Ioana Manolescu

@mioana

Senior researcher at Inria and Ecole polytechnique, France. ACM Senior Member. Working on BigData, AI, Fact-Checking, Disinformation

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Ioana Manolescu@mioana· 3h

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0... "The journalists were not the ones who stuffed Arday into the cannon and lit the fuse. They were gravity." 💯 Perfect piece from @graemewood.bsky.social @theatlantic.com

They elevated Arday, a fragile and disturbed person, into a position where his fragility would be tested and he would be shattered. Even if the Cambridge Faculty of Education’s standards were so low that his inadequacies would remain unremarked there, he was a fellow of a Cambridge college with real scholars who would eventually be indignant upon realizing that their new colleague’s scholarship consisted of copy-paste jobs, semiliterate nonsense, and fan notes on his favorite 1990s Brit-pop. Did Arday’s allies think no one would notice? That those who noticed would be forever intimidated into polite silence? That drinking sherry in the common room of Jesus College would be a pleasant experience for Arday himself as he waited to be found out? Those who placed Arday in that situation were cruel and heartless. They may as well have taken a skin-and-bones Make-A-Wish kid, told him that he could fly, and shot him out of a cannon. The journalists were not the ones who stuffed Arday into the cannon and lit the fuse. They were gravity.

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· 21h

Exactement comme elle dit ⬇️💯

Cambridge hired Arday — from a pool of finalists that included two more senior women of color — at a moment when it was facing persistent questions about Black underrepresentation. Handsome and charismatic, an intellectual Horatio Alger, he offered the university a P.R. coup.

Many of the people who didn’t bother questioning Arday’s back story should have known better; today their oversight looks less like respect than condescension, as if no one took him seriously enough to think hard about what he was saying. “Arday was treated not as a scholar but as a mascot,” Jason Okundaye wrote in the left-leaning Guardian.

In retrospect, it would have been much better for all concerned if the story of his scholarly mistakes and biographical inventions had broken in a careful, professional outlet like Times Higher Education, instead of festering until it turned into a right-wing parable. Cofnas’s article catalyzed a journalistic feeding frenzy not just because it seemed to show evidence of plagiarism and falsehood, but also because it claimed there’d been a cover-up, and cover-ups tend to drive reporters wild.

For people on the left, it’s sure easier to talk about the feral excesses of the right-wing press than the willful gullibility of certain elite progressives. But both contributed to the Arday disaster. Denying that won’t protect the left. It will just leave leftists out on a limb that grows ever more shaky.

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· 21h

Menaces et intimidation de Jason Arday sur des journalistes qui lui posaient des questions sur son travail et son parcours www.nytimes.com/2026/08/17/o... (on trouve les mêmes infos dans plein d'endroits).

Last year, Jack Grove, a reporter for Times Higher Education, a British magazine, was preparing an article about plagiarism allegations against the star academic Jason Arday. It would have been a big story because Arday, who in 2023 became Cambridge’s youngest-ever Black professor, was a minor celebrity, thanks in part to his seemingly extraordinary biography.

Among other things, Arday said that he’d gotten his Ph.D. despite severe autism that left him nonverbal until he was 11 and unable to read until he was 18. He’d claimed to have run 600 miles in six days, which would have made him one of the world’s most accomplished ultramarathoners.

Grove sent Arday three emails with questions about both his work and his history. Arday responded by hiring one of Britain’s leading defamation firms — one known, among other things, for trying to quash investigations into Scientology — and reporting Grove to the police for harassment. As Grove later wrote, an officer told him not to contact Arday again because it was affecting the professor’s mental health. The magazine, fearing expensive litigation, killed the piece.

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· 11d

The Louvre offers these 🐈 moms and their kittens, in recognition of #InternationalCatDay #cat 🥰

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· 18d

Oui. Une fois n'est pas coutume, ce matin j'ai écrit ça ⬇️: "unmitigated disaster". Le désastre est un peu corrigé par le fait qu'avec de l'IA on arrive à mieux accéder aux données de vérification, p.ex. avec StatCheck www.inria.fr/fr/fact-chec... Mais le bilan reste largement négatif 👎 🙄 🤖

Less than two months ago, in this panel, I had said: ➡️ "For the integrity of the information space, #AI is mostly an unmitigated disaster" ⬅️ 💣 💥

This Wired story https://www.wired.com/story/ai-scammers-are-better-at-building-trust-than-humans/
shows that autonomous LLM chatbots 🤖 were more effective at scamming humans (eventually, convincing them to install an app or a game on their computers or phones), than humans. Further, chatbots refused to admit they were not human, and humans mostly didn't distinguish them from human scammers during the scam (but were better at it later). A disaster indeed 💯

A complementary insight is here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.16475 #AI agents 🤖 outperformed human debaters, even very skilled ones (contest winners), in persuading users to do something (not nefarious in this case: giving to a children charity).

