Angela Chen
@chengela.bsky.social
📤 4112
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Journalist, editor, author of Ace.
pinned post!
I have an essay in the latest
@kenyonreview.bsky.social
. It circles questions I've been asking for almost ten years now: how should a medical diagnosis shape the past? When does biology require reconciliation? And what does it mean to be emotionally fair?
kenyonreview.org/piece/disease-disposition/
4 months ago
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Is the top middle image "an image with a car"?
2 months ago
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Anna North
4 months ago
For
@thecut.com
, I wrote about the time I spent two weeks in the hospital waiting for my second kid to be born, and what happened to my mind while I was there
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Quit Romanticizing Boredom
Everyone says “logging off” will solve our problems. After actually living it, I’m not so sure.
https://www.thecut.com/article/quit-romanticizing-boredom-motherhood-anna-north.html
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Going through vacation photos, found this from the Franz Kafka Museum. Welcome, Franz.
4 months ago
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I've had this on my "to-read" since
@ruthgraham.bsky.social
raved about it years and years ago (her review here:
slate.com/culture/2017...
). It's extraordinary, perfect mix of psychologically insightful plus dramatic plus existential.
4 months ago
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Nicole Chung
4 months ago
If you want to understand open adoption, it makes sense to start with birth parents—yet studies of them are few. 2+ yrs ago, I began talking w/ birth mothers to try to understand what living in an open adoption is like for them, and what rights or options they might have if challenges were to arise.
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When Adoption Promises Are Broken
Many birth mothers hope to maintain contact with their child. But their agreements with adoptive parents can be fragile.
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/2025/10/open-adoption-birth-mother-child-contact/684418/?gift=eUUtLLA90_W6-VDmwPw8oGxSOMdJk6Mh0-vzmul9LJM&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
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I have an essay in the latest
@kenyonreview.bsky.social
. It circles questions I've been asking for almost ten years now: how should a medical diagnosis shape the past? When does biology require reconciliation? And what does it mean to be emotionally fair?
kenyonreview.org/piece/disease-disposition/
4 months ago
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IVF automation in Mexico City: "Over the past three years, babies have been conceived — and at least 20 of them have been born — through clinical trials that involve automation with little to no human intervention."
www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
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Robots are learning to make human babies. Twenty have already been born.
One in six people of reproductive age suffer from infertility. Start-ups are using AI-powered robots to increase IVF success rates and lower costs.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/10/01/ivf-babies-ai-robots-fertility/
4 months ago
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Angela Chen
Matt Shipman (he/him)
5 months ago
Seeing ice cream cones during their spawning runs really takes your breath away. They’ll only do this once in their entire lives.
add a skeleton here at some point
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At an Italian restaurant in Westchester and the waiter says to me: “Has anyone told you you look like…” I brace myself. “…Lisa Su, the CEO of Advanced Micro Devices?”
6 months ago
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"Merging two of America’s most iconic snacks, was a deeply complex undertaking, requiring cloak-and-dagger tactics reminiscent of the Manhattan Project."
www.wsj.com/arts-culture...
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Oreos Combined With Reese’s? Inside the Manhattan Project of Snacks.
The combination of two of America’s favorite treats sounded simple. It wasn’t.
https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/food-cooking/oreos-inside-reeses-reeses-inside-oreos-its-the-manhattan-project-of-snacks-a1f71e65?st=hWwpq1
6 months ago
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Perhaps everything is easier said than done, but I do believe that if I were the most notorious traitor in CIA history, I would have tried harder to cover my tracks.
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/u...
6 months ago
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Years ago, my dad gave me a hard drive and said, somewhat morbidly, "in case I die, I want you to have these family photos." I finally opened it and it's 80% photos of him at ping pong tournaments.
7 months ago
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Truly, unintended consequences for everything.
7 months ago
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Sigal Samuel
8 months ago
AI systems could become conscious one day. What if they hate their lives? Is it our duty to make sure they're happy? To make sure Claude is always enjoying spiritual bliss? What could that even mean for an AI? My new piece:
www.vox.com/future-perfe...
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AI systems could become conscious. What if they hate their lives?
How to not torture ChatGPT and Claude’s successors.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/414324/ai-consciousness-welfare-suffering-chatgpt-claude
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I do like this Muriel Rukeyser poem, but have less sympathy each time I remember she wrote it in the 60s. "Various devices"? I'll show you various devices!
www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47657/...
8 months ago
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Earlier this year I read an advance copy of PORTALMANIA — out this week! — and I really loved it (so did Karen Russell & Mary Gaitskill). It's a collection of unsettling, complex, sometimes melancholy sci-fi stories about escape, possibilities and asexuality.
www.simonandschuster.com/books/Portal...
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Portalmania
If you could go anywhere, where would you go? And what happens to the people you leave behind?From the author of After World comes a genre-busting ...
