All of us are dissociated and dissociating to make it through today. I hope you give yourself and others grace.

Paper Finds That Leading AI Chatbots Like ChatGPT and Claude Remain Incredibly Sycophantic, Resulting in Twisted Effects on Users A study found that sycophancy is pervasive among chatbots, and that bots are more likely than human peers to affirm a person's bad behavior.

A new study found that sycophancy is a pervasive function of leading chatbots, which are likely to give users bad/antisocial advice when asked about real-world interpersonal conflicts -- warping users' judgement and promoting dependence.

futurism.com/artificial-i...

People are quick to condemn dead rapists. Living rapists? Not so much.

On this year’s long covid awareness day, I want more people to read and think about what the late Shafiqah Hudson said before it killed her. Because she was right, as usual, and also early, as usual. Perhaps too early for a lot of people to listen.

The Iconic Civil Rights Protest You Don't Know | American Experience | PBS Meet the protesters who crawled their way into history—and changed how all Americans live.

Today is the 36th anniversary of the Capitol Crawl and disabled people are still fighting for basic rights in a society that's actively working to undermine them, surrounded by systemic disablism.

(This is a corrected thread TY to the person who flagged that I said 26th, not 36th!)

Long COVID Treatment Guide An evidence-supported guide covering treatments addressing multiple Long COVID symptoms & mechanisms — focused on prescription medication, with a limited set of supplements, OTC medications, procedure...

We're thrilled to release the #LongCovid Treatment Guide! This is a collaboration with @rthm.bsky.social to help patients & providers explore treatment options together.

The guide focuses on 24 medications, but includes a few other interventions for breadth /1

Same! Thanks!

This happened to me too!

How many of the people screaming about how anti-vaccination parents should be tarred and feathered mask during surges in COVID? Or when they’re around vulnerable people?
Asking as someone whose mother passed away of Covid complications likely from infections contracted by unmasked visitors.

An outline of a naked woman is embroidered on linen in the same bone white colour as the linen. She stands legs together, her right hand covering her groin, her left hand, palm up, extended slightly to her side. She looks to the right. Her entire body except for her belly is covered in intricate markings representing different neurological sensations. Her face is a mask of green lines, feathery grey lines cover her shoulders and chest. There is a thick band of intricate burgundy stitching around her waist. Her forearms and hands are covered in thick blue undulant lines. Her right leg has bands of burgundy along the muscles, with small dots around them. Her inner left leg has a thick line of blue running up it, with thin branches spreading towards her outer leg.

For this #InternationalWomensDay I’m sharing a symptomatology #embroidery, body map (2016), in which I stitched my #MECFS symptoms freehand over a few months. ME/CFS affects mostly women, and the symptoms are often ignored or not taken seriously because of medical misogyny.

#SciArt

Me too.

This is the reason why my cycle of investigating new symptoms ends in avoidance of doctors for a bit until I get a new symptom that’s incapacitating enough that makes me forget why I don’t trust most doctors.

I know that @fractalecho.bsky.social and @lizjackson.bsky.social wrote a great piece on a related topic: how disability tech and technologies of war and violence are entangled for @thenewrepublic.bsky.social
It’s a must read to understand disability and AI discourse

newrepublic.com/article/1793...

I see you at the virtual meetings while refusing to provide even hybrid access for the events you organize.

Disability accommodations are a rare thing that actually trickles down. You like curb cutouts? Auto-opening doors? Jar openers? Ramps? Hand rails? YOU’RE WELCOME

Even as an abled person you use disability accommodations every single day.

Supporting accommodations actually helps everyone.

¡Gracias, Élika!

Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication & Global Studies Recieved the Asociación de Colombianistas' Best Book Award (2025) & Latin American Studies Association's Latinx Studies Section's Best Book Award. THE CENTER FOR SOCIAL SCIENCE SCHOLARSHIP AT UMBC.

Alt text: Poster with a photo of Tania wearing a red KN95 mask and a black keffiyeh at UMBC and the book cover of Tania's book Postconflict Utopias: Everyday Survival in Chocó, Colombia with the Atrato River and members of COCOMACIA.

The text reads: BOOK AWARDS: TANIA LIZARAZO.

All my gratitude always to my collaborators, members of COCOMACIA, the strongest Black peasant organization in Colombia.

So grateful for all the support l've received from UMBC and beyond that has made this book (and these awards!) possible. Invite me virtually to your classes/events/universities to talk about how we can imagine different worlds together.

you wanna know why people with long COVID are insistent about masks so much so that they "annoy" you?
Because there is often no real treatment/care easily accessible for many of us.
Workplaces make it hard for us to earn a living.
Have a little consideration, ffs.

