Elsa Devienne

How to Read an "AI" Press Release — Sonja Drimmer Every so often someone like Mark Zuckerberg or Sam Altman will dribble out some unadorned text in Times New Roman font, announcing with stentorian certitude the advent of a new world that their latest...

Zuckerberg farted out some nonsense today, and since most media outlets refuse to report critically any time a tech CEO offers them some a pseudoserious press release, I've decided to do it for them.

sonjadrimmer.com/blog-1/2025/7/30/how-to-read-an-ai-press-release

My "factoid repeated everywhere but turned out not to be true" from my PhD dissertation is: swimmer Annette Kellerman never got arrested for wearing a one-piece bathing suit at Revere Beach in 1907 (she just was a genius marketer). Still repeated as gospel everywhere! www.boston.com/community/wi...

thank you 🙏😊😊

One more question: has anyone missed their sleeper trains because of how bad the German trains are? Is there any leeway to take one the day after in case that happens?

thank you :-)

And can I book the Stockholm to Uppsala ticket the day of (without it being horribly expensive)?

#ESEH peeps: Who else is taking the sleeper train from Hamburg to Stockholm on 17 August @eseh.bsky.social ?

'I have a lifeline scholarship to study in Scotland - but I'm trapped in Gaza' Shaimaa Abulebda has been given the chance to reclaim some of her old life - but remains stuck in Gaza because of government red tape.

Shaimaa has a funded place at Edinburgh to study for a PhD with me, but is stuck in Gaza due to Home Office restrictions. I'm proud of her for speaking about her situation on TV and grateful to reporter Paris Gourtsoyannis for covering her story. news.stv.tv/east-central...

Oh that would be such a cool thing!!

Thank you!!

ohhh thank you !! 😃

It does *AND* there will be an accompanying podcast produced in collab with @anjakrieger.bsky.social based on the interviews with the women who organized the first citizen science cleanups in the 1980s (and one interview with an activist currently campaigning against single-use plastics).

Still from a 1980s video documenting Judie Neilson's effort against plastic pollution in the ocean. We see Judie, a short-haired woman with glasses. In the background is the Oregon coastline.

There are four women at the center of this article. I'm so excited to introduce these wonderful women and their stories to the world.
This is Judie for whom I have so much admiration ☺️

Screenshot of proofs entitled: "Making Plastics Count: Citizen Science Beach Cleanups and the Ocean Plastic Pollution Crisis (1980s-2020s)"

Proofs!!
My first publication on #Plastics, "Making Plastics Count: Citizen Science Beach Cleanups and the Ocean Plastic Pollution Crisis (1980s-2020s)", is coming out in September in Environmental History 🐬🌏

Worth pointing out that we'll be talking histories of #Plastics just after INC-5.2 (negotiations for a UN #PlasticsTreaty) conclude in Geneva.

Let's hope scientists get heard 🙏

Latest reporting on the topic from @dpcarrington.bsky.social shows how hard that is www.theguardian.com/environment/...

screenshot of the programme with the two panels indicated at 9am and 11am

@eseh.bsky.social 2025 participants: I just wanted to flag the 2 environmental histories of #plastic panels I've organised with really exciting papers by @luciletruffy.bsky.social & more + @finnarne.me as chair.

Both are hybrid & on Wed 20 Aug. morning.

Make sure to add them on your calendar!

Really grateful to everyone who's read and shared this, and especially people who've written to their MPs on behalf of the students stuck in Gaza. I hope we will have some good news to share before too long, so these students can get to the UK in time for the new academic year.

La Ligue contre le cancer fustige l’adoption de la controversée loi Duplomb « C’est un affront au principe de précaution », dénonce la Ligue contre le cancer en réaction à l’adoption, le 8 juillet 2025, de la loi Duplomb sur l’agriculture. Portée par les sénateurs Laurent Dup...

Pour ceux qui se posent encore des question sur la nécessité de ne pas céder à la FNSEA et de lutter contre cette loi.

www.lequotidiendumedecin.fr/actu-medical...

Ça fait un putain de choc à chaque fois. Et c'est pareil dans tous les massifs.

The way AI is unfailingly cheerful and servile really grates. It's like a perfect little minion: "Would you like me to do further research ?" No doubt the ideal worker in the minds of those who shaped it.

Seriously, We Transfer has just said they'll scrape anything you send through them for AI.

@luciletruffy.bsky.social

For my #PlasticPeople, there's an article on the plastic bag by Nils Johansson

Two weeks have passed since a Florida Highway Patrol officer arrested the Honduran immigrant client of Magdalena Cuprys of Cuprys & Associates. “He was stopped at a weigh station in Tampa because he owns a construction company, and he was required to stop for his truck to be weighed,” Cuprys told me. “The client had a valid Florida driver’s license. The patrol officer called Customs and Border Protection on him. The client called me, and the officer took the phone from him and spoke with me.” She asked why CBP was alerted. “I was advised that the client looked Hispanic, had a Hispanic name, and now they are collaborating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and CBP, and their orders are to call CBP any time they encounter anyone they suspect is an immigrant,” said Cuprys. “I asked if they would have followed the same process if it had been me driving, and the response was it depends if you look Hispanic.”

“It depends if you look Hispanic.”

From Forbes: www.forbes.com/sites/stuart...

What about getting a library card instead :-) ?

Two Writers Fell in Love, Married, Then Divorced. Who Gets the Story?

The hardest part with this (a breakup between two writers which has inspired three books so far) is deciding which book to start with 🤓

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/b...

This is the one day of the year when working from a northern-facing room in Manchester UK pays off. Feeling very smug.

Something we talk about in "Life After Cars" is that in 1975 the traffic fatality rate in the Netherlands was 20% *higher* than in the US. Today, the traffic fatality rate in the Netherlands is more than 60% *lower* than in the US.

Download the free ebook of Matt Simon’s eye-opening A POISON LIKE NO OTHER now until July 8! A must-read on the hidden dangers of microplastics in our environment—and our bodies. islandpress.org/summer #FreeSummerRead #Microplastics #FreeRead #PlasticPollution

🥇 Elsa Devienne (@elsadevienne.bsky.social) won the First Book Prize for her brilliant Sand Rush: The Revival of the Beach in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles (OUP, 2024).