"The adoption of conspiracy beliefs is associated with epistemic motivations to build causal understanding of the world, need for social belonging, and attempts to take narrative control over a complicated and threatening world."

"Open-mindedness predicts support for public health measures and disbelief in conspiracy theories during the COVID-19 pandemic across 68 countries."

Sounds like something you'd see in The Onion

Liam has reminded me of something I've been meaning to do for a while:

Why "Beauvoir" and not "de Beauvoir"?

A thread 🧵

Ah, interesting! I'm only half serious, and both sides keep the feud alive. But my impression has been that debates often start with criticism of CP as obscure and useless, and the term itself came from a desire to distinguish it from AP. Meanwhile, many in CP haven’t read AP or formed an opinion.

Yes, and also

Kan skicka om du vill läsa!

A woman in a black dress with a high collar, her hair tied up, holding a black book. Soft light falls on her calm face.

Lovely portrait by Norwegian painter Even Ulving, Lesende kvinne (Reading Woman, 1886).

Feminists began raising the alarm about the manosphere decades ago – and we were ignored | Laurie Penny We were told we couldn’t take a joke, and that social media isn’t real life. Now the misogyny of early chatrooms and Gamergate has made its way to the White House, says journalist and feminist activis...

"Why has it taken so long for us to treat misogyny as a political problem?"

Full quote (meant to include square brackets on shortened part): "I replied at the time: 'We’ll leave Budapest, we’ll live splendidly in Vienna, the world’s most livable city, and when everything here collapses, we’ll come back and rebuild what can be rebuilt.'"

Two days ago, Andrea Pető recalled that when asked 10 years ago about the future of CEU, she said:

"We’ll leave Budapest, live splendidly in Vienna, and when things change, we’ll come back and rebuild what can be rebuilt."

May her forecast become reality.

verfassungsblog.de/after-collap...

Forget LLMs – humans have been fabricating sources for a long time!

"Trump joins a long list of political leaders who have been beguiled by the prospect of overwhelming early blows achieve decisive effects only then to struggle to find a new strategy when they did not, and the enemy turned out to be resilient and resourceful."

Mozart-Magic meets Chandelier-Magic
#ChandelierSunday

Thanks for sharing, @killedbyproxy.bsky.social 🌼

A Bluepoint Siamese cat sitting in a small cardboard box on a table. In the background, there's a fruit bowl, chandelier, and a framed poster, along with our new license plate that supplied the box.

Maybe I should add Iris to my next publication!

"F. D. C. Willard (1968–1982) was the pen name of Chester, a Siamese cat, used on several papers written by his owner, J. H. Hetherington, in physics journals. On one occasion, he was listed as the sole author."

Do you use Bridgy fed? I wonder if it might be related to that

A glitch created a duplicate of this post, so I had to delete the other one. Very strange when that happens

And it was an exceptionally dark winter this year, even by Stockholm standards

Outdoor table featuring a plate of American pancakes, eggs Benedict with salmon, and two coffees

Brunch outside premiere 🌞 been waiting all winter for this

SPLASHDOWN!!!

Three cheers for science, engineering, research, curiosity, cooperation.

Look what the fuck we can do when we ask big questions, work together, and fund our scientists.

Congratulations, NASA. Congratulations, humanity!

Photo from the 1978 campaign promoting paternity leave in Sweden, featuring well-known weightlifter Hoa-Hoa Dahlgren, by Försäkringskassan.

Sweden's got you covered since 1978

It’s Friday, the sun is shining, and the construction crew in the courtyard is blasting Pixies' Where Is My Mind – and somehow, it all feels perfect

🔨🔚

AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice Not only are AIs far more agreeable than humans when advising on interpersonal matters, but users also prefer the sycophantic models.

A Stanford University study tested 11 major Al systems, and found *all of them* show high levels of overly agreeable, flattering behavior.

This creates a feedback loop: users like being affirmed → developers train Al to validate → Al gets even better at flattering at the expense of truth

Our colleague needs your help keeping a 1,200-year dataset alive!

If you have botanical expertise or are based near Arashiyama, Kyoto — DM her or email tuna@ourworldindata.org.

Yay for us! It's both a blessing and a curse, like many other human creations

Swedish scientist Almira Osmanovic Thunström created a fake disease and uploaded a preprint to see if LLMs would swallow it.

You'll never guess what happened next.

Of course, rationality is portrayed as male and irrationality as female, but I guess you can’t have it all