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Stephen J Read
Stephen J Read
@steveread.bsky.social
Professor of Social Psychology, University of Southern California. Interested in Computational modeling of personality, decision-making, social reasoning, and social behavior. Also interested in relating this to Neuroscience
10.2K followers2.7K following549 posts
Stephen J Read reposted
Stephen J Read reposted
Threatening to murder, ruin or imprison people is now a routine thing for Elon Musk. It's evidence of his rapidly evolving sociopathology. bsky.app/profile/rbre...
Elon Musk can whine and threaten me all he wants, but I'm still going to call out his bullying and abuse of power.
Stephen J Read reposted
Stephen J Read reposted
One of the things sheriffs do is warp the perception of democracy. Each county has one sheriff no matter how few (or many) people live there. About 2/3 of counties are rural (there's no real definition of rural, so this is broad). Little map for you. The green is rural.
That’s a staggering fact to take in: About 1/3 of U.S. counties are now contractually partnered with ICE—to say nothing of all the counties assisting ICE more informally. I wrote recently about what this type of collaboration can do to communities: boltsmag.org/frederick-co...
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Israel may have a democracy if they can keep it. #Discover #Following #News #USPolitics apnews.com/article/isra...
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We interrupt our usual programming to inform you that I was never hired by Facebook to do a hit job on Jonathan Haidt. statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/10/27/w...
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The Army awarded an artillery shell project to General Dynamics in a rushed process without the typical vetting. The result: a fiasco in a Texas factory with robots in flames and half a billion dollars in taxpayer funds that yielded no usable shells. (Published August)
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Apparently the new objective of the Trump immigration doctrine is to make the United States into the global center for the criminal underworld. www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/1...
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The absolute unrelenting courage and tenacity of Epstein survivors cannot be lauded enough. They continue to be put through absolute hell and most of media ignoring each revelation is another renewed assault against them. The Pedophile Protector Party is run by a rapist.
House Judiciary Democrats have just released a 50-page report that pulls together years of assault allegations against Trump and his reported connections to Jeffrey Epstein. The report calls for a special counsel to investigate Trump's ties to Epstein.
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Stephen J Read reposted
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Since Ken Paxton was sworn in as the attorney general of Texas, he has taken about 350 trips outside the state with a taxpayer-funded security detail, including 25 to foreign countries, according to a New York Times analysis. nyti.ms/4yOQK5k
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The data center buildout could cause a massive increase in gas prices as companies scramble for limited supplies and infrastructure fails to meet demand.
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Thread where I learned that Bill Ackman sponsored Bubonic Bob's racist vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau.
It’s time to have a serious conversation about this shift in philanthropic dollars to fund science, in the broader context of the Trump administration’s war on science as a public good. Thank you to @heidiledford.bsky.social for covering this. MY HOT TAKES 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Stephen J Read reposted
Stephen J Read reposted
Stephen J Read reposted
This, like the Comey seashell case, should have been laughed out of court, with severe sanctions on the lawyers who brought it. Judges need to stop playing nice. The DOJ is mocking the law. They should be severely punished.
NEW: A federal judge expedited Democrats’ effort to dismiss the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) preemptive legal challenge to Alaska’s Senate election results. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...
Stephen J Read reposted
Stephen J Read reposted
Trump not doing much to shake that "viceroy of Latin America" label...
Bold of Trump/Rubio to highlight their violent conquest of/theft from a Latin American nation in their quest to win Latino votes (screen cap on left) As @simonwdc.bsky.social says on our pod, Trump's "viceroy of Latin America" act might be partly what's costing GOP Latinos (screen cap on right)
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"The Trump administration is exploring a new concession to Russia: lifting sanctions on the country’s flagship government investment fund, long viewed by U.S. officials as one of the Kremlin’s most powerful tools of international influence."
Putin must have something really compromising on Trump. Trump is trying to end the war by helping Putin conquer Ukraine. It's appalling. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/27/u...
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Stephen J Read reposted
Stephen J Read reposted
The role of $ in elections is sometimes overrated, but this kind of news is still interesting, because it reflects parties' unpublished internal polling. If the DCCC is doing this, they are seeing things that lead them to feel bullish.
Scoop: DCCC expands the map in the final week of 2026 election Committing $15 million to TV ads in 49 districts, including four first-time offensive spending moves in NV-2, FL-7, VA-5 and TN-5. Projecting confidence in big House gains. Full list here: www.nbcnews.com/politics/tru...
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Donald Trump LOVES tariffs... ... AND he LOVES LYING about them 🤥 Here's the truth about tariffs Republicans hope you won't notice: YOU ultimately pay them.
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Replying to @mjfree.bsky.social
America was built on checks and balances. Let's restore them with a #BlueWaveIn7Days 💙 https://apnews.com/article/midterm-elections-democrats-affordability-corruption-018019529b14a6b3bc4a343a4e17c44f
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The political media is visibly chafing at the current situation, where Republicans are glaringly awful, fucking everything up, running deviant candidates everyone hates, and Dems are just being normal & winning. The force is out of balance. They are viscerally eager to go after Dems about something.
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Trump-appointed judge in AZ admonishes the Trump admin for dragging its feet in complying with his Oct. 6 order to "facilitate" the return to the U.S. of a Egyptian man that the admin deported to Equatorial Guinea in April w/out due process. A deplorable case: www.courtlistener.com/docket/74798...
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Stephen J Read reposted
He's such a phony. His wife's name was Usha Chilukuri when they met. His in-laws names are Radhakrishna and Lakshmi Chilukuri. He was married in a Hindu ceremony presided over by a Hindu priest.
JD Vance says of the Middle East that it's "a region of the world made up of countries whose name I couldn't even pronounce"
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NEWS: Susan Collins’ latest campaign ad is sparking outrage in Maine. The ad takes a swipe at Democrat Troy Jackson’s working-class roots, sparking accusations of “shameless elitism.” Even a former Collins staffer is blasting it, declaring: “The race is over.”
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No, we don't need scientists! AI will do it all!
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‘Even successful and highly profitable technology companies are struggling to afford the enormous costs of AI... How to summarize the sentiment among AI firms right now? “Take it when you can. Everyone is going to need more.“‘ www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...