We can't rely on this lawsuit alone, though: keep pressure ON to stop Maryland's concentration camp: 2 steps, starting tomorrow:
- Feb 24 www.wcindivisible.com/take-action.... &
- March 28: www.mobilize.us/nokings/even...
& stay in touch w/our new coalition here:
-> stopthecampsmaryland.com <-

Unoriginally, the layoff monster finally came for me 👾

But my bad news might be good news for you if you’re a fan of the show! I guess I can go all in now.

If you can and would like to, please help me make more of the show you love 🥳

(Exciting partnership news coming soon!)

“Confusion” doesn’t begin to describe our emerging predicament. Seventy-two percent of American teens have turned to A.I. for companionship. A.I. therapists, coaches and lovers are also on the rise. Yet few people realize that some of the frontline technologists building this new world seem deeply ambivalent about what they’re doing. They are so torn, in fact, that some privately admit they don’t plan to use A.I. intimacy tools. “Zero percent of my emotional needs are met by A.I.,” an executive who ran a team mitigating safety risks at a top lab told me. “I’m in it up to my eyeballs at work, and I’m careful.” Many others said the same thing: Even as they build A.I. tools, they hope they never feel the need to turn to machines for emotional support. As a researcher who develops cutting-edge capabilities for artificial emotion put it, “that would be a dark day.”

Developers I spoke to said the same incentives that make bots irresistible can stand in the way of reasonable safeguards, making outright abstention the only sure way to stay safe. Some described feeling stuck between protecting users and raising profits: They support guardrails in theory, but don’t want to compromise the product experience in practice. It’s little wonder the protections that do get built can seem largely symbolic — you have to squint to see the fine-print notice that “ChatGPT can make mistakes” or that Character.AI is “not a real person.” “I’ve seen the way people operate in this space,” said one engineer who worked at a number of tech companies. “They’re here to make money. It’s a business at the end of the day.”

But even if companies can curb serious dependence on A.I. companions — an open question — many of the developers I spoke with were troubled by even moderate use of these apps. That’s because people who manage to resist full-blown digital companions can still find themselves hooked on A.I.-mediated love. When machines draft texts, craft vows and tell people how to process their own emotions, every relationship turns into “a throuple,” a founder of a conversational A.I. business said. “We’re all polyamorous now. It’s you, me and the A.I.”

A genuinely alarming piece in the NYT about how the developers, scientists and assorted techbros behind "AI companions"/"synthetic care" do not even know or understand the potential harms of the tech they're developing but they're too greedy to stop themselves from developing it.

Epstein couldn't stop emailing people about eugenics In the latest files, the trafficker gives it a Silicon Valley–pilled name: "genetic altruism."

I parsed through some of the emails in the Epstein files, and it’s very clear that Epstein was a eugenicist weirdo. Something he very much had in common with the billionaire class à la Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Donald Trump. New for @motherjones.com.

www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

1/ ProPublica collected handwritten letters in mid-January from children held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the same facility where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was taken.

Hundreds of kids are still detained.

We’ll let the children’s words speak for themselves. 🧵

Donate to Support Stevie Wilson's New Beginning, organized by Danielle Squillante Our beloved comrade and friend Stevie Wilson is FINALLY coming home from pri… Danielle Squillante needs your support for Support Stevie Wilson's New Beginning

My friend and one of the co-authors of Read This When Things Fall Apart, Stevie Wilson, will be released from prison in less than a week. Stevie has done tremendous work as an incarcerated organizer and has plans to continue doing important work on the outside. Let's help him make a new start.

You cannot talk about the measles outbreak without talking about the widespread erosion of public health - from vaccines to COVID mitigations. ICE facilities have been wracked with TB, measles, and COVID outbreaks. Community spread stops with you. Wear a fit tested N95.

We need a better way to get the 3800+ kids out of ICE detention than this. We know Liam’s name and we can advocate on his behalf, but that isn’t true of almost any of the other people stuck in detention centers.

We have to stop ICE on a systemic level.

Your friends are still acting like everything is normal in America. What do you do? All Americans live in a “dual state.” Here’s what that means — and how to help others see it.

Not to diminish the very real threat of fascism, but I really could’ve used an article called “Your friends are acting like COVID is harmless. What do you do?” 3-4 years ago. The gaslighting’s been a total mindfuck. Anyway, this article’s worth a read.