Sara Simon

@sarambsimon.bsky.social

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grad student in history & science studies • former newsroom software engineer & data journalist • she/her

smbsimon.github.io

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Sara Simon

Organizers got enough signatures to put a measure protecting abortion on the ballot in Arkansas. In *Arkansas*. They had *no national support*. Ignore the pundits melting down over not being treated as Very Special Boys. Dobbs has fundamentally changed elections. Everything they know is wrong.

Arkansas abortion rights groups collect enough signatures to advance ballot measurewww.nbcnews.com A measure to enshrine abortion rights in the ruby red state’s constitution is now one step closer to making the November ballot — but major obstacles remain.

she's here 🤩

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Sara Simon

Reply to

Ashley Shew | Against Technoableism

I'm pointing to one direct material consequence here, but there's also those who won't go out or participate if they need the mobility or stability help too. Fewer disabled people will participate in public when some of our simple tech is constantly depicted as signaling our inferior/lesser status.

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Sara Simon

A lot of ableism isn't deliberate: that makes it more pernicious! A walker is representing being at lower faculty, by your description. I tweeted this on the other site: "The way walkers are used in media/culture is truly revolting -- & this rep prevents ppl from using what is a useful tool."

Using the walker on the magazine cover is not deliberately ableist. And at some point people are going to have to learn discernment and how to view creative media within the context it’s presented. The walker on the cover is to the point of an elderly person no longer being at full faculty.

major fireworks in our neighborhood, visible from our living room. the cat keeps coming out to look at them, then boom loud noise and he races back under the bed 😞

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Sara Simon

I will bring this one back every year

‘What To The Slave Is The Fourth Of July?’: Descendants Read Frederick Douglass' Speech | NPRyoutu.be In the summer of 2020, the U.S. commemorated Independence Day amid nationwide protests for racial justice and systemic reforms in the wake of George Floyd’s ...

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Sara Simon

hi! I’m on the job market. would love to chat! melodykramer.github.io

Melody J. Kramer melodykramer.github.io Melody Kramer's portfolio and website

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Sara Simon

One thing I don’t understand is why, when people are outraged by some injustice or affront — like book bans — they don’t first look to see who is already tracking the issue, who’s already working on education + organization. “We need to do something!” People *are*. Find them. Help them.

The latest from Isaac Chotiner is, as always, very much worth your time.

A Holocaust Scholar Meets with Israeli Reservistswww.newyorker.com Omer Bartov on his experience speaking with right-wing students who had just returned from military service in Gaza.

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Sara Simon

"It marks the second incident in two months involving a Tesla’s near miss-with a train while utilising its driver assistance system." You can tell Tesla is close to "solving self-driving" because they are down to the tough edge cases like *checks notes* trains nz.news.yahoo.com/tesla-autopi...

Tesla autopilot appears to veer electric vehicle onto train track it mistook for roadnz.news.yahoo.com Local police urged drivers to remain ‘vigilant while using Tesla's autopilot feature,’ noting that it ‘can fail’

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Sara Simon

(Gentle cough): papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Between my parents and lots of boomer teachers, I was raised on plenty of Warren Court mythology. It took time to learn that the liberal court was an outlier, and most SCOTUSes had been conservative. And still, legal scholars say the Roberts Court is even further to the right than many others.

It Makes Nothing Happen: Reasons for Studying the History of Lawpapers.ssrn.com Rather than write narratives of law intended for lawyers, judges, or policy makers, this article asserts that constitutional and legal historians should write a

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Sara Simon

I think you could ask a few questions but none the student giving tours will know... What's the institution's discount rate? Has the institution offered retirement packages? Have there been layoffs or hiring freezes? How has student recruitment changed in the past few years?

We did our first college tour yesterday with our teen and the startled look the admissions person gave us when I asked this question! Of course, I don't expect a straight answer, and I'm not sure a faculty member would give a straight answer either unless you know them personally.

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Sara Simon

I say this to my history students every semester. Lawyers do not have a monopoly on law, courts, & especially the Constitution--despite how often they are told otherwise. It may be in the best interest of lawyers to claim that unique authority; it's in everyone else's best interest not to let them.

Part of how we got here has been to leave too much of the discussion about all of this to lawyers. People feel like they can't understand the courts without law degrees and that's just not true. But we're left without a robust group of non-lawyer activists and organizers who could offer leadership.

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Sara Simon

Reply to

Hypervisible

The situation is somehow even worse than previously reported: "the tool processed student records in ways that likely ran afoul of L.A. Unified’s own data privacy rules and put sensitive information at risk of getting hacked." www.the74million.org/article/whis...

Whistleblower: L.A. Schools’ Chatbot Misused Student Data as Tech Co. Crumbledwww.the74million.org AllHere, ed tech startup hired to build LAUSD’s lauded AI chatbot ‘Ed’, played fast and loose with sensitive records, ex-software engineer alleges.

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Sara Simon

My latest story for Chicago Tribune: Error in new lung transplant algorithm harmed sick and dying patients. An embarrassingly basic scientific error led to major problems for people across the country in an incident a surgeons group called “deeply troubling.” www.chicagotribune.com/2024/06/30/l...

Error in new lung transplant algorithm harmed sick and dying patientswww.chicagotribune.com A flawed new algorithm for distributing lungs to transplant patients wound up putting people with Type O blood at a disadvantage.

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Sara Simon

"Gaza’s remaining hospitals, health centers and oxygen stations will stop working within 48 hours...Israel’s closure of the vital Rafah border crossing last month severed key supply lines, limiting access to food, fuel and medical supplies, aid groups say." www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/0...

Gaza’s remaining hospitals will stop working in two days, health officials warnwww.washingtonpost.com Israel’s closure of the vital Rafah border crossing last month severed key supply lines, aid groups warned. Fighting goes in Shejaiya, Gaza City, the IDF said.

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Sara Simon

In all seriousness public consciousness around the courts is night and day from pre 2016. The Barbie movie had a joke about appellate judgeships!

I missed that Barbra Streisand weighed in on chevron

I worry sometimes that my criticism of the NYT is written off as disgruntled former employee whining. Please listen when us former employees say that with a legacy like this, the shit there runs deep.

This is beyond the normalization of publications like the Times at the time. But the Times specifically was wrong on Hitler, wrong on MLK Jr, wrong on Ida B Wells, wrong on the famine in ukraine, wrong on weapons of mass destruction. Being wrong somehow isn't disqualifying.

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Sara Simon

We’re living through an era when everything needs to be upended yet so many people are clinging tightly to the edge of the pool. I understand why this is: when things feel uncertain, the status quo is a mirage of ‘safety’. But we need people who are willing to swim in the deep end & offer new paths

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Sara Simon

If you care about the way AI is steamrolling environmental concerns you might be interested in this (free, online) conference happening in July—program just posted, and link to register: uva.theopenscholar.com/rethinking-t...

Rethinking the Inevitability of AIuva.theopenscholar.com

joining the chorus to say i'm logging off now, no need to watch anything or be online tonight. go enjoy the sunshine, make a fun dinner, hang with your pet. i am so glad i left journalism, lol

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Sara Simon

Reply to

Sarah T Roberts, PhD

Here are keywords: — SSRN article ostensibly written by a law professor — false quote attributed to me — in a paper I never wrote — because it doesn’t exist — and because I don’t hold the opinions ascribed to me — but it sure sounds like something ChatGPT would do.

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Sara Simon

“What emerges is a portrait of a threat that is steadily rolling along, yet also settling into what feels like a routine. Nearly every day, a few new herds are found to have infections, entrenching the virus deeper into the cattle population and expanding its footprint across more states.”

Three months into bird flu outbreak in U.S. dairy cows, experts see deep-rooted problems in responsewww.statnews.com Three months into the H5N1 bird flu outbreak in U.S. dairy cows, experts see deep-rooted problems in the government's response.

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Sara Simon

christ

After Earning a Degree From Northwestern While Incarcerated, Michael Broadway Dies in Custody at 51 as Family Questions Medical Response

After Earning a Degree From Northwestern While Incarcerated, Michaelnews.wttw.com The circumstances around his death have left friends, family and others incarcerated at Stateville questioning the sequence of events around his medical treatment. Friends who witnessed his death last...

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Sara Simon

the times’ willing participation in a right-wing Christianist assault on the human rights of a small minority is one of the most disgraceful chapters in its history. absolutely sickening

Biden Officials Pushed to Remove Age Limits for Trans Surgery, Documents Showwww.nytimes.com Newly released emails from an influential group issuing transgender medical guidelines indicate that U.S. health officials lobbied to remove age minimums for surgery in minors because of concerns over...

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Sara Simon

What the fuck? I just had my first case of Covid and was frankly non-functional for 2 solid weeks (fever up to 102), as well as probably contagious. I’m lucky it was summer & I’m an academic, but if it had been mid-semester I would’ve been PHYSICALLY INCAPABLE of teaching, nvm contagion issues…

NEW: This spring, NY quietly stripped away COVID sick leave from its own employees. The state informed executive agencies in March that the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who work for the state would no longer get COVID-specific sick days. hellgatenyc.com/governor-hoc...

Governor Hochul Abruptly Ends COVID Sick Leave for NY State Employees - Hell Gatehellgatenyc.com COVID-19 cases are again on the rise in New York. Statewide, the number of recorded cases has increased five-fold since April, though they are still below levels reached this past winter.

there was a pottery class in my neighborhood i wanted to take last summer but didn't because i felt weird about likely being the only masker. by now, i've gotten so used to it, so i signed up! and wearing the mask is the easiest part, lol. it's truly no big deal and keeps me and others safe 💕

Sit with this. Then restart anyway. We’re seeing a summer surge. If you’ve restarted let folks know—here and elsewhere. Let them know it is NEVER too late to start caring about people in an ongoing disaster. Be the cavalry as the front lines fall, not the quislings. We are fighting for our lives.

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Sara Simon

hi, i wrote a post - "destroy AI". ali-alkhatib.com/blog/fuck-up...

Destroy AIali-alkhatib.com I’ve been struggling to articulate this idea, and maybe the problem is that it’s actually kind of simple once you put it out there, and there’s really no good reason to unpack a whole case for it once...

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Sara Simon

I literally warned y'all about exactly this kind of harmful outcome from GPT integrations, & even told you *why/how* it'd happen. And if it's showing in résumé sorting, then bet it's about break as having been happening in patient portals & police reports & lending application sorters & on & on & on

“UW researchers found that ChatGPT consistently ranked resumes with disability-related honors and credentials — such as the ‘Tom Wilson Disability Leadership Award’ — lower than the same resumes without those honors and credentials.”

ChatGPT is biased against resumes with credentials that imply a disability — but it can improvewww.washington.edu UW researchers found that ChatGPT consistently ranked resumes with disability-related honors and credentials — such as the “Tom Wilson Disability Leadership Award” — lower than the same...