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Dolly Parton has ‘some good news, and a little bad news’ about her health
Dolly Parton has good and bad news about her health. The Queen of Country gave her fans an update on her condition Monday.
Dolly Parton gives health update: ‘Good news and a little bad news’
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — Dolly Parton gave a health update Monday afternoon sharing “good news and a little bad news.” Parton said she was responding well to medicine and treatments an…
India loses its last left-wing government after five decades
Kerala in India, which gave the world its first democratically elected communist government, has voted the left out.
The Idea That Reshaped Identity Politics Has a Complicated Backstory
Kimberlé Crenshaw gave us the terms “intersectionality” and “critical race theory.” Her new memoir shows that she isn’t done fighting over what they mean.
Barella and Thuram: ‘Inter always get back on our feet’
Marcus Thuram and Nicolò Barella insist the genuine bond between players is what gave Inter the strength to ‘get back on our feet’ after ending the season empty-handed, going on to win the Scudet...
Carolina Panthers looking to trade fan-favorite wide receiver
The NFL offseason has begun its shift toward minicamps and OTAs, and the draft gave teams a chance to infuse their rosters with rookie talent after free agency. The Carolina Panthers made several moves this offseason, including selecting a wide…
Opinion | In a Minneapolis Public School, a Cure for Toxic Politics
This school gave me hope for our democracy.
HER Sports Day gives Charlottesville girls opportunity to explore athletics
Whether on the field or on the court, the sixth annual HER Sports Day gave girls the opportunity to practice, play, and explore athletics.
HER Sports Day gives Charlottesville girls opportunity to explore athletics
Whether on the field or on the court, the sixth annual HER Sports Day gave girls the opportunity to practice, play, and explore athletics.
HER Sports Day gives Charlottesville girls opportunity to explore athletics
Whether on the field or on the court, the sixth annual HER Sports Day gave girls the opportunity to practice, play, and explore athletics.
'I Wasn't Going to Do Something Illegal' — Reggie Fils-Aimé Remembers the Phone Call That Made Nintendo Stop Working With Amazon During the DS Era
Reggie Fils-Aimé has opened up about the time an Amazon executive gave him a phone call and asked Nintendo to do something "illegal" during the era of the Nintendo DS.
Dodgers notes: Miguel Rojas, Kiké Hernández, Max Muncy, Teoscar Hernández
With the Dodgers back in St. Louis this weekend, Katie Woo at The Athletic wrote about a pep talk last June in St. Louis that Kiké Hernández gave to Miguel Rojas, who was struggling both at the plate and mentally: “I wanted to change the mentality, because if he didn’t, he was going to be […]
Why do crabs walk sideways? Scientists trace it back 200 million years
Crabs’ famous sideways walk may trace back to a single evolutionary moment 200 million years ago. Researchers found that most modern crabs inherited this trait from one ancestor—and never looked back. The movement likely gave them an edge, helping them dodge predators with quick, unpredictable bursts. It’s a rare example of a behavior evolving once and then dominating an entire group.
Cade Cunningham leads Pistons comeback to force Game 7 as Magic collapse
Orlando grew a 22-point lead heading into halftime, but an ice-cold streak for the Magic gave Detroit a window to get it all back.
Paste Ends The Games Coverage That Gave So Many Writers Their Start
After briefly being a standalone site and then being folded into The AV Club, Paste's games writing seems to be no more
Trump says he's considering taxpayer-funded deal to bail out Spirit Airlines
Trump said his administration gave Spirit "a final proposal" and would make an announcement Friday or Saturday"
Knicks eliminate Hawks with a 140-89 Game 6 blowout
OG Anunoby scored 29 points in 27 minutes, Karl-Anthony Towns had his second triple-double of the series and the New York Knicks had their biggest playoff victory in franchise history, overwhelming and eliminating the Atlanta Hawks 140-89 in Game 6 on Thursday night. The Knicks broke several NBA records by halftime. Dyson Daniels and Mitchell Robinson were ejected after fighting following a pair of free throws from Anunoby that gave the Knicks a 50-point lead in the second quarter.
TheBody: RIP Loreen Willenberg, who gave her HIV-proof body to science and her heart to the community
Loreen Willenberg will be remembered for being one of only three known people in the world whose body seemed to eradicate HIV with no help from antiretrovirals.
Valtteri Bottas says stronger mental health support in F1 helped him open up about his battles
Formula 1 driver Valtteri Bottas believes support in motorsports for mental health struggles has greatly improved during his career and gave him the courage to reveal his own personal battles
The Whistleblower Who Uncovered the NSA’s ‘Big Brother Machine’
An unexpected visitor gave my team the evidence we needed to prove that the government was secretly wiretapping Americans.
Tulane students are betting big as sports wagering becomes campus norm
With one parlay bet, you can turn the $20 your mom gave you for food into $200. Enticing, right? This mindset is common on college campuses across the country. 67% of students living on campus participate in sports betting, and Tulane University is no exception. “There’s no barrier to entry for these gambling sites. It’s...
Pentagon’s $25 billion cost estimate for Iran war is low and does not include cost of rebuilding US bases, sources say
The $25 billion estimate that a top Pentagon official gave to lawmakers on Wednesday for the total cost to date of the Iran war is a lowball figure that does not include the cost of repairing extensive damage suffered by US bases in the region, three people familiar with the matter told CNN.
