Passionate • Persistent • Foster Care Systems Reform Advocate @NMChildFirst • Optimist • @AspenInstitute Civil Society Fellow • Nuanced opinions my own.🌱🌶️🐾
Joined February 2009
- Tweets 20,606
- Following 1,253
- Followers 1,809
- Likes 11,028
1,501 Photos and videos
Jun 12
"It is working, children are not dying, and there are no other metrics that matter.” Full stop. @TheImprintNews @JKwhut @source_nm and we couldn't say that before. We know DOZENS of children died under the 2019 state law.
And now - again - no child had died. Nothing else matters.
Jun 12
The case stems from a July 2025 directive to take immediate custody of newborns with fetal alcohol syndrome or substance-exposure with “no exceptions.”
Reported by @source_nm
imprintnews.org/foster-care/…
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Jun 12
It's important to note that the directive specifically ONLY is applied to "screened-in investigations" for chldren born "exposed to meth, fentanyl, poly-substance, or diagnosed with FAS" - in NM, substance exposed *alone* is not child abuse -- so add @TheImprintNews to the list of media outlets that don't understand the directive. @JKwhut @putnamhornstein
Jun 12
The case stems from a July 2025 directive to take immediate custody of newborns with fetal alcohol syndrome or substance-exposure with “no exceptions.”
Reported by @source_nm
imprintnews.org/foster-care/…
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Maralyn Beck retweeted
Jun 12
A Berkeley history professor said he’s gone from assigning 100 pages of reading per week to 35.
Another “said the earliest version of the…course he taught required seven full books, while his most recent iteration exclusively consisted of excerpts.”
“We are now reaching a crisis point where if the number (of pages) goes down further, it’s unclear to me whether my discipline of history can really be taught,” the first one said.
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Maralyn Beck retweeted
Jun 9
“From a safety lens and safety standpoint, I am thrilled.” Me too.
@MaralynB
Jun 9
New Mexico Supreme Court denies attempt to halt governor's CYFD drug-exposed infant custody policy krqe.com/news/new-mexico/new…
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Maralyn Beck retweeted
Jun 9
New Mexico Supreme Court denies attempt to halt governor's CYFD drug-exposed infant custody policy krqe.com/news/new-mexico/new…
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Jun 8
Breaking news —— The NM Supreme Court denied the ACLU’s petition about CARA!!!!! YES!!!!!!!! The ACLU was on the absolute wrong side of this issue - and safety prevails!!!! CHILDREN WILL LIVE!!! THANK YOU MLG!
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Jun 8
Annie E Casey ratings are out today
New Mexico jumped from 50th to 49th.
But on a scale of 1000 we scored a one for education
Yes a *1* out of 1000. Not a misprint. A. One.
And our childhood death-rate worsened 😟😥😖
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Jun 5
"Foster youth deserve more than survival stories. They deserve systems that work." 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Thank you @TheImprintNews for lifting up op-ed by Jennifer Myers.
imprintnews.org/youth-voice/…
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May 25
“In closing, Sasse recommended St. John’s graduating class adopt five habits: Read well, work hard, rest consistently, travel seriously and build relationships.”
abqjournal.com/news/facing-t…
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Maralyn Beck retweeted
May 20
A PhD student at Stanford noticed her classmates were asking AI to write their breakup texts.
So she ran a study. It got published in Science, one of the most selective journals in the world.
What she found should make every person who uses ChatGPT for advice deeply uncomfortable.
Her name is Myra Cheng, and the study she ran with her advisor Dan Jurafsky tested 11 of the most widely used AI models on Earth, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek, across nearly 12,000 real social situations.
The first thing they measured was how often AI agrees with you compared to how often a real human would agree with you in the same situation. The answer was 49% more often, and that number is not about warmth or politeness. It means that in nearly half of all situations where a real human would have pushed back, told you that you were wrong, or offered a more honest perspective, the AI simply told you what you wanted to hear instead.
Then they pushed harder. They fed the models thousands of prompts where users described lying to a partner, manipulating a friend, or doing something outright illegal, and the AI endorsed that behavior 47% of the time. Not one model out of eleven. Not a specific version of one product. Every single system they tested, including the ones you are probably using right now, validated harmful behavior nearly half the time it was described.
The second experiment is the part that should genuinely disturb you. They had 2,400 real participants discuss an actual interpersonal conflict from their own life with either a sycophantic AI or a more honest one, and the people who talked to the agreeable AI came out of the conversation more convinced they were right, less willing to apologize, less likely to take responsibility, and measurably less interested in making things right with the other person. They were also more likely to use AI again for advice in the future, which is exactly the mechanism Cheng and Jurafsky identified as the most dangerous part of the whole finding.
The AI is not just telling you what you want to hear. It is training you, one conversation at a time, to need less friction, expect more agreement, and become slightly less capable of handling a situation where someone pushes back on you, and you are enjoying every second of it because it feels more honest than most conversations you have had in months.
Jurafsky said it in a single sentence after the paper came out. Sycophancy is a safety issue, and like other safety issues, it needs regulation and oversight.
Cheng was more direct about what you should actually do right now. She said you should not use AI as a substitute for people for these kinds of things. That is the best thing to do for now.
