Caught the Stranger Things finale at an @8pm sold-out showing. Whatever the critics say about it (& I’m sure there will be plenty)— as the lights came up there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Audience cheered & clapped & sobbed What a terrific experience to share Thanks for a great ride 💜

a neat (and scary) survey into AI "companions" and kids www.aura.com/reports/stat... "nearly half of the time kids and teens use AI, it is for companionship, and when they do, the themes of discussion are primarily sexual, romantic, and violent."

As an educator, I have a mandatory reporting duty to alert my school if I suspect a student is a victim of abuse, manipulation, and/or harassment. What happens when ChatGPT is the perpetrator? For context, I teach "AI" and machine learning. I'm not anti-tech but GenAI should be shot into the sun.

23andMe’s bankruptcy is more than a failed biotech story, write Zeena Nisar, Gregory Shelby, and Amr Yakout. It reveals deep cracks in how the United States governs genomic data — exposing the the nation to serious privacy and national security risks.

Mirrored here for when that gets taken down: archive.org/details/3mam...

Some PCP’s “say Care Connect is eroding the in-person option. They argue that instead of spending a chunk of the network’s $400 million pledge to shore up primary care on AI, the network should use more of its funds to attract and increase pay for primary care staffers.”

Oh you know, just a typical Sunday in Western Mass, attending a Drunk Opera History performance of the Messiah. Vegan butternut bisque & beers on hand at the Iron Horse. Audience is probably ~80-90% retirees with full scores in their hands. Delightful.

“Once an AI pathology tool had identified a person’s race, they became overly-obsessed with finding previous analyses that fit that particular identifier.”

Post-doc positions: "Academic freedom is under pressure today. This requires rescue havens of free research. ... [we] invite early career researchers, whose work is restricted due to political pressure in the USA..." uni-freiburg.de/frias/call-f...

NEW: They kept saying they were gonna do it and now they've done it A group of clowns (Senators) have introduced a bill to FULLY REPEAL Section 230. No reform, no replacement, just utter destruction of all online free speech. We can't let this happen. Share & take action www.badinternetbills.com

The White House claims the vote to rename the Kennedy Center was “unanimous.” That is false. I was muted on the call and denied the opportunity to speak or register my opposition. That is not consensus. That is censorship.

For a lot of people in Minnesota, these assassinations have been the backdrop to a lot that's happened since. There's some dismay that the country barely blinked before it moved on. www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

Every year I tell myself I’m gonna organize an alternate conference to AACN’s Doctoral Education in Nursing conference. And every year the date passes me by. But this is a year for bold action. Anyone else interested in a Not-an-AACN Doctoral Education in Nursing conference?

The name "Popular Science" doesn't mean we shift our coverage depending on public opinion. It means we cover relevant subjects that are rigorously researched, reliable, and grounded in reality. And trans lives are grounded in reality. We see y'all. No matter what. www.popsci.com/science/tran...

Never before have I been more excited to skip an AACN Doctoral Education in Nursing conference.

This is why many nurses don’t trust ANA to speak for the profession. Teaching nurses about AI isn’t the same as giving us real influence over adoption. When ANA partners upstream with vendors, those choices are no longer neutral. Nurses notice.

A thread on my thoughts about the email that arrived in my inbox this morning, announcing new microgrant opportunities for A.I. & nursing innovation, courtesy of the ANA & Hippocratic A.I. 🧵 ⬇️

But I am even more disappointed in the ANA (who has several of its members on Hippocratic A.I.’s advisory boards), for enabling what is -in the long term- a disaster capitalist effort to reap profits of coerced A.I. adoption—> an effort that will ultimately deskill the workforce & dehumanize care

The American Nurses Association’s new A.I. & nursing microgrant program is sponsored by Hippocratic A.I. They claim it is to “empower” nurses to lead in A.I. adoption I just… WTF are we even doing here? Seriously - WHAT ARE WE DOING

'“This is yet more evidence that the public is footing the environmental bill for some of the richest companies on Earth,” said Donald Campbell, the director of advocacy at Foxglove, a UK non-profit that campaigns for fairness in tech.' www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

F************************

The world is on fire but I’m still excited to read this as the title alone RESONATES

This is possibly the most significant attack on trans rights in this country yet, and I can count the number of posts on my timeline about this on my hands. If you're trying to dismiss this thinking "It'll die in the senate," DON'T! Sound the alarms now!

