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Les Guthman

@lesguthman.bsky.social

490 followers 1.3K following 40 posts

Documentary director & producer. Most recent “LIGO” & YouTube web series & e-book. Coming soon, “Squeezed Light” doc. Frm Disney, NBC News, Annenberg Foundation & Peabody Award-winning VISIONS series on PBS. 🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦

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Les Guthman @lesguthman.bsky.social · Aug 13

OTD in 2015 I interviewed LIGO’s Kip Thorne (2017 Nobel in Physics) on camera, the 1st day of what has become a ten-year, and multiple film, collaboration with @LIGO.org. My archive of LIGO’s astonishing discoveries now resides for researchers in the Les Guthman LIGO Video Archive @caltech.edu 🧪

Caltech and LIGO’s Kip Thorne, winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics

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Jacob Soboroff @jacobsoboroff.bsky.social · 20h

here’s more context to the videos DHS is putting out from Chicago.

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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 18h

Jeffries: "If Donald Trump can find $20b to bail out his right-wing dictator friend in Argentina, it's extraordinary to me that Republicans are unwilling to even have a discussion about how we address the healthcare crisis that they've created."

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Bradley P. Moss @bradmossesq.bsky.social · 1d

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @aoc.bsky.social · 1d

If Mike Johnson is refusing to call the House back into session during the shutdown, then we’ll do the work right here the Bronx.

The New York Essential plan is being eliminated entirely next year due to the GOP healthcare cuts. People’s lives are at stake.

And that’s why we’re fighting back.

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The New Republic @newrepublic.com · 1d

ICE agents surrounded, seized, and zip-tied a U.S. citizen who had just finished working a double shift because she didn’t “look” American to them.

She had her U.S. passport on her when she was detained, yet she was interrogated for an hour. trib.al/hDC7Vgv

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Les Guthman @lesguthman.bsky.social · 1d

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

The Beacon of Democracy Goes Dark

For nearly 250 years, America promoted freedom and equality abroad, even when it failed to live up to those ideals itself. Not anymore.

www.theatlantic.com

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Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum.bsky.social · 1d

"We always think about America’s postwar role in Europe as an act of great generosity, the defense of allies from Soviet aggression. But by putting democracy at the center of our international identity, we also helped strengthen our own political system"
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

The Beacon of Democracy Goes Dark

For nearly 250 years, America promoted freedom and equality abroad, even when it failed to live up to those ideals itself. Not anymore.

www.theatlantic.com

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Pam Ronald @pcronald.bsky.social · 1d

Remarkable recovery of the Klamath River salmon. Many thanks to the agencies, Tribes, and NGOs who came together to remove dams and monitor the recovery of the Klamath River salmon. And kudos, too, to the indigenous youth who paddled source to sea on the newly freed river

Colorful kayaks in a circle on the water

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Jacob Soboroff @jacobsoboroff.bsky.social · 1d

The government’s own data and detentions like the ones we reported on in Chicago raise serious doubt about whether the Trump administration’s mission is to target “the worst of the worst” at all. New reporting from @msnbc.com. www.msnbc.com/msnbc/news/t...

Trump says migrants drive violent crime in Illinois. But ICE can’t find many violent criminals.

Masked ICE agents and other federal forces showed up in Chicago to go after gangsters. Instead, they keep catching people who are just living their lives.

www.msnbc.com

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Sen. Adam Schiff @schiff.senate.gov · 1d

Congrats to University of California professors & alumni for being awarded 5 Nobel Prizes!

California’s scientists are leading the world in crucial breakthroughs.

www.sfchronicle.com/california/a...

University of California sets world record with five Nobel Prizes in one week

The UC system made history this week, as its faculty and alumni won five Nobel Prizes across medicine, physics and chemistry — the most ever awarded to a single institution in one year.

www.sfchronicle.com

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Bradley P. Moss @bradmossesq.bsky.social · 2d

It’s a damn cease fire. They solved nothing beyond temporarily stopping the violence.

JFC

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 2d

MARCO RUBIO: This is probably one of the most important days for world peace in 50 years. That's not an exaggeration

TRUMP: Only 50?

RUBIO: Maybe 100

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Jay Rosen @jayrosen.bsky.social · 2d

This is what I pay the New York Times for: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/12/w...
[Gift link]

Viktor Orban’s ‘Propaganda State’ Is Starting to Show Cracks

www.nytimes.com

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Last Week Tonight with John Oliver @lastweektonight.com · 2d

Here’s last night’s story about Bari Weiss, CBS News, Paramount Skydance, and why the Upper West Side is a lot more than just “Seinfeld territory.” youtu.be/gieTx_P6INQ

Bari Weiss: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

YouTube video by LastWeekTonight

youtu.be

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James Fallows @jfallows.bsky.social · 2d

I am going to re-up this a third time:

Please read this excellent piece by Lincoln Caplan about why John Roberts—more than Mitch McConnell, more than Stephen Miller or Russell Vought, more than anyone else—owns the destruction of Constitutional order.

www.harvardmagazine.com/legal/suprem...

James Fallows @jfallows.bsky.social · 4d

Re-upping:

Excellent assessment of John "Roger Taney" Roberts.

In @harvardmagazine.bsky.social , by Lincoln Caplan.

As careful, legally informed, judicious-minded writer as you're going to find. With an unsparing judgment.

www.harvardmagazine.com/legal/suprem...

What Trump Means for John Roberts's Legacy | Harvard Magazine

Executive power is on the docket at the Supreme Court.

www.harvardmagazine.com

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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 2d

The 400 richest Americans are now worth a record $6.6 trillion.

The entire bottom 50% of America is worth just $4.2 trillion.

Read that back.

When 400 people control more wealth than half a country’s population, we have a very serious problem.

