Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Eric Reder is on the River 🛶💦 @ericreder.bsky.social · 4h

The system that we broke is the nature system that supports human society and all life. This breaking causes other system failures.

Renewing AND BELIEVING IN our relationship with intact functioning nature systems is the only way we get out of our current crises.

3 11

Eric Reder is on the River 🛶💦 @ericreder.bsky.social · 6h

Toronto flying to Seattle and LA flying to Milwaukee instead of a Toronto-Milwaukee matchup and a Seattle-LA matchup.
This hurts my brain a little bit.
#MLB ⚾ 🐦

1

Reposted by Eric Reder is on the River 🛶💦

Christoph Fischer @beautysurroundsyou.com · 7h

When I came upon this wonderful grove of lenga trees in Argentinian Patagonia, I could not pass up the opportunity. The dead branches & beautiful black trunks add an interesting graphical element to a sea of autumn colors.

#bluesky #landscape #travel #nature #landscapephotography #photography

21 65 640

Reposted by Eric Reder is on the River 🛶💦

Kristin Wyatt @kristinwyatt.bsky.social · 7h

#autumn #water #ripples
#photography

Autumn leaves and acorns fall from the trees making ripples in the water.

1 3 50

Reposted by Eric Reder is on the River 🛶💦

AlinaHagen 🌊🎨📸 @alinagrafik.bsky.social · 7h

#Stunday

Crepuscular rays at a nearby park. (click to see full image)

#EastCoastKin #LandscapePhotography #Pano

A panoramic view of the morning sun shining through the thin fog and trees, creating crepuscular rays and a glow. Laguna Lake Park, San Luis Obispo, California

12 20 140

Reposted by Eric Reder is on the River 🛶💦

SoCal Leslie @socalleslie.bsky.social · 6h

Nothing like a desert sunrise. 🌅 The trees are date palms. 🪶

Desert sunrise behind a row of date palms.

8 9 93

Reposted by Eric Reder is on the River 🛶💦

Mary Gillis @marygillis.bsky.social · 16h

I did this, took like 30 min.
Points I kept hammering: domestic cloud, regulations around copyright and likeness rights, focusing on machine learning with concrete, real world uses (creating new drugs, etc), the damage done by slop, the need to listen to AI experts who are realists, not boosters.

Nico Mara-McKay 🦇 (they/iel) @nicomaramckay.com · 4d

Canadians: The federal government is seeking public input on how AI should be developed and used in business, research, and the military.

If this scares the shit out of you, please let them know:

Help define the next chapter of Canada's AI leadership

Current status: Open from October 1 to October 31, 2025 Canada helped invent modern AI. To stay a leader—and protect our digital sovereignty—we're running a 30-day national sprint to shape a renewed...

ised-isde.canada.ca

5 87 180

Reposted by Eric Reder is on the River 🛶💦

Costa Samaras @costasamaras.com · 17h

wind and solar elkos low and getting lower www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

The government’s own data rebuts Trump’s claims about wind and solar prices

The Trump administration has targeted renewable energy for driving up electricity prices, but POLITICO’s analysis shows states that are growing their wind and solar power typically have lower power co...

www.politico.com

7 36

Reposted by Eric Reder is on the River 🛶💦

Himal Southasian @himalmag.bsky.social · 21h

🎙️📚 “Yes, colonisation was bad. But you could not undo the role of these countries in your life. And when you did try to undo them, it could produce a tremendous amount of violence in those societies.”

A conversation with Aatish Taseer:

Aatish Taseer on exile and the idea of return: Southasia Review of Books podcast #34

Welcome to the Southasia Review of Books podcast, where we speak to celebrated authors and emerging literary voices from across Southasia. In this episode, Shwetha Srikanthan speaks to the writer…

youtu.be

1 1

Reposted by Eric Reder is on the River 🛶💦

sadvil 😎 @sadvil.bsky.social · 1d

A great weekend to share Jeff Bridges making a perfect joke

31 650 3.3K

Reposted by Eric Reder is on the River 🛶💦

Matthew Terrill @matthewterrill.bsky.social · 1d

I was already a hard AI-skeptic but this cements my long suspicion that there is no feasible path to anything close to return on invested capital for these data centers. Tech would need 15 to 25 times current AI revenues within the next 2-3 years just to break even. Not financially viable.

