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Alison Smaalders@vividwings.bsky.social |
56 followers 109 following 255 posts
Archaeology major, currently working in P&C insurance. Gamer, LARPer, general nerd, cat lover. She/her.
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Alison Smaalders
@vividwings.bsky.social
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My understanding is that it happened earlier- London in particular deforested the area around it very early (shortages were documented before the Black Death), and though most of the country burned wood or peat until the railroads came, London was fully coal-burning by 1600.
0 replies 0 reposts 1 likes
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Alison Smaalders
@vividwings.bsky.social
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Wait, I do remember where it comes up at least once- "The Very Secret Sex Lives of Medieval Women" by Rosalie Gilbert, which also has a TON of general information on sex in the middle ages and all the unique cultural weirdness surrounding it.
1 replies 0 reposts 1 likes
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Alison Smaalders
@vividwings.bsky.social
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I recall reading it in a book, but I can't remember which one- however, this method of divorce required "impotence trials" and those are widely written about because they're, uh, spicy. Men had to perform in front of an audience. www.salon.com/2023/02/11/t...
1 replies 0 reposts 3 likes
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Alison Smaalders
@vividwings.bsky.social
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Whole swathes of their gender relations, good and ill, are based around this idea! One of the handful of reasons a woman could get a civil divorce was impotence, and it wasn't just about children- it was considered a man's duty to please his wife (so she wouldn't go seeking satisfaction elsewhere).
1 replies 0 reposts 5 likes
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Alison Smaalders
@vividwings.bsky.social
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British food has a reputation for boiling everything to death in part because they were one of the earliest countries to adopt coal as a cooking fuel. It's far hotter than wood and hard to "turn down", so water was used to moderate the cooking temperature.
2 replies 6 reposts 54 likes
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Preeti Chhibber
@runwithskizzers.bsky.social
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apropos of uhhhhhhh everything, reposting this again
3 replies 728 reposts 1660 likes
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Mitchell Epner
@mitchellepner.bsky.social
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For the same reason handlers of search & rescue dogs occasionally have volunteers put themselves in a position to be "found" alive in a grim disaster scene -- to keep up morale so that these dogs keep working -- I give you this screen shot from the BOP showing the current location of Steve Bannon.
35 replies 182 reposts 931 likes
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Hemry, Local Bartender
@bartenderhemry.bsky.social
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Maybe I'm super fucked up but having the supreme court declare that J6 was fine and good actually feels worse than J6
25 replies 242 reposts 1458 likes
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Mr. Am I Being Detained
@gonebabygone.bsky.social
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This isn’t “hypocrisy,” he was lying about what he believes so they would confirm him
21 replies 122 reposts 772 likes
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Kaitlin Has Had Enough
@gothamgirlblue.com
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Conceding the premise that the presidency is a show and all that matters is how it’s perceived and not what it can do has infected our entire politics, and given Republicans carte blanche to be incompetent because it doesn’t matter that they fail it only matters that they can sell it as success
2 replies 29 reposts 118 likes
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Kaitlin Has Had Enough
@gothamgirlblue.com
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Finally, because I know this is coming: I have an adult’s relationship with politicians. I grew up with them and I know they are people. They are not my friends. They are means to an end. I don’t defend Hillary because she has made egregious mistakes but because I expect all politicians to make them
2 replies 8 reposts 44 likes
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Wagatwe Wanjuki
@wagatwe.com
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surged 48%. for a mass plagiarism tool that tells you to eat rocks and glue.
13 replies 377 reposts 981 likes
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Naomi Kritzer
@naomikritzer.bsky.social
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Google is just straight up getting less functional and I don't mean that search returns a bunch of garbage, I mean that searching my Gmail inbox doesn't work right, when I click on links they sometimes freeze instead of forwarding, etc.
17 replies 18 reposts 195 likes
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Bethany Brookshire
@beebrookshire.bsky.social
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I am reading Hannah Arendt right now and she makes this point. Over and over. With a freakin hammer. There are a LOT OF PEOPLE in the world very eager to pick a group and blame it for their problems, esp when they don't have a strong grasp of where those problems really come from.
6 replies 101 reposts 335 likes
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Hillary Monahan
@hillarymonahan.bsky.social
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The next president appoints 2-3 Supreme Court spots. That's a huge reason I'm showing up in November. This shit's gotta stop and that's the quickest way to do that.
3 replies 29 reposts 99 likes
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Lydia Polgreen
@polgreen.bsky.social
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The thing I can't stop thinking about is this: I'm 48, and in my adult lifetime there has been one Republican who won the popular vote. But I will probably spend the rest of my life under the authority of a Supreme Court dominated by hard right conservatives. How is that democracy?
