vpanderson.com - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

“The Peaches Are Not Ready,” a one-act play starring a duck and a bowl of peaches

submitted 5 hours ago • 2 comments

Nearly half of 140 senior SSA administrators have been forced out or left the agency. A decimation of hundreds of years of administrative expertise at the insitence of the ignorant. (Gift article) www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/u...

submitted 6 hours ago • 11 comments

What I learned today is that the @nytopinion.nytimes.com doesn’t believe in young people of color in leadership. Time and time again people tout “seniority” and “experience”. 75 years ago, there were no women of color elected in NY. Where is “seniority” or “experience” to come from for us?

submitted 12 hours ago • 12 comments

If you have enough money and promise to protect the comfortable, you typically have all the "experience" you need.

submitted 5 hours ago • 0 comments

It has been four days since Kristi Noem, the head of the department of homeland security, said this in public. If meant literally, it describes the end of democracy in California. If not meant literally, would be nice for that to be clarified and for the troops to leave. bsky.app/profile/just...

submitted 7 hours ago • 24 comments

After ruling the NIH grant terminations illegal, Judge Young ended the hearing with an eye-opening speech. “This represents racial discrimination, and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community. That's what this is. I would be blind not to call it out. My duty is to call it out. And I do so.”

submitted 8 hours ago • 11 comments

Corrupt as hell. Truly running for Eric Adams's 2nd term. If you want to defeat him, tell everyone you know to rank Brad Lander and Zohran Mamadani 1st and 2nd (or 2nd and 1st). And don't rank Cuomo at all.

submitted 5 hours ago • 3 comments

"Friends and relatives question how immigration authorities were alerted to her location." Pulled over on a flimsy pretext while driving, released w/a warning, then pulled over by ICE minutes later. Local cop who pulled her over has been removed from a chat that included federal enforcement.

submitted 5 hours ago • 1 comment

BREAKING: A federal judge reversed National Institutes of Health's terminations of hundreds of critical research grants that were canceled because of their alleged connection to disfavored topics, including diversity, equity, inclusion, and gender identity. This is a major win for public health.

submitted 5 hours ago • 299 comments

Great line here: "Considered individually, defendants’ legal arguments are meritless. Considered in the aggregate, they are terrifying."

submitted 9 hours ago • 34 comments

Public lands are just that: public, and owned by the taxpayer. Republicans want to auction them off to the highest bidder to pay for their billionaire tax cuts. Hell no.

submitted 8 hours ago • 38 comments

There are too many people out there that think creativity is something that some people have, and its 'extra' to life instead of something integral to humanity that all of us share and have. Its not a side thing to monetize, its something we have to grow and nurture in ourselves always!

submitted 13 hours ago • 4 comments

a lot of these A/I bros who want immediate treasure clearly didn't get the message about the friends we made along the way

submitted 19 hours ago • 2 comments

BREAKING: A federal judge in Massachusetts (the Reagan-appointed William Young) has declared the Trump administration's cuts to NIH grants — ostensibly over Trump's EOs on gender ideology and DEI — are "illegal" and "void." He's ordering many grants restored.

submitted 9 hours ago • 100 comments

I just want 'ai' to go away. The simultaneous widespread poisoning of knowledge; attempt to end-run professions that cultivate critical thinking; and sucking the joy out of everything while ramming unwanted technology down our throats is so exhausting. I just can't anymore.

submitted 12 hours ago • 9 comments

I'm sorry, WHAT?

submitted 10 hours ago • 29 comments

Stolen from a friend's IG:

submitted 9 hours ago • 29 comments

Climate change is helping various kinds of ticks grow their populations and spread to new areas, where they threaten to spread new diseases. I wrote about it and learned some horror-movie-worthy details that you need to know too

submitted 12 hours ago • 14 comments

Today's newsletter is one of the few places where you'll read about Clayton Kershaw defacing his Pride Day cap with a bible verse widely used by homophobes to discredit the LGBTQ+ community. Imagine if it was someone doing that to an American flag cap logo. www.cupofcoffeenews.com/cup-of-coffe...

submitted 12 hours ago • 14 comments

#NoKings but drag kings! #Buffalo #NoKingsDay #NoKingsProtest

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Peaceful and patriotic showing in Buffalo, NY today! (I tried to blur any visible faces.) #NoKings #Buffalo

submitted 2 days ago • 2 comments

No Kings in Buffalo, NY. Great atmosphere! #buffalo #nokings

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Because I currently have no money with which to get new games, I have been playing some of my older ones, including the Batman Arkham series, which honestly still hold up. As such I wanted to draw Harley and Ivy ☺️. #Art #HarleyQuinn #PoisonIvy #Batman

submitted 23 hours ago • 4 comments

So the guy who can singlehandedly set US tariffs on smartphones is launching his own US smartphone company do I have that right

submitted 12 hours ago • 330 comments

It's pretty irritating how many pundits would hear the ideas "I want to shove 100 live scorpions in your mouth" and "I want to shove 0 live scorpions in your mouth" and sagely declare: "The wisest course of action is to let someone shove 50 live scorpions in your mouth."

