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thelasttheorist.bsky.social
Steve T PhD
@thelasttheorist.bsky.social
2.5K followers 800 following 25K posts
Social scientist, project manager, engineer
Kansas, New School, and Tufts alum
Still running
https://storrente.com
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thelasttheorist.bsky.social
As a good lib, I choose second best for sake of everyone's net gain.
A ho-hum picture of the Northern Lights taken from the top of a parking garage. Brightly lit street below with a bit of the foothills starting to slope upward at the left. Above the horizon the sky is a hazy, dusty green color that fades to red higher up. The whole effect is kind of soft compared to some of the other dramatic photos we're seeing tonight.
November 12, 2025 at 5:00 AM
thelasttheorist.bsky.social
I'm out of jail and out on bail and that's the way it goes.
Screen grab of my post from yesterday that reads "In my defense, I also contacted my members of Congress" and below that the original post itself has a screen grab of my avatar and handle with the "Posts a lot: more than 100 times yesterday" label. I drew some red arrows under my handle in the upper post to show that today the label has disappeared.
November 11, 2025 at 2:59 PM
thelasttheorist.bsky.social
In my defense, I also contacted my members of Congress.
Screen shot of my avatar and handle with the usage labeler tag underneath: "Posts a lot: more than 100 times yesterday" White text on dark background. I've highlighted the tag text in green.
November 10, 2025 at 3:13 PM
thelasttheorist.bsky.social
Looks like some of the staffers knew in the wee hours earlier this morning.
Screen shot of the Google Trends page for the word "primary" on today, Nov. 9, 2025. It shows low levels of searching for primary, below 25 per hour, for most of the day. there's a huge spike between 1 and 2 AM, up to 100 searches per hour. Blue data line on white background with gray horizontal lines for the qty (y axis) and time markers (x axis)
November 10, 2025 at 2:31 AM
thelasttheorist.bsky.social
I was doing this earlier but somehow it's my head that hurts now.
Capture of a plot from my Garmin watch showing elevation during my run. Black background, white text, green plot for elevation. It shows a 2 hour and 3 minutes run, at altitude, with a lot of elevation gain.
November 10, 2025 at 2:07 AM
thelasttheorist.bsky.social
One thing that sucks is I think we finally did drag some of these Senate cadavers out of the cave into the light, but it only takes a couple who can't quit the dancing shadows.
Screen shot from the film The Matrix, of Cypher (Joe Pantoliano) a bald white guy about 40 with a mustache and a soul patch. He's sitting in a steakhouse, holding up a fork with a prodigious piece of rare meat on it, as if deep in contemplation. It's the scene where he's meeting with Agent Smith (the bad guy, played by Hugo Weaving) and selling out his crew mates so he can go back into the Matrix and have all his memories wiped. Giving up the struggle to do the right thing, and instead choosing his own comfort and advantage. Dooming his friends to death.
November 10, 2025 at 12:38 AM
thelasttheorist.bsky.social
Dunno if it's on purpose but the cover is a brilliant call back to Leviathan, except here the many individuals are atomized into a uniform grid instead of composed into the "artificiall man."
Screen shot of part of the cover from Thomas Hobbes's book Leviathan. It's a woodcut print, black ink on white paper, of a king - a white man with a crown, sword in his right hand and scepter in his left, mustache and long curly hair. He's very large and appears over a piece of countryside that's much smaller, with little houses etc. The illustration of his body is actually composed of smaller illustrations of people. Image from the wikipedia page for Leviathan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(Hobbes_book) Closer shot of the body of the Sovereign in on the cover of Leviathan. They all have little hats on and are mainly posed facing toward and up to the sovereign's face, so you see a lot of round hats on their heads, tops pointing back to the viewer's POV. Again, image available on the Leviathan Wikipedia page. Throw Wikipedia a couple of bucks if you can, support credible independent knowledge preservation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(Hobbes_book)
November 9, 2025 at 4:35 PM
thelasttheorist.bsky.social
I was just casually leaving the coffee shop when this book assaulted me and demanded to be taken home and put at the top of the Unread Pile.
