Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Tim Verstynen

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 46m

POLITICO: “.. They referred to Black people as monkeys and ‘the watermelon people’ and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies .. and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.

@politico.com
www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

230 1.2K 2.2K

Reposted by Tim Verstynen

The New York Times @nytimes.com · 42m

This school year, many Texas districts are teaching from an elementary curriculum that features extensive content about the Christian faith, according to a New York Times analysis. More than 300 of the state’s roughly 1,200 districts signed up to use the lessons.

Inside the New Bible-Infused Texas English Curriculum

This school year, many Texas districts are teaching from an elementary curriculum that features extensive content about the Christian faith, according to a New York Times analysis.

nyti.ms

10 20 41

Reposted by Tim Verstynen

Kate Clancy @kateclancy.bsky.social · 4h

I am being asked to tell my department which pieces of lab equipment should be supported with backup power because they expect rolling blackouts and brownouts in 2026 due to increased energy demands from AI. In case you're wondering how my day is going.

10 280 620

Reposted by Tim Verstynen

Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 1h

VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE

If you have an election in your area, VOTE!

Ballot receipt email from Allegheny County

2 3 15

Tim Verstynen @tdverstynen.bsky.social · 42m

Look, I edited what I originally wrote to sound more humane. I might have overcorrected.

Tim Verstynen @tdverstynen.bsky.social · 1h

Noooooooooooooooooooo!

Cadence Weapon @cadenceweapon.bsky.social · 2h

I'm absolutely stunned. RIP to the legend D'Angelo. Bar none, one of the greatest musicians of this generation

Reposted by Tim Verstynen

karl rove knausgård @uhactually.bsky.social · 20h

Lmao WaPo has fewer than 100K circulation now. It turns out “alienate your liberal subscriber base” is not a good strategy when the Republicans also hate you. www.forbes.com/sites/andyme...

The Washington Post Is Running Out Of Readers Willing To Pay

Once a titan of American journalism, The Washington Post now struggles to reach even 100,000 print subscribers most days.

www.forbes.com

230 540 2.7K

Reposted by Tim Verstynen

Dr. Jens Foell @jensfoell.de · 3h

What annoys me most about the current gen AI hype is how clearly it demonstrates every single day that people will sacrifice ethics, accuracy, privacy, energy balance, and the sanctity of artistic achievement to gain just the tiniest bit of convenience.

1 8 36

Tim Verstynen @tdverstynen.bsky.social · 3h

Good. This man needs to live out the rest of his days in a tent under a freeway overpass without a penny to his name.

The Associated Press @apnews.com · 4h

BREAKING: The Supreme Court rejects Alex Jones' appeal of $1.4 billion judgment for calling Sandy Hook school shooting a hoax.

Supreme Court rejects Alex Jones' appeal of $1.4 billion defamation judgment in Sandy Hook shooting

The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and left in place the $1.4 billion judgment against him over his description of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting as a hoax staged by crisis actors.

bit.ly

1 1 4

Reposted by Tim Verstynen

Larry Glickman @larryglickman.bsky.social · 6h

Future historians may well argue that the Jim Crow era, which, depending on how one periodizes, lasted for roughly 75 years, represented a longer time period than the modern civil rights era, which, even if one starts with Brown v. Board, is barely 70 years old.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/14/u...

Will the Supreme Court Use a Louisiana Case to Gut the Voting Rights Act?

www.nytimes.com

2 35 94

Tim Verstynen @tdverstynen.bsky.social · 6h

I’m pretty sure those “some” are in the White House.

2

Reposted by Tim Verstynen

Sam Gershman @gershbrain.bsky.social · 7h

Really interesting work by Bakhurin and colleagues challenging the reward prediction error hypothesis of dopamine:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
I love this figure which both echoes and undermines the famous figure from Schultz et al. (1997).

3 38 110

Reposted by Tim Verstynen

Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 21h

I wonder if all the people braying about the "war on Christianity" might raise some objections if it were a *Democratic* administration who had its armed thugs shooting priests in the head with pepper balls and waiting outside Catholic Churches to disappear parishioners?

Rachel Maddow @maddow.msnbc.com · 23h

"After the warning, neighbors showed up and formed a human chain outside the church to guide parishioners home. NBC Chicago found more organizers doing the same for the beginning of the 6 p.m. mass..."

www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/c...

Chicago priest urges parishioners to leave mass with caution after ICE agents reported nearby

Chicago's Rogers Park community remained vigilant after reports of federal agents near a Catholic church during Sunday mass.

www.nbcchicago.com

69 880 3.1K

Reposted by Tim Verstynen

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 15h

"Residents in Chicago and Portland are living in a police state where masked armed forces kidnap who they want to kidnap, where they have to listen to public officials routinely lie about what is happening in their neighborhoods." donmoynihan.substack.com/p/purge-merg...

