Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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Solomon @solomonmissouri.bsky.social · 13h

Reposted by dave howl-croft 👻🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 12h

The Catholic Church requires bishops to submit their resignation to the Pope when they turn 75 and the Pope chooses whether to accept it or not and as much as I hate having to hand anything to the Catholic Church, they are kinda on to something

hammancheez @hammancheez.bsky.social · 13h

Dems building a bench of senators younger than 75 challenge fail

Eric Michael Garcia @ericmgarcia.bsky.social · 13h

Janet Mills's campaign account just posted this video of her saying that she just announced her campaign against Susan Collins. #MESen. Mills, 77, is expected to jump in the race against Collins. She would face Graham Platner, Jordan Wood and Dan Kleban.

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Reposted by dave howl-croft 👻🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

NightMar on Hicks Street, Part 4: The Rabbit’s Revenge @histoftech.bsky.social · 11h

The Virginia Senate just told UVA it’s not getting state funding if it accepts the compact since UVA exists to serve Virginia, its residents, & their interests—not be a tool of the federal govt. Scoop from our student newspaper, who’ve been doing vital reporting www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2025...

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unraveled @unraveledpress.com · 10h

Seen in Maywood, Illinois

Handwritten sign on parked car dash that reads ZIP TYING CHILDREN IS FUCKING WRONG

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Reposted by dave howl-croft 👻🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

👻madeline boOoOoOodent👻 @oldenoughtosay.com · 9h

okay fine round of applause for this headline

Guardian Australia @australia.theguardian.com · 1d

You won’t believe what degrading practice the Pope just condemned

Communication must be freed from clickbait and misguided thinking, head of Catholic church tells journalists The Pope has condemned clickbait as a “degrading” part of journalism, at a private audience with global newswires. Australian media representatives were among those to hear directly from Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican on Thursday with about 150 members of newswire alliance MINDS International. Continue reading...

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by dave howl-croft 👻🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Virginia Gewin @virginiagewin.bsky.social · 9h

Journalist here

I’m interested in talking to a federal agency scientist who was fired, then rehired. I can keep you anonymous. I’m on Signal ginnyg.04

Reposts are appreciated!

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Reposted by dave howl-croft 👻🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Patrick De Klotz @patdeklotz.bsky.social · 9h

"Career prosecutors determined that there was no evidence to support these charges. They were pushed out and replaced with individuals whose only qualification is their loyalty to a single man, not to the Constitution or the law. That is corruption. That is abuse of power...we must all speak out."

Tyler McBrien @tylermcbrien.com · 12h

INBOX: National Bar Association President Ashley L. Upkins calls the charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James “unjust and dangerous” and a representation of "the continued weaponization of our nation’s justice system for political gain."

Full statement below:

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Reposted by dave howl-croft 👻🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

BrettC, Ph.D. @brettc.bsky.social · 16h

I love how many hats linguistics lets me wear.

There's the social sciences hat, the humanities hat, the data science hat, and even the physics and biology hats!

If only I had more heads to wear all hats at once!

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Reposted by dave howl-croft 👻🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 16h

peter thiel (clutching chrome plated human skull) tell me oracle... does the world end in fire, or ice? the passionate flames of the activist thunberg, or the frozen doom yudkowski demands?

chatGPT: ✨ What a great question, Peter! ✨

Let's break that tough Q down 🕺, in your favorite epic style:

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Reposted by dave howl-croft 👻🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

NightMar on Hicks Street, Part 4: The Rabbit’s Revenge @histoftech.bsky.social · May 15

that thing where your parents blame you for something that functionally cannot be your fault

Dinosaur (seeing a comet): Terry! Quick!
Make a wish.

Second dinosaur: I wish for a thousand wishes.
(Lots of comets rain down)

First dinosaur: TERRY WHAT
THE HELL?!

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dave howl-croft 👻🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @davehowcroft.com · 16h

AI is going great: www.youtube.com/shorts/8yXl0...

AI Errors Are Being Used To Decide Government Policy #funfact

YouTube video by Doug Sharpe

www.youtube.com

Reposted by dave howl-croft 👻🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 1d

Hey US scientists, the NY Times wants to hear from you if you've had your funding cut. 🌊🧪

Has Your Scientific Work Been Cut? We Want to Hear.

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by dave howl-croft 👻🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

🎃👻🐈‍⬛ Grim Pierce 🪦⚰️☠️ @unchi.org · 1d

The Oatmeal doesn't always land quite right for me, but this is fantastic. Read it. theoatmeal.com/comics/ai_ar...

Screenshot of the linked article in The Oatmeal, showing a drawing of a paintbrush covered with red, blue, and yellow paint hovering near an open laptop, from which is dripping paint in the same colors. At the top of the picture are the words "Let's talk about AI art."

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Reposted by dave howl-croft 👻🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Lucius Fox In The Box @carnegro.bsky.social · 1d

Pope Leo is spitting.

www.npr.org/2025/10/09/n...

Leo questioned a world where the wealth of the elite grows
"exponentially" while many "millions of people die of hunger or survive in conditions unfit for human beings." He also criticized "ideologies that defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation,"
with false promises "that a free-market economy will automatically solve the problem of poverty."

