My beard is red, or orange frankly speaking. However, underneath the left nostril, it’s grayed, even white, resembling a trail of snot, sinking vertically down to my upper lip.

Today, just for fun, i licked at it, as a preschooler would.

of course it tasted of beard, not snot, but i think it is maybe also an early taste of the second childhood

Laptop doanh nhân đời cũ vẫn là lựa chọn hợp lý cho người cần máy bền, bàn phím tốt và giá vừa túi. Dòng ThinkPad, Latitude hay EliteBook được thiết kế cho văn phòng nên khung máy chắc, dễ thay pin, dễ nâng RAM.

Nên kiểm tra gì trước khi mua

• Pin: xem độ chai trong BIOS hoặc phần mềm, còn trên 80% là ổn.
• Màn hình: soi điểm chết, hở sáng ở bốn góc.
• Bản lề và vỏ: bản lề lỏng là dấu hiệu máy dùng nhiều.
• Cổng kết nối: cắm thử USB, HDMI, sạc Type-C.

Cấu hình đủ dùng năm nay

Chip Intel thế hệ 11 trở lên hoặc Ryzen 5000, RAM 16GB, SSD 512GB là đủ cho Word, Excel, họp online và chạy vài chục tab trình duyệt.

Muốn xem máy thật và được kiểm tra tại chỗ, anh chị có thể tham khảo các mẫu tại Hưng Phát Laptop, nơi máy được test kỹ trước khi giao.

You copy a “blank name” from a generator site. In one app it saves and your name disappears, exactly like the screenshot promised. In the next app the field just empties itself and refuses to save. In a game, it eats your rename card and then shows a box.

The sites that hand out these characters all swear theirs works, and they openly contradict each other, sometimes on the same character for the same app. I build text tools for a living, so I went looking for why. The honest answer is that the question everyone asks, “which character works?”, is the wrong question. The right question is what each of these characters actually is, because every app you paste into is silently asking exactly that.

Here is what the evidence supports as of late 2026, including the places where the evidence runs out and the tool sites are guessing.

First, the door that is closed everywhere

No invisible character works in a username. Not on Discord, not on Instagram, TikTok, X or Roblox. Handles are validated against a small set of allowed characters, usually lowercase letters, digits, underscores and periods. Anything outside that set is refused before it is even stored.

Everything in this article is about the other field: the display name, the nickname, the bio line, the message box. Those fields accept broad text, which is where invisible characters live. When a guide says “invisible name for Discord”, it always means the display name or a server nickname. Your @handle underneath stays exactly as visible as ever, which matters later when we talk about moderation.

A blank name is not an empty name

Here is the fact the whole topic rests on. In Unicode, the official list of whitespace characters, the ones software agrees count as “space”, has exactly 25 entries. The ordinary space is one of them. Of all the characters people use for blank names, only one, the no-break space U+00A0, is on that list.

The rest are not spaces at all. They are letters, symbols and format controls that happen to draw nothing. When you paste one into a name field, you are not submitting an empty name. You are submitting a name written in characters whose ink is invisible. Whether it survives depends entirely on which invisible thing you submitted, because apps filter by what a character is, not by what it looks like.

Meet the characters

U+3164, Hangul Filler, the letter that draws nothing. This is the workhorse of blank names, and its secret is mundane: in Unicode it is classified as a letter. It comes from Korean text processing, where it fills an empty slot inside a syllable block, so standing alone it renders as blank width. Name validators that ask “does this field contain at least one letter?” look at U+3164 and answer yes. Trimming functions that remove whitespace look at it and see a letter, so they leave it alone. It even has genuine width on screen, a full syllable's worth, which is why a name made of it can hold space open in a layout.

U+2800, Braille Pattern Blank, the symbol that is not a space. A Braille cell with no dots raised. The Unicode standard says about it, in plain words, that while it is imaged as a fixed-width blank in many fonts, it does not act as a space. It is classified as a symbol, not whitespace, not a format character, and it is the only popular blank character that passes almost every filter unchanged: trimming ignores it, normalisation ignores it, whitespace checks ignore it. That is why it is the standard answer for blank messages. A chat app asking “is this message empty?” checks for text, finds a symbol, and lets it send.

The zero-width family, U+200B, U+200C, U+200D, U+2060 and U+FEFF. These are format characters, instructions to the rendering engine (allow a line break here, join these letters, do not break here) rather than text. They have no width and draw nothing. They are also, in the words of the analysis that tested them, the first thing a sanitiser strips. Apps that clean incoming text remove format characters on principle, because they are a classic tool for hiding things inside text. A few survive in odd corners, but as a family they are the weakest choice for a name, and the first to break.

U+00A0, the no-break space, the only real space here. It is genuine whitespace, which cuts both ways. Most trimming code removes it, and when software normalises text it is commonly rewritten into an ordinary space, at which point it gets trimmed like any other space. Padding built from it simply evaporates in many apps. It has one strange claim to fame below, in Free Fire, where a version-specific report says it is now the only character left standing.

U+115F and U+1160, the filler twins. The modern Korean syllable fillers that U+3164 normalises into. You will rarely copy them directly, but an app that normalises your pasted U+3164 quietly turns it into U+1160, which is still invisible and still a letter. Normalisation re-spells these characters; it does not delete them. What deletes things is a separate filter, and the difference between those two mechanisms explains half the contradictory advice online.

Why apps keep a character or kill it

Every field you paste into runs some version of the same three checks.

First, trimming. The field removes whitespace from the ends, and often asks whether anything is left. Real spaces die here. So does a name made only of spaces, in every app, without exception. The blank characters above mostly survive this check precisely because Unicode does not classify them as whitespace. (One measured exception worth knowing: JavaScript's own trim also removes U+FEFF, so the byte order mark dies in most web-based fields before anything else runs.)

Second, character class filtering. Name systems increasingly follow the identifier security rules written for exactly this problem, which exclude format characters and invisible “default ignorable” characters. That is the standards-level reason the zero-width family keeps disappearing and why platforms tighten over time: they are adopting the documented rulebook, one update at a time.

Third, plain policy. Some platforms simply decide that a name nobody can read is a moderation problem, and block or reset it regardless of how clever the character is. Policy beats technique every time, eventually.

What actually works, app by app, late 2026

I am going to be careful here, because this is where the internet lies to you. Most “works!” claims come from tool sites with a copy button to sell, not from dated tests. The only dated, first-person platform testing I could find in this whole research was published on 23 October 2026, and it was also the most pessimistic source in the pile. Read the confident claims below with that in mind.

WhatsApp messages: U+2800 works, U+200B does not. The evidence here is unusually consistent. A message of only spaces cannot be sent at all; the send button never wakes up. A U+2800 message sends and arrives as an empty bubble. WhatsApp strips the zero-width space before checking, so a message made of U+200B is judged empty and refused. For a blank profile name or About line, guides converge on U+2800 (with U+3164 also reported), but note that WhatsApp requires at least one character in About, which is the entire reason the trick exists.

TikTok nickname: U+3164 yes, zero-widths stripped on save. The detailed failure reports are instructive: the zero-width characters appear to be accepted while you type, then the saved nickname quietly reverts, because TikTok filters U+200B, U+200C, U+200D and U+2060 at save time. The Hangul Filler survives, and U+2800 is the accepted fallback. Several sources note TikTok's filter tightens and loosens with app updates every few weeks, so treat any TikTok answer as having an expiry date.

Instagram name and bio: U+3164, with an argument about U+2800. A measured per-app table built by a developer who catalogued these characters says Instagram keeps U+3164 in the Name field and in bio lines, and, surprisingly, rejects U+2800 in bios while keeping it elsewhere. Other guides recommend U+2800 for bios as a spacing tool, which is a different job from being the whole bio. What is agreed: invisible characters in the bio still count toward the 150-character limit, and Instagram's background save process strips some characters some of the time, which is why the same paste works on Tuesday and not on Friday.

Discord: display names and server nicknames, not usernames. U+3164 and U+2800 are both widely reported as kept in display names and server nicknames, with a caution from one recent guide that the global display-name field is stricter than server nicknames and tightens after updates. One test table claims even U+200B works in nicknames, which contradicts everything known about how sanitisers treat format characters; I would not trust it. A blank Discord message is a U+2800 job, same as WhatsApp.

