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Spencer

@spencerthielmann.bsky.social
36 followers 100 following 25 posts

THE LAST MERMAID OF THE MISSISSIPPI 🧜‍♀️ with @emilyberge.bsky.social MG ages 8-12 (Simon & Schuster, release date 4/6/2027) 🛰️ RAND School of Public Policy MNSP + MTP Candidate literary rep @abwycisk.bsky.social‬

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Spencer @spencerthielmann.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
@davidpierce.xyz question from a soon to be new parent. Do you (or fellow verge team) use any apps or tools to share photos with family that are not social media? We are investigating options for something other than instagram (or public social media really) for photo updates.
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Spencer @spencerthielmann.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
@reckless.bsky.social @davidpierce.xyz as a soon to be fellow dad, what is the answer to the baby monitor situation? Which is the one to buy that won't stream video from inside your house onto the internet for the world?
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Spencer @spencerthielmann.bsky.social · 30/10/2025
Listening to Cory Doctorow and @sarahjeong.bsky.social explain how we got to this point is cathartic. It's like competency porn. If you are a writer or creator of any kind, listen to this episode. Then subscribe to Pluralistic and buy Enshittification.
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Adrienne LaFrance @adriennelaf.bsky.social · 30/10/2025
And actually astonishing when you think about it: The Trump administration's top officials are choosing to separate themselves from the public—more to the point: separate themselves from any visible protest—and live on military bases. Gift link here: www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...
theatlantic.com
Top Trump Officials Are Moving Onto Military Bases
Stephen Miller, Marco Rubio, Kristi Noem, and others have taken over homes that until recently housed senior officers.
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WIRED @wired.com · 14/10/2025
With just $800 in basic equipment, researchers found a stunning variety of data—including thousands of T-Mobile users’ calls and texts and even US military communications—sent by satellites unencrypted. www.wired.com/story/satell...
wired.com
Satellites Are Leaking the World’s Secrets: Calls, Texts, Military and Corporate Data
With just $800 in basic equipment, researchers found a stunning variety of data—including thousands of T-Mobile users’ calls and texts and even US military communications—sent by satellites unencrypted.
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👁🌻🦊⚙️⚓ Bob, Engineer, Pusher of Paper @navmecheng.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
> It is 2025 BC. I am a soldier from one of the outlying provinces called to defend the pyramid in Memphis > It is 2025 AD. I am a soldier from one of the outlying provinces called to defend the pyramid in Memphis
Soldiers at the Bass Pro Shops pyramid in Memphis, TN.
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Spencer @spencerthielmann.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
I’ve been banging this drum for a while. C2PA isn’t perfect, but it is a good first step. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. We can iterate as we solve more problems.
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Spencer @spencerthielmann.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
This reskinned could be the plot of a sci-fi novel. Crazy. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/s...
nytimes.com
How to Deal With 30 to 50 Feral Hogs
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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
Bonus panel here: www.smbc-comics.com/comic/why-8 #smbc
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Jennifer Kretchmer @dreamwisp.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
Because it feels relevant as we continue to evaluate the media and our representatives’ statements, my favorite way to identify the active vs. passive voice.
A post by Rebecca Johnson:
“I finally learned how to teach my guys to ID the passive voice. If you can insert "by zombies" after the verb, you have passive voice.”

A tumblr respond from mightymur:
“The final, brilliant word on passive voice.
"She was killed [by zombies.]"<--passive
"Zombies killed [by zombies] her." <-- active”
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Downpuppy @downpuppy.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
to wit -
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nilay patel @reckless.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
It does seem like “are foreign movies a national security emergency” is a question more tariff coverage should be asking
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Bill Abney @babney.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
Line drawing of a fish coming up onto the land. Below it, in a typeface akin to some tarot cards, are the words: THE FOOL
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Keith @mosheroperandi.bsky.social · 13/07/2025
I think it's now possible to make a poli-sci course that equips one for modern political analysis better than most classic theory and has a syllabus sourced entirely from random internet posts. Text 1. Wilhoit's Law, born as part of a 2018 blog comment crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/l...
There is no such thing as liberalism — or progressivism, etc.

