Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by suhr

SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 1d

"this is a bad thing that you should not be promoting because it is actually based on realworld racism and is used like realworld racism" is apparently the anti-woke position on bluesky right now, and everyone is rushing to show that they don't agree with it

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Brandon Friedman @brandonfriedman.bsky.social · 3d

Sending troops from Texas to forcefully occupy and suppress cities in Illinois and Oregon IN OPPOSITION TO THOSE STATES' GOVERNORS is literally a civil war and it's cooking my brain that Democrats are simply pretending it isn't happening

Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney.bsky.social · 3d

UPDATE: Hegseth today called up 400 members of the Texas National Guard, with Gov. Abbott's apparent permission, to be deployed "where needed, including in the cities of Portland and Chicago." www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

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Joel Morris @gralefrit.bsky.social · 4d

The “LLM AIs are actually people and you mustn’t bully them” thing is like instituting a full murder investigation into that train that got walled up in Thomas the Tank Engine because it had a face on it.

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Frames @oxinabox.bsky.social · 4d

as a girl with a PhD in natural language processing and machine learning it's actually offensive to me when you say "we don't know how LLMs work so they might be conscious"

I didn't spend 10 years in mines of academia to be told ignorance is morally equal knowledge.

We know exactly how LLMs work.

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mady castigan✨ 🏳️‍⚧️ @madycast.com · 4d

If you find yourself feeling this way, please go to your mirror every night and repeat the affirmation "I will not extend my circle of empathy to specially processed rocks that convert training data into copyright infringement lawsuits" five times

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Preorder Read This When Things Fall Apart @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 7d

We need a bigger national spotlight on this building raid, fam. Agents dropped from helicopters onto the roof. Citizens and non-citizens alike were dragged from their homes in the night. People who weren't kidnapped during the raid had their belongings seized after the fact. This is madness.

Preorder Read This When Things Fall Apart @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 7d

"Jones, 27, is among the residents left at 7500 S. South Shore Drive who are trying to piece together what remains after an early morning, high-powered federal immigration raid led to the arrests of dozens of their neighbors at their South Shore apartment building."

Massive immigration raid on Chicago apartment building leaves residents reeling: 'I feel defeated'

The Department of Homeland Security said federal agents with Border Patrol, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives arrested 37 people in the raid.

chicago.suntimes.com

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Kat Tenbarge @kattenbarge.bsky.social · 8d

Ohio’s new age verification law targeting porn goes into effect today, which means people will either have to use a VPN or submit their IDs to use Bluesky. This is Project 2025 in action. The goal is to limit freedom and make it harder to access anything remotely progressive

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Assigned Media @assignedmedia.org · 8d

On Friday 18 blue state attorneys general BLASTED the Federal Trade Commission, telling it to back off trans youth healthcare and warning of an insidious attempt to reshape the regulation of medicine in the US.

And nobody covered it.

www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-new...

State AGs Defend Trans Americans in Stunning Rebuke to Trump’s FTC — Assigned

Eighteen state Attorneys General unite to stand up in defense of trans Americans, in opposition to a Federal Trade Commission investigation into trans healthcare.

www.assignedmedia.org

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Ryan Marino, MD @ryanmarino.bsky.social · 8d

This is why we fund scientists to study things like oyster slobber even if you don’t think it sounds important

Leah McElrath @leahmcelrath.bsky.social · 10d

⚠️ Chinese researchers have invented bone glue that mimics how oysters stick to surfaces underwater.

The adhesive can reportedly repair orthopedic fractures in 2-3 minutes, even in blood-rich environments, and is bioabsorbable.

interestingengineering.com/science/chin...

China's oyster-inspired 'bone glue' bonds fractures in minutes

A new oyster-inspired Bone-02 adhesive can revolutionize bone repair without metal fasteners.

interestingengineering.com

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mady castigan✨ 🏳️‍⚧️ @madycast.com · 11d

UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk said recently in regards to trans healthcare for minors, “We are going to have to follow whatever rules the federal government proposes.”

It's unclear if that includes UCLA Health, but this is very worrying and shows the need for a community response.

archive.ph/DfR0M

UCLA chancellor ready to stand firm against Trump demands, unless they’re ‘valid’

UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk, speaking at an event with a Los Angeles-based Jewish organization, defended campus efforts to support Jewish communities.

www.latimes.com

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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 12d

The thing regular people don’t often grasp about ‘academic freedom’ is that if you don’t allow experts to research & teach in their fields of expertise, guided by their professional judgment & decades of training, you have effectively given up on the concept of knowledge & shut down your university

Bryan Edward Stone (שָׁלוֹם) @bestonetx.bsky.social · 12d

Universities are moving rapidly to comply with laws that don't exist.

