Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Kevin Thurman @kmthurman.bsky.social · 3h

Committee for the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences takes another firm stand on the importance of institutions -- this time to innovation & growth -- while so many in business support tearing down institutions.

They also reminded me I need to pick up Culture of Growth.

Reposted by Kevin Thurman

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 15h

if we are going to have a supreme court that is as powerful as it is, i basically think justices should be forbidden from public comment on their work as well as any supplemental source of income while they are on the bench. (they should also ride circuit again but that's a bit separate.)

Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 22h

The substance of what she's saying is bad and unconvincing, but more fundamentally, I really don't think Supreme Court justices should be going on book tours where they publicly comment on their work and respond to criticism of it. Either put it in a written opinion or hold your peace.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 23h

Amy Coney Barrett defends heavy use of the shadow docket: "If we wrote a long opinion, it might give the impression that we have finally resolved the issue, and in none of these cases have we finally resolved the issue."

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Kevin Thurman @kmthurman.bsky.social · 1d

Travel planing is bad in LLMs still. They’ve gotten much better at initial output but all the same it will be a road trip that is an average of every article & blog on the type of trip. But mostly text is a terrible interface for travel yielding tons of issues and reintroduces errors.

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 1d

Left: In a desperate effort to find reasonable use case, OpenAI is running ads during the baseball playoffs about how you can use ChatGPT to plan a road trip. www.youtube.com/watch?v=go4o...

Right: What happens if you actually do that. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Open AI commercial about using ChatGPT to plan a road trip

Hannah Read, 37, tried to use an AI chatbot to plan a trip to Norway with her partner and three children.

She wanted to drive from her home in Flintshire, north Wales and cross the North Sea by ferry.

"I thought it might make for a nice drive," Hannah says. "I asked ChatGPT if there was a ferry from the UK to Norway and it said there was one from Newcastle to Bergen."

She later checked a ferry travel website but found no such route exists.

A travel blog detailing how Brits can reach Norway says the last time the route operated was in 2008.

"I did feel a bit disappointed when I found out the information on ChatGPT was incorrect, as I'd got quite excited and had started planning the trip in my head," Hannah adds.

"My advice is don't rely on AI 100%, it's better to still do proper research."

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Leah Litman @leahlitman.bsky.social · 2d

More judges speak to the press (the NYT) about what a disaster the Supreme Court (specifically the shadow docket) has been - “incredibly demoralizing & troubling”; a “judicial crisis”; a “slap in the face to district courts.” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/u...

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darth™️ @darthbluesky.bsky.social · 2d

that johnson is more terrified of seating a duly elected democrat who could force an epstein vote than having the entire government shut down really makes me wonder about that epstein vote tbh

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Kevin Thurman @kmthurman.bsky.social · 3d

At some point as a country we have to admit a huge portion of the rot is the entirety of the legal system. But more interestingly been thinking about how adversarial institutions are suffering more during this period than others.

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Kevin Thurman @kmthurman.bsky.social · 4d

Especially with agents. Business have a higher acceptable error rate on a lot of tasks than individuals do but agents are still pipe-dreams given the inputs and outputs of llms.

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Kevin Thurman @kmthurman.bsky.social · 5d

Fair, i guess i saw the problem being garbage in garbage out being very serious when it needs to anchor on brands whose mentions are likely high influenced by non-purchase intent memes and spam the companies generated themselves.

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Kevin Thurman @kmthurman.bsky.social · 5d

Why would they be good at this? Training data is likely highly biased in multiple ways. Am I misunderstanding the use case?

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Chris Murphy @chrismurphyct.bsky.social · 5d

This has nothing to do with crime. This is an attempt to crush political dissent.

Never before, in our entire 250 year history, has the military or immigration agents been used like this. It's dystopian, illegal, and it should stop.

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southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 5d

“No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.”

George Pearkes @peark.es · 5d

Well that's not how appropriations work at all

*WHITE HOUSE TO TRANSFER TARIFF REVENUE TO FUND WIC: LEAVITT

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Kevin Thurman @kmthurman.bsky.social · 6d

Away from multiple scandals?

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George Pearkes @peark.es · 6d

People think American cultural hegemony looks like McDonald’s drive throughs but it’s also bougie food halls. (Laudatory)

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Kevin Thurman @kmthurman.bsky.social · 7d

It’s civil war or at least the highly illegal federal precursor to it. So Congress should not find anything until the troops are withdrawn. States should take action to mobilize their own guard so they cannot be mobilized against others.

Greg Greene (he/him/his) @greene.haus · 7d

Also: what’s it called when military reserves from one state deploy, unwanted, to another state? A something-or-other between the states?

