JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: If GPT-4o seems like ‘Her,’ it’s a welcome upgrade over ‘The Terminator.’ “After Monday’s announcement, one OpenAI employee posted, perhaps a bit ominously: ‘You are all gonna fall in love with it.'”

So maybe not a complete improvement. Flashback: Meet your new, lovable AI Buddy.

Also: AI and the Screwfly Succession.

Related: OpenAI’s Chief Scientist and Co-Founder Is Leaving the Company.

OUT: FOLLOW THE SCIENCE. IN: WHAT SCIENCE? Flood of Fake Science Forces Multiple Journal Closures: Wiley to shutter 19 more journals, some tainted by fraud.

Fake studies have flooded the publishers of top scientific journals, leading to thousands of retractions and millions of dollars in lost revenue. The biggest hit has come to Wiley, a 217-year-old publisher based in Hoboken, N.J., which Tuesday will announce that it is closing 19 journals, some of which were infected by large-scale research fraud.

In the past two years, Wiley has retracted more than 11,300 papers that appeared compromised, according to a spokesperson, and closed four journals. It isn’t alone: At least two other publishers have retracted hundreds of suspect papers each. Several others have pulled smaller clusters of bad papers.

Although this large-scale fraud represents a small percentage of submissions to journals, it threatens the legitimacy of the nearly $30 billion academic publishing industry and the credibility of science as a whole.

The discovery of nearly 900 fraudulent papers in 2022 at IOP Publishing, a physical sciences publisher, was a turning point for the nonprofit. “That really crystallized for us, everybody internally, everybody involved with the business,” said Kim Eggleton, head of peer review and research integrity at the publisher. “This is a real threat.” . . . World-over, scientists are under pressure to publish in peer-reviewed journals—sometimes to win grants, other times as conditions for promotions. Researchers say this motivates people to cheat the system. Many journals charge a fee to authors to publish in them.

Every successful system attracts parasites. Science has been very successful, so its parasite load is now unsustainably high. See also the United States of America.

ONLY TWO? MIT Hired Six New Diversity Deans. Two of Them Are Serial Plagiarists, Complaint Alleges.

MIT welcomed six new deans of diversity, equity, and inclusion, one for each of the institute’s main schools, as part of a “DEI Strategic Action Plan” launched the previous year. Aimed at boosting the representation of women and minorities, in part by developing DEI criteria for staff performance reviews, the plan pledged to “make equity central” to the university “while ensuring the highest standards of excellence.”

But according to a 71-page complaint filed with the university on Saturday, at least two of the six DEI officials may not be living up to those standards. The complaint alleges that Tracie Jones-Barrett and Alana Anderson are serial plagiarists, copying entire pages of text without attribution and riding roughshod over MIT’s academic integrity policies.

In her 2023 dissertation titled “Cite a Sista,” which explored how black women in the Ivy League “make meaning of thriving,” Jones-Barrett, MIT’s deputy “equity officer,” lifts a whole section on “ethical considerations” from Emmitt Wyche III, her classmate in Northeastern University’s Graduate School of Education, without any sort of citation.

The section is one of several long passages taken from Wyche’s 2020 thesis, “Boyz in the Hoods: (Re) Defining the Narratives of Black Male Doctoral Degree Completers,” which does not appear in Jones-Barrett’s bibliography. Wyche and Jones-Barrett did not respond to requests for comment.

Much more at the link.

But: MIT abolishes mandatory DEI statements in faculty hiring.

LIMITED TIME DEAL: BALEAF Men’s Sun Protection Shirts. #CommissionEarned

THE “EXPERTS” HAVE FUMBLED THE BALL AGAIN: In Red Sea, US Navy paying the price of shipbuilding failures.

I THOUGHT IT WAS RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION, LIKE HUNTER’S LAPTOP. OH. Ashley Biden’s diary is the subject of public scrutiny again. This time around, it has been verified to be the real deal. That’s bad news for The Big Guy. “It isn’t me telling you that the diary’s content is real. This is left-wing fact-checker Snopes telling you the mention from Ashley that her father showered with her and other inappropriate things that happened during her younger days is true. Snopes quietly confirmed the claims in question after Ashley verified the information herself in April.”

Plus: “Don’t you think if it was Ivanka’s diary and she was talking about her father and incest it would be covered 24/7 on all networks? Of course it would.”

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: A Big Week for SCOTUS and the Second Amendment.

