Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Em Bee @emleebeebee.bsky.social · 6m

Buena Vista, VA

Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 18h

What’s the word where you’re from that, when pronounced exactly as it looks, identifies a tourist immediately?

Reposted by Em Bee

Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 1h

The basic structure of so much commentary, some in the guise of academic study, reduces to:

(1) generative AI products are detrimental to the goals of education

(2) therefore, the goals of education must change.

Without the tacit axiom that AI has authority behind it, that just doesn’t follow.

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Reposted by Em Bee

Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 2h

It is also remarkable how far what is essentially advertising copy has penetrated into ostensibly neutral, scholarly contextualizations even of critical studies — rote invocations of AI’s “power,” “potential,” and ubiquity, untethered to any specific sources or data, are just background noise now.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 2h

Imagine studying a technology whose presence in the classroom is so detrimental to the development of writing and research skills (including even the will to know the sources behind claims!) that mitigating its effects becomes a central goal of course design, and concluding with tips on adopting it.

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Dan Martin @danmartin7.bsky.social · 41m

Universities are going to destroy learning and critical thinking if they keep making deals with AI companies that put these tools in front of students who have nothing to lose. Faculty across the nation are now wasting hours trying to curb AI use that their university manufactures and promotes.

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Em Bee @emleebeebee.bsky.social · 12h

Also — this is the fiftieth most important point here — who still has a pension. (I do, because I’m a state employee. But like — is this talking point from 1973??)

Reposted by Em Bee

Moira Donegan @moiradonegan.bsky.social · 20h

"Reproductive freedom should be sacrosanct" and "we should tax women who refuse to breed" are not in fact mutually compatible statements.

William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 22h

My most controversial take on this is probably that while I think reproductive freedom should be sacrosanct, I don’t really have any problem with additional taxes on (high income) childless people. Someone gotta pay into the pensions!

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Em Bee @emleebeebee.bsky.social · 15h

ALMOST posted my family’s business on Facebook but instead I went to therapy.

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Juan Martinez @fulmerford.com · 20h

hey man, cool book, mind if I steal it to generate a shittier book by yelling prompts at my phone?

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daria argento @mommywiseau.bsky.social · 22h

*having a moment of brilliance & clarity* have we tried feeding the LLMs Finnegan's Wake? is there a Finnegan's Wake slider we can use to just fuck everyones shit up finally

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Kelsey Atherton @atherton.bsky.social · 22h

Free healthcare to all residents of the US regardless of immigration status would rule, actually. Universal benefits for universal problems (having a body that can get sick or hurt)

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Gavin, Small Beer, long covid, &c. @gavingrant.bsky.social · 23h

economy of the billionaires, by the billionaires, for the billionaires

Karl Bode @karlbode.com · 1d

twice a year the entire U.S. press becomes a marketing extension of a single billionaire-owned retailer, and nobody in any position of editorial power thinks it's weird or gross

photo of Google News search results for Amazon Prime Day (the second this year)

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Reposted by Em Bee

Moira Donegan @moiradonegan.bsky.social · 23h

A disturbingly easy way to get yelled at is to say that women should be in the paid workforce.

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Em Bee @emleebeebee.bsky.social · 22h

I HIGHLY recommend you mute these hashtags if you are not an agent or editor lol.

Katherine "Kat" Silva @katsilvaauthor.bsky.social · 22h

Reminder, friends...

Katherine "Kat" Silva @katsilvaauthor.bsky.social · 1d

Hey, friends. You'll see a lot of people using these hashtags and participating in this today. Some of these pitches will be pretty awesome sounding. Please do not like or repost if you are not an editor or agent. You can support us by commenting or quote-reposting though! We appreciate you!

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Em Bee @emleebeebee.bsky.social · 1d

I recently texted my friends “this is the kind of greed they warned about in the Bible” & I’m soooo glad the Swifties are picking up on it!!

Defector @defector.com · 1d

"'The Life of a Showgirl' is the weakest and least interesting album Swift has ever made. It has no heart, no purpose, no emotional core." defector.com/taylor-swift...

