iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Sam Ulmschneider

Starfire’s Deranged Neocon Foreign Policy Podcast @irhottakes.bsky.social · 34m

I don’t trust the mainstream media, but I feel like the primary alternate model, getting the news from the posts of a 14 year-old Romanian schizophrenic shitposter named “G00n3R the Swamp Pervert,” is not necessarily a superior alternative.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 2h

One of the most depressing days in my AP Government class is the day we teach campaign finance, bc the curriculum requires me to teach the non-coordination requirement reasoning in Citizens United/Speechnow with a straight face instead of talking about the death of non-coordination since 2015-18.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 9h

one of the the interesting bit of the Trump approval rating collapse is that though the Iran war has damaged him, it wasn't some kind of decisive event. He was sitting in the low 40s before the war started, now he's sitting in the mid-to-low 30s. He went from 45-ish to 40-ish (similar drop) Jun-Jan.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 21h

Increasingly, students enter universities with AP/DE credits & will never take a university provided course in non-major areas. That means having HS teachers w graduate credentials, active scholarly engagement are important for student exposure to a discipline, but we do nothing to encourage that.

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Reposted by Sam Ulmschneider

"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Man, you have to be just...really racist...not to come away from spending basically any time at all at an American university with a nearly boundless faith in the power of American assimilation. All sorts of students whose ancestors came from all over, utterly and completely American, all the way.

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Reposted by Sam Ulmschneider

Mike Boylan-Kolchin @mbkplus.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Optimizing one’s time on Capitol Hill for internet content rather than for lawmaking has been a net negative for the country

“Freedom of speech” / guy in a town hall meme

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Reposted by Sam Ulmschneider

Jeff Lazarus @jlazarus.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I’ve joked about making candidates pass a freshman American Government class before they can run and even though I know it’s a terrible idea a part of me really wants it to happen.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

does any band do better at surfacing & effectively portraying edginess, paranoia, anxiety, the emotional currents of hypermodernity than the Talking Heads? Remain In Light is an older album than I am on this earth, but I just listened to it all the way through and it's a pretty resonant experience.

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Reposted by Sam Ulmschneider

Elizabeth Bear @matociquala.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

2003: whatever you do, don't source your research from Wikipedia. 2026: Wikipedia is the safest online source to start general research from.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Yeah, there are structural problems and a lot of consumer-facing discomfort in the economy right now, but they are nothing like an actual recession-near-depression in terms of the urgency and severity of the damage being done to people's lives and economic future. That doesn't mean things are great!

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

every once in a while I have a stupid, wild idea like "what if I play the soundtrack for Conan the Barbarian during the next major test my students take to see if powerful background music can help/calm/inspire their raw nervousness"? I'll never do it but these things hover in the background.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

It's honestly a little astonishing that a video game I've never played and don't own (Hardspace: Shipbreaker) has a soundtrack so well done and atmospheric that it is right up there in my most listened to albums of all time.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

It isn't the best or the best-remembered Hitchcock film, but I have an enduring love for Notorious. It's such a strange relic of a transitional moment in film history.

static.klipy.com

Ingrid Bergman Smiles in Old Hollywood

ALT: Ingrid Bergman Smiles in Old Hollywood

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Silent film era was a success in my pop culture history class (the one farthest from my wheelhouse). Now I choose an early sound film from the 1930s or early 1940s, not for its artistic merit or significance but as an example of cultural and social or commercial trends/forces. What would you pick?

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Something driving me insane about grading College Board style assessments is that they determined grammar/spelling never count agst a student unless they occlude the factuality of the student's evidence or undermine their reasoning/use of evidence. Massacres of English on a page can get full marks.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

My policy positions on specific proposals are generally nuanced and varied but I'm more and more convinced of the need for enormous universal subsidies for parents/child caregivers. The gains are so powerful across so many domains that the real issue is how to pay for it w/o distortional impacts.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

What's your favorite small-scale musical gem that not enough people have ever listened to? Mine these days is Sahara Surfers, an Austrian stoner-grunge-rock-metal band whose sophomore album 'Sonar Pilot' is just really fantastic, evocative, and fun by turns...and maybe 70,000 people have heard it.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Off to teach everything students need to know about redistricting and gerrymandering from both the political science and constitutional law angles in just 80 minutes, not an impossible task at all, no, why do you ask?

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

The American colonists (later revolutionaries and Reconstruction Amendment writers!) who adopted the ideas of birthright citizenship, civic nationalism, and creedal national identity were coming from a background that set such an idea up to succeed! A more evocative summary of it I've rarely seen.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Watched FW Murnau's 'Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans' w my History of Popular Culture class today, was impressed and surprised by their degree of buy-in to the whole thing. I'd used comedies for my silent film entries in pop culture history in the past to mixed results, this may be a better choice!

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Funny, back avt 12-14 years ago idea of a pivot to video washed through journalism like a biblical flood. It never really manifested then, but now it has - except the video which so much political news has pivoted to is short-form and hosted on scrolling social platforms - not what was envisioned!

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

"From Accommodation, Acculturation, and Moderation to Iterative Terrorism: The Collapse of Religious Sectarian Tolerance in the Old Republic and the Rise of Stochastic Religious Warfare in the Imperial Period and Aftermath in the Ord Trasi Sub-Sector"

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

One of those groups I'd pay a lot of money to see but who never seem to tour close enough to me at a good enough moment in my calendar: The Warning. Really part of the next wave of what's happening in mainstream metal (yes, there are many other subgenres with alternative artistic takes!). Sigh.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

TIL (or was reminded) that every Washington state legislative district is a multimember district with respect to the lower house! I feel like this should've been top of mind for me already, since I talk/teach a lot about legislative representation in different constitutional systems/structures.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Whenever I see people throwing around “10 tv shows” etc I freeze and panic. 10 TV shows I enjoy for possibly indefensible, idiosyncratic reasons? 10 TV shows I consider most important or artistically valuable? 10 TV shows which I would argue had the greatest impact on future shows? Argh, too broad!

