Aisha Down
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aishadown.bsky.social
Aisha Down
@aishadown.bsky.social
71 followers 25 following 3 posts
Reporter covering AI for The Guardian. Senior Tarbell Fellow @ Tarbell Center for AI Journalism. SABEW award for international reporting, 2024.
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Reposted by Aisha Down
caroleeena.bsky.social
Today's Poem reminds me of my grandmother Ethel Mabry who was the one who got up early and started the woodstove and then cooked breakfast. Things I took for granted then but don't now.
January 30, 2026 at 6:06 AM
Reposted by Aisha Down
premthakker.bsky.social
An insane, perfect encapsulation of it all:

The same day Trump’s agents kill a Veterans Affairs ICU nurse in broad daylight, the CEOs of Apple and Amazon join Trump to watch a private screening of a film about his wife directed by an alleged sexual abuser who was seen shirtless in the Epstein Files
January 25, 2026 at 3:28 AM
Reposted by Aisha Down
theguardian.com
Meet ‘Amelia’: the AI-generated British schoolgirl who is a far-right social media star
Meet ‘Amelia’: the AI-generated British schoolgirl who is a far-right social media star
The avatar, created to deter young people from extremism, has been subverted and is breaking out of niche online silos In certain corners of the internet, on niche news feeds and algorithms, an AI-generated British schoolgirl has emerged as something of a phenomenon. Her name is Amelia, a purple-haired “goth girl” who proudly carries a mini union flag and appears to have a penchant for racism. Continue reading...
www.theguardian.com
January 25, 2026 at 10:06 AM
Reposted by Aisha Down
adamg.bsky.social
Ada Limón
TORN Witness the wet dead snake, its long hexagonal pattern weaved around its body like a code for creation, curled up cold on the newly tarred road. Let us begin with the snake: the fact of death, the poverty of place, of skin and surface. See how the snake is cut in two—its body divided from its brain. Imagine now, how it moves still, both sides, the tail dancing, the head dancing. Believe it is the mother and the father. Believe it is the mouth and the words. Believe it is the sin and the sinner-the tempting, the taking, the apple, the fall, every one of us guilty, the story of us all. But then return to the snake, pitiful dead thing, forcefully denying the split of its being, longing for life back as a whole, wanting you to see it for what it is: something that loves itself so much it moves across the boundaries of death to touch itself once more, to praise both divided sides equally, as if it was easy.
January 21, 2026 at 2:33 AM
Reposted by Aisha Down
susanlleary.bsky.social
I can’t imagine my life without the poetry of Carl Phillips 💙

@cphillipspoet.bsky.social
Blurry Finally in Too Soon Each of Us A water-meadow is not a flood-meadow. A working meadow's not a fallow field. Heartbreak like a bloodhound better off abandoned because untamable. There's a slant of light I used to call Self-Portrait as a Lion, Bringing Down a Stag.
January 14, 2026 at 10:07 PM
Reposted by Aisha Down
jsweetli.bsky.social
NEW: It appears billionaire Bill Ackman has donated $10k to a GoFundMe for Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who killed Renee Good.

Ackman has reposted the fundraiser but hasn’t posted about his own donation.
January 11, 2026 at 1:02 PM
Reposted by Aisha Down
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
the endless ground of your own deep pulse,

Rainer Maria Rilke, tr. David Young
Be ahead of all partings, as if they were behind you, like the winter that’s just past. For among the winters is one so endlessly winter that your heart, if you overwinter, can survive it. Be dead in Eurydice, always—, climb with more song, climb with more praise, back up into pure relation. Here in the kingdom of decay, among what’s wasting, be a tingling glass that shatters itself with sound. Exist while you know the state of nonexistence, the endless ground of your own deep pulse, so that you can fulfill it completely this one time. With the used-up, as well as the muffled and useless stock of full nature, the unreckoned sum, count yourself in, rejoicing, and then demolish the count.
January 10, 2026 at 7:53 PM
Reposted by Aisha Down
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
I want to stay in bed,

