Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Leroy

Ashley Allen @phlashman.uk · 20h

As a programmer who went through dotcom bubble, this all feels very familiar.

Mainly the people who a extremely pro AI, usually the CEO/Money people, literally have zero technical knowledge about it, just line go up.

The sooner it pops, the better for everyone.

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Reposted by Leroy

Ian Dunt @iandunt.bsky.social · 1d

In 2037 it'll release a bargain-basement knock-off first-person-shooter in which the NPCs say how great Hitler was.

Every Film Now @everyfilmnow.bsky.social · 2d

Elon Musk announces xAI game studio will release a great AI-generated game before end of 2026.

Powered by Grok, the studio aims to revolutionize gaming with dynamic, photo-realistic experiences.

#xAI #Grok #AIGaming

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Leroy @leroylynch.bsky.social · 18h

Axios: “The AI business is beginning to function like one giant dollar-eating, energy-sucking entity that makes chips, trains models and sketches utopias to justify runaway costs.”
archive.is/Tk3NZ

archive.is

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ABC News Bot (unofficial) @abcnewsbot.bsky.social · 19h

People were gathering for the festival and an anti-junta demonstration when bombs killed more than 40 people and injured about 80 others.

Myanmar's military strikes festival and anti-junta protest, killing 40

People were gathering for the festival and an anti-junta demonstration when bombs killed more than 40 people and injured about 80 others.

www.abc.net.au

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Leroy @leroylynch.bsky.social · 18h

Bank of England: Record of the Financial Policy Committee meeting on 2 October 2025 (note comment on AI risk)
www.bankofengland.co.uk/financial-po...

Despite persistent material uncertainty around the global macroeconomic outlook, risky asset valuations have increased and credit spreads have compressed. Measures of risk premia across many risky asset classes have tightened further since the last FPC meeting in June 2025. On a number of measures, equity market valuations appear stretched, particularly for technology companies focused on Artificial Intelligence (AI). This, when combined with increasing concentration within market indices, leaves equity markets particularly exposed should expectations around the impact of AI become less optimistic.

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · Nov 6

155 years ago #onthisday, Top the wombat died. He was the pet of the poet and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti who, upon Top's passing, created this self-portrait in mourning. More on Rossetti and co’s curious but longstanding fixation with the #wombat here: publicdomainreview.org/essay/o-uomm...

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Carter Edman @carteredman.bsky.social · 1d

CNN: Trump says violence on streets of Portland is rising

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Christian Downie @christiandownie.bsky.social · 1d

Our forthcoming book Climate Obstruction: A Global Assessment is profiled in The Guardian this morning

www.theguardian.com/australia-ne... @anuregnet.bsky.social @cssn.org

Media and political attacks on Australia’s emissions targets ‘straight out of the climate obstruction playbook’, expert says

Prof Christian Downie points to the Business Council of Australia and News Corp newspapers as examples of deliberate obstruction

www.theguardian.com

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jeff computers @helldude.bsky.social · 2d

here's the thing about social media: it stinks and is for horses' asses. of course the people who run this place are ding dongs. does no one remember the great mastodon migration of several years ago? a thousand little tyrants bloomed and canceled each other over inscrutably baroque beefs

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 2d

anyway, looking forward to bari weiss restoring “trust in news” where “trust in news” means pumping out propaganda for your oligarch boss

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 2d

perhaps the biggest story TFPever ran was a catastrophically shoddy argument that George Floyd ackshully died of an overdose. When confronted with irrefutable evidence that the piece was simply wrong, Weiss didn’t take it down, she asked her critic, @radleybalko.bsky.social, to come on a podcast.

max tani @maxtani.bsky.social · 2d

David Ellison’s note to staff on Paramount’s acquisition of the Free Press

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Pride Was A Riot, Sacramento @pridewasariot.bsky.social · 2d

Welcome to clown world. The carnies have badges and they all shoot each other.

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Possum @pollytics.bsky.social · 1d

Australia Brain would do this with vigorous household income means testing seamlessly merging into an income contingent loan, which would allow us all to wax lyrical about its efficiency, whilst reducing net-benefit to human welfare by about 90 cents in the dollar. Oi Oi Oi!

Mike Sowden @mikeachim.bsky.social · 2d

Damn. This is amazing. £325 per week, paid monthly, for 3 years - and the result was a profit for the Irish economy:
www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employmen...

Post from Threads user rodneyowl: "Ireland has declared the Basic Income for Artists scheme permanent. This will be officially announced in tomorrow’s budget. Details to follow. Congratulations to all who fought for it and the present and future artists of all sorts in Ireland. That includes me 👌We’re just comin to the end of a 3 year pilot scheme. It’s been a roaring success. For every €1 paid out to the 2000 participants, the government got €1.46 back. Can’t argue with that. Other countries are already taking note."

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BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 2d

people who want you to believe they can predict events a century out but can't predict Donald Trump fucking up.

ae @aelkus.bsky.social · 2d

absolutely nothing discredits “longtermism” more than how much of these freaks are only belatedly realizing how much of a mistake it was to bandwagon with Trump

Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 3d

the rats! the ship! the water, rising!

