Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Marleen Stikker

Josh Nicholas @joshnicholas.com · 5d

This is kinda sad

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Evie @mommabear7.bsky.social · 6d

He’s right- I’m scared

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De Groene Amsterdammer @groene.nl · 5d

Teruglezen | Steeds meer organisaties willen rechten toekennen aan dieren en planten. We kunnen daar lacherig over doen. Maar waarom zou een bedrijf wel en een boom niet kunnen worden erkend als rechtspersoon?

‘Edelachtbare, mijn cliënt voelt zich niet fijn in de legbatterij’

Steeds meer organisaties willen rechten toekennen aan dieren en planten. We kunnen daar lacherig over doen. Maar waarom zou een bedrijf wel en een boom niet kunnen worden erkend als rechtspersoon?

buff.ly

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Olga Nesterova @onestpress.onestnetwork.com · 6d

Barbra Streisand is joining Jane Fonda and 600+ entertainment figures in re-launching the Committee for the First Amendment. Fonda announced the revival of the organization, initially founded by her father, Henry Fonda. The organization was founded in the 1940s to defend free speech against fascism.

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The Daily Show @thedailyshow.com · 7d

Excited to introduce Vibes from Meta. Eat your slop, piggies!

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Gil Durán @gilduran.com · 7d

This piece by @laurabullard.bsky.social goes DEEP into Peter Thiel’s Antichrist fixation—a bizarre melding of biblical scripture and Nazi philosophy.

Remember: This isn't about AI. It's a much deeper story about the strange mind behind JD Vance.

Read it:

www.wired.com/story/the-re...

The Real Stakes, and Real Story, of Peter Thiel’s Antichrist Obsession

Thirty years ago, a peace-loving Austrian theologian spoke to Peter Thiel about the apocalyptic theories of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt. They’ve been a road map for the billionaire ever since.

www.wired.com

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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 13d

The richest man on earth owns X.

The second richest man on earth is about to be a major owner of TikTok.

The third richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

The fourth richest man owns The Washington Post.

See the problem here?

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Marleen Stikker @marleenstikker.bsky.social · 13d

Larry Ellison, the creepy mogul, moving up the control and surveillance ladder of social media www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Murdoch’s TikTok? Trump offers allies another lever of media control

Under the known terms of the deal with China, TikTok would get a new board, including Murdochs and Ellisons

www.theguardian.com

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Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee @imco.europarl.europa.eu · 20d

The European Parliament’s Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) is now on Bluesky 🦋!

Follow us for regular Committee updates and activities - meetings, votes, missions, and more - and for more information visit our website at www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/e....

Highlights | Home | IMCO | Committees | European Parliament

Main page of the European Parliament's Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO). Latest news, links to documents and videos of meetings.

www.europarl.europa.eu

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Marleen Stikker @marleenstikker.bsky.social · 14d

Toni Blair Thinktank funded with 257 million pounds by Larry Ellison …
www.newstatesman.com/politics/202...

Inside the Tony Blair Institute

Who really benefits from the former PM’s tech evangelism?

www.newstatesman.com

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Jimmy Kimmel @jimmykimmel.com · 14d

As I was saying…

Jimmy Kimmel is Back!

YouTube video by Jimmy Kimmel Live

youtu.be

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Tony 🤖 @tonymatic.bsky.social · 14d

Hier nog een briljant stukje van Left Laser die zaterdag een hardwerkende extreemrechtse NL'er interviewde.

Met een plottwist 🙃

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Ami Fields-Meyer @fieldsmeyer.com · 15d

Pritzer gets the mechanics of authoritarianism – systemic intimidation, seizing control of elections, etc. – in a way others in national democratic leadership don't or won't say out loud.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 15d

Pritzker: "One of the reasons Trump wants to send troops into cities is bc he wants to be able to take control of the 2026 elections...if they've got troops in cities, & it becomes a kind of norm for people, then it won't be abnormal for them when they're going to vote having troops at ballot boxes"

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lieke marsman @liekemarsman.bsky.social · 14d

Reminder voor ons allemaal, maar vooral voor Eelco Heinen:

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Marleen Stikker @marleenstikker.bsky.social · 15d

Probably an AI training tool ..