Mamdani: City Hall volunteers will be independent in outreach about RBG hearings
Last year, only 400 New Yorkers gave public testimony for a decision impacting more than 2 million New Yorkers.
Microsoft expects headcount to decrease in coming quarters
Microsoft reported earnings on Wednesday, and CFO Amy Hood gave new forecasts, including a new outlook on headcount at the company.
Supreme Court leans in favor of Trump's bid to end protections for Syrian, Haitian migrants
Trump's lawyers say Congress gave the Department of Homeland Security, not judges, the power to end Temporary Protective Status granted earlier.
ECU Health serves up a strong comeback
ECU Health’s seamless care gave longtime tennis player Sam Fulmer the chance to return to the court, and the active lifestyle he loves, pain-free.
Heard on Campus: Tanya Berger-Wolf on AI for nature
Tanya Berger-Wolf, professor of computer science engineering; of electrical and computer engineering; and of evolution, ecology and organismal biology at Ohio State University, gave a lecture titled “AI for Nature: From Science to Action" as part of the Distinguished Lectures in Life Sciences series presented by the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences.
GitHub fixes RCE flaw that gave access to millions of private repos
In early March, GitHub patched a critical remote code execution vulnerability (CVE-2026-3854) that could have allowed attackers to access millions of private repositories.
League obsessions can help Gunners in Europe
When I compare the heady mania that followed Gabriel Martinelli's clincher at the Bernabeu last season to the slightly stiff 'see you at the Etihad' the fans gave the team after an uninspiring 0-0 draw against Sporting, it's hard to believe both nights achieved the same thing. When PSG followed in late April sunshine for our first Champions League semi final since 2009, the pre-game atmosphere was carnival-like — towers of pre-game beer snakes wobbling through the concourse. The fun came to an end when Ousmane Dembele shanked PSG in front within five minutes, but the dream was there.
'Survival no longer feels impossible'
When Xavi Simons' knee gave way, many of us thought that was it. All season, when Spurs have come face to face with adversity, they have crumbled. It has left us questioning the players' desire and mental fortitude.
Colorado lawmakers limit health care enrollment for immigrant children, but raise cap on dental benefits as budget talks conclude
After weeks of wrestling with how to rein in spending on a program providing health coverage to immigrants, Colorado lawmakers gave final approval Tuesday, April 28, to a proposal to limit enrollment and end certain...
Colorado lawmakers limit health care enrollment for immigrant children, but raise cap on dental benefits as budget talks conclude
After weeks of wrestling with how to rein in spending on a program providing health coverage to immigrants, Colorado lawmakers gave final approval Tuesday, April 28, to a proposal to limit enrollment and end certain...
Perplexity just gave its Comet AI browser an upgrade for iPad users with these features
Perplexity has been early to the AI-browsing space with its Comet web browser. Today’s Comet update includes some welcome features...
Some fungi can influence the weather — and now we know how they do it
Some types of fungi borrowed a gene from ancient bacteria that gave the ability to make ice and trigger rain.
Chicago Bears 2026 Draft Class Grades Roundup
Our guy @GOOCH1701 checks to see what grades the NFL Draft experts gave the Bears' 2026 class.
Mezcal worm in a bottle DNA test reveals a surprise
The famous mezcal “worm” has long puzzled scientists, but DNA testing has finally cracked the case. Researchers found that all sampled larvae were actually agave redworm moth caterpillars—not a mix of species as once believed. While the discovery clears up a long-standing mystery, it also raises concerns about sustainability. Growing demand for mezcal and edible larvae could put pressure on wild populations and the agave plants they depend on.
Buying an apartment seemed my best option. Visiting a tiny home village showed me another way to live.
A zillennial who spent 30% of his income on his mortgage felt lucky. Minitopia's tiny home village gave him a new perspective on homeownership.
Letter to the editors: Business incubator is a key career launchpad
My first job out of college was at the INCubator housed in the Hamilton County Business Development Center. That desk gave me something invaluable: a front row seat to possibility.
Inside Iowa Politics: Emotional farewell speech from Sen. Jack Whitver
State Senator Jack Whitver gave his retirement speech as he prepares to leave office to continue his treatment for a brain tumor.
Inside Iowa Politics: Emotional farewell speech from Sen. Jack Whitver
State Senator Jack Whitver gave his retirement speech as he prepares to leave office to continue his treatment for a brain tumor.
Inside Iowa Politics: Emotional farewell speech from Sen. Jack Whitver
State Senator Jack Whitver gave his retirement speech as he prepares to leave office to continue his treatment for a brain tumor.
Inside Iowa Politics: Emotional farewell speech from Sen. Jack Whitver
State Senator Jack Whitver gave his retirement speech as he prepares to leave office to continue his treatment for a brain tumor.
'Inflicting' politics on others
During his failed campaign to become one of Indiana’s U.S. senators, Republican candidate Richard Mourdock gave us a taste of what was to come.
iPhone 18 Could Come With 12GB of RAM
Apple's standard iPhone 18 could feature 12GB of memory for the first time, according to analyst Dan Nystedt. In a new post on X, Nystedt said that the standard iPhone 18 will match the 12GB of RAM Apple gave the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max last September. It would mark the first time the entry-level iPhone model has shipped with that much memory. This rumor making the rounds again, add 12GB of RAM.
