pretty sure it means Iran is really good at the art of the deal. $2M per tanker
@nytimes.com
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/06/w... also here: archive.is/3Kvia

also when I discovered that in Australia the government now wants me to show ID to read substack 😑

The Science of 'Yes': How we get others to do what we want (and how they do the same to us) Resistance is futile...

My latest article breaks down the science behind how people get you to say "yes" and why learning this won't save you. I'd ask you to read it, but I'm going to start small and just ask you to click the link. (That's the foot-in-the-door technique. You're welcome.)
open.substack.com/pub/bullshit...

the art of the deal

UFOs over the oval: The sighting school kids were told not to talk about Flying saucers, balloons or mass hysteria? It's 60 years today since Australia's biggest UFO sighting took place at a Melbourne school. Witnesses are still demanding answers about what happened that d...

I want to believe.

60 years on from one of the most widely sighted UFO events that happened in Melbourne.

www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04...

Largest study of its kind shows AI assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time – regardless of language or territory An intensive international study was coordinated by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and led by the BBC

What a time to be alive www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/...

meh, should have been a tiktok

Abstract Online media shapes public opinion, with messages from opposing information sources deepening polarization. How content is framed and presented determines its meaning and impact on readers. To date, studies on framing have focused on finding certain phrases, topics, or ideas characterizing messages from particular sources, a strategy providing only limited results. In this study, we used a broader, agnostic approach that involves extracting the narrative from text, including its characters, plot, setting, and moral of the story, and the relationships between these elements. We translated text from tens of thousands of health documents in the language of conspiracy corpus (LOCO) into representations called semantic graphs. We then compared these graphs across documents from conspiracy and mainstream sources. We found that conspiracy media framed health through belief, emphasizing immediacy and individual impact, whereas mainstream media used scientific framing with a long-term, institutional focus. Shared words carried divergent narratives. As one example, in documents related to COVID-19, conspiracy media emphasized preventing violence rather than preventing infection (the mainstream narrative). Understanding conspiracy narratives is crucial for policymakers and media platforms seeking to curb their spread. This understanding can inform efforts to boost media literacy and reduce the number of posts peddling misinformation. We suggest using automated tools and AI as an aid in both efforts.

Figure 1. Translation of two sentences into semantic graphs with narrative elements Note. We extracted the narrative elements of sentences from conspiracy and mainstream documents using an algorithm that translated the text into semantic graphs, as shown above, which omit grammar such as prepositions and verb tenses. Simplified semantic graphs for two sentences—one from conspiracy and the other from mainstream media—depict narrative elements by color: blue for plot, orange for character, green for setting, and purple for attributes of character or setting. The arrows connecting the rectangles indicate a direct semantic relationship between two elements.

Figure 3. Comparing narrative elements across conspiracy & mainstream media in three health-related subject areas Note. Words representing predominant narrative elements—plot, characters and setting—in conspiracy and mainstream texts were mapped according to their semantic properties (typical use in a sentence). For instance, combat terms (war, destroy, military) appeared in the conspiracy graphics in locations analogous to those of disease terms (infect, disease, patient) in the mainstream maps. Similarly, an immediate timeframe (today, tomorrow) in conspiracy media appeared where specific weeks, months, or years showed up in mainstream texts.

Framing of health-related narratives in conspiracy versus mainstream media

Reiter-Haas, Klösch, Hadler, & Lex

"mainstream and conspiracy media use some of the same terms to tell dramatically different narratives"

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

The man with the nuclear codes

super interesting that it can do that kind of stuff. have never explored it for this kind of work, but I can see the advantages for meta science and replication endeavours

Australia has a major climate disinformation problem – and fixing it will take a huge effort Senate inquiry wants more funding for climate research and digital literacy to address scare campaigns, and wants more studies on health impacts of wind turbines.

Embarrassing AI slip-ups and wind turbine syndrome made it into the final report.

Interestingly, it found the solution to climate and energy disinformation is to take a similar approach as Finland and Estonia are to Russian war propaganda 😭🔌

OK so did it actually do it, or just say it did it, and just copied your paper?

Workers who fall for ‘corporate bullshit’ may be worse at their jobs, study finds

New study finds that employees impressed by corporate speak may be least equipped to make effective decisions

Are AI-generated summaries suitable for studying and research? Despite didactic, ethical, and environmental concerns, the use of GenAI is on the rise in academia. For most applications, the jury is still out on whether and how they will benefit education and rese...

I’m going to keep pushing this article I wrote, as long as AI-generated summaries are causing trouble: www.tue.nl/en/our-unive...

"A total of 22 men"
🙄

he was living rent free in one guy's mind it was somewhat amusing given how obnoxious that guy was.

"Research consistently shows leaving these spaces is a challenging experience. Disengagement is usually gradual and uneven. It often involves the slow rebuilding of identity, relationships and belonging outside the forums that once defined participants’ worldview."

Has the Strength Model of Self-Control Been Depleted? Reflecting on the strength model of self-control, some criticisms of the model, and some of the adjustments that have emerged.

