Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Michael Skvarla

Dante Atkins @danteatkins.bsky.social · Sep 11

Our politics seems to be entering a phase of "right supremacy" where only the lives of right-wingers have value. Assassinating the leader of a state legislative body in her own damn home was business as usual, but all of America has to have a reckoning if it's a far-right online influencer.

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Tea’s so happy being Teddy Roosevelt @teaberryblue.net · Sep 11

BOOM! Studios is HIRING!!!

We're looking for a talented, organized, and detail-oriented Assistant Editor with 1-2 years in editorial or a similar field! You will most likely be working directly with me on a variety of comic titles. Please visit the link to apply!

bit.ly/42ooXLq

#comicjobs

Assistant Editor, BOOM! Studios (Open to Remote)

bit.ly

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Reposted by Michael Skvarla

Prof Susie Maidment @tweetisaurus.bsky.social · Aug 27

Hi all, me, @richardjbutler.bsky.social and the amazing UK-US-Moroccan team are delighted to announce that.. we have a new specimen of Spicomellus AND IT'S WAY WEIRDER AND WAY COOLER THAN WE EVER IMAGINED!!

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Michael Skvarla @napoleonicento.bsky.social · Aug 25

LLMs can't think or evaluate so this is unsurprising

Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · Aug 25

“The study authors asked GPT 4o-mini to evaluate the quality of 217 papers. The tool didn’t mention in any of the reports that the papers being analyzed had been retracted or had validity issues.

In 190 cases, GPT described the papers as world leading, internationally excellent, or close to that”

ChatGPT tends to ignore retractions on scientific papers

Study finds the chatbot doesn’t acknowledge concerns with problematic studies

cen.acs.org

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Reposted by Michael Skvarla

Science Magazine @science.org · Aug 21

Light pollution is causing birds around the world to sing for longer each day, prolonging their vocalizations on average by 50 minutes, according to a new study in Science.

Learn more: https://scim.ag/3Uz7vzP

A figure showing that light pollution prolongs avian vocal activity by nearly an hour. (A) Most diurnal bird species show bimodal vocalization patterns with peaks in the morning and evening; in light-polluted landscapes (yellow shading), the first vocalizations occur earlier in the morning and the last vocalizations occur later in the evening. (B) Globally—averaged across species, space, and season—onset of morning vocalization shifted 18 min earlier in the brightest landscapes versus the darkest landscapes. (C) Similarly, evening cessation was delayed by an average of 32 min. In (B) and (C), lines are means and shaded regions are 95% confidence intervals (CI) of model predictions.

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Reposted by Michael Skvarla

Jason Karsh @jkarsh.bsky.social · Aug 25

Now police are monitoring the site. What are we even doing.

South Florida Sun Sentinel @sun-sentinel.com · Aug 24

A Florida Department of Transportation crew early Sunday painted the Pulse crosswalk back to black and white for a second time as supporters continued to try to restore the rainbow-colored crossing. Now, police agencies are monitoring the site.

DOT repaints Pulse crosswalk for a second time. FHP and OPD watching site

A squad of Florida Highway Patrol and Orlando Police Department officers surveilled the dozen people who were using chalk on the rainbow crosswalk on Sunday. Advocates said it was an intimidation t…

www.sun-sentinel.com

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Reposted by Michael Skvarla

ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · Aug 25

obviously people deserve blame for being antisemitic but it is a world-historical catastrophe that almost every institution nominally dedicated to fighting antisemitism has decided to burn their credibility for the short term interests of the Netanuahu government

William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · Aug 25

a very bleak development in terms of my view of the world in the last few years has been both ‘the Israeli govt is much worse than I thought and deserves an enormous amount of criticism’ and ‘yeah a lot of people geniunely are just low-grade antisemitic’ both apparently being true.

関税オタク大統領、やめて @hikoukihikouki9.bsky.social · Aug 24

The latest on how the internet has made us all medieval peasants: “this cookie chain has the spirit of the perfidious Jew behind it”

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Matt Bertone @bertonemyia.bsky.social · Aug 22

Who wants a job like mine? If so you may be in luck! 🥳

Virginia Tech is hiring an Insect Identification Laboratory Manager: careers.pageuppeople.com/968/cw/en-us... Follow the link for info and to apply.

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Reposted by Michael Skvarla

Alex Wild @alexwild.bsky.social · Aug 22

The ruling class is desperate to shunt as much intellectual activity through AI as it can, because AI is another lever to prevent ideas that threaten their social status from surfacing.

Kimberly @greypele.bsky.social · Aug 22

So, Research Assistant (AI feature, Primo) is censoring the following topics: Genocide in Palestine
Gaza war
Rwandan genocide
Armenian genocide
Genocides across the world
History of genocides
lynching
lynching in the united states
lynchings in the united states
january 6
covid
covid data
COVID-19”

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Reposted by Michael Skvarla

David Sacerdote @davidsacerdote.bsky.social · Aug 22

It was only through collective action — in the form of a class-action lawsuit, that people got paid.

www.sfchronicle.com/tech/article...

Elon Musk to pay $500 million in severance to 6,000 ex-Twitter workers

The tentative $500 million deal, filed in federal court, covers about 6,000 workers who were laid off after Musk bought the company for $44 billion and rebranded it as X.

www.sfchronicle.com

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Lee Hurley @hleehurley.com · Aug 22

This sounds hyperbolic and I need every cis person following me, who thinks it is, to understand this is very much the reality in the UK.

mady castigan✨ 🏳️‍⚧️ @madycast.com · Aug 22

So basically in the UK, any time someone regrets having sex with a trans woman, they can go cry to the police that she "lied" about being a woman and the police and jury will believe them every time.

