Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Mark Anderson

Tom Joscelyn @tomjoscelyn.bsky.social · 3h

“I spent three nights and three days in federal custody. During that time, I was never told what I was charged with, was not allowed to shower despite being covered in tear gas and pepper spray, had no phone call to my family, and no access to an attorney.” - George Retes, U.S. citizen and veteran.

I’m a US citizen and a veteran. ICE arrested me for no reason.

Jailed for three days without an explanation or ability to notify anyone, George Retes argues the only path to healing starts with the government taking accountability for its actions.

newsletter.ofthebrave.org

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Matt Steinglass @mattsteinglass.bsky.social · 1d

“The jobs that low-skilled migrants do…let people in other parts of the economy take on more skilled work. Florence Jaumotte of the IMF and colleagues find that in rich countries a 1 pct pt rise in migrants’ share of the adult population ultimately raises GDP per person by 2%.”

Welcome to Zero Migration America

Closed borders will make the country smaller, poorer and less innovative

economist.com

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Betsy Wolf @betsyjwolf.bsky.social · 1d

For my practitioner friends, people who managed Title I funds (among others) were laid off today.

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Mark Anderson @mandercorn.bsky.social · 2d

"Babies start processing #language before they are born, a new study suggests."

www.scientificamerican.com/article/babi...

Babies Start Processing Foreign Languages before They Are Born

Babies process foreign languages they heard in utero much like their mother tongue, researchers find

www.scientificamerican.com

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Jeffrey Vagle of the Carcosa Vagles @jvagle.me · 4d

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Molly Jong-Fast @mollyjongfast.bsky.social · 5d

CHICAGO (AP) — Storming an apartment complex by helicopter as families slept. Deploying chemical agents near a public school. Handcuffing a Chicago City Council member at a hospital.

apnews.com/article/chic...

Using helicopters and chemical agents, immigration agents become increasingly aggressive in Chicago

Activists, residents and elected leaders say increasingly combative tactics used by federal immigration agents are sparking violence and fueling neighborhood tensions in the nation’s third-largest cit...

apnews.com

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Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg.bsky.social · 9d

America enters a new, dark chapter: "Kavanaugh Raids" on entire buildings and neighborhoods, a chapter surely to be remembered as infamously as we now view the "Palmer Raids" of the first Red Scare. www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/welcome-to...

Welcome to the Era of "Kavanaugh Raids"

ICE crosses another big, important line.

www.doomsdayscenario.co

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Mark Anderson @mandercorn.bsky.social · 10d

"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, she said."

chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/...

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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ProPublica @propublica.org · 15d

NEW: I arrived in the U.S. eight weeks ago to report on how the administration’s immigration crackdown was playing out from the front lines.

What I saw Thursday was the culmination of ICE’s aggressive behavior.

By @tilleckert.com

I Filmed the ICE Officer Who Shoved a Woman. It Felt Like the New Normal.

I arrived in the U.S. eight weeks ago to report on how the administration’s immigration crackdown was playing out from the front lines. What I saw Thursday was the culmination of ICE’s aggressive behavior.

www.propublica.org

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Mark Anderson @mandercorn.bsky.social · 16d

The findings underscore the importance of looking beyond simple averages to understand the complex effects of #bilingual experience.

Mark Anderson @mandercorn.bsky.social · 16d

Instead of relying on conventional averages, the study modeled performance as a continuous function of time, revealing that higher levels of English immersion were associated with slower initial performance, but a higher usage of English relative to Mandarin was linked to faster overall learning.

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Mark Anderson @mandercorn.bsky.social · 16d

There have been a wide variety of contradictory findings on whether #bilingualism enhances #cognition or not, and a recent study suggests the way researchers measure performance may be the key to solving this mystery.

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Bilingual effects on cognitive control: Are we looking in the right place? | Bilingualism: Language and Cognition | Cambridge Core

Bilingual effects on cognitive control: Are we looking in the right place?

www.cambridge.org

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Mark Anderson @mandercorn.bsky.social · 17d

"There are benefits of working on a slower timescale. You don’t get caught up in hype waves. You can take weekends off and still publish something original."

www.quantamagazine.org/to-understan...

To Understand AI, Watch How It Evolves | Quanta Magazine

Naomi Saphra thinks that most research into language models focuses too much on the finished product. She’s mining the history of their training for insights into why these systems work the way they d...

www.quantamagazine.org

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Daniel Bellingradt @dbellingradt.bsky.social · Apr 14

This is how your email finds me.

