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alapite.bsky.social

@alapite.bsky.social
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Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 27/09/2026
Four days ago, a scientist was surprised by the news that Anthropic discovered new virus genes for making DNA. He says he’s been studying them for years—and feeding his data to Anthropic’s AI as part of his own research. Coincidence? Here’s my story. nyti.ms/3VSWayc
nyti.ms
Did Anthropic’s A.I. Really Make a Scientific Discovery on Its Own? (Gift Article)
An expert at the University of Copenhagen said his team had been sharing its research with the company’s A.I. model, Claude, and that its new finding matched their work.
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Matt Ford @mford.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Ezra Klein asked Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about AI making kids worse at math and reading. Huang’s reply: “Does it matter?” Then he said he doesn’t know his own address or phone number. “We’re going to lose some fine intellectual dexterity.” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/o...
So the message of this research out of China, where you were seeing a lot of kids using A.I. to help them, was that when they were using the A.I., they were getting things done faster. But it turned out that the skills they were learning were not holding, that their actual personal performance, at least in the way we traditionally measure it, was degrading.

What do you think when you hear that?

The last part — I completely agree. Try to get a kid to do long division right now. The multiplication table is starting to be forgotten. Doing square roots, my goodness. Basic math is being forgotten. Does it matter?

That’s my question for you.

Yeah. I don’t think it does. I don’t think it does.

But there must be some set of skills that matter.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But maybe not those. We’re going to discover new ones. Just maybe not those.

There are a lot of skills that don’t matter. My first confession, I actually don’t know my address.And I ——

I don’t really believe that to be true.

It’s completely true. Janine will tell you and Lori will tell you.

One day I had to pump gas — it was a few years ago. They needed my ZIP code, and I panicked. I didn’t know my ZIP code. I don’t know my telephone number. I forget these things. I can live with it.

But let me take the other side because I don’t want to fall into a thing where, because some skills can be safely offloaded ——

Yeah.

I also can’t get anywhere without a mapping system now. Never could, frankly. But I’m a big reader. And one of the skills I really value, one of the capacities I have that I really value is an attention span formed on physical books.

You’re a big reader. I’ve read about the kind of reading you do. And there is, prior to A.I., a lot of concern and noticing among college professors and others that the way people use the internet has probably shortened attention spans.
Some skills can be safely given away. Others are valuable. They are capacities that are needed for that flexibility, for that creative thinking, for that focus. It can’t be the case that everything can be traded off.Some skills can be safely given away. Others are valuable. They are capacities that are needed for that flexibility, for that creative thinking, for that focus. It can’t be the case that everything can be traded off.

Yeah. Well, I think that we’re going to lose some finer intellectual dexterity, but we’re going to be better systems thinkers.

Today’s engineers are far better systems thinkers than I was when I graduated from school. But I was a much better transistor thinker.

What do you mean by systems thinker?

They think of large systems. Today’s computers have trillions, hundreds of trillions of transistors in them. When I first graduated from school, the first chip I worked on had 200 transistors. I knew every one of them by name. No engineer does that today. Most engineers now work well above the transistor, well above the functionality, and they’re cobbling things together to do things.

