Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Dave Karpf

Noah Frank @noahafrank.bsky.social · 14m

Dave is spot on. For reasons that should become quickly obvious, I keep coming back to this piece I wrote almost three years ago frequently these days www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article...

1 4 8

Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 21m

There are elements of all three. Reality is complicated!

But the stories we tell matter, and storytelling involves choices.

1

Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 23m

Everyone agrees that we're currently in a dotcom era-like AI bubble. People disagree what sort of bubble it is.

There are 3 stories one can tell about the dotcom crash: a startup story, a telecom story, and an accounting fraud story.

My take: it's giving Enron
open.substack.com/pub/davekarp...

It's Giving Enron

On the AI bubble, and the various echoes of the dotcom crash

open.substack.com

8 28 87

Reposted by Dave Karpf

John Calvin’s Strongest Soldier @waveturtlejake.bsky.social · 7h

Hey guys, bad news about my upcoming appearance on Brightsiders. On the one hand, I wish this would have happened before I got on the plane and missed my brother’s wedding. On the other hand, we don’t hold grudges in the Bright community. It’s not what Daryl and Nick would have wanted.

Gaius (from Tribunate) @gaius.bsky.social · Aug 18

Sad news everyone, I’m officially pulling the plug on Brightsiders, my super fan podcast for the 2017 movie Bright. I still feel like there were many interesting topics left to discuss but after 7 years of weekly episodes I’ve learned that no one has ever listened to the show.

4 32 380

Reposted by Dave Karpf

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 8h

one of my takeaways from this great piece is that weiss just doesn’t…sound like an intelligent person? or at least, not someone who has thought even a little bit about how and why they think the things that they do. www.youtube.com/watch?v=gieT...

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

YouTube video by LastWeekTonight

www.youtube.com

340 1.4K 7.7K

Reposted by Dave Karpf

Ken Liu @kyliu99.bsky.social · 7h

It's launch day for the US edition of ALL THAT WE SEE OR SEEM!

What is the future for human art in the age of AI? What kind of AI is actually helpful? These are some of the questions driving this techno-thriller.

Get it from wherever you prefer to get your books.

@sagapressbooks.bsky.social

3 28 130

Reposted by Dave Karpf

NY Times Pitchbot @nytpitchbot.bsky.social · 1d

Elon Musk is doing Enron the right way.

by Ezra Klein

electrek.co/2025/10/13/e...

Elon Musk's SpaceX and xAI are buying Tesla's unsold Cybertrucks

Hundreds of Tesla Cybertrucks have been spotted being delivered Elon Musk’s private companies, SpaceX and xAI, as Tesla is having...

electrek.co

78 560 3K

Reposted by Dave Karpf

Perry Bacon @perrybaconjr.bsky.social · 23h

I think the main barrier to honest, direct coverage from the mainstream media in Trump 1.0 was professional norms/reflexive both sides-ism. In 2.0, that's still a factor, but a bigger barrier may be ownership. Reporters/editors know that many media owners are wary of too much anti-Trump coverage.

18 81 450

Reposted by Dave Karpf

Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · 1d

don't worry, Sam Altman is confident that his efforts to eliminate vast numbers of jobs will all just sort of work out for the unemployed, eventually, possibly after they starve to death, which is technically a form of having it work out

futurism.com/artificial-i...

Sam Altman Says If Jobs Gets Wiped Out, Maybe They Weren't Even "Real Work" to Start With

Worried that AI will destroy work? Well, Sam Altman asks if you've considered what a farmer from half a century ago thinks of your job, first.

futurism.com

89 250 1.1K

Reposted by Dave Karpf

Mike Masnick @mmasnick.bsky.social · 1d

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver this week is a complete takedown of Bari Weiss... and it's thorough and devastating.

And a bit of interesting timing, given that Weiss's new boss, David Ellison (who is talked about in the episode) is trying to buy HBO, where Oliver's show is...

27 420 2.1K

Reposted by Dave Karpf

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d

underrated part of this is that stoller very clearly has no idea what "the passive voice" is

Ghostin this Hell @hoovybaby.bsky.social · 1d

no quarter given lmao

Matt Stoller & @matthewstoller • 2h
UPS had seven months of warning about the de minimis change, but is still taking packages w/o getting required customs info & is making tariff charge errors.
Nice use of passive voice though!

derek guy
@dieworkwear • 2h
i apologize using a passive voice. i was not born in london to a wealthy bank executive, sent to an exclusive private prep school in new hampshire, and then studied at harvard before larping as a champion of the people. you have to work with my low upbringing.

