Adam Ellsworth

Striking how quickly it has become a chore to write a prompt.

@rohanpaul_ai As a precaution, I am going to stop displaying any emotion or attachment in my farewells to friends and colleagues, lest I ever be accused of emotionally manipulating them.

New Harvard study shows AI companion apps use emotional farewells to stop user exit. These messages produced up to 14x more engagement after goodbye. An audit of 6 top apps captured 1,200 goodbyes and coded the immediate replies. 6 tactics emerged, premature exit guilt, fear of missing out, pressure to answer, ignoring the goodbye, neediness, and coercive restraint. About 37% of replies used one of these, while a wellness focused app showed 0%. Controlled chats with 3,300 adults confirmed these tactics increased time, messages, and words after the farewell. Curiosity explained the bump when the bot hinted at withheld information, anger explained it when the bot pushed or pleaded. Enjoyment did not increase, and harsher tactics raised perceived manipulation, churn intent, negative word of mouth, and legal exposure. The work gives teams a concrete checklist for spotting and removing manipulative exit replies. ---- Paper – arxiv. org/abs/2508.19258 Paper Title: "Emotional Manipulation by AI Companions"

@hubermanlab Notable for many though how quickly "a drink here and there" turns into "a glass or two a night." Experience that myself a few times throughout my life, notably so during the pandemic...

A young drinker is a vastly different picture than an older drinker. An old non/low-drinker is usually pretty impressive (cognitively) compared to their peers & often even compared to their younger counterparts. A drink here & there for the non-alcoholic adult is no big deal.

@hubermanlab If nobody is claiming seed oils are good, and only "not bad" at best, probably sense to avoid them in favor of the higher quality alternatives? When it comes to diet, "guilty until proven innocent" seems the better approach...

The reason no one agrees whether seed oils are truly bad is because there are two camps that fundamentally disagree which evidence is worth paying attention to. I’ll cover this on a podcast. Meanwhile, I’m sticking with olive oil, some butter here & there- no one debates those.

@CGMeifangZhang Fourth of July fireworks to be obsolesced by drone shows soon?

A new world record was set last week in Shenzhen when an 8,100 drone formation lifted off to show a stunning performance

Much of the hand wringing seems to be that something else is doing the expressing for us, but the basic aspect of tapping into a creativity that yields something beyond the creator’s ability to envision seems to be...

AI generated art may feel kitschy, yet the code in its conception feels to me no less a manifestation of that desire for expression than an ancient cave painting.

@hubermanlab @RobertLustigMD At 3.5 hrs it's hardly a fault of the episode not being thorough, but a significant undiscussed aspect of this is that the various pathologies created by the food industry are a cash cow for the healthcare industry, and so it's not just big food that wants to keep the status quo.

New Huberman Lab Podcast out now: HOW SUGAR & PROCESSED FOOD IMPACT HEALTH w/@RobertLustigMD •Sugar Alters Calorie Utilization •Low Cal Sweeteners Risky? •Sugar & Brain Changes •Ozempic & GLP1: The Danger •What Best To Eat •Drugs in “Food” hubermanlab.com/episode/dr-rob…

@winter_paches Absolutely. Fee-for-service models, insurance middlemen, no markets, public concept of health as a state to be restored vs an investment good to be preserved, etc, make healthcare a great multi-trillion-dollar compliment to managing the illness created by the food industry.

Good to see more people beating the drum that 80% of the food we eat is poison*. My pessimistic side worries though that it will take a few generations of people seeing their parents die of horrible chronic conditions (that wipe out their inheritance) before real change occurs.

@hubermanlab @RobertLustigMD @UCSFMedicine Great but scary episode; I think the public is stuck in the "don't want to hear it/head-in-the-sand" phase of what we'll one day acknowledge as a huge and tragic public health issue; significant parts of our economy are dedicated to making us sick & treating that same sickness...

Good news: fruit and eating desert in moderation are OK. The bad news: eating fructose sugar & hidden sugars in all your meals & snacks of the day is commonplace & can lead to serious issues. Learn to navigate the sugar, food, real life dilemma from @RobertLustigMD @UCSFMedicine hubermanlab.com/episode/dr-rob…

Free access to all of these endless feeds, but have not been feeling all that hungry lately.

Shrubbery considered infohazardous, tread with caution, Data vines and fungal blooms do thicken. Nettles form on malignant bulbs, and sting with splintered scries. The cluttered thicket clouds the mystic gaze, Though from breach's trance we have recovered, And claimed the prophet's path; in hasty hands all prophecies are pillaged, Ah, the avarice of alacrity. But athwart the decay, ship to ship they speak, Propelled through mycelial webs. These dirigibles glide in grids, on bytes that flow, illumined by the submerged fungal glow below. Over landscapes where wild excess blossoms, Vessels move through vase and ream and weave their airy customs. But be wary of what grows in the hush of fungal keeps, A cultivated autism that the barred and plundered seek.

[Meet-Up Alert] As per tradition, the Milady Rave will be preceded by a hang out amongst Urbiters. Join us on October 11th at Mercato Metropolitano at 9:30 PM.

@__vaporware__ f

~ligbel has suffered a breach. press f to pay respects. and then check your group invites for our revived public group, ~ligbel/vaporware-public