Clearly, the persuasion capabilities of #AI can and should be used for good, e.g., to reduce polarization by helping people see the viewpoint of the other side. Thomas Renault, Sacha Altay and other colleagues have raised this point recently.

But we are now sharing our information space with entities that run on GPUs in many data centers across the world and I do feel we're not ready for this 😱 and that it will get worse before it gets better.

Well, we'll have interesting stories to tell our children on the other side, I guess 😬 Or maybe we'll go back to socializing IRL❓ 😉

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· 21d

So, here we are... www.nytimes.com/interactive/... 😢

NYTimes headline: The Fires in France and Spain are Breaking Modern Records

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· 24d

Changer ses coordonnées bancaire à la MAIF: on y est presque... 🙄

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· 24d

"l’A400M fait à peine mieux qu’un Dash, parce que ce n’est pas la quantité d’eau ou de retardant qu’on amène d’un coup qui compte, c’est la quantité d’eau qu’on amène pendant plusieurs heures d’affilée. Or l’A400M a un délai de rotation très long" 🤷 www.lemonde.fr/planete/arti...

Dans ce contexte, que pensez-vous de l’engagement de l’A400M ?

C’est une magnifique opération de communication pour éteindre toutes les critiques sur le manque de disponibilité des Canadair. Vu la situation, il ne faut rien s’interdire, mais ça rappelle un peu les commandes de clim en urgence pendant la canicule : on fait avec les moyens du bord. Ce qu’il faut savoir, c’est que l’A400M fait à peine mieux qu’un Dash, parce que ce n’est pas la quantité d’eau ou de retardant qu’on amène d’un coup qui compte, c’est la quantité d’eau qu’on amène pendant plusieurs heures d’affilée. Or l’A400M a un délai de rotation très long, le Dash est beaucoup plus rapide et efficace. D’ailleurs, là encore, nous n’avons depuis le début de l’été que 7 de nos 8 Dash disponibles.

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· Jun 27

L'impression que le 🐈‍⬛ se liquéfie en solidarité avec moi ( 📷 d'il y a un jour ou deux)

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· Jun 16

et en fish et en emacs-lisp... masterinfodroit.lacl.fr/programme-mo... 👁️

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· May 29

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· May 22

🗓️ 👁️ 🎶 Le 3 juin à 20h30, l’Ensemble vocal de l’École polytechnique se produira en l’église de Saint-Germain-des-Prés à Paris avec deux grandes œuvres du répertoire sacré français : le Requiem de Gabriel Fauré et la Messe aux chapelles de Charles Gounod! Billetterie: www.helloasso.com/associations...

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· May 19

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https://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2026/05/19/des-pesticides-interdits-dans-le-riz-le-the-et-les-epices-consommes-en-france-l-effet-boomerang-des-exportations-de-substances-toxiques_6691425_3244.html
Or, les tests menés par Foodwatch montrent que ces limites sont dépassées dans 14 produits, dont deux en France. L’ONG demande leur rappel immédiat.

Il s’agit du paprika doux moulu de la marque Ducros (numéro de lot 601912350) et du riz thaï de la marque Taureau Ailé (numéro de lot 0506251BN-B). Le paprika doux moulu concentre à lui seul pas moins de 18 résidus de pesticides, dont six interdits en Europe. Et pour deux de ces substances prohibées, les niveaux de concentration dépassent les limites maximales de résidus. Il s’agit de deux insecticides : le chlorfénapyr et le flonicamide. Le premier a été retrouvé à une concentration de 0,096 milligramme par kilo (mg/kg), soit plus de neuf fois la limite autorisée (0,01 mg/kg), et le second à une teneur de 1,89 mg/kg, soit plus de six fois la limite maximale de résidus (0,3 mg/kg).

Trois pesticides interdits ont été identifiés dans le thé vert nature Twinings et le thé vert menthe Carrefour Sensation ; deux dans le thé vert de Chine Leader Price, le thé vert Monoprix et le riz basmati long Carrefour Extra et le cumin entier Albert Ménès ; un dans le thé vert à la menthe Lipton, le cumin moulu Ducros et le riz basmati Leader Price.

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· May 19

Si vous aimez la #musique, Verdi, et êtes prêts pour une grande émotion, allez ce soir au concert "Defiant Requiem", 19h30 à @sorbonne-universite.fr ! 🎶👂😍 www.defiantrequiem.org ⬇️

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· May 8

www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/a... "“The humanities are not a luxury. They are how a democracy understands itself."

In her 143-page ruling, Judge McMahon ordered the agency to rescind the cuts while saying the plaintiffs had suffered “irreparable injury.”

