@erin-wertz
Postdoc at University of Warsaw's Center for Excellence in Social Science studying political communication. Other interests include: anonymity and identity online My research: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Ua7qrSYAAAAJ 🏳️⚧️she/her
The article makes this fairly explicit, but it's worth emphasizing that Grammarly doesn't have any clear option to request a specific reviewer (hence you can't easily check if you're included) and even a cursory attempt gets it to produce a bunch of random scholars from my or adjacent fields.
I mean, the ethical arguments against LLMs seem broadly strong to me, so not necessarily important; but a lot of even reasonable, cautious advocacy still seems ahead of the data to my mind? At least based on occasional quick skims of the data.
Like they can feel very fast and powerful to use; but outside of some limited contexts I wonder whether, once you make the writing read well, fix hallucinations and review sources cited, review everything for factual inaccuracy, etc you may actually spend more time or still trend toward worse output
It strikes me that even the writing-adjacent areas where LLMs are likely to be useful, a lot of these benefits are still essentially unproven, and I am honestly dubious that the automation will routinely speed or enhance output when factoring in essential human scrutiny and review.
The more philosophical issue is of course that the vast majority of people really don't care much about trans issues either way and none of these surveys really seem interested in learning more about whether/how people who might actually change their behavior over them (granted, that's tricky).
I do think it's motivated at its core:
"You must abandon these issues that the right has made toxic (where I sympathize with the right), to stand firm on other issues (where I think the right is wrong.) This gets us the painful compromise Americans need (exactly my ideal issue positions)."
But, setting a causal argument that has nothing whatsoever to do with the data they actually collected aside, the results seem mostly similar to what we see elsewhere.
And then that final question is *worlds* apart from any other data I've seen. Wording effects? Biases from ordering?
Like, The Argument's article was designed to fit a narrative they don't even pretend to investigate ("people are souring on trans rights, this might be because a random pseudonymous trans woman on Bluesky was mean to me and therefore progressives are really unwilling to compromise.")
The big thing that interests me in Lakshya's data is that the answers re: which side is better on LGBT rights seem to diverge much more sharply from others.
The individual rights questions aren't that dissimilar to Pew, etc. But I'm very curious how/why Lakshya gets this result:
"persuade their own base," in context seems to mean "persuade their own too-pro-trans base to accept reasonable compromises (enacting Lakysha Jain's exact ideal policy stance) that will clearly start winning hearts and minds."
Democrats had a good night, winning major races including governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey and a redistricting ballot measure in California, while also confronting the future of the party. n.pr/3JKZzJO
And #ica25 presentation done!
Open call: we’re still looking to do more interviews with D&D players who are considered ethnic minorities. Interested? Please reach out!
if i thought this site was going to moderate properly i'd subscribe to it happily & talk about the benefits of doing so to my million+ followers across youtube, twitter & twitch. as things are i'll be saying it isn't worth it. hearing similar things from my pals with big online followings
"Bluesky's decentralized protocol offers news organizations unprecedented control over their data and audience relationships."
"boyfriend looking over his shoulder meme" involving him looking away from "My dread that I have become too reliant on automation and am slowly losing familiarity with data analysis" toward "A package that formats all test statistics for me so I don't have to pay attention to or read anything when copying them into a paper."
Copy of Caroline’s email sent to the Tavistock and Portman NHS foundation trust, asking if Alice Litman‘s data was sent to the DHSC for Prof Appleby to review.
Reply from head of data at the Tavistock Portman NHS foundation trust, saying Alice‘s data was not included in the audit.
BREAKING
On the day the UK government announces a permanent puberty blocker ban I learn:
ALICE’S DATA WAS NOT INCLUDED in data sent to Appleby to assess for his rushed DHSC report, that dismissed whistleblower claims of increased suicides in trans youth since Bell.
The report is a proven sham.
How the Social Media Ban Harms Children
*Social media is a life line for socially excluded children
Which isn’t to say his science reporting isn’t just highbrow transphobia written in a tone that a moderate liberal audience without subject matter expertise might see as innocuous, or that it isn’t contributing to the campaign against him across the platform.
The discourse around Jesse Singal is interesting. To many unfamiliar, I suspect it looks like well-intentioned, but censorious prone, activists trying to shut down liberal skeptics.
The objection is much more the well-documented accusations of serial harassment of trans women who challenge him.
Quite the headline: 295,000 journalists in 44 countries will drop X
EJC: we can “no longer ethically participate in a network that its owner has transformed into a machine of disinformation and propaganda”
www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/media/e...
Atm we can still see this influence in tastemaking. Brianna Wu is the most blocked account on Bluesky, largely because the trans community has a lot of reason to dislike her.
I’ll be curious to see if and when the top blocks change, if we really are in the vertical part of the s-curve
Between Musk and the way the invite system worked out, it was profoundly easy to get inundated in offers to make an account if you were trans and overly online a bit over a year ago.
A very interesting confluence of factors that pushed the culture massively from what the devs envisioned.
The Rolling Stone article is probably some of the highest profile coverage of this—though it’s hardly alone—it’s also very perfunctory.
It’s fairly easy to find accounts that really deemphasize the bipoc and queer communities that were here, and the way they pushed the platform on e.g., moderation.
As Bluesky takes off, it’s important to remember how much of the culture was shaped by the early trans/queer cluster. I do worry that could get buried in the cultural narratives around the current phase of growth and the platform’s better utility for journalism.
www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult...
See! I had a typo in that post, a fake person wouldn't make typos! That's a distinctly human behavior. Extremely pseudo-authentic. Much parasocial!
Hi!
I don't have anything to post at the moment, but I look slightly less like I'm pretending ot be a human being if I have something here, so here we go.
Oh, this is a good one! I don't suppose I could get added?