Sign in

Christopher N. Dougherty

@christopherdougherty.ca
190 followers 647 following 76 posts

I research charities in Canada and the UK. www.christopherdougherty.ca

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Christopher N. Dougherty
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.
892113864
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 21/09/2026
Hallucinated citations are like cockroaches, if you see one there’s more behind the walls
010
Reposted by Christopher N. Dougherty
Canada's National Observer @nationalobserver.com · 04/09/2026
INVESTIGATION: Canada’s National Observer has discovered a network of deceptive, AI-generated websites promoting Albertan separatism. The websites, rather than targeting human readers, are targeting chatbots — trying to influence the answers they provide.
nationalobserver.com
A US-linked network of fake websites is promoting Alberta separatism to AI chatbots
The websites present crude, AI-generated slop disguised as the voice of real Albertans. But they're made in Florida — and they're not even targeting Albertans directly.
11256186
Reposted by Christopher N. Dougherty
SimpsonsQOTD @simpsonsqotd.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
"Hey, Dad, that light says 'check engine'." "Uh-oh. Tape must have fallen off. There. Problem solved."
Season 10 / Episode 8
112826
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 01/09/2026
Not really, between copilot and the embedded design tools, PowerPoint is more GenAI than not. But, unless it’s a course on designing presentation visuals, the visuals aren’t the learning objective or the main thing that I’m assessing.
030
Reposted by Christopher N. Dougherty
Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
New from 404 Media: Google Earth has introduced an AI feature that lets anyone fabricate completely bullshit satellite images. In our own tests, we added a “bomb blast and crater” to an area of Los Angeles. This is a misinformation time bomb, will 100% be abused www.404media.co/google-earth...
22068522698
Reposted by Christopher N. Dougherty
Gerald Butts @gmbutts.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
There’s a lot of algorithmic power focused on fights between Canadians and Americans over wildfires. Somebody’s paying for it. 🌲 🔥
1211232
Reposted by Christopher N. Dougherty
Nature Portfolio @natureportfolio.nature.com · 16/07/2026
There are wildfires burning in Canada and Minnesota, spreading smoke across Canada and the US. Here's a thread of research about wildfires, including causes of previous wildfire seasons in Canada, the health effects of wildfire smoke and how climate change is affecting wildfires. 🧵 🌎🧪
A cloud of smoke, Spreading Creek Wildfire 07-04-2014 close to the Saskatchewan River Crossing, Banff National Park. Credit: Miriam/Adobe stock image
23825
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 06/07/2026
@hydroottawa.bsky.social hi, I'm relocating to Ottawa from outside Canada on 1 August. I've been trying to fill out the move in form since Thursday 2 July and I keep getting an error message on the 'move in details' page saying to try again in 2 minutes. Why can't I fill in the form?
Hydro Ottawa error message saying to try again in 2 minutes
000
Reposted by Christopher N. Dougherty
Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 23/06/2026
Begging news outlets to stop illustrating deadly heat waves with happy beach fun 🏖️😎 and life-saving vaccines with terrifying needle assaults 💉😭. Especially on social media (where many/most people get their news) the photo is the most prominent part of the story; these choices undermine it completely
403311838
Reposted by Christopher N. Dougherty
Seth Abramson @sethabramson.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
(📢) Please RT this 200-post thread on the eve of Elon Musk becoming humanity’s first trillionaire. I’m a Musk biographer, and my opinion—based on my research—is that he’s one of the most dangerous men alive. I urge folks to consider this before aiding in enriching him further.
threadreaderapp.com
Thread by @SethAbramson on Thread Reader App
@SethAbramson: (🧵) THREAD: I'm an Elon Musk biographer. Musk and/or his agents have programmed his AI to make false statements about me that the AI makes no effort to substantiate or correct. So here'...
34777454
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 09/06/2026
Gown prices are too high
120
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 08/06/2026
Oh good, digital mercantilism
030
Reposted by Christopher N. Dougherty
The Guardian @theguardian.com · 10/05/2026
I knew my writing students were using AI. Their confessions led to a powerful teaching moment | Micah Nathan
theguardian.com
I knew my writing students were using AI. Their confessions led to a powerful teaching moment | Micah Nathan
The problem wasn’t just the perfectly polished, yet mediocre prose. It’s what’s lost when we surrender the struggle to translate thought into words
1128176
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 08/05/2026
