Spencer
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spencerthielmann.bsky.social
Spencer
@spencerthielmann.bsky.social
25 followers 96 following 20 posts
director at knp.work
writer with @emilyberge.bsky.social
THE LAST MERMAID OF THE MISSISSIPPI (2027)
literary rep @abwycisk.bsky.social‬
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Spencer @spencerthielmann.bsky.social · Jun 28
Huge news for @emilyberge.bsky.social and myself. Our debut middle grade has finally been announced! Emily articulated it perfectly (as she always does)—see thread below

#booksky
spencerthielmann.bsky.social
Listening to Cory Doctorow and @sarahjeong.bsky.social explain how we got to this point is cathartic. It's like competency porn. If you are a writer or creator of any kind, listen to this episode. Then subscribe to Pluralistic and buy Enshittification.
October 30, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Reposted by Spencer
adriennelaf.bsky.social
And actually astonishing when you think about it: The Trump administration's top officials are choosing to separate themselves from the public—more to the point: separate themselves from any visible protest—and live on military bases.

Gift link here: www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...
Top Trump Officials Are Moving Onto Military Bases
Stephen Miller, Marco Rubio, Kristi Noem, and others have taken over homes that until recently housed senior officers.
www.theatlantic.com
October 30, 2025 at 12:55 PM
Reposted by Spencer
wired.com
With just $800 in basic equipment, researchers found a stunning variety of data—including thousands of T-Mobile users’ calls and texts and even US military communications—sent by satellites unencrypted. www.wired.com/story/satell...
Satellites Are Leaking the World’s Secrets: Calls, Texts, Military and Corporate Data
With just $800 in basic equipment, researchers found a stunning variety of data—including thousands of T-Mobile users’ calls and texts and even US military communications—sent by satellites unencrypted.
www.wired.com
October 14, 2025 at 1:08 AM
Reposted by Spencer
navmecheng.bsky.social
> It is 2025 BC. I am a soldier from one of the outlying provinces called to defend the pyramid in Memphis

> It is 2025 AD. I am a soldier from one of the outlying provinces called to defend the pyramid in Memphis
Soldiers at the Bass Pro Shops pyramid in Memphis, TN.
October 11, 2025 at 5:32 PM
spencerthielmann.bsky.social
I’ve been banging this drum for a while. C2PA isn’t perfect, but it is a good first step. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. We can iterate as we solve more problems.
reckless.bsky.social nilay patel @reckless.bsky.social · Oct 11
It was @sarahjeong.bsky.social and we’ve been pounding this drum for years - especially since all the promises of metadata to prove images are real have gone nowhere www.theverge.com/2024/8/22/24...
October 11, 2025 at 7:21 PM
spencerthielmann.bsky.social
This reskinned could be the plot of a sci-fi novel. Crazy.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/s...
How to Deal With 30 to 50 Feral Hogs
www.nytimes.com
October 11, 2025 at 12:25 PM
Reposted by Spencer
zachweinersmith.bsky.social
Bonus panel here: www.smbc-comics.com/comic/why-8
#smbc
October 8, 2025 at 4:49 PM
Reposted by Spencer
dreamwisp.bsky.social
Because it feels relevant as we continue to evaluate the media and our representatives’ statements, my favorite way to identify the active vs. passive voice.
A post by Rebecca Johnson: “I finally learned how to teach my guys to ID the passive voice. If you can insert "by zombies" after the verb, you have passive voice.” A tumblr respond from mightymur: “The final, brilliant word on passive voice. "She was killed [by zombies.]"<--passive "Zombies killed [by zombies] her." <-- active”
October 7, 2025 at 10:02 PM
Reposted by Spencer
downpuppy.bsky.social
to wit -
May 5, 2025 at 12:56 PM
Reposted by Spencer
reckless.bsky.social
It does seem like “are foreign movies a national security emergency” is a question more tariff coverage should be asking
atrupar.com Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · Sep 29
Trump: "I will be imposing a 100% Tariff on any and all movies that are made outside of the United States."
Our movie making business has been stolen from the United States of America, by other Countries, just like stealing “candy from a baby.” California, with its weak and incompetent Governor, has been particularly hard hit! Therefore, in order to solve this long time, never ending problem, I will be imposing a 100% Tariff on any and all movies that are made outside of the United States. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! President DJT
September 29, 2025 at 3:24 PM
Reposted by Spencer
babney.bsky.social
Line drawing of a fish coming up onto the land. Below it, in a typeface akin to some tarot cards, are the words: THE FOOL
August 14, 2025 at 10:58 PM
Reposted by Spencer
mosheroperandi.bsky.social
I think it's now possible to make a poli-sci course that equips one for modern political analysis better than most classic theory and has a syllabus sourced entirely from random internet posts.

