Eliza Bettinger

Imaging a human saying to you, "i will only ever tell you what i think you want to hear, based on what i know about ppl like you, how you start our conversation, & what you say during it. Sometimes that will sound like truth, sometimes like errors or lies. Now: Let's talk about your medical history"

Beautiful!

Thank you! I’m getting “failed to lad company details” messages every time i click on a company or contract

Update: ICE Says It Won’t Purchase Warehouse Agency buying facilities across U.S. to house detainees

I think Chester is out of the running? highlandscurrent.org/2026/02/21/i...

Thank you!

Anyone have a gift link for this one?

As someone who’s probably on Bluesky blocklists for saying something other than "burn it all down" about AI, it also seems clear that asking for more nuance in these discussions in Dec 2025 is like asking for more nuanced discussion of immigration as masked ICE agents toss people in unmarked vans+

"What I didn’t know was that the role would require me to assume multiple fabricated identities, and use pseudo profiles
created by the company to engage in intimate and explicit conversations with lonely men and women." (via @dairinstitute.bsky.social)
data-workers.org/wp-content/u...

A non-existent paper attributed to ‪Ben Williamson‬ has already been cited 42 times.

It's like Scholarly Communication has been injected with misinformation bombs. Events are totally out of control. No one has a handle on its extent. And, there's no plan to stop it.

@benpatrickwill.bsky.social

I did not use canvas in any of my classes this semester. I set up a google drive (yes, I know, imperfect but I did it in ~1 week) for each class with subfolders for various materials and assignments. Things went well with only a bit more checking in *until* the end of the semester crunch. A thread 🧵

This is what i’m interested in — how many different outputs might it create? Do some contradict each other? Does it repeat the same mistakes?

This! Take time to plan and fortify and relish the world we want to build. Libraries can be such a central piece of that.

You Can’t Fight Fascism While Defunding Libraries “Libraries embody everything that we need right now to fight back against fascism," says Sara Heymann.

Wherever you live, this story has significant implications because the trend of defunding libraries, when we should be fortifying these outposts of learning, sharing, and survival, is a national phenomenon. Libraries are models of the kind of infrastructure we must EXPAND to get the world we want.

You Can’t Fight Fascism While Defunding Libraries “Libraries embody everything that we need right now to fight back against fascism," says Sara Heymann.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has proposed disastrous cuts to our city's libraries while setting aside $5M for a ShotSpotter replacement. As library associate Sara Heymann told me, “Libraries embody everything we need to fight back against fascism.” My piece on what’s at stake and how to fight back:

I really hate it when scientists keep saying that “we need to rebuild trust in science,” because it implies that scientists are to blame for the mistrust rather than the millions of dollars of dark money that have funded political attacks on science in order to advance a far right agenda.

Interesting 🧵

So true and this is what I’ve been saying too.

Our admins say: “We’ve lost public trust.”

No, we’ve bern target of focused attacks for many years and you haven’t lifted a finger to fight back or to protect our work.

Makes it seem like you kind of like where we headed.

It is clear what we need. It is to re-communalise academic publishing. Its costs funding are met by learned societies and their funders; profits go back to research, as do the data it generates. Researchers repeatedly call for this. tinyurl.com/bdekus68rofits

Our libraries are cutting staff so that Elsevier can have its 32% profit margin

The Drain of Scientific Publishing The domination of scientific publishing in the Global North by major commercial publishers is harmful to science. We need the most powerful members of the research community, funders, governments and ...

Profits from scientific publishing are eye-watering, costing us billions. In ‘The Drain of Scientific Publishing’ (arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820), (building on ‘The Strain of Scientific Publishing’ doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00327) we show how it is harmful – and unnecessary.

Our friend Janneke Adema says that scholar-led publishers are not best seen as an alternative to the commercial publishing industry but instead as positioned against the marketised university. We can carve out space for good stuff without wasting effort trying to unseat commercial publishing.

This is the Epstein reading that matters.

And how do we get there? First, stop working with commercial publishers to reform the system. We have had decades of failed attempts at reform in which the only constancy is publishers’ profits. We cannot continually try to reform a broken system.

Over the past months (and at least 11 versions!), I was lucky to work with 11 amazing colleagues on a call to action to reform academic publishing.

Not another declaration, but an appeal to our powerful friends, research funders & institutions, to Stop the Drain of Scientific Publishing. 1/n

My mom was oldest of 13, and utterly unapologetic about having *one.*

I asked about this, and one of our excellent librarians discovered that in fact AI summaries/"Research Assistant" can be switched off at the level of the library. Something to request. support.proquest.com/s/article/Eb...

My last RT goes for university administrators, too.

COMPLICITY NOT COWARDICE. COMPLICITY.

I don't think it's cowardice. I think that they are OK with what the GOP is doing. The sooner folks reconcile with this, the better.

I’m no great fan of the ACA.

I believe we should guarantee health care as a human right through a single-payer Medicare for All system.

But — at minimum — we cannot allow Republicans to destroy our already-broken system by doubling insurance premiums for 20 million Americans.