Then the woman will be sentenced to be raped by men in men's prison.

Jamie Wareham @jamiewareham.co.uk · Aug 22

This is a vastly upsetting case, that uses CPS guidelines that effectively mean if Trans+ people don't come out before sexual contact, they can now be found guilty of sexual assault - which is what has happened here

Let's take a look at the background 🧵

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

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Reposted by Michael Skvarla

Hell Gate *subscribe today!* @hellgatenyc.com · Aug 22

There was a *whole lot of news* yesterday on the Eric Adams extended universe indictments that you may have missed, so let's get a thread going. First, with this lengthy breakdown on just what was included in some of these indictments. hellgatenyc.com/lewis-martin...

Killing Bike Lanes for Cash and Fame: How Eric Adams's Former Top Aide Allegedly Ran This Filthy Town

The Manhattan DA has hit former top mayoral aide Ingrid Lewis-Martin and six other people with a range of corruption charges that involve karaoke bars, a promise of a SAG card, and $10,000 in seafood.

hellgatenyc.com

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Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · Aug 19

The fact that the thing we're calling artificial intelligence *can't do math* and yet we're jamming it into programs that successfully *have done math* for decades, then warning people against using the AI to do math, seems like an excellent summary of where we are.

Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · Aug 19

Good thing no one uses Microsoft Excel for anything related to legal, regulatory or compliance business functions

www.theverge.com/news/761338/...

Microsoft Excel adds Copilot Al to help ...
theverge.com
The Verget-4.1-mini Al model | 5
successor to the LABS.GENERATIVEAI function Microsoft started experimenting
with in 2023.
Microsoft notes that you can combine its new Al function with other Excel functions, including IF, SWITCH, LAMBDA, or WRAPROWS. The company adds that information sent through Excel's COPILOT function is "never" used for AI training, as "the input remains confidential and is used solely to generate your requested output."
The COPILOT function comes with a couple of limitations, as it can't access information outside your spreadsheet, and you can only use it to calculate 100 functions every 10 minutes. Microsoft also warns against using the AI function for numerical calculations or in “high-stakes scenarios” with legal, regulatory, and compliance implications, as COPILOT "can
give incorrect responses."
Copy Share Select all Web search Dictionary
...

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Simon Rosenberg @simonwdc.bsky.social · Aug 19

2 bits of data from new Economist/YouGov poll.....

13% support for cutting research funding to universities. 24% among Republicans. Polling on this continues to be catastrophic for the Rs, suggests Dems should be learning far harder into standing up for science and our universities. 1/

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Michael Skvarla @napoleonicento.bsky.social · Aug 19

Here is an example of a paper wasp with one wing folded longitudinally and the open. I prepared it for an online course about stinging insects, maybe it'll be useful for someone's insect taxonomy class.

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Reposted by Michael Skvarla

Bryan Blessed @bryb.bsky.social · Aug 16

I don't know why this lad is building a subterranean city for cats, but I'm all for it.

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Pittsburgh graffiti @pghgraffiti.bsky.social · Aug 18

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Michael Skvarla @napoleonicento.bsky.social · Aug 16

Abolish ICE

Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · Aug 16

While masked agents were violently attacking a delivery worker this morning, bystanders repeatedly asked to see their badge numbers but they refused.

Bystander: You guys are ruining this country, you know that, right?

Agent: Liberals already ruined it.

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Reposted by Michael Skvarla

Southern Minnesota Museum of Natural History @smmnh.bsky.social · Aug 16

Abundant Eocene fossils of plants and animals are found in the Green River Formation of Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. This fossil Pseudosalix Hanleyi, with stems, leaves and flowers preserved, is harder to find than a T-rex tooth!

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Reposted by Michael Skvarla

ProPublica @propublica.org · Aug 16

We asked people who experienced "sweeps" of homeless encampments to write about it in their own words.

In Portland, Teresa Stratton told us about how her husband’s ashes were taken in a removal:

Handwritten text on a notecard: My husbands ashes; I made me feel alone scared, empty, now I wonder where he is and if he's all still in his urn and if hes ok and I hope he's not in the dump

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mossworm.bsky.social @mossworm.bsky.social · Aug 16

tldr; please help me fight back against Another Website Making A Chatbot while there is still time

mossworm.bsky.social @mossworm.bsky.social · Aug 16

iDigBio is hosting a zoom webinar on Monday, August 18, 1pm - 2pm (it says ET in one place and CT in another place, I'm assuming it's ET??) to discuss how their new agentic LLM chatbot iChatBio is "transforming" biodiversity research. I'm sure it is.
ufl.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: iChatBio: A Modular Agent System for Biodiversity Data Exploration. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.

Curious how AI is transforming biodiversity research? Join us for a look at iChatBio, a cutting-edge agentic system designed to help scientists discover, process, and analyze biodiversity data with ea...

ufl.zoom.us

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Michael Skvarla @napoleonicento.bsky.social · Aug 14

I was beta testing an agricultural extenion AI chat bot yesterday and got it to tell me how to dispose of a body using lye and hydrofloric acid ala Breaking Bad

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Reposted by Michael Skvarla

Alex Wild @alexwild.bsky.social · Aug 13

Buried in the regime's political takeover letter of the Smithsonian is the worst bit. Unlike exhibits, which are non-destructive towards primary materials, temporary in nature, and reversible, the foundational collections are irreplacable. They want to be able to throw stuff out.

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Michael Skvarla @napoleonicento.bsky.social · Aug 13

Wow! What a good-looking red tail just hanging out

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