Right? It’s not even like vaccines, which are hugely effective. CBT is slightly better for somewhat more people with complex trauma than doing nothing at all for them. Mental health is complex, very context dependent, and hugely individual.
020
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 06/05/2026
There’s probably stuff out there on the founding of early school districts, electrification co-ops, producer co-ops, the wheat board, equipment sharing, fire services, and ambulance services. The RCMP and railway are also public goods that enabled rural communities to develop.
120
Reposted by Christopher N. Dougherty
Timothy Caulfield @caulfieldtim.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Slopaganda: pushing lies to normalize separation "A network of inauthentic YouTube accounts is targeting Albertan audiences, exploiting genuinely-held grievances and repurposing them to advance narratives that normalize the prospect of secession and U.S. annexation." www.cdmrn.ca/slopaganda-t...
cdmrn.ca
↳ Slopaganda: The Inauthentic YouTube Network Selling Secession to Albertans — Canadian Digital Media Research Network
23715
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 06/05/2026
there are a bunch of people who promote CBT as a silver bullet cure, but that is the most *cost-effective* treatment that produces statistically significant results in trials when compared to doing nothing and seeing who improves on their own, not the most *effective* treatment for *everyone*
130
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 06/05/2026
A lot of the other ones are a mix of 'just be normal and get over it' and 'come to my workshops and buy my patented treatment'
120
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 06/05/2026
Just as someone who read through most of the recommended pop press books on trauma because reasons, the good part of this book is the first half that's acknowledging what complex trauma is effects on real people. The back half is not good. So if you only read the start of the book, it seems good.
250
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 22/04/2026
Sure smelled like something ;)
010
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 22/04/2026
Mostly ‘this is bad, here’s what the cited papers actually say’ with extra grumpiness in a few cases where the abstract of the cited paper said the exact opposite of what the submission claimed they had. The actual science was also bad because they omitted a really important variable or three.
0100
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 22/04/2026
I just finished reviewing a paper for a good journal where in the first five pages, only three citations out of 20 or so were correct. The rest were to real articles that had nothing to do with the claims that the citation was meant to support.
2120
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 21/04/2026
McSweeney’s is tracking horrors, which are not all impeachable: www.mcsweeneys.net/columns/lest... The list is over 800 items, and there’s a colour coded key
mcsweeneys.net
Lest We Forget the Horrors: An Unending Catalog of Trump’s Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes
Lest We Forget the Horrors: An Unending Catalog of Trump’s Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes
130
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 14/04/2026
The economy runs on trust, when trust erodes the economy stops working. The problem showing up in places like the Edelman Trust Barometer (www.edelman.com/trust/2026/t...) is that people are insulating, participating in (and trusting) smaller communities, and general social trust is down.
edelman.com
030
Reposted by Christopher N. Dougherty
Phil Plait @philplait.bsky.social · 29/03/2026
We should fund science
542148
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 17/03/2026
it's not a proper reddit read-through if you don't come out with commentary like: "reviewer 2 is clearly a toxic gaslighter, set some boundaries and dump him," "anyone know what else that second author has been in?" and "the editor needs to do some research, here's some youtube links."
120
Reposted by Christopher N. Dougherty
Dropped Mike @rebrafsim.bsky.social · 15/03/2025
me: if z is the length of a slice and a is the area of the pie, then pi(zz)=a PhD advisor: this is what you’ve been working on for three and a half years?
232210436
Reposted by Christopher N. Dougherty
Mo Ryan @moryan.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
I finally lost my shit about so-called AIs, LLMs, enshittification & everything fucking evil that @officialgrammarly.bsky.social is doing. I'm fucking furious, and not just about what 1 company has done. An open letter to Grammarly & the rest of the LLM hype machine www.moryan.com/an-open-lett...
moryan.com
An open letter to Grammarly and other plagiarists, thieves and slop merchants
To everyone at Grammarly, I am writing a book right now, a really challenging endeavor that no doubt someone in Silicon Valley will think it’s fine to steal the day it’s published. I’ve been a profes...
837981496
Reposted by Christopher N. Dougherty
Brian Bilston @brianbilston.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
In celebration of World Book Day, here’s a poem called ‘Book Group’.
Book Group

