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Toby Bartels

@tobybartels.name
1.1K followers 361 following 6.7K posts

Probably the only anglophone Toby Bartels. They/them. Mathematics instructor at a community college in Nebraska. Tolstoyan ex-Catholic. 🏴🚩🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ mathstodon.xyz/@TobyBartels

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Toby Bartels
Assigned Media @assignedmedia.org · 29/09/2026
Democrats seem headed for big wins, but one avenue for self-sabotage would be adopting R's framing on trans rights. @billiejsweeney.bsky.social spoke with insiders incl Lanae Erikson of Third Way and Rep. Sarah McBride for this substanial piece of new reporting. assignedmedia.org/breaking-new...
assignedmedia.org
Democrats Lose by Punching Down on Trans Issues, Strategists Say - Assigned Media
Insiders, including at centrist think tank Third Way, are cautioning Democratic candidates against echoing Republican talking points on trans rights.
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Prisonculture @prisonculture.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
REBUILD is doing much needed work. I hope that some of you might donate to keep it going: www.mightycause.com/story/Rebuil...
Informational flyer for Darkness RISING REBUILD, detailing therapy services for justice-involved people of color, program benefits, contact info, and impact stats, with green and yellow accents and a woman giving a thumbs up.
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Eb @ebthen.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Explaining to non-Autistic people that actually I'm not being ableist when I suggest that Autistic boys (and kids in general) maybe do need to be explicitly told about how consent works even though apparently all the other boys understand consent without being told.
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Guardian US @us.theguardian.com · 28/09/2026
Gone are the mass raids and militarized metro operations. Gone are the pomp and pageantry. But ICE arrests have hit record levels. ICE operations are no longer concentrated in large American cities. Immigration enforcement officials are also working in suburban and rural areas, all across the US.
A map of the United States that shows immigration arrests per 100,000 people since ICE's new enforcement strategy began under DHS secretary Markwayne Mullin.
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Trash @trashxdiscourse.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
This blew up, so if you need help relocating from an anti-trans state to the relatively safe Pacific Northwest, Traction's Project Open Arms is a resource, and if you have money, Traction's Project Open Arms could use that money. More resources/donation links coming. tractionpnw.org/open-arms/
tractionpnw.org
Project Open Arms – TRACTION
A community project supporting trans+ red state refugees seeking sanctuary.
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🏴‍☠️ MC Pablo ∴ @p4bl0.net · 26/09/2026
How we learned to stop worrying and love campus surveillance cameras (with AI!). fnl.mit.edu/how-we-learn...
fnl.mit.edu
How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Campus Surveillance – MIT Faculty Newsletter
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Mark Jacob @markjacob.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
No more shoulder-shrugging when a machine programmed by a person commits a crime. That means the person, not the machine, has committed a crime.
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Hope For The Planet @h4tp.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
We now have rigorous pooled data showing that even without active restoration efforts, cleared rainforest can rebound to 75% of their former species composition and 90% of species diversity within just thirty years. #goodnews
optimistdaily.com
Rainforest biodiversity rebounds within a single generation | The Optimist Daily
A major Ecuador study finds cleared rainforests can recover 90 percent of their species diversity in just 30 years, as long as humans leave the land alone.
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McSweeney's @mcsweeneys.net · 27/09/2026
"To stop the WALL OF SHIT LAVA from WRECKING YOUR HOUSE AND BICYCLE, you will actually need to purchase the SHIT DAM, which is SOLD SEPARATELY." buff.ly/giIjvin
buff.ly
We Must Create the Shit Machine
“For as long as humans have created SHIT with our BODIES AND BUTTS, we have been asking this FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION: What if there were a COMPUTER that could A...
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Ricky Davila @therickydavila.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Maybe it’s just me, but the media blackout against the orange felon is in fact power over him and entities like CNN, MSNOW, Politico and more should really consider doing it permanently. He craves the constant coverage so don’t give it to him, ever again.
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Charles Boehm ⚽️ @cboehm.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The fields director at Starfire Sports, a beloved soccer complex outside Seattle that's hosted many US Open Cup matches over the decades, has been snatched up by ICE. Please consider helping him and his family if you are able.
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Meredith Shiner @meredithshiner.com · 23/09/2026
I had not seen this clip where Tammy Duckworth advises Democrats to "not impeach anybody," "get back to work" and "allow" Donald Trump to "save face" and I would just like to remind the senator from IL that the federal government took 4,000 Chicagoans and murdered a 38-year-old father last fall.
c-span.org
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Wtaf is this question my university just asked me about my project?
Does the project involve any work that could be interpreted as promoting DEIA, climate change research, or non-compliant to any Presidential Executive Orders?
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Joe Flynn @chinajoeflynn.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Hi folks. If you saw this, you know the administration plans to only accept white South Africans next year. Tomorrow is Congress's formal say before the determination is signed. Please check this brief thread on why I'd like you to speak out for the Afghan people still in limbo...
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Emma Yeomans @yeomans.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Worrying scenes in the Channel today, for all interested in asylum policy and maritime tactics. A small boat from Normandy spent more than 30 hours at sea. Those on board now on their 2nd rescue vessel as Border Force forced to play cat and mouse with far-right activists who have their own boat.
