I am starting to think some of us are looking at ourselves too much, and if you stare at anything too long, it will start to look weird after a while. Plus, the internet has warped our perception of what real humans + real aging is supposed to look like.

But today, I want to talk about the ways "selfie-culture" has distorted many people's perception of themselves. I think if more people realized how distorted our selfie cameras make us look, they'd feel a lot less critical of themselves.

Today's Sources:

1. Oohs St.Lou's Studios (The Visuals): https://oohstloustudios.com/the-science-of-the-selfie-no-you-dont-really-look-like-that#
2. ENT of Athens "Your Selfie is Lying to You": https://www.entofathens.com/your-selfie-is-lying-to-you/
3. Popular Science "Selfie Face Perception Distortion": https://www.popsci.com/technology/selfie-face-perception-distortion/
4. How to look better in selfies: https://www.slrlounge.com/why-your-selfies-look-awful-what-can-is-being-done-to-look-better-in-selfies/

Resources for Resisting a Coup: https://makeyourdamnbed.medium.com/practical-guides-to-resisting-a-coup-b44571b9ad66

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

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With everything going on in the United States, chances are you’ve been working to stay informed, and maybe even help out in some ways — both of which can take a lot of mental energy. Your main goal is to find the balance between taking action and taking enough care of yourself that you’re actually able to work effectively. - Anna Borges

The Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/annaborges/recharge-then-resist

Resources for Resisting a Coup: https://makeyourdamnbed.medium.com/practical-guides-to-resisting-a-coup-b44571b9ad66

SUPPORT Julie (and the show!): https://supporter.acast.com/make-your-damn-bed

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/make-your-damn-bed.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With everything going on in the United States, chances are you’ve been working to stay informed, and maybe even help out in some ways — both of which can take a lot of mental energy. Your main goal is to find the balance between taking action and taking enough care of yourself that you’re actually able to work effectively. - Anna Borges

The Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/annaborges/recharge-then-resist

Resources for Resisting a Coup: https://makeyourdamnbed.medium.com/practical-guides-to-resisting-a-coup-b44571b9ad66

SUPPORT Julie (and the show!): https://supporter.acast.com/make-your-damn-bed

DONATE to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund: www.pcrf.net

GET AN OCCASIONAL PERSONAL EMAIL FROM ME: www.makeyourdamnbedpodcast.com

TUNE IN ON INSTAGRAM FOR COOL CONTENT: www.instagram.com/mydbpodcast

OR BE A REAL GEM + TUNE IN ON PATREON: www.patreon.com/MYDBpodcast

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/make-your-damn-bed.

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Engaging with AI ethically is never going to be black and white, but we shouldn't feel shame or guilt for using these things with more awareness and tact. Being conscious is the best way to avoid the risks + potential consequences that come from engaging with an unregulated new technology.

Managing our expectations and understanding the risks is incredibly important to these beginning stages of AI. Today we talk about a few of the ways I'm engaging with ai more consciously.

1. 15 times it's good to use AI, 5 times not to: https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/15-times-to-use-ai-and-5-not-to
2. Protecting the Freedom to opt out: https://theconversation.com/avoiding-ai-is-hard-but-our-freedom-to-opt-out-must-be-protected-255873
3. Preventing AI from doing all the thinking: https://spencereducation.com/cognitive-atrophy/
4. Avoiding AI article: https://www.voxweb.nl/en/they-are-not-using-ai-avoiding-it-is-actually-really-easy
5. Exploring the ethical use of AI: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0268401223000816

Resources for Resisting a Coup: https://makeyourdamnbed.medium.com/practical-guides-to-resisting-a-coup-b44571b9ad66

SUPPORT Julie (and the show!): https://supporter.acast.com/make-your-damn-bed

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/make-your-damn-bed.

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We should be cautious about normalizing AI before establishing regulations: 

Unreliable:https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11729512/#:~:text=This%20study%20indicates%20that%20ChatGPT,back%20to%20an%20existing%20publication. AND https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07930-

Plagiarism machine: https://youtu.be/TWpg1RmzAbc?si=OjKaOsE7GWKfm15p&t=868

Environmental racism, Energy Waste + Terror: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/08/terrorist-groups-artificial-intelligence

Training models = unethical. https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news-events/the-hidden-human-cost-of-ai-in-conversation-with-professor-mark-graham/

Exacerbates issues. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKCynxiV_8I&t=3s AND https://apnews.com/article/chatbot-ai-lawsuit-suicide-teen-artificial-intelligence-9d48adc572100822fdbc3c90d1456bd0

Bad for Brains: https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt/

Stealing Jobs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uJHHOO5ZmY and https://www.vox.com/technology/418525/ai-chatgpt-google-office-work-white-collar-jobs

Biased. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/even-chatgpt-says-chatgpt-is-racially-biased/ and https://news.uchicago.edu/story/ai-biased-against-speakers-african-american-english-study-finds

Privacy Violation. https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/machine-surveillance-is-being-super-charged-by-large-ai-models and https://www.govtech.com/artificial-intelligence/new-chatgpt-gov-enables-use-of-non-publicly-available-data

The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/make-your-damn-bed.