So you need to think much more about systems and interactions of systems. So some of the lower-level knowledge is gone.
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Justin Baragona @justinbaragona.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Welp. According to Semafor, David Ellison has discussed bringing Elon Musk on as an investor in Paramount's merger with Warner Bros., which could mean Musk could have a stake in CBS News and CNN. www.semafor.com/article/09/2...
semafor.com
Exclusive: Paramount weighs tapping Musk for equity investment
A cash injection from SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk could reduce investor Larry Ellison’s financial burden and bolster the deal’s investor base.
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Matt Hodges @matthodges.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Very quick and dirty Jev test for hiring bias. One resume for a Wall Street job; asked whether the applicant should get a first-round interview. 76 evaluations, changing only the first name. 19 of each: White-associated men/women, Black-associated men/women. console.typesafe.ai/playground?s...
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Ben Recht @beenwrekt.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Here’s my first attempt to grapple with AI companies’ conquest of mathematics and our new mathematical condition.
argmin.net
Applied Pure Mathematics
Some thoughts about mathematics as a cultural and social technology.
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SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I'm back, I missed you all. Since this is an important subject I know too much about, here's a 🧵 explaining that AI Safety Is Mostly A Sex Cult. I don't think these people should make policy. (1/?) (alternative title: Time For Some Cult Theory)
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C. Kirabo Jackson @kirabojackson.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
If spending more on schools raises the earnings of the children who benefit, does it eventually make the whole economy richer? My new NBER paper examines this using school-finance reforms. 🧵 www.nber.org/papers/w35755
nber.org
The Macroeconomic Returns to School Finance Reforms: Micro-Calibrated Predictions Meet Causal Evidence
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...
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The Washington Post @washingtonpost.com · 15/09/2026
The 3-hour-and-45-minute “Musk” (plus a 10-minute intermission) hits theaters on Oct. 16, but it’s already causing a stir. The documentary paints Elon Musk as an emotionally unstable grifter with more power and influence than perhaps any other human. wapo.st/4ydlXzL
washingtonpost.com
‘Musk’ film is almost four hours long, engrossing and terrifying. What to know.
The documentary paints the tech trillionaire as a power-hungry megalomaniacal conman with a god complex. Musk accuses filmmaker Alex Gibney of compiling "hit list" against him.
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Matt Bors @mattbors.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
It was exactly ten years ago today, on my 33rd birthday, that I posted this comic online.
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
I wrote this quickly at a bus stop and didn't realize it would go viral, or else I would have worded it better. But the point is that the media is too credulous about AI killing everyone in 10 years (how?) when climate change is killing people now and will only get worse (we know exactly how).
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
I resigned from ExxonMobil today. I spent the last three years doing fossil fuel extraction research at both BP and ExxonMobil. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing to maximize extraction while the window to act closes, and gambling with our lives. More below.
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Simon Lee @simonleewx.com · 10/09/2026
8 years ago, I tweeted side-by-side maps from NASA GISS showing global temperatures in 1976 and 2018 – both hot summers in the UK. It subsequently went viral and was printed in the Daily Mail! The 2026 version is stark. Two locally extreme summers separated by 50 years of global climate change.
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Derek Lowe @dereklowe.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
More and more studies show that vaccination against various infectious diseases also leads to fewer cardiovascular deaths and lower rates of dementia. A rational public health system would be getting as many people vaccinated as possible. But. . .
science.org
More Impossible-to-Ignore Vaccine Effects
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
One reason England does so well is our second generation immigrants outperform their peers which is not true in most OECD countries. We are also very good at integration. And it's v sad that this is never acknowledge in debates on immigration.
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NPR @npr.org · 05/09/2026
The U.N. has backed a new map showing Africa in its true relative size, with the U.S. standing alone in opposition. n.pr/4cq8Sdp
n.pr
The U.N. backs a new world map showing Africa in its true relative size
The U.N. has backed a new map showing Africa in its true relative size, with the U.S. standing alone in opposition.
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Vasabjit Banerjee @vasabjit.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
This just dropped. It proves things folks have suspected for years about the MBA-ization of U.S. industry. I am not an economist, so I can't judge it beyond a certain level. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...
aeaweb.org
Eclipse of Rent-Sharing: The Effects of Managers’ Business Education on Wages and the Labor Share in the US and Denmark
(Forthcoming Article) - We provide evidence that CEOs with a business degree reduce wages and the labor share in the US and Denmark. Firms appointing business managers are not on differential trends a...
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John C. Baez @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
It's gonna get much hotter next summer. Right now the Niño 3.4 anomaly is +2.3°C. The previous record was in 1997 - then the anomaly hit +2.8°C. But we're not even in an El Niño yet! We'll probably get one next year. And then the Niño 3.4 anomaly is expected to hit 3.5-4.3°C. Really scary.
climatecasino.substack.com
More Fucked Today than Yesterday
And even more fucked tomorrow
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Nobel Prize @nobelprize.org · 24/08/2026
We've arrived on Bluesky! We hope you will follow along as we share inspiring, motivational and exciting content about the achievements and individuals that have been awarded a Nobel Prize. Stay tuned.
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Benjamin Riley @benjaminjriley.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Both the Economist and others suggest this study demonstrates that AI can help students. So I contacted the lead researcher to figure out how many. Answer: Out of ~26,000 kids, a total of 20. And five months after starting to use AI, only four continued to spend 65 minutes on homework. Four.
