NEW from me in @pnas.org on the risks of data sharing with qualitative research: "Today, confidentiality risks are amplified by social media, surveillance, and AI tools, which make ample data about people publicly available, thus making deidentification less effective" www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Studying who owns US rental housing by using a new method tracing ownership through Census, IRS, and SEC records. Individual landlords own the large majority of rental units in 11 metros, from Kestelman, Diamond, @johneric.bsky.social, Pennington, van Dijk, and Voorheis www.nber.org/papers/w35258

The exploit shows the extreme risk of offloading technical support to AI.

For @us.theguardian.com, I reported on how economic instability, skyrocketing costs of basic needs, and the job market are making it harder for young people to enter adulthood: "It’s never enough."

danah boyd recently argued that social media (as we knew it) is mostly dead; what we have now is parasocial media: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... I agree. Networked social media is disappearing, replaced by a new logic/structure of content creator, creator-centered community, & algorithm.

We’re back in the 2000s I guess

Sure, why not carolinapublicpress.org/75741/nc-meg...

Unfortunately I hear the same argument from liberals and progressives when I ask them to stop engaging with the work of influencers who constantly share misinformation

Here's why so much election analysis is basically useless: A race decided by a point and a half can be blamed on almost anything. Most party autopsies don't stand the test of time, and the narratives that get pushed are mainly exercises in confirmation bias www.gelliottmorris.com/p/2026-05-29...

Scoop: NSF has been quietly blocking new funds and grants to four top universities: Duke, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. Dozens of proposals from PIs at these universities—and their collaborators—have been stuck at the Office of Award Management awaiting finalization for months.

Biggest impact of AI on college admissions is helping poor kids write like rich kids with consultants. But there's a catch: the elite schools already stereotyped them as bad writers, so poor kids get rejected for suspected AI use while rich kids get admitted. arxiv.org/abs/2602.17791

CDC rule would make permanent the ability to bar US entry to anyone, including legal permanent residents, during outbreaks. This is not informed by science, human or viral behavior. It does acknowledge the strain on CDC. #IDsky #healthpolicy #Ebola #quarantine #virology #immunology #publichealth

In 2016, Microsoft released an AI chatbot called Tay. It was supposed to learn from people on Twitter. The internet turned it into a disaster so quickly that Microsoft had to take it offline and apologise.

Duke University plans to build a small data center at Central Campus, potentially the first of several similar-size projects, which has raised questions among some faculty about whether the endeavors could derail the institution’s climate commitments. @insideclimatenews.org @lisasorg.bsky.social

I GET LOGGED OUT. BUT I LOG IN AGAIN

Tom Kane, the prolific voice actor known for his work as Professor Utonium and HIM on “Powerpuff Girls,” “Star Wars,” and much more, has died at 64

The Nationals have identified and banned at least one individual from Nats Park after they unfurled a sign that directed fans to a white nationalist website, according to a team spokesperson. More in here: www.nytimes.com/athletic/728...

it's wild how the dominant political belief in the west is "people from other countries are BAD NEWS" in an age where every video of different people trying each other's food is like "I would like to meet the person who made this and give them a kiss"

“I think a lot of people that we considered when we were operational for three years were very deserving of clemency,” says a North Carolina lawmaker and former judge who served on the state’s now-disbanded Juvenile Sentence Review Board.

Not convinced straight people are real

New paper in Nature. The more a government controls its domestic media, the more it dominates AI training data, the more pro-regime outputs we get from AI. By scraping the open web, LLMs are unwittingly laundering state-coordinated narratives into seemingly objective answers.

New from me. Buried in the staggering numbers of new anti-trans laws is another trend: more and more new laws are creating new criminal penalties. 1 in 4 trans people now lives in a state that has since 2022 created a new misdemeanor or felony penalty related to trans life.

As if Google killing the Fitbit app and adding more surveillance wasn’t bad enough, they’re discontinuing badges. I worked hard for those!!

