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Rachel Plummer

@smaychel.bsky.social

180 followers 150 following 200 posts

Poet and children's author. My books include The Big Day, Wain and Once I Carried Three Crows. Also a creative writing teacher, story teller, knitter, mum of two and a carer for my disabled son. Proud to be represented by Children's Books North Agency.

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Rachel Plummer @smaychel.bsky.social · Jan 28

I have been one acquainted with the noot.

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Rachel Plummer @smaychel.bsky.social · 4h

How can Thiel not understand that he is the celestial dragon in this situation?? He needs to sit so far down he ends up underground.

a close up of a cartoon character 's face with a necklace around his neck

Alt: Monkey D Luffy about to punch the everloving shit out of a celestial dragon.

media.tenor.com

Rachel Plummer @smaychel.bsky.social · 4h

Take Luffy's name out of your mouth, Thiel, you absolute loser.

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 5h

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.

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Rachel Plummer @smaychel.bsky.social · 4h

"What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet."

Rachel Plummer @smaychel.bsky.social · 4h

S t u n n i n g

Rachel Plummer @smaychel.bsky.social · 4h

I can't tell you how happy these little guys make me.

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Rachel Plummer @smaychel.bsky.social · 4h

Sulphur tuft are my favourite mushrooms. If I ever got a tattoo, it would be of them.

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Rachel Plummer @smaychel.bsky.social · 4h

Mushrooms I saw in Colinton Dell today.

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Rachel Plummer @smaychel.bsky.social · 1d

Bus knitting. Autumn leaves and acorns.

Some knitting on my lap. There's a tweedy beige background with orange leaves and brown and green acorns on it.

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Reposted by Rachel Plummer

David Stevens @davidst999.bsky.social · 2d

Clouded funnel (Clitocybe nebularis) today in The Scottish Wildlife Trusts' Bawsinch and Duddingston Nature Reserve, Edinburgh. #Fungi #Mushrooms #Mycology #Nature #Photography #Nikon #iPhone @scotwildlife.bsky.social

Clouded funnel (Clitocybe nebularis) today in The Scottish Wildlife Trusts' Bawsinch and Duddingston Nature Reserve, Edinburgh. Taken with an inverted iPhone to get an ant's eye view.

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Rachel Plummer @smaychel.bsky.social · 2d

"I'd rather put a gun in my mouth."

Juno Rylee Schultz @junoryleejournalism.com · 3d

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems...
SIMON: What?
SHAPIRO: ...Or saying...
SIMON: You imagine that?
SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.
SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.
SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this.
SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

Reposted by Rachel Plummer

Errol 🦇 🏳️‍🌈 @eerieseymour.bsky.social · 3d

“Maybe we don’t need to crush orphans” you FOOL. You absolute LUDDITE. Don’t you know the Orphan Crusher is here to stay?

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Reposted by Rachel Plummer

Errol 🦇 🏳️‍🌈 @eerieseymour.bsky.social · 3d

The Orphan Crusher is here to stay. If we don’t feed more Orphans to the Crusher the Orphan Crushing industry will die. It’s time to wake up to the reality of the Orphan Crusher. The Orphan Crusher is worth billions. We need to teach people to use the Orphan Crusher. It’s here to stay.

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🌈 Hailey Piper 🌈 @haileypiperfights.bsky.social · May 16

No exceptions. If you use Gen A I in any capacity whatsoever, you suck.

Yes, the way you're using it too. You're not special.

"She probably doesn't mean me"

I do.

sephirAmy @sephiramy.bsky.social · May 15

I've seen some vocally anti-AI people recently make an anti-AI post and be surprised there are still pro-AI people following them, and I can explain this;

most pro-AI people think they are somehow the exception. the way THEY are using it, SURELY you would take no issue!

well, we do. so fuck off.

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Reposted by Rachel Plummer

Woodo @woodo.bsky.social · 5d

Oh my God this.

You’re not making art, you’re making disgusting, over-processed hotdogs out of the lives of human beings, out of the history of art and music, and then shoving them down someone else’s throat hoping they’ll give you a little thumbs up and like it. Gross.

