Author | Lightnews

C. E. M. Henderson

@cemhend.bsky.social

2.8K followers 1.7K following 600 posts

PhD@UToronto CMS. Palaeography, codicology, forensics skeptic. Also Chaucer and video games. Wikipedia editor (AMA). AuDHD. 🏴🏳️‍⚧️ Also @[email protected] and cemhend on birdsite

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C. E. M. Henderson @cemhend.bsky.social · Nov 12

Hi new folks! 👋
I’m in my last year* of dissertation-writing about Medieval English scribal identification. Can we do it: by consensus (no); with some help from forensics (also no); at all (unclear); with the help of machine learning (surprisingly maybe yes)?

*if I can stop getting in car crashes

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Andrew Turley @aturls.bsky.social · 19h

Look folks gen AI videos are out in the wild so if you weren't already being careful about sharing rage bait videos then now is a great time to start

If you can't trace a video back to a trusted source then I recommend leaving it where it is, like a slice of bologna you found on the street

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Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · 1d

arXiv will no longer accept review articles and position papers unless they have been accepted at a journal or a conference and complete successful peer review.

This is due to being overwhelmed by a hundreds of AI generated papers a month.

Yet another open submission process killed by LLMs.

Attention Authors: Updated Practice for Review Articles and Position Papers in arXiv CS Category – arXiv blog

blog.arxiv.org

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C. E. M. Henderson @cemhend.bsky.social · 1d

This has the potential to be TRULY STUPID

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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 4d

JD Vance claims that diversity weakens unions, as people end up distrusting each other and not organizing.

Let me tell you two menswear stories related to this claim. 🧵

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C. E. M. Henderson @cemhend.bsky.social · 6d

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Dr Basil Arnould Price @basilaprice.bsky.social · 6d

It’s finally coming out ! Get ready Old Norse studies 😈🏳️‍⚧️

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C. E. M. Henderson @cemhend.bsky.social · 6d

what do you mean it’s totally routine to get a brain scan after you have a—

C. E. M. Henderson @cemhend.bsky.social · 7d

They got rid of Biden in a hurry because he’s old but the president finds a cognitive impairment screener very hard and this is fine apparently

Acyn @acyn.bsky.social · 7d

Trump: AOC is low IQ. If you give her an IQ test, have her pass like the exams that I decided to take when I was at Walter Reed. Those are very hard…

The first couple of questions are easy. A tiger, an elephant, a giraffe..

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☀️ Starshine @starshine.bsky.social · 9d

i feel like im goin insane

The Intercept @theintercept.com · 9d

Support for the Maine Senate candidate suggests that voters are so sick of what the establishment has to offer, they might look past a Nazi tattoo.

The Left Put Its Faith in Graham Platner. Will He Break Its Heart?

Support for the Maine Senate candidate suggests that voters are so sick of what the establishment has to offer, they might look past a Nazi tattoo.

interc.pt

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C. E. M. Henderson @cemhend.bsky.social · 9d

ok, I would play the shit out of “shooty game with inexplicable dream physics” but I recognize this is probably not what the tech dingdong had in mind

K. Thor Jensen @kthorjensen.bsky.social · 10d

Oh my god some fucking tech dingdong posted this on Twitter with the caption "AI games are going to be amazing" totally seriously, you have to watch it. You have to. In full screen.

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 14d

“By 2035, data centers globally are projected to use about as much electricity as India…according to the International Energy Agency. A single data center can also use more than 500,000 gallons of water a day, nearly as much as an Olympic-size swimming pool.”

🎁:
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/t...

From Mexico to Ireland, Fury Mounts Over a Global A.I. Frenzy

www.nytimes.com

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Heather Randell @heatherrandell.bsky.social · 14d

“In Ireland, data centers consume more than 20 percent of the country’s electricity. In Chile, precious aquifers are in danger of depletion. In South Africa, where blackouts have long been routine, data centers are further taxing the national grid.”

