John Flournoy

Gonna be thinking about this lede for a minute.

hailey ‪@hailey.at‬ an unfortunate irony about this post - and even if you are the staunchest anti-ai critic out there, i think you’d agree - is that some of the most bigoted things are being said to respond to this. copy/pasting phrasing and terminology used by bigots but replacing “dna” with “bits” doesn’t make it ok ‪⚡️🌙‬ ‪@dystopiabreaker.xyz‬ · 6d i’m completely serious when i say that much of the dismissive ai discourse on here fires the bigotry neuron October 4, 2025 at 11:03 AM 11 reposts 305 quotes 260 likes 39 saves ‪hailey‬ ‪@hailey.at‬ · 3d if you’re writing a sentence that sounds like eugenics but you go “oh that’s fine to say because it’s not a real person” (whatever that means) you may want to consider what made you okay with saying that

Hailey's original post doesn't sound like she's referring to this kind of slippage unless that's what she was trying to say with "copy/pasting phrasing and terminology used by bigots but replacing 'dna' with 'bits' doesn’t make it ok"?

Sloppy phrasing but maybe so.

I once knew a girl who slept in a coffin throughout middle school and high school. And if you know, you know: she's kicking the most possible ass right now professionally.

Goths get it.

Two kinds of flowers on different sprigs of bushes crisscrossed in the middle of the image. On one, they are stubby like a flower with no petals and clustered amid short green leaves. On the other, the flowers have formed tight brush like bundles that are starting to open into fluff to carry seeds away.

#BloomScrolling #MendocinoCoast
Coyote brush, male and female.

Government shutdown hits air travel, closing a control tower and causing delays across the country | CNN The impact of the government shutdown hit travelers across the United States Monday, as air traffic controllers called out sick, closing a control tower and leading to delays at major airports.

"Controllers are considered essential workers, so they must work during the shutdown, but are not being paid"

...

"The number of controllers calling out sick has increased since the start of the shutdown, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a news conference"

www.cnn.com/2025/10/07/u...

The point here is that, um, the conversation has been had. It is being had loudly. We are witnessing the very physical effects of the "conversation."

SIMPLER TIMES

Welcome to the entropy superhighway.

Saw a linkedin from a C-suite that said "Things are messed up, MAGA really is hurting a lot of people." To which a C-suite (bro-gendered), replied, "I encourage you to have a sincere conversation with people who think differently so you don't risk living in an echo chamber."

and how is this a reasonable political strategy? "but I didn't SIGN the bill". That will assuage critics. Clearly. WTF.

yes, I concur. Wtf.

"They'll never use that <massively privacy intruding technology> against us like Big Brother, there are laws against it" said someone. #privacy

WOW. wow. just wow. Found Art, really.

A press release dated October 7, 2025, with the headline: “Attorney General Ken Paxton Launches Undercover Operations to Infiltrate and Uproot Leftist Terror Cells in Texas After Increased Political Violence.” The statement claims rising left-wing violence, referencing the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and outlines Paxton’s directive for undercover investigations. A highlighted quote from Paxton reads: “Leftist political terrorism is a clear and present danger. Corrupted ideologies like transgenderism and Antifa are a cancer on our culture and have unleashed their deranged and drugged-up foot soldiers on the American people.” The text further accuses the radical Left of fostering political violence, referencing incidents involving Antifa-like groups and a supposed assassin tied to transgender movements. It also notes that President Trump designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, with Paxton vowing sweeping investigations into radical leftist groups.

In a press release, Texas Attorney General calls "transgenderism" a "corrupted ideology" that is "a cancer on our culture."

This is openly genocidal rhetoric about trans people from a sitting AG.

Eeek. "I hate an efficient finite program M that runs in quadratic time" is actually different from other hate statements, it turns out.

But, digging into that post i maybe hear a true thing that sparked it(?) I've certainly gotten vitriol by stating "next token prediction models are fun".

Uf that is a poorly thought out quoted post. The reducto is practically on the face of it.

Dunno guys maybe states should stop paying federal taxes weird no one has come up with a plan for this obviously no one saw this coming it was impossible to predict

Opinion | Six surgeons general: It’s our duty to warn the nation about RFK Jr. We took an oath to declare dangers when we found them. We’re doing that again today.

“Never before have we issued a joint public warning like this. But the profound, immediate and unprecedented threat that Kennedy’s policies and positions pose to the nation’s health cannot be ignored.” www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

This is a fun thread, scroll up.

