The SciLit launch in Bucharest, from a seat in the room
I was in the room for the Bucharest launch of SciLit, an Erasmus+ course that places scientific literacy next to human rights. The host was the Romanian Secular-Humanist Association, which is not a neutral consortium. The test is not the opening event.…
A thousand accounts is not a thousand citizens: AI influence-for-hire in Malaysia
A commercial platform used Claude to build fake accounts, a synthetic news site, and fabricated dossiers aimed mainly at Malaysian audiences. Anthropic rated the campaign Category Two: assets without evidence of authentic community breakout.…
Short-form video and the mind that cannot come down
Meta executives say science does not back public fear of platforms. Caty Enders, in The Guardian, looks past the lawsuit headlines to a quieter claim: what short-form video may be doing to attention, impulse control, and memory. The map is thin — and not…
Exclusive interview with Nicolae Țibrigan: Romania, platforms, and democratic resilience
In this incisive interview by Andrei Eugen Drăguț, Dr. Nicolae Țibrigan exposes how modern platform architectures, strategic gendered attacks, and inherited distrust converge in a hybrid war on reality—fought in our bodies and public sphere. Essential…
Attention capitalism and the battle for the human mind
Before the day has properly begun, before a thought has had time to form in silence, the phone has already staged an entire emotional sequence: a headline that provokes, a video that absorbs, a comment that validates, a post that unsettles, a…
What counts as evidence in an age of anecdotes, experts, and uncertain truths
There is a quiet tragedy in the modern information age. We have more access to claims than ever before, but not necessarily more access to truth. Every day, we are surrounded by confident voices. Someone has a story. Someone has a study. Someone has an…
Coherence in a fragmented world from self-delusion to societal resilience
A person wakes up and reaches for the phone before reaching for a thought of their own. Before breakfast, the mind has already absorbed war, scandal, outrage, financial anxiety, medical fear, political contempt, and the curated performances of hundreds…
Hantavirus, public fear, and the discipline of proportion in an age of viral anxiety
Hantavirus is a serious rodent-borne infection that can cause severe disease, but for most people the everyday risk remains low. The real challenge is learning how to respond with evidence, proportion, and public-health literacy rather than panic. Fear…