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Connor Martini

@wrathofcon.bsky.social
132 followers 226 following 27 posts

PhD @ Columbia, seti/presence/enchantment Editor @ Prickly Paradigm Press Sci-fi writer repped by @jamiecowen.bsky.social Were people doing agential realism in your bathroom?

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Reposted by Connor Martini
Judith Weisenfeld @jlweisenfeld.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Check out @wrathofcon.bsky.social's *Where Is Religion?* project, an interactive learning tool for undergraduate American religion courses, produced through Princeton's Center for Culture, Society and Religion.
whereisreligion.com
Where is Religion?
An interactive teaching tool exploring the unexpected places where religion appears in American life.
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Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
But isn't it interesting that our methods of observation and the political choices of how to allocate resources prefigure in advance the kinds of life that we're able to find and, consequently, how terms like "safe" and "detectable" come to be synonymous?
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Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
The microbe is a safe kind of other the encounter with which does not require us to reevaluate what it means to be human or to live in our galaxy. Is that why JWST is doing atmospheric spec and not IR searches? No, not entirely.
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Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
In short, TS threaten the supremacy of the human as a galactic intelligence. We are not special, we are not owed the stars in some manifest destiny, we are not nature's chosen. A microbe doesn't do that. If we wanted to, we could destroy k2-18b before intelligent life can evolve
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Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
Technosignatures, on the other hand, indicate dangerous life. Intelligent life, likely much more technologically developed than ourselves. This kind of life is dangerous in the Hollywood sense, but it is also dangerous in the affective, social sense.
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Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
Not all aliens are equal in detectability or in the consequence of their detection. Dimethyl sulfide is an indicator of simple, microbial life. An ingredient in the primordial soup. It might mean there's life, and that's groundbreaking, but it is a safe kind of life.
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Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
5. Not to make this about biosig v. technosig, but I do want to talk about why these observations are done on big government-funded telescopes-in other words, why atmospheric spectroscopy is being done, but not infrared observations looking for waste heat from alien tech?
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Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
Then there needs to be exhaustive experimentation here on Earth to understand if something like dimethyl sulfide is *really* something that can only be produced in known biotic processes. If it could occur naturally without life, then it is an ambiguous biosignature.
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Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
4. SO MUCH MORE RESEARCH is needed before anything can be said conclusively. Observations and analyses have to be repeated, probably with other telescopes (including some, like the Habitable Worlds Observatory, which haven't been built yet).
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Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
3. k2-18b is ~124 ly from Earth. JWST is powerful, but to do atmospheric spectroscopy at that distance is bananas. This suggests that the detected biosignatures are very prevalent in the exoplanetary atmosphere.
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Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
2. k2-18b is suspected to be a mostly watery planet, and one of the biosignatures that may have been detected here is dimethyl sulfide, which on Earth is emitted by oceanic phytoplankton. So, yeah.
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Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
1. Wow!! This really might be it, folks.
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Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
some thoughts on k2-18b! 🧵 www.npr.org/2025/04/16/n...
npr.org
Are there signs of life on alien planet K2-18b, or is it just a lot of hot air?
The James Webb Space Telescope may have detected life-associated gas in the atmosphere of a far-off planet. The news is being greeted with both enthusiasm and skepticism.
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Mark Levin @levinchem.bsky.social · 14/04/2025
M. Gessen hits the nail on the head, yet again www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/o...
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Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social · 14/04/2025
The "Transformations in Spirituality and Religion" section of this report from 2000 titled "When SETI Succeeds: The Impact of High-Information Contact" 🙃
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Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social · 14/04/2025
I'm just a boy, standing in front of a physicist, begging him to reconsider the broad generalizations through which scientists tend to understand religion (which consequently makes scientists look naive and silly!)
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Ian Boudreau @ianboudreau.com · 03/04/2025
Everyone wants there to be a grand scheme behind all of this but the terrible truth is that extremely stupid people are in charge and they have a fanatical devotion to wrong, childlike concepts of society and economics cooked up by right wing radio hosts in order to sell tainted dietary supplements
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Max Berger @maxberger.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
yes
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leon @leyawn.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
my new theory is that once you have a certain amount of money and wealth you start to go crazy and detach from reality. that number is different for everyone. for me it's $20
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JP @jpbrammer.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
thankfully, "Grok, welcome to the resistance" is the sequence of words that summons the meteor
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Center for Culture, Society and Religion at Princeton University @princetonccsr.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
CCSR is pleased to announce that Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social will be joining us this Fall as Postdoc in Religion & the Public Conversation. His work explores how scientists approach & apprehend the unknown; he will pursue a public-facing project on "Detection." ccsr.princeton.edu
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Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social · 25/03/2025
Thank you, Maia! 🌈
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Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social · 25/03/2025
Thank you!! 🥹🥰
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Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social · 25/03/2025
Interrupting my regular lurking and retweeting bc I GOT A JOB!! This fall I'll be a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton's Center for Culture, Society, and Religion @princetonccsr.bsky.social working on the "Religion and the Public Conversation" project 😎
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Gillian Branstetter @gbbranstetter.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
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What we're hearing: The senior House Democrat told Axios that a colleague called them after a town hall crying and said: "They hate us. They hate us."
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Amal El-Mohtar @amalelmohtar.com · 18/03/2025
Put this on your fucking Hugo ballots or be dead to me tbh
lightspeedmagazine.com
Inside the House of Wisdom - Lightspeed Magazine
This is the eighth floor of the Al-Ahli Memorial Library, my favorite place in the building. When the elevator door opens, it’s like walking into a quiet circle of glass. So, as we walk, I’m going to ...
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Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
Just gonna leave this right here
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Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
my kingdom for chinos that don't make me look like this
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Skrrt Vonnegut @skrrtvonnegut.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
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Max Kennerly @maxkennerly.bsky.social · 09/03/2025
Yes. If DHS can barge in, say your visa was revoked, be told you have a green card, say it's revoked too, and then disappear you so that neither your lawyer nor your family can find you, then all the guardrails are gone. There is no policy, practice, or law protecting anyone.
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Hari Kunzru @harikunzru.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
They adopted a posture of total submission and it bought them precisely nothing. A lesson for the Trump era www.nytimes.com/live/2025/03...
nytimes.com
The Trump administration cancels $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia University.
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Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
It’s so rad to have such a strong and united opposition party 🤡
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onion person @junlper.beer · 06/03/2025
not going to lie it’s pretty bleak that we’re having to explain to people who are supposedly democrats as to why ronald reagan was bad
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Mikepole @michaeldrummey.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
Evergreen.
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Daisy Rockwell @shreedaisy.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
Boycott dates!
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cait (and adonis) @cait.bsky.social · 05/03/2025
Reagan was such a good president that you can see his impact on nearly every measure of America's economy and livelihood ♥️ in that he destroyed everything for everyone and is in hell being tortured by demons right now
Life Expectancy vs. Healthcare Spending
Over Time, from 1970 to 2014

