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Reposted by Sara Davis

Ada Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · 2d

I see pieces like this a lot, often w/ a spin of lamenting cultural degeneration, but reading is a LABOR issue, it’s declined because so many people are working overtime or two jobs & employers expect after hours work. France has Earth’s highest reading rate b/c long lunch breaks & labor protections

After Dinner Conversation® @afterdinnerconversation.com · 2d

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AmandaGW @amandagw.bsky.social · 6d

If you use Word and don’t want Microsoft snooping in your stuff, this is your reminder to go to File - Options - General - Privacy Settings and uncheck all “optimization” settings. 🙄

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Sara Davis @literarysara.bsky.social · 7d

This month I read Creation Lake, H is for Hawk, and Theory of Water. 💙📚 #BookSky

Reading Roundup: September 2025

Creation Lake, H is for Hawk, Theory of Water.

literarysara.net

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Fran Wilde @franwilde.bsky.social · 7d

I love my dictionary. No slop, except for the definition listed under s.

Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 7d

We are thrilled to announce that our NEW Large Language Model will be released on 11.18.25.

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Reposted by Sara Davis

A.D. Sui 🇺🇦 [sway] @thesuiway.bsky.social · 7d

and every time you use AI, you are justifying the existence of these data centers. you are implicitly agreeing that it's ok to charge these households for the additional power the centers are using.

Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 8d

"Data centers are proliferating in VA and a blind man in [MD] is suddenly contending with sharply higher power bills...It’s an increasingly dramatic ripple effect of the AI boom as energy-hungry data centers...[pull]...households into paying for the digital economy" www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

AI Data Centers Are Sending Power Bills Soaring

Wholesale electricity costs as much as 267% more than it did five years ago in areas near data centers. That’s being passed on to customers.

www.bloomberg.com

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Sara Davis @literarysara.bsky.social · 18d

Today in Cities Are Good: got home from a day-long walk and found my neighbors all sitting around folding tables in the middle of our block. Eating pizza & potato chips, dogs on laps, little kids running around. I didn't have anything to contribute but they pulled out a chair & plate for me anyhow.

Sara Davis @literarysara.bsky.social · Sep 4

Today in Cities Are Good, Actually: settled into a subway seat to play Pokemon Go on my ride home. Felt a light tap on my shoulder, turned around. A man about my age, masked up like I am, showed me his phone: also playing Pokemon Go. We laugh quietly, then go back to minding our business.

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Sara Davis @literarysara.bsky.social · 19d

I am just a volunteer Tree Tender, not an arborist. But if I were in charge of this tree, I would move the flowers growing around its trunk and make sure the root flare isn't covered in dirt or mulch--the tree might not be getting enough air and water.

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Sara Davis @literarysara.bsky.social · 23d

I wish I had taken literally any science course in college. I APed out of them all, which means when I decided to take climate change courses as a post-bacc, those were my first science classes since high school--public high school in the American South. 🫠 I really felt that knowledge gap!

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Jessica Kant @jessdkant.bsky.social · 23d

Just FYI: while CDC is no longer tracking much of anything, wastewater data is still being reported. COVID-19 levels have just been nationally upgraded to “high”

HIGH
Nationally, the wastewater viral
activity level for COVID-19 is currently high.

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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 27d

"We are told that AI is inevitable, that we must adapt or be left behind. But universities are not tech companies. Our role is to foster critical thinking, not to follow industry trends uncritically." www.ru.nl/en/research/...

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Sara Davis @literarysara.bsky.social · 28d

I've been wanting to sign up for this fabulous newsletter. Leaving Substack is the perfect occasion to subscribe!

(The author gets into the WHY in this letter, if you've somehow remained in the dark about why Substack is bad for writers.)

Kate McKean @katemckean.bsky.social · 28d

Hey, I left substack and moved to ghost. Find me here!

www.agentsandbooks.com/oh-hello/

Oh Hello

Please Excuse the Mess While I Unpack Hey friends, guess what? I moved over to Ghost! I'd been on Substack for almost seven years, and frankly, it was time to go. If you're not seeing my newsletter r...

www.agentsandbooks.com

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YOU HAVE WON A HAM @jon-snow-420.bsky.social · 29d

if you have a billion dollars you should be legally designated a dragon and any human can adventure against you

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Sara Davis @literarysara.bsky.social · 29d

Today's Slowdown poem is such a banger that I had to read it aloud. www.slowdownshow.org/episode/2025...