67 replies 939 reposts 3632 likes
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Max Kennerly
@maxkennerly.bsky.social
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Yup. The Constitution includes a narrowly-defined legal immunity for members of Congress in a specific circumstance. Not one word about Presidential or Supreme Court Justice immunity. Those parts were made up out of thin air.
6 replies 90 reposts 327 likes
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David M. Perry
@lollardfish.bsky.social
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Reminder that there are five ways to address the current SCOTUS problem. 1. Impeach some justices 2. Impose term limits 3. Expand the courts 4. Pass legislation limiting court prerogatives 5. Keep winning the presidency for the next 16 years or so while periodically also holding the senate.
68 replies 286 reposts 1103 likes
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Arkady Martine | Dr. AnnaLinden Weller
@byzantienne.bsky.social
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PERFORMATIVE DESPAIR IS NOT A POLITICAL STRATEGY. Do not conjure your own imagined demise. In particular, don't do it collectively, on a communication system meant to amplify emotional contagion. (simpler/more esoteric: don't do death magic at collective scale on your own minds, for fuck's sake)
7 replies 209 reposts 585 likes
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Michael Tae Sweeney
@mtsw.bsky.social
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they should've been in handcuffs by the end of Biden's inaguration speech. Failing to act immediately might be the decision that dooms the Republic.
8 replies 86 reposts 500 likes
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sarah jeong
@sarahjeong.bsky.social
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It's hard to explain how widespread the repercussions of overturning Chevron deference will be. Even if you narrow the scope down to tech policy, you're left wrangling a super-explainer on a friday afternoon www.theverge.com/24188365/che...
12 replies 245 reposts 522 likes
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Kari Dru
@karidru.bsky.social
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"Wasn't this an episode of..." You know what, yes. It was an episode of everything. Do not do THIS SHIT SPECIFICALLY is an entire genre of sci fi.
9 replies 38 reposts 91 likes
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Andrew Nelson
@holophrastic.bsky.social
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You can tell who did and who did not moderate IRC/phpBB/whatever back in the day, because all of us who did learned the true shape of online group culture: your culture is the shittiest person you don't ban
32 replies 477 reposts 1462 likes
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Joshua J. Friedman
@joshuajfriedman.com
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Is praying for death the new quiet quitting?
13 replies 65 reposts 510 likes
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Katie Mack
@astrokatie.com
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Mask bans are evil and dystopian and I am appalled that they’re even being proposed. Wearing masks to protect your health and the health of others needs to be recognized as a right for all and an absolutely essential protection for those who would otherwise be unable to participate in society
35 replies 791 reposts 2424 likes
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Alison Smaalders
@vividwings.bsky.social
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People have tried for literal decades. So far? No luck. Manipulating fabric is incredibly difficult to program a machine to do because it's so, so complicated. It may well get solved eventually, but for now, it's skilled people at machines sewing every single seam in every single piece of clothing.
0 replies 0 reposts 1 likes
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Alison Smaalders
@vividwings.bsky.social
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Yes! It's all connected. My mother is a weaver, and when my dad wrote a book on programming ("Programming With Threads"), he insisted on a picture of a loom on the cover as a reference to the textile history of computing.
0 replies 0 reposts 4 likes
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Alison Smaalders
@vividwings.bsky.social
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Given that the first computer with graphical output was arguably a loom, and the amount of math involved in planning weaving/knitting projects, this makes sense to me.
1 replies 0 reposts 7 likes
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Alison Smaalders
@vividwings.bsky.social
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This is absolutely anthropology! I would love to see an ethnography of bumper-sticker people. Side note, my favorite baffling sticker is a Jesus fish being eaten by a Darwin fish that is in turn being eaten by a giant fish labeled "Gulpo, the fish who eats concepts".
0 replies 0 reposts 2 likes
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Jen
@envirojen.bsky.social
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There’s a group of kids on the corner selling lemonade. They yell “LEMONADE” at every passing vehicle, but the only people I have seen stop for a drink so far are on foot or bike. There is no shortage of free parking on the street. Maybe this is analogous to local business districts. 😉
10 replies 112 reposts 541 likes
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Ian Boudreau
@iboudreau.bsky.social
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Feels like we're going to hit the tipping point between "I wouldn't actually recommend ecoterrorism, but" and "is there any solution other than ecoterrorism available?" very soon
21 replies 148 reposts 463 likes
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Dan Davis
@bindlestaff.bsky.social
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The AI facility in Musk’s new Gigafactory in Texas will house 50,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs. Each one consumes about 3,740 kWh annually. So *just to power the GPUs,* Musk will need 187GWh per year. This is higher annual consumption than some entire countries.