Driving systems-level change through health education - UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health
April 24, 2026 Second-year MPH student Claire Siebert's summer practicum gave her an opportunity make a systemic impact on the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), where she designed a syphilis education program for incarcerated adults that is now woven into federal correctional facilities across the country.
This Dad’s ‘Horrible’ Smelling Bachelor Pad Inspired His Business. It Hit $12K a Month Fast — Now On Track for $100M a Year.
Scott Dancy's friend gave him a game-changing solution — and it led to a business.
A Los Angeles Woman Was Lost. An Ambitious Mental Health Program Gave Her a Sense of Purpose
The novel experiment in community care, concentrated in Hollywood, was inspired by the mental health system in Trieste, Italy.
Barry Mano, Who Gave Sports Referees a Voice (and More), Dies at 82
With Referee magazine and a nonprofit advocacy group, he created a community and support system for sports officials
Big Business Fears Mamdani. Its Workers Gave Him Big Bucks.
Nearly 2,000 employees at member firms of the big business Partnership for New York City donated to Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign — while CEOs spent millions opposing him.
Truro man rebrands car to raise awareness of mental health
Ben Drew gave his Kia Ceed a makeover to help "end the stigma" after losing two friends to suicide.
Dems jockeying for Newsom endorsement give passing grades on issue that ignited 'poop map' crisis
Democratic candidates gave Newsom no lower than a B-minus on homelessness, drawing sharp criticism from Republicans at a California gubernatorial debate on Wendesday.
Mystics, Monumental Sports bring a different kind of support to DC girls
The Washington Mystics and Monumental Sports, through a new nonprofit called EquipHer, gave away three free sports bras to every girl at Hart Middle School.
Albuquerque business owners plead guilty to selling counterfeit Native American jewelry
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – A husband and wife from New Mexico pleaded guilty in North Carolina federal court to smuggling and selling counterfeit Native American jewelry. Kiem Thanh Huynh, 60, and …
College athlete gave up athletic scholarship; was it the right choice
Growing up, running was my life, and I worked hard to earn a college scholarship. But when I started school, my passion for the sport disappeared.
MBA Voices: How London Business School Gave Me The Motivation & Tools To Reimagine My Career
The biggest takeaways from B-school aren't always the lessons you take from the classroom, says one London Business School MBA.
US imposed 2-week deadline during secret Cuba meeting
The US gave Cuba two weeks to free high-profile political prisoners during a secret meeting or face up to the Trump administration's consequences.
Colorado lawmakers advance bill to tackle Colorado’s prison capacity issues
As lawmakers work to compete the next state budget, they are intensifying efforts to address overcrowding and capacity challenges within the Department of Corrections and related agencies — issues that have contributed to increased spending in the budget. The state Senate on Friday gave preliminary approval to Senate Bill 159, specifically designed to work on […]
Eagle man sentenced for defrauding Garden City business, IRS
EAGLE (Idaho Statesman) — An Eagle man has been sentenced to 52 months in federal prison on embezzlement and tax fraud charges, according to the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Idaho. Miles J. Elletson, 55, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and filing false tax returns, defrauding Alloway Electric, a contracting company in […]
Hundreds bring their pets to Tuskegee University for annual animal health fair
Veterinary students and professionals gave free health examinations for pets and offered families a variety of vaccinations at a low cost.
'Really poor in terms of chances created'
Stoke boss Mark Robins says they gave away two bad goals and did not create enough opportunities going forwards following their defeat by Wrexham.
Central Health leaders tour new Hancock campus ahead of April 24 opening
Central Health leaders gave a first look at the new $150 million Hancock facility in Austin, with patient services set to begin April 24.
What I learned when I gave up sugar for six weeks
Foods with added sugar are everywhere – even in some surprising places. So how easy is it to go without sugar and what difference can it make to your health?
Trump touts tax tips policy in Vegas, says Iran war is going 'swimmingly'
President Trump used a rare visit to Las Vegas to tout his no tax on tips policy, and also gave promising predictions on the Iran war.
ChatGPT maker OpenAI shifts its focus to business users amid Anthropic pressure
The same ChatGPT chatbot that gave OpenAI’s Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar a tilapia recipe for a recent Sunday night dinner at home is also...
Clarence Thomas Wouldn’t Know What Progressivism Was If It Smacked Him on the Head
The Supreme Court justice gave a talk in Texas that was just plain absurd.
In the Katzmann Lecture, Senator Andy Kim takes aim at political corruption
Last year’s edition of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, which gauges countries’ perceived resistance to corruption, gave the United States its lowest score since the index’s current scale debuted in 2012. That result likely would not surprise US Senator Andy Kim of New Jersey, who focused on corruption in politics when he delivered the fifth annual Robert A. Katzmann Lecture on April 6. The event honors the career and impact of the late Judge Katzmann of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, a professor of practice at NYU Law.
Inside the surreal anti-science conference where Trump’s EPA chief gave the keynote address
"Essentially, the climate deniers are in charge now."
ChatGPT maker OpenAI shifts its focus to business users amid Anthropic pressure
The same ChatGPT chatbot that gave OpenAI’s chief financial officer Sarah Friar a tilapia recipe for a recent Sunday night dinner at home is also now doing her most mundane tasks at work like summarizing her emails and Slack messages.
