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John Mashey @johnmashey.bsky.social · 27m

John Mashey @johnmashey.bsky.social · Apr 30

AI1/ Emergent behaviors of “scheming” and even outright deception were just covered by The Economist:
www.economist.com/science-and-...
(Paywall, may be able to try for free, but in any case, read on for a lecture this week on exactly this topic and link to (open access) technical paper cited.)

AI models can learn to conceal information from their users

This makes it harder to ensure that they remain transparent

www.economist.com

John Mashey @johnmashey.bsky.social · 37m

~2014, I had a fascinating, if surreal discussion of potential civilization enders, one of which was pandemics… but the one thing we didn’t consider was possibility that US gov’t would deliberately wreck our best defenses.☹️
bsky.app/profile/john...

John Mashey @johnmashey.bsky.social · 1d

1/ Given CDC evisceration, attacks on climate science, NASA... here's a short tale of worrisome prescience from 2014.
I attended an early showing in San Francisco of the fine film "Merchants of Doubt". It has book's foci of climate denial/tobacco, but adds more.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRWE...

Merchants of Doubt (2014) with Naomi Oreskes, Jamy Ian Swiss, Frederick Singer Movie

YouTube video by hos Ben

www.youtube.com

John Mashey @johnmashey.bsky.social · 54m

Could be worse. In 2010, plagiarism was discovered in 2 papers written by Co Editors in Chief for their *own* Wiley online journal. We reported it. Wiley let them silently rewrite the papers. We escalated up management chain & then Board… ~year after complaints, the CoEiCs were silently dropped.

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John Mashey @johnmashey.bsky.social · 1h

And having been in several companies that had to do layoffs (usually at Director/VP level in Silicon Valley cos)..
A) executives agonized over it
B) layoffs were a lot more carefully done than “oops, we laid off a bunch of people we had to immediately hire back.”
Execs that did would not last long.

John Mashey @johnmashey.bsky.social · 1h

I think my sign still works for Palo Alto, … location of Peter Thiel’s Palantir.
bsky.app/profile/john...

John Mashey @johnmashey.bsky.social · Jun 20

My sign for *Palo Alto* NoKings day might be related.

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Seth Abramson @sethabramson.bsky.social · 1h

(🚨) BREAKING NEWS: Donald Trump No Longer Remembers That He Was President and Controlled the FBI on January 6, 2021, Confirming Americans' Worst Fears About His Advanced Dementia

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Reposted by John Mashey

Mother Jones @motherjones.com · 4d

Under the Third Reich, most Germans generally lived in the law-bound normative state, while Jews and other disfavored people were victims of the arbitrary and violent prerogative state.

The dual state is characterized by the facade of normalcy obscuring the fact of an authoritarian state.

The “dual state” theory was invented to describe Nazis. The Supreme Court could take us there.

Authoritarianism—but make it look like the rule of law.

www.motherjones.com

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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 8h

Seeing a lot of celebration of this as a win.

But at NIH we have seen this exact play before.

It looks like it is the Vought strategy -and to stop the lawless firings we have to see the bigger picture.
A 🧵:

Trump Administration Will Rehire Scores of Experts Fired in Error

www.nytimes.com

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 3h

Thankfully, some of yesterday's CDC firings have been rescinded.

But this should be a major scandal, not business as usual in this shitshow of an administration. It's either spectacular incompetence or an effort to make even politically untouchable positions feel precarious to those in them.

Helen Branswell 🇨🇦 @helenbranswell.bsky.social · 4h

100s of #CDC employees were notified Friday they were being fired — RIF'd. The firings cross multiple parts of the agency, endangering its core mission of keeping Americans safe.
Saturday, some were informed they were RIF'd in error.
Hard to imagine how this happens www.statnews.com/2025/10/11/c...

CDC battered by government shutdown firings, while some are rescinded

The White House’s mass firing of CDC staff on Friday has decimated offices related to injury prevention, respiratory disease surveillance, and chronic disease, according to four people familiar with t...

www.statnews.com

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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 7h

Several people have asked variants of “mass layoffs happen in the private sector all the time, why shouldn’t this be ok for govt employees too?”

