EM Simpson
@emsetc.bsky.social
4.5K followers 860 following 4.2K posts
I am not a committee. Defense, pop-culture, Jayhawk propaganda. All opinions my own. Co-host of Sirens: A Bombshell Production https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sirens-a-bombshell-production/id1195698408
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Reposted by EM Simpson
donmoyn.bsky.social
Should elected officials be imprisoned for speaking out against an invasion of their cities? Hard to say. Very technical question. Really one for the lawyers to sort out.
atrupar.com
Q: Do you agree that the mayor of Chicago and governor of Illinois should be in prison?

MIKE JOHNSON: Should they be in prison? I'm not the attorney general. I'm not following the day to day on that
Reposted by EM Simpson
erinsikorsky.bsky.social
As a longtime Bombshell and now @sirenspod.bsky.social fangirl, I was so delighted to join @emsetc.bsky.social and Radha Iyengar Plumb for this mini episode!
sirenspod.bsky.social
New mini with the brilliant @erinsikorsky.bsky.social to dig into her new book Climate Change on the Battlefield. What is the threat militaries are facing from climate change? How is it shaping the landscape they operate in? And what are they doing about it? podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b...
Climate Change on the Battlefield
Podcast Episode · Sirens: A Bombshell production · 10/08/2025 · 27m
podcasts.apple.com
emsetc.bsky.social
"Hello, William? Heyyy. You busy? Would you mind coming over here to take a look a something? Yeah, no, just pop over. Bring your wife!"
emsetc.bsky.social
honestly, not my favorite civil war
emsetc.bsky.social
was not expecting English civil war discourse today
Reposted by EM Simpson
jackjenkins.me
Gonna be thinking about this lede for a minute.
(RNS) — Last month, the Rev. David Black stood in front of a Chicago-area U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility and spread his arms wide. Adorned in all black and wearing a clerical collar, the pastor looked up at a group of masked, heavily armed ICE agents on the roof and began to pray.

“I invited them to repentance,” Black, a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), said in an interview. “I basically offered an altar call. I invited them to come and receive that salvation, and be part of the kingdom that is coming.”

But when Black began to lower his arms a few seconds later, the agents responded to his spiritual plea by firing pepper balls, or chemical agents that cause eye irritation and respiratory distress, video footage shows. One struck Black in the head, exploding into a puff of white pepper smoke and forcing him to his knees. Fellow demonstrators rushed to his aid, and as the pastor rubbed his face in pain, the agents continued to fire.

“We could hear them laughing,” Black said.
Reposted by EM Simpson
kevinmkruse.bsky.social
I know we're all used to the president talking like Livia Soprano all the time, but this is a goddamn outrage
carlquintanilla.bsky.social
“.. we’re going to take care of our people,” Trump added. “There are some people that really don’t deserve to be taken care of. And we’ll take care of them in a different way.”

@thehill.com
thehill.com/homenews/adm...
Reposted by EM Simpson
kjhealy.co
You have to think of the NYT’s education reporting in much the same way as its Real Estate, Lifestyle, and Vows features. That is, of direct personal interest to a tiny but influential sliver of subscribers, and functionally ragebait for everyone else.
Harvard Students Skip Class and Still Get High Grades, Faculty Say
Many students don't do the reading and don't speak up in class, according to a report. Now, professors are trying to change that campus culture.
7 MIN READ
A Harvard Professor Is Placed on Leave
After Firing a Pellet Gun
3 MIN READ
Reposted by EM Simpson
jamellebouie.net
wrote this line yesterday:

"If President Trump were, in other words, trying to instigate some kind of national divorce, it is hard to imagine what he would be doing differently than this."
yasharali.bsky.social
Statement from Illinois Governor JB Pritzker
This evening, President Trump is ordering 400 members of the Texas National Guard for deployments to Illinois, Oregon, and other locations within the United States. No officials from the federal government called me directly to discuss or coordinate.
We must now start calling this what it is: Trump's Invasion. It started with federal agents, it will soon include deploying federalized members of the Illinois National Guard against our wishes, and it will now involve sending in another state's military troops.
I call on Governor Abbott to immediately withdraw any support for this decision and refuse to coordinate. There is no reason a President should send military troops into a sovereign state without their knowledge, consent, or cooperation.
The brave men and women who serve in our national guards must not be used as political props. This is a moment where every American must speak up and help stop this madness.
emsetc.bsky.social
sweet mother of god please stop making me think about my dissertation
atrupar.com
Trump: "The problem with Vietnam, we, you know, we stopped fighting to win. We would've won easy. We would've won Afghanistan easy. We would've won every war easy. But we got politically correct. 'Oh, let's take it easy.' We're not politically correct anymore, just so you understand."
emsetc.bsky.social
I actually quite enjoyed the TV adaptation, which was a much ambivalent as to what happened in Beirut (did Elliot get played or was defection always the preferred outcome).

The book does a good job highlighting that its hard to know spies' motivations bc they're often unaware of them themselves
emsetc.bsky.social
semi-related: i just finished Ben Macintyre's "A Spy Among Friends" which has an afterward from your dad at the end. He had lengthy notes from an interview with Nicholas Elliot which served as a great coda. Elliot in his own words was really something.
Reposted by EM Simpson
aelkus.bsky.social
no industry in the US has ever really been angelic but there is an unique combination of messianic fervor and raw nastiness behind current AI gold rush that even fairly jaded science fiction hasn't really depicted quite well

bsky.app/profile/cksh...
ckshowalter.bsky.social
Ignoring very real consent issues- this is flat out dangerous. These women all ready deal with serious risks to personal safety due to stalkers. Chat bots that hyper charge parasocial relationships don’t help.

Swift in particular is dealing with a dangerous situation right now. 1/
reuters.com
Reuters @reuters.com · Aug 29
Exclusive: Meta has appropriated the names and likenesses of celebrities — including Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson, Anne Hathaway and Selena Gomez — to create dozens of flirty social-media chatbots without their permission, Reuters has found reut.rs/3JWb00R
Reposted by EM Simpson
tatiwm.bsky.social
It's very telling that — of all the things they could have created — they jumped straight to reducing famous, powerful women flirtation tools without their consent.
reuters.com
Reuters @reuters.com · Aug 29
Exclusive: Meta has appropriated the names and likenesses of celebrities — including Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson, Anne Hathaway and Selena Gomez — to create dozens of flirty social-media chatbots without their permission, Reuters has found reut.rs/3JWb00R
Exclusive: Meta created flirty chatbots of Taylor Swift, other celebrities without permission
Meta has appropriated the names and likenesses of celebrities – including Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson, Anne Hathaway and Selena Gomez – to create dozens of flirty social-media chatbots without their permission, Reuters has found.
reut.rs
Reposted by EM Simpson
alanallport.bsky.social
It’s National Poetry Day.

The greatest poem in the English language.
emsetc.bsky.social
I must ask - where did you get that
Reposted by EM Simpson
omrimarian.bsky.social
It's neither. He's simply creating a calculated pretext to justify violence against political enemies. They teach it on the first day in dictator school.
davidcorn.bsky.social
Can Miller really believe this? If so, he is delusional. If not, then he’s a reprehensible demagogue.
emsetc.bsky.social
I morning’d too hard and now I need a nap
emsetc.bsky.social
Oh, they know what time it is
pbump.com
Smoke detectors should know what time of day it is so if they’re running low on batteries they can think, “that’s more of a mid-morning problem.”
Reposted by EM Simpson
kellyscaletta.bsky.social
Somewhere in America, a young Hispanic girl is hiding in an attic writing a diary.
Reposted by EM Simpson