"This ebb and flow of support and critique is science in action, and is a sign of a branch of knowledge that is functioning, rather than one in the midst of a crisis."

fun fact: the plural of anecdote is anecdata

Abstract Conspiracy theories are widely viewed as harmful to politics, and a growing number of studies have sought to identify their detrimental effects. Our study adds to this literature by examining whether brief, realistic exposure to conspiracy theories about a major political event can undermine individuals’ commitment to a broad set of democratic norms. We rely on two online survey experiments conducted in Brazil with a total of 8 thousand respondents. Participants assigned to the treatment conditions were exposed to conspiracy theories surrounding the stabbing of then–presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro during a campaign event; control group participants viewed either the official account of the event or unrelated content. Subsequently, participants answered questions about democratic norms, institutional trust, and political hostility. We find some evidence that exposure to conspiracy theories reduces support for democracy, particularly in the electoral dimension. Surprisingly, non-partisans are more affected than partisans. Results also indicate that exposure to conspiracy theories reduces institutional trust but does not affect political hostility. However, the effects of conspiracy theories are not consistent across narratives, emerging more clearly in the one that blames the right for the event. These findings underscore the nuanced and specific nature of the influence of conspiracy theories on democratic values, which can help calibrate our concerns about these narratives.

Exposure to conspiracy theories decreases support for democracy and institutional trust, while having non-significant effects on partisan hostility. The estimates are derived from bivariate OLS regressions with conventional standard errors. Since the outcomes were collected in different studies, the sample size is n = 2, 401 for the model using the OSDI as the outcome variable and n = 3, 987 for the models with institutional trust and partisan hostility as outcomes

Effects of CTs across different dimensions of democratic support. Individuals exposed to con- spiracy theories are less willing to accept election results and less supportive of democracy in the abstract. Average treatment effect estimates with 95% (thin line) and 90% (thick line) confidence intervals for the causal effect of exposure to conspiracy theories on different dimensions of democratic support. The estimates are derived from bivariate OLS regressions with conventional standard errors. The sample size for all models is n = 2, 402

Exposure to Conspiracy Theories partially decreases trust in election results, make individuals slightly more willing to accept the Jan 8, 2022 attack to the Brazilian Congress, reduces beliefs that candidates should concede in the face of an electoral defeat, and decreases trust in elections. Average treatment effects with 90% and 95% confidence intervals (thick and thin lines, respectively). The models used to generate the figures are bivariate OLS regressions with conventional standard errors. The sample size is n = 3992 for all the models in the figure

Do Conspiracy Theories Undermine Support for Democracy?
Amaral, Borba, Lira, Lessa & Pavão

fascinating paper that used videos of a real event and conspiratorial narrative to see the effect on political attitudes

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

The paranoid style in British politics It has its uses

an issue with est prevalence, however perhaps?

"
A second golden age of paranoia is happening right now. Almost half of British voters believe that the statement
“a secret group of people is responsible for making all
major world decisions, such as going to war” is definitely or probably true"
"

The algorithm isn't a conspiracy: Epstein isn't the only one to game the internet Among the 3.5 million files released from by the US Department of Justice are emails from Jeffrey Epstein referencing payments of around $40,000 to 'clean up' Google search results for his name.

“The google page is not good”: The Epstein files offer a rare glimpse into a practice usually conducted with no paper trail, writes Isabelle Knevett. www.crikey.com.au/2026/03/17/j...

Young people particularly vulnerable to cults post-COVID According to one of Australia's leading cult experts, the number of young adults between 17 and 25 years old joining cults since COVID is increasing at an alarming rate.

certainty and belonging noted as key needs for individuals swindled into cults

www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03...

The Famed 1967 Bigfoot Film Was an 'Incredible Hoax,' Says the Director of a Groundbreaking New Documentary Filmmaker Marq Evans stumbled upon film footage that had been locked away in a safe for decades that, he says, proves that the famous 1967 Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film was an "incredible hoax."

"What we eventually found out is that [this new footage] represented a trial run, a rehearsal that was never discarded.”

Excerpt From “The Famed 1967 Bigfoot Film Was an 'Incredible Hoax,' Says the Director of a Groundbreaking New Documentary”
people.com/famous-1967-...

ten words that strike fear in the mind of every (?) academic:

"Dear Colleague,
A Reviewer Account Has been created for you "

The wisdom of deliberative crowds Pooling answers is good, but collectively agreeing a system is better

Researcher improved collective intelligence with this one weird trick

tomstafford.substack.com/p/the-wisdom-of-delibera...

We study pandemics, and the resurgence of measles is a grim sign of what’s coming The US eliminated measles in 2000, but the disease is once again circulating.

The disease’s resurgence serves as a serious warning about the country’s capacity to manage infectious disease threats of all kinds.

Post Conversation Soda @fredsoda america deindustrialized so extensively, we can’t even manufacture consent anymore 8:14 AM · Mar 12, 2026 · 118.5K Views https://x.com/fredsoda/status/2032067772054663557?s=20