Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Gabriela Femenia @gfemenia.bsky.social · 3h

I'm glad my alma mater finally found its spine

Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · 3h

PENN IS OUT! That means both institutions that signed prior agreements with the administration have said no. We're at 3 rejections.

I told y'all once the second one hit yesterday, the clock started for the rest.

www.thedp.com/article/2025...

Penn rejects White House proposal for special funding treatment

With the decision, Penn becomes the third university to decline the offer.

www.thedp.com

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Gabriela Femenia @gfemenia.bsky.social · 2d

Literally the only reason I kept the china cabinet the previous owner left behind. It lights up, too!

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Jonathan Edward Durham @thisone0verhere.bsky.social · 2d

Peak millennial culture is putting the good china you inherited in the basement because you need room in the hutch you inherited for the good LEGO sets

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Old White Nepo Hat @kenwhite.bsky.social · 7d

Read this thread for a frankly breathtaking example of the utter garbage you get when Techbrahs try their hand at law.

Although if you say "I have an issue that's important to me, huh, I guess I will try Vibe Lawyering," I am basically ok with whatever happens to you.

Kathryn Tewson @kathryntewson.bsky.social · 8d

The bros are at it again! and make no mistake, they are LITERALLY calling it "Vibe Lawyering"

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Gabriela Femenia @gfemenia.bsky.social · 7d

Also, much as I like it, Peter Gabriel's Solsbury Hill

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Gabriela Femenia @gfemenia.bsky.social · 7d

In my ongoing efforts to detoxify my commute listening, this morning's episode of #pchh was both a fun listen and question.

My nominees: Iggy Pop's Lust for Life, The Who's Baba O'Riley, and There She Goes (both The La's original and the Sixpence None the Richer cover).
www.npr.org/2025/10/09/n...

Most overused songs in movies : Pop Culture Happy Hour

Some great songs are so overused in movies, they’ve become cliches. Everyone’s mileage is bound to vary, but we’re rounding up a few songs we love that need to be retired and suggesting a few worthy r...

www.npr.org

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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 12d

🫡

How to Turn Off AI Tools Like Gemini, Apple Intelligence, Copilot, and More - Consumer Reports

AI features are crowding into Google search, Gmail, iPhones, Windows laptops, and other products. If you're suffering from AI overload, these settings can help.

www.consumerreports.org

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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 14d

Some brief thoughts on the Anthropic settlement, and why I think most authors should claim their share of the settlement if they can, inadequate though I think it is:

whatever.scalzi.com/2025/10/02/a...

Authors, Time to Get That (Anthropic) Bag

To begin, for those of you who do not follow such things with intense interest, a little context about the “AI” company Anthropic being sued for stealing authors’ works and reachi…

whatever.scalzi.com

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Gabriela Femenia @gfemenia.bsky.social · 14d

This is the advice I consistently give people about trying AI: use something you know very well already, so you can actually determine the quality of the output for yourself, and get some idea of how the sausage is being made

John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 14d

The "AI" responses that Google gives about me and my work are consistently error-prone, which I know because I am me. If I know Google's "AI" responses give incorrect answers about things I know about, I can't trust it to give correct answers about things I don't know. So, no, I don't use it.

John Gordon 🇨🇦🇩🇰 @johngordon.bsky.social · 14d

I’m surprised you don’t use ai answer engines in research you currently do with Google

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Gabriela Femenia @gfemenia.bsky.social · 15d

I actually bought the shirt at ALA so I can!

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Gabriela Femenia @gfemenia.bsky.social · 16d

Shame clearly isn't enough; there should be more sanctions

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 16d

When the second case of a lawyer getting caught using synthetic text extruding machines hit the news, I wondered: Don't these people gossip?? I would have thought the first case would be so embarrassing as to make things very clear.

www.404media.co/18-lawyers-c...

>>

18 Lawyers Caught Using AI Explain Why They Did It

Lawyers blame IT, family emergencies, their own poor judgment, their assistants, illness, and more.

www.404media.co

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Gabriela Femenia @gfemenia.bsky.social · 16d

The legal market is a comparatively small part of TR's profits so I am not so sure pushback from firms would work, and law firms are very used to taking whatever "improvements" the vendors slap on anyway. We don't get a choice in academic libraries; they just turn the stuff on at will.

