Athie Gnome
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athiegnome.bsky.social
Athie Gnome
@athiegnome.bsky.social
390 followers 630 following 1.8K posts
Trans fem gnome, ✡️, interested in talking about trans experiences, Judaism, social science/data science, and your insights!
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athiegnome.bsky.social
The proto-party from which all other parties emerge?
Famous image from Hobbes's cover of Leviathan, with a king made of all the citizens of a country.
October 1, 2025 at 12:03 PM
athiegnome.bsky.social
This is the GDP per capita of Russia over time. Does the Putin period look catastrophic to you? It looks catastrophic to me...
World Bank per capita GDP data for Russia adjusted for inflation. A line chart starting in the late 1980s at about $4000, climbing steeply to about $16000, and then becoming unstable and stagnant.
September 28, 2025 at 6:23 PM
athiegnome.bsky.social
This X post is from someone who died last year. The image contains an amazing quote describing him.

nashvillebanner.com/2024/10/14/s...
“Remember Steen as he lived: He extorted people, stole wages from his employees, got innocent people fired, put trans people and abuse victims at risk by posting their name-change petitions, and paid children to film school fights,” said attorney Sarah Martin.
July 25, 2025 at 1:13 PM
athiegnome.bsky.social
This is also my heritage. I wonder why DHS didn't happen to choose some Jewish immigrants? Probably a fluke, I bet. (I think everyone could usefully imagine their own personal version here.)
A Jewish immigrant family arrives on Ellis Island, with New York’s turn-of-the-century skyline in the background. Unknown artist. The National Library Ephemera Collection.
July 14, 2025 at 10:55 PM
athiegnome.bsky.social
Finally, is the artist character rapidly balding between the first and second frames or something?
A hairline that does not have a sharp corner and extends relatively close to the (admittedly raised) eyebrow. A hairline on the same character with a very sharp corner that doesn't get even close to the eyebrow.
June 20, 2025 at 9:43 PM
athiegnome.bsky.social
And let's note that the AI can't settle on a consistent approach to eyes. Are they flat within faces, bulging slightly out, or bulging substantially out in all directions?
Two eyes wide open with lines around them suggesting they are bulging well out of their sockets. The silhouette also shows one eye extending far outside the margin of the face. The same character with eyes still extending far outside the face margin but now appearing sunken into the face on one side while still bulging on the other. Two eyes that are clearly entirely contained within the silhouette of the face and that seem to lie flat on that face. Two eyes contained within the silhouette of the face, apparently flat, but seemingly sunken below the surface of the face a bit.
June 20, 2025 at 9:43 PM
athiegnome.bsky.social
Now look how they're consistently designed in the second frame. Neither of these choices is inherently wrong, although some of the details in the first frame were odd. But the change between frames is unusual.
An open-mouthed smile in which the upper teeth are represented as a single, unbroken bar of white.
June 20, 2025 at 9:43 PM
athiegnome.bsky.social
Something similar happens with teeth. Look how they're presented in the first frame.
An open-mouthed smile in which five upper teeth are (mostly) separately rendered. The third and fourth teeth are partially fused, and the fifth tooth is slightly fused to the fourth, but there is an overall trend toward depicting a set of individual teeth on the top side of the mouth.
June 20, 2025 at 9:43 PM
athiegnome.bsky.social
Some of the hands are just broken, reflecting choices that no human artist would ever make. Some are perfectly acceptable, except that they are a different style from the overall intent. It's a mix.
Two fists. The left fist has no clearly articulated fingers and instead has three rounded nodules. The right fist has four very thin fingers, all approximately the same length, extended straight. The fingers do not all start from the same level in the hand. Two hands. The left has its four fingers and no thumb extended. Three of the fingers are plump and rounded, while the fourth is quite sharp, triangular, and apparently partially detached from the palm. The right hand is a ball of undefined nodules. The background is uranium-yellow with flesh-colored nodes in the air. One hand extended upwards. A thumb and four to five fingers point toward the top of the image. Each of them appears horribly mangled, and the interior of the hand has a few markings that resemble wounds.