Photo of the cover of Brian Massumi's book The Personality of Power (Duke U Press, 2025). Its black with a photo collage made up of many smaller full-body photos of people. The cover text is relatively small, with Massumi's name at the upper left and the title lower on the right.
November 9, 2025 at 4:09 PM
thelasttheorist.bsky.social
Can't see beyond the horizon no matter how much you stare.
Photo of the Gulf of Mexico at sunset, taken from the beach in Florida. Brown sand with light ripples and a bit of foam. The water is a dusky green-gray with a darker bluer stripe at the horizon. The sky is overcast and darkening but with some white areas and orange where the lingering sunlight is leaking through. It's a square photo with the horizon dividing it in half.
November 9, 2025 at 3:43 AM
thelasttheorist.bsky.social
I don't think this guy will become governor, but it would be funny if the anti-vax crowd turned on AI.
Photo of an article in the Naples Daily News about Republican candidate for governor Paul Renner. There's the lower half of a photo of Renner visible at the top. I highlighted a sentence about "removing harmful ingredients from school lunches" and then lower down another sentence that says he will require parental opt-in consent for kids using AI. Below that it says he's going to emphasize functional and naturopathic medicine.
November 7, 2025 at 1:48 PM
thelasttheorist.bsky.social
My favorite bird, the anhinga. Swims to hunt and then stands in the sun to dry its feathers.
A black anhinga stands on a concrete water control feature with a metal grate. Dark canal water and green bushes in the background. The bird has jet black feathers with some white accents on the wings. Long shore bird neck like a heron. Sharp medium long yellow beak. I think this one's a juvenile because the neck feathers are gray-brown instead of black and they're still a bit fuzzy.
November 7, 2025 at 1:15 AM
thelasttheorist.bsky.social
I went over this hill TWICE today, from 3 feet above sea level to ten feet.
Screen shot of a graph from my Garmin watch. It shows elevation (y axis, plotted in green) run time (x axis). Black background with white text. I circled the towering 10 foot peak in purple. The whole run is pretty much between 3 and 8 feet.
November 6, 2025 at 8:49 PM
thelasttheorist.bsky.social
Tough elevation changes on today's run.
Elevation graph from my Garmin watch showing elevation (X axis) and time (Y axis). White text and grid on black background with green shaded in for the data. It shows a 58 minute run with odd, choppy looking numbers for the elevation. Next picture for more details. I zoomed in on the left side of the graph. Now you can see that the elevation of the run only varies in a range of 3 feet to 7 feet above sea level. I circled the y axis in purple and wrote "feet !" on the graph to emphasize this point.
November 4, 2025 at 12:45 AM
thelasttheorist.bsky.social
Hello fine sir.
Photo of a wood stork chilling in a thin patch of shade, on the grass. White pumice rocks and a muddy little creek in the background. The bird is white, with a body about 20% larger than a rugby 🏉. It has a head like a vulture, covered with leathery gray skin with a black band over the top. Its beak is thin and long. It's completely scrunched up, long neck folded and legs bent in front. Pink web feet just visible at the bottom.
November 3, 2025 at 7:08 PM
thelasttheorist.bsky.social
Different layers today.
Tall skinny photo of the Gulf of Mexico from the beach. Clear blue sky at the top, all the way down to the bottom third of the frame. It lightens a bit by the horizon with some haze. Then there's a blue layer of water at the horizon, getting more turquoise towards the beach. A little bit of white foam over light brown sand at the very bottom.
November 3, 2025 at 5:07 PM
thelasttheorist.bsky.social
The ad I was served reading this article...
Screen shot from the article on my phone (vertical orientation). It shows an advertising photo and then below that some bold links for related news stories. The ad is a photo of a very small consumer spy camera propped up in some human finger tips. It's a little rectangular thing with bright colors and says "SPY CAM" right on the side. The Links are for stories about spying and China.
