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Tuomas Pernu

@tuomaspernu.bsky.social
3.7K followers 1.8K following 4.5K posts

PhD and all that. Lecturer in Philosophy of Science and Research Ethics at the University of Eastern Finland (UEF). Some things I'm responsible for: www.tuomaspernu.london

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Reposted by Tuomas Pernu
Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
New from 404 Media: when you upload images to Copilot, they're not private. Human contractors are reviewing Copilot users' prompts/images, according to internal docs we got And they're horrified at what they're seeing. Bombarded with requests to make sexual AI images www.404media.co/humans-readi...
404media.co
Humans Are Reading Copilot Prompts — And They're Horrified
Human contractors are reviewing Copilot users’ prompts and uploaded images, according to internal documents obtained by 404 Media. The contractors are also bombarded with users’ requests for sexual AI...
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Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Thomas Hunt Morgan was born OTD in 1866. If you're ever feeling that your work is uending and unedifying, remember that he once said this: "Two years work wasted, I have been breeding those flies for all that time and I've got nothing out of it." 🌱🐋🧪 #HistSTM
Photograph of Morgan's Fly Room at Columbia University, around 1920. American Philosophical Society.
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Richard A Carter @richardacarter.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Saw this one on Instagram just now - I'm assuming that King's or Amsterdam are not involved, and no I didn't click on the link(!), but any relevant colleagues I know on here may want to be aware...
An AI generated advert with heavily distorted, misspelled text, calling for participants to test new psychological questionnaires
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Ran Blekhman @blekhman.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
We have to stop using "paper count" as a useful scientific metric. More writing output no longer means more knowledge gained www.washingtonpost.com/education/20...
washingtonpost.com
One professor’s AI-assisted output: 200 papers and 14 books this year
An online platform removed 257 papers written or co-written by the University of Chicago’s Nicholas Polson after other academics raised questions.
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Antti Gronow @anttigronow.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
The new Pet Shop Boys song about Putin the poisoner.
youtu.be
Pet Shop Boys - A top secret washing machine
YouTube video by Pet Shop Boys
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Tuomas Pernu @tuomaspernu.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Why deal drugs, arms, people, when you can simply.. earn millions in the counterfeit vinyl trade? Mind-boggling. Perhaps a clear sign of an inflated marked (inflated vinyl prices, to be more precise).
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jon christian @jonchristian.net · 17/09/2026
NEW: We spent months investigating a little-known media startup called Brown Brothers Media, which buys legit news sites and turns them into AI-powered zombie content farms What blew my mind was its traffic -- it appears to be getting more readers than NPR or CBS News futurism.com/artificial-i...
futurism.com
How Three Brothers Built an AI Slop Empire by Buying Legitimate News Sites and Turning Them Into Zombie Content Farms That They Say Get 50 Million Page Views per Month
Brown Brothers Media is a media empire raking in millions of clicks with AI, fake writers, and plagiarism.
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Josh Pizzuto-Pomaco @joshpizpom.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
EXC: 90 programmes in Edinburgh University's College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences are to be closed. The casualties, which include 48 language and literature programmes, will be 'taught out', w/ no admissions after 2027. @heraldscotland.bsky.social www.heraldscotland.com/news/2655839...
heraldscotland.com
Ninety programmes to close at leading university as savings plan takes shape
According to the document, a total of 90 programmes will be “taught out” over the next several years, including 48 in the School of Language.
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Tuomas Pernu @tuomaspernu.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
People throw around "pseudoscience" too easily. But I do think Cofnas’s “race realism” deserves to be called such. And: pseudoscience is not protected by academic freedom. It's our duty to be maximally liberal in academia. But it's also our duty to draw the line somewhere. We should draw it here.
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Tuomas Pernu @tuomaspernu.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
This is weird: "To put it briefly, mathematicians are people who try to understand the causes of things." Like, super weird. Outlandish. Mathematics is generally acknowledged to be an acausal discipline par excellence. terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09/13/h...
terrytao.wordpress.com
Happy, those able to know the causes of things
[This is a guest post by Nestor Guillen, crossposted from his blog. This blog post was initially written in a different file format and converted using AI. — T.] Keywords: LLMs, cultural tech…