PUBG Mobile and BGMI: U+3164, and mind the rename card. Multiple sources, including the measured table, agree the Hangul Filler is the surviving character for a blank in-game name and that U+2800 likely does not survive there. Every change consumes a rename card, so this is the worst possible place to experiment blind. If you are setting a game name, work from tested styles, including blank-name options that are known to register, rather than pasting strangers' characters: this is exactly the problem I built the name-style lists at Fonti's PUBG name styles to avoid.

Free Fire: the guides are out of date, possibly including this paragraph soon. Most pages still tell you to use U+3164 in Free Fire, full stop. But the only source that ties its claims to actual game versions reports that U+3164 has been blocked since patch OB43, producing the “invalid name” error, and that in the current version only the no-break space U+00A0 still registers. Two other recent pages corroborate the OB43 claim independently. Rename attempts cost diamonds or a card. My honest advice: do not spend either on the strength of any guide, this one included, until you have seen a test dated after the current patch.

Roblox: believe the dated test, not the tutorials. Roblox's own help pages say display names are continuously filtered and that names breaking the rules may be reset to your username. The single dated hands-on test from October 2026 found Roblox's display-name check rejecting every blank character, the Hangul Filler and the Braille Blank included. Against that stand many tutorial sites saying U+3164 still saves, most of them older than the test. The fair conclusion is that if a blank Roblox name works on a given day, it is a gap in the filter, not a feature, and it can be reset whenever the filter catches up. Remember also that Roblox display names change only once every seven days, so a name that saves but renders as a box locks you in for a week.

Steam and X: reports genuinely disagree. Steam's profile name is reported working with U+3164 and U+2800 by several guides, and marked “reports disagree” by the dated test table. X's display name has the same split, though blank X posts with U+2800 (and, unusually, U+200B) are consistently reported. For both: possible, unproven, and liable to change without notice.

Facebook: the technique says yes, the policy says no. Tool sites claim U+3164 in both name fields passes the technical checks. One comparative study says Facebook is the exception among big platforms and blocks blank names outright under its real-name policy, with only partly-blank names (visible letters padded with invisible characters) surviving. Facebook can demand identity verification for a flagged name, and names change only once in 60 days. Whatever the validator allows today, the policy risk here is the highest on this list.

Why your working blank name will break

Among Us is the template. In October 2020 the blank-name trick went viral at the game's peak; within weeks the developer patched online play so a blank name returned an “Inappropriate name” error, and it survived only in local modes. The guides recommending it, however, are still up, still confident, and still wrong.

That is the lifecycle everywhere. A character slips through because the validator was written before anyone abused it. The trick spreads. The platform adds the character, or its whole Unicode category, to the filter. The guides do not get the memo. Free Fire's OB43 patch, TikTok's save-time stripping and Roblox's continuous filtering are all the same story at different chapters. When you adopt a blank name, you are borrowing it from the platform's next update.

The costs nobody lists on the copy-button pages

A blank name makes you unreachable in specific, practical ways. On Discord, server members cannot easily mention or search a name they cannot see or type, and moderators can simply reset nicknames that defeat moderation; several servers require recognisable names as a rule. Two blank-named players in one match are indistinguishable, which is why game publishers treat invisible names as an identification problem, not a joke: Krafton's rules for BGMI put inappropriate nicknames, which includes names designed to be unidentifiable, at a 90-day ban with the name changed without your consent.

Screen readers make the human cost concrete. Accessibility testers find that invisible characters in text are typically skipped entirely or announced as nothing useful, leaving blind users guessing at content sighted users can at least see is there. A blank display name is, to a blind person's reader, a person with no name at all.

Add the small print: devices whose fonts lack a glyph may render your invisible character as a visible box, the exact opposite of the effect you wanted; names pasted through invisible characters break simple text matching, so search, tagging and some support forms fail on a name their systems cannot match to what you typed; and in games, every failed experiment is priced in rename cards or diamonds.

If you still want one, do it the careful way

Test in a free field first. A bio line or a Discord server nickname costs nothing to change; a game name costs a card. Never spend currency on an unverified character.

Check the date on any guide you follow, including this one. Advice from before a game's latest patch is history, not instructions.

Prefer a name that is mostly visible. A short styled name with invisible characters used as spacing gives you the look, keeps you mentionable and searchable, and survives filters that exist specifically to catch fully blank names. It is also, not coincidentally, the version least likely to be reset by a moderator.

Keep your username, the part people actually use to find you, clean and typeable. The display name is decoration; the handle is your address.

And expect the patch. If a blank name matters to your identity somewhere, keep a fallback name ready, because the day it breaks will not be announced.

FAQ

What is the difference between a blank name and an empty name? An empty name contains nothing, and no major app accepts one. A blank name contains real characters, usually the Hangul Filler U+3164 or the Braille Blank U+2800, that render as nothing. The field is full; it just looks empty.

Which invisible character works in the most places? For names, U+3164, because validators classify it as a letter. For messages, U+2800, because validators classify it as printable content rather than an empty string. Neither works in usernames anywhere.

Why did my invisible name stop working? Almost always a patch. Platforms periodically add abused characters, or their whole format-character category, to their filters. Among Us did it in 2020, Free Fire reportedly did it in patch OB43, and TikTok adjusts its filter with ordinary app updates.

Can I get banned for a blank name? The blankness itself is rarely the listed offence. The exposure is the rules around it: impersonation and deceptive identity rules on Discord, real-name enforcement on Facebook, and inappropriate-nickname penalties in Krafton's games, where BGMI lists 90 days plus a forced rename. Server-level rules on Discord can also cost you the nickname on sight.

Is U+3164 the same as a space? No. Unicode does not classify it as whitespace at all. It is a letter with a wide advance that draws nothing, which is precisely why trimming and empty-field checks let it through.

Why does my blank name show as a box on my friend's phone? Their font has no drawing for that character, so the system substitutes a placeholder box. The character is present and correct; the rendering failed. This is most common with the less common characters and on older devices.

The short version

Invisible names are not a trick with spaces. They are real characters from the quiet corners of Unicode, and each app keeps or kills them based on what Unicode says they are: a letter survives name checks, a symbol survives empty-message checks, and format characters get swept out by the cleaners. The map above is the state of play in late 2026, drawn from the most careful sources I could find and flagged where the sources fight each other. It will age, because the platforms keep patching. That is not a flaw in the map; it is the territory.

Iris Khan builds Fonti, a free text styler at https://fonti.cool, and writes about how styled and invisible text behaves in the wild. A companion piece on the spacing side of this problem: why your Instagram line breaks keep disappearing.

#Unicode #InvisibleCharacters #BlankNames #Discord #Gaming

Getting things off your chest on the Cradle Loop

It was rumbling with thunder early this morning & I thought we’d skip the Cradle.

But after six it sounded clear. I glanced out the window, checked the weather on my phone, & it looked good.

“Let’s saddle up,” I told eddy, my Belgium Alumega.

(eddy always stays in lower case. Capitals slow him down. He’s more fast & aerodynamic that way.)

We rode out to the Cradle past all the ugly political posters still clinging to the lamp posts. It’s been a week & a half of politics.

“You know, eddy, I’m a liberal. A verligte.”

“Oh no,” said eddy. “Not this kak again.”

Politics is not eddy’s favourite subject.

“Well, I’m a cold-blooded mathematician. I dislike the fascist right & the woke left. But it’s always a binary choice for everyone & I’m stranded in the middle.

Jirre, here on the southern tip of Africa we have the ultimate in lack of integrity with the cadres or comrades or whatever they like to call themselves. They’re just a plain mafia club of thieves. Commission after judicial commission has laid that bare. Yet they fok voort noord, as we say.

In the States you can see how people were assimilated in much the same way the Germans were by Hitler. Dissent & you are attacked & humiliated. Fight, fight, fight.”

“No well, fine,” said eddy. “Glad you have that off your chest.”

“Well, eddy, you just have to humour me while I flip the bird at every political campaign poster we ride past.”

“Ok,” agreed eddy. “But do it silently.”

“Not even the odd ‘Jou ma se dinges?’”

“No!”

We landed at Biden. The place was packed again. Everyone still squeezing in their last bits of practice for the 94.7.

eddy & me didn’t mess around. We cranked down Stampede Hill & hit the junction to the Sterkfontein Caves in record time.