November 3, 2025 at 2:06 PM
thelasttheorist.bsky.social
Clam pass at night. Sign says there's an alligator 🐊 nearby but we didn't see it.
Night photo of Clam Pass. In the foreground at left and right are dark shapes of the mangrove forest. In the center is glassy water of the inlet. On the horizon are some bright mid-rise residential buildings. Gray sky above. The whole scene is somewhat brighter than you would expect, because there's a 3/4 moon out (not pictured) and I used the night setting on the camera.
November 3, 2025 at 1:21 AM
thelasttheorist.bsky.social
Greens and blues
Photo of the Gulf of Mexico from southwest Florida. Blue sky with just a bit of cloud lint at the top left. Milky haze clinging to the far horizon. Blue stripe of the Gulf just below the horizon, which fades to marine green close to the shore (which is itself out of frame).
November 2, 2025 at 6:06 PM
thelasttheorist.bsky.social
"These are essentially just [commercial leases], which has allowed us to push the leverage [push gesture] further than we would be able or even allowed to do . . ."
Screen shot from the film Margin Call, showing Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto), a white guy with black hair, a blue suit, white shirt, and dark tie, speaking in a corporate board room. He's mid-sentence, holding a pencil in one hand and gesturing with the other open hand. A blurry piece of office art hangs on the wall behind and to the right in the frame. It's the scene where he's explaining that all their mortgage CDOs are now shit.
October 31, 2025 at 4:46 AM
thelasttheorist.bsky.social
Dunno if I can afford those. I may have to get a substitute.
product photo of "groucho glasses" from the Walmart website It's a pair of round black eyeglass frames with no lenses, with big bushy black eyebrows affixed to the tops, a large fake nose hanging from the bridge, and an equally bushy black mustache hanging below the nose. Photo taken against a white background.
October 28, 2025 at 5:20 PM
thelasttheorist.bsky.social
after giving my conference paper
Photo of Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) being arrested at the end of the film Wall Street. He's a 30-ish white guy with brown hair, wearing a sharp gray stockbroker suit. Standing in a glass-walled office, facing to our left, hands behind his back, crestfallen look on his face. An '80s era New York policeman with a cap and light blue short sleeved uniform shirt is hooking him up. Behind the glass all of Bud's coworkers are watching from the bullpen.
October 27, 2025 at 5:59 AM
thelasttheorist.bsky.social
He could have saved a lot of money.
Photo of a vintage Mickey Mouse watch by Ingersoll. A shiny round steel case with very large knurled crown at the 3 o'clock position. Off-white dial with black markers and numbers 1-12. Mickey Mouse is a the center of the dial, and his arms (thin black lines with yellow glove-hands) point out the minutes and hours.
October 26, 2025 at 3:02 AM
thelasttheorist.bsky.social
Creative genius at work.
Screen shot from the article in the original post. Black text on white background, red Hollywood Reporter logo at top left. It says: "Among Coppola's seven watches in the New York sale is the F.P. Journe FFC prototype, a one-of-a-kind watch that started as a suggestion from the filmmaker to the watchmaker during a dinner at Coppola's Napa Valley home in 2012." And I've highlighted the next bit in yellow: "Coppola aske Journe whethr in all of human history a timepiece had been made using a hand to indicate the time."
October 26, 2025 at 3:02 AM
thelasttheorist.bsky.social
Things are largely terrible but I am crushing it in a way I thought I would not get back to. Or if not crushing it, at least squeezing it pretty hard.
Running plot from my Garmin showing elevation in green (starting around 5300 ft and topping out above 6050 ft). Over the top is a red line for heart rate, jagged but steady in the high 130s. Black background with white and red axis and text.
October 26, 2025 at 12:20 AM
thelasttheorist.bsky.social
He's a computer scientist who walked in through the door guys like Silver opened. Dial-twisters who can tell a story that appeals to the money people. He's not here for dialogue.
Screen shot from Jain's profile page. White text on dark blue background. It says he has 31.5k followers and is following 294. I underlined in green the next part, which says "Account not actively monitored."
October 24, 2025 at 11:35 PM