Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Aaron D'Souza @aarondsouza.bsky.social · 17h

I'm looking forward to being the grizzled old fart that makes $$$ getting hired to fix garbage that was vibe-coded a decade ago.

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Aaron D'Souza @aarondsouza.bsky.social · 1d

Unix fan, tweaked hex to get in-game resources, jazz musician, emacs/vi user, loves Scheme.

Thomas Morgan may be my perfect spirit animal. I can't wait to hear his debut as a leader.

Ethan Iverson @ethaniversonpiano.bsky.social · 1d

NEW: utterly astonishing essay by bassist Thomas Morgan that explains his first album as a leader iverson.substack.com/p/guest-post...

Guest post from Thomas Morgan: A UNIVERSE OF POSSIBILITIES WITHIN THEIR RESOURCE CONSTRAINTS

[all about the new album AROUND YOU IS A FOREST]

iverson.substack.com

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Aaron D'Souza @aarondsouza.bsky.social · 1d

Thomas is the person I want to grow up to be. What a lovely article.

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Aaron D'Souza @aarondsouza.bsky.social · 6d

Q: What changed?
A: Skin-tone of the person to which it's applied.

(Fun fact: That is also the answer to a lot of other questions)

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Aaron D'Souza @aarondsouza.bsky.social · 9d

Lesson #\infty on shooting one's own foot:

Nearly 20 Percent Fewer International Students Traveled to the U.S. in August

The data shows the steepest decline in August international student arrivals since the pandemic.

www.nytimes.com

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Aaron D'Souza @aarondsouza.bsky.social · 14d

This Friday will be Bandcamp Friday. Go get the album:

150 Million Gold Francs, by Obed Calvaire

7 track album

obed-calvaire.bandcamp.com

Aaron D'Souza @aarondsouza.bsky.social · 14d

Obed Calvaire is a legend. The Haitian repository of musical traditions is a deep, deep wellspring.

Gaya K'ow!

YouTube video by Obed Calvaire

youtu.be

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Aaron D'Souza @aarondsouza.bsky.social · 15d

FFS you guys, this timeline broke Randall.

Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 15d

Could we survive eating only humans?

Watch the latest What If? video collaboration with @minuteearth.bsky.social!

youtu.be/PUtI3xoaHx0

Could we survive eating only humans?

YouTube video by xkcd's What If?

youtu.be

Aaron D'Souza @aarondsouza.bsky.social · 15d

This is how we get war crimes.

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Aaron D'Souza @aarondsouza.bsky.social · 15d

Sure, guardrails imposed by government are often flawed, but we've seen over and over again that unfettered capitalism will not police itself. I'll take the flawed guardrails and do my best to make them less flawed.

Video: Opinion | Joseph Gordon-Levitt: Meta’s A.I. Chatbot Is Dangerous for Kids

Mark Zuckerberg has a vision for how A.I. could be used in Meta’s universe. But the actor and filmmaker Joseph Gordon-Levitt is here to point out a flaw in the technology: an apparent lack of guardrai...

www.nytimes.com

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Aaron D'Souza @aarondsouza.bsky.social · 17d

Being just as mindless and susceptible to snake oil as any other population, all the while telling ourselves "no, exceptionalism is in our bones" — that delusion is our undoing. And it is retrospectively evident in how poorly our guardrails have been crafted.

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Aaron D'Souza @aarondsouza.bsky.social · 19d

Power of the purse? It's more like power of the pursed lips, because that's all the legislature seems to be able to wield.

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Aaron D'Souza @aarondsouza.bsky.social · 20d

This makes me so happy.

Reposted by Aaron D'Souza

Galina Esther Shubina, my coffee is my own @galsh.bsky.social · 21d

Thread

Gil Durán @gilduran.com · 21d

1/ A longtime Wired editor just wrote a mush-brained essay about how he totally missed the political rot of Silicon Valley (& still doesn't get it).

But in the late 1990s, a Wired journalist warned of a toxic ideology bubbling up from tech. Paulina Borsook has largely been erased. Let's change that

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Aaron D'Souza @aarondsouza.bsky.social · 21d

Sorry brother. Hopefully once you get there, the fun research will grab you by the nuts.

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Aaron D'Souza @aarondsouza.bsky.social · 22d

I'm going to try this for GRAD.

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Aaron D'Souza @aarondsouza.bsky.social · 24d

Fun fact: Actual technique spammers unwittingly revealed to me at an SEO conference back in 2007-ish:

Gamify (or free-porn-enticify) solving captchas, and what's actually being solved on the backend is the creation of realistic-looking Google user accounts for them to accumulate.

Reposted by Aaron D'Souza

Nate Chinen @natechinen.bsky.social · 26d

Not far into the early set at The Village Vanguard on Thursday night, I had a wildly irresponsible thought: at this moment, the Miguel Zenón Quartet might actually be the best band in the world.

Vanguardia Subterránea

The Miguel Zenón Quartet levitates the underground

open.substack.com

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Aaron D'Souza @aarondsouza.bsky.social · 26d

Halfway through the third book in Hilary Mantel's trilogy. Her writing is epic.

Also enjoying *everything* by Adrian Tchaikovsky right now. On my 5th book of his this year and can't stop

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Aaron D'Souza @aarondsouza.bsky.social · 26d

Nate Smith's new album is all 🔥🥁🎵

LIVE-ACTION, by Nate Smith

10 track album

waterbabymusic.bandcamp.com

Aaron D'Souza @aarondsouza.bsky.social · Sep 14

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Aaron D'Souza @aarondsouza.bsky.social · Sep 13

Remember when the Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, and British were the superpowers of the world? Their (relative) insignificance in current times is exactly where we're headed.

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Aaron D'Souza @aarondsouza.bsky.social · Sep 11

This is why they invented font sizes.

Aaron D'Souza @aarondsouza.bsky.social · Sep 8

And yet, a whole bunch of folks would *totally* vote him in for a 3rd term if they could do it tomorrow.

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Aaron D'Souza @aarondsouza.bsky.social · Sep 7

These people are so sad. Like each of them has fuck-this-money in the billions, and are unable to say "fuck this".

What sad, pathetic lives. Never let them forget that they were there, saying these things.

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