Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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Rachel Feder @rachelfeder.bsky.social · 1d

I love this.

Alex Shevrin Venet @asv.bsky.social · 1d

wowwww this is incredibly beautiful. tagging some friends who will love this: @ladyofsardines.bsky.social @heymrsbond.com @marcusluther.bsky.social

therumpus.net/2025/10/02/h...

Human Error Is the Point: On Teaching College During the Rise of AI - The Rumpus

My syllabus is a mess of half-remembered intentions. I re-use icebreakers that I know don’t work. I forget to grade the first assignment until Week Four. I write emails that begin with “So sorry for t...

therumpus.net

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Erin Kappeler @erinkappeler.bsky.social · 8d

cackling

McSweeney's @mcsweeneys.net · 8d

"This technology that is ruining education has incredible potential to save education, if only I could figure out how to use it better to improve my students’ education."

I Need AI to Write Better Lesson Plans So My Students Stop Using AI to Write Their Papers

I care deeply about my students’ learning, but with all the new technologies available to help them cut corners, I worry that they’re not doing the...

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Erin Kappeler @erinkappeler.bsky.social · 12d

"A refusal of AI in creative work begins with a refusal of that product’s ideological packaging. ... The way out of AI hell is not to regroup around our treasured flaws and beautiful frailties, but to launch a frontal assault. AI, not the human mind, is the weak, narrow, crude machine."

Large Language Muddle | The Editors

The AI upheaval is unique in its ability to metabolize any number of dread-inducing transformations. The university is becoming more corporate, more politically oppressive, and all but hostile to the ...

www.nplusonemag.com

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Erin Kappeler @erinkappeler.bsky.social · 20d

Love it when brilliant friends publish gorgeous, heartbreaking, life-affirming poems. <3

Michelle Kohler: “To Die Is Different“

A poem by Michelle Kohler: “The clocks tick pink, then turn to horses. Please, / put my heart in the tunnel of your telescope while there’s time.”

yalereview.org

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Erin Kappeler @erinkappeler.bsky.social · 20d

Love it when brilliant friends publish gorgeous, heartbreaking, life-affirming poems. <3

Michelle Kohler: “To Die Is Different“

A poem by Michelle Kohler: “The clocks tick pink, then turn to horses. Please, / put my heart in the tunnel of your telescope while there’s time.”

yalereview.org

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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 27d

"We are again confronting a massive attack on the very foundations of democratic education + the stakes feel even higher. In the 50s the targets were individual teachers—communists progressives liberals +their leftwing unions. Now the target is the system itself" www.bostonreview.net/articles/a-g...

A General Air of Anxiety - Boston Review

The Red Scare targeted my father. He taught me the meaning of resistance.

www.bostonreview.net

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The Ass is the father of the legs @internethippo.bsky.social · 28d

I think it's good to keep getting mad about evil and unjust things, if only to remind yourself and everyone else that these things are in fact evil and unjust. I don't think it's naive. Nor is it wise and sophisticated to adopt a "You fool, nothing matters and nothing good can ever happen" posture

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Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 28d

The second this Texas A & M story broke I said to a friend “we’re going to quickly learn that this student is the child of some county GOP chair.” I was close. Of course the entire episode was not spontaneous, but was part of a PR stunt that’s now ruined several people’s lives.

Robert Downen @robertdownen.bsky.social · 28d

Lost in the Texas A&M news is that the entire crusade is the product of a former labradoodle breeder turned State Rep whose stunts and grandstanding are so insufferably transparent that even his Republican colleagues despise him. Meet Brian Harrison, winner of Texas Monthly’s 2025 Cockroach award:

“Studio Makeup and Narcissism”: The Texas’s Lege’s Least Favorite Lawmaker

"Cockroach" is an old Lege term for a figure who mucks up lawmaking. In 2025 the title goes to Brian Harrison.

www.texasmonthly.com

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MediaJustice @mediajustice.bsky.social · 29d

TODAY, we're launching The People Say No: Resisting Data Centers in the South, our report dedicated to exposing data center harms in the South and how our people are fighting back.

Read the full report, including case studies from 5 southern states:
bit.ly/nodatacenters

Report launch graphic for MediaJustice's newest report, "The People Say No: Resisting Data Centers in the South." The graphic is divided in two sides: on the left we have a sort of environmental utopia with wide canyons and folks in a canoe going by a stream. On the right we have the alternative, rows of data center equipment with endless wiring.

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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · Jul 16

you say "i asked chatgpt"
i hear "i asked [an improv comedy group]"

an improv group wrote this report
instead of a therapist i use an improv comedy group

Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · Jul 16

chatgpt is much like an improv comedy group

1) you are the audience, giving it prompts
2) it produces things roughly shaped like your prompt
3) it is trained to respond with Yes, And
4) it has the factual accuracy of improv
5) it does not understand comedy

Dr. Casey Fiesler @cfiesler.bsky.social · Jul 16

This is fascinating: www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/s/I...

Someone “worked on a book with ChatGPT” for weeks and then sought help on Reddit when they couldn’t download the file. Redditors helped them realized ChatGPT had just been roleplaying/lying and there was no file/book…

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Erin Kappeler @erinkappeler.bsky.social · 29d

was very surprised to find a tiny little article-let of mine in here!