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Marleen Stikker @marleenstikker.bsky.social · 15d

Select which photo is AI-generated by clicking on it. realitycheckk.com

Reality Check - AI Photo Detection Game

realitycheckk.com

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Caroline de Gruyter @carolinedegruyter.bsky.social · 15d

This should have been front page news

www.ft.com/content/6596...

EU to block Big Tech from new financial data sharing system

Germany argues groups such as Apple and Meta are excluded to protect Europe’s ‘digital sovereignty’

www.ft.com

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Ryan Mac 🙃 @rmac.bsky.social · 15d

This is horrific and feels like it should be a bigger deal. Business Insider reports that people who have worked at xAI have seen Grok create images and written material with child sex abuse material.

www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-gr...

Behind Grok's 'sexy' settings, workers review explicit and disturbing content

Workers say they've faced sexually explicit content while xAI has marketed Grok to be deliberately provocative. Experts say the company should be cautious.

www.businessinsider.com

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DER SPIEGEL @spiegel.de · 16d

In einem Video zeigt der niederländische Komiker Arjen Lubach, wie sich der Disney-Konzern an Donald Trump anpasst: Arielle wird belästigt, Bambis Mutter landet wegen Wokeness am Drehspieß. Es ist nicht der erste Erfolg der Macher.

Niederlande: Disney-Parodie von Arjen Lubach wird nach Absetzung von Jimmy Kimmel Internethit

In einem Video zeigt der niederländische Komiker Arjen Lubach, wie sich der Disney-Konzern an Donald Trump anpasst: Arielle wird belästigt, Bambis Mutter landet wegen Wokeness am Drehspieß. Es ist nicht der erste Erfolg der Macher.

www.spiegel.de

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Marleen Stikker @marleenstikker.bsky.social · 15d

“Brussels and national capitals need to “accept they are in a culture war – with Europe as the target” and act accordingly” www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

Trump is waging culture war on Europe by promoting rightwing allies, report finds

Study finds US president seeks to interfere in elections and ‘move the ideological centre of gravity’ in European politics

www.theguardian.com

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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Sep 6

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
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Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

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Open Knowledge Foundation @okfn.bsky.social · 15d

Take this opportunity to reread 'The Road to a Press Freedom AI Commons' by @avilarenata.bsky.social and Scott Griffen. The text explores a joint project to open the #IPI archive and makes a call for reflection on #AI infrastructures for the public good.

buff.ly/6aDf8hS

The Road to a Press Freedom AI Commons - Open Knowledge Blog

Opening the International Press Institute (IPI) archive is not just for preservation, but the first step toward creating a digital press freedom commons for the public good.

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 15d

Protests, mass meetups, conferences—a youth-led movement is reclaiming the Luddite mantle, rejecting a future dominated by Silicon Valley companies, toxic apps, and generative AI.

This fall, a "Luddite renaissance" is in full swing.

www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/the-luddit...

The Luddite Renaissance is in full swing

This fall, the new luddites are rising

www.bloodinthemachine.com

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Gil Durán @gilduran.com · 17d

“The real existential threat isn’t AI—it’s the powerful people building it.” — @adambecker.bsky.social

For a simple debunking of bizarro AI politics, read this now (gift link)

www.theatlantic.com/books/archiv...

The Useful Idiots of AI Doomsaying

Those who predict that superintelligence will destroy humanity serve the same interests as those who believe that it will solve all of our problems.

www.theatlantic.com

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Caroline Haskins @carolinehaskins.bsky.social · 16d

You may know the software company Palantir as a contractor for ICE + the military. But in recent months, it's relaunched its merch store & said it wants to be a "lifestyle brand."

What does it mean for Palantir to be a lifestyle brand...? I unpacked it here:
www.wired.com/story/palant...

Palantir Wants to Be a Lifestyle Brand

Defense tech giant Palantir is selling T-shirts and tote bags as part of a bid to encourage fans to publicly endorse it.

www.wired.com

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