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Steuard Jensen

@steuard.bsky.social
637 followers 125 following 1.4K posts

Physics professor, Tolkien scholar, JoCoNaut, and all-around science nerd. he/him

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Reposted by Steuard Jensen
maura quint @mauraquint.bsky.social · 7h
Yes every woman has been harassed, many assaulted. But every woman has also experienced invisible loss from moments she avoided harassment. She felt a space becoming unsafe, so she left, while men stayed on. And in leaving, she lost: opportunities, experiences, learning, promotions, even simply fun.
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Naomi Kritzer @naomikritzer.bsky.social · 6h
"Executions don't just happen, you know, you have to manage them or else it's all very hurried and awkward and looks uncomfortably like a murder." --Daggerbound, T. Kingfisher
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Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 18h
There is a moment at the very very end of Abdul El-Sayed's podcast with Ezra Klein (book recommendation section) where he talks about the idea of "speaking truth to pain" and this will be staying with me for an extremely long time. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...
But there’s also something about truth to pain. We talk a lot about truth to power, but I think it’s actually a lot harder to speak truth to pain. I say that as someone who went to medical school, realizing that in a lot of our politics right now, we’ve got to get a lot better at speaking truth to pain if we’re going to get through some of these challenges that we have.

What does “truth to pain” mean?

It’s one thing to look power in the eye and say: You’re wrong about this. But there’s a way in which pain is very difficult to reason with. Because when somebody is in their pain, they’re in their trauma. They see that pain, and they may not see what’s causing it.

I remember just very explicitly being in a trauma ward with a gunshot wound patient and watching this big guy with his hand on his gunshot wound. All the folks are trying to pull his hand off his pain, that point of his gunshot wound, this clear vulnerability.

And this emergency room doctor had the presence of mind to be like: Everyone, stop. And she looks him in the eyes, and she’s like: I get that really hurts, and I’m so sorry that you’re here. You don’t want to be here. We don’t want you to be here. But if you don’t let us fix this, you could die. So I’m going to take your hand, and I’m going to move it off, OK? Because I need to get there so that you can live.

She was speaking truth to pain. He understands he’s at the hospital, he needs care, but he also doesn’t want anybody to touch the wound. Which is a natural thing. And I think it is a really great metaphor for how we think about a lot of these challenges we talked about today.
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Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I’ve been saying for a while, someone needs to estimate the net cost of millions of people having to spend a chunk of every day worrying about what the insane president has done or will do.
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uosdɯᴉS ɐuɐꓷ 🦄 @danacorn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
All bigots make the same arguments, and insist that no, these are totally new arguments and this is a totally different situation, but they aren’t and it isn’t. The bigot side never turns out to have been the right one, folks.
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NE Ohio Regional Sewer District @neorsd.org · 29/09/2026
bold and wildly inexplicable photo choice here
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Daniel Solis @danielsolis.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
This week's t-shirt is a very silly joke for fans of linguistics, Ghibli, and milky drinks. #WeeklyTshirt #Ghibli #Boba danielsolis.threadless.com/designs/kiki...
A black spikey shape wearing a red bow and riding a witch's broom. 
A blobby shape filled with milk and tapioca balls, with a red spiral stripped straw.
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Physgal ⚛️ @physgal.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
This makes me so, so angry. There is no excuse for behaviour like this. Cornell failed this young woman. #AcademicSky
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Stevis will try to keep people safe @stevis23.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
So this must have taken purchase orders, specific contracting actions... And I'm sorry, all of those little people need to be prosecuted for their Hatch act violations. Yes, they should be behind the big dogs, but we need to establish the consequences for following illegal orders.
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Hourly Cosmos @hourlycosmos.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Life in the Milky Way Galaxy - From Bill (ridingrobots.bsky.social) - flic.kr/p/2roeDrA
Cedar Breaks National Monument, Utah
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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
This, from Dennett, I wish I'd taken to heart earlier in my life. www.themarginalian.org/2014/03/28/d...
How to compose a successful critical commentary:

