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Theoderic

@theoderic.bsky.social
2K followers 3.1K following 2.8K posts

Anonymous policy lawyer. Personal account.

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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
For all that Silicon Valley invests in the philosophy of AI, they couldn’t predict the literal Pope would be immovable on AI consciousness? Something so obvious it’s a plot point in multiple celebrated sci-fi series?
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Kalshi is giving away coffee at Bryant Park from a truck labeled “Markets for Everyone. Freedom to Forecast.” Suggests two things: • They’re really afraid of regulation • “Freedom” remains a pernicious way to launder harmful goods and ideas.
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
On the contrary, they got to show their boss as a fighter willing to indulge a crazy conspiracy theory on live TV. Did it backfire? Yes, in circles where merit and statesmanship matter. But Schmitt doesn’t inhabit those circles and doesn’t care about them.
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Really resent YouTube for marketing background play and downloadable video as premium features when both are just… basic functions we should expect from a player.
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Ugh, FINE, I will be the lieutenant governor of New Jersey.
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Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Yep, this is why Trump leaping into a war of choice with Iran is so bad: there is just no good way to disentangle from it. Trump himself has discovered this with his endless efforts to TACO. You can waltz out of the region but you'll probably be forced back in sooner or later.
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
John “Torture Memo” Yoo is a law professor at Berkeley — Berkeley!!! — and leads their law and policy faculty www.law.berkeley.edu/our-faculty/...
law.berkeley.edu
John Yoo
John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law. He is also the Thomas Smith Senior Research Fellow, Civitas Institute, at the University of Texas at Austin.  He is also a Nonresident
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
“The president’s illegal war backfired AND this is why we don’t let presidents declare war without Congress.” Begging Democrats to seize this chance to educate the public about how pocketbook issues and structural issues are inextricably linked.
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Love how this skeet comes back every now and again
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
The Romans had this really helpful concept called damnatio memoriae where the name of a traitor would be stricken from public monuments — literally carved off them — thus symbolically effacing them from public memory
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
RFK Jr.: “And whether birds are real.”
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I had a friend group in the early 2010s that got really into Rationalism and then, seemingly inexplicably, polyamory. Never occurred to me that the two were related.
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Republicans fundamentally don’t believe government can solve hard problems, which is why they shouldn’t be trusted to lead governments
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Fella Historian🌻 @thisuserisdumb.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Scorching take: I really dislike the term “Dog Parent.” With much love for the dogs of the world, all of whom (yes) are good dogs, parenting a human child is so, so much harder that comparing the two feels off-putting.
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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
New — I wrote about this weird thing where people within the Republican party keep being exposed as Nazis and the party then tries to claim each one is an aberration. The facts, as I lay out here, indicate otherwise:
thehandbasket.co
Republicans don’t have a Nazi problem—they are the Nazi problem
A spate of recent revelations have shown the ideologies and their adherents are one and the same.
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Case in point: bsky.app/profile/mari...
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Completely agree with you — to nobody’s surprise :). With Jewish kids of my own now, I also do a lot of thinking about how their safety is bound up with the continuance of rule of law **in the country they currently inhabit.** The threat to those values is also pretty one sided.
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
A man being tortured on GWB’s orders at Abu Ghraib. Specifically it’s the famous picture of a man hooded and with his arms out and electrodes attached to his hands
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Only plausible explanation and fits the admin’s general miasma of weird corruption
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Tom Coates @tomcoates.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
October 2024 Economist cover:
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
My theory: • Left-wing antisemitism is a betrayal, unexpected, and the left-wing coalition often responds to pressure to push out bad faith actors. • Right-wing antisemitism is par for the course, and in any event they *don’t* respond to pressure. It’s a lost cause.
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Perfect encapsulation of the moment. • Macklemore says “free Palestine.” Kicked off a tour, endless coverage. • Kanye praises Hitler, denies the Holocaust. Ah well show must go on. • Vance ally Tucker Carlson casually banters about “goyslaves.” Crickets. Our threat assessment is completely broken.
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Found the rarest thing of all, a good tweet
Ilya Sukhar, an investor bro, tweets: I do not support pacing frontier models. If I am going to die at the hands of killer Al, I want it to be American, not Chinese. Buy American, Die American.