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Portalmania/Debbie-Urbanski/9781668061114
9 months ago
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Angela Chen
Cape Cod Demon Hunter
9 months ago
“The pope will be from Chicago” sounds like an 1880s Republican’s dire prediction for if we don’t stop Irish immigration
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izzie ramirez
12 months ago
For a long time, I thought ditching beef would mean missing out on some grand connection I'd gain at the table. For
@vox.com
, I wrote about reconnecting with Indigenous foodways, while also acknowledge the cultural pull of beef — as a Texan.
www.vox.com/future-perfe...
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I’m the daughter of a cattle rancher. Could I ever ditch beef?
Beef is tied to my cultural identity — because of its complicated, colonial history.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/380708/cattle-ranching-beef-colonialism-history
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There's a new push for employer-sponsored child care. Is this as good as it gets — or a mistake that repeats the problems of employer-sponsored health care? From
@rachelmcohen.bsky.social
www.vox.com/child-care/4...
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This workplace benefit is helping parents — and boosting businesses. Could it backfire?
Most Americans have no access to employer-sponsored child care. That could soon change.
https://www.vox.com/child-care/401260/child-care-daycare-employer-ceo-kindercare-bright-horizons-pittsburgh
11 months ago
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I grew up in Silicon Valley and first heard this phrase at 16. I am, shall we say, amused to see it recounted here as still the reasoning du jour. From an
@nybooks.com
piece reviewing new books on sexual ethics:
www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
11 months ago
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Got this notice while trying to access a paper with the subtitle "Is Mutual Love with a Robot Possible?" Not at this rate!
about 1 year ago
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@allaboutchemist.bsky.social
and I are developing different take-aways from Mexico. Me: “I will never again go more than 3ft below land.” Him: “The tuna is a revelation.”
about 1 year ago
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Angela Chen
Rafe Meager (they/them)
about 1 year ago
here is an ungated version from 2022
www.andreamatranga.net/uploads/1/5/...
add a skeleton here at some point
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[email protected]
is creating floor plans for those in Altadena who lost their homes in the fires and might need a simple floor plan for insurance reasons (or just memories):
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
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Eaton Fire Floor Plan Support - Altadena Families
Background: We are Ashley and Robert Thaxton-Stevenson, theater makers and educators in NYC. Ashley grew up in Altadena, CA and her parents lost everything when their West Altadena house burned down o...
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdYrk8YizgVNoOvgIEg4BLlWRTUT9rnDg5T9GYiyyu0GpRnaQ/viewform
about 1 year ago
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I've been thinking about "running to" versus "running from" and enjoyed this similar Orpheus/Odysseus parallel that apparently was a rhetorical parallel that MLK Jr used:
davidepstein.substack.com/p/how-to-mak...
. (Next line, of course, notes this didn't really work out for Orpheus.)
about 1 year ago
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This detail on anti-social architecture—from a smart
@theatlantic.com
feature on solitude—caught my eye. Just last week I was thinking about how my place (built 1910) had a "bad" layout because the living room was too large and bedrooms too small.
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...
about 1 year ago
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Angela Chen
leon
about 1 year ago
where does the new york times even find these people
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Odd connections in science (pseudo-science?) history: Chester Carlson, inventor of photocopying technology, bequeathed $1M to past lives research. Today, that institute is also funded by the endowment of 1920s silent film actresses:
www.nytimes.com/2025/01/03/s...
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Do You Believe in Life After Death? These Scientists Study It.
Is reincarnation real? Is communication from the “beyond” possible? A small set of academics are trying to find out, case by case.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/03/style/virginia-dops-reincarnation.html
about 1 year ago
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Angela Chen
depths of wikipedia
about 1 year ago
in the article of former North Carolina Congressman Patrick McHenry:
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One of my favorite article genres is "tracking down a zombie stat" and here's a great addition. Have you seen the stat that men are only 20% of the fiction market?
@constancegrady.bsky.social
tries to track it down:
www.vox.com/culture/3929...
@vox.com
about 1 year ago
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Angela Chen
Ryan Moulton
about 1 year ago
Proof that the "this amount of flavor would kill a medieval peasant" meme is at least partially true. They would sell out their family for a Turkish Delight because they had never experienced a Starburst.
add a skeleton here at some point
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People complain about babies on flights but when a baby started screaming during the end of mine—as we were stuck on the tarmac for an hour after landing an *already* hours-delayed redeye—all I could think was "only this baby is brave enough to express how we are feeling. This baby speaks for me."
about 1 year ago
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Angela Chen
Rafe Meager (they/them)
about 1 year ago
The real deadweight loss is the friends we made along the way
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Angela Chen
Kate Knibbs
about 1 year ago
There are a LOT of ongoing AI copyright lawsuits in the US right now. We've been keeping track at
@wired.com
—and, to make things easier on everyone, created this interactive visual guide. It'll be updated w/ any major developments:
www.wired.com/story/ai-cop...
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Every AI Copyright Lawsuit in the US, Visualized
WIRED is following every copyright battle involving the AI industry—and we’ve created some handy visualizations that will be updated as the cases progress.
https://www.wired.com/story/ai-copyright-case-tracker/
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The Gisele Pelicot rape case—which just ended with a "guilty" verdict for her husband—has gotten a lot of attention.
