iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Tech's obsession with selling AI as a magical thing where everyone gets an agent to book travel and restaurant reservations just reveals how far they live outside the real world, where people can't afford food and gas. Solving problems that don't exist for the vast majority of us.

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

The reach of the lesbian bar story in the Boston Globe gets to something about local news, which is that people want deeply reported, weird and wild stories in their newspapers - that was a big part of the draw for local news for generations, it was fun to read!

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I'm admittedly not a super wealthy tech genius, but it seems if you are warning the thing you helped create could plausibly wipe out human civilization in the near future, you should be tasked with doing something to stop that?

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Reposted by Kathleen McLaughlin

Katiesaurus @katiesaurusseven.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I recommend @kemc.bsky.social's book, BLOOD MONEY to really understand the plasma industry.

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

I knew I saw you out working the prairie the other day, James!

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Reposted by Kathleen McLaughlin

Danny Rivero @danielrivero.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

The real story in the US right now is the myriad of authoritarian-style hostile takeovers happening at public colleges and universities, where the VAST majority of people get their higher education

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

The amount of ink spilled about a tiny private college in Maine while there's actual political warfare and purges going on in public universities does not speak well of us.

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

American media's obsession with elite colleges that educate a tiny fraction of the country makes sense when you understand it's the underpinning of our class system (which we pretend we don't have).

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

I have air purifiers cranked up in my house so it's fine indoors, but thank you!!

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

This picture looks fine if you don’t know there should be a giant wall of mountains right at the end of the road. The Continental Divide, in fact. That’s how bad wildfire smoke is in the West.

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

The uber wealthy used to build libraries, parks and museums to gain favor with the public, now they buy elections.

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Reposted by Kathleen McLaughlin

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

cases like this have caused public outrage in other countries like Ireland that led to huge protests and changed laws; the majority of Americans don't seem to care.

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

No place does bizarro working-class cosplay quite as dramatically as the American West, where you can spot moneyed new arrivals for their expensive cowboy hats, boots and big trucks, and their leaning into yeehaw-isms, while everyone else just ... kind of normal.

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Organizers now say they've got more than enough signatures to qualify this initiative that could upend Citizens United for the November ballot in Montana 👀

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

No, but I've read some. Quite a distressing story!

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Reposted by Kathleen McLaughlin

Dana R. Fisher (aka the Apocalyptic Optimist) @fisherdanar.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Anyone looking to understand corporate influence in American politics, this figure from @axios.com should be a wake-up-call as AI has dwarfed even oil and gas (though there are obviously connections there). To learn more about AI and the midterms, see this piece: www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/t...

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

💯And it's often wrong shorthand!

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

Someone commission me to write a piece about how the red state/blue state-ification of American discourse has doomed us superficial, bad thinking about just about everything.

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

If you contextualize the mass expansion of data centers in spite of widespread public opposition as the latest, largest assault in an ongoing class war waged mostly from the top, things do make a bit more sense.

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Reposted by Kathleen McLaughlin

The Nation Magazine @thenation.com · 04/05/2026

A grassroots effort in Montana aims to make Citizens United irrelevant by cutting corporate money out of elections. @kemc.bsky.social on the Montana Plan. www.thenation.com/article/poli...

thenation.com

How the Montana Plan Could Make “Citizens United” Irrelevant

A transpartisan initiative to return power to the people.

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Reposted by Kathleen McLaughlin

Eileen Clancy 🧿 @clancyny.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

How the Montana Plan Could Make Citizens United Irrelevant By Kathleen McLaughlin A transpartisan initiative to return power to the people. @kemc.bsky.social

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

My first newsroom! Truly the heart of the community back then

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

I wrote something last year about the repurposing of America's local newspaper buildings into new things and what it says about communities, but someone could write a very interesting book rooted in that shift in what's valued.

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Read my piece on Montana's (very long) fight against money controlling politics and why it matters.

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Starting to believe that a certain percentage of the American commentariat class are operating in a state of AI-induced psychosis.

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

A real loss - kind of the last living connection to the Chinese history of Montana.

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

The longest-running family owned Chinese restaurant in America shut down yesterday. Survived 115 years, two world wars and the Great Depression but couldn't withstand whatever it is we're doing right now.

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

I genuinely don’t think America can fix itself without an honest reckoning on class and inequity, but I also see no evidence that’s going to happen.

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Reposted by Kathleen McLaughlin

Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

I think people are allowed to draw conclusions about the American people based on their decision to put this man in office bsky.app/profile/pear...

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

They were arrested, eventually, but got up to some good hijinks before that happened.

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

There was a village in rural China back in the mid-2010s where the local government had grown so corrupt that a couple of old ladies started their own competing official government, stamping documents and making decisions, and I think of them often.

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

Provincial is exactly the word for the overriding mentality of this book. She goes on one tangent about how some dude in WY in a pro-2A hat must be anti-abortion and I am thinking "oh, someone's never heard of Mountain West politics."

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

It's great, I think you'll love it.

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

she meets some dogs but not enough dogs! no dog in her van. very problematic.

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

I will never say Mao had good ideas, but there are a good number of American writers who need extended community service time in rural areas before they are allowed to tell us all their opinions about rural Americans.

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Reposted by Kathleen McLaughlin

John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 31/03/2026

Happy Trans Day of Visibility. I know trans people and I know fascists who are making life difficult for trans people. The trans people are pretty cool and I'm glad I know them. The fascists can go fall down a deep dark hole.

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

Unpopular opinion but perhaps we need to send coastal urban writers and journalists down to the countryside for a certain amount of time before they are allowed to write about it.

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

I wrote about a great new book by Megan Kate Nelson, out today, that blows apart the myths of the American West by telling the stories of real, interesting lives substack.com/home/post/p-...

substack.com

The Westerners

A new book reveals a more complex and fascinating story of the American West

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Kathleen McLaughlin @kemc.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

The Lindy West book is grating not because of her relationships but because she demands grace and acceptance from everyone, but gives none to any of the people she encounters on a cross-country road trip. It's the opposite of what a road trip memoir should do, especially in our current moment.

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