Graph of student exam scores correlated to homework completion time for to groups, students using AI and those that did not. There is a slight spike for studens using AI who also maintained extensive homework completion time. As described in post, the number of students falling into this bucket was 20 out of 26,000.
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Maggie Harrison Dupré @mharrisondupre.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
NEW: Teen boys are using smart glasses — mainly Meta's AI Glasses — to film themselves harassing classmates at school, following girls around and "rizzing" them or "ragebaiting" them w/ insults. In several videos we reviewed, girls plead w/ the poster to stop filming. futurism.com/artificial-i...
futurism.com
Teen Boys Are Using Meta Glasses to Harass and Bully Girls at High Schools and Middle Schools
Teen boys are using Meta's AI glasses to harass and bully victims -- overwhelmingly girls -- at middle schools and high schools.
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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 19/08/2026
I don't think people understand the extent to which this has been a decade plus long billionaire funded campaign (obviously Thiel is involved). We've tried to ring the alarm about these eugenicists but it is too easy for them to get parroted by the mainstream media. bylinetimes.com/2026/08/18/t...
bylinetimes.com
The Peter Thiel-Linked Race Science Network that Penetrated Cambridge University and Targeted Jason Arday
The media's coverage of the academic's life was fuelled by the campaign of an established far-right network
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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
“X’s algorithm learns what you hate and shows you more of it, according to a new study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” www.404media.co/xs-algorithm...
404media.co
X's Algorithm Feeds Off Ragebait and Impacts Democrats More, Study Finds
X is driving engagement by making users fight in the replies.
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Evan Greer @evangreer.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
there is no such thing as "age verification." All "age verification" is actually "identity verification." You can coat it in glitter and "privacy-preserving" wrapping paper. But in the end, mandating age verification means mandating surveillance be built into software and hardware. Period.
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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
In the wake of Arday's death, Nathan Cofnas (who led the X mob against him) states his motivation. Beyond whistleblowing, he states that after a 'revolution' removes professors like Arday, it will open opportunities for him to become 'head of the department of eugenics and race science at Harvard'.
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Met Office - weather and climate @metoffice.gov.uk · 13/08/2026
Temperatures have now provisionally exceeded 37°C 🌡️ Before 2026, the UK had recorded 37°C or higher on only six occasions. This year alone, we've already reached that mark three times.
A table of top temperatures so far. The highest currently at 37.6°C at Charlwood.
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Zack Labe @zacklabe.com · 08/08/2026
🚨 The last three months have averaged the highest global mean sea surface temperature on record relative to any other May-June-July period since records started in 1850... Data from the new @noaa.gov ERSSTv6. 🌊
Green line graph time series of average sea surface temperature anomalies for each May-July from 1850 through 2026. There is large interannual variability, but an overall long-term increasing trend. Anomalies are computed relative to a 1981-2010 baseline.
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Zack Labe @zacklabe.com · 07/08/2026
Preliminary data shows that we may have set a new all-time record high for the daily global average sea surface temperature. The warmth in the ocean has already been quite remarkable over the last several months this year. Find more of our briefing graphics: www.climatecentral.org/climate-brie... 🌊
Line graph time series of daily global mean sea surface temperatures from 1982 to 2026. This year is currently at record high for this time of year. Data is from NOAA OISSTv2.1, and the graphic is created by Climate Central.
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Nature @nature.com · 05/08/2026
A severe bout of COVID-19 can wake up an army of dormant viruses hiding inside the body go.nature.com/4fDUY9w
go.nature.com
COVID can wake up a slew of dormant viruses inside you
Reactivation of typically harmless anelloviruses, in particular, seems to be linked with developing long COVID, study finds.
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Adam Kucharski @adamjkucharski.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Two fictional (presumably AI) stories in recent X posts, now repeated as a Google summary. No need to tell tall tales about your achievements when the AI ecosystem will now do it for you…
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Zack Labe @zacklabe.com · 01/08/2026
A data-driven picture of our rapidly changing planet - updated through June 2026... Download the graphic at zacklabe.com/climate-chan...
Heat map-style graphic showing monthly mean global surface air temperature anomalies from January 1850 to June 2026. There is a long-term warming trend evident in each month. Blue shading is shown for colder months, and red shading is shown for warmer months. Annotations are shown for the year of each warmest respective month. All of these records have occurred within the 2023 to 2025 period in this dataset. Anomalies here are calculated relative to a 1850-1900 baseline. Data is from NOAA/NESDIS/NCEI NOAAGlobalTemp 6.1.0.
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Nahel Belgherze @wxnb.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Bordeaux, France, has now recorded more days above 40°C in 2026 alone than during the entire 105-year period from 1920 (when observations began) to 2025. This is deeply shocking.
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Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
Elon Musk, owner of X, has called the editor of the Economist "a traitor to the West, plain and simple" after her recent interview with him. He now argues that "anyone who opposes remigration is a traitor" Musk has been socialising violence since Aug25: "fight or die, that's what it comes down to"
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Ben Allen @evodynamics.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Congrats we just made it impossible to come here for a PhD www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/16/m...
bostonglobe.com
Trump administration limits student visas to four years, changing longstanding policy - The Boston Globe
The new rule, which also restricts the international students’ ability to transfer schools or change majors without approval in their first year, will go into effect in mid-September.
