Luminiferous Aether
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luminiferousaether.bsky.social
Luminiferous Aether
@luminiferousaether.bsky.social
130 followers 260 following 81 posts
An occasional birder, a constant reader, and a general dork.
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Reposted by Luminiferous Aether
Today I’m voting for school board. Keep the local MAGA out. Keep the ABA teacher with no real information about her out too (IYKYK).

Your local election for boards and judges and funding and so forth really do matter. Go vote!
I do love this I Voted sticker and wish they gave them out at my local ballot drop.
The most important thing you can do is VOTE. I have! ✅
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This magazine just fired all of their politics staffers
We are honored to receive the @rooseveltinstitute.org's 2025 Four Freedoms Award for Freedom of Speech and Expression, and to be among a stellar class of laureates including @wck.org, @cvt.org, and more. Details: tnvge.co/ZMIUg7v
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An anti-CRT movement targeted an accomplished educator — driving her out of two Georgia school districts.

The mission began inside a golf community clubhouse on a Sunday afternoon, where parents were coached on how to land a Fox News appearance.

(Published June 2022)
By @nicolefcarr.bsky.social
White Parents Rallied to Chase a Black Educator Out of Town. Then, They Followed Her to the Next One.
Cecelia Lewis was asked to apply for a Georgia school district’s first-ever administrator job devoted to diversity, equity and inclusion. A group of parents — coached by local and national anti-CRT gr...
www.propublica.org
If you haven’t already, look into warranty of habitability laws in your jurisdiction. Using those magic words in future communications should light a fire under their ass.
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As I've said many times, the most sensible way to determine what the party wants & prioritizes is by looking at what it does when it has power to act, namely, when it has a trifecta at the state level. Take Minnesota:
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The reality of the Democratic Party -- what its elected officials actually do with the power they are given -- is almost entirely immaterial to US political discourse. Happens off-stage, basically.

Discourse is dominated by a kind of collective hallucination, a bogieman invented by its opponents.
This right here, this exact sentence, is THE problem in American political journalism.

The IRA *was* cheap energy and good jobs! That was the whole bill! Democrats did precisely what political pundits are telling them to do and the pundits just ignore it.
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Imagine I'm clanging a very large down-on-the-ranch style bell right now.

"Come onnnnn down, today's the last day to order a shirt that will actually come in your exact size and color choice, get those orders in today, because I'll be en route back to Philly come tomorrow."

Get one: SquidFacts.net
I'm doing another print run of these "Biology is Bigger than Binaries" shirts!

Back, quite literally, by popular demand. Bullying works, sure, but so does a bunch of nice cutie patooties politely asking!

Order 'em now, I'll mail 'em in early November.

SquidFacts.net
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The "Deciding To Win" centrists dismiss base mobilization, but the actual 2024 data shows: the more blue a place was in 2020, the lower its turnout was in 2024.

Swing voters weren't nearly as important as Dem-leaning irregular voters not voting at all. The base wasn't mobilized, so we lost.
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From now on, when anyone asks how we’re going to pay for it, the answer should be we’ll take it out of the teargas budget.
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Homage to Xavier Bou: little swifts at the Olifants River high-water bridge, Kruger National Park. Unstacked from video taken with an Iphone 14. #birds #photography #SouthAfrica #iPhone
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To check if a pundit is being honest, ask “would he have made this claim a year ago, before he knew it would be a defense of Trump” and folks, I’m 100% certain Douthat would not have argued “The president needs to demolish the East Wing and build a palace” last year
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This is why I ended a class every semester showing voting in South Carolina gubernatorial election for 1872, 1874, and 1876. Then I’d show them that SC didn’t have real options in elections for 100 years.

“If you vote for a party that doesn’t want democracy nothing else you want will ever matter.”
Farmers and ranchers are saying to Trump “… but we voted for you.”

Yes, guys. You did. And now he never needs a vote from you ever again. You’ve outlived your usefulness to him. He doesn’t need you anymore and he doesn’t care what you think about anything he tries to do.

Sorry. Hard truths.
Bessent on American farmers being hurt by tariffs: "Martha, in case you don't know it, I'm actually a soybean farmer, so I have felt this pain too."
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The ex-prosecutor also said this:

“I have a lot of close contacts in law enforcement, and almost to a person, none of them support these actions. As a lawyer, someone who adamantly believes in the rule of law, watching it in open sight in front of my house just be completely eroded…it’s upsetting.”
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"Tzefardea Tzedek" (Frog of Righteousness)

As soon as the Portland Frog became a meme, Jewish social media blew up with jokes about the 2nd Passover plague - tzefarde'a (frogs) - and the Rabbinical commentary around it. I knew I had to make a calligraphy piece encompassing all of it. (more in alt.)
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I really think that we need to talk more about the fact that Republicans have basically quietly abolished the House of Representatives
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We asked people who lived in homeless encampments that were cleared out in city “sweeps” to write about what object was the hardest for them to lose.

“They took my baby pictures and my moms obituaries,” a man in California wrote.

(Published Dec. 2024)
“I Have Lost Everything”: The Toll of Cities’ Homeless Sweeps
Cities often take belongings — including important documents and irreplaceable mementos — when they conduct sweeps of homeless encampments. ProPublica gave notecards to people across the country so th...
projects.propublica.org
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I am fast becoming a single issue voter. And that issue is prosecute every one of these motherfuckers.
ICE detains mother dropping off child at elementary school—refuses to even look at her U.S. legal papers.

"What documents?" agent sarcastically replies—holding up the folder.

"The ones in your hands!" witnesses yell back.

Madison Elementary School in Santa Ana, California.
Things AI is actually suited for: tasks so tedious and formulaic that academics were already outsourcing them first to undergrads, then to mechanical turk.
AI bros: how about we built something you can’t trust with those tasks, but could do your hobbies?
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this is what will happen if mamdani makes bus rides free
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i think i would honestly find this whole discourse more tolerable if people simply said what they were actually saying, which is that they think the Democratic Party is too associated with femininity (and secondarily, with black people) and that they want to correct this
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This is actually super easy and a lot of fun. The kids are excited and surprisingly knowledgeable. Please volunteer if you can! 🏺
Heyyyy we desperately need more archaeologists to volunteer to answer questions from students via video chat through @skypeascientist.bsky.social.

We have 80 unmatched teams. We’ve already matched 650 😵‍💫

If you know any archaeologists, please send them here www.skypeascientist.com/sign-up.html
Sign Up
Skype a Scientist gives you the opportunity to connect with students and the public around the world. ​
www.skypeascientist.com
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“oh so you think the east wing being demolished is worse than-“ it’s a synecdoche, man. a visual metaphor. there’s a reason the aliens in Independence Day don’t aim a huge laser at SNAP benefits
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"normies do not care about this thing and so it is no use raising a stink" is imho just an excuse for not doing politics, which is the job of making normies care about something
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A president who can tear down 1/3 of the White House can tear down the entire White House. A president who can steal $230M from the treasury can steal $1T from the Treasury. We have both legalized and tolerated Trump’s crimes, so they will only get bigger.