Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

DGBassani @dgbassani.bsky.social · 5d

I am so bad at ‘connections’ (the NYT game) that it is verging on embarrassing.

DGBassani @dgbassani.bsky.social · 5d

If you try to address 1 code bug with an LLM, maybe it will help. But a web search will do the job too. If you ask for a code structure review, it will certainly create a cascade of non-existing issues with a gazillion ‘helper functions’. How do people use these in their work!?? It’s a time sink.

1 1 11

DGBassani @dgbassani.bsky.social · 12d

Wordle 1,562 5/6

⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
🟩🟩⬛⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

1

Reposted by DGBassani

Joshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 15d

New from #SCIMaP - analysis of the White House’s Proposed FY 2026 National Science Foundation Budget.

Take-home: Slashing NSF by >50% will lead to ~$11 billion in economic loss and extensive job loss and reduced training opportunities in communities nationwide.

Report: osf.io/e8rnc

a 🧵

Economic loss from the White House's NSF FY 2026 Proposed Budget

7 140 200

Reposted by DGBassani

Emily Atkin @emorwee.bsky.social · 17d

Anyway here's the real article, please share this one and not that one heated.world/p/charlie-ki...

Charlie Kirk was a fossil fuel industry plant

Big Oil's money gave Kirk a larger platform to spread baseless climate conspiracy theories—as well as other extremist views.

heated.world

3 140 230

Reposted by DGBassani

Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · 17d

This one followed every child born in Denmark from 1999-2010, with more than 650,000 children.

No association between MMR vaccine and autism was observed.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30831578/

Measles, Mumps, Rubella Vaccination and Autism: A Nationwide Cohort Study - PubMed

Novo Nordisk Foundation and Danish Ministry of Health.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

3 50 140

Reposted by DGBassani

Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · 17d

Trump again just implied that the MMR vaccine causes autism.

Many studies have shown that there is no relationship between MMR vaccine and the development of autism.

This one followed every single child born in Denmark from 1991 through 1998 (n=537,303). There was no association.

A Population-Based Study of Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccination and Autism | NEJM

It has been suggested that vaccination against measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) is a cause of autism. We conducted a retrospective cohort study of all children born in Denmark from January 1991 th...

www.nejm.org

17 200 450

DGBassani @dgbassani.bsky.social · 18d

My guess: 3 weeks of school. New age group mixing in poorly ventilated environments. We’ve seen these swaps during this period in other late summer and early fall waves. Some variants circulate more efficiently among certain groups.

6

Reposted by DGBassani

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 18d

Sounds like the segregationists in Connecticut are having a grand ole time

“While waiting for the police to arrive, the old Karen’s friend said, ‘You’re not the minority anymore.'”

www.blackenterprise.com/alex-okeefe-...

Alex O'Keefe, Award-Winning Black Screenwriter, Pulled From Train After White Woman Objects To How He Was Sitting

Alex O'Keefe, an award-winning Black screenwriter, was pulled from a train by the police after a white woman objected to his posture.

www.blackenterprise.com

61 840 1.7K

DGBassani @dgbassani.bsky.social · 19d

Just watched the new Superman movie. I don’t have the right mindset to understand what angered folks so much.

2 4

Reposted by DGBassani

J Green @jgreen63.bsky.social · 20d

It's not just people who caught it in 2020. It's 2021, 2022, 2023,2024, 2025, and forever into the future.

Billy Hanlon @bhanlon15.bsky.social · 20d

Metro UK: “The long Covid legacy: ‘People don’t want to think about us”

‘Alex Sprackland caught Covid-19 in March 2020, he thought he’d be back to normal in no time…five years on, the 34-year-old still grapples with the severe, life-limiting effects of the infection’

metro.co.uk/2025/09/20/l...

The long Covid legacy: 'People don't want to think about us'

Around 2million people are still thought to be living with long Covid in the UK

metro.co.uk

5 34 71

DGBassani @dgbassani.bsky.social · 20d

Wordle 1,554 4/6

⬛🟨⬛⬛⬛
🟨🟩⬛⬛🟨
⬛🟩🟨🟨⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

2

Reposted by DGBassani

Yvonne Lam @yvonnezlam.bsky.social · 21d

fwiw I like @mostlybree.kitrocha.com's suggestion of getting people who forgot they have subscriptions to cancel them.