A central principle of civil service law is the president doesn’t get to remove civil servants because he disagrees with them. And Congress must be…

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Reposted by John Mashey

c Phlo- Future Engineering @cphlo.bsky.social · 17h

Saw it... good points

John Mashey @johnmashey.bsky.social · 1d

1/ Given CDC evisceration, attacks on climate science, NASA... here's a short tale of worrisome prescience from 2014.
I attended an early showing in San Francisco of the fine film "Merchants of Doubt". It has book's foci of climate denial/tobacco, but adds more.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRWE...

Merchants of Doubt (2014) with Naomi Oreskes, Jamy Ian Swiss, Frederick Singer Movie

YouTube video by hos Ben

www.youtube.com

1 1

Reposted by John Mashey

Andrea Pitzer @andreapitzer.bsky.social · 12h

One great aspect of iconic inflatable costumes (aside from how they instantly undermine propaganda about war zones) is that it's useless to arrest the person wearing one. Cuffing a frog would make law enforcement look pathetic. And carting one off just guarantees that more will show up the next day.

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Reposted by John Mashey

Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 12h

“We can give $20 billion to Argentina but we can’t afford the CDC’s measles experts” is a hell of an argument

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Glenn Branch @glennbranch.bsky.social · 13h

Lexicographic enshrinement for Eugenie C. Scott's coinage "Gish Gallop"! @eugeniescott.bsky.social

Gish gallop

Gish gallop (sometimes gish gallop or Gish/gish galloping) refers to a rhetorical technique or strategy by which a debater puts forth too many false arguments for their opponent to be able to refute i...

www.merriam-webster.com

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Michael E. Mann @michaelemann.bsky.social · 17h

‘Science Under Siege’: Two Experts Sound the Alarm on Trump’s War on Science | My co-author @peterhotezmdphd.bsky.social & I discuss our new book #ScienceUnderSiege with @mehdirhasan.bsky.social of @zeteo.com: zeteo.com/p/science-un...

‘Science Under Siege’: Two Experts Sound the Alarm on Trump’s War on Science

Acclaimed scientists Michael E. Mann and Peter Hotez on how the MAGA antiscience movement threatens the entire planet, from the climate to pandemics, and how we fight back.

zeteo.com

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John Mashey @johnmashey.bsky.social · 12h

Yes they are. The librarian in my 1st-2nd grade school was mean to me. I wanted to read only science fiction books, but she made every other book be something else. I suspected collusion with Mom.

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Dorit Reiss @doritreiss.bsky.social · 13h

Hundreds of U.S. students quarantined amid measles outbreaks: Note: this is routine. Children exposed and unvaccinated are quarantined in every measles outbreak. This is what anti-vaccine wins look like. www.nbcnews.com/health/healt... via @nbcnews.com @erikaedwards.bsky.social

Hundreds of U.S. students quarantined amid measles outbreaks

At least 270 unvaccinated kids are staying home from school as measles continues to spread nationwide. "Expect more," one expert said.

www.nbcnews.com

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Dr. Richard Pan @drpanmd.bsky.social · 1d

RFK Jr & Trump are ensuring America will not be prepared for future disease outbreaks. #1MdeadAmericans #CDC

Sheryl Gay Stolberg @sherylnyt.bsky.social · 1d

BREAKING: Friday night massacre underway at CDC. Doznes of "disease detectives," high-level scientists, entire Washington staff and editors of the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) have all been RIFed and received the following notice:

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John Mashey @johnmashey.bsky.social · 14h

Yes, thanks. And of course I recall your great work on vaccination legislation, whose voting patterns I studied years ago in comparison with those in tobacco-21.
$ on latter was findable, not on former, but as you know, most Republicans voted against both, sigh.

Reposted by John Mashey

Dr. Richard Pan @drpanmd.bsky.social · 15h

In the CA legislature, I secured $300M annually in the state budget for local & state public health departments, which previously receive little direct state funding prior to my election to the CA Senate. #publichealth
www.cdph.ca.gov/Pages/FoPH/f...