Text 1. Wilhoit's Law, born as part of a 2018 blog comment
crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/l...
There is no such thing as liberalism — or progressivism, etc. There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham’s Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation. There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely. Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time. For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual. As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence. So this tells us what anti-conservatism must be: the proposition that the law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone. Then the appearance arises that the task is to map “liberalism”, or “progressivism”, or “socialism”, or whateverthefuckkindofstupidnoise-ism, onto the core proposition of anti-conservatism. No, it a’n’t. The task is to throw all those things on the exact same burn pile as the collected works of all the apologists for conservatism, and start fresh. The core proposition of anti-conservatism requires no supplementation and no exegesis. It is as sufficient as it is necessary. What you see is what you get: The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
July 13, 2025 at 1:07 AM
Reposted by Spencer
garyseconomics.bsky.social
I'm back. Here's how we fix the UK's dire economic and political situation www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMor...
I'm back – and I think we can win
YouTube video by Garys Economics
www.youtube.com
July 13, 2025 at 8:11 AM
Reposted by Spencer
wired.com
A team of astronomers recently discovered the traveling space object, just the third of its kind to pass through our solar system. www.wired.com/story/heres-...
Everything We Know About the Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS
A team of astronomers recently discovered the traveling space object, just the third of its kind to pass through our solar system.
www.wired.com
July 13, 2025 at 9:03 AM
spencerthielmann.bsky.social
Huge news for @emilyberge.bsky.social and myself. Our debut middle grade has finally been announced! Emily articulated it perfectly (as she always does)—see thread below

#booksky
June 28, 2025 at 2:31 AM
Reposted by Spencer
adashtra.bsky.social
The worst part about this is not so much getting the definition of the phrase wrong but the asserting the idea that humans have three feet
June 2, 2025 at 11:40 PM
Reposted by Spencer
wired.com
As Trump makes deals across the Middle East this week, we revisit our deep dive on spymaster sheikh, Tahnoun bin Zayed al Nahyan. He's the UAE’s chess-obsessed, jiujitsu-loving intelligence chief who controls vast sums of sovereign wealth. America’s AI giants are scrambling for a piece of it.
A Spymaster Sheikh Controls a $1.5 Trillion Fortune. He Wants to Use It to Dominate AI
Tahnoun bin Zayed al Nahyan—the UAE’s chess-obsessed, jiujitsu-loving intelligence chief—controls vast sums of sovereign wealth. America’s AI giants are scrambling for a piece of it.
www.wired.com
May 16, 2025 at 1:25 PM
Reposted by Spencer
npr.org
A pair of U.K. scholars discovered the mislabeled document in Harvard Law School's digital archives. The university bought it for just $27.50 in 1946. It turned out to be an authentic copy dating to 1300.
Harvard learned it has an authentic Magna Carta. In 1946, it paid less than $28 for it
A pair of U.K. scholars discovered the mislabled document in Harvard Law School's digital archives. The university bought it for just $27.50 in 1946. It turned out to be an authentic copy dating to 1...
www.npr.org
May 15, 2025 at 6:13 PM
Reposted by Spencer
reckless.bsky.social
If you thought social media had scrambled America’s CEOs just wait until they’re fully cooked by AI apple.news/AJ_ht7MMyT9G...
Copilot consumes Nadella’s life outside the office as well. He likes podcasts, but instead of listening to them, he loads transcripts into the Copilot app on his iPhone so he can chat with the voice assistant about the content of an episode in the car on his commute to Redmond. At the office, he relies on Copilot to deliver summaries of messages he receives in Outlook and Teams and toggles among at least 10 custom agents from Copilot Studio. He views them as his AI chiefs of staff, delegating meeting prep, research and other tasks to the bots. “I’m an email typist,” Nadella jokes of his job, noting that Copilot is thankfully very good at triaging his messages.
May 16, 2025 at 2:57 AM
spencerthielmann.bsky.social
This article has such great moments. This was my favorite.
#articleclub
May 7, 2025 at 9:52 PM
spencerthielmann.bsky.social
April 10, 2025 at 12:03 PM
spencerthielmann.bsky.social
April 4, 2025 at 3:23 AM
spencerthielmann.bsky.social
www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
Column | Delete your DNA from 23andMe right now
The genetic information company declared bankruptcy on Sunday, and California’s attorney general has issued a privacy “consumer alert.”
www.washingtonpost.com
March 25, 2025 at 3:16 AM
spencerthielmann.bsky.social
Truly unbelievable.
theatlantic.com The Atlantic @theatlantic.com · Mar 24
American war planning usually takes place in highly secure facilities. But the Trump administration planned its strikes on the Houthis using a group chat—and accidentally included The Atlantic’s editor in chief, @jeffreygoldberg.bsky.social. theatln.tc/AmsjsuT6
March 24, 2025 at 9:18 PM
spencerthielmann.bsky.social
#articleclub continues

www.economist.com/1843/2025/02...
Tyler Cowen, the man who wants to know everything
He is Silicon Valley’s favourite economist. Does his lust for knowledge have a place in the age of AI?
www.economist.com
March 16, 2025 at 2:06 AM