Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Rae Walker

Alex Hanna-ween @alexhanna.bsky.social · 17h

I'm not an economist but seems worrying that the whole US economy is seven companies in a trenchcoat, passing the same $20 up and down

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 19h

NVIDIA and OpenAi:

Concerns that their “increasingly complex and interconnected web of business transactions is artificially propping up the trillion-dollar AI boom.“

@bloomberg.com $NVDA 👀
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.bsky.social · 19h

They gave the physics prize to the dude who said that ChatGPT is the world's butterfly and GPT3 was a caterpillar.

The dude who told us in 2018 that radiologists should cease to go to school because the profession was gonna be out in 5 years. But 5 years later he just moved on to the next lie.

These Women Tried to Warn Us About AI

Rumman Chowdhury, Timnit Gebru, Safiya Noble, Seeta Peña Gangadharan, and Joy Buolamwini open up about their artificial intelligence fears

www.rollingstone.com

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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.bsky.social · 23h

The audacity to anthropomorphize machines being built by corporations
--stealing data
--exploiting the labor of the people who are actually the "undesirables" under eugenic thought
--killing the environment,

and then compare criticisms of such eugenic practices to, wait for it, eugenics.

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Rae Walker @raewalker.bsky.social · 1d

Spied a grass spider web 😍

A small white web lies atop brown leaves and grass

Closer image of a small white web that lies atop brown leaves and grass

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Rae Walker @raewalker.bsky.social · 2d

Adding a Teaspoon to the cauldron does seem appropriate

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Rae Walker @raewalker.bsky.social · 2d

Yesterday was our youngest cat’s 2nd birthday. This is Teaspoon. He found an empty cauldron & immediately climbed in.

A young black cat peeks out from inside a black cauldron.

A young black cat sticks his head even farther out from inside a black cauldron. He has yellow eyes.

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Rae Walker @raewalker.bsky.social · 2d

At a time of rising authoritarianism, when almost nothing feels funny, I want to thank public library service announcements for giving me a reason to cackle

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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 2d

And if you prefer to watch & listen to talks, here's the talk it is based on:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuU-...

Resisting dehumanization in the age of AI - Emily Bender

YouTube video by CogSci: Interdisciplinary Study of the Mind

www.youtube.com

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Scientists for Global Responsibility @responsiblesci.bsky.social · 8d

🚨Polluter and Cyber Elites - A lethal Alignment?

This year's conference explores where the interests of the far right tech bros and major polluters coincide - and what we can do to challenge them!

Join us on Wednesday 15th October, 16:00 - 18:00 BST

www.tickettailor.com/events/scien...
🧪

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Rae Walker @raewalker.bsky.social · 2d

Grants can be very confusing! I’m glad if any of this way helpful. Good luck!

Rae Walker @raewalker.bsky.social · 2d

Usually someone at the org should be available to answer technical questions like about allowable budget items & where to put them. It serves them well to have as many well-written proposals in their pool as possible, so they have an incentive to help you.

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Rae Walker @raewalker.bsky.social · 2d

And we’ll list honoraria under directs (if they’re allowable).

Apologies if this is not helping. It’s hard to say without seeing the mechanism & template/rules for that particular budget.

Rae Walker @raewalker.bsky.social · 2d

If your grant has instructions to fill out a separate budget on consulting, I’d look at the rules for that section. Usually when we hire consultants it’s for formal consultation (like design or methods), but not critical support like interpretation, which typically falls under directs as a service.

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Rae Walker @raewalker.bsky.social · 2d

Here’s where I pause to acknowledge each grant mechanism often has its own rules about what needs to be a line item. At institutions where I’ve worked, if you have to bring someone in from the outside & pay them, that usually needs a subcontract. And consulting fees usually fall under direct costs.

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Rae Walker @raewalker.bsky.social · 2d

Briefly:

Direct= anything you need to formally budget/pay for (your time/salary or that of others; supplies; data; software; etc)

Indirect= overhead for your institution (e.g. cost of keeping the lights on), usually a % of the direct costs

Consulting Costs= subcontracts for folks not at your uni

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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 8d

"alarming impact of AI on the environment: forprofit utilities will have to make $720 B in grid upgrades by 2030 to meet spiraling demand, costs that they will pass on. locking in planetchoking carbon emissions right when we should be pivoting away from fossil fuels"

www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...

