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Caleb Crain

@calebcrain.bsky.social

3.6K followers 550 following 2.3K posts

Into #birding, #CrossFit, and sometimes writing. Wrote the novels "Necessary Errors" and "Overthrow" More at https://calebcrain.substack.com and https://steamthing.com. New short story! https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/08/12/clay-fiction-caleb-c

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Caleb Crain @calebcrain.bsky.social · Nov 26

Hi, new followers! I wrote "Necessary Errors," a gay coming-of-age novel set in Prague a year after the Berlin Wall fell, and "Overthrow," a novel about Occupy protesters aswim in surveillance. My short stories have won n+1's Anthony Veasna So prize and the Paris Review's Susannah Hunnewell prize.

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Alex Wild @alexwild.bsky.social · 8h

We decided the word for arranging Halloween skeletons into various scenes in the front yard is “Necroscaping”

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Caleb Crain @calebcrain.bsky.social · 12h

“Self-described ‘satanists’ dressed in black costumes with goth makeup walked up and down the line of attenders carrying a goblet of red liquid with a small plastic replica of a bone. ‘Will you bring our dark lord Peter Thiel this baby’s blood?’ they asked.”

Soraya Nadia McDonald @sorayanadiamcdonald.com · 23h

"Thiel said that international financial bodies, which make it more difficult for people to shelter their wealth in tax havens, are one sign the antichrist may be amassing power and hastening Armageddon, saying: 'It’s become quite difficult to hide one’s money.'"

So he thinks we're all idiots, huh?

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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Jen Howard @jenhoward.bsky.social · 13h

"The Labor Department warned in an obscure document filed with the Federal Register last week that 'the near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens' is threatening 'the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S. consumers.'”

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Nomadic Warriors for Pritzker @nomads.bsky.social · 1d

This is an incredibly weak place for them to be. If they end up tear gassing a bunch of librarians and kids in strollers at the family picnic that is No Kings it could trigger the type of support that ends a regime.

I'll see you on the 18th.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

Sen. Roger Marshall: "October 18 is when the protest gets here. This will be a Soros paid-for protest for his professional protesters. The agitators show up. We'll have to get the National Guard out. Hopefully it will be peaceful. I doubt it."

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Ryan Cordell @ryancordell.org · 1d

Experimenting with a new concept using @queermedieval.bsky.social’s Portland Frog woodcut. Embracing goofiness as protest.

A poster in green ink on off white paper. In the center is a woodcut style illustration of a protester wearing an inflatable frog costume standing up against two ICE agents. The text above and below reads:

VIVE LA
RIBBITSTANCE

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Caleb Crain @calebcrain.bsky.social · 1d

At least talking green frogs are on our side again.

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Caleb Crain @calebcrain.bsky.social · 1d

Great Halloween costume idea, though.

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Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 1d

[Me, a poor, on the subway, glowering jealously at all those fat cat, fancy pants rich people on the public bus]

Andrew Cuomo tweet:

@ZohranKMamdani's "plan" provides no relief for working families who take the subway, and unnecessary benefits to wealthy New Yorkers who take the bus and can afford the fare.

I focus on working families, while @ZohranKMamdani the mansion boy focuses on helping the rich.

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dr. caitlin m. green @caitlinmoriah.bsky.social · 1d

the portland chicken guy 🥰

Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 2d

www.wweek.com/culture/2025...

Can you put into words what that purpose is? You and the frog have really become icons of this protest.

There’s been a nice overall whimsy that has shown up. The frog is amazing. We had a bunch of other inflatable people here last night, too. I saw people playing Twister the other day.

What they rely on is fear. So by coming out in an absurdist manner, it speaks to them, to some extent, that we’re actually not that afraid.

It also dismantles their narrative a little bit. When they try to describe this situation as “war-torn,” it becomes much harder to take them seriously when they have to post a video saying [U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security] Kristi Noem is up on the balcony staring over the Antifa Army and it’s, like, eight journalists and five protesters and one of them is in a chicken suit.

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Filipe Campante @filipecampante.bsky.social · 1d

From some of the reactions, I was right to assume it would be hard for people to appreciate the significance. This is not an “of course, two Nobel laureates” case. They’re huge field builders, Esther being still quite young. The kind of people who will attract many others, including young scholars.

Filipe Campante @filipecampante.bsky.social · 1d

It might be hard to convey to people outside economics just how seismic this is. The Trump effect has most certainly arrived to US academia.

Florian Scheuer @florianscheuer.bsky.social · 1d

I am delighted to share that Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee will join our Department of Economics @econ.uzh.ch at the University of Zurich on July 1, 2026, as Lemann Foundation Professors of Economics.

🧵 1/7

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Caleb Crain @calebcrain.bsky.social · 1d

“The more I moved from apocalyptic hypotheticals to concrete real-world findings, the more concerned I became… AI was getting smarter and more capable. It was learning how to tell its overseers what they wanted to hear. It was getting good at lying. And it was getting better at complex tasks.”