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George Conway 🇺🇸🚫👑🐸 @gtconway.bsky.social · 3d

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The Keeling Curve @keelingcurve.bsky.social · 3d

424.19 parts per million (ppm) CO2 in air 11-Oct-2025
keelingcurve.ucsd.edu

The Keeling Curve

The Keeling Curve is a daily record of global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration maintained by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

keelingcurve.ucsd.edu

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Dr Paul Dorfman @drpauldorfman.bsky.social · 4d

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Kevin Carey @kevincarey1.bsky.social · 4d

It's clearer by the day that Columbia making a deal with Trump in July was a catastrophe for higher education as a whole. It gave terrible people a bottomless appetite for extortion. The other eight universities must follow MIT's lead.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/u...

M.I.T. Rejects a White House Offer for Special Funding Treatment

www.nytimes.com

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Zohran Kwame Mamdani @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · 8d

I grew up going to Zabar's. So many of my childhood memories center around the best lox in NYC (which is saying something). With Saul Zabar's passing today, the Upper West Side has lost a legend who turned his parent's humble store into a culinary institution.

Saul Zabar, Smoked Fish Czar of Upper West Side, Dies at 97

www.nytimes.com

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Zohran Kwame Mamdani @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · 6d

I'm honored to earn the endorsement of Liz Holtzman, who served our city with distinction as a Congresswoman, District Attorney and Comptroller.

"Mr. Mamdani will bring tremendous energy and intelligence to the second toughest job in America along with a vision of making New York more affordable."

An endorsement graphic with a photo of Former Representative Liz Holtzman.

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Kathleen Clark @kathleenclark.bsky.social · 5d

A master class from MIT in responding to authoritarian overreach:

Your “premise … is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone.
… America’s leadership in science & innovation depends on independent thinking & open competition for excellence.

Dear Madam Secretary,
I write in response to your letter of October 1, inviting MIT to review a "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education." I acknowledge the vital importance of these matters.
I appreciated the chance to meet with you earlier this year to discuss the priorities we share for American higher education.
As we discussed, the Institute's mission of service to the nation directs us to advance knowledge, educate students and bring knowledge to bear on the world's great challenges.
We do that in line with a clear set of values, with excellence above all. Some practical examples:
• MIT prides itself on rewarding merit. Students, faculty and staff succeed here based on the strength of their talent, ideas and hard work. For instance, the Institute was the first to reinstate the SAT/ACT requirement after the pandemic. And MIT has never had legacy preferences in admissions.
• MIT opens its doors to the most talented students regardless of their family's finances. Admissions are need-blind. Incoming undergraduates whose families earn less than $200,000 a year pay no tuition. Nearly 88% of our last graduating class left MIT with no debt for their education. We make a wealth of free courses and low-cost certificates available to any American with an internet connection. Of the undergraduate degrees we award, 94% are in STEM fields. And in service to the nation, we cap enrollment of international undergraduates at roughly 10%.

source:
https://orgchart.mit.edu/letters/regarding-compact

• We value free expression, as clearly described in the MIT Statement on Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom. We must hear facts and opinions we don't like - and engage respectfully with those with whom we disagree.
These values and other MIT practices meet or exceed many standards outlined in the document you sent. We freely choose these values because they're right, and we live by them because they support our mission - work of immense value to the prosperity, competitiveness, health and security of the United States. And of course, MIT abides by the law.
The document also includes principles with which we disagree, including those that would restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution. And fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone.
In our view, America's leadership in science and innovation depends on independent thinking and open competition for excellence. In that free marketplace of ideas, the people of MIT gladly compete with the very best, without preferences. Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education.
As you know, MIT's record of service to the nation is long and enduring. Eight decades ago, MIT leaders helped invent a scientific partnership between America's research universities and the U.S. government that has delivered extraordinary benefits for the American people. We continue to believe in the power of this partnership to serve the nation.
Sincerely,
Sally Kornbluth

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Prof. Eliot Jacobson @climatecasino.net · 5d

I has been a very long time since I posted this list of 40 consequences of climate change. But, it's important to take note of item number 40.

I truly wish things were going to get better, but sadly, it's all just going to get more f&%ked from here.

climatecasino.net/2021/10/top-...

Top 40 Impacts of Climate Change

In this post, I list 78 current and future impacts of climate change, along with references for some of the more unexpected items. That list was compiled scouring the web along with suggestions and c...

climatecasino.net

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Costa Samaras @costasamaras.com · 5d

Picture how big the Hoover Dam is. An absolute unit. The Hoover Dam has a power capacity of 2 gigawatts (GW).

The solar farm that the Admin just cancelled could have produces 6.2 GW of power. That's more than 3 Hoover Dams.

jael holzman @jael.bsky.social · 5d

SCOOP: The Bureau of Land Management says the largest solar project in Nevada — the Esmeralda 7 mega-farm — has been canceled

The news was quietly dropped via a sudden website update with no public word from any of the companies involved or a statement from the agency

@heatmap.news

Esmeralda 7 Solar Project Has Been Canceled, BLM Says

It would have delivered a gargantuan 6.2 gigawatts of power.

heatmap.news

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Quinta Jurecic @qjurecic.bsky.social · 6d

I wrote legal editorials for the Post for a hot minute many years ago, and I was constantly anxious about making sure I got the details right. This editorial is just humiliating for everyone involved

Philip Bump @pbump.com · 6d

I spent more than a decade at The Post. It was good to me and I was proud to work there. I’ve largely refrained from being critical since I left. But this framing of the special counsel probe is embarrassing and flatly wrong. Stunning, but not. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Opinion | Jack Smith’s lawfare and James Comey’s arraignment on pathetically weak charges

Good people will be deterred from public service if they see a meaningful risk of winding up in jail afterward.

www.washingtonpost.com

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