Kat O’Brien
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lavidagata.bsky.social
Kat O’Brien
@lavidagata.bsky.social
2.6K followers 560 following 7.4K posts
Iowa-born, NYC-influenced, Spain living. Former sports journalist working in sustainability. Runner, traveler, pro-democracy, love to read. My own opinions. Signal @Democracy.23
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lavidagata.bsky.social
It was great to attend part of #MozFest in Barcelona & hear from/connect with people working on tech for good, surveillance limits, & more inclusion/accessibility. Esp enjoyed meeting @anildash.com & @bencollins.bsky.social, 2 people whose work I admire; & hearing from @francescabria.bsky.social
Francesca Bria speaks on a panel at Mozilla Festival A panel on indigenous peoples’ inclusion at Mozilla Festival Orange and black umbrellas hanging at Poble Espanyol Anil Dash speaks at Mozilla Festival in Barcelona
November 9, 2025 at 10:08 PM
lavidagata.bsky.social
The oligarchy strikes again.

“With little public scrutiny, the Trump administration is handing out hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts to some of the country's most profitable companies and wealthiest investors.”
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/08/b...
With little public scrutiny, the Trump administration is handing out hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts to some of the country's most profitable companies and wealthiest investors. The Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service, through a series of new notices and proposed regulations, are giving breaks to giant private equity firms, crypto companies, foreign real estate investors, insurance providers and a variety of multinational corporations. The primary target: The administration is rapidly gutting a 2022 law intended to ensure that a sliver of the country's most profitable corporations pay at least some federal income tax. The provision, the corporate alternative minimum tax, was passed by Democrats and signed into law by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. It sought to stop corporations like Microsoft, Amazon and Johnson & Johnson from being able to report big profits to shareholders yet low tax liabilities to the federal government. It was projected to raise $222 billion over a decade.
November 9, 2025 at 11:03 AM
lavidagata.bsky.social
Birthday miles and chapuzón.
The last year has been pretty rocky and obstacle-filled, but at least I am still living in my beloved Barcelona ❤️, and I hope with all my heart that will still be true next year. As my niece said yesterday, you kind of live in the perfect place 🌊💕
13.73 miles and views of Camp Nou and Barcelona from the Carretera de Les Aigues 13.73 miles in 8:52/‘mile. Barcelona panorama from Carretera de Les aigues Runner woman selfie smiling after a dip in the sea at Playa Barceloneta Casa Batlló & Casa Ametller with Christmas decorations in the street
November 8, 2025 at 1:28 PM
lavidagata.bsky.social
The moon rising tonight in Barcelona!. Snapped with my iPhone, 2 models ago.
The red almost full moon rising tonight in Barcelona!.
November 7, 2025 at 8:38 PM
lavidagata.bsky.social
Fascinating indeed. And not reassuring for those of us for whom excellent writing has been a differentiator.
Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT have significantly lowered the cost of producing written content. This paper studies how LLMs, through lowering writing costs, disrupt markets that traditionally relied on writing as a costly signal of quality (e.g., job applications, college essays). Using data from Freelancer.com, a major digital labor platform, we explore the effects of LLMs’ disruption of labor market signaling on equilibrium market outcomes. We develop a novel LLM-based measure to quantify the extent to which an application is tailored to a given job posting. Taking the measure to the data, we find that employers had a high willingness to pay for workers with more customized applications in the period before LLMs were introduced, but not after. To isolate and quantify the effect of LLMs’ disruption of signaling on equilibrium outcomes, we develop and estimate a structural model of labor market signaling, in which workers invest costly effort to produce noisy signals that predict their ability in equilibrium. We use the estimated model to simulate a counterfactual equilibrium in which LLMs render written applications useless in signaling workers’ ability. Without costly signaling, employers are less able to identify high-ability workers, causing the market to become significantly less meritocratic: compared to the pre-LLM equilibrium, workers in the top quintile of the ability distribution are hired 19% less often, workers in the bottom quintile are hired 14% more often.
November 7, 2025 at 11:19 AM
lavidagata.bsky.social
Views earlier this morning on my run.
A woman and her dog on a paddleboard in Barcelona. 10 miles run at 8:53 min per mile Blue skies over the Barceloneta beach as seen from behind the Hotel Vela
November 7, 2025 at 11:12 AM
lavidagata.bsky.social
In other debates, Adidas is out with its new football ⚽️ campaign ahead of the World Cup, which takes place in the U.S. (mostly), Canada & Mexico. I love that Spain features prominently, with both Lamine Yamal and Aitana Bonmati, but the cowboy theme seems basic & unoriginal. U.S. = cowboys?