16 replies 112 reposts 292 likes
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Joshua Erlich
@joshuaerlich.bsky.social
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for America, for society, we need Kendrick to go after Elon
3 replies 19 reposts 105 likes
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Ed
@notdred.bsky.social
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I guess I’ve become sort of a science-hype debunker so as far as this goes, let me just say: it’s real. Really really real. You could soon get a shot every six months that would basically eliminate your chance of getting HIV. Taken a step further: we have the tools to eliminate HIV in our lifetime.
46 replies 659 reposts 2134 likes
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Pawluh
@pawluh.bsky.social
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I put tennis balls out on the patio to see if the baby raccoons would play with them and...
44 replies 348 reposts 2441 likes
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Dr. Damien P. Williams: Magus, Werewolf, Cyborg, Bi
@wolvendamien.bsky.social
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Bet every police precinct in the City of New York has shiny new A/C
2 replies 61 reposts 156 likes
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John Pfaff
@johnpfaff.bsky.social
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“Non-lethal” rubber bullet blinds a journalist in one eye, leads to blindness in the second, and causes dementia and now fatal traumatic brain injury. To be clear: a rubber bullet fired AT her HEAD, while she was flashing journalist credentials and not close to protestors or police. Fatally shot.
7 replies 257 reposts 487 likes
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Courtney Milan
@courtneymilan.com
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I would like more trains, and faster.
16 replies 82 reposts 673 likes
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David Marshall
@illdave.bsky.social
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I can't remember a tech campaign this relentless.
143 replies 2287 reposts 6959 likes
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Greg Andraste Sideyr
@andraste.fuckbgp.com
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Reskeet your mental state
1 replies 10 reposts 19 likes
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Alison Smaalders
@vividwings.bsky.social
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The last line sent me, but this is absolutely devastating from top to bottom.
0 replies 0 reposts 5 likes
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Will Oremus
@oremus.bsky.social
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The Federal Trade Commission, of all entities, is out here writing absolute bangers about AI snake oil. www.ftc.gov/business-gui...
56 replies 2218 reposts 5105 likes
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Dr. Damien P. Williams: Magus, Werewolf, Cyborg, Bi
@wolvendamien.bsky.social
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Basically every person who thought about this for even 10 seconds warned google this was going to happen. Google's entire incentive structure is monetization-via-ranking-via-SEO-&-clicks. People are clicking "AI" porn, & people Making "AI" porn are manipulatively lying in their SEO to drive traffic
10 replies 144 reposts 410 likes
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Martin Bell
@martinbellmcmlv.bsky.social
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Dear kids! Do us all a favour and register to vote! Especially if your family home is in a Tory area. You could make a big difference to the careers of some very small people. #GTTO
www.theguardian.com/politics/art...
2 replies 74 reposts 133 likes
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TiaraLA Should Be Writing
@tiarala.bsky.social
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Just being near politics right now breaks my psyche. Our choice is “do the least harm”. That’s it. We don’t get an ideal outcome. I can’t engage with people who think there’s some miracle alternate path at this point in the process. This is what we’ve got. Nov is almost here.
3 replies 35 reposts 91 likes
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kilgore trout
@kilgoretrout.bsky.social
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I am once again asking you to consider that an entire information ecosystem established as the primary form of communication over a hundred years and allegedly regulated by the federal government was destroyed by scammers virtually overnight and we just don’t, like, ever talk about it
105 replies 1356 reposts 3959 likes
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The Georg
@thegeorg.bsky.social
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I am definitely pro universal basic income. We need to get employers to stop thinking of us as slave labor and more as consumers. We can't buy shit if we don't have money to spend.
3 replies 11 reposts 33 likes
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John Scalzi
@scalzi.com
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ALL HAIL THE NEW HOLE
10 replies 26 reposts 300 likes
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Crooked Emily
@wrenispinkle.bsky.social
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Every time I jog by the Cheesecake Factory in Seaport Village I’m reminded that I took $1 million from that huge company & gave it back to janitors they’d stiffed Me! With no law degree & only some well-written state law that allowed us to hold corps jointly & severally liable for their contractors
16 replies 72 reposts 555 likes
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Shepherd
@neolithicsheep.bsky.social
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Eid al Adha Mubarak to my Muslim friends and indeed to Muslims everywhere. May Gd grant you a peaceful and prosperous life, and Gd's blessings never leave your side.
0 replies 18 reposts 113 likes