Leah Shaffer
LightNews LightNews
banner
leahshaffer.bsky.social
Leah Shaffer
@leahshaffer.bsky.social
11K followers 1.4K following 9.7K posts
Science writer, mostly puttering about the garden.
she/her
Posts Replies Media Videos
leahshaffer.bsky.social
we have evolved beyond the need for Newsom, he will go to the West with the rest of the departing elves and remain Newsom where he can podcast in peace. Shhhh let him rest.
aprildaniels.bsky.social April Daniels ⚧ @aprildaniels.bsky.social · 7h
No more Gavin Newsom. We have transcended the need for Gavin Newsom.
January 17, 2026 at 1:38 AM
leahshaffer.bsky.social
Strike day. Friday.
annabookwriter.bsky.social Anna Holmes @annabookwriter.bsky.social · 8h
Alt text, because one would think folks would want news about a general strike to go as far as it can.
January 16, 2026 at 10:42 PM
leahshaffer.bsky.social
To browse and share
January 16, 2026 at 9:14 PM
leahshaffer.bsky.social
Oh.
seamas.bsky.social The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 13h
pretty sure he meant the other thing, grok, but very cool that those are your two things
Tweet exchange in which a photo of Anne Hathaway is posted by @TheRoyalSerf, to which user @VvSchweetz24 replies "@grok...do your thing. @Grok replies: Anne Hathaway isn't Jewish; she was raised Catholic but left the church. She married Adam Shulman (who is Jewish) in 2012 and celebrates Jewish holidays with their kids. SHe's played Jewish roles, like in "Armageddon Time."
January 16, 2026 at 5:33 PM
leahshaffer.bsky.social
TGISF #ScienceSky 🧪
artologica.net Artologica aka Michele Banks @artologica.net · 13h
Science Friday > Whiskey Friday
scifri.bsky.social Science Friday @scifri.bsky.social · 15h
Happy Science Friday! Here’s what we’re covering today on the show. Listen on your local public radio station, 2-4 p.m. ET. 🛰️ 🧱 👁️

Learn more here: buff.ly/2NuWn58
January 16, 2026 at 5:06 PM
leahshaffer.bsky.social
These are good mushrooms, #SciArt @lukelukeluke.bsky.social
catalyst-artworks.bsky.social C.R. Gill Art @catalyst-artworks.bsky.social · 13h
This little cluster of chanterelles just won the 3D Art Sculpture category in the North American Mycological Association competition. #fungi #botanicalart #mushrooms #wax #sculpute

On view at Gallery 200 (Ottawa) until the start of March.
Water soluble encaustic painting of a cluster of golden chanterelles against a stylized background of leaves. Two sculptures of the same chanterelles grow out of the bottom right corner of the painting.
January 16, 2026 at 4:59 PM
leahshaffer.bsky.social
come on down, y'all. Skies are clear #NewSkies
andysmithmn.bsky.social Rep. Andy Smith @andysmithmn.bsky.social · 14h
X/Twitter seems to have gone down right in the middle of a congressional hearing in Minnesota about ICE’s lawlessness and violence in my state 🤔

You can watch here: www.youtube.com/live/bfVji76...
Kidnapped and Disappeared: Trump's Deadly Assault on Minnesota
YouTube video by Representative Pramila Jayapal
www.youtube.com
January 16, 2026 at 4:48 PM
leahshaffer.bsky.social
The story of #LFK