There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham’s Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation.

There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely.

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:

There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.

For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual.

As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence.
So this tells us what anti-conservatism must be: the proposition that the law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.

Then the appearance arises that the task is to map “liberalism”, or “progressivism”, or “socialism”, or whateverthefuckkindofstupidnoise-ism, onto the core proposition of anti-conservatism.

No, it a’n’t. The task is to throw all those things on the exact same burn pile as the collected works of all the apologists for conservatism, and start fresh. The core proposition of anti-conservatism requires no supplementation and no exegesis. It is as sufficient as it is necessary. What you see is what you get:

The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
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Gary Stevenson @garyseconomics.bsky.social · 13/07/2025
I'm back. Here's how we fix the UK's dire economic and political situation www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMor...
youtube.com
I'm back – and I think we can win
YouTube video by Garys Economics
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WIRED @wired.com · 13/07/2025
A team of astronomers recently discovered the traveling space object, just the third of its kind to pass through our solar system. www.wired.com/story/heres-...
wired.com
Everything We Know About the Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS
A team of astronomers recently discovered the traveling space object, just the third of its kind to pass through our solar system.
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Spencer @spencerthielmann.bsky.social · 28/06/2025
Huge news for @emilyberge.bsky.social and myself. Our debut middle grade has finally been announced! Emily articulated it perfectly (as she always does)—see thread below #booksky
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Ash Parrish, Kotaku's LeBron James @adashtra.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
The worst part about this is not so much getting the definition of the phrase wrong but the asserting the idea that humans have three feet
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WIRED @wired.com · 16/05/2025
As Trump makes deals across the Middle East this week, we revisit our deep dive on spymaster sheikh, Tahnoun bin Zayed al Nahyan. He's the UAE’s chess-obsessed, jiujitsu-loving intelligence chief who controls vast sums of sovereign wealth. America’s AI giants are scrambling for a piece of it.
wired.com
A Spymaster Sheikh Controls a $1.5 Trillion Fortune. He Wants to Use It to Dominate AI
Tahnoun bin Zayed al Nahyan—the UAE’s chess-obsessed, jiujitsu-loving intelligence chief—controls vast sums of sovereign wealth. America’s AI giants are scrambling for a piece of it.
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NPR @npr.org · 15/05/2025
A pair of U.K. scholars discovered the mislabeled document in Harvard Law School's digital archives. The university bought it for just $27.50 in 1946. It turned out to be an authentic copy dating to 1300.
npr.org
Harvard learned it has an authentic Magna Carta. In 1946, it paid less than $28 for it
A pair of U.K. scholars discovered the mislabled document in Harvard Law School's digital archives. The university bought it for just $27.50 in 1946. It turned out to be an authentic copy dating to 1...
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nilay patel @reckless.bsky.social · 16/05/2025
If you thought social media had scrambled America’s CEOs just wait until they’re fully cooked by AI apple.news/AJ_ht7MMyT9G...
Copilot consumes Nadella’s life outside the office as well. He likes podcasts, but instead of listening to them, he loads transcripts into the Copilot app on his iPhone so he can chat with the voice assistant about the content of an episode in the car on his commute to Redmond. At the office, he relies on Copilot to deliver summaries of messages he receives in Outlook and Teams and toggles among at least 10 custom agents from Copilot Studio. He views them as his AI chiefs of staff, delegating meeting prep, research and other tasks to the bots. “I’m an email typist,” Nadella jokes of his job, noting that Copilot is thankfully very good at triaging his messages.
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Spencer @spencerthielmann.bsky.social · 07/05/2025
This article has such great moments. This was my favorite. #articleclub
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Spencer @spencerthielmann.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
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Spencer @spencerthielmann.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
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Spencer @spencerthielmann.bsky.social · 25/03/2025
www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
washingtonpost.com
Column | Delete your DNA from 23andMe right now
