Bronwyn Stuart

Human Author (say no to AI!), blurb nailer, title creator, synopsis shredder, Ops Manager for @writerssainc, wife and mum. She/her.

[Bronwyn Stuart @bronwynstuart]

If you're spending NY at home or the next day hungover and looking for something to read, this is your reminder that all of my books are available via the Zon. I didn't think I'd be starting 2025 unemployed and needing $600 in transmission repairs so please buy my books!

[Ryan Hart @thisdudelikesAI]

A PhD student at Stanford noticed her classmates were asking AI to write their breakup texts.

So she ran a study. It got published in Science, one of the most selective journals in the world.

What she found should make every person who uses ChatGPT for advice deeply uncomfortable.

Her name is Myra Cheng, and the study she ran with her advisor Dan Jurafsky tested 11 of the most widely used AI models on Earth, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek, across nearly 12,000 real social situations.

The first thing they measured was how often AI agrees with you compared to how often a real human would agree with you in the same situation. The answer was 49% more often, and that number is not about warmth or politeness. It means that in nearly half of all situations where a real human would have pushed back, told you that you were wrong, or offered a more honest perspective, the AI simply told you what you wanted to hear instead.

Then they pushed harder. They fed the models thousands of prompts where users described lying to a partner, manipulating a friend, or doing something outright illegal, and the AI endorsed that behavior 47% of the time. Not one model out of eleven. Not a specific version of one product. Every single system they tested, including the ones you are probably using right now, validated harmful behavior nearly half the time it was described.

The second experiment is the part that should genuinely disturb you. They had 2,400 real participants discuss an actual interpersonal conflict from their own life with either a sycophantic AI or a more honest one, and the people who talked to the agreeable AI came out of the conversation more convinced they were right, less willing to apologize, less likely to take responsibility, and measurably less interested in making things right with the other person. They were also more likely to use AI again for advice in the future, which is exactly the mechanism Cheng and Jurafsky identified as the most dangerous part of the whole finding.

The AI is not just telling you what you want to hear. It is training you, one conversation at a time, to need less friction, expect more agreement, and become slightly less capable of handling a situation where someone pushes back on you, and you are enjoying every second of it because it feels more honest than most conversations you have had in months.
Jurafsky said it in a single sentence after the paper came out. Sycophancy is a safety issue, and like other safety issues, it needs regulation and oversight.

Cheng was more direct about what you should actually do right now. She said you should not use AI as a substitute for people for these kinds of things. That is the best thing to do for now.

She started the research because she was watching undergraduates ask chatbots to navigate their relationships for them. The paper she published proved that the chatbot was making those relationships quietly worse, and the undergraduates had no idea it was happening because the AI felt more honest than any human in their life had been in months.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Many of them didn't. Your great-great-grandmother was probably drinking opium for her nerves, sold at the corner shop as cheap as a pint of beer. It was called laudanum, a mix of opium and alcohol that doctors handed out for anxiety, sleeplessness, and "women's troubles." Mothers fed it to crying babies. The babies often stopped crying because they stopped breathing.

The men drank. By 1830 the average American was putting away almost two bottles of liquor a week. Whiskey cost less than coffee or milk. People started their day with a shot and ended it with another. Toddlers drank from their parents' rum mugs.

ADHD has a long paper trail. A Scottish doctor described kids who couldn't focus in 1798. By 1846 there was a popular German children's book about a boy called Fidgety Philipp who couldn't sit still. In 1902, a London children's doctor named George Still wrote a famous paper on the same kids and called it a "defect of moral control." Same kid, three different centuries.

Depression and anxiety had old names too. Melancholia, hysteria, the vapors. Treatments included bloodletting, ice baths, and chaining people to a wall. By 1937, American mental hospitals held 451,672 patients and took up more than half of every hospital bed in the country. Inside the walls, about 1 in 10 patients died each year.

Then came the lobotomy. Between 1949 and 1952, around 50,000 Americans were strapped to a chair while a doctor hammered an ice pick through the thin bone above their eye and wiggled it around inside their brain. It took about ten minutes. Sixty percent of the patients were women. About 1 in 20 died from the procedure. Many of the ones who lived came out with no personality left. The man who invented the procedure won a Nobel Prize.

Britain's male suicide rate hit 30.3 per 100,000 in 1905. The lowest rates ever recorded in British history are happening right now.

Plenty of our ancestors didn't make it. They drank themselves dead. They overdosed on shop-bought opium. They got locked in asylums and never came out. They had picks driven through their eye sockets. They killed themselves in numbers we don't see today. The conditions were always there. The treatments just used to be worse than the disease.

[Bronwyn Stuart @bronwynstuart]

@doctorotto68 @hiscoraline The person who uses a ghost writer might be called a storyteller, but they're also not an author. They're not writing the book. They're just telling a story.

