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R.E.Ward

@snap-dragons.bsky.social
745 followers 513 following 47 posts

Yeah my parents really did give me this wonderful initials/last name combo. 🏳️‍⚧️ 🏳️‍🌈 He/Him NCSU Alum Sci-fi fantasy nerd 🖖

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Reposted by R.E.Ward
Laura Bassett @lebassett.bsky.social · 17h
“If you don’t like public executions just don’t watch it” says the crowd trying to ban drag shows and books
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s. e. smith @sesmith.lol · 08/10/2026
I REALLY like this @anildash.com piece on 'unalive' and algospeak in general, particularly the exploration of the implications for a generation of people growing up steeped in it.
anildash.com
We are going to kill “unalive” - Anil Dash
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.
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Stephen Vaisey 🇺🇦 @stephenvaisey.com · 07/10/2026
BTW this means no funding for GSS, ANES, or PSID. GSS 2026 is in the field now, but then it looks like that's it. Devastating for social science.
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Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
"The current level of political animosity is exactly what one would expect to see if an extremist faction attempted to rescind the hard-earned rights of the vast majority of the country’s citizens." There are not enough exclamation points to convey how I felt reading this paragraph
Screenshot of article which reads: From this perspective, the “both sides” frame falls apart. The prob-
lem is not that the parties are divided. The problem is the existential 
threat that a reempowered ethnonationalist strain poses to pluralistic 
U.S. democracy writ large. The current level of political animosity is 
exactly what one would expect to see if an extremist faction attempted 
to rescind the hard-earned rights of the vast majority of the country’s 
citizens. The only way to re-oppress most of a country is to use anti-
democratic and authoritarian tactics. And the only way to oppose those 
tactics is to push back as a population and clearly reject them. This is 
the argument happening in the United States, and its pathology is not 
anger—it is the movement to undermine a generation of rights.
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Elizabeth Spiers @espiers.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Just read @katemanne.bsky.social ‘s fantastic piece in The Cut about the Cornell rape and she points out that students protesting conditions in Gaza were treated more harshly than the rapists and holy shit, this detail
One of these students was my own advisee, and having supported her throughout the the months-long case, I can state with confidence that she did nothing wrong. Moreover, she happens to be deaf and was suspended in part for being “unreasonably loud.” Privacy consideration
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Luna @lunalore.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I get the feeling that Meta tried SO HARD to make this mascot thing the cuddliest lil’ guy ever but all I see is an unholy amalgamation of the Snuggle fabric softener teddy bear & the Adipose Babies from Doctor Who. Its an echo of both but not either, and feels viscerally WRONG
Snuggle fabric softener teddy bearAdipose Fat Babies flying up to the mother ship in series 4 of Doctor Who
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The Trandalorian @charliejaneanders.com · 30/09/2026
I really do think tech crossed a line at some point between "helping you do the things you want to do" on the one hand, and "helping you do the things tech wants you to do" on the other. At this point, we're all contorting ourselves to live how the tech industry thinks we should be living.
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Katelyn Burns @katelynburns.com · 30/09/2026
"He has one house" I lost it
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CN Lester 🏳️‍⚧️ @cnlester.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
There a very few books that deserve being called 'vital', but Sara Ahmed's 'Complaint' is one of them.
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hammancheez but spooky @hammancheez.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
GOP Consultants : what do you mean she just fucking tweeted it out
Marjorie Taylor Greene
We have not seen a caravan headed to the U.S.
southern border in several years, why now?
Oh yeah, there is an election coming and the
GOP needs to scare you into voting because
nothing else is working.

Anthony Aguero Live
Over 400 aliens predominantly from
Honduras entered Mexico on Thursday,
ready to make their way to the US southern
border ... Here's footage of the caravan.
Someone is incentivizing this movement, t ...