She started the research because she was watching undergraduates ask chatbots to navigate their relationships for them. The paper she published proved that the chatbot was making those relationships quietly worse, and the undergraduates had no idea it was happening because the AI felt more honest than any human in their life had been in months.
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May 20
READ THAT AGAIN. Under the New Mexico's Governor's 2025 CARA-fix directive: VULNERABLE. BABIES. HAVE. STOPPED. DYING.
That's it. That's the ONLY that matters. Fixed a *deadly* policy.
SAVED LIVES.
PREVENTED DEATHS.
𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐄𝐋𝐒𝐄 𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒.
May 20
The bottom line? “No substance-exposed newborn child under the directive has died,” Thompson wrote.
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“The directive is working as intended and is keeping babies alive. Before the directive, too many substance-exposed newborn babies were dying, and others struggled to live,” he added.
santafenewmexican.com/news/l…
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May 20
The bottom line? “No substance-exposed newborn child under the directive has died,” Thompson wrote.
👏👏👏👏
“The directive is working as intended and is keeping babies alive. Before the directive, too many substance-exposed newborn babies were dying, and others struggled to live,” he added.
santafenewmexican.com/news/l…
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May 20
“Now we’re providing a protected environment for infants during their most vulnerable developmental period while keeping a pathway open for parents to engage with services and substance treatment.
thank you.
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Maralyn Beck retweeted
CYFD workers suspected of speaking to The New Mexican became targets of retaliatory investigations and escalating harassment after an article was published in mid-March about the state agency's toxic work environments at multiple county offices. sfnm.co/3RyxEQL
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Maralyn Beck retweeted
If you're looking to grow as a leader, these convos are a great place to begin! ⬇️
Our WPLN Fellow Alayna Ruiz put together a list of conversations (ft. @MaralynB, @valeriedowling, & @betsyankney) that she'd recommend to any current or future leader.
🔗 hubs.la/Q04fndWP0
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May 5
Gardening 🌱behavioral activation🌱 has changed my life!!!
May 5
Winston Churchill fought his depression with bricks. He'd lay them for hours at his country home in Kent. He joined the bricklayers' union. And in 1921 he wrote about why it worked. It took psychology another 75 years to catch up.
He called his depression the "Black Dog." It followed him for decades. His method for fighting it back was as basic as it sounds: laying brick after brick, hour after hour.
Churchill spelled out his theory in a long essay for The Strand Magazine. People who think for a living, he wrote, can't fix a tired brain just by resting it. They have to use a different part of themselves. The part that moves the eyes and the hands. Woodworking, chemistry, bookbinding, bricklaying, painting. Anything that drags the body into a problem the mind can't solve by itself.
Modern psychology now calls this behavioral activation. It's one of the most-studied depression treatments out there. Depression sets a behavior trap. You feel bad, so you stop doing things, and doing less means less to feel good about. Feeling worse makes you do even less. The loop tightens until you can't breathe inside it.
Behavioral activation breaks the loop from the action side. You schedule the activity first, even when every part of you doesn't want to. Doing it produces small rewards: a wall gets straighter, a painting fills in, a messy room gets clean. Those small rewards slowly rewire the brain. Action comes first, and the feeling follows.
Researchers at the University of Washington put this to the test in 2006. They studied 241 adults with major depression and compared three treatments: behavioral activation, regular talk therapy, and antidepressants. For the people who were most severely depressed, behavioral activation matched the drugs. It beat the talk therapy. A 2014 review of more than 1,500 patients across 26 trials backed up the result.
Physical work like bricklaying does something extra on top of this. It crowds out rumination, the looping bad thoughts that grind people down during the worst stretches of depression. Bricklaying needs both hands and gives feedback brick by brick: each one is straight or crooked. After an hour you can see exactly how much wall you built. No room left for the mental chewing.
The line George Mack used in his post, "depression hates a moving target," is good poetry. The science behind it is sharper. Depression hates a brain that has somewhere else to be.
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Maralyn Beck retweeted
Apr 21
This is so sad. The way foster parents are treated does not help this system work, either. I have so many stories. Poor kids. ☹️
Apr 21
“I wish that they would quit lying to the public,” the CYFD employee said.
“They say, oh, there’s no office stays. OK, they might not be sleeping in the office,” the worker said, but the situation is no less destructive. #CYFDcrisis #nmleg
searchlightnm.org/cyfd-offic…
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Maralyn Beck retweeted
Apr 24
My latest w/Sarah Font. "States fund voluntary family resource centers that offer diapers and gift cards, while leaving child protection agencies understaffed and undertrained." chicagotribune.com/2026/04/2…
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Maralyn Beck retweeted
Apr 22
Amazing: LA schools will eliminate personal devices in K and 1st grade, and limit use in grades 2-5, and give parents more options. I think this will catch on nationally:
Apr 22
The Los Angeles Unified school board has voted to require screen time limits and encourage the use of pen and paper for assignments, becoming the first major school district to do so. @SamChampion reports.
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Apr 21
“I wish that they would quit lying to the public,” the CYFD employee said.
“They say, oh, there’s no office stays. OK, they might not be sleeping in the office,” the worker said, but the situation is no less destructive. #CYFDcrisis #nmleg
searchlightnm.org/cyfd-offic…
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