Chad Small

China is one of the biggest development funders and operators in the world. It’s also silencing environmental reporters who dare to tell the truth about the harms some of those projects have caused across the global south

Thank you to @thexylom.com for publishing this story.

The thing about being an US born person of immigrant extraction who has also lived in a couple of other countries and traveled to a bunch more is... I can be both very clear eyed in the way the US sucks while also being aware of how other countries use the USA's failings to distract from their own.

My teen, who had dreamt of being an astrophysicist, just told me he wants to go to law school because, “Science isn’t going to be a priority in the US in the future…I don’t want a job where I’ll be constantly worried my funding will be taken away.”

Gutting. How many future scientists have we lost?

Opinion | We Have a Way to Pay for Free Buses. It Means Free Street Parking Is Over.

yes … yes!!!!! www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/o...

The co-founder and executive director of the Transit Riders Union is now on the board of Sound Transit.

Elections matter, folks.

TN07 is a story about gerrymandering: the GOP cracked Nashville into 3 districts when it redrew the 2022 map, destroying the Dem seat there.

Fast-forward: a section of Nashville, which just 5 years ago had a Dem representative, is now voting Dem by huge margins but it's been designed to not matter.

🍃 Risa spent the summer reporting on local news @cascadiadaily.com sponsored by the Ralph W.F. Hardy Endowment. You'll want to read it: www.aaas.org/programs/mas...
#MassMediaFellowship #SciComm

Seattle is not small or narrow. It’s huge and we can easily double our population if we are being realistic. It would fund transit, schools and services and bring an economic vitality and vibrancy to every part of our city

this headline, and much of the reporting, is the result of believing that the key to good journalism is never taking a position

This is where we need to do a better job at differentiating between things like AI/ML weather modeling or AI/ML medical, and generative AI and other LLM that every company is trying to shove down our throats.

I’m very supportive of the former but very skeptical of the latter.

👀

A dark-themed weather tracking map from Google Weather Lab: Cyclones (Preview) showing hurricane/cyclone models in the Atlantic Ocean as of Friday, September 19, 2025, at 08:00. The map includes ensemble forecast tracks and storm markers extending from the mid-Atlantic toward Western Europe. Multiple colorful lines (green, orange, blue, purple, yellow) represent different storm model ensembles and possible tracks, with clusters of paths pointing toward Ireland, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, and Portugal. The cyclone originated east of the Caribbean, with its projected paths fanning northeastward across the Atlantic. Colored circles mark storm intensity along the tracks, numbered (e.g., 1, 2, 6) corresponding to categories. A second storm is visible off the Pacific coast of Mexico with clustered ensemble markers. The left panel lists model options (Observed, Our experimental model, WeatherNext Gen, WeatherNext Graph, ECMWF ENS, ECMWF HRES), a legend for storm markers, tracks, ensemble tracks, cones, and wind speed colors. At the bottom, sliders indicate initialization time (Fri, Sep 19, 2025, 08:00) and lead time (+6 days, Fri, Sep 26, 2025, 02:00). The background map highlights North America, the Atlantic Ocean, Western Europe, and parts of Africa.

Having AI crammed down our throats is bullshit, but machine learning has some real uses in science. This awesome page shows experimental cyclone track forecasts from Google DeepMind and Google Research's AI weather models, along with forecasts from ECMWF. 😍

deepmind.google.com/science/weat...

journalists really should stop baring their entire asses like this

"I have no idea how this technology actually works but my editor is mostly interested in engagement clicks so we proceeded anyway"

Researchers: “my analysis has policy implications because the p value is 0.049, your analysis doesn’t because the p value is 0.051.”

Andre 3000: are you all even listening to yourselves

politics idea: love the city you want to be in charge of

A huge, huge problem

...and less than 24 hours later Condé Nast has fired Lex and the rest of the Teen Vogue political desk, even as stories like this were bringing huge numbers of readers to the site

Bay Area Teen Uses Drones to Map the Wetlands He Grew Up Loving | KQED A South Bay student uses drone technology to show what’s at stake as rising seas threaten the Bay Area wetlands that act as a natural barrier to flooding.

Bay Area Teen Uses Drones to Map the Wetlands He Grew Up Loving

“I hope these maps encourage youth to come into this field and try to save their backyard. I want the next generation to be able to enjoy it.”

