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Asher Hellbein

@asherelbein.bsky.social

18K followers 2.3K following 25K posts

Freelance writing about the wild, old and dead. (Plus comics.) Bylines in The New York Times, SciAm, Undark, Texas Monthly, and lots of other places. Repped by @desir.ee at Looking Glass Literary.

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 2d

Sale ends this evening! Get 'em while they're hot!

Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 5d

Fuck Prime Day. PDFs of GHOST DAYS and IN THE SNOW, THE JUNGLE are on sale for just 3$ today, which means you can grab this fully illustrated short story collection AND its followup novella for just $6.

Get your Appalachian historical folklore/horror fix here!

www.asherelbein.com/store

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 3m

I think (beyond the incorrect idea that The Radical Left is a monolith) there's something to this, though I'd add that normie liberalism *also* forgot that it was an ideology that could change things, and settled into complacent senescence. Now it's waking up. And there are a lot of them!

Remain In Hell Without Despair @daphnelawless.com · 2h

I submit that the radical Left are paralysed in the face of this mass movement because it contradicts their theory of change - that "Normie libs" are NPC and that change only happens by recruiting to radical ideologies

The Ass is the father of the legs @internethippo.bsky.social · 3h

A bunch of grandmas standing and hooting for Nuremberg 2? Something for the opposition party to think about

Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 4h

She's a big girl!

Reposted by Asher Hellbein

John Hawks @johnhawks.net · 8h

Paleoanthropology can be confusing with names. Why would scientists use “Denisovan” instead of coming up with a species name? Or “modern human” instead of Homo sapiens? And why didn’t some names ever catch on, like the Heidelbergers or the chumanzees?

www.johnhawks.net/p/informal-h...

Informal hominins, from Denisovan to superarchaic

In a new research article, I review the ways that paleoanthropologists name ancient groups outside the Linnaean system.

www.johnhawks.net

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 18h

Driving along an somewhat dicy road in West Texas: occasionally hair-raising, but has its benefits

A quite large Texas horned lizard huddles against a dirt embankment from where the approaching car flushed her out of the road

A large male Texas brown tarantula goes a’wanderin’ over the pebbles after love

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Reposted by Asher Hellbein

T&E @transportenvironment.org · 3d

NEW: Biofuels globally emit more than the fossil fuels they replace, our latest study shows.

The first-of-a-kind study looks at global biofuels production today and the potential impacts of government biofuel targets.
🧵⤵️

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Reposted by Asher Hellbein

👁🌻🦊⚙️⚓ Bob, Engineer, Pusher of Paper @navmecheng.bsky.social · 1d

> It is 2025 BC. I am a soldier from one of the outlying provinces called to defend the pyramid in Memphis

> It is 2025 AD. I am a soldier from one of the outlying provinces called to defend the pyramid in Memphis

Soldiers at the Bass Pro Shops pyramid in Memphis, TN.

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 8h

Because they make stupid amounts of money!

Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 10h

Can’t have helped! But I‘m not convinced there’s an actor who could have. People just are not buying

Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 10h

Is TRON the greatest disconnect between studio-assumed and actual nostalgia?

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 10h

“Why didn‘t a TRON film make money” is one of those questions you’d think would answer itself

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 18h

Driving along an somewhat dicy road in West Texas: occasionally hair-raising, but has its benefits

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Reposted by Asher Hellbein

Leonid Baezhnev @rev-avocado.bsky.social · 1d

I think we should expand the court to like 21 members, you get a five-judge panel with the possibility of an en-banc reconsideration on the papers and transcript, and we fill the 12 new seats entirely with a variety of constitutional loyalist district judges.

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 1d

Battered outlet syndrome

Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 1d

You’ve got this, buddy.

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Reposted by Asher Hellbein

Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 2d

Actually, I'm going to throw my hat out: would anybody like to have me on their podcast/newsletter to talk about Appalachian pulp, folklore, witchlore, and the benefits of weirding historical fiction? I think these stories are good, and I want to talk about them!

Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 5d

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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 1d

This is AI.

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The Lincolnshire Poster @desiderratum.bsky.social · 1d

Netanyahu wouldn't have accepted this deal from Biden, but some commentators don't seem to realize that this makes Biden's deference to him all the more damning. He was obviously in the tank for Trump! So why didn't Biden play hardball?

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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 1d

We have truly not yet figured out how to cope with a person or institution that is "aware" of climate change, "accepts the science", but then decides to continue actively worsening it anyway

We don't even have a word or a phrase for this!

theconversation.com/mark-carneys...

Mark Carney’s climate inaction is at odds with his awareness of climate change’s existential threat

Climate action no longer seems to be a priority for Prime Minister Mark Carney, despite his previous activism. This is bad news for Canadians and the climate.

theconversation.com

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 1d

The stories are somewhat in conversation with the sort of Mythic Timeless Appalachia of writers like the great Manly Wade Wellman, but are also an attempt to do that kind of fantasy in way that's more tied to the actual place and history

Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 1d

Pulp as in "pulp fiction," particularly the blend of weird fantasy storytelling common in the 1940s and 1950s sci-fi magazines. These are stories that blend folklore, history, and genre blending, set in and around the southern Appalachians in 1900

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 1d

Worth noting that if it *were* transparent virtue signalling, you'd expect her to drop her advocacy at the first moment it became inconvenient, when she has in fact been quite consistent in the face of persistant and vocal criticism

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 1d

I think the conclusion you're drawing here has much, much more to do with you than her, dude

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 1d

No joke, this is a great book pitch

Zach Rabiroff @zachrabiroff.com · 1d

From Pussy Hats to Protest Frogs: The Fall and Rise of America in Furries

Adam Selzer @adamchicago.bsky.social · 2d

The frogs have landed in Chicago!

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 2d

Look, should he have been mayor (or entrusted with any sort of power of any kind) at any point? No. Am I happy that my New York friends no longer will have to suffer him? Yes.

...but I'm kinda gonna miss him

Joshua J. Friedman @joshuajfriedman.com · 2d

"You're a dark, sick person, man, you know that? ... Some of you [reporters] are so sick and dark—and you're the leader of that. ... Your personal sick vendetta and the sickness of how you think, of oversexualizing a Black man ... that's typical of the sickness and the darkness of your sick mind."

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Riley Black 🦕 🏳️‍⚧️ @restingdinoface.bsky.social · 2d

If you've been curious about When the Earth Was Green, you can read a sample over at Smithsonian. It's about an unlucky bug caught in goop and how oozing trees helped make the fossil record.

How a Fragile Insect Living 100 Million Years Ago Becomes a Fossil

A bug, a dinosaur and a tree intersect, creating the perfect conditions for resin to capture a moment in time

www.smithsonianmag.com

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