Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

LightNews

GJ Charles

@thestatichand.bsky.social

160 followers 160 following 28 posts

a blurry jpeg of a person. Artist, Producer, Researcher, etc Bleeps, Glitches and Redistribution www.garyjcgaryjc.com

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

GJ Charles @thestatichand.bsky.social · Nov 13

Something nice for debut Bluesky post... My article on cultural flatness, Artificial Intelligence, and emerging spikelets of aural resistance. Published in Alluvium, as well as FORM Journal in South Africa. alluvium.bacls.org/2021/06/04/a...

Archived Futures: Digging In The Crates Of Always

In a recent short story/essay, Anarchic Artificial Intelligence, Louis Chude-Sokei considers the role of memory and history in formulating conceptions of futurity. Through the lens of emerging arti…

alluvium.bacls.org

GJ Charles @thestatichand.bsky.social · 21d

The launch of AWS Deep Composer always amuses me. Not an obviously fail or glitch, but quite possibly the most underwhelming tech demo / launch ever. You can even feel the underwhelm from the audience (presumably Amazon staff) who start off pumped, end up dumped. www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH2E...

Announcing AWS DeepComposer with Dr. Matt Wood, feat. Jonathan Coulton

YouTube video by Amazon Web Services

www.youtube.com

Reposted by GJ Charles

Paris Marx @parismarx.com · Sep 4

“A substantial rise in supply could probably only unwind a small fraction of the huge rise in house prices … This suggests that politicians’ primary focus on supply may be fundamentally misdirected.”

Is the argument high house prices are solely due to supply finally falling apart?

Making British homes affordable again

Politicians have long blamed a housing shortage for soaring prices, but it is tax reform that can make the market less dysfunctional

Reposted by GJ Charles

Pete Quily @pqpolitics.bsky.social · Sep 4

If you want to make housing more affordable, implement, a Singapore style stamp tax

Foreigners pay 60%

Corporations pay 65%

Citizens pay 0% for first home

20% for 2nd homes and 30% for 3rd homes

Ban politicians from being domestic real estate speculators or landlord’s conflict of interest

ADDITIONAL BUYER'S STAMP DUTY
Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty (ABSD)
Rates before Apr 27, 2023
Rates on or after Apr 27, 2023
Singapore citizens
First residential property
0%
0%
Second residential property
17%
20%
Third and subsequent residential property
25%
30%
First residential property
5%
5%
Permanent residents
Second residential property
25%
30%
Foreigners
Entities/ Trustees
ird and subseque sidential proper
30%
35%

30%
60%
Any residential property
35%
65%
Housing developers

35%^ + 5%^^
35%^ + 5%^^

^ Housing developers may apply for remission of this ABSD, subject to conditions ^^ This 5% will not be remitted and is to be paid upfront upon purchase of residential property

Source: Ministry of Finance, Ministry of National Development and Monetary Authority of Singapore

GJ Charles @thestatichand.bsky.social · Aug 21

www.instagram.com/carlabusutti...

Carla is a brilliant artist. Reach out., she would love to hear from you.

GJ Charles @thestatichand.bsky.social · Aug 21

www.instagram.com/carlabusutti...

Brilliant artist.

GJ Charles @thestatichand.bsky.social · Aug 21

The artist is Carla Busuttil

GJ Charles @thestatichand.bsky.social · Aug 21

The artist is Carla Busuttil.

GJ Charles @thestatichand.bsky.social · Aug 21

An @abeba.bsky.social tweet turned into a protest banner artwork at BCU MA graduate show. Brilliant!

GJ Charles @thestatichand.bsky.social · Jul 15

This is true, even when considered in purely ‘Western’ terms. Zoom out to thinking more broadly/globally and it becomes more intensely true. We should be cultivating diversity and plurality of practice.

Robert Komaniecki @komaniecki.bsky.social · Jul 15

One of the great embarrassments of music academia, to me, is that we are constantly producing musicians who think that their knowledge of classical music supersedes the knowledge of practicing musicians from completely different genres or traditions.

Reposted by GJ Charles

Robert Komaniecki @komaniecki.bsky.social · Jul 15

One of the great embarrassments of music academia, to me, is that we are constantly producing musicians who think that their knowledge of classical music supersedes the knowledge of practicing musicians from completely different genres or traditions.