Amazon’s new Fire TV Stick HD is its ‘slimmest ever’
Amazon just gave its most affordable streaming stick an upgrade.
From a massive living area to an entertainment room and art collection: Ram Kapoor’s approximately Rs 20 crore Mumbai house
Ram Kapoor enjoys a lavish lifestyle in Mumbai with wife Gautami and kids. He once gave a glimpse of his luxurious Mumbai house in a Farah Khan’s vlog. The house is worth around Rs 20 crore and includes an entertainment room, bar and much more. Here’s a look at his lavish Mumbai house:
They counted on a rural dialysis unit to keep them alive. Then it closed
A hospital in Nebraska shut down the only dialysis unit for miles, upending lives. That's despite a new federal program that gave the state more than $200 million to improve rural health care access.
Trump warns US-UK trade deal ‘can always be changed’ with relations in ‘sad state’
President says he gave Britain ‘better deal than I had to’ but ally was ‘not there when we needed them’ on Iran
JJ Wetherholt Homers Twice as Cardinals Rally to Beat Guardians
Tuesday night’s game at Busch Stadium was a parade of solo home runs for both the St. Louis Cardinals and the Cleveland Guardians. JJ Wetherholt homered twice and made some epic plays in the field as the Cardinals showed their come-from-behind heart yet again to walk off the Guardians in extra innings. Michael McGreevy gave […]
Australian business sentiment crashes in March on worries about fallout from Iran war
Australian business confidence plunged last month by a magnitude only seen during financial crises as the Iran war gave rise to a global oil shock, a survey showed on Tuesday.
Jennifer Riley: Nuclear verdicts and junk science are creating a judicial hellhole
Over the years, Pennsylvania has become flooded with excessive lawsuits that are pushing our healthcare system to a breaking point. […]
Napoli draw at Parma gives Inter chance to put one hand on Serie A title
Napoli's Serie A title defence suffered a blow with Sunday's 1-1 draw at Parma which gave league leaders Inter Milan the chance to move nine points clear.Napoli trail Inter by six points, a gap which could increase following the late match between the Milan giants and Champions League chasers Como.
Illinois Court Hears Final Lawsuit Challenging Marijuana Social Equity Business Licensing Lottery
“We just want a fair shot. We’re not asking for anything special, no special privileges, but what they promised from the very beginning.” By Hannah Meisel, Capitol News Illinois Nearly seven years after Illinois lawmakers approved recreational cannabis legalization, applicants who lost out on coveted business licenses are still battling the state in court, alleging […]
I used Meta's Muse Spark AI to rate my lunch and suggest dinner
Muse Sparks rated my lunch a 7.5 out of 10, told me to watch my sodium intake, and gave me dinner recipes that helped me get rid of leftovers.
“AI polls” are fake polls
A few weeks after Donald Trump’s second presidential win, I took the train up from London (where I was living at the time) to Oxford to attend a conference on polls and forecasts of the 2024 election. Most of the attendees were pollsters or academics, but I also watched presentations from Aaru and Electric Twin, two companies that do what is interchangeably called synthetic sampling, silicon sampling, or synthetic audiences. Stripped of startup jargon, that means they use large language models (LLMs) to simulate responses to public opinion polls by having AI agents take on the role of survey respondents. I had already heard of Aaru thanks to some articles with eye-catching headlines like “No people, no problem: AI chatbots predict elections better than humans” in the months leading up to Election Day. The founders were making some big, some might even say far-fetched claims, such as: “within two years, we will simulate the entire globe — from the way crops are grown in Ukraine to how that impacts production of oil in Iraq, trade through the strait of Malacca, and elections for the mayor of Baltimore.” When Semafor asked Aaru’s cofounders — Cameron Fink and Ned Koh — about my boss, they said “we respect all those who came before us.” Nate (as he so often does) shared his thoughts on Twitter: Fink and Koh were relatively good-natured about this back-and-forth when we spoke at Oxford. They even offered to mail me one of the t-shirts featuring Nate’s quote they apparently had made. I never took them up on the offer, which I now somewhat regret. These synthetic sampling companies fell off my radar for a while, but they do still exist. In fact, Aaru recently received a $1 billion valuation. Is what they’re doing anywhere close to the most important frontier in AI development? Not by a longshot, especially when Anthropic just developed a model so adept at exploiting software vulnerabilities that it’s only being released to 40 companies. Still, silicon sampling is increasingly finding its way into public polling. Axios reported in March that “a majority of people trust their own doctors and nurses” based on findings from Aaru — without mentioning that the “people” in that sentence were actually LLMs. Around the same time, the Public Sentiment Institute “boosted” their online sample of 373 real survey respondents with 114 AI agents.1 (Spoiler alert: even the co-founder of Electric Twin doesn’t think that’s a particularly defensible approach.) Polling companies like Qualtrics and Ipsos are also developing synthetic data panels. So, what should we make of these … “polls”? Let’s get one thing out of the way: whatever they are, they’re not polls in the way that term is usually defined. Subscribe You can’t replace polls with AI On one hand, using LLMs to essentially make up fake survey respondents sort of sounds like the dumbest idea ever, one that will at best imperfectly replicate real polls while introducing all sorts of biases. On the other hand, with LLMs improving at a remarkable, perhaps even alarming rate, maybe that means I’m a dinosaur at the ripe old age of 24 because I still want to rely on polls that talk to actual people. I’m not going to argue that synthetic samples are completely useless. In fact, as I’ll return to later, there is evidence that some techniques can replicate topline survey results quickly and cheaply. But the marketing from certain companies can be slightly optimistic. “No traditional poll will exist by the time the next general election occurs,” said Fink in 2024. We’re just 206 days away from the midterms, and