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Rodney Brooks @rodneyabrooks.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Everyone wants to be a prophet of doom. From Bruce Mehlman's substack today brucemehlman.substack.com
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Jason Moore @moorejh.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Interesting times we live in.... futurism.com/health-medic... #pharmacology #chatgpt
futurism.com
Man Announces That He Has Synthesized a New Schizophrenia Treatment in His Garage, Based on a Formula Devised by ChatGPT
A man claims to have synthesized a treatment for Schizophrenia and Alzheimer's from his own lab, using only ChatGPT.
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Tuomas Pernu @tuomaspernu.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Well, live & learn! Abduction and apagoge are indeed connected - but apparently only terminologically. But whole story is fascinating! Peirce *thought, incorrectly, that his abduction was Aristotle's apagoge. Here: muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/articl...
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Tuomas Pernu @tuomaspernu.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Haastan mukaan kaikki suomalaiset yliopistot! bsky.app/profile/merv...
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Sridhar Ramesh @radishharmers.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
If you near solving P vs NP, Riemann, or Collatz, and ask an LLM to check your work, it flags it to its AI lab owners to scoop you. The $$$ incentives are too large. I drafted this joke a few days ago, was working to polish it, but must now rush it out on pain of being scooped.
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Quantian @quantian.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Dancing very very VERY close to saying “OpenAI stole our almost-complete proof of Navier-Stokes from internal access to our ChatGPT sessions because they were desperate to scoop Anthropic” which is absolutely 100% a believable thing OpenAI would do right now cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/st...
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Tuomas Pernu @tuomaspernu.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Sounds, prima facie, a very sensible way to curb the social media companies. However, although I do think that algorithms are a major source of problems, I wonder if their role is as central as the discussion seems to suggest. There's something deeply problematic in online interaction in general.
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Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Switzerland's Federal Government is Replacing Microsoft on 3,000 Computers This is the pilot phase, with 3,000 workstations moving away from Microsoft 365. The federal administration has over 54,000 computers. itsfoss.com/news/swi... 1/2
itsfoss.com
Switzerland's Federal Government is Replacing Microsoft on 3,000 Computers
This is the pilot phase, with 3,000 workstations moving away from Microsoft 365. The federal administration has over 54,000 computers.
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Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 07/09/2026
My 4yo, listening to Sandstorm by Darude: “When does the music start?” Absolutely savage.
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Tuomas Pernu @tuomaspernu.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
One nation, and one nation only, voted against the UN resolution to adopt a new world map reflecting Africa's true size. Frankly, at this point, I'm surprised the US did not put forward a motion declaring the Earth flat.
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Tuomas Pernu @tuomaspernu.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Minusta tämä oli hyvä. "Ahdistusdiagnoosien määrä on kasvanut 40 prosenttia vuoden 2023 jälkeen." "Saarikolla on myös yksi hyvin selkeä vaatimus: korkeakoulujen täytyy lisätä lähiopetusta. 'Se on huomattavasti tehokkaampi keino kuin terapiapalveluiden lisääminen.'” Niinpä niin.
hs.fi
Mielenterveys | ”He hyväksyivät sen” – Annika Saarikko osoittaa vanhempia, ruuduilla kasvoi ahdistunut sukupolvi
Poliitikot eivät osanneet puuttua yhteiskunnan isoihin muutoksiin. Se näkyy nyt oireiluna, jota terapiapalvelut eivät ratkaise, sanoo YTHS:n toimitusjohtaja Annika Saarikko.
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Tuomas Pernu @tuomaspernu.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Oh, this is brilliant! I think I'll need to use this in my lectures - to whom should I credit this? Also, this is clearly incomplete: what do we have in the lower right corner? bsky.app/profile/alis...
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Tuomas Pernu @tuomaspernu.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Erityisesti ao. pistää silmään. En ole syventynyt Hugging Face -keissiin. Mutta ymmärtääkseni sitä pidetään laajasti markkinointitemppuna. Jos/kun näin on, niin AI:ssa huolestuttaa eniten se, miten firmat - ja ylipäätään aihepiiristä touhottavat tahot - vedättävät poliittisia päättäjiä ja mediaa.
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Flo Débarre @flodebarre.eurosky.social · 04/09/2026
I had missed this important detail 👇, and I had not seen it either in the news articles I had read about the latest IgNobel prizes (Nature, LeMonde) www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧪 @chrisnsimms.bsky.social
Retraction Note
Open access
Published: 11 February 2025
Retraction Note: Study of defensive behavior of a venomous snake as a new approach to understand snakebite

