Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Jeremy Espenshade @jeremyke.bsky.social · 20h

One can hope that the game theory is now clearer. It's not a one-round prisoners dilemma where you're better off capitulating. If you ever take the deal, you just end up in a new prisoner's dilemma for the next round of admin demands. So the optimal move is to hold firm even if peers give in.

Jeremy Espenshade @jeremyke.bsky.social · 21h

Note: I realize this could read very dystopian, but it's also the case that as the marginal cost of creating mediocre content falls, the value of differentiated high quality content will rise. This has always happened in every previous automation of human activities.

Jeremy Espenshade @jeremyke.bsky.social · 22h

Also, this isn't the primary value. it's a competitive element. Some people will sometimes want a story written, and they might choose which AI to adopt based on that. The same way a car company might add more trunk space, it's only useful sometimes, but maybe the deciding factor among alternatives.

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Jeremy Espenshade @jeremyke.bsky.social · 22h

Your question is analogous to asking why, since there's money in digging holes in the ground, people don't just pay diggers rather than build excavators. They build excavators because once you have one, you can dig a lot of holes very quickly, very cheaply.

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Jeremy Espenshade @jeremyke.bsky.social · 22h

In case your question isn't rhetorical, do you know any short story writers who can produce ~instant short stories with full creative customization by the client for a few cents per draft? The AI models aren't selling short stories. They're selling a short story generator.

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Jeremy Espenshade @jeremyke.bsky.social · 1d

It's all the more tragic for him because the graft was so petty. The guy's going to leave office having gone on a few first class flights but millions in debt, and his legacy of civic delivery will be a shadow of what it could have been due to selling out transportation projects for fancy dinners

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Jeremy Espenshade @jeremyke.bsky.social · 3d

In the NE, i'd pull down 'Upstate NY' to the state line in the eastern half, and pull up 'midatlantic' to include more of NE PA (Allentown/Scranton/Reading) which are a lot more similar to Philadelphia suburbs than the Appalachian region to the west.

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Jeremy Espenshade @jeremyke.bsky.social · 5d

Open AI's current operating budget is mostly being paid by investors, not revenue. Without exponential growth, those investors have no exit story. It doesn't matter what OpenAI believes will happen - they'd immediately stop being viable as a business if they weren't aiming for that exit criteria.

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Jeremy Espenshade @jeremyke.bsky.social · 5d

Come on NBC, you have the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever!

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Reposted by Jeremy Espenshade

Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 8d

Everyone should listen to Chris Murphy's extraordinary warning about Trump on our pod. First, he says the logic must be that the more lawless he gets, the stiffer the resistance.

"If I give in and consent to these kinds of tactics then it just normalizes it all." 1/

newrepublic.com/article/2013...

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Open New York @opennewyork.org · 9d

we should let people build housing near it

Tweet via Basil @LinkofSunshine:

The Lex Avenue Line has equivalent higher daily ridership to 2/3rds of the entire population of Paris

The best subway line in the world baby

[Map of Lexington Ave subway line in Manhattan]

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Jeremy Espenshade @jeremyke.bsky.social · 9d

There's rules about what you can call a bedroom... There's none about which room you can sleep in!

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Anjali Enjeti @anjalienjeti.bsky.social · 9d

My god.

“Watson said she saw agents dragging residents, including kids, out of the building without any clothes on and into U-Haul vans. Kids were separated from their mothers…’It was heartbreaking to watch…seeing kids coming out buck naked and taken from their mothers, it was horrible.’”

Massive immigration raid on Chicago apartment building leaves residents reeling: 'I feel defeated'

The Department of Homeland Security said federal agents with Border Patrol, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives arrested 37 people in the raid.

chicago.suntimes.com

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Jeremy Espenshade @jeremyke.bsky.social · 9d

The case where they get what they're asking for does avoid harm they could run on, but it would also go some way to addressing concerns of ineffectuality and pierce the sense of Trump inevitability.
The only play that's a pure loss is giving in after taking whatever damage they get from shutdown

Jeremy Espenshade @jeremyke.bsky.social · 9d

I think the pure politics hope is that Thune finally fully breaks the filibuster, the direct impact on people with subsidies going away is obvious and widely reported in winter/spring 2026, and Dems run on record of doing everything they could to prevent that harm.