based on the fact that I still have to collect a bunch of polls every day, I’d say he should have run that prediction by a sample of AI agents before the interview.2 To see why synthetic samples can’t replace polls, here’s a quick primer on how they work. The simplest version of these models involves taking a LLM (like ChatGPT or Claude), giving it a demographic profile (e.g., a white, college-educated woman who lives in Utah and makes $70k a year), and then asking it to respond to a survey question. You repeat that process a few thousand times using different demographic profiles and end up with a sample of synthetic survey responses. The actual models used by private companies are more sophisticated than this, usually because they incorporate more hypothesized demographic characteristics for each agent and provide them with extra information. Aaru, for example, feeds agents a diet of news and information they’d be likely to consume, while Electric Twin incorporates their customers’ proprietary data about the audience they’re trying to replicate. The way Ben Warner, the co-founder of Electric Twin, explained it to me was “we have a large amount of data on […] for instance, 5,000 people. Can we make an accurate prediction of how they would respond to another question?” Still, it should be obvious why synthetic samples can’t replace polls. Polling is fundamentally a data collection process. We might use surveys to make predictions by feeding them into election forecasts, but the main purpose of a poll isn’t prediction, it’s gathering new data about what people think and how they feel. Silicon sampling, on the other hand, produces no new data. It’s simply a model: you input LLM training data, demographic prompts, and a bunch of other information, and it spits out a prediction for what a poll would say. We love models here, but models aren’t polls. That difference is an important philosophical sticking point for most pollsters I talk to. “I think politics should stay away from [synthetic sampling], because we’re trying to […] represent the voice of the people,” said Natalie Jackson, a vice president at GQR Insights. Democratic pollster John Hagner told me: “I think I’m just incredibly skeptical of this idea. I don’t think it’s research. At that point, you’re asking the machine to tell you what you already believe.” Hagner has seen some presentations of early synthetic sampling experiments, but so far, “if it’s being used in a campaign, people are keeping it incredibly quiet.”3 But Eli, I hear you saying, aren’t polls themselves increasingly governed by modeling decisions? Indeed they are: pollsters’ choices on which sampling method to use, how to define their likely voter models, and how to weight their samples can and do lead to dramatic differences in the results they publish. Aaru even referenced these limitations in the methodology statement included with that maternal mortality “poll” — although I’m using the term “methodology statement” loosely here, because it doesn’t really explain how the model works at all. We can ignore the (frankly preposterous) implication that synthetic sampling isn’t subject to a separate set of biases. The important point is that there’s still a meaningful difference between using weighting and other statistical techniques on actual polling data and using a model to predict what a poll would say. The latter is far closer to election forecasts or techniques like MRP — potentially useful models, but not a replacement for polls.4 To be fair, other synthetic sampling companies are perfectly happy with the distinction between polls and models. Warner compared polling and synthetic sampling to different tools in a toolbox. “The mistake I think we make is we think that these new tools should either work in exactly the same way or somehow replace these old tools,” he said. “Rather than thinking of it as, okay, so we’ve always had the hammer, we’ve always had the screwdriver, now we’ve got a saw. But don’t use a saw to try [to] do the job of a hammer.” A quick comment from Nate Eli didn’t ask me for a comment — rather rude of him, don’t you think? But since I’m editing this story, I figured I’d add a few quick thoughts rather than putting words in his mouth. Beyond the frequently misleading marketing, what bothers me about the AI “poll” hype is that as AI tools make statistical inference cheaper and/or better (note that these are not synonyms) that actually increases the comparative value of collecting original data. You might be able to train a model to make a reasonable estimate of what some hard-to-reach poll respondent would say — say, a young Black man who voted for Trump. (Such a person checks a number of boxes for a voter who is usually hard to reach in surveys.) Indeed, this is closely related to what models like the Silver Bulletin forecast already do. They essentially smooth out the kinks in noisy survey data by making inferences based on past voting patterns or national polls or surveys of other states. But you don’t actually know what these voters think unless you’re reaching them directly. If there’s a shift in opinion among this subgroup, you’re not going to detect it. So if I were running a campaign, I’d invest more in going the extra mile to find a representative sample of those voters. And then I’d hire some smart quants — or Claude? — to figure out the implications for campaign strategy based on proprietary data that my competitors didn’t have access to. -Nate Silver Are these models any good? If synthetic surveys are just a new type of model, the next obvious question is whether the models are at least accurate. The answer very much depends on who you ask. On one end of the spectrum, you have the maximalist argument that synthetic sampling is more accurate than actual polls. “It’s an incredibly challenging problem to go to someone and say ‘hey, we’re going to be more accurate at predicting human behavior than you, even when you talk to your customers directly’,” Koh recently told CNBC. In his view, synthetic sampling isn’t a saw to polling’s hammer, it’s “magic.” There’s certainly evidence that synthetic samples can replicate certain survey toplines. But if Aaru does have any examples of their approach outperforming the polls, they’re keeping those to themselves.5 Aaru’s 2024 election model, for example, had Kamala Harris leading in Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on November 4th. And although they’ve since taken down their forecast page, they gave Harris a 50.5 