Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Natalia Cecire

Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 14m

I’ve just learned that John Searle, whose Chinese Room thought experiment is often used to challenge ideas of “understanding” in LLMs, died at age 93 on Sunday. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

John Searle obituary

American philosopher whose Chinese Room thought experiment rebuts the idea that computers can think as humans do

www.theguardian.com

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Natalia Cecire @ncecire.bsky.social · 23m

If it's searchable perhaps you could have a look as I'm running between meetings atm!

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Natalia Cecire @ncecire.bsky.social · 37m

if it's the intro I definitely have a pdf

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Reposted by Natalia Cecire

Frances Ryan @francesryan.bsky.social · 1h

This is devastating but hard to think of more important journalism. 18,457 children have been killed in Gaza (many more not accounted for). Here, The Guardian prints their names and beautiful faces and tells us what they were like before Israel stole their lives. www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

Young lives cut short on an unimaginable scale: the 18,457 children on Gaza’s list of war dead

Every name on a list compiled by health authorities in Gaza of the child victims of Israel’s offensive

www.theguardian.com

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Natalia Cecire @ncecire.bsky.social · 1h

So you're offering to fund more places on science and medicine courses, which have to be topped up by government? Oh, you're not? hmm

Tim Worthington @outonbluesix.bsky.social · 3h

How is this repeatedly made into a policy issue - by *all* parties - when the blunt fact of the matter is that grown adults who are obliged to pay for their own education, and relentlessly pursued to repay their loans, should be able to study whatever the fuck they want.

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Natalia Cecire @ncecire.bsky.social · 2h

And are they hiring? When has clustering all the humanities departments into one place, touting new opportunities for "interdisciplinarity," ever led to *more* jobs?

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Natalia Cecire @ncecire.bsky.social · 2h

his name is already on the main building of the NYPL!

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Reposted by Natalia Cecire

Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 3h

'The vote was triggered by the announcement of £30m-worth of cuts at the university this academic year, £25m of which will come from staff costs.'

Vote of no confidence in Swansea University vice chancellor over job cuts

UCU members at Swansea University pass a vote of no confidence in its vice chancellor due to job cuts.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Reposted by Natalia Cecire

Ron Coleman @arecoleman.bsky.social · 12h

I once helped a researcher confirm that Igor Stravinsky was an avid "Mad Magazine" reader.

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Reposted by Natalia Cecire

Vanessa is the name of the Doctor! @hpsvanessa.bsky.social · 4h

Reminder that basing funding on graduate income incentivises unis to close courses like nursing (too poorly paid), and to discriminate against female students and most minority ethnic groups (whose earnings on graduation are lower than white men).

Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 4h

'Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is expected to announce plans to cut the number of UK university places by about 100,000 annually by reintroducing student number controls.' 1/3

Badenoch’s number caps plan would cut 100,000 university places

Tory leader to use conference speech to attack ‘debt trap degrees’ and pledge more money for apprenticeships

www.timeshighereducation.com

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Natalia Cecire @ncecire.bsky.social · 4h

Meanwhile people are out here writing books in stolen moments, between meetings about steering and assessment, 200 words at a time

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Natalia Cecire @ncecire.bsky.social · 4h

trying to reduce the number of people who can spell "Britain" I guess

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Natalia Cecire @ncecire.bsky.social · 4h

Tbh I don't love the sound of relocating all the humanities departments to one building. Usually when they merge us it's not because they're about to support us...

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Natalia Cecire @ncecire.bsky.social · 4h

Terminal manager-brain, I'm afraid. What's seen as important is not research but the apparatus around research. Partnerships! Capacity-building for these partnerships that you just forced these institutions to form! Assessing and steering!

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Natalia Cecire @ncecire.bsky.social · 4h

"The guidance recognises that certain regions will have relatively immature partnerships in place, and gives UKRI an explicit capacity-building task to get its teeth into, alongside plenty of flexibility in its assessing and steering of how clusters are set up, governed, and awarded funds."

Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 4h

'obliging different areas to bid against one another and then leaving the ultimate say-so down to Whitehall has proven hugely misguided in all sorts of different levelling-up-adjacent funding opportunities in recent years.'

So this is what devolved research funding looks like

A couple of recent policy announcements show how the government is attempting to navigate the niceties of regional funding distribution

wonkhe.com

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Reposted by Natalia Cecire

redrum scare(d) corncob (no one said it made sense) @inquiline.myatproto.social · 9h

Keep sharing this story, folks. (Just told a family member who seemed to not really believe me, so followed it up with this link)

Daniel Knowles @dlknowles.bsky.social · 10h

Good reporting on the South Shore raid from South Side weekly here.

Confirms one thing I was told but didn't put in my own piece because I didn't have a second source and it seemed too insane: border agents segregated arrested residents by race

southsideweekly.com/federal-agen...