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Oh no! I missed Caturday because I was driving around all day. Fortunately the internet never begrudges a cat picture, here’s Faye looking worried I might have the gall to kick her from my lap while I’m grading essays.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

there really is no set of terms more perilously abused to the point of becoming effectively meaningless in contemporary American politics than 'middle class' 'working class' 'blue collar' and 'white collar,' all of which point to a vibe, aesthetic, attitude, or imagined group, not a real group.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I actually reserved a little time for gaming today, but am stuck between trying out the new Surviving Mars expansion, trying a run as the Soviets in HoI4 (haven't done it in 4+ years) or making some headway in the grim single-character RPG StoneShard. Taking suggestions!

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

one of my strongest takes it that the widespread adoption of individual consumer automobiles, though the commercial and social logic that prodded it seems hard to avoid, is one of our worst civilizational bungles as a species.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

the only two SCOTUS cases about voting or gerrymandering the AP Government curriculum wants me to teach are Baker v Carr and Shaw v Reno, and every year I struggle with whether I'm over-reaching and demanding too much of the students by adding Shelby County v Holder and Rucho v Common Cause. Sigh.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Only 3/9 weeks of the first quarter are actual five day weeks. Just riddled w holiday weekends and PSATs and festivals and other interruptions. Hard to actually achieve the pace I’m supposed to!

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

As I get older, I hate long distance driving increasingly more. I’m more aware of the value of time wasted by hours in traffic and have ever-heightened consciousness about all the terrible things that can go wrong and fuck up your life due to cars.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

My school has rough guidelines that AP/university level courses are expected to/can assign abt 3 hours of work a week (similar to a college class, and 3 contact hours a week and 3 follow up work hours), but many of our students take 5-7 such courses. What high schooler should do that much homework?

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Reposted by Sam Ulmschneider

Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

doing a SCOTUS term preview discussion tomorrow (I know its super early but the school's calendar rules all). What are your favorite petitions and major issues still lurking out there and all too likely to get granted before the term is over, cause a big old ruckus in the process?

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I don't mind paying abt 20% of each paycheck in income taxes as a teacher - I'd be willing to pay more for state and federal governments that did their work robustly! I do mind that I pay so much while people who make much, much more than me continuously find ways to escape so much as a 10% burden.

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Reposted by Sam Ulmschneider

Friendly Skeleton @jonathan.eylerwerve.com · 15/09/2026

a mobile phone is a cybernetic implant, we're just pragmatic about the interface format

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

It's always interesting what science fiction is able to imagine and how, and what it doesn't stumble onto. Easy to imagine that in 2046, twenty years from now, the cigarette industry is mostly dead and replaced by vapes. But vapes appear in basically no science fiction images of the future pre-2010.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

If I could be given a two week J-term silly-but-not student interest course to teach, it would be "Music Video Analysis: An Intro to Critical Thinking Skills, Cultural History, Political Theory, and Music Appreciation"

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

the structures of professional growth expressed here should be something within our reach - they're already achieved in some small, select spaces - but this frame of discussion is treated as either a frivolous daydream or dangerous elitism by too much of the education and curricular policy space.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Spending all day w my best students at James Madison's house tomorrow, it is one of the days I look forward to and treasure most each year of teaching. it's easy to post lots of doomerism and grouching but some experiences remain energizing and help to grow student's curiosity and joy in learning.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Had a chance to see Patrick Page in All The Devils Are Here a second time last week and can't help but think a lot abt the degree to which taking a couple semesters of pure Shakespeare studies in my academic career more or less on a whim has enriched my life enormously, in unexpected cascading ways.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Man, my students have to use a lot of their mental processing space on non-school stuff I couldn’t have imagined at 17. By the time they graduate they’re expected to be strong users of the whole Google and Microsoft suites, maybe Canva too, and several LMS or student account software. Whew.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

...Treasury rate instability, AI capital market dynamics, oil supply distortions, cryptocurrency weirdness, health insurance market implosions, AI investment undercurrents...it is really hard for me not to feel nasueously like (vibes wise, I am no econ wonk and know it!) I'm on the edge of 2008 mk2.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I know there's a lot going on, but feels profound for Americans to consider that the British Empire was the most powerful, innovative, expanding polity in the world 200 years ago, in the top 5 100 years ago, on a reversible downslide 50 years ago, and the UK may be disintegrated in another 20 years.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I posted about this the other day and it's really crucial to understand. The demographic and macroeconomic 18-wheeler hurtling towards the Chinese economic and social models is going to require the new mechanisms for productivity and service provision AI might provide, they need it more than anyone.

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I sometimes wonder what Bush's Presidency would have been like if the 9/11 plotters had failed. Their plot was so complex, difficult, multi-layered that its genuinely surprising it didn't collapse in the planning, preparation, or execution and a domestic-focused Bush term...hard to know the course!

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

This is one of those facts that I feel like just isn't present enough in political discussion bc almost everyone in politics discourse space are people who have jobs or life structures that let them create retirement plans and accounts. The implications of it for campaigns, policymaking are huge!

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Sam Ulmschneider @samulmschneider.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I feel like my musical tastes are eroding into the generation before I was born sometimes - sitting down for a long shift of grading at the public library and my music of choice today seems to be mostly Wishbone Ash, Jethro Tull, and King Crimson.

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