Welcome to the ‘Borax Challenge’

Among the fistfuls of reporting threads I’ve kept gripping over the years are two topics that recently converged in a TikTok story: health misinformation online and viral challenges. Welcome to the “borax challenge,” where people are drinking borax in water

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Welcome to the ‘Borax Challenge’

Among the fistfuls of reporting threads I’ve kept gripping over the years are two topics that recently converged in a TikTok story: health misinformation online and viral challenges. Welcome to the “borax challenge,” where people are drinking borax in water

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How AI reinforces systemic bias

Vox asked me to explain the many, many ways in which AI systems can reinforce biases, a topic that has become even more urgent with the introduction of popular generative AI tools. A lot of people who pay attention to

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How AI reinforces systemic bias

Vox asked me to explain the many, many ways in which AI systems can reinforce biases, a topic that has become even more urgent with the introduction of popular generative AI tools. A lot of people who pay attention to

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How tools like ChatGPT can combat ADHD paralysis

Two weeks after leaving my full-time job and going freelance, I was formally diagnosed with inattentive-type ADHD. This was February of 2023, just as ChatGPT was popping up everywhere. I kept seeing the potential for this tool to help people

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How tools like ChatGPT can combat ADHD paralysis

Two weeks after leaving my full-time job and going freelance, I was formally diagnosed with inattentive-type ADHD. This was February of 2023, just as ChatGPT was popping up everywhere. I kept seeing the potential for this tool to help people

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Book review: “Distrust”

For the Washington Post, I reviewed Gary Smith’s take on disinformation and the replication crisis in scientific research. Here’s what I wrote: People are often tempted to trust statistics and algorithms as neutral arbiters. But algorithms are incapable of independently

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Book review: “Distrust”

For the Washington Post, I reviewed Gary Smith’s take on disinformation and the replication crisis in scientific research. Here’s what I wrote: People are often tempted to trust statistics and algorithms as neutral arbiters. But algorithms are incapable of independently

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The children’s show ‘Bluey’ is a balm for stressed, child-free adults

At the end of 2022, during a very stressful time in my life, I started getting an avalanche of videos from a wholesome children’s show on my TikTok For You Page. This is how I accidentally became a fan of

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The children’s show ‘Bluey’ is a balm for stressed, child-free adults

At the end of 2022, during a very stressful time in my life, I started getting an avalanche of videos from a wholesome children’s show on my TikTok For You Page. This is how I accidentally became a fan of

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The porcelain challenge didn’t need to be real to get views

I’ve written about a million stories over the years about the way in which moral panics about teen challenges get attention online and in mainstream media. In this iteration, I interviewed a TikTok creator who completely made up the “porcelain

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The porcelain challenge didn’t need to be real to get views

I’ve written about a million stories over the years about the way in which moral panics about teen challenges get attention online and in mainstream media. In this iteration, I interviewed a TikTok creator who completely made up the “porcelain

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Dementia content gets billions of views on TikTok. Whose story does it tell?

This story of mine is the one I’m proudest of among everything I wrote in 2022. It’s about going viral, consent, and cognitive decline. There’s a lot written about the huge consent issues raised by “sharenting” culture and parents who

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Dementia content gets billions of views on TikTok. Whose story does it tell?

This story of mine is the one I’m proudest of among everything I wrote in 2022. It’s about going viral, consent, and cognitive decline. There’s a lot written about the huge consent issues raised by “sharenting” culture and parents who

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