Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Sarah Quinn @sarahquinn.bsky.social · 2h

I still remember my ** mom's** best friend's number

Rachael Levay @rlevay.bsky.social · 2h

I can still remember my childhood best friends’ phone numbers.

bleary @bleary.off-the-records.com · 4h

If anyone needs me I will be in the museum, lying down next to the bog bodies.

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Reposted by Sarah Quinn

Jean Beaman @jean23bean.bsky.social · 22h

Postdoctoral Fellowship in Moral and Political Economy @snfagora.bsky.social

apply.interfolio.com/175535

apply.interfolio.com

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Reposted by Sarah Quinn

derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 1d

I interviewed one of these factory workers in Los Angeles. She gets paid three cents to sew a zipper, five cents for a collar, and seven cents to prepare the top part of a skirt.

This is how fast fashion brands like Fashion Nova can put "Made in USA" tags on dress shirts that retail for only $25

"Every day at 6 am, Bilma boards a bus that shuttles her to downtown Los Angeles’s Fashion District. When she reaches the garment factory an hour later, she starts working immediately, without punching in. Like thousands of other garment workers in the United States, Bilma’s wages aren’t tethered to the clock but rather to the quantity of operations she executes. Three cents for a zipper or sleeve, five cents for a collar, and seven cents to prepare the top part of a skirt before she passes it onto the next sewing operator in line. Assembling an entire dress earns her a mere 15 cents. Bilma toils away on garments primarily for fast-fashion labels such as Fashion Nova, Lulus, and Lucy in the Sky, who prioritize quickly stocking on-trend items over the quality of materials. These companies peddle things like $80 maxi dresses, $25 poplin dress shirts, and $5 crop tops, all modeled by beautiful people and bedecked with the tantalizing promise of low-cost glamor."

"This worker payment system, known as “piecework” in the garment industry, is how US-based manufacturers can sidestep labor laws that require companies to pay at least the minimum wage. Rather than compensating Bilma for the exhausting 12-hour shifts—a regimen that, according to LA County’s minimum wage requirement, should yield $202.80—her pay is determined by the individual tasks she performs, which can fluctuate daily. Despite her adept handling of hundreds of garments a day, Bilma’s earnings typically linger around $50 per day. That’s $300 weekly for the standard six-day grind and $350 if she opts for Sunday labor. Doing what she can with this modest income, Bilma spends $400 a month to live in a two-bedroom apartment with six other people, some of whom are day laborers. In this crowded arrangement, two occupants squeeze into each bedroom, while two more lay claim to the living room. Bilma sleeps in the corner of the bustling kitchen."

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Reposted by Sarah Quinn

Bloomberg News @bloomberg.com · 1d

A new book argues that when easy money ran out, Silicon Valley’s billionaires looked for someone to keep the good times rolling. They found him in Donald Trump.

What Really Drove Silicon Valley’s Shift to the Right

In Gilded Rage, journalist Jacob Silverman argues that a decade of free cash turned tech’s utopians into power brokers and made Trump their unlikely ally.

bloom.bg

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Reposted by Sarah Quinn

Louise Amoore @amoorelouise.bsky.social · 6d

Our article on the politics of AI prompts is out now @econsocjournal.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... 1/n

Politics of the prompt: Government in the age of generative AI

This paper addresses the politics of the technique of prompting in machine learning, at a time when bureaucratic and democratic government is undergoing transformation. Drawing on the case of the U...

www.tandfonline.com

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Reposted by Sarah Quinn

ZP39A @zp39a.bsky.social · 3d

It's gonna be sold as a luxury novelty at first then will be used to take real healthcare away from poor people.

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 3d

“Apple is reportedly prepping a Health+ service that will use AI to dispense advice on nutrition, exercise and more.”

Apple might launch Health+ with AI doctor, food tracking and more

Apple is reportedly prepping a Health+ service that will use AI to dispense advice on exercise and eating right.

www.cultofmac.com

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Reposted by Sarah Quinn

Lauren MacIvor Thompson @lmacthompson1.bsky.social · 3d

I am writing this because it has swiftly become crystal clear to me that many people have no idea what is happening or how this works. Here is a thread for non-academics to put into context what just happened to Dr. Mark Bray, a fellow historian.

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Reposted by Sarah Quinn

Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 5d

"It is not hyperbole to say that the future of higher education in America requires that every university reject it. If any schools capitulate, the pressure will be enormous on all to fold. The only solution is solidarity and collective action against this effort at federal control over higher" ed.

Philip N Cohen @philipncohen.com · 9d

Chemerinsky: The Trump extortion demands are unconstitutional as well as odious (gift link). Me: Any school that signs must be shunned, faculty affected must walk. No room for this.