A man sitting and looking towards the viewer of the engraving. The man leans his arm on a parapet and is surrounded by female personifications of Painting, Drawing and Sculpture as well as a winged angel with fanfare trumpets (Glory), Father Time with his scythe and the skeletal figure of Death clutching an arrow; a putti holds aloft a wreath and carries a palm. The image is part of a larger engraving, made around 1600, and nowadays at the BM 58490001 (Source: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/image/58490001 ).

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Mark Anderson @mandercorn.bsky.social · 20d

Big thanks to @manymindspod.bsky.social and Dr. Marc Berman's research for inspiring my latest post.

#Nature isn't just an amenity, it's essential for student #cognition.

#education #neuroscience

schoolecosystem.wordpress.com/2025/09/21/b...

Beyond the Brick Wall: Using Environmental Neuroscience to Boost Learning and Well-being

The capacity for intense focus in our students is a finite resource—a cognitive fuel tank that can, and does, run low. We see the results daily in the classroom: irritability, impatience, and a fra…

schoolecosystem.wordpress.com

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Andrea Junker @strandjunker.com · 21d

Dear American citizens, whatever you wish more German citizens would have done in 1933, do that now.

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Mark Anderson @mandercorn.bsky.social · 23d

"these results demonstrate that latent tree-structured sentence representations emerge in both humans and LLMs"

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=71128

Language Log » LLMs and tree-structuring

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

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Jonathan Ladd @jonmladd.bsky.social · 24d

Americans are most likely to encounter people from different economic classes in gas stations, restaurants and hotels. This mixing is least likely to happen in elementary and secondary schools, while exercising, and in supermarkets. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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Marianne Rice @mariannerice.bsky.social · 25d

Check out our latest report: Educator Perceptions of HQIM Alignment, Adoption, and Implementation in Grades K-5, which captures the experiences and perceptions of district leaders, school leaders, and teachers who have implemented HQIM in Grades K-5 in TN.

trrc.utk.edu/resources/hq...

Educator Perceptions of HQIM Alignment, Adoption, and Implementation in Grades K-5: Report - Tennessee Reading Research Center

trrc.utk.edu

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Mark Anderson @mandercorn.bsky.social · 26d

"One of the rats that the team recorded even soliloquized alone inside a garbage bag—perhaps offering a Yelp review for passing comrades."

www.scientificamerican.com/article/scie...

New York City’s Rats Have a Secret Nightlife—And a Language Humans Can’t Hear

A new preprint field study reveals that New York City’s rats aren’t just survivors—they’re talkative city dwellers with their own hidden nightlife. Mapping their movements and conversations could offe...

www.scientificamerican.com

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Mark Anderson @mandercorn.bsky.social · 28d

"If the authors are willing to state that their paper supports conclusion X based on argument Y, I’m happy to quote them on that – if it’s wrong that’s their problem."

crookedtimber.org/2025/09/12/i...

Is Deep Research deep? Is it research? — Crooked Timber

crookedtimber.org

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Elle @elleisanisland.bsky.social · 29d

All I saw was cheesecake boat and ocean for at least 5 minutes

Photo of a missing slice of cheesecake that looks like a cheesecake hull floating in a deep blue ocean. The "ocean" is actually the blueberry topping on the large cheesecake that we don't see completely.

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Mark Anderson @mandercorn.bsky.social · Sep 11

"The reality is that progress is continuing apace, but it swallows up and renders ordinary some of its more visible successes. What is left behind for future progress can be pretty slow." #AI

feeds.feedblitz.com/~/924658517/...

How to think about AI progress - Marginal REVOLUTION

The Zvi has a good survey post on what is going on with the actual evidence. I have a more general point to make, which I am drawing from my background in Austrian capital theory. There are easy proj...

feeds.feedblitz.com

Mark Anderson @mandercorn.bsky.social · Sep 11

"We found that mosquitoes are drawn to those who avoid sunscreen, drink beer, and share their bed"

science.slashdot.org/story/25/09/...

Beer Drinkers Are Mosquito Magnets, According To a Festival Study - Slashdot

alternative_right shares a report from Phys.org: Some people are simply mosquito magnets while others emerge relatively unscathed. But why is this so? One explanation, according to scientists from th...

science.slashdot.org

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Mark Anderson @mandercorn.bsky.social · Sep 3

"For a relatively cheap investment, more green space at a school offers long-term benefits to generations of students."

theconversation.com/adding-more-...

Adding more green space to a campus is a simple, cheap and healthy way to help millions of stressed and depressed college students

Multiple studies show that grass, trees, shade and sidewalks on a campus reduce student anxiety.

theconversation.com