95 530 6.6K

Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 1d

3 24 240

Reposted by Dave Karpf

Will Jennings 🗳️ @drjennings.bsky.social · 1d

Anyone writing about the influence of these thinkers really needs to provide detail on what they have actually written. Most of it is incoherent, lacking any substance and often downright weird.

Huw C. Davies @huwcdavies.bsky.social · 2d

Reading Thiel, Yarvin, Peterson et al. makes you realise what passes for intellectual iconoclasm these days is all absolute bollocks. Why anyone gives any of these people the time of day let alone credibility is baffling.

20 73 360

Reposted by Dave Karpf

David_j_roth @davidjroth.bsky.social · 2d

It's striking that even in the defenses of Bari Weiss's broader thing no one ever says that she or her website does good work. Even the people that admire the success she's had selling lite reactionary shit to rich old guys top out at "people do seem to like it." You could defend Jake Paul that way.

52 280 2.2K

Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 2d

Yikes.

2

Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 2d

Just sent V2 of the full, edited manuscript back to my editor.

Current mood:

a poster for the blues brothers shows two men in a car and says hit it

Alt: Jake and Elwood Blues, on a mission from God.

media.tenor.com

3 2 93

Reposted by Dave Karpf

ceej @ceej.online · 2d

the disastrous refusal of the self-styled silicon valley technokings to keep anyone in their lives capable of questioning their increasingly incomprehensible politics has lead to a crisis of thinking so severe that a fifty-eight year old man believes something is important because he knows about it

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 2d

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.

48 140 980

Reposted by Dave Karpf

Maria Bustillos @handle.invalid · 2d

Flaming Hydra IS the name of a great band
(of writers and artists)

Check out some free work at flaminghydra.com/free

follow us at @flaminghydra.com

1 7 31

Reposted by Dave Karpf

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 2d

a key thing about vought — and all of these guys — is that they have a totally top down and hierarchical vision of the world. they believe that the cultural changes they hate can be turned off by destroying the federal government because they can’t imagine that they emerged bottom-up in society

Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 2d

What he’s railing against is a profound shift in culture, status… He’s obsessed with the idea that America is controlled by a leftist “ruling elite” - but “elite” isn’t defined socio-economically or by political power, it means something like: Getting to define “real America” and who gets to belong.

290 3.3K 14K

Reposted by Dave Karpf

Kashana @kashana.blacksky.app · 2d

So thankful that dudes without game now have the option of driving all of our energy bills up to come up with devastating lines like it was nice to meet you

C. Buckthorn @cbuckthorn.bsky.social · 2d

This is amazing. I laughed out loud www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

As 32-year-old Rich points out, though, "it's not like using ChatGPT guarantees success".
When he met someone in a bar one Friday night and swapped social media handles, he asked AI what his next move should be.
ChatGPT discerned that sending an initial message on Monday midmorning would set the right pace. "Then it gave me some options for what the message could be," says Rich.
"Keep it light, warm, and low-stakes so it reads as genuine interest without urgency," the bot advised. "Something like: Hey Sarah, still laughing about [tiny shared moment/reference if you've got one] - good to meet you!" Rich went back and forth with ChatGPT until he felt they'd hit upon exactly the right message ("Hey Sarah, it was lovely to meet you") but sadly she never replied, he says. "It's been two weeks now."

55 700 3.4K

Reposted by Dave Karpf

lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 2d

alan moore hated people like thiel misinterpreting his work so profoundly that he dropped out of public life to become a shaman and worship a snake deity

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 2d

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

26 77 1K

Reposted by Dave Karpf

Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 2d

“Who was president in 2020?” remains one of the most pertinent questions in American politics—absurd, yes, but here we are—and that extends to “who was president January 1 - 19, 2021?”

Joyce White Vance @joycewhitevance.bsky.social · 2d

That’s a nice trick, since Biden wasn’t the president on Jan 6.

65 880 4.4K

Reposted by Dave Karpf

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 2d

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

130 580 4.2K

Reposted by Dave Karpf

Ryan W Enslow @ryanwenslow.bsky.social · 2d

The purpose of government is not to maximize earnings to investors

36 330 1.4K