“eddy, this hill here I’m naming in your honour. eddy’s Bump.”

“Jabonga, Mastelek. We need to find a landmark for you as well.”

“Well, old friend, we have decades for that. No rush.”

The female boemelaars were out in force today. Walking around with beach towels as skirts.

“Must be on the bones of your ass to use your towel as a skirt, eddy?”

“Well Mastelek, how do you think the Scottish kilt developed? You sleep, live & work in that. It’s just a blanket or a woolly towel.”

“I haven’t worn mine for ages, eddy. Need a good reason. I think I’ll just wear my Elliot Tartan to work next week.”

“Everyone will think you eccentric.”

“I am.”

“You cannot cycle in a kilt, eddy. Must I explain?”

“Nooooooooooo, Mastelek. Spare me. I have your spandex kit on my saddle & going commando is too much. Case closed.”

On the final crank up to Biden we blew past the whole bunch of cyclists to the top. At the summit I turned to eddy.

“Let’s do that again?”

We freewheeled to the bottom & repeated the performance.

“Let’s go home, eddy, after a Freezo. If I did that again it would be a bridge too far!!!!”

While grabbing the Freezo, there was a bloke struggling with the bikes on the racks. It was an almighty tangle.

“You grabbing someone else’s bike by the hoods?” I asked.

“These damn things like to get amorous” he replied.

“Yeah! eddy has that problem with Bianchis!”

We loaded up & the radio played the Cranberries, Dreams.

Ronald Bartels | LinkedIn | Instagram

Finally got my hands on Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve last week. Sharing my thoughts on the game before I lose track of time doing something else, like playing more Ace Combat 8.

First off, the opening cinematics are interactive, which is pretty cool. I don't remember playing a game with this feature. Granted, I don't play that many games. But still, this was cool.

The opening cinematics also have this sort of Metal Gear feel to them. I don't know why, but I like it. It gave me goosebumps when I went through it.

I like that this game brought back some focus on your wingmen, or fellow pilots. The chatter during flight brings the game to life in a good way. I do not like the “voice in your head” approach to telling your character's story, though. If they're going to let you respond to dialogue in the game, then they might as well let you be your own character instead of having somebody else's voice in your head.

The graphics in the game are excellent, not just for the planes but for the character models as well. I can see why so many players are infatuated with Tasha.

I've played the first few missions, and the replay system and camera are much improved over Ace Combat 7. The replay camera includes some angles that make for great screenshots. And I already said the graphics are excellent, but my God, the planes in this game look really good!

You start the game in an F/A-18C. It seems slow to respond to roll inputs. Either that, or they decreased the sensitivity of the analog stick. I feel like they tried to slow the game down a bit, making it a little more simulation and a little less arcade.

But who am I kidding? This is still very much an arcade game.

Sorry I'm jumping back and forth, but back to the story. I much prefer the player's story and companions in this game over those in Ace Combat 7. It might be too early to compare the two games, though, considering I've only completed a few missions.

I'll end this post with a compilation of clips from my first few hours with the game.

https://youtu.be/ywwmeDA0c5g?si=8QykhkiHtzl7CKvi

Tags: #GameLog #AceCombat8

I spent the entire day with a today. We started around 11:20, and it is now 10:30 PM. I had fun, and I am happy with today, but I will say that I don’t think I’m interested in her anymore. There were several things that just made me less and less interested. I think the biggest one for sure was she mentioned that she had a dream about a guy that she talked to like two years ago, and so she asked him out next week. And this reminds me of I think the original reason why I kind of lost interest in Her. She had told me she was not really ready for a relationship, and while we were talking and flirting all that she kind of started flirting with someone else at something I invited her for. And I know that the number one thing that turns off a suitor is expressing interest into other people. But I also know that we have been friends for a while now and so she just might not be interested in me like that. But I think past that, there were a couple things that made me kind of feel like her caring about my birthday or me was more of an exception rather than the norm. She mentioned that she was happy. She got to do the stuff for my birthday because her brother doesn’t really celebrate his birthday either. And I kind of feel like in a way I was a proxy for him. And also, she didn’t notice that I had mentioned. I don’t like coconut a few times, as we apparently made a coconut cake. And it mostly just kind of felt like she wanted to bake for baking sake, rather than for me, which is not a bad thing, but just not necessarily a super strong indicator that she cares about me like that. But also we had talked about what we expect out of a relationship, or what we are looking for, and she couldn’t really articulate it well, but ended up, essentially saying that her demand was for the person to be chivalrous. And for her that meant things like opening her car door for her or giving her the princess treatment. And I felt like a bit of the ick from that, but we did talk about it a bit, and I think I kind of isolated my issue with that. I think that sort of stuff is putting an expectation on the man in the relationship, which is fine if there are other expectations put solely on the woman. And this mostly revolves around my belief that a relationship should fundamentally be equitable. Like skill based matchmaking. And when there are expectations like this, it feels like it is because the woman is performing her traditional, gender, roles, or expectations, but that is something that I don’t want in a relationship. I think all of the expectations that I have for a relationship are ones that they also have for me. And so if someone expects me to compensate in certain ways by being chivalrous, for example whether it’s financially, or in these small acts of services constantly, it feels bad to me because it feels like that will never be reciprocated. I can’t really think of anything that I would want my partner to do for me that I wouldn’t be doing for them. And I think that it just ends up feeling like a One Direction service towards this person. And I don’t think that’s what I look for in a relationship.

When did having a life worth inhabiting become so unfamiliar and strangely defined. The eagerness for popularity people have crushes me. I suppose it always has as I've never really understood it at all. The very idea of what should and shouldn't receive recognition confounds and saddens me.

I'm not really sure where my thoughts are, atm. A bit scrambled for sure. The priorities of our civilization consistently disappoint me. I keep fighting against shutting down, but there are moments where it's more challenging than others. This appears to be one of them.

How strange it is to both be at a loss but content in who you are simultaneously. I've been told aplenty that I'm either too unfocused or far too focused. I think, perhaps, the reality is that I'm simply not focused on what others wish I was. I think I am beginning to accept that I never will be.

© 2026 AnOublietteofThought. All rights reserved.

This is a hypothetical setup for the Brand New Shield. What would the league look like? What markets would be looked at? How would the ownership model work? Let's dive in.

I truly believe dominating the indoor game is the way to go here. The indoor game from a prominence standpoint has lost its way and is filled with a combination of fledgling and fly-by-night minor leagues. There isn't an exact number of teams in mind but it would have to be a number where a good schedule would make sense. A hypothetical situation would be a 12 team league split into two conferences and every team in the regular season would play every team in their conference twice. So, 12 team league with a 10 game regular season would work here. Conference winners would then face each other in a title game. In this scenario there'd be an 11 week season and every team has a week 6 bye. The universal week 6 bye would be a great opportunity to do mid-season fan fests and other activities to engage the communities the teams are located in. There could even be broadcasts from these fan fests with player and coach interviews and Q&As to make it a more interactive experience that could be broadcast through an official league app. You'd then have the championship game 2 weeks after the end of the regular season to give the teams an extra week to prepare.

The markets these teams would be located in is something that I have gone back and forth on. The easy way out is just to use major markets but in terms of being the major league for everybody else, that doesn't fit the vibe. It would be about researching great markets with great fan bases that get overlooked. Giving what people consider minor league markets their own major league team is personally what I'd rather do and I believe there is a way to make that work if this does ever get off the ground. I'd prefer places with a proper arena already in place to lower the initial infrastructure investment and focus more resources in other areas.

As far as the ownership model goes... A single ownership model is the way to go so that all things are created equal. However, a way to distribute Green Bay Packers or Saskatchewan Roughriders style shares of the teams that include some perks for the fans who purchase them is also something I would definitely consider.

There is a long way to go before this vision could ever come into fruition. Thank you all for reading this, I really do appreciate it.

Small Changes That Make Your Beauty Routine Easier

A beauty routine should fit comfortably into your day. If getting ready means searching through crowded drawers or trying products you rarely enjoy using, a few thoughtful changes can make the process simpler.

Start with what already works. Keep your favorite everyday products together so they are easy to find. Separate occasional makeup, styling tools, and special-event accessories from the items you reach for each morning. You can enjoy variety without keeping everything on the counter.

