Kate Knibbs
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knibbs.bsky.social
Kate Knibbs
@knibbs.bsky.social
37K followers 1.4K following 830 posts
Live in Chicago, write for Wired, got a great attitude

Send me tips: [email protected] / Signal: kateknibbs.09
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knibbs.bsky.social
Kate Knibbs @knibbs.bsky.social · May 20
Went deep on the first AI streaming music fraud case. Mike Smith, the defendant, had more ties to the industry than you'd think. He worked with Snoop Dogg and RZA. And his former business partner suspects he'd been up to sneaky stuff for a while: www.wired.com/story/ai-bot...
‘A Billion Streams and No Fans’: Inside a $10 Million AI Music Fraud Case
A chart-topping jazz album! Loads of Spotify and Apple Music plays! Just one problem: The success might not be real.
www.wired.com
Reposted by Kate Knibbs
davey.bsky.social
NEW: AI “recipe slop” is overrunning search and social. Food creators say Google’s AI Overviews and glossy fake food pics are drowning out real, tested recipes — collapsing traffic and setting home cooks up for disaster, especially this Thanksgiving.

Gift link: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
AI Slop Recipes Are Taking Over the Internet -- And Thanksgiving Dinner
Food bloggers see traffic dip as home cooks turn to AI, inspired by impossible pictures
www.bloomberg.com
November 25, 2025 at 3:16 PM
Reposted by Kate Knibbs
stevenlevy.bsky.social
AI companies, funders, and government are all intertwined in one big heaping trillion dollar blob. Here's what it means. www.wired.com/story/ai-ind...
There Is Only One AI Company. Welcome to the Blob
As Nvidia, OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft forge partnerships and deals, the AI industry is looking more like one interconnected machine. What does that mean for all of us?
www.wired.com
November 21, 2025 at 5:36 PM
Reposted by Kate Knibbs
cpearsall242.bsky.social
Insane but true fact: making US roads as safe as Canadian, Australian, or European roads would save more lives than eliminating murder from the US.
November 21, 2025 at 3:01 AM
knibbs.bsky.social
Ryan Murphy American Crime Story S4 "American Canto".... its only a matter of time
November 20, 2025 at 11:32 PM
knibbs.bsky.social
The mysteries of the PELVIC FLOOR have been plumbed by our greatest writer on the body, @caseyjohnston.bsky.social www.wired.com/story/the-pe...
The Pelvic Floor Is a Problem
Everyone’s suddenly obsessed with the pelvic floor—physical therapists, MAHA influencers, me. Could this deeply misunderstood body part really be the seat of so much modern dysfunction?
www.wired.com
November 20, 2025 at 3:05 PM
Reposted by Kate Knibbs
jakelahut.writes.news
This is a whole can of worms Trump just opened up:

He’s reviving some version of the ban on state-level regulation of AI that fell out of the big beautiful bill — shoutout to @knibbs.bsky.social for her coverage on the Blackburn defection that led to that — by folding it into the defense bill
November 18, 2025 at 10:47 PM
Reposted by Kate Knibbs
pbump.com
November 18, 2025 at 9:21 PM
Reposted by Kate Knibbs
katie-drummond.bsky.social
Everyone is speculating about the *AI BUBBLE* so for @wired.com Big Interview podcast, I asked one of my favorite econ experts @weisenthal.bsky.social to come explain it to me.

His use of the word "creaking" to describe the US economy? Mildly terrifying. Other than that, great convo, 10/10.
‘Odd Lots’ Cohost Joe Weisenthal Has Predictions About How the AI Bubble Will Burst
Much of the US economy rests on AI’s future. On this episode of “The Big Interview” podcast, “Odd Lots” cohost Joe Weisenthal breaks down why AI’s impact on finance goes beyond billion-dollar investme...
www.wired.com
November 18, 2025 at 6:21 PM
Reposted by Kate Knibbs
leahfeiger.bsky.social
NEW: For months, the Social Security Administration was quietly sharing sensitive data about immigrants with DHS. Now it’s official.

read @telliotter.bsky.social:
Social Security Data Is Openly Being Shared With DHS to Target Immigrants
For months, the Social Security Administration was quietly sharing sensitive data about immigrants with DHS. Now it’s official.
www.wired.com
November 18, 2025 at 1:54 PM
Reposted by Kate Knibbs
praddenkeefe.bsky.social
I have been thinking about this line today, on the value of editors, from the late great John Bennet, for no reason in particular.
November 18, 2025 at 2:14 PM
Reposted by Kate Knibbs
caitlinkelly.bsky.social
After a bird flu outbreak tore through Midwestern barns, killing hens and spiking egg prices, the USDA didn’t investigate whether the virus was airborne. @propublica.org did. www.propublica.org/article/bird...
What the U.S. Government Is Dismissing That Could Seed a Bird Flu Pandemic
Egg producers suspect bird flu is traveling through the air. After a disastrous Midwestern outbreak early this year, we tested that theory and found that where the wind blew, the virus followed. Vacci...
www.propublica.org
November 18, 2025 at 12:30 PM
Reposted by Kate Knibbs
leahfeiger.bsky.social
SCOOP: In text messages sent in 2017, Jeffrey Epstein appears to position himself as a middleman between president Donald Trump’s administration and Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates. He seemingly represents himself as passing on information directly from Trump to Gates through an intermediary.
Jeffrey Epstein Claimed Intimate Knowledge of Donald Trump’s Views in Texts With Bill Gates Adviser
In text messages from 2017, Jeffrey Epstein seemingly represented himself as positioned to pass information from the Trump White House to Bill Gates through an intermediary.
www.wired.com
November 13, 2025 at 8:22 PM
Reposted by Kate Knibbs
reichlinmelnick.bsky.social
NEW: @propublica.org investigated the Chicago apartment raid where kids were zip-tied and citizens detained for hours. They find:

- NONE of the arrested were criminally charged
- NO evidence the building was "filled with TdA terrorists."
- ZERO legitimate reason for DHS to rappel from a Blackhawk.
As a Black Hawk helicopter roared overhead, the slender, 28-year-old immigrant from Venezuela answered softly, his eyes darting to a television crew invited to film the raid. Next to Caicedo, masked Border Patrol agents inspected another man’s tattoos and asked him if he belonged to Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang that the Trump administration has designated a terrorist group. Until that moment, Caicedo’s only interaction with law enforcement in his two-and-a-half years in the United States had been a traffic stop two weeks earlier for driving without a license or insurance, according to the records we reviewed. Chicago police had run a background check on him and found no prior arrests, no warrants and no evidence that he was in a gang. Caicedo said he had a pending asylum application, a steady job at a taco joint and a girlfriend whose daughter attended elementary school across the street. None of that mattered. The U.S. government paraded him and his neighbors in front of the cameras and called their arrests a spectacular victory against terrorism. But later, after the cameras had gone, prosecutors didn’t charge Caicedo with a crime. They didn’t accuse him of being a terrorist. And after a brief hearing in immigration court, the government sent him back to the country he had fled nine years earlier. “I lost everything,” he said in a phone interview from his mother’s home in the Venezuelan city of Valencia. “For those fools, everyone from Venezuela is a criminal.”
November 13, 2025 at 2:08 PM
Reposted by Kate Knibbs
weeder.bsky.social
Trying to get ahead of that Joyce Carol Oates dunk
nytimes.com The New York Times @nytimes.com · 14d
Pope Leo has shared his four favorite movies of all time, as the Vatican prepares to host dozens of actors and directors in a “World of Cinema” gathering on Saturday at his official residence. See which films made the pope's list. nyti.ms/4p3exK9
Pope Leo Shares His Favorite Movies Ahead of Vatican Event
The list leans heavily on uplifting classics.
nyti.ms
November 11, 2025 at 11:00 PM
Reposted by Kate Knibbs
bgrueskin.bsky.social
Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer.

He is a computer safety researcher.

And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine.

In under 1600 words.

aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...
I Want You to Understand Chicago Politics Chicago 2025-11-08 I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time. Every day my phone buzzes. It is a neighborhood group: four people were kidnapped at the corner drugstore. A friend a mile away sends a Slack message: she was at the scene when masked men assaulted and abducted two people on the street. A plumber working on my pipes is distraught, and I find out that two of his employees were kidnapped that morning. A week later it happens again. An email arrives. Agents with guns have chased a teacher into the school where she works. They did not have a warrant. They dragged her away, ignoring her and her colleagues’ pleas to show proof of her documentation. That evening I stand a few feet from the parents of Rayito de Sol and listen to them describe, with anguish, how good Ms. Diana was to their children. What it is like to have strangers with guns traumatize your kids. For a teacher to hide a three-year-old child for fear they might be killed. How their relatives will no longer leave the house. I hear the pain and fury in their voices, and I wonder who will be next. Understand what it is to pray in Chicago. On September 19th, Reverend David Black, lead pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, was praying outside the ICE detention center in Broadview when a DHS agent shot him in the head with pepper balls. Pepper balls are never supposed to be fired at the head because they can seriously injure, or even kill. “We could hear them laughing as they were shooting us from the roof,” Black recalled. He is not the only member of the clergy ICE has assaulted. Methodist pastor Hannah Kardon was violently arrested on October 17th, and Baptist pastor Michael Woolf was shot with pepper balls on November 1st. Understand what it is to sleep in Chicago. On the night of September 30th, federal agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter to execute a raid on an apartment building on the South Sho…
November 9, 2025 at 8:49 PM
Reposted by Kate Knibbs
brittanytrang.com
A Sharon Begley byline, almost 5 years after her death.

Upon hearing the news James Watson had died, a STAT reporter said in our Slack, "I wish I could read what Sharon would have written."

