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Ridge Cook

@ridgecook.bsky.social

1.1K followers 1.5K following 4.8K posts

"Blues were here when the world was born." -JL Hooker “Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart.” — Pablo Casals

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Ridge Cook @ridgecook.bsky.social · Nov 12

🧵1/Before and during the deep Depression, US did not lose its optimism. Various World Fair offered an idea of what may be coming in World of Tomorrow or Cities of the Future displays.

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Ridge Cook @ridgecook.bsky.social · 7h

Unfortunate but true. Sorry to see Blacksburg take this route will all the needs for education in Appalachia.
Marshall Un has taken a different path.
A contrast between 2 institutions I attended.

Airbag Moments resists 🇺🇦 @airbagmoments.bsky.social · 19d

Let's do this.

American universities have four mutually conflicting missions:

1. Profitable sports franchise
2. In loco parentis babysitter for horny teens
3. Pre-professional workforce training
4. Oh, yeah, almost forgot, teaching people the things civilization has learned for the last 400 years.

Robert Kelchen @robertkelchen.com · 19d

Virginia Tech is looking to add $229 million to its athletics budget over the next four years, with just over half coming from donors and the rest from additional institutional support.

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Ridge Cook @ridgecook.bsky.social · 17h

Was handing out legs and tasted pretty good.
My late uncle had a drive in that served frog legs but they weren't like these. 😁

Ridge Cook @ridgecook.bsky.social · 17h

The Kid made a loaf of bread shaped like a toad.
Why? who knows.

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Ridge Cook @ridgecook.bsky.social · 17h

Supposed convivence.
"Alexa, wipe my butt for me"
"TV-go to the Weather Channel"
Sitting in a restaurant looking at the raccoon on your home porch.

Stupid crap being used by Corporations to make money off lazy people.

Ridge Cook @ridgecook.bsky.social · 18h

Agree. Or *don't load your home up with corporate live mics and cameras on the Internet*. Don't put your toaster or Refrig on the Internet.
Don't put your Car on the Internet.

If you give away your privacy for "convenience" , then corporations will use it to make $ and govts will use it for info.

Woodrow Hartzog @hartzog.bsky.social · 1d

This was, of course, always where the IoT and facial recognition were headed. They will not stop unless lawmakers make them.

Analysis | Amazon’s Ring plans to scan everyone’s face at the door

For the first time, the company is putting facial recognition into its home security doorbells and video cameras.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Ridge Cook @ridgecook.bsky.social · 1d

MIT tells Trump Admin to stick the Compact agreement where solar radiation photons doesn't excite electrons.
www.washingtonpost.com/education/20...

Reposted by Ridge Cook

Michael Hunter @mikelark.bsky.social · 1d

Beautiful citizen of the planet Earth. ♥️🎹

jeff @jazyjef.bsky.social · 1d

Thelonious Sphere Monk was born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina on this day in 1917

📸 Guy Breemat/INA/Getty Images, Paris, March 10, 1963

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Ridge Cook @ridgecook.bsky.social · 1d

And when the telcos went to VoIP, it made interception so much easier from a console in an office somewhere.

Ron Filipkowski @ronfilipkowski.bsky.social · 2d

I think even Marsha knows this.

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Ridge Cook @ridgecook.bsky.social · 1d

So under Trump, the US is now a petro-colony.
Well, I guess if they pass enough money to your son-in-law to hold for you, anything is for sale.

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Reposted by Ridge Cook

Raider @iwillnotbesilenced.bsky.social · 1d

Michael Wolff: I've seen the pictures of Trump with Epstein's girls. Here's what's in them.

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Ridge Cook @ridgecook.bsky.social · 1d

Great 🧵and discussion of how ancient history -Iliad and Trojan War- is collected into an act of Art then later trying to fit that Art & its license into fact (see Old Testament). Trying to make Blake's Poetic Genius into something more than it is.

nitter.net/hermahai/sta...

nitter.net

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Ridge Cook @ridgecook.bsky.social · 1d

3/muscles. It is their well established power centers which will have immediate effect on Trump attempts at control.
Calls for "soft secession" or denying "blue state" money is just hot air from people who have never individually written a check to the IRS. Ignore them. Go to the state houses.
End.