submitted 13 hours ago • 59 comments

This week, I talked with @silkys13.bsky.social about immigration raids, rising authoritarianism, mass protest, innocence narratives, and what it means to organize effectively in this moment. Given everything that's happening, I highly recommend checking this one out.

submitted 4 days ago • 7 comments

During these unprecedented times, it’s important to remember that, although rare, ‘precedented’ is a word.

submitted 11 hours ago • 27 comments

Oh my god, last week Kristi Noem's Chief of Staff sent a memo to all DHS leadership telling them their memos need to be shorter by quoting an entire Winston Churchill memo from 1940 titled "Brevity." Text of memo shared with me:

submitted 12 hours ago • 92 comments

I live in a world where I am supposed to just accept that this sentence exists

submitted 11 hours ago • 96 comments

BREAKING — Israel Issues First Evacuation Threat to Civilians Inside Tehran

submitted 12 hours ago • 5 comments

I will hold the line on this. Right-wing violence has far more support, materially, institutionally and ideologically, in the U.S. than left-wing violence. There is no both-sidesing it.

submitted 2 days ago • 32 comments

The entire far right propaganda machine is spinning into action to spin this violence as being perpetrated by the left. It will be successful and by week's end a solid portion of the country will believe it was committed by someone on the left, facts be damned.

submitted 11 hours ago • 93 comments

Undocumented immigrants paid an effective federal income tax rate of 5.27% in 2022. That means they paid a higher effective tax rate than 5 of the richest Americans…and a higher effective tax rate than 55 mega corporations. So let me ask you: who are the real freeloaders?

submitted 3 days ago • 405 comments

Marble head of Aphrodite emerges from the mud in the excavation of the ancient city of Aizanoi in modern day Turkey (or Türkiye). Probably 1st or 2nd century

submitted 4 days ago • 8 comments

"...the threat of deportation by abusive spouses is louder than ever and allows abusers to wield greater power and control over their victims." www.cbsnews.com/news/alleged...

submitted 1 day ago • 3 comments

My god. 6 MILLION acres of public lands in Oregon, including the vast majority of our national forests, will be sold in a fire sale if the MAGA budget passes.

submitted 22 hours ago • 44 comments

"De La Cruz, 29, and Perez had been delivering food to dairy farmworkers in the area when Border Patrol pulled over their vehicle in the northern Vermont town of Richford" www.bostonglobe.com/2025/06/16/m...

submitted 11 hours ago • 3 comments

Kroger has shut down four Colorado locations as grocery strike begins. The UFCW just launched these initial walk outs, but the strike could grow dramatically and spread across multiple strikes. Over 100,000 supermarket workers have authorized strikes across the West and PNW.

submitted 11 hours ago • 53 comments

LEFT: The fake picture of the Department of Defense just posted. RIGHT: The reality. So now the military is not just arresting us on street corners illegally but spreading disinformation. And it's only Monday.

submitted 12 hours ago • 345 comments

Here is the text of my keynote from the Bram Stoker Awards ceremony. It was a rant masquerading as a keynote. And in pure Becky fashion it is also a call to action. Why We Need Horror Authors in the Fight For the Freedom to Read: raforall.blogspot.com/2025/06/why-...

submitted 14 hours ago • 4 comments

There are many reasons to oppose Cuomo's attempted comeback. An often forgotten one is that during the pandemic, he tried to hand NY over to the tech oligarchs as their AI laboratory. Lots of damning clips in this 2020 interview I did on the subject: www.democracynow.org/2020/5/13/na...

submitted 1 day ago • 7 comments

"Rosenberg, a trained attorney, said the proposed DEI ban would seem to contradict existing state laws, such as those that offer targeted property tax exemptions to help people with disabilities maintain their housing and home ownership." www.bostonglobe.com/2025/06/16/m...

submitted 11 hours ago • 1 comment

You know, I don't have a problem with sexual harassment being something that permanently disqualifies someone from holding public office.

submitted 12 hours ago • 44 comments

i think about this a lot goodnight

submitted 1 day ago • 39 comments

“We’re coming up on our 250th birthday as a country, the association’s about to turn 150, & we’ll be meeting in our nation’s first capital. It feels momentous in a way that I’m not sure it would have in a different year.” President-elect Sam Helmick #ALAAC25 www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

submitted 13 hours ago • 0 comments

I've said it many times before and Andrew Cuomo is making me say it again: we don't have a cancellation problem. We have never had a cancellation problem. To the contrary, we have a problem that "disgrace" is a very temporary embarrassment— an brief entr'acte more than an intermission.

submitted 13 hours ago • 115 comments

Would you like to buy this fine book? Absolutely you would. Action/black comedy for people who like DIE HARD. Get it here (in USA): bookshop.org/a/23067/9781...

submitted 12 hours ago • 1 comment

"Bluesky is dead." Meanwhile, on Bluesky

submitted 12 hours ago • 0 comments

I refuse to give the NYT my eyeballs, so I can't speak to the specifics of this article. But any historians attempting to use AI for either writing or research should be run out of the field. AI is inherently unable to do anything we need it to do to understand and communicate history.

submitted 13 hours ago • 14 comments