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ERTBen

@ertben.bsky.social

610 followers 550 following 1.3K posts

Figuring out where we go from here. Seeking community and new ways to engage people in progressive ideas. Weather, wildfire, wilderness and front-yard gardening. Midwest-born Californian. Exvangelical.

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ERTBen @ertben.bsky.social · 8h

Having grown up Indiana, I greatly appreciate being Outdiana.

ERTBen @ertben.bsky.social · 8h

Screenshot, don’t link. You’re giving them money by sending people to their site.

ERTBen @ertben.bsky.social · 8h

A distinction without a difference, in the end. The result is the same.

ERTBen @ertben.bsky.social · 8h

BART always. In one of the foggiest cities on earth, they slow to half speed whenever the track gets damp.

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Michael McDonald @electproject.bsky.social · 15h

A reason why we got here is that the media stopped reporting facts and replaced reporting with making everything a reality tv show where contestants fight one another. It turned lying from a liability into an advantage since it would no longer be punished

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ERTBen @ertben.bsky.social · 13h

The surge was questionably effective at establishing control of one city, Baghdad. Other internal factors were arguably as important, if not more so, in the reduction in violence.

Even if it was effective, it took 1/3 of the standing army to control one city smaller than metro Atlanta.

ERTBen @ertben.bsky.social · 1d

I mean, they did also make at least two videos in 1999 that set up Bush and Gore as totally equally bad and encouraged people to vote for Nader. I give them a non-zero amount of blame for the early 2000's.

ERTBen @ertben.bsky.social · 1d

They care so much about the Constitution

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missingjigsaw.bsky.social @missingjigsaw.bsky.social · 3d

In a way, nobody is as perfect a representative of their district as Ro Khanna (extremely pejorative).

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Anne Carpenter @drannecarpenter.bsky.social · 2d

This means that we can screen for potential novel drugs for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in easily-grown skin cells, using mitochondria as a simple readout. In fact, a team at NIH’s NCATS is working on this now! Stay tuned.

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southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 1d

What an emblem of the billionaire class—descending on a peaceful city in a private jet on the horn to NYT asking for the place to be invaded by federal authorities because the rent-a-cops you employ for a week to harass a few junkies outside the convention center cost too much.

Mr. Benioff spoke as his annual Dreamforce conference is set to begin Tuesday in downtown San Francisco, bringing 50,000 visitors to the city. He is scheduled to deliver a keynote address about the benefits of "agentic enterprise," a business model in which humans and artificial intelligence bots work together.
Speaking by telephone from his private plane en route to San Francisco, he lamented that he has to pay for nundreds of off-duty law enforcement officers to help patrol the convention area and said that San Francisco needed to "re-fund" the police.
The city never actually "defunded" its police force, and San Francisco's violent crime rates are below those in many other U.S. cities.
But San Francisco has struggled to recruit and keep officers, and it still has problems with lower-level crimes and open-air drug use, especially in neighborhoods like the Tenderloin near City Hall. It has about 1,500 police officers, and Mr. Benioff says it ne → another thousand.

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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 2d

Douthat is laundering hard core white Christian supremacy into the mainstream, with the NYT's blessing.

Max Kennerly @maxkennerly.bsky.social · 2d

Ross Douthat treats this guy like they're having some deep conversation about the relationship of Christianity and the government, but the dude is a garden-variety dull, shallow, hateful, worthless bigot with nothing interesting to say, just endless riffs on "God hates everything/everyone I do."

Douthat: So that’s the first purpose of your political project, for America to stop making God angry.

Wilson: Yes. And most people think that when they are confronted with that project, they think that we want to get our tentacles into everything and start controlling everything. I actually think we need limited government. The government should be significantly smaller than it is, and we need to curtail a lot of the busybodyness that we have. That’s why I would call myself a theocratic libertarian. There is a true libertarian element in this, and yet, the transcendent grounding for what we’re talking about means that we acknowledge the authority of God.

We have racked up quite a body count of awful crimes, and I believe the only way out is for us to repent and turn to Christ. This would be things like no more Pride parades, no more drag queen story hours, no more abortion on demand, no more legalized same-sex unions — all of that, done. That’s the repentance part.

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Sarah Tuttle @niais.bsky.social · 2d

In honor of @aussiastronomer.bsky.social - I think we've all done enough for this week, hm?

Grab a drink of your choice (maybe in one of those gorgeous coupe glasses), put up your feet, and let your parasympathetic nervous system slow the fuck done.

We're here. Let's celebrate.

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ERTBen @ertben.bsky.social · 2d

You left out “unlawful” from the headline.

ERTBen @ertben.bsky.social · 2d

How many are journalists watching as part of their job?

ERTBen @ertben.bsky.social · 2d

Ready for a velvet revolution

ERTBen @ertben.bsky.social · 2d

The Democrats did prosecute Trump - he was impeached within 10 days after January 6th, Republicans refused to convict in he Senate, leaving him eligible to run again.

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ERTBen @ertben.bsky.social · 2d

Red Death

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ERTBen @ertben.bsky.social · 2d

Is this a "security incident" or an issue with TSA security?

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Simon Rosenberg @simonwdc.bsky.social · 2d

The Republicans don’t want to pass their budget on their own. It’s full of ugly and unpopular stuff. They want Dem cover. We cannot give it to them.

Kevin Collins @kwcollins.bsky.social · 2d

The founders in fact did NOT create the filibuster, but they DID give the Senate and House each the power to set their own rules, which includes changing rules to allow passage of appropriations bills with simple majorities

ringwiss @ringwiss.bsky.social · 2d

“And that’s why we nuked it twice in the past month.”

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ERTBen @ertben.bsky.social · 2d

Could you be bothered to note that these firings are a violation of the law? A lapse in appropriations is not an opportunity to unilaterally eliminate programs the President doesn't like. Congress determines which programs are funded and which are not.

ERTBen @ertben.bsky.social · 2d

I did the fucking news.

ERTBen @ertben.bsky.social · 3d

They refused to convict him in 2021. That was their true off-ramp to be done with him forever. Not holding my breath.

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ERTBen @ertben.bsky.social · 3d

The first three Super Bowl halftime shows were performed by HBCU marching bands - Grambling State and Florida A&M.

ERTBen @ertben.bsky.social · 3d

If Hunt can win there's no hope for a Democrat.