Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Bonnie Stewart @bonstewart.bsky.social · 1d

honoured & excited about this upcoming talk for #ReclaimOpen25 :)

Reclaim Hosting @www.reclaimhosting.com · 1d

Exciting news! We are simply delighted to announce @bonstewart.bsky.social as opening keynote for this year's conference #ReclaimOpen25! Find out more about the keynote "Rewilding voice in a time of enclosure" and what else is in store reclaimopen.com/schedule/

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 2d

University leaders: [terminate programs, close campuses, cave in to political pressure from demagogues]

Faculty, students, staff: you’re killing the university

Management consultants: looks like you got a real comms challenge here

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kit spooks 👻 @kitsparks.bsky.social · 2d

huh, it’s almost like Canadians intended to inflict reciprocal harm on American exports to put homegrown political pressure on the Trump admin in favour of free trade.

Breen Ouellette (he/him) @breeno.bsky.social · 3d

"This was all about some ugliness that we’re not part of. We’re not in politics. We’re just some guys in Virginia making good whisky. But unfortunately, we’re the victims."

Everyone is "in politics" in a democracy.

Tell these American whisky guys to vote harder or cope harder.

Canada’s boycott America movement is hurting innocent bystanders | CNN Business

Virginia Distillery CEO Gareth Moore was bullish on his company’s American single malt whisky sales north of the border when 2025 kicked off.

www.cnn.com

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Bonnie Stewart @bonstewart.bsky.social · 5d

i hadn't seen this! thank you! i am gonna build it in to my teaching for after Reading Week :)

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Bonnie Stewart @bonstewart.bsky.social · 5d

who's survey? (ie maybe)

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Bonnie Stewart @bonstewart.bsky.social · 6d

sigh. NOT a good - or sovereign - path for Canada. we cannot build infrastructure on a crappy US company's advertising copy.

blair @blairaf.com · 6d

Looks like Canada's approach to "sovereign AI" will involve creating structural dependencies on large US tech companies

Excerpt from an article that reads: Lehane met with AI Minister Evan Solomon on Monday. Solomon told The Logic in June that his mission is to “create sovereign AI.” But “sovereignty is not solitude,” Solomon said, noting that Canada still needs technology and capital from other countries.

OpenAI is participating in similar initiatives in other advanced economies. In May, the firm launched OpenAI for Countries, a new program that localizes ChatGPT and its underlying models for a nation’s particular customs and the requirements of its public sector. It is also offering to build data centres for countries that help pay for the infrastructure.

Countries are turning to OpenAI because of its “cutting-edge technology,” which can be used to build homegrown tools and applications, and because the firm can help stimulate their domestic AI ecosystems by building or buying compute capacity, Lehane said.

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John Pfaff @johnpfaff.bsky.social · 8d

Um, ICE just coldly shot an unarmed PRIEST in the head w a pepper ball when he (and everyone around him) clearly posed no threat.

For the crime of … complaining about government policy.

Core 1A speech.

With cameras rolling, they’re sniping priests for sport.

Kurt @flglchicago.bsky.social · 8d

Here’s video of the incident

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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.bsky.social · 8d

for those of you who are serious about understanding the eugenic lineage of the whole AGI movement, on the other hand, you can peruse some of the resources at www.dair-institute.org/projects/tes...

The TESCREAL Bundle

The array of utopian ideologies that power Silicon Valley's elite is ultimately bleakly eugenicist.

www.dair-institute.org

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Bonnie Stewart @bonstewart.bsky.social · 8d

whatever you did, good job :)

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🏳️‍⚧️ Josephine Riesman (Horrifying) @josie.zone · 10d

It is morally wrong to want a computer to be sentient. If you owned a sentient thing, you would be a slaver. If you want sentient computers to exist, you just want to create a new kind of slavery. The ethics are as simple as that. Sorry if this offends

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Felicity Hannah @felicityhannah.bsky.social · 13d

This article manages to name her husband before it names… her.

Article reads:
Woman named as Archbishop of Canterbury in historic first

The 63-year-old archbishop-designate is married to Eamonn Mullally, with whom she has two children. Originally from Woking in Surrey, she was the UK's chief nursing officer from 1999 to 2004.

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Raider @iwillnotbesilenced.bsky.social · 13d

ANTI FACIAL RECOGNITION

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 14d

People think they’re taking down a rich intellectual sinecure but they’re mostly terrorizing committed public servants who make $58,000 a year after 15 years of experience at a school that has to budget creatively so students can access textbooks.

Emily Farris @emayfarris.bsky.social · 14d

This new column by @tressiemcphd.bsky.social makes me think about when I recently had to talk to the police for yet another safety plan, I tried to “lighten” the mood by saying that we all knew this wasn’t my first rodeo. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/o...

For at least the past 15 years, my colleagues in academia have grappled with angry letters to university officials for doing their jobs. They have weathered campaigns for their firing. They have contended with an internet army obsessed with doxxing them, their parents, their kids. I’ve been contacted by the F.B.I. more than once in my career. Not because I hold any important state secrets or know a biker gang but because one of my colleagues has lived with so much sustained harassment from right-wing “activists” that it has become a matter of federal concern. Watch lists (one of which was constructed by Kirk’s organization) do not distinguish between public intellectuals at wealthy enclaves and hoi polloi who teach popular classes at cash-strapped schools. In either case, an army of trained provocateurs stands ready to destroy their lives to prove their bona fides as conservative activists.

