Dr. Allison Roberts 's Avatar

Dr. Allison Roberts

@laroberts.bsky.social

Trying to re-build reliable community here (vs the current tw!tt3r); post in personal capacity Sociologist/historian/political scientist interested in world events (current or past), military, disability issues, tech, and more.

148 Followers  |  426 Following  |  2 Posts  |  Joined: 18.10.2023  |  2.2058

Latest posts by laroberts.bsky.social on Bluesky

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Explore the collections in this theme here: buff.ly/BQi6aZp

Explore our accompanying themes here: buff.ly/ThOFbGw

09.05.2025 09:01 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 2    ๐Ÿ” 2    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
Unsplash image of the Earth, mostly the nightside with a tracery of city lights on every continent.

Unsplash image of the Earth, mostly the nightside with a tracery of city lights on every continent.

OK, this is wild.

In September 2023, geophysicists across the world started monitoring a very odd signal coming from the ground under them.

It was picked up in the Arctic. And Antarctica. It was detected everywhere, every 90 seconds, as regular as a metronome, for *nine days*.

What the HELL?

1/

12.05.2025 15:20 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 22535    ๐Ÿ” 7746    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 750    ๐Ÿ“Œ 1496
Archived Resources | The Society for Military History

The Society for Military History is now archiving historical materials related to military history that are disappearing from federal or state websites. We are open to submissions, anonymously or otherwise. Please see
www.smh-hq.org/archivedreso... and note there the submission links.

08.04.2025 12:49 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 387    ๐Ÿ” 210    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 4    ๐Ÿ“Œ 9
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Trump, Hegseth promise record $1 trillion Pentagon budget The surprise announcement comes as the Defense Department prepares to lay off tens of thousands of civilians.

i was told we are drastically cutting costs, everything from cancer research to meals on wheels to weather forecasts, because the country is on the verge of bankruptcy

08.04.2025 11:05 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 782    ๐Ÿ” 206    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 32    ๐Ÿ“Œ 27
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Trump Administration Aims to Spend $45 Billion to Expand Immigrant Detention A request for proposals for new detention facilities and other services would allow the government to expedite the contracting process and rapidly expand detention.

this is a staggering amount of money to build campsโ€”suggesting that building & running a gulag will be the primary function of the otherwise gutted Trump-state

in last fiscal yr: "D.H.S. allocated about $3.4 billion for the entire custody operation overseen by ICE"

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/u...

08.04.2025 04:27 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 4241    ๐Ÿ” 2467    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 280    ๐Ÿ“Œ 467

So I'll finish transcribing parts of this speech later but I wanted to talk about a couple things in it that makes it great.

06.04.2025 03:07 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 623    ๐Ÿ” 205    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 12    ๐Ÿ“Œ 24

Nearly the entirety of my career as a C-17 pilot was during wartime and I flew many of our fallen home. Itโ€™s solemn, emotionally draining duty, and in addition to this excellent piece by @charlotteclymer.bsky.social, Iโ€™ll share how it goes from the aircrew perspective. ๐Ÿงต๐Ÿ‘‡๐Ÿป 1/x

05.04.2025 21:36 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 840    ๐Ÿ” 261    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 23    ๐Ÿ“Œ 35
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You can stop asking where the mass opposition is. It's everywhere. People poured out to protest not only what Trump has doneโ€”and what they fear he will do next.

The message is: crowd large.

Many politicians, administrators, and business leaders, in bowing to Trump, have drawn confidence and comfort from the perceived vibe shift.

Events like this puncture that delusion.

05.04.2025 23:36 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 11797    ๐Ÿ” 3246    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 165    ๐Ÿ“Œ 172

Trump, Rubio, Musk and the his DOGE employees, Luke Farritor and Gavin Kliger, collectively chose to kill these people.

Through orders, indifference, and through pushing buttons that meant that some of the most vulnerable people in the world would have their lives sniffed out.

