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Emily Bell

@emilybell.bsky.social
40K followers 2.6K following 2.5K posts

Prof Columbia J School. Director Tow Center . Writes Guardian + elsewhere. Lives in airports…views are my own, thank goodness

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Reposted by Emily Bell
Brandy Zadrozny @brandyzadrozny.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
“Paxton has taken nearly 1,000 trips with a state-funded security detail, costing $3.3 million. The newsrooms’ review of Paxton’s travel records, obtained through the state’s Public Information Act, could only connect 138 of those trips and $553,000 in security costs to state business.”
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Alan Jagolinzer @jagolinzer.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
We are aware of the political frictions related to the Lithuania disinfo conference. We expect no spillover impact and are still hosting the 2027 Cambridge Disinformation Summit. The call for papers is open. For more information, see the conference website: www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/events/cambr...
jbs.cam.ac.uk
Cambridge Disinformation Summit (2027)
Connect with Cambridge Judge! Explore our full calendar of upcoming events, learn about our programmes and connect with world-class speakers.
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Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
ICYMI: The Trump administration pushed other governments not to participate in a European conference on disinformation because of a panel that was focused on whether the US is now a threat for foreign influence and manipulation in Europe.
techpolicy.press
Disinformation Conference in Europe Caught Up in Transatlantic Politics
Europe’s top disinformation conference faces government withdrawals and pressure over its debate on foreign interference, free speech and the US.
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Columbia Journalism Review @columjournreview.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Can the News Exist Without Big Tech? The Atlas is trying to imagine a future for journalism beyond the reach of Silicon Valley. @antelava.bsky.social and @simonallison.bsky.social join @emilybell.bsky.social and Heather Chaplin at @zegfest.bsky.social. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/c...
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Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Hugo Chavez-linked PR flack Michael Shellenberger — a random guy with a Substack who rakes in donations to fight a “censorship complex” that he created — would like you to know that journalists reporting on his attempts to smear people are propagandists.
Lithuania's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment. EU Disinfolab declined to comment.
"If you believe that emailing questions to government officials and others constitutes
'pressure,' then you are a propagandist and a toady and should stop misrepresenting yourself as a journalist," Shellenberger told Rapporteur.
An EEAS spokesperson said: "The reason for the request to remove the logo of the EEAS was that organisers chose to frame some of the discussions in a way which does not align with the official positions held by the EU. "
Global Affairs Canada did not respond to questions about its decisions to withdraw support.
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
….makes you sound as though you got stuck in a public convenience (I will probably get a text in the next 10 mins saying ‘mom I am stuck in a public convenience, pls send money’ )
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Reposted by Emily Bell
Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Software engineering could and should be done with the same care as any other type of engineering. This is a post in honor of Margaret Hamilton (and also a subtweet of all vibe-coders everywhere).
Screencap

"“I fought to bring the software legitimacy so that it — and those building it — would be given its due respect, and thus I began to use the term ‘software engineering’ to distinguish it from hardware and other kinds of engineering, yet treat each type of engineering as part of the overall systems engineering process,” Hamilton told El Pais in 2018. “When I first started using this phrase, it was considered to be quite amusing. It was an ongoing joke for a long time. They liked to kid me about my radical ideas. Software eventually and necessarily gained the same respect as any other discipline.”"