Nina Metz @ninametz.bsky.social · 21d

Boycott/don't boycott ... you're adults and can decide what you think is the right choice

But the "I would but I (or my kids) just want to watch [XYZ]" argument is pretty silly! A boycott comes with inconvenience. That's baked in. You have to decide what's *most* important to you

1 2 9

DGBassani @dgbassani.bsky.social · 21d

🤞

Reposted by DGBassani

Edward Nirenberg @enirenberg.bsky.social · 21d

This isn't even a slight exaggeration. He is actively working on destroying the US's entire vaccine infrastructure. The HepB vote will be tomorrow, where they will get rid of the birth dose and recommend it at 30 days, dooming a bunch of infants to chronic infection ft. cirrhosis, cancer, and death.

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 21d

RFK Jr. is objectively pro-disease, pro-illness and pro-child death.

RFK Jr.-Backed Vaccine Panel Advises Against MMRV Vaccine for Young Children

New members of a key committee tweak routine childhood vaccine guidance as some states and insurers go their own way.

www.wsj.com

61 1.1K 2.9K

DGBassani @dgbassani.bsky.social · 21d

Maybe dislodge the wire and use a small Phillips screwdriver to turn the slot to the off position - a quarter turn clockwise?

1 1

DGBassani @dgbassani.bsky.social · 21d

The wire tip should be inside the white slot. This photo shows it completely out of place, but mine was dislodged but still resting near the slot, so lifting it did not turn the machine off as it should.

DGBassani @dgbassani.bsky.social · 21d

2

DGBassani @dgbassani.bsky.social · 21d

When this happen to mine: the metal wire that you can lift to stop it was dislodged from its place at the front. Behind the white square that faces the door . Try to take a photo or use a small mirror to see it from the back.

1

Reposted by DGBassani

Tyler King @tyleraking.com · 22d

The released a new search tool as part of their AI Watchdog Series that will let you search multiple datasets at once. www.theatlantic.com/category/ai-...

2 24 39

DGBassani @dgbassani.bsky.social · 23d

From my shrimp tank days: We called them ‘the criminals’. Without guns (obvs) they were able to cause panic in all other tank inhabitants. We moved them often to the refugio to ‘do time’. They always fell back into their life of crime as soon as they regained liberty. Awful creatures.

a cartoon drawing of a giant bug standing in front of a building with a blue sky in the background

ALT: a cartoon drawing of a giant bug standing in front of a building with a blue sky in the background

media.tenor.com

2

Reposted by DGBassani

Corey O'Neill @coreyoneill.bsky.social · 25d

A quick crash course in blackpill accelerationism: the memes are the ideology

Excellent (and very much worth it) 8 minute watch from Cy Canterel on recent events.

www.tiktok.com/@cybelecante...

(h/t @realclaudetaylor.bsky.social)

2 16 32

Reposted by DGBassani

Social Media Lab @socialmedialab.ca · 27d

Scammers are targeting seniors again. When we released our new @polidashboard.org app for tracking political ads, we did not expect that it could also be used to detect financial & other types of fraudulent activities on Meta’s advertising platforms.
socialmedialab.ca/2025/07/29/p...

4 24 62

Reposted by DGBassani

Cynthia Miller-Idriss @milleridriss.bsky.social · 27d

I wrote about the groypers and the Fuentes-Kirk fight years ago, in Hate in the Homeland. Cautioning here that there is still a lot to know about the shooter’s motivation, I’m sharing these two paragraphs here to set the history of this fight in context:

71 710 1.9K

DGBassani @dgbassani.bsky.social · 27d

Ego, the perceived sunken-cost of a wrong opinion, and ignorance. All highly correlated. I often tell my students: look for mentors who are comfortable with what they don’t know and are willing to learn with you. ‘I don’t know’ is a perfectly fine answer to any question. It doesn’t diminish anyone.

1 7