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jennifer kates

@jenniferkates.bsky.social
738 followers 265 following 112 posts

public interest law/policy/advocacy always. opinions and idealism all mine. 🔗 www.opensocietyfoundations.org/gran…

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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 5h
This is a page turner. I thought I already knew a lot of what would be in @gilduran.com’s book, but it’s still giving me chills. bookshop.org/p/books/the-...
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Greenb3ar @greenb3ar.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
Okay the best political ad of the year is here from LA-DSA
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Solid summary
Brief NYTimes book review synopsis of the first book in Gormenghast
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 08/10/2026
V v good new @earthjustice.org report on the genuinely nutty numbers behind the data centre fossil fuel boom in the US This new update shows emissions from off-grid gas plants for data centres are WAY worse than previously estimated earthjustice.org/feature/data...
Climate & Public Health
▪ Massive scale and impact: The scale of both total
and individual BYOP proposals is massive. As of
August 2026, there are nine proposed gas BYOP
projects that are 4.5 GW or larger. If all are built,
nine of the top 10 largest power plants in the U.S.
would be data center gas BYOP.
Altogether, the current 177 GW of gas proposals
would emit over 400 million metric tons of carbon
dioxide equivalent ( MTCO 2e) annually, increasing
the U.S. power sector’s total emissions by 23% .
Ozone and particulate matter pollution from
these projects could cause an estimated $5 –10B
in monetized health damages each year. 1
▪ Majority gas: Building on prior reports, we
estimate that for current BYOP proposals,
approximately 80% of energy generation will
come from gas.
▪ Inefficient gas technologies with more air
pollution: More than half of disclosed gas BYOP
capacity uses technologies that are less efficient
and more polluting than typical gas power plants.  Majority gas:  Building on prior reports, we estimate that for current BYOP proposals, approximately 80% of energy generation will come from gas.

 Massive scale and impact: The scale of both total and individual BYOP proposals is massive. As of August 2026, there are nine proposed gas BYOP projects that are 4.5 GW or larger. If all are built, nine of the top 10 largest power plants in the U.S. would be data center gas BYOP.

Altogether, the current 177 GW of gas proposals would emit over 400 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (mtCO2e) annually, increasing the U.S. power sector’s total emissions by 23%. Ozone and particulate matter pollution from these projects could cause an estimated $5–10B in monetized health damages each year.
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Chilling article
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Heavy again today thinking about what it means to know what we do now about Botstein and Chomsky. But appreciative of this serious weighing. archive.is/2026.06.05-1...
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Prisonculture @prisonculture.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
“Everyone influences the world in some way. No matter how powerless we may feel, each of us is a creator who continually churns out energy that bends and shapes our world and the people in it. 

