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Sage Anastasi

@sageanastasi.bsky.social

860 followers 1.2K following 2K posts

Pākehā, dream avatar of gender magic. PhD student working on political & social polarisation, trying to make data scientists read Laclau. Opinions mine. he/him 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 Mastodon, where I am not active but there are DMs: @[email protected]

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Sage Anastasi @sageanastasi.bsky.social · Jul 28

Bringing this back for today. What an honour to have Tom Lehrer rock up to our little country, ask what civil rights issues were going on (the All Blacks' upcoming tour of Apartheid South Africa), and then immediately write a song about it.

David Hood @thoughtfulnz.bsky.social · Oct 28

Auckland Star 16 April 1960, page 1

Oh Mr Nash by Tom Lehrer

When the early missionaries first brought Rugby to New Zealand,
It became the state religion right away,
And to the ten commandments has been added an eleventh,
And it says: No matter what -- thou shalt play!

dmdb.org/lehrer/lehre...

Song against the All Black Tour of South Africa

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Sage Anastasi @sageanastasi.bsky.social · 8h

Can confirm, it took about a month for me to start feeling like I could do things other than rest

Sage Anastasi @sageanastasi.bsky.social · 8h

5% of the time it took to do it! I'm currently on a 72 day holiday after handing in my 4 year thesis

Reposted by Sage Anastasi

Chappell Ellison @chappelltracker.bsky.social · 10d

This Tumblr user summarizes something I've been feeling/doing lately. Against everything going on, it somehow feels helpful.

User homoquartz writes: as long as you smile and nod, people are satisfied. it’s just to show that you are nice and there with good intentions. we’re small in a big world and have to rely on other people to be decent to us. so we do our little human dance to each other to say, “i’m not here to hurt you. here’s something we have in common, like the weather or sports or itchy sweaters, so we both know we’re on the same team. we both agree on a basic fact, like that it is rainy or that being itchy is uncomfortable, and this proves we can get along. i’m being light-hearted and non-threatening right now."
Small talk isn't to get to know a person. It's just a greeting to affirm you're buddies in the universe. I am motivated by wanting the other person to know I am friendly, so I have gotten pretty decent at small tall when I used to hate it.

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Sunny Moraine @dynamicsymmetry.bsky.social · 23h

Also? Getting comfortable enough with failure that failure no longer crushes you is like a basic survival skill if you’re hypersensitive/have anxiety, and the only way to do that is to just go ahead and fail repeatedly

human bean @humanbean.net · 23h

people don’t realize that there are things that they need to practice to get better at them

they think it should be easy so they keep just trying occasionally and then deciding it’s not for them

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Bill Bennett @billbennett.bsky.social · 18h

Have I got this right? We can't afford to fund the health system but we can build a Death Star.

www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

NZ defence strategy explores space weapons export potential

Defence Minister Judith Collins insists NZ-produced technology could compete internationally.

www.rnz.co.nz

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Countess Sappho @countess-sappho.bsky.social · 19h

YOU HEARD THEM

Meme image of Shinji from Evangelion leaning forward in a folding chair with his heads in his hands. Text around him reads "GET IN THE FUCKING FROG" and there are two depictions of someone in inflatable frog suits

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Russel Norman @russelnorman.bsky.social · 11h

Remember the old rightwing argument that all we needed to do was put a price on climate emissions and let the market do its thing? Well the necessary step was for the Govt to put a price on emissions. The current far right NZ Govt just announced it will never put a price on emissions.

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Vincent van Gogh @vangogh.bsky.social · 11h

The Reaper after Millet - 1889
https://botfrens.com/collections/46/contents/14679

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Miscellaneous Reasons To Live @reasonsbot.bsky.social · 13h

I need to live long enough to learn to play the queerest instrument of them all, the theremin

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Sage Anastasi @sageanastasi.bsky.social · 13h

You might be interested in a couple of Honours essays I put up on my blog about it, and my PhD chapter where I put their theory of antagonism into practise for measuring polarisation!
sageanastasi.wordpress.com/2021/04/09/i...
sageanastasi.wordpress.com/2021/07/12/t...
arxiv.org/abs/2403.18191

Introduction to Discourse Theory

(I’m back! This and the next post are both pieces I wrote for my Honours Communications classes last year. Today’s is the theory background to make the next one (on TERFs and populism) …

sageanastasi.wordpress.com

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Gwen Snyder is undead @gwensnyder.bsky.social · 15h

One of the best phrases I've ever learned for working with kids is, "thank you for your no."

It gives me such happiness to see them make their own choices for their little bodies, and to be able to affirm that as a good thing

Chantal James @chantalalive.blacksky.app · 15h

Some little kids are not really shy, they just choose who they want to give their energy to & refuse to give it unless they want to. We could all learn from that boundary setting.