Lamine Yamal with cowboy hat on for new Adidas ads Aitana Bonmati in cowboy hat in a pool room for new Adidas campaign
November 6, 2025 at 6:56 PM
lavidagata.bsky.social
Delighted to have had an event for the U.S. Spain Executives Community this evening at the beautiful Barcelona Health Hub at the Recinte Sant Pau Modernista. We had three health tech founders discuss the ins and outs of building a health tech startup in Barcelona.
The outside of the Recinte Sant Pau Modernista Three startup founders sit and listen as the moderator of a panel asks a question
November 5, 2025 at 8:23 PM
lavidagata.bsky.social
Since election results happened in middle of night in Europe, related newspaper covers will be tomorrow. There’s tons of coverage online, though, mostly on Mamdani.
One non-election cover worth sharing is Germany’s FrankfurterRundschau on Trump’s systematic dismantling of democracy. Check alt text.
Trump's Wreckage For a year now, the re-elected US president has been systematically dismantling democracy. And lining his own pockets and those of the super-rich even further.
November 5, 2025 at 7:54 AM
lavidagata.bsky.social
3-1 Barça win over Elche.
End of the match in Barça Fans take pictures after the match showing off their gear at Estado Olimpic A mid-match play with an Elche player fallen on the ground.
November 2, 2025 at 8:45 PM
lavidagata.bsky.social
It’s now 2-0 after Ferran Torres scored.
Barça players head to corner to celebrate Ferran Torres’s goal.
November 2, 2025 at 5:44 PM
lavidagata.bsky.social
Goooooool by my fave (and a lot of people’s), Lamine Yamal. Barça up 1-0.
Lamine Yamal celebrates a goal with teammates against El Che.
November 2, 2025 at 5:42 PM
lavidagata.bsky.social
Fútbol up next.
A sunset picture of Tibidabo from Montjuic with indigo flowers in forefront A fiery orange sunset outside the Estadi Olimpic Lluis Companys de Montjuic Players on the field ahead of Barça vs El Che
November 2, 2025 at 5:17 PM
lavidagata.bsky.social
The Chicago Tribune called it that. This is its Instagram
On Halloween, state-sponsored terror in Chicago and the north suburbs
November 1, 2025 at 10:36 PM
lavidagata.bsky.social
In the sea every calendar month since I moved to Spain. One thing I always have here, no matter what is going on in life or the world 🌊
7.96 miles run, sailboats and paddlesurfers at the beach in Barcelona
November 1, 2025 at 11:12 AM
lavidagata.bsky.social
Cover of Germany’s Taz: “One year after Trump’s reelection, is it too late for the U.S. to be saved?”
With a picture of police/ICE officers spraying tear gas.
Wochen taz- One year after Trump’s reelection, is it too late for the U.S. to be saved? With a picture of police/ICE officers spraying tear gas.
November 1, 2025 at 8:52 AM
lavidagata.bsky.social
My goodness, what a photo on the cover of Brazil’s @oglobo.globo.com. 121 people dead in the police raid of a favela in Rio.
Mortos chegam a 121, e governos do Rio e federal criam parceria contra facções do crime O Globo - foto of dozens of dead people, many men in only underwear, lined up
October 30, 2025 at 8:35 AM
lavidagata.bsky.social
Good job by both the @chicagotribune.com and Sun-Times with their covers today.
Chicago Sun-Times. Border in the Court. Judge orders Bovine to appear for daily-check-ins and wear a bodycam Chicago Tribune. “Not how any of us want to live.” Judge orders Border Patrol boss Bovine to court daily to report use of force
October 29, 2025 at 2:03 PM
lavidagata.bsky.social
This by @zeets.bsky.social is excellent. Our society is built as an ever-faster-spinning hamster wheel, one where those who don’t work & who are poor are denigrated.
Yet also, even the well-educated with “great resumes” find their jobs & lives ever more precarious.
open.substack.com/pub/somethin...
