Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 1d

My first thought was “wow I hope this guy didn’t give out his name because he could absolutely be charged” and yup, he is correct to stay anonymous.

This man’s account is shocking. His neighbors’ situation is shocking. The entire Chicago raid is shocking.

On the other side was a mom and her 7-year-old daughter, pleading for his help.
"I wasn't planning on letting her stay, but I didn't know what the hell was going on," the man said of his Venezuelan migrant neighbors. But he quickly relented. The little girl was inconsolable and hid under his bed.
"I didn't want them to take her," said the man, who didn't want to be named because he fears he'll be targeted by federal authorities for his actions.
"I gave her my bedroom, and I just told her,
'Just stay there. Don't open, don't, shh, just stay quiet," he recalled telling the mom and daughter as he choked back tears.

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Bobby Kogan @bbkogan.bsky.social · 1d

Three key points:
1) The admin has been planning mass firings to begin in October since February
2) The work necessary to carry out mass firings is illegal during a shutdown, violating the Antideficiency Act, which carries a criminal penalty
3) This harms America, ridding us of talent and expertise

Russ Vought v @russvought
The RIFs have begun.
12:27 PM • 10/10/25 • 15K Views

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Zohran Kwame Mamdani @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · 19h

The prosecution of Tish James is the product of a broken system that allows lawless billionaires to rule alongside corrupt politicians.

It’s as much a story of New York City as Washington, D.C.

But it's here in New York where a new era of politics will be born.

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Eric Topol @erictopol.bsky.social · 1d

Waning immunity. A significant Covid wave in England. No new variant.
Thanks Prof Pagel for highlighting and contextualizing

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Ryan Marino, MD @ryanmarino.bsky.social · 2d

Do you really have any rights if they are openly saying they will just make up reasons to detain you?

thematthill.bsky.social @thematthill.bsky.social · 4d

Wow. Greg Bovino admits on camera that his agents can detain people if you look scared, change your demeanor, or grip a steering wheel too tight.

As his unmasked agents walk around with large guns to scare you, they may arrest you just for that — even if you're a U.S. citizen.

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~ @asynchronia.bsky.social · 1d

Honestly some of the strongest public speaking I have ever seen in my life

New York Attorney General Letitia James @newyorkstateag.bsky.social · 2d

This is nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system.

I am not fearful — I am fearless.

We will fight these baseless charges aggressively, and my office will continue to fiercely protect New Yorkers and their rights..

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thetranscendedman @atranscendedman.bsky.social · 1d

Yale researchers analyzed data from 158 million US workers and found that even after the pandemic, COVID-19 continues to raise work absences by 13% and labor force exits by 13%.

The virus has created a new year-round baseline similar to flu season.

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Enduring Outcomes of COVID-19 Work Absences on the US Labor Market

This cohort study examines the extent to which COVID-19 continues to generate work absences and decrease labor force participation beyond the pandemic period in the US.

jamanetwork.com

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Karl Bode @karlbode.com · 2d

you'd think a prominent news outlet like the New York Times might mention that "antifa" isn't an actual organization in a long story about antifa, but nope!

and the subhead helps props up a false claim this professor was up to something seedy as something up for debate

NYT headline: "Rutgers Expert on Antifa Tries to Flee to Spain After Death Threats"

subheadline: "Mark Bray was teaching courses on antifascism. Turning Point USA accused him of belonging to antifa, which he denies. His flight to Spain was canceled abruptly on Wednesday night."

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Karl (sad trombone noise enthusiast) @brainnotonyet.bsky.social · 3d

Just a reminder that Jack published a book last year called “unhumans” that makes the argument that all Democrats and anyone left of Francisco Franco should be rounded up and murdered en mass for the rest of the populations entertainment.
Jack is a Nazi and hell bent on the murder of his opponents

CrimethInc. Ex-Workers' Collective @crimethinc.com · 3d

Jack Posobiec explicitly says that "Antifa" dates back to the Weimar Republic, explicitly acknowledging that this administration is opposed to those who resisted the arrival of Adolf Hitler in Power.

A screenshot of C-Span showing Jack Posobiec speaking during a panel on "Antifa."

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Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 3d

The suspect accused of igniting the fire that destroyed LA's Pacific Palisades neighborhood allegedly used a ChatGPT prompt to show "a burning forest and a crowd fleeing from it," months prior, officials say

Man arrested, faces federal charge in connection with Palisades Fire: DOJ

The fire caused widespread destruction in Los Angeles County and killed a dozen people earlier this year.

abcnews.go.com

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Elad Nehorai @eladn.bsky.social · 5d

No mainstream leaders, pundits, media, will treat her life as important as Kirk's.

None will see this shooting as dangerous as Kirk's.

None will value a brown woman as much as that white man.

This isn't just about Republicans. It's the values at the heart of leadership & institutions in America.