@kqednews.kqed.org @kqedscience.bsky.social
www.kqed.org/science/1998...

Celebrate STEM Day with us on November 8th! 🧬📝

RSVP for our free Zoom event on November 8th! Learn science journalism from Chad Small, a PhD student in Atmospheric and Climate Science and science journalist!
@smallthoughts.bsky.social
#scicomm #sciencejournalism

🔗RSVP: bit.ly/labreports3

What did I just watch

We've got to stop behaving as if we're not responsible for one other. Eradicate from your mind expressions like, "I don't owe you anything.""They/she/he doesn't owe you anything." That "owe" is thinking of us in terms of transactions as if our value is only important in terms of profit & loss.

Wikipedia Says AI Is Causing a Dangerous Decline in Human Visitors “With fewer visits to Wikipedia, fewer volunteers may grow and enrich the content, and fewer individual donors may support this work.”

wikipedia's data shows that AI is siphoning traffic away from the site, which is a danger to its sustainability. ironically Wikipedia is more important than ever to users who want reliable information instead of slop, and to AI companies that need it for training data www.404media.co/wikipedia-sa...

It’s time to change the way the media reports on protests. Here are some ideas. "People kept sharing these videos that were coming up and it was unambiguous what was going on. We weren't looking at a stream of videos of violence erupting or clashes breaking out. We were looking a...

As we go into No Kings weekend (and with the influx of new followers from x) seems like a good time to resurface this.

It was written in 2020 then focused on George Floyd about the media's antagonistic relationship to protest

SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems... SIMON: What? SHAPIRO: ...Or saying... SIMON: You imagine that? SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over. SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level. SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this. SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

In an interview for a new Netflix documentary filmed months before her death, famed British primatologist Jane Goodall called for billionaire and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to be blasted into space. “Absolutely, there are people I don’t like,” she told interviewer and TV writer Brad Falchuk, “and I would like to put them on one of Musk’s spaceships and send them all off to the planet he’s sure he’s going to discover.” When asked if she would like Musk to be on the spacecraft alongside them, she sounded off. “Oh, absolutely, he’d be the host,” she said. “Along with Musk, it’d be [president Donald] Trump and some of Trump’s real supporters.” “Put them all on that spaceship and send them off,” she concluded.

If you ever end up recording a final message, ensure you dedicate a good chunk of it to roasting your nemeses, like Jane Goodall did

futurism.com/future-socie...

this one might upset some ppl!!!! tried to be nuanced and balanced, but EJ is always where my heart will be

Don't miss the latest addition to the Uproot Resource Library, "Reporting on Atmospheric Rivers," brought to you by the fantastic @smallthoughts.bsky.social and @rachelreports.bsky.social, members of the Uproot Advisory Board!

uprootproject.org/initiatives/...

Emissions are Sparking Increases in African Heat Waves in Unexpected Ways, New Study Finds - Inside Climate News Declines in cooling sulfates combined with increases in greenhouse gas concentrations have increased the intensity and frequency of African heat waves. And the temperature spikes may be even more inte...

"Declines in cooling sulfates combined with increases in greenhouse gas concentrations have increased the intensity and frequency of African heat waves." Uprooter @smallthoughts.bsky.social for @insideclimatenews.org

insideclimatenews.org/news/0609202...

I’m one of the Ph.D. students caught up in the cancelation of ‘diversity’ grants. I’m heartbroken I’m one of the Ph.D. students caught up in the cancelation of ‘diversity’ grants. I’m heartbroken

Heartbreaking account of what it's like to lose funding for your PhD because of the Trump administration's attitude towards diversity, from my former colleague
@marissa-russo.bsky.social

www.statnews.com/2025/09/05/n...

Emissions are Sparking Increases in African Heat Waves in Unexpected Ways, New Study Finds - Inside Climate News Declines in cooling sulfates combined with increases in greenhouse gas concentrations have increased the intensity and frequency of African heat waves. And the temperature spikes may be even more inte...

Declines in cooling sulfates combined with increases in greenhouse gas concentrations have increased the intensity and frequency of African heat waves. And the temperature spikes may be even more intense than has been recorded.

In @insideclimatenews.org

insideclimatenews.org/news/0609202...