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Splainer (Material Conditions Acknowledger)

@splainer.bsky.social
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splained.substack.com/archive So prescient, I never had a Twitter account.

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Splainer (Material Conditions Acknowledger) @splainer.bsky.social · 15h
New "Do you even lift?"/"Homie what set you from" just dropped.
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Splainer (Material Conditions Acknowledger) @splainer.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Interesting associations in this research, including: younger men were more likely to endorse white nationalism, but women showed a U-shaped relationship between WN endorsement and age; "Not sure" and "Did not vote" correlated with white nationalism about as much as conservatism/GOP/Trump support.
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Quinn Slobodian @quinnslobodian.com · 29/09/2026
Interesting that the ICC is the test case for genuine digital sovereignty.
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Splainer (Material Conditions Acknowledger) @splainer.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
This post got me to try recalling when Netanyahu (first) did his pointing-at-a-stylized-Iranian-bomb-diagram thing at the UN. My guess was 7 years too late.
Screenshot of the start of September 28, 2012 Reuters article "Netanyahu's Iran cartoon bomb timed to make big impact" (https://www.reuters.com/article/world/netanyahus-iran-cartoon-bomb-timed-to-make-big-impact-idUSBRE88R12L/). Included are the lead image's caption, byline, and first two paragraphs.

> Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu draws a red line on a graphic of a bomb as he addresses the 67th United Nations General Assembly at the U.N. headquarters in New York September 27, 2012. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson Purchase Licensing Rights
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> By Jeffrey Heller
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> NEW YORK (Reuters) - The "Bibi bomb" was born of days of discussions between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a brains trust of close advisers on how to make a powerful impact in yet another speech on Iran's nuclear program.
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> "The diagram made his address special," a senior official in Netanyahu's entourage said on Friday about the cartoonish drawing of a bomb the Israeli leader, who is nicknamed "Bibi," used at the U.N. General Assembly as a prop to illustrate what he sees as Iran's drive for an atomic weapon.
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Splainer (Material Conditions Acknowledger) @splainer.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I didn't wake up today expecting to think of the political slogan "We are the 1%", and approve of it, but here I am.
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Gregk Foley @gregk.co.uk · 27/09/2026
The Internet, Social Media and AI are facilitating the churning out of obscene atrocity denial propaganda to deterritorialised global audiences in a way that feels unlike any prior epoch, and I feels like nobody in power is even willing to confront that because they expect to exploit it themselves.
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Splainer (Material Conditions Acknowledger) @splainer.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Political Scientist Who Thinks _Veep_ Isn't A Comedy is a good bit. (I suppose the _NYT_ holding up _Veep_ as the best post-1999 TV comedy is also very _NYT_.)
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Splainer (Material Conditions Acknowledger) @splainer.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I'd problematize the contrasting of science against conspiracy theory. Conceivably perfect knowledge of how the world works would oblige you to believe in _more_ conspiracy theories, because some conspiracies are real.
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BlackskyNews 🗞️ @blackskynews.blacksky.app · 25/09/2026
The DOJ on Thursday announced it has dropped more than 50 school desegregation cases. Nearly 80 percent of the cases took place in the Southern states of AL, MS, SC, GA, and Louisiana. “This is just the beginning,” AL AG Steve Marshall posted on X, newrepublic.com/post/215867/... #BlackskyNews
newrepublic.com
Trump’s Justice Department Gives Up on Desegregation
The DOJ is no longer bothering to enforce racial desegregation of schools..
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Splainer (Material Conditions Acknowledger) @splainer.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
#NewFromMe: can prices explain how often people, including in recent years, blame higher prices for making them worse off? Mostly!
splained.substack.com
Prices explain most variation in Americans’ blaming of price rises for making them worse off
Most temporal variation in how often people in the University of Michigan’s consumer-sentiment survey blame higher prices for making them worse off, to be specific
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Splainer (Material Conditions Acknowledger) @splainer.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Supposing, for argument's sake, that arresting Netanyahu was outside NYPD/mayoral jurisdiction and hence somehow literally impossible...just refuse to escort the guy and arrest protestors!
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alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
THREAD. Did you know that Minneapolis police deployed 101 personnel to a 7-person vigil held one morning at Renee Good's memorial? The cops generated $1.92 million in overtime cash for themselves.
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Gregk Foley @gregk.co.uk · 24/09/2026
Current leading figure of the far-right international (still growing, btw) is a guy who deliberately hamstrung California rail projects to sell his cars, thinks his businesses should supersede the US state, and got so mad someone else rescued some cave divers he smeared someone as a paedophile.
Joe @manicpixel.bsky.social • 10h
One of the real problems with "The Left" from the centre to the fringe is the fixation that it is more important that I save the world than the world gets saved
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Stephen Bush 0@stephenkb.bsky.... • 10h
Really good way of putting it.
