Tapping the sign:

For the past year, Columbia Journalism Investigations and @insideclimatenews.org have investigated the push to mine more lithium. The results: We mapped every proposed project in the country, and the first story in the series examines the impacts on tribes. insideclimatenews.org/news/0305202...

"Last year, the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine published its long-awaited report on the environmental impacts of nuclear war. The last time it did such a comprehensive study was in…1985." Important @thebulletin.org series kicks off with intro by @francoisdm.bsky.social

After many failed attempts to subpoena trans kids' private health records, DOJ is now trying to get them via criminal grand jury in Texas. "This is mafia-type behavior," Shannon Minter tells @hurwitz.bsky.social. This will be a new test of blue-state shield laws. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

New from 404 Media: spoke to four people who attended a trade show where senior ICE officials spoke about how much Palantir is supercharging their arrests. List of 20 million people on ICE agents phones now; increased chance of successful arrest from 28 to 80% www.404media.co/ice-agents-h...

hi, as some of you know Them was sold last month and i was laid off as a result. this is a gofundme for myself and my colleagues who have been impacted, pls share and donate if you feel called <3 www.gofundme.com/f/support-la...

Texas eliminated 5 Democratic seats with no voter approval. Louisiana suspended election with no voter approval. Tennessee erased last majority-Black district with no voter approval. But VA Supreme Court blocks redistricting map approved by 3 million voters www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

This is a good as time as any to say that I am doing an independent study on AI's effects on journalism as an information source this fall for my MLIS. Any case studies, readings, examples? Send them my way, building my reading list out.

🧵 "The internet isn’t just an endless archive anymore." 🌐 Journalist Philip Bump argues that preserving journalism & digital history is essential for understanding what happened online. 📚 Read the Q&A with Bump & more in VANISHING CULTURE, free or purchase in print: archive.org/details/vani...

A mystery donor in Nebraska is spending $1.6 million on a ballot initiative banning trans girls from girls' sports—duplicating an existing state law. Uihlein is spending $800k on the same in Maine. What do these two states have in common? Close Senate races. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

NEW: Less than 72 hours before Weber State University in Utah was scheduled to host a conference on censorship, presenters were told not to discuss identity politics, or be removed from the official program agenda. www.404media.co/how-a-univer...

The Internet Archive, Wikimedia, academics, and hobby archivists are having trouble finding hard drives or are having to pay extremely high prices for them.

The left is the only US political faction that grapples with the actual science of decarbonization and calls for the phaseout of fossil energy rather than an "all of the above" energy "abundance" that will never zero out emissions. 🧵

Something I am thinking about today is that there is this weird, false history that presumes trans children and their transitions began only with the confines dutch protocol anyways, read this interview and the book "Histories of the Transgender Child"

when you are so “no homo” you rename Claude to Claudia

This week, the Supreme Court finally killed off the Voting Rights Act of 1965. I've spent the past decade studying the VRA and the attacks on it, so I thought I would offer some historical perspective, and where I think we're headed. This will be a long thread; buckle up.

Mixed news from Congress on science budgets for NASA, NSF, NOAA and NIST. Like last year, Congress looks like it will rebuff Trump administration's major cuts. On the other hand, Congress still proposes some downsizing—and does not appear to be taking action about OMB. My reporting:

What a STUNNING quote: “I just think the American market is ahead of us [and] the same thing is going to happen here....it just will take a bit longer and it will be a bit harder because more people will be saying, ‘hang on a minute, we don’t want to be burning greenhouse gasses"

Jamie is quoted on my latest in AI polling. My conversations with him were invaluable in understanding the dizzyingly complex outcomes that AI can bring to research.

From staff cuts to mounting political pressure, the Freedom of Information Act and the staff who process these requests have been under fire and threatening the future of public records access, reports @notus.com.

📊 New data release today! Check out the latest state-by-state tools for tracking U.S. billion-dollar disasters, as well as disaster and risk mapping! 2026 already has 5 events tallied so far this year ($12.4 billion). Explore the data with @climatecentral.org: www.climatecentral.org/climate-serv...

NEW: An @ij.org review of media reports has identified at least 14 recent cases of police officers allegedly using Flock and other automated license plate reader systems to stalk wives, girlfriends, exes, and even strangers who caught their eye in public. ij.org/police-have-...

A little more than a year ago, @paperwords.bsky.social received a letter from the US Forest Service detailing plans for a new wildfire recovery project. But a single word caught his eye—and alerted him to a secret, Big Tobacco-style campaign with ramifications for our forests.