The genetic information company declared bankruptcy on Sunday, and California’s attorney general has issued a privacy “consumer alert.”
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Spencer @spencerthielmann.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
Truly unbelievable.
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Spencer @spencerthielmann.bsky.social · 16/03/2025
#articleclub continues www.economist.com/1843/2025/02...
economist.com
Tyler Cowen, the man who wants to know everything
He is Silicon Valley’s favourite economist. Does his lust for knowledge have a place in the age of AI?
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Andrew J. Hawkins @andyjayhawk.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
The president of the United States literally did an infomercial for his biggest political donor on the White House lawn today. He also threatened to criminalize protests against said donor. Normal country stuff www.theverge.com/news/627896/...
theverge.com
Trump says he’ll label attacks on Tesla locations as domestic terrorism
Trump made the statement at a White House event where he promised to buy a Tesla.
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Emily Liu @emilyliu.me · 10/03/2025
zuck wearing a shirt that says "aut zuck aut nihil"jay graber, bluesky ceo, wearing a shirt that says "mundus sine caesaribus"
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Futurism @futurism.com · 07/03/2025
"It would be nothing short of an extinction-level event for space science and exploration in the United States." futurism.com/trump-admin-...
Headline card: Trump Admin Reportedly Plotting to Slash NASA Budget by 50 Percent
Image inside NASA facility
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Spencer @spencerthielmann.bsky.social · 02/03/2025
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Spencer @spencerthielmann.bsky.social · 24/02/2025
We are really speedrunning into our dystopian future. This is like cyperpunk any%. www.cryptopolitan.com/crypto-trade...
cryptopolitan.com
Crypto trader kills himself on X live to create a meme coin | Cryptopolitan
A crypto trader known as MistaFuccYou shot himself live on X (formerly Twitter) after losing his last $500 in a meme coin rug pull on Friday night.
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Hipster Vampire Amy @lasrina.bsky.social · 24/02/2025
Can’t believe the knives are already out in the stores. The Ides of March gets more commercialized every year.
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Spencer @spencerthielmann.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
Cyberpunk 2025 starting right now
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Spencer @spencerthielmann.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
Yo-Yo Ma rocks.
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Spencer @spencerthielmann.bsky.social · 12/02/2025
@climatetown.bsky.social with another banger. Rollie Williams is the communicator we need on climate science and breaking down propaganda - www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBC_...
youtube.com
How Oil Propaganda Sneaks Into TV Shows | Climate Town
YouTube video by Climate Town
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Emily Berge @emilyberge.bsky.social · 08/02/2025
me watching The Brutalist but the cigarette is a mozzarella stick
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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 08/02/2025
"Stopping doesn't mean they won't come after you." This is where we are, too. The vagueness of the book banning law in Iowa, the fact that the law makes room for bans to extend to public libraries and bookstores, mean that if this red state decides we're a problem...
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Emily Berge @emilyberge.bsky.social · 07/02/2025
I too would excel at my work in macrodata refinement for 18 minutes with Merritt Wever
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Joshua Erlich @joshuaerlich.bsky.social · 04/02/2025
if you’re 25 years old with control of the entire treasury system and you don’t delete every student debt file, you are the biggest loser the world has ever seen
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nilay patel @reckless.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
You know the Republican Party stands for stable commonsense business regulation because the entire world economy is waiting on pins and needles to see if one old man blows it up on a Saturday afternoon
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Garth Marenghi's Catbus @catbus.phd · 31/01/2025
classic Loony Tunes have much to teach us about class solidarity
Bugs and Daffy standing by a tree, sign reads DUCK SEASON, then RABBIT SEASON then ELMER SEASON, and they both glare ominously off camera
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Spencer @spencerthielmann.bsky.social · 02/02/2025
Holiday is my best friend and we meet up quarterly
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Spencer @spencerthielmann.bsky.social · 02/02/2025
If there is a couch on a job, I will lay on it. There’s no stopping me.
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