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Gabriela Femenia @gfemenia.bsky.social · 16d

Some of us do, frequently, and get branded "Luddites" for our trouble.

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Karl Bode @karlbode.com · 17d

Stanford researchers found that AI-generated "workslop" is actually making people less productive, in part because workers have to correct errors or decode the useful information/intent buried in a flood of auto-generated garbage:

AI-Generated “Workslop” Is Destroying Productivity

Despite a surge in generative AI use across workplaces, most companies are seeing little measurable ROI. One possible reason is because AI tools are being used to produce “workslop”—content that appea...

hbr.org

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Gabriela Femenia @gfemenia.bsky.social · 21d

It was a whole spiral of blue-eyed soul started off by Steve Winwood. I may start regularly playing Song Algorithm Roulette on my commute instead of law and news podcasts because my mental health was much better the rest of the day.

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Gabriela Femenia @gfemenia.bsky.social · 22d

Yesterday I had the singularly GenX satisfaction of playing one 80s song on Apple Music, and then correctly guessing what else the algorithm would supply based on shared characteristics. I may have to make a mix tape for old times' sake next.

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Marlene Manoff @mmanoff.bsky.social · 28d

www.404media.co/librarians-a...

Librarians Are Being Asked to Find AI-Hallucinated Books

It’s a trippy time to have a library card.

www.404media.co

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Gabriela Femenia @gfemenia.bsky.social · Sep 16

Shocked, I tell you.

Brian Greenberg @briangreenberg.net · Sep 16

For a while there, the news made it seem like like AI was going to swallow every job whole but the AI gold rush is hitting a wall.

⚠️ Big firm AI pilots are failing
🧠 Turns out, trust and expertise matter more than ever.

fortune.com/2025/09/10/a...
#AI #Cybersecurity #HumanSkills

'Human skills' are at a premium again now that big companies are backpedaling on error-prone AI | Fortune

AI adoption rate among large companies has dipped from a peak of 14% earlier this year to 12% as of late summer.

fortune.com

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Scariest LiBOOrian @audiolibrarian.bsky.social · Sep 16

article from today's daily journal

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Amanda Watson @amndw2.bsky.social · Sep 15

You know what else is being affected by the tariffs on parcels worth less than $800? International interlibrary loan. I'm hearing reports of libraries overseas that won't lend to the US anymore. (That's in addition to the libraries here that have shut down their ILL b/c of lost IMLS funding.)

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Gabriela Femenia @gfemenia.bsky.social · Sep 11

The whole thread, and the cited Guardian article, is a must-read but this is the heart of everything.

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · Sep 11

The next time someone tells you this is just how it is/"AI" is inevitable/this junk is here to stay, please remember that the future is not yet written and we don't have to put up with this.

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Philadelphia Inquirer @inquirer.com · Sep 9

Forty-five local preservation and historical organizations have convened to send a message to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum: Removing or editing Philly slavery exhibits is “ahistorical and un-American.” (1/3)

Removing or editing Philly slavery exhibits is ‘un-American,’ 45 local historical groups tell Trump’s Interior secretary

It's the first time a major coalition of Philadelphia's preservationist groups have coordinated a widespread opposition to President Trump and Secretary Doug Burgum's threats to Independence Park.

inquirer.com

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Gabriela Femenia @gfemenia.bsky.social · Sep 9

It is one of the tragedies of my academic life that social media was not around when I was a medievalist grad student so I could be the one to go viral with the manuscript memes

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ElieNYC @elienyc.bsky.social · Sep 8

Here’s my write up on the most racist decision to come out of the Supreme Court in a while. The court approved of Trump’s racial profiling of Latinos with Brett Kavanaugh saying being harassed based on the color of your skin is “common sense.”
My latest in @thenation

The Supreme Court Just Gave the OK to Racial Profiling

The court’s ruling allowing ICE to resume its indiscriminate round-ups of LA’s Latino residents can only be described as one thing.

www.thenation.com

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Dr. Damien P. Williams Wants A Better Sociotechnical Paradigm @wolvendamien.bsky.social · Sep 8

How many times, in how many contexts, from how many internal and external researchers, or from how many CEO's are people going to have to receive this message before they believe it:

"Hallucinations" are an inherent part of the large language model architecture.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Can researchers stop AI making up citations?

OpenAI’s GPT-5 hallucinates less than previous models do, but cutting hallucination completely might prove impossible.

www.nature.com

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