Gus Orviston
@orviston.bsky.social
410 followers 200 following 3.4K posts
Bibliophile, perpetual grad student, fan of democracy, cats, and the Oxford comma. Episcopalian, but not great at it. Foxes over hedgehogs.
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orviston.bsky.social
Do not stop trying to be a good person just because you see bad people winning. Virtue matters.
Reposted by Gus Orviston
snowden.st
this baseball game is designed to ruin so many east coast Saturday mornings, it’s beautiful
orviston.bsky.social
Go Tigers, but I’ll have to catch up with y’all tomorrow. I’m going to bed.

Good luck, boys.
orviston.bsky.social
We will all of us pay for this, in the long term. So much damage dealt out by people that are willing to burn down the country to punish Democrats.
orviston.bsky.social
Take a bow, evangelicals! This is on you. If you claim to take Matthew 18 as literally as you want to take everything else in your Bibles, just go ahead and fit your necks for those millstones.
donmoyn.bsky.social
The elimination of USAID is a moral atrocity and all involved made a choice to enable, and then lie about, ending the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in the world.
MAE SOT, Thailand (AP) - Mohammed Taher clutched the lifeless body of his 2-year-old son and wept. Ever since his family's food rations stopped arriving at their internment camp in Myanmar in April, the father had watched helplessly as his once-vibrant baby boy weakened, suffering from diarrhea and begging for food.
On May 21, exactly two weeks after Taher's little boy died, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio sat before Congress and declared: "No one has died" because of his government's decision to gut its foreign aid program. Rubio also insisted: "No children are dying on my watch."
That, Taher says, "is a lie."
orviston.bsky.social
At some point, it needs to dawn on the median voter that the GOP is punishing the country because Trump is angry that he's not getting his way.
sherylnyt.bsky.social
BREAKING: Friday night massacre underway at CDC. Doznes of "disease detectives," high-level scientists, entire Washington staff and editors of the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) have all been RIFed and received the following notice:
Reposted by Gus Orviston
jvl.bsky.social
This piece about Bari Weiss is devastating because it's relentlessly fair. DO NOT MISS. www.thebulwark.com/p/bari-weiss...
orviston.bsky.social
Episcopalian, here, so I'm team wizards all the way.
orviston.bsky.social
The upcoming NoKings protest is gonna have so many people in frog costumes, won’t it
orviston.bsky.social
The most reliable way to distinguish Protestant denominations is to ask if their clergy dress like businessmen, rappers, homeless people, or wizards.
bornwithatail.bsky.social
The aesthetics of evangelical pastors (suit & tie/“whacky youth pastor”) have rendered Americans incapable of seeing anyone in a clerical collar as anything other than Roman Catholic.
orviston.bsky.social
The filibuster should be nuked. Pray the very least, made more painful to implement.
atrupar.com
Thune: "If the Democrats had won the majority, they probably would've tried to nuke the filibuster. And then you'd have four new senators from Puerto Rico and DC, you'd have a packed Supreme Court, you'd have abortion on demand ... "
orviston.bsky.social
Laser focused on the issues most important to the American people
orviston.bsky.social
People are not listening to this because these are informed and wise opinions.
peark.es
I couldn't believe this but it's true, Thiel can't decide whether the antichrist is Greta or Big Yud. Positively reeling.
(Washington Post) -- Tech billionaire Peter Thiel recently warned that Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and critics of technology or artificial intelligence are "legionnaires of the Antichrist" in private lectures on Christianity that connected government oversight of Silicon Valley to an apocalyptic future, according to recordings reviewed by The Washington Post.
In the four, roughly two-hour lectures, which began last month and culminated Monday at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Thiel laid out his religious views to a sold-out audience told to keep the contents "off-the-record," according to an event listing. He argued that those who propose limits on technology development not only hinder business but threaten to usher in the destruction of the United States and an era of global totalitarian rule, according to the recordings.
"In the 17th, 18th century, the Antichrist would have been a Dr. Strangelove, a scientist who did all this sort of evil crazy science," Thiel said in his Sept. 15 opening talk, according to the recordings. "In the 21st century, the Antichrist is a Luddite who wants to stop all science. It's someone like Greta or Eliezer," he said, referring to Thunberg and Eliezer Yudkowsky, a prominent critic of the tech industry's approach to AI.
orviston.bsky.social
Another option would be JD Vance, just to see if we can get Trump to try to kill two of his VPs in a row.
orviston.bsky.social
I mean, this seems terrible, but maybe he's just trying to fit in with the rest of the people in Trump's orbit. I would think that with the culture of the White House, you can't get any respect in meetings until you've harassed at least a few people.
donmoyn.bsky.social
"30-year-old conservative lawyer and activist who is Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel, which deals with federal employee whistleblower complaints and discrimination" cancelled his colleague's hotel room so she would be forced to stay with him.
www.politico.com/news/2025/10...
In late July, Paul Ingrassia, the White House liaison for the Department of Homeland Security, arrived at a Ritz-Carlton in Orlando with a lower-ranking female colleague and others from their department. When the group reached the front desk, the woman learned she didn’t have a hotel room.

