Marina Bolotnikova
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mbolotnikova.bsky.social
Marina Bolotnikova
@mbolotnikova.bsky.social
13K followers 1K following 130 posts
editor for Vox thinking about factory farming & animal rights, agriculture, science & its discontents, cities, housing, transit and ✨ideas✨. marina@vox.com. Skeptical of epistemic authority~
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mbolotnikova.bsky.social
Marina Bolotnikova @mbolotnikova.bsky.social · Jul 7
Suburbs are as old & varied as human civilization—it was only recently that they became synonymous with a specific, sprawl-oriented development pattern. To solve our housing crisis, Americans will have to rethink what the suburb is, & what it could become🌟

www.vox.com/future-perfe...
America’s fastest-growing suburbs are about to get very expensive
Sprawl made the American Sunbelt affordable. Now it’s breaking it.
www.vox.com
Reposted by Marina Bolotnikova
emilyonhere.gay
sorry but mamdani and cuomo should have worn blue and yellow hats, respectively
3 rows with each NYC mayoral candidate: (blue bar) Zohran Mamdani (yellow bar) Andrew M. Cuomo (red bar) Curtis Sliwa (wearing a red had)
November 5, 2025 at 12:24 AM
Reposted by Marina Bolotnikova
bennettmcintosh.com
> We’re taught that "a boundary…defines you as separate from others" Yet if you believe that we’re all profoundly interconnected and interdependent then that idea of boundaries may feel like it muddies more than it clarifies

Always read @sigalsamuel.bsky.social

www.vox.com/the-highligh...
You don’t need better boundaries. You need a better framework.
“Setting boundaries” is broken — but there’s a different way to think about caring for yourself and others.
www.vox.com
November 4, 2025 at 8:11 PM
mbolotnikova.bsky.social
Some really big news dropped in animal rights world last week that was made possible only by extremely competent activism—a top breeder of dogs for lab experimentation will shut down. So I wrote about it and what it means and says about science, etc.

gift link: www.vox.com/future-perfe...
The secretive dog experimentation industry is crumbling
The US experiments on tens of thousands of beagles. After a shocking case, will it come to an end?
www.vox.com
November 2, 2025 at 6:14 PM
Reposted by Marina Bolotnikova
jandutkiewicz.bsky.social
Myths about our ancestors' meaty diets animate modern politics and culture wars about food and identity. But the history of human diets tells a different story about food's past and lets us be more rational about its future.

@gnrosenberg.bsky.social & I for @vox.com

www.vox.com/future-perfe...
The myth of the carnivore caveman
You are not going to like where our ancestors got their protein.
www.vox.com
October 31, 2025 at 12:35 PM
mbolotnikova.bsky.social
Felony conspiracy for ***taking chickens worth $24***

Jarring to assimilate this news when not 24 hours before, we learned that the 2nd biggest breeder of dogs for animal experimentation in the US will close, which represents maybe DxE's greatest achievement ever
dxeofficial.bsky.social Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) @dxeofficial.bsky.social · 12d
Animal rescuer Zoe Rosenberg was just found guilty of felony conspiracy and 3 misdemeanors for her rescue of four chickens from Perdue's Petaluma Poultry. Zoe was represented by Chris Carraway, of Animal Activist Legal Defense Project (@AALDP-DU.bsky.social), and attorney Kevin Little.
October 30, 2025 at 12:22 AM
Reposted by Marina Bolotnikova
bennettmcintosh.com
In v2 of our preprint on "Adversarial Reanalysis," Kelsey Ichikawa, @nicolecnelson.bsky.social, & added our take on Gold Standard Science as an example of how #OpenData challenges science's existing tools for self-governance

osf.io/preprints/me... #sts #metascience
MetaArXiv title on osf.io: "Adversarial reanalysis and the challenge of open data in regulatory science"
October 29, 2025 at 10:30 PM
Reposted by Marina Bolotnikova
24hoursukraine.bsky.social
This is a kindergarten in Kharkiv. Imagine bringing your child there in the morning — and then it’s struck by russia. Imagine the children, the teachers. And know that this is real — it’s happening every single day somewhere in Ukraine.
October 22, 2025 at 12:06 PM
Reposted by Marina Bolotnikova
tamarhaspel.bsky.social
Terrific explanation by @jandutkiewicz.bsky.social in @vox.com of why you don't have to worry about lead in your protein powder.