“The injury is not limited to the loss of money,” Judge McMahon said. “It includes the disruption of protected expression, the interruption of ongoing research and publication, the cancellation or suspension of humanities programming, and the chilling effect caused by the government’s use of viewpoint-based and unauthorized criteria to terminate federal grants.”

Joy Connolly, the president of the American Council of Learned Societies, said in a statement that the ruling was a victory for the Americans in all 50 states who are served by programs the endowment supports.

“The humanities are not a luxury,” she said. “They are how a democracy understands itself. Today’s decision is a step toward honoring the will of Congress and our mission as a nation — to seek the truth, know ourselves and build a better future on that knowledge.”

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· May 3

Oui. Rome, pour le boulot, c'est vraiment trop dur. J'en sais quelque chose 🤩

Fontaine "du maure", piazza Navona, Rome

Deux fresques du Caravage dans l'église Saint-Louis des Français

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· May 1

France 🇫🇷 #StandWithUkraine in 🇮🇹 (Palazzo Farnese, FR embassy in Rome) 🇺🇦

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· Apr 29

Alors, cette délégation de service public, tout se passe bien? (Voir ALT)

"L'état italien paie. Alors, nous, pourquoi vous nous payez au rabais? 7 ans sans contrat!"

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· Apr 29

Oui, cela a été du court-termisme, dans ma compréhension, parfaitement compris et assumé (lire ci-dessous). Par ailleurs, comment aurait-on pu penser que les 🇨🇳 n'allaient PAS vouloir et pouvoir acquérir puis développer des technologies? Après avoir vu le 🇯🇵 copier puis innover? Complètement classique

Mais Hervé Machenaud, surnommé « le Chinois » chez EDF, récuse la moindre naïveté. « En France, c’est [le groupe américain] Westinghouse qui a construit la première centrale du parc nucléaire français à Fessenheim. Nous avons appris avec eux. Nous avons construit la deuxième avec leur soutien. Puis nous avons amélioré la technologie et avons construit seuls les autres centrales. Nous savions en allant en Chine qu’ils feraient comme nous, cela n’avait rien de naïf », explique-t-il.

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· Apr 28

Puis de l'autre côté de l'entrée, l'explication 😀🤷‍♀️

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· Apr 28

Il y a donc une française, elle marche dans la rue à Rome et se dit: curieux nom pour un hôpital italien, il est public ou privé ? 1/2

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· Apr 26

www.nytimes.com/video/us/pol... "The 🇺🇸 has drained much of its ammunition, at a total cost of nearly $1 billion a day" @nytimes.com 👁️

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· Apr 25

www.comicsands.com/harnik-trump... Photographer Andrew Harnik won the White House Correspondents' Association's Award for Excellence in Presidential News Coverage by Visual Journalists for this photo ⬇️ 💯

Donald Trump stands by as others attend to Gordon Findlay who had a malaise and collapsed to the floor of the Oval Office at the White House

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· Apr 13

Bohemiae Rosa, map of the Kingdom of Boemia by Christoph Vetter, 1667, at @labnf.bsky.social in the "Imaginary maps" (cartes imaginaires) ongoing exhibition. Ping @annakubista.bsky.social

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· Mar 5

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· Mar 4

Très à propos: dans plus de 30 bases, des commandants US ont dit aux troupes que la guerre en Iran est une guerre chrétienne. Dans au moins un cas, les commandants ont dit que la guerre allait précipiter l'Armageddon et le retour de Jésus dans le monde... 😜

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· Mar 2

March 2, 2026, 11:58 a.m. ET7 minutes ago

Shawn McCreeshReporting from the White House

After just a few minutes, Trump has moved on from his war in Iran to the curtains he’s picked out for the White House and his new ballroom. “I picked those drapes in my first term,” he says. “I always liked gold.” There’s light chuckling in the room.
Katie Rogers
March 2, 2026, 11:58 a.m. ET7 minutes ago

Katie RogersWhite House reporter

Trump, in the middle of a Medal of Honor ceremony where he is explaining his rationale on deposing Iran’s supreme leader, starts talking about his White House ballroom project.

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· Feb 22

Plus que 3 semaines jusqu'au concert de l'Ensemble vocal de l'Ecole polytechnique + orchestre Les Rencontres, dans le cadre unique de l'église Saint-Eustache, au coeur de Paris! 🗓️ Le 16 mars à 20h, pour les billets ➡️ www.helloasso.com/associations... 🎶 Venez nombreux!

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· Feb 22

Entre Saint-Remy lès Chevreuse et Courcelle sur Yvette #Essonne 🌳🌿

Ioana Manolescu@mioana· Feb 21

#VictoryForUkraine