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Sqepticism

@sqep.bsky.social
581 followers 1K following 2.7K posts

All humans deserve full bodily autonomy male female and intersex <3 YourWholeBaby.org Social Democrat, Secular Humanist, American

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Sqepticism @sqep.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
'But I do believe he hates them' Indeed indeed. Thats how we know they are on our team imo.
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FactPost @factpostnews.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Markwayne Mullin on ICE shooting a man while his 5-year-old child was in the backseat: "I'll say this about the 5-year-old child. As a father of six, I would never endanger my kids."
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Elizabeth Picciuto @epicciuto.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Republicans in power finally found an unsolicited dick pic they think is harassment
people.com
Blogger Was Jailed After Allegedly Sending Obscene Shrek Image to Ohio Lawmaker. Now He’s Going on Trial
D.J. Byrnes claims his prosecution on a telecommunication harassment charge violates his First Amendment rights.
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I Love Animals @petsanimals.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
I was laughing and my dog thought I was hyperventilating and got me my emergency inhaler.
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Jean Beaman @jean23bean.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
so thankful for @caitlindickerson.bsky.social and her incredible work: www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...
theatlantic.com
The Babies Left Behind in America
The United States is deporting parents without their children, creating a whole new family-separation crisis.
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Joyce P @joyous2.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
www.theatlantic.com/economy/2026...
theatlantic.com
The Biggest Source of Inequality That No One Talks About
Progressives are focused on the wrong tax loophole.
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Lettie Vagtsom @lettie-vagtsom.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026...
theatlantic.com
Trump’s Unlikely Strategy to Control History: Footnotes
The White House is threatening $190 million in Smithsonian funding.
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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
subtext is dead
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tweety fish oh wow like a chimera or something spoooky @sifu.tweety.fish · 06/10/2026
This one is going to be much more informative than the oddly similar but less informed piece posted by somebody with a much bigger audience today, so I gotcha covered there
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The Wall Street Journal @wsj.com · 07/10/2026
“Honey please I need you to get this done for me.” How Kimberly Guilfoyle pressed a MAGA ally to transfer $100,000 to her Amex account. on.wsj.com/4yVnPgV
on.wsj.com
“Honey please I need you to get this done for me.” How Kimberly Guilfoyle pressed a MAGA ally to transfer $100,000 to her Amex account.
Text messages with a MAGA ally show Guilfoyle seeking funds and offering access to top administration officials before becoming ambassador to Greece.
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VoteHub @votehub.com · 07/10/2026
NEWS — Republican Michael Whatley’s Senate campaign has paused TV advertising in North Carolina as it rethinks its strategy, per @newsobserver.com. The move comes as outside GOP groups have also shifted millions in planned spending away from the race, including toward Kansas.
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Mrs. Detective PikaBOO, Esq. @clapifyoulikeme.favrd.social · 06/10/2026
Big update at the link (www.gofundme.com/f/fund-me-if...), but here's the tl;dr:
Bernie Sanders “I am once again asking for your financial support” meme, with my tiny baby head, from the same photo as my profile pic, very badly photoshopped onto him
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Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
They listened to me. There is now more chart.
Chart showing the daily sea surface temperature for the Nino region of the Pacific, with a red line for 2026 shooting off above every other year in record-setting territory, with the y axis now expanded upward somewhat to allow for the absurdly high temperature
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Sqepticism @sqep.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Holy shit so fucking true lmao
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Perry Bacon @perrybaconjr.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
"For America to right itself, we need changes on the scale of Reconstruction and the New Deal. And I worry that’s not going to happen if Democrats and the broader anti-Trump left are taking their cues about what’s necessary and politically possible from the Times." newrepublic.com/article/2160...
newrepublic.com
The Left Must Fight The New York Times’ Monopoly Too
The paper’s editorial vision is out of step with the robust liberalism needed today.
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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
i think this is often the case. there's often a need to believe the story is much more complicated below the surface, but sometimes it's not.
