this handful of independent journalists (my former colleagues at Motherboard) do more impactful journalism than 75% of the corporate tech press on a fraction of the budget

Pam Bondi, Tulsi Gabbard, and Kristi Noem canceled a highly anticipated appearance before secretaries of state. www.votebeat.org/2026/01/30/b...

🌟OPEN ACCESS🌟 In a new #BSSA paper, a team from the USGS simulates hypothetical earthquakes on Washington State’s southern Whidbey Island fault. ⚒️ buff.ly/DrbnLp0

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News publishers are limiting access to the Internet Archive's crawlers because they fear it's a backdoor to AI scraping. As a result, some of the web's history of getting lost. www.niemanlab.org/2026/01/news...

AI technologies now enable coordinated "swarms" of inauthentic social media activity that can manipulate public opinion at scale by mimicking human behavior, generating convincing falsehoods, and fabricating false consensus. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

If you're interested in seeing how framing contests are taking shape after the ICE killing of another person in Minneapolis, here's a window into the conversation on X this morning. Link to interactive graph: faculty.washington.edu/kstarbi/Spot... * I put this together quickly. Sorry for any errors

Our initial analysis is up. The video footage appears to show that the gun was taken away from the man before he was shot. He was UNARMED before any of the shots were fired.

First-time posters need to be endorsed by an established arXiv author in their own field. The new rule is mostly to try and discourage people from trying to get something started by sending some rubbish to arXiv. 🦠🧪 www.science.org/content/arti...

Congrats to @cip.uw.edu co-founder @katestarbird.bsky.social!

I told @bloomberg.com that Grok's undressing spree is the inevitable consequence of a concerted effort to roll back digital safety across tech platforms led by self-interested US elites www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again. www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

One of the issues that has come up again and again in my reporting on misinformation and social media is the massive influence social media companies have on research in the field. Last night a preprint dropped that tries to get at this with some numbers. My piece in @science.org (and 🧪🧵 coming):

Our team at the @cip.uw.edu is co-sponsoring the Disinformation Summer Institute this June on Bainbridge Island. Apply by Feb. 15. Learn more in this thread ... ⤵️⤵️⤵️

States once relied on CISA for election security. Now officials say politicization and retreating support have shattered that trust.

I turned my thread here from yesterday about how the layers of quote posts on X that start with a mundane story increasingly get passed along with ever more unhinged conspiracy theories until Elon Musk shares it with his over 200 million followers.

Emmett’s thread offers a very succinct summary of our team’s recent “frameworks” paper, which describes our motivation and methodological approach for supporting collective sensemaking thru rapid research in a university setting. We’re planning another full deployment for the 2026 U.S. election.

Today in stratovolcanoes, Wy'east (Mt Hood), on the way north from LAX to SEA.

Thanks for highlighting our recent report, @emmettoconnell.bsky.social! (Cc: @danielletomson.bsky.social @katestarbird.bsky.social)

There's A LOT going on right now in struggle b/w democracy & authoritarianism, so it's hard to keep up. But it's going to be REALLY important that we pay attention to (and keep pushing back against) how election lies (from 2020) are being mobilized in ways that threaten election integrity in 2026.

I was nearly killed a few years back by a speeding motorist while I was crossing the incredibly wide (non-arterial) 1st Street in the Bluff Heights area of #LongBeach, California. It looks like dead palm fronds have been added as a lane divider here at 1st St & Coronado Ave.

Status scoop: Bari Weiss is subjecting another "60 Minutes" piece to scrutiny that has yet to air: one in the works for months by Anderson Cooper examining Trump's decision to accept white South African refugees. Details in @status.news www.status.news/p/60-minutes...

not saying it can't get worse but this week really feels like a straightforward depiction of what worst-case 'post truth' information apocalypse ppl were warning of in the late 2010s

NEW: Publishers of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette announce they are shutting down the newspaper on May 3, 2026. Hours ago, the Supreme Court of the US declined to extend a stay on a court order for the paper to pay its journalists following the end of a 3-year strike.

a huge victory for universities, worth billions of dollars: Trump can’t cap indirect-cost rates on NIH grants, appeals court rules www.chronicle.com/blogs/the-tr... via @andyandy.bsky.social

What could go wrong for flood-struck communities when the federal agency tasked with managing emergencies loses nearly 20% of its workforce in less than a year?