Leo described a "new tyranny," which shuns any kind of oversight and where the economy is structured "in such a way that sacrifices are demanded of the masses in order to serve the needs of the powerful." The poor, he wrote, are only allowed "drops that trickle down."

The pope openly challenged "prosperity theology" and called Christians to the practice of giving charity. "It will not solve the problem of world poverty, yet it must still be carried out, with intelligence, diligence and social responsibility," he wrote.

Popular movements that challenge "the empire of money," invite people to take on the cause to combat poverty alongside the poor, instead of on their behalf, and "make history," the pope said. It our duty, Leo said, to "make their voices heard, albeit in different ways, in order to point out and denounce such structural issues, even at the cost of appearing foolish or naïve."

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km fedyk 🐀 @karigrafia.bsky.social · 1d

this grant application season, remember to use person-first language: instead of “academic”, say “person in academic crisis”

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Reposted by dave howl-croft 👻🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Peter Tennant @pwgtennant.bsky.social · 1d

There was a great post by someone saying that choosing to use an LLM for coding is always like choosing to be the hare in the 'hare and tortoise'.

You set off quickly but inevitably run into problems. Eventually your counterfactual tortoise self - who did by building knowledge - walks past.

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Reposted by dave howl-croft 👻🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Georgia Tomova @georgiatomova.bsky.social · 1d

girls just wanna have funDS 💃

Georgia Tomova @georgiatomova.bsky.social · 1d

We should do a study on how much of the funded applied research suffers from problems that the unfunded methods research could have helped prevent or resolve

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Reposted by dave howl-croft 👻🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Peter Tennant @pwgtennant.bsky.social · 1d

Just because an LLM can produce a report with various figures & charts doesn't mean it is good at statistics.

Because good statistics is not about producing code.

It's about deep knowledge of study design & conduct. In my opinion, 95% of all data science problems come from poor questions & design.

Terry McGlynn @hormiga.bsky.social · 2d

Y'all. I just got ChatGPT to do everything in R for this manuscript. I mean EVERYTHING. And it's all legit and reproducible. I'm shook.

How are we mentoring our trainees in statistics now? Who needs to learn coding in R line by line, and who doesn't?

scienceforeveryone.science/statistics-i...

Statistics in the era of AI

How do we mentor, teach, and do stats when AI can do so much of the work?

scienceforeveryone.science

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Reposted by dave howl-croft 👻🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Prof Christina Pagel @chrischirp.bsky.social · 1d

🧵🚨

The UK’s independent scientific bodies are highly vulnerable to politicisation - over the past 5 months I've been working with @martinmckee.bsky.social to map out their vulnerabilities and it's not good news.

Today our report is published!
www.ucl.ac.uk/policy-lab/n...

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UK’s arm’s length public bodies are highly vulnerable to politicisation

Seven in ten Britons say it is important for top scientific institutions to be independent in exclusive new polling.

www.ucl.ac.uk

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Reposted by dave howl-croft 👻🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 1d

I'll be in my "I told you so" yurt. It's an imaginary yurt. But it's a yurt.

404 Media @404media.co · 1d

BREAKING: A catastrophic breach has impacted Discord user data including selfies and identity documents uploaded as part of the app’s verification process, email addresses, phone numbers, approximately where the user lives, and much more.

🔗 www.404media.co/the-discord-...

The Discord Hack is Every Users’ Worst Nightmare

A hack impacting Discord’s age verification process shows in stark terms the risk of tech companies collecting users’ ID documents. Now the hackers are posting peoples’ IDs and other sensitive informa...

www.404media.co

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Reposted by dave howl-croft 👻🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Pat Walshe - Privacy Matters @privacymatters.bsky.social · 1d

But “won’t ya think of the children” …. Many did and that’s why many objected to age verification & the processing of identity documents

404 Media @404media.co · 1d

BREAKING: A catastrophic breach has impacted Discord user data including selfies and identity documents uploaded as part of the app’s verification process, email addresses, phone numbers, approximately where the user lives, and much more.

🔗 www.404media.co/the-discord-...

The Discord Hack is Every Users’ Worst Nightmare

A hack impacting Discord’s age verification process shows in stark terms the risk of tech companies collecting users’ ID documents. Now the hackers are posting peoples’ IDs and other sensitive informa...

www.404media.co

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Reposted by dave howl-croft 👻🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Haunted Nick Seaver @nickseaver.website · 1d

I can record a short video of myself and then just write scripts that an AI avatar of me will say? How about I just walk into the sea

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dave howl-croft 👻🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @davehowcroft.com · 1d

Tonight at 7pm, #WeAreTheUniversity! Check out @ucu.org.uk's live event exposing the hypocrisy of university leadership making bank while the people actually doing the work of the university suffer: www.youtube.com/live/rZRbCP0...

LIVE: Exposing Vice Chancellors across the UK - VOTE YES #WeAreTheUniversity

YouTube video by UCU - University and College Union

www.youtube.com

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Reposted by dave howl-croft 👻🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Nina Markl 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 @ninamarkl.bsky.social · 1d

okay, pals, i have heard one too many prompt engineering is a real and valuable skill’, this is gonna be a research project now

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dave howl-croft 👻🦔 in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @davehowcroft.com · 1d

I know we have asbestos warnings on some of our buildings; I hope @uniofaberdeen.bsky.social management are up to date 🤞

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