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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The elephant in the room here - aside from the fact that the government and its various hangers on are very right wing, and they don’t want to combat the far right - is that they are terrified of the American Eye Of Sauron properly fixing upon Britain as a problem, or as an opportunity.
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Splainer (Material Conditions Acknowledger) @splainer.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Private-prison CEO Trite Scam to get multi-million-dollar payout this year.
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Splainer (Material Conditions Acknowledger) @splainer.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Laughed off his company's CSAM-simulator; basically broke Wisconsin election law; DOGE may've siphoned off government data for a Musk company to snoop through; probably abused multiple regulated drugs while running(?) companies.
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Andrew Quemere @andrewqmr.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
A couple went on a Fox News podcast and claimed the state of #Massachusetts took away their teen because they won't help the teen transition. But it's actually because the father was charged with beating and threatening to kill the teen and the mother was charged with witness intimidation.
wbur.org
Mass. parents' story about child's gender transition complicated by court records
Joseph Kutzko was charged with assaulting the child in January 2025, not long before the child was removed from the family’s home. Mother Arlene Kutzko was charged with witness intimidation in connect...
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Jonathan Ladd @jonathanmladd.com · 21/09/2026
The government moving or hiding jailed people to avoid review by courts isn't some loophole in our habeas corpus rights. This government behavior has been considered a violation of the people's habeas corpus rights since at least the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_...
Jailors were forbidden to move prisoners from one prison to another or out of the country to evade the writ. In case of disobedience jailers would be punished with severe fines which had to be paid to the prisoner.[5][6]
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Splainer (Material Conditions Acknowledger) @splainer.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has a few days left to make the funniest Sveriges Riksbank award to date.
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Splainer (Material Conditions Acknowledger) @splainer.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
This is of course a sarcastic joke, but it got me to consciously connect two facts for the first time: the first line of the Niemöller poem, "Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten", refers to a group who were/represented about 15% of German adults — and yet that line is often omitted.
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Peter Whitewood @pwhitewood.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
For Matthew Syed, we’ve been looking for German extremism in the wrong place. Not the AfD, the real extremist was…Angela Merkel.
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Gillian Brockell @gillianbrockell.com · 20/09/2026
Exactly. I’ve been saying this since I started the tracker last year, and it’s why I don’t call them deportations. gillianbrockell.com/tracking-all...
I am using the term "third-country removals" instead of "third-country deportations" here, because the latter is a legal process in which a migrant is resettled in a safe third country. What is actually happening, in nearly all cases, more closely resembles chain refoulement, rendition, or kidnapping - and may violate U.S. and
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Fared Al Mahlool | فريد المحلول @faredalmahlool.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
This video was filmed in Palestine. My heart struggles to comprehend such cruelty and the heartbreaking disregard for human life. No human being should have to endure this.
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Trevon Logan @trevondlogan.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
It’s amazing how the media cooperates to make some issues salient and completely ignores others. We went from North Carolina being protested against for an anti-trans bathroom bill in 2016 to now every politician being asked their position on a dozen or so athletes in ALL of K-16.
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Spencer Ackerman @attackerman.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
It’s not “third-country deportation,” it’s an extraordinary rendition, complete with torture and enforced silence by the “host” country’s thugs. And it’s a direct consequence of never imposing punishment on the CIA for doing this during the War on Terror.
nytimes.com
A Central African Hotel Has Become a Nightmare Prison for U.S. Deportees
Witnesses say men were hooded and beaten in Equatorial Guinea. The autocratic government there is a partner in President Trump’s deportation program.
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Anna Phylaxis @quatoria.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
At this point, if no action is taken to enforce this law, it becomes clear that the law itself is a dead letter - and perhaps always intended to be so. Was the passage of this law simply a PR stunt, or is this ACTUALLY the law of the land in New York State?
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Vincent Carchidi @vcarchidi.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Data center backlash from people not marinating in online discourse is clearly not because people have convictions about whether it's interpolation or extrapolation.
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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.com · 17/09/2026
It was confirmed yesterday that the centre left coalition won the election in Sweden As predicted, with the far right performing poorly, coverage has almost entirely vanished from international media
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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.com · 18/09/2026
It's a mystery why people no longer trust politicians...
Former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson joins Palantir