🚨 NEW TOOL for U.S. legal journalists ⚖️ I turned @allyjar.bsky.social's incredible crowdsourced Google doc on accessing state court records into an interactive map. Check it out and let me know about any errors, missing information, or ways I can improve this thing (link below)

I wasn't all that surprised by what it knew until I got to this part and then I was creeped out

#ncpol did anyone perchance archive the 5/6 11am Mary Belk press conference?

Her routine mammogram, which was mostly covered by insurance, required a follow-up exam. That screening, which confirmed her diagnosis, came with a $790 co-pay.

Bipartisan lawmakers in the North Carolina House are backing a bill that would provide equal health insurance coverage for diagnostic and supplemental breast imaging. ncnewsline.com/2026/05/06/n... #ncpol @christinezhu.bsky.social

A detail I didn’t know: “The Herald entered the Epstein series for a Pulitzer Prize that year, but it was not a finalist. Alan Dershowitz … who helped broker Epstein’s original deal, wrote a letter to the Pulitzer committee that year, urging them not to honor Brown’s work.” share.inquirer.com/THMiUZ

New CDC MMWR shows 50 large TB outbreaks in the US, 2017–2023. 1,092 cases. 23 states. 79% of outbreak cases were US-born. TB is doing what TB does, exploiting the cracks that inequality created through homelessness, substance use, incarceration, poverty. www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes...

Earlier this year, Trump’s Department of Justice released an opinion that a nearly 100-year-old federal ban on mailing handguns through the U.S. Postal Service is unconstitutional and cannot be enforced. And yes, this post is about mifepristone. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

Atrium’s proposed deal with WakeMed would extend the reach of the state’s largest hospital system and raise new competition concerns. Full story: www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2026/05/01/c...

WaPo reports Louisiana’s governor will announce on Friday that he is suspending the House primaries where people have already started voting and redraw the map; I’d expect them to go for an all-Republican map and eliminate both majority-Black districts, not just one.

one of thee movies of all time

The United States now has the most government restrictions on academic freedom of any high-income country. www.chemistryworld.com/news/academi... Raw data from @vdeminstitute.bsky.social —> academic-freedom-index.net/research/Aca...

Federal Policy Changes and Career Stability Among NIH K-Award Recipients Among NIH K-award recipients, 96% perceived recent federal policy changes as negatively affecting research career stability; 18% report being much less likely to continue research vs 1 year ago jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Hi #publichealthsky - there was a website where you could type in a search query and it would show how many NIH grants/how much funding was associated with that search term, but I’m not remembering the name. I remember it being white or light text on a dark (blue?) background. What was it? 🥲

went from “you can’t use state money to present on LGBTQ topics” here in Florida to a Texas public university literally telling students that they can’t write about or study anybody but straight people.

The fact that the US Secretary of Health denies that pathogens cause disease should always be a much bigger story

“A growing number of MAHA supporters embracing shots when measles comes to town calls into question the strength and sustainability of his [Kennedy’s] movement.”

At the end of 2024, the National Academies put out a report concluding the NIH has woefully underfunded women’s health research, and they suggested $15 B should be invested over the next 5 years. Here’s what’s happened instead. Hard to study women’s health if you can’t say “women.” wapo.st/4euUt1c

Books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books

Dr. Cerina Fairfax is remembered as a mentor and community leader as officials call attention to the broader impact of domestic gun violence toward Black women

Love and respect @newsobserver.com but the subject line on this email should’ve led with Fairfax’s death, not his ties to Duke. I had no idea what I was about to open.

At its core, the political economy of scholarship was never supposed to rely on ~$50k from a smelting fortune. Institutions have hollowed out their support, the feds have done the same, and all that's left is inadequate private funding.

haven’t read this yet but should we presume the hospitals using chat bots are continuing the trend of billing patients for messages

Happy 20 years of Neil banging out the tunes 🐀🎶🎉

🚨New publication alert! 🚨 Social Science Quarterly: college students who receive a peer-led, short, in-class presentation about voting are 11 percentage points more likely to vote. Research done w grad and undergrad students at @scharschool.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

The reason it feels hard to get ahead right now is because it's hard to get ahead right now. Wages are barely keeping up with prices, and prices are just starting to heat up.