Yes. Yes they did. 😭

Oh hey looks like this was it. Left a note asking him ("mustache guy") to explain himself. This morning the "buy one get one" was crossed out.

I'm proud of him.

Causal inference interest group, supported by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies Seminar series 20th October 2025, 3pm BST (UTC+1) "Making rigorous causal inference more mainstream" Julia Rohrer, Leipzig University Sign up to attend at tinyurl.com/CIIG-JuliaRohrer

Happy to announce that I'll give a talk on how we can make rigorous causal inference more mainstream 📈

You can sign up for the Zoom link here: tinyurl.com/CIIG-JuliaRo...

Knowing individual researchers involved here, I can say this: These actions were several years ago and not uncommon. The only difference is that researchers warned against something that was obviously illegal. Gray zone calls happen every single day.

What's remarkable about the times story is that we learn almost nothing about who Bari Weiss is or what TFP actually promoted.

N.J. city has no summer homicides for first time in a half-century Crime has dropped sharply in Camden in the past decade.

Just dropping this here to show what community policing (what Camden Co actually calls Unity Policing) can do. Our cities don’t need ICE, they need outreach and social services www.nj.com/camden/2025/...

Time for my annual reminder that, thanks to the precedent set by economists, ANY group can establish their own Nobel Prize for ANYTHING. Come on people, get creative.

I mean yeah not speaking from personal experiences of course. OF COURSE.

Furious Minds The story of the radical conservative intellectual movement shaping Donald Trump’s agenda—and how it threatens American freedoms, values, and democracy

My friend @lkatfield.bsky.social has a book coming out that I think is essential reading for everyone. A starred review in Publisher's Weekly called it a "formidable debut ... a meticulous and unsettling revelation of a right-wing plan for a 'new old-fashioned world.'"

At least it's not the early pickup day!! 😭

The three aforementioned related themes sketched out in this section, will play out in the AI-social psychology relationships we will examine — namely: a. misunderstanding of the statistical modelswhich constitute contemporary AI, leading to inter alia thinking that correlation implies causation (Guest, 2025; Guest & Martin, 2023, 2025a, 2025b; Guest, Scharfenberg, & van Rooij, 2025; Guest, Suarez, et al., 2025); b. confusion between statistical versus cognitive models when it comes to their completely non-overlapping roles when mediating between theory and observations (Guest & Martin, 2021; Morgan & Morrison, 1999; Morrison & Morgan, 1999; van Rooij & Baggio, 2021); c. anti-open science practices, such as closed source code, stolen and opaque collection and use of data, obfuscated conflicts of interest, lack of accountability for models’ architectures, i.e. statistical methods and input-output mappings are not well documented (Barlas et al., 2021; Birhane & McGann, 2024; Birhane et al., 2023; Crane, 2021; Gerdes, 2022; Guest & Martin, 2025b; Guest, Suarez, et al., 2025; Liesenfeld & Dingemanse, 2024; Liesenfeld et al., 2023; Mirowski, 2023; Ochigame, 2019; Thorne, 2009).

Being able to detect and counteract all these three together comprises the bedrock of skills in research methods in a time when AI is used uncritically (see Table 1). The inverse: not noticing these are at play, or even promoting them, could be seen as engaging in questionable research practises (QRPs; Brooker & Allum, 2024; Neoh et al., 2023; Rubin, 2023). Therefore, in the context of critical AI literacy for social psychology, and indeed cognitive, neuro-, and psychological sciences in general, the three points above serve as totemic touchstones, as litmus tests for checking somebody’s literacy in AI (Guest, 2024; Guest & Martin, 2021, 2025a, 2025b;

Guest, Scharfenberg, & van Rooij, 2025; Guest, Suarez, et al., 2025; Suarez et al., 2025; van Rooij & Baggio, 2021; van Rooij & Guest, 2025; van Rooij et al., 2024b). To wit, if somebody is able to minimally articulate these three related issues, how they manifest, and why they matter to our science, we can rest easy they know the basics of how to critically evaluate AI products in science.

Without Critical AI Literacy (CAIL) in psychology (doi.org/10.31234/osf...) we risk the following:

1️⃣ misunderstanding statistical models, thinking correlation is causation;

2️⃣ confusing statistical models and cognitive models, undermining theory;

3️⃣ going against stated open science norms.

4/