Aaron
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aarond42.bsky.social
Aaron
@aarond42.bsky.social
270 followers 700 following 210 posts
Programmer / writer / magician in NY
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aarond42.bsky.social
He does know that the Nobel Prize for literature is already a thing, right? Right?
Excerpt from the dissent reading: " In the interest of time, this dissent is, admittedly, disjointed. Usually, in dissenting from an opinion of this length, I would spend more days refining and reorganizing the dissent for purposes of impact and readability. But that approach is not reasonably possible here because these two judges have not allowed it. The resulting dissent is far from a literary masterpiece. If, however, there were a Nobel Prize for Fiction, Judge Brown’s opinion would be a prime candidate. "
November 19, 2025 at 10:28 PM
aarond42.bsky.social
Pan's in the corner now, looking how I feel.
Pantalaimon, a three-in-December goldendoodle, lying in the corner looking like the world weighs heavy on him
October 25, 2025 at 1:22 AM
aarond42.bsky.social
Here's Pantalaimon on the subway, at a coffee shop, and pleading to be let into his favorite book store, which gives him a treat every time. (He didn't believe me that they were closed.)
Pan, an almost-three-year-old goldendoodle, on the subway. He loves the subway. He makes his rounds, asking for a pet from every human. Pan sitting on a stool at a coffee shop, smiling impatiently, waiting for his dental treat (that they keep in a jar just off camera) Pan pleading to be allowed into the book shop. It's closed, but he doesn't believe me until I pull the door to demonstrate.
October 24, 2025 at 4:18 AM
aarond42.bsky.social
I don't know what it was when you said that, but now it's this.
Jerry's post has 86 likes
October 9, 2025 at 5:15 AM
aarond42.bsky.social
Honestly, Pantalaimon, I get it.
September 19, 2025 at 5:39 AM
aarond42.bsky.social
Pan has decided that silicone mats are for dogs and not dog bowls, and thus he's evicted both of his bowls from the mat and is nursing them like beers while he lies on it.
Pantalaimon, my two-and-a-half-year-old goldendoodle, lying on a chewed up silicone bowl mat, next to the two bowls that used to live on it. Pan is mostly obscured by a door frame. Pantalaimon smiling up at me from the mat, nursing an empty dinner bowl. Another angle on Pantalaimon nursing his bowl from the mat, this one including my right foot for scale.
August 26, 2025 at 2:31 AM
aarond42.bsky.social
I see he's been at this for a while
John Dunn replying, "It is brainwashed and an insane thought that you believe that being white brings success" in response to a John Scalzi skeet that does not in fact say anything like that, but rather says, "(Plus, you know: Privilege that comes from being white, cis and straight in this society, none of which guarantees success or luck but means I have fewer impediments to success than others might even that luck strikes. I may have written about this at some point.)"
August 9, 2025 at 11:46 PM
aarond42.bsky.social
I gotchu
@jcssalterego.bsky.social's verification badge. It's composed of a blue-shifted circle of Jerry's pfp with a checkmark made of his eyes cloned over each other a bunch of times and, in one instance, his smile.
July 23, 2025 at 5:46 AM
aarond42.bsky.social
They're also claiming that outreach is illegal, because (unintelligible mumbles)
The group claims that Hopkins has targeted “underrepresented minority” groups through race-based outreach and pathway programs, which includes those who identify as American Indian or Alaskan Native; Black or African American; Hispanic, Latinx or of Spanish origin; or native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander. That, in turn, helps shape the applicant pool to achieve “racially preferred results” without having to consider race as an explicit admissions factor, the complaint reads.
July 18, 2025 at 2:18 PM
aarond42.bsky.social
Pantalaimon in his backpack, waiting for the bus
July 4, 2025 at 3:05 PM
aarond42.bsky.social
Figures
Billy Binion's profile, blocked for me because he's on a blocklist of TERFs called "A Very British Bigotry
June 30, 2025 at 5:54 AM
aarond42.bsky.social
Oh no, he's 100% trying to be antisemitic too.
Bo French tweet reading "The DMs I get when I post something like this are interesting. It's just a poll. But I get accused of being on different sides, depending on who sends them. My take is that radical islam wants to conquer us. You may not like jews, but to suggest they are a bigger threat to Americans is Jew Derangement Syndrome." as if it's normal and healthy to dislike Jews just for their ethnicity/religion, and to think they're a threat to America, but it's deranged not to think that Muslims (or, as he for some reason always styles them, "Islamists") are a bigger threat.