Ingrassia then informed her that she would be staying with him, according to five administration officials familiar with the episode. Eventually the woman discovered that Ingrassia had arranged ahead of time to have her hotel room canceled so she would have to stay with him, three of those officials said.
Reposted by Gus Orviston
opinionhaver.bsky.social
This is why I’m extremely skeptical of any attempt to add ‘ideological diversity’ to academia, despite thinking that there are fields where some version of it would genuinely epistemologically healthy: I simply do not believe that modern conservatism actually can supply people who are not this:
mtsw.bsky.social
Thiessen having a good chuckle about his fired liberal colleagues - some of whom he worked with for 15 years - is a good reminder that token conservatives at mainstream news outlets are/were there to destroy them, not to contribute to them.
orviston.bsky.social
Props to the frogs. I think, in retrospect, the Trump administration is realizing they should have tried to pick on a city that is not so aggressively weird.
Reposted by Gus Orviston
gregpak.net
The fact that their ticket was mysteriously canceled the day before and then they were questioned by DHS is both one of the greatest political scandals and crises of my lifetime and just another fucking Thursday in 2025.
proftwolf.bsky.social
Mark Bray and Yesenia Barragan, and the family, have safely embarked on their trip to Spain after being questioned by DHS.
orviston.bsky.social
Genuinely curious how this the logistics of this happen when the government is supposed to be shut down.
washingtonpost.com
The Trump administration confirmed that the U.S. bailed out Argentina.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he had directly bought Argentine pesos in global currency markets in a bid to relieve pressure on the nation’s embattled President Javier Milei, a supporter of President Trump.
The U.S. just bailed out Argentina, Treasury Secretary confirms
The US Treasury has finalized a $20 billion financial rescue of Argentina, including a currency swap arrangement with the country's central bank.
www.washingtonpost.com
Reposted by Gus Orviston
csmfht.bsky.social
New ship of Theseus just dropped, but now it has conscious thought
orviston.bsky.social
Sorry, this is true but just makes it more hilarious if they do this:

bsky.app/profile/hora...
horadam.bsky.social
It was in fact handed to him for nothing. I’m sorry, folks need to stop pretending it was anything but an anti-Bush statement that served to delegitimize the award.

That said, adults move on and don’t demand the Nobel committee make subsequent unmeritorious awards.
greene.haus
The prize wasn't awarded to Obama for 'nothing.' The prize was awarded in the hope that Obama had staved off the specter of an America governed by folks like the man below.
orviston.bsky.social
This isn’t serious - sorry, Fred - but I think other most hilarious possible outcome is for them to give it to W, for PEPFAR.
thefred.bsky.social
Følks, the Norwegian Nobel Committee is more likely to announce no award or to dissolve itself than award the prize to Donald Trump. Be serious.
Reposted by Gus Orviston
prchovanec.bsky.social
"We went from a dead country a year ago to the hottest country in the world."

Headlines from October 2024 (left) versus June 2025 (right).
Reposted by Gus Orviston
scottlincicome.bsky.social
I just told you I already liked the shutdown, Harry, you don't have to sell it to me 😏 www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Reposted by Gus Orviston
bwreed.bsky.social
This is something all too rare: A Republican asking himself, 'How would I feel if a Democrat did to me what Trump is doing to Democrats?'
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
Oklahoma’s Republican governor criticizes guard deployment. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/u...
Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma, a Republican and the chairman of the National Governors Association, on Thursday criticized the deployment of Texas National Guard troops to Illinois as a violation of his beliefs in federalism and “states’ rights.”

His comments, in an interview with The New York Times, marked the first time a Republican governor has questioned the interstate deployment of National Guard troops over a governor’s objections. Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois and other Democratic elected officials have been strongly critical of the move and have implored Republican governors to join the opposition.

Mr. Stitt on Thursday said, “We believe in the federalist system — that’s states’ rights,” adding, “Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration.”
orviston.bsky.social
This radical new approach to the scientific method is sure something, I guess.
atrupar.com
RFK Jr on Tylenol and autism: "It is not proof. We're doing the studies to make the proof."