Some people think ChatGPT has a place writing things like news briefs, stuff written to a specific style and tone and, y'know, kinda boring. So Science did a study. ChatGPT failed. Why? It got stuff wrong. "Also, extensive editing for hyperbole was needed." www.science.org/content/blog...

The man teaching my kite class tonight said, “I don’t know if you’ve seen the news but it’s bad.” And it made me wonder what it would be like to have not seen the news for more than like one hour at a time lol

i remain resolute in my confidence we will win and it will be because we stuck together. dooming and fatalism is not how any of us will get out of this mess. i’m saying this as a veteran climate journalist who is a trans woman. if i have more hope than you, think of what that says about your view

no one ever knows what the thing will be that changes everything. it's probably a million things, many of which are already in progress. keep moving, don't fall prey to doomism

Log off and do an Active Hope spiral (spend 2 min on each prompt)

I wish skating twitter were here so I could tell them I did a toe loop 🥲

I keep a notes app doc of unhinged things I’d write about if someone gave me an op ed column. Just added a new one

Man I love Madison

if you've got anything to spare, support the organizer of Madison's best queer dance parties as she gets treatment for breast cancer www.gofundme.com/f/ccz6e-sara...

in the way that you can pay someone to tidy your house regularly I would like to pay someone to tidy my phone regularly

meanwhile weird al is soundchecking down the street lol

I wrote one (1) story about Gamergate in 2016, was instantly targeted and threatened on social media, and was scared off from reporting anything further on online culture. Many media organizations have repeatedly failed to deal with bad faith attacks and are too often wholly unprepared for new ones.

of course our online communities aren't healthy have you seen our real-life ones

unfortunately for all of us the bad kind of logging on is WAY more profitable

went into target last weekend for the first time since before the holidays bc cvs doesn't require a prescription to get a COVID shot in WI and it was eerily empty for a sunday afternoon.

"[Disinformation is] organized, it’s deliberate, it’s politically motivated, it’s financially motivated as well. And it’s a killing force." - @michaelemann.bsky.social yaleclimateconnections.org/2025/09/its-... @climateconnections.bsky.social

it’s early but it seems like maybe this is relevant again (wrote it last week fml)

Spread calm. Tell the truth. Defend vulnerable people who are under attack. Getting stuck in a reactive mode is exhausting, and exhaustion can make us weak.

Any amount you could give would be deeply appreciated. And most of it will go towards paying the Madison-area writers, artists and editors who make Tone what it is.

This + increasingly, I think it's important to note who doesn't want these spaces (public schools, universities, parades, etc) to exist and who benefits from them feeling unsafe.

The best thing I did for myself right after the election was to sign up for skating lessons. I'm jumping again for the first time in decades! And my class signups have proliferated, so I'm booked and busy and meeting new people in my community (taking a kite sewing class tonight).

Got to go look at art last weekend and it did feel like it opened my lungs and unclenched my jaw quite a bit

An auto play Twitter video of a journalist being beheaded messed me up for months of my senior year of college before a doctor finally prescribed me sertraline and the FODMAP diet (campus health just made me take pregnancy tests lol). Watching this stuff is really, really bad for you.

The MSNBC commentator saying that most political violence has historically come from the left just once again showed how we suffer from failing to learn history. Lynching, pogroms, race riots, the political violence that ended Reconstruction, and against the Civil Rights Movement. Come on.

City officials want to give Buffy a state-of-the-art crossbow and add a holy water creek for humans to paddle to the club. But state officials prefer opening the hellmouth wider. (h/t @citycastmadison.bsky.social)

I wrote about the intentionally byzantine process of getting a COVID vaccine this fall defector.com/how-the-fuck...

Republicans are eliminating tax credits for EVs, rooftop solar, heat pumps, energy-efficient windows, and more. Here’s how to take advantage of the credits while you still can:

A good question to ask oneself politically is 'what do I need to ignore in order to maintain my commitment to x, y, and z?' Because if you, for example, need to ignore a whole group of people's humanity in order to vote for a horrible politician, then it may be too costly to your soul.

School shootings aren't as obviously part of a political program as, say, campaigns or bill passage, but like the firebombing of abortion clinics they function to constrain the safety of those deemed undesireable, to rob freedom and peace, to force all life in defiance of shooter to be lived in fear

Broken record territory rapidly approaching, but once again: Homelessness is not a societal inevitability. It's a policy failure. This is a solvable issue with a known solution, even under capitalism, because that solution is less expensive than the current responses. We just don't want to do it.

But by far and away, the biggest priority for a Heritage Foundation-captured CDC is going to be using the agency's legal frameworks for access to medical data, and weaponizing them to control women. *Most* of the Project 2025 plan for CDC is a witch hunt against abortion on an unprecedented scale.

20 years since Hurricane Katrina, climate change has made hurricanes even more dangerous in many ways. These graphs show some of those ways. @climatecentral.org yaleclimateconnections.org/hurricane-gu...

“Disaster money is just sitting,” one FEMA employee tells WIRED. “Every single day applicants are asking their FEMA contact ‘where’s my money?’ And we are ordered to just say nothing and redirect.” Must-read by @mollytaft.com

At knitting group [ in ~MIDDLE AMERICA~] last night a friend was like “I don’t even know what word to use for my politics. I used to say democrat but I’m ashamed to say that now.” And I said I’m working hard to be able to say that I’m an abolitionist.

I wrote about planning a wedding that won’t pollute our home. Something that Taylor Swift, just like Jeff Bezos and any other immorally wealthy person, is unlikely to do. (See: her new, “natural diamond ring” when plenty of gorg vintage ones exist) yaleclimateconnections.org/2025/08/six-...

sneak peak of my wedding dress just dropped 👀👰

having to endure taylor swift wedding planning while i am also wedding planning while having to endure a taylor swift album cycle on top of a trump presidency is really going to make me shoot myself into the sun

cool to be living in an increasingly overtly authoritarian country, while the war planes that were brought to my city several years ago against the will of the people continue to fly overhead

People are in motion everywhere and no one action is "the silver bullet." That means that there are many many things to join and that you don't know what will make THE difference. No one thing will. That's actually OK.

Look at this dog I saw at halong bay last night

what do you do when the fact that a fact is a fact is the problem. like the fact is rejected first and foremost because it is true

I have found none of these words alienating to any midwesterner I talk to (like 95% of the people I talk to)

Many things are bad but also it is the time of sleepy bees and that is something so precious and good

What this means in practice is that 14K trans people will have to quit their federal employee jobs and find jobs that cover gender affirming care. In other words, this is a purge of trans people from the civil service. Lavender scare. Everyone who participates is responsible

It would be really useful if this country tracked heat-related deaths in any substantial meaningful way

!!! The explicit mention of climate change and calling out states for abandoning people to extreme weather by sending troops to terrorize DC here is so important.

people always say the great lakes region is a climate haven because of the access to fresh water but...

Watching all the dogs walk by while I sit on my front porch after work

I’ve made three types of ice cream sandwiches this summer and this is the first one I’ve photographed. Not pictured: strawberry with chocolate sandwich cookie, peach with a blondie cake cookie