Taylor Sosa

This is a quote from the article summing up both studies in Technology Review: "A multi-university team of researchers has found that chatting with a politically biased AI model was more effective than political advertisements at nudging both Democrats and Republicans to support presidential candidates of the opposing party. The chatbots swayed opinions by citing facts and evidence, but they were not always accurate—in fact, the researchers found, the most persuasive models said the most untrue things."

Two independent studies found that AI chatbots were better at persuading voters than political ads. The most persuasive bots also lied the most. This is something that humans working in psyops have known for decades. AI is psyops at scale. www.technologyreview.com/2025/12/04/1...

I miss living in a republic.

I am exhausted by the number of cis people who want to seriously discuss the grade when terrorizing and ruining the life of a trans TA is the goal.

The real 1A issue is that a trans grad student was targeted by the state for punishment while a network of malignant political operatives who helped it happen celebrate.

None of the people picking apart the assignment want to engage with that, for probably bad reasons. It’s frustrating.

Katelyn and others have made the point that this attack on academic freedom is inseparable from the simultaneous attack on trans identity. This is becoming a routine part of the playbook. They want to take everything from trans people, academics is just the latest front.

This TDoR, I'm thinking about Elisa Rae Shupe, who died by suicide in January of this year. It's been hard for me to think about Elisa; she did what she did because she believed it would call national attention to a crisis, and it didn't. Stay alive, because death saves no-one, especially not you.

“Win every election” is not a viable strategy for preventing authoritarianism

So cool that whenever someone asks the president, “did you eat the Lindbergh baby” he’s like, “no but I’d be allowed to, I have the right to, I might do it later”

"Just the other day, I was in the audience at Lincoln Center when Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, while promoting a new book, that she doesn't think the United States is in a constitutional crisis," Farias told us. "Today, the Supreme Court, without offering a single line of reasoning, more or less declared that the Fourth Amendment, which protects everyone from unreasonable searches and seizures, nonetheless allows the Trump Administration to arrest and detain anyone who looks Latino, citizen or not, on account of the language that they speak or the kind of jobs they do. The ruling putatively covers the Los Angeles area, but the effect could be national," he continued. "If that's not a constitutional crisis, then what is?"

The New Yorker asked me “how bad” today’s Supreme Court ruling was. I boiled it down to one paragraph:

link.newyorker.com/view/5bda429...

Trump DOJ is looking at ways to ban transgender Americans from owning guns, sources say | CNN Politics Senior Justice Department officials are weighing proposals to limit transgender people’s right to possess firearms, according to two officials familiar with the internal discussions.

Ban assault weapons, not trans people.

It’s not just that the President of the United States posted a video of eleven people being murdered in international waters it’s that the President of the United States ordered the murder of eleven people in international waters so he could post a video of it.

Big Summary LGBTQ Bills

Historical look at anti- & pro- LGBTQ legislation numbers from 2009 through the present?

The positive stuff is not as complete as I'd like from 2019-2022 but I'm working on it:

docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Dumbest fucking timeline.

If Donald Trump is this casual about calling himself a dictator we can and should acknowledge how you have to force dictators out of power.

Drive the care out of large hospitals and then laden small providers with increasingly expensive and unnecessary equipment regulations. Welcome to the anti abortion playbook.

To put it bluntly, this is a fucking disaster. For consumers, for small businesses and artists, for everybody. The US is cutting ourselves off from the rest of the world and for what?? Even if this gets sorted out or walked back, it’s going to cause a major disruption.

I know there's a lot of controversy about the Cracker Barrel logo, so I worked up a new option that should be good with everyone... The barrel is back, but it's now guarded by Scubble, The Cracker Goblin. I also worked up a new slogan for the company!

The establishment on both sides is telling us in different ways "focus on white men ONLY."

A very mistaken list of the last 12 presidents of the United States and their years in office produced by the Ph.D level scholar known as ChatGPT-5. Includes John F. Katwady, president 1991-1968; George W. bush, president 220Z-1999), and Bill Christen, president 1999-2001

I've seen this on Bluesky and had to try it myself. The image below was the response to the prompt: "Show me a diagram of the US presidents since Herbert Hoover, with their names and years in office under their photos" Bravo, OpenAI, bravo.

I analyzed more than 100 extremist manifestos: Misogyny was the common thread Gender identity–driven violence is the most common ideological theme across ‘lone-actor’ extremist manifestos in a recent study.

I analyzed more than 100 extremist manifestos: Misogyny was the common thread. “Misogyny now acts as a ‘gateway drug’ to broader extremist ideologies. This is particularly true in digital spaces where hate and grievance are cultivated algorithmically.” [theconversation.com]

In private group chat, GOP lawmakers made crude jokes about a Democratic colleague's clothing The thread was sparked by a photo that was later posted to social media, unleashing online harassment.

The difference between Colorado state legislators and the anonymous sexist and racist trolls who post on X is that the legislators wear nametags and get paid by taxpayers. Excellent reporting by @cprnews.bsky.social. www.cpr.org/2025/08/06/c...

Colorado’s Democratic Gov Jared Polis has again found common ground with the Trump administration: keeping poor kids from getting soda using food benefits. #copolitics

Chronically ill people: You should rest when you feel sick.

Some of the same chronically ill people: But, not me, I have to work, sometimes at my own peril.

I’m here to tell you at this point using the excuse that WWE is your “comfort hobby” doesn’t absolve you of actively supporting the sports wing of fascism

Trans people are now banned from UPenn, Harvard, Brown, Cornell, Columbia, intntnl track & field, the Olympics, chess, darts, most federal jobs, the US military & intelligence services, federal facilities, public bathrooms in most states, & many local sports. Seems bad! Let me know what I missed!

a lot of rank and file dems do not seem to understand that trans people are in an existential battle for our right to be part of society right now. the government today is trying to use employment law and federal extortion to ban us from bathrooms.

The housing shortage isn’t just about homelessness.

It’s also the young person who can’t afford to move out. It’s the couple who can’t get a place big enough to have children. It’s the people stuck with roommates (or even in abusive relationships) because they can’t get a place of their own.