Midnight Moondust

first day of pride month

The first image: A Palestinian elder holding the keys to his home, from which he was forcibly displaced after the Nakba of 1948. An image filled with pain, with tears that dried on faces, and hearts that collapsed under the weight of loss. Yet, hope for return still filled those hearts.

The second image: A recent photo that tells the same story, but this time, the protagonist is my young sister, Maryam, holding the keys to our home from which we were displaced and demolished after the Nakba of 2023.

For anyone wondering, the PhD student's name is Myra Cheng.

Across three preregistered studies, participants interacting with sycophantic AI became more convinced of their own rightness and less willing to repair relationships. Yet at the same time, participants rated sycophantic AI models as higher quality, more trustworthy, and more desirable for future use, which may explain why this behavior has persisted despite its harmful impacts.