@mt ... . 1d

@Anth ... . 1d
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Circ @tinyicecat.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
This news is important because all the fucks out there actively attempting to wreck the world want you to think that the work is hopeless and just mitigating the worst case scenario. It's not. Fucking keep going.
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Racheline Maltese @racheline.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Imagine if anyone with any power stopped being a coward.
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Lightspeed Magazine @lightspeedmagazine.com · 24/09/2026
This week on LIGHTSPEED: "Alterverse" by Sanjana Raj www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/alte...
lightspeedmagazine.com
Alterverse - Lightspeed Magazine
Asha is eight pages into the book before the words disappear. There are still hundreds of pages before the end of the book, so they must have had a record of the length of the volume, but lost the tex...
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Charlotte Garden @charlottegarden.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
OMG
Mr Albanese said he had a "frank" discussion with OpenAI's chief executive Sam Altman, saying the company took three months to notify the government of the breach and, when it did, the notification was in an email sent to the Services Australia public inbox.
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Micah @rincewind.run · 23/09/2026
are you fucking serious newsom and bonta should be raked over the fucking coals for settling
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Corey H. @chinders.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
….real though
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Musicology Duck @musicologyduck.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
vote for me and my platform of chilly rainy days being only for cozy reading and napping
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 22/09/2026
whenever i hear some variation on "but what if trump does X or Y or Z" i think of this ulysses s. grant remark to a subordinate during the wilderness campaign.
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Annalee Newitz @annaleen.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
It's Monday. Please enjoy this short story about a graduate student whose clitoris disappears after the Second Comstock Laws go into effect.
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mattie lubchansky @mattielubchansky.com · 21/09/2026
great news! | patreon.com/lubchansky
PANEL 1: A TECH BRO running through the street, holding a laptop over his head.
TECH BRO: GREAT NEWS! I THINK I WROTE THE COMPUTER PROGRAM THAT'S GOING TO KILL EVERYONE.

PANEL 2: MATTIE peers at the laptop, which just says KILL ALL HUMANS on it, with a blinking cursor. Another WOMAN runs away.
MATTIE: IT LOOKS LIKE YOU JUST TYPED A SENTENCE HERE ON THE LATPOP.
WOMAN: AHHH! DON'T LET IT NEAR THE NUKES!

PANEL 3: The TECH BRO shakes his head.
TECH BRO: NO. YOU CRETIN, YOU DON'T TRULY UNDERSTAND ITS CAPABILITIES.
TECH BRO: PLUS, IT'S SCRAPED FROM SOMEONE *ELSE* TYPING IT. IDIOT.