1 You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”
2 You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
3 You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
4 Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.
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Oregon 🕎🎲 @oregonthedm.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Most riveting thing I've seen all week
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weeder @weeder.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
God, grant me the courage to change the things I can and incredible new powers to change the things I can't.
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Philip Gourevitch @pgourevitch.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
vandals plot to desecrate all historical landmarks in nations capital
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
With the midterm elections shaping up to be a massive reckoning for the Republican Party, it's worth remembering that they had a fairly easy offramp from Trumpism in the immediate aftermath of the January 6th riot but they completely chickened out.
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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
these people will happily whitewash and paraphrase unhinged Trump rants to make them seem grammatically coherent and authoritative, but if a young woman says “like” we must keep it in there to make sure you know she’s a bimbo infuriating actually
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Olivia Waite @oliviawaite.com · 22/09/2026
Oh my god it’s funny because it’s true — take a gander at the video and then read up: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunnes_...
en.wikipedia.org
Dunnes Stores strike - Wikipedia
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DAW Books @dawbooks.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Slayers of Old, the perfect book to read this fall, is now in paperback! You'll no doubt binge this humorous cozy fantasy about a group of former Chosen Ones coming out of retirement to save the world one last time! buff.ly/Mwotg8s
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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
NASA picture of the day today is a real 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿beauty! This is a composite image of the ~5000yo Callanish Stones on the Isle of Lewis. The amazing Giuseppe Petricca has only gone and photographed the Sun at noon there, every few days, for a whole year. #Dedication 🔭🧪👌 ℹ️: science.nasa.gov/image-articl...
The imposing Callanish Stones stand talk with their shadows spanning out across the glass.  It's a super clear sky, but looks cold. Above the central stone is a strange figure-of-8 shape of dots.  This is the location of the Sun, at noon, on various different days across the year.
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Steve Gale @stevewg.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Colley Hill, Surrey: coffee break from birding the steep scrub. Love the plaque on the bench I’m sitting on
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Sarah Walsh @bigdamnherossir.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Last thing you see before waking up in a bathtub full of ice light one kidney
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Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 21/09/2026
So @dwillner.bsky.social & I took some of our discussion thread from Bluesky last week regarding the "sexy apocalypse" predictions from the EA-aligned "AI Safety" folks, and wrote an article from the perspective (Dave's) of those who do *real* risk mitigation work. The apocalypse will not be sexy.
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Digital Tolkien Project @digitaltolkien.com · 21/09/2026
Today is the 89th anniversary of the publication of The Hobbit. Here's a thread on interesting glimpses the book gave us into the legendarium Tolkien had at that stage already been working on for over twenty years but which readers at the time would have had no sense of.
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Kieran Healy @kjhealy.co · 21/09/2026
While we’re here my other fave bit of etymology is that the “gar” in “garlic” is the same as the “gar” in “Gardena”, as in “Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum”. Gardena is the Spear-Danes, and garlic is the sharp or spear-leek.
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Scott Nover @scottnover.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
BREAKING: TV pool will not be providing coverage of presidential events until further notice b/c of CNN's ban, pool chair and FOX News Washington Bureau Chief Bryan Boughton said. It's effectively a boycott by the fellow members — ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX: www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...
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Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 21/09/2026
AGAIN! You do not need to fear "superintelligent AI" "going rogue" & killing humans, when HUMANS keep putting regular, everyday shitty-assed, extremely error-prone "AI" into potentially life-&-death-crucial systems. It does not have to be "powerful" to do that! It can do that & still be very shitty!
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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
An important read about class and academic jobs www.nytimes.com/2026/09/18/b...
nytimes.com
The Working Class Face a ‘Class Ceiling’ in Elite Occupations (Gift Article)
Being female or a person of color has long been seen as a disadvantage in hiring and promotion. A new study of college professors shows that class may loom as large.
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Steven (with a PH) @sjksalisbury.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Christening a baby is nothing like christening a ship. I know that now. Once again I can only apologise.
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Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Anthropic employees: NEXT-GEN AI COULD WIPE OUT HUMANITY WITH A SUPERVIRUS! Normies: that seems like a big leap. How would this AI disseminate such a virus in the real world? Anthropic employees: oh, through the wet labs we built and hooked it up to, of course. Normies: …😬😤
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Annalee @flowerhorne.com · 19/09/2026
This is why I think it's so important to push back against the personification of LLMs. If a person shoots someone while wearing a hand puppet, they can't claim the hand puppet did the murder.
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Stephanie 🍉 @ageofoddish.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
mmygod