Incredible news: Sharon in fact did pre-write a Watson obit. And it is masterful and excoriating.
🧪🧬🧫
James Watson, dead at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers
James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA who died Thursday at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers.
www.statnews.com
November 8, 2025 at 1:39 PM
Reposted by Kate Knibbs
jcsalterego.bsky.social
bluesky branding refresh unveiled
"WEBSITE FOR 38 YEAR OLDS" in the style of Zohran Mamdani's campaign logo
November 8, 2025 at 9:18 PM
Reposted by Kate Knibbs
royalpratt.bsky.social
Great read about Chicago’s growing resistance movement against Operation Midway Blitz. Story of community, solidarity, and empathy bringing the children of day laborers together with suburban moms. Gift link. By Andrew Carter @chicagotribune.com
www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/08/c...
Inside Chicago’s growing resistance movement against Operation Midway Blitz: ‘Small acts have huge consequences’
In Chicago, the resistance to President Donald Trump’s mass deportation mission has taken many forms. A movement has grown through acts large and small.
www.chicagotribune.com
November 8, 2025 at 1:59 PM
Reposted by Kate Knibbs
maxread.info
we talk too much about the male loneliness crisis and not enough about the male suckerfication crisis maxread.substack.com/p/prediction...
One way of thinking about Twitter, especially in the Elon Musk era, is as the latest and most sophisticated version of the mailing lists that have powered the conservative movement, and the various scams and cons and schemes that constitute it, since the 1960s--in other words, as a huge and immediately accessible collection of suckers, waiting to have their avidity and paranoia exploited for cash. The predictions markets here are happy to play the same role with heavy X.com users as crypto scams and meme-stock hustlers did on the same site a few years ago, or as cash-for-gold ads did with Fox News viewers a decade before that, or as direct-mail get-rich-quick schemes did with Goldwater voters deep in prehistory.1 But the demand for dumb money created by the increasing annexation of our everyday social and cultural lives into casino-market hybrids like predictions markets (or, arguably, social media itself2) isn’t going to be satisfied solely by a pre-existing population of Birchite suckers. We talk a lot about the “male loneliness crisis” but in my estimation we don’t talk enough about the “male suckerfication crisis”: The process by which young men are continuously cultivated--by politicians, influencers, podcasters, sportscasters, and the very structure of social networks--as dupes and suckers, both for the enrichment and empowerment of Trumpist politicians and movements but also in service of the profits an ever-expanding roster of gambling and gambling-adjacent industries, among them app-enabled retail day-trading, crypto speculation, predictions markets, and of course, actual sports betting.
November 7, 2025 at 5:40 PM
Reposted by Kate Knibbs
sarahjeong.bsky.social
state legislators should be paid more. otherwise the legislatures are full of dilettantes, cranks, and nepobabies. this is why you keep hearing about the craziest fucking state laws
ryanlcooper.com ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 18d
people hate hearing this but it's 100% true, creating a huge pay gap between political leaders, their staffs, and other elites is a recipe for corruption. of course the flip side of that is taxes on the rich should be jacked way the hell up
shoe.bsky.social Shoe+ @shoe.bsky.social · 19d
The Mayor of New York only makes $260k. I bet there are police that make more than that in NY with overtime.

We need to pay elected leaders more money and stop pretending it's some sort of calling. They're managing hundreds of billions of dollars in investments and millions of people's lives.
November 7, 2025 at 3:29 PM
Reposted by Kate Knibbs
newyorker.com
One analytical model shows that, as of November 5th, the dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. has already caused the deaths of 600,000 people, two-thirds of them children. https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/jUzNSc
The Shutdown of U.S.A.I.D. Has Already Killed Hundreds of Thousands
The short documentary “Rovina’s Choice” tells the story of what goes when aid goes.
newyorkermag.visitlink.me
November 6, 2025 at 9:00 PM
Reposted by Kate Knibbs
jakelahut.writes.news
Hey everyone, thank you so much for the outpouring of support.

I need to pay rent, and I launched a GoFundMe spot.fund/LahutRentFund
Click here to support Jake Lahut's story *LahutRentFund
*spotfund is the easiest place to create beautiful and free online fundraisers. It takes just minutes to start raising money today.
spot.fund
November 7, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Reposted by Kate Knibbs
melodyschreiber.com
The man who ended USAID is the world's first trillionaire
November 7, 2025 at 2:14 AM
Reposted by Kate Knibbs
anniewaldman.bsky.social
NEW: Billions of pounds of food are imported to the U.S. each year.

The FDA inspects foreign producers to ensure what we're eating is safe from pathogens and dangerous manufacturing practices.

But now, after Trump's drastic staff cuts, these inspections have plummeted to a historic low.
🧵/
Foreign Food Safety Inspections Hit Historic Low After Trump Cuts
The dramatic shift in oversight comes at a time when the U.S. has never been more reliant on foreign food, which accounts for the vast majority of the nation’s seafood and more than half its fresh fru...
www.propublica.org
November 6, 2025 at 1:30 PM