Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Lisa Messeri

Audra Wolfe @audrajwolfe.bsky.social · 21h

My best advice to aspiring authors of scholarly books is to read other scholarly books recently published by your target press. This may seem obvious and yet is not!

1 13 79

Lisa Messeri @lmesseri.bsky.social · 22h

many graduate students (who are otherwise very talented) don't know the style of italicizing book titles and putting article titles (un-italicized) in quotes. I'm wondering why this is? Genuinely asking this question, and perhaps also wondering if this style convention is changing?

1 1

Reposted by Lisa Messeri

NightMar on Hicks Street, Part 4: The Rabbit’s Revenge @histoftech.bsky.social · 1d

UVA school of data science is hiring this year—searches are open to folks from all disciplines. We need humanists & social scientists to teach ethics/data & society courses + do research that supports school’s mission to be holistic in the study of data science: datascience.virginia.edu/faculty-jobs

Faculty Jobs — School of Data Science

School of Data Science at the University of Virginia.

datascience.virginia.edu

2 38 39

Reposted by Lisa Messeri

Adam Wickberg @adamwickberg.bsky.social · 3d

We are hiring! Prospective PhD students in environmental history, history of science, history of technology and STS interested in the climate and environmental impacts of AI look here. Please share in your networks. #envhist #histsci #AI #anthropcoene

Center for Anthropocene History @anthropocenekth.bsky.social · 7d

Open PhD position at KTH: "AI Planetary Futures: Climate and environment in Silicon Valley's AI paradigm". Apply by Oct 23! lnkd.in/dCs8eZjb

The project analyzes the climate and environmental aspects of Silicon Valley-based general-purpose AI systems developed by Big Tech companies.

1 26 21

Reposted by Lisa Messeri

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

The Virginia Senate just told UVA it’s not getting state funding if it accepts the compact since UVA exists to serve Virginia, its residents, & their interests—not be a tool of the federal govt. Scoop from our student newspaper, who’ve been doing vital reporting www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2025...

39 1.1K 3.8K

Lisa Messeri @lmesseri.bsky.social · 5d

my co-author and i have an article coming out in a cog sci journal in just a few weeks obliterