LightNews
PG Holmlov
@pgho.bsky.social
270 followers 1.1K following 3.3K posts
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PG Holmlov @pgho.bsky.social · 1m
The most popular models privilege dominant epistemologies while marginalising alternative ways of knowing… the languages considered ‘low-resource’, spoken by hundreds of millions… When a language becomes marginalised, the knowledge embedded within it often disappears aeon.co/essays/gener...
Generative AI has access to a small slice of human knowledge | Aeon Essays
Huge swathes of human knowledge are missing from the internet. By definition, generative AI is shockingly ignorant too
aeon.co
PG Holmlov @pgho.bsky.social · 8m
…the decline in tariff rates over 90 years had been achieved through negotiations, in which the U.S. and other nations agreed not to backtrack on tariff reductions… Now Trump is learning, to his obvious shock, that other nations can also play trade hardball paulkrugman.substack.com/p/how-trump-...
How Trump Is Making China Great
Why we’re going to lose the trade war, and much more besides
paulkrugman.substack.com
PG Holmlov @pgho.bsky.social · 11m
… down there, mountains are sea mounts… It’s really quite astonishing that less than a decade ago, this single piece of data analysis discovered almost twice as many sea mounts as there are mountains in Switzerland everythingisamazing.substack.com/p/the-mounta...
The Mountains At The Bottom Of The World - 1: Massif Attack
A two-parter on the world's longest mountain range (no, not *that* one).
everythingisamazing.substack.com
PG Holmlov @pgho.bsky.social · 34m
Overall, only about one in eight of the papers received any media attention at all… Of the 129,000 studies that did garner coverage, men-led papers were found to receive more attention overall and were heavily overrepresented in the top 5% of most covered studies www.science.org/content/arti...
When women researchers publish, media attention doesn’t always follow
Men-led papers receive more media coverage than women’s, new study finds
www.science.org
Reposted by PG Holmlov
rbreich.bsky.social
Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 13h
The 400 richest Americans are now worth a record $6.6 trillion.

The entire bottom 50% of America is worth just $4.2 trillion.

Read that back.