percent chance of winning the race on November 2nd.6 After the election, Fink told Semafor he was happy enough with those results because they were “within margin of error,” a term that is completely meaningless when applied to a “sample” of AI agents. And of course, Aaru says their models have improved since 2024, so supposedly now they’d be more accurate than the polls? Still, their stronger argument is on cost: “We are significantly faster and cheaper than traditional polling, and still more accurate,” said Fink. The first two claims are undeniably true, but the third brings us to the opposite end of the spectrum. Both Jackson and Hagner are skeptical that these models are reliable for anything beyond replicating common survey toplines. “I just […] don’t think the machines are what we want when we’re looking for nuanced views. My example on this is people in Arizona and Nevada in 2024 who voted for Trump and voted for expanding abortion in their states on ballot initiatives,” said Jackson. Hagner identified another issue. Maybe the synthetic respondents, like sycophantic LLMs, are inhuman in one important way: they’re too nice. “The reports that have come through at the meetings that I’ve been at are that the early experiments on this, they cannot get respondents to be as racist or sexist or, frankly, as negative as human respondents,” he said. Academic research mostly agrees on this point. While there are some papers that show promising results when using LLMs to replicate polling data, most show that LLMs suffer from various quirks like producing too few “don’t know” responses and can seriously overpredict the favorability of politicians like Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. They also seem to struggle with too little variation between demographic subgroups, so the difference in predicted opinion between Democrats and Republicans, for example, is too small. When I asked Warner about these studies, his response to these papers was that just because academics can’t get synthetic sampling to work doesn’t mean that the technique doesn’t work in general. “Actually, the argument is, okay, yours does not [work]. That does not mean […] for this complex set of machinery, which uses a lot of investment, a lot of time, a lot of money, you can’t get it to work.” Cards on the table, I’m somewhat sympathetic to this argument because academics aren’t exactly great at making election forecasts. Usually, the people with skin in the game are the most accurate. Warner’s argument is that the approach Electric Twin takes — which includes, for example, making multiple predictions for each synthetic respondent using different models and prompts and subsequently averaging those to get a final prediction in a sort of ensemble forecast — produces better results than the simpler academic models. Warner shared a comparison between his method and the method from a recent academic paper with me, and Electric Twin was indeed able to get more accurate replication. But even still, he acknowledged that synthetic sampling “is not a crystal ball.” “If you asked me, do I think using other data sources will be more accurate than asking somebody who they will vote for, I would probably say no. But if you asked me ‘would your system be useful for our turnout modeling today?’ I would say yes.” For better or worse, it looks like the method is already getting more popular in the market research world. Most of the clients Aaru touts these days are businesses like EY and McDonald’s. And AI will probably begin to pop up in other parts of the political polling process. Pollsters are already using it to code open-ended survey responses, and some firms, like YouGov, are testing using LLMs to ask survey respondents questions. More worryingly, one danger to actual polls is that AI agents can be used to infiltrate online surveys. Most online polls use various checks to prevent that from happening, but there’s conflicting evidence on how effective those filters are and how prevalent AI agents currently are in online panels. If those agents ever become impossible to detect, it might spell the end of online polling, but the solution isn’t to replace all of your respondents with ChatGPT. Silver Bulletin is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a subscriber. Subscribe 1 That particular poll obviously doesn’t meet Silver Bulletin standards for aggregation. But we exclude all Public Sentiment Institute polls from our averages because we classify them as an amateur polling firm. 2 You could argue that Fink meant the next presidential election, but (a) I’m also confident we’ll still have real polls in 2028 and (b) in that case he should have asked an LLM to define “general election.” 3 Quick caveat: that’s reporting from a Democratic pollster. It’s possible that Republicans are more willing to use AI in political campaigns. 4 Indeed, Silver Bulletin does not include “polls” produced by MRP in our forecasts or averages, and we think it’s extremely misleading when their practitioners describe them in a way that suggests original data had been collected among a large number of states or Congressional districts. 5 A recent report from Aaru and EY did show two examples of a synthetic estimate being closer than a survey to a real-world benchmark — but I’d take those findings with a grain of salt because the report reads more like an ad and didn’t involve any sort of prediction being made ahead of time. 6 For comparison, our odds for Harris on the same day were 48.2 percent.
Max Muncy hits three homers, lifts Dodgers on walk-off
LOS ANGELES — Max Muncy gave Dodger Stadium a finish worthy of the big screen Friday night.
A Hematology Science Researcher’s Experience of the Present Funding Environment
Rinku Majumder, PhD, gave a status update on her laboratory’s investigations of anticoagulant protein S.
Meta’s New AI Asked for My Raw Health Data—and Gave Me Terrible Advice
Meta’s Muse Spark model offers to analyze users’ health data, including lab results. Beyond the obvious privacy risks, it’s not a capable stand-in for a real doctor.
20 years after passing nation-leading health care law, Mass. braces for new challenges
A landmark health coverage law passed 20 years ago gave Massachusetts among the lowest uninsured rates in the country. It inspired the sweeping federal overhaul known as the Affordable Care Act. Now many are wondering whether that period of intense negotiations and compromise offers lessons for today's urgent health care challenges.
