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Caro Williams-Pierce

@therealcaro.bsky.social
269 followers 534 following 530 posts

Half professor, half feral - and fully absentminded. Easily distracted by ideas about design, trust, and learning. Fueled by curiosity, filled with rage. She/her

PostsRepliesMedia
Caro Williams-Pierce @therealcaro.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
New dystopian life: ‘scary masked thief’ shops at the same clothing stores as ICE
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Caro Williams-Pierce @therealcaro.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
So proud of this piece!! cacm.acm.org/opinion/comm...
cacm.acm.org
Communicating the Value of Publicly Funded Science – Communications of the ACM
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Stephen Collins @stephencollins.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
[Scene is ANCIENT GREECE - where SOCRATES and PLATO and others are sitting round, thinking]

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SOCRATES:
Plato..

PLATO:
Yes Socrates?

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SOCRATES:
Can you tell me, are you human?

PLATO:
Why… yes, Socrates

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SOCRATES:
And would you agree, Plato, that a human knows what a chariot is?

PLATO:
Um, yep

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SOCRATES:
So you can tell me, then

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[Socrates produces a papyrus, showing a drawing of the corner of a chariot wheel]

SOCRATES:
*Is that a chariot*?

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PLATO:
Well
that’s more just a bit of wheel 

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SOCRATES:
So not a *chariot*.

PLATO:
No.

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SOCRATES:
[Producing another papyrus with the full drawing of the chariot, chopped into boxes]

So if a man were challenged to “tap the boxes containing chariots to prove you’re human” when he was just trying to check his ClubCard points... *where could he tap*?

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PLATO:
Well you can’t tap any of them really

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SOCRATES:
So are we not human?

PLATO:
‘Spose not.

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[Bleak pause]

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PLATO:
I’ll get the hemlock

SOCRATES:
Yeah

[ends]
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Stephen Collins @stephencollins.bsky.social · 19/10/2025
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Nurse:
It’s become a real problem in this area

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Nurse:
We’ve seen the whole community lost to addiction

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Show a building sign posted:
Westminster ‘X’ Addiction Clinic
With various Westminster people or looking at their phones outside it

Nurse:
Ministers, Spads, Researchers…

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Nurse:
Most mornings we’ll get a call about someone acting strangely 

[Nurse on phone taking a call]
Ok - we’ll be right over

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Nurse:
We just have a gentle chat 

[Nurses approach a minister –Robert Jenrick? - standing in the Palace of Westminster

Minister:
I understand your concerns…

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Nurse:
Are you OK love?

Minister:
Yes I’m just hearing legitimate concerns from real voters

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Nurse:
That’s a robot, a Nazi and a poorly-disguised Russian 

[Show that the people he is talking to are precisely these characters]

Nurse 2:
Give us your phone, love

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Nurse:
At the clinic we put them in a Grass-Touching Pod, with a real voter to talk to

[We see them back at the clinic, holding the minister's head and pushing him into a glass isolation booth with a grass floor. And it is a baffled looking woman, on a chair, ready to talk to him.]

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Minister:
YOU MUST BE WORRIED ABOUT THE COMING CIVIL WAR

[woman looks baffled]

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woman:
I just want a bus service 

Minister:
LOOK AT MY FLAG 
[produces a St George's flag]

[ends]
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Micah @rincewind.run · 18/10/2025
Discworld QOTD, from Feet of Clay
No more kings. Vimes had difficulty in articulating why this should be so, why the concept resonated in his very bones. After all, a good many of the patricians had been as bad as any king. But they were...sort of...bad on equal terms. What set Vimes's teeth on edge was the idea that kings were a different kind of human being. A higher lifeform. Somehow magical.
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Tania Lombrozo @tanialombrozo.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
Laypeople often learn about science from expert explanations & those explanations often contain JARGON. Does jargon make explanations better or worse? In a paper out today in Nature Human Behaviour, @cruzf.bsky.social and I find that jargon can support illusions of understanding...
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Alex Kirshner @alexkirshner.com · 16/05/2025
this is a letter to the editor from a high school track runner who came in second to a trans girl in a race. her state house rep in maine started talking about it. so she wrote this: www.pressherald.com/2025/05/14/r...
Rep. Laurel Libby, R-Auburn, recently used my second-place finish in the 1,600-meter run, and that of my teammate in the 800-meter run, to malign Soren Stark-Chessa, the trans-identified athlete who finished first.