Gift link:
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/t...

From Mexico to Ireland, Fury Mounts Over a Global A.I. Frenzy

www.nytimes.com

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eileen chengyin chow @chowleen.bsky.social · 14d

You wonder who they mean,
but then you see. Their poison hemlock? That
is you. Their brown tree snake. Their killer bee.

-Amit Majmudar, 'Invasive Species'
#everynightapoem
We flower where we flower.

AMIT MAJMUDAR
Invasive Species
The bees are Africanized. All elm disease is Dutch.
The carp is Asian, the python of the Everglades specifically Burmese. The plague bacillus sailed from India to Europe. Europe coughed khaki back at India. Everything is alien, especially star thistle with its spurs and bursts, unearthly, mapping its home galaxy
like a foundling with a fleur-de-lys foot tattoo.
Though even lilies hitchhike— every ditch lily was once a tiger lily, treasured in the garden of a Mughal. Everybody thinks the Mughals Indian, but Mughal comes from Mongol.
Invaders make themselves at home and home remakes them into natives. Everybody comes from someplace else where they were royal refugees. We flower where we flower, flinging roots like ropes from runaway hot air balloons to snag a city's skyline.
It never feels like an invasion when you're doing it. It feels like parenting, like cooking what you've always cooked, like dancing with your grandma at a noisy wedding But then you turn to see the horrified park rangers staring at you, calling in the experts-look at this, what do we do, they're everywhere. You wonder who they mean, but then you see. Their poison hemlock? That is you. Their brown tree snake. Their killer bee.

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Mel Buer @melbuer.bsky.social · 18d

What are you good at? Got some skills? Are you a good talker? A gardener? A cook? A laborer? Got a closet full of coats that don’t fit your kids but might fit the kids whose mom just got deported? C’mon friends, there’s space for you in the movement. Join it. Pick up the tools for the time you got

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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 16d

It’s tiresome at this point, but again, their entire pitch is “wouldn’t it be great if there were no such things as talent, craft, and skill,” and what that means is a bland, slop-filled world. www.businessinsider.com/marc-andrees...

Didn't go to film school? Don't worry. Legendary investor and movie buff Marc Andreessen doesn't think that will be an issue for future creatives.

During an episode of "Monitoring the Situation," the podcast for the venture capitalist firm that Andreessen cofounded, A16z, he said advancements in AI technology — like OpenAI's Sora 2 — have made it possible for a new type of filmmaker to emerge.

"The filmmaker with no visual skill, or access to a set, or to a camera, or to actors, but with an idea," Andreessen said on Friday. "It's going to start with shorts and animated things and so forth, but it's going to work its way up to full movies."

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Brandon Bishop @brandontbishop.bsky.social · 18d

Every decade, university administrators excite themselves over the prospects of firing all the faculty and 95% of the staff.

Early 2020s: LLMs
Early 2010s: MOOCs
Early 2000s: Wikis

ktb ⧉ @kevinbaker.bsky.social · 18d

In ways that we haven't fully internalized, LLM discourse is reanimating key features of 2004ish Wikipedia discourse.

Vlad K. @porcupunk.bsky.social · 18d

Wow. Just wow.

"Students pay premium prices for information that AI now delivers instantly and for free. A business student can ask ChatGPT to explain supply chain optimization or generate market analysis in seconds. The traditional lecture-and-test model faces its Blockbuster moment."

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bleary @bleary.off-the-records.com · 20d

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

Did people really memorize phone numbers before cell phones, or is that just a movie thing?
2? Questions
I was watching some old shows from the 90s and noticed people would just dial numbers from memory - like they'd call their friends or family without looking anything up.
Made me wonder if that was actually normal back then? Did people genuinely have all their important numbers memorized, or did most folks keep a little address book or written list nearby?