"I clearly hit a nerve in the industry, when judging by the number of individuals who reached out to chat," he wrote in an followup blog post. "In total, l've spoken with over two-dozen rather senior people in the datacenter universe, and there was an interesting and overriding theme to our conversations: no one understands how the financial math is supposed to work. They are as baffled as I am, and they do this for a living."
Kupperman's original skepticism was built on a guess that the components in an average Al data center would take ten years to depreciate, requiring costly replacements. That was bad enough: "I don't see how there can ever be any return on investment given the current math," he wrote at the time.
But ten years, he now understands, is way too generous.
" had previously assumed a 10-year depreciation curve, which I now recognize as quite unrealistic based upon the speed with which Al datacenter technology is advancing," Kupperman wrote. "Based on my conversations over the past month, the physical data centers last for three to ten years, at most."
In his previous analysis, Kupperman assumed it would take the tech industry $160 billion of revenue to break even on data center spending in 2025 alone. And that's assuming an incredibly generous 25 percent gross margin - not to mention the fact that the industry's actual Al revenue is closer to $20 billion annually, as the investment manager noted in his previous blog.

"In reality, the industry probably needs a revenue range that is closer to the $320 billion to $480 billion range, just to break even on the capex to be spent this year," Kupperman posited in his updated essay. "No wonder my new contacts in the industry shoulder a heavy burden - heavier than I could ever imagine. They know the truth."
Kupperman called that gulf between tech industry spending and actual revenue in 2025 "astonishing."
However, it doesn't even begin to scratch the surface. For example, how does it all shake out when we account for 2026, when hundreds of new data centers are expected to pop up?
"Adding the two years together, and using the math from my prior post, you'd need approximately $1 trillion in revenue to hit break even, and many trillions more to earn an acceptable return on this spend," he writes.
"If the economics don't work, doing it at massive scale doesn't make the economics work any better
- it just takes an industry crisis and makes it into a national economic crisis," he concludes.
Overall, the pessimists broadly agree: it's no longer a matter of if Al is massively overhyped, but when the whole thing comes crashing down.
More on Al hype: Data Shows That Al Use Is Now Declining at Large Companies

13 170 480

Reposted by Eric Reder is on the River 🛶💦

Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 22d

“When it comes to the AI technology industry, we refuse their frames, reject their addictive and brittle technology, and demand that the sanctity of the university both as an institution and a set of values be restored.”

zenodo.org/records/1706...

4/🧵

Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia

Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these col...

zenodo.org

2 9 62

Reposted by Eric Reder is on the River 🛶💦

Preorder Read This When Things Fall Apart @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 1d

My publisher’s been very patient. I’m not doing everything I said I’d do to promote this book (out in a few weeks) because I’m an organizer in a city under federal attack. My days are full and emotionally exhausting. Any help getting the word out means a lot. It's a book people need right now.

Read This When Things Fall Apart by Kelly Hayes | Pilsen Community Books

A bundle of letters to activists and organizers on the frontlines in catastrophic times from Let This Radicalize You co-author Kelly Hayes In social movements, some heartbreaks are all but inevitable.

www.pilsencommunitybooks.com

29 610 940

Reposted by Eric Reder is on the River 🛶💦

Jeff Doctor @jeff.doctor · 1d

I am once again asking Canadian journalists to ask the most basic-ass question of "on whose land will these be built?" How is it that every other major industry must consider Indigenous rights but with tech it's like "meh".
www.cbc.ca/news/busines...

ANALYSIS | Why OpenAI wants to help Canada build homegrown artificial intelligence | CBC News

OpenAI wants to help Canada build a sovereign digital infrastructure for artificial intelligence, putting the country in a tough spot as it tries to distance itself from overreliance on U.S. tech comp...

www.cbc.ca

11 150 330

Reposted by Eric Reder is on the River 🛶💦

Dr Eleanor Janega @goingmedieval.bsky.social · 1d

If I see you posting AI slop, it's an instant block. Even if you think it's cute or says a lot about society. If you are purporting that some AI slop is real news, I will report you for misinformation, and then block you. Sloppers should be marginalised.