No Good Art Comes From Greed | Defector

The packages arrived square and thin and carefully wrapped on Saturday afternoon. There were three of them, but only one was mine. If I could have rejected my package, sent it back from whence it…

defector.com

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makana yamaghosto @makana-yama.bsky.social · Oct 8

it's anti-Prime day on Bookshop, which means FREE SHIPPING!!! interested in reading about a crew of scrappy lesbian thieves taking down a trillionaire tech mogul with superhuman aspirations? HAMMAJANG LUCK is available to preorder with free shipping!!!

l;nk below!

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Em Bee @emleebeebee.bsky.social · 1d

toddlers think all other living beings are NPCs. they can't understand that you even HAVE feelings to manipulate.

Em Bee @emleebeebee.bsky.social · 1d

learning basic facts about childhood brain development makes other people sound insane. toddlers don't even know you have feelings and knowledge different than them my dude. what do you mean they're being manipulative.

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Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 1d

I've been working on a book proposal and alternating between "this is meaningful" and "this is pointless," and a friend recently shared this quote that she stumble on in a Goodreads review: "Every book is a grand gesture of optimism on the part of both the reader and writer." Keep creating, friends.

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KG Haintings 🎃 @songsforhorses.com · 3d

The fact that "make the miners code" was doomed because AI would nuke all of the coding jobs a scant 8 years later is almost not even worth mentioning given the context that the electricity demands of both the coding jobs and ai meant that both only served to entrench Old King Coal further anyway

KG Haintings 🎃 @songsforhorses.com · 3d

Shockingly hard to find any writing that is remotely critical of the "Silicon Holler," despite the fact that I don't know a single rural southern Appalachian person who thought of it as anything other than a scam that, at best, you might could get on the pump side of for a couple months

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Em Bee @emleebeebee.bsky.social · 4d

Also it’s sort of a production degree — my favorite thing my Alma mater does is be like “look at all our successful graduates :-)” and it’s just ppl who double majored in marketing or taught themself graphic design.

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Dan Martin @danmartin7.bsky.social · 4d

Another really annoying part of this is it's just vocational additon. An English or Comm degree will give students knowledge abt rhetorical and design theory and teach them how to think abt and create textual communication forever.

Jay Shelat @jshelat1.bsky.social · 4d

THIS IS AN ENGLISH OR COMMUNICATIONS DEGREE! JUST DO THOSE INSTEAD JESUS IN HEAVEN

"spooky sukkot" daniel s. @self.agency · 5d

Syracuse University, which costs $100,000 per year, has opened a school to give degrees in podcasting and social media influencing 🫥

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Myra Cheng @myra.bsky.social · 5d

AI always calling your ideas “fantastic” can feel inauthentic, but what are sycophancy’s deeper harms? We find that in the common use case of seeking AI advice on interpersonal situations—specifically conflicts—sycophancy makes people feel more right & less willing to apologize.

Screenshot of paper title: Sycophantic AI Decreases Prosocial Intentions and Promotes Dependence

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🪓💀 Dr. Alexei Q Tschuner 💀🪓 @surliertexan.bsky.social · 5d

"and some even hope AI could simulate the responses of minorities or other groups who are often underrepresented in studies."

You fucks trained a parrot to talk words & now instead of studying trans people you're writing up the parrot's responses as research. there is no place in hell hot enough

Dr. Jens Foell @jensfoell.de · 5d

People are running stats on LLM-generated participants and think they’re being social scientists when in fact they’re technically just playing a very strange video game. This is like saying you’re doing math research because you’re playing sudoku.

www.science.org/content/arti...

AI-generated ‘participants’ can lead social science experiments astray, study finds

Data produced by “silicon samples” depends on researchers’ exact choice of models, prompts, and settings

www.science.org

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Em Bee @emleebeebee.bsky.social · 5d

Gave up on changing behavior and just got a big soft basket for shoes by the front door. Now the shoes have a place and it’s easy to throw around / not something to trip on. Also I immediately decant individually wrapped snacks / pouches into clear bins in the pantry.

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