s movie where some snotty 12 year old wished on a magic xylophone to be president and now all the real world leaders are having to promise him more screen time or else
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
'Perfidy Hegseth' sounds like a Dickens character who tricks children into trading their last chestnut for bitumen
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 12/01/2026
it is a generational catastrophe for rule of law that everyone in the US now takes it for granted that federal investigations are simply politics by other means
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Elizabeth Picciuto @epicciuto.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
If someone in 2013 read the sentence, “Today NATO warned President Donald Trump that the US should not invade Greenland,” they’d think it was a mad-libs.
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 03/01/2026
prediction: google searches for 'Grenada' and 'Noriega' will be at all-time highs today
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 01/01/2026
compelling assessment of Weiss. 'no truth... only content' That fits how I've seen her behave over time. There's little sense that any truth exists to converge upon. Only provocative narratives and counter-narratives. Great for an opinion section. Terrible for the news side.
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
more about the epistemic backstop: philpapers.org/archive/RIND...
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
never ending epistemic backstop crises time.com/7290050/veo-...
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
story here: www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/...
washingtonpost.com
Defendant accused of faking Trump death threats so witness would be deported
Demetric Deshawn Scott wrote letters threatening to kill President Donald Trump, in an attempt to get Ramón Morales Reyes deported, Wisconsin prosecutors said.
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
incredible... A man charged with assault and robbery tries to get his alleged victim deported (to prevent him testifying) by forging letters threatening the president.... but fails to consider that the victim doesn't speak English... ... and still gets his victim rounded up for deportation
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
seeking podcast recommendations: - case studies of advertising campaigns - the history of obsolete technology (especially industrial revolution vintage)
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 26/05/2025
apartment building wifi naming drama comes for Korean Starbucks www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/0...
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 26/05/2025
The motives here are good, but it's hard to imagine how to keep students from gaming this. Also risk of a backfire effect if young people think civil discourse is just what the olds force you to pretend to do a few minutes a day while you go on being horrid on your real (hidden from olds) accounts.
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 24/05/2025
but we tell people 'click through to the original source, don't just read the AI summary'
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
What's maddening is that the Trump admin probably didn't even think about the long term consequence. I can picture the meeting around a whiteboard last week: 'Come on guys, we need a way to damage Harvard's finances. Toss them out, no dumb ideas!'
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Jamal Greene @jamalgreene.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
The playbook. (This was 2018.) www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/12...
insidehighered.com
Central European University is forced out of Hungary, moving to Vienna
Central European University says the Hungarian government has forced it to move its main campus from Budapest to Vienna.
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
Also: future scientists, you are very welcome here in Canada! We may not be able to pay as much as America, but there is much less chance we will abduct you off the street and send you to a nightmare prison in El Salvador!
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
Future historians may actually be able to calculate how much economic benefit China gained from today's news.
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
Throughout the Cold War, America benefited enormously from its reputation as a place you could come to do science without ideological interference. Its edge in leading technology comes from that. Today the Trump administration ratified a new policy: if you want to do science, go somewhere else.
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
also: who would trust an AI attached to a program that routinely mishandles CTLR-c-CTRL-v?
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Regina Rini @reginarini.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
adobe acrobat AI saying this about a 20 page journal article is a form of violence
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Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
After years of bad takes from some corners of the left that blamed corporate greed for the effects of a worldwide flood of money supply & contraction of goods supply due to COVID, now we're getting bad takes from the insane right-wing president blaming corporate greed for the effects of his tariffs.
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