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Sean Mullen, Ph.D. @drseanmullen.bsky.social · 1d

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

“We may be witnessing the emergence of a population-level acquired immune deficiency — not sexually transmitted, but airborne.”

That line isn’t from a tweet. It’s from a peer-reviewed paper in AJPM Focus (2025).

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Micah @rincewind.run · 1d

I know the headline everyone's running with is "erotica" but "we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues" and "we are putting personality back in ChatGPT so it will act like a friend" are diametrically opposed statements

that's the cause of most of the mental health issues

Matt Burgess (WIRED) @mattburgess1.bsky.social · 1d

Oh good, ChatGPT is getting "erotica for verified adults" later this year

We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. We realize this made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems, but given the seriousness of the issue we wanted to get this right.

Now that we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues and have new tools, we are going to be able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases.

In a few weeks, we plan to put out a new version of ChatGPT that allows people to have a personality that behaves more like what people liked about 4o (we hope it will be better!). If you want your ChatGPT to respond in a very human-like way, or use a ton of emoji, or act like a friend, ChatGPT should do it (but only if you want it, not because we are usage-maxxing).

In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our “treat adult users like adults” principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults.

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B @brandononearth.bsky.social · 1d

Ah I didn’t know the original quoted post was from Bouie. Looks like I’ve been blocked

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B @brandononearth.bsky.social · 1d

We’ve regressed so much in terms of basic public hygiene and etiquette since 2019. I’ve never seen people actively ignore open mouthed coughs in public like this

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Elana Levin @levin.bsky.social · 1d

when work makes people sick and insists on making them sicker by denying the right of protection and there is no safety net --- consider other people.
via @thesicktimes.org

Despite the ongoing pandemic, some companies are banning employees from masking - The Sick Times

While some anti-mask policies have failed — a win for workers — there is a larger effort to ban masks in the U.S. on state and local levels. And more businesses may attempt to ban masks in the workpla...

thesicktimes.org

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B @brandononearth.bsky.social · 1d

I’m not interested in a society where I have to wear high a respirator and take good tests regularly to be able to enter public spaces, but that’s where we are as long as we refuse to clean the air, don’t have universal paid sick leave, and pretend covid has no long term damage.

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B @brandononearth.bsky.social · 1d

“Yet the system is broader than the buildings called "prisons." Manipulation, confinement, punishment, and deprivation can take other forms - forms that may be less easily recognized as the violence they are.” Maya Schenwar, Prison by Any Other Name

B @brandononearth.bsky.social · 1d

Normalizing being on video for work was a mistake.

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More Perfect Union @moreperfectunion.bsky.social · 2d

A typical AI data center uses as much electricity as 100,000 households, while the largest under development will consume as much power as 2,000,000 homes — according to @npr.org.

Data centers are booming. But there are big energy and environmental risks

How tech companies and government officials handle local impacts will shape the industry's future in the U.S.

www.npr.org

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B @brandononearth.bsky.social · 4d

And if it’s not common to wear masks now at your work, it’s not because the virus got any less dangerous, it’s just that your employer decided your health isn’t worth protecting. Covid is a labor issue

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B @brandononearth.bsky.social · 4d

Exactly! That was the problem the whole time. The government claimed people were essential and pushed them into danger without any protection an then did that with everyone else. Instead of upgrading ventilation systems and providing people with masks, they said good luck, some of you will die

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B @brandononearth.bsky.social · 4d

The pandemic never ended either, most people just accepted “go back to work, go back to spending” and ignore the brain fog they have, the getting sick twice as often as they used to, the lingering cough

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Andrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social · 5d

every single tech idea is like “soon our robots will be capable of playing catch with your kid, freeing you up to spend more time working on your employers’ spreadsheets”

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Angie Rasmussen @angierasmussen.bsky.social · 5d

I don’t know who needs to hear this but the CDC is being eviscerated right now. America is not going to have any kind of outbreak response capacity after tonight. Americans’ health data is no longer secure. Say goodbye to federal public health in any capacity. It’s a disaster. We won’t recover.

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Maryn McKenna @marynmck.bsky.social · 5d

Extremely bad news if true (and unlikely this reporter would run with it if not). The MMWR has been the earliest warning bell for outbreaks since it announced the first US cases, in 1981, of what was later identified as AIDS.

This will be a grievous shock to what remains of US public health.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg @sherylnyt.bsky.social · 5d

BREAKING: Friday night massacre underway at CDC. Doznes of "disease detectives," high-level scientists, entire Washington staff and editors of the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) have all been RIFed and received the following notice:

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B @brandononearth.bsky.social · 6d

Unprocessed trauma is a big driver. Participating in “important” things via teleconference (corporate jobs,school) while being surrounded by death and fear in physical life makes these things feel trivial by comparison. It’s hard to ignore when society says it cares more about normal than your life.

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B @brandononearth.bsky.social · 7d

This is also why companies constantly push “ai” to replace human interaction. It all comes back to pursuit of profit.

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Gretchen Felker-Martin 🍉 @scumbelievable.bsky.social · 7d

I don't like him personally, but David Simon on AI is the final word on the subject.

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PacoOnPause @pacoonpause.bsky.social · Sep 10

I'm going to try to change your perspective on COVID in under 2 minutes.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 12d

What makes LLMs work as a business is precisely that all this text is decommodified, free. As they themselves say, they'd have to shut down if they had to pay for their trainging data. Yet all that data is the product of human labor. This cutting edge of capitalism rests on a substrate of communism.

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JB_AU @jbau.bsky.social · 17d

This whole section really.

Finally: AI cannot do your job, but an AI salesman can 100% convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job, and when the bubble bursts, the money-hemorrhaging "foundation models" will be shut off and we'll lose the AI that can't do your job, and you will be long gone, retrained or retired or "discouraged" and out of the labor market, and no one will do your job.
AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations:

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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 14d

OpenAI is essentially a social arsonist, developing and releasing tools that hyper scale the most racist, misogynistic, and toxic elements of society, lowering the barriers for all manner of abuse. The so called guardrails make a pinky swear look like an ironclad contract.

This social app can put your face into fake movie scenes, memes and arrest videos

The new Sora social app from ChatGPT maker OpenAI encourages users to upload video of their face so their likeness can be put into AI-generated clips.

www.washingtonpost.com

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B @brandononearth.bsky.social · 18d

The Democratic Party is using Harris to test out policy points for the next few years. She’s become a de facto spokesperson for the party and in her book she floats continuing to cater to the rich and cozying up to people like the man who performed a Nazi salute at the most recent inauguration

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B @brandononearth.bsky.social · 18d

I’m sorry you’re feeling sick. I used to hate getting sick on vacations, but since I started wearing a mask on planes, transit, and public indoor spaces, I’ve been able to avoid getting sick. I wish as a society we prioritized improving our indoor air quality so people would get sick less often.

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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 18d

“AI” isn’t a tool or technology or even a cluster of technologies with a misleading name. It’s the infrastructure at the foundation of a form of capitalism dependent on data brokering. We should be teaching our students about this and not teaching them about “responsible” use.

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