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Make Opening Day a National Holiday @chriscardsfan.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Using “northern” or “southern” in terms of sides during the Civil War neglects that there was resistance to secession and the Confederacy, paid in full by 100k white southerners who wore blue. There were also northerners who, for reasons of profit and partisan politics supported the Confederacy.
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ProTip (AKA alt_localgov) @protip.altgov.info · 04/10/2026
This might seem like a difference of opinion. It is not. It is among the most impeachable things a President can do. If the President can just choose to violate the budget Congress passes, Congress doesn’t have any power.
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John “Old Oxcart” Ireland @crassversion.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Fascinating story on Estonia’s change in defense strategy.
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 05/10/2026
NEW: Remember when John Oliver opened a church to expose how easy it was to get tax exemptions? This year, ProPublica reporters set out to establish private schools to test if, truly, anyone could open one. We founded two. Here’s how.
propublica.org
How ProPublica Reporters Became Private School Owners in 24 Hours
The reporting experiment demonstrates how easy it can be to open private schools that might then access public money. No credentials or background checks required.
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Jesse Lee @jessecharleslee.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
It was never about saving money.
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Edward Nirenberg @enirenberg.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
It is humbling to know I am not as good at histology as a pigeon journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...
journals.plos.org
Pigeons (Columba livia) as Trainable Observers of Pathology and Radiology Breast Cancer Images
Pathologists and radiologists spend years acquiring and refining their medically essential visual skills, so it is of considerable interest to understand how this process actually unfolds and what ima...
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J. L. Yocum @jlyocum.com · 02/10/2026
It's growing increasingly difficult to find even remotely sane takes on this subject. Refreshing to see one in the @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2026/10/01/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | These Things Are Computers. Stop Talking About Them Like They’re Human. (Gift Article)
If we want to figure out the proper way to control A.I. models, we need to recognize what they really are.
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Jason Leopold @jasonleopold.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
NEW FOIA Files newsletter is out! Pam Bondi’s Secret DOJ Email Address Revealed The former AG used an email alias during her tenure. It’s a long-standing DOJ practice that can interfere with the public’s ability to access records through the #FOIA www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...
bloomberg.com
Pam Bondi’s Secret DOJ Email Address Revealed
The former attorney general used an email alias during her tenure. It’s a long-standing DOJ practice that can interfere with the public’s ability to access records through the FOIA.
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David Kaye @davidakaye.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I think this is sorta wrong. genocide is notoriously difficult to prosecute in intl tribunals. whether the prosecutors believe it’s genocide and whether they believe they can get convictions are different things.
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ae @aelkus.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I am not a "America will lose everything abroad" doomer but I really feel that the IR wing of the Nothing Ever Happens crowd are out to lunch
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olive consumer's floating skull @machete.gay · 02/10/2026
I've seen a lot of posts claiming Geller was a rapist before he became a progressive and I've consistently seen two missed points in those posts. 1: Not all sexual assault is rape and not all rape is Lifetime TV movie stuff. But far more importantly. 2: Progressives commit plenty of rape.
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Eleanor @theotheror.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Why stop there? Plumbing truther: where do my poops really go & what is the government doing with them
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Mike Sacks @mikesacks.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
4 years ago, Trump Judge Kathryn Mizelle vacated Biden’s airplane mask mandate: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us... Now, Trump Judge Kathryn Mizelle says vacating rules is likely unconstitutional: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us... I wonder what changed! Grab 1: Then Grab 2: Now
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Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
"The entire exercise is, 'Here’s how to be a racist in a smart and polite-sounding way.'" www.unpopularfront.news/p/from-shitp...
unpopularfront.news
From Shitpost to Bullshit
The Function of Conservative Intellectuals
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Fun @funkelly.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
cracked it
A Twitter post by sarrah bellus where someone asked “what’s wrong with musks body?” with photos from a recent visits somewhere outside. He’s standing in all black and cowboy boots. His chest is thrust forward and he has an anterior pelvic tilt. Next to him is two photos of a person from the mid 20th century study showing a person with estrogen deficiency - this person is in their underwear, they have knock knees, hunched shoulders, a protruding chest, which is a sign of estrogen deficiency. The thought here is that Elon musk, suspected of taking too much testosterone, has a similar estrogen deficiency. The quoting post by Dave greenridge says as much.
