New dystopian life: ‘scary masked thief’ shops at the same clothing stores as ICE
Caro Williams-Pierce
@therealcaro.bsky.social
Half professor, half feral - and fully absentminded. Easily distracted by ideas about design, trust, and learning. Fueled by curiosity, filled with rage. She/her
![[Scene is ANCIENT GREECE - where SOCRATES and PLATO and others are sitting round, thinking]
1
SOCRATES:
Plato..
PLATO:
Yes Socrates?
2
SOCRATES:
Can you tell me, are you human?
PLATO:
Why… yes, Socrates
3
SOCRATES:
And would you agree, Plato, that a human knows what a chariot is?
PLATO:
Um, yep
4
SOCRATES:
So you can tell me, then
5
[Socrates produces a papyrus, showing a drawing of the corner of a chariot wheel]
SOCRATES:
*Is that a chariot*?
6
PLATO:
Well
that’s more just a bit of wheel
7
SOCRATES:
So not a *chariot*.
PLATO:
No.
8
SOCRATES:
[Producing another papyrus with the full drawing of the chariot, chopped into boxes]
So if a man were challenged to “tap the boxes containing chariots to prove you’re human” when he was just trying to check his ClubCard points... *where could he tap*?
9
PLATO:
Well you can’t tap any of them really
10
SOCRATES:
So are we not human?
PLATO:
‘Spose not.
11
[Bleak pause]
12
PLATO:
I’ll get the hemlock
SOCRATES:
Yeah
[ends]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:4m3we4apbjayclzcnhwe3pfp/bafkreiazbuxbxnuyt5etli2cjseaychvbuym6n6z33nwx2mutlvoqjdhge)
![1
Nurse:
It’s become a real problem in this area
2
Nurse:
We’ve seen the whole community lost to addiction
3
Show a building sign posted:
Westminster ‘X’ Addiction Clinic
With various Westminster people or looking at their phones outside it
Nurse:
Ministers, Spads, Researchers…
4
Nurse:
Most mornings we’ll get a call about someone acting strangely
[Nurse on phone taking a call]
Ok - we’ll be right over
5
Nurse:
We just have a gentle chat
[Nurses approach a minister –Robert Jenrick? - standing in the Palace of Westminster
Minister:
I understand your concerns…
6
Nurse:
Are you OK love?
Minister:
Yes I’m just hearing legitimate concerns from real voters
7
Nurse:
That’s a robot, a Nazi and a poorly-disguised Russian
[Show that the people he is talking to are precisely these characters]
Nurse 2:
Give us your phone, love
8
Nurse:
At the clinic we put them in a Grass-Touching Pod, with a real voter to talk to
[We see them back at the clinic, holding the minister's head and pushing him into a glass isolation booth with a grass floor. And it is a baffled looking woman, on a chair, ready to talk to him.]
9
Minister:
YOU MUST BE WORRIED ABOUT THE COMING CIVIL WAR
[woman looks baffled]
10
woman:
I just want a bus service
Minister:
LOOK AT MY FLAG
[produces a St George's flag]
[ends]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:4m3we4apbjayclzcnhwe3pfp/bafkreicahofq6s4xow7vowj7dx6odw6ejdwr4kwcmzta7qwi4hg2nvywji)
Discworld QOTD, from Feet of Clay
Micah@rincewind.run · 10mo agoDiscworld QOTD, from Equal Rites “It is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done. A person ignorant of the possibility of failure can be a half-brick in the path of the bicycle of history.”
Laypeople often learn about science from expert explanations & those explanations often contain JARGON. Does jargon make explanations better or worse? In a paper out today in Nature Human Behaviour, @cruzf.bsky.social and I find that jargon can support illusions of understanding...
this is a letter to the editor from a high school track runner who came in second to a trans girl in a race. her state house rep in maine started talking about it. so she wrote this: www.pressherald.com/2025/05/14/r...
I need a pirate expert - or just someone who REALLY gets into Talk Like a Pirate Day. It’s for research!
Thinking about devastating cuts to NSF: US gov-funded science has been the engine upon which most of the tech wealth was generated. But the oligarchs (currently hoarding much of that $) think it’s their own brilliance & not the accident of standing close to the scientific engine that made them rich.
Come to my Rogue Workshop at #CHI2025 - if you're furious at funding cuts and public kidnappings and letting 19-year-old kids mess around in the Social Security database, this workshop is for you! Wednesday, April 30 Room G313 2:10 - 3:40 pm
A friend who was out as a gay man during Section 28 was telling me the advice he used to give to straight allies asking how they could help back then: stand in solidarity with us so that some of the shit they’re throwing at us sticks to you. If you’re clean, you’re not standing close enough.
Sign spotted in a yard in Capitol Hill, where freedom of expression endures.
Beautiful 🥹 apple.news/AyXnrnJRMTTe...
At Kennedy Center, Guster Perform With Cast of LGBTQ+ Musical Canceled by Trump Takeover — Rolling Stone
Band and cast of LGBTQ+ musical Finn — whose own Kennedy Center performances were canceled after Trump named himself Kennedy Center chairman — take stage at historic D.C. venue
apple.news
Imagine if Terry Pratchett wrote a #DoctorWho episode What if the TARDIS landed in Ankh-Morpork? What if Death and Binky met The Doctor “OH DEAR, IT’S YOU. *sighs* I FIND YOU INCREDIBLY IRRITATING AS JUST AS YOUR HOURGLASS RUNS OUT IT BECOMES FULL AGAIN. I CALL THAT CHEATING” @rhi.bsky.social
sorry i didn’t reply, i: ☐ forgot to ☐ am speechless! ☐ honestly thought i did? ☐ have nothing of value to add ☐ have no idea what you’re talking about ☐ don’t know how to respond to that? ☐ disagree and am letting the leaden weight of my silence speak for me ☐ don’t want to (check all that apply)
New essay: Fuck Fascism: On Radical Rudeness www.feministgiant.com/p/essay-fuck...
Essay: Fuck Fascism
On Radical Rudeness
feministgiant.com
We Stan a legend
Transgender World@transgenderreport.com · last yr.State Sen. Tony Bisignano doubled down on calling out Republican lawmakers for stripping away civil rights protections for transgender people in an interview with The Advocate. www.advocate.com/pol... #transgender #trans #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA
INFO’s little walk-out protest contribution today - just a couple of us, but we are but one node in a broad web… What do we want? SCIENCE! How do we want it! PEER REVIEWED What do we want? SCIENCE! How do we want it! APPROPRIATELY ARCHIVED
Doing meta-reviews of reviews of meta-analyses. I feel very meta right now.
Some things, once taken apart, cannot be "mended." Even so, they can still hold value. This is a post about disability. This might also be a post about democracy.
I've been able to brush off most of the erasure of trans people from government websites, but this one is REALLY getting under my skin. It's just complete revisionist history. How fucking dare they Old vs. new
Benjamin Dreyer@bcdreyer.social · last yr.This is where you go to tell the National Park Service to restore the word "transgender" in its entry on the Stonewall monument. (Scroll down.)