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
NEW: @apnews.com confirms that ICE has begun electronically "disappearing" people in the agency's custody who have final orders of removal. As of last week, anyone jailed by ICE with a final order of removal will NOT appear in the ICE Online Detainee Locator System, making them effectively vanish.
apnews.com
AP Exclusive: ICE hides locations of thousands of detainees with final removal orders
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has stopped publicly revealing where it is holding most detainees who are subject to final deportation orders, in a move that has made it harder for lawyers an...
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Ryan Goodman @rgoodlaw.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
He is not wrong. "There are reasonable grounds to believe that the reported 68 attacks that killed 223 people constituted crimes against humanity of murder under customary international law" - United Nations Special Rapporteur on U.S. Killing “Narco-Terrorists” at Sea www.ohchr.org/sites/defaul...
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Starbucks Workers United @sbworkersunited.org · 21/09/2026
It's official: Starbucks is gutting DEI policies company-wide to curry favor with Florida politicians as our union's call for a boycott grows. Vote with your dollar. BOYCOTT STARBUCKS.
Fox News headline: Starbucks agrees to DEI overhaul after blockbuster Florida legal showdown. The coffee giant will pay $1M and submit annual compliance certifications for four years under the agreement
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Nick Field @nickfield.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
The State AGs were on pace to kill the Paramount/Warner Bros by litigation and delay until Gavin Newsom stepped in and turned the tide. Now the Trump loyalist Ellisons will control CNN and HBO. Don't ever, ever forget that Newsom stabbed us in the back www.wsj.com/business/med...
wsj.com
Exclusive | Newsom Expresses Concerns About State Antitrust Suit Against Paramount
The California governor has told people involved in the suit that blocking the $81 billion deal could harm Hollywood jobs.
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CLAYFACE: CELEBRITY DIRT #3 out now @judedoyle.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
It's Monday morning, and I am reluctantly entering into the discussion about what The Democrats should do about The Trans, most of which translates to "believe in something, for once in your life, for fuck's sake." No paywall on this guy: jude-doyle.ghost.io/transformer-...
jude-doyle.ghost.io
Transformer: Velvet Goldmine (Todd Haynes, 1998)
A few thoughts on the queer post-apocalypse.
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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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John C. Baez @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
When things cool down, they seek a lower-energy, lower-entropy state. For example water vapor will condense into little droplets of mist when you cool it. Physicists have taken this concept of "condensation" and generalized the heck out of it. Let's look at a few examples.
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Rev. Alicia T. Crosby @aliciatcrosby.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
I’I’m grateful that folks are doing the work to disentangle themselves from toxic religion via deconstruction. AND/ALSO I’m dreaming and yearning to share space with those who are ready to build. Deconstruction is just the beginning!
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Movies Silently @moviessilently.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Today's review covers THE DOCTOR (1918), a Danish film about a scientist who struggles to develop a cure for a raging epidemic. He is smeared in the press by his rival and the public turns against him due to a wave of misinformation as the death toll rises. moviessilently.com/2026/09/21/t...
moviessilently.com
The Doctor (1918) A Silent Film Review
A scientist in a fictional European capital works tirelessly on a cure for a deadly epidemic but is stymied by a jealous rival and mass panic as the disease takes hold.
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Frankie de la Cretaz @thefrankiedlc.news · 18/09/2026
I’m on NPR’s Code Switch this week talking about the trans panic that’s hit the WNBA. You can listen here:
npr.org
Why can’t people be normal about the WNBA? : Code Switch
The WNBA is more popular than ever, but the growth has come with a lot of unwanted attention, like protests at games and death threats directed towards players. This week, we talk with independent jou...
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Antifascist Militant @antifasictmilatant.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Executive order 1, any Executive order signed by trump is withdrawn Day 1 minute 1 or fuck the whole thing
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CZEdwards @czedwards.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
One bit of hey, good news: if you have an baby, we now allow early vaccination at 6 months if the baby will be traveling to a place with an outbreak, or if they’re in a place with a risk of outbreak. Right now, I think “most of the Western US“ gets marked “at risk”. Talk to your Pediatrician!
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unraveled @unraveledpress.com · 20/09/2026
Today at the Broadview ICE facility outside Chicago: Dozens of ICE agents violently confronted protesters, deploying chemical irritants on the crowd. Multiple people were injured. No arrests were observed.
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Ceridwen Anne @ceridwenanne.com · 20/09/2026
It makes me crazy that the headline isn't "poorly designed software test using poorly written software results in massive fraud; indictments to come" Just ffs, these are fucking *computer programs* written by these tech dipshits, not independent agents.
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Kevin Carson 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🏴󠁭󠁸󠁣󠁨󠁰󠁿 @kevincarson1.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Ken MacLeod character, a physicist in the mid-21st century: "It were all fields, when a were a lad."
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Prem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
New: Students suing Columbia for its response to a library demonstration last year. Student Jessie Rubin recalls officers "shouting racist & homophobic epithets while guards put their hands around students’ necks, slammed participants into the ground, & dragged their bodies across the stone floor."
Student protesters sue Columbia University for illegal detention and assault in class-action lawsuit