The last Thursday of every month was Book Group,
when the books would gather together to discuss Brian.

“It’s no fun here any more,” remarked Bleak House, glumly.
“Why doesn’t he read us?” whined the Grapes of Wrath. “It makes me so angry!” 
“I’m sure he only bought me so he can show me off to his friends,”
complained Ulysses, in a stream of self-consciousness.

“I bet he can’t even remember my name, The Idiot,”
muttered a voice from the Russian literature section.
“That’s because he avoids you like The Plague,” said another.
“C’est vrai!” came a cry. “It is like I do not exist.”

“Let’s not give up on him yet.” It was Brave New World.
After some Persuasion, they agreed to give him one last chance.
“Be quiet!” cried Waiting for Godot with Great Expectations.
“Here he comes now!”

Brian entered the room, with his phone.
He sat down and watched some videos of baby pandas falling over.
After an hour or so, he started googling cats dressed as celebrities.

On the shelf, the books waited with uncracked spines,
their silence speaking volumes.


Brian Bilston
16432148
Reposted by Christopher N. Dougherty
Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
A new paper shows that less than 2 months of exposure to Twitter’s algorithmic feed significantly shifts people’s political views to the right. Moving from chronological feed to the algorithmic feed also increases engagement. This is one of the most concerning papers I’ve read in awhile.
The political effects of X's feed algorithm
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10098-2
Received: 16 December 2024
Accepted: 4 January 2026
Published online: 18 February 2026
Open access
• Check for updates
Germain Gauthier,5, Roland Hodler?5, Philine Widmer35 & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya3,4,5 m
Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects'. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk's platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects.
Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users' feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X's algorithm has persistent effects on users' current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship.
15764963272
Reposted by Christopher N. Dougherty
Mike Ginn @shutupmikeginn.bsky.social · 08/03/2025
its amazing how chatgpt knows everything about subjects I know nothing about, but is wrong like 40% of the time in things im an expert on. not going to think about this any further
126187674576
Reposted by Christopher N. Dougherty
Florence Ashley @floralashes.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
Dear academics, I propose we nickname “revise and resubmit” as “Australian no” since it has been brought to my attention that if you say “R&R” it sounds like an Australian saying “oh no!” Sincerely, Me
2346
Reposted by Christopher N. Dougherty
Micro SF/F by O. Westin @microsff.com · 27/01/2026
"The Dark Lord has taken over our land. What do we do?" "Learn from the goblins." "What? Those useless little-" "Takes skill to mask rebellion as incompetence." "What?" "They know His reign will end. For now, they persist and resist." "Oh." "Also: remember every moment of joy is a victory."
2616236
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 25/01/2026
Phorcys and Ceto
000
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 21/01/2026
Econ 101 has a bunch of assumptions that aren't true anymore - lots of buyers, lots of sellers, buying and selling based on economic utility maximisation, predictable production costs, transaction costs, and taxes. Might have to look at the assumptions of mercantile markets instead of free markets.
000
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 19/01/2026
Ugh… no… there’s no reason to even appeal that decision other than hating the individual politician that was under investigation. The Morneau investigation that used the same facts found wrongdoing in his case, because there was a lot of door opening and information passing going on in that MINO
010
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 07/01/2026
Thanks! Looks like I’m out because they exclude people who have previously received a tricouncil award at the same level
010
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 07/01/2026
Is there eligibility criteria listed somewhere? I’ve got a project proposal that could fit as a postdoc, but the eligibility fine print will matter in my case
110
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 26/12/2025
Make it easy for humans who have context and hard for generative AI: “Using only assigned readings from the syllabus, and at least two of the four frameworks discussed in weeks 2 through 9 of the course, provide your analysis and policy recommendations for the case discussed in week 10”
110
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 02/12/2025
War, on drugs
000
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 30/11/2025
Economics is just a set of tools for solving constrained optimization problems. The tools can be used to optimise anything, it doesn’t have to be production or consumption. We could choose to optimize for care, or social capital, or QALYs, or global hamster populations.
030
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 28/11/2025
That’s a euphonium
020
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 25/11/2025
thanks!
010
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 25/11/2025
this position looks interesting! are there any specific teaching needs that applicants should address?
110
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 24/11/2025
Sure, but there was a not small amount of outsourcing to secretaries, typist pools, and wives
000
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 17/11/2025
See also: Flag of Convenience
010
Christopher N. Dougherty @christopherdougherty.ca · 17/11/2025
Small, positive.
050
Reposted by Christopher N. Dougherty
Bylines Scotland @bylines.scot · 16/11/2025
Dangerous times...
54731
Reposted by Christopher N. Dougherty
Joe Hanson @drjoehanson.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
When people learn with ChatGPT instead of following their own searches, they end up knowing less, caring less, and producing worse advice, even when the facts are the same. Friction is an essential ingredient for learning! Convenience makes us shallow. academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...
academic.oup.com
Experimental evidence of the effects of large language models versus web search on depth of learning
Abstract. The effects of using large language models (LLMs) versus traditional web search on depth of learning are explored. A theory is proposed that when
201329609