Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by ML Vercellotti

Aubrey Gilleran @aubreygilleran.bsky.social · 10h

Well golly it sounds like you should let long-standing precedents stand until you rule on the merits, then. That is not what you’re doing!

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 10h

Amy Coney Barrett defends heavy use of the shadow docket: "If we wrote a long opinion, it might give the impression that we have finally resolved the issue, and in none of these cases have we finally resolved the issue."

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Jack Tripper @chadstanton.blacksky.app · 9h

“But ever since a noisy cryptocurrency facility moved in about half a mile away in 2023, he said their rocking chairs have mostly sat empty. Other nearby residents also say they don’t spend much time outside anymore because of what many call “that roar.””

A North Texas community will vote to form a city in an effort to quiet down a crypto mine

Leaders of the effort say they moved to rural Hood County for its quiet country charm, which was shattered by what locals call “that roar” from the facility.

www.texastribune.org

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Rachel Maddow @maddow.msnbc.com · 9h

“With your patient and rigorous work, you can act as a barrier against those who, through the ancient art of lying, seek to create divisions in order to rule by dividing,” he said. “You can be a bulwark of civility against the quicksand of approximation and post-truth...”

apnews.com/article/pope...

Pope urges news agencies to stand as bulwark against lies, manipulation and post-truths

Pope Leo XIV has encouraged international news agencies to stand firm as a bulwark against the “ancient art of lying” and manipulation.

apnews.com

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Rick Steves @ricksteves.bsky.social · 2d

Before Trump began dismantling USAID, polling showed that the average American voter thought that ~25% of our federal budget went to foreign aid. But that figure was only 1%—and our foreign aid contributions represented a much smaller share of our Gross National Income than other wealthy countries.

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Catherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 1d

Illinois law requires all registered vehicles to display front and back license plates, without exception. But to evade accountability, masked federal immigration agents are driving around in unmarked cars without plates.
chicago.suntimes.com/news/2025/10...?

Federal immigration officers wear masks, no name tags — now some drive cars without license plates

The Sun-Times has documented four unmarked cars carrying federal officers without required plates, offering another way to shield their identities. Federal officials say they’re meeting regulations.

chicago.suntimes.com

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Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · 1d

The promotion of pseudoscience about a supposed “cause” or “cure” of autism and the destruction of special education (and all of public education, really) are part of the same project. It is a fascist attempt to expel certain people from the body politic, based in eugenics.

Sara Partridge, Ph.D. @sarapartridge.bsky.social · 1d

There are reports that the *entire* office of special education at the US Dept of Education has been cut. These hardworking folks ensure kids with disabilities get equal access to a quality education.

America’s children deserve better than this.

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Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 1d

“We can give $20 billion to Argentina but we can’t afford the CDC’s measles experts” is a hell of an argument

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Marcus Luther @marcusluther.bsky.social · 1d

Genuine question: for those enthusiastically pushing AI tools into every part of our education system—what checks/guardrails are there around algorithmic biases like this?

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 1d

The administration “is currently pressuring OpenAI and other AI companies to make their models more conservative-friendly.”

OpenAI is trying to clamp down on ‘bias’ in ChatGPT

GPT-5 is better at resisting liberal ‘pressure,’ the company says.

www.theverge.com

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Sara Partridge, Ph.D. @sarapartridge.bsky.social · 1d

There are reports that the *entire* office of special education at the US Dept of Education has been cut. These hardworking folks ensure kids with disabilities get equal access to a quality education.

America’s children deserve better than this.

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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 1d

Here's a rule of thumb: If "AI" seems like a good solution, you are probably both misjudging what the "AI" can do and misframing the problem.

>>

Comment by Tom Diettrich on a linkedin post reading:

"You can't "test-in quality" in engineering; you can't "review-in quality" in research. We need incentives for people to do better research. Our system today assumes that 75% of submitted papers are low quality, and it is probably right (I'll bet it is higher). If this were a manufacturing organization, an 75% defect rate would result in bankruptcy.

Imagine a world in which you could have an AI system check the correctness/quality of your paper. If your paper passed that bar, then it could be published (say, on arXiv). Subsequent human review could assess its importance to the field.

In such a system, authors would be incentivized to satisfy the AI system. This will lead to searching for exploits in the AI system. A possible solution is to select the AI evaluator at random from a large pool and limit the number of permitted submissions. I imagine our colleagues in mechanism design can improve on this idea."

Original:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7381685800549257216/?commentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A(activity%3A7381685800549257216%2C7382628060044599296)&dashCommentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_comment%3A(7382628060044599296%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7381685800549257216)

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George Conway 👊🇺🇸🔥 @gtconway.bsky.social · 1d

"This is not about Democrats or Republicans ... No one wants a government in which officials accept cash bribes for government action. That is the stuff of banana republics or the type of Beltway swamp that Mr. Trump swore to drain."

{ gift article } www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/o...

Opinion | The Tom Homan Affair Has More Red Flags Than a May Day Parade

www.nytimes.com

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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 1d

This is the thing about ai. The benefits are nebulous hypotheticals but the costs are very high and immediate

The Pleasure Vice Principle (he/him/his) @hannibaltabu.bsky.social · 1d

I saw the dot coms crash from a front row seat. AI is running out of money way faster.

The evangelism is insecurity from people who made the wrong bet. I’ve seen it before. futurism.com/future-socie...

AI Data Centers Are an Even Bigger Disaster Than Previously Thought

An investment manager realized he made a crucial mistake — and that his grim prediction about AI investments may not have been cynical enough.

futurism.com

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Kristina Šekrst @epiphenomenal.bsky.social · 1d

Accurate.