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Rachel Maddow @maddow.msnbc.com · 12d

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/29/u...

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Jeremy Espenshade @jeremyke.bsky.social · 13d

It's sad that my "Don't Rank Eric or Andrew for Mayor" hat is once again obsolete 🤣 @dreamfornyc.bsky.social

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Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 16d

I hear the President has decreed that it is possibly a crime to refer to Americans as "fascists," but "fascism" is a word that has a relatively clear meaning that's worth understanding. Here's how an official publication of the US Army defined "fascism" in 1945.

Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · Aug 1

The central point is that when fascism came to America it wouldn't call itself that, nor would it be wearing a swastika. It would call itself "patriotic" and "100% American."

Can We Spot It?
(Question: How can we identify native American fascists at work? )
An American fascist seeking power would not proclaim that he is a fascist. Fascism always camouflages its plans and purposes. Hitler made demagogic appeals to all groups and swore: "Neither I nor anybody in the National Socialist Party advocates proceeding by anything but Constitutional methods." Any fascist attempt to gain power in America would not use the exact Hitler pattern. It would work under the guise of "super-patriotism" and "super-American-ism." Fascist leaders are neither stupid nor naive.
They know that they must hand out a line that "sells." Huey Long is said to have remarked that if fascism came to America, it would be on a program of "Ameri-canism."
Fascists in America may differ slightly from fascists in other countries, but there are a number of attitudes and practices that they have in common. Following are three. Every person who has one of them is not necessarily a fascist. But he is

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Zohran Kwame Mamdani @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · 16d

Sickening behavior by this agent. The fact that Mayor Adams has rolled out the red carpet for ICE is a stain on our city.

Brad Lander @bradlander.bsky.social · 16d

I was back at 26 Federal Plaza today, where an ICE agent violently threw this bereft woman to the ground in front of her kids. She had not touched him. She did not pose any threat. She had to be taken to the hospital. (🎥: Elias Eliahu)

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Jeremy Espenshade @jeremyke.bsky.social · 16d

Y'all are sleeping on how good @arstechnica.com 's political coverage is.

Article screenshot with headlines: FCC chairman unconvincingly claims he never threatened ABC station licenses - Brendan Carr would like you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.

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Jeremy Espenshade @jeremyke.bsky.social · 19d

Yeah, this alliance is inherently risky for those that are in the in-group today. Since there's no principle at the heart of decisions for who's in and who's out, you're always at risk of being ostracized (see, Pence, Latinos for Trump, etc) if the remainder of the in-group doesn't need you.

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Jeremy Espenshade @jeremyke.bsky.social · 19d

Re: 2) When you're fighting so long to shift consensus on what *should be*, it can be easy to believe that once that's achieved *it is*.
I notice this all the time in professional context. There's still a lot of work to do to make the facts on the ground change.

Jeremy Espenshade @jeremyke.bsky.social · 19d

It's pretty clear they see the world as 0-sum, and their goal is to take as much of the pie for them and theirs as possible. The makeup of the in-group is flexible, but the important part is that there is an out group which is losing something. By definition, that means the in-group is winning more.

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Jeremy Espenshade @jeremyke.bsky.social · 19d

It's pretty clear they see the world as 0-sum, and their goal is to take as much of the pie for them and theirs as possible. The makeup of the in-group is flexible, but the important part is that there is an out group which is losing something. By definition, that means the in-group is winning more.

Jeremy Espenshade @jeremyke.bsky.social · 19d

"There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/l...

The travesty of liberalism — Crooked Timber

crookedtimber.org

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