June 20, 2025 at 9:43 PM
athiegnome.bsky.social
Let's begin with the classic starting place: hands. Here is the apparently intended design. The AI isn't able to consistently maintain this, though.
A fist with four closed fingers covered by a bent thumb over a uranium-yellow background. Both the background and the fist have weird streaky texture and occasional odd black flecks.
June 20, 2025 at 9:43 PM
athiegnome.bsky.social
No, no, no! The 20 guys at the parking lot waiting for work is the alleged "foreign invasion," because these people are fascist liars. The "insurrection" is marches like the one in the photo, because more fascist lies.
Photo of one of the peaceful marches in Los Angeles that were the primary alleged basis for the violent law enforcement attacks.
June 10, 2025 at 5:26 PM
athiegnome.bsky.social
People seem to be missing the point. Biden's administration carried out an extremely repressive immigration policy in an unsuccessful attempt to neutralize Trump's appeal on this issue. He deported far more people per year than Obama or Trump I had done.
Department of Homeland Security data on annual repatriations from 2014 to the present. The four Biden years stand out as by far the highest.
May 28, 2025 at 7:06 PM
athiegnome.bsky.social
The "spike" word definitely has drama, which is bad news for science communication. But it combines with images of the COVID virus to create a really spreadable idea. I don't know that either the picture or the word alone would do it.
Image of the COVID virus, with the spikes colored red.
May 12, 2025 at 5:55 PM
athiegnome.bsky.social
Just looking at data, searching in good faith for that Black privilege. May take me a bit to find it, I don't know.
Data showing the slightly increasing racial wealth gap in the US over time, from 86% (looking at median households) in 1990 to 90% in 2022.
May 4, 2025 at 4:04 PM
athiegnome.bsky.social
Anecdotes are always interesting, but they're good to put in perspective. Here are representative data from the UK.
April 29, 2025 at 12:51 PM
athiegnome.bsky.social
It would be good for people to have historical perspective on crime rates and not just calculate percentage changes from historically low baselines.

www.ppic.org/publication/...
California crime rates over time, showing very high peaks for property crime in the 1970s and violent crime in the early 1990s. Rates subsequently declined, and the rises in recent years that Anton describes as "spikes" are barely visible on the figure.
March 27, 2025 at 6:00 PM
athiegnome.bsky.social
Even here, Singal can't stop doing dishonest propaganda. He mentions reports critical of care for trans youth but omits the wave of reports affirming care. Singal also doesn't mention that the state bans he discusses were part of the same hate movement he's critiquing in this op-ed.
I’ve long been a critic of American youth gender medicine. Researchers in this field have often produced slipshod work and drawn premature conclusions about the benefits of blockers, hormones and surgery. There are serious unanswered questions about the safety and efficacy of these treatments, which have been banned or restricted in about half of American states and a number of European countries in the wake of several damning government-sponsored reports.
March 27, 2025 at 1:57 PM
athiegnome.bsky.social
This is Newsweek's terrible user interface design. All of the fairness meters default to this position below the meter on the left/unfair side until you rate. Then, after you rate, the meter will show your personal rating and text will show up underneath reporting the most popular rating.
A Newsweek article's fairness meter before I clicked on it, with the needle in the same position below the gauge and to the left/unfair side. The same fairness meter, after I clicked that the article was fair. Now the needle points upwards to fair, and a text has appeared at the bottom that reports the most popular rating as center/fair.
March 19, 2025 at 6:37 PM
athiegnome.bsky.social
Nope. This isn't the act of a Jewish government, or an act on behalf of the Jewish people. Please knock it off.
Screenshot of White House X/Twitter post about the recent graduate student detention that begins "SHALOM, MAHMOUD."
March 10, 2025 at 8:00 PM
athiegnome.bsky.social
This is great! Check out this correction published last year. This published article had 30 at least partially hallucinated sources, and also refers to "vegetative electron microscopy" and "extracellular cells."