@TheyThemItalian quote tweets: you read this on a terminal in fallout
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Broke: Salvation by Faith Woke: Salvation by Works Bespoke: Salvation by Logic and Reason
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Tomorrow’s the 25th anniversary of 9/11, but next week is *also* the 18th anniversary of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy and the start of the 2008 financial crisis
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Say it with me AI companies
Phoebe teaches Joey meme. She’s trying to get him to say “sensible regulation builds trust” but he says “the machine god cometh” instead
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
AI companies, I’m available to consult on why your GR/PR strategies aren’t working. My intro seminar — “For the love of God just be normal for once” — starts at $9,999.00.
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
Big Tech’s PR work around AI has been a masterclass in how not to communicate with the public about technology
Comedy raven meme. The raven says “AI is so powerful it might destroy humanity.” The audience says “sounds terrible! We don’t want it!” Sweating, the raven fumbles prompt cards saying “ai will take your job,” “ai will replace art,” and “ai reads your emails.”
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Maybe they are! We've run the experiment under conditions of high inequality and hyperpartisanship. I guess we'll see!
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Regulation is how disruptive technologies win public trust and mass adoption. Unfortunately, AI execs have convinced themselves that they're exempt from both politics and the laws of history.
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
I solved it years ago while reading one night, unfortunately the book's margin was too narrow to contain it
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Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
This is, of course, an oversimplification and an unfair generalization, but... everyone has lost their minds.
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Oh that’s clever. Hadn’t thought of it that way!
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the relentless onward march of time 💀🎃 @incoherent.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
I think part of it is the potential for locking out competitors through regulation. "This needs to be handled responsibly, and we are Serious Thinkers about the issue so you should trust us and not some fly-by-night foreign startup."
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Basically two possibilities here: • AI labs are consciously ignoring well-founded warnings from their own experts • AI labs see x-risk as a way to hype their own capabilities and so indulge some pontification by eccentric employees Can’t wait to find out which one it is!! (My bet is 75% hype.)
Matt Yglesias tweet: This from OpenAl's chief scientist is very thoughtful but also completely at odds with what OpenAl's lobbyists say in Congress and state legislatures, and how the superpac money associated with OpenAl behaves.

Quoting 

Jakub Pachocki @ @merettm - 1d
I wrote about the state of Al, why I'm concerned about the next few years, and the choices we need to make to keep the future in humanity's hands.
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
I'm aware of what social networks have **become** but the pre-algorithmic form of the technology was all about streamlining connection around interests, an impulse that favors popular movements.
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
This is right, but I would put a finer point on it. The appropriate vocabulary centers power. Social networks democratize power. AI concentrates it.
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
By contrast: the best people I know in government have a commitment to public service so deeply-felt and genuine that it would make Leslie Knope blush
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Crystal clear in hindsight that 9/11 deranged American politics, allowing reactionaries to run the country into a ditch and then — when the liberal order failed to put things back together in time — profit from the ongoing chaos.
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
If the United States won anything, it was a Pyrrhic victory. You don’t get Trumpism without Iraq and the Global War on Terror, and there’s a nontrivial chance Trumpism in turn ends in a constitutional crisis the nation can’t survive as constituted. bsky.app/profile/dipl...
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Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
This is shocking behavior that should be a national scandal
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
I once worked on a case where ICE was trying to deport a small business owner paying for his daughter’s Ivy League tuition over a 30-year-old DUI conviction. In the Obama administration, btw 🙃
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Sam Bagenstos @sbagen.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
If Dems win a trifecta in 2028 and don't push forum-shopping reform (and related judicial reforms) as their first bill, they'll doom everything else they try to do. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/30/u...
nytimes.com
How Trump’s Policy Agenda Runs Through One Federal Court, in Texas (Gift Article)
For years, conservative litigants flocked to Judge Reed O’Connor’s district. Now, North Texas has become a favorite destination of the Justice Department.
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Jonathan Ladd @jonathanmladd.com · 30/08/2026
My view is that we should not have a secret police. And any government action against a person under U.S. jurisdiction motivated by the political views of that person is a violation of the First Amendment. Follow the Constitution. Abolish ICE.
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
All this for a deeply unpopular president about to suffer an enormous electoral rebuke. Never cease to be amazed by the spineless of some elites.
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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
There is an enormous list of pro-democracy institutional reforms that can be passed with simple majorities & zero constitutional amendments. Approximately everything we need to become an actual democracy. We just have to do it: bsky.app/profile/mcop...
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Benjamin McKean @blmckean.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
COME ON
甲
Scores
Today's Top Odds Odds Beginner's Betting Guide Glossary
'We are broken': One family's fight against gambling addiction
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Theoderic @theoderic.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
This is Doomerism. We’re 30 months out from the 2029 inauguration. Lot can change in that time, especially as the Supreme Court continues to prove itself beyond reform.
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