Texas Conference of the AAUP @texasaaup.bsky.social · 12d

“I’m emotionally shellshocked right now,” said one professor in the Texas Tech system. “What does it say about academic freedom? It says we don’t have it.” The professor spoke by phone from the inside of a car to avoid being overheard by colleagues.

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/26/u...

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suhr @suhr.bsky.social · 13d

and if they got in through your windows they'd leave a bunch of tiny drones behind

suhr @suhr.bsky.social · 13d

last night I had a dream that I moved to SF and there was something known as a "drone storm" where someone would regularly release thousands of drones that flew around and look into peoples windows and such. thousands of little red and green lights floating around in the night.

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 13d

Now do wage theft.

Shoplifters could soon be chased down by drones

Flock Safety is pitching its police-style drone program to private businesses. It could bring aerial surveillance to shopping centers, warehouses, and hospitals.

www.technologyreview.com

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Alex Park @alexcpark.com · 14d

Or the parkway

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Ari Trujillo-John @reftw.bsky.social · 14d

Oh hey! The Grand Lake Theater in Oakland is perfect for this.

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The Editorial Board @editorialboard.bsky.social · 15d

Jackbooted government thugs declaring in advance that they will break the laws of a sovereign state.

thehill.com/national-sec...

DHS says ICE won’t comply with California ban on agents wearing masks

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Monday it would not follow California’s new law banning its agents from covering their faces during enforcement operations. “To be clear: We will NOT …

thehill.com

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Aniello De Santo @anids.bsky.social · 17d

We have been saying this all along but sure we had to wait for them to acknowledge it

Prof Mike Yearworth @mikeyearworth.bsky.social · 18d

"In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limits."

www.computerworld.com/article/4059...

OpenAI admits AI hallucinations are mathematically inevitable, not just engineering flaws

In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limi...

www.computerworld.com

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Göktuğ Kayaalp @igoktugk.bsky.social · 21d

This must be the zenith, the climax of capitalist academia, seeking to maximise researcher "output" at all costs, finally optimising the participant* out,---"at last".

your #3 source for absurdist true crime 🔨 @davidgerard.co.uk · 21d

We simulated the human mind with a chatbot. It didn’t work

not advocating data fraud! technically

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlW-... - video
pivottoai.libsyn.com/20250917-we-... - podcast

time: 6 min 08 sec

robot lying on psychiatrist's couch, robot psychiatrist laughing uproariously

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River_Tam @rivertam.bsky.social · 19d

Microsoft gave guidance on H1Bs to its employees last night

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Sumitra Badrinathan @sumitra.bsky.social · 19d

i don’t think people on bluesky understand the severity of this situation.

i woke up to literally hundreds of texts from friends and family thinking about either moving back home to india or applying to other countries for jobs. this includes me.

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · 19d

Those on an H1B cannot return to the US from tomorrow (Sunday) unless paying $100K. This is an out-of-the blue presidential action. We’ll see software engineers stranded abroad.

One easy to predict outcome: those on US visas will travel less… for work, for conferences etc.

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Jamie Cummins @jamiecummins.bsky.social · 21d

Can large language models stand in for human participants?
Many social scientists seem to think so, and are already using "silicon samples" in research.

One problem: depending on the analytic decisions made, you can basically get these samples to show any effect you want.

THREAD 🧵

The threat of analytic flexibility in using large language models to simulate human data: A call to attention

Social scientists are now using large language models to create "silicon samples" - synthetic datasets intended to stand in for human respondents, aimed at revolutionising human subjects research. How...

arxiv.org

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suhr @suhr.bsky.social · 20d

Interactive fiction

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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 21d

These are precedented times and the precedent is a loud ass warning

www.nytimes.com/1939/02/04/a...

Goebbels Ends Careers of Five 'Aryan' Actors Who Made Witticisms About the Nazi Regime (Published 1939)

www.nytimes.com

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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 21d

All they had to do to circumvent the 1st Amendment was outsource the censorship to the oligarchs.

The oligarchs have seized control of not only the media but the very platforms and algorithms used to disseminate information itself.

www.thedissident.news/the-oligarch...

The Oligarchs' Coup Against the Free Press Is Happening Now

The American information space is not merely changing; it is undergoing a hostile takeover. It is a deliberate, coordinated campaign by a new class of oligarchs out of Silicon Valley that includes Jef...

www.thedissident.news

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suhr @suhr.bsky.social · 21d

Do words do things or not? We may never know, and that's part of why we're in this mess.