Reposted by GJ Charles

Marcus @marcusjmerritt.com · Jul 14

A Borges story about a guy who gets AI to summarize all the world’s information for him, and then summarize the summary, until the AI has the whole world summarized into a single word. He sits alone at his desk, staring at the word, repeating it endlessly, certain he is experiencing everything

Reposted by GJ Charles

Jon of The North @krauza.bsky.social · Jul 13

Hey, remember when the Panama Papers were released and they showed how basically every wealthy person on the planet was avoiding taxes by offshoring their money and nothing was done about it except the reporter who broke the story was murdered with a car bomb?

GJ Charles @thestatichand.bsky.social · Jul 8

Almost can’t believe this happened… At a (quasi) academic conference?!?. Solidarity with @abeba.bsky.social

Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.bsky.social · Jul 8

a couple of hours before my keynote, I went through an intense negotiation with the organisers (for over a hour) where we went through my slides and had to remove anything that mentions 'Palestine' 'Israel' and replace 'genocide' with 'war crimes'

1/

Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.bsky.social · Jul 8

my keynote happening in a few mins. registration here to stream it

aiforgood.itu.int/summit25/reg...

Reposted by GJ Charles

Spencer Ackerman @attackerman.bsky.social · Jul 2

@zohrankmamdani.bsky.social’s Zionist accusers can’t even describe how it is that he’s supposed to threaten Jews. That’s because they can’t, since he doesn’t. They also can’t accept that in our socialist, anti-Zionist politics, there is real Jewish community. New from me in @zeteo.com:

My Fellow New York Jews and I Know Zohran Mamdani Does Not Threaten Us

It's time we all speak out against Jewish self-victimization and not fall into the trap of Islamophobic tropes.

GJ Charles @thestatichand.bsky.social · Jul 1

The Bleeding Commons

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Reposted by GJ Charles

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · Jun 30

I gotta say I find a lot of AI discourse around higher ed very confusing. "if ChatGPT can write your essays is college even worth it?" did people think math teachers were assigning problem sets because *they* couldn't figure out the answers?

GJ Charles @thestatichand.bsky.social · Jun 20

Also, famously…. no white spirits exist under socialism. 😅

Reposted by GJ Charles

Matana Roberts @matanaroberts.bsky.social · May 19

you know when I knew the US was in deeper 💩? that debate moment when Biden and Trump started arguing about golf scores.

Reposted by GJ Charles

James Medlock @jdcmedlock.bsky.social · May 12

There is no plan. There is no 3D chess. The president has a toddler’s understanding of the economy and will continue to just do things (and then undo them, and then do them again).

Reposted by GJ Charles

Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.bsky.social · Feb 23

IQ is like dick. those possessing very little obsess with it

Reposted by GJ Charles

Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.bsky.social · Jan 27

At Google, I asked why they were fixated on building THE LARGEST model.

Why are you going for size?

What function are you trying to achieve?

Why is the thing you were upset about that you didn't have THE LARGEST model?

They responded by firing me 🤷🏼

Reposted by GJ Charles

Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.bsky.social · Jan 25

The impossibility of automating ambiguity (Birhane 2021)

Human creativity is marked by imagination and thinking of things that were not thought of before. Creative innovations that have come to define and revolutionize the world, from music to medicine, are often marked by surprise, spontaneity, and uncertainty. Creativity, Juarrero (2000) reminds us, stands in stark opposition to certainty and predictability. It requires unexpected and spontaneous behaviour and not repeating past patterns and trajectories. Creativity, by definition, defies expectation.4
As ML systems attempt to order the spontaneous and non-determinable social world, they create a future that resembles the past leaving us no room for a chance to be different. Such classifications and predictions reinforce stereotypes and impinge on the inherently open-endedness of being, limiting a personʼs potential by defining them by what people like them have done or liked or how people like them have behaved in the past. When future behaviours are predicted based on past stereotypes, individuals are deprived of the opportunity to challenge stereotypes and to realize their full potential.

Reposted by GJ Charles

Peretsky @peretsky.bsky.social · Jan 12

These people are your enemies

GJ Charles @thestatichand.bsky.social · Jan 12

Great piece from C Thi Nguyen on ‘The Limits of Data’ and quantification of every aspect of life.

issues.org/limits-of-da...

The Limits of Data

Policymakers want to make decisions based on clear data, but important factors are lost when we rely solely on data. A philosopher writes:

GJ Charles @thestatichand.bsky.social · Jan 12