What is the signature of your effect? How do you change the environments you pass through? What magic, for good or ill, do you perform in the daily rhythm of your life?” - Rob Brezsny
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NPR @npr.org · 07/10/2026
Researchers uncovered the graves of more than 1,000 children next to juvenile detention facilities in 29 states. At one Maryland gravesite, 230 Black boys are buried. n.pr/4zauALa
n.pr
Over 1,000 children are buried at juvenile detention centers nationwide
Researchers uncovered the graves of more than 1,000 children next to juvenile detention facilities in 29 states. At one Maryland gravesite, 230 Black boys are buried.
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Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg @danua.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
The Inquirer reported that the Philly School District is juking enrollment stats, including this quote from a principal: "They’re doing this so we don’t lose the funding." That statement is almost certainly wrong.
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Excuse me
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Kaos 😭
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
This invocation from Walter Benjamin ❤️‍🔥 @astra.bsky.social @naomiaklein.bsky.social
Few have thought more deeply about these temporal themes than Walter Benjamin. When he looked to the past, he saw piles of historical wreckage, yes, but that was not all he saw. He also identified a potential for repair, alongside a kinetic kind of energy. "The tradition of the oppressed" through time, he wrote, emerged in those moments when masses of working people rose up to resist subjugation, suddenly aware of their collective strength and determined to change the world. Sometimes they won their battles, and often they lost, but Benjamin……became convinced that the efforts never disappeared, and that their latent power could be summoned in what he referred to as Jetztzeit, often translated as "now time." Now time, he wrote, could break through into the present like a match igniting a long fuse stretching backward through previous eras, bursting, in Benjamin's formulation, like "a tiger's leap into the past."END TIMES FASCISM
AND THE FIGHT FOR THE LIVING WORLD
NAOMI KLEIN
ASTRA TAYLOR
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
New from @timnitgebru.blacksky.app and me: "It is high time for us to regulate usage of systems sold as “AI”, not because they are magical machines, but because they are error-prone products that shouldn’t be used in high stakes scenarios." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
Forget ‘superintelligence’: error-prone AI nearly sparked world war three this month | Timnit Gebru and Emily M Bender
The risks of AI aren’t what we think they are, as a recent security incident between China and the United States reveals
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Reading this now!
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Want to tag along so bad
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Save the Academy, bring back Atwater Kent (the Philadelphia History Museum), and fund our schools.
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
May I see - and help bring about - the day when this city better values learning, discovery, and its history
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
And ordered these to come today for my son, dedicated to trying to make him read corn maze folk horror this fall 😏
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Maybe also “Daffodil Days” bookshop.org/p/books/the-...
bookshop.org
The Daffodil Days: A Novel
A stunningly inventive and poignant historical novel that follows Sylvia Plath through the final year of her life, told through the eyes of the people who knew her during her time in the English count...
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
This thread = current vibes
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Great piece from @pemalevy.bsky.social and @ariberman.bsky.social on the Redemption-Era evils the Roberts Court has resurrected www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
motherjones.com
Jim Crow was on the ash heap of history. Then came the Roberts court.
The disaster the justices have unleashed has its roots in one of the darkest periods of our past.
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Atrios @eschatonblog.com · 24/09/2026
Oh no we told the computer to do a hack and it did it is it god
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Leah McElrath @leahmcelrath.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
AP Stylebook warns against anthropomorphizing AI systems: “Avoid language that gives them human characteristics… Instead, explain what a system does, how well it performs, who built it and who could be affected by it.”
APStylebook @APStylebook
X.com
Artificial intelligence systems do not think, feel, want or understand. Avoid language that gives them human characteristics. This is called anthropomorphizing, when we ascribe human traits, emotions or behaviors to non-human things, such as animals or inanimate objects.
Instead, explain what a system does, how well it performs, who built it and who could be affected by it.
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
*Additional amenities: possible hyperscale data center next door
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damniel spookradski @self.agency · 23/09/2026
it's not enough that they stole all the web's content, they're also stealing all the web's traffic so that they can serve ads on what they stole and profit from it
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Imagine if your city fixed broken sidewalks
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Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg @danua.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
It is, in fact, pathetic.
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
My husband. “I think it’s pathetic,” said Daniel Urevick Ackelsburg. “We need institutions to stand up for core American values, and unfortunately this is just another example of one failing to do so.” www.pennlive.com/news/2026/09...
pennlive.com
UPMC settles fight with Trump Administration over gender care for minors
The hospital system had already suspended most gender care services for patients under 19; today's announcement ends the administration's legal pursuit.
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Matt Pearce @mattdpearce.com · 17/09/2026
80% of AI news at this point consists of a company announcing “we wrote a computer virus” then there’s something about the apocalypse or regulation, then the next news story is like “we wrote another computer virus.”
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
You are way luckier than me if you have never seen the video for Galway Girl.
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
How many falling apart schools could we have modernized?
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
They want to pave the way for mass data center expansion, and big tech dominance over our lives But the future is not inevitable - join us today.
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Prisonculture @prisonculture.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Public opinion is dynamic. It exists to BE SHAPED. And it is ONLY a resource. It does nothing on its own.
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
whyy.org/articles/dat...
News article: 'Recipe for disaster:
Philadelphia activists urge City Council to pass a data center moratorium
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Citations Needed @citationspod.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
In Ep 241, "The Disempowering Politics of 'Inevitability' Part 1: Data Centers and LLM as 'The Future'," we breakdown the "inevitability" line AI companies use to bulldoze over democracy and how "inevitability" arguments have been used to sell everything from Manifest Destiny to "free trade deals".
soundcloud.com
Ep 241: The Disempowering Politics of 'Inevitability' Part 1: Data Centers and LLM as 'The Future'
In this episode we breakdown the popular "inevitability" argument "AI" companies are using to bulldoze over democracy and how the "inevitability" line has been used to sell everything from Manifest De
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Couldn’t not 💞
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Just catching up - moved by this hazlitt.net/longreads/la...
hazlitt.net
Lay It Down | Hazlitt
People love John Samson Fellows’s music. He doesn’t want to make it anymore.
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
It’s our air, our lives, and our city — we should decide 🦅 Two potential data center sites have already been identified in Philly—but the city has no rules to protect communities. We're rallying on 9/14 to demand City Council press PAUSE on data center development. Join us at philly.my/sep14rally
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Will Bunch @willbunch.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
How is ICE making record arrests? I found the answer in Pa. coal country, where cops lured by a promise of federal $$$ have embraced ICE's 287(g) and are throwing up checkpoints, raiding job sites, arresting 100s, and terrorizing their communities My special report www.inquirer.com/opinion/penn...
inquirer.com
In Pa. coal country, local police join with ICE to bring arrests, fear | Will Bunch
Pa.'s Schuylkill County is the new face of Trump's mass deportation, as local cops lured by federal cash bust scores of migrants.
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Literally imagining the follow up to “Their job isn’t politics. That’s my job”
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
My disappointment that when I opened the link that it wasn’t a Chotiner interview knows no bounds
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Robyn Swirling @rswirling.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
“Don’t people work hard enough and suffer too much not to deserve, in their short lives, to encounter beautiful and well made things?”
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Carly Goodman @carlygoodman.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
the erosion of formal rights, boldly but never solely targeting noncitizens, has been 30 years in the making
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
The show that makes you feel sane
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P is for Pirate 🌈✨️⚔️ @p4pirate.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
This essay is beautiful and worthwhile. I'm glad I took time out of my morning to read it.
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Thank you. This was so disturbing I keep thinking about it. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/17/u...
nytimes.com
Islamophobia’s Rise in Texas: ‘I Won’t Rest Until Every Muslim Is Gone’ (Gift Article)
Muslim communities have been growing for decades, particularly around Dallas. Now, conservatives want to roll up the welcome mat.
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Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 04/09/2026
Technology being everywhere doesn’t mean it belongs everywhere. The tech industry wants us to believe that AI in early education is not only inevitable, but necessary. We don't see it that way. This week, we announced a moratorium on generative AI for public school students in 2-K to 8th grade.
We’re eliminating AI use for students in 2-K through 8th grade for the upcoming school year.
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jennifer kates @jenniferkates.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
🌘
youtu.be
Harvest Moon
YouTube video by Cassandra Wilson - Topic
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Puff the Magic Hater @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
For years, people have asked @tanuja.bsky.social and me how we built and sustained Understory, our spiritual and emotional support group for activists. So we made a toolkit to help others build spaces of their own.
organizingmythoughts.org
The Understory Toolkit
Creating spaces of reflection, belonging, and collective care
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