Opinion | Trump’s ‘Compact’ With Universities Is Just Extortion

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Sarah Quinn

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 6d

We don't know anything yet.

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Sarah Quinn @sarahquinn.bsky.social · 6d

That performance is one of my favorites of all time.

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Mark Igra @markigra.sciences.social.ap.brid.gy · 6d

The New York Times minimizing the unconstitutional assault on US cities so much that it didn't appear on the "front page" even on my big screen monitor. Had to export a pdf to capture the tiny headline. Truly atrocious. Does any major US news org care at all?

Screen shot of NYTimes online front page with tiny headline about Emergency powers circled in red. Red text on yellow saying "Unconstitutional invasion of us cities way down here!!! WTF NY Times." Another text saying "But at least I know where to find a tree house with rustic vibe" referring to NYT headline near top saying "6 Tree Houses You can Rent for Glamour With a Rustic Vibe"

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Sarah Quinn @sarahquinn.bsky.social · 6d

Add to that the repercussions for the environment and dangers of environmental racism, and most concluded that the costs far outweighed the benefits.

Sarah Quinn @sarahquinn.bsky.social · 6d

By the end of the class, some students still wanted limited use of AI, but most advocated for it to be banned completely. They didn't want to use my work without my consent, and if they couldn't upload my slides to ChatGPT, the platform was rendered mostly useless for them anyway.

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Sarah Quinn @sarahquinn.bsky.social · 6d

I talked about how much work goes into making good slides. I said that feeding those slides to the model was a way of helping LLMs steal that work from me.

So I asked that students not use it to make study sheets, or generate comments for discussion.

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Sarah Quinn @sarahquinn.bsky.social · 6d

I stated this clearly: I was under no illusion that students could use LLMs however they wanted, but I did not give consent to feed any of my own materials from this class to any LLMs.

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Sarah Quinn @sarahquinn.bsky.social · 6d

Also, I used the Anthropic case as an example, and disclosed that my own work had been stolen and used to train models.

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Sarah Quinn @sarahquinn.bsky.social · 6d

What's new this year is that we had the convo in lecture 4 -- after they had learned a bit about racial capitalism (the topic of the class). This meant students readily connected the dots between LLMs and environmental racism, and labor exploitation.

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Sarah Quinn @sarahquinn.bsky.social · 6d

We first discussed how students use AI, and its costs & benefits. Here I'm non-judgmental and empathetic. Saving time really matters for stressed people under capitalism! Higher ed sorts by cultural capital and that's unfair!

So far, this is exactly what I have done in all of my other classes.

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Sarah Quinn @sarahquinn.bsky.social · 6d

Every quarter, in every undergrad class, I talk with students about what should be included in our LLM AI policy.

For the first time, most of the class decided that we should not allow AI at all.

Here's how we got there . . .

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Reposted by Sarah Quinn

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 10d

🫡

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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Sarah Quinn @sarahquinn.bsky.social · 8d

Book cover for They Thought They Were Free" The Germans, 1933-45
by Milton Mayer

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter."

""You will understand me when I say that my Middle High German was my life. It was all I cared about. I was a scholar, a specialist. Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the university was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was ‘expected to’ participate that had not been there or had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one’s energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time."

"Those," I said, "are the words of my friend the baker. ‘One had no time to think. There was so much going on.’"

"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’

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Sarah Quinn @sarahquinn.bsky.social · 9d

It's a real mire, which makes me think that this would be an ideal time to do a study of the social construction of public opinion.

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Reposted by Sarah Quinn

Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 17d

*The AI boom = one of the costliest building sprees in world history

* Past 3 years' commitments are greater than the cost of building the U.S. interstate highway system

* Consumers must spend $800 billion on AI within a few years, to justify investment from 2023-24

www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-b...

This week, consultants at Bain & Co. estimated the wave of AI infrastructure spending will require $2 trillion in annual AI revenue by 2030. By comparison, that is more than the combined 2024 revenue of Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Nvidia, and more than five times the size of the entire global subscription software market.

Morgan Stanley estimates that last year there was around $45 billion of revenue for AI products. The sector makes money from a combination of subscription fees for chatbots such as ChatGPT and money paid to use these companies’ data centers.

How the tech sector will cover the gap is “the trillion dollar question,” said Mark Moerdler, an analyst at Bernstein.

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Sarah Quinn @sarahquinn.bsky.social · 19d

Vader was a *delight* at cocktail parties, I'm told. And he always brought the most thoughtful house warming gifts.

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Sarah Quinn @sarahquinn.bsky.social · 20d

Thanks to the discourse I have had Blondie in my head all day.

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