In honor of VULTURES turning 7: a giveaway.
Ebooks and audiobooks. Let's say...5 of each (though the audiobooks are, unfortunately, limited to US/UK listeners).
To enter:
1. Tag 3 friends in the comments
2. Share this post
That's it.
We've already blown past 2 stretch goals. But can we get to #3 by Saturday?!
S1 - New art piece, bringing the total to 6. UNLOCKED
S2 - Reversible blue and silver ribbon bookmark. UNLOCKED.
LOCKED
S3 - GILDED SPRAYED EDGES [SILVER].
Let's go!
ART REVEAL for The Price of Power Ultimate Edition.
We hit 800 followers today, which is insane. I couldn't be more grateful for this amazing community.
This will be the final art reveal before we go live on May 27th.
"NOT ALL THE GLORY" by Andrea Tarzia
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.
Have you ordered our Farseer Trilogy set yet?
📣 Available to preorder NOW until 27 May at 3pm BST/10am ET at: https://t.co/4iPsMIucUC
📸: bookish_mai; melissarosee_reads; binding_agent; toadsandtomes
COVER REVEAL TIME! I am thrilled to help @ZB_Steele reveal the new cover art of SONG OF THE DAMNED series.
I got to participate a little bit in the progress of the illustrations, and I'm so thrilled the series is getting this new cover art by the one and only @jeffbrown67!
COVER REVEALS
Ecstatic to help my boi @ZB_Steele reveal the new covers for 'Whispers of the Storm' and 'Rising Gale', Books 1 & 2 in his 'Song of the Damned' series.
Both by the GOAT @jeffbrown67
New ebook cover for Whispers goes LIVE today, Rising Gale releases on June 16th.
Artist: Jeff Brown
Interior formatting for physicals: Abel Montero
Physicals for the updated cover of Whispers of the Storm should be ready this week, if you want a collector's copy of the original cover move now!
Extremely excited to show off the new covers for...
SONG OF THE DAMNED
Whispers of the Storm & Rising Gale
Art by the GOAT @jeffbrown67
Interior design of the physicals (available Friday! If you want a copy of the OG, order now!) done by the electric @monteroauthor