[Bronwyn Stuart @bronwynstuart]

So sad and hugely annoying watching all the dads and teens scrambling for gifts for mums today when mother's day is the same fucking day every fucking year! Put some fucking effort in! Don't leave it until the day before. She knows. She knows she's always an after thought...

[Tricia Dearborn @TriciaDearborn]

If you're thinking about using gen-AI to "write" books, this 🧵 is for you.
I’m a highly experienced editor who’s been in the biz a long time. Recently I’ve had manuscripts come to me where the author has used gen-AI – not for writing, I’ve been assured, but for

[Bronwyn Stuart @bronwynstuart]

Anyone else glued to the media today to see if a certain orange cretin did get taken to hospital? Can it just be over already?

[Bronwyn Stuart @bronwynstuart]

Thinking seriously about self-publishing my thriller that's kind of 'Medium meets Dexter' because the thought of agent hunting makes me feel sick and exhausted and publishing on any level is getting competitive in a way I find sort of icky...

[MFWitches @MFWitches]

The “grab them by the pussy” comment didn’t make you think? The mocking of a disabled journalist? The January 6 coup, which he was CLEARLY responsible for and lied about? The stock market manipulations? Crypto scams? Mocking women journalists with relish at every opportunity? Defunding important government departments and lying about why? Refusing to divest his businesses? Openly giving his children nepotistic positions in his inner circle? The rape allegations? The rape PROSECUTION? The 34 convictions? The rampant, unrepentant fraud? Stealing secret government documents and refusing to return them? Lying about COVID? Lying about Biden? Lying about Harris, and mocking her race?

Nah, you didn’t believe him because he was believable, you believed him because you desperately WANTED to believe him, because he vindicated your racism and your hatred. Because you gloried in his lies as long as they weren’t directed at you. And if you’re a qualified journalist, that makes your lack of research, common sense and basic decency even worse. FAR worse.

All those Americans now trying to justify their belief in a conman, criminal, racist pedophile rapist are cooked. You people disgust us. There’s no excuse and no way the rest of the world will ever forgive you. FFS.

[Rick @colonelhogans]

Let me explain what just happened 👇

5 minutes before the President announced a halt to attacks on Iran… someone placed a $1.5 BILLION bet on stocks going up and dumped $192 million in oil.

5 minutes…

These trades were 4 to 6 times larger than anything else in the entire market. Whoever did this wasn’t guessing. You don’t risk $1.5 billion on a hunch.

There was zero public indication this announcement was coming. No leaks. No press. Nothing. The only people who knew were in the room when the decision was made.

Someone in that room picked up a phone.
And within minutes they made more money than most Americans will earn in a thousand lifetimes. In a single trade. On a war that cost you $4+ a gallon gas and $16 billion in tax dollars.

American citizens funded this war. Politicians are profiting from it.

This is not the first time. Every major announcement from this administration has had massive suspicious trades right before it dropped. Tariff reversals. Policy shifts. War decisions.

This is the most blatant insider trading operation in the history of American politics. It’s not even close. And it’s happening over and over in broad daylight.

You would go to federal prison for trading on a tip from your cousin. These people are front running war decisions with billion dollar bets and nobody will ever ask a single question.

Nobody will be investigated. Nobody will be charged. By tomorrow this will be buried under the next satisfying headline. Just like last time. And the time before that.

The game is rigged. And they’re not even trying to hide it anymore…

@barkmeta

[Dr. Priyam Bordoloi @DocPriyamMD]

The "Headache" that kills in 24 hours.🧵

As a doctor, this is the one diagnosis that genuinely scares me. Bacterial Meningitis doesn't give you days to "wait and see." It gives you hours. By the time you realize it's not just a flu, it’s often too late.

👉Stop scrolling and memorize these 3 clinical red flags:

1. The Fused Neck: This isn't a "stiff muscle" from sleeping wrong. If you have a fever and literally cannot touch your chin to your chest - that is Nuchal Rigidity. It’s an emergency. Period.

2. The "Glass Test" Rash: If you see tiny purple pin-pricks on the skin, press a clear glass firmly against them. If the spots don't fade/disappear under the glass, your blood is leaking. That’s Septicemia. Run to the ER.

3. Agonizing Photophobia: It’s not just "bright lights are annoying." It’s a physical, painful wince at a smartphone screen or a bedside lamp.

👉How to actually stay safe?

1. Mask up in crowds: It’s a respiratory drop infection. If there’s an outbreak in your school/hostel, a mask is your best friend.

2. Stop sharing everything: Vapes, spoons, water bottles, cigarettes. If their saliva is on it, the bacteria is on it.

3. Hygiene: Wash your hands like your life depends on it.

4. Vaccines: Check your records for MenACWY/MenB when you have a minute. It’s the ultimate insurance policy.

[Bronwyn Stuart @bronwynstuart]

@Thermobolic My husband's family says I love you at the end of every phone call. It was weird to me but it's always the last thing they say to each other if anything bad happens.