Choose Inspiration That Suits Your Habits

A haircut might look beautiful in a photograph, but consider how you would wear it at home. Before your next salon appointment, think about whether you usually air-dry your hair, use styling tools, or need enough length to tie it back. Discuss those details with your stylist alongside your reference pictures.

The same approach works for nails and makeup. You might love the color of an elaborate manicure while preferring shorter nails and a simpler finish. Borrow the detail you like and adapt it to your preferences.

For more ideas, The Serenity Lab covers hair, makeup, nails, and everyday self-care topics that can help you explore different looks.

Buy With a Clear Purpose

Before purchasing something new, decide what you want it to do. Are you replacing a favorite product, trying a shade you genuinely like, or buying something similar to several items you already own?

A short wish list gives you time to consider each purchase. Check the product details, compare your options, and picture when you would actually use it.

Keep an Everyday Version

Leave room for busy mornings. A familiar hairstyle, a few preferred makeup products, and accessible tools can give you a dependable starting point. Save longer experiments for days when you have time to enjoy them.

The goal is a routine you feel comfortable repeating, with enough flexibility to try something different whenever you want.

Well, the feel-good show I ended up binge watching (and have already restarted) has brought my love life back up to my attention. I feel so ready and energized to meet and connect with someone, but I have no idea where to start.

It seems silly to start thinking about this now since I am about to move, but I almost wish I had someone to share this excitement with outside of my family. I know Colorado will bring new opportunities in all areas of my life, but I can’t help but wonder if the man I am manifesting even exists. I can’t be asking for too much, right? I mean I see this type of man portrayed in movies and shows, within my family and friends, and even strangers on the internet. I know some of them are real, but is there one for me?

That last sentence sounds a little hopeless… I mean duh, yes, obviously there is someone for me. And I know I will never settle for less than I deserve, so I continue to practice patience and focus on different parts of my life – career, home, friendships… I know it is a matter of ‘when’ and not ‘if’, so I will hold on to that for now.

Thank you for your message. I am currently out of office — but will return at the end of the month.

Today was nowhere near as productive as yesterday, but I made some continued progress. It was a cold and gloomy day so getting cozy and watching a feel good show felt more aligned with the type of day than yesterday.

I did manage to get myself ready on time(ish) for therapy and then I went to go meet with an old work friend. We caught up for the first time since I left my job and filled each other in on the wild rollercoaster the last few months have been. I broke the news of the move to her and she seemed very surprised, but excited for me.

I can’t pinpoint exactly how this move is making me feel, but it feels like I am on the cusp of a major realization or life change. I think it will be really good for me to get out of my bubble and try something entirely different.

Thank you for your message. I am currently out of office — but will return at the end of the month.

The decluttering challenge has begun.

It is absolutely crazy how much junk we accumulate without even realizing it. I decided it is best to work on decluttering some boxes and things I have stored before I start to pack, and it has been a wild ride. I think most of it is trash, but I get so sentimental about memories that it is really hard to know what to get rid of.

I tend to hold on more to cards, notes, letters, notices, and receipts more than other physical items. I love looking back and seeing thank you or birthday cards from people I have lost touch with, or finding an old receipt and remembering that trip or seeing how much the economy has changed.

I have made some slight progress, but I did not get anywhere near finished and now I have a heap of junk on my bed. I hope I can find the motivation to continue getting rid of things in the coming days so I can clear my mind and focus on packing next.

Thank you for your message. I am currently out of office — but will return at the end of the month.

What an incredible day. I felt like I was on cloud 9,000.

A wave of optimism hit me strong today. I can’t believe we are making it. I can’t believe the changes around the world, the changes coming to my life. It has been a hard journey, and now I feel more hopeful than I ever had before. I feel so ready for this next step. I trust and believe everything is working out exactly as it should. I am believing in the process.

I spent hours at the pottery studio today. It felt incredible to get so much done. I wanted to go for a run too, but it didn’t work out with my schedule. Maybe someday soon I can restart the running I feel like I am starting to lose. I do also have a lot to do before the move so my schedule is actually pretty tight.

Thank you for your message. I am currently out of office — but will return at the end of the month.

Inbetweeners 45- Zane

So by the time the players had finished the Xalatra questline, they had encountered the NPC Zane only once. They didn't even remember who he was, but boy did he remember them. Zane's official title is “Special Operator” for Mechanus. This is a catch all term for a third party contractor who does work for Mechanus. They farm out work to countless such operators and contractors, but Zane is the one they send in for the most difficult jobs that require the most moral... flexibility.

I took my inspiration for Zane from the character Conrad Kellogg in Fallout 4, in particular that he is a mercenary who trades work for cybernetic upgrades and extended lifespan and has no moral compunctions about dirty work. I've posted his statblock previously, but he is a CR 23 with numerous cybernetic offensive abilities and buffs. I even made a direct reference to Fallout with his “VATS” ability that lets him make 7 full attacks with his gun arm once per short rest.

Zane has been a contractor for Mechanus for a long, long time. He has no particular allegiance to the gearheads, as he calls them, but they simply pay the best and provide a steady stream of high profile jobs. As he became more powerful, his rate and abilities exceeded most mercenary work. He was beneath guarding emperors, taking out enemy warlords, or even hunting down massive dragons. For him, only big game would do, and nothing is bigger than existential threats to reality itself.

When the Protectors of the Weave finally got a handle on where the players were and the network of rooms, they brought Zane into the fold to plan their ambush. They would assault the Grey Room directly, but wanted Zane has back up to clear up any who escaped. Zane carefully studied the map of the rooms that had been put together by the Protectors documenting various sightings and Far Realm energy. He figured the players would go to the market if they escaped, and that the Protectors would try to corner them there. Most other paths led to more peril, so they would probably try to cut through the Throne Room. Mechanus showed that the Throne Room took them to some sort of storage area, and beyond that the path disappeared. There was a gap of time between when the players went through the Throne Room and returned that took a couple of weeks, so Zane correctly deduced that was their emergency escape route. He meticulously planned an ambush that they would not be able to beat.

The “door” in was the main doors to the great Throne Room hall, and the “door” they needed to go through was on the other side of the Throne. There was another “door” they found off to the right of the throne, and Zane would put himself directly there, dropping down walls of force to block the other two. He knew the targets were unpredictable, and that despite their appearance as a mere mid tier adventuring party were exceedingly dangerous. Intel picked up that they had taken out an entire group of vampires, a small army and made inroads with the church of Torm by fighting off an infernal incursion. Rather than face them immediately, he wanted to see what tricks they had up their sleeve. So his plan was to deploy a “corrected” demon, a special project he'd been working on in tandem with Mechanus since they had occupied The Torment, where demons were captured, and surgically enhanced to remove their free will and turn them into terrifying weapons. The project was controversial, and there was a lot of red tape around field testing. All red tape had been lifted for this particular capture, so he figured why not use one of them. By all accounts a single corrected demon should make short work of a mid tier adventuring party. Its subjugation pulse alone would stun them, and the corrected demon's martial ability was more than enough to take them head on. If they somehow defeated it, he had several more on standby to be teleported in.

It reminds me now I'm not sure how much I established of Zane's presence in the Torment. Since Uzo used a temporal duplicate when fighting the Warden, the reality distortion was like a flare signal sent out to Mechanus. They came to investigate soon after. With how dangerous the Torment was known to be, and its remote location in Hades, they sent Zane first. He quickly saw the potential in the prison which had fallen into chaos, and spearheaded the project to start to use it to make the corrected demons, building it on the work of the Jailer and the Warden. Mechanus signed off, reluctantly, as it was connected to their attempt to locate and neutralize the Interloper. So prior to this encounter in the Throne Room, that's where Zane had mainly been “operating.”