João Miguel Alves-Nunes, Adriano Fellone, Selma Maria Almeida-Santos, Carlos Roberto de Medeiros, Ivan Sazima & Otavio Augusto Vuolo Marques 
Scientific Reports volume 15, Article number: 5027 (2025) Cite this article
Save article
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The Original Article
Click and Read was published on 03 May 2024

Retraction of: Scientific Reports https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-59416-6
Click and Read, published online 03 May 2024

The Editors have retracted this Article.

After publication, concerns were raised about the animal work reported in this paper. The Animal Ethics Committee of Butantan Institute confirmed that the approval granted to the Authors for their research on snakes (Bothrops jararaca) did not include newborn snakes or the use of the “soft stepping” method.

All authors disagree with this retraction.
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Tuomas Pernu @tuomaspernu.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Kiitämme: varautumista AI:n aiheuttamiin muutoksiin. Moitimme: fokusointia spekulatiivisiin uhkiin. Konkreettisena, realistisena uhkana on, että yhteiskunnan tukipilarit - viranomaiset, oikeuslaitos, yliopistot - hukkuvat AI-soopaan. *Tähän tulisi varautua. www.hs.fi/politiikka/a...
hs.fi
Turvallisuus | Suomessakin pitää herätä nyt tekoälyn riskeihin, sanoo ulkoministeri Elina Valtonen
Valtonen perustaa syksyksi työryhmän, joka selvittää tekoälyn ulko- ja turvallisuuspoliittisia vaikutuksia.
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 04/09/2026
UN to vote on adopting new world map that shows Africa’s true scale
theguardian.com
UN to vote on adopting new world map that shows Africa’s true scale
Togo-sponsored resolution calls to phase out traditional map that depicts continent as similar size to Greenland The UN general assembly will vote on Friday on a resolution for the world to formally phase out the traditional Mercator map of the globe in favour of one that more accurately displays Africa’s size. Robert Dussey, Togo’s foreign affairs minister, said the resolution was sponsored by Togo and backed by countries including the African Union’s 54 other member states. He did not specify the total number. Continue reading...
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Tuomas Pernu @tuomaspernu.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
"Contemporary scientific systems progressively constrain high-risk and conceptually innovative research while being increasingly structured around short funding cycles, productivity-based evaluation criteria and risk-averse frameworks that favour predictable and non-transformative research outputs."
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Hoodlum 🇺🇸 @nothoodlum.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
New logo just dropped.
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Tuomas Pernu @tuomaspernu.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
How about: Abandon "AI" -> replace it with "machine learning" We would clear so much bullshit with this one, simple terminological stroke. (Otherwise I find this list of suggestions very sensible indeed.) bsky.app/profile/mark...
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Alex Usher @alexusherhesa.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
This isn't new or anything, but I don't think I've ever seen it put quite so delightfully:
blogs.lse.ac.uk
Universities rarely use research evidence in their decision-making, so why do they expect anyone else to? - LSE Impact
Despite universities’ important role as evidence-producing organisations, they rarely draw upon research evidence for internal decision making, why?
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Tuomas Pernu @tuomaspernu.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Nyt on kowa. Todella kowa. yle.fi/a/74-20243396
yle.fi
Mies tarjosi huutokaupassa tuhat euroa – sai 40 000 kirjaa
Eversti Ismo Talka, 75, meni vain katsomaan huutokauppaa. Yhden tarjouksen jälkeen hänellä oli 40 000 kirjaa ja tuhat euroa vähemmän rahaa.
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Alix Dunn @alixdunn.com · 29/08/2026
I'm sorry but publishing a report that "loss-of-control" incidents of LLMs "doubled" in a month and then sharing that your methodology is counting X posts where people say that happened is just hilarious. And then you have an X-axis that reaches 12 tweets?! Also hilarious.
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Tuomas Pernu @tuomaspernu.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide: my doctoral school courses on philosophy of science are now available for all doctoral students in Finland. This year, I'm offering two courses: Autumn 2026: Philosophy of the Human Sciences Spring 2027: Philosophy of the Exact Sciences More information/enrolment:
doctoralcourses.fi
University of Eastern Finland Courses - Doctoral courses in Finland
updated 10.8.2026. All courses offered by the University of Eastern Finland have been compiled on this page. Please check the course information in advance to see if you meet the qualifications for ea...
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Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
George Grosz, Pillars of Society. 1926. 100 years ago.
Three unpleasant men in suits and ties, a priest, a thug with a stick, all looking stern and cruel.grotesquely painted.
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Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Nothing could possibly go wrong.
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
+
Ranchers and Farmers have always been a number one priority for me. They work very hard, are smart, efficient, and immaculately CLEAN, but for years I have heard that they have had a tremendous problem with the Big Processors, who many say are a nasty Monopoly. There are, essentially, 4 of them, a very non competitive number, and they make life miserable for our wonderful Farmers and Ranchers, and I can't let that happen, can I? So, in order to break this powerful monopoly, with much of its ownership based outside of the U.S., I am authorizing legal documents to be drawn in order to allow Farmers and Ranchers to be given the right to PROCESS THEIR OWN FOOD. This should move quickly. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
President DONALD J. TRUMP
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Tuomas Pernu @tuomaspernu.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Quite something: Norway took the first two places in Vuelta today (just a minute ago). Makes you wonder: why is Finland never a factor in these games? What the hell creates the difference?
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Nina Havumetsä 🇫🇮🇪🇺🇺🇦 @ninahavumetsa.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
"Päätä päiväsi" on kuule Microsoft vähän eri asia kuin "Wrap up your day". #konekääntäminen
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Tuomas Pernu @tuomaspernu.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide: my doctoral school courses on philosophy of science are now available for all doctoral students in Finland. This year, I'm offering two courses: Autumn 2026: Philosophy of the Human Sciences Spring 2027: Philosophy of the Exact Sciences More information/enrolment:
doctoralcourses.fi
University of Eastern Finland Courses - Doctoral courses in Finland
updated 10.8.2026. All courses offered by the University of Eastern Finland have been compiled on this page. Please check the course information in advance to see if you meet the qualifications for ea...
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Tuomas Pernu @tuomaspernu.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Not only does it appear that the US ambassador is full of baloney - characteristic of a representative of the US government - he has actively worked against academic freedom by breaching the institutional autonomy of a university. www.ugent.be/en/news-even...
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Tuomas Pernu @tuomaspernu.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Whatever you think about the Cofnas Affair, this is pretty damn rich coming from a representative of the US government:
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Tuomas Pernu @tuomaspernu.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Did this. Anybody else getting any answers?
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 27/08/2026
The ball is in your court, Pinker.
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Tuomas Pernu @tuomaspernu.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
What I really like about this essay is the idea of science/academia (basic research) as a conscience or reflective consciousness of the society (probably not terms used in the text!). *That's why & how science, all of it, is useful to us! And that's why values (ideals) are baked in to it.
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Tuomas Pernu @tuomaspernu.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Who, when, why came up with the "social contract for science"? Is it a myth - a strawman? I get what the term means, but was there ever really such a thing? Or did we just recently come up with the notion due to its narrative usefulness? This is a genuine question - the essay is great!
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Benjamin Riley @benjaminjriley.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Headline from story from April 2023 wherein Bill Gates predicted AI tutors would be teaching kids to read within 18 months, or October 2024. (It is presently August 2026 and this remains a complete pipe-dream fantasy.)

