Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Holt @holt.bsky.social · 1h

There is nowhere else I’ve been where I felt so much that, at any moment, I would be captured by the mythical Roc and carried away.

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Holt @holt.bsky.social · 6h

You get a point each time you see that “Blocked” that saves you from reading a message.

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Holt @holt.bsky.social · 8h

I do think there is a minority of Mainers whose primary concern is the general health of the Democratic party, and they view the support of another ~octogenarian as being a bad thing in that regard.

Holt @holt.bsky.social · 8h

I think most Mainers I’ve seen talk about it likely would not be complaining if Mills’ support were coming entirely from in-state sources. How should a state protect its sense of political-self?

Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 1d

The whining about Janet Mills jumping into the Maine Senate race is pretty hard to take. It's fine and healthy for our candidates to run in contested primaries. It's dangerous to simply nominate people by acclamation based on internet vibes. Mills isn't even bad, she's just extremely old.

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Holt @holt.bsky.social · 9h

Once I get one that’s less dangerous, I’ll make sure to share it.

Reposted by Holt

Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 20h

Over the next several weeks I am going to live skeet my evening reading of Hannah Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism" for no particular reason.

Picture of the Library of America edition of Hannah Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism" with a glass and decanter of bourbon adjacent for no particular reason.

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Holt @holt.bsky.social · 9h

I am a fan of the citrus soda. I tried dry-packing the limes in salt this time, which was too salty. I may try a brine next time to more precisely control the salt level. I also think there’s likely to be a bit more fermentation flavor development with a little lower salt content.

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Holt @holt.bsky.social · 18h

Learned what an osmotic laxative was today while testing out a chanh muõi (vietnamese salted lime soda) recipe.

Super effective!

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Holt @holt.bsky.social · 1d

There are a few Roaring bitmap implementations in Python too, for particularly large/possibly-partially-sparse sets.

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Holt @holt.bsky.social · 1d

Is there a whistle type you’re recommending?

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Holt @holt.bsky.social · 1d

What is a political party? Is a surprisingly complicated question, and I think it would be good if we allowed people to coordinate and compete for better answers to it.

David Darmofal @daviddarmofal.bsky.social · 1d

Competitive primaries are good for parties. The strengths & weaknesses of Mills, Platner, and others will become clear through competition. It's ridiculous to claim, as Bernie Sanders has, that this will eat up resources. Democrats should have plenty of money & shouldn't be the anti-democracy party.

Amy Fried @asfried.bsky.social · 1d

Maine Democrats are facing a choice for who will take on Susan Collins and that’s exactly how it should be. A competitive primary isn’t a distraction. It’s a crucible that tests candidates and shows who’s strongest. #mepolitics

amyfried.substack.com/p/a-maine-de...

Reposted by Holt

Carlos Scheidegger @cscheid.net · 1d

This may just be the best CS paper I’ve read this year. Just read the abstract and first para of the intro! The rest of the intro is really wild too, but very very good:

dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

A screenshot of an academic paper. It reads:

Abstract
A "
'quine" is a deterministic program that prints itself. In this essay, I will show you a "gauguine": a probabilistic program that infers itself. A gauguine is repeatedly asked to guess its own source code. Initially, its chances of guessing correctly are of course minuscule. But as the gauguine observes more and more of its own previous guesses, it detects patterns of behavior and gains information about its inner workings.
This information allows it to bootstrap self-knowledge, and ultimately discover its own source code. We will discuss how-and why-we might write a gauguine, and what we stand to learn by constructing one.
CCS Concepts: • Computing methodologies → Philo-sophical/theoretical foundations of artificial intelli-gence; Theory of mind.
Keywords: reflection, probabilistic programming
ACM Reference Format:
Kartik Chandra, Amanda Liu, Jonathan Ragan-Kelley, and Joshua B.
Tenenbaum. 2025. Gauguin, Descartes, Bayes: A Diurnal Golem's Brain. In Proceedings of the 2025 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software (Onward! '25), October 12-18, 2025, Singapore, Singa-pore. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 9 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/
3759429.3762631

1 A Way of Knowing

From time to time, we all have crises of identity-moments of radical and overwhelming uncertainty about our selves.
I' don't know whether the doubts that seize us can really be externalized in language, but if I were to try, I would express them as questions, questions like: Who am I? What am I?
What kind of person? What kind of mind?

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Holt @holt.bsky.social · 2d

What would a communication/decision environment look like where we could (more) reliably tell if this were true or not?