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Rachel Plummer @smaychel.bsky.social · 5d

We went to say hello to the sea yesterday.

A photo of a beach with the tide in. My 10 year old son is lying on the sand. The weather is overcast.

Reposted by Rachel Plummer

Pop Crave @popcrave.com · 5d

Greta Thunberg releases a video describing the conditions faced by Palestinian adults and children in Israeli custody after her release.

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Reposted by Rachel Plummer

DAVE! (like "Them!" but Dave) @daveexmachina.bsky.social · 6d

normal person: i just want a place to hang out with my friends
tech weirdo: and shitheads
np: no just my friends
tw: but what about hearing alternative views on race and gender?
np: we just want to hang out and goof around
tw: so where do the shitheads fit in then
np: no shitheads
tw: not following

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Reposted by Rachel Plummer

onion person @junlper.beer · 6d

i love the domino effect of trans people asking the moderation team to take harassment of trans people seriously and instead decided to perma ban a black guy who was one of the earliest users here

Ravin BOO!dram 👻 🎃 - FREE ŁINK @rvbdrm.com · 6d

So… Łink’s account is permabanned from Bluesky’s appview, but also gets banned from:

WhiteWind
Skylight
Bluescreen
Flashes

Basically all ATproto apps/projects?

WHAT THE HELL IS THE POINT OF THIS PROJECT THEN?

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Reposted by Rachel Plummer

Kris 🎃 Lorischild @direkris.itch.io · 5d

Greta Thunberg annoys the right because she's a reminder that it's possible to stay true to your moral principles even when it's inconvenient, and they fucking hate that

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Reposted by Rachel Plummer

Dave Jones @cleanpowerdave.bsky.social · 5d

NEW: GLOBAL RENEWABLES OVERTAKES COAL

How the heck did that happen so quickly?!...🧵

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Reposted by Rachel Plummer

Septimus Brown @septimusbrown.com · 5d

Today I am imagining a kinder and more loving world.

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Reposted by Rachel Plummer

Alex von Tunzelmann @alexvont.bsky.social · 5d

I agree with every word Zelda Williams says. And this at the end from OpenAI makes me want to go full Ned Ludd. Creators can’t have a blanket opt-out on copyright infringement of their work and have to fill out a form appealing to OpenAI’s mercy every time? Fuck off into the sun

OpenAI told the Guardian that content owners can flag copyright infringement using a “copyright disputes form” but that individual artists or studios cannot have a blanket opt-out. Varun Shetty, OpenAI’s head of media partnerships, said: “We’ll work with rights holders to block characters from Sora at their request and respond to takedown requests.”

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Reposted by Rachel Plummer

Saul Staniforth @saulstaniforth.bsky.social · 5d

"I bore witness with my own eyes the appalling humanitarian catastrophe, the genocide that's being carried out. Each time I've been to Gaza its worse than the time before"

NHS surgeon Nick Maynard is asked about his reflections from working in Gaza

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Reposted by Rachel Plummer

The Edinburgh Reporter @edinreporter.bsky.social · 5d

Edinburgh Community Food opens new kitchen hub

The new kitchen hub at Edinburgh Community Food (ECF) was opened by Scottish chef Tony Singh, MBE. Tony served up a colourful, bean-based dish to mark the occasion. The new facility is designed to feel like stepping into a friend’s home and is more…

Edinburgh Community Food opens new kitchen hub

The new kitchen hub at Edinburgh Community Food (ECF) was opened by Scottish chef Tony Singh, MBE. Tony served up a colourful, bean-based dish to mark the occasion. The new facility is designed to feel like stepping into a friend’s home and is more than just a kitchen. The services offered will provide all round support for vulnerable individuals and families and has been created in response to the National strategy of Whole Family Support, which aims to eradicate child poverty.

theedinburghreporter.co.uk

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Reposted by Rachel Plummer

Gaius (from Tribunate) @gaius.bsky.social · 7d

They simply want it to be sentient so they can pretend they aren’t wasting their limited time on earth burning 7 acres of the amazon asking fancy autocorrect to write a birthday card for their mom

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