Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Alex Luke

@alexluke.bsky.social

790 followers 1.5K following 560 posts

Workplace linguistic ethnographer | Socialist & unionist - current USyd NTEU branch committee member | EAP teacher. "Capire. Per meglio colpire" - Tronti. They/he

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Alex Luke @alexluke.bsky.social · Mar 24

Gonna pin this and list all the things I read in 2025. Since I'm starting at the end of March I've probably missed a few but here goes

Alex Luke @alexluke.bsky.social · Jan 22

I am, after years of attempts, finally getting near the end of this and, with a few small caveats, it's been great

2 11

Alex Luke @alexluke.bsky.social · 1d

Yeah but electrification is actually useful

Reposted by Alex Luke

Courtney Vaughn @courtneyvaughn.bsky.social · 1d

Streets are still closed off in front of the Portland ICE facility at 8:30pm. Protesters have gathered on a side street. Dance party in progress.

790 5.2K 22K

Reposted by Alex Luke

Sarah Kay (she/her) @k-interarma.bsky.social · 1d

The Guardian has published the names of the 18,457 children killed in Gaza. www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

Young lives cut short on an unimaginable scale: the 18,457 children on Gaza’s list of war dead

Every name on a list compiled by health authorities in Gaza of the child victims of Israel’s offensive

www.theguardian.com

1 18 18

Alex Luke @alexluke.bsky.social · 1d

We also show how a counter language ideology labelling those literacy practices as 'HR-language' operated as a form of discursive counter-conduct. It was an absolute pleasure writing this with Karin and learned a lot from doing so. Let me know if you can't access it and I can get you a copy.

Alex Luke @alexluke.bsky.social · 1d

I'm happy to say that the article that Karin Tusting and I wrote for Text and Talk is now available. In it, we look at how a number literacy practices were deployed in a university language centre to try to shape workers into reflective practitioners. www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

‘SMART goals’ and ‘HR language’: technologised literacy practices and counter-conduct in the workplace

This study examines the use of literacy practices in a performance management system which aims to produce reflective practitioners, and how these practices were discursively resisted by staff. It emp...

www.degruyterbrill.com

1 1 3

Reposted by Alex Luke

Rob Milton @therobmilton.com · 2d

- put down the damn AI.

270 400

Reposted by Alex Luke

Steve Mullis @stevemullis.net · 2d

"hand-to-hand combat with antifa every night"

a guy in a frog costume standing facing a line of police and ICE agents in Portland

500 3.5K 12K

Reposted by Alex Luke

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 2d

The "AI" research community:

1) Claims to be building "everything machines", doesn't acknowledge that that means what they're doing is untestable (see Gebru & Torres 2024)

firstmonday.org/ojs/index.ph...

>>

2 22 90

Reposted by Alex Luke

Mondoweiss @mondoweiss.net · 8d

🚨 Update from Yasmin Acar, spokesperson for the Global Sumud Flotilla, speaking from the Alma Freedom ship:

At 150 nautical miles from Gaza, about 20 drones are hovering overhead. Multiple naval vessels have been spotted, with reports of an imminent interception by Israeli vessels.

5 110 190

Alex Luke @alexluke.bsky.social · 8d

If this isn't capitalism, why do I and almost everyone I know have to engage in wage labour and purchase commodities to socially reproduce ourselves and the people we love?

Alex Luke @alexluke.bsky.social · 8d

You might want people who are sympathetic to democratic norms controlling armed forces though, at some point in the future

Reposted by Alex Luke

Juliet Liu @juliet.social · 9d

I'm starting to think we need to bring back a constructive form of shame, which @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social makes a great case for in this excellent piece:

www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

5 29 92

Alex Luke @alexluke.bsky.social · 11d

Yeah also mine. Also it isn't AI automation removing jobs, it's bosses using AI automation to remove jobs. This is abject servile capitalist shite

Alex Luke @alexluke.bsky.social · 11d

Remember that smug meme, "If you ever wondered what you would have done while the Nazis took power, you're doing it now"? It would seem now that most people never thought about that at all

2 5

Reposted by Alex Luke

Timothy Snyder @timothysnyder.bsky.social · 12d

Well said by Karl Jacoby, this has been much on my mind, need to think about the absurd meeting of generals in this light

Karl Jacoby @karl-jacoby.bsky.social · 13d

Only an administration intent on committing war crimes in the present and future would stoop to calling Wounded Knee a "battle" rather than what it truly was: a massacre of over 250 Lakotas, mainly women, children, and the elderly. 1/

41 410 1.3K

Reposted by Alex Luke

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 11d

🔥🔥🔥

Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 11d

“AI” isn’t a tool or technology or even a cluster of technologies with a misleading name. It’s the infrastructure at the foundation of a form of capitalism dependent on data brokering. We should be teaching our students about this and not teaching them about “responsible” use.

1 41 160

Alex Luke @alexluke.bsky.social · 11d

The other interesting point that occurs to me (and has been pointed out already) is that by reifying language into a data set it turns from living labour to dead labour

2 3

Alex Luke @alexluke.bsky.social · 11d

This is a good point. From a critical sociolinguistics perspective, LLMs involve both the formal and real subsumption of language at different points in their formation and use

Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 11d

No, it really is data brokering. They don’t want to pillage data and then merely have it; they want to use data as the raw material for producing models that calculate everything from determining prison sentences to managing insurance claims.

1 2 4

Reposted by Alex Luke

Glen @vaguebiscuit.bsky.social · 12d

Well don't I feel stupid

A headline about the James Webb Telescope potentially finding a new stellar object dubbed a black hole star

290 6.8K 26K

Alex Luke @alexluke.bsky.social · 13d

Rest in power

Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 13d

Assata Shakur has "died in Havana, Cuba, as a result of health conditions and her advanced age."

She was 78.

Assata Shakur, political activist and ex-Black Liberation Army member, has died

Assata Shakur “died in Havana, Cuba, as a result of health conditions and her advanced age,” according to Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

www.whatimreading.net

Alex Luke @alexluke.bsky.social · 13d

More affluence will not fill the gaping hole in our hearts caused by exploitation, alienation, greed, and consumerism

1 1 2

Alex Luke @alexluke.bsky.social · 13d

I always think this when the likes of Jim Chalmers go on about how we need more productivity to improve lifestyles. How much more do we need? Australians enjoy a level of material affluence previously unknown in human history.

2 3

Reposted by Alex Luke

Zoe Drayson @zoedrayson.bsky.social · 16d

When a typo in your Google search leads to new and exciting philosophical positions

AI Overview: "Dental realism"refers to the philosophical debate about whether teeth exist independently of human perception, a concept rooted in metaphysical realism. While realism asserts an objective reality for teeth, idealist philosophies contend that teeth's existence is tied to our consciousness and perception. Philosophers use this idea, for example, to discuss the ethics of tooth extraction, examining whether a procedure impacts a real entity or merely a subjective experience.

56 400 1.4K

Reposted by Alex Luke

Carl Beijer @carlbeijer.bsky.social · 16d

Perfect example of how the Neocons paved the way for Trump.

2002: Everyone's favorite Neocon resister Bill Kristol argues that it's "unfair" to worry that the president will use the war on terror to settle scores and fight imaginary enemies

2025: Trump designates Antifa a domestic terrorist org

4 14 89

Alex Luke @alexluke.bsky.social · 21d

Yet again, an example of generals fighting the last war