In what Reuters called a "mass digital undressing spree,” Elon Musk is provoking outrage after his Grok chatbot responded to user prompts to remove clothing from images of women and to create "sexualized images of children" and post them on X. I spoke to Stanford HAI's Riana Pfefferkorn about it:

Places that were habitable in previous generations are no longer habitable in today’s climate as rising seas threaten low-lying coastal communities. www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/f...

One thing I wrote about here is how technology has made buses *way* more convenient while techno-futurists were obsessed with flying taxis and self-driving cars.

Birmingham revellers turn out for non-existent fireworks – for second new year in a row

1/ Ever wonder how a rumor in MN becomes a physical confrontation in WA in 72 hours? It’s a new model: Participatory Disinformation. WA's digital ecosystem is perfectly primed for these outbreaks. 🧵

I recently checked out Tacoma's new transit-accessible cheesecake window as part of my latest newsletter edition. Also in this edition ... 🧵 transiterranean.beehiiv.com/p/basque-che... #Tacoma #TacomaWA #PublicTransit #PacificNorthwest

The rumors about daycare centers are extremely "fit" for virality: having both novelty & familiarity (drawing on anti-immigrant tropes of criminality & exploitation); making emotional/identity appeals; are *participatory* in that ppl can create their own “evidence” by investigating local centers.

🙃 “Frankly, no one I know has ever ridden farther than the Carroll Street Station in Brooklyn. We’re not really sure what’s out there, but we figured we’d better put something on the map."

Anyway, Brandolini’s law continues to hold: Bullshit is asymmetrical. Editorial failures like this put the burden on me to track how even purportedly scholarly works (mis)use what I’ve said and written, and expend time and effort to set the record straight. It’s untenable in the long run.

With this high level visibility on the former City Hall Station, hopefully content creators will finally retire the "Did you know there's a secret subway station at New York City Hall?" type of video. Since at least the mid 2000s, that old station has been rediscovered every few weeks online.

The Trump administration is rolling out the red carpet for once-besieged prediction apps like Polymarket and Kalshi, with millions pouring into bets on the midterms. The companies wave away concerns about foreign influence and partisan meddling www.npr.org/2025/12/23/n...

A new subscription to @theonion.com print edition has brought some needed joy to the holiday season. The special wrapping paper page inserts will also come in handy for belated Christmas presents!

Former head of trust and safety at Twitter, Yoel Roth, demonstrating the intellectual dishonesty of “In Covid’s Wake” by showing how they distorted his own words to make them say the opposite of what he was arguing.

“I’m 84 years old. Threats against my life expectancy are kind of hollow. I don’t have much time anyway. I’m more concerned that our democracy is at risk because of the trends against the rule of law.” www.nbcnews.com/politics/pol...

While I normally focus on AI deepfake pornography, there's an under-discussed AI-gen harm that's particularly prevalent during the holidays: AI product scams. We counted down the top 10 holiday scams to look out for this year (check out the video), but here are some extra highlights below

Jeff Tumlin (ex-SFMTA head) has a good perspective on Waymo bricking in SF www.linkedin.com/posts/tumlin...

Happy Caturday! It's also this guy's Gotcha Day but he's too busy guarding his territory from pigeons outside.

My essay reframing the “Seattle Freeze” as “Cascadian Calm”: a regional culture shaped by introversion, openness, and low neuroticism. Quiet isn’t hostility but respect. Friction peaks during migration waves; community grows through empathy, not forced friendliness. olympiatime.com/2025/12/20/u...

In case you missed this earlier this week, our team put out a report documenting our approach to "rapid research" during elections, crises, & other breaking news events. It demonstrates a role for university researchers — relying on contextual and methodological expertise — to act as "sensemakers".

Do not cite an academic paper unless you’ve read it

AI "news" is so fucking awful. Seattle Bike Blog has great search engine karma, so we often get "cited" in these slop stories. Here's one that just popped up about the Rad bankruptcy. Nearly all the figures in the piece are just plain wrong, but then the AI attributes the errors to us! Fuck this.

Researchers find that influencers influence. New experimental evidence for old theories around opinion leaders, parasocial relationships, and persuasion, with implications for political messaging in our digitally connected era. www.wired.com/story/the-mo...

A few thoughts on why the latent popularity of car-free living hasn’t translated to the funding changes necessary to make it possible: The millions of people who would like to drive less aren’t organized, so elected officials rarely hear from them, allowing the car-dominated status quo to fester.