'while the media will focus on vaccine scientists & big Pharma companies, the most important issue for control to prevent thousands of deaths in Africa is how to mobilize communities to ensure the best public health practices to reduce transmission' thesocialvaccines.substack.com/p/how-to-sto...

AI-driven algorithms designed to maximize engagement on social media can unintentionally set the stage for radicalization. By exploiting the need for belonging and certainty, this can open the door for conflict. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

This from Shade The UK is a great guide for future proofing your home for hotter weather www.shadetheuk.com/overheating-...

Reminds me of a stats class I took when we were told a team of energy demand researchers spent weeks trying to identify why the internal temperature of one of the homes in their study skyrocketed intermittently. Eventually they spoke to the owner who said the cat sometimes sat on the thermostat!

The Financial Times ran an entire story of coal shipments "jumping" that is based on an algorithmic artifact in shipping data.

This week I spoke on a panel at the National Academies on the implications of artificial intelligence-related data center electricity use and emissions. I talked about how principles of ethical AI include energy & climate. 🔌💡 Video of the workshop is here: www.nationalacademies.org/event/43750_...

Community-based fact-checking works Community notes reducethe subsequent spread of misleading posts by 61% and increase the odds that users delete their false posts by 94% But they appear too late to stop the viral stage of the diffusion making the effect modest. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

All the philosophy students who pursued their passion made a wise decision. Learning how to think is a always a good investment. Psychology grads are not doing too badly on the job market either.

Creativity is a team sport Our environments and the people around us matter a lot more than our innate abilities when it comes to creativity The greatest invention Thomas Edison made was not the lightbulb or the battery, but creating a innovation team: www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/the-myth-o...

This website visualizes social media as a room with 100 people 3 people are producing most toxic content Most people assume 43 are producing toxic content, because these 3 are hyperactive and amplified by engagement based algorithms. The other 97 quiet voices disappear thenoisyroom.com

How Can We Improve Initial Public Response During Emergencies? Recommendations from a Systematic Review of Pre-Incident Information www.mdpi.com/2413-8851/10...

A single line in this piece just made my day: “The electricity system operator is understood to be preparing to run the grid without any gas for short periods as soon as this summer, in a first for the UK energy system.” Renewables *work*. And progress matters🎉 www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Love this work. It’s so important to point out that measuring social issues is not the same as measuring physical ones. If only we could measure attitudes like we measure body temperature!

New paper, out this week in PLOS One, suggests that most close relationship self-report measures are primarily capturing relationship quality 🧵 journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

There's something just so brilliant about coal mines being directly replaced with solar farms www.pv-magazine.com/2026/04/07/g...

Online hostility is predicted by economic & political inequality Inequality breeds online hostility because people crave status in unequal societies and status-seekers constitute the main perpetrators of hostility in political settings, whether online or offline. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

my hot take is that this is a *fantastic* result & reason for optimism:

Adorable wooden horses on wheels were pulled around by little ones in the past, too. A timeless reminder that play has been part of the human experience for millennia. From Egypt, Roman period, 30 BC-150 AD. 📷 Julia Thorne/Manchester Museum 🏺

While social media shows you extreme content, AI is more likely to show people more moderate content This means the technology, on average, could have very different effects on polarization. www.ft.com/content/3880...

Gas only sets Spain's electricity price 15% of the time. When gas costs spike it barely registers on the electricity bill. In countries like Italy and the UK gas sets the price 90% of the time. The difference is enormous. I spoke to @politico.com about this. www.politico.eu/article/spai...

People have really lost trust in their social media feed--algorithms have amplified the worst voices.

Rachel Ziemba in this post / interview discusses the effects. rziemba.substack.com/p/why-are-oi...

The more active users are on social media, the more polarized they are! The opinions of the these extreme users are filling your newsfeed, but they are not representative of most citizens or even most social media users--which are far less polarized! arxiv.org/pdf/2603.021...

An analysis of over 14 million social media posts from accounts in Canada found that 87% of conspiratorial claims come from just 100 influencers. This minority of users impacts politics, influencing what people view as normal and leads to self-censoring to avoid attacks from conspiracy theorists.

