Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Ethan Soutar-Rau @ethansr.bsky.social · 8h

That one is good…

Pascal Mamassian @mamassian.bsky.social · 22d

A nice shift in perceived colour between central and peripheral vision. The fixated disc looks purple while the others look blue.

The effect presumably comes from the absence of S-cones in the fovea.

From Hinnerk Schulz-Hildebrandt:
arxiv.org/pdf/2509.115...

An array of 9 purple discs on a blue background. Figure from Hinnerk Schulz-Hildebrandt.

Reposted by Ethan Soutar-Rau

jeff com-BOO-ters @helldude.bsky.social · 21h

a growing block of our already wildly disaffected voters are stupid, ugly, and nihilistic. i enjoy hectoring and marginalizing them before and after every "the most important election in history"

Cai @annenotation.bsky.social · 1d

Leftists are just wreckers. They are a huge part of why we currently have no bench.

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Emily Moin @emilymoin.com · 23h

Mr President Sir without NHANES the US will lose the trade war and become a net importer of observational studies

Beth S Linas, PhD, MHS @bethlinas.bsky.social · 23h

I can’t begin to tell you how much research, policy, and programming revolve around the use of NHANES data. Again, you think these lay offs don’t affect you? Think again- money gets allocated based, in part, on what these data show. This is stunning

CDC team running top survey on health and nutrition is laid off

NHANES has collected data on eating patterns, diabetes, and other common diseases for decades. The CDC team that runs it has been fired.

www.statnews.com

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Fun @funkelly.bsky.social · 1d

how happy we’d all be if this was all the internet was for

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 1d

Yeah, that is a tear gas canister being fired toward the retreating couple holding the baby

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What’s the Hold Up Pod Dan @jacketdan.bsky.social · 2d

He did it again for the 5 year anniversary

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Foone @foone.bsky.social · 1d

I've been bedridden for the last 10 months for medical reasons, and I'm still about 1000$ behind on being able to pay for my car and storage. I'm sorry to keep asking, but if you could send a couple dollars, it'd really help.

ko-fi.com/fooneturing

Support Foone Turing ❤️

Become a supporter of Foone Turing today!

ko-fi.com

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Ethan Soutar-Rau @ethansr.bsky.social · 2d

Fundamentally I think this is the important mental image… an artificial neural network is roughly a container that can hold a shape of certain dimensions.

“Training” and whatnot boil down to different ways to methodically deform the shape

rev. howard arson @theophite.bsky.social · 2d

you can think of a LLM as a shape in high-dimensional space. this is unintuitive. how is a model a shape? the same way as a graph of the relationship between height and weight is a shape. the vast majority of the variables represented in this space are composites of other variables.

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matthew @pahuski.com · 3d

Happy Columbo’s Day

Screenshot from Columbo. He his talking to his dog, which is sitting is the drivers seat of a car. “Okay, I’m gonna put you in charge. You take care of the car. You’re a responsible dog. When I get back, if the car’s okay, I’ll give you another cookie.”

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 3d

the actual story here, which the media never talks about, is that police in this country have become a discrete right-wing political operation. the story isn't about cops leaving (they're lying about that), it's about the police trying to exert influence over elections.

Mark Misoshnik 🏴 @misoshnik.bsky.social · 4d

Lmao is this supposed to be a bad thing?

A tweet from Bari Weiss that says “"It's shaken me to my core," a lieutenant said of Mamdani's unexpected victory in June. "The absolute dread I feel is palpable.
"
Today in @TheFP our @Olivia_Reingold talks to the cops who say they will walk if Zohran Mamdani is elected in November:”

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Ethan Soutar-Rau @ethansr.bsky.social · 2d

It’s a good name because it forces you to say dumb stuff in opposition to it. No one needed a King to get a paycheck before.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 2d

Bessent: "No Kings means no paychecks. No paychecks and no government."

Ethan Soutar-Rau @ethansr.bsky.social · 3d

By analogy to LLMs, that would mean something like reading in tokens that are not in the input.

But no one uses it like that. They use it for the model outputting tokens which contain facts that the LLM doesn’t have.

This is a completely different problem! Confabulation? I dunno.

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Ethan Soutar-Rau @ethansr.bsky.social · 3d

I really hate the use of “hallucination“ in the AI community. It obscures the nature of the problem.

Perception *is* constructed, but it’s usually grounded in reference to the senses. If it’s not, and you perceive something you don’t sense then you might be hallucinating.

☁️ Ascended NPC Alex ☁️ @lastnpcalex.agency · 3d

that is, in some way, aren't we all hallucinating? the sense that my sensorium happens "at the same time" is simply false. sound and sight and touch reaching my brain at different times. all experience a hallucination... and yet, that isn't useful for understanding how we are good at prediction!

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Ethan Soutar-Rau @ethansr.bsky.social · 3d

I gotta say there is something about the frog suit. A virtuoso tailored it.

amanda moore 🐢 @noturtlesoup17.bsky.social · 3d

The inflatables have made it to Broadview.

