sara simon
@sarambsimon.bsky.social
1.9K followers 1.2K following 980 posts
phd student in us history • former newsroom software engineer & data journalist • she/her • chicago smbsimon.github.io
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Reposted by sara simon
histoftech.bsky.social
UVA school of data science is hiring this year—searches are open to folks from all disciplines. We need humanists & social scientists to teach ethics/data & society courses + do research that supports school’s mission to be holistic in the study of data science: datascience.virginia.edu/faculty-jobs
Faculty Jobs — School of Data Science
School of Data Science at the University of Virginia.
datascience.virginia.edu
Reposted by sara simon
paris.nyc
my latest investigation for @consumerreports.org is based on months of reporting and 60+ lab tests of leading protein supplements

we found that most protein powders and shakes have more lead in one serving than our experts say is safe to have in a day (🧵)

www.consumerreports.org/lead/protein...
Protein Powders and Shakes Contain High Levels of Lead - Consumer Reports
CR tests of 23 popular protein powders and shakes found that most contain high levels of lead.
www.consumerreports.org
Reposted by sara simon
kateclancy.bsky.social
I am being asked to tell my department which pieces of lab equipment should be supported with backup power because they expect rolling blackouts and brownouts in 2026 due to increased energy demands from AI. In case you're wondering how my day is going.
Reposted by sara simon
meredithshiner.com
It’s impossible to overstate how much “abolish ice” is the normie position now here in chicago — just countless random moms at toddler soccer on a park district field asking me where I bought my anti-ice t-shirt. average people don’t like our neighborhoods being terrorized.
lauraolin.bsky.social
A friend ran the Chicago marathon today and said he couldn’t count the number of FUCK ICE signs along the way.
Reposted by sara simon
sethcotlar.bsky.social
Intergenerational tension is a thing in any modern society, but in Oregon those tensions often map onto one's feelings about Portland. Young kids who don't fit in somewhere in Oregon will dream about escaping their families/towns and moving to Portland. Conservative parents fear this will happen.
sarambsimon.bsky.social
this skeet brought me back so vividly, i can practically smell the cafetorium
sarambsimon.bsky.social
perfect thread about portland, my hometown, from my high school classmate who sums up the millennial pdx childhood experience so well
ceaubin.bsky.social
What The Hell Is Going On, a thread:

I’ve seen some thinkpieces and posts about Portland protests that fail to understand the long-term hyperspecificity of Portland culture/humor, and frame it as a sort of shitposting meme-pilled ironic thing. Which is wrong.

So I’m gonna give you my breakdown.
Reposted by sara simon
dansinker.com
New levels of hell: just got an email from our local AYSO cancelling today’s youth soccer games because ICE is at the Home Depot across from the soccer fields at James Park in Evanston.
sarambsimon.bsky.social
more work for mother, the twenty-first century edition
kissane.myatproto.social
I counted up the number of ways (platforms, accounts, apps) that people in my professional and personal lives plus healthcare systems and kid’s school are contacting me and uhh. This is objectively impossible.
sarambsimon.bsky.social
was just thinking the other day about how much easier parking used to be when all i had to do was keep a bag of quarters in the glove compartment
sarambsimon.bsky.social
to me, it sounds like the album she would have made if she'd leaned on AI for help. there's something about it that's just very bland
Reposted by sara simon
sonjadrimmer.bsky.social
So my point is that we need to get better at understanding when the language of progressivism is co-opted by bad actors to hustle into the public sphere (“too innovative for regulation”) technologies that threaten the basic foundations of trust necessary to a functioning society.
Reposted by sara simon
lollardfish.bsky.social
The end of federal enforcement of special ed laws. Some states - including MN - will likely be ok. But a lot of disabled kids in a lot of states are going to lose the education that federal law and decades of jurisprudence say they are owed.
Education Department wipes out special ed office in shutdown layoffs, union says
The Education Department laid off nearly everyone at the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services.
www.usatoday.com
Reposted by sara simon
sarahlazare.bsky.social
An extremely rough day for Edgewater in Chicago. ICE activity near schools. People kidnapped while working in yards, standing on hiring corners. So many rapid responders biking, walking, driving, whistles around necks, trying to protect their neighbors, but up against such well-funded forces.
sarambsimon.bsky.social
beautiful, no notes
cait.bsky.social
guy in a legal advice reddit wants to know how to get out of paying google the money he owes them after vibe coding one of his apps into running 40 times a second for several days straight, but says it's not his fault bc they should have stopped him by making it harder to use
r/LegalAdviceUK u/ShavedAp3 • 3d
Join
Google want to charge me 7 k for API access what can I do as they are denying appeals
Debt & Money
Hi there and thanks for reading.
I tried to keep this brief and just ended up rambling on trying to get as much in as possible so here is my edited hopefully a lot smaller problem.
Google are charging me 7k for a mistake that I told them about within a day, the bill went from about £45 to 16k in a day! when I asked for help I was told "dont worry well reset it as a one off, you'll need to put measures in place and ill guide you through those after you agree" So i did he then said "I will monitor it for a further 24 - 48 hours and then tell you how to put the measures in place. " Less than 24 hours later the bill was now 23k and I found out how to stop it myself. Then came the long back and forth to get it reset.
Fast forward 5 months they have finally given me a 20k credit but with VAT the total bill at the time of the credit was 27k
The 20k would have cleared the costs at the time of making them aware they claim its both our responsibilities to monitor costs I feel I did that by contacting them as soon as I saw the irregularity.
I asked them to reconsider they said no the appeal has said that is their final offer so 1 now owe 7k.
Is there anything I can do here from a legal standpoint. I don't have 7k I barely have £45.
Thanks for reading I am in England if it helps. Intentional or not, OP used either 36k (16 + 20) or 43k (16 + 27) of API credit. Obviously what API it is matters, but with google maps, 16k would equate to ten million pulls. Or two hundred thousand Gemini 2.5 calls with 1000 token input and 5k token output.
Those aren't numbers that something running correctly should run up for any average person or company. So either google screwed up something (which is unlikely that it would only happen to one person in the entire network) or OP has some app or something which isn't running properly and is sending too much to the API.
Edit: It was OP's app, polling google maps nearly 40 times a second for days.