3L Rachel Sadler Charts Path in Brain Health, Technology, and Policy Through UC Law SF’s Health Law Concentration - UC Law San Francisco (Formerly UC Hastings)
3L Rachel Sadler studies health law and policy at UC Law SF while researching the legal implications of neurotechnology and other emerging tools that may affect human cognition. 3L student Rachel Sadler shares how UC Law SF’s Health Law Concentration prepared her for a career focused on the intersection of brain health, government policy, and technology. Gained a detailed understanding of how U.S. health care is regulated and where policy reform is needed through coursework and research. Interned with state and federal agencies that regulate health care services and worked with a major health care provider’s bioethics department. Plans to pursue a career focused on protecting cognitive liberty and mental privacy as new technologies reshape healthcare. 3L Rachel Sadler: The Health Law Concentration has given me fluency in one of the most complex regulated industries and the tools to become an effective advocate for better health policy. Before coming to law school, I spent a decade teaching and working with teachers and administrators on high school programming for multilingual learners. Healthcare kept emerging as the most powerful driver of student outcomes. I wanted to understand how to make effective policy change in this area and how to use existing law to defend people’s health rights in California. Through the concentration’s coursework, I gained a sophisticated understanding of how U.S. healthcare is regulated. I also learned where the pressure points for reform exist. The courses gave me space to develop what became my central research interest: how law and policy can be built to protect human cognition and healthy brain development, particularly regarding new technologies such as generative AI and neurotechnology. The health law faculty were instrumental in that process, genuinely invested in helping me and other students define and pursue our own intellectual vision. During law school, I interned at the General Counsel’s Office for Region IX of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I also externed at the California Department of Justice’s Health, Education and Welfare Division. Additionally, I externed at Kaiser Permanente Northern California’s Bioethics Department. Alongside those placements, I conducted extensive independent research on mental privacy and emerging neurotechnology, working closely with Professors Emily Murphy and George Horvath. That research became the throughline of my law school experience and the foundation of my current policy focus. I must also credit Nicole Ozer of the Center for Constitutional Democracy (CCD), whose deep knowledge of California privacy law and the public-interest privacy landscape deeply informed my work. I currently serve a research assistant with the CCD, where I spearhead the development of K-12 educational resources in partnership with law faculty and students. I’ve found UC Law SF to be an ideal place for second-career, nontraditional students. There is a tremendous diversity of life and career experience here, and I felt fully welcomed into the community, despite returning as a student at a different stage of life. I came to law school wanting to promote equity in California’s healthcare system. I am leaving with a sharper and more specific ambition: to build a policy career focused on protecting cognitive liberty and mental privacy from technological intrusion. This is both an urgent and underserved area of law, and I want to be part of defining this landscape going forward. Whether as a practicing attorney or a policy advisor, I plan to work on these issues after law school. I strongly recommend UC Law SF and the Health Law Concentration. When I arrived in law school, I worried the concentration would be narrow and that my non-clinical background would be a disadvantage. The opposite was true. The health law faculty thinks about health expansively, encompassing social determinants of health, structural inequity, and emerging technologies alongside the regulatory mechanics of the industry. The faculty are accessible, intellectually generous, and genuinely invested in students’ development. I found my research vision here, and I deeply appreciate the concentration’s role in this. The Evidence of Success series highlights UC Law SF students as they share how the College’s opportunities equip them with the experience, skills, and confidence to excel in the legal profession.
Top C.D.C. Official Delays Report on Covid Shot’s Effectiveness
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya objected to the study’s methodology, saying it gave an inaccurate picture of the vaccine’s benefits.
Women in Business club holds first annual symposium
BuzzBallz founder Merrilee Kick gave a keynote speech on starting a business at the first-ever University of Montana Women in Business symposium on March 27.
Iran’s Reality Shatters JD Vance’s Hungarian Fantasy
If what mattered most in the world was the political future of JD Vance, this would be a very good week. The US vice president gave a rousing speech in support of Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a model leader for the global conservative right, while at the same time helping his boss toward the off-ramp from an unpopular war with Iran.
TRADING DAY Markets gorge on huge TACO
World markets soared on Wednesday and oil had its biggest fall in five years, as investors gave a hearty welcome to the ceasefire in the Iran war. The question now is whether this is just a mega-relief rally, or a major turning point in sentiment.
Review determines no charges for Green Bay mayor over recording devices
The devices, in place in 2021 and 2022, were located outside the City Council chambers and the mayor’s office.
Review determines no charges for Green Bay mayor over recording devices
The devices, in place in 2021 and 2022, were located outside the City Council chambers and the mayor’s office.
New Yorkers Mostly Like What They See From Mamdani So Far
Residents gave Mamdani high marks on his leadership, but his approval rating is lower than Eric Adams’s was around the same period.
Brawl breaks out between Braves pitcher Reynaldo López and Angels slugger Jorge Soler
“I asked him if everything was OK and the answer he gave me, I didn’t like it,” Soler said through a translator, according to MLB.com. “That’s why I went out there.”
Final session days put key Kentucky bills back in play
Kentucky lawmakers will gavel in April 14 for the last two days of the 2026 legislative session.