The Costs of the Cloud | Ashley Dawson

Hours after his inauguration, Donald Trump declared a “national energy emergency.” The US, he warned in an executive order, suffered from “a precariously

www.nybooks.com

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andrew ⓕ lyons @andrewfordlyons.net · 4d

Paper goes hard at the start on how exaggerated or false claims about what Gen AI represents is making it into psychology research.

"...from the clearly insidious to those whose ethical neutrality is skin-deep and whose functionality is a mirage. Ultimately, contemporary AI is research misconduct."

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 4d

New preprint 🌟 Psychology is core to cognitive science, and so it is vital we preserve it from harmful frames. @irisvanrooij.bsky.social & I use our psych and computer science expertise to analyse and craft:

Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. doi.org/10.31234/osf...

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Cover page of Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1

Table 1 Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1

Table 2 Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 5d

If you follow AI, you've heard a number of cognitive scientists weigh in with valuable insights and concerns. You may not have heard from one quite like Hagen Blix, however, who describes generative AI as "class warfare through enshittification."

My interview with @hagenblix.bsky.social:

"AI is an attack from above on wages": An interview with cognitive scientist Hagen Blix

The author of 'Why We Fear AI' on why he sees generative AI as "class warfare through enshittification."

www.bloodinthemachine.com

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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 6d

"AI" is absolutely and ONLY a marketing term, and at this point if it's being used, the intent behind it is to overpromise to the consumer/end user on the program's actual capabilities. And, of course, none of the "AI" is actually intelligent in any meaningful way.

derickhuth.bsky.social @derickhuth.bsky.social · 6d

It would be neat if it wasn’t marketed as AI. Predictive statistical modeling doesn’t really slide off the tongue I guess

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Rae Walker @raewalker.bsky.social · 6d

I’ll (hopefully) be on sabbatical next year & I’m currently in the planning phase.

Throwing this out there in case any colleagues are interested in a visit*

(*timing & financial capacity also being obvious limitations - care work means I can’t leave home for extended periods…)

a black and white cat standing on a couch with the words hi there written below it

Alt: a black and white cat standing on a couch waves at the camera with the words hi there written below it in white

media.tenor.com

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𝗽𝗵𝗼𝘁𝗼𝗳𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗱 @photoframd.bsky.social · 6d

ICE agents injured a journalist at an NYC courthouse, adding to a disturbing trend. Freedom of the Press Foundation has cataloged more than a dozen allegations of violence against journalists by federal agents this year. #ICE
www.msnbc.com/top-stories/...

ICE agents injured a journalist at an NYC courthouse, adding to a disturbing trend

Freedom of the Press Foundation has cataloged more than a dozen allegations of violence against journalists by federal agents this year.

www.msnbc.com

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Reposted by Rae Walker

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 6d

This is my favorite LLM after the one made in Oxford

Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 7d

We are thrilled to announce that our NEW Large Language Model will be released on 11.18.25.

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Rae Walker @raewalker.bsky.social · 7d

If you live in MA, and thanks in part to the actions of the state government, local pharmacies are stocking the latest COVID boosters in both adult & pediatric doses.

You don’t need to specify why you need it. And they’re taking insurance.

They’ve got this year’s flu shot too.

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Rae Walker @raewalker.bsky.social · 7d

Digital privacy is a human rights issue and a public health issue.

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Robin Berjon @robin.berjon.com · 7d

If you think this is US-only, it's not.

If you think the GDPR protects you, it's doesn't.

If you hadn't realised privacy is a national security and corporate espionage issue, it is.

If you think politicians can't tackle this, they can.

If you believe that tech or business need this, they don't.

michael veale @michae.lv · 7d

Either real-time bidding data or app SDK data is being bought and used by ICE to seize people from the streets. If you didn’t believe that the adtech stack is a human rights concern, I’m not sure what more evidence you need. www.404media.co/ice-to-buy-t...

ICE to Buy Tool that Tracks Locations of Hundreds of Millions of Phones Every Day

Documents show that ICE has gone back on its decision to not use location data remotely harvested from peoples' phones. The database is updated every day with billions of pieces of location data.

www.404media.co

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