Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Carolyn Ownbey, PhD

Tammi, yeah, that one. 2.1 @tammi.bsky.social · 11h

I found a 19th century Cat Villain!

A huge chonk of a fluffy cat sitting on a table near an open fire. The cat is cream and grey and appears to be shaped like a barrel in a fur coat. They are scowling fiercely with their moustache and bewhiskered ears apparently flowing back into the cold wind. There's a definite vibe that this villainous cat twirls their moustache as they evict orphans into the aforementioned blizzard and think Scrooge was an easy-going lightweight. They are magnificent.

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Reposted by Carolyn Ownbey, PhD

Hobby Drifter in Tokyo @hobbydrifter.bsky.social · 7d

White people who have spent decades thinking “Born in the USA” is patriotic and “Every Breath You Take” is a great wedding song are suddenly very concerned about not being able to understand lyrics to some songs at the Super Bowl halftime show.

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Reposted by Carolyn Ownbey, PhD

Prisonculture @prisonculture.bsky.social · 6h

they are not "trying" to exert influence, they ARE influencing elections already.

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Reposted by Carolyn Ownbey, PhD

Juno Rylee Schultz @junoryleejournalism.com · 4d

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems...
SIMON: What?
SHAPIRO: ...Or saying...
SIMON: You imagine that?
SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.
SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.
SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this.
SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

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Reposted by Carolyn Ownbey, PhD

Dan Sinykin @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social · 12h

know what's good? a great lecture by someone who really knows their shit

Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 19h

flipped classrooms & the unquestioned shift toward “student-led learning” were also part of the deprofessionalization->adjunctification->mechanization program whose ultimate goal was a fully administrative university

John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 20h

The over-reliance on standardization as the mechanism for writing instruction really was a pretty unbeatable context to produce de-professionalized teachers okay with using AI to grade

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Carolyn Ownbey, PhD @carolynownbey.bsky.social · 10h

Please use alt text on photos! The disabled community will appreciate it.

Carolyn Ownbey, PhD @carolynownbey.bsky.social · 11h

I made this point on TikTok in April (www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8AmJuBH/ c. 4:30) but it bears repeating: the point of this man, to the admin (& esp miller), is a v particular manipulation & evasion of intl law in the service of manufacturing consent. It didn’t work, so now they’re retaliating against him.

Julie DiCaro @juliedicaro.bsky.social · 11h

So Kilmer Abrego-Garcia will not challenge a deportation to Costa Rica, who has agreed to for him residency, but DHS won’t agree to send him there because it’s not cruel enough.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/u...

For weeks, Mr. Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national who is married to a U.S. citizen, has made clear that he would not challenge his deportation if he were sent to Costa Rica, which has promised him legal residency and guaranteed that he would not be sent back to El Salvador.

But the Trump administration has refused to deport him to Costa Rica, and in an earlier hearing this week, Judge Xinis pressed the administration to consider the option or clarify why it was unacceptable.

Reposted by Carolyn Ownbey, PhD

Julie DiCaro @juliedicaro.bsky.social · 11h

So Kilmer Abrego-Garcia will not challenge a deportation to Costa Rica, who has agreed to for him residency, but DHS won’t agree to send him there because it’s not cruel enough.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/u...

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Reposted by Carolyn Ownbey, PhD

Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 17h

bitch what

Onedrive settings. A toggle for using AI to detect and identify faces is set to on. The caption says, you can only turn off this setting 3 times per year.

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Reposted by Carolyn Ownbey, PhD

Ian Coldwater 👻🌿 @lookitup.baby · 15h

Boss, we’ve got a problem. Users don’t want this stuff! They keep wanting to turn it off, even when we keep turning it back on!

Boss: I have an idea

Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 17h

bitch what

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Reposted by Carolyn Ownbey, PhD

Joseph Morris @morris.cloud · 12h

Can't think of anything else that this looks like other than the aftermath of Hiroshima or Nagasaki (actually just looked at pictures of the fire bombing of Dresden, and there were more building standing after that that this)

Carolyn Ownbey, PhD @carolynownbey.bsky.social · 16h

If you haven’t seen it, this footage from @apnews.com is incredibly important.

The intent here seems unmistakable, in two ways: (1) just read the genocide convention, here it **absolutely** is, and (2) this level of infrastructural destruction is, no question, meant as pre-development demolition.

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Reposted by Carolyn Ownbey, PhD

Ryan Broderick @ryanhatesthis.bsky.social · 24d

In the 2010s, this country's elites were thrown onto social platforms with everyone else and could finally read what we all think about them and it caused them so much psychic damage that they decided to destroy both the internet and democracy to make sure nothing like it ever happened again.

Gillian Branstetter @gbbranstetter.bsky.social · 24d

If this is what it took for you to be pushed into fascism you were probably already there

This predates the social media wars of the late 2010s: One Trump appointee told me that a radicalizing experience was being booted out of the Gawker comments section, way back in the day. But as progressive movements swept through social media, others were tossed off Twitter and Facebook for stepping over a variety of lines, from allegations of harassment to claims of election misinformation. Pandemic era public health rules and fevered enforcement cost others their accounts.

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Carolyn Ownbey, PhD @carolynownbey.bsky.social · 13h

🧵

alec karakatsanis @equalityalec.bsky.social · 15h

THREAD. Did you know that at about 1/3 of all stranger homicides in the U.S. are perpetrated by police? But there's something hidden here that is important to understand in this authoritarian moment.

