Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

jennie rose halperin @littlewow.online · 4h

Report it on our AI slop form! nyu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

As part of Library Futures ongoing work on vendor accountability efforts, we are collecting reports of AI-generated content in library collections. Please note that the data collected via this form ar...

nyu.qualtrics.com

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jennie rose halperin @littlewow.online · 9h

Want to do something about it? Participate on our research on AI Slop and digital censorship @libraryfutures.bsky.social using nyu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_... or emailing us at [email protected]

AI-Generated Slop Reporting Form

As part of Library Futures ongoing work on vendor accountability efforts, we are collecting reports of AI-generated content in library collections. Please note that the data collected via this form ar...

nyu.qualtrics.com

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jennie rose halperin @littlewow.online · 9h

To quote @sarahlamdan.bsky.social "We lease these streams of content like on Netflix or Spotify... It’s another way that the outsourcing of traditional information roles is poisoning the well of fact and truth and reliable information sources.”

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jennie rose halperin @littlewow.online · 9h

At a time when collections are under great scrutiny, it is a violation of professional values to offer materials that the library cannot stand behind as legitimate collection choice. Here's white supremacist Russian Propaganda from this morning. Is this in line with collection development policies?

arktos search with 5 white supremacist books

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jennie rose halperin @littlewow.online · 9h

According to librarians we've spoken to @libraryfutures.bsky.social, most people are not checking out AI Slop and other kinds of junk content, but we do not know how many people are searching for legitimate content, finding these low-quality titles, and leaving the library digital collection.

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jennie rose halperin @littlewow.online · 9h

In February, @404media.co did a piece on the overwhelming amount of AI Slop in public library vendor Hoopla Digital. They promised to clean up their platform, but just this morning I went looking and easily found a self-publishing house pushing shoddy health content by a fake author.

Stephanie Hinderock stock photo nonfiction writer

search for a bad self publisher with many health related books

stock photo with many women with different names

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Reposted by jennie rose halperin

Maggie Tokuda-Hall @maggietokudahall.bsky.social · 1d

It's banned books week and so I'm legally obligated to bully you, a person who has ever had their name on a book, into joining @authorsabb.bsky.social.

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

We fight the source of book bans with calls to action, partnership w everyone in the game, and offer training.

AABB Author Sign-Up Form

Hello! We're Authors Against Book Bans, a group of authors who’ve come together to protect and promote the freedom to read on both the national and local levels. We’re creating a network of authors to...

docs.google.com

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jennie rose halperin @littlewow.online · 3d

Ah New England, how I missed you!

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jennie rose halperin @littlewow.online · 9d

I am! I’m going to Newton for the holiday but in town until Friday (so will have to be Wednesday before sundown!) but I’ll be back!

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jennie rose halperin @littlewow.online · 9d

Omg I’m in Boston this week— anything dairy free?

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jennie rose halperin @littlewow.online · 14d

lol, love it

jennie rose halperin @littlewow.online · 14d

But I agree and this story is another example of the brokenness of the corporate publishing industry.

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jennie rose halperin @littlewow.online · 14d

MDMA was not approved for therapeutic use because the FDA felt like patients were overly responsive to their therapist’s prompts, leading to reports of positive experiences and false memories that they later questioned. Physiologically it seemed like MDMA potentially worsened depression long term.

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Reposted by jennie rose halperin

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 15d

"Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply."

me on why Ezra Klein should be ashamed / why shame is Good Actually

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

How Can We Live Together? - Boston Review

Ezra Klein is wrong: shame is essential.

www.bostonreview.net

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jennie rose halperin @littlewow.online · 16d

For the first of four AI webinars, we're talking with the inimitable @hypervisible.blacksky.app and Christa Albrecht-Crane! Join @libraryfutures.bsky.social for "What we Talk about When We Talk about AI," an intro to AI and ML from ethicists and experts.
nyu.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: What We Talk About When We Talk About AI. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.

It’s hard to open the internet without seeing “AI.” But just what is AI? How did machine learning originate? How do large language models work? Just what are we talking about when we talk about AI, an...

nyu.zoom.us

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jennie rose halperin @littlewow.online · 16d

Recipe – I made 1.5 times the crust because it didn't quite fill the dish, but otherwise as written www.southernliving.com/recipes/atla...

Atlantic Beach Pie

Atlantic Beach Pie is not only delicious, it is easy to make. With a saltine cracker crust, lemon-lime filling, and fluffy whipped cream topping, this North Carolina pie is a winner.

www.southernliving.com

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jennie rose halperin @littlewow.online · 16d

My first Atlantic Beach pie was a hit! Tasted great even though it didn't quite look as neat as I wanted it to. Saltine crust + an entire mountain of whipped cream was better than key lime. #blueskybakers #usuallyibakenodairybutitwasabirthday

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jennie rose halperin @littlewow.online · 19d

In November I wrote about Trump’s obsession with the golden age of late night TV for @flaminghydra.com through the lens of his friendship with Joan Rivers.
He hasn’t been invited back since 2016, but was once a regular; he appeared on Letterman more than 30 times.
flaminghydra.com/the-trump-er...

