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fostercricket.bsky.social

@fostercricket.bsky.social
114 followers 337 following 101 posts

Posts things that interest me, fascinate me, or make me think. Typically, will be climate change, economics, and governance.

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Reposted by @fostercricket.bsky.social
Jakob Kaiser @jakobkaiser.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
Fascinating article on research productivity vs. innovation in the AI era. The danger: If used without critical thinking, AI might lead to a vast increase in research publications, while actual scientific progress stagnates. Quality over quantity matters! www.aisnakeoil.com/p/could-ai-s... 🧪
aisnakeoil.com
Could AI slow science?
Confronting the production-progress paradox
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The Associated Press @apnews.com · 12/07/2025
Younger Democratic candidates across the country are running to replace party elders. The candidates have grown tired of lawmakers holding office past their prime and say fresh faces can reach more voters.
bit.ly
Young Democrats have called for a rebrand. They're vying to replace the party's old guard
Younger Democratic candidates across the country are running to replace party elders. The candidates have grown tired of lawmakers holding office past their prime and say fresh faces can reach more voters.
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News Eye @newseye.bsky.social · 05/07/2025
25 dead so far across Texas from flooding. Local authorities are blaming poor forecasting. It’s all so tragically predictable and criminally negligent.
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Dr Surekha Davies, Historical Monster Consultant (she/her) @drsurekhadavies.bsky.social · 05/07/2025
"some of these AI experts appear to mirror their products: they are able to produce remarkable results while having an understanding of them that is, at best, skin deep and brittle." @philipcball.bsky.social nails it! Elected representatives and educ. administrators must stop falling 4 the grift.
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fostercricket.bsky.social @fostercricket.bsky.social · 04/07/2025
If R are just now getting upset about this… they’re a bit late to the game
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Adam Bonica @adambonica.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
As the GOP prepares to enrich the mega rich by adding trillions to the debt and cruel budget cuts, it’s worth noting that a Democratic admin probably would have made them even richer through sound economic policy and by not by throwing the markets into a panic every few weeks.
Line graph showing total wealth of Forbes 400 from 1982-2024 in billions of dollars. Y-axis ranges from 0 to 5,000 billion. Background shaded red during Republican administrations (Reagan, Bush Sr., Bush Jr., Trump) and blue during Democratic administrations (Clinton, Obama, Biden). Graph shows steady upward trend with notable growth during Democratic terms. Text boxes indicate average total growth: 16.5% for Republican administrations, 57.1% for Democratic administrations. Percentage changes labeled for each presidential term, with Biden showing +64.6% growth through 2024. Data source: Forbes 400 lists, 1982-2024.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
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Ben Mullin @benmullin.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
WSJ editorial board: “The President is using government to intimidate news outlets that publish stories he doesn’t like. It’s a low move in a free country with a free press.” www.wsj.com/opinion/dona...
wsj.com
Opinion | Trump’s Lawfare Against the Free Press
He suggests prosecuting CNN, while pressuring a settlement out of CBS.
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The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
Kilmar Abrego Garcia describes being tortured in the El Salvador mega prison, where Trump sent him without due process — admittedly by mistake. As un-American as it gets. And others are still there.
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Mrs. Betty Bowers @mrsbettybowers.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
In a mere matter of days, we can house migrants, but not our homeless. Because being cruel is always the motivation. #AlligatorAuschwitz
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BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
the stories that come out of the ICE camps are going to look like the stories that come out of every camp system; rampant corruption, epidemic disease, physical and sexual abuse on a vast scale, a death rate far higher than normal, and medical abuses.
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National Women's Law Center @nwlc.org · 02/07/2025
Today, we celebrate 60 years of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), an agency dedicated to protecting workers from discrimination and promoting equal opportunity for everyone.
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fostercricket.bsky.social @fostercricket.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
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fostercricket.bsky.social @fostercricket.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
This may be the dumbest thing I’ve read.
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Indivisible Asheville/WNC @indivisibleavl.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
"They'll get over it" - Mitch McConnell  "Everybody dies" - Joni Ernst "Minutiae" - JD Vance MAGA politicians have zero empathy for the plight of ordinary Americans who depend on these programs. www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...
rollingstone.com
J.D. Vance Dismisses Kicking Millions Off Medicaid: 'Minutiae”
Vice President J.D. Vance said the reconciliation bill kicking millions off Medicaid is “minutiae" compared to securing ICE deportation funding.