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Paul A. Lombardo @plombardo2024.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
They are at it again www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....
nejm.org
“Ridding the Race of His Defective Blood” — Eugenics in the Journal, 1906–1948 | NEJM
From the early 20th century until well after World War II, the Journal amplified attention to eugenics and provided important support among medical professionals for the U.S. eugenics movement.
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Sarah Drasner @sarahedo.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
🎉 After 2 years of building it off and on, my side project app is done: Habik: Life Manager! The premise is that you can do hard things. Break them down, and take them one day at a time. Habik takes the guesswork (and the self-negotiation) out of what to do today. apps.apple.com/us/app/habik...
Home screen of the app that shows today's menu of activitiesOnboarding screen that asks what activities you want to partner on with things like journaling, reading, exercise, hobbies and more
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Sam Learner @samlearner.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
wrote for the magazine about the open source software that underpins our digital lives, how it is being upended by AI code tools, and about maintainers as.ft.com/r/b7f62212-9...
ft.com
Who cleans up after the vibe-coding party?
Our obsession with AI code-writing tools is overwhelming the web’s unsung human caretakers
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Good news: We can tell you how much the globe will warm if we continue to burn fossil fuels and emit CO₂ at an alarming rate. Bad news: We’re terrible at telling you how bad the impacts will be, and they’re consistently worse than we predicted.
bloomberg.com
Extreme Heat Stuns Even Climate Scientists Who Saw It Coming
Record-breaking heat waves are even stunning scientists monitoring the acceleration of climate change.
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Zack Labe @zacklabe.com · 01/07/2026
Human-caused climate change is increasing the risk of hotter temperatures, including these dangerous heat waves. Watch the entire distribution shift to the right. I'm afraid these headlines about record heat are only going to become more common. 🌡️ Visualization by svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5613/
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Ed Hawkins @edhawkins.org · 29/06/2026
Just one possible outcome... but the GFS weather forecast model is suggesting 40-41°C is possible in the UK around 7th July. This is a long-range forecast with significant uncertainty, but the fact that we are even seeing such values fairly regularly in the forecasts is extraordinary.
GFS for 7th July
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Chise @sailorrooscout.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
GOOD NEWS! A personalized mRNA vaccine, known as mRNA-4157, has shown promise in keeping melanoma, a deadly skin cancer, from returning. FIVE years later, NEARLY 70% of people in the vaccine group are CANCER-FREE. The vaccine also cut a person’s risk of the cancer metastasizing by NEARLY 60%.
nbcnews.com
A personalized vaccine for melanoma cut the risk of cancer returning after five years
If the vaccine is effective in a late-stage trial, it would be “paradigm-shifting,” one expert said.
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Nahel Belgherze @wxnb.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Paris, the capital of France, has recorded more days above 40°C this week than during the 147-year period spanning from 1872 to 2019. Historic is an understatement.
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Prof Friederike Otto @frediotto.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Europe's worst heatwave so far, in terms of heat stress measures and temperatures - brought to you by fossil fuels. New @wwattribution.bsky.social study showing how such deadly heat became possible in only a few decades. www.worldweatherattribution.org/fossil-fuel-...
A map of Europes with dots for all 854 cities analysed, pink dots for the cities that broke humid heat records, grey dots elsewhere. Pink dots conentrated over Southern UK, Germany, Poland and Benelux.
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Abbey @abbeyarletto.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
When reality surpasses fiction! Top: fictional forecast for August 2050, broadcast by French TV in 2014 to warn about the consequences of global warming. Bottom: Real French forecast for yesterday, June 22, 2026.
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Ed Hawkins @edhawkins.org · 23/06/2026
Happy birthday to the heatwave of 1976 which began today 50 years ago, peaking at 35.9°C. If a comparable heatwave happened in the current climate it would be 3-4°C hotter, peaking at 38-39°C. And the actual forecast is for temperatures of 38-39°C in the next few days with a red heatwave warning.
The summer of 1976 translated into a warmer climate.
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New York Times Opinion @nytopinion.nytimes.com · 22/06/2026
Some bosses say full-time, in-person work boosts productivity or collaboration. “Our new research reveals that the objection to any work from home is more likely to be driven by something else entirely: ego,” write Adam Grant, Marissa Shandell and Courtney Elliott.
nyti.ms
Opinion | The Real Reason Bosses Want You Back in the Office Full Time (It’s Not Productivity)
It’s all about them.
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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
Trump admin told Anthropic it needs to prevent foreign nationals from accessing its Fable models. It seems it will now ask for a selfie and ID from users, with data processed by Persona Industries, funded by Peter Thiel, whose Palantir Industries runs services for ICE.
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Rachel Maddow @maddow.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
Trump and Rubio announce they will entirely cut HIV/AIDS assistance to the country with the highest number of people living with HIV in the world: www.politico.com/news/2026/06...
politico.com
Trump administration to phase out HIV funding for South Africa
The State Department said the country had failed to address the president’s concerns about treatment of its white citizens.
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Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
McSweeney’s on the economics of the AI bubble. This description of AI driven layoffs is excellent satire.
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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
When utilized in literature review, LLMs consistently 1. fail to mention female authors in female-led literatures, 2. insist that men are more influential or more heavily cited when this is contradicted by objective citation counts, and 3. attribute women’s work to hallucinated male scholars.
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