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Leroy @leroylynch.bsky.social · 2d

Deloitte will provide a partial refund to Australia's federal government over a $440,000 report that contained several errors, after admitting it used generative artificial intelligence to help produce it.
www.theguardian.com/australia-ne... #auspol

Deloitte to pay money back to Albanese government after using AI in $440,000 report

Partial refund to be issued after several errors were found in a report into a department’s compliance framework

www.theguardian.com

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 3d

*gasp*

“Everyone thought we’d come in and there were going to be these huge costs we could cut away but there just aren’t,” said a third senior Reform cabinet member in Kent.

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Leroy @leroylynch.bsky.social · 2d

WSJ: AI Investors Are Chasing a Big Prize. Here’s What Can Go Wrong.
There are good reasons to think that simply throwing more computing power at the current models won’t do it.
archive.is/A0KJh

archive.is

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Leroy @leroylynch.bsky.social · 2d

Financial Times: America is now one big bet on AI
It’s seen as the magic fix for every threat to the US economy
archive.is/6gtm9

archive.is

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 3d

This Dylan Riley thesis about civil society applied to 2025 is very interesting

newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

society is. Regarding the former misconception, it must be emphasized that despite The Origins of Totalitarianism's many interesting insights - above all concerning imperialism - its central argument is largely wrong. In the two countries that produced indisputably fascist regimes in the interwar period, Italy and Germany, civil society was highly developed prior to the authoritarian takeover. In both, cooperatives, churches, trade unions, political parties and mutual aid societies had experienced massive growth from 1870 onward. The idea that pre-fascist Germany and Italy were atomized mass societies is misleading. And what did the fascists do with this organizational infrastructure once in power? They occupied it and bent it to the regime's purposes. This contains an important lesson about what civil society is (and what it is not). Civil society, as Gramsci understood, and as today's liberals do not, is a terrain of struggle. It is not, and cannot be, an agent.

This is highly relevant to the current moment in the US. For it is not the case that MAGA wishes to destroy the realm of associations and interest groups - it seeks to colonize it. It does not discourage civic engagement; it seeks to promote its own forms of it. Thus, in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination, J. D.
Vance exhorted listeners of Kirk's podcast to
'get involved, get involved, get involved', explaining that civil society 'is not just something that flows from the government, it flows from each and every one of us'. Ryan Walters, the former superintendent of Oklahoma's public schools, announced the ambition to launch a Turning Point USA chapter in every high school and college in the state. This is a struggle for hegemony fought on the terrain of civil society, not a struggle for or against a (mythical) realm of pre-political consensus and practical problem solving - what Gramsci would have called a war of position.

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Scott Murderhouse @voxparlour.bsky.social · 4d

Taylor Swift announces next album title: The Queen in Yellow. She told Variety: "A few years back I came across this amazing play and I was so inspired. It's been living in my head for years. I even dream of it, of the city in the play."

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Tim Price @timprice.bsky.social · 3d

They’re soaking the big man in the goo from Dune every four weeks just so he can go out in front of the cameras and say “we’re going to war with Portland very strongly.” I don’t think they’re set up for a thousand-year reich here

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Laurasaurus @laurasaurus.bsky.social · 3d

I think it’s the opposite. They’re acting like they know they only have until Trump dies, if that, and they need to haphazardly destroy as much as they can, as quickly as they can before they get thrown out.

Andrea Junker @strandjunker.com · 3d

They’re not acting like they’re in a four-year term.

They’re acting like they’re in an everlasting dictatorship.

Are we all clear on this?

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James @gravitysra1nbow.bsky.social · 3d

In one sense, this is the Admin recklessly undermining basic norms of liberal democracy.

In another sense, this is the sweatiest flailing around since Giuliani was giving conferences outside a landscaping shop. It's just blindly groping around for any lever of power, regardless of how dumb it is.

The Associated Press @apnews.com · 3d

BREAKING: Gov. Newsom says Trump is sending 300 California National Guard members to Oregon after a judge blocked his Portland troop deployment plan.

California governor says Trump is sending 300 California National Guard members to Oregon

California Gov. Gavin Newsom says the Trump administration is sending 300 California National Guard members to Oregon.

bit.ly

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Reposted by Leroy

Blayne Haggart @bhaggart.bsky.social · 3d

Calling for regulation now is fine and all, but let’s not sweep under the carpet that we’re in this mess because of the disastrous theory that the best internet is an unregulated internet, not because of antitrust laws.

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Blayne Haggart @bhaggart.bsky.social · 3d

Doctorow’s blaming of bad antitrust law for ruining the Internet conveniently ignores the other, equally culpable, culprit: the decades-long insistence by groups like the Doctorow-affiliated Electronic Frontier Foundation that the Internet itself should be minimally regulated.

Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish?

Sick of scrolling through junk results, AI-generated ads and links to lookalike products? The author and activist behind the term ‘enshittification’ explains what’s gone wrong with the internet – and ...

www.theguardian.com

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