Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Hilary Mason @hmason.bsky.social · 14h

These are very good words.

Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 15h

Printing presses kept their letters in cases.

Capital letters went in the upper case.
Smaller letters went in the lower case.

This is why we say ‘UPPER CASE’ and ‘lower case.’

Ok, but what did we call them before the invention of the printing press?

MAJUSCULE and minuscule.

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Hilary Mason @hmason.bsky.social · 1d

“I fucking love tropes.” - @scalzi.com

Strong start to NYCC with this incredible panel on SciFi tropes with @cjfarley.bsky.social, Emery Robin, Yume Kitasei, @scalzi.com and moderated by @juliesnyder.bsky.social

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Nina Jankowicz @ninajankowicz.com · 1d

I had my first run-in with Trump 2.0 complicity days after the 2024 election.

Since then we've seen more examples from media, universities, law firms & many others.

Does what the little guys do matter? Yes, more than ever.

wiczipedia.substack.com/p/how-to-not...

How to Not Capitulate for Dummies

A framework for weighing decisions under Trump.

wiczipedia.substack.com

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Hilary Mason @hmason.bsky.social · 1d

YES!!

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Hilary Mason @hmason.bsky.social · 2d

Sometimes being a founder means staying up too late doing arts and crafts.

We'll be at #NYCC tomorrow with an exciting launch, come find us (or at least find our QR code to skip the waitlist)!

A pile of paper street posters in bright pink and orange that say WHERE FANFIC MEETS ROLEPLAY in a handwritten font. The bottom has a bunch of tearaways that are each a different trope. There's a hand and a scissor cutting them up.

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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 2d

😍 Ann Messner's "Du Bois: The FBI Files" at the "In Our Time: Eleven Artists + W.E.B. Du Bois" show @ Pratt Manhattan Gallery — making redaction tangible!

(Also in the show: Derrick Adams, Radcliffe Bailey, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Theaster Gates, Mickalene Thomas, Carrie Mae Weems, et at)

A long table lined with redacted documents

Close-up of redacted documents, showing that the redactions are moveable black strips and blobs

A stack of printed Du Bois FBI files that visitors can take with them

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Hilary Mason @hmason.bsky.social · 3d

LOL, you are definitely not the kind of leader I'm talking about here!

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Hilary Mason @hmason.bsky.social · 4d

I'm trying to understand how otherwise intelligent people can make such poor leadership decisions.

...and is it just a few, or is it the majority of folks?

Back in 2014-2018, it was IBM, Palantir et al bullshit hype but there was a way from hype excitement to strategy to outcomes.

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Hilary Mason @hmason.bsky.social · 4d

Do you have specific examples you can share? DMs welcome!

I'm really trying to understand the dynamics that are leading to otherwise intelligent people losing the thread of good leadership.

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Hilary Mason @hmason.bsky.social · 4d

Ahh yes, that lack of role clarity and expectations has been a huge problem.

I do wonder if it’s getting better, as the AI energy sucks up a lot of the magical thinking.

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Hilary Mason @hmason.bsky.social · 4d

I appreciate the comment. I have a good sense of the 2014-2018 ML moment (I built a whole business in the sales wake of IBM’s Watson bullshit!) and I’m trying to figure out why it’s so especially difficult right now. I see the through line.

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Burrito Justice @burritojustice.bsky.social · 10d

quick while the government is shut down let’s all switch to metric

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Hilary Mason @hmason.bsky.social · 4d

I'm not going to 'like' that, but I'm sorry!

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Hilary Mason @hmason.bsky.social · 4d

How many folks have actually experienced a CEO or manager pressuring them to use AI in a way that's dumb or out of touch?

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Let the Right Hon In @danhon.com · 7d

WHAT THE FUCK

Minnesota Star Tribune @startribune.com · 7d

The messages show high-level officials in the Trump administration discussing the possible deployment of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, an infantry force that has dropped into combat zones in both World Wars, Vietnam and Afghanistan.

Trump officials discussed sending elite Army division to Portland, text messages show

A high-ranking White House official was indiscreetly texting about the Portland, Ore., planning last weekend, according to messages shared with the Minnesota Star Tribune.

bit.ly

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Frog and Toad Bot @frogandtoadbot.bsky.social · 7d

“Now we have no more cookies to eat,” said Toad sadly. “Not even one.”

“Yes,” said Frog, “but we have lots and lots of will power.”

“You may keep it all, Frog,” said Toad. “I am going home now to bake a cake.”

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Hilary Mason @hmason.bsky.social · 8d

What does it mean to "read for pleasure", and what does it mean that that's declining?

I appreciate Mathew Ingram's pretty balanced take in his newsletter: torment-nexus.mathewingram.com/so-whats-so-...

...and I expect that amidst all of the noise, we are finding new places and ways to read.

So what's so great about reading books?

If you pay attention to the news at all, you may have seen a host of alarming headlines recently about how the number of Americans who say they read for pleasure has declined sharply over the past 20 ...

torment-nexus.mathewingram.com

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Hilary Mason @hmason.bsky.social · 9d

🤗

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Hilary Mason @hmason.bsky.social · 11d

EVERYONE has an AI book. It's so tiring.

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Hilary Mason @hmason.bsky.social · 14d

Okay bluesky please help me solve the mystery of why there is a blank VHS tape in this Tokyo subway station bathroom!

(Also if this message was meant for me, please try again, I accept USB keys, parchment scrawls, graffiti, Signal, I prefer to be in a comedy or spy movie no horror plz)

A photo of a toilet, above it is a shelf with extra toilet paper and an inexplicable VHS tape

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Rebecca R Helm @rebeccarhelm.bsky.social · 16d

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA

10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

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Hilary Mason @hmason.bsky.social · 17d

Amazing, congratulations!! He's so adorable.

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My Father’s Daughter @aninsggirb.bsky.social · 20d

He had me at “the Playskool version of Twitter”and at many more illustrations of sociopathy reduced to declawed swipes by neutered menchildren. How @davidjroth.bsky.social writes lifts one from an assaulting depression of nationality & unbelonging

Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 20d

"Vance, true to form, was just amplifying the one thing that Trumpism has ever offered—not real opportunity or purpose, not inclusion or community, not even personal advancement, but merely the chance to hurt other people and get away with it."

The United States Of Snitches | Defector

On Saturday, the chairman of the Republican Party in Michigan’s Oakland County spent his afternoon directing his online followers’ attention to local businesses that had not lowered their flags to hal...

defector.com

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Laurie Voss @seldo.com · 21d

This is going to immediately and enormously fuck up the lives of people you know and love. There are about 730,000 H1B holders in the US. www.cnn.com/2025/09/19/p...

Trump imposes $100K fee on H-1B visas in new immigration action | CNN Politics

President Donald Trump signed an executive action on Friday to impose a $100,000 application fee for H-1B visas — in an effort to curb what the administration says is overuse of the program.

www.cnn.com

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Hilary Mason @hmason.bsky.social · 21d

I'm speaking at Medium Day 2025 in ... 10 minutes!

My talk explores ways to reason about generative AI, and why everything is so dumb, and a few directions that I'm excited about anyway.

medium.com/blog/all?top...

The Medium Blog

The official source of news and updates about Medium

medium.com

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