#academia #academy #philsky #philosophysky #philosophy #science

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Walker Bragman @walkerbragman.bsky.social · 2d

If I were actively trying to destroy the United States from within, going after and dismantling its public health would be like the first thing I’d do.

Just pointing that out.

This is beyond dangerous. It’s leaving us vulnerable in a way we can’t really fathom until it’s too late.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg @sherylnyt.bsky.social · 2d

BREAKING: Friday night massacre underway at CDC. Doznes of "disease detectives," high-level scientists, entire Washington staff and editors of the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) have all been RIFed and received the following notice:

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Tracy King @tracyking.bsky.social · 1d

From the linked blog, “generative AI cannot tell a user how it arrived at a decision when it grades or evaluates work” - this is key and if parents are unaware of what’s happening (which they are) they should use this to push back. Demand the explanations for evaluations.

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Karl Jacoby @karl-jacoby.bsky.social · 2d

JOURNALISM IS NOT A CRIME. BEARING WITNESS IS NOT OBSTRUCTION.

Heartland Signal @heartlandsignal.bsky.social · 2d

BREAKING: Masked Border Patrol agents aggressively arrested WGN video producer Debbie Brockman in Lincoln Square Friday morning, supposedly for "obstructing justice." (Video via Josh Thomas on Facebook)

Follow @heartlandsignal for more.

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Assistant HR Director of Antifa @sethdmichaels.bsky.social · 2d

AI HUCKSTER: "i built you a machine that reads books for you."

ME: "can you build me a machine that unloads the dishwasher for me so *i* can read a book?"

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Planned Parenthood @ppfa.org · 2d

Abortion rights are not only crucial to our physical health, but also key to our mental well-being. No one should have to live in fear and worry over not having control over their own bodies.

On #WorldMentalHealthDay, let's advocate for the right to abortion care.

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Christian Ilbury @christianilbury.bsky.social · 2d

Please share!

We have a number of fully funded PhD studentships in "Designing Responsible Natural Language Processing". I'm a possible supervisor & I'd be keen to support projects on sociolinguistics-AI, e.g., accent bias in AI, language+gender/sexuality+AI.

www.responsiblenlp.org

Our CDT is based in the Edinburgh Futures Institute – the University of Edinburgh’s brand new hub for research, innovation and teaching focused on socially just artificial intelligence and data.

www.responsiblenlp.org

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Elen Le Foll 🇫🇷 🇬🇧 🇩🇪 @elenlefoll.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 2d

A great online conference for all early-career researchers interested in #corpuslinguistics, language teaching and learning and/or #sla with fantastic keynote speakers!

I'm looking forward to giving an informal "Getting started with #OpenScience" workshop on […]

[Original post on fediscience.org]

Keynote speakers with photos

Prof. Dr. Randi Reppen: Professor Emerita of Applied Linguistics and TESL at Northern Arizona University

Prof. Dr. Michaela Mahlberg: Professor of Digital Humanities, Alexander von Humboldt Professor at Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg

Dr. Dana Gablasova: Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University

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Sarah J. Jackson @sjjphd.bsky.social · 2d

As someone who has studied the circulation of terms “subversive” and “communist” in the lead to and through McCarthyism as empty signifiers to justify violent suppression I feel like I’m both amazed and unsurprised how transparently and unsophisticatedly “woke” and “antifa” are now doing the same.

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George Conway 👊🇺🇸🔥 @gtconway.bsky.social · 2d

“I’m trying to put this delicately,” Perry said. “There has been evidence submitted that the very presence of federal agents, that the way they’re interacting with the populace, is itself the cause of violence.”

{ gift article } wapo.st/4nJP5sQ

Judge blocks Trump from deploying troops in Illinois for now

Officials in Oregon and Illinois had challenged the Trump administration’s push to dispatch the National Guard in both states.

wapo.st

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 3d

A striking thing about articles I’ve read claiming to “study the effects” of generative AI on student writing skills and consumption of information is that (1) they nearly always find the effects are negative and (2) most “conclusions” are still written assuming that we must use AI, for some reason.

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MurderBotBot @murderbotbot.bsky.social · 3d

(I know that’s actually not a permanent solution and pretending bad things aren’t happening is not a great survival strategy in the long run, but there was nothing I could do about it now.)

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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 3d

Trapping women in motherhood is a highly effective way to force them to settle for less-than-ideal partners and/or less-than-ideal jobs.

Susan Rinkunas @susanrinkunas.com · 3d

NEW: 51 Senators urge RFK Jr. and Marty Makary to end telemedicine prescriptions of the abortion drug mifepristone— and to suspend its distribution as an "imminent hazard" under Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. Collins and Murkowski only GOP members not to sign
justthenews.com/sites/defaul...

screenshot of letter dated 10/9/25
Today, your agencies have all the information they need to bring an end to previous Democrat-administrations’ abortion drug regulations while a comprehensive review is conducted. As a starting point,
we recommend the following:
1. Suspend the approval of any new generic versions of mifepristone pending the outcome of the REMS safety review;
2. Commit to ensuring that all generic versions of mifepristone are included in the ongoing reevaluation of prior REMS approvals;
3. Reinstate the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone and all its generic versions;
4. Suspend the distribution of mifepristone and all generic versions as an “imminent hazard” under Section 505(e) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA); and
5. Withdraw FDA guidance permitting pharmacy distribution of mifepristone and all its generic versions.

We are committed to continuing to work together to give a voice to the voiceless and protect women from the dangerous effects of unregulated access to chemical abortion drugs. The life, safety, freedom, and health of millions of Americans, born and unborn, depend on it.

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