Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Ezekiel Williams

@ezekielwilliams.bsky.social

1.3K followers 1K following 99 posts

Math, Neuroscience, AI. PhD candidate at Mila and University of Montreal; also writes music and dreams of post-growth economies 🧠🪴🇵🇸 Website: https://computationalcognition.ca/author/

computationalcognition.ca

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Ezekiel Williams @ezekielwilliams.bsky.social · Mar 25

1/7: Super excited to share our new paper! This one should be of interest to neuroscientists and deep learning theory folks. This paper was a collaboration with Alexandre Payeur, @averyryoo.bsky.social, Thomas Jiralerspong, @mattperich.bsky.social, Luca Mazzucato, @glajoie.bsky.social

6 14 69

Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

Jason Thorne @jasonthorne.bsky.social · 2d

“How Bike Share went from death’s door to one of Toronto’s fastest-growing ways to travel” in the Toronto Star www.thestar.com/news/gta/how...

4 63 270

Ezekiel Williams @ezekielwilliams.bsky.social · 1d

I continue to be horrified by mainstream media bias in covering Israel's genocide. Why are all 20 Israelis "hostages", when 3 are soldiers, but thousands of Palestinians held without charge are "prisoners"? Why take for granted that Palestine must disarm but the genocidal Israeli state must not?

In These Times @inthesetimes.com · 3d

"It’s not as if there aren’t plenty of media-ready Palestinian or Palestinian-American guests to choose from, chief among them Palestinian-American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who has not appeared on any of the major Sunday news shows since 2019."

inthesetimes.com/article/gaza...

In 2 Years of Gaza Genocide, Sunday Shows on NBC, ABC and CNN Have Not Featured a Single Palestinian Guest

In a microcosm of the U.S. coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza, since Oct. 7, 2023, influential Sunday news shows have not seen fit to book any Palestinians.

inthesetimes.com

Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

Sasquatch McGillicuddy @antilinguist.bsky.social · 1d

Once again, these types of openly genocidal comments have been uttered and on the record for decades, but consent must be manufactured by media. There are tide pods to sell and informing the public about the barbarity they support is bad for the news industry.

Brian Goldstone @brian-goldstone.bsky.social · 1d

Trump to the Israeli parliament today, gloating about U.S. weapons supplied to Israel over the past two years:

"You obviously used them very well."

www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

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

The children’s names below appear on a list of victims of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, maintained by health authorities in the territory. As of the end of July it ran to 60,199 names, of whom 18,457 were under 18s. Far from comprehensive, the list does not include the thousands still buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings, as well as the war’s many indirect victims"

3 7

Ezekiel Williams @ezekielwilliams.bsky.social · 6d

Highly recommend, to my AI research colleagues, the linked paper which we discussed today at the @mila-quebec.bsky.social Critical Science Reading Group. Importantly, it suggests ways that the AI research community can support our artist friends instead of harming them. dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

AI Art and its Impact on Artists | Proceedings of the 2023 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society

dl.acm.org

Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

Resist 🕎🍉 @antizionistjew.bsky.social · 13d

The Global Sumud Flotilla is being intercepted by the Israeli occupation forces in international waters. Pressure your government for the protection of Global Sumud Flotilla

19 370 540

Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 16d

Just a head’s up that I’ve continued making updates to this guide: most recently, to remove the caveat on Here WeGo for not having CarPlay, adding Citymapper, and a suggestion to try the DVD/Blu-ray section at your local library as a streaming alternative. More to come!

Paris Marx @parismarx.com · Jul 18

Silicon Valley’s alliance with Donald Trump was a mask off moment and showed the world we can’t depend on US tech companies.

For the past few months, I’ve been trying to get off US tech and I put together a guide so you find alternatives too. I hope you find it helpful!

Getting off US tech: a guide

I’m in the process of dropping US tech services. Here’s how I did it, and options you should consider.

www.disconnect.blog

6 59 170

Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 18d

Shameful that Canada’s ambassador didn’t walk out while a war criminal addressed the UN General Assembly.