Federal Agents Storm South Shore Building, Detaining Families and Children

Families were woken by flashbangs and helicopters as hundreds of federal agents raided their homes. Days later, neighbors are still searching for the missing.

southsideweekly.com

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Reposted by Natalia Cecire

jessamyn @librarian.bsky.social · 1d

He's not on social media. Any librarian who has been the recipient of his cc'ed letters (letters!) continually and exasperatedly petitioning the Library of Congress for better, more just, subject headings knows he is one of the OG progressive librarians.

turtleroad.org/2022/03/08/s...

Sandy Berman

The Making of a Radical Librarian

turtleroad.org

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Reposted by Natalia Cecire

NEH Union - AFGE L3403 @nehafge3403.bsky.social · 23h

The cuts at the National Endowment for the Humanities go far deeper than any of these agencies - almost 70% of 179 people were terminated, despite no change to the agency's budget.

There were no savings here - only idealogical destruction. #NEH

Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · 1d

How much smaller the federal workforce is now vs. a year ago
Ed Dept 42%
OPM 33%
HUD 31%
Treasury 29%
Defense (civilian jobs) 22%
Small Biz Admin 21%
Energy 20%
Interior 15%
HHS 14%
SSA 11%
EPA 10%
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

How Much Smaller Is the Federal Work Force? Shutdown Plans Offer a Clue.

The number of federal employees has been trimmed by thousands since President Trump took office, according to contingency plans drawn up by federal agencies.

www.nytimes.com

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Natalia Cecire @ncecire.bsky.social · 14h

Someone I TA'd for back in the day had a story about a student plagiarizing F. O. Matthiessen 😂

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Reposted by Natalia Cecire

Stephen Shapiro @stephenshapiro.bsky.social · 23h

chicagomaroon.com/48606/news/u...

University of Chicago Professor Arrested at Anti-ICE Protest

Assistant professor Eman Abdelhadi was charged with two counts of aggravated battery to a police officer, a class 3 felony, and two counts of resisting and obstructing peace, a class A misdemeanor, af...

chicagomaroon.com

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Reposted by Natalia Cecire

Rob Horning @robhorning.bsky.social · 17h

that users could prefer a generated simulation to actual old clips for nostalgia purposes clarifies how nostalgia is about consuming "decontextualization" in itself — nostalgia negates history under the auspices of longing for it

Nitish Pahwa @nitishpahwa.com · 8d

YouTube has a legit library of recordings from quotidian settings (which are interesting, mostly as historical markers) but instead of promoting that social media pushes soulless facsimiles solely meant to associate a feeling with a moment sans the immediate, substantive context

grimm ☀️ @mugrimm.bsky.social · 8d

This is doing numbers on social media right now and it's so depressing how people truly yearn for this shit and want to preserve that feeling indefinitely like a mausoleum of false memories.

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Reposted by Natalia Cecire

Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 19h

Much good stuff in here but this is the heart of it

This is the grain of sand at the center of the pearl of my ire, because "we are going to have to live here with each other" is the
exact premise that Republicans do not agree with any of us about, and while Klein in his remarks pays lip service to some of the recent proofs of this clear fact, his analysis of what to do about it he excises this reality entirely. In his mind, he and Kirk were just two guys, both trying to change the country for what they thought was good. It's a bond. Never mind that what Kirk thought was good was the American military in the streets of Chicago, and mass kidnapping in service of a white ethnostate, and the end of bodily autonomy for women and queer people, and so forth. In the Klein world, moral clarity about abuse is polarizing, and polarization, not abuse, is the problem to solve.

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Natalia Cecire @ncecire.bsky.social · 17h

nothing I love more than proofing a spreadsheet cell by cell

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EveryDoctor @everydoctor.org.uk · 18h

PFI - you’ve probably heard the term, but what does it really mean for the NHS? 💷

We’ve broken down how PFI were sold as a clever way to fund hospitals… and why they ended up costing the public billions more than they should have.

Keep an eye out… our new research on PFIs is coming soon 👀

Image of handshake with "What is PFI? Private companies build and maintain public infrastructure (like hospitals), and the government repays them over decades"

Image of Big Ben and "Why was it introduced: faster hospital builds, spread out public costs, shift financial risk to private sector. That was the theory..."

Image that says "But here's the catch: High long-term repayment costs / Locked in decades-long contracts / Some hospitals pay more in interest than the hospital cost to build".

Image of hospital bed and words " Who profits? Private investors and banks earn steady returns. Meanwhile... hospitals cut services to pay bills. Should hospitals serve patients... or profits?"

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Reposted by Natalia Cecire

Nick Sturm @nicksturm.bsky.social · 19h

This is a huge collapse in the book distribution business, especially following the closure of Small Press Distribution last year. Baker & Taylor--originally established in 1828--has been central to the library market for decades.

Maris Kreizman @maris.bsky.social · 19h

seems very bad www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

Baker & Taylor Prepares Plan to Shut Down

At a town hall yesterday, B&T owner and CEO Aman Kochar announced that following the termination of the ReaderLink acquisition deal, he does not see a path to keep the library wholesaler in business.

www.publishersweekly.com

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