Fascinating

Fascinating

@aoc.bsky.social journalists shouldn’t use any social media platform as a measure of public sentiment as it’s very skewed by a vocal minority who post a lot. “97 % of political posts from Twitter/X come from just 10 % of the most active users on social media” www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

"Does 200 lines of Python code understand anything? My siblings in Christ I hope it’s clear how utterly bizarre this question is." www.todayintabs.com/p/a-i-isn-t-...

Excited to be finally giving a talk at TransformGov! 👏👇

If 90s and 00s girls magazines gave women body dysmorphia, LinkedIn is giving people career and life dysmorphia. Social media bias works in both directions it seems. 😢

I've lots of complaints about analytic philosophy (c.f. my blog posts about it being a failing research programme!) but I always need to be clear that my objections to it are absolutely not in the "be clear about your argument structure and the conditions under which your claims would be true" part.

Kent Psychology is hiring 🎓We have two posts: 1) open area and 2) cog neuro. More details can be found here: jobs.kent.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx... Feel free to reach out with questions!

'Four minutes of air conditioning' The new, excellent essay by my colleague @hannahritchie.bsky.social on energy poverty. ourworldindata.org/four-minutes...

The disruptive climate crisis makes hot weather hotter and cold, colder. This year, our overheated planet has been making some of our weather much colder and in Washington much snowier.

Great thread on what it takes to inspire climate action - especially this point on why people often need help with the basics - who do I speak to? How do I convene a group? @parisawright.bsky.social has started a new network to help people set up their own community sustainability initiatives.

I’ve wanted to go to Arizona ever since I watched Boyhood.

Good Morning ☀️ 🏜️ Growing up in Michigan, this is NOT what I thought the desert looked like…

AI makes it much easier to produce fake news and disinformation- but I feel it’s massively under appreciated how much AI chatbots have removed one of the simplest rules of thumb everyone has for whether an article or piece of content is likely to be good or not - which is, how well it’s written.

AI makes it much easier to produce fake news and disinformation- but I feel it’s massively under appreciated how much AI chatbots have removed one of the simplest rules of thumb everyone has for whether an article or piece of content is likely to be good or not - which is, how well it’s written.

Beliefs serve at least two core functions. 1) they help us navigate the world 2) they serve as signals to manipulate others Philosophers & psychologists have focused on the first while largely overlooking the second www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

A new article in Nature Medicine found that social connections were a surprisingly powerful predictor of a long life. Living with a partner was roughly as beneficial as exercise. www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/debunking-...

Are you applying for one of our @cam.ac.uk summer schools? Don't forget that applications for all University of Cambridge programmes close tomorrow. 🚨 summerschools.suttontrust.com/university-p...

Fascinated though not surprised to see a slow but steady decline in the number of US citizens using any form of social media - especially given all the research that shows people think it’s full of toxic horrible content that makes them feel bad about the world.

Fascinated though not surprised to see a slow but steady decline in the number of US citizens using any form of social media - especially given all the research that shows people think it’s full of toxic horrible content that makes them feel bad about the world.

Research finds that people overestimate how many social media users post harmful content--which makes us think the world is worse than it really is. academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

New planet just dropped and it 1) is almost exactly Earth-sized 2) has a year that's almost exactly 1 Earth year. 3) orbits a star that is not a 💢temperamental little shit M-dwarf 💢but is instead a 🧡 good orange boi 🧡 Me for @science.org based on results presented at #RockyWorlds4: 🔭🧪

Making tests option is a bad idea. New research finds that "test score optional policies harm the likelihood of elite college admission for high achieving applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds" www.nber.org/papers/w33389

Fascinating. A proper AI assistant really appeals to me for the convenience, but also, what does it mean to give your health records to an AI company? open.substack.com/pub/theglp1w...

Writing is thinking Outsourcing the entire task of writing to LLMs will deprive us of the essential creative task of interpreting our findings and generating a deeper theoretical understanding of the world.