Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Tom Sgouros @tsgouros.bsky.social · 42m

ChatGPT de Bergerac

1

Tom Sgouros @tsgouros.bsky.social · 2h

They are aching for a bloody shirt to wave.

Tom Sgouros @tsgouros.bsky.social · 2h

The writers of the 25th amendment did not anticipate a situation where the cabinet thought a president's obvious disability was to their advantage.

6

Tom Sgouros @tsgouros.bsky.social · 2h

But they did publish a stirring editorial about it six months later!
In which they acknowledge they would continue to do exactly what the government wanted them to do: deny employment to people the government did not approve of. Such courage!

timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine...

timesmachine.nytimes.com

Tom Sgouros @tsgouros.bsky.social · 2h

"Government officials have tried to silence or intimidate The New York Times for almost as long as there has been a New York Times. Their efforts usually fail." And then proceed to give an example where those efforts succeeded and the Times fired the copy editor.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/i...

A Voice of the Press, Preserved

www.nytimes.com

1

Tom Sgouros @tsgouros.bsky.social · 12h

I yearn for even just one moment of true accountability.

1

Tom Sgouros @tsgouros.bsky.social · 1d

The 25th amendment did not anticipate a cabinet that would see the President's obvious disability as being to their advantage.

7 35

Tom Sgouros @tsgouros.bsky.social · 1d

This is so confusing. Now we have good frogs and bad frogs?

1

Tom Sgouros @tsgouros.bsky.social · 1d

A robot smart enough to do the dishes is also smart enough to find them boring.

2

Tom Sgouros @tsgouros.bsky.social · 1d

The 25th amendment assumes a cabinet that does not see the President's mental decline as to their own benefit.

2

Tom Sgouros @tsgouros.bsky.social · 2d

You would think he'd show even a touch of concern for the outright corruption of his peers or maybe even for the practical effect of what he imagines are magisterial decisions. Self-dazzled, really.

1 3

Tom Sgouros @tsgouros.bsky.social · 2d

The people who wrote the 25th amendment clearly did not anticipate a situation where the cabinet and advisors to the President think his failing faculties are to their benefit.

1 1 2

Tom Sgouros @tsgouros.bsky.social · 2d

What a delightful job to have.

Reposted by Tom Sgouros

John Fugelsang @johnfugelsang.bsky.social · 3d

140 1.3K 5.3K

Reposted by Tom Sgouros

Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 3d

Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE

nyti.ms

140 1.8K 4.7K

Reposted by Tom Sgouros

♨ naïve dumbass @atticusgf.bsky.social · 3d

Trump vs. US was the final straw imo. You cannot read that ruling and continue believing they have legitimacy. It is not only against the plain text of the constitution, it is anathema to the national ethos. It is offensively, insultingly un-American and they ceded legitimacy by committing that sin.

27 380 2.1K

Tom Sgouros @tsgouros.bsky.social · 4d

"Eumenides?" says the guy to the tailor. "Euripides?" says the tailor looking at the holes. "No, Demosthenes."

1 1

Reposted by Tom Sgouros

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 4d

The elimination of USAID is a moral atrocity and all involved made a choice to enable, and then lie about, ending the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in the world.

MAE SOT, Thailand (AP) - Mohammed Taher clutched the lifeless body of his 2-year-old son and wept. Ever since his family's food rations stopped arriving at their internment camp in Myanmar in April, the father had watched helplessly as his once-vibrant baby boy weakened, suffering from diarrhea and begging for food.
On May 21, exactly two weeks after Taher's little boy died, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio sat before Congress and declared: "No one has died" because of his government's decision to gut its foreign aid program. Rubio also insisted: "No children are dying on my watch."
That, Taher says, "is a lie."

85 2.4K 5.2K

Tom Sgouros @tsgouros.bsky.social · 4d

I yearn for just one small measure of accountability for these crimes.

4

Tom Sgouros @tsgouros.bsky.social · 4d

What could a blip matter, after all?

Tom Sgouros @tsgouros.bsky.social · 4d

You can always tell who knows they're in the wrong because that's who gets angrier.

3

Tom Sgouros @tsgouros.bsky.social · 4d

A 1997 reform in RI made assessments more frequent to jerk people around less. But 25 years of data show that it didn't work. A better way is possible, but it will require independent analysis of the data and techniques, something that is currently protected by non-disclosure agreements.

Tom Sgouros @tsgouros.bsky.social · 4d

You can question the assumptions about the RE market that go into the math, and you can question the math, too. The way assessment is done guarantees that people get jerked around, for no reason except bad math.
steveahlquist.substack.com/p/tom-sgouro...

Tom Sgouros: Reassessing Assessment - How property tax assessments become random

"Anyone who has ever challenged the assessor’s valuations knows that at some point, they shrug and say, “It’s market forces.” This is not very satisfying..."

steveahlquist.substack.com

1

Tom Sgouros @tsgouros.bsky.social · 4d

Both those things are obviously false, but assessment practice assumes them to be true. Another example: we assume the value of a lot is proportional to its size, but a consolidated city block is worth far more than the sum of its lots, so that's false, too.

1

Tom Sgouros @tsgouros.bsky.social · 4d

When we say a house is a collection of bathrooms and bedrooms, there is an implicit assumption that the variation among bedrooms is small compared to the variation among houses. When we assume time on the market is irrelevant to value, we implicitly assume fairly efficient markets, too.

1