1348: Valentine for Ernest Mann by Naomi Shihab Nye

Today’s poem is Valentine for Ernest Mann by Naomi Shihab Nye.

www.slowdownshow.org

Sara Davis @literarysara.bsky.social · Sep 8

Wow, not only did I get mt covid and flu shots today, but I ALSO got $20 off of my $40 allergy meds. Get vaxxed while you can, Philly!

My hand holding two CVS coupons and a 90-ct bottle of Zyrtec

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Ada Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · Sep 6

I post a piece of good news every day (climate, civil rights, disease eradication, science, sanitation, conservation) because, to keep our activism & resistance going, we need reminders that, when we try hard, we do succeed. They *want* doomerism; Despair is how we lose. #ShareGoodNewsToo

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Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · Sep 6

Just a reminder to check for your name in this list of books that OpenAI trained from. If your name is there, they probably owe you several thousand dollars.

OpenAI cried that if everyone eligible author files, the company will go bankrupt, so I'm alerting every author I have ever spoken to.

Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI

Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.

www.theatlantic.com

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Sara Davis @literarysara.bsky.social · Sep 4

Today in Cities Are Good, Actually: settled into a subway seat to play Pokemon Go on my ride home. Felt a light tap on my shoulder, turned around. A man about my age, masked up like I am, showed me his phone: also playing Pokemon Go. We laugh quietly, then go back to minding our business.

Sara Davis @literarysara.bsky.social · Sep 4

Just in the past week or so, a parade of strangers have stopped by my house to pick up cuttings from my pothos and spider plants. Another complete stranger helped me carry a cat tree from his house to mine so my foster cat will have something of his own to tear apart.
Cities are good, actually.

An orange tabby gazes pensively into the distance from the top level of a cat tree, bathed in light from an unseen window. (He is actually far less dignified and graceful than this evidence would suggest.)

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John Rogers @johnrogers.bsky.social · Sep 3

Your occasional reminder that the positive effects of UBI have been tested and validated hundreds of times more often than the murderous Musk robotaxis or LLM’s we’re rushing to put into our schools and streets.

Philadelphia Inquirer @inquirer.com · Sep 3

For the past three years, the city has been giving cash to some struggling renters, no strings attached.

The first-in-the-nation experiment has been even more successful than researchers studying its impact expected.

Philly’s first-in-the-nation experiment giving cash to struggling renters is working, researchers say

Families that got cash rental assistance were less likely to be evicted, experience homelessness, and report having serious problems with their homes, according to a study of the PHLHousing+ program.

www.inquirer.com

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Sara Davis @literarysara.bsky.social · Sep 2

In August I had a reading drought. I finished Instructions for a Heatwave, Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, and not much else.

Reading Roundup: August 2025

Instructions for a Heatwave, Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, way too many news links about genAI, and not much else.

literarysara.net

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Patrick Vallely @pjvphotography.bsky.social · Aug 28

"Pat, why do you carry that ridiculous 600mm lens on long hikes?"

Buddy, I can see mountains reflected in the eyes of a trailside pika.

Tighter crop of the same pika, focusing on its head.

An even tighter crop, focusing more on the pika's eye.

An extremely tight crop of the pika's eye, emphasizing their reflection of an early morning mountain scene.

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Sara Davis @literarysara.bsky.social · Aug 26

Which emergency to feature first: the fallout of war, the floods and the droughts, or what the White House is up to?

Climate roundup: Summer is the new season for the sads

Which emergency to feature first: the fallout of war, floods and droughts, or what the White House is up to?

literarysara.net

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Boo!-per Lund @cooperlund.online · Aug 26

Americans broadly hate all of this, and we all gotta remember that when it feels like things are spinning out of control

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Sara Davis @literarysara.bsky.social · Aug 26

As a result, many intelligent and well-read people I know--including staunch genAI skeptics who don't want to see it in their lives or their classrooms--have nevertheless bought into the hype wholesale. They
accept that it is here to stay (not necessarily) and will only get smarter (not really).

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Sara Davis @literarysara.bsky.social · Aug 26

I realized recently that media coverage so often repeats or adapts genAI sales points for a simple reason: the marketing makes for GREAT headlines. What tech tells us about genAI is sensational, intriguing, clickable. Anthropomorphizing genAI appeals to what we already hope and fear about it.

Greg Pak @gregpak.net · Aug 26

No. It’s not sentient, you clowns. Stop selling this garbage in “news” articles.

The Guardian @theguardian.com · Aug 26

Can AIs suffer? Big tech and users grapple with one of most unsettling questions of our times

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