When 400 people control more wealth than half a country’s population, we have a very serious problem.
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PG Holmlov @pgho.bsky.social · 55m
They all asked, “How did you find out?” And Mary was telling, “I found out because this random AP photographer knocked on our door in the middle of the night”… It was a lot of fun for me to be able to watch someone who had no clue that this was even a possibility www.science.org/content/arti...
What’s it like to tell someone she won a Nobel Prize?
Science chats with photographer Lindsey Wasson, who captured how Nobel winner Mary Brunkow reacted to life-changing news
www.science.org
Reposted by PG Holmlov
atrupar.com
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1h
Trump: "We're not gonna go into a war. But if we do, we're going to win that war like nobody has ever won a war before. We will not be politically correct."
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PG Holmlov @pgho.bsky.social · 1h
Where I grew up, that word alone – ain’t – could mark you as someone who’d never get out… the British accent wasn’t just smoothing over. It was a whole other identity, a cocoon of fantasy so complete I felt protected inside it… The absurdity was part of the thrill psyche.co/turning-poin...
How my fake accent became a full-blown identity experiment | Psyche Turning points
When I spoke like someone I wasn’t, people listened more closely. What did that say about them – and me?
psyche.co
PG Holmlov @pgho.bsky.social · 1h
…women’s relative longevity may derive, in part, from having double X chromosomes, that protects them against harmful mutations… most mammals are like humans, with the females of nearly three-fourths of mammal species outliving their male counterparts www.washingtonpost.com/science/2025...
Why do women outlive men? A study of 1,176 species points to an answer.
A growing body of evidence suggests that women’s relative longevity may be linked to having double X chromosomes.
www.washingtonpost.com
Reposted by PG Holmlov
markjacob.bsky.social
Mark Jacob @markjacob.bsky.social · 1h
Trump, speaking in the Israeli parliament, boasts about the weapons the U.S. has provided and says "you obviously used them very well."
An estimated 20,000 children have died in the war in Gaza.
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PG Holmlov @pgho.bsky.social · 1h
I would sometimes hire someone and tell them the kind of figures I wanted made. It would take days or weeks for them to get back, but now I have a much faster research assistant who understands instructions better than any human and completes tasks in seconds www.richardhanania.com/p/how-ai-mad...
How AI Made Me 33% More Productive
Taking the grunt work out of writing
www.richardhanania.com
PG Holmlov @pgho.bsky.social · 7h
If you compare the cost of solar or batteries between China and the U.S., people always point to labor costs… even more important is they’ve heavily invested in automation. The number of workers per [battery produced] is about six times lower than in the U.S. e360.yale.edu/features/han...
This Data Scientist Sees Progress in the Climate Change Fight
Countries are falling short on reducing emissions, but British data scientist Hannah Ritchie looks at the numbers and sees the world making real gains on climate change. In an interview, she talks abo...
e360.yale.edu
PG Holmlov @pgho.bsky.social · 7h
Later, ICE transferred the group of carpenters to a maximum-security prison in Berlin, New Hampshire, where there were more than 300 inmates serving sentences for various crimes such as robbery, rape, and homicide www.texasobserver.org/brazilian-ca...
A Brazilian Carpenter's 51-Day Detention Journey from Vermont to Texas
“On the first day, I thought they had picked me up by mistake..."
www.texasobserver.org
PG Holmlov @pgho.bsky.social · 8h
…birds from locations spanning Australia, China and Zambia use the same call to identify their parasites, despite never into contact with each other… even if the call is coming from different species on different continents, they instinctively investigate www.birds.cornell.edu/home/vocal-w...
Birds’ Vocal Warnings Provide New Insight Into the Origins of Language
Birds separated by vast geographic distances and millions of years of evolution share a remarkably similar learned vocal warning to identify parasitic enemies near their nests, an international team o...
www.birds.cornell.edu
PG Holmlov @pgho.bsky.social · 8h
…a CEO complaining that the cost of acquiring a customer had gone from $13 to $250 over ten years, due to higher prices on Instagram and the inability of any other ad platform to offer comparable results… “everybody’s margin becoming Facebook’s profits” www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-r...
Monopoly Round-Up: Will the Trade War Pop the AI Bubble?
Tech monopolies have created an AI bubble that could take down the economy. China just threatened to pop it. What happens now? Plus, the Pope dons his anti-monopoly hat, and more.
www.thebignewsletter.com
PG Holmlov @pgho.bsky.social · 9h
”You’re making disgusting, over-processed hotdogs out of the lives of human beings, out of the history of art and music... AI is just badly recycling and regurgitating the past”… daughters watching their fathers’ legacies puppeteered for viral content nickpotkalitsky.substack.com/p/the-reckon...
The Reckoning: Sora 2 and the Year We Said Enough
"Can you tell me where we're headin'? Lincoln County Road or Armageddon?"
nickpotkalitsky.substack.com
PG Holmlov @pgho.bsky.social · 9h
The indictment sits in a Nevada file, gathering dust. And somewhere in Tel Aviv, a man once charged with trying to meet a child for sex is still at liberty, perhaps writing code for the same government that pretends he never existed www.closertotheedge.net/p/the-man-wh...
THE MAN WHO FLEW HOME
How a senior Israeli cyber official accused of child predation in Las Vegas boarded a plane instead of facing justice.
www.closertotheedge.net
PG Holmlov @pgho.bsky.social · 18h
A standard of care that calls for replacing breasts with stiff and senseless fabrications without mammary functioning both reflects and is rooted within an asymmetrical binary whereby a woman’s value depends in large part on her objectification www.sapiens.org/culture/wome...
When Women Say “Ta-Ta” to Ta-Tas
An anthropologist fighting cancer navigates the social pressure in the U.S. to get breast reconstruction after a mastectomy.
www.sapiens.org
PG Holmlov @pgho.bsky.social · 18h
85% av de anställda i servicebranschen har upplevt eller bevittnat kränkande beteenden från kunder… allt från förolämpningar och trakasserier till rena aggressionsutbrott. Var femte serviceanställd säger att de utsatts för hot eller trakasserier minst en gång i månaden www.prevent.se/arbetsliv/me...
Otrevliga kunder ett stort problem för servicepersonal - Arbetsliv
Raseriutbrott, hot och sexuella inviter från kunder. För anställda i servicebranschen är det inte ovanligt att möta den typen av beteenden, enligt en ny rapport.
www.prevent.se
PG Holmlov @pgho.bsky.social · 18h
…careers of literary titans of the late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries bear similar hallmarks: The disappointing debut. The stalwart editorial advocate. The understanding time is a meaningful factor… Nowadays, tremendous pressure to succeed from the beginning thewalrus.ca/the-publishi...
The Publishing Industry Has a Gambling Problem | The Walrus
Companies keep betting on the next bestseller. Literature is poorer for it
thewalrus.ca
PG Holmlov @pgho.bsky.social · 18h
…social-media platforms shared a foundational premise with critics in the disinformation field: platforms have a unique power to influence users, in measurable ways… Look closer… much of the attention for sale on the internet is haphazard, unmeasurable, or fraudulent harpers.org/archive/2021...
Bad News, by Joseph Bernstein
Selling the story of disinformation
harpers.org
PG Holmlov @pgho.bsky.social · 18h
If “things are stalling… I might say, ‘Please find a good, engaging, funny answer to this to keep the conversation going’”. He never copies entire answers – “ChatGPT formulates things in a very obvious way” – but he uses certain lines that sound most like him www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...
‘I realised I’d been ChatGPT-ed into bed’: how ‘Chatfishing’ made finding love on dating apps even weirder
Where once people were duped by soft-focus photos and borrowed chat-up lines, now they have to watch out for computer-generated charm. But it’s one thing to use a witty phrase – another thing entirely...
www.theguardian.com
PG Holmlov @pgho.bsky.social · 19h
…stationarity means that things aren’t changing through time… nonstationarity is the status of a time series whose statistical properties are changing through time… this is the reality we live in… climate change is impacting ecosystems across the world predirections.substack.com/p/welcome-to...
Welcome to the age of nonstationarity
A statistical property that undermines ecosystem management under climate change.
predirections.substack.com
PG Holmlov @pgho.bsky.social · 19h
The finding is based on data from 312,000 British residents who describe themselves as regular drinkers. Those who had a glass of wine or two — particularly red — at mealtimes were 14 percent less likely to develop the metabolic disease over the next decade studyfinds.org/wine-with-di...
Having a glass of wine with dinner may help you avoid diabetes, study says
Researchers from Tulane University report that drinking wine with dinner could actually help stave off diabetes.
studyfinds.org
PG Holmlov @pgho.bsky.social · 20h
I kept returning to his chilling promise that he was prepared to die: “I love death more than you love life.” He was right that Jews prize life above all else. Jewish law’s highest priority is the preservation of human life; it trumps any other religious rule www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
‘I Love Death More Than You Love Life’
The terrorist at the synagogue
www.theatlantic.com