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.
🧵/
I am sick, absolutely sick, of the retreat of civic society, the media and the other political parties in the face of Reform UK - one of the most existential threats the state structures have faced for decades.
Universities can see what's happened to our US partners and colleagues. There's an example right in front of them of what the authoritarians will do once in power. They can fight back now or lose the ability to do so.
A multimillionaire thinks that paying down the national debt is so important that all the poors should get into the workforce earlier, work in it harder, and stay in it later to help pay it off.
It's the only possible way to do it!
Does studying philosophy make you a better thinker? 🤔
A new study finds philosophy majors outperform all other majors in reasoning, curiosity, and open-mindedness—even after controlling for differences at the start of college.
What are your thoughts? 💭
#philsky #philosophy #betterthinker
After Border Patrol shot two people in Portland, DHS claimed they were "vicious gang members" tied to a past shooting.
But records I obtained reveal a US prosecutor has since directly contradicted DHS, saying, "We're not suggesting he is a gang member." My dive into how DHS' claims have collapsed:
How AI Impacts Skill Formation Judy Hanwen Shen, Alex Tamkin AI assistance produces significant productivity gains across professional domains, particularly for novice workers. Yet how this assistance affects the development of skills required to effectively supervise AI remains unclear. Novice workers who rely heavily on AI to complete unfamiliar tasks may compromise their own skill acquisition in the process. We conduct randomized experiments to study how developers gained mastery of a new asynchronous programming library with and without the assistance of AI. We find that AI use impairs conceptual understanding, code reading, and debugging abilities, without delivering significant efficiency gains on average. Participants who fully delegated coding tasks showed some productivity improvements, but at the cost of learning the library. We identify six distinct AI interaction patterns, three of which involve cognitive engagement and preserve learning outcomes even when participants receive AI assistance. Our findings suggest that AI-enhanced productivity is not a shortcut to competence and AI assistance should be carefully adopted into workflows to preserve skill formation -- particularly in safety-critical domains.
I think often of a tweet I saw that was like "if your kid actually reads books, they're gonna be one of the smartest people in like ten years" arxiv.org/abs/2601.20245
Remember that (1) universities will do absolutely anything to survive; and that (2) they'll make sure other unis close before they'll fail themselves. They will certainly **not** be beacons of resistance - indeed quite the opposite.
www.timeshighereducation.com/news/univers...
Beyond a tiny hardcore of rich universities, if you are an employee in UK Higher Ed you will be somewhere on the treadmill/ slippery slope below. You'll recognise exactly which step you are on at this moment. Take a look. 👇
White House with image of a Black man and an emoji of chains.
And the chosen image is of Don Lemon doing journalism.
The boy holding a bag of haribo confectionary is questioned by a masked IcE agent while three others with weapons stand by
The boy has head bowed, holding his confectionary, as he is taken away.
A teenage boy was walking home in Minneapolis yesterday when four masked men jumped out of a van & questioned him - with no parent or guardian present.
He was bundled into the van & taken away.
Bystanders heard the boy say: “Can I just go home?”
I don’t know how America comes back from all this.
There’s a big story everyone is missing—but this article hits on it.
We aren’t just seeing public health dismantled bc we’ve been taken over by conspiracy theorists and lunatics.
What we’re really seeing is the giant, predatory, underegulated wellness industry come to Washington.
Call me crazy, but I don't think the question of whether or not Bovino belongs in his job depends on whether or not he deletes the tweet he made calling protesters "cannon fodder." Making the tweet (along with many other things he's done) should disqualify him from any law enforcement job ever.
Paul Verhoeven undefeated in creating a movie that flies right over the heads of the people it’s making fun of
Screenshot of a Truth Social post by Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) showing a profile-style card with his name and a formal portrait labeled “Official portrait, 2025.” Below the photo is a table of roles and dates, including a line that reads “Acting President of Venezuela,” with “Incumbent” and “January 2026,” and another line listing “45th & 47th President of the United States,” with “Incumbent.” It also lists “Assumed office: January 20, 2025” and “Vice President: JD Vance.” At the bottom are engagement counts and a timestamp: “8 ReTruths,” “27 Likes,” and “1/11/26, 7:23 PM.”
The guy in the White House just posted that he's the acting president of Venezuela. Insane.
extracting (huge chunks of) books (verbatim) from language models (with jailbreak prompts)
icymi @olivia.science @irisvanrooij.bsky.social @kortizart.bsky.social @emilymbender.bsky.social @alexhanna.bsky.social @victoriastrauss.com @iwriteok.bsky.social
“This is not a hot economy…by multiple measures it’s notably worse than the economy Trump inherited from Biden.
And it may be even colder than reported. BLS employment numbers are often significantly revised…employment numbers may have been overstating job growth…”
open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...
When he tells you who he is, believe him.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/u...
Federal Health Minister Nina Warken: The statements made by the US Secretary of Health are completely unfounded, factually incorrect, and must be rejected. I would be happy to explain this to him personally. In Germany, the constitutionally protected freedom of medical treatment applies. Doctors decide independently and on their own responsibility on the treatment of patients. The scope of services covered by statutory health insurance is based on proven scientific evidence and is not determined by politicians. Patients are also free to decide which therapy they wish to receive. During the coronavirus pandemic, there was never any obligation on the medical profession to administer COVID-19 vaccinations. Those who did not want to offer vaccinations for medical, ethical, or personal reasons were not liable to prosecution, nor did they have to fear sanctions. There was no professional ban or fine for not vaccinating. Criminal prosecution was only pursued in cases of fraud and document forgery, such as the issuance of false vaccination certificates or fake mask certificates.
Too late, this was the reply, translation in alt text.
A woman recording an ICE agent tells him "Shame on you."
The agent responds, "Have you all not learned from the past couple of days?"
"Learned what?" she asks
Then he knocks her phone out of her hand
This is an important and sobering read about a 1943 American pamphlet warning citizens what fascism in America would look like. Every bit of it is happening now
open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...
“Het idee van ‘verantwoord gebruik’ is een sofistisch gedrocht, dat een vals gevoel van morele en pedagogische veiligheid moet creëren”
apache.be/2026/01/09/a... @apache.be
So a CBS Evening News reporter actually did a pretty solid breakdown of the ICE murder video, talking to a former agent who details all the ways Ross messed up. And yet: It didn’t air on the actual show tonight. CBS did post it to YouTube—and it has nearly 800k views already youtu.be/6ywLEESFDu0?...
I think it is probably a bad idea to put clearly unhinged, angry psychopaths in federal law enforcement positions.
Pastor: I said to this ICE agent, 'Take me, stop harassing her.' The agent got in my face, pointed a gun at me, and said, 'Are you afraid now?' To which I said, 'I am not afraid.'
He’s not wrong
unspeakably pathetic stuff from Trump here as he says he'd be honored to accept María Corina Machado's Nobel Prize if she wants to give it up to him