Peer takes full-time position at the controversial company as it fends off pressure from both Andy Burnham’s government and Sadiq Khan
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Netpol @netpol.org · 18/09/2026
A jury unanimously acquitted a Churchill statue spray-painter who, despite the nonviolent nature of what was clearly a protest, spent seven weeks on remand. The judge imposed severe restrictions on the defendant talking about their motivation for resisting genocide realmedia.press/olax-acquitt...
realmedia.press
Jury unanimously acquits Churchill statue spray-painter - Real Media - The View From Below
Dutch human rights activist, Olax Outis had no “lawful defence” and was stopped from give a closing speech – but was acquitted by the jury in a verdict seen as a snub to a system complicit in Genocide...
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Splainer (Material Conditions Acknowledger) @splainer.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Screenshot of Alan (@aselrod.bsky.social) Elrod's June 5, 2026 post "I’ve only ever written freelance for The Bulwark, but Bill Kristol is a good man and quite literally not a war criminal".
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Dan Sohege @danielsohege.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
There has been a noticeable lack of serious reaction over Turkish persecution of LGBTQIA+ community from the global community. As in many other countries, Türkiye tries to mask persecution by claiming being LGBTQIA+ isn't illegal and then using "obscenity laws". www.theguardian.com/global-devel...
theguardian.com
Turkey detains dozens in crackdown on LGBTQ+ activists and journalists
Protesters teargassed as minister claims widespread raids and arrests under obscenity laws were to ‘protect families’
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Splainer (Material Conditions Acknowledger) @splainer.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I guess this is kinda what post-training and prompt-engineering is like for an LLM?
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Gillian Branstetter @gbbranstetter.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
I don't think people really understand the psychic impact of knowing that multiple times a day every day your friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, and everyone who could ever have any power over you is being flooded with agitprop designed to make them hate you
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Karen Attiah @karenattiah.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Almost thought this was satire.
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Gillian Branstetter @gbbranstetter.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
The fact that Musk himself is sponsoring so many of the anti-trans ads this cycle presents a pretty golden opportunity for Dems to point out that of course the guy who literally wants to build a gas-powered data center in your backyard wants this election to be about trans people.
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Splainer (Material Conditions Acknowledger) @splainer.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
There's gotta be a name for when civilian oversight of the military is lost.
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Splainer (Material Conditions Acknowledger) @splainer.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Screenshot of the 2021 Twitter exchange between Tom (@tom_user_) Usher and British MP Chris (@RhonddaBryant) Bryant. Usher's post is a _Simpsons_ screenshot/meme of Sideshow Bob walking around a semicircle of rakes on which he keeps stepping (causing different rakes to swing up and hit him in the face), Sideshow Bob labeled "Chris Bryant" and several of the rakes labeled "Various academics repeatedly hammering his shit takes". Bryant's reply below it is "Sorry, are you suggesting I should be repeatedly hit in the head with hammers?".
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Gregk Foley @gregk.co.uk · 16/09/2026
All-timer contortion of reality there.
Pro-Palestinian Remarks Roil Sheeran Tour, Leading Finneas to Drop Out
Three other acts are also leaving the tour, citing the right to free speech after the rapper Macklemore was removed over comments he had made onstage.
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 15/09/2026
I hope everybody realises just how openly the fossil fuel companies are talking about how much the data centre boom directly benefits them www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/videos/dc...
DCD Talks: Natural gas as a bridge to AI scale with Stiven Smith, Cummins
August 25, 2026 By DCD  Have your say

Stiven Smith, Vice President, Power Generation, Natural Gas Prime Power & Microgrids North America & Caribbean at Cummins, speaks with DCD about flexible power strategies for AI-scale data centers.
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AnthropoceneMPG 🌊 @anthropocenempg.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
New AI twist: This particular hyperscale Data Center would further nuclear weapons research. www.404media.co/we-did-not-i...
404media.co
‘We Did Not Invite You.’ Citizens Rage at Town Hall Over Proposed Nuclear AI Data Center
The University of Michigan is partnering with Los Alamos National Labs to build a massive data center in a small Michigan township. The residents say they were never consulted.
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Paul Bland @fpbland.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
I am so proud to have worked on this important brief, and for the honor of representing these extraordinary human rights advocates. The bank's position is reprehensible, and I intensely hope that the Court of Appeals reaffirms that there ARE real consequences for aiding and abetting in genocide
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Septima P. Snark @drsubini.blacksky.app · 27/08/2026
The police are defunding public health. The police are defunding us. Going to keep saying it.
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Splainer (Material Conditions Acknowledger) @splainer.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Why can being accused of rape be a deal-breaker, but not campaigning against trans people? Why is being accused of rape a deal-breaker, but not getting a Nazi tattoo, lying about it, working for post-Blackwater, and allegedly trapping a girlfriend in a bedroom overnight and manhandling a girlfriend?
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Splainer (Material Conditions Acknowledger) @splainer.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Pretty sure people argue against voting for lesser evils outside September. What's gained by pretending it's a "clockwork" phenomenon specific to this point in the election cycle?
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Gregk Foley @gregk.co.uk · 12/09/2026
“Is Britain ungovernable?” It’s a good question. This would certainly be an opportunity to demonstrate the opposite, wouldn’t it. Otherwise people could be forgiven for suspecting you might be throwing the game.
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Isaiah Bishop @isaiahbishop.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
*levitating in the lotus position* game theory suggests chinese hackers should use OpenAI api to hack something autonomously and open up liability questions to slow AI growth
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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
You’ll notice that as ever, the annoying dirty hippies called the War On Terror correctly and all the smart, Sensible important people dived into it with both hands giving everyone the finger and screaming insults, and now it’s just another One Of Those Weird Things That Happened.
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Alex Bores @alexbores.nyc · 07/09/2026
Did OpenAI stonewall Congress while sharing details with the EU? Today, the European Commission confirmed that OpenAI sent them a report on the hijacking of the German wiki. They didn't say when that report was sent, but the deadline to file in compliance with the EU AI Act ran out around July 6.
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