Opinion | The A.I. Prompt That Could End the World

www.nytimes.com

Caleb Crain @calebcrain.bsky.social · 1d

According to the hit counter, most of the visitors to my twentysomething-year-old blog are now coming from China, and they're not going to any one page or group of pages, or coming from a single referrer. This is new. I'm guessing LLM developers there are downloading the whole thing, over and over?

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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 1d

Bought a book.

A beat-up paperback of Hot Line: The Letters I Get . . . And Write!, by Burt Reynolds, from 1972. Reynolds is on the cover in a dark singlet decorated with two big white stars and a clinging hottie who’s clearly about to get him out of said singlet and into said hottie.

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 3d

A partner to this similarly jaw-dropping chart...

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Peter Brannen @peterbrannen.bsky.social · 3d

Just remembered this jaw-dropping graph by @oceansclimatecu.bsky.social showing the rate of change in CO2 during the previous two deglaciations of the Pleistocene (which, as a fun aside, featured ~400 feet of sea level rise) as compared with today

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Caleb Crain @calebcrain.bsky.social · 3d

A silly frog costume is an excellent way to protest ICE. Maybe couldn't be improved upon. It says we are not afraid. It says you are being ridiculous, so we will be just as ridiculous. And it punctures and deflates the illusion of "menacing rioters" that ICE is trying to project onto the crowds.

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Amanda Katz @katzish.bsky.social · 3d

I’m sorry, I love this

Lux "Nightmare" Alptraum @luxalptraum.com · 3d

TFW you paid $1400 to see Beckett’s most famous work without knowing anything about it

One Star Review of Waiting for Godot on Broadway
I recently attended Waiting for Godot on Broadway and spent over $1,400 for two Row C seats (103 and 104). I'm a longtime admirer of Broadway productions and even hold a season pass for Shea's Performing Arts Theatre, so I came in with genuine enthusiasm and high expectations. Unfortunately, this show was unlike anything ! have ever experienced —and not in a good way.
What I encountered was not the artistry, music, or emotional storytelling I usually associate with Broadway, but instead what felt like an endless cycle of nonsensical conversation between characters who seemed trapped in their own madness. I tried-truly tried-to find meaning, symbolism, or even a thread of emotional resonance. I stayed through the first half hoping the second would offer clarity. But by intermission, it was clear: this was a waste of both time and money.
Keanu Reeves is an actor I respect greatly, but I cannot fathom why he would agree to participate in such a disjointed, inaccessible production. His talent was lost in a performance that defied reason rather than provoked insight.
To anyone considering attending: unless you are drawn to highly abstract, nearly incomprehensible theater, I strongly caution you against this show. For the average, educated, thoughtful theatergoer, it is far more frustrating than fulfilling. In my opinion, this was the single most disappointing Broadway experience I've ever had - an unfortunate waste of money and, more importantly, of time.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 3d

I’m going to be very disappointed if my local bookstore doesn’t have a novel called “The Girlfriend of Antifa” out on its front display table sometime next year. Or it could be a short story collection.

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Nicholas Slayton @nslayton.bsky.social · 3d

Coming around to the theory that they're Truman Showing him

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 3d

Good lord.

@apnews.com

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Adam Keiper @adamkeiper.com · 3d

not doing much to disprove the allegations of mental decline

Brad Heath @bradheath.bsky.social · 3d

WSJ: President Trump believed his Truth Social post demanding prosecutions of James Comey and other political foes was a private message to his attorney general, and "and was surprised to learn it was public."

www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

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Caleb Crain @calebcrain.bsky.social · 3d

Yeah, I spent an hour today trying to resist replying, to this one guy, "I am probably as old as your grandmother, and I already know how to suck eggs."

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Adam Sternbergh @sternbergh.bsky.social · 3d

A cartoon rendering of a woman in a purple dress with long black hair, it is Natasha Fatale, girlfriend of Boris in Rocky and Bullwinkle

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Caleb Crain @calebcrain.bsky.social · 3d

I've been trying to be philosophical lately about what people do with QTs of me, too, but it's hard when they're completely wrongheaded.

Caleb Crain @calebcrain.bsky.social · 3d

“If I were a science fiction writer I would be working on a story about venture capitalists building a runaway artificial intelligence that will likely enslave or destroy humankind, only to be thwarted by a minor poet suing them for copyright violations for scraping her poems.”

AI Insurance Is Expensive

P(doom), STAAR Surgical projections, Bitcoin life insurance and YouTube self-help.

www.bloomberg.com

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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 3d

repost this if an editor has ever saved you from yourself

violent alien @blipstress.bsky.social · 3d

An actual hot take: Too many authors are afraid of editors watering down their voice or whatever and not afraid enough of editors letting you put any old slop on the page.

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