the slut gnomes of false berlin jeopardy bluesky posttoday's jeopardy categories. the last 2 are "false berlin" and "bizarre little men"
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Kevin 🚀 @astro-kevin.com · 18/09/2026
So it was a Palantir AI tool that contributed to this horrific war crime
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Kevin Gannon (now a Moo Deng fan account) @thetattooedprof.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Dave Barry: still goated 🐐
Michelle has been a sportswriter for four decades. For most of her career, she has written more than 400 stories a year. So we’re talking thousands of stories, containing tens of thousands of names and statistics, and I’m guessing that in all that time she got maybe a dozen facts wrong. She had to be accurate, because she was — in fact still is — a woman, which means that every time she writes a story, she has to prove that she knows what she’s talking about. Men do not have to prove this, because men have penises, which give men a natural ability, from birth, to speak authoritatively about all sports, all the time. This is why a casual male sports fan can watch three minutes of a football game between two teams he has never seen before and declare, with complete confidence, that the coaches — who have been coaching for years, and whose jobs depend on their teams’ performance, and who have been up late night after night preparing for this game — have NO IDEA what they’re doing. The casual male sports fan can tell this at a glance, thanks to his penis.
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Steuard Jensen @steuard.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I haven't read/followed *that* much of the recent conversation framing a bunch of the AI community as some sort of sex cult, but what I've seen has bothered me: lots of deliberately using consensual sexual choices to demonize. I appreciate this post for its focus on specific harms in THIS context.
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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
AI is screwing up journal papers: Journal editor asks authors of 10 submitted papers to meet and discuss their paper. Of the 7 that showed up, 3 were unable to answer basic questions about the paper and 3 had difficulty when asked further questions on technical details… medium.com/@TmlrOrg/ask...
medium.com
Asking Authors About Their Own Papers
By Nihar B. Shah
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Steuard Jensen @steuard.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I am sitting at my office desk grading papers with gloves on, because for reasons I cannot explain, the temperature in this building has been consistently about 63º for the past couple of weeks (including the days that were really hot outside).
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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
The very first line is a lie, and we all know it. *None* of this was ever designed to help us, which is why it hurts us and we hate it. It really is that simple, but the media simply cannot bring themselves to say it.
cnn.com
The humans are rejecting the machines that were supposed to help them | CNN Business
Touchscreens and self-checkout machines were designed to help customers. But restaurants and retailers are ditching them to humanize stores and attract workers.
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Steuard Jensen @steuard.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I think I put together a solidly good campus presentation today about my sabbatical research and writing last spring and summer, and I also managed to plan an important day's activities in my First Year Seminar course and run my small independent study group on QED, and I'm not asleep yet. Victory!
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WOR$T GIRL IN ACADEMIA @medievaliste.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Once again, the median pay for an adjunct professor in the United States of America is $3,500 per course. Not per month, per course.
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Nicolas Hénin @nicolashenin.net · 17/09/2026
Nice campaign by the Norwegian Consumer Council about the declining lifespan of products. Enjoy!
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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
In a normal, functioning democracy, this would end his presidency tonight.
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Bela Lugosi's Dad 🏳️‍⚧️ 🇵🇸 @belalugosisdad.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Personally I would not pick this fight with the youtube guy who demonstrates all the ways he can nail you with an arrow at 200 yards using his feet while wearing 12-inch Pleasers, whose wife can also kill you with her bare hands, and has 9 billionteen followers who are all trans women with swords.
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Marian Call @mariancall.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
this thread does not go where you think
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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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Michael Fry @bigdirtyfry.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Your Grandad Cyclops talks about his school days
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Tom Pepinsky @tompepinsky.com · 16/09/2026
the hardest thing for the politician-bureaucrats to understand -- but which NSF staff *absolutely do* understand and always have -- is that you actually make scientific progress by giving young people money and promising not to bother them
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
One of the coolest things about people who don't have a lot of power taking a principled stand is it lays bare the complete cowardice of the ones who actually *do* have power when they fail to do even a fraction as much.
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The Nerdskull @nerdskull.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
I feel it’s crazy that nobody outside of trans people and REALLY invested allies seems to know that the internal trans refugee crisis is one of the biggest internal refugee migrations the United States has ever experienced.
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sirosenbaum.bsky.social @sirosenbaum.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
There are many ways to be engaged politically for change. Voting is one mechanism, and it's more important than it seems -- if it wasn't, the right wouldn't be so concentrated on its elimination. Your vote is for the least-worst candidate. That's the starting point for political action, not the end.
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