One of the reasons I chose to run cross-country and track is the community: Teammates cheering each other on, athletes from different schools coming together, and the fact that personal improvement is valued as much as, if not more than, the place we finish.

Last Friday, I ran the fastest 1,600-meter race I have ever run in middle school or high school track and earned varsity status by my school’s standards. I am extremely proud of the effort I put into the race and the time that I achieved. The fact that someone else finished in front of me didn’t diminish the happiness I felt after finishing that race. I don’t feel like first place was taken from me. Instead, I feel like a happy day was turned ugly by a bully who is using children to make political points.

We are all just kids trying to make our way through high school. Participating in sports is the highlight of high school for some kids. No one was harmed by Soren’s participation in the girls’ track meet, but we are all harmed by the hateful rhetoric of bullies, like Rep. Libby, who want to take sports away from some kids just because of who they are.

Anelise Feldman
Freshman, Yarmouth High School
Yarmouth
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Charlotte Clymer @charlotteclymer.bsky.social · 07/05/2025
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Caro Williams-Pierce @therealcaro.bsky.social · 07/05/2025
I need a pirate expert - or just someone who REALLY gets into Talk Like a Pirate Day. It’s for research!
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Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 04/05/2025
Thinking about devastating cuts to NSF: US gov-funded science has been the engine upon which most of the tech wealth was generated. But the oligarchs (currently hoarding much of that $) think it’s their own brilliance & not the accident of standing close to the scientific engine that made them rich.
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Banga @bangabanga.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
Don't trifle with a Mainer
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Caro Williams-Pierce @therealcaro.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
Come to my Rogue Workshop at #CHI2025 - if you're furious at funding cuts and public kidnappings and letting 19-year-old kids mess around in the Social Security database, this workshop is for you! Wednesday, April 30 Room G313 2:10 - 3:40 pm
Rogue Workshop: transform your science into action!
Caro Williams-Pierce (carowp@umd.edu)

Filled with rage at the dumpster fire that is our world and our countries right now? Tired of screaming endlessly into the void, and want to do something - anything - to stop the burning down of science and human rights? 

Learn how to channel that rage, use your CHI knowledge, and communicate with people, organizations, and political bodies. They need to hear our voices, our science, and our fury - time to make them listen.

Wednesday, April 30 
Room G313
2:10 - 3:40 pm
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Caro Williams-Pierce @therealcaro.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
Watching this talk feels like looking at the near future of the US #CHI2025
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Caro Williams-Pierce @therealcaro.bsky.social · 26/04/2025
Heading to #chi2025! See you all in Japan!
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Arthur Webber 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 @bernietranders.bsky.social · 26/04/2025
A friend who was out as a gay man during Section 28 was telling me the advice he used to give to straight allies asking how they could help back then: stand in solidarity with us so that some of the shit they’re throwing at us sticks to you. If you’re clean, you’re not standing close enough.
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Alexander Howard @digiphile.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
Sign spotted in a yard in Capitol Hill, where freedom of expression endures.
Sign: 
DEMOCRACY ISN'T DYING IN DARKNESS
*****
REPUBLICANS ARE MURDERING IT IN BROAD DAYLIGHT
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A Voice Crying in the Wilderness @cryingwilderness.bsky.social · 29/03/2025
Today’s Bonus Daily Cartoon, by Guy Richards Smit. #NewYorkerCartoons
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Ursula @ladyofsardines.bsky.social · 30/03/2025
Comrade card for 3/30/2025.
PROTECT our trans students!
STOP terrorizing trans athletes!
DISOBEY these evil motherfuckers!
love and defend
love and defend
love and defend

First word of each line is bubble letters in the color of the trans flag.

