Candace Winstead

Just got an email announcing that Princeton is offering ChatGPT accounts to all undergrads next semester. Looking forward to other helpful innovations lIke giving them unlimited heroin or free handguns

The techno-dystopia I fear is not one where an LLM becomes sentient, developing both a desire and means to wipe out humanity, but one where people come to believe that truth is whatever Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, or Grok say, and the few very rich people who own them use that to manipulate the public.

i know it's the age of immediacy and frictionless and what-have-you but *everything* takes longer to complete now than it did even two or three years ago. it's stunning.

Just a reminder that there is no good data to support these uses in K12, we are just testing it live all on kids who won’t ever be these ages again and can’t get them back if we fuck it up.

HHS wants a new Medicare code that pays doctors extra only when they attribute a patient’s symptoms to a vaccine. Vaccine critics say doctors are paid to push vaccines. We aren’t. Under this code, we’d be paid to blame them. My new piece in @cidrap.bsky.social: www.cidrap.umn.edu/childhood-va...

instead of hearing about ai more can you just punch me in the head until I pass out

Each Friday night, I write a briefing on what happened in US science & higher ed. 🧪  Oct 23 (Yr 2, Wk 43) - PHP Black October vulnerability - NSF leadership hollowed out - NIH Hospital board speak out - EPA can’t dismiss data center pollution lawsuits & more buttondown.com/liminalcreat...

"I understand that there have been some experiments showing that LLM review may have similar outcomes to human peer review, but who cares? Either scholarship, research and publishing are human enterprises or they aren’t." www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu... >>

The 5-year cancer survival rate is up to 70% SIDS deaths have decreased by over 50% 89% decline in tornado deaths All thanks to federal investment in science and OUR tax dollars at work!

Some good news today: A clinical trial to test Ebola Bundibugyo vaccines candidates has started. The first participant was vaccinated in Bunia in the DRC today. 🧪 #IDsky I wrote about the plans and the background a few days ago in @science.org: www.science.org/content/arti...

Of the very many acts of violence perpetrated by Jay Bhattacharya—and I do think violence is the right word—the shutting down of so many critical clinical trials was one of the worst

This piece by student journalist Naishu Vempali made me pump my fist in solidarity. I hope when I’m back teaching at UMass next year they take a class with me, where they can expect nothing but top quality human-grade feedback, interaction, and attention. dailycollegian.com/2026/10/chat...

Likely the most important thing I've ever written — if you're an academic and the AI mania unsettles you, here's my best shot at presenting some intellectual tools that might help you articulate why. arxiv.org/abs/2610.27251

The CDC took two months to respond to a request from CA and WA to validate a high-throughput test for measles, and then said it had “other competing priorities.” 🎁 🔗 www.nytimes.com/2026/10/21/h...

In my most curmudgeonly moments, I don’t see why presenting the prose output of a machine built on mass theft as your own scholarly work should be evaluated less harshly than old school plagiarism. Traditional plagiarists at least had to identify and evaluate the works they were going to copy.

BREAKING: Police in Guinea-Bissau say they raided the offices of Bandim, the Danish research project, and seized hepatitis B vaccines at the center of global controversy www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...

I was a lifelong liberal Democrat. Then Donald Trump reminded me that he correctly identified a giraffe on an emergency cognitive exam.

“The end of acute infection is not necessarily the end of the disease”. I very much appreciate this comment in Nature highlighting the role of infectious disease in the development or exacerbation of chronic disease. Vaccines can prevent chronic diseases, which is often overlooked.

YES. JESUS CHRIST YES. ITS ONLY BEEN AROUND 3 YEARS. WE DON'T NEED IT. www.techspot.com/news/114234-...

A tech company that wants to put giant mirrors on satellites to beam down “sunlight on demand” just simulated the concept with spotlights near Mt. Whitney.

I will be eternally grateful to have been born in a literate culture where literacy was valued and expected and I still had the time, attention, and freedom to develop a literacy practice. Understanding context, inference, vocabulary, perspective, affect — all powerful, useful skills and values.

We found that the most gendered experience wasn’t work-life balance, the focus of most retention efforts. It was feeling devalued, in formal evaluations, but particularly in everyday interactions. Unlike every other topic, the gender gap in devaluation was larger among more senior faculty.

What if we just didn't make fun of what people looked like (or their size, or ability, or hair or clothes or makeup or plastic surgery even or any of that shit) Because actually what matters is what you say and what you do words and actions and their impact on other people

Good news Contrary to what the Danish researchers themselves are saying publicly, in fact the government and key health authorities in Guinea-Bissau have NOT approved this highly unethical RFK Jr-funded trial www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...

#CDC has been informed of another child who died from #flu this past winter, bringing the 2025-26 total to 193 deaths. The new season starts in Oct. All states are reporting minimal flu activity, but you can see (right) it's starting to tick up, led, as usual, by kids. www.cdc.gov/fluview/surv...

Our analysis found that from 2020 to 2025, the rate of deaths involving ectopic pregnancies nearly doubled compared with the previous six-year period. The uptick was steeper in states with abortion bans.

There was a shooting at Colorado State Fort Collins between the chemistry and microbiology building. My son was in the micr bldg in his GRFP writing class at the time. He is OK but really fucking scary texts to get.

If there is good news, it is this: we are at the dawn of an age when no one will care what anyone who let Trump happen says about anything. I kind of think that’s a future worth living for.

Thank you @adamserwer.bsky.social for the fullest account of what’s actually dangerous in higher ed right now. State censorship at incredible scale. And for particulars of expert history framed as ideology I note @sethrockman.bsky.social on the block here. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/1...

My god. A Virginia data center ran backup diesel generators full blast for 24 hours, creating a giant cloud of toxic smoke that choked its human neighbors. The government claimed there was nothing they could do.

Fuck this guy

As I said to someone else recently, I eagerly look forward to a time when I never need to think about Rahm or Gavin again. (I get that, as governor of California, that’s not an option right now as to Newsom.)

Warrantless stops and violent roving patrols by masked federal agents across California, especially the Central Valley, have been terrorizing farm workers for the past 5 days. The chaos is escalating. full statement: www.dailykos.com/stories/2026...

This is so much worse than the headline really makes out. Seems kind of like Nikon didn't check hard enough and maybe looked past how genAI was used to fabricate this imagery www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10...

This is one reason why you shouldn’t upload work into LLMs during the peer review and grading processes. That work is confidential, and you have no right to share it without permission. You are taking someone’s intellectual property and giving it to the entire world without their consent.

New email to Director Bhattacharya about the unethical hepatitis B study. 1/3

I'm a bit early on this Friday’s briefing on what happened in US science & higher ed this week 🧪  Oct 8 (Year 2, Week 41) - Penn officially wins: feds don’t get lists of Jewish community - J-1 & H-1B visa “fraud” narratives - corrupting the Census & so much more buttondown.com/liminalcreat...

I'm going to CSU Bakersfield this month to talk about authentic connections, literacy, & embracing our own humanity in a dehumanizing world. And I'll lead a writing workshop at the university. Join me! 10/29, 7 p.m., CSUB Icardo Center www.bakersfield.com/entertainmen...

This is a disaster. The ethics committee in Denmark that approved the Guinea-Bissau study which will withhold the birth dose of HepB vaccine “had never considered medical studies before but it changed the rules in order to vote on this one”. Four members of the committee have resigned in protest.

I can’t stress enough that this notion of if and when It will gain consciousness is Bible fanfic. It’s not real.