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · Sep 6

Just a reminder to check for your name in this list of books that OpenAI trained from. If your name is there, they probably owe you several thousand dollars.

OpenAI cried that if everyone eligible author files, the company will go bankrupt, so I'm alerting every author I have ever spoken to.

Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI

Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.

www.theatlantic.com

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Preorder Read This When Things Fall Apart @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 29d

Cynicism doesn't make you better than other people btw. I would much rather know and relate to people who are willing to experience disappointment because they tried, than people who shield themselves from disappointment by always assuming the worst, and therefore do NOTHING.

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Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · Sep 3

enshittification | noun | when a digital platform is made worse for users, in order to increase profits

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hammancheez @hammancheez.bsky.social · Sep 4

Workers : so are u using AI to solve the mysteries of the universe

CEO : kinda

Workers : kinda?

CEO : we're eliminating all customer service and first line tech support jobs and replacing them with a forked Claude agent

Workers : what does that solve

CEO : solves me having to pay ur asses lmao

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Alex Brown 🇵🇸 (they/them) @bookjockeyalex.bsky.social · Sep 2

LLM companies are beta testing experimental products our children, and educators are facilitating it.

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · Sep 2

Y’all, they are just admitting it.

Tony Wan, head of platform at MagicSchool investor Reach Capital, explained to me that AI education companies benefit from teachers and students flagging inappropriate content and otherwise helping guide product development. To that end, he said, “we often encourage our founders to just get this in the hands of teachers and users as quickly as possible—not necessarily as a refined product. And I don’t mean that in a bad or irresponsible way.” Wan later clarified that this “should not come at the expense of quality or pose risks.”

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McSweeney's @mcsweeneys.net · Aug 26

"Share the longest period of time you’ve ever wept. Then, as a group, seat yourselves in order from shortest cry to longest cry."

Faculty Meeting Icebreakers

Write down the most common intrusive thought that keeps you up at night, but don’t include your name. Then choose a table leader to read each thoug...

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · Aug 26

Crystal clear.

Acyn @acyn.bsky.social · Aug 25

Pritzker: To the members of the press who are assembled here today and listening across the country, I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is. This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story.

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Nissa Ren Cannon @nissaren.bsky.social · Aug 26

Hope to see you soon!

Modernist Studies Association (MSA) @moderniststudies.bsky.social · Aug 22

The MSA Committee of Contingent/Independent Scholars is holding a Zoom roundtable on Tues., Aug. 26, 4pm EST on “Funding and Support Off the Tenure Track and in the Face of Increasing Precarity” w/ @nissaren.bsky.social, Emily Bloom, and @chollis.bsky.social Email [email protected] for Zoom link!

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Erin Kappeler @erinkappeler.bsky.social · Aug 26

!!!

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Erin Kappeler @erinkappeler.bsky.social · Aug 21

Love this idea!

roxanne panchasi @rpanchasi.bsky.social · Aug 20

Just sharing the “Xtreme endnotes” assignment @parisnoire.bsky.social mentions here in case anyone else finds it helpful as we begin a new academic year.

FWIW, it’s a purely analog exercise in an AI-freaky world & my students have never not had fun doing it.✌🏽

www.historians.org/perspectives...

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Meredith McGill @mlmcgill.bsky.social · Aug 21

Syllabus q: amusingly, I have lots of great reading on "What is Media?" for the first "Poetry and Media" grad class, but nothing for "What is Poetry?"! I may just go all Aristotle, Sidney, Mill, Whitman etc. on them, but: do you know of a good essay / short book that tackles this question head on?

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Brendel @brendelbored.bsky.social · Aug 21

NFTs were a bubble, AI is a bubble, but small carvings of large hipped women have remained popular with unsettling lighthouse keepers for 200 years, invest with confidence

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Erin Sherman 🌱 65n Chesapeake rolling coastal plain @wearegonnafindout.bsky.social · Aug 21

This is a little rambly thread about LLMs and their epistemic Deal.

My spouse started training as an NLP researcher with an undergrad advisor who had been working in the area since the 70s. He watched ideas come and go under different names - trends.

Matt Henry @menrywy.bsky.social · Aug 21

I think it has a lot to do with career opportunism on the part of both admins and faculty who either couldn’t think of anything better (admins) or were pushed into centering AI in funding apps in part because AI is a fad and also because of the curtailment of intellectual freedom in other areas.

John Gallagher @earlymodernjohn.bsky.social · Aug 21

When the dust settles, and if universities have meaningfully survived, it will be worth asking how institutions usually so resistant to thoroughgoing change chose to leap with both feet into an untested technology they didn't understand and didn't know how to use.

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Erin Sherman 🌱 65n Chesapeake rolling coastal plain @wearegonnafindout.bsky.social · Aug 21

GenAI cos have basically democratized the degenerative information environment that, to their c-suites, is normal. To them, it feels like they are giving everyone else a gift: a life like theirs.

A life full of blithely incompetent, trend-chasing BS that people like my spouse loathe.

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Joseph Rezek @rezekjoe.bsky.social · Aug 21

This is literally how I feel

Pukicho @pukicho.bsky.social · Aug 21

If you use ChatGPT for anything at all just know, I have bested you. You have been bested by my superior mind.

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