Annalee Newitz
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annaleen.bsky.social
Annalee Newitz
@annaleen.bsky.social

bestselling author * Hugo winner * nerd
latest books: Automatic Noodle, Stories Are Weapons
bylines: New Scientist, Flaming Hydra, etc.
pod: www.ouropinionsarecorrect.com
pronouns: they/them
all the stuff: www.techsploitation.com .. more

Annalee Newitz is an American journalist, editor, and author of both fiction and nonfiction. From 1999 to 2008, Newitz wrote a syndicated weekly column called Techsploitation, and from 2000 to 2004 was the culture editor of the San Francisco Bay Guardian. In 2004, Newitz became a policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. With Charlie Jane Anders, they also co-founded Other magazine, a periodical that ran from 2002 to 2007. From 2008 to 2015, Newitz was editor-in-chief of Gawker-owned media venture io9, and subsequently its direct descendant Gizmodo, Gawker's design and technology blog. They have written for the periodicals Popular Science, Film Quarterly and Wired. As of 2019, Newitz is a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times. .. more

Communication & Media Studies 20%
Political science 19%
Pinned
Holy crap -- Automatic Noodle is an instant USA Today and Indie bestseller! Thank you so much, humans and robots, for reading this li'l book and making it soar. Now go eat something! Or get your noodle swag at automaticnoodle.website

Incredible story of tracking down the real human behind AI slop stories, by @nickhunebrown.bsky.social
"I was embarrassed. I had been naively operating with a pre-ChatGPT mindset, still assuming a pitch’s ideas and prose were actually connected to the person who sent it"

Stunning investigation of how slop merchants are getting work into established media outlets

thelocal.to/investigatin...

Thank you!
"I was embarrassed. I had been naively operating with a pre-ChatGPT mindset, still assuming a pitch’s ideas and prose were actually connected to the person who sent it"

Stunning investigation of how slop merchants are getting work into established media outlets

thelocal.to/investigatin...

Perfection. Also Cliff's is the greatest.

I feel like I'm in a @bootsriley.bsky.social movie at this point

I love this so much

Love it.

Long may its failure continue

Literally the plot of M3gan

Feels very Space Merchants

oh holy shit that is dark. but also -- ads in the lobby of an apartment building????????

So wild. I love that the combined narrative of these ads is "date AI. fire women." At least the AI is breaking up with whoever the imaginary audience for these ads is.

Two perfectly normal ads in the perfectly normal city of San Francisco.

Great article from @felipedlh.bsky.social about a rarely-acknowledged vibe among recent immigrants: disappointment in the United States. Especially among people who believed they could succeed here by working hard. Only on Flaming Hydra!

Reposted by Annalee Newitz

TODAY: @felipedlh.bsky.social tracks a sad trend; “a deep-seated regret, among immigrants, for having come to the United States at all.” flaminghydra.com/r/fc898c29?m... r
Bill of goods / Feline fame
Felipe De La Hoz on immigrants’ regrets; Ace and Jack on Hollywood cats
flaminghydra.com
'Iran’s capital must be moved because the country “no longer has a choice,” President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Thursday in remarks carried by state media, warning that severe ecological strain has made Tehran impossible to sustain'

#Iran 🇮🇷
Iran president says capital move now a necessity as water crisis deepens
Iran’s capital must be moved because the country “no longer has a choice,” President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Thursday in remarks carried by state media, warning that severe ecological strain has mad...
www.iranintl.com

Thanks for all your help making the book come to life on the web-o-matic

Hopefully next year!
If folks haven't read it, I recommend @annaleen.bsky.social's Stories are Weapons, which is unfortunately more and more relevant during this administration. When I started it, I thought, "yeah yeah, I know this." But each chapter was 🤯; well researched analysis of these tactics, recent & historical.

Incredible

If you're in the Bay Area and want to chat about Automatic Noodle, I'll be visiting the first-ever meeting of the Noe Valley Books Book Club to talk about it! 12/4! noevalleybooks.com/event/2025-1...
Noe Valley Books Book Club - Automatic Noodle
3957 24TH STREET . 415-590-2961 . EVERY DAY 10AM-7PM .
noevalleybooks.com

The Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT genuinely changed my life. I learned a ton, witnessed how science is done firsthand, and took my writing career in a new direction. If you write about science/tech, you should apply!! ksj.mit.edu/fellowships/...
The bookshelf in our beautiful seminar room @ksjatmit.bsky.social is filled with books by former fellows. Want to be next? Applications to our fellowship are open and on our website. @annaleen.bsky.social @ferrisjabr.bsky.social @tomzellerjr.com @s-r-m.bsky.social and Melanie Kaplan. Please share.

Reposted by Annalee Newitz

The bookshelf in our beautiful seminar room @ksjatmit.bsky.social is filled with books by former fellows. Want to be next? Applications to our fellowship are open and on our website. @annaleen.bsky.social @ferrisjabr.bsky.social @tomzellerjr.com @s-r-m.bsky.social and Melanie Kaplan. Please share.

Some of his ideas feel like they made their way into HAI and similar groups ...

And why you should be celebrated too! You are a fact-checking badass. Also: distant early warning that I need some of your time in 2027 to fact check my next book, which I promise will be a lot more fun than my last one.
AOC: Should this AI bubble pop, we should not be entertaining a bailout of these corporations while healthcare is being denied to Americans and SNAP is being denied to Americans —

Yay!! Love you, Cosmic Mariners!

Fascism is a form of intergenerational trauma. In my latest newsletter, I talk about how this played out in the life of sexologist Wilhelm Reich, whose career as an anti-fascist activist took a dark, grifty turn. buttondown.com/thehypothesi...

So good. I like seeing this season lean into silliness more often.