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Angela Chen

@chengela.bsky.social
4.2K followers 214 following 99 posts

Science journalist, editor, author of Ace. chengela.substack.com

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Reposted by Angela Chen
Rafe Meager (they/them) @economeager.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I found it. The only good post on the covid queer bar thing. substack.com/@sproutstack...
Russell Sprout
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Sproutstack


Hey you heard about this story coming out of Massachusetts? Apparently this group of self-selected individuals, who largely feel out of place in a world of great sorrow and despair - like, they're in this world, but not of it - formed a very intentional community as an example to the rest of the world, like a beacon that shines on a hill. And now they're tearing each other apart over seemingly inscrutable moral infractions! All this, in Massachusetts! Can you believe it?
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Max Kozlov @maxkozlov.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
SCOOP: Top researchers at Columbia, Stanford, and others thought they were elected to elite scientific societies alongside Nobel laureates. The catch? The organizations are a sham. I spent the last month diving deep into a massive academic scam spanning continents, for @nature.com
nature.com
Exclusive: Sham scientific societies are misleading star researchers
A Nature investigation reveals a network of organizations that have been building their ranks through deceptive practices.
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
So many good details in this profile of Robert Montgomery, a pioneering heart surgeon with a heart condition. He learned to decrease his stress response so his device wouldn't shock him, got a heart transplant from his own program, is now working on pig kidneys. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/w...
nytimes.com
He Changed the World of Organ Transplants. Would He Die Waiting for His Own?
A New York transplant surgeon’s experience waiting for a heart transplant laid bare the challenges of a system he had spent decades trying to fix.
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I read a scathing ethnography about education at St. Paul's, an elite NH boarding school, & was half-convinced, half-skeptical. Then I talked to my friend who went to another elite NH boarding school & he goes "well everyone knows St. Paul's isn't rigorous." chengela.substack.com/p/what-they-...
chengela.substack.com
What they taught at boarding school
And what the students learned.
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Confinement, week 4 of 6: Watched two "Kirsten Dunst gets married" movies back-to-back: Mona Lisa Smile and Melancholia. Works surprisingly well to think of Melancholia as a sequel.
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Really moving piece, esp for anyone who remembers Nikole Hannah-Jones' original essay. Ten years later, her daughter tells her: “Sometimes I wish instead of always thinking about other kids, you would have thought about me. I never really got the education I wanted.” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/m...
nytimes.com
In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?
A decade ago, I made a decision about my daughter’s education that I hoped would challenge New York City’s separate and unequal school system. Now 16, she thinks I made the wrong choice.
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Reposted by Angela Chen
Sean Carroll @seanmcarroll.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Everyone is wondering, so: yes, Bernard Derrida, awarded this year’s Dirac Medal for his work on statistical mechanics, is the cousin of Jacques Derrida, famous problematizer of binary oppositions. www.ictp.it/news/2026/8/...
ictp.it
ICTP Announces 2026 Dirac Medal Recipients | ICTP
ICTP has awarded its 2026 Dirac Medal to four physicists who have made important contributions to statistical mechanics, a framework used by physicists to describe the collective behaviour of systems ...
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
For years now there's been buzz that a particular genetic variant is protective against dementia — now people are suggesting there's been fraud. Investigation from @jennieerinsmith.bsky.social @charlespiller.bsky.social in @science.org www.science.org/content/arti...
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Reposted by Angela Chen
Sam @mardiroos.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Affirmations: My body is not a soft animal. My skin is chitinous. My juicy meat is protected. I will molt safely again and again.
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
"In 1957, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist named John Hack discovered the most important law of river networks: Any stream, from the littlest brook to the mightiest river, has a length that’s proportional to its drainage area raised to the power of 0.6." www.quantamagazine.org/why-are-rive...
quantamagazine.org
Why Are Rivers So Mathematical? | Quanta Magazine
A simple scaling law brings order to the chaos of flowing water, rock, and sediment. New findings have extended the law even further.
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
I’m on an ethnography kick & loving them so much I have been inspired to blog! This one is about living in the Canadian Arctic among people never allowed to lose their temper, but starts with the anthropologist's disappointment over the reach of missionaries. chengela.substack.com/p/one-weird-...
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Spoon River Anthology is taught in a lot of US high schools, but they should teach the annotated version because it's full of gossip. “Julia Miller” is based on Masters’ early sweetheart—in life, happily married to an older man, but he turns her into a miserable pregnant woman who commits suicide.
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
In a demonstration of how personality can subtly shape choices, yesterday my (cheerful, positive) friend and I discovered that we'd both recently read biographies of Alma Mahler. He chose one called Passionate Spirit. I chose one titled Malevolent Muse.
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Reposted by Angela Chen
Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 06/03/2026
A few things I've learnt from writing >4,000 word pieces: - They tend to be more popular than my short pieces! - They're more definitive - like reference material, not a hot take. - Not everyone will reach the end, and that's okay. - Write so that the people who do find it incredibly satisfying.
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kelly @kickinson.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
my local park is full of hundreds of snow sculptures and someone has been adding museum labels
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