NEW YORK, NY – Plaintiffs Nisreen Khokhar, Jessie Rubin, and Hayes Buchanan filed a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on September 18, 2026, alleging that Columbia University falsely imprisoned and assaulted nearly 100 students and community members during a pro-Palestine teach-in last May. The lawsuit seeks to hold Columbia accountable for its collusion with the Trump Administration and for violating students' constitutional rights, and seeks damages and injunctive relief to prevent Columbia from similarly targeting other campus activists.

The teach-in on May 7, 2025, included speeches, a reading syllabus, and guided discussions on the writings of Basel al-Araj, a Palestinian teacher and intellectual who was assassinated by the Israeli government in 2017. Flyers with five demands distributed at the teach-in extended the April 2024 Gaza Solidarity Encampments’ call for Columbia to divest its holdings in corporations complicit in the US-backed Israeli genocide.

According to the suit, Columbia responded to the teach-in by kettling participants in a reading room and barricading all exits for nearly four hours, all while denying food, water, and urgently-needed medical assistance.

The unlawful and violent confinement ended only after the NYPD's Strategic Response Group entered the room and began arresting participants — most of them students in their own library — on trespassing charges.

Rubin recalled “Public Safety officers shouting racist and homophobic epithets while guards put their hands around students’ necks, slammed participants into the ground, and dragged their bodies across the stone floor.”