Anyway, the corrected demons were merely an appetizer. There to soften up the targets and deplete some of their spells and resources. The main event was Zane, and two Maruts assigned to him for this job. It was exceedingly rare for Maruts to be deployed under the command of a third party contractor. They were the prized constructs in Mechanus's arsenal, the absolute enforcers of law. However, with how dangerous the targets were, Mechanus made an exception. Zane knew though that the Maruts were there to watch over him as much as they were the players. Mechanus could not afford any mistakes. So, in addition to the corrected demons, Zane plus two CR 25 constructs were waiting. A Marut alone is strong enough to level a top tier adventuring party, and two plus Zane would be overwhelming for any of them. Hell, Zane figured that with the trap he set up they could probably take down the Resplendent Six, the premier heroes of the multiverse. The overkill was the point. It was made clear to him that under no circumstances could the players be allowed to escape. Use of overwhelming force, pushing the probability of success asymptotically towards 100% was the instruction. So, that is what he would do. There should be no way it could fail. Even if the players managed to summon an ancient red dragon infested with a Far Realm parasite, he had enough power to take it down. Yet somehow, the players sabotaged everything.

When they came through, the goblin ranger somehow took down Zane's corrected demon with a single volley of arrows. Something wasn't right... the way his bow warped reality around it. The damage was... unnatural. Clearly these were the targets the Protectors sought to bring down. Zane dispensed with the idea of deploying more of the Corrected Demons from the Torment after such a pitiful display. Zane was very disappointed and would need to troubleshoot that for later. For now, these players were clearly too dangerous to keep around. His plan from here was simple. The Maruts and he would kill them in under 12 seconds, bring their souls and bodies back from Mechanus, revive them in stasis containers, and then the Protectors would take it from there and he'd get paid. Handsomely.

However, before Zane could act, judgement arrived. The Judgement of Torm. The renegade angel Lurian, who had come up briefly in the strategic meetings, stormed through the door behind Zane. They knew from the prison records in the Torment that Lurian had been imprisoned and was freed by the targets. Soon after, he was seen taking over the Shadow of Torm, and rebranding it and greatly swelling its ranks in what could only be called a militant-theocratic-populist uprising. Mechanus was monitoring that situation closely and evaluating its relation to the players. Zane had apparently discovered just how connected the events were.

No matter, Zane would kill the angel, his followers, and the players. That is why he brought overwhelming military power, to neutralize any threats or impediments to the mission. His instructions were explicit, take the targets at all cost, and neutralize anyone who gets in the way. Once classified as existential threats, most of the rules of war were lifted. This is why Zane liked working the most dangerous contracts for Mechanus—hunting the reality breakers. His hands were unbound. He even had a moment of excitement. When else would he have the opportunity to kill an angel and have it be retroactively sanctioned? He'd fought many, many foes before. Defeated them all. But never an angel. Unfortunately Lurian did not come unarmed. He came armed with the most dangerous weapon of all... the law.

As soon as Lurian started reading the proclamation, Zane knew he was done. Despite being an existential threat, there were certain rules that had to be followed as part of balancing the powers between planes. He challenged the jurisdiction of the current operation and the case was airtight enough that the Maruts retreated. There goes his firepower. His ability to warp in more corrected demons along with it. Mechanus had pulled the plug. Since he was a third party contractor, Zane could still act against them. He liked his odds against the targets. He liked his odds against the angel and his possie. He didn't like his odds against them all together. He ran some instant heuristic algorithms to play out the different probabilities. Too many unknowns. The angel had single handedly taken out a top general of Mammon. The players powers were unknown variables, not bound to the weave. Novel powers never seen before. Maybe he could take them, but he didn't even know the risk. Zane had to retreat in humiliation. He had been outplayed.

By the time the proper paperwork was filed and jurisdiction was established, the players were gone. Going after Lurian would mean declaring war on Torm, Tyr, Bahamut, Pelor, and who knows how many more gods. And it didn't matter, the players went to the one place Mechanus could not reach them, the one place they had no jurisdiction and no real power—Sigil. Soon after Zane learned the players defeated Arkanos the Undefeated in the arena, an impossible feat. Two Maruts had definitely been the right call.

Mechanus and the Protectors of the Weave changed the mission. They had the Interloper quarantined. The players had the equivalent of diplomatic immunity in Sigil. No one would cross the Lady of Pain. So instead, they sought to treat with the players. Zane's contract remained largely intact. If the players left Sigil, he could capture them for the same rate. No planned ambush in coordination with Mechanus, but he could call in reinforcements if Zane had a line on them. To the Protectors it was a pivot, to Zane it was a retreat.

Going after them in Sigil was a non-starter. The Lady could erase him from existence with a thought. Even if she didn't take notice, the players had just defeated the most powerful gladiator in the mulitiverse and become celebrities. He needed to draw them into a more favorable environment. And more importantly, he needed allies who didn't abide by jurisdiction and weren't afraid to get their hands dirty. The players became Zane's obsession, and they barely knew he existed. He made the Torment his base of operations, and sought out a powerful ally to help him. Fortunately, it wasn't hard. Lurian was freed by the players and executed Mammon's top general. And the players defeated Arkanos and lifted Mammon's curse, taking out his biggest money maker. Zane reached out, and Mammon listened.

Zane had done work for Mammon before, but didn't like how stingy he was with pay. Despite being the wealthiest being in the multiverse, he was loathe to pay out and would find any reason to reneg. This was different though, he didn't care about the money. The players humiliation had become personal. So, a link was established between Minauros and the Torment, and they plotted...

Sixteen point two per cent. That is how often people in one 2026 experiment caught a machine's mistake once it had explained itself in fluent, confident prose. Swap the explanation for a bare number, the model's own estimate of how likely its answer was to be right, and the rate more than doubled, to 37.5 per cent.

The figures come from controlled studies by Ruth Cohen and Sarit Kraus of Bar-Ilan University, Lu Feng of the University of Virginia and Ayala Bloch of Ariel University, posted to arXiv as paper 2604.03237. The first version had a title built for the conference circuit: “The Persuasion Paradox: When LLM Explanations Fail to Improve Human-AI Team Performance”. Its abstract did not hedge: “We identify a Persuasion Paradox: fluent explanations systematically increase user confidence and reliance on AI”. The authors argued that interfaces should put calibrated reliance and recovery from errors ahead of persuasive fluency.

Then something unusual happened. On 18 August 2026 the authors posted a revision with a new title, “Supporting Calibrated Reliance in Human-AI Collaboration: Different Strategies for Different Tasks”. The word “persuasion” has vanished from the text. The 16.2 and 37.5 per cent figures remain, but the revised statistics report that differences in error recovery across the four support conditions did not reach significance (p = .055). The new abstract closes on a far less quotable line: “no single support strategy is universally effective.”

Hold both versions in your head, because between them they contain the whole argument. The first is the story everyone wants to tell: explanations are a trap, and the explainable AI movement has been building persuasion machines. The second is the story the evidence supports: explanations reliably raise confidence, do not reliably raise accuracy, and help or hurt depending on whether the reader can check what they say. A paper about the dangers of persuasive fluency was, in its first draft, a little too persuasive. Its authors noticed and pulled it back. That is calibration in action, and it is exactly the behaviour designers should be trying to produce in everyone else.

So the useful question is not whether explanations are good or bad. It is narrower and harder. When should a system withhold its explanation, or restructure it? And what would an interface look like if its job were not to help people understand the AI, but to help them know when to ignore it?

Sixteen Per Cent and a Change of Title

Cohen and colleagues ran three experiments with participants recruited through university mailing lists, mostly people with STEM backgrounds, who were paid a bonus for each correct answer. Two tasks carried the weight: RAVEN matrices, abstract visual puzzles in which you choose the shape that completes a pattern, and logical reasoning questions from the LSAT, the American law school admission test.

The cleverest design was the multi-stage reveal. Twenty-seven participants answered each RAVEN puzzle three times: first alone, then after seeing the AI's predicted answer, then after reading an explanation, either a written rationale from a large language model or a heatmap showing which parts of the image the model weighted. Alone, they were right 37.0 per cent of the time. With the AI's answer, 49.8 per cent. With the explanation on top, 48.8 per cent. The explanation bought nothing in accuracy.

It did buy something else. In the paper's words, “confidence remained largely unchanged after the prediction stage and increased only after explanations were presented”. The prediction made people more accurate without making them feel surer. The explanation made them feel surer without making them more accurate. If you wanted one result to sum up the worry about fluent AI, that is it.