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Reposted by Carolyn Ownbey, PhD

Democracy Action Network @democracyactionnet.bsky.social · 15h

CajunBlueAZ ⚜️🇺🇸 🇺🇦 @cajunblue.bsky.social · 16h

🚨🚨🚨The intensity here is indescribable. The reference post (to follow) indicates the gravity being similar to that of “Bloody Sunday.” A harrowing parallel. 1/2

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Carolyn Ownbey, PhD @carolynownbey.bsky.social · 14h

Exactly.

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Carolyn Ownbey, PhD @carolynownbey.bsky.social · 14h

Hamas was always going to still exist because the way Israel approached this is not the way to eradicate a militant group. They knew this. That was never the goal.

Frankly, they want to use Hamas as a propaganda tool, “terrorists” against which to pit Israel. They can’t do that if there’s no Hamas.

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Reposted by Carolyn Ownbey, PhD

Andrea Pitzer @andreapitzer.bsky.social · 1d

One great aspect of iconic inflatable costumes (aside from how they instantly undermine propaganda about war zones) is that it's useless to arrest the person wearing one. Cuffing a frog would make law enforcement look pathetic. And carting one off just guarantees that more will show up the next day.

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Reposted by Carolyn Ownbey, PhD

Kevin Gannon (now a Moo Deng fan account) @thetattooedprof.bsky.social · 20h

Bar associations need to start disbarring. There's immediate precedent with Giuliani. To the point @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social has repeatedly made, a polity that allows elites to repeatedly lie, obviously and with impunity, is not sustainable. Feels like the legal profession is at the same juncture.

Dante Atkins @danteatkins.bsky.social · 1d

The case against Comey is beyond weak. The case against James is worse. It is based on a lie, and they know they're lying because exculpatory evidence that contradicts the indictment had already been presented to a grand jury in another jurisdiction. Everyone involved with this needs to be disbarred

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Carolyn Ownbey, PhD @carolynownbey.bsky.social · 16h

Supposedly we have developed highly sophisticated military technology, capable of absolute precision. Heck, a sniper can land a shot from over 2 miles away.

Why, then, does Gaza City look like this? Are all of those “high-tech” advances just “thing go boom a lot”?

We know why.

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Carolyn Ownbey, PhD @carolynownbey.bsky.social · 16h

If you haven’t seen it, this footage from @apnews.com is incredibly important.

The intent here seems unmistakable, in two ways: (1) just read the genocide convention, here it **absolutely** is, and (2) this level of infrastructural destruction is, no question, meant as pre-development demolition.

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Reposted by Carolyn Ownbey, PhD

Brendan Davey @brendandavey.bsky.social · 8d

It also reveals to me, constantly, how little time any of those journalists with such a big platform have actually SPENT in university classrooms.

Especially public universities, where the majority of students are and virtually no one from the vaunted NYT or the Atlantic went.

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Reposted by Carolyn Ownbey, PhD

Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 8d

I’ve been thinking about how US media (on all sides of the political spectrum) have been on a tear for decades now radicalizing the public (there is no other word for it but radicalizing) against the very idea of universities.
The NYT, the Atlantic, WSJ, it’s been a concerted decades-long effort.

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Reposted by Carolyn Ownbey, PhD

Chris Robinson @chris-robinson.bsky.social · 10d

Roughly 1500 books published by my employer, Duke University Press, are named in the list of books Anthropic stole to build their AI. That's almost 1/3 of the books Duke UP now has in print. Now think of all publishers big and small and try to picture the total amount of stolen work. Inconceivable.

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Carolyn Ownbey, PhD @carolynownbey.bsky.social · 9d

Maybe this is a millennial thing or maybe it’s just me, but I have, etched into my memory, the fact that Snowden made journalists put their phones in the freezer before he would speak.

Not just airplane mode, not just off.

And that was in, what, 2013? The tech has gotten better (worse) since then.

Carolyn Ownbey, PhD @carolynownbey.bsky.social · 9d

These steps are important, but folks need to understand that if they’re using tech of any kind there are limits to how much they can actually protect you.

There are innovations that are more effective (mesh networks etc), but please god STOP trusting technology.

Electronic Frontier Foundation @eff.org · 10d

ICE is buying a location tracking tool that harvests data from hundreds of millions of phones a day. Protect your location data by updating a few settings on your phone 🧵 (1/4): www.404media.co/ice-to-buy-...

Carolyn Ownbey, PhD @carolynownbey.bsky.social · 9d

These steps are important, but folks need to understand that if they’re using tech of any kind there are limits to how much they can actually protect you.

There are innovations that are more effective (mesh networks etc), but please god STOP trusting technology.

Electronic Frontier Foundation @eff.org · 10d

ICE is buying a location tracking tool that harvests data from hundreds of millions of phones a day. Protect your location data by updating a few settings on your phone 🧵 (1/4): www.404media.co/ice-to-buy-...

ICE to Buy Tool that Tracks Locations of Hundreds of Millions of Phones Every Day

Documents show that ICE has gone back on its decision to not use location data remotely harvested from peoples' phones. The database is updated every day with billions of pieces of location data.

www.404media.co