Gloria Thomas

Writer | Newsletter: I love music, Doctor Who, Manchester United, gardening, family & friends. Banner by @JendiaGammon

[Greta Berlin @Truegreta]

I stood at this pool, at both monuments and saw both reflections…
He’s a God damn idiot, as are the fools that support him. The “Reflection Pool” wasn’t designed by American architect Henry Bacon a hundred years ago to look like a swimming pool. It’s designed to have a darkened characteristics that has reflective qualities to reflect the monuments.
That way, the Washington Monument is reflective to you when at the Lincoln Memorial, and when at the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial is reflective to you.
It’s designed to enhance the grandeur of monuments, create an illusion of reflection, and inclusion of expansive space of unity.
He’s a tacky vulgar person that vulgarizes everything he touches. America isn’t becoming great, it’s becoming vulgar.

Credit - Mathew Reed

[Alleria 🇨🇦 Content Creator @alleria_eh]

How to handle a rainbow crosswalk if you encounter one:

[Meidas_Charise Lee @charise_lee]

This is hilarious

[TheFrenchie @ML3democrats]

Goodnight 💤🌙

[Subi-doo 🐸 @suzamaroo]

I’m actually speechless…

[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.

[The Husky @Mr_Husky1]

In May 1860, she kissed her six children goodbye. She thought about the dinner she would cook later. She thought about the laundry. She thought about the quiet life of a mother in Illinois.

She had no idea that when the front door clicked shut, it would stay locked for three long years.

Her husband, Theophilus Packard, was a respected minister. To the neighbors, he was a man of God. But inside their home, he was a man who could not stand a wife who thought for herself. Elizabeth Packard liked to read.

She liked to debate religion. She had her own opinions about life and faith. In the 19th century, for a woman to have a brain was considered a danger.

Theophilus decided to end the argument once and for all. He didn’t need a crime. He didn't need a witness. In those days, the law in Illinois said a man could commit his wife to an insane asylum without any evidence or a public hearing. He simply had to say she was "disturbed."

One morning, a group of men arrived at her home. They didn't listen to her logic. They didn't care about her tears. They dragged her away to the Jacksonville Insane Asylum. Elizabeth was 43 years old, perfectly sane, and suddenly a prisoner.

When she entered the asylum, she expected to see people who needed medical help. Instead, she found a warehouse of "inconvenient" women. There were wives who had argued with their husbands about money. There were daughters who refused to marry men they didn't love. There were women who were simply too loud or too independent.

"This is not a hospital," Elizabeth realized. "It is a cage for the unwanted."

The doctors tried to break her spirit. They told her that if she just admitted her husband was right and she was wrong, she could go home. They wanted her to say she was crazy for wanting her own thoughts. Elizabeth looked them in the eye and said, "I cannot buy my liberty by a lie."

She didn’t give up. Instead, she started to write. She hid scraps of paper in the linings of her clothes. She tucked notes under floorboards. She recorded every abuse, every scream in the night, and every story of the women around her. She became a secret journalist inside a living nightmare.

After three years, she was finally released, but her husband locked her in a room at home. He planned to move her to another asylum in a different state. This time, Elizabeth’s friends helped her get a message to a judge.

A trial was finally ordered to determine if she was actually insane.

The courtroom was packed. Theophilus was confident. He brought "experts" to say that her religious doubts proved her mind was broken. But then, Elizabeth stood up.

She didn't shout.

She spoke with the calm power of the truth. She explained her beliefs. She showed the jury that having a different opinion is not a disease.

The jury only needed seven minutes. They came back with a single word: Sane.

Elizabeth walked out as a free woman, but she found that her husband had taken everything. He had sold their furniture, taken her money, and disappeared with their children. She was alone and penniless.

Most people would have disappeared into the shadows. Elizabeth did the opposite. She spent the next forty years traveling the country. She stood before the legislature and demanded new laws.

She said, "A woman's mind is her own, and the law must protect it."

Because of her, states changed their laws. They made it illegal to lock a person away without a fair trial and a medical exam. She turned her private pain into a public shield for thousands of other women.

She proved that even if you take away a woman’s home, her money, and her children, you can never truly take away her voice.

[Gloria Thomas @Wizardisms]

The spread of Trump Toxicity throughout our nation's capital represents vain attempts to distract from his horrific crimes, corrupt dealings, and the senseless worldwide death and destruction he's caused. Republicans must stop him before it's too late.

[Jim Acosta @Acosta]

After Jesse Watters of Fox complained about my story on Trump’s ridiculous reflecting pool project, I decided to do a fuller report on many of the ways Trump is ruining DC. CRY MORE @JesseBWatters ! 😂 cc @WashProbs

[Fred Guttenberg @fred_guttenberg]

If you were horrified last night watching our elected leaders run and scramble because of gun violence, just imagine how my daughter Jaime felt in school running from an active shooter before she was killed.

Now, becomes a part of the solution and only vote for people determined to address gun violence in America.

[Art Candee 🍿🥤 @ArtCandee]

Bette Midler dropped a revamped Woodie Guthrie protest song into All You Fascists (Bound to Lose) against Donald Trump and his MAGA cronies in Congress.

This part where she sang about the Epstein files and said “you pervs are bound to lose” had me rolling.

Bravo, Bette (and Barbara Hershey)!

🔥

[What Now? with Trevor Noah @WhatNowPodcast]

35 years ago, America won the Cold War. So what happened?

Ian Bremmer breaks down how the world's view of the US has shifted — and why that matters more than most people realize.

Full episode with @ianbremmer is out now. 🎙️

[Mike Nellis @MikeNellis]

Donald Trump just called the Epstein survivors “victims or whatever” and then lied about them not being willing to go under oath. Completely disgusting. And by the way, when is Trump going to go under oath himself?

[Chase Oliver @ChaseForLiberty]

Its never too early to be thinking about your Halloween costume

[Emoluments Clause @Emolclause]

#BREAKING: Legendary #Maddow: “I mean, look at how they are treating deploying troops…Staff Sergeant Matthew Blank…is 23 years old…he enlisted at 18, he’s been in the military for five years. He has already had deployments to the Middle East and Europe…Before this next deployment, happily this past month, Staff Sergeant Blank got married. Big wedding in Texas…Last week he and his wife had their appointment…to get her her military spouse ID. Instead, when they showed up…ICE agents handcuffed her and took her to an immigrant prison.”🤦��♀️

[Covie @covie_93]

If kash patel can't keep his own email safe what makes you think he can keep you safe???

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

If you can’t get enough. Here’s 8 more minutes of pure deconstruction of the regime. 😂

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

If there is precisely one thing you watch today, make it this. French Senator Claude Malhuret. A microphone. And the most magnificently savage dismantling of the Trump administration ever delivered in a language they almost certainly don’t speak.

He covers Iran. He covers corruption. He covers the kind of staggering, industrial-scale incompetence that would get you fired from managing a car park. And he does it with the calm, unhurried certainty of a man who has read every page of the indictment and found it, if anything, worse than expected.

France has never pretended to like these people. But this is contempt elevated to an art form. The kind of refined, aristocratic disdain that takes centuries of civilization to produce and approximately ninety seconds to deploy.

Malhuret sounds like he is four seconds from the button. Not out of panic. Out of sheer, exhausted disgust.
Honestly? Understandable.
Watch it. Share it. The adults are speaking.

Gandalv / @Microinteracti1