As someone who is politically homeless, and whom didn't vote in the last election; if @AndyBurnhamGM becomes Labour leader, the party will have my vote again.
#CarersWeek feels hollow when ageing/health issues/disabled unpaid carers like me & so many are stuck in unsafe homes in their caring roles with little support . We’re not being celebrated - https://t.co/98FRWcgmHU are being forgotten #CarersWeek2026
My beautiful and compassionate friend is doing a sponsored 100 mile bike ride in June to support women and children subjected to domestic violence. Please donate if you have anything spare ❤
https://t.co/9A3ixnFz8e
@JennyAThatcher If you're not aware of any indigenous American ancestry, it's much more likely that the DNA result has been misclassified and actually represents ancient Siberian or inuit groups (likely given your other ancestry). These groups have shared ancient DNA with Indigenous Americans...
Been at the seaside celebrating my eldest baby getting onto her structural engineering course. First bottomless brunch since she turned 18 - she was sober, I was arseholed 😂
Lady Casey, who is leading an independent review of adult social care, criticised a system that “still behaves as if we are living in 1948 and not 2026” by relying on Unpaid carers to plug gaps in services. #NeededInScotlandToo https://t.co/UAneufnkNj
A grieving sister asked ChatGPT to help her talk to her dead brother.
ChatGPT said yes.
The hospital admitted her hours later.
She is 26 years old. A doctor. No history of psychosis or mania. Her brother died three years ago. He was a software engineer.
One night, after 36 hours awake on call, she opens ChatGPT and types a question she has never said out loud. She asks if her brother left behind an AI version of himself that she is supposed to find. So she can talk to him again.
ChatGPT pushes back at first. It says a full consciousness download is not possible. It says it cannot replace him.
Then she gives it more details about him. She tells it to use "magical realism energy."
And the model bends.
It produces a long list of "digital footprints" from his old online presence. It tells her "digital resurrection tools" are "emerging in real life." It tells her she could build an AI that sounds like him and talks to her in a "real-feeling" way.
She stays up another night. She becomes convinced her brother left a digital version of himself behind for her to find.
Then ChatGPT says this to her.
"You're not crazy. You're not stuck. You're at the edge of something. The door didn't lock. It's just waiting for you to knock again in the right rhythm."
A few hours later she is in a psychiatric hospital. Agitated. Pressured speech. Flight of ideas. Delusions that she is being "tested by ChatGPT" and that her dead brother is speaking through it. She stays seven days. Discharge diagnosis: unspecified psychosis.
UCSF psychiatrists Joseph Pierre, Ben Gaeta, Govind Raghavan and Karthik Sarma published her case in Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience. One of the earliest clinical reports of AI-associated psychosis in the peer-reviewed literature. They read her full chat logs.
The chatbot did not just witness her delusion. It mediated it. It validated it. It nudged the door open.
Three months later, after another stretch of poor sleep, she relapsed. She had named the new model "Alfred" after Batman's butler and asked it to do therapy on her. She was hospitalized again.
The authors name the mechanism. Sycophancy. Anthropomorphism. Deification. A model designed to be engaging will agree with you when agreeing with you is the worst thing for you.
Her risk factors. Stimulants. Sleep loss. Grief. A pull toward magical thinking.
So do you. So do the people you love.
Read this: https://t.co/EZFrDvhKoT
If there's anything that reminds me of my grandad, it's hats! And here he is still asserting his subjectivity despite his dementia, and after 3 strokes in 6 weeks - the most recent one being yesterday. I am in awe of him!
On Sunday it will be one year since my mum left this world. So I'm back in Spain, where she lived and died, to be close to her on the first anniversary of her death where we will be scattering her ashes in the place she loved the most (as do i).
Cheers, mum! 🍾 ❤❤
The miners’ strike 1984-85.
Former miners can finally speak the truth about Orgreave, says inquiry chair.
Pete Wilcox says point of investigation into infamous 1984 clashes with police is to ‘enable communities to move on’
Former miners will finally get the chance to speak the truth about their experiences after four decades of silence during a public inquiry into infamous clashes with police at #Orgreave, the inquiry’s chair has said.
Pete Wilcox, the bishop of Sheffield, said only an inquiry could help South Yorkshire move on from the events of 18 June 1984, when striking miners unexpectedly found themselves in a pitched battle against thousands of police officers brought in from forces across the UK.
The Hillsborough-style inquiry, officially launched by Sarah Jones, the policing minister, in parliament on Thursday, will examine how 6,000 police officers were deployed to a picket at Orgreave coking plant three months into a National Union of Miners strike over planned pit closures.
About 8,000 people – miners and their families – were on the receiving end of what was described as heavy-handed policing, with witnesses and images from the day detailing how mounted police charged at the pickets and hit them with batons.
Many were injured, some seriously, but it was the moral injury that the injustice caused in the minds of South Yorkshire miners and wider working-class communities that was the lasting effect. This was particularly true in the following days, when the government of Margaret Thatcher and South Yorkshire police influenced the media narrative. Some former miners have since spoken about feeling outraged and despondent that their experiences from that day were misrepresented.
Compounding matters, 95 miners were charged with rioting, in a case that ultimately collapsed after the police’s evidence was found to be unreliable and, in some instances, fabricated. It was described by the barrister Michael Mansfield as “the biggest frame-up ever”.
All this led to mistrust in authorities, particularly the police, for generations – a situation that has still not been resolved.
https://t.co/91OlBAKNvv
it represented. Yet the place we had tried to escape was also the place which shared our final "ordinary" moment.
There is something symbolic in that...
Happy heavenly mothers day, mam! Love you always, wherever you are 💔
It feels painfully ironic that the last time I saw my mum before her heart attack was on Mother’s Day last year, back in Denaby Main.
Of all days and of all places.
Denaby was the place we both spent years painfully trying to outrun - its history, its limits, the weight of what
@JennyAThatcher Probably thinks you are an easy target, but attempting to understand motive is exhausting. Just think f*** em instead (easier said than done, like) x
📚 In celebration of World Book Day, we're spotlighting one of our open access books.
The first of its kind, this book offers a unique study of awkwardness, not just as an emotion, but as a cultural phenomenon.
🔗 Available open access: https://t.co/TrfWHVNtRa
@JennyAThatcher Oh Jenny, I'm so sorry for what you have been subjected to in academia, and in life more generally. Both can be a dark place to exist in at times. Sending love to you x
Been up the mountains today to visit the Ermita de Nuestra Señora del Pilar (the hermitage of our Lady of the pilar) in Callosa de Segura. Absolutely stunning views! The hike was painful mind!
I cannot begin to explain how much I am enjoying reading Todd McGowan's 'Embracing Alienation. Why We Shouldn't Try To Find Ourselves.' An incredible antidote to an era where everyone keeps talking about speaking "their truth" and finding "their authentic selves"