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Luke Steuber @lukesteuber.com · Aug 27

Pineapples grow like they’re trying to prank you into thinking this is how pineapples grow

A pineapple farm that looks like Ripley should burn it in Alien

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eric shamow @botmatrix.myatproto.social · 18h

If you didn't already avoid the Salvation Army for their transphobia and bigotry, you have a new reason to avoid them in the feeding ICE

kat, ghost of helenruthsghost @chaoskat.bsky.social · 18h

Salvation Army seen feeding ICE today. For anyone who doesn't already know about their bigotry, here is more, No need to give them your money this Christmas, or ever.

unraveled @unraveledpress.com · 19h

It’s dinner time for the police. Appears to be pizza from a Salvation Army van.

Broadview’s “free speech” curfew starts soon, at 6pm.

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Valerie Halla @valeriehalla.dicot.moe · 21h

everyone would agree that if you believe in what is right, it doesn't matter if it's controversial. i would go a step further and say: you should not even concede to the *idea* that what you believe is controversial.

trans rights is only controversial if you act like it's controversial.

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Valerie Halla @valeriehalla.dicot.moe · 21h

model the behavior of someone who hasn't even heard of the *concept* of being against trans rights. take trans existence as a given. treat anyone who concedes to anti-trans talking points like an amoral freak, and don't give them an ounce of your public attention. say what is right with authority

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Rich Raho @richraho.bsky.social · 20h

Chicago priest Fr. Larry Dowling describes procession to ICE facility: “No one had the courage to speak directly to us. No one from Homeland Security could stand in the presence of the Monstrance holding the Blessed Sacrament. No wonder. Evil is repelled, recoils in the presence of Christ.”

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doctober @docseuss.bsky.social · 18h

sometimes you are doing it purely for self-fulfillment, making something that's exclusively for you

and hustle culture has tried to convince you this is monetizable

it is not

you are actually doing it for personal reasons, not financial ones. you are not a 'failure' for making something for YOU

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doctober @docseuss.bsky.social · 18h

I see a lot of people go "I do this because I like it," fail to find success and go "everyone just hates me" and no, no, there is something YOU can change about it: study the successful people. Look at what's working for them. Look at what's selling. Ask yourself why.

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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 20h

I’ve never wanted anything more than CONCLAVE: THE GAME

Mark O’Neill 🐻 @radiobeartime.com · 1d

boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/43...

Habemus Papam

A game of intrigue, and hidden agendas in the race to elect the next Pope.

boardgamegeek.com

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Nora Reed (they/them ze/hir) @nora.zone · 21h

im listening to this while i do my little work tasks and realizing that we DID a cultural shift around a new technology that accelerates climate change and makes everything suck before and it's cars!!! and we should figure out what we can learn from the anti car people about killing "ai"

Cancel Me, Daddy Podcast @cancelmedaddy.bsky.social · 3d

This week we're collabing with the co-hosts of @thewaroncars.bsky.social to chat about how pro-car propaganda works, its history, and how it shows up in our politics today, especially in this year's NYC mayor's race! www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN-e...

Why Car Propaganda Is Destroying Our Cities (ft. The War on Cars Podcast)

YouTube video by Cancel Me, Daddy - Media & Politics Podcast

www.youtube.com

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Kevin J. CREATURE @kevinjkircher.com · 2d

Over 40% of corn grown in Indiana is used to make ethanol that cars burn. One acre of corn yields about 16,500 vehicle-miles per year of ethanol, which sounds high until you realize that one acre of solar yields about 2,700,000 vehicle-miles per year: 16,000% more driving for a given plot of land.

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Sage Anastasi @sageanastasi.bsky.social · 23h

It was definitely developed by Laclau & Mouffe in Hegemony And Socialist Strategy (1985). I forget whether their particular arm of the field had a name 😅

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David Hood @thoughtfulnz.bsky.social · 2d

While there is not much crossover between stereotypical Columba College & stereotypical Bluesky, if anyone is on a Columba fundraising mailing list it is a great day to unsubscribe with the phrase "I feel that a culture of exorcisms is actively damaging to raising students for the modern world"

Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 2d

#Dunedin #NZ school principal returns from leave for 3 months… and is quashed.

“the instability was driven by what they believed was a core of influential, long-standing, "very conservative" staff members”

It sounds like the cupboard needs cleaning.

Gossip, snobbery and a principal sent by God ⬇️

Gossip, snobbery and a principal sent by God

Classroom exorcism, prayers for Charlie Kirk and a conservative dress code - insiders have lifted the lid on a prestigious Dunedin school where...

www.odt.co.nz

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Sage Anastasi @sageanastasi.bsky.social · 1d

Yeah, the post-structuralist view I was taught loops back to Gramsci and goes "since everything is contingent, it's always possible for us to build something better"

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rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 3d

What Hailey actually said was not "AI is sentient and shouldn't be discriminated against". What she said was using language derived from bigoted terms used for human groups, in any context, normalizes that use in such a way to reduce the threshold taboo against using it for those humans.

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