PANEL 4: A BUSINESSMAN hands the SCIENTIST a big bag of money. The space behind him is also filled with bags.
BUSINESSMAN: HERE IT IS! EVERY PIECE OF CURRENCY EVER MINTED INCLUDING COINS FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD
TECH BRO: THANK YOU.
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Christopher McKnight Nichols @cmcknichols.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
There's an attempt out there to REshape the media image of recent US gov't cuts, as hyper-rational, even humane, BUT once the totality is taken into view it is impossible to make that case, no matter how much the US fed deficit is your central issue - just consider USAID apnews.com/article/usai...
apnews.com
What to know about USAID and the deadly impacts of US foreign aid cuts
The foreign aid landscape has changed dramatically since U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration dissolved the United States Agency for International Development, once the world’s largest humanit...
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Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 22/09/2026
The very cool thing about this is that there are some kinds of brain cells we weren't able to grow before because we didn't understand they were different, and now that we've figured out that they are different, we can grow them.
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Micah @rincewind.run · 21/09/2026
congratulations to everyone on reinventing Worse Cable
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Tal Lavin @swordsjew.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
wow its amazing how much lighter i feel after completing an extremely daunting task that's been weighing on me for months. i guess procrastination really does lead to more stress. good thing i'll definitely remember this for all future daunting tasks
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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 19/09/2026
Yeah, I've been a tech nerd for decades but all the "AI" stuff really does feel like "Sooooo we're taking a type of computation that's actually bad at most things and putting it in a whole bunch of stuff to make it work worse because... if we don't the whole economy's going to crash or something?"
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Max Kennerly @maxkennerly.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
You really shouldn't be in politics if you can't take advantage of your opponent being sponsored by The Job Destroying Factory That Raises Your Water And Power Bills And Whose Creators Say It Might Kill Us All.
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Tyler King @tyleraking.com · 17/09/2026
“A senior executive at Microsoft said A.I. systems built on the work of others will be seen as ‘an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions’ and possibly the greatest robbery of labor in human history, according to court documents unredacted Thursday in an ongoing Manhattan lawsuit.”
orlandosentinel.com
Docs in A.I. copyright suit reveal startling admission by Microsoft exec over ‘astonishing theft’
The admission appeared in a newly unredacted filing in the landmark copyright infringement legal battle playing out between newspapers like the Orlando Sentinel and tech companies Microsoft and OpenAI...
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Nathalie Maréchal, PhD @nathaliemarechal.net · 17/09/2026
So you just learned about the AI cult, huh? Here is the longform explainer you need to make sense of the very, very strange ideas driving tech policy in 2026. Buckle up, it’s a wild ride. www.techpolicy.press/what-policym...
techpolicy.press
What Policymakers and the Public Need to Know About the Cult of AI
Nathalie Maréchal asks, why are we betting the economy and the future of democracy on cult-like beliefs?
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Micah @rincewind.run · 17/09/2026
the worst part about this is that a lot of the damage will be permanent by the time we can turn the research funding back on a lot of folks will have unsurprisingly and not unreasonably decided that they should leave this area of research because it will never be reliable what a huge waste
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ashley fairbanks @ziibiing.com · 17/09/2026
i feel like a message that is missing in the midterms is that….republicans control everything? it feels like a basic thing we should really be saying over and over. this is all their choice. unhappy? look who is in the drivers seat.
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Dan Friedman @dfriedman.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
The Kennedy Center joins the Reflecting Pool, Lafayette Park and sort of the White House itself (no tours) where supposed renovations have led to indefinite loss of public access. After taxpayer funded plans/construction, these places are fenced off and closed down, not improved.
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R Subramanian (he/him) @rsubramanian.com · 17/09/2026
"NPR tracked down equipment and found that some of it was auctioned, donated or thrown in the trash... NASA donated hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of radio communications equipment to Capitol Technology University without the knowledge of the scientists who used it"
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sirosenbaum.bsky.social @sirosenbaum.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Waititi level
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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
When they eventually make a movie about this time, please don't put the male politicians in good suits. IMO, the ugly, low rent tailoring should be part of the story.
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Jeremy Markovich @ncrabbithole.com · 16/09/2026
the latest episode of SHADOW GOVERNOR DAVE BOLIEK www.wral.com/news/nccapit...
wral.com
Politically divided NC court panel upholds GOP takeover of state elections board
The 2-1 decision by the North Court Court of Appeals, with Republicans in the majority, allows a GOP-backed effort to seize control of elections from Democratic Gov. Josh Stein to stay in place.
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Kieran Healy @kjhealy.co · 15/09/2026
This is partly an LLM problem and partly an organizational problem. The LLM makes life much, much easier for everyone who wants to just pretend, and much, much harder for everyone who doesn’t.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
American Samoans are nationals, but not citizens. Do you know what this distinction means? Neither did they, and the result was they were prosecuted for voting in a local AK election. The good news is that the prosecutions were dropped, but when you hear about voter fraud, its often cases like this.
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Micah @rincewind.run · 11/09/2026
the world would be a much better place if all the cultural cachet and wealth of harry potter had gone to the matrix instead
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Karen Benjamin Guzzo @karenguzzo.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
It’s just spite at this point.
nytimes.com
E.P.A. Will Erase Limits on Climate Pollution From Power Plants (Gift Article)
Generation of electricity is the second largest source of carbon dioxide and other planet-warming gases in the United States.
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🎃🎃🎃Michael Scare-anicolas🎃🎃🎃 @karanicolas.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
If Democrats were serious they would go straight for the jugular of the crypto industry as soon as they take power. There’s public policy reasons to do this (name a non-crime use case), but also it cuts off a major artery for Republican support and corruption.
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sirosenbaum.bsky.social @sirosenbaum.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
they'll do it to you anyway, Dems
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Julia Serano @juliaserano.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
👇 THIS right here. Talarico, Turek, et al ARE THE ONES WHO CHOSE THOSE POSITIONS. if you're afraid those decisions may alienate pro-trans/LGBTQ+ voters, THEN BLAME THEM, NOT US!
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Ghostly Bree @mostlybree.kitrocha.com · 12/09/2026
Holy shit y'all.
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Helen Czerski @helenczerski.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
As both an academic and a writer, I am repelled by the "this looks like a long document. Would you like me to summarize it for you?" that seems to appear at the top of every pdf viewer now. NO. The *entire point* of good writing (either books or journal papers) is that every sentence has a purpose.
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Micah @rincewind.run · 11/09/2026
see, it’s not that hard
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Hansi Lo Wang (he/him) @hansilowang.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
BREAKING: Trump admin proposes major #2030Census changes that would reshape voting maps, including no race & ethnicity questions and excluding non-U.S. citizens without a green card from a count that 14th Amendment says must include “whole number of persons in each state” www.npr.org/2026/09/09/n...
npr.org
Trump officials propose sweeping changes to the census that would reshape voting maps
A Trump census proposal would stop asking about race and exclude millions of U.S. residents from a count that the 14th Amendment says must include the "whole number of persons in each state."
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Micah @rincewind.run · 09/09/2026
and the thing is I don't even want to do bribes! I am quite happy with my life of Not Doing Crime, actually but I would very much like it if the people with all the money and power were also not doing crime, I think it would be better if they also followed the rules
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Amanda Wong @amandawtwong.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
No, babe, I NEED the $200 Le Creuset Star Trek shuttlecraft casserole dish for my banana bread.
Le Creuset Star Trek shuttlecraft casserole dish
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Katelyn Burns @katelynburns.com · 08/09/2026
One thing I think would be common sense legislation is barring lawmakers from using AI in social media, ads, and all other communications.
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