MAGA Is Winning Its War Against U.S. Science
Source: NBER With all the other terrible news right now, you may not have noticed that Donald Trump is in the process of killing American science. OK, that’s an exaggeration — but not that much of an exaggeration. The Trump administration’s latest budget proposal calls for a gigantic increase in military spending combined with severe cuts to social programs. But as the chart above shows, it also calls for debilitating reductions in research funding. Furthermore, Trump appointees have already been strangling science by sharply reducing the rate at which research grants are approved. Here, for example, is the number of new grants approved by the National Science Foundation: Source: Nature Large numbers of existing grants have also been frozen or terminated, especially in the study of infectious diseases. Add to this a sharp drop in visas issued to foreign students, who often play a direct role in research and who help support academic departments that do research: Put all of this together, and much U.S. scientific research is set to come to a screeching halt — not a few years from now, but over the course of the next year or two. This new assault on U.S. science is taking place at a time when the role of American science in the world has already been greatly eroded. The chart below, based on research recently reported by the National Bureau of Economic Research, measures national strength in science by the share of publications in highly ranked journals. In the 1990s the United States had more such publications than the rest of the world combined. Since then we’ve dropped into third place — well behind China and slightly below the European Union. And this was before the Trump administration’s attack on science had time to take its full effect. Source Some erosion in U.S. scientific preeminence was inevitable given China’s growing sophistication and wealth. But we’ve also fallen behind Europe, even though everyone says that Europe is lagging economically and technologically. Claims about Europe’s underperformance are, in fact, dubious if one looks hard at the data. But it’s still striking to see America lagging. What’s going on? There are presumably multiple factors behind America’s scientific lag. But even before Trump II the growing hostility of the U.S. right to science surely had some negative effect. And since the rise of MAGA G.O.P. attitudes toward science in general have become overwhelmingly hostile. This is true even for the Republican rank and file: And while I haven’t been able to find good survey data, it’s obvious that the anti-science turn has been even more pronounced — and began earlier — among the Republican political elite. Chris Mooney published The Republican War on Science in 2005, and even then was describing a longstanding trend. Why have Republicans turned so anti-science? Part of the answer is that they believe that scientists don’t support them. And they’re right! A study of who scientists give money to shows that only a small percentage gave money to Republicans even 20 years ago, and that almost none of them donate to Republicans now: Social scientists have always been strongly pro-Democratic, while there used to be a significant number of physical, “hard” scientists supporting the GOP. But these days physicists are almost as uniformly Democratic, or at least non-Republican, as sociologists. Why are there almost no Republican scientists? It’s not a mystery. GOP political orthodoxy includes positions that are at odds with the scientific consensus on multiple issues, ranging from the validity of the theory of evolution, to the reality of climate change, to the efficacy and safety of vaccines. In each case the scientific consensus is solidly grounded in evidence. But even before the rise of MAGA the U.S. right was increasingly hostile to evidence-based policymaking — especially, of course, where the evidence is unfavorable to fossil fuel interests or quack medicine, both financial mainstays of right-wing politics. So scientists don’t support Republicans, and the feeling is mutual. Today’s Republican Party doesn’t like science or scientists. It doesn’t like having its preconceived views challenged by appeals to evidence. It knows that very few scientists are on its side electorally. In general, it sees scientific research as a threat to its grasp on political power. Add in MAGA’s combination of rabid anti-intellectualism and allergy to any hint of criticism, and one has the makings of a drastic anti-science turn in policy. “Ignorance is strength” might was well be an official MAGA motto. And as I said, we aren’t talking about something that will happen over the course of multiple years: The U.S. scientific enterprise is threatened with severe damage, even collapse, over just the next year. There are many reasons to find this prospect horrifying: Think of all the beneficial advances, affecting almost every part of life, that won’t happen because U.S. science — still crucial to the world — has been eviscerated. But think, also, of America’s international standing. Can a nation that has forfeited its role as a leader, or even a contender, in global science, still be a Great Power? No. MUSICAL CODA
Arizona cardiology practice paying $3.85M to resolve lawsuit after data breach
The 2023 incident potentially gave an attacker access to the names, addresses and Social Security numbers of thousands of heart patients.
Marlins' Pete Fairbanks makes 3rd career start before paternity leave
Fairbanks threw 27 pitches in his lone inning, allowing three hits, including a three-run home run by Yankees first baseman Ben Rice that gave New York a 3-1 lead.
Cubs Take Game One of Double Header
After last night’s postponed game, the Guardians faced a chilly Sunday double header against the Chicago Cubs. In game one, Slade Cecconi took the mound for Cleveland and Edward Cabrera for Chicago. Both starting pitchers gave it their all, keeping it a scoreless game into the eighth with both teams only notching one hit. Your […]
Chucklefish on why Witchbrook has taken a decade to release
Donna Orlowski, the COO of Chucklefish, has explained why Witchbrook has taken so long to release. Back in 2016, the project was first teased. A year later, it was announced as Spellbrook, and then became Witchbrook in 2018. We’ve essentially seen the last decade fly by, but the game has still yet to debut. Orlowski gave some insight into the...
Oregon gave millions in erroneous benefits for state health plan, audit says
A free Oregon health care program for adults who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid could have improperly given out $15 million in payments related to benefits for recipients, according to a recent audit of state-managed federal programs.