Robert Kinsley
HOME ALONE IN MID-NOVEMBER, WAITING FOR A POEM The morning comes on like a bout with loneliness, dark clouds sweep in low across the valley, rain sets in hard from the west. I want to stay in bed, refuse it all, like the junk mail I always end up opening. For hours, I pace among these rooms parting the air with my hands, searching the horizon for traces of light that catch and turn somehow to poem. All I see from the window are the dark shapes of geese winging past, like children who are leaving home for good. The day slips by, another empty envelope marked occupant.
December 27, 2025 at 6:30 PM
Reposted by Aisha Down
merriam-webster.com
The 'kin' of ‘napkin’ means "little."

‘Nap’ comes from ‘nape,' which means “tablecloth.”

So a napkin is a little tablecloth.

10/10, no notes.
December 28, 2025 at 2:00 PM
Reposted by Aisha Down
chronotope.aramzs.xyz
This, unfortunately, has been very obviously coming. I suspect this is only the leading edge of a whole bounty hunter complex.

aramzs.xyz/noteworthy/t...
December 23, 2025 at 8:49 PM
Reposted by Aisha Down
annabower.bsky.social
“These men risked their lives to speak with us. We have a moral and professional obligation to the sources who entrusted us with their
stories. Abandoning them now is a betrayal of the most basic tenet of journalism: giving voice to the voiceless.”
annabower.bsky.social Anna Bower @annabower.bsky.social · Dec 22
Per NY Times’s Michael Grynbaum on X, this is Sharyn Alfonsi’s email to her “60 Minutes” colleagues in full:
News Team, Thank you for the notes and texts. I apologize for not reaching out earlier. I learned on Saturday that Bari Weiss spiked our story, INSIDE CECOT, which was supposed to air tonight. We (Ori and I) asked for a call to discuss her decision. She did not afford us that courtesy/opportunity. Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices. It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now-after every rigorous internal check has been met is not an editorial decision, it is a political one. We requested responses to questions and/or interviews with DHS, the White House, and the State Department. Government silence is a statement, not a VETO. Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story. If the administration's refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a "kill switch" for any reporting they find inconvenient. If the standard for airing a story becomes "the government must agree to be interviewed," then the government effectively gains control over the 60 Minutes broadcast. We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state. These men risked their lives to speak with us. We have a moral and professional obligation to the sources who entrusted us with their stories. Abandoning them now is a betrayal of the most basic tenet of journalism: giving voice to the voiceless. CBS spiked the Jeffrey Wigand interview due to legal concerns, nearly destroying the credibility of this broadcast. It took years to recover from that "low point." By pulling this story to shield an administration, we are repeating that history, but for political optics rather than legal ones. We have been promoting this story on social media for days. Our viewers are expecting it. When it fails to air without a credible explanation, the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship. We are trading 50 years of "Gold Standard" reputation for a single week of political quiet. I care too much about this broadcast to watch it be dismantled without a fight. Sharyn
December 22, 2025 at 3:42 AM
aishadown.bsky.social
“If we handed in stuff that was AI-generated, we would be kicked out of the uni, but we’re being taught by an AI" -- on how maybe AI shouldn't transform higher education.

www.theguardian.com/education/20...
‘We could have asked ChatGPT’: students fight back over course taught by AI
Staffordshire students say signs material was AI-generated included suspicious file names and rogue voiceover accent
www.theguardian.com
November 20, 2025 at 8:54 PM
aishadown.bsky.social
Ross Douthat here makes a fantastic argument for ... just subscribing to The Guardian instead.
November 8, 2025 at 10:27 AM
Reposted by Aisha Down
moiradonegan.bsky.social
If I was working at the Times (would never happen lol) I would be talking to my women colleagues and perhaps outside counsel about whether this constitutes a Title VII violation.
katebaldwin.bsky.social Kate Baldwin @katebaldwin.bsky.social · Nov 6
Current printed title (and better summary):
NYT headline “Did Women Ruin the Workplace?”
November 6, 2025 at 5:00 PM