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Here are some reasons we should be cautious about normalizing AI + ChatGPT before establishing regulations: 

It’s unreliable. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11729512/#:~:text=This%20study%20indicates%20that%20ChatGPT,back%20to%20an%20existing%20publication. AND https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07930-

It’s a plagiarism machine. https://youtu.be/TWpg1RmzAbc?si=OjKaOsE7GWKfm15p&t=868

Environmental racism, increasing consumer's energy bill.

Terrorism: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/08/terrorist-groups-artificial-intelligence

Training these models is deeply unethical.

Exacerbates mental health issues.

Bad for User’s Brains: https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt/

Stealing Good Jobs.

Biased.

Privacy Violation.

Deepfakes + Harmful Misinformation: perpetuates extremism

Affects Societal Trust + Relationships.

Worst Corporations Backing AI

Moral Questions of Control + Freedom

As historian Yuval Noah Harari has written, to “never summon a power you cannot control”

Resources for Resisting a Coup: https://makeyourdamnbed.medium.com/practical-guides-to-resisting-a-coup-b44571b9ad66

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

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AI is becoming increasingly unavoidable. It's in our phones, our TV's, and emails. But ChatGPT is one we STILL have a choice on how much we use it.

There is a vast number of reasons we should be moderating the amount of AI we’re engaging with, while we still can. 

Here are some reasons we should be cautious about normalizing AI + ChatGPT before establishing regulations: 

It’s shockingly unreliable: ChatGPT is known to falsify sources, reinforce biases, and perpetuate misinformation. AI hallucinations are another increasing concern. According to one peer reviewed study: “ChatGPT is an unreliable source… as 64% of sources were deemed inaccurate, specifically referring to these sources as not able to be traced back to an existing publication.” https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11729512/#:~:text=This%20study%20indicates%20that%20ChatGPT,back%20to%20an%20existing%20publication. AND https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07930-

It’s a plagiarism machine: steals directly from artists without credit or permission. https://youtu.be/TWpg1RmzAbc?si=OjKaOsE7GWKfm15p&t=868

Resources for Resisting a Coup: https://makeyourdamnbed.medium.com/practical-guides-to-resisting-a-coup-b44571b9ad66

SUPPORT Julie (and the show!): https://supporter.acast.com/make-your-damn-bed

DONATE to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund: www.pcrf.net

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

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People are more productive than ever before and YET our wages are not reflecting the growth in labor. Our wages have been stolen by the wealth hoarders and redistributed to shareholders at the expense of our dignity. We need to ensure their propaganda about laziness doesn't continue to influence the people around us.

The robber barons are worse than ever, but at least we're FINALLY talking about their crimes.

1. Justin Scott's TikTok video on Livable Wages: https://www.tiktok.com/@cypher.j/video/7525955994262834462
2. The Atlantic on Minimum wage: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/raise-the-minimum-wage-reduce-crime/480912/ 
3. The NYTimes on calculating "livable wages": https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/smarter-living/what-a-living-wage-actually-means.html
4. EPI's Productivity–Pay Gap Charts + Breakdown: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ 

Resources for Resisting a Coup: https://makeyourdamnbed.medium.com/practical-guides-to-resisting-a-coup-b44571b9ad66

SUPPORT Julie (and the show!): https://supporter.acast.com/make-your-damn-bed

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

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I'm baaack!!! and today I'm diving into Zohran Mamdani's platform and campaign which has given me a surprising amount of renewed hope for the future of American politics, if we can stay focused on resistance, revolution, and harm reduction.

SOURCES:

1. NYTimes on Zohran: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/us/politics/what-is-democratic-socialism.html
2. Zohran's Platform: https://web.archive.org/web/20250701190438/https://www.zohranfornyc.com/platform
3. Who's afraid of socialism? https://ips-dc.org/whos-afraid-of-socialism/
4. The DSA’s “What is Democratic Socialism?” https://www.dsausa.org/about-us/what-is-democratic-socialism/
5. Britannica's Democratic Socialism: https://www.britannica.com/topic/democratic-socialism
6. Democratic Socialist Public Officials: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Democratic_Socialists_of_America_public_officeholders

Resources for Resisting a Coup: https://makeyourdamnbed.medium.com/practical-guides-to-resisting-a-coup-b44571b9ad66

SUPPORT Julie (and the show!): https://supporter.acast.com/make-your-damn-bed

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

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there are so many different "consequentialisms" out there + it's important to not get lost in the "sauce" of the different combinations, but focus on the perspectives you can manage now, ideally the ones that affect you, your community, and the world around you.

RESOURCE: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/

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The opinions expressed by Julie Merica and Make Your Damn Bed Podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. Make Your Damn Bed podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/make-your-damn-bed.

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