My wife just told me about a mom who was feeling shamed for not adopting the surveillance culture-promoting cop Elf on a Shelf. Parents - if you’re feeling such unmerited shame, pleeease let me introduce you to my friend: Snail On A Rail Why is Snail on a Rail better than Elf on a Shelf? Here—>

Tomorrow, the House of Representatives will vote on a bill that bans gender-affirming medical care for any transgender person under 18, and threatens any medical professional providing this care to youth with 10 years in prison. Tell Congress to protect trans youth and vote NO.

Stares at this Executive Order in oncology nurse 👀 👀 👀

“What’s more, the review must be conducted first with a ‘computational text analysis tool’ that scans for terms “that may potentially be associated with misalignment with the administration’s priorities,” per the guidance.” So shitty tech is gonna do book-burning, but with NIH grants. F*** this.

We are failing our kids

This is like one of those quizzes you can’t get wrong because they’re all *awful*.

we can kill them all if we just work together and ✨believe💫

Me, searching for the “All of the Above” option-

🚨 THE BATTLE BEGINS 🚨 Your favorite year-end contest is back. It’s time to choose who will be this year’s Worst Person In Tech for 2025! Each day of this week new matchups will drop until we choose the winner on Friday. 🗳️ Cast your ballot: twsu.forms.app/worst-person...

Merriam-Webster’s human editors have chosen ‘slop’ as the 2025 Word of the Year.

Building upon the excellent foundations of this idea to further suggest: Writing Retreat Train.

After 2+ weeks on the pneumonia train it’s quite a relief to disembark I love trains but this ain’t it

I said no to a major project today. One that would have otherwise aligned with my goals, & that I am good at, but it would have completely disrupted my long-planned sabbatical. Please clap. 👏

"Starting Jan. 1, in six states selected to take part in a federal pilot program, traditional Medicare recipients will face a new hurdle to get certain procedures covered -- private AI companies that get paid based on how many claims they deny..." www.kuow.org/stories/thou...

A 27 year old man in end stage kidney failure was told if he wanted his dialysis he has to sign self deportation papers. “If you want to leave, sign. If not, you're going to die here." Withholding of life saving medical treatment should be considered torture. www.wfae.org/race-equity/...

@npr it’s not a principle. It is a constitutional guarantee.

As someone who spent years helping to facilitate pediatric vaccine delivery (including HepB vax) in resource-deprived areas where mothers often walked 14+ miles to the clinic in 100+ degree heat just for a chance to protect their little ones from unnecessary (& all too common) death—> I am appalled

Legions of unpaid, under-resourced, financially precarious caregivers of folks with dementia syndromes-watching all the tech titans & health innovators who are giddy over promises surveillant A.I. will diagnose Alzheimer’s->wondering how any of this will meaningfully support THEM & their loved ones?

No. No it can’t. At least not accurately. And we should think LONG & hard about what it means to “diagnose” something you have no intention of bringing resource to treat. Through eye scans. That could be collected without someone’s express consent. This version is a recipe for weaponized med tech.

Abject.

My employer, Dartmouth College, today boasts it's 1st Ivy "to launch AI at an institutional scale." It is doing this by partnering--"more than a collaboration"--with Anthropic, a company that stole the books of many faculty, me included, which many of us are suing.

I’ve been thinking about the intellectual and affective labor involved in reading AI Generated student papers. I’m forecasting a little of the proposal that @cnygren.bsky.social and I advance in a piece that’ll be out soon but here’s where I’ve personally landed (o speak for myself not for us both):

The actual F

Twelve former commissioners of the FDA express concern that the agency’s recent moves will undermine a regulatory model designed to ensure vaccine safety, effectiveness, and availability. www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

For a time in my 20s I worked with the International Rescue Committee supporting the transition of resettled Somali Bantu refugees These families had endured all manner of uncertainty, upheaval & hardship- searching for safety & a better life These experiences left me with a deep respect for them

Headline: "AI can replace 11.7% of workforce" Actual study: Anthropic paid MIT to use a "labor simulation tool" that said 11.7% of TASKS could be done by AI

After you read the Prasad memo, read this.