15 180 1.1K

Reposted by Eric Reder is on the River 🛶💦

Zack Labe @zacklabe.com · 1d

Record high temperatures are currently being set across the northernmost portions of the #Arctic. In fact, it is effectively ice-free on the Atlantic side of the Arctic all the way up to about 85°N latitude! This includes record low sea ice around Svalbard.

Graphic by zacklabe.com/arctic-tempe...

Line graph time series of 2025's daily 2-m temperature in the Arctic compared to each year from 1958 through 2024. There is a long-term warming trend for every day of the year. There is also large interannual variability and a clear seasonal cycle.

8 100 200

Eric Reder is on the River 🛶💦 @ericreder.bsky.social · 2d

@ryankbrook.bsky.social it appears your pig press is popular

1

Reposted by Eric Reder is on the River 🛶💦

George Tsakraklides @tsakraklides.bsky.social · 3d

“Capitalism is a trap that lured humans into believing they had created a stable world. Indeed, an economy where everyone exploits everyone else is surprisingly stable in the short term”
open.substack.com/pub/georgets...

5 25 65

Eric Reder is on the River 🛶💦 @ericreder.bsky.social · 2d

Happy Friday y'all.
It's a good day...

youtu.be/dH3ArgyyrFA?...

Shungudzo - It's a good day (to fight the system) [official visualizer]

YouTube video by Shungudzo

youtu.be

Reposted by Eric Reder is on the River 🛶💦

Helen Bennett 🌿 @helenbennett.bsky.social · 2d

Just had to take a photo of this perfect looking Amanita muscaria lurking on the dark woodland floor! 🍄 📷 🌿

Wishing everyone a good weekend ahead 🕊️

#Scape #ForestFriday #FungiFriday #Photography #Mushroom #Nature #EastCoastKin

A photograph of a Fly agaric mushroom that has a bright red cap that is covered in wart-like white spots which are remnants of the white veil of tissue that at first enclosed the young mushroom, and are sometimes washed off by the rain. It has a white stem with a bulbous base. Native to the UK. It is poisonous and infamous for its psychoactive and hallucinogenic properties!

13 44 430

Reposted by Eric Reder is on the River 🛶💦

Rachel Gilmore @rachelgilmore.bsky.social · 2d

You know how local media is getting decimated as disinformation floods in?

Well, my friends at @nationalobserver.com have created an incredibly cool new tool for keeping an eye on local politics.

Check it out:

6 77 240

Reposted by Eric Reder is on the River 🛶💦

IPBES @ipbes.net · 2d

It's #WorldMentalHealthDay 🌍

#DidYouKnow Healthy ecosystems support healthy minds?

IPBES #NexusAssessment confirms: biodiversity and functioning ecosystems improve mental health. Access to biodiverse environments facilitates recovery from stress, depression & other health-related conditions.🏡🧪

1 29 61

Reposted by Eric Reder is on the River 🛶💦

Kara Fagan 🇨🇦 Liberal @fagankara.bsky.social · 2d

Just a reminder to all of our Canadian young women who might want to consider a career in trades- first, you CAN do this! Second there are organizations like Build a Dream if you’re looking for a way to start investigating.

www.webuildadream.com

Build a Dream – Build a Dream empowers female students to explore under-represented careers and promotes gender balance in the workforce.

www.webuildadream.com

1 15 48

Reposted by Eric Reder is on the River 🛶💦

Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum.bsky.social · 2d

Congratulations to Maria Corina Machado, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize - her incredible optimism has already changed her country. I spoke to her, and wrote about her, at the beginning of this year:
www.theatlantic.com/internationa...

The ‘Anthropological Change’ Happening in Venezuela

Maduro is still in place, but a pro-democracy movement is transforming the beleaguered country.

www.theatlantic.com

310 3.3K 13K

Reposted by Eric Reder is on the River 🛶💦

Jon Thompson @jonthompson.bsky.social · 3d

Nishnawbe Aski Nation Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler issues state of emergency across NAN territory over drugs, gang violence.
He on Canada & Ontario to meet & resource it.
“It has come to the point in some cases where our chiefs and council feel they’re losing control,” he says.

2 1 3