Unable to adapt to streaming, the traditional late night shows are bleeding viewers. At his height, Carson reached 17 million Americans every night. Now, operating on a four-day schedule, The Tonight Show reaches about 2.04. million. And Trump himself may have something to do with the twilight of late night.
Tonight with Jimmy Fallon's head writer, Rebecca Drysdale, quit the show in late 2020 because she could no longer bear to write about him. In a Facebook post discovered by the Chicago Sun-Times and CNBC, she wrote that
"doing material about Trump has led to divided creative teams, anxiety, tears and pain... I don't believe that making fun of this man, doing impressions of him, or making him silly, is a good use of that power. It only adds to his."

In interviews and campaign rallies, Trump has made it abundantly clear that he misses the golden age of late night, particularly the legendary Tonight Show host, Johnny Carson.
Carson helped make Joan Rivers's career, and she was a popular guest host on The Tonight Show for years. But when news leaked that she hadn't made the cut for consideration as Carson's successor, she took Fox's offer to host her own show in the same time slot as The Tonight Show. Carson took his revenge; he never spoke to Rivers again and blacklisted her, forbidding any celebrity who appeared on The Late Show with Joan Rivers from coming on The Tonight Show.

Even as the news of late night hosts
"distraught" over Trump's win spread, the administration's circus has provided a firehose of outraged engagement. In 2017, a communications professor at George Mason University counted 3,100 jokes about Trump, as compared with Clinton's 1,700 in 1998 during the height of his impeachment scandal.

Some percentage of Trump voters believe that he is likewise just doing it for the ratings, that his terrifying authoritarian rhetoric is schtick,
"just riling up the news." Despite all evidence to the contrary, these voters still believe that Trump is a "businessman," that he's "fiscally conservative," that he won't touch the socially liberal policies that many Americans support.

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jennie rose halperin @littlewow.online · 20d

shout out to all my basic bitches

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jennie rose halperin @littlewow.online · 20d

I shared a Really good quote from Lisa Feldman Barrett in the thread to that effect!

Reposted by jennie rose halperin

Megan Greenwell @greenwell.bsky.social · 21d

If I were editing a college president’s guest essay about the importance of colleges hosting “difficult speakers,” I would ask her to clarify how her argument squares with her history of expelling students for protesting, and why speakers should be treated better than her own students.

NYT GUEST ESSAY
Barnard President: Now Is the lime for Colleges to Host Difficult Speakers

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jennie rose halperin @littlewow.online · 21d

I am once again pointing to the Lisa Feldman Barrett piece, which is still the best thing I've read on the issue of campus speakers. www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/o...

What’s bad for your nervous system, in contrast, are long stretches of simmering stress. If you spend a lot of time in a harsh environment worrying about your safety, that’s the kind of stress that brings on illness and remodels your brain. That’s also true of a political climate in which groups of people endlessly hurl hateful words at one another, and of rampant bullying in school or on social media. A culture of constant, casual brutality is toxic to the body, and we suffer for it.

That’s why it’s reasonable, scientifically speaking, not to allow a provocateur and hatemonger like Milo Yiannopoulos to speak at your school. He is part of something noxious, a campaign of abuse. There is nothing to be gained from debating him, for debate is not what he is offering.

On the other hand, when the political scientist Charles Murray argues that genetic factors help account for racial disparities in I.Q. scores, you might find his view to be repugnant and misguided, but it’s only offensive. It is offered as a scholarly hypothesis to be debated, not thrown like a grenade. There is a difference between permitting a culture of casual brutality and entertaining an opinion you strongly oppose. The former is a danger to a civil society (and to our health); the latter is the lifeblood of democracy.

By all means, we should have open conversations and vigorous debate about controversial or offensive topics. But we must also halt speech that bullies and torments. From the perspective of our brain cells, the latter is literally a form of violence.

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jennie rose halperin @littlewow.online · 21d

Now is the time for Laura Rosenbury to step down as the President of Barnard College. This piece is embarrassing and so full of holes and faulty research that it wouldn't even withstand our required freshman seminar.
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/o...

Opinion | Barnard President: Now Is the Time for Colleges to Host Difficult Speakers

www.nytimes.com

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jennie rose halperin @littlewow.online · 21d

Really excellent article on the state of e-lending by Maria!

Maria Bustillos @mariabustillos.com · 22d

Just a few huge companies control *all the ebooks* including the ebooks you borrow from your library

There's a way past this: selling ebooks directly to libraries. We're working on this at @flaminghydra.com

www.cjr.org/analysis/the...

Nearly all publishers of newspapers, magazines, and commercial books, as well as the tens of thousands of small, independent, and academic publishers, rely on these same few companies to get their books into libraries, schools, and bookstores. Industry consolidation means that publishers have little choice but to sign contracts advantageous to distributors and the lifelines to revenues they offer, while having little negotiating power with respect to terms.

In the case of e-books, where these near monopolies have consolidated and solidified over the past decade, the danger of a sudden loss of access is particularly acute. When you borrow and read an e-book at your library, for example, that transaction is almost certainly handled by the country’s largest private equity company, KKR. The firm currently controls as much as 90 percent of library e-book loans through its OverDrive/Libby platform, according to a 2023 report from Library Journal.

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Reposted by jennie rose halperin

Re:Create Coalition @recreatecoalition.bsky.social · 26d

#FairUseFriday While we are still one year out from the midterms, campaigns are starting to gather and create content they can use to boost their messaging.

How political campaigns can use news clips in ads without news outlets' permission

Seeing newscasters in political ads doesn't mean they've given consent to the campaign.

www.wcnc.com

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