@marincogan.bsky.social
wrote about the case, and a similar one in the US due to our exemptions in marital rape laws:
www.vox.com/world-politi...
.
@vox.com
about 1 year ago
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Very funny detail from an ongoing case accusing selective unis of letting in rich, academically weak kids.
www.nytimes.com/2024/12/17/u...
. Imagine the incentives if kids actually got an admissions edge from having divorced parents!
about 1 year ago
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"The most popular translator in the history of Iran translated hardly anything at all...In some cases, the author of the book Mansouri was supposedly translating didn’t even exist." This 'translation' of Lolita is truly amusing. From
@yalereview.bsky.social
:
yalereview.org/article/amir...
about 1 year ago
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Angela Chen
Boston Review
about 1 year ago
In 1910 William Sadler traveled to Europe to study under Freud. Like many early psychoanalysts, he developed a relish for debunking mediums and psychics. What makes his work interesting today, though, is the paranormal claim he believed was real. On its curious role in AI copyright battles:
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To Whom Does the World Belong? - Boston Review
The battle over copyright in the age of ChatGPT.
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/to-whom-does-the-world-belong/
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"The way we think about how China would overrun Taiwan may well be wrong. Rather than an all-out invasion, it could attempt to capture the island without firing a single shot through 'gray zone' tactics."
@joshuakeating.bsky.social
www.vox.com/world-politi...
about 1 year ago
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"It had taken Zoë four years to persuade her family and her psychiatrist that she should be allowed to die. Yet at the last minute, she had decided not to go ahead."
www.theguardian.com/society/ng-i...
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How a young Dutch woman’s life began when she was allowed to die
At the last minute, Zoë decided to call off her euthanasia. But how do you start over after you’ve said all of your goodbyes?
https://www.theguardian.com/society/ng-interactive/2024/dec/17/euthanasia-assisted-dying-netherlands-stephanie-bakker
about 1 year ago
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Angela Chen
Rachel Cohen Booth
about 1 year ago
really interesting new research on IVF and pollution, via
@jkutzie.bsky.social
19thnews.org/2024/12/air-...
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Air pollution could be threatening the success of IVF, new study finds
Air pollution impacts both the egg and sperm — and the resulting embryo quality in IVF.
https://19thnews.org/2024/12/air-pollution-ivf/
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Angela Chen
tal yarkoni
about 1 year ago
i asked Claude to write a Barthelme-esque short story with the aesthetic sensibilities of "The School", and it gave me this. i mean. i mean.
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If only this hed had been written in 2012—the joy I would have felt sending this to the professor who made us read parts of said novel. (It's Что делать? — "What is To Be Done?" — by Chernyshevsky. I remember this vividly because as a joke I wrote my last name as Chenyshevsky for the relevant exam.)
about 1 year ago
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Native New Yorker
@allaboutchemist.bsky.social
is visiting the Bay Area & so far: a) I caught him staring longingly at an image of Times Square b) he wanted to go to a Halal Guys sit-down restaurant (yes, based off NYC food cart) c) he told me the weather but turned out he googled "weather nyc"
about 1 year ago
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My Friday: looking at a “software buttons” exhibit at the Computer History Museum. I’d wear the Word one, but for Google Docs.
about 1 year ago
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@rachelmcohen.bsky.social
on how joint filing — the default for married couples in the US — keeps women out of the work force:
www.vox.com/policy/39077...
. Most peer countries have embraced individual filing, to good effect.
about 1 year ago
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Black plastic spatulas may be fine after all—a "typo" may have been to blame: "But 60 times 7,000 is not 42,000. It is 420,000. This is what Joe Schwarcz noticed. The estimated exposure is not even a tenth of the reference dose. That does not sound as bad."
nationalpost.com/news/canada/...
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How a simple math error sparked a panic about black plastic kitchen utensils
A study warned that people were being exposed to a toxic chemical from kitchen utensils. But the researchers misstated the safe daily limit
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/black-plastic
about 1 year ago
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Just logged into a meeting wearing a puffer jacket and explained that the jacket is *because* I'm in California, and not in spite of that. Hyperlocal conditions (parents refusing to turn on the heat inside) matter.
about 1 year ago
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I was surprised by how startled I was about Chiung Yao's death, given that I've never read her books. Still, the 1998 TV adaptation of My Fair Princess fully consumed the Chinese-language diaspora and felt like a formative childhood cultural experience.
www.nytimes.com/2024/12/08/b...
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Chiung Yao, Influential Taiwanese Romance Novelist, Dies at 86
One of the most successful writers in the Chinese-speaking world, she filled her plots with twists and turns, but love always transcended all.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/08/books/chiung-yao-dead.html
about 1 year ago
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The majority of Americans consider themselves "working class," including nearly 60 percent of Republicans in the upper-income tier (according to Pew). Is the term even useful then?
@abdallahfayyad.bsky.social
www.vox.com/politics/390...
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What does “working class” even mean?
The criticism that Democrats left America’s working class behind surged after the 2024 election. Here’s why the term is so hard to define — and why that maters.
https://www.vox.com/politics/390108/working-class-definition-voters-2024
about 1 year ago
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