Lawrence, Kansas would not exist if a rich young Boston man had not become radicalized by the story of Anthony Burns, a free man who was kidnapped under the Fugitive Slave Act.
The more they suppress and abuse, the more seeds of their doom are planted.
January 16, 2026 at 3:21 PM
leahshaffer.bsky.social
Stories are Weapons, to quote @annaleen.bsky.social
If you have a story telling skill, you draw comics, good at the tiktok edit? SEO wizard?
Use those skills to the tell the tale of the honorable people of the frozen northern shire in their battle against the evil regime of cruel and broken men.
January 16, 2026 at 3:05 PM
Reposted by Leah Shaffer
trungles.com
Cartoonists, I’d love to hear your stories! For local resources, please check out @defend612.bsky.social
defend612.com
ICE OUT Cartoonists against ICE Calling on cartoonists and artists to tell your stories about the ICE occupation of your towns and cities! *4-panel comics* *3:4 Instagram format* Use this Blue: *There is a color drop block of blue to copy * Use these hashtags: #iceout[your city] #iceoutmpls #iceoutcomics
January 16, 2026 at 1:30 PM
leahshaffer.bsky.social
Zitron is a treasure but I have to laugh about how every week, it's like "Here is my 10,000 word newsletter explaining the doom that will befall" and "Now 20,000 words to talk about how truly fucked we are!"
subscribe for $10 off annual
edzitron.com Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 1d
Tomorrow: My 13,500 word historical and financial analysis on how the AI Bubble is magnitudes worse than the Dot Com Bubble, with a contagion that will spread throughout the global markets and our society.

Here's $10 off annual.

edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo...
I Am Deeply Worried About How Not Like The Dot Com Bubble This Is I spent hours and hours reading old articles through broken paywalls and archive.org links in the hopes I’d find some sort of positive spin - a way that the AI bubble wasn’t as bad, some sliver or nugget of joy, some shred of hope, and everything I’ve read has made me more and more worried. The real problem is that there are similarities, but only with the worst parts of both bubbles. We’ve got stupid amounts of money being sunk into stuff. We’ve got stupid companies that want to IPO. We’ve got hopeless startups juiced up by credulous venture capitalists and marketed by even-more credulous journalists. Except this time we have the worst margins this side of a vineyard planted in Las Vegas Nevada, and despicable boosters that will go to war with you to try and prove you wrong using ghost stories, fairy tales and pixie dust. I realize I’m being a little cavalier and colloquial about this, and that’s because I feel utterly emotionally drained by this - things are so much worse than I thought. I really felt like I’d dig into the past and find that there were direct, obvious similarities, and thus have some degree of hope that things wouldn’t be apocalyptic. Instead, I’m convinced that things will be much, much worse. The dot com bubble was relatively distributed, and created useful infrastructure. The ideas of some of the most prominent dot com startups were valid, but based on stupid hypergrowth business models that didn’t make sense and were only sustained through mass hysteria and ignorance. By comparison, AI startups are fundamentally illogical, selling unreliable software that’s best-known for its consistent mistakes and active harms backed by the corrosive and ever-worsening infrastructural costs. And they’re the customers of the largest company on the stock market, that can only keep its valuation, on which the markets depend, by selling more of an expensive-to-buy and more-expensive-to-ins… The Logical Endpoint Of My Argument Depending on how right I am, I worry that the following will happen: NVIDIA will lose anywhere from 40% to 90% of its revenue, which will annihilate the value of the S&P 500. Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta will face massive, multi-billion dollar impairments within the next few years. Oracle will face potential bankruptcy or at least a severe, horrendous series of layoffs and restructuring efforts to try and right the ship after agreeing to $248 billion in lease obligations primarily to get the revenue from its $300 billion, 5-year-long deal with OpenAI, a company that is going to run out of money in the next year. Venture capital is going to take such a severe haircut from the AI bubble that it will effectively kill any chances of raising a round after Series B for many, many years. Those $178.5 billion in data center debt deals will be predominantly underwater, leading to massive losses for private equity and banks (leading to a chill in effectively all debt markets), and massive job losses across the many, many construction projects that have started as a result of the AI bubble. If OpenAI or Anthropic can manage to go public, every investor will lose out as they collapse under the weight of their bullshit assumptions. Every partner, every company relying on them, every infrastructure provider will be burned. I also believe that we, as a society, will face a violent paradigm shift as a result of the AI bubble bursting, because it revealed how many people do not understand stuff. The amount of bosses, influencers, movie stars, politicians and other individuals of note that have fallen behind generative AI and claimed again and again that it can do things that it can’t and perpetuated myths that will lead to massive societal harms both today and in the future have revealed themselves as fucking frauds. It’s been obvious since 2023 that generative AI flat out does not do what many people say it will and obvious since 2024 t… And believe me, even if I’m half right, things will likely be so much worse than when the dot com bubble burst. I don’t see a scenario where anything survives the collapse of CoreWeave, let alone the collapse of OpenAI. I don’t see a scenario where any more than a few AI startups survive, and if that happens, there won’t be any customers for those GPUs - not that anywhere near enough existed to fill even a tiny percentile of the demand. On some level, I hope I’m wrong. I just don’t know how anymore.
January 16, 2026 at 2:47 PM
leahshaffer.bsky.social
A good mother throws their child to the wolves, says RFKJr, a man so dedicated to eating roadkill, he got brain parasites.

