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Jessica McKenzie

@jessimckenzi.bsky.social
13K followers 4.5K following 4.7K posts

reporting, writing, editing climate change stories @thebulletin.org // outdoorsy newsletter: jessicastarmckenzie.com/newsletter // tips: jmckenzie@thebulletin.org, jsmckenzie@protonmail.com, or jessimckenzi.01 on signal

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Reposted by Jessica McKenzie
François Diaz-Maurin @francoisdm.bsky.social · 3h
In an increasingly unstable international security landscape, citizens intuitively understand that pursuing deterrence today and disarmament tomorrow aren't mutually exclusive. Read the full study in the Bulletin: thebulletin.org/2026/10/the-...
thebulletin.org
The nuclear paradox: Why the world wants both deterrence and disarmament
A landmark 24-country study reveals that a majority of people worldwide embraces both nuclear deterrence and disarmament, exposing a pragmatic—rather than confused—flexibility that gives policymakers ...
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Reposted by Jessica McKenzie
Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Th private equity aesthetics actually made me teary-eyed this morning. raleighmag.com/2026/10/01/n...
raleighmag.com
First Look: NC State Fairgrounds Food Hall
The NC State Fairgrounds’ new food hall opens for a first look during the 2026 State Fair, with terraces, bars, event space and food vendors.
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
in a very long line at the morgan library with all the other procrastinating tarot enthusiasts in nyc, apparently
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
i don't think you should be allowed to call your business a speakeasy if it has a yelp page
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Reposted by Jessica McKenzie
Los Angeles Times @latimes.com · 03/10/2026
Effort to save California's iconic Joshua trees scrapped after Trump administration blocks funding
latimes.com
Effort to save California's iconic Joshua trees scrapped after Trump administration blocks funding
A slate of projects aimed at preserving the future of California's iconic Joshua tree in has been scrapped after the Trump administration blocked more than $25 million in funding for national parks this year.
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
extremely weird times to be living in!
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
someone asked in an email if my bf was in band back in the day and google ai's suggested response was like (paraphrasing) "oh haha ya i played trumpet, but i want to know what you think i played" reader, my bf does not and never has played trumpet!!
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Reposted by Jessica McKenzie
François Diaz-Maurin @francoisdm.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
AI doesn’t need rogue "superintelligence" or evil intent to start a nuclear war. In @thebulletin.org, Paul Slovic & Herbert Lin show how today’s AI—combined with ordinary human fallibility—could trigger catastrophe. 🧵
A large blue robotic hand points towards a person seated at a desk in a grand, ornate room with yellow lighting. (Illustration by François Diaz-Maurin; source images from The White House and canva.com)
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
'Twas Pirelli's Miracle Elixir That's wot did the trick, sir True, sir, true Was it quick, sir? Did it in a tick, sir Just like an elixir Ought to do!
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
an interesting text to revisit after the nepal disaster, after seeing (again and again and again) how the "hard infrastructure" at the china-nepal border crossing fared
Most climate advocates have accepted that some form of adaptation will be a necessity for human societies over the course of this century. But many refuse to acknowledge that much of that adjustment will need to be powered by fossil fuels. Hard infrastructure—modern housing, transportation networks, and the like—is what makes people resilient to climate and other natural disasters. That sort of infrastructure requires steel and concrete. And there are presently few economically viable ways to produce steel or concrete without fossil fuels.
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Reposted by Jessica McKenzie
Alessandra Bergamin @alessandrabergamin.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
For @truthout.org I wrote about Israel's killing of environmental and land defenders in Lebanon's south. truthout.org/articles/leb...
truthout.org
Lebanon’s Environmental Defenders Say Israel Is Deliberately Targeting Them
Israel has decimated Lebanon’s land — and is also slaughtering the people who protect it.
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Reposted by Jessica McKenzie
Maris Kreizman @maris.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
"The cultural critic Maris Kreizman said, 'There are people claiming antisemitism when they didn’t get a book deal, but maybe they’re just bad writers.'” jewishcurrents.org/what-pen-ame...
jewishcurrents.org
What PEN America Got Wrong About Antisemitism in Publishing
Misleading anecdotes, flawed data, and oversimplified analyses are at the heart of a narrative of Jewish exclusion promoted by the free expression…
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Reposted by Jessica McKenzie
Semafor @semafor.com · 30/09/2026
Visitors to the US are on track to drop by almost two million year-on-year. “We’re the only major country in the world losing visitation,” the head of the US Travel Association said. “It’s mind-boggling.” www.semafor.com/article/09/2...
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
just contemplating the vast stores of knowledge that would be lost if the wayback machine was completely broken...
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
trying to read a local news article that is no longer up but was saved 47 times between 2016 and 2025 and it glitched out and reloaded the page infinite times until i told the browser to stop trying and now it's telling me "Too Many Requests"
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
is the wayback machine broken?
