Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Cabil @cabil.bsky.social · 15h

Have you watched this
youtu.be/9VH8lvZ-Z1g?...

The Crayon Song Gets Ruined - Studio C

YouTube video by Studio C

youtu.be

Reposted by Cabil

Kat Tenbarge @kattenbarge.bsky.social · 16h

The fact that I can’t immediately tell if a video is AI now actually makes me sick to my stomach. I cannot believe there are people who think this is a good thing

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Reposted by Cabil

emma 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🔞 @5g.gay · Aug 31

so many of the small indignities of daily life come from us being denied the ability to tell a rich man in a tech company to fuck off. minesweeper has microtransactions. paid services have ads. the opt out says maybe later. the drive thru is a broken chatbot. your car is an ipad. fuck off! fuck off!

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Cabil @cabil.bsky.social · 4d

I think this daily wordle-like is neat
cluesbysam.com

Clues by Sam

A daily logic puzzle where you deduce who are criminals and who are innocent!

cluesbysam.com

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Cabil @cabil.bsky.social · 4d

Arrived in the mail today 🥹

An image of a book. The cover shows a watercolour painting of a door, with the book title The Saint of Bright Doors on top, with the author's name, Vajra Chandrasekara below.

Cabil @cabil.bsky.social · 7d

1st book fair haul from my salary 🤧

Reposted by Cabil

Vajra Chandrasekera @vajra.me · 10d

Currently at:
— only buy tech too old to have AI built in
— painstakingly disable AI every time they add it to something that used to work perfectly well
— if it can't be switched off, abandon the platform or tool
— if there are no good alternatives, avoid the AI parts
— patiently wait for the crash

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 10d

🫡

How to Turn Off AI Tools Like Gemini, Apple Intelligence, Copilot, and More - Consumer Reports

AI features are crowding into Google search, Gmail, iPhones, Windows laptops, and other products. If you're suffering from AI overload, these settings can help.

www.consumerreports.org

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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 13d

Munch munch crunch crunch slurp slurp

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Cabil @cabil.bsky.social · 16d

Fun simple time waster recommended by Tom Scott gisnep.com/doomscroll/

DOOMscroll

Scroll to survive. How far can you DOOMscroll?

gisnep.com

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Reposted by Cabil

Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 20d

We are producing a generation unable and (somewhat) unwilling to think, read and write without relying on tech controlled by some of the most evil people on the planet to tell them what to think, read and write and they don’t seem to see the dangers of this dependency even if we point it out

Roxane Gay @roxanegay.bsky.social · 21d

I cannot tell you how grim the AI in higher ed situation is. Many of the students have completely surrendered to letting AI do their homework, badly, I might add. How do you fix this? Truly, what the hell do we do, beyond what grading can address, which isn't a solution?

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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 20d

Actually let me correct this; this is an inter generational problem. Too many people seem unable and/or unwilling to see how dangerous this building reliance on gAI is

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Reposted by Cabil

Vajra Chandrasekera @vajra.me · Sep 3

You can read or watch low culture without framing them as guilty pleasures or breaks from serious high culture. You can express an opinion without qualifying it as Just Your Opinion. You can do nothing for a while (to whatever small extent is possible, capitalism &c.) without needing to justify rest

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Drew "I never drink..." Weing @drewweing.bsky.social · Sep 3

Sometimes you're looking through old sci fi novel covers, and you have to share one.

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Reposted by Cabil

soul nate @mnateshyamalan.bsky.social · May 18

wife: how was guarding the two paths today, honey?

guard: [looking away] fine

wife: did something happen?

guard: [tearing up] no

wife: would the other guard tell me something happened?

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Reposted by Cabil

Steven Van Impe @svanimpe.bsky.social · Jun 22

Well put by @mmasnick.bsky.social.

www.techdirt.com/2025/06/20/c...

The “bubble” framing also fundamentally misunderstands what most people want from social media. When you go to a knitting circle, are you disappointed that most people there want to talk about knitting? When you join a book club, do you complain that everyone seems interested in books? Pundits and politicians may want to broadcast to the largest possible audience, but most people are looking for community, not maximum reach.

Most people aren’t looking for a debating arena. They want to talk with people they like about topics they care about—whether that’s knitting, local politics, or professional interests.

This becomes impossible when the platform owner has hung out a shingle for Nazis, and your attempts to discuss your hobbies get drowned out by fascist propaganda algorithmically pushed into your timeline. That’s not “diverse discourse”—it’s just a bad user experience.

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lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · Jun 13

we created the greatest trove of searchable knowledge in human history and immediately started throwing trash all over its floor

article from yahoo sports claiming the texas rangers placed corey seager on 10 day IL, dated "5 hours ago"

clicking into the actual article, the story is actually from april 23

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Cabil @cabil.bsky.social · May 5

🧵

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.chantal//RYAN @thoughtrise.bsky.social · May 5

time and time again, the most miserable people i meet are highly intelligent people who have become hyper-preoccupied with themselves, their role in society and their own capabilities

there is tremendous navel-gazing as they search their authentically titanic intellects for their raison d'etre

1/

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Reposted by Cabil

Beyond The Mac Rainbow @macrogers.bsky.social · Apr 19

To me Rowling exists entirely outside of the “should we support/work with artists with troubling views?” debate. She doesn’t just *think* her opinions, she doesn’t just *say* them, she’s a relentless 24-7 activist whose whole mission in life is terrorizing trans people.

Hex Anderson @dexanderson.com · Apr 19

there's also people claiming we trans people are "holding allies to a purity test" here and to be clear:

"Don't participate in stuff that actively funds the campaign to exterminate us" is a pretty fucking low bar. One might say it's not even "allyship," it's just decency.

Parker Molloy @parkermolloy.com · Apr 19

Also, Lithgow is trying to muddy the waters by giving interviews where he pretends that the controversy here is that he's American, not that he's signing off on transphobia.

deadline.com/2025/04/john...

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Reposted by Cabil

Sooz Kempner @soozuk.bsky.social · Apr 20

The regret rate for gender transition is less than 0.3% (as compared with an average of 14% for surgery in general and 7% for having kids!) but the media loves to find and platform a regretter.

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Reposted by Cabil

Vajra Chandrasekera @vajra.me · Apr 9

the "we fucked up a wolf and tried to brand it after a fantasy franchise" company (in which grrm is an investor) exists solely to justify the ongoing mass extinction of countless species: it's ok if capitalism kills off living things because we can always mutilate something else to simulate it

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Cabil @cabil.bsky.social · Mar 10

Rigid thinking sucks

Cabil @cabil.bsky.social · Feb 25

It's ridiculous that past me fucked around and I get to find out

Cabil @cabil.bsky.social · Feb 22

..I have never related to the 'oor sanam'. So it was interesting to read a narrator much more keen to be in touch with her roots. I have to think about it more, and the book admittedly didn't offer much as fiction or as a fictional autobiography to me, but it was a really appreciated read.

Cabil @cabil.bsky.social · Feb 22

Read Love Marriage by VV Ganeshananthan. A fictional diaspora perspective of the war and being tamil. It was a surprisingly heavy read given its easy language. Maybe it was the way it made me think of most things I had already known in new ways.

Born and brought up in Colombo,

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