A man so repellent, he looks like someone in the transition state before they become The Thing. Red tentacles could rip out of him any second now, get the hell away!
factpostnews.bsky.social FactPost @factpostnews.bsky.social · 1d
HHS Secretary RFK Jr: "This idea that you should trust the experts, a good mother doesn't do that"
January 15, 2026 at 8:37 PM
leahshaffer.bsky.social
whole generations getting radicalized
Trump could be the Donny Appleseed of socialism. The one thing every American shares is built in oppositional defiant disorder. Knee-jerk backlashes to ...everything. We'll backlash to the stratosphere with this one.
stevemullis.net Steve Mullis @stevemullis.net · 1d
Posts from Minneapolis residents read like they'll be read in voiceover in a Ken Burns-like doc one day
r/Minneapolis If Trump invokes the Insurrection Act, that's it for me. I've spent the last week checking on my neighbors, engaging with my city, my local police, everyone. I've supported my friends and family, made sure they knew they weren't alone in their feelings of hopelessness, powerlessness. I've called and emailed my representatives, demanding answers, demanding action. I've just been overcome with this overwhelming, almost primal need to care for and support my community. If Trump invokes the Insurrection Act, and soldiers take to our streets, then that tears it for me. My son just turned 1yr. I've done my best to be a helper, so that I can still be around to support him and spend time with him. But if I have to STAND OUTSIDE in the FREEZING COLD and get the SHIT KICKED OUT OF ME by the people who are supposed to be protecting me, if I have to do that to fight for goodness, and righteousness, and justice, then that's what I'm gonna fucking do. I'm going to do it because this is not the future I want for my son. If you've been out on the streets, and you're tired, and you're hurting, don't worry. Rest when you need to. Because I know my home and I know my neighbors. When you need to rest, two more will replace you. I will be one of them. This is my home. Minneapolis is not going to quit. Minnesota is not going to quit. And FUCK EVERYONE who tries to come in here and take from us the PRIDE, LOVE, and COMMUNITY we've built. As long as I can stand, I'm going to plant my two feet between the oppressors and the home I love. I love you all. L'etoile du Nord.
January 15, 2026 at 7:03 PM
leahshaffer.bsky.social
Don't go pouncing on Jamelle for his reasonable take that there are no guarantees for anyone in democracy but especially the old, weak, addled man in power. He is priming an entire generation, entire cities, to hate him. A sizable (and fast growing) group fully dedicated to his downfall.
tyllnd.bsky.social tannara @tyllnd.bsky.social · 1d
the sort of liminal space american politics exists in rn — a fed govt that *wants to be* fascist and *is* doing a ton of violence/damage but is also very clearly outnumbered and losing battles left and right in elections, courts, the streets — is i think hard for a lot of us to get our heads around
jamellebouie.net jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d
ICE can't even deal with irate middle-aged midwesterners. how does he occupy hundreds, if not thousands, of polling cites and precincts? trump v. illinois clarified that he has no legal authority to unilaterally commandeer national guards, how does he move forward from there?
January 15, 2026 at 6:40 PM
leahshaffer.bsky.social
I wanted a little treat to settle all the wrath in my heart so I got a tiny quiche. Bakery staff are wearing an anti-ICE shirt so perhaps this tiny quiche will just feed the wrath. That's ok.
A rosemary goat cheese quiche from Sucrose.
January 15, 2026 at 5:31 PM
leahshaffer.bsky.social
Bad Times, they're here: The thing about Bad Times is that it forces new paradigms, new systems, new leaders to emerge in response to the BAD. It is painful, it is awful, I wish it did not happen but it's pretty much the only way to force massive and fast change upon broken systems. It's gonna hurt.
January 15, 2026 at 4:45 PM
leahshaffer.bsky.social
Lots of ways to help, thank you @ziibiing.com #StandWithMinnesota
ziibiing.com ashley fairbanks @ziibiing.com · 1d
crazy that the website that I randomly decided to put together at 10AM yesterday has had over 25k unique visitors in 24 hours.