Correction: Rabiee et al. Silver and Gold Nanoparticles for Antimicrobial Purposes against Multi-Drug Resistance Bacteria. Materials 2022, 15, 1799. Following publication [ 1 ], the authors raised concerns to the editorial office relating to certain terminology and the relevance of several citations contained within this publication. The editorial office then completed an investigation adhering to our Updating Published Papers policy (https://www.mdpi.com/ethics#_bookmark30). As a result of the investigation and discussions between the authors and the editorial office, it was decided to issue a correction containing the following changes: The original publication contained the following irrelevant citations that have now been removed and the references have been renumbered: [2], [4], [8], [9], [10], [12], [13], [15], [17], [18], [19], [26], [27], [28], [30], [37], [38], [39], [42], [49], [50], [53], and [65]. In addition, the following references were replaced: [22], [23], [31], [32], [33], [34], and [35]. Text Correction In addition, two phrases in the original publication were not appropriate. The authors would like to change “vegetative electron microscopy” to “scanning electron microscopy” and “extracellular cells” to “extracellular membrane”. A correction has been made to Section 3. Ag Nanoparticles for Antimicrobial Resistance, paragraph 1. The authors state that the scientific conclusions are unaffected. This correction was approved by the Academic Editor.
February 20, 2025 at 6:09 PM
athiegnome.bsky.social
That's very supportive and wonderful of you to say! I have other books, shown here with an unloved form of my name blurred out. (Not that it's hard to find if someone wants to, just a google search away, so it goes.) This is a big chunk of my life's work!
Multi-Method Social Science book Billionaires and Stealth Politics book Finding Your Social Science Project book Party-System Collapse book
February 19, 2025 at 10:33 PM
athiegnome.bsky.social
The MAHA executive order very strongly replicates Andrew Wakefield and related extremist ideas about autism. We have "toxins," vaccines, diet, electromagnetism, inflammation, specific foods, etc. The whole harmful-autism-parent complex. Exciting to basically see Wakefield in government.
(a) study the scope of the childhood chronic disease crisis and any potential contributing causes, including the American diet, absorption of toxic material, medical treatments, lifestyle, environmental factors, Government policies, food production techniques, electromagnetic radiation, and corporate influence or cronyism; (ii) assess the threat that potential over-utilization of medication, certain food ingredients, certain chemicals, and certain other exposures pose to children with respect to chronic inflammation or other established mechanisms of disease, using rigorous and transparent data, including international comparisons;
February 13, 2025 at 11:48 PM
athiegnome.bsky.social
Wild stuff! LISEP's alternative unemployment metric shows the Biden presidency as unambiguously the *best* economic period of most people's lives, whereas traditional metrics simply show the Biden period as about as good as the Clinton era. Yet the LISEP guy pretends he's revealing a bad economy.
A graph showing "true unemployment" that combines unemployed, part-time employed and arguably underemployed people versus the official employment rate. By definition, "true unemployment" is always much higher. But it was trending down after the great recession (other than the temporary COVID bump) and the Biden period was the lowest period of "true unemployment" in the history of the statistic.
February 12, 2025 at 3:41 PM
athiegnome.bsky.social
"The reputation is coming back, very, very rapidly."
A headline from the Independent that reads, "Elon Musk's teenage high school grad staffer known as 'Big Balls' now State Department adviser: Report The news raises fresh fears about Musk and DOGE's access to sensitive information about U.S. diplomats"
February 11, 2025 at 6:16 PM
athiegnome.bsky.social
In a video interview while the riot was ongoing, Stager explained his actions in pretty vivid language.
" Subsequent to this assault, Stager was filmed in the vicinity of the Capitol making statements regarding the events of January 6. In one portion of the video, Stager pointed to the U.S. Capitol and made the following chilling statement: "Everybody in there is a disgrace. That entire building is filled with treasonous traitors. Death is the only remedy for what's in that building." Stager went on to say that "everybody in there is a treasonous traitor. Every single one of those Capitol law enforcement officers, death is the remedy, that is the only remedy they get." See Exhibit 6."
February 11, 2025 at 4:50 PM