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rsperling.bsky.social
@rsperling.bsky.social
Social Science Librarian at Yale University. Hiker. Servant to two peculiar cats.
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December 7, 2025 at 6:21 PM
“I Pray Heaven To Bestow The Best Of
Blessings On This House And All that shall hereafter Inhabit it. May none but Honest and Wise Men ever rule under This Roof.” - John Adams
Grateful for Garrett Graff and his ability to explain moral clarity
The destruction of the East Wing is a reminder that America has violated the only check-and-balance that actually ends up mattering: www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/the-only-c...
October 23, 2025 at 3:24 PM
She’s corrupt as hell and she kills dogs.
“I’ve not heard of anything this egregious — a donor calling up and saying I need help and getting it,” one disaster relief expert said, “while others may be getting denied assistance or otherwise waiting in line for help that may or may not come.”
Kristi Noem Fast-Tracked Millions in Disaster Aid to Florida Tourist Attraction After Campaign Donor Intervened
The DHS chief has been widely criticized for slowing down FEMA’s response after natural disasters. Texts and emails obtained by ProPublica point to an effective way to get help faster: have one of Noe...
www.propublica.org
October 2, 2025 at 6:12 PM
Don’t pull stunts with baristas; their jobs are grueling enough. And don’t ever cross picket lines.
In @nytopinion.nytimes.com

As a recent viral video from a Starbucks shows, “baristas, often coded by the right as ‘woke,’ can end up pinned between hostile customers intent on humiliating us and a company intent on insulating itself,” Cassie Pritchard, a Starbucks barista, writes in a guest essay.
Opinion | How Did My Fellow Baristas End Up on the Front Lines of a Culture War?
This is the era of effigy politics.
nyti.ms
October 1, 2025 at 12:35 PM
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I've been listening to Long Shadow, which is Garrett's podcast about 9/11, and it's first rate narrative history. Garrett is our best chronicler of that day.
I want to share today three pieces of writing about 9/11 and the lessons I’ve learned across years of researching and studying that terrible day. www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/luck-traum...
Luck, Trauma, and Remembering 24 Years Later
The three stories I think about on 9/11
www.doomsdayscenario.co
September 11, 2025 at 1:47 PM
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I wrote about how America is likely to start feeling its first broad pain from the DOGE cuts and Trump firings this month as the agencies that help secure our summers—FEMA, NOAA, the National Park Service, and air traffic control—have been especially hard hit: www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/prepare-fo...
Prepare for America’s Summer of Pain
The Trump administration has hollowed out the parts of government that secure our summers.
www.doomsdayscenario.co
June 4, 2025 at 6:48 PM
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“If I were president… I will end that war in one day, it would take 24 hours.”

“I would get that ended in a period of 24 hours. It would be easy, that deal would be easy.”

Instead, he grants his fellow psychopath latitude for ongoing mass murder.

Insults Zelenskyy.
Envoy: “Putin’s not a bad guy.”
SUMY - the numbers climb again.

Murdered: 32 (two children)
Wounded: 84 (ten children)

Bodies have been removed but bloodstains remain.
We can also see the pain etched on to faces of even Ukraine's hardened emergency workers.

#RussiaIsATerroristState
April 13, 2025 at 12:30 PM
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Spectacular view of 100,000 people attending the #HandsOff march in NYC
April 5, 2025 at 8:44 PM
Slava Ukraini!
February 28, 2025 at 7:01 PM
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Iris Cummings Critchell, a swimmer who was the last survivor of the American team that competed in Hitler's 1936 Olympics in Berlin and an aviator who flew bombers as a pilot with the Women’s Air Force in World War II, died Friday in California. She was 104.
Iris Cummings Critchell, 104, Dies; Olympic Swimmer Turned Aviator
The last survivor of the American team that competed in Hitler’s 1936 Games in Berlin, she went on to become a wartime pilot and an aeronautics instructor.
www.nytimes.com
January 30, 2025 at 2:38 PM
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Think about this and how Fox and the GOP would politicize an Army helicopter crashing into a commercial airplane days after a Black woman president tried to gut air safety & installed the least qualified man ever as Defense Secretary.

THAT is the degree to which Dems should politicize this crash.
The head of the FAA, Mike Whitaker, resigned on January 20 — one year into his 5 year term — after facing relentless criticism from Musk for not approving SpaceX missions quickly enough.

The Senate confirmed him unanimously in 2023.

No acting FAA head has been appointed.
January 30, 2025 at 12:02 PM
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➡️ January 20: FAA director fired
➡️ January 21: Air Traffic Controller hiring frozen
➡️ January 22: Aviation Safety Advisory Committee disbanded
➡️ January 28: Buyout/retirement demand sent to existing employees
➡️ January 29: First American mid-air collision in 16 years

Making America Great Again!
January 30, 2025 at 3:37 PM
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A universe in motion seen from the International Space Station during a night pass over Earth (view fullscreen).
January 20, 2025 at 10:28 PM
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In a wilderness where gale force winds & furious weather reign supreme, Patagonia's mount Cerro Torre is bathed in the warm light of the rising moon, while the stars reflect beautifully in it's still waters.

#photography #travel #nature #bluesky #landscape #landscapephotography #naturephotography
January 15, 2025 at 12:14 PM
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January 7, 2025 at 12:24 AM
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This was shared with us and made us smile! 😊
December 10, 2024 at 9:35 PM
Yup, that’s where I’m at.
I can't bring myself to be even a little mad about Biden pardoning Hunter. The values and norms he'd been trying to uphold were obliterated by American voters last month. Why sacrifice your son to a dead god?
December 2, 2024 at 7:33 PM
*cough*DixieChicks*cough*
Meghan McCain claims "people are more comfortable talking to conservatives because conservatives don’t try to cancel them." Yet, there was an entire conservative boycott of a beer company because a trans woman was given a can of beer with her likeness on it to feature on her personal social media.
November 26, 2024 at 7:13 PM
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In the wake of the U.S. election, Natl Academy of Sciences President Marcia McNutt has authored a spot-on editorial in Science, stressing the apolitical nature of science and how it remains vital to informing a lot of public policy. Best read all week!! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
#scipol 🧪
November 16, 2024 at 1:42 AM
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If anything, we’re probably under-imagining how disruptive and different the next decade or generation of America will be. I sketch out here two scenarios (not mutually exclusive) about the peril and challenge ahead: www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/two-scenar...
Two scenarios for the years ahead
What if America Doesn’t Meet This Moment?
www.doomsdayscenario.co
November 13, 2024 at 4:16 PM
You’ve been kidnapped. The characters from the last tv show you watched are trying rescue you. Who’s coming to save you?
November 13, 2024 at 12:59 AM
Some content to prove I’m human. Cordelia and Gloria: not sure what I’d do without these clowns.
November 12, 2024 at 1:28 AM