The between-subjects RAVEN study, with 100 participants across five conditions, is where the famous numbers live. Every form of AI support beat working alone by a wide margin: unaided participants managed 24.6 per cent, while the four AI-assisted groups landed between 53.5 and 60.5 per cent, with predicted probabilities at the top. On overall accuracy, though, the AI-supported conditions were statistically indistinguishable. The difference appeared in how people handled the AI's mistakes. “LLM explanations showed the lowest recovery rate (16.2%) despite high agreement (84.2%),” the authors write. The probability condition showed the highest recovery, 37.5 per cent, with 75.8 per cent agreement on correct predictions.

Read those pairs together. The explanation group agreed with the AI more when it was right (a gap that, like the recovery gap, fell short of significance) and caught it less when it was wrong. That is the signature of reliance that has stopped discriminating: trust that rises evenly across good and bad advice instead of tracking which is which.

The caveats matter, and the revised paper is admirably blunt about them. There was no power analysis in advance, and twenty people per condition is a small sample. The RAVEN probabilities were raw, uncalibrated softmax outputs. A “selective automation” strategy, in which the AI decides confident cases and hands uncertain ones to the human, is now presented only as a benchmark derived after the fact from the probability group's data. The pattern is consistent and striking. It is not yet proof.

The Same Explanation Wins at Logic

The LSAT study rarely makes it into social media summaries, and it is the part that turns a scare story into a design problem.

Eighty participants worked through ten LSAT questions with help from an AI whose answers were right 60 per cent of the time. One group saw only the AI's answer, one saw the answer plus a stated probability, one saw an expert-written explanation adapted from earlier research, and one saw an explanation generated by a large language model.

The language model's explanation won outright. That group reached 72.5 per cent accuracy, against 55.5 per cent for expert explanations, 48.5 per cent for the bare prediction and 47.0 per cent for probabilities. It was the only group to beat the AI's own 60 per cent, and it recovered best from errors, at 47.5 per cent against 35.0 per cent for probabilities. It even beat the human experts' explanations, which rules out the comforting idea that machine prose is simply worse prose. Here the fluent explanation was not a sedative. It was a tool.

Why would the same kind of support hurt in one task and help in another? The authors are careful not to overclaim, noting that task, model and explanation style all changed between studies. But the contrast lines up with an idea that runs through the field. An LSAT explanation lives in the same medium as the problem. If a model says an argument assumes that correlation implies causation, you can reread the passage and see whether it does. The explanation offers a claim the reader can test against evidence already in front of them.

A verbal rationale for a visual puzzle is different. It translates a pattern into words, and the reader has to translate it back. That is laborious, so most people do not bother. They register that the paragraph sounds like reasoning and move on. The explanation becomes a vibe rather than an argument.

In 2023, Helena Vasconcelos and colleagues at Stanford University and the University of Washington, including Michael Bernstein, Tobias Gerstenberg and Ranjay Krishna, gave this intuition a formal shape. Across five studies with 731 participants navigating a maze with a simulated AI, they argued that people make a strategic cost-benefit choice about whether to engage with an explanation at all. Task difficulty, explanation difficulty and money all shifted how much people over-relied on the AI. Earlier studies that found explanations useless, they suggested, may simply have used explanations that did not make checking the AI any cheaper. Their title made the counterintuitive point: “Explanations Can Reduce Overreliance on AI Systems During Decision-Making”.

Put Cohen's LSAT result beside that framework and a first principle falls out. An explanation earns its place when it lowers the cost of verification. When it raises that cost, or supplies the feeling of verification without the substance, it should be withheld or rebuilt.

Editing the Machine's Mind Feels Like Power

If reading an AI's reasoning can make you overconfident, perhaps the fix is to let users get their hands on it. Interactive reasoning, where people inspect and change a model's chain of thought, has become a fashionable idea in human-computer interaction. A short paper at CHI 2026, the field's flagship conference, held in Barcelona in April, suggests the fashion deserves scrutiny.

Jiwon Moon of the University of Chicago, with Chien-Ming Huang and Ziang Xiao of Johns Hopkins University, published “Understanding the Affordances of Control in AI Reasoning for Human-AI Decision-Making” in the conference's Extended Abstracts, the venue for shorter, often preliminary work. They compared three interfaces in a decision task: no chain of thought, a read-only chain of thought, and an editable one that let users alter the AI's displayed reasoning.

Their abstract captures the gap between how an interface feels and what it does. “Editability significantly increases perceived power, control and satisfaction, but does not improve decision accuracy relative to a no-rationale baseline.” The read-only version was worse: it “increases agreement with the AI and induces inappropriate reliance when the AI is wrong”, reducing accuracy compared with editing and trending below the baseline in which people saw no reasoning at all.

The mechanism is the interesting part. Mediation analyses, the authors report, suggest that editability raises perceived power, which in turn predicts higher confidence and greater over-reliance on incorrect advice, a pattern “consistent with illusion of control.”

The phrase comes from a 1975 paper by the psychologist Ellen Langer in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Across experiments built on games of pure chance, Langer argued that features associated with skill, such as choice, familiarity, involvement and competition, lead people to expect success beyond what the odds justify. Her best-known demonstration, in which people who picked their own lottery ticket asked far more to sell it than people who were handed one, has not aged well: in 2021 Joowon Klusowski, Deborah Small and Joseph Simmons reported in Psychological Science that experiments with more than 10,000 participants found choice alone did not make people think they were more likely to win.

That wrinkle is instructive rather than fatal. Moon, Huang and Xiao measured perceived power directly and linked it to confidence and over-reliance in their own data. But it is a reminder that a vivid label can travel further than the evidence beneath it, which is the subject of this article. Because the CHI paper is an extended abstract, its effect sizes should be treated as provisional. The direction of the result is still a warning to anyone who treats “user control” as an automatic good. Control that is not connected to better outcomes is a feeling, and feelings are what persuasion is made of.

Thirty Years of Leaning on Machines

None of this is new in kind. It is new in fluency.

In 1997, Raja Parasuraman and Victor Riley published “Humans and Automation: Use, Misuse, Disuse, Abuse” in the journal Human Factors. Misuse, in their taxonomy, is over-reliance on automation, producing monitoring failures and decision biases. Disuse is neglect of automation that works, often because it has cried wolf too often. Abuse is automating without regard for the consequences for human performance. All three map onto modern AI assistants, but misuse is the one fluent explanations feed.

In 2004, John Lee and Katrina See gave the field its central goal in the title of their review in the same journal: “Trust in Automation: Designing for Appropriate Reliance”. The key idea is calibration. Trust should match a system's actual trustworthiness, neither overshooting nor undershooting. And it has to work at a fine grain: trusting a system the right amount on average is not enough. You need to trust it more where it is good and less where it is bad.

Medicine has the clearest data on what happens when that fails. A 2012 systematic review in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association by Kate Goddard, Abdul Roudsari and Jeremy Wyatt drew on 74 studies of automation bias, which they defined as “the tendency to over-rely on automation”. Pooling four healthcare studies in which decision support systems gave wrong advice, they found the systems increased the risk of an incorrect decision by 26 per cent. The accelerants were familiar: high trust, low self-confidence, workload, complexity, time pressure. Among the design mitigations, they listed attaching updated confidence levels to the system's output, and offering information rather than direct recommendations.

A review published years before large language models went mainstream recommended, in effect, what the RAVEN probability condition did: show people how sure the system is, case by case.

The idea is now law. Article 14 of the European Union's AI Act, on human oversight of high-risk systems, requires that overseers be enabled “to remain aware of the possible tendency of automatically relying or over-relying on the output produced by a high-risk AI system (automation bias)”, particularly where systems provide information or recommendations for decisions taken by people. Those obligations do not bite yet, either: the Digital Omnibus on AI, in force since July 2026, pushed the high-risk deadlines back to December 2027 for standalone systems and August 2028 for AI built into regulated products. The regulation names the problem. It does not specify the interface that solves it. That is the designer's job, and the evidence suggests a fluent paragraph of reasoning is not, by default, the answer.

Explanations Help Most When You Need Them Least

The most cited study on this question predates the language model boom and predicted much of what followed. In 2021, Gagan Bansal and colleagues from the University of Washington and Microsoft Research, among them Besmira Nushi, Ece Kamar, Marco Tulio Ribeiro and Daniel Weld, presented “Does the Whole Exceed its Parts? The Effect of AI Explanations on Complementary Team Performance” at CHI.