Setting unrealistic target levels for contaminants and then testing stuff and claiming it's unsafe has a long and storied history.
October 22, 2025 at 3:11 PM
mbolotnikova.bsky.social
Everything you actually need to understand about the Consumer Reports protein powder report (threading a gift link!) -- plant-based protein powders are fine, and do not, ffs, allow them to push you to get whey protein
screenshotted text: times lower than minimal known unsafe levels) to arrive at 0.5 micrograms of lead per day as its reference level. This is an unachievable safety target, significantly below the lead you get from average daily food consumption, especially for people who eat more legumes, fruits, and vegetables, all of which grow in the soil and inherently pull in some amount of heavy metals. As one clinical dietician I spoke with told me of the Prop 65 level: “You literally can’t eat food from the Earth if you want to achieve this.”
October 22, 2025 at 2:59 PM
Reposted by Marina Bolotnikova
matthewhayek.bsky.social
A new study from U of Michigan researchers finds that the diet footprint of cities varies by 3x, primarily driven by variation in where & how beef is sourced & produced. I'm skeptical though, and think that their methods exaggerated real world variation 🧵 1/N www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...
Column | Your diet’s impact on the planet depends on where you live. Look up your city.
What you eat, and where you eat it, can have a big impact on how much you’re contributing to climate change, according to a study published Monday.
www.washingtonpost.com
October 21, 2025 at 5:46 PM
Reposted by Marina Bolotnikova
mikegrunwald.bsky.social
My new NYT essay is about the essence of Trumpism: Bailing out farmers who can’t sell soybeans to China because of his tariffs, while bailing out Argentina so it can sell more soybeans to China. It’s the economic equivalent of pardoning pals and prosecuting enemies.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/o...
Opinion | They’re Small, Yellow and Round — and Show How Trump’s Tariffs Don’t Work
www.nytimes.com
October 21, 2025 at 2:18 PM
Reposted by Marina Bolotnikova
bennettmcintosh.com
"Whether we’re feeding it to pigs and chickens or trucks and tractors... Humans use too much soy, a magnificently productive crop, for perilously unproductive purposes." @mbolotnikova.bsky.social on how we've found the worst uses for the best bean 🫛

🎁 www.vox.com/future-perfe...
How soybeans took over America — and the world
This technology could feed a world of 10 billion. We’re squandering it, and the trade war with China could make it worse.
www.vox.com
October 17, 2025 at 12:18 AM
mbolotnikova.bsky.social
Y'all will be hearing more from me about this "feminization of society" horseshit
October 16, 2025 at 11:24 PM
Reposted by Marina Bolotnikova
tamarhaspel.bsky.social
Excellent soy primer by @mbolotnikova.bsky.social for @vox.com.

"Humans use too much soy, a magnificently productive crop, for perilously unproductive purposes."

Soy is an amazing crop! But it's a symptom of our meat addiction.
www.vox.com/future-perfe...
How soybeans took over America — and the world
This technology could feed a world of 10 billion. We’re squandering it, and the trade war with China could make it worse.
www.vox.com
October 16, 2025 at 10:06 PM
Reposted by Marina Bolotnikova
joshuakeating.bsky.social
How soy explains the world.
Great piece piece from @mbolotnikova.bsky.social that takes from the trade war, to the rainforests, to the supermarket aisle (not the aisle you're thinking of)

www.vox.com/future-perfe...
How soybeans took over America — and the world
This technology could feed a world of 10 billion. We’re squandering it, and the trade war with China could make it worse.
www.vox.com
October 16, 2025 at 9:28 PM
mbolotnikova.bsky.social
Just the absolute worst people in American life, and unfortunately they are the intellectual foundation, to the extent there is such a thing, of our politics now
October 16, 2025 at 7:15 PM
mbolotnikova.bsky.social
Wrote a lot of words on SOYBEANS!🫛 I love having this job so much lol

America should have greater ambitions for the soybean—treating it not just as slop for the world’s abused livestock, but as a miracle technology with the potential to reshape world diets for the better
www.vox.com/future-perfe...
How soybeans took over America — and the world
This technology could feed a world of 10 billion. We’re squandering it, and the trade war with China could make it worse.
www.vox.com
October 16, 2025 at 5:13 PM
Reposted by Marina Bolotnikova
davidho.bsky.social
Meat is a blind spot for people who care about climate. When I used to have dinner with my colleague Wally Broecker, the climate scientist who coined the term “global warming”, he would always order a steak.
The climate movement’s biggest weakness
What the climate movement is getting dead wrong.
www.vox.com
October 4, 2025 at 3:05 PM
Reposted by Marina Bolotnikova
bennettmcintosh.com
"In the 1960s, when nerds like me were asking whether or not we were alone in the universe, Jane Goodall started asking people to consider whether or not we were alone on this planet"