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NBC News @nbcnews.com · 01/07/2025
More than 14 million people could die over the next five years because of the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, according to an analysis published Monday in the medical journal The Lancet.
nbcnews.to
USAID cuts could lead to 14 million deaths over the next five years, researchers say
An analysis published Monday in the medical journal The Lancet projects that cuts to the agency will lead to more deaths from diseases like AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.
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Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 30/06/2025
The White House has ordered the US Dept. of Justice to prioritize denaturalization: voiding the citizenship of US citizens. Who will it denaturalize? "Any" case that it "determines to be sufficiently important". Point 10 leaves the criteria opaque and arbitrary. substack.com/redirect/169...
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Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
A new paper in The Lancet, one of the world’s foremost peer reviewed medical journals, estimates that USAID prevented 91 million deaths across 133 countries over 20 years. The paper estimates that Elon Musk’s DOGE funding cuts to USAID will lead to 14 million deaths by 2030 (4.5 million children).
thelancet.com
Evaluating the impact of two decades of USAID interventions and projecting the effects of defunding on mortality up to 2030: a retrospective impact evaluation and forecasting analysis
USAID funding has significantly contributed to the reduction in adult and child mortality across low-income and middle-income countries over the past two decades. Our estimates show that, unless the a...
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Leah Greenberg ❌👑 @leahgreenberg.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
absolutely massive red flag when the only way you can get the straggler on board with your trash fire bill is to promise it doesn't apply to their state
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David Corn @davidcorn.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
How messed up do you have to be to say that stripping health coverage from up to 16 million people, removing food from kids, and raising taxes on some low-income people is “immaterial”?
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Richard Pearshouse @richardpearshouse.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
“Nearly 200 countries agreed to try to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C… But countries have continued to burn record amounts of coal, oil and gas and chop down carbon-rich forests - leaving that international goal in peril.”
bbc.com
Three years left to limit warming to 1.5C, top scientists warn
The Earth could be doomed to breach a key climate target in as little as three years, scientists warn.
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fostercricket.bsky.social @fostercricket.bsky.social · 14/06/2025
Not sure how many but way more than the 500 people anticipated.
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fostercricket.bsky.social @fostercricket.bsky.social · 14/06/2025
#NoKings in Vienna VA. DC suburb. Not sure
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fostercricket.bsky.social @fostercricket.bsky.social · 08/06/2025
It’s got to be on purpose? They think this is a good look on media 🤷🏻‍♀️
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fostercricket.bsky.social @fostercricket.bsky.social · 08/06/2025
😬 La manifestation is what I learned about real quick living in Paris. They happen for any labor dispute. I’ve always thought we could learn a lot from our French brethren.
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Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 07/06/2025
“Defund the police” was in fact a great slogan.
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Jacob Soboroff @jacobsoboroff.bsky.social · 07/06/2025
live from the huge spontaneous anti-ICE protest after the agency used military-style tactics during a series of raids in Los Angeles today.
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Rick CarBOOso’s Private Fire Crew @amandasmith.bsky.social · 08/06/2025
“Defund the police” is also a climate justice issue because LAPD helicopters alone burn 761,000 gallons of jet fuel in a year per a jalopnik article from 2023. www.jalopnik.com/lapd-spends-...
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fostercricket.bsky.social @fostercricket.bsky.social · 08/06/2025
The more I understand the forthcoming climate disaster and how absolutely beneficial migration is for economics. Open borders just make sense
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Senator Dr. John Brown stan account, Esq., PhD, MD, JD, LCSW @johnbrownstan.bsky.social · 08/06/2025
The correct response to state violence is more protest, more people. Make it clear that a free people cannot and will not be oppressed.