Their target was complementary performance: a human-AI team that beats both the human alone and the AI alone. Earlier studies showing that explanations helped had mostly used AI far more accurate than people, so teams improved simply by deferring to a better decision-maker. Bansal's group used AI roughly as accurate as humans, across three tasks (sentiment in beer reviews and book reviews, plus LSAT questions), with 1,626 participants.

Teams did achieve complementary performance, but explanations did not improve on simply showing the AI's confidence. The mechanism was an asymmetry. “Explanations often increased accuracy when the AI system was correct but, worryingly, decreased it when the AI erred, resulting in a minimal net change.” Explanations made people more likely to accept the AI's recommendation whether or not it was right.

Bansal's team tried a fix. Their “adaptive explanation” explained only the top answer when the AI was confident, but laid out the top two alternatives when confidence fell below a threshold, inspired by an efficient assistant that divulges more, “confessing doubts and arguing for alternatives”, only when unsure. It did not significantly improve team performance, though the authors saw suggestive evidence that it nudged agreement in the right direction. Keep it in mind: it is the seed of a better idea.

In 2023, Max Schemmer and colleagues at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology gave the asymmetry two names. At the Intelligent User Interfaces conference, they proposed measuring “appropriateness of reliance” on separate axes. Relative AI reliance captures how often people switch to correct AI advice after starting with a wrong answer. Relative self-reliance captures how often people keep their own correct answer when the AI is wrong. In their 200-person experiment, explanations raised relative AI reliance from 29.59 to 38.87 per cent. Relative self-reliance did not significantly change.

That is the pattern in miniature. Explanations help people accept the AI when it is right. They do far less to help people resist it when it is wrong. And resistance is the whole point of a human in the loop. If the machine were never wrong, you would not need the person.

Why Fluency Reads as Truth

Large language models sharpen the problem because their explanations are not heatmaps or feature weights. They are prose, and prose is the native format of human persuasion.

In 2025, Mark Steyvers and colleagues at the University of California, Irvine published “What large language models know and what people think they know” in Nature Machine Intelligence. They measured the calibration gap: the difference between how confident people are in a model's answers and how confident the model itself is. Shown default explanations, people overestimated the model's accuracy, and longer explanations raised their confidence even when the extra length did nothing for accuracy. “There's a disconnect between what LLMs know and what people think they know,” Steyvers said in the university's announcement. “We call this the calibration gap.” When the team rewrote explanations so their language reflected the model's internal confidence, that gap narrowed, and people got better at telling right answers from wrong ones.

A year earlier, Sunnie Kim of Princeton University, with Q. Vera Liao, Mihaela Vorvoreanu, Stephanie Ballard and Jennifer Wortman Vaughan of Microsoft, tested something similar. In a pre-registered experiment with 404 participants answering medical questions with a simulated LLM-powered search engine, first-person expressions of uncertainty, along the lines of “I'm not sure, but...”, reduced people's confidence in the system and their agreement with it, and improved their accuracy. Impersonal hedges had weaker effects that did not reach significance. Wording matters enough, the authors concluded, that it needs user testing before deployment.

Back in 2020, Yunfeng Zhang, Q. Vera Liao and Rachel Bellamy of IBM Research found that confidence scores helped people calibrate their trust, while explanations of individual predictions did not do the same job. Their caveat still applies: calibrated trust does not guarantee better decisions unless the human brings knowledge that can compensate for the model's errors. Calibration tells you when to be suspicious. It does not tell you the right answer.

Fluency, in other words, is not a neutral property. Length, confident tone and smooth reasoning all signal reliability without being connected to it. A well-designed system should make those signals honest, or remove them.

Friction Works and Nobody Likes It

If people skim explanations and defer, the obvious response is to make deferral harder. Zana Buçinca, Maja Barbara Malaya and Krzysztof Gajos of Harvard University tested exactly this in “To Trust or to Think: Cognitive Forcing Functions Can Reduce Overreliance on AI in AI-assisted Decision-making”, published in 2021 in the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction.

Borrowing from research on diagnostic error in medicine, they built three interventions into a task in which 199 participants judged how to cut the carbohydrate content of meals. In the “on demand” condition, the AI's suggestion stayed hidden until people clicked to see it. In “update”, people decided first and could revise after seeing the AI's advice. In “wait”, a message saying the AI was processing the image appeared for 30 seconds before the suggestion arrived.

All three significantly reduced over-reliance compared with simple explainable AI interfaces. None eliminated it: the interventions “reduced, but not yet eliminated, overreliance on the AI”, and the human-AI teams still underperformed the AI alone. Then the twist. When the AI was wrong, “people performed best in conditions that they preferred and trusted the least”, which they also rated most difficult. The interventions also helped people high in “need for cognition”, a measure of how much someone enjoys effortful thinking, more than others, raising the question of who friction actually protects.

This is the commercial problem in one finding. Every metric a product team watches, from satisfaction scores to stated trust, rewards the smooth, confident explanation. The metric that matters, whether people catch the machine's errors, rewards friction. Moon, Huang and Xiao found the same split from the other side. And a 2026 CHI review of reliance research by Muhammad Raees, Vassilis-Javed Khan, Ioanna Lykourentzou and Konstantinos Papangelis made the general point: user engagement is valuable for appropriate reliance, but it comes at a cost.

When to Withhold the Explanation

So when should a designer leave the explanation out? The evidence supports no blanket rule, and the revised Cohen paper is explicit that no single strategy wins everywhere. But it does point to conditions under which a default explanation is more likely to hurt than help.

The first is when the explanation cannot be checked against evidence the user can see. The RAVEN rationale asked people to verify a verbal account of a visual pattern; the LSAT rationale asked them to verify a verbal account of a verbal argument. Where explanation and evidence live in different media, or the evidence is hidden, the explanation tends to function as a confidence signal rather than an argument. Vasconcelos's cost-benefit framing predicts exactly this.

The second is when fluency is decoupled from reliability. A language model can write an equally polished rationale for a right answer and a wrong one, and Steyvers's results show that people read polish and length as accuracy. If a system cannot make the style of its explanation track its actual confidence, the explanation is broadcasting a false signal.

The third is when the user cannot bring independent knowledge. Zhang, Liao and Bellamy's caveat applies: suspicion helps only if the human can act on it. Goddard's review identified time pressure, workload and complexity as amplifiers of automation bias, precisely when people are least able to scrutinise a paragraph of reasoning. In those conditions, a persuasive explanation mostly accelerates deference.

The fourth is before the user has formed a view. Buçinca's update condition and Cohen's multi-stage design both suggest timing matters. An explanation shown before someone has thought for themselves anchors them. Shown afterwards, as a challenge rather than a verdict, it does a different job.

None of this means explanations should vanish. Withholding an explanation from the moment of decision is not the same as withholding it from the record. Engineers debugging a model, auditors checking it and people contesting its verdicts may all need a full account. The question here is narrower: what to put in front of someone in the seconds when they decide whether to accept the machine's answer. The default, an explanation attached to every answer and displayed immediately, is the wrong default for a large class of tasks.

How to Rebuild an Explanation

Withholding is the blunt option. Restructuring is more interesting, and the literature offers several patterns.

Lead with uncertainty rather than reasoning. In Cohen's RAVEN study, the probability display recovered best from errors and was rated clearest by participants, despite explaining nothing. Goddard's review flagged confidence displays more than a decade ago, and Kim's work shows uncertainty can be expressed in natural language, if the phrasing is tested. A number or a well-chosen hedge is a cue to look harder, cheap to read and hard to mistake for an argument.

Make explanations conditional, in the spirit of Bansal's adaptive design. When the model is confident and historically reliable on this kind of case, a short answer may suffice. When it is uncertain, it should do the opposite of what fluent assistants usually do: argue against itself, present the strongest alternative, and show what evidence would change its answer.

Stop recommending and start evaluating. In a 2023 paper at the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability and Transparency, titled “Explainable AI is Dead, Long Live Explainable AI! Hypothesis-driven decision support”, Tim Miller, then at the University of Melbourne, argued that recommendations plus explanations undermine human agency and do not match how people reason. He proposed “evaluative AI”, tools that “provide evidence for and against decisions made by people” rather than handing them a decision to accept or reject. The human proposes; the machine stress-tests. There is nothing to be persuaded of, because the machine is not selling an answer.

