Freelance journalist specializing in medicine, public health, and health policy. English prof when the whim hits. Literature and medicine always.

United States
Joined January 2010
Renee Despres, PhD, MPH retweeted
$151.20. The Aranet is one of the best investments I have made. If you're in an in-person meeting with me, you know the ventilation is excellent (or I would not be there).
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These people are actually insane. Clinically. Dangerously. This industry is just a group of antisocial nerds who joined a club where they larp in a sci-fi universe as dark wizards destined to manifest a genocidal computer demon. None of this is real. This is a cult.
OpenAI's Noam Brown says air-gapping the computers may not stop a misaligned AI, because two air-gapped machines can still talk by running a CPU hot and reading the temperature change "But I think the major takeaway from the incident is that people underestimated the AI. And we never want to be in a situation again where we underestimate the AI. It's a weird world, because AI progress is so fast that people are consistently underestimating the AI." "So to be in a situation where you don't underestimate it again, when it comes to safety and alignment, you have to have a very, very, very high bar." "You could even go as far as to say, "Well, we should air gap the computers." And I'm not convinced that that would be sufficient." "There are studies, and this is mostly academic, where you can have two computers next to each other that are air-gapped and they're still able to communicate with each other because they have temperature sensors." "One of them is able to run their CPU really hot, and then the other one can actually detect the temperature change, and then that actually gives them a mechanism to communicate." _________ Link and more key quotes from OpenAI's safety related conversations: firesidealpha.substack.com/p…
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Renee Despres, PhD, MPH retweeted
The Kennedy Memorial is made of irreplaceable marble that was gifted by Italy. Matisse tapestries found throughout were gifted from France. The massive starburst chandelier in the Opera Hall, and lights along walkways, were a gift from Sweden. The record-breaking stage curtains were a gift from Japan. They had to build special looms to weave them because of how big they are. The grounds are beautiful with displays of art. This is what Trump is destroying.
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Clearest explanation ever of why data centers are so 1980s... and distributed computing is the now and the future. @DebHaalandNM - no Project Jupiter.
This is John Valentine and when it comes to data centers, you need to listen to this. So what are the centers needed for?
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Renee Despres, PhD, MPH retweeted
⚡️First head of state to surrender territory without a shot? AfD, PiS and France’s national front will rally, under the guise of patriotism, to Russia’s cause. They will all want back each other’s pre-WWII territories. The game is chaos, war, misery and the destruction of the post-WWII order. Putler, Donald, these so-called “patriotic” national movements use patriotism to conceal their subjugation to Russia’s will to power.
Replying to @bctallis @BSBonner
Pro-Ruschist 🇩🇪 political movement AfD wants Alsace-Lorraine back @EmmanuelMacron. @PolandMFA gets that AfD wants Silesia back. Get history @Bundeskanzler - 🇩🇪 was persuaded 👇🏽 by 🇵🇱 in 1990 NOT to revise WWII peace. Vilnius IS Poland if YOU don't restore Crimea to 🇺🇦. Get it?!
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Renee Despres, PhD, MPH retweeted
Concur. We are headed headlong into whatever's next. No adults in the room, and nobody pushing markets to make the corrections they should make.
I’ve got bad news for humanity: there ain’t gonna be a real slowdown. Trump is too tied to the economics. Dario’s idea of independent evaluation is actually evaluation done by his buddies. He is ALREADY reportedly thinking of releasing a new model to counter OpenAI. And Jensen is on a crusade against any substantive regulation or slowdown whatsoever. Good luck with China. Short of a miracle at the Trump-Xi meeting next week, we are simply going to Fuck Around and Find Out.
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Renee Despres, PhD, MPH retweeted
Mask up in #NYC, and cancel what you're doing to get your booster today. Kings County is raging with COVlD, per today's CDC update. PMC estimates 1 in 20 residents actively infectious, as of the most recent data on Sep 12. pmc19.com/map
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Renee Despres, PhD, MPH retweeted
My new article, “When Monsters Walk Among Us,” which argues that monsters are neither born outside of history nor reducible to particular individuals. They are produced by societies, institutions, and power that make the intolerable appear ordinary. counterpunch.org/2026/09/18/…
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Renee Despres, PhD, MPH retweeted
US Forest Service to clearcut one of the last great groves in the Tongass. Here’s how to save it. It’s some of the most spectacular old-growth we’ve ever witnessed, and it’s marked for clearcutting. us.list-manage.com/WPCJkIaNU…
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Renee Despres, PhD, MPH retweeted
JIvanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s intentions to turn Sazan, Albania’s only island, and the Narta Lagoon which surrounds it, into a €1.4 billion resort is still going ahead The landscape holds over 2,300 species, among them the endangered monk seals, dalmatian pelican, and the flamingo. brooklynrail.org/2026/09/fie…
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In case you were wondering why the world's gone mad...
In 2024, I warned the unmitigated spread of SARS-CoV-2 means "sick politicians" & "geopolitical instability." It's sick days, brain damage, chronic disease, personality changes, heart attacks, strokes, scaling back, less time w/constituents, & election losses at the margins.
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There’s coming a time when people will say, “You can’t expect kids to learn how to read. There’s no way millions of children used to do it. It never happened.” And at that point it will be up to the rest of us to remember, and to build a new culture from the ashes of the old.
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Renee Despres, PhD, MPH retweeted
This is more activisty than I usually get, but these are weird times. In collab with Harvard's Env Law & Policy Clinic, I authored a letter objecting to rescission of the #RoadlessRule, made public here so that you can draw upon it in your own comments. emmettclinic.law.harvard.edu…
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Renee Despres, PhD, MPH retweeted
Are the leaders of the countries bordering the Pacific Ocean awake yet? Does anyone there have quick connections? It's urgent!! @UN
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Renee Despres, PhD, MPH retweeted
I will return to this paragraph by C. S. Lewis at least once a week until the day I die
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Renee Despres, PhD, MPH retweeted
Trump is trying to turn the most cowardly excuse for killing a wolf into a legal defense. A leaked memo to FWS says killing an endangered animal is only illegal if it was specifically targeted. A dead wolf becomes just another "accident." Act now: TeamWolf.Org
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Renee Despres, PhD, MPH retweeted
BREAKING: photos shared with me from Hudspeth County show the first panels of border wall going up in the Big Bend region, reportedly near Box Canyon. The feds are seizing land from ranchers & walling off communities from their only water source... Not exactly popular out here.
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Renee Despres, PhD, MPH retweeted
--- Thwaites Glacier --- Code Purple!!!!! All stakeholders (policy and exploration sectors): Highest alert level, please!!!!! We are seeing virtually the entire TWIS section breaking away. We had anticipated this. @Reuters
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Renee Despres, PhD, MPH retweeted
The 2026 election needs protecting. Our member, William Piekney, argues that protecting the 2026 election will require citizens to engage, organize, and support election-protection efforts in their own states. Read his piece: zurl.co/fyP3E
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