Chicago Sun-Times @chicago.suntimes.com · 5d

Body-camera video appears to contradict the government’s claim that Marimar Martinez, 30, drove toward officers before one of them opened fire at her late Saturday morning in Brighton Park, her attorney claimed.
trib.al/9Sxu9IN

Attorney for woman shot by Border Patrol claims officer said 'Do something b-----' before shooting

Body-camera video appears to contradict the government's claim that Marimar Martinez, 30, drove toward officers before one of them opened fire at her late Saturday morning in Brighton Park, her attorney claimed. A judge ordered Martinez and a co-defendant released pending trial.

trib.al

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ProPublica @propublica.org · 4d

Heather Honey, a high-profile denier of Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, was appointed to a senior DHS position in which she’ll help oversee election security.

“DHS now appears poised to become a primary amplifier of false election conspiracies pushed by our enemies,” one expert said.

She Pushed to Overturn Trump’s Loss in the 2020 Election. Now She’ll Help Oversee U.S. Election Security.

Heather Honey has been appointed to a senior position in the Department of Homeland Security. State election officials and voting experts are concerned.

www.propublica.org

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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Sep 6

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

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emptywheel @emptywheel.bsky.social · 4d

Going back to that raid on the South Shore apartment building. It hasn't gotten much focus that the goons reportedly traveled the same way Patriot Front does: in UHauls.

blockclubchicago.org/2025/09/30/a...

A Budget truck with about five armed men seen inside. It's dark out and the taillights are lit. The photo is attributed to KT O'Loughin.

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Anna Merlan @annamerlan.bsky.social · 5d

Let it never again be said that a woman with no real reporting experience who fell for a Twitter account called "Official Antifa" cannot be the head of a huge news organization

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~ @asynchronia.bsky.social · 5d

This was posted when it was a publication that had not put anything out in approximately ten years

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~ @asynchronia.bsky.social · 6d

Genuinely good writing

I Am An AI Hater

I am an AI hater. This is considered rude, but I do not care, because I am a hater.

anthonymoser.github.io

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~ @asynchronia.bsky.social · 6d

Saw an argument that calling "A.I." chatbots "slaves" dehumanizes and/or objectifies the human beings who have endured that categorization. I disagree. I don't think the chatbots are slaves because they endure enslavement, I think they are tools for their users to practice the mentality of a slaver.

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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 22d

Much like offloading onto LLMs, men are more likely to feel OK offloading generally. Women do not & sadly are used to doing this work. Men are formed by patriarchy to demand, expect, and tolerate this. This is in pure contrast to all the women who contact me to say they will work hard to fight AI.

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 22d

TBF they need much more help than just not using AI, but indeed they are its most vociferous supporters and for good reason: men under patriarchy are used to outsourcing (especially to women) their cognitive labour

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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 22d

TBF they need much more help than just not using AI, but indeed they are its most vociferous supporters and for good reason: men under patriarchy are used to outsourcing (especially to women) their cognitive labour

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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 22d

If people want to understand and read more, see:

Erscoi, L., Kleinherenbrink, A. V., & Guest, O. (2023, February 11). Pygmalion Displacement: When Humanising AI Dehumanises Women. doi.org/10.31235/osf...

bsky.app/profile/oliv...

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Jun 11

To help us do this, we develop a lens to help us trace the harm towards women within/by AI by examining literature, film, and other media (see the figure above), and then apply the lens (also above) to current types of technologies like voice assistants to demonstrate its use.

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Ryan Marino, MD @ryanmarino.bsky.social · 7d

75% of people still aren’t paying attention

Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · 7d

About 1 in 4 U.S. adults worry they or someone close to them could be deported, according to a June @pewresearch.org survey.

About 1 in 4 U.S. adults worry they or someone close to them could be deported

About four-in-ten immigrants (43%) say they worry a lot or some, up from 33% in March.

www.pewresearch.org

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Karl (sad trombone noise enthusiast) @brainnotonyet.bsky.social · 8d

The fact they are doing publicity for urban black sites and feeder concentration camps within the cities they are waging terror campaigns against should tell you what this is.

The takeover of democratically held cities by fascist troops this is the first step of many towards a fascist police state

PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 @patriottakes.bsky.social · 8d

Kristi Noem inspecting a building she wants to acquire in Chicago in order to expand ICE operations in the city

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Daniel Knowles @dlknowles.bsky.social · 7d

I visited the apartment building ICE raided on Tuesday today. Story to come, but you can walk right in. Half of the apartments have no doors on them. Children's stuff abandoned in some flats. *Citizen* residents told me they were arrested and held for hours in zipties. This is America

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C.H. Romatowski @chromatowski.bsky.social · 8d

We have the opportunity to make a similarly historic gain with clean indoor air.

To take 2023 as a benchmark, respiratory viruses (especially flu and Covid) are killing in the vicinity of 100k a year in the U.S.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Ken Burnside @kenburnside.bsky.social · 11d

I'm a historian. Sewage systems have saved more lives than any medical intervention. Vaccines are second and antibiotics third.

Prior to the 1880s, the urban annual death rate was ~25%; it dropped to ~0.5% in under a generation.

Support your sewage system. Dispose of bodies responsibly.

NE Ohio Regional Sewer District @neorsd.org · 11d

I’m a sewage system. I also have a great personality.

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