Shannon Osaka

I have a soft-tissue condition that makes it difficult for me to walk long distances. I definitely have "personal range anxiety" as described at the end of the piece. (I also can't ride a bike due to a nerve issue.) Things can be useful for different people!!!

Really appreciate your support, Ross!

GREAT MINDS

I was not expecting Bad Bunny to celebrate the work of linemen during halftime but I'm here for it.

Washington Post C.E.O. Will Lewis Steps Down After Stormy Tenure

from the NYT: 'Katie Mettler, a former chair of the Washington Post guild, said: “I’m glad Will Lewis has been fired. I wish it had happened before he fired all my friends.”'

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/07/t...

We appreciate you!!

Climate reporters are some of the kindest, most selfless, and most hardworking people around.

We need MORE of their work, not less. I'm grateful to everyone who has read and subscribed to support any kind of climate coverage over the years, ours or another newsroom's. Thanks for not turning away.

Breaking: Washington Post gutting its climate team Clean energy dies in darkness. Courtesy of Jeff Bezos.

I don't say this often but: I'm so proud to be a climate and environment reporter. We cover an issue that is vitally important to humanity and the natural world. 14 of my climate colleagues at the Post were laid off today and I'm devastated.

www.climatecoloredgoggles.com/p/washington...

thank you for supporting our journalism during that time 🙏

Your work has been AMAZING and always at the highest level. So impressed by what you have accomplished and sorry the institution treated you this way.

Donate to Washington Post 2026 layoff fund, organized by Rachel Siegel On Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026, The Washington Post laid off hundreds of journalists. We ar… Rachel Siegel needs your support for Washington Post 2026 layoff fund

Terrible day for many amazing, hard-working, intelligent journalists at the Washington Post. I'm still here and trying to figure out how to best support my colleagues who have lost their jobs.

If you feel able to share or contribute, please do:

www.gofundme.com/f/standing-t...

Donate to Washington Post 2026 layoff fund, organized by Rachel Siegel On Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026, The Washington Post laid off hundreds of journalists. We ar… Rachel Siegel needs your support for Washington Post 2026 layoff fund

Whatever you think of the Washington Post at this moment, here's a chance to support the dedicated, hard-working journalists who were just laid off. If you have the means, your donation is most welcome. If you don't, a kind thought and maybe spreading the word to others is support enough 💙

Waking up without power, heat, or running water. (Again.) But the work here in Kyiv continues. Warming up in the car, writing in pencil — pen ink freezes — by headlamp. Despite how difficult this job can be, I am proud to be a foreign correspondent at The Washington Post.

Proud to work with the @washingtonpost.com's fearless international reporters. They're the heart of this newsroom, and we'd understand our world less without them. #SaveThePost

Chart showing main drivers of peak load growth between 2025 and 2045, from the CEC. EVs are 8234 MW, data centers 4721 MW.

From the CEC report:

www.energy.ca.gov/filebrowser/...

California’s new grid hog isn’t who you think No, data centers aren’t the primary driver of California’s soaring energy demand forecast.

Dang. California Energy Commission predicts that EV load growth will be almost DOUBLE that of data centers between 2025 and 2045.

(This is CA specifically, which has the highest EV adoption rates in the country.)

www.politico.com/newsletters/...

Washington Post demands government return materials seized from reporter The Post demanded in a court filing Wednesday that federal law enforcement officials return electronic devices the government seized from a staff reporter’s home.

"The outrageous seizure" of @hannahnatanson.bsky.social's records "chills speech, cripples reporting, and inflicts irreparable harm." Anything less than immediate return "would license future newsroom raids and normalize censorship by search warrant" www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

In the Atlantic Ocean, Subtle Shifts Hint at Dramatic Dangers (Published 2021) A warming atmosphere is causing a branch of the ocean’s powerful Gulf Stream to weaken, some scientists fear.

This was a pretty good one, visually: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

And of course, many emphasized that this is just the normal process of science -- no big scandals here. Introduce a method, face critiques, refine it further.

“This is exactly how science works in tackling a new problem,” one researcher told me.

A chart showing the exponential growth of plastics production.

When I talk to scientists about dosing, they say they are most concerned about the fact that plastic production is rising exponentially. The dose we are exposed to is likely rising as well.

TOTAL mass is more uncertain. The best method to do this is pyrolysis gas chromatography mass spectrometry, and there are questions about whether that method overestimates polymers like polyethylene.

That's why researchers are urgently refining those methods to better understand our total dose.

A few key points raised:

Animal studies show clearly that tiny plastics can reach the brain/other organs. Researchers have exposed rats and mice to fluorescently tagged nanoplastics in their food, and found those same tiny plastics deep in the brain."

A scientist questioned new microplastics findings. Then other researchers fired back. A prominent scientist criticized microplastics research methods. Others are defending the work.

Scientists were frustrated by a piece in the Guardian earlier this week that seemed to call into question the science on microplastics in the body.

I wrote about why researchers are certain microplastics are in the human body -- and what we still don't know:

www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

I am BEGGING folks not to use AI to send me emails about my stories. So confusing to read through a 500-word email only to realize that it's referencing something that ... does not exist in the story. 🫠

Please just write it in your own words. I will read and respond if I am able!

That's fair! To my mind, we know that it's not accumulating forever because they haven't been able to find any association between organ concentration and age -- where if they were accumulating you would expect to see that.

But I don't know if that's so much the reporting as what readers assume...

It's definitely discussed heavily because it's only one paper with such a small sample size.

However, there are researchers who are currently exposing mice to microplastics and casual connections to atheroscleromas. That could help explain the NEJM results and is quite concerning.

Yes, it's less of a bombshell when most of the critiques are things the scientists have been transparent about the whole time!

🤣🤣🤣

You're welcome! Yes, it's a super exciting field -- challenging to report on but very interesting.

The exception is gut or colon, where it's easier for larger particles to get in through ingestion. But most scientists think that those larger particles are likely passing through our bodies harmlessly as they aren't small enough to enter blood circulation/cell walls.

Another way to think about this is researchers have shown in mice that they can feed mice fluorescent microplastic particles, and later those particles show up in the mouse's brain.

No question of contamination there and the particles are clearly getting in.