16.03.2025 00:31 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 723    ๐Ÿ” 280    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 19    ๐Ÿ“Œ 15
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SCOOP: Emails Show Mahmoud Khalil Asked Columbia for Protection a Day Before He Was Detained "I havenโ€™t been able to sleep, fearing that ICE or a dangerous individual might come to my home. I urge you to intervene and provide the necessary protections to prevent further harm."

SCOOPโ€”Emails obtained by @zeteo.com show Mahmoud Khalil reached out for help from the Columbia administration *one day before* ICE detained him.

He said he couldn't sleep from threats he was receiving.
He even wrote that he feared ICE "might come to my home."

10.03.2025 20:26 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 8846    ๐Ÿ” 3211    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 117    ๐Ÿ“Œ 254

NEW: State health department announces new measles case in Maryland

State agency alerts: "Anyone who visited the following location.. may have been exposed: Washington Dulles International Airport: The international arrivals area March 5th, 4pm-9pm"

09.03.2025 19:57 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 4814    ๐Ÿ” 2340    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 295    ๐Ÿ“Œ 551

Disabled patients have a right to safe healthcare

When we ask staff to mask, we arenโ€™t entitled. Weโ€™re advocating for our lives. Weโ€™re trying to protect our baseline. Weโ€™re asking for the respect we deserve

We canโ€™t โ€œjust stay homeโ€ from the hospital. Masks should be mandatory.

07.03.2025 03:34 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 246    ๐Ÿ” 52    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 5    ๐Ÿ“Œ 0
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Pinterest updated their terms of use and they're going to use all of the content you saved to train their AI.
Go to options > your privacy rights > disable GenAI
Please do it ๐Ÿซ 

07.03.2025 02:16 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 8007    ๐Ÿ” 6696    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 156    ๐Ÿ“Œ 410
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More harm and chaos within the US federal research system An anonymous scientist updates on the situation in the US I work inside the US federal research system and The BMJ allowed me to publish an anonymous account of how science and certain populations ar...

Not just in the weather community
www.bmj.com/content/388/...

01.03.2025 12:59 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 8    ๐Ÿ” 5    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 0    ๐Ÿ“Œ 1

I will never forget the photo of Zelenskyyโ€™s face after he saw Russiaโ€™s war crimes in Bucha in 2022. He seemed to age years in an afternoon. Watching him constantly cross the world asking for aid that should have been thrown at him is one of the deepest shames of our age.

28.02.2025 18:43 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 25488    ๐Ÿ” 6231    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 232    ๐Ÿ“Œ 202

Again, the richest man in human history personally individually directed this

28.02.2025 22:55 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 9832    ๐Ÿ” 3977    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 158    ๐Ÿ“Œ 93
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In an extraordinary display of public support, heads of state, heads of government, and foreign ministers from all over Europe and Canada are posting in support of Ukraine in response to the Oval Office meeting with Trump, Zelenskyy, and Vance.

28.02.2025 22:26 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 16301    ๐Ÿ” 5018    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 371    ๐Ÿ“Œ 495
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Editorial: A president just disrespected America in the Oval Office. It wasnโ€™t Zelensky Itโ€™s time to say it plainly. Americaโ€™s leadership has switched sides in the war. The American people have not, and they should speak up. In the past several weeks, the U.S. leadership has demonstrate...

NEW: A searing editorial in the The Kyiv Independent.

โ€œItโ€™s time to say it plainly. Americaโ€™s leadership has switched sides in the war. The American people have not, and they should speak up.

โ€œA president just disrespected America in the Oval Office. It wasnโ€™t Zelensky.โ€

@kyivindependent.com

28.02.2025 22:45 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 67991    ๐Ÿ” 19322    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 1277    ๐Ÿ“Œ 1045

Trump White House staffers were seen loading around 15 boxes of documents onto the rear of Air Force One.
ย 
Team Trump says the boxes contain the classified documents the FBIย seizedย  from Trump's Florida home in 2022.

01.03.2025 00:00 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 3668    ๐Ÿ” 1624    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 398    ๐Ÿ“Œ 272
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Inside DOGEโ€™s Clash With the Federal Workforce With a surprise incursion in the first minutes of the Trump presidency, Elon Muskโ€™s programmers seized control of a key personnel agency; โ€˜rogue bureaucratsโ€™ fight back.