"Anthropologist Haneul Jang, who has worked with the BaYaka for over a decade, describes how marriages happen: an enamored adolescent couple will simply walk off into the forest and a few days later, they return and build a hut": worksinprogress.co/issue/marria...
worksinprogress.co
The market for marriage - Works in Progress Magazine
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good agricultural surplus, must be in want of a wife.
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
Since moving, J and I have been having escalating fights over his inability to plan, culminating in him sending me a google doc of plans that includes this:
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 03/12/2025
Is the top middle image "an image with a car"?
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Reposted by Angela Chen
Anna North @annanorth.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
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
thecut.com
Quit Romanticizing Boredom
Everyone says “logging off” will solve our problems. After actually living it, I’m not so sure.
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 05/10/2025
Going through vacation photos, found this from the Franz Kafka Museum. Welcome, Franz.
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 05/10/2025
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.
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Nicole Chung @nicolechung.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
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.
theatlantic.com
When Adoption Promises Are Broken
Many birth mothers hope to maintain contact with their child. But their agreements with adoptive parents can be fragile.
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
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/
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
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...
washingtonpost.com
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.
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Reposted by Angela Chen
Matt Shipman (he/him) @shiplives.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
Seeing ice cream cones during their spawning runs really takes your breath away. They’ll only do this once in their entire lives.
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 29/08/2025
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?”
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 11/08/2025
"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...
wsj.com
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.
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 05/08/2025
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...
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
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.
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 27/07/2025
Truly, unintended consequences for everything.
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Sigal Samuel @sigalsamuel.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
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...
vox.com
AI systems could become conscious. What if they hate their lives?
How to not torture ChatGPT and Claude’s successors.
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
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/...
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 16/05/2025
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...
simonandschuster.com
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 ...
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Reposted by Angela Chen
Kylie Eleison @gonebabygone.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
“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 @izzieramirez.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
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...
vox.com
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.
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
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...
vox.com
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.
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
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...
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 26/01/2025
Got this notice while trying to access a paper with the subtitle "Is Mutual Love with a Robot Possible?" Not at this rate!
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
. @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.”
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Reposted by Angela Chen
Rafe Meager (they/them) @economeager.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
here is an ungated version from 2022 www.andreamatranga.net/uploads/1/5/...
andreamatranga.net
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
.@art-s.bsky.social 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...
docs.google.com
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...
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
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.)
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 08/01/2025
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...
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leon @leyawn.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
where does the new york times even find these people
A screenshot of a New York Times update that says: In Grand Central Terminal, Leon Chang, 26, of Brooklyn, said he had not heard of congestion pricing and asked what it was. When explained it was a toll for cars entering Manhattan, he then asked “What do you mean? What is a car?” Walking outside, we showed him a vehicle parked on the street. He gently touched the hood of the car. “You wish to forbid these majestic beasts from entering the city,” he said in a wistful tone. “It is a folly of man. The desire to tame the world around us.”
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 06/01/2025
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...
nytimes.com
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.
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depths of wikipedia @depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social · 03/01/2025
in the article of former North Carolina Congressman Patrick McHenry:
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 03/01/2025
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
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Ryan Moulton @moultano.bsky.social · 23/12/2024
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.
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Angela Chen @chengela.bsky.social · 22/12/2024
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."
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Rafe Meager (they/them) @economeager.bsky.social · 22/12/2024
The real deadweight loss is the friends we made along the way
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