VICTORIA TAFT: The Space-Time Continuum You Must Live in to Believe NYC Trump Prosecutors. “I know next to nothing about string theory, but it looks like the prosecutors in the Trump trial in Manhattan are hoping the jurors do. They want them to join the prosecution’s time-space continuum — that’s the only way to make sense out of how trying to kill a bad story in 2011 and again in 2016 turned into 34 alleged bookkeeping errors in 2017, and how those misdemeanors magically elevated into felonies in 2024 — including stealing the 2016 election.”

STILL A FEW BUGS IN THE SYSTEM: NHTSA Investigating Waymo for Bad Driving. “Waymo is under investigation. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said its preliminary evaluation into an estimated 444 Waymo vehicles follows 22 reports of 22 incidents including 17 collisions. The agency said in some of those cases the automated driving systems appeared to disobey traffic safety control devices and some crashes occurred shortly after the automated driving systems exhibited unexpected behavior near traffic safety control devices. This is the latest in a series of investigations opened by NHTSA into performance of self-driving vehicles after initiated probes into General Motors Cruise and Amazon.com’s Zoox.”

THE ISRAELI ENTRANT WON THE POPULAR VOTE:  Eurovision and a salute to the Jews.

FED RATES CAN’T CURE INFLATION, IT CAN ONLY MASK SYMPTOMS WHILE THE MONEY SUPPLY ADJUSTS THROUGH ECONOMIC GROWTH:  Jerome Powell urges patience on rate cuts after key inflation index higher than expected.

IF THEY’RE NO BETTER THAN THE COVID VAX IT’S STILL OVERCHARGING:  Bill Gates predicts $2 vaccines for every disease.

CHASER:  The NYT Indirectly Exposes Something We’ve Known for Awhile About the COVID Vaccine.

THAT’S OKAY, THE TRUMP TRIAL IS NOT A PURSUIT OF TRUTH:  Michael Cohen’s ex-lawyer to nuke Cohen’s tale before Congress: ‘Habitual liar, totally unreliable’.

THE SURVIVORS ARE ALREADY REBUILDING:  Losing the Sexual Revolution.

SHOCKED, SHOCKED, SHOCKED, BEHOLD MY SHOCKED FACE:  MIT Hired Six New Diversity Deans. Two of Them Are Serial Plagiarists, Complaint Alleges.

OUR WAREHOUSE IS YOUR WAREHOUSE, OUR CARS ARE YOUR CARS:  Stunning New Footage Again Indicts the UN’s Partnership With Hamas.

I DON’T THINK I’M GOING TO USE THE NAME, BUT IT EXPLAINS THE WHOLE HISTORY BEAUTIFULLY:  There’s a right name for the “Woke” ideology, and it’s critical constructivism. Critical constructivist ideology is what you “wake up” to when you go Woke.

If you read the whole thread, you’ll see what people are being indoctrinated into through this is actual insanity. Not metaphorical insanity, but real insanity, as in a complete break with reality.

PROBABLY BAKED IN TO HOW BAD HIS CONDITION WAS BEFORE THE TRANSPLANT:   First Recipient of a Genetically Modified Pig Kidney Transplant Dies 8 Weeks after Historic Surgery.

WHY NOT? THEY ALREADY BUY THEM DRUGS, RIGHT?   San Francisco Spends $5 Million of Taxpayer Money to Give Free Beer and Vodka Shots to Homeless.

Clown timeline is going pro.

IF DIETS ARE NOW HUNGER STRIKES, I HUNGER STRIKE MOST OF MY LIFE:  Princeton Anti-Israel Hunger Strike Collapses, Solves its Problem by Rotating in New Strikers.

GOOD THING ONLY WHITE PEOPLE HAVE BEEN DECLARED CAPABLE OF RACISM:  NYC Mayor Adams Thinks Illegal Aliens Could Be Lifeguards Since ‘They’re Excellent Swimmers’.

FAIR:  The Real Reason for Secularism: For the Left, the Golden Rule and the 10 Commandments turn out to be a major problem.

OH, IT’S NOT JUST NOW. THE LEFT HAS BEEN TRYING TO IMPUGN FREE WILL FOREVER:  Free will itself now under assault.

And I had a knock-out drag-out fight on a panel with Robert Sawyer almost 20 years ago, as he was trying to claim everything was predestined. Bah.

CAN WE GET RID OF BMI ALREADY?  The Modern Myth of Childhood Obesity Exposed.

TEACH TEACHERS NOT TO RAPE:

BREAKING: Dontay Akeem Prophet, the principal of Destiny Leadership Academy in FL, was just arrested for false imprisonment and aggravated child ab*se.

He was caught on security video trapping a student in a classroom where he continuously ass*ult*d him.

Dontay had multiple… pic.twitter.com/fu9ZDRdxMF

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 13, 2024