Muskโ€™s hackers burglarized "a vast trove of information about the entire federal workforceโ€ on OPM computers even as Trump was being sworn in โ€” that is "hours before Muskโ€™s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, was officially created by an executive order.โ€

www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

28.02.2025 02:34 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 3595    ๐Ÿ” 1590    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 107    ๐Ÿ“Œ 122
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US scientists rebuild climate risk map deleted from government site When the US Federal Emergency Management Agency removed a map of future climate hazards from its website, researchers built their own version

Last week, FEMA removed an interactive mapping tool from its website showing in local detail how climate change could affect the risk of hurricanes, floods, wildfires and other hazards across the country. Two data scientist rebuilt it within a week. ๐Ÿงช

28.02.2025 21:23 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 266    ๐Ÿ” 107    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 4    ๐Ÿ“Œ 9

This is the video exhibit of insanity.

28.02.2025 20:44 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 792    ๐Ÿ” 135    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 39    ๐Ÿ“Œ 8
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NEW: I am hearing from multiple sources that Lt General Telita Crosland, Director of the Defense Health Agency, has been pushed out in an on-going purge. Official internal agency news said "retired" but I'm told relieved of duty or at least forced into retirement. www.defense.gov/About/Biogra...

28.02.2025 18:21 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1323    ๐Ÿ” 544    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 86    ๐Ÿ“Œ 81
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Arrest a librarian? Georgia Senators to consider bill to remove 'harmful materials' Georgia Senate Bill 74 would remove librarians' protections against a state law about giving 'harmful materials' to minors. Here's what we know.

We've reached "arrest the librarians" level of authoritarianism.

www.usatoday.com/story/news/p...

27.02.2025 20:29 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1331    ๐Ÿ” 495    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 71    ๐Ÿ“Œ 49
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Prison Company Foresees โ€˜Unprecedentedโ€™ Revenue, Announces Massive Newark ICE Lock-Up The Geo Group inked a 15-year contract worth $1.2 billion to reopen Delaney Hall, which will become the largest immigration detention center in the New York-metropolitan area.

โ€œโ€ŠWe expect the upside potential from all these opportunities to represent as much as $800 million to $1 billion in incremental annual ICE revenuesโ€

you know who's REALLY excited about the Newark ICE facility opening back up?

28.02.2025 02:08 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 323    ๐Ÿ” 110    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 7    ๐Ÿ“Œ 10
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State Department visa policy could bar trans people from traveling to U.S. Violations could result in travel bans beyond just athletes

Finally.

A major media outlet has finally reported on Trumpโ€™s total travel ban for transgender visa applicants seeking the United States.

I had to scream for two days to get someone else to report on it.

It is NOT just for athletes.

www.the-independent.com/news/world/a...

27.02.2025 14:36 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 5824    ๐Ÿ” 2131    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 91    ๐Ÿ“Œ 98
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It's literally just the same bill they passed for a trans youth ban, they just remove the word minor and change the word child to person.

This is literally what we said would happen. It was never about trans youth.

27.02.2025 15:57 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 921    ๐Ÿ” 233    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 12    ๐Ÿ“Œ 18

Many Medicaid recipients do not know they receive it because Medicaid is called different things in different states. The public narrative of Medicaid focuses on a distant other, but 40% of US children and 60% of nursing home residents receive Medicaid. Just SOME of the names by state are below:

27.02.2025 16:46 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 3565    ๐Ÿ” 1852    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 83    ๐Ÿ“Œ 203

Why haven't we seen more backlash against the GOP's proposed cuts to Medicaid? One reason is that people may not know they're on Medicaid, because Medicaid has different names in different states (see ๐Ÿงต). Another is that some people may not realize that they (or their kids) could qualify.

27.02.2025 21:05 โ€” ๐Ÿ‘ 1279    ๐Ÿ” 509    ๐Ÿ’ฌ 40    ๐Ÿ“Œ 31

@laroberts is following 20 prominent accounts