29 U.S.C. § 157 @organizingpower.bsky.social · 2d

This is objectively wrong. Manchin and Sinema were happy to fall on the grenade. But Schumer and over half the Dem caucus had no interest in nuking the legislativd filibuster.

Michael McDonald @electproject.bsky.social · 2d

The rest of the Democratic caucus wanted to nuke the filibuster. They were the ones preventing it.

Holt @holt.bsky.social · 2d

And when we learn that our system does not perform as we intend when faced with real world inputs, we should adapt the system so that it performs as we desire?

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Holt @holt.bsky.social · 2d

What worse fate could you wish on someone than to have them constantly surrounded by people that are encouraging their self destruction? What is left to reason with when they surround themselves with such company voluntarily?

Sally Jenkins @sallyjenx.bsky.social · 3d

Ratio me. Please. It's a badge of honor. If you don't like a link, go follow some chicken-heart who needs the approval of the thought-police. Caitlin Flanagan of @theatlantic.com is a tremendous writer and this piece is an excellent read. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Don’t Bet Against Bari Weiss

The new editor in chief of CBS News triumphs over her critics.

www.theatlantic.com

Holt @holt.bsky.social · 2d

Justice will be our hammer, and every prosecution a nail for a third reconstruction.

Graham Platner for Senate @grahamformaine.bsky.social · 3d

We have armed secret police kidnapping people off the street based on the color of their skin.

When we win: we will haul them before a Senate committee. The masks will come off. There will be consequences.

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Holt @holt.bsky.social · 3d

Original: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Inside tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s off-the-record lectures about the antichrist

The political svengali and investor has been giving lectures on ‘an evil king or tyrant … who appears in the end times’

www.theguardian.com

Holt @holt.bsky.social · 3d

If a politician ran whose entire platform was “If someone publicly confesses to a crime, I will investigate and prosecute them for that crime.” I would vote for them in a heartbeat.

An excerpt from an article about Peter Thiel:

He believes the Armageddon will be ushered in by an antichrist-type figure who cultivates a fear of existential threats such as climate change, Al and nuclear war to amass inordinate power. The idea is this figure will convince people to do everything they can to avoid something like a third world war, including accepting a one-world order charged with protecting everyone from the apocalypse that implements a complete restriction of technological prog ss. In his mind, this is already happening. Thiel said that international financial bodies, which make it more difficult for people to shelter their wealth in tax havens, are one sign the antichrist may be amassing power and hastening Armageddon, saying: "It's become quite difficult to hide one's money."

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Holt @holt.bsky.social · 3d

In honour of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand.

Multi agent YOLO mode.

🫧 Spark Elation 🫧 @tyranny.sparklenoise.com · 3d

In honour of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand.

“a supply chain attack”

Queen Olivia III @queenoliviaiii.com · 3d

In honour of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand.

“The tapes wouldn’t start”

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Holt @holt.bsky.social · 3d

“Huffing Straussian hyperfarts”

Jake Flores @feraljokes.bsky.social · 3d

I can't believe this is real

Holt @holt.bsky.social · 4d

bsky.app/profile/left...

Em, spookily 👻 @lefttheprairie.bsky.social · 11d

The final piece of good news: it is so easy for you to help! Use the Pilsen Arts & Community House link for the whistle project and check out these other resources

linktr.ee/pilsenartsco...

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Holt @holt.bsky.social · 5d

“You’re killing people”

I think most people read/hear this as ~“I am preparing to defend myself and others from you, to your death or mine if necessary.”

Anna Holmes @annabookwriter.bsky.social · 5d

I actually get more annoyed when people say they “just” use AI for their emails or to check their grammar. You’re killing people. For your banal shit. Not for some great discovery or curing cancer. Because you can’t write an email.

Reposted by Holt

rev. howard arson @theophite.bsky.social · 5d

found milei's alt

Quinta Jurecic @qjurecic.bsky.social · 5d

I am formally admitting defeat at understanding the Argentinian economy

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Holt @holt.bsky.social · 5d

Have you been to Richard’s Super Premium Ice Cream?

Holt @holt.bsky.social · 6d

I think this is part of why AI discussions are quite difficult. What does it mean for something to “seem to embody a collective hopelessness…”? That question is quite hard to disentangle from an entire worldview.

Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 6d

Generative AI, in both form and content, and whether looked on favourably or critically, seems to embody a collective hopelessness about the prospect of human learning and creativity, if not human knowledge altogether. It’s as if climate change had fans.

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