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Ridge Cook @ridgecook.bsky.social · 1d

2/ one of its premier institutions.
As noted in the past; foreigners and naive authoritarians think power flows from DC. The US Federal Sys means the real, day to day political power is in the states. Governors of Calif, NY, Ill, and now Ok, know this. Legislatures like Va are beginning to flex

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Ridge Cook @ridgecook.bsky.social · 1d

🧵
1/Va Legislature warns UVA that agreeing to a Trump Admin pushed "Compact" would endanger university independence and Legislature support.
The "Antient Dominion", whose charter reaches from sea to sea, is beginning to stand up to attempts to influence

www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2025...

Virginia Senate leaders express “unequivocal opposition” to Compact

The letter calls upon the University to immediately cease consideration of the Compact, and if not, the state will work to negatively impact the University’s funding.

www.cavalierdaily.com

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Ridge Cook @ridgecook.bsky.social · 1d

I really like the way these look, *except* the head stock.
Really out of proportion.

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Ridge Cook @ridgecook.bsky.social · 2d

Survival?
She sees the pedophile & dementia coddling GOP is trouble through internal polls. Can she parlay that into oligarch money is the question. Are they ready to abandon the sinking ship and go to another figurehead to promote their agenda?
Hummmm.

Jack Hopkins-The Original @therealjackhopkins.bsky.social · 2d

Her pivot could expose everything Washington wants buried...or prove the system still owns her. If Greene’s break is real...the GOP’s in trouble. If it’s not...America is. 🔥👇
www.jackhopkinsnow.com

Reposted by Ridge Cook

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 2d

MOODY’S: Twenty-two states are either in a recession or on the precipice of a downturn. 👀

@axios.com 🇺🇸
www.axios.com/newsletters/...

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Ridge Cook @ridgecook.bsky.social · 2d

Canned asparagus.
Its the slime that forms in the can.
Deadly. Gag worthy.
Learned that as a kid at the dinner table.

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Reposted by Ridge Cook

Marya @maryapetry.bsky.social · 2d

This is an act of prayer, an act of church, a commitment to compassion. This is a pilgrimage.

Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 2d

"A Chicago Heights Catholic priest began a 50-day pilgrimage in support of immigrant children, from Pope Leo’s boyhood home in Dolton, IL to New York... 'This is not only a physical act of endurance, but a spiritual act of solidarity, a prayer in motion'" www.chicagotribune.com/2025/10/06/c...

Chicago Heights priest begins walk for immigrant children from Pope Leo’s childhood home in Dolton

Gary Graf, a Chicago Heights Catholic priest, began a 50-day justice walk from Pope Leo’s boyhood home in Dolton to New York.

www.chicagotribune.com

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Ridge Cook @ridgecook.bsky.social · 2d

President Z knows how to play with children.

Ridge Cook @ridgecook.bsky.social · 2d

Its the constant culture war framing.

Culture Preachers who promise Paradise (social and economic) if only those damn radical liberals are driven out of power.

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Reposted by Ridge Cook

Dean Booth 🦆🐇 @deanbooth.bsky.social · 2d

Remember that WaPo endorsed Bondi as qualified and serious. Unfortunately, WaPo is neither.

ATTORNEY GENERAL
Pam Bondi [thumbs up]
Florida's former attorney general is qualified; lawyers who have worked with her report that she is serious.

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Ridge Cook @ridgecook.bsky.social · 2d

Can the House refuse to seat sworn Representative?
Lets look at Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
House *did* delay seating him during investigations and committee hearings. Eventually SC rules in his favor in Powell v McCormick, but this SC ignores precedent. So House has delayed duly sworn seating winner.

Ridge Cook @ridgecook.bsky.social · 2d

The Pope is on the side of the immigrants. Especially as priests are pepper sprayed or hit with nonlethal rounds.
Maybe a new modern armored "martial" order is necessary to stand up to ICE to defend the faithful.

www.thelettersfromleo.com/p/breaking-p...

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Ridge Cook @ridgecook.bsky.social · 2d