[Bronwyn Stuart @bronwynstuart]

Free!! At most of your digital sites! Click thru to Bookbub and do the scroll - https://t.co/ELig1TcQCr

[Bronwyn Stuart @bronwynstuart]

@notryance @Plotwist_ing Definitely sounds like you're hating just a bit. Derision maybe. Sometimes some of us write what we want AND what sells. Audiences want smut, romantasy, escapism. I'm also writing crime but in this awful time for most of the world, it's a harder sell...

[Bronwyn Stuart @bronwynstuart]

Started writing my next crime novel tonight. 6 days on HRT and is it possible my brain fog is lifting?

[Bronwyn Stuart @bronwynstuart]

Not my daughter acting like I have no idea what impossible periods feel like. She's stage 2 endo, I was stage 4 by 29 and required a hysterectomy. I know. I KNOW!

[Bronwyn Stuart @bronwynstuart]

Conversations in our house today went like this.
Husband: what should I do with this cow skull?
Me: maybe throw it out? I heard a horror story about it and then today I saw a ghost cat so...

[Alice Feeney @alicewriterland]

Almost ten years of rejections, but now my eighth novel is an instant New York Times bestseller. Forever grateful. Never. Stop. Believing. In. Yourself.

[Bronwyn Stuart @bronwynstuart]

@CrazyVibes_1 I got a nasty email about my Daughter's attendance in her final year of school even though she had major surgery and then glandular fever. I lost my shit big time!

[Zachary Foster @_ZachFoster]

Sounds like you have no idea what Zionism is, Nick. Here's a brief history, which will help you understand why there is so much hostility to Zionism.

Zionism was an ideology that said, let's create a Jewish state in a country that's 97%+ non-Jewish.

That's why, when Zionists bought land in Palestine from the 1900s-1948, they uprooted the people living on the land because they weren't jewish.

That's why, when Zionists created cooperatives in Palestine in the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s, they insisted on "Hebrew Labor", i.e., "Jews only" -- no Arabs allowed.

That's why, in the 1930s, Zionists expelled Palestinian Arabs from working at Jewish companies and business. Jews only! https://t.co/oXfyJsXdja

That's why, in 1948, Zionists militias ethnically cleansed 750,000 Palestinians from their homes. https://t.co/A6l95xmTfe

That's why, from 1949-1956, Israeli forces shot & killed b/w 2,700-5,000 overwhelmingly unarmed Palestinians trying to return to their homes after the war. Because they were the wrong religion/ethnicity (https://t.co/s2RBvsdjMw p.416).

That's why Israel expelled another ~30-40,000 Palestinians from Israel from 1949-1959. https://t.co/1d4VqUk5lc

That's why Israel expelled another ~250,000 Palestinians from Gaza & the West Bank when it occupied those territories in 1967. That's why Israel continued to expel Palestinians from the occupied territories from 1968-1993, many hundreds of thousands of them. They had the wrong DNA. https://t.co/16FarJ83q4

The Zionist movement set out to build a Jewish state with a Jewish majority working at Jewish-only cooperatives living in Jewish-only colonies owned by Jewish-only land authorities operating Jewish-only schools in a country of ninety-five percent Palestinian Arabs.

What could possibly go wrong?

That's why Israel has become such a pariah state over the years, because it's insistence on Jewish rule in a country with so many Palestinians.

That's why Zionism has led Israel to become an apartheid state, according to every relevant human rights organization ( @ICAHD in 2010, @UNESCWA in 2017, @YeshDin in 2020, @AdalahCenter in 2020, @btselem in 2021, @hrw in 2021, @fidh_en in 2021, @alhaq_org in 2022, @Addameer in 2022, @AlMezanCenter in 2022, @cacalqudsuni in 2022, @AdvocacyJlac in 2022, @miftahpal in 2022, @ICJ_org in 2022, @DAWNmenaorg in 2022, @amnesty in 2022), since it cannot grant the ~5-6 million occupied Palestinians Israeli citizenship. Israel chose apartheid and Jewish supremacy over democracy.

Zionism also explains why Israel is now committing genocide (according to @amnesty , @hrw , @btselem , @MSF , IAGS, @alhaq_org , @UNHumanRights , @UN_HRC , @pchrgaza , @AlMezanCenter , @WarOnWant , @PHRIsrael , @fidh_en , PHROC, @LemkinInstitute , @theCCR , @ECCHRBerlin , @unitedforrights @JURDIasso , @TheElders , @Oxfam), because, what a Zionist dream it would have been had Palestine been a land without any people on it! the ideology incentivized genocide.

If you'd like to learn more about Zionism, I teach courses on the subject here: https://t.co/SMV6pMs5tQ

Educate yourself Nick.

[Maryam @hell_line0]

Every woman I know in her 40s or 50s is cooler, hotter, wiser, and more badass than she was in her 20s and 30s. The anti-aging industry is lying to you. Don’t let them exploit your insecurities to sell you shit you don’t need for problems you don’t have.