I wish I could talk about the politics of work in the United States — the fact that it's harder and harder to live a decent life with a full time job, that every industry is made increasingly precarious by the tech evangelists who will invent any and every way to put people out of work, and that even beyond that, it feels spiritually deadening that so much of work has no meaning or benefit outside of completing repetitive tasks and that work dominates so much of people's day to day lives that one can rightly say that we've turned human life into one endless workday where the possibility of rest only exists to get you ready again for work. There's so much literature on all of these topics and I find the topics fascinating and critical to building a better world and shape of human life, but I just can't get past the initial step where we judge that even though the money, resources, and food is available, that some people should suffer because they don't work. And not only suffer but that they deserve to do so. It is what they have earned. I feel like accepting that sets you on a morally and spiritually dangerous path. Even if,
October 29, 2025 at 7:01 AM
lavidagata.bsky.social
Whooo, this piece on the casino economy, where it’s rigged for the house to never lose (though it can & will happen) & for the rest of us to lose.
Stripping health coverage from working-class Americans to give tax breaks to companies gambling on speculative ventures.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/26/o...
As the economy becomes more unpredictable, Mr. Trump and Republicans have shrunk the safety net that catches people when volatility catches up with them. They cut Medicaid and did not extend Affordable Care Act subsidies in order to fund further tax cuts. Social Security and Medicare are on the table for reform. This is the cruelest logic of the casino economy, stripping away health coverage from working-class Americans to give tax breaks to companies gambling on speculative ventures; reducing food assistance to fund capital gains preferences for investors playing the memecoin market; firing hundreds of thousands of federal workers to "save" money while bleeding institutional knowledge and capacity. The math doesn't work. The morality doesn't either. In this economy, individuals bear the downside risk, while corporations and the wealthy collect the upside. It's a rigged game where the house - seemingly, the already rich - always wins. The question is why this hasn't all collapsed yet. The answer is actually simple: time. Economic systems have inertia. Institutions built over decades don't crumble overnight
October 28, 2025 at 10:39 AM
lavidagata.bsky.social
I’ve been getting emails from recruiters that are fake/bots. Sometimes I’m not 100% that they’re fake, but email or lack of professional signature makes it suspect. They seem to be scraping LinkedIn for these details
Anyway, this one’s footer is an AI explainer of what a headhunter does lol.
Connecting Exceptional Talent with Leading Organizations A headhunter plays a vital role in connecting top talent with the right opportunities. They specialize in identifying, approaching, and recruiting skilled professionals for organizations, often targeting highly qualified individuals who may not be actively seeking new roles. Their work requires strong networking, industry knowledge, and discretion, making them a trusted bridge between companies and candidates. AI-generated pictures of things involved in headhunting
October 28, 2025 at 7:21 AM
lavidagata.bsky.social
Yet another story on rising cancer rates in Iowa, this one including the entire Corn Belt.
Gift link.

wapo.st/3Le1yXo
Cancer rates rising for young adults. Chart shows up particularly in Iowa.
October 27, 2025 at 12:13 PM
lavidagata.bsky.social
Inside the bar. Still as many people outside as earlier.
Maybe I should offer on my sports tours reservations at places that people can watch the game. I’m serious, finding spots for tourists that want to watch but not go to the game would be a needed service.
October 26, 2025 at 4:12 PM
lavidagata.bsky.social
Because there aren’t nearly as many sports bars/bars to watch sports in Spain (compared to US), when you get a big match like the Clásico, people are standing outside places with TVs watching through the windows. Most hoping that spots will open up inside.
#ElClasico
People standing outside Dunne’s in Barcelona watching the Clásico
October 26, 2025 at 3:50 PM
lavidagata.bsky.social
Blocked for these replies 🤷🏼‍♀️
natUdren @avidayala.usky.social om → Replied to misterz777.bsky.social You're describing something different from what I have been trying to do and describing here in my posts. I have been trying to offer an analysis of global media coverage. Separately, there is loads to be done to oppose and stop Trump et al, and then reform democracy if/when reinstated. Kat O'Brien @lavidagata.bsky.social • 3m I am doing this work for free as a former journalist who studied political science. I'm one person volunteering my spare time. Separately, I've done work volunteering, protesting, supporting immigrants. That's not what the thread was about, though. It was about media coverage. 个 Kat O'Brien @lavidagata.bsky.social • 40m - Replied to a blocked post I'm afraid I am already spending more time than I have just to look at 5 countries' newspaper covers & stories when I can. Many others aren't easily accessible via resources I have, & I also don't speak those languages. It would be great if some entity were analyzing coverage across all countries.
October 26, 2025 at 11:07 AM