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Reposted by Jessica McKenzie
David R. Brockman, Ph.D. @drdrbrockman.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Update: The America.gov chatbot now refuses to answer "political" questions or offer "judgments about past elections" 🤔
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Reposted by Jessica McKenzie
Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
They quoted me in this New Yorker piece about AI today. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
“Let’s say there’s a world or time line I exist in where A.I. has been subject to regulation. It is ethical. It has no footprint environmentally,” the novelist Jeff VanderMeer, a prominent critic of A.I., told me over the phone. “With those guardrails in place, would I read an A.I. book? All I can say is no. And the reason is, in part, because I want to read something coming from a particular mind.” Using A.I., he said, “feels like a betrayal of the whole point of why you’re a writer.”
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
“What we have to keep in mind is that all this doomerism isn’t based on any scientific work,” says Boyan Milanov, Senior Research Scientist at AI Now Institute. “It really is science fiction. None of the claims are scientifically verifiable or falsifiable.” thebulletin.org/2026/09/how-...
thebulletin.org
How the bad science of AI doomerism is good for big business
There is no clear path showing that today’s AI systems will lead to superintelligence, much less a basis for calculating the probability of doom.
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Reposted by Jessica McKenzie
Annie Waldman @anniewaldman.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
NEW: As Trump’s White House and influencers keep touting the unproven benefits of raw milk, hundreds across the country are falling ill from outbreaks. Some people get severe indigestion. And some nearly die. Here's the story of one toddler who drank it. 🧵👇 www.propublica.org/article/cali...
propublica.org
A Girl Nearly Died After Drinking Raw Milk. The State Did Little to Punish the Unlicensed Farmer Who Sold It.
California is teeming with black-market dairies, propped up by consumer demand fueled by misinformation. With evidence against one raw goat milk farm, regulators could have sought punitive action. But...
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Reposted by Jessica McKenzie
Sara Goudarzi @saragoud.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
AI doomer discourse has been in overdrive the last several weeks: a resignation that set off a media frenzy, endless warnings, and even a Senate bill to ban superintelligence. But where’s the science and why all this hype? I dug into how doomerism serves big business.
thebulletin.org
How the bad science of AI doomerism is good for big business
There is no clear path showing that today’s AI systems will lead to superintelligence, much less a basis for calculating the probability of doom.
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
"Over the past month, central Tokyo received 46.8 total hours of sunshine, which is just 36% of the yearly average for the same period." !!!
japantimes.co.jp
Tokyo sets a new record with 34 straight days of rain
The rainy-day streak is the longest since the Japan Meteorological Agency began keeping records in 1886.
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
you know that tiktok meme "i feel like you're just here for the zipline." that's me + free health care. doctor, i am just here for the free stuff, don't give me anything else! unless i ask for it!
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
universal health care someday
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
and other people have not been so lucky! same routine blood panel, same test that is no longer considered preventative and required to be covered, but instead of $20 a redditor was asked to pay $600
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
i am so lucky to be "healthy" and insured and annoyed by a $20 bill instead of a $2,000 bill but nothing bothers me more than the opaque and impenetrable morass that is health care and health insurance. if someone expects to go in for an annual and have blood tests covered it should be covered!
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
i am very lucky to have insurance and i only paid $20 but i did call my insurance to ask why it was covered several years ago but isn't now and the agent could not explain...at first said i had met my out of pocket maximum which no i have never in my life met that. it was just covered!
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
also they billed my insurance $1400 for these tests!!!! that's crazy!!
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
love finding out that something regularly included in routine blood tests is no longer considered preventatitive it's diagnostic so i have to pay for it now
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
oops almost got a little weepy over @billmckibben.bsky.social's latest but my wry haha funny social take is: why not both?
nytimes.com
Opinion | I’m Exhausted. You’re Demoralized. We Weren’t Built for a World Like This.
A greatly underappreciated virtue of other presidents was that you could forget about them for weeks at a time.
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Reposted by Jessica McKenzie
Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
“A 1-year-old baby appeared in immigration court without legal representation in Arizona and received an instruction: File an asylum application before the next hearing or face deportation.”
notus.org
Judge to Baby: File an Asylum Application
The 1-year-old is one of the migrant children who advocates say appeared in immigration court without legal representation.
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Reposted by Jessica McKenzie
Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
amazing to have a williams prof out here arguing for postliteracy w/ a useful idiot routine that *thinks* it's trying to "claim critical thought back" via dead poet's society pedagogy, but whose actual function in the public sphere is to carry water for the tech industry & the trustees they control
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
ew
continue to do it. *A.I. will write summaries of our thoughts and may contribute some of its own.* But we shouldn’t always force students to maintain a written record of knowledge. Universities have forgotten that archiving and thinking are separate.
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
i am SO glad i went to school before ai!!!