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Dr Lisa 🇰🇳🇨🇦🏳️‍🌈❤️🧘🏽‍♀️🎸🏝💃🏽🛸🐸✊🏽🕉☯️⚧️☮️ @xitter-refugee.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
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public health guy @publichealthguy1.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
good caturday to you
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Stan Oklobdzija @stano.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Coming around to the idea that the biggest priority for Americans interested in keeping liberal democracy alive for the next several decades is whole scale reform of the Supreme Court and the judiciary. We can't afford to have Reconstruction 2.0 hampered by the SCOTUS like Reconstruction 1.0 was.
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Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
"In the states examined in this analysis, a drop of approximately 20% in inflation-adjusted rents—as happened in Austin, Texas, and Minneapolis after those cities made reforms—could reduce poverty by 18% to 26% and child poverty by 21% to 38%." www.pew.org/en/research-...
pew.org
The Housing Shortage Is a Major Driver of Poverty
Housing costs are usually the largest item in a household’s budget and can determine a family’s financial stability.
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Texas Tribune @texastribune.org · 26/09/2026
Delayed Texas voter applications highlight how difficult it is to register in the state, experts say. Via @votebeat.org
texastribune.org
Texas’ delayed voter applications highlight registration woes
Texas is among eight states that don’t have universal online voter registration. A DPS snafu created a backlog of at least 200,000 applications this week.
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Evan Urquhart @evanurquhart.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
As a survivor reading between the lines of this very carefully written story it sounds like Jonathan McKinsey was a trans man in an abusive and controlling marriage who was targeted for violence repeatedly by his ex-wife and her parents and eventually murdered. But as a reporter? I can't be sure.
nytimes.com
Couple Accused of Killing Their Son-in-Law in Bay Area Park (Gift Article)
Jonathan McKinsey, an engineer who worked in the games department for The New York Times, was fatally shot Saturday in a San Francisco suburb. The police have accused his parents-in-law, both 76.
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All In with Chris Hayes @allinwithchris.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Iowa GOP governor candidate Zach Lahn is facing fresh questions about whether he actually lives in the state after a reporter found a Strava account showing frequent bike rides around his Kansas estate.
youtube.com
Exposed by Strava? Iowa candidate’s Kansas bike rides fuel carpetbagging claims
YouTube video by MS NOW
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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 27/09/2026
Women trying to succeed in Silicon Valley AI and effective altruist spaces are reporting feeling serious social pressure to attend sex parties - where people have reported being sexually assaulted, like below. Events like Aella’s “Slutcon,” which is happening again this weekend.
Ann Pierce
@itsannpierce
20h
I am disheartened by this as well. I already lost a bunch of followers for agreeing with @tautologer, but it's saddening to see local nerdy women being caricatured as Karen-like outsiders and getting pushed out of the scene. This is exactly why you hear so few concrete, names-attached stories of sexual harrassment and assault. I'm told there is a history of discrediting these because the "slut normalization" thing is top priority and these stories get inconveniently in the way of spreading this ideology.
I got roped into attending last year's Saturday Slutcon party because so many local and out-of-town friends were there (to echo sentiments @tautologer expressed about "slut events becoming central to the larger scenes). Mostly I hung out with people I knew and that was great. But in the course of my 3-ish hours there, there were 2 times my "no" was not accepted by a man I didn't know, and I was physically pushing a huge guy off of me who was rubbing his penis on me, who continued to do it despite my physical force against him, and after I finally wriggled away from him, told him I wanted to dance alone etc., he came back and did it again.
