Kate Tuttle
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katekilla.bsky.social
Kate Tuttle
@katekilla.bsky.social
Gen X, middle child, Leo. I mostly write about books.
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I haven't written this kind of personal essay in years, so it was interesting to revisit this one, originally published in 2018, that @noahmichelson.bsky.social asked me to update.
www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-...
A Trump Supporter Sat Next To My 12-Year-Old Black Son On A Plane. I Couldn’t Believe What She Told Him.
"My son is growing up to face dangers made worse by the president this woman voted for."
www.huffpost.com
I've decided that since I was President of the National Book Critics Circle for two years (2018-2020) I will be celebrating myself this Presidents Day, so there.
As a woman who grew up very invested in the idea that government can help people, that politics matter, and that the unrealized ideals of America matter, it's a bitter thing to mark Presidents Day when we have this president instead of two women who came so close to being the first female POTUS.
February 16, 2026 at 4:14 PM
I love talking about books on podcasts! This one with Atlanta's own Bill Nigut was a lot of fun. There are some audio issues that made me cringe but I hope others might find the conversation interesting. www.wabe.org/podcasts/in-...
Kate Tuttle
Boston Globe books section editor Kate Tuttle joins host Bill Nigut to discuss recent and upcoming book releases. Kate previously lived in Atlanta where she wrote for the New York […]
www.wabe.org
February 16, 2026 at 4:05 PM
Reposted by Kate Tuttle
A book I highly recommend on electronic slot machines—which fully convinced me they should be illegal for how they systematically mislead our brains—is Natasha Dow Schüll‘s ADDICTION BY DESIGN

Gamified online gambling seems much worse, & is becoming much more ubiquitous

It will immiserate so many
I see no reason not to look at the online gambling and prediction market craze as a new opioids crisis.

It will wreak havoc on lower-income Americans and leave a trail of destruction and despair in its wake.

The companies are just Purdue Pharma 2.0

www.liberalcurrents.com/from-pill-mi...
From Pill Mills to Prop Bets: Prediction Markets and Mobile Sports Betting Apps Are Fueling America’s Next Addiction Crisis
Against the gamblification of the world.
www.liberalcurrents.com
February 14, 2026 at 6:52 PM
Reposted by Kate Tuttle
Everywhere this man goes he should be treated as if he murdered millions of children, because he did.
The Project 2025 architect who promised to put federal employees “in trauma” is spending $15 million of former USAID funding—money that would have gone toward fighting HIV, polio, malaria, and other diseases—to bankroll his security detail. trib.al/TSV3cmb
February 16, 2026 at 11:47 AM
Reposted by Kate Tuttle
Right-wing Heritage Foundation’s own data shows fewer than 100 noncitizens voted since 1982 (!!!)

This is not a real problem. “The SAVE ACT is a Trojan horse to nationalize elections”: open.substack.com/pub/thiswill...
February 16, 2026 at 3:24 PM
Reposted by Kate Tuttle
Happy Presidents’ Day to @errinhaines.bsky.social President of the National Association of Black Journalists and @deborahnarcher.bsky.social President of the @aclu.org and Brittany Fonteno President of @abortionfunds.bsky.social
February 16, 2026 at 12:34 PM
Reposted by Kate Tuttle
I was talking to a lawyer about a story, and he was like, "Why is no one talking about what's happening to my clients???" and I was like "Well, every single industry in the United States is going through the worst crisis it's ever faced, but journalism was ahead of everyone in that race"
it’s breathtaking to see how this country is in decline by every possible metric
Devastated to learn that Univ of Texas at Austin is closing the American Studies dept. The years I spent there earning my PhD were formative, making me the teacher, thinker, and writer I am today. I've passed on what I learned at UT to thousands of students over the past 20 years. Just awful.
February 16, 2026 at 3:30 PM
Reposted by Kate Tuttle
The question is always, if this company is worth a trillion dollars what trillion dollar problem is it fixing and the only possible answer to that question in the instance of A.I. is “wages.”
AI guys insisting on the inevitability of the tech are so irritating. every comparison they make is to something whose utility was immediately apparent. "it does things faster and we can fix its mistakes later and that'll be the job now" does not compare to "metronome that doesn't need winding"
February 16, 2026 at 3:26 PM
Reposted by Kate Tuttle
Me as a child: it must be very hard to become a CEO and be very hard work once you get the job

Guy obviously on drugs speaking at a conference: the next five years of the economy should be about a dream I had where a dog spoke to me
February 16, 2026 at 1:58 PM
Reposted by Kate Tuttle
This is why the phrase comes up in so many of the things I've written about AI.