There are some little plants with flowers growing through the words.
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Caro Williams-Pierce @therealcaro.bsky.social · 30/03/2025
Beautiful 🥹 apple.news/AyXnrnJRMTTe...
apple.news
At Kennedy Center, Guster Perform With Cast of LGBTQ+ Musical Canceled by Trump Takeover — Rolling Stone
Band and cast of LGBTQ+ musical Finn — whose own Kennedy Center performances were canceled after Trump named himself Kennedy Center chairman — take stage at historic D.C. venue
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Laura / SheHulk 🖖🏻🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️‍🌈 @shehulk.bsky.social · 08/03/2025
Imagine if Terry Pratchett wrote a #DoctorWho episode What if the TARDIS landed in Ankh-Morpork? What if Death and Binky met The Doctor “OH DEAR, IT’S YOU. *sighs* I FIND YOU INCREDIBLY IRRITATING AS JUST AS YOUR HOURGLASS RUNS OUT IT BECOMES FULL AGAIN. I CALL THAT CHEATING” @rhi.bsky.social
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Firefly Tam @durorodu.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
😂🙌🏽
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They-Ra @xanindigo.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
sorry i didn’t reply, i: ☐ forgot to ☐ am speechless! ☐ honestly thought i did? ☐ have nothing of value to add ☐ have no idea what you’re talking about ☐ don’t know how to respond to that? ☐ disagree and am letting the leaden weight of my silence speak for me ☐ don’t want to (check all that apply)
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Mona Eltahawy @monaeltahawy.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
New essay: Fuck Fascism: On Radical Rudeness www.feministgiant.com/p/essay-fuck...
feministgiant.com
Essay: Fuck Fascism
On Radical Rudeness
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Cersei Trannister 🏳️‍⚧️🏴‍☠️🦋 @qadishtujessica.inanna.app · 07/03/2025
We Stan a legend
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Caro Williams-Pierce @therealcaro.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
INFO’s little walk-out protest contribution today - just a couple of us, but we are but one node in a broad web… What do we want? SCIENCE! How do we want it! PEER REVIEWED What do we want? SCIENCE! How do we want it! APPROPRIATELY ARCHIVED
5 people standing outside, holding handwritten signs: ‘Yay science!!’ and ‘Will factor 4 food’
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Caro Williams-Pierce @therealcaro.bsky.social · 25/02/2025
Doing meta-reviews of reviews of meta-analyses. I feel very meta right now.
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Vanessa Svihla @vsvihla.bsky.social · 13/11/2024
Some things, once taken apart, cannot be "mended." Even so, they can still hold value. This is a post about disability. This might also be a post about democracy.
A white backdrop with many components of different shapes and sizes arrayed, somewhat organized. The objects are black, silver or yellow and include springs, small screws, washers, and uncommon things, all from a disassembled object.
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Caro Williams-Pierce @therealcaro.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
Reject hopelessness. Embrace joy. Go to battle.
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Wes Fenlon @wes.readonlymemo.com · 14/02/2025
No shade to The Verge but this Lenovo sponsored post promising AI WILL UNITE ZOOMERS AND BOOMERS IN THE WORKPLACE is the funniest bullshit I've ever read
Ad reading "their ages may span 40 or 50 years, but with smart usage of AI LCs and other workplace tech from Lenovo, the four generations in the workforce can find common ground." Then it plays a clown car honk noise
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Caro Williams-Pierce @therealcaro.bsky.social · 27/03/2024
I’m not sure what to think about the vanity plate I just saw - LOLITA
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Caro Williams-Pierce @therealcaro.bsky.social · 27/03/2024
One of my students, presenting on how interactive and amazing museums can be, said: "Traditional museums are modeled after old British museums full of artifacts from countries they colonized. And they say DON'T TOUCH THE ART. Which is ironic."
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Caro Williams-Pierce @therealcaro.bsky.social · 27/03/2024
TIL about the history of 'ugly laws' in the USA! '...a law of 1867 deemed it illegal for "any person, who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or deformed in any way, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object, to expose himself or herself to public view."' With exceptions for 'demonstrations' 😒
en.wikipedia.org
Ugly law - Wikipedia
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Caro Williams-Pierce @therealcaro.bsky.social · 27/03/2024
The Business Insider referenced Vimes’ boot theory! It really has gained huge traction 😍 apple.news/AAlTaE1sqSS2...
apple.news
Classic thrifting is getting worse as the secondhand market explodes
Thrifting has surged in popularity, especially with members of Gen Z, who value individuality and sustainability. But traditional thrift stores are seeing a decline in quality items, retail experts sa...
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Caro Williams-Pierce @therealcaro.bsky.social · 22/03/2024
👏🏽 😂 It’s good to see! apple.news/AJt5jdGEJQI2...
apple.news
Fewer people are using Elon Musk’s X as the platform struggles to attract and keep users
X usage has declined as downloads of Threads have surged in recent weeks.
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Dan "Scary" Greene @dmgreene.bsky.social · 10/01/2024
The bold, inspirational vision for 2024 from my state's Democratic Party: a "decency agenda"
marylandmatters.org
House Speaker Adrienne Jones outlines priorities for upcoming legislative session - Maryland Matters
House Speaker Adrienne Jones outlines some of the legislative priorities for upcoming 90-day session that begins Jan. 10 in Annapolis.
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Caro Williams-Pierce @therealcaro.bsky.social · 10/01/2024
Plus, they have the best flour (and their gluten free mixes are truly mind blowing)
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Caro Williams-Pierce @therealcaro.bsky.social · 10/01/2024
I had no idea trail mix could be THIS GOOD 🤩 kickashproducts.com/shop/p/kick-...
kickashproducts.com
Kick Ash Trail Mix — Kick Ash Products
A grand mix of almonds, pecans, pumpkin seeds, coconut and fine-grain sea salt, baked with organic maple syrup and coconut oil and mixed with dried cherries and vegan chocolate chips! It’s safe to...
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Caro Williams-Pierce @therealcaro.bsky.social · 09/01/2024
Family in various states: we’ve got 12 inches of snow! My Newfie in Maryland: high of 60 tomorrow - can I come live with any of you?!
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the raccoons ate all of my koi @classicmax.bsky.social · 06/01/2024
man what am i even supposed to do here
select all images with the ship of theseus
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Caro Williams-Pierce @therealcaro.bsky.social · 04/01/2024
I’m not sure that ‘grass fed beef jerky’ goes in the Plant-Based Snack section, CVS 😂
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They-Ra @xanindigo.bsky.social · 21/12/2023
Today is the Winter Solstice! I hope everyone has a good shortest day ☀️
Sunrise over a misty field, with a sky thick with wispy clouds behind dark silhouettes of leafless trees. The the foreground are gates and fences, receding into a misty haze tinted golden from sunlight.
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Emily L. Hauser (she/her) ❌👑 @emilylhauser.bsky.social · 20/12/2023
Pls watch the segment w/ which @chrislhayes.bsky.social ended his show tonight. “There is no terrorist attack, no matter how horrific—& truly Oct 7 was horrific—that can wash clean what we are seeing in Gaza & what we as Americans & our government are abetting. It must end. We must stop it.” Yes.
msnbc.com
Chris Hayes: The war in Gaza must end
Chris Hayes: “There is no terrorist attack, no matter how horrific—and truly Oct. 7 was horrific—that can wash clean what we are seeing in Gaza and what we as Americans and our government are ab...
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Caro Williams-Pierce @therealcaro.bsky.social · 19/12/2023
A Tuesday at noon seemed like a good time for a Costco run - apparently everyone else had the same thought 😭
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Joshua J. Friedman @joshuajfriedman.com · 18/12/2023
NEW: Judge Engoron DENIES Trump's motion for directed verdict in NY fraud case—and shares impressions of expert witnesses: "Bartov is a tenured professor, but all that his testimony proves is that for a million or so dollars, some experts will say whatever you want them to say." tinyurl.com/mr4asu3z
Screenshot of document described in post. Follow link in post for full text.Screenshot of document described in post. Follow link in post for full text.Screenshot of document described in post. Follow link in post for full text.
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born miserable @bornmiserable.bsky.social · 18/12/2023
if Donald Trump hates immigrants so much, he should stop marrying them
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Caro Williams-Pierce @therealcaro.bsky.social · 18/12/2023
I get SO MUCH work done when there's grading to avoid!
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