AI-generated sites are flooding the internet, swallowing all in their wake

Meet the inaugural TJA Reporting Fellowship cohort 🎉 7 journalists. 7 reporting projects. One goal: stronger, more accurate coverage of trans communities. Over the next 6 months, fellows will receive mentorship, funding, and support for community-centered stories. bit.ly/TJARF26

A trans journalist, it is impossible for me to be "clubby" with many sources due to the very nature of being trans. There is so much talk about about marginalized journalists having "bias," when in fact the very marginalization forces us to act with higher professional standards than peers.

Fabulous article by my mentor, Leysia Palen, chronicling the rise & fall of Twitter as information source & organizing site during disaster events: journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mc... Citing a wealth of literature, Palen reflects on what Twitter was (for disaster response) & what it became

When power is built on disinformation, data become a threat.

The FTC exists to protect Americans from unfair business practices. Instead, they appear to be preparing a major push against transgender rights. from @telliotter.bsky.social

NAS President Marcia McNutt claims she is being bipartisan by avoiding “topics for which there is a partisan divide.” But this is blatantly partisan. She is doing exactly what one party wants. Worse, in direct opposition to the science in these fields. 🧵1/?

🧵 We tend to think the internet is permanent, but VANISHING CULTURE—the new 📚 from Internet Archive—starts with a simple reality: our digital record is far more fragile than we think 🕳️ 📖 Read for free: archive.org/details/vani... 🛒 Purchase in print: www.betterworldbooks.com/product/deta... ⬇️

To celebrate Earth Day, environmental leaders Al Gore, Catherine Coleman Flowers, and Bill McKibben talk about the challenges in tackling climate change—and why there’s still hope for our planet. 🌎 Our latest and surprisingly optimistic episode of More To The Story:

In honor of Earth Day: a thread of environmental wins

“I could make my living on this for a number of years, and that is an increasingly rare prospect for queer journalists," said Samantha Riedel, a former long-time contributing writer for Them. @transjournalists.org estimates around half of its members are freelancers. buff.ly/I5jcAGL

🚨 LIVE ONLINE EVENT 🚨 Publishers vs. preservation: what happens when the web can’t be archived? Find out on PRESERVING THE WEB IN THE AGE OF AI, a LIVE Future Knowledge #podcast recording 🎙️ 📆 Tues, April 28 🕙 10 AM–11 AM PDT/🕐 1 PM–2PM EDT 📍 ONLINE 🎟️ www.eventbrite.com/e/preserving... 🧵

This is already demonstrably incorrect. And Wright isn't even dead yet.

"Contemporary science is evolving at a breathtaking pace, but archival practice is struggling to keep up—especially when it comes to capturing not just the final products of research but the full, dynamic process by which science is made." www.aip.org/library/ex-l...

The US government paid $1 billion to kill a wind farm just because. Just absolute idiocy in every direction heatmap.news/energy/total...

Breaking: HHS’s ban on gender-affirming care is struck down. Rarely have I read a ruling this sharply worded. “This case is one of a long list of examples of how a leader’s wanton disregard for the rule of law causes very real harm to very real people.” www.advocate.com/politics/nat...

This is a really excellent explainer on the stakes of forcible detransition and how it violates bioethical standards.

This bit right here. This is John Roberts basically admitting, explicitly, that he is dreaming up a legal doctrine out of nothing because he does not like or approve of Obama's policy:

A badly worded poll is making vaccine skepticism look more common than it is. www.statnews.com/2026/04/17/v...

"The world’s top 100 oil and gas companies banked more than $30m every hour in unearned profit in the first month of the US-Israeli war in Iran" That cash comes from all of us locked into reliance on dirty fossil fuels despite none of us asking for it www.theguardian.com/environment/...

it is, among other things, incredibly striking to see that roberts was so solicitous of the burden the clean power plan might put on fossil fuel executives, when, a decade later, he is indifferent to the way trump’s moves have thrown hundreds of thousands of lives into turmoil.

NEW from me at @theguardian.com + @documented.net An official at Trump-aligned AFPI said the quiet part out loud: They want to end medical transition for everyone, adults included. Children are the “low-hanging fruit” in their quest to do so. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

🧵 Saving local news also means saving archives 🗞️ Not just physical photos, clips & recordings, but digital reporting too 💻 When archives disappear, communities lose memory, identity, and their only reliable record of change. More 👇 www.poynter.org/reporting-ed... @poynterinstitute.bsky.social

An "unusual arrangement" "Sales of Tesla Inc.’s Cybertruck have been propped up in recent months by Elon Musk’s other companies, an unusual arrangement that further indicates the polarizing pickup is failing to appeal to everyday buyers." finance.yahoo.com/markets/stoc...

A name that continues the exploitation of Rosalind Franklin’s life and work, James Watson couldn’t have done it any better himself.

“Whatever legitimate concerns people may have about generative AI, libraries are not the problem, and blocking access to web archives is not the solution; doing so risks serious harm to the public record."