Kristina McElheran

I have seen a lot of cursed stuff in my time in academia but this is among the *most* cursed.
Grammarly is generating miniature LLMs based on academic work so that users can have their writing ‘reviewed’ by experts like David Abulafia, who died less than two months ago.

NEW at SCOTUS: the court votes 6-3 to block a California law preventing public schools from outing gender-questioning students to their parents.

A lot of people are looking at this as insider trading but it's an even bigger issue for national security if there was advance warning of air strikes.

I am hopeful that the war in Iran will bring needed democratic change to … the United States of America.

This is Gus. He really likes helping bring in the groceries. Makes him feel super strong and super proud of himself. 13/10 we're proud of you too, Gus (TT: angieee677)

The Founders were so concerned about bribery that the Constitution forbids it three separate times (the two emoluments clauses and as the only name impeachable offense besides treason).

Exactly for this reason. A US president pocketing funds from foreign govts leads to actions against US interests.

JD Vance: "We're announcing today that we have decided to temporarily halt certain amounts of Medicaid funding that is going to the state of Minnesota in order to ensure that the state of Minnesota takes its obligations seriously to be good stewards of the American people's tax money."

New details from Epstein files reveal Lutnick had years-long business tie with sex offender The commerce secretary apparently still hasn't come clean on his connection with Epstein.

A MOTHER JONES SCOOP! New details from Epstein files reveal Lutnick had a years-long business tie with the sex offender. This challenges his claim he had minimal contact with Epstein. The two were involved in a deal for six years, and an email shows they discussed it. @nlanard.bsky.social

Many are appropriately outraged by Altman’s comments here implying that raising a human child is akin to “training” an AI model.

This is part of a broader pattern where AI industry leaders use language that collapses the boundary between human and machine.

🧵/

And 🇨🇦

what if i told you OLS is AGI

The “quietly retracted” part troubles me. This should be big and splashy and consequences severe.

This is hard on my nervous system. Also, the dog’s.

Our dog is perplexed that we are staying in a shouting at the TV instead of walking in the woods like we usually do. Sorry, pup!

Same! But maybe should have dialed back the tea, today…

A lot of people, including me, were wondering how an IRB could ever approve this study.

The answer is that no IRB did. The person who “signed off” on approval from the only ethics board that reviewed it had resigned three years earlier. His signature was used without his knowledge.

COVID-19 vaccination status during pregnancy and preeclampsia risk: the pandemic-era cohort of the INTERCOVID consortium COVID-19 vaccination with a booster reduces the odds of PE by 30% approaching 60% reduction among women with pre-existing morbidities.

Remember when RFK Jr. unilaterally decided that COVID19 vaccines should no longer be recommended during pregnancy?

Well, COVID19 increases the risk of preeclampsia.

And it turns out that getting boosted, either before or during pregnancy, significantly reduces the risk of preeclampsia.

A fake ICE tip line reveals neighbors reporting neighbors A Nashville comedian’s deportation hotline, set up as a joke, has gone viral among viewers who say it shows the “banality of evil personified” in the U.S. immigration crackdown.

New: A comedian set up a fake ICE tip line as a joke. Then 100 calls flooded in: neighbors ratting on neighbors, a teacher reporting a kindergartener. Fans say the viral TikToks revealed deportation's "banality of evil." Conservatives say he should be in prison wapo.st/4kM4qbF

Computer controversy continues - UPI Archives House Republicans continued their campaign against the White House's so-called Big Brother computer system Tuesday by challenging the Clinton administration...

I know it sounds like I'm writing from the 19th century but Republicans and the news media were once very very concerned with how the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton may have put names into a computer.

www.upi.com/Archives/199...

We need to talk about the right’s new voter suppression target: Women The SAVE Act would make it harder for married women in particular to vote, and that is just one part of the MAGA right's misogynist project.

It is essential to take the threat to women’s voting rights posed by the SAVE Act within the wider context of coercive and misogynistic views on the right.

I wrote about it for @liberalcurrents.com

www.liberalcurrents.com/we-need-to-t...

84 years sounds like a long time. And I know in some ways it is. But it's also not that long. I still have living relatives who were in the camps and who were old enough to remember it. This isn't abstract or ancient history. It's part of the living memory I grew up with.

They raided the jailed children to steal their letters.

The problem, in federal officials' minds, wasn't confining children in prison-camp conditions; it was that the children could tell the public about it.

On January 10, 2026, while driving back to work after getting lunch with his father and cousin, a car quickly passed O., sped up, then stopped in front of him. (Id. ¶ 3.) A few men in civilian clothes stepped out of the car and asked for his identification. (Id.) The men threatened O.—if he did not get out of the car, they would force him out. (Id.) O. exited the car and was told he was under arrest. (Id.) The men handcuffed him and did not allow him to bring his phone. (Id.) O. felt like he was being kidnapped. (Id.) The men detained O., his father, and his cousin, taking them all to Whipple. (Id. ¶ 4.) At Whipple, there was “food scattered on the floor, the floor was sticky with mud, and everything stuck to your shoes.” (Id. ¶ 5.) The space was so cramped that sometimes there was no space to sit on the floor. (Id.)

The horror stories rolling in from Minnesota are just the tip of the iceberg. This 20-year-old, who's lawfully present in the country, was arrested for being Latino, then jailed in a filthy cell where he couldn't even sit down. 18 days of illegal detention. democracyforward.org/wp-content/u...

This was a first for me today:

On the phone with customer service call center at a financial services firm. Human answers the phone and introduces himself as a virtual assistant (?!).

I had a 10-minute call with this guy who was obviously reading a chatbot's responses off a screen.

Weird.

The current person in charge of ICE's procurement for detention is a GEO Group executive who ran the company's immigration detention portfolio. He was granted an "ethics waiver" from DHS allowing him to hand out contracts to GEO in his new role.

Screenshot of a CNN segment shared by Acyn. A split-screen shows commentator Lydia Moynihan on the left and Kevin O’Leary on the right during a heated exchange. The chyron reads, “Obama: Dems need to avoid scolding and ‘virtue-signaling.’” The post quotes O’Leary referencing China and concentration camps, and McGowan responding about West Virginia.

I spent my childhood inside of American concentration camps. I know one when I see one. And that is what ICE is building.

I encourage everyone to sit with the term "ethics waiver" for a minute.

Every single article on an issue starts with a descriptive statistic about how prevalent/important it is. But if you happen to be in the business of generating those statistics, your work will be dismissed as “merely descriptive.” #EconSky

Left side profile of the pheasant who regularly visits my mum and dad's garden on the day he first became a pheasant monk and got a tonsure.

The pheasant who regularly visits my mum and dad's garden, looking straight on us while daring us to suggest he is partly made of fuzzy felt.

A more relaxed side of the pheasant who regularly visits my mum and dad's garden, but where he still looks like he is the product of an industrious afternoon from a local fibre arts group.

I absolutely refuse to believe that the pheasant who regularly visits my mum and dad’s garden is real and has not in fact been crocheted.

In PA, which John represents, the EDPa has had to reject *NINETY* attempts to imprison people “without cause, without notice, and in clear violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act.” The cases keep coming because of Trump’s defiance.