I'm at #IJF26 and it's my first time attending — if you're here, I'd love to meet up!
Posts by Dr. Jay Barchas-Lichtenstein (they/them)
In Perugia for #IJF26? Join @bankonjustin.com, @lni.media's @davejorgenson.bsky.social, @cnti.bsky.social's Amy Mitchell and @codeforafrica.bsky.social's @justinarenstein.bsky.social at 5p Thursday to talk about the future!
I can!
The hospitalists are much closer to lay usage, and that's probably a good thing. (When you say "sepsis" I hear "imminently life-threatening.")
But the risks of miscommunication when the patient relays info to their PCP are real and perhaps consequential.
(@tnfalpha.bsky.social I would be very happy to tell you about the ensuing confusion from a patient / family POV sometime if it's relevant to your research and work!)
A "fun" linguistic thing I learned this week. (Don't worry, everyone is ok.)
Hospitalists reserve the term "sepsis" for TSS while "bacteremia" refers to a non-emergent blood infection. Other doctors call it all "sepsis."
Not ripe for patient misunderstanding at all...
cc @tnfalpha.bsky.social
Screenshot of AI query. Response begins: "Amanecí Partio" es un tema del artista Juan Ponce de León, destacado por su estilo pegajoso, lanzado alrededor de 2022...."
After listening to La Brega, I wanted to find the words to "Amanecí Partió" and sensibly googled "letra amanecí partio."
No luck, but I did find this unfortunately hilarious AI gem. (cc @alanacb.bsky.social, @onthemedia.bsky.social )
Es cierto que Ponce de León fue lanzado alrededor de 2022...
TIL about a fun Easter egg: try googling "garamond font" or "comic sans font"
It only works for a handful of common ones but it's adorable.
The biggest difference by far watching the various campaigns as a New Yorker and all of the messaging we were targeted with I think is an important takeaway for the whole country:
Cuomo’s entire message was threats and fear and cynicism.
Mamdani’s entire message was lightness and joy and hope.
I also feel like we see the same debate play out in conversations about the war. The framing is almost always "us" OR "them", but the people I'm most persuaded by have moral clarity that it's "all of us"
I think you've put your finger on something I struggle with when I talk to people in my life: There are competing visions of safety as zero-sum game and safety as solidarity.
Hate crimes are up. People are scared. But which way they go is very telling.
This is why if you learn nothing else for evidence literacy, learn to look up survey items and read them for yourself and think about how someone might interpret them.
so much of what i think has gone unsaid re: whether zohran is “good” for jewish new yorkers is that many are looking for him to indicate he would protect (whatever that means) jewish new yorkers *above* or to the detriment of non-jewish new yorkers.
Sign at the airport with a quote from Lao Tzu: "A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving."
JFK is setting expectations really low these days, huh?
What does responsible use of AI look like for the future of journalism?
CNTI's @drnycnerd.bsky.social will discuss ways AI is reshaping newsrooms as part of First Amendment Day at UNC.
🗓️ Wednesday, October 8, 2025
🕚 11:00 a.m.
📍 UNC
✅ Free and open to the public
Full details: lnkd.in/g-y2FyUE
In Serbia, a leaked recording has raised fears of political attempts to weaken independent media. As the country adopts the EU’s DSA, a question looms: Will this law protect press freedom—or be misused to suppress it?
👉 Read more from @ewrightwy.bsky.social:
euobserver.com/eu-and-the-w...
Eat. Sleep. Exercise. Nurture the relationships that sustain you. Protect your health. Find joy. Don't mistake any of these for the resistance itself. Joy isn't resistance, neither is rest. But you need to be whole to resist for a lifetime.
It’s weird to me that people keep starting new Substacks and still don’t know that Substack is extremely bad news
Please get off Substack 😭
www.anildash.com//2024/11/19/...
GPT-5 is so amazing it can make 52.8 higher than 69.1 on a bar chart
It can even make 69.1 and 30.8 THE SAME SIZE
The real secret about genius is that it refers to an emotional experience in the perceiver, not a quality in the perceived. It's an amazing feeling, when someone lights up your brain with their skill. It's why I love my job. But it is a feeling, not an objective event
Even worse!
They get to pretend they're accountable?
Is this ConEd by any chance?
Some things researchers can do:
- ask about specific tools or use cases or outputs
- discourse analysis to tease out what's included in "AI" policy documents, the media, etc.
- interviews and thinkalouds to suss out what people think "AI" is
I finished reading "The AI Con" last week and I'm going to be sitting with it for a long time.
As a researcher it affirms my frustration with the slipperiness of "AI" as a term. All the research shows that people don't understand it consistently.
What do we do if we're already a monthly donor and we desperately want a pin? Asking for ... a friend?
What do news organizations actually need to know about AI & journalism? A new briefing from @cnti.bsky.social's Global AI & Journalism Research Working Group synthesizes 80+ research studies.
cnti.org/article/aij-...
🥇 Black: The good, normal way to have coffee
🥈 Milk, no sugar: Not bad at all, but superfluous (unless the coffee is too strong)
🥉 Milk and sugar: Fine if I think of it not as coffee, but as a coffee-flavoured dessert (affogato lite?)
💩 Sugar, no milk: O gods this is vile, why would you do this
This briefing is the first in a series. Stay tuned for more!
If you'd like to suggest topics or research to include, please reach out.
5. The research consistently shows that explaining *how* AI was used is more valuable than stating *that* AI was used -- "AI" is a broad umbrella term that means different things to different audiences.
4. Covering AI effectively benefits from both understanding the technology deeply and hearing from the broadest possible range of stakeholders.