Israel 'must finish the job' in Gaza, Netanyahu tells UN, after dozens walk out in protest | CBC News

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the United Nations General Assembly on Friday that Israel "must finish the job" against Hamas in Gaza, giving a defiant speech despite growing internatio...

www.cbc.ca

10 33 200

Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

Emily R. Trunnell, Ph.D. @ertrunnell.bsky.social · 20d

The vibrant nightlife of NYC rats you’ve never heard—a project by @ralphpeterson.bsky.social & @zamakany.bsky.social 🐀🌆

The vast majority of what we know about rats comes from experiments. 🧪

The team at @basisresearch.bsky.social wondered how well those findings extrapolate to the real world.

🧵

1 2 9

Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 19d

the kids are alright

Susan Kaye Quinn is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱 @susankayequinn.bsky.social · 20d

They've lost the 9yos

JA Westenberg
@Daojoan@mastodon.social

My 9 year old and his classmates have started using “that’s AI” to mean “I don’t believe you.”

Me: we’re having dinosaur meat for dinner

Kiddo: that’s AI
Sep 24, 2025, 07:36 AM

2 18 190

Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

Marius Pachitariu @marius10p.bsky.social · 22d

New work from the lab, mismatch responses consistent with spatial but not temporal predictive coding theory.

Qingqing Zhang @qqzhang.bsky.social · 22d

Does predictive coding work in SPACE or in TIME? Most neuroscientists assume TIME, i.e. neurons predict their future sensory inputs. We show that in visual cortex predictive coding actually works across SPACE, just like the original Rao+Ballard theory #neuroscience
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

8 29

Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

Venki Murthy @neurovenki.bsky.social · 25d

(edited repost) Thrilled to see our computational work on adaptive shaping of behavior (we call it outcome-based curriculum learning) in PLoS Comp Biol! @wl-tong.bsky.social, @gautamreddy.bsky.social & I formalize curricula in any RL task that can be framed as sequential simple-to-complex behavior.

Adaptive algorithms for shaping behavior

Author summary Animals are commonly trained by ‘shaping’ their behavior using a sequence of simpler tasks towards a complex behavior. Numerous schools of thought have proposed heuristics for shaping b...

journals.plos.org

11 35

Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

Charlie Angus @charlieangus104.bsky.social · 25d

Three days after the UN inquiry declares "genocide" in Gaza the Carney government says they are still waiting for "all the evidence" before taking a stand.
What an epic moral failure.

53 140 440

Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

Nataliya Zadorozhna @cnd25.bsky.social · 24d

There‘a a consensus among experts-Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Canada, as party to Genocide Convention, is bound to act.This duty is not triggered by an authoritative determination of genocide but by the mere risk of genocide ICJ issued such risk warning on Jan’24
bsky.app/profile/hrw....

Charlie Angus @charlieangus104.bsky.social · 25d

Three days after the UN inquiry declares "genocide" in Gaza the Carney government says they are still waiting for "all the evidence" before taking a stand.
What an epic moral failure.

7 25 84

Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

Stand Up for Science! @standupforscience.bsky.social · 27d

You asked for it! We delivered Quack-O-Grams to our members of Congress urging them to #ImpeachRFK, and get that Quack out of office!

There's still time for you to get in on this fluffy, feathery action: Send your own duck at zurl.co/W1ZnB and keep the momentum going! 🦆

30 360 1K

Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

Anne Urai 🟥 @anne-urai.bsky.social · Feb 10

Feeling like academia is in pretty bad shape? You're not alone.

@clarekelly.bsky.social and I previously wrote about the need to collectively rethink and reshape scientific practice: the academic doughnut. Read more at elifesciences.org/articles/84991

But, have these ideas changed anything? 👇

Doughnut academia.
Adapting the “doughnut” model of economics to the academic world enables us to visualize the inner social foundations that universities should provide, and the outer human and planetary boundaries that universities need to avoid overshooting. Note that the ordering of elements within the inner and outer rings is random; there is no direct pairing between foundations and ceilings.

Adapted from Raworth, 2017 under a CC-BY-SA license.