Source: https://news.mit.edu/2026/margaret-hamilton-computing-pioneer-dies-1007
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
….from Canada if memory serves. Obviously college students from Canada have somewhat fallen foul of the current administration as well as accountants
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
No they don’t afaict
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
I know …it’s just the very fractional things wrong within messages that are the giveaway …I get tons of them
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
super high intelligence technology
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Or that people would rather have Elon Musk sucking up resources, not paying taxes, firing national park rangers and lowering wages than a hard working accountant
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Unbelievably stupid. Lisa Su was a small child when she came to Queens from Taiwan, her father was a statistician who worked for City government in NYC …probably one of the accountants described here by Vance as being debarred
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Do you sign your texts to colleagues ‘Peter Geoghegan’? The tell I had was supposedly one of my kids calling me ‘mom’ ….phishing everywhere
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Dr Emma L Briant 🇬🇧 in 🇺🇸 w/ 🐕 @emma-briant.co.uk · 07/10/2026
This is shameful of the countries who buckled under the pressure www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
theguardian.com
EU drops sponsorship of disinformation conference at Trump officials’ request
Lithuania and Canada were also pressured to withdraw, and days before #Disinfo2026, logos were wiped off website
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Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
The latest “rigged election” strategy from the Trump administration involves producing a series of strategically timed arrests of non-citizens for alleged voter fraud & promoting those events to feed the false narrative that non-citizen voter fraud is widespread. uwcip.substack.com/p/federal-fr...
uwcip.substack.com
Federal Fraud Charges Resonate With Debunked Non-Citizen Voting Narratives
A flurry of recent charges and press conferences amplifying alleged non-citizen voting make a small phenomena seem bigger
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Matt Binder @mattbinder.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
the tech industry is about to invent books
Andrew Yeung 
@andruyeung
X.com
We created gyms because modern day work no
longer required physical activity. Without exercise,
our muscles atrophy.
I predict we'll need gyms for our brains too, once Al
starts doing our knowledge work.
10:53 PM • 10/4/26 • 1.3M Views
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
🧐
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 29/09/2026
Warren: "This has been their argument every time -- they cut taxes and say, 'Ultimately it's really going to pay off for you.' What's happened every time? The academics study it very carefully and say, 'What really happened is the richest people got richer and everybody else got left behind.'"
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Brandy Zadrozny @brandyzadrozny.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
It was like 2 hours into the MAHA Summit before I saw a woman. Elevance insurance exec, Dr. Catherine Gaffigan, spoke at the "affordability" panel.
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Tow Center for Digital Journalism @towcenter.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Since the 1990s, @raziaiqbal.bsky.social has had a front-row seat to world events and the transformation of journalism. On Journalism 2050, live at @zegfest.bsky.social she reflects with cohosts @emilybell.bsky.social and Heather Chaplin. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/j...
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Columbia Journalism Review @columjournreview.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Since the 1990s, @raziaiqbal.bsky.social has had a front-row seat to world events and the transformation of journalism. On Journalism 2050, live at @zegfest.bsky.social, she reflects with cohosts @emilybell.bsky.social and Heather Chaplin. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/j...
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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 22/09/2026
This is exactly what we emphasized in my most recent Foreign Policy story about the huge increase in combatants using cheap drones to kill civilians: the core problem still very much is human beings CHOOSING to harm other human beings VIA technology. foreignpolicy.com/2026/09/14/d...
foreignpolicy.com
Civilians Need Better Protections in the Drone Age
Hunting noncombatants from the sky is growing disturbingly common.
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MeidasTouch @meidastouch.com · 22/09/2026
NEWS: Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration has secured a record $131.5 million settlement from DoorDash after a NYC investigation found the company underpaid or failed to properly pay 264,000 delivery workers. 1/
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Brandy Zadrozny @brandyzadrozny.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
No way the website for this film fictionalizing the horrors of AI was ... written with AI. Right?
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Dr Emma L Briant 🇬🇧 in 🇺🇸 w/ 🐕 @emma-briant.co.uk · 19/09/2026
AI generated report "almost started a war" Exclusive: US military had close call after using AI for false intelligence report, sources say www.cnn.com/2026/09/18/p...
cnn.com
Exclusive: US military had close call after using AI for false intelligence report, sources say | CNN Politics
The episode shows the risks of using this new, relatively poorly understood technology in the middle of the Iran war
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Peter Geoghegan @petergeoghegan.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
🔴 Something Tom Watson won't tell you: Five police forces in the East Midlands working with Palantir on a controversial surveillance programme are ending their involvement Exclusive by Democracy for Sale and Liberty Investigates. democracyforsale.substack.com/p/revealed-f...
democracyforsale.substack.com
Revealed: Five police forces to drop Palantir surveillance tool
Exclusive: Palantir's UK policing ambitions take a hit as East Midlands forces end their involvement in a controversial data pilot.
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Thank you - good correction, (his debunked studies were conducted in the late 90s)
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Highly recommended
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
His dad - read @gilduran.com ‘s excellent Nerd Reich. WRM’s ridiculous grifty book - the Sovereign Individual (and his even griftier pre-crypto investor newsletter) were favourite reading materials of a young Peter Thiel
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
This is completely true
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I mean Lord Rees Mogg is also erm no longer operational - but he’s a key plank of Thiel think
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Milo is definitely in that category - though expelled now, which I guess rules him out from ‘currently operating in the US’ territory.
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
….the giveaway is that 70pc approval rating.
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
People operating in US public life or influencing current extremist thinking - Lord Rees Mogg, Andrew Wakefield, Steve Hilton - all essentially identified as charlatans, or snake oil salespeople in the UK in the 90s . The North Atlantic Grift (there should be a current and tide map for that )
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
It is *wild* that someone who could not have been more thoroughly debunked , discredited and struck off by the British medical establishment in the 1990s (hardly a bastion of liberalism ) is still out there in public, having his ideas adopted by US Congress
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Brandy Zadrozny @brandyzadrozny.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
RFK's book publisher and the head of his SuperPAC, MAHA Action, just said "anytime you hear the word measles in the media, you should think "this is a story meant to control what I think, what I do, what I what I believe, and what my attitude towards Bobby Kennedy ought to be."
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
V good
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Absolutely agree …that’s also on my banned list. Also make a decision - are these models actually beyond your control right now? In which case you are not pacing anything
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Stop saying ‘frontier’
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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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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Everyone in higher education needs to read this - starting with the Boards of Trustees who are presumably encouraging this type of activity. (Replacing humans with (more expensive) LLM tokens)
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I just can’t …I need coffee
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Some ‘silicon beings’ entered the threat model this morning apparently - can we be snuffed out by sentient IKEA oven mitts?
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
The King Charles AI Summit /EA sex cult regulatory intersection is now living in my head ( @faineg.com , and @mariabustillos.com , holding you responsible) . In hours of Chatham House/ Ditchley /UNGA / etc symposia on ‘AI safety’ , the sex cult angle is under represented imo
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Will the sex cult be on the table in Dumfries House? So to speak
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I am simultaneously reading about the effectively altruistic sex cult (or extremely rational sex party? not sure which) and listening to a recording of the Today prog on Radio 4 , where they are talking about King Charles ‘AI summit’ in Dumfries House…and laughing a lot …
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
This really is shifting the Overton Window to a hole in the roof - an election speech promising to put diesel prices well above $7 , for the reward of ‘destroying Iran’ , which is not apparently destroyed, hence the very high fuel prices
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Peter Geoghegan @petergeoghegan.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
‘More than a third of the $2.8bn raised for the current 2025-26 election cycle comes from the 20 biggest mega-donors, according to an FT analysis’ And guess which industry is all over MAGA/GOP Yep, crypto Can think of £72m reasons why this sounds familiar…. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
giftarticle.ft.com
US billionaires line up to bankroll Republicans’ election push
Ultra-wealthy overwhelmingly back Donald Trump’s party over Democrats as money floods into midterms race
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
The Sheeran Effect …like the Streisand Effect but whereby declaring yourself non-political you in fact briefly become the most political celebrity on earth
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