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fostercricket.bsky.social @fostercricket.bsky.social · 31/05/2025
This should have been illegal (it’s been independent since 1998 by law and Presidents don’t have the authority to dismantle). It’s horrific the silence on it. We are literally 🔥 all soft power here. Aid, Science, education, health, & more… sacrificed for billionaires tax cuts
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Katie Holten @katieholten.bsky.social · 31/05/2025
War on Nature Is Up Against a Powerful New Resistance Movement. #RightsofNature offers philosophical grounds for resistance to the administration’s shortsighted drive to gut environmental regulation and reduce the natural world to 🤑. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/o... @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social 💚
nytimes.com
Opinion | Trump’s War on Nature Is Up Against a Powerful New Resistance Movement
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 31/05/2025
If you see reactionary centrist takes that universities did this to themselves by being too woke, or not being friendly enough to conservatives, remember there are always people willing to make the arguments of the authoritarian respectable
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 31/05/2025
Damn. This is dramatic. I had heard a couple days ago that a Nadler staffer had been arrested but was waiting for confirmation. So now we know what happened; ICE officers barged into the district office trying to arrest other people, handcuffed a staffer who pushed back, then let her go, no arrest.
Robert Gottheim, Nadler's co-chief of staff, confirmed there was no arrest but otherwise
declined to comment on the unusual event that resulted in federal agents entering the office of a Democratic member of Congress, accusing office staffers of criminal wrongdoing and handcuffing a staffer.
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Peter Gleick @petergleick.bsky.social · 31/05/2025
There are 2 previous historical cases of countries destroying their science and universities, crippling them for decades: Lysenkoism in the USSR and Nazi Germany. The Trump administration will be the 3rd. It's not just budgets but research, institutions, expertise, and training the next generation.
Graphs showing 25 years of budgets for the National Institute of Health, NASA, and the NSF. In all cases, the proposed budget for next year is far, far below any year of the previous quarter century.
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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 31/01/2025
LAWLESS NSF: Every NSF employee who is following the director on this funding freeze and fishing expedition is in violation of US code. per the post below, this language has been reauthorized twice, most recently by Biden in 2022 as the CHIPS Act. www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/... 🧪
PUBLIC LAW 117-167-AUG. 9, 2022
Subtitle E-Fundamental Research
SEC. 10341. BROADER IMPACTS.
(a) ASSESSMENT.-Not later than 120 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Director shall enter into an agreement with a qualified independent organization to assess how the Broader Impacts review criterion is applied across the Foundation and make recommendations for improving the effectiveness for meeting the goals established in section 526 of the America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science Reauthorization Act of 2010 (42 U.S.C. 1862p-14).
(b) ActIvitiEs.-The Director shall make awards on a competitive basis, to institutions of higher education or non-profit organizations (or consortia of such institutions or organizations) to support of resources for reple menting the Broader impasts review criterion, including-
(1) training and workshops for program officers, merit review panelists, award office administrators, faculty, and students to improve understanding of the goals and the full range of potential broader impacts available to researchers to satisfy this criterion;
(2) repositories and clearinghouses for sharing best practices and facilitating collaboration; and
(3) tools for evaluating and documenting societal impacts of research.
136 STAT. 1557
42 USC 19051.
Deadline.
Contracts.
Recommenda-tions.
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The Verge @theverge.com · 30/05/2025
Young people sue Donald Trump over climate change
buff.ly
Young people sue Donald Trump over climate change
If they’re successful, they’ll stop executive orders boosting fossil fuels. 
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The New Republic @newrepublic.com · 30/05/2025
All policy is climate policy. Cuts that make people poorer also make them more vulnerable to baking in their homes; programs that keep people out of poverty help them avoid meeting that fate. trib.al/zZIu4b1
trib.al
The Republican Plot to Let People Die of Heatstroke
As we approach a summer that may be among the hottest on record, Republicans are trying to cut programs that help the poor and the elderly stay cool—and stay alive.
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fostercricket.bsky.social @fostercricket.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
If this isn’t a strong enough argument against big oil, I don’t know what is.