[reagan fucked it up]United States Debt in 2014 Dollars and as Percent of GDP 

[reagan fucked it up]Top Marginal Tax Rate from 1966 to 2014

[reagan fucked it up]
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Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social · 05/03/2025
wow they’re out here casting 7th level eyebite
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Randall Stephens @randalljstephens.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
Seems like the relevance of this Reagan-era Herblock cartoon has risen by 200%. Washington Post, 12/22/1988.
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Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social · 25/02/2025
Congrats!! This sounds awesome 🤩
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Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social · 25/02/2025
lmfao so what exactly is the political position being articulated here? what is not Donald Trump and not the "far left"? when you stand for nothing, you don't get cookies for not "bending the knee"
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The Onion @theonion.com · 24/02/2025
Democratic Leaders Stand Real Still In Hopes No One Notices Them
theonion.com
Democratic Leaders Stand Real Still In Hopes No One Notices Them
WASHINGTON—With the elected officials trying their hardest not to move a muscle, reports confirmed Monday that top Democratic leaders in Congress were standing real still in hopes that the American pe...
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Reactor Magazine @reactorsff.bsky.social · 25/02/2025
By popular demand, we're bringing you SIX (6) recommendations for space horror books centered on female characters!! Wait-what was that sound? One moment–I'm going to check the airlock. I'm sure it was nothing...
The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling; The Outside by Ada Hoffmann; Dead Space by Kali Wallace; This World Is Not Yours by Kemi Ashing-Giwa; Ghost Station by SA Barnes; The Scourge Between Stars by Ness Brown
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Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
lol. lmao, even.
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Ken Klippenstein @kenklippenstein.bsky.social · 21/02/2025
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Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
"Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective"
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Taco Bell Quarterly @tacobellquarterly.org · 20/02/2025
You do not need to stop to reassess your purpose or intention to write. This is creative writing. It's like having high functioning anxiety except you're writing it down and calling it a book. Give in to the spiral.
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Connor Martini @wrathofcon.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
lmao wait him running was even on the table?? the man has factory reset on camera several times, and he keeps losing fights with stairs.
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