Sequence the interaction. Ask for the human's judgement first, reveal the AI's view second, and explain only where they disagree. That combines Buçinca's update intervention with adaptive explanation, concentrating scarce attention where it could change the outcome.

Route the cases. Machine learning researchers have long studied “learning to defer”; a 2020 paper at the International Conference on Machine Learning by Hussein Mozannar and David Sontag, for instance, developed methods for training a model that either predicts or hands the decision to a human expert. Cohen's selective-automation benchmark gestures at the same idea, and the authors note that humans can keep final authority under such schemes. Human scepticism is a scarce resource and should be spent where the model is weakest.

A Framework Built Around Distrust

Pull these threads together and a framework for calibrated reliance emerges. Its goal is not understanding but discrimination: helping people tell the machine's good answers from its bad ones, case by case. What follows is a synthesis of the research above, not a standard anyone has yet adopted.

Measure the right thing. Evaluate a system separately on cases where the AI is right and cases where it is wrong, which is the first recommendation in the revised Cohen paper. Schemmer's two axes offer one method; error recovery offers another. Overall accuracy and trust ratings on their own are close to useless, because the Cohen, Bansal, Buçinca and Moon studies all show satisfaction and confidence moving independently of decision quality.

Make every confidence signal honest. If explanations sound equally sure whether the model is right or wrong, their style is lying. Either calibrate the language to the model's real confidence, as Steyvers's team did, or strip out the persuasive styling and show a calibrated number. One caveat: Cohen's RAVEN probabilities were not carefully calibrated, and the authors warn that uncertainty alone can miss errors the model makes confidently. Probability displays are a starting point, not a solution.

Match support to the task's evidence. Where users can verify an explanation against material in front of them, as with the LSAT, rich explanations can pay their way. Where they cannot, prefer uncertainty cues, contrastive alternatives or nothing at all. This is the core lesson of the revised Cohen paper, and a direct rejection of one-size-fits-all explainability.

Protect independent judgement. Elicit the human's view before revealing the machine's wherever time allows, and present explanations as challenges to disagreement rather than justifications for agreement.

Budget friction. Buçinca's results show friction works and people dislike it. Applied everywhere, it wears people down and pushes them back towards blind acceptance. Applied where the model is uncertain, the stakes are high and the human might know better, it earns its cost.

Distrust the feeling of control. Moon, Huang and Xiao's work warns that editing, steering and customising can raise users' sense of power without improving outcomes. Every control affordance should be tested against accuracy on cases where the AI is wrong, not just against satisfaction.

Treat oversight law as a design brief. Article 14 asks that overseers “remain aware” of automation bias. Awareness is not a pop-up warning. It is an interface that makes the machine's fallibility visible at the moment of decision.

The Researchers Who Took Their Own Advice

The revision of the Cohen paper is worth dwelling on. The first version made a vivid, general claim with a memorable name. The second narrowed it, flagged its statistical limits, demoted its most appealing benchmark to a reference point, and concluded that the right answer depends on the task. The authors noticed that their framing was more confident than their evidence, and they recalibrated. The Langer replication story is the same lesson at a fifty-year scale.

That is precisely the behaviour a calibrated-reliance interface tries to produce, and it is hard. Product teams have every commercial reason to keep the fluent, confident explanation, which tests well, demos well and makes users feel smart. The evidence from Bansal in 2021 to Moon in 2026 says that feeling is not the same as being right, and the two can pull in opposite directions.

The explainable AI movement rested on an appealing premise: if people understand why a machine says what it says, they will use it better. The premise is not wrong so much as incomplete. Understanding helps when it gives people something to check. When it gives them only something to believe, it becomes another form of persuasion, and a more effective one than a bare answer, because it looks like reasoning.

The goal, then, is not more explanation or less, but better-aimed explanation: cheap to verify, honest about uncertainty, sequenced so it does not pre-empt human judgement, and most forthcoming when the machine is least sure. Judge it on one question above all: when the model was wrong, did the person notice?

In the RAVEN study, people reading fluent explanations caught roughly one AI error in six. Shown a number instead, they caught more than one in three. Neither is good enough, and the gap between them is statistically fragile. But it points towards where better designs will come from: interfaces built not to win the user's trust, but to earn it one case at a time, and to surrender it gracefully when it has not been earned.

References and Sources

All URLs accessed and verified on 29 October 2026.

1. Cohen, Ruth; Feng, Lu; Bloch, Ayala; Kraus, Sarit. “The Persuasion Paradox: When LLM Explanations Fail to Improve Human-AI Team Performance.” arXiv:2604.03237v1, first version, 2026 (superseded). https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.03237v1 (full text: https://arxiv.org/html/2604.03237v1)
2. Cohen, Ruth; Feng, Lu; Bloch, Ayala; Kraus, Sarit. “Supporting Calibrated Reliance in Human-AI Collaboration: Different Strategies for Different Tasks.” arXiv:2604.03237v2, revised 18 August 2026. https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.03237 (full text: https://arxiv.org/html/2604.03237v2)
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8. Yale School of Management, Yale Insights. “Does Having Choice Provide an Illusion of Control?” https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/does-having-choice-provide-an-illusion-of-control
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14. Kim, Sunnie S. Y.; Liao, Q. Vera; Vorvoreanu, Mihaela; Ballard, Stephanie; Vaughan, Jennifer Wortman. “'I'm Not Sure, But...': Examining the Impact of Large Language Models' Uncertainty Expression on User Reliance and Trust.” In The 2024 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT '24), June 2024, pp. 822-835. DOI: 10.1145/3630106.3658941. arXiv:2405.00623. https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.00623
15. Steyvers, Mark; Tejeda, Heliodoro; Kumar, Aakriti; Belem, Catarina; Karny, Sheer; Hu, Xinyue; Mayer, Lukas W.; Smyth, Padhraic. “What large language models know and what people think they know.” Nature Machine Intelligence, 7(2), 221-231, 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s42256-024-00976-7. https://www.nature.com/articles/s42256-024-00976-7 (preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.13835)
16. University of California, Irvine, School of Social Sciences. “UC Irvine study finds mismatch between human perception and reliability of AI-assisted language tools.” 22 January 2025. https://www.socsci.uci.edu/newsevents/news/2025/2025-01-22-steyvers-uci-study-finds-mismatch-between-human-perception-and-reliability-of-ai-assisted-language-tools.php
17. Parasuraman, Raja; Riley, Victor. “Humans and Automation: Use, Misuse, Disuse, Abuse.” Human Factors, 39(2), 230-253, June 1997. DOI: 10.1518/001872097778543886. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1518/001872097778543886
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20. Miller, Tim. “Explainable AI is Dead, Long Live Explainable AI! Hypothesis-driven decision support.” In Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT '23), June 2023, pp. 333-342. DOI: 10.1145/3593013.3594001. arXiv:2302.12389. https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.12389
21. Mozannar, Hussein; Sontag, David. “Consistent Estimators for Learning to Defer to an Expert.” In Proceedings of the 37th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2020), PMLR 119, pp. 7076-7087. arXiv:2006.01862. https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.01862
22. Raees, Muhammad; Khan, Vassilis-Javed; Lykourentzou, Ioanna; Papangelis, Konstantinos. “Do People Appropriately Rely on AI-Advice? An Analytical Review of HCI Research on Human-AI Decision-Making.” In Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Barcelona, April 2026, Article 805. ACM. DOI: 10.1145/3772318.3791467. https://research-portal.uu.nl/en/publications/do-people-appropriately-rely-on-ai-advice-an-analytical-review-of/
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24. Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 July 2026 amending Regulations (EU) 2024/1689, (EU) 2018/1139 and (EU) 2023/1230 as regards the simplification of the implementation of harmonised rules on artificial intelligence (Digital Omnibus on AI). Official Journal L, 24 July 2026; in force 27 July 2026. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2026/1744/oj

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Tim Green UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

ORCID: 0009-0002-0156-9795 Email: tim@smarterarticles.co.uk

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One of the side projects I run next to readalikes.ai is a hockey romance books site, hockeyromancebooks.com. It's one of several exact-match domains I'm building, each one focused on a single, very specific search.

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The search numbers

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Readers rarely search for “a good book.” They search for the exact thing they want. So the site is built around tropes:

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More of these are coming. I'll share what works and what doesn't.