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Allison Hantschel @allisonhantschel.com · 21d

The last No Kings in Chicago was like 90 percent older female protest veterans who've been derided as normie lib wine moms for the past decade so maybe we could start nagging, like, "woodworking dads" or find a way to condescend to 30-year-old men for a goddamn change.

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Dave Andress @davidandress.bsky.social · 21d

5. Global climate collapse OUGHT to be a force as potent as potential nuclear war in keeping public discourse honest.

6. For a while in the 1990s it looked like it might be.

7. But then it was swallowed up in the bundle of things it was permitted to preach ideological lies & garbage about...

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Eduardo Valdés-Hevia 👁️ @valdevia.art · 22d

Spontaneous Carcinometamorphosis, commonly known as Mancini's disease after the famed boxer-turned-crustacean Bruno Mancini, is a disease that will slowly turn skeleton to exoskeleton, hands to claws, lungs to gills, until a human being finds itself where all the roads of evolution lead: crab.

A textbook anatomical drawing of a human with a large crab claw for an arm. Some of the organs inside appear to be that of a crab's.

A black-and-white photo of a patient in a hospital, being held by two nurses. The man's arms are now crab claws, and his skin is turning into an exoskeleton. His eyes are now at the end of stalks.

A textbook showing three black-and-white pictures of a person's arm turning into a crab claw. The three stages read "Presymptomatic patient", with a regular man's arm, "Exoskeletalization", where the arms turns hard and segmented and the fingers start fusing, and "late stage transformation", where the arm is fully crab-like.

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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 24d

www.wweek.com/culture/2025...

Can you put into words what that purpose is? You and the frog have really become icons of this protest.

There’s been a nice overall whimsy that has shown up. The frog is amazing. We had a bunch of other inflatable people here last night, too. I saw people playing Twister the other day.

What they rely on is fear. So by coming out in an absurdist manner, it speaks to them, to some extent, that we’re actually not that afraid.

It also dismantles their narrative a little bit. When they try to describe this situation as “war-torn,” it becomes much harder to take them seriously when they have to post a video saying [U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security] Kristi Noem is up on the balcony staring over the Antifa Army and it’s, like, eight journalists and five protesters and one of them is in a chicken suit.

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C. E. M. Henderson @cemhend.bsky.social · 27d

Summary of replies: things are about to get GREAT. Except your back. That’s about to become very, very bad.

essencesimmone.blacksky.app @essencesimmone.blacksky.app · Oct 3

Those who are 35+, what advice do you have for people just entering their 30s?

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✨️Angel Facts✨️ @angelic.style · 29d

ppl dunk constantly on things like philosophy and sociology and then turn around and go "maybe the computer *is* actually talking to me"

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Andrew F. Sullivan @afsulli.bsky.social · Sep 30

this Sunday I will be at Little Ghosts Festival in Toronto talking about the specific and unseemly horror of Toronto.

bring your moms and dads or other parental guardians.

The Little Ghosts Festival Panel & Reading Schedule!

Saturday October 4:
1pm: Horror in Comic Books
2pm: Wet Screams: Horrotica & Monster Romance
3pm: Queer Fears
4pm: INHUMANITIES Book Launch & author readings

Sunday October 5:
1pm: Eco Horror & Climate Fiction
2pm: Horror on Film
3pm: Toronto is Terrifying: City as Setting
4pm: Author readings

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Mychal Threets @mychal3ts.bsky.social · Oct 1

There have been two hosts in the history of Reading Rainbow. The Legend of Literacy, LeVar Burton! And... me, Mychal Threets, a librarian 🥹🤯

I am a reader, a librarian because LeVar Burton and Reading Rainbow made us believe and see we belong in books, we belong everywhere ✨

youtu.be/e7es7qdWVnU

Smiling Mychal with hands raised wears an outer space shirt in a library. It is a still from an episode of Reading Rainbow.

LeVar Burton smiles with hands behind his head as he lies down on a colorful pile of books. ENEMY PIE book rests on his chest.

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