Paul Konstant
@progpk.bsky.social
450 followers 1.2K following 630 posts
Retired scientist/ technologist. Diverse interests, few of them mainstream, fewer overlap. I like to follow specialists. Rational, romantic, mystic, cynical, idealist. He/him. 📍València, España
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progpk.bsky.social
New folks on Bluesky, I *beg* you to fill out your profiles with enough info we can tell you're a real person.

I get dozens of new followers a day. At least half are scams and bots.

If your avatar isn't personalized, you never post, but follow thousands, you're getting blocked.
Reposted by Paul Konstant
mark-bray.bsky.social
Our plane to Spain is in the air!

🙌🙌

Thank you so much to the countless people supporting us in every way and in particular all of the Rutgers students and faculty who have supported us every step of the way.
Reposted by Paul Konstant
lmacthompson1.bsky.social
I am writing this because it has swiftly become crystal clear to me that many people have no idea what is happening or how this works. Here is a thread for non-academics to put into context what just happened to Dr. Mark Bray, a fellow historian.
Reposted by Paul Konstant
carlquintanilla.bsky.social
“Stabilizing Argentina is ‘America First’.”

🇦🇷 🇺🇸
Reposted by Paul Konstant
Reposted by Paul Konstant
bbkogan.bsky.social
Three key points:
1) The admin has been planning mass firings to begin in October since February
2) The work necessary to carry out mass firings is illegal during a shutdown, violating the Antideficiency Act, which carries a criminal penalty
3) This harms America, ridding us of talent and expertise
Russ Vought v @russvought
The RIFs have begun.
12:27 PM • 10/10/25 • 15K Views
Reposted by Paul Konstant
Reposted by Paul Konstant
katiephang.bsky.social
“This is a movement…This is an achievement of a whole society…I am just one person.”

The beautiful humility of Venezuelan pro-democracy leader, Maria Corina Machado, the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize recipient.
Reposted by Paul Konstant
costasamaras.com
We're spending $20B to bail out Argentina, but they cut USAID down to the bone, causing deaths around the world. The entire budget of USAID, the whole agency, was $21B last year. Shameful.
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 Paul Konstant
jessdkant.bsky.social
I wasn’t prepared for most of today’s WH “round table” but I was *most* not prepared for the allegation that there is a secret cabal of homelessness and housing nonprofits who fund leftist “muscle”
Closed captioning: embedded contestion with the
homeless, housing nonprofit
Reposted by Paul Konstant
rmcarpiano.medsky.social
RFK Jr.'s confirmation bias strikes again...

FYI: US circumcision rates declining for decades (1 example here) while autism prevalence has increased (likely bc of diagnostic changes & ⬆️ surveillance). Plus, prior circum-autism findings highly problematic... 1/
Graph showing rates of circumcision performed on male newborn infants discharged from short-stay hospitals in the US 1979-2010. The line trends  downward (and at points flat) from ~65% in 1979 to ~60% in 2010 and the trend since 2000 has gone from ~63% to ~60%. Graph showing rise in autism prevalence per 1000 children in US among boys and girls from 2002 to 2022. Trend for boys is higher at 2002 and shows stronger increase over entire period (from ~11% to ~50%) than does the trend for girls (<5% to just under 15%).
Reposted by Paul Konstant
jessdkant.bsky.social
Before public health, my initial training was as a trauma therapist. When I first heard about people doing this it made me genuinely scared. A machine can’t co-regulate with you, it can’t track your affect; it has no way of knowing when you’ve gone past your limit or how to avoid imposing meaning.
amockingbird.bsky.social
I had dinner last night with a friend who was talking about using ChatGPT to write and process her trauma, and how it was making connections she hadn’t realized. She’s very smart, and has psychosis and DID. And I have no fucking clue how to warn her away from it, it’s everywhere, so it must be safe?
Reposted by Paul Konstant
costasamaras.com
Picture how big the Hoover Dam is. An absolute unit. The Hoover Dam has a power capacity of 2 gigawatts (GW).

The solar farm that the Admin just cancelled could have produces 6.2 GW of power. That's more than 3 Hoover Dams.
jael.bsky.social
SCOOP: The Bureau of Land Management says the largest solar project in Nevada — the Esmeralda 7 mega-farm — has been canceled

The news was quietly dropped via a sudden website update with no public word from any of the companies involved or a statement from the agency

@heatmap.news
Esmeralda 7 Solar Project Has Been Canceled, BLM Says
It would have delivered a gargantuan 6.2 gigawatts of power.
heatmap.news
Reposted by Paul Konstant
onestpress.onestnetwork.com
Bombshell investigation shows that Hungary's Russia-alligned Orban regime has been running an espionage network in Brussels, recruiting and infiltrating among the highest levels of foreign governments.
Reposted by Paul Konstant
newrepublic.com
“We took the freedom of speech away,” President Trump boasted in his opening remarks at his “antifa roundtable” Wednesday.

It was a jarring admission—perhaps a Freudian slip—from a president who is, indeed, evidently intent on eliminating free speech. trib.al/6RZEOqc
Reposted by Paul Konstant
mcopelov.bsky.social
But did we avoid dismantling core functions of the federal government? No.

But did we avoid killing millions of people by destroying USAID? Also no.

But did we at least avoid violating all kinds of federal laws & the constitution by letting random guys off the streets do this? Alas, also no.
carlquintanilla.bsky.social
Did DOGE save us $2 trillion?

“Not even close. .. Total spending excluding interest rose $220 billion, or 4%, for the entire fiscal year.” 🤡

@wsj.com
www.wsj.com/economy/tari...
Reposted by Paul Konstant
xriskology.bsky.social
Most of us know about Silicon Valley pronatalism--people like Musk having as many kids as possible. But did you know that a peculiar kind of *antinatalism* is also becoming popular in the Valley? In this article, I name the phenomenon: replacement antinatalism. Read below:
Reposted by Paul Konstant
thomaszimmer.bsky.social
We need to talk about Russell Vought – But Properly
 
Why certain mainstream outlets insist on sanitizing Vought as a devout “small government” conservative – and what actually animates his war against pluralistic democracy.
 
New piece:
We need to talk about Russell Vought – But Properly
Why certain mainstream outlets insist on sanitizing Vought as a devout “small government” conservative – and what actually animates his war against pluralistic democracy
steady.page
Reposted by Paul Konstant
motherjones.com
Masked agents snatching people at work, church, their child’s daycare. A return of family separations. States are lining up to run their own detention centers.

Anti-immigrant animus is now being paired with unprecedented funding, manpower, and technology.

We report from inside the American gulag.
American Gulag
The brutal rollout of Trump's police state.
www.motherjones.com
Reposted by Paul Konstant
mark-bray.bsky.social
“Someone” cancelled my family’s flight out of the country at the last second.

We got our boarding passes. We checked our bags. Went through security. Then at our gate our reservation ‘disappeared.’
Reposted by Paul Konstant
donmoyn.bsky.social
Probably just a coincidence, but I had tickets cancelled for an international flight on Friday, after I checked in. Airline said the ticket had been flagged for potential fraud and cancelled. My hosts who bought the ticket purchased it again the next day, and I was able to travel w/o a problem.