Thomas A Caswell
tacaswell.bsky.social
Thomas A Caswell
@tacaswell.bsky.social
I am a soft-condensed matter physicist by training, but am now Research Software Engineer working to enable scientist to use computers to do science via open source software.

Project Lead of Matplotlib and PSF Fellow

he/him
Reposted by Thomas A Caswell
The message we keep having to repeat.
While this usually isn't the intent, "no one will ever be held accountable for this" doomerism is an excuse not to try.

There'll be at least some accountability if enough Americans work for it. And this time really is different. Doesn't guarantee the aftermath will be, but it increases the chances.
November 30, 2025 at 9:20 PM
Reposted by Thomas A Caswell
A reminder that the current SECDEF caught the eye of the president by championing the pardoning of American war criminals — men whose own units testified against them, and who were convicted by military juries

He should never have been nominated for, let alone confirmed in, this job
November 28, 2025 at 7:28 PM
Reposted by Thomas A Caswell
A reminder for those who are not aware: "remigration" is the process of deporting all non-white people from a country. It includes citizens and is, by definition, ethnic cleansing.

And to be clear: this is not fake. I just screenshot it myself.
November 28, 2025 at 6:12 PM
Reposted by Thomas A Caswell
I don’t know if anyone else notices or cares, but when I see a presentation in which the speaker uses obviously generated-AI images to illustrate their slides, it makes me immediately less confident in whatever other content they’re presenting.
November 28, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Reposted by Thomas A Caswell
It happened! The @nytimes.com profiled Paulina!

The Writer Who Dared Criticize Silicon Valley

Paulina Borsook’s “Cyberselfish,” which offered dire predictions about the tech world’s love for libertarianism, is finding fans. It only took 25 years.

Gift Link:
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/27/t...
November 27, 2025 at 4:39 PM
Reposted by Thomas A Caswell
Today’s xkcd made me cry.

In a good way.

xkcd.com/3172/
November 24, 2025 at 11:46 PM
Reposted by Thomas A Caswell
Many of us learned long ago that there is no "Legal Philosophy" in the Federalist Society. It is a club that gives members a leg up in the competition for certain judicial clerkships and jobs in the Trump administration. That is it. Period.

How does the NY Times not know this?
November 22, 2025 at 11:14 PM
Reposted by Thomas A Caswell
All I ever wanted to be was a scientist after I decided that being a fireman wouldn't work for me.

I've had to fight a lot of people for that career path, and I've won.
What’s the lore behind choosing your career path ?
November 23, 2025 at 12:18 AM
Reposted by Thomas A Caswell
POV: you are a young woman celebrating a recent academic success
November 17, 2025 at 7:20 PM
Reposted by Thomas A Caswell
We need to build some real social stigma around being afraid of cities. You don't have to like them or live there, but a politics built this strongly around watching TV and going "ewww" is embarrassing, and people should be embarrassed by it. It's like "fear of werewolves" being your top issue.
June 10, 2025 at 3:17 PM
Reposted by Thomas A Caswell
1/ I’d like to share what’s happened since Sept. 30, the night of the most dramatic raid of the Trump administration’s Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago. Under the cover of darkness, 37 immigrants were taken from an apartment complex …🧵
November 16, 2025 at 3:17 PM
Reposted by Thomas A Caswell
“Why do women, especially women of color leave physics?”

Oh I dunno maybe because you do have to be fucking crazy on a level to put up with this shit for your entire career and not walk away bsky.app/profile/chan...
In the meantime, he got the professional networking opportunity, and I didn’t. And Lawrence Krauss gets to write nasty things about me in the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times gets to write about me like I’m a crazy queer bitch who hates men.

That’s the other side of these emails
November 16, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Reposted by Thomas A Caswell
Never forget the same people defending pedophilia have spent years trying to convince the public that drag queens and trans people are a threat to children.

It’s all smoke and mirrors to allow the real predators to roam free.
November 14, 2025 at 12:21 AM
Reposted by Thomas A Caswell
This is inside baseball, but to me, there are three ways in which this development *bears out* Justice Jackson's unusual intervention Friday night—about which there was much confusion.

First, this makes it clear that a majority of the Court was *not* going to force the USDA to fund SNAP by Friday.
#BREAKING: Over a public dissent from Justice Jackson, #SCOTUS *extends* the temporary pause of the district court’s order that had mandated full SNAP payments for November—keeping that ruling (and those payments) on hold through the end of the day this Thursday:
November 12, 2025 at 12:58 AM
Reposted by Thomas A Caswell
I'll get back to "party unity" as soon as the Senate Minority Leader tells us if he voted for the Democratic party nominee for mayor of his city.

I'm tired of party unity only ever running one way.
November 10, 2025 at 11:14 PM
Reposted by Thomas A Caswell
1/ The US Government has quietly removed a memorial to Black soldiers who died in World War II from the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, South Limburg. The move follows a complaint from the right-wing Heritage Foundation to the American Battle Monuments Commission. ⬇️
November 9, 2025 at 9:23 AM
Reposted by Thomas A Caswell
"People I don't agree with deserve to suffer" is conservative thinking.
November 10, 2025 at 1:06 AM
Reposted by Thomas A Caswell
My statement on the spending legislation and Republican healthcare crisis.
November 10, 2025 at 12:08 AM
Reposted by Thomas A Caswell
CARTOON OF THE DAY

(From @mluckovichajc)
November 7, 2025 at 2:01 AM
Reposted by Thomas A Caswell
Apparently all you needed to do to predict the NYC election results was read that one N.K. Jemisin novel.
November 5, 2025 at 2:07 AM
Reposted by Thomas A Caswell
New Yorkers if this doesn’t convince you, I don’t know what will.
Stephen Miller endorses Andrew Cuomo.
November 4, 2025 at 3:25 AM
Reposted by Thomas A Caswell
The right-wing think tank which wrote the entire platform for the current president of the US is defending neo-Nazis, and meanwhile a substantial portion of American rabbis think the Muslim candidate for NYC mayor who has denounced antisemitism is the biggest threat to me as an American Jew.
November 4, 2025 at 3:32 AM
Reposted by Thomas A Caswell
Christian Zionists often profess to love both Israel and the Jewish people, but for many of them, this devotion is intrinsically tied to their beliefs about the fate of the Jews in the end times—and it’s not pretty.
Tucker Carlson’s lovefest with a white nationalist just blew up the Christian right
A conversation with Nick Fuentes about Christian Zionism got many MAGA notables upset.
www.motherjones.com
November 2, 2025 at 12:00 AM
Reposted by Thomas A Caswell
More than 1800 detainees are missing after the closure of Alligator Alcatraz. Their families and lawyers can’t find them and they’ve vanished from the ICE database. Feels like this should be a much bigger story www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...
Hundreds of Alligator Alcatraz detainees drop off the grid after leaving site
As of the end of August, the whereabouts of two-thirds of more than 1,800 men detained at Alligator Alcatraz during the month of July could not be determined by the Miami Herald.
www.miamiherald.com
September 23, 2025 at 5:39 PM
Reposted by Thomas A Caswell
In light of the PSF's recent loss of an NSF grant and attendant funding shortfall, I will be matching donations up to $5000. Send me your receipts.

Very happy if you've already donated for similar reasons but the point is to motivate *new* donations so be sure the timestamp is after this toot 😉.
October 28, 2025 at 8:02 PM