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
this is such a disingenuous and weird little strawman argument to make. has chatting with your colleagues replaced writing papers and books, professor?
I don’t rely on prepared scripts when I teach, and few of the teachers I most admire do. Instead, I engage my seminar students through messy, searching conversation, responding to their presence in the classroom to gauge whether we’re understanding one another. I want to make new connections in the immediacy of our back-and-forth. I want to recall a thread from two class meetings ago spontaneously and weave it into my improvised lecture while snapping into new ways of thinking about it in the moment.

If the only way that I could teach my courses was to sculpt written paragraphs, I’m not sure I would actually know the material.
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
totally willing to entertain the idea that discussion and oral presentation is a good way to think and to assess thought but bizarre to jettison this argument as a way to defend ai assisted writing imo!
nytimes.com
Opinion | I’m a College Professor. Writing Isn’t as Important as We Think.
If I do not treat writing as essential for achieving thought, it is not clear why I should force my students to.
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
i love the "old man shakes fist at sky" energy i bring to posting from my couch, but it's just that kind of day (decade)
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
“It’s not just about attacking warehouses so that we won’t have food. They also want to intimidate us — to make it so that we can’t work, study, do scientific research or really do anything at all.”
nytimes.com
Russian Drone Strikes Ukraine’s Science Academy, Causing Fire in City Center
A Russian jet-powered drone hit Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences, the source of almost all of the country’s major scientific discoveries.
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
wonder what he's up to recently oh hmmm interesting
newrepublic.com
Kash Patel Caught With Suspected Double Agent at Alina Habba’s Wedding
The FBI director was spotted in a photo with an FBI informant suspected of being a double agent.
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
oh man this seems bad. i wonder if the times reached out to the person who leads the fbi for comment? no? no mention of the director of the fbi kash patel at all? interesting
nytimes.com
Embarrassing Breach at F.B.I. Fuels Fears of Harm to Its Employees
In an internal memo, the F.B.I. said it believed the hackers may have stolen sensitive information on all of its employees.
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Reposted by Jessica McKenzie
Peter Gleick @petergleick.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Israeli attacks destroyed most of Gaza’s #wastewater infrastructure, causing a massive discharge of untreated sewage. That sewage is now contributing to a worsening algae crisis affecting Israeli desalination facilities and cutting their #water supplies. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/s...
theguardian.com
Israel facing water shortages caused by destruction of Gaza’s treatment plants
Five desalination plants shut down for days, while Gaza remains in grip of severe water and sanitation crisis
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
it's a brand new kind of face-eating leopard previously unknown to science!!!
nytimes.com
Did Anthropic’s A.I. Really Make a Scientific Discovery on Its Own?
An expert at the University of Copenhagen said his team had been sharing its research with the company’s A.I. model, Claude, and that its new finding matched their work.
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
lotta stories about people surprised that the lying plagiarism machine (as @byjenamiller.bsky.social always calls it) plagiarized them...
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
just a thought
buildcanada.com
Keep Toronto Moving With Congestion Pricing
Toronto is paying the price of gridlock. Commuters waste time in traffic and businesses lose billions in productivity. Congestion pricing will get Toronto moving again.
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
has doug ford considered congestion pricing??
The win is significant for Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford, and his government, who have long railed against Toronto’s bike lanes, blaming the protected zones for the city’s traffic ills.
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
"It was estimated by a city report in 2024 that ripping up the lanes would cost taxpayers an additional C$48m (£26m). Internal briefings obtained by the Trillium also found the province’s own staff reported that bike lane removal would not reduce congestion and could make it worse."
theguardian.com
Ontario free to axe Toronto bike lanes, region’s top court rules
Win is significant for region’s premier, Doug Ford, who blames protected zones for city’s traffic ills
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
an incredibly embarrassing, extraordinarily expensive self-own
cbc.ca
Toronto's bike lanes cost millions to install. What's the price tag for their removal or reconfiguration? | CBC News
With bike lane removal and reconfiguration plans along some of the city's busiest roads now underway, questions persist over what the endeavour will look like and how much it's going to cost taxpayers...
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
"What is certain, however, is that a vast sum of our money will be wasted, countless Torontonians will find themselves profoundly inconvenienced for extended periods, and, eventually, a cyclist will get struck by a car. But at least the congestion will be worse."
spacing.ca
EXCLUSIVE: Inside the contract to rip out Toronto's bike lanes - Spacing Toronto
After the Ontario Court of Appeal (ONCA) shot down CycleTO’s legally innovative charter challenge that sought to stop Doug Ford’s attack on the city’s bike lanes, Queen’s Park wasted little time befor...
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
have decided today is the day that i will get entirely and rationally overheated about the toronto bike lane situation. what a horror
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Jessica McKenzie @jessimckenzi.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
no ghost bus other passengers have arrived in numbers although maybe we're all ghosts how could i tell
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