Tamara Kneese

For sure!

It’s wild, I’ve lived in the Bay for 8 years and still haven’t made my way down there!

Me with way more white hair, not smiling and wearing glasses because I forgot my contact solution while sporting a Sontag hat

This is me on vacation now, ready for middle aged battle

Oh even closer! We drove up to Sonoma County from Oakland

Me smiling on a sunny Vancouver day at 31 but it feels more like I have aged 31 years since then tbh

This was me on my last vacation 10 years ago, when we drove from Portland to Vancouver. I was so happy then and blissfully ignorant of the many horrors to come!

There’s only one way out of this

"WASHINGTON, D.C. (August 1, 2025) – The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced today that it will begin an orderly wind-down of its operations"

cpb.org/pressroom/Co...

I took a 4 day vacation, not connected to work travel and not to visit family, the first actual vacation I have taken in 10 years. Emailing me right now means you automatically get hexed, sorry

Breaking: NSF is suspending roughly 300 grants with UCLA, following a DOJ finding on Tuesday that the university violated Title VI by "creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students."

The “deal” that Brown made with the Trump admin is much more extreme than is being reported. It includes government oversight of course evaluations and no barrier to government interference in faculty hiring.

Read it for yourself here:

www.brown.edu/sites/defaul...

it's true you're going to get to read three thousand words of me on Co-Star and the history of astrological computing (with a special guest appearance by Nancy Reagan) 🔭

Trump Administration Puts New Chokehold on Billions in Health-Research Funding The National Institutes of Health can’t award grants to outside researchers under a new White House restriction.

NEW
The White House is blocking the NIH from awarding new research grants for the rest of the fiscal year

Chokes off billions in research funding

Gift link www.wsj.com/politics/pol... with @nidhisubs.bsky.social

Big Tech Asked for Looser Clean Water Act Permitting. Trump Wants to Give It to Them New AI regulations suggested by the White House mirror changes to environmental permitting suggested by Meta and a lobbying group representing firms like Google and Amazon Web Services.

SCOOP from me: Trump's AI action plan released last week makes a specific set of recommendations around loosening Clean Water Act permits for data centers — recommendations mirrored in letters sent to the administration by Big Tech lobbyists earlier this year:

Yuval Abraham ...7al" • 34m Odeh just died. Murdered. Yuval Abraham ..x 7a1' • 2h An Israeli settler just shot Odeh Hadalin in the lungs, a remarkable activist who helped us film No Other Land in Masafer Yatta. Residents identified Yinon Levi, sanctioned by the EU and US, as the shooter. This is him in the video firing like crazy.

An Israeli settler sanctioned by the European Union just shot and killed one of the Palestinian activists and filmmakers a part of the No Other Land crew

Your Guide on How to Support Mutual Aid Groups in Palestine as Humanitarian Crisis Deepens As we speak, up to two million people in Gaza are being threatened with starvation, as the state of Israel, backed by the US government, continues to blockade humanitarian aid into Gaza, attack basic ...

Two million people are being threatened with forced starvation in #Palestine, as the US government continues to support ongoing ethnic-cleansing.

We've created a list of on-the-ground mutual aid groups in #Gaza that you can support, amplify, and follow. itsgoingdown.org/your-guide-o...

I made a pledge to that whenever I spend money on seeing live music this summer I'll donate the same amount to one of the many projects Sameer is organizing. So after a bunch of shows in the past couple of weeks, I just contributed to this one. I hope you'll join me if you can.

My family is personally fucked over by this regime’s changes to student loans in a big way and I don’t see how anyone in this country will be able to financially survive any of this

Screenshot of Washington Post homepage. Lead headline is: "Mass starvation stalks Gaza as deaths from hunger rise." Lead image is of a woman in Gaza holding an almost impossibly emaciated child

Harrowing lead story and image on the Washington Post homepage right now. www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/0...

UNC System leaders to meet ahead of new school year, as financial pressures loom Financial pressures from the state legislature, the Trump administration and the changing landscape of college athletics all present issues for public universities in North Carolina about to kick off ...

“The UNC System is leaving its current accrediting body to join with FL, TX, SC, TN, & GA to form a new group. It’s the brain-child of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican & possible 2028 presidential candidate, who has said they’ll fight against the “woke” standards used by other accreditors.”