AI does three main things:

1) dismantle the institutions necessary for democratic society to thrive

2) transfer wealth upwards

3) create the permission structure for (1) and (2)
February 16, 2026 at 2:30 PM
Reposted by Kate Tuttle
The other thing is that if we don't want voters to treat voting like a consumer choice, we should stop treating the process like a privilege that only people who can take off work and keep track of complex primary calendars get to enjoy, which is a holdover from Jim Crow.
February 16, 2026 at 3:10 PM
Reposted by Kate Tuttle
How many marathons could I run every day if I didn’t have to run them? A million? A billion? A TRILLION???!!!
“By removing writing from reporters’ workloads, we’ve effectively freed up an extra workday for them each week.”

A newspaper editor actually said this! @theonion.com is cooked.
A conscientious journalism grad withdraw from a job when she learned the Cleveland Plain Dealer uses AI to write its stories.

Now the editor is castigating her and journalism professors for not being “prepared for the workforce.”

You can’t make this shit up.

www.cleveland.com/news/2026/02...
February 16, 2026 at 1:15 PM
Reposted by Kate Tuttle
Writing is thinking.

It's not some marginal boring task you can skip. It's the heart of it.
It’s easy to think writing is mainly the transcription of ideas you already have—that is, until you try to write something worthwhile, and you find what you thought were saying transform into something far more interesting in the process. This skips that last step, and that is *not* an improvement.
“We plan to hire an AI rewrite specialist to ingest the reporting by Hannah and others and use AI to convert it into stories.”

The editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer said it will use AI to ‘write’ its articles.

www.cleveland.com/news/2025/10...
February 16, 2026 at 2:55 PM
As a woman who grew up very invested in the idea that government can help people, that politics matter, and that the unrealized ideals of America matter, it's a bitter thing to mark Presidents Day when we have this president instead of two women who came so close to being the first female POTUS.
February 16, 2026 at 2:50 PM
Reposted by Kate Tuttle
It’s easy to think writing is mainly the transcription of ideas you already have—that is, until you try to write something worthwhile, and you find what you thought were saying transform into something far more interesting in the process. This skips that last step, and that is *not* an improvement.
“We plan to hire an AI rewrite specialist to ingest the reporting by Hannah and others and use AI to convert it into stories.”

The editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer said it will use AI to ‘write’ its articles.

www.cleveland.com/news/2025/10...
February 16, 2026 at 2:45 PM
After years of being annoyed at my mother’s annoying habit of calling to remind me of my older brother’s birthday, now that she’s gone I’m having a hard time remembering if it’s 2/17 or 2/18.
February 16, 2026 at 2:26 PM
Reposted by Kate Tuttle
From Hamdan Ballal, co-director of last year’s Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land.” This is happening now.
February 16, 2026 at 1:26 AM
Reposted by Kate Tuttle
If you want to learn what SSPE is like, there are real stories from real people about the devastation measles can wreak even years later
February 16, 2026 at 2:08 AM
Reposted by Kate Tuttle
The pace at which US wealth concentration is rising is simply staggering

The concentration of AI wealth into the hands of a few tech barons + plutocratic capture ==> unchartered territory
February 15, 2026 at 2:47 PM
This is all quite horrifying
(1/11) If you live in NY, you’ve probably started seeing a new warning: “THIS PRICE WAS SET BY AN ALGORITHM USING YOUR PERSONAL DATA.” This mandatory disclosure went into effect late last year, and it’s the first attempt by a US state to grapple with a new generation of surveillance pricing.
February 16, 2026 at 12:10 AM
Reposted by Kate Tuttle
"The Crime of Witness" by Fintan O’Toole in @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social

"The videos that expose the administration’s mendacity about its own use of extreme violence against peaceful dissent are themselves products of the courage to show up [and] see for yourself."

www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
February 16, 2026 at 12:05 AM
Reposted by Kate Tuttle
A child dying of cancer spent her final days fighting to free her wrongfully detained father from ICE custody.
 
This comes just weeks after a mother from Maryland was denied the right to be at her son’s side as he died from cancer.
 
Not one dime for this cruelty.

www.cbsnews.com/amp/chicago/...
Ofelia Torres, teen who fought to have her father released from ICE custody, dies from rare cancer
Ofelia Torres, 16, died on Friday from Stage 4 alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare and aggressive form of cancer, her father's lawyer confirmed.
www.cbsnews.com
February 15, 2026 at 9:20 PM
The NBA all star game feels like a bad video game.
February 15, 2026 at 10:04 PM
Reposted by Kate Tuttle
The awfulness of the first sentence here is obvious. As for the second sentence, I don't think they do and I don't think they do.
February 15, 2026 at 7:38 PM