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Daniel Brownstein

@ptolohead2131

Historian and cartographer; literacy advocate

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27.02.2025
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Latest posts by Daniel Brownstein @ptolohead2131

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Dystopian Diptychs: Virtual and Economic Realities of the Palisades Fires The problem of mapping fires and fires spread in Los Angeles is increasingly taxing, both as they are exacerbated by the new weather systems of climate change--high, dry winds; dried trees; low groundwater--and was we lack the urban infrascture to provide the water or fire mitigation needed to deal with them. But if the Pacific Palisades fire of this past year reminded no one so much as a dystopian image of Hell of Dantesque proportions--of raging fires consuming buildings, sending firefighters desperately running to staunch the conflagration's spread against all odds in flaming settings that raged with an intensity one can only call infernal, provoking collective questioning of what went wrong that our world was revealed so combustable--

Dystopian Diptychs: Virtual and Economic Realities of the Palisades Fires

The problem of mapping fires and fires spread in Los Angeles is increasingly taxing, both as they are exacerbated by the new weather systems of climate change--high, dry winds; dried trees; low groundwater--and was we lack…

12.10.2025 22:51 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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“A Mighty Redwood Has Fallen” Malcolm Margolin was the coolest people I knew. If we can't be hugely saddened by his passing, and the loss of his dynamic presence in the East Bay, he'll be a model for persisting a vision quest in a dark age. We first met while both walking the East Coast Trail in opposite directions, Malcolm as ever patrolling and using the newly reclaimed bayshore pathway that had been a tradition of the bayshore Ohlone people.

“A Mighty Redwood Has Fallen”

Malcolm Margolin was the coolest people I knew. If we can't be hugely saddened by his passing, and the loss of his dynamic presence in the East Bay, he'll be a model for persisting a vision quest in a dark age. We first met while both walking the East Coast Trail in…

06.09.2025 21:23 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
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You should now, Mr. President—you tried your hardest in the Reform Party in 2000, but couldn’t get nominated. Or have voters’ interest in politics changed?

07.07.2025 07:02 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

He only has a limited repertoire, on the other hand

19.06.2025 03:26 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

It did seem to be a fixation Trump was obsessed. Given his lack of new thoughts, it is disconcerting

19.06.2025 03:22 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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That handshake may well trigger a global health crisis of lowest vaccination rates of some time by breaking scientific consensus! Regrets, @SenBillCassady?

10.06.2025 02:56 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

@SenBillCassidy killing expertise for transparency will be your legacy. How can you sleep?

10.06.2025 02:14 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

SecKennedy’s chilling call for “transparency” over expertise in #vaccine policy of HSS echoes the rhetorical strategy of attacking climate science in Trump’s previous administration—as if ending expert opinion helps nation

10.06.2025 02:10 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Victory! Can one map energy independence? The updating of the largest body of water in the Americas to the "Gulf of Mexico" is hardly an arbitrary choice. Does it map the seabed off the continental shelf, and the territorial waters of the United States?

Victory!

Can one map energy independence? The updating of the largest body of water in the Americas to the "Gulf of Mexico" is hardly an arbitrary choice. Does it map the seabed off the continental shelf, and the territorial waters of the United States?

06.06.2025 02:23 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Expansionist Energies and Political Synergies: Unpacking the Brave New World of DOGE Donald Trump has so skillfully adopted terms and coopted concepts by slapping his name on them to rebrand them as his own, in ways we may do well to question if this is entirely impulsively done. From CPAC to the alt right, Trump's second Presidential administration whole-heartedly embrace old ideas not only to invest them with new energy, but to draw energy from them, honing in on their logic and persuasive power as a strategy in incessant ways.

Expansionist Energies and Political Synergies: Unpacking the Brave New World of DOGE

Donald Trump has so skillfully adopted terms and coopted concepts by slapping his name on them to rebrand them as his own, in ways we may do well to question if this is entirely impulsively done. From CPAC to the…

05.06.2025 23:44 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Maybe we should be more angry at the people who elected the current government

22.05.2025 18:48 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

When the moral arc of the universe stopped running through Massachusetts

21.05.2025 13:44 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

The outrage is tragicomic. “What if it’s not sunny?” What if it’s bleak and smoggy? Have you ever heard of batteries?

21.05.2025 13:42 👍 7 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

What did Trump do as the market plunged and people panicked?

Did he meet with economists, business leaders, governors?

Did he meet the coffins of KIA soldiers at Dover, as he said he would?

Nope. He met with Saudi golf executives at his club.

05.04.2025 03:09 👍 507 🔁 148 💬 18 📌 3

Good luck with that

31.03.2025 16:17 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

No way—they are scared of standing up to campaign finance reform though

31.03.2025 14:55 👍 7 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

She wrote a fucking op-ed.

27.03.2025 19:15 👍 2540 🔁 444 💬 110 📌 19

Authoritarian porno with strong S&M undertones! This is seriously unethical shit

27.03.2025 12:58 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Landscape/Image/Map: Map-Making in Neolithic Çatalhöyük "All maps have edges," writes Margaret Atwood, noting that even slime-molds, bereft of a central nervous system, readily map adjacency. And although the notion of metric accuracy or or accurate indices are lacking--as is a frame--there is a distinct sense of mapping adjacency in the cave-painting or mural that has survived since circa 7000 BCE (6960±640 BCE) in the Konya region of Anatolia, in a valley that has  provided a site of intense archeological investigation of one of the earliest dense areas of human inhabitation.  

Landscape/Image/Map: Map-Making in Neolithic Çatalhöyük

"All maps have edges," writes Margaret Atwood, noting that even slime-molds, bereft of a central nervous system, readily map adjacency. And although the notion of metric accuracy or or accurate indices are lacking--as is a frame--there is a…

24.03.2025 17:04 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Gaza is a great talking point for him and his allies, and to keep together a fragile alliance. The orgy of violence is a way to brainwash Israelis and maintain control.

24.03.2025 10:33 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

They do have the benefit of an energetic and rather healthy history of American-skeptical leftism!

23.03.2025 16:44 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Seem Elon decided to work for “free” for us to push past four to five or six bn in gov contracts! Woo hoo

23.03.2025 12:55 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Conway doesn’t have a large legal team for whom he’s responsible….

23.03.2025 12:42 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

The Renee Richards illusion. And they were an optometrist, weren’t they?

15.03.2025 16:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Everyone is serving at the pleasure of the President from now on—not the nation

15.03.2025 15:59 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Absolutely disgusting

13.03.2025 01:44 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Chart showing that middles aged people especially born first vaccinated between 1963-1967 should get a measles booster

Chart showing that middles aged people especially born first vaccinated between 1963-1967 should get a measles booster

It’s important for folks in their 40s/50s/60s to realize that some of us should get a measles booster. I did a few years ago

02.03.2025 04:13 👍 1752 🔁 927 💬 123 📌 75

And a point more czars for each!

03.03.2025 18:05 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Resistance to a proposed capping at 4 million suggests just how out of reach most of these funds are!

28.02.2025 03:53 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0