June 28, 2025 at 2:51 AM
aarond42.bsky.social
I mean, if you start the story here, the judge "interrupted" the flight. If you start a little earlier, ICE flew migrants out of the country without a chance to ask for humanitarian protection (and w/ a final destination of South Sudan) against the judge's orders.
A federal judge in Boston interrupted an Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation flight taking immigrants from Cuba, Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos and Mexico to South Sudan more than two weeks ago. U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy said the flight violated his order prohibiting officials from sending immigrants to countries where they aren’t citizens without a chance to ask for humanitarian protection. He instructed officials to arrange screenings.
June 6, 2025 at 2:38 AM
aarond42.bsky.social
Its talons remind me of the Rockodile I printed back in 2019.
The Rockodile on the bed of my printer Overhead view of the Rockodile on the bed of my printer. 3/4 profile of the Rockodile on the bed of my printer.
May 30, 2025 at 7:01 PM
aarond42.bsky.social
Is that a theses/feces pun?

Because my favorite in that genre is from the opening paragraph of The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie.

www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/158944...
ONE I have lost count of the days that have passed since I fled the horrors of Vasco Miranda's mad fortress in the Andalusian mountain-village of Benengeli; ran from death under cover of darkness and left a message nailed to the door. And since then along my hungry, heat-hazed way there have been further bunches of scribbled sheets, swings of the hammer, sharp exclamations of two-inch nails. Long ago when I was green my beloved said to me in fondness, 'Oh, you Moor, you strange black man, always so full of theses, never a church door to nail them to.' (She, a self-professedly godly un-Christian Indian, joked about Luther's protest at Wittenberg to tease her determinedly ungodly Indian Christian lover: how stories travel, what mouths they end up in!) Unfortunately, my mother overheard; and darted, quick as snakebite: 'So full, you mean, of faeces.' Yes, mother, you had the last word on that subject, too: as about everything.
May 30, 2025 at 4:05 PM
aarond42.bsky.social
Happy Towel Day from Pantalaimon!
Pan requesting a belly rub on a Don't Panic towel Pan still requesting that belly rub. Pan just happy to be a frood. Do you sass that hoopy, Pantalaimon? He's a frood who always knows where his towel is.
May 25, 2025 at 4:26 PM
aarond42.bsky.social
They're weirdly obsessed with gay and trans people existing.
maudhullah skeet responding to a video about how Republicans first claimed gay marriage would tear apart society, then shifted to demonizing trans people once the Overton window shifted enough that hating gay people was uncool. Maudhullah's reply reads, "It only seem like a repetitive cycle because abusive ignorant men never learn to man up and acknowledge their wrongdoings now they just compete with women on being feminine and taking dick 🤦.... No soft talk will ever solve this and women are too emotionally attached to these useless men... 🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦" A series of unhinged maudhullah skeets: "Why you hide and terrorize #straight people? Come out the closet 🤣 we need to do some ♻️" "Gents are gents and Ladies are ladies! Basic #Math plus we #LOVE Ladies. They look too good 😍" "Straight Gs! Always Straight! Forever Straight"
May 25, 2025 at 3:06 PM
aarond42.bsky.social
Pam from the office saying, "They're the same picture."
May 9, 2025 at 7:57 PM
aarond42.bsky.social
ಠ_ಠ
Nguyen recounted a similar chain of events, adding that his client, who’s Vietnamese, had previously been threatened with the prospect of being sent to Libya. At one point, the detainee and others were ordered to sign a document agreeing to be deported to the country, according to the emergency motion filed on Wednesday, in which Nguyen’s client is a plaintiff. “He didn’t read the document. He can’t read [English] and it wasn’t translated in Vietnamese, or through an interpreter. So he refused to sign,” Nguyen said. “And because he refused to sign, he was separated from the other folks.” The emergency motion said that detainees who refused to sign off on the removal to Libya were put in separate rooms, “cuffed in” and forced to provide their signatures for the document.
May 9, 2025 at 2:06 PM
aarond42.bsky.social
The memorandum opinion gets off to a strong start.
