Melanie Bavaria

Anyway I have been a journalist for 15 years and have never seen an anonymity deal like that, that I can remember.

And it’s begun. ⚕️🏥🚫 #hospitalclosure #bbb

I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did w/ ICE.

This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion - making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined.

It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.

"Israel killed nearly two-thirds of the 124 journalists who died around the world in 2024" - you would imagine this would cause a commotion in the world of news journalism, wouldn't you.

Since the dawn of this country, war plans included when ships left port. Sailers were cautioned that "loose lips sink ships."

But a new body of scholarship questions the belief that mentioning when a craft departs and what was on board is a "war plan."

#Satire

Confident stupidity is the defining trait of the modern GOP

oh my god -- Comer thinks "editorial standards" literally refers to standards for editorials and is corrected by the NPR head

Wait while I was at the typewriter store, we lost TikTok and maybe... got the ERA?! how long was I in there

God i love @propublica.org so much

I really, REALLY can't get over just how beautiful this comet is in our LASCO images! I mean, I've seen more than a handful of comets in this data over the years (~5,200 to be exact - not that I'm counting...) But I've really gotta say... this might be the pick o' the bunch right here. WOW 😱😍☄️☀️🔭

These results really appear to align with reductions in school funding effort and expansion of failed choice schemes

Piles of Xmas trees and mulch

Park Slopers, bring your Xmas trees to Prospect Park 3rd St. entrance for #mulchfest today and tomorrow. No amount of greenery donated too small, as this elderly neighbor’s cart attests. And puhlease take some mulch with you to make your street trees happy this winter. We have mountains!

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A NOTE ON GENERATIVE AI This class helps you to be a better writer and thinker. Generative AI (ChatGPT and other platforms) is neither writing nor thinking. Any use of AI in this class (whether to write, brainstorm, outline, or summarize) will be considered a violation of academic integrity. It undermines your intellectual development, for one: AI content is often inaccurate or hallucinatory and is always boring, banal, and average. This is by design, as generative AI works by predicting the most obvious or basic sequencing of words. Good writing—writing that is persuasive, powerful, lively, funny, surprising, rousing, insightful, transformative, provocative—requires human work. Human creativity is weird and variable and uneven, but it holds the capacity for growth, revelation, empathy, and brilliance. I urge you not to abandon the glorious experiential potential of human messiness and transformation for the tedium of robot sentences. One further reason to abjure generative AI, especially in a class on environmental literature: in addition to its counterproductivity to your work as a writer and thinker, AI is enormously environmentally destructive.

My draft of a syllabus statement on a.i. for my writing class, for what it is worth:

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A man stands in a room with dark red walls showing off a framed illustrated poster that says "Pen & Pencil Night"

Know a deserving journalist in the Philadelphia region? Time to nominate them for the Philly News Awards!

(hosted annually by the Pen & Pencil Club, the oldest continuously operating press club in the nation)

Send in your noms here: docs.google.com/forms/d/1X5o...

So I went back to Senator Fischer's 2013 swearing in ceremony, and wouldn't you know it, her husband had no problem shaking then-VP Joe Biden's hand (twice). Video at 1:15:00 www.c-span.org/program/publ...
bsky.app/profile/bria...

Totally agree. Too often, American culture loses sight of the "magic" of childhood in favor of programming, predicability, and consumerism.

If you are anxious about what the next four years means for independent media and investigative journalism, can I suggest chipping in a few bucks to an outlet that relies on reader support to keep going? Honestly, I'd love if you just supported the people and the work you read, whoever that is...

Adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you da. Have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you'll sound like a maniac. It's an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out. And since since comes before colour, green great dragons can't exist." - Mark Forsyth, quote from The Elements of Eloquence: How to turn the Perfect English Phrase

Been seven years since I first read this, on the English language's *completely universal but totally invisible* adjective hierarchy, and I can honestly say I've thought about it most days since.

Hakeem Jeffries: "Republicans are marching America to a painful government shutdown that will crash the economy and hurt working-class Americans because they would rather enact massive tax cuts for their billionaire donors than fund cancer research for children."

Philly has beautiful murals all over the place. Here is one you can’t see from the ground - only from our hotel window

Tous coupables

How rich musicians billed American taxpayers for luxury hotels, shopping sprees, and million-dollar bonuses Pop stars took advantage of the SVOG grant, using COVID relief funds for luxury spending. Lil Wayne bought Balenciaga and flew private.

Unbelievable www.businessinsider.com/lil-wayne-ch...

How rich musicians billed American taxpayers for luxury hotels, shopping sprees, and million-dollar bonuses Pop stars took advantage of the SVOG grant, using COVID relief funds for luxury spending. Lil Wayne bought Balenciaga and flew private.

This story is absolutely wild.

ABC's $15 million settlement w/ Trump is shameful. The sum, and the publicity, will make it harder for journalists to do their work in the years to come.

That said, the Stephanopoulos interview that triggered the suit was a train wreck.

It wasn't remotely worth $15MM. But it was bad

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Darling Isabelle could rock a top pony! Absolutely adorable!

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