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Ethan Soutar-Rau @ethansr.bsky.social · 3d

I will say that the federal bureaucracy has worked as a sort of ark that has carried within it an optimistic mode of American life.

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 3d

a key thing about vought — and all of these guys — is that they have a totally top down and hierarchical vision of the world. they believe that the cultural changes they hate can be turned off by destroying the federal government because they can’t imagine that they emerged bottom-up in society

Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 3d

What he’s railing against is a profound shift in culture, status… He’s obsessed with the idea that America is controlled by a leftist “ruling elite” - but “elite” isn’t defined socio-economically or by political power, it means something like: Getting to define “real America” and who gets to belong.

Ethan Soutar-Rau @ethansr.bsky.social · 3d

I wonder if this effect is so strong In US because both parties have policy platforms which simply won’t work as desired.

Lee Drutman @leedrutman.bsky.social · 3d

Thermostatic public opinion, reacting against the governing regime, like old faithful.
globalaffairs.org/research/pub...

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Ethan Soutar-Rau @ethansr.bsky.social · 3d

input buffers are already a sort of transparent proto version of this.

I was thinking the other day of making a fighting game where one could explicitly hold the input buffer and then execute the sequence when you desired.

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Ethan Soutar-Rau @ethansr.bsky.social · 4d

There’s something worth pointing out here that Denmark doesn’t really have any incredibly dense parts. So the average is the same, but the median experience is pretty different.

Oh The Urbanity! @ohtheurbanity.bsky.social · 4d

Fun fact: despite the enormous land mass, the population-weighted density of Canada — basically the density experienced by the average person — is the same as Denmark and close to the Netherlands.

Canada and Denmark are 3,000 people per km², while the Netherlands is 3,400/km².

Mapping Population Density Across the Globe

Explore the detailed geography of population across the globe with interactive mapping and statistics. Identify global megacity regions and the growth and diversity of urban forms. Data is from the Gl...

luminocity3d.org

Reposted by Ethan Soutar-Rau

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 4d

www.dailytarheel.com/article/e9c7...

UNC ends Black Student Movement's 52-year 'co-ownership' of Upendo Lounge

BSM President Adam Sherif said administrators cited new federal guidelines that instruct all federally funded entities to ensure they are not engaging in "discriminatory practices, including those lab...

www.dailytarheel.com

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Zohran Kwame Mamdani @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · 4d

It’s pronounced cyclist.

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Ethan Soutar-Rau @ethansr.bsky.social · 4d

One thing I am wondering if we’ll see is a kinda judicial nullification where lower courts act as if Supreme Court rulings don’t apply in their jurisdiction for various reasons.

(Which is sort of the converse of the Supreme Court saying district courts cant make nation wide injunctions)

Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 4d

District court judges, appointed by presidents from Reagan to Biden (including Trump I), seem to understand the assignment more than most law firms. This is curious because the data shows that lawyers as a whole are more liberal on average than federal judges

Jon Seidel @jonseidel.bsky.social · 6d

Perry asks directly whether the feds started the alleged violence in Chicago.

She asks whether it matters if the inability to execute the law was "caused by the federal agents."

Hamilton: "No, your honor."

Ethan Soutar-Rau @ethansr.bsky.social · 4d

the move to internalize customs revenue within the executive was telegraphed even before the previous near shutdown.

If there had been resistance then, the money would not have been collected yet.

As is, now it has and everything becomes a procedural question.

Mike Black @mikeblack114.bsky.social · 4d

So the Dems need to be clear again that any FMer carrying out direction to implement mil paychecks in the absence of appropriations will be subject to anti-deficiency act criminal penalties, because to be clear even with the reconciliation slush fund BS there is no way to legally so this, period

Ethan Soutar-Rau @ethansr.bsky.social · 4d

Mud Wizard

Erin Fogg says Free Link @criminalerin.bsky.social · 4d

Future historians: As their computers ate and destroyed all their languages we can only assume that what happened was magic became real and that's how they defeated global genocidal fascism

On the left, the German Mud Wizard in their druid cloak pushes a German riot cops who is already stuck in the mud. On the left are 3 Portland Antifa frogs in green inflatable cartoonish costumes and one black frog with white frog bones on him like the antifa frog skeleton.

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Reposted by Ethan Soutar-Rau

Mount St. Helens in 1980 @mountsthelens1980.bsky.social · 7d

Tomorrow, we will talk about this photo.

A red Ford Pinto hatchback angles across a narrow gravel forest service road, a blue enduro motorcycle on a rear hitch carrier. Tall firs frame the view. Beyond them, a towering ash cloud from a pyroclastic density flow billows skyward. Photo by Richard Kent Lasher, May 18, 1980.

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infinite brians @infinitebrians.neocities.org · 5d

this sword appeared to me in a vision

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