Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Izabella Laba 🇨🇦 @ijlaba.bsky.social · 1d

Also Poland in 1980! The Solidarity movement started with a shipyard strike that expanded to a general strike throughout the country. The communists were forced to sit down and negotiate.

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Izabella Laba 🇨🇦 @ijlaba.bsky.social · 2d

Give it another few weeks and he'll post the golden showers tape himself.

August J. Pollak @augustjpollak.bsky.social · 2d

We went from "OMG a tan suit this is a permanent stain on the integrity of the office" to "Is the president making AI-generated scat fetish videos a new echelon in American politics" in a shorter time than GTA VI's development cycle

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Izabella Laba 🇨🇦 @ijlaba.bsky.social · 3d

Yesterday on campus.

A round fountain pool with trees reflected in it. It's a sunny day and the tree leaves are turning yellow and orange.

Another view of the same pool, with an orange dog.

Reposted by Izabella Laba 🇨🇦

Robert Komaniecki @komaniecki.bsky.social · 4d

So you want to mobilize ground troops in Venezuela— got it. I hear that you're concerned about civilian casualties, and I can minimize those with a little more information. Would you like to enter via Venezuela's southern border with France, or by sea?

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Izabella Laba 🇨🇦 @ijlaba.bsky.social · 5d

Canadians voting with our feet, and no, we're not going to go back until the circumstances change.

Hey, nobody *made* them vote for the host of Wrestlemania 4 @legalminimum.bsky.social · 5d

For those who don't know: Vancouver BC residents regularly used to cross-border shop in Bellingham WA. If anyone was wondering whether Trump's stupidity would have a noticeable effect. This will start to hit him because he's a real estate guy and the other real estate guys will get cranky.

Cascadia Daily News @cascadiadaily.com · 5d

Retail vacancies are up in Bellingham for the second quarter in a row. At Sunset Square, 170,000 square feet of retail space is vacant.

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Reposted by Izabella Laba 🇨🇦

Andy Diggle @andydiggle.bsky.social · 6d

"I'm Tony Gilroy, creator of #Andor. I am urging you with everything I have to get out on Saturday for #NoKings day.

"Go to NoKings.org and find the location nearest you where you can go out and protest nonviolently.

"Democracy is up for grabs, and it's up to us to protect the thing we love."

"We Have Friends Everywhere" — October 18 — NoKings.org

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Izabella Laba 🇨🇦 @ijlaba.bsky.social · 7d

Oh fuck fuck no.

Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 7d

D'Angelo has died after a battle with pancreatic cancer, his former manager says. He was 51

D'Angelo Dead at 51

Grammy-winning R&B soul singer D'Angelo is dead from pancreatic cancer ... TMZ has learned.

www.tmz.com

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Reposted by Izabella Laba 🇨🇦

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 8d

yearly reminder to people insisting that we view Christopher Columbus as "a man of his time" that *the people responsible for the Spanish Inquisition* thought Columbus was out of pocket

Thomas Lecaque @tlecaque.bsky.social · 8d

Christopher Columbus was dragged back to Spain in chains by a crusading knight, convicted of tyranny and immeasurable cruelty, pardoned by Isabella but banned from returning to Hispaniola.

Fuck Columbus.

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Reposted by Izabella Laba 🇨🇦

Jeff Lockhart @jwlockhart.bsky.social · 9d

Sometimes you just can't tell people things. You just have to sit back and let them find out for themselves. Usually those people are children.

Nate Silver
@NateSilver538 • 5h
•.°
I'm just one person, and my programming needs are somewhat unusual (building various kinds of statistical forecasting models). But I'm just not seeing the consistent productivity gains from LLMs that I would have expected if you'd asked me 6 months ago.

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Reposted by Izabella Laba 🇨🇦

Carolyn Bertozzi @carolynbertozzi.bskyverified.social · 10d

My 14-yr-old and I were playing with Sora, gave it two prompts of things I/we had done that day 1/n

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 10d

The administration “is currently pressuring OpenAI and other AI companies to make their models more conservative-friendly.”

OpenAI is trying to clamp down on ‘bias’ in ChatGPT

GPT-5 is better at resisting liberal ‘pressure,’ the company says.

www.theverge.com

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Reposted by Izabella Laba 🇨🇦

Steffani [Scary Name Here] Cameron 🇨🇦 @snarkysteff.bsky.social · 10d

Either these guys don’t wanna get it or they don’t wanna admit it, but this was NEVER ABOUT TARIFFS.

It’s about respecting our fucking country and its sovereignty.

They could drop the tariffs tomorrow and half of us will still boycott the USA.

If I have a non-US option, I buy it. Even China.

American spirit exports to Canada 'plummeted' 85%, says U.S. trade group | CBC News

American spirit exports to Canada "plummeted" 85 per cent in the second quarter of 2025, with the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States calling the situation "very troubling" as consumers in ...

www.cbc.ca

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Izabella Laba 🇨🇦 @ijlaba.bsky.social · 12d

As a resident, I will in fact say that the city is not responsive to our concerns.