This was scary and bad, but it didn't even cross my mind to report this because one of the other people who didn't accept my "no" earlier in the night was the bartender (an officially sanctioned authority at the event), and I knew the event was organized exclusively by women into CNC (who are vocal about how rapey behavior turns them on), so I figured this sort of thing would just get me laughed at. And anyway, I heard there were a lot of other incidents like it. Later though, someone encouraged me to report this story to the organizers, and despite my embarrassment I did, so *they know* that this and other incidents happened. This is why they cut the Saturday night party this year and created a larger training program for the flirt girls - *because* of things like this last year. Yet the narrative bein…People who haven't been to Slutcon are saying "it's just group therapy," "it's just innocent flirting." But the environment is much like a sex party in that many people are nude, there is making out and sex acts happening out in the open. I think it's pretty unreasonable to expect that every nerdy girl who likes rationalist bloggers or is into EA/AI safety should automatically be comfortable with this! That if she's not, there's something wrong with her, we don't want her in our scenes, etc.
Not to mention, it's explictly an event *for men*, where men are the clients and the "flirt girls" are the product. Last year I overheard an exchange where a man felt "led on" by a flirt girl and was trying to get her punished/kicked out. (A dynamic that seems inevitable in this context!)
Anyway- it does sound like they've upped their consent education a lot this year, are more organized, and that's good! As I've told my friends who are attending: I hope they have fun!
I heard several accounts last year of women who had no problems and really enjoyed the event. That's great!
Just... can we live in reality about this? There are real reasons why male-female sexual dynamics are tricky.
Encouraging autistic men who can't yet read body language to go around asking to see womens' boobs is maybe a bit ill-advised. Maybe not everyone should be/identify as a slut; maybe it's not for everyone.
And yeah, filtering the Bay Area Al safety scene down to only women who are super comfy with this eliminates *most* women - including many of the really smart, nerdy, weird women who've been in the larger scenes for years. What a loss for humanity.
I absolutely understand why people with a minority sexuality would want to create belonging, would want to create spaces for people like themselves. But why do it like this/at this cost?
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Phil Klinkner @pklinkne.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I really love this chart. I'm guess that the correlation here (.85) is about as big as you would find for any other variable. Also, a less serious scholar than @tesler.bsky.social (namely me) would have made a crude Freudian reference to the slope of the line.
Chart shows a close positive relationship between Trump's 2024 vote and Google searches for testosterone boosters.
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World’s Biggest Stagflation Truther @corncobanalysis.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
“I am immune to culture war propaganda and have no idea why Americans care about it!” I say, as I share this culture war lolcow article to as many of my friends as I can
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Starfire’s Deranged Neocon Foreign Policy Podcast @irhottakes.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I think what exacerbates the problem is that grace isn't universal. Normies don't get to go to Jedi Heaven. Leia gets to see her biological father in Jedi Heaven but not her real dad.
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Calliope @calliope5431.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Virtually everyone's perception of the CIA is colored by what it did pre-1975 and the Church Committee hearings. The modern agency is very different, and very few people want to reckon with that fact because it invalidates their conspiracy theories and triumphal narratives.
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Sam (ABeardedPanda) @abeardedpanda.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Anyways, this is genuinely the funniest chart in the world because it shows Jill Stein's twitter use spikes every four years and only during years where there's a federal election so if she's breaking her silence now *someone* is panicking
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pdr1985.bsky.social @pdr1985.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Just posting this:
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Sam (ABeardedPanda) @abeardedpanda.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Look, if you thought the results were disastrous when they took woke out of the economy, we're gonna get sent back to the stone age if they take furries out of the economy
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Sam (ABeardedPanda) @abeardedpanda.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
It is honestly baffling to me how "read a transcript of what the Russians say and take it seriously" is apparently an incredibly difficult bar to clear for most "Russia Understanders"
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Catherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
you know things are going well when “isn’t there a Hannah Arendt quote about this?” is a thing you text casually to a friend
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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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Steve Vladeck @stevevladeck.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Here's a graphic that does a better job of conveying the point than my original post: even by the (insane) standards of the first Trump administration, #SCOTUS is receiving—and granting—a truly unprecedented number of applications for emergency relief from the federal government:
A chart that shows the number of emergency applications filed and granted by the Supreme Court during each presidency dating back to George W. Bush, with the data annualized to show the far-higher frequencies since 2017, but especially during the Trump I and Trump II administrations.
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