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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 19d

The reason they create devices is not to solve a problem but instead to build something that makes you a more perfect stream of data for them to monetize.

www.cnet.com/tech/computi...

One potential use is as a TV remote. "Once you start using it regularly, you put it on your wrist and you just start using it every day, it becomes infuriating that you're not using it for more things like picking up a TV remote," Bosworth says. "We think the opportunity for this to be a bigger input platform over time is really big."

We also talked about the possibilities for typing, something Meta's research groups have discussed in the past. Bosworth says two neural bands would be needed, but it's being explored. "A really fun thing happens when you have two of these, you could also do typing. That's not a guarantee. We can do typing with downward-facing cameras pretty effectively, but [they're] expensive," he adds.

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Ben Williamson @benpatrickwill.bsky.social · 20d

Edtech platforms "are not neutral 'tools' but complex ecosystems shaped by technical architectures, commercial imperatives, and political-economic interests." Excellent new policy brief on edtech platforms from @nepc.bsky.social and @philnichols.bsky.social

National Education Policy Center @nepc.bsky.social · 20d

New policy brief: Educators should reassess the hidden impacts of ed tech ecosystems on teaching, learning, and student data. bit.ly/46C2JXT

Fit for Purpose? How Today’s Commercial Digital Platforms Subvert Key Goals of Public Education

Digital educational platforms have become ubiquitous in American classrooms, with tools like Google Workspace for Education, Kahoot!, Zearn, Khan Academy, and many others now structuring curriculum, i...

nepc.colorado.edu

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Zack Whittaker @zackwhittaker.com · 20d

NEW: Neon, an app that pays you to record your calls so your audio can be used to train AI, and already rose to the top #5 free apps on Apple's App Store, has gone offline after a security lapse.

We found the app exposed users' phone numbers, call recordings, and text transcripts of those calls.

Exclusive: Neon takes down app after exposing users' phone numbers, call recordings, and transcripts

Call recording app Neon was one of the top-ranked iPhone apps, but was pulled offline after a security bug allowed any logged-in user to access the call recordings and transcripts of any other user.

techcrunch.com

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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 20d

Kimmel’s defiant return highlights one of the most disturbing dynamics of Trump II, that so many people in positions of leadership are chickenshit frauds who would rather fold in advance than put up anything resembling a fight www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Kimmel’s refusal to capitulate stands out because so many other well-situated people—those with the resources, platform, and power to stand up to the president, including, initially, the leaders of ABC—have surrendered, withdrawn, or become Trump sycophants themselves. One by one, American leaders supposedly committed to principles of free speech, due process, democracy, and equality have abandoned those ideals when menaced by the Trump administration. These cascading acts of cowardice from the people best positioned to resist Trump’s authoritarian power grabs have made Trump seem exponentially more powerful than he actually is, sapping strength from others who might have discovered the courage to stand up. Defending democracy requires a collective refusal to acquiesce to lawless behavior from many different sectors of society. All of these powerful people trying to save their own skin have effectively multiplied Trump’s attacks on constitutional government, by enhancing a false sense of inevitability and invincibility.

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Bonnie Stewart @bonstewart.bsky.social · 21d

ruin a book with a car:

Dead Pintos' Society
(too plausible?)

SpiritWuClanTangHaLOLweenStore @yevkras.bsky.social · 21d

Ruin a book with a car:

No Hyundai For Old Men

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Bonnie Stewart @bonstewart.bsky.social · 21d

i miss a long ago internet where people had tough days and - my privileged experience, at least - was that others who happened to be up at the same weird hours crawled outta the woodwork with empathy.

pre 2012, before the dogpiles took over.

i hope tomorrow is easier?

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Gil Durán @gilduran.com · 21d

1/ A longtime Wired editor just wrote a mush-brained essay about how he totally missed the political rot of Silicon Valley (& still doesn't get it).

But in the late 1990s, a Wired journalist warned of a toxic ideology bubbling up from tech. Paulina Borsook has largely been erased. Let's change that

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Bonnie Stewart @bonstewart.bsky.social · 21d

nobody deserves that kinda judgement. i'm sorry that happened to you.

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Cate Denial @cjdenial.bsky.social · 21d

@thetattooedprof.bsky.social's latest in the Chronicle - on welcoming AI critics to the table when deliberating on policy - is spot on: www.chronicle.com/article/some...

Advice | Sometimes We Resist AI for Good Reasons

Why higher ed needs to listen to the contrarians in setting policies on using tools like ChatGPT in faculty work.

www.chronicle.com

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Bonnie Stewart @bonstewart.bsky.social · 22d

...and by 'great learning experience' they actually mean 'more content that keeps you clicking' whee wut

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 22d

The CEO “wants to ‘democratize access to a great learning experience’ on the cheap with AI…”

Former Spotify execs launch AI-powered ‘learning platform’ for the ‘curiously minded’

A new AI learning platform from the creators of podcast app Anchor makes “courses” from user prompts.

www.theverge.com

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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 22d

Still haven't raptured, this is some bullshit right here

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Heba Gowayed هبة جويد @hebagowayed.bsky.social · 23d

Incredible. Italy brought to a standstill as Italians descend to the streets to protest for Gaza. No business as usual. Schools closed. Businesses closed. Shameful on the rest of us.
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

Disruption across Italy as tens of thousands protest against Gaza war

Schools and stations closed and ports blocked in one of Europe’s biggest demonstrations opposing Israel’s offensive

www.theguardian.com

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