www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_Fz...
Dr. Jane Goodall
YouTube video by vlogbrothers
www.youtube.com
October 3, 2025 at 12:01 AM
mbolotnikova.bsky.social
Goodall was such an icon because she did & said things that were heresy in the scientific community. Her work on animals' capacities represented not just an abstract finding but a practical ethic that led her to advocate for veganism &vocally oppose animal experimentation
www.vox.com/future-perfe...
Jane Goodall’s most radical message was not about saving the planet
The conservationist used her stature to advocate for one of the most important, yet most unpopular, causes in the world.
www.vox.com
October 2, 2025 at 3:38 PM
mbolotnikova.bsky.social
Finally happening: i am writing a piece about how meat and car dependence prevent us from decoupling by converting energy to food and transportation extremely inefficiently. Seeking reading recs to jog my thinking!
September 25, 2025 at 1:39 PM
Reposted by Marina Bolotnikova
bennettmcintosh.com
Doomers, who treat super-intelligent AI as likely and threatening, treat intelligent as almost a magic power, but it's much more heterogeneous, spiky (and, I would add relational) than that; But the AI-as-Normal-Tech argument seems naive about the incentives to use risky AI in, e.g., Mil Tech
Second, what exactly does this argument take “intelligence” to mean? It seems to be treating it as a unitary property (Yudkowsky told me that there’s “a compact, regular story” underlying all intelligence). ==But intelligence is not one thing, and it’s not measurable on a single continuum. It’s almost certainly more like a variety of heterogenous things== — attention, imagination, curiosity, common sense — and it may well be intertwined with our social cooperativeness, our sensations, and our emotions. Will AI have all of these? Some of these? We aren’t sure of the kind of intelligence AI will attain. Besides, just because an intelligent being has a lot of capability, that doesn’t mean it has a lot of power — the ability to modify the environment — and power is what’s really at stake here. One of the most glaring flaws of the normalist view is that it doesn’t even try to talk about the military. Yet military applications — from autonomous weapons to lightning-fast decision-making about whom to target — are among the most critical for advanced AI. ==They’re the use cases most likely to make governments feel that all countries absolutely are in an AI arms race, so they must plow ahead, risks be damned.== That weakens the normalist camp’s view that we won’t necessarily deploy AI at scale if it seems risky.
September 17, 2025 at 3:31 PM
Reposted by Marina Bolotnikova
bennettmcintosh.com
If you read one review of If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies make it @sigalsamuel.bsky.social 's about competing #AI worldviews

"It was hard to seriously entertain both [doomer and AI-as-normal tech] views at the same time."

www.vox.com/future-perfe...
The AI doomers are not making an argument. They’re selling a worldview.
How rational is Eliezer Yudkowsky’s prophecy?
www.vox.com
September 17, 2025 at 3:31 PM
Reposted by Marina Bolotnikova
davidzipper.bsky.social
As autonomous vehicles spread across the US, they could turn urban streets into a congested, chaotic mess. But it’s not inevitable.

In @vox.com, I proposed specific ways cities can future-proof themselves for self-driving cars.

🧵
A self-driving car traffic jam is coming for US cities
A century ago, cars remade America. Autonomous vehicles could do it again.
www.vox.com
September 15, 2025 at 11:43 AM
mbolotnikova.bsky.social
I really feel for the people of LA, especially renters (the majority of the city). Hard to fathom a so-called progressive government with such contempt for its own people, and for extremely straightforward sustainable development principles
maxdubler.com Max Dubler 🏳️‍🌈 @maxdubler.com · Aug 19
It's 2018. The LA City Council is opposing SB827 because it overrides local control. Rent is $1,663

It's 2019. The LA City Council is opposing SB50 because it overrides local control. Rent is $1,791

It's 2025. The LA City Council is opposing SB79 because it overrides local control. Rent is $2,625
cayimby.bsky.social California YIMBY @cayimby.bsky.social · Aug 19
“Los Angeles leaders are once again demonstrating their cowardice and failing their own constituents who desperately need more housing—and they’re doing it at the behest of LA’s wealthiest, most entitled voters, who have consistently blocked progress on housing affordability.” - @hanlon.bsky.social
August 20, 2025 at 12:48 AM