James @gravitysra1nbow.bsky.social · 7d

Okay. Well, if Trump is going to attempt legal end-arounds like federalizing the NG of GOP states to send them to Dem states over the objections of governors and courts, I think the Democrats should just keep the federal government shut down indefinitely.

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Governor JB Pritzker @govpritzker.illinois.gov · 7d

This evening, President Trump is ordering 400 members of the Texas National Guard for deployments to Illinois, Oregon, and other locations within the United States. No officials from the federal government called me directly to discuss or coordinate.

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Kevin Thurman @kmthurman.bsky.social · 10d

Also this is related to the idea that the us power and wealth is more like three dude in a trench coat pretending to be something rather that the hegemony with the widest distribution of wealth in history.

Kevin Thurman @kmthurman.bsky.social · 10d

Living anywhere except the US and having the concept that variety is a downstream aspect of wealth would disabuse anyone of this notion. Now they have more people without basic needs met than wealth implies but that’s a societal choice — and a bad one.

lil homie gay ass @shituationist.bsky.social · 14d

The reason that the US appears less poor than some third world nations is because state power here won't let you just build a shack. They'll tear it down and make you homeless so that no one has to see shacks. That's going to change as state power erodes.

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Kevin Thurman @kmthurman.bsky.social · 10d

I do think it’s supply demand issue based on a pandemic era social media correction and short-termism by company algorithms.

Alex Hern @hern.bsky.social · 10d

My big question for this is the extent to which it’s demand vs supply driven. My hunch is that people’s preference for keeping up with their friends is undiminished, but we’ve seen a boom-bust cycle in people’s desire to see the more easily-monetised churn of influencer content and now pure slop

Tony Tassell @tonytassell.bsky.social · 10d

Have we passed peak social media? @jburnmurdoch.ft.com here www.ft.com/content/a072...

Kevin Thurman @kmthurman.bsky.social · 10d

Horrible on many levels but also typical terrible gift giving, special organic seeds or something is your better bet for Charles as that’s something he likes. A sword given by his second cousins is something Trump wants to give badly wishing he was a royal as well.

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 10d

Very Trump-era story.
1. The sword has no meaning for Charles, but matters for the Eisenhower Museum.
2. Illegal for the museum to give away US property!
3. Trump makes no distinction between personal/public property.
4. The person who did the right thing was fired.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/a...

After Declining to Give Trump a Sword for King Charles, a Museum Leader Is Out

www.nytimes.com

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 11d

Some schools will be starved of resources. Other schools will be offered bribes. The end goal is the same. To make the universities an extension of the Trump administration. Shame on any of these institutions willing to take the bribes.

Letters on Wednesday were going out to solicit agreement and feedback from Vanderbilt University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Texas, the University of Arizona, Brown University and the University of Virginia, according to an administration official.

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Spooky Back From the Dead Lazarus @jlazarus.bsky.social · 11d

The Daily Watergate continues apace.

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 11d

We are now in the domain of not just illegal impoundments, but targeted illegal impoundments to punish liberal spaces. Not different from what Trump is doing to to universities.

City Nolan @ndhapple.bsky.social · 12d

OMB Director Russell Voight says that US DOT will announce that the federal government is "pausing" funding for both Gateway and the Second Avenue Subway because of "unconstitutional DEI principles" -- x.com/russvought/s...

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Kevin Thurman @kmthurman.bsky.social · 12d

This speech alone should have him removed from office.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 13d

Trump to top military officials: "I told Pete, we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military. National Guard, but our military. Because we're going into Chicago very soon. That's a big city with an incompetent governor. Stupid governor."

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 13d

the president of the united states wants to use the american military to kill american citizens on american soil. that's the whole story!

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Greg Greene (he/him/his) @greene.haus · 13d

What I sought from a Dem presidency, going into in 2020:
- regulators (Warren, E.-coded)

What I seek from a Dem presidency, going into 2028:
- regulators (Warren G.-coded)

Christopher Webb @cwebbonline.com · 13d

NEW: Rachel Maddow drops unseen bodycam footage of feds coordinating the arrest of Newark Mayor Baraka.

I REPEAT: the feds ordered his arrest even though he wasn’t breaking any laws.

Federal agent: “We are arresting the mayor right now per the Deputy Attorney General of the United States.”

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Anne Rasmussen @annerasmussen.bsky.social · 14d

🚨 New paper in @thejop.bsky.social

Why do politicians often misperceive what citizens' policy positions are?

@simonotjes.bsky.social and I study ~10,000 estimates of public opinion by politicians in Denmark & the Netherlands to uncover the sources of these (mis)perceptions

Thread 🧵1/10

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