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Cheryl Rofer

@cherylrofer.bsky.social

22K followers 1.3K following 20K posts

Retired nuclear scientist. Worked in Estonia, Kazakhstan, and Los Alamos. Posting on nuclear issues, war, nature, science, and women's issues. Also cats. She/her. Blogs at Nuclear Diner and Lawyers, Guns & Money Banner: The invincible summer within

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Cheryl Rofer @cherylrofer.bsky.social · Jan 16

Solidarity, people!

Not recriminations

Not "I told you so."

Solidarity.

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🎃 public HELLth guy 🎃 @publichealthguy1.bsky.social · 12m

this

Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 26m

With this HHS RIF, everyone is aggressively “calling” what data sources or government functions are dead, and I’m a bit uncomfortable. Not every team is zeroed out. Many people still doing their jobs. Reporters still need to substantiate claims about e.g. unreliable data. Not sure this is helping

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Cheryl Rofer @cherylrofer.bsky.social · 9m

All my junk mail is catching up with my new address, and finally one of them has sent new address labels!

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Governor JB Pritzker @govpritzker.illinois.gov · 1h

Congratulations to all the runners today at the Chicago Marathon!

I hope you’re taking a moment after crossing the finish line and enjoying all that the best big city in the nation has to offer.

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Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · 49m

Here more than 5,000 people answered the question below (more than 4,200 via quote replies & >800 comments). Lots of interesting stories!

On X, 15 people replied to the same query.

Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · 4d

Has anything great happened in your life because of social media?

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MLF @marklfilteau.bsky.social · 43m

At our local record store/cafe

Notice
Anyone purporting to be an agent of ICE or any other federal agency who enters these premises with the intent of arresting and or detaining any person(s) within:
Must wear clothing that accurately represents the agency they represent.
Must not wear a mask or anything else that conceals their true identity.
Must possess an official warrant signed by a federal judge and agree to show it to anyone who asks to see it.
Must agree to any photography, video, and/or audio recording of their activities.
Must provide detailed information of where their arrestees will be sent and allow full due process as required by the Constitution.
The United States is a democratic republic and the rights of everyone must be respected.

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Rebecca O’Donnell @rebeccaodonnell.bsky.social · 1h

I made this true story comic to show protesters how sneaky agitators are. Don’t let them rile you, and Hold the Line.

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Cheryl Rofer @cherylrofer.bsky.social · 1h

In honor of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand:

The football is open.

Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 1h

In honor of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand:

Archives banned making copies.

Natasha Simonova @philistella.bsky.social · 2h

In honor of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand:

New library catalogue website.

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Sunil S 🇺🇦 @sunils.bsky.social · 1h

It's not that radical. These are all fading Silicon Valley stars who had run out of productive ideas & were making bad wagers on new tech- the GOP offered them the same billionaire wealthfare it offered the Earth Barons (those mining & carbon industry guys).

Politico @politico.com · 5h

How did tech industry leaders go from heaping praise on Barack Obama to going all in on Donald Trump?

A Silicon Valley chronicler explains the increasingly radical politics of Elon Musk, David Sacks and Mark Zuckerberg 👇

‘The Democrats Still May Not Understand What They're Dealing With’

A Silicon Valley chronicler on the increasingly radical politics of Elon Musk, David Sacks and Mark Zuckerberg.

www.politico.com

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GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com · 2h

for fuck’s sake the alt text is fine but if you’re posting screenshots to an article *you also need to put a link to the fucking article*

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GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com · 2h

HEY THERE PORTLAND. if you’re out and about this afternoon, we are going to be playing a little shindig at @nightowl.bsky.social, who are having a little block party. we should be on around 2:30PM!

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James Cameron @jjjcameron.bsky.social · 2h

I mean yes, sometimes it is.

Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 2h

Vance is having an incredible morning on the Sunday shows doing "oh so now it's illegal to [mundane thing]?"

A real quote when Vance is asked about whether Tom Homan kept the $50,000 he got in a fast food bag: "Is it illegal to take a payment for doing services?"

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Cake or Death @johngcole.bsky.social · 2h

can we all agree no more south african billionaires going through psychotic breaks in the us government?

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 6h

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.

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Rob Shum @robshum.bsky.social · 2h

Somehow, these guys are taken seriously as politics-knowers, even though they’re like comic book fans who deny any difference between DC and Marvel, or PC users who think iOS and Windows are the same.

Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 3h

My version of this is that Vought, Yarvin etc represent a kind of braindead right-Gramscianism, which leaves out all the interesting subtleties and treats civil society _only_ as a realm of indoctrination, where one ideological master-narrative can readily be substituted for another.

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 4h

a key thing about vought — and all of these guys — is that they have a totally top down and hierarchical vision of the world. they believe that the cultural changes they hate can be turned off by destroying the federal government because they can’t imagine that they emerged bottom-up in society

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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 2h

Pritzker: "If the Constitution means anything -- and I guess we all are questioning that right now -- the Insurrection Act cannot be invoked ... they just want troops on the ground because they want to militarize especially blue cities in blue states."

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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 2h

Pritzker: "You just heard a tidal wave of lies from the VP. It's a bit shocking. And you heard over & over him just making things up. There's a reason why the judge here in federal court said that they admin lacks credibility and why even the Nobel committee chair said the admin lacks integrity."

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Dan Kaszeta FRHistS @dankaszeta.bsky.social · 8h

It’s second Sunday of the month and it’s my turn again. I’m running Captain Dan’s laundry for homeless/destitute migrants, refugees, asylum seekers.

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Cheryl Rofer @cherylrofer.bsky.social · 2h

Also that he is a Peter Thiel acolyte

Cheryl Rofer @cherylrofer.bsky.social · 3h

We have to keep in mind that every word Vance emits is a lie.

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Cheryl Rofer @cherylrofer.bsky.social · 3h

And the delusion continues today in "Golden Dome".

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The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 3h

💯 CO-SIGN 👇🏽

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Cheryl Rofer @cherylrofer.bsky.social · 3h

I really want to go to this pumpkinfest.

Block Club Chicago @blockclubchi.bsky.social · 3h

14 things to do outside in Chicago this October: blockclubchi.co/4gSkdnj

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Cheryl Rofer @cherylrofer.bsky.social · 3h

Simply calling people names is not effective. You have to be specific about what they're doing wrong.

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Cheryl Rofer @cherylrofer.bsky.social · 3h

We came so close

Stephen Schwartz @atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 3h

Today in 1986, unprecedented negotiations in Reykjavik, Iceland, to verifiably eliminate _all_ US and Soviet nuclear weapons collapsed when Ronald Reagan rejected Mikhail Gorbachev’s stipulation that research on ballistic missile defenses be restricted to laboratories (per the 1972 ABM Treaty).

A color photograph of presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev leaving Hofdi House at the end of the summit. Reagan, waring a tan overcoat, looks stunned and a little angry. Gorbachev, waring a blue overcoat and a hat, looks disappointed, wistful at the enormous missed opportunity the summit provided.

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Paul Rosenberg @paulrosenberg.bsky.social · 3h

🎯🧵"When the output of the highest court in the land wouldn't pass muster coming from first-year law students, it discredits the institutional legitimacy of the entire legal system."

Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 20h

The thing about the Roberts Court is they're not evil geniuses, because they're not geniuses.

Murshed Zaheed @murshedz.bsky.social · 1d

“More than three dozen federal judges have told The New York Times that the Supreme Court’s flurry of brief, opaque emergency orders in cases related to the Trump administration have left them confused about how to proceed in those matters and are hurting the judiciary’s image with the public.”

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Cheryl Rofer @cherylrofer.bsky.social · 3h

Longer, and very good analysis here.

Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 3h

There's one huge difference between the 2025 Portland protests & the ones in 2020. Today, the ~100 anti-fascist protesters at the ICE facility are sandwiched between the feds who have MAGA-friendly media embedded w/ them, and ~15 MAGA-friendly content creators/counter-protesters out in the crowd.

The Washington Post @washingtonpost.com · 4h

As President Trump tries to send the National Guard to Portland, Oregon, conservative influencers are working to support his claim that the city is burning with viral clips from one block. https://wapo.st/4q5HM0n

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Kai Kupferschmidt @kakape.bsky.social · 3h

Our future is being shaped to a terrifying degree by people who have just … completely lost their marbles…

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Inside tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s off-the-record lectures about the antichrist

The political svengali and investor has been giving lectures on ‘an evil king or tyrant … who appears in the end times’

www.theguardian.com

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