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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️

@transthropology.bsky.social
140 followers 458 following 306 posts

Archaeology student (lithics), a hobby of starting hobbies (ADHD). Somewhat decent at photography (35mm), fiber arts (mostly sewing), and making keyboards (experiencing a rapid descent into 40s). they/them (gender is a nightmare)

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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Popping back in to study this like a toddler with a bug
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
Posting another art piece for funsies
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
Perchance I'll be watching this at 1:30 am my time...
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
Grad cap done!
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
It's pride month and I'm here to remind you that transphobia is racism by a different name. Remember that policies that target trans people, especially trans women, ALSO target people of color, especially women of color. Western gender norms were based on and defined by white people!
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
The world continues to slowly fall apart but hey. I'm decorating my grad cap.
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
My god they're actually gonna let me have a masters degree
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
Everyone who told me that I shouldn't do academic writing extremely linearly has personally victimized the me that is, right now, realizing how bad nonlinear writing is.
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
Anyway here's more art
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
Defense date is scheduled and my adhd panic is ACTIVATED
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
And now I'm REALLY starting to play around with Affinity (vector/raster art program)
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
More vector doodling with a lil poetry sprinkled in for funsies
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
"I asked the machine made by a machine-selling guy how good the machine was at being a good little machine and it promised me it was a very good little machine and NOT a torment nexus! I did this because Gollum asked me to." 🫩🫩🫩
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
Been playin around with vector art again
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 29/03/2026
The first day home after a conference is always so very sexy
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
The ending of Project Hail Mary (book version) was unexpected and sweet. I still think I like Rocky better than Ryland, though
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
Something just a bit too on the nose about the local police precint literally plastering over the cracks in the actual façade and then repainting the whole building white...
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
So used to the feedback style of my advisor that when I get comments from other professors I get thrown for a loop. What do you mean I don't have to totally restructure every sentence??
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Reposted by Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️
Brandon Bishop @brandontbishop.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
"The troops deserve lobster tail." Ok, so do the people on food stamps.
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
Follow thru to the article and remember that Israel has already been caught using white phosphorous on Palestinians in Gaza.
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
Literally 9/10 archaeology jobs listings I get from linkedin are ai training gigs. It sucks because they pay hourly way better than any job in my area, so I see the temptation considering the economics of our field. CRM archaeology especially.
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
Feels hard to say something about the irreplaceable loss of cultural resources without saying it also about human life. This is a kind of murder to me - not just the erasure of life, but the erasure of memory. I don't have enough words to say it fully. It's all so Overwhelming.
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
This is an interesting article that I have a few issues with, but primarily I find it an odd choice to frame it as "moderate voters are further left of their reps" instead of "dem reps are further right than their constituents, even the moderate ones." Like who is stationary and who is shifted here?
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Reposted by Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️
Man in Business Suit Levitating @dfeldman.org · 09/03/2026
The ICE jail in Georgia will be the largest jail or prison in the US, by a substantial margin. It’s in a warehouse with no HVAC, medical, or sanitation facilities. ICE didn’t even contact the city, which says it doesn’t have enough electricity or sewage processing.
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 08/03/2026
Absolutely chilling (and telling) final line.
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 08/03/2026
This reminds me of a student in a field school I was assisting with who commented that before field school, he would have read a lot of our local historic archaeology as trash. A cabin is a great example because it isn't necessarily *that* old, but it IS still archaeology.
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 08/03/2026
There is so much flexibility inherent to archaeology. To not flex for all of our community members is a structural choice that can and should be unmade. I love that care is made here to define mothering the act rather than mothering the biological relationship. Also a good shorthand for first steps.
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 08/03/2026
Reading this book on the Keiller-Knowles collection and reeling at how differently we would describe these lithics here. Fascinating how differently the languages emerged
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Reposted by Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️
Lynne @lynne-sails.bsky.social · 08/03/2026
This, and the desalination plant strike, are not about regime change or destroying nuclear weapon building capacity. This is a direct attack on a people already suffering. This is a war crime.
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 07/03/2026
Father LOCATED
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 07/03/2026
Choosing to believe this is actually an ancient packer
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Reposted by Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️
Jen Grogan 🐙📖📚 @eightarmsedits.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
"We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words." - Ursula K. Le Guin November 19, 2014
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 07/03/2026
Had a pleasant urge to write something adjacent to an essay or opinion piece earlier. I think I might want to make a habbit of it just to give myself a break from academic writing.
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Reposted by Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️
Jesspooka Kant 🎃 @jessdkant.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
Indifference to suffering is a hallmark of genocide.
At one point he said he overheard a security guard talking about bets made among the staff over which detainee would be next to die by suicide.
The guard said he had paid $500 into a pool, with the total pot riding on the outcome. The talk was particularly jarring, he said, because he had contemplated suicide himself.
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
Say it with me: charging disabled students to park on campus is forcing us to pay more to use the same facilities as able-bodied students. It's discrimination.
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
WE HAVE A WEBSITE!! ...it isn't even close to done BUT I GOT REALLY FAR!
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
Today's the day I [re]tackle html and css to build my own website. Last time I did this was like... 18 years ago?
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
Made a new little maker's mark for myself (in letterboxing we'd call this a siggy, or signature stamp) and decided to jazz it up with some fun colorways
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
Extremely annoying to try and secure your own usernames across platforms and finding one person camping it in only 2 places. Like you're not even using it! That's my me!
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Vindication is a nice feeling sometimes
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Reposted by Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️
Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
I wrote about how Democratic leadership has abandoned the moral high ground on Iran, and how it has left them toothless when opposing Trump.
stringinamaze.net
Hollow Opposition
On Iran, top Democrats only have procedural concerns
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
The way this kind of person has somehow always anecdotally met more detransitioners than studies have ever recorded. Gender confirmation proceedures continue to have the lowest rates of regret, and most documented cases are attributed to external social pressures. "A number" WHERE?? 🧐
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
sounds like it's time to post a meme made by you (mine is a three-parter)
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
New rheum said something that pinged my bs detectors ("10 lbs off your body is 80 lbs of your joints") so I went on a hunt last night and you'll NEVER guess what I found! 🫩🫩🫩
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
Having to type ± so many times that I added the alt code as a macro to a dedicated key on my data entry board
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Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️ @transthropology.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
The focus on impacting fertility when we are talking about children feels particularly insidious here.
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Reposted by Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️
Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 01/03/2026
“You can’t bomb a country into democracy,” says Zack Polanski. The very same words I used myself on BBC’s The Politics Show during the Iraq war. I think we are correct.
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Reposted by Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️
Sarah Jane Cervenak @sjcerv.bsky.social · 28/02/2026
“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.” James Baldwin
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Reposted by Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️
David Corn @davidcorn.bsky.social · 28/02/2026
The idea of a legislative body representing the population having the ability to check the ultimate power of a country’s leader sounds really neat. Someone should write that down.
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Reposted by Nik Simurdak 🏳️‍⚧️
Mythic 🦊 @mythicalredfox.bsky.social · 28/02/2026
Thinking about this quote from Persepolis creator Marjane Satrapi again.
Picture of Marjane Satrapi alongside a quote from her. The quote reads:

The world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you.

And our governments are very much the same...

- Marjane Satrapi, Iranian-French graphic novelist
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