Michael Geller @michaelgeller.bsky.social · 12d

Were you aware the City of Vancouver has issued a Draft Official Development Plan for public review and comments? Nor was I until I received a call from a delightful @ctvnewsvancouver.bsky.social journalist yesterday morning. You can find details here: gellersworldtravel.blogspot.com/2025/10/ctv-...

CTV Interview regarding Vancouver's forthcoming Official Development Plan - October 8, 2025

Yesterday morning a got a call from a very delightful Demetra Maragos, a journalist with CTV. She was doing a story about the City of Vancou...

gellersworldtravel.blogspot.com

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Reposted by Izabella Laba 🇨🇦

Lucius Fox In The Box @carnegro.bsky.social · 12d

Pope Leo is spitting.

www.npr.org/2025/10/09/n...

Leo questioned a world where the wealth of the elite grows
"exponentially" while many "millions of people die of hunger or survive in conditions unfit for human beings." He also criticized "ideologies that defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation,"
with false promises "that a free-market economy will automatically solve the problem of poverty."

Leo described a "new tyranny," which shuns any kind of oversight and where the economy is structured "in such a way that sacrifices are demanded of the masses in order to serve the needs of the powerful." The poor, he wrote, are only allowed "drops that trickle down."

The pope openly challenged "prosperity theology" and called Christians to the practice of giving charity. "It will not solve the problem of world poverty, yet it must still be carried out, with intelligence, diligence and social responsibility," he wrote.

Popular movements that challenge "the empire of money," invite people to take on the cause to combat poverty alongside the poor, instead of on their behalf, and "make history," the pope said. It our duty, Leo said, to "make their voices heard, albeit in different ways, in order to point out and denounce such structural issues, even at the cost of appearing foolish or naïve."

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Izabella Laba 🇨🇦 @ijlaba.bsky.social · 13d

I did like DMW when it was staged here. M-D I have not seen. Maybe I should look it up sometime?

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Izabella Laba 🇨🇦 @ijlaba.bsky.social · 13d

Yeah, either that or else pick a subplot and focus on that. For K&C, you have to keep the three main characters or else it's not K&C. But maybe less war? The deployment to Antarctica could be cut out? Do you spend time on the comics they work on? Dunno.

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Izabella Laba 🇨🇦 @ijlaba.bsky.social · 13d

I loved the book, too! And now I'm going to spend the rest of the evening thinking about how I would adapt it 🤣🤣🤣

(As a mathematician, I've had to give 20-minute talks about 200-page proofs. It's actually a very similar problem.)

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Izabella Laba 🇨🇦 @ijlaba.bsky.social · 14d

Same for "math ability". It's not a single type of ability, it can't be measured on a linear scale, and the mythical "far end of the bell curve" is lost in the fog of the margin of error.

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Reposted by Izabella Laba 🇨🇦

NightMar on Hicks Street, Part 4: The Rabbit’s Revenge @histoftech.bsky.social · 16d

happy sunday, remember that you are completely expendable to your employer and that when you die they will forget you ever existed within weeks and easily replace you

Work really hard and one day this can be you (followed by graffiti of a headstone that says “RIP worked really hard” on it

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Izabella Laba 🇨🇦 @ijlaba.bsky.social · 17d

I do like the idea that analysis is salty 😂😂😂

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Izabella Laba 🇨🇦 @ijlaba.bsky.social · 18d

And the Danzig Corridor is being brought up as the WW2 counterpart to the Suwałki corridor? Which, of course, Russia offers to "resolve peacefully"?

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Reposted by Izabella Laba 🇨🇦

onion person @junlper.beer · 19d

it’s really good when “technology of the future” treats you leaving as if you were leaving a cult

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Izabella Laba 🇨🇦 @ijlaba.bsky.social · 19d

Yep. I'm an actual researcher in math, as in: I create research rather than just "research" with Google. I've seen Google AI blurbs on the topics on my research, with sentences from my papers taken out of context and rearranged so that they no longer make sense. I cannot recommend it to anyone.

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Izabella Laba 🇨🇦 @ijlaba.bsky.social · 20d

"Our power isn’t in making one of the choices that are presented to us. Our power is in shaping the choices available to us."

John Raimo @johnraimo.bsky.social · 20d

Gift link: essential and sadly brave writing for dark times from Tressie McMillan Cottom (@tressiemcphd.bsky.social). www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/o...

Opinion | Mourn, or Else

www.nytimes.com

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Izabella Laba 🇨🇦 @ijlaba.bsky.social · 21d

Someone needs to cut off their mushroom supply.

Justin McElroy 🇨🇦 @jmcelroy.bsky.social · 21d

Vancouver Developers Being Chill About Redeveloping Malls By Building Two Million Dollar Condos On Top Of Them Challenge: impossible

(this is for oakridge)

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Izabella Laba 🇨🇦 @ijlaba.bsky.social · 21d

Yeah, I know. That was a "yes, and". And I'll make sure to vote against every single one of those ABC fuckers next time.

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