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Forests & Finance @forestsandfinance.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
Chinese banks rise to claim top spots among largest lenders to “forest-risk” businesses. They poured $23B+ into forest-risk companies since 2018 yet most have no zero-deforestation policies. @globalwitness.org warns about blind spot in China’s green finance agenda globalwitness.org/en/campaigns...
globalwitness.org
China banks top largest lenders to “forest-risk” businesses
A new analysis reveals that Chinese banks have become the largest creditors to “forest-risk” companies, after major producing countries Brazil and Indonesia
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fostercricket.bsky.social @fostercricket.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
Not at all climate change being real and happening right now
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fostercricket.bsky.social @fostercricket.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
This is utterly stupid dumb and short sighted. Particularly with us staring down a bird flu pandemic
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Gabrielle Hecht 🇵🇷 • she/elle/ella/cis⚔️ • AOC 4USpresident @gabriellehecht.bsky.social · 26/05/2025
Reposting with alt text: letter from 1100 Israeli academics write a strong letter demanding an end to the massacres and expressing responsibility Read
- An Urgent Call to the Heads of Academia i...
An Urgent Call to the Heads of Academia in Israel
To the Association of University Heads in Israel, the Board of Academic Public Colleges, and Academics for Israeli Democracy,
We, members of the academic and administrative staff in institutions of higher education in Israel, call on you to act immediately to mobilize the full weight of Israeli academia to stop the Israeli war in Gaza.
Israeli higher education institutions play a central role in the struggle against the judicial overhaul. It is precisely against this backdrop that their silence in the face of the killing, starvation, and destruction in Gaza, and in the face of the compl elimination of the educational syste there, its people, and its structures, striking.As academics, we recognize our own role in these crimes. It is human societies, not governments alone, that commit crimes against humanity. Some do so by means of direct violence. Others do so by sanctioning the crimes and justifying them, before and after the fact, and by keeping quiet and silencing voices in the halls of learning. It is this bond of silence that allows clearly evident crimes to continue unabated without penetrating the barriers of recognition.Since Israel violated the ceasefire on March 18, almost 3,000 people have been killed in Gaza. The vast majority of them were civilians. Since the start of the war, at least 53,000 people have been killed in Gaza, including at least 15,000 children and at least 41 Israeli hostages. At the same time, many international bodies are warning of acute starvation - the result of intentional and openly declared Israeli government policy - as well as of the rendering of Gaza into an area unfit for human habitation. Israel continues to bomb hospitals, schools, and other institutions.
Among the war's declared goals, as defined in the orders for the current military operation "Gideon's Chariots," is the "concentration and displacement of population." This is a horrifying litany of war crimes and even crimes against humanity, all of our own doing.We cannot claim that we did not know. We have been silent for too long. For the sake of the lives of innocents and the safety of all the people of this land, Palestinians and Jews; for the sake of the return of the hostages; if we do not call to halt the war immediately, history will not forgive us.
We will not forgive ourselves. It is our duty to act to stop the slaughter; it is our duty to save lives. It is our duty to save what can still be saved of this land's future. The institutions of higher education in Israel must raise their voices, address their students and the public at large, look at reality directly and call things what they are - unspeakable actions being done in our name, with our own hands, that will ultimately result in destroying higher education in Israel and the entire society from within.
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fostercricket.bsky.social @fostercricket.bsky.social · 23/05/2025
Truly but a pleasant surprise nonetheless
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Christopher Webb @cwebbonline.com · 22/05/2025
Take all the time you need with this because you’ve got 3½ more years to ponder: If you sat out the 2024 election, you voted against your own interests too— by way of abstention.
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fostercricket.bsky.social @fostercricket.bsky.social · 23/05/2025
Exactly what the donor class has been asking for
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Sherrilyn Ifill @sifill.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
Why are accepting this? Secret police?
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 19/05/2025
"Joe Biden’s fitness for office is not the most pressing issue facing the country now, in 2026, or in 2028. This is trivially obvious. But the fact that the media, and some Democrats, continue to be obsessed with the last election points to some real problems going forward." — @nberlat.bsky.social
publicnotice.co
Voters want Dems to stand up to Trump, not self-flagellate
Sorry, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson.
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fostercricket.bsky.social @fostercricket.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
About fraking time. DOGE had no authority
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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 19/05/2025
One of the disturbing truths it's taken me a long time to fully internalize: the person who calls upon us to be better attracts *vastly* more resentment & rage than the person who unapologetically wallows in sin. You see this at the micro & the macro level.
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fostercricket.bsky.social @fostercricket.bsky.social · 16/05/2025
Every single federal employee has more integrity than many in this administration
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