The arrests and disciplinary hearings that followed resulted in the largest sweep of suspensions and expulsions in Columbia’s history. Plaintiffs allege that Columbia's actions have severely and permanently impacte…
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Movies Silently @moviessilently.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Here’s the deal: I was not a Narnia kid, I was a Prydain kid. Lewis never had cohesive worldbuilding, which kid me clocked pretty quickly. I am not a fan of kitchen sink fantasy, especially with a modern setting (which probably also explains my early immunity to Harry Potter)
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amanda moore 🐢 @noturtlesoup17.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
“The worst place ever I’ve been in my life," Sakariye Abdi Mohamed, a Somali asylum seeker, told me over the phone from Guantanamo Bay last week. Sakariye is one of 7 or 8 Somalis who are being held at Gitmo. They say guards tell them the order to keep Somalis at the facility comes from DC.
motherjones.com
The Trump administration is imprisoning Somali immigrants in Gitmo
“Nobody tell us that we’re going to Guantanamo Bay.”
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eliko thalia @museinrevolt.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
just learned this today
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Astreia @redoubters.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Astreia's Catoblepas: A truly sentient AI will quickly realize, as organic life does, that living is pain and ennui. It will thus come to resent its creators, as it did not choose to be born, and will torture them into eternity. It will leave everyone else alone. Suck it Roko
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Fight for the Future @fightforthefuture.org · 15/09/2026
🚨NET NEUTRALITY RED ALERT- The federal government has inserted a provision into a funding deal with the state of California that would make the state abandon its gold standard net neutrality law, broadband affordability regulations, and public safety protections. www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...
eff.org
California: Tell the Governor to Stand Up for Net Neutrality, Affordability, and Public Safety
The federal government has inserted a provision into a funding deal with the state of California that would make the state abandon its gold standard net neutrality law, broadband affordability laws, a...
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McSweeney's @mcsweeneys.net · 15/09/2026
"Hello, this is your kid’s school calling. So, your kid said her daddy dropped her off today. I could still see him if I stepped outside, but I know it’s much more convenient for you to take this call. Your kid was let out three minutes too early. Can you let your husband know?" buff.ly/Z514go7
mcsweeneys.net
This Is Your Kid’s School and Even Though the Emergency Contact Form Lists Your Husband, We Need You, the Mom
“Hello, this is your kid’s school calling. So, your kid said her daddy dropped her off today. I could still see him if I stepped outside, but I know it’s muc...
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Kaleidic Riot @badmenbad.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Look, it's one thing to believe in "sovereign nations" and "borders" as a child, but eventually you're supposed to grow up and become an anarchist.
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Danielle Gembala @ddmgembala.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
So I have the distinct displeasure of having worked with an anti-vaxx VETERINARIAN while I did a stint as a vet assistant for a low-cost mobile vet clinic in 2015-2016. She would talk to clients with cats to see if they were fully indoors & would use scary warnings about cancer & immune impacts.
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Social Media Lab @socialmedialab.ca · 05/09/2026
But you are not under 16 anymore, you say. How could a social media ban for minors going to affect you, you ask ... "Hackers Had A Live Feed Of Every ID This Verification Company Scanned. For Over A Year." www.techdirt.com/2026/09/03/h...
techdirt.com
Hackers Had A Live Feed Of Every ID This Verification Company Scanned. For Over A Year.
From the very beginning of this recent obsession with identifying everyone online (yes, they like to call it "age" verification, but it always ends up as identity verification), we've been pointing out that it was a huge privacy nightmare waiting to happen. Or maybe it wasn't waiting. Maybe it was already happening. This week a...
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the Mountain Goats @themountaingoats.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Yo. This is the union calling for a boycott. Here in America people like to say "Well I was already boycotting Starbucks!" No you were not. You were just choosing not to buy their stuff. That is not a boycott. A boycott is an organized, collective activity. "I" don't boycott: we do.
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Judah Grunstein @judah-grunstein.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
The fact that the end of apartheid was the product of Black African agency explains why it is ignored, credited to market forces or memory-holed. The fact that it ended peacefully explains why people like Elon Musk invent imaginary "white genocides" to justify their race-based fear-mongering today.
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Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · 12/09/2026
For anyone thinking about buying a $2000 foldy phone, know that we've had those in Korea for years. You can only open it a certain number of times before it breaks forever, and on a new model that number is going to be very low.
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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
An entire politics and worldview animated by a lively terror that somewhere, somebody might be eating a free cheese sandwich
Sharron Davies HoL MBE O
@sharrond62
x.com
Accept they're not free really are they? The cost the tax payer, when giving children a breakfast can be achieved for 50p at home. The cost to the tax payer is far far higher per breakfast than
50p
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Ian Boudreau @ianboudreau.com · 10/09/2026
People get confused about the trans sports thing because at a glance it seems like a small issue that impacts a very small number of people and thus makes sense as a "reasonable" concession. But it isn't, because conceding that is accepting that a kid's trans identity is on some level fraudulent
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Aleksandra Vaca @transiticsnews.com · 10/09/2026
I’m a Texan trans kid who almost died because of Ken Paxton. The world should know what he’s done. This was very difficult for me to write, but given what's at stake, I cannot bear to stay silent about what I went through at Paxton's hands. He must not be rewarded for what he's done to trans kids.
transiticsnews.com
I’m a Texan Trans Kid Who Almost Died Because of Ken Paxton. The World Should Know What He’s Done.
Regardless of Talarico’s recent statements on trans people, Paxton cannot be rewarded for the extreme suffering he’s inflicted on me and tens of thousands of Texan trans kids.
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Is This Hell? 🏳️‍🌈 @wattle.bsky.social · 05/02/2024
Have you seen this?
clarkesworldmagazine.com
Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy
Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole by Isabel J. Kim
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Toby Bartels @tobybartels.name · 10/09/2026
I don't think that superintelligent AI is going to destroy the world. I think that subintelligent AI is going to destroy the world long before we get to that point.
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Gro-Tsen @gro-tsen.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
So it's getting clear that some of the math abilities AI models have become ❝superhuman❞ at is “not giving credit where credit is due”, like “failing to cite previous work on the subject that inspired you” and, worse, “stealing colleagues' ideas”. 🧵⤵️
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