tom_watts • 3d
According to other posts he ended up polling Google maps direction API 2300 times per minute for a few days. Looks like a combination of OP not knowing coding and asking ChatGPT to do it for him, and potentially Google's backend doing something weird in interpreting the janky code.
•••
146 ShavedAp3 OP • 3d
Even if that was the case and it wasn't the sign up process doesn't have the documentation I refer to.
Funnily enough though asking an LLM to help me find it still took some digging after it did.
If you work in the field im sure its easy but those just tinkering or learning not so much.
If google didnt want people like me using it they could make it far harder to do so, they could have hard limits in place for sole users to prevent stuff like this and so many other things.
Should they well clearly they don't think so and no doubt you agree that doesn't make it the right opinion it just makes it yours.
• • •
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Reposted by sara simon
lenasun.bsky.social
NEW: @CDCgov hit hard by massive firings that several staff describe to me as a “bloodbath.”
Among those RIFd:
—leadership of the center for immunization and respiratory diseases;
—leadership of global health center
—leadership of the measles outbreak response; 1/4
Reposted by sara simon
jhppl.bsky.social
US public health is in crisis. In this special JHPPL issue edited by @oberlanderunc.bsky.social & @sarahgollust.bsky.social, you’ll find articles that help contextualize the erosion of public health infrastructure & adoption of policies harmful to public health. read.dukeupress.edu/jhppl/advanc...
Advance Publication | Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law | Duke University Press
read.dukeupress.edu
sarambsimon.bsky.social
it will probably be a bit before it turns into anything real (a diss chapter, perhaps?) but i'd be happy to send it, in its current status, your way!
Reposted by sara simon
camrodriguez.bsky.social
if you're a national outlet zooming in to cover immigration raids in chicago and you're only in broadview or elwood you're doing it wrong, just saying
Reposted by sara simon
annakornbluh.bsky.social
week 7, in a city under siege for 32 days and counting, and the students who are able to come to class despite the blitz are showing up like their lives depend on those 50 minutes of togetherness, poetry, and big questions
miriamposner.com
IDK, man. School started 2 weeks ago for us, and once again students remind me that they’re so curious and interested in the world and anxious to ask big questions. We hear that these questions are no longer useful or relevant, but wherever that’s coming from, it’s not what students believe.
sarambsimon.bsky.social
a fabulous panel! and fabulous live-skeeting from ben, with the perfect alt text on this image
bhgross144.bsky.social
Our next speaker, @sarambsimon.bsky.social, is talking about the 1890 Census, but she breaks from SHOT tradition by shifting the focus from Herman Hollerith to John Shaw Billings.

At a time when there was no permanent census bureau, Billings came up w/the idea of using punch cards... #SHOT2025
John Shaw Billings and his very dignified mustache. (Wikipedia)