MEMORANDUM OPINION No American President has ever before issued executive orders like the one at issue in this lawsuit targeting a prominent law firm with adverse actions to be executed by all Executive branch agencies but, in purpose and effect, this action draws from a playbook as old as Shakespeare, who penned the phrase: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, HENRY VI, PART 2, act 4, sc. 2, l. 75. When Shakespeare’s character, a rebel leader intent on becoming king, see id. l. 74, hears this suggestion, he promptly incorporates this tactic as part of his plan to assume power, leading in the same scene to the rebel leader demanding “[a]way with him,” referring to an educated clerk, who “can make obligations and write court hand,” id. l. 90, 106. Eliminating lawyers as the guardians of the rule of law removes a major impediment to the path to more power. See Walters v. Nat’l Ass’n of Radiation Survivors, 473 U.S. 305, 371 n.24 (1985) (Stevens, J., dissenting) (explaining the import of the same Shakespearean statement to be “that disposing of lawyers is a step in the direction of a totalitarian form of government”). The importance of independent lawyers to ensuring the American judicial system’s fair and impartial administration of justice has been recognized in this country since its founding era.
May 3, 2025 at 4:41 AM
aarond42.bsky.social
Michael Crichton called this Gell-Mann amnesia.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Ma...
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know. That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia. — Michael Crichton, "Why Speculate?" (2002)[2]
April 20, 2025 at 4:51 AM
aarond42.bsky.social
@jamellebouie.net I made a quick mockup of a couple interpretations of that
A mockup of a yellow baseball cap with a rainbow Gadsden Flag snake and text A mockup of a Gadsden Flag snake and text on a rainbow baseball cap
April 19, 2025 at 9:56 PM
aarond42.bsky.social
What I don't see here from @kirstengillibrand.bsky.social: A commitment to vote "no" on the SAVE Act
A reply from Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, reading: Thank you for contacting me to share your thoughts on the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act and American Confidence in Elections (ACE) Act. The freedom to vote is fundamental to the strength of our democracy and I am committed to ensuring that every eligible American has equal access to the ballot. Since arriving in Congress, one of my biggest priorities has been preserving and advancing democracy. I proudly support the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (VRAA), which will both work to improve access to the ballot for all citizens, advance campaign finance reform, and preserve our democracy. I am honored that the VRAA includes provisions of my Voter Empowerment Act, which seeks to expand voter registration and voting access by requiring states to make voter registration available online, establish automatic voter registration systems, and encourage people under 18 years of age to pre-register to vote. I am also proud to support other bills that will ensure every individual has equal access to the polls, including the Youth Voting Rights Act, Register to Vote Act, Same Day Registration Act, and the Stop Automatically Voiding Eligible Voters Off Their Enlisted Rolls in States (SAVE VOTERS) Act. The right to vote is inherent to our country’s founding and I remain committed to combating any attempts to undermine our democracy. Please rest assured that I will keep your thoughts in mind as Congress considers the SAVE Act and ACE Act. Again, thank you for contacting me. If there’s another issue that’s important to you or a question you’d like to ask, I invite you to send me a message through my website and follow my work in the Senate on Facebook and Twitter. I look forward to keeping in touch throughout my time in the Senate. Sincerely, Kirsten Gillibrand United States Senator
April 15, 2025 at 2:11 PM
aarond42.bsky.social
If the government won't fund the American Women's History museum, I'm more than happy to chip in.
News headline reading: "'Improper Ideology'—Trump Demands Women's History Museum Remove Trans People Or Lose Funding The American Women's History Museum must remove trans people from its exhibits and programming, or lose its federal funding, Trump says." A web page thanking me for my donation to the Smithsonian American Women's History Museum
April 9, 2025 at 3:41 PM
aarond42.bsky.social
I just sent the following email (and borrowed some language from you)
Dean Messonnier and Executive Assistant Schlater: Is it true that UNC Gillings School of Public Health is eliminating its Health Equity and Social Justice MPH concentration? If so, that is concerning and antithetical to your school's mission. Equity is foundational to public health, which is why it's one of the first things the Trump administration is trying to dismantle. UNC Gillings giving in is a cowardly capitulation, and a devastating one. I urge you to reconsider. Cowardice is contagious, but so too is courage. If you stand up, other universities will as well, and together you'll be one of the most effective power centers defending democracy and the value of higher education as an institution; if you capitulate, as you are currently poised to do, no obeisance will ever be enough. The Trump administration will always demand more, and each time you'll be less able to refuse. Before you know it, your institution will have sold its soul for nothing at all. Respectfully, Aaron
April 6, 2025 at 12:45 AM