StrictlyChristo 🇺🇦🌻❌👑 @strictlychristo.bsky.social · 22h

Federal Secret Police and plainclothes ICE agents kidnap multiple people from a neighborhood in Chicago. They then deploy teargas and brutally beat neighbors who come out to express their concern.

23 550 1.4K

Tim Verstynen @tdverstynen.bsky.social · 8h

At some point they’re gonna pull this shit with a gun nut who will shoot an agent trying to illegally detain them and, honestly, I think that’s what ICE leadership wants.

Imagine if your boss was rooting for someone to kill you because it’d give them more power?

1 1

Reposted by Tim Verstynen

NPR @npr.org · 8h

Tom Bowman has held his Pentagon press pass for 28 years. He says the Pentagon's new media policy makes it impossible to be a journalist, which means finding out what's really going on behind the scenes and not accepting wholesale what any government or administration says. n.pr/4q87Jwb

Opinion: Why I'm handing in my Pentagon press pass

Tom Bowman has held his Pentagon press pass for 28 years. He says the Pentagon's new media policy makes it impossible to be a journalist, which means finding out what's really going on behind the scenes and not accepting wholesale what any government or administration says.

n.pr

110 1.2K 3.1K

Reposted by Tim Verstynen

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 19h

If you make "controversial statements" outside of classroom, that the President of the university dislikes, you can be summarily fired even if you are tenured.

Julie Greene @greeneland.bsky.social · 20h

I just learned, Thomas Alter, tenured professor, has been terminated effective immediately. Shame on Texas State! We mst build support for Tom. spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/south-tex...

Texas State upholds the firing of associate history professor Thomas Alter

Alter’s termination occurred on Sept. 10, stemming from his remarks at the Revolutionary Socialism Conference on Sept. 7.

spectrumlocalnews.com

27 230 610

Reposted by Tim Verstynen

Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 17h

We know — from first principles — that LLMs can only create AI slop.

Why do people keep needing empirical tests?

Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · Aug 17

The intractability proof (a.k.a. Ingenia theorem) implies that any attempts to scale up AI-by-Learning to situations of real-world, human-level complexity will consume an astronomical amount of resources (see Box 1 for an explanation). 13/n

Box 1 in the paper, intuitively explaining the implications of the intractability result.

3 13 52

Reposted by Tim Verstynen

Mother Jones @motherjones.com · 17h

Despite Alligator Alcatraz’s shocking conditions and rampant “psychological warfare,” copycats are popping up around the country—everything from the “Cornhusker Clink” to the “Speedway Slammer”

Inside the hell of Alligator Alcatraz

Despite shocking conditions and rampant “psychological warfare,” copycats are popping up around the country.

bit.ly

32 220 420

Tim Verstynen @tdverstynen.bsky.social · 17h

This seems to be true for emotional pain as well.

Reposted by Tim Verstynen

News Eye @newseye.bsky.social · 1d

NEW: There’s a disaster unfolding in Alaska right now. And no major network is covering it.

The remnants of Typhoon Halong battered western Alaska overnight. Homes, with people in them, have literally been swept into the Bering Strait.

At least 20 are missing. No comment from any federal agency.

990 8.8K 14K

Tim Verstynen @tdverstynen.bsky.social · 1d

Good news for anyone looking to buy a house. Bad news for anyone who put most of their equity into their house.

Source: www.redfin.com/news/sellers...

1

Reposted by Tim Verstynen

Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 1d

This is a powerful account from a PhD student whose fellowship was terminated by NIH because it was part of a "diversity" program without any other considerations or understanding of what the program or the students were actually doing.

undark.org/2025/10/09/o...

1/2

NIH Student Grant Cancellation Will Weaken Scientific Innovation

The termination of federal F31 diversity fellowships puts many graduate students in a bind — and U.S. science at risk.

undark.org

3 120 230

Tim Verstynen @tdverstynen.bsky.social · 1d

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day!

2

Reposted by Tim Verstynen

Olivia Messer @oliviamesser.bsky.social · 1d

In which John Oliver methodically unpacks how thin it is to claim you’re all about “the truth” when you’re only running essays don’t get properly fact-checked — and don’t hold up to even basic reporting scrutiny www.youtube.com/watch?v=gieT...

Bari Weiss: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

YouTube video by LastWeekTonight

www.youtube.com

40 1K 3.6K