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/22/bill-gates-ai-chatbots-will-teach-kids-how-to-read-within-18-months.html
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Christopher J Stevens @metaphysiology.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Queen Parton passed away yesterday, on Metal God Halford's birthday. So here they are performing (briefly) together, two icons of both musical art and universal humanity:
youtube.com
Dolly Parton - Jolene (The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 2022)
YouTube video by Bali
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Tuomas Pernu @tuomaspernu.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
I think this is crucial: Cofnas appears to be making, in his role as an academic (i.e. intramurally), scientifically controversial and ethically/politically/socially concerning claims that lack all evidential and argumentative basis. Pseudoscience is not protected by academic freedom. Anywhere.
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Alex Zalben @azalben.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Dolly Parton, among a thousand other amazing things she did in her life, gifted over 330 million books to kids through her Imagination Library program. Her passing is a tremendous loss to the world, but you can support the program today to keep it going imaginationlibrary.com
imaginationlibrary.com
Dolly Parton's Imagination Library | USA, UK, IE, CA, AU
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is a book gifting program that mails free books to children from birth until they begin school in participating areas.
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Anne Lutz Fernandez @lutzfernandez.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
A friend found this clipping in some old files. Haven't seen this before. Mind blown.
Color political cartoon by Danny Hellman from the New York Press dated October 6-12, 1999. In it, Donald Trump and his then wife Marla Maples being shown a model of the White House with many added stories and a shiny gold T on the top, with Taj Mahal towers on the side and flags flying with a T. It is labeled "Proposed White House Renovation." A ghoulish Philip Johnson says, "Granted, It's in violation of several of Washington D.C.'s landmark and zoning codes. But of course as president of the United States..." Trump, licking his lips, says, "It's tremendous, Philip, when do I move in?" The caption beneath is Spectacularly unqualified egomaniac Donald Trump contemplates a White House run"
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Tuomas Pernu @tuomaspernu.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
"Our analysis shows that Europe struggles to convert its research potential into deployable defense products. The disconnect between potential and application is due in large part to the lack of consistent demand from domestic military end users." Mutatis mutandis for other research/applications?
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