Seven ways to think like a 21st century scientist.
1. Change the goal: from a business that produces papers and graduated students, towards a university that works towards the inside space of the academic doughnut. 2. Get savvy with systems: from feeling like a cog in the university machine, towards being gardeners of our academic system. 3. See the big picture: from academics who look out over the world from their ivory tower, towards scholarship which accepts its own embeddedness in (and dependence on) society and the planet. 4. Create to regenerate: from a rat race where we tread water, towards “slow scholarship” that values community building, deep thinking and rest crucial for intellectual work. 5. Nurture human nature: from the lone genius, towards team science. 6. Design to distribute: from a funding system where the rich get richer, towards a fair distribution of opportunities and resources. 7. Be agnostic about growth: from a focus on increasing numbers of papers, citations and students, towards rebuilding trust in our own academic communities and with society.

2 38 110

Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 28d

This is long, but worth it. Some choice quotes:

www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/the...

>>

4 21 55

Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

Kevin Mitchell @wiringthebrain.bsky.social · Sep 15

I think about this diagram a lot. This is a *simplified* schematic of *some of* the brain regions and circuits involved in behavioral control. (From: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...)

A diagram showing dozens of brain regions densely interconnected by complicated loops

5 20 97

Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · Sep 11

“AI isn’t magic; it’s a pyramid scheme of human labor,” said Adio Dinika, a researcher at the Distributed AI Research Institute…These raters are the middle rung: invisible, essential and expendable.”

How thousands of ‘overworked, underpaid’ humans train Google’s AI to seem smart

Contracted AI raters describe grueling deadlines, poor pay and opacity around work to make chatbots intelligent

www.theguardian.com

17 460 940

Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · Sep 10

“Not only AI enthusiasts, but even some scholars whose expertise concentrates on identifying and critically interrogating ideologies and sociotechnical relationships (…) unfortunately fall prey to the teleological belief that AI is an unstoppable force.” — zenodo.org/records/1706...

1 11 29

Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

Climate News @climatenews.bsky.social · Sep 7

Medical doctors, humanitarian aid workers and volunteers from 140 countries, including Greta Thunberg, are part of the Global Sumud Flotilla sailing to take food and medicine to starving children in Gaza.

Italian dock workers unions will shut down European ports if the flotilla is stopped.

6 140 350

Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

Zohran Kwame Mamdani @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · Sep 5

I am once again asking you to stop sending us money.

But we do need your time. ⏰

zohranfornyc.com/events

570 5.6K 25K

Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · Sep 4

New from 404 Media: this company turns dashcams into 'virtual CCTV cameras'. Then hackers got in. Hacker accessed terabytes of users recordings. Includes a user driving to CIA entrance; others at U.S. military bases. Big tech also buying images from the cameras

www.404media.co/this-company...

This Company Turns Dashcams into ‘Virtual CCTV Cameras.’ Then Hackers Got In

A hacker has compromised Nexar, which turns peoples' cars into "virtual CCTV cameras" that organizations can then buy images from. The images include sensitive U.S. military and intelligence facilitie...

www.404media.co

12 240 580

Ezekiel Williams @ezekielwilliams.bsky.social · Aug 30

phenomenal work! Hoping this builds pressure to get the Broadview staging ground shut down

Rachel Cohen @cohen489.bsky.social · Aug 30

I got arrested yesterday! (real drop off from being a corporate law firm associate five months ago. or upgrade.)

I was blocking vehicles leaving from ICE’s Broadview, IL, staging ground and de facto detention center at 1930 Beach St. full statement (for now) below.

Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

Ben Recht @beenwrekt.bsky.social · Aug 29

Yup. And not just philosophers. There is a whole breed of "AI Safety" researchers in CS who do the same SciFi nonsense and get enormous research funding. They got mad at me for calling them dorks complicit in death yesterday.

www.argmin.net/p/the-banal-...

The Banal Evil of AI Safety

Chatbot companies are harmful and dishonest. How can we hold them accountable?

www.argmin.net

4 12 51

Reposted by Ezekiel Williams

David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · Aug 27

Bluesky now the platform of choice for scientists and other non-fascists.

Bluesky now platform of choice for science community

It’s not just you. Survey says: “Twitter sucks now and all the cool kids are moving to Bluesky”…

arstechnica.com

6 67 420