please keep sharing with your networks.
Stand With Minnesota
A directory of places to give to as Minnesota defends itself from ICE occupation
www.standwithminnesota.com
January 15, 2026 at 4:27 PM
leahshaffer.bsky.social
Machine learning can be very helpful, it can remove much of the pain or "friction" involved in crunching data. But that's a problem. Real innovation often ONLY emerges from constraints. People can't see beyond the beam and the empty prompt box unless they have no choice. #ScienceSky 🧪
January 15, 2026 at 4:25 PM
leahshaffer.bsky.social
meme break
A pic of a ginger cat with both paws on a low table containing its food bowl. Its face is fully in the bowl. Behind a shelf nearby, lurks a black and white cat that stares judgmentally at the ginger. Meme reads: Butters drinks water like a drunk hanging onto a toilet bowl for dear life and I finally got a pic. As an added bonus, that I didn't notice while taking it, Mooncake is looking on in judgement.
January 15, 2026 at 12:28 AM
leahshaffer.bsky.social
How does one summon the furies, the underworld's maiden goddesses of vengeance? Hypothetically, speaking.
January 14, 2026 at 11:09 PM
leahshaffer.bsky.social
From Andy ..."bacterial meningitis that transformed me overnight from a perfectly healthy 22-year-old college student, working at the school newspaper and playing just about every intramural sport, to a comatose ICU patient, fighting for my life on a ventilator." www.thebulwark.com/p/my-life-sh...
January 14, 2026 at 10:43 PM
leahshaffer.bsky.social
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u9G...
I felt a Blueeee Wave coming on 🎶
Something release me from in this glow
I don’t need it anymore
"Blue Wave" by Operators (Official Audio)
YouTube video by LastGangRadio
www.youtube.com
January 14, 2026 at 8:44 PM
leahshaffer.bsky.social
#PsychSky #MedSky #PublicHealth if you got your SAMHSA grant yanked, let Noam and the grant trackers know!
noamross.net Noam Ross @noamross.net · 2d
We are collecting information on terminated SAMHSA grants at Grant Witness: grant-witness.us/submit-samhs...

If you worked on one of these programs, please let us know at the link! And please share with your colleagues. We need a comprehensive record of these terminations to fight back!
elizabethjacobs.bsky.social Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · 2d
Last night with no warning, RFK Jr. cancelled up to $2 billion in funding for mental health and substance abuse research and programs administered through SAMHSA.

He and his minions did so because “they no longer believe the defunded programs align with the Trump administration's priorities”.
January 14, 2026 at 6:21 PM
leahshaffer.bsky.social
Look, for morale reasons, I'm gonna need to order a metric ton of cookies from trans girl scouts. It's for morale!
erininthemorning.com Erin Reed @erininthemorning.com · 10d
1. Did you know that Girl Scouts has, for a long time, accepted trans girls and nonbinary scouts?

Trans kids are under attack. Every year, I make a thread of trans and nonbinary girl scouts you can get your cookies from.

Lets get our cookies from them this year in solidarity!
2026 Trans Girl Scouts To Order Cookies From!
This year, consider ordering your Girl Scout cookies from a trans girl scout to make their day!
www.erininthemorning.com
January 14, 2026 at 6:10 PM
leahshaffer.bsky.social
No therapy for anyone, only sharpened sticks and bones. 🩺
January 14, 2026 at 4:35 PM