Too much history at once dude

The Last Thing We Had in Gaza Was Flour. Now Even That Is Gone. My father feels dizzy every single day. I lost four kilograms in just one week. People are collapsing in the streets.

“It seems that my death won’t come from an Israeli missile or a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s bullet — it will come from hunger. Slow. Silent. Cruel.”

‘We faced hunger before, but never like this’: skeletal children fill hospital wards as starvation grips Gaza For months Israel kept food shipments to Gaza far below starvation rations. Now the death toll is rising rapidly

Unspeakable crime.

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

I have an idea: add a widget that uses AI to simulate the depletion of aquifers used to cool the data centers that run each campus’s Canvas AI! Pedagogical self-reflexivity! Infrastructural literacy!

People's AI Action Plan

The White House released its AI Action plan this morning. We know where it came from: straight from Big Tech. But there’s another path available to us: we and over 100 other orgs called for a People’s AI Action Plan. Read it here: peoplesaiaction.com
apnews.com/article/trum...

Led by OMB, work with Federal agencies that have AI-related discretionary funding programs to ensure, consistent with applicable law, that they consider a state’s AI regulatory climate when making funding decisions and limit funding if the state’s AI regulatory regimes may hinder the effectiveness of that funding or award.

Looks like Trump is trying to back-door the state AI regulatory ban that was rejected in the Senate 99-1. From today's release of the AI "action plan": www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...

Wanted to give you all a heads up that I’m going to be dropping some balls and generally not following through on my promises

Data Centers Aren’t the Future of American Prosperity Tamara Kneese and Maia Woluchem cut through lobbying points and speculative myths to focus on what the evidence reveals about the tech industry’s claims.

In our new policy brief for @datasociety.bsky.social, @mwoluchem.bsky.social and I break down the myths and industry talking points attached to data centers. Who benefits from unbridled data center growth and who is most at risk when such speculative ventures fail?

When the data center lobby comes knocking, local officials might be drawn in by the supposed economic benefits that data centers can bring. And the public is told that data centers are our collective destiny, that we have no choice but to build ever more sprawling data centers at a frantic pace

Data Centers Aren’t the Future of American Prosperity Tamara Kneese and Maia Woluchem cut through lobbying points and speculative myths to focus on what the evidence reveals about the tech industry’s claims.

Data Centers Aren't the Future of American Prosperity- @tamigraph.bsky.social & @mwoluchem.bsky.social bust the myths of data centers: they don't massively increase jobs, they don't increase clean energy investment, and they don't benefit local communities! OH SNAP datasociety.net/library/data...

Without immediate intervention, the last reporters in Gaza will die July 21, 2025 AFP has been working with 1 writer, 3 photographers and 6 videographers, all freelance, in the Gaza Strip since its staff journalists left in 2024. Along with a few others, they are now the only ones left to report what is happening in the Gaza Strip. The international press has been banned from entering the territory for nearly two years. We refuse to watch them die. One of them, Bashar, has been working with AFP since 2010, first as a fixer, then freelance photographer, and since 2024, as lead photographer. On July 19th he managed to post a message on Facebook: “I no longer have the strength to work for the media. My body is thin and I can’t work anymore.” Bashar, 30, works & lives in the same conditions as all Gazans, moving from one refugee camp to another under Israeli bombings. For > a year he’s lived in utter destitution, working at extreme risk to his life. Hygiene is a major issue for him, with recurring bouts of severe intestinal illness. Since Feb, Bashar’s been living in the ruins of his home in Gaza City with his mother, 4 brothers & sisters and the family of one of his brothers. Their house is devoid of any furnishings, except a few cushions. On Sunday morning, he reported that one of his brothers had “fallen, due to hunger.” Even though these journalists receive a monthly salary from AFP, it’s no longer enough to buy food, or they have to pay completely exorbitant prices. The banking system has collapsed, and those who exchange money via online bank accounts charge a commission of up to 40%. AFP no longer has the ability to provide them with a vehicle and there is not enough fuel to allow these journalists to travel for their reporting. Driving a car means becoming a target for Israeli airstrikes. AFP reporters therefore travel on foot or by donkey cart. (alt txt continued in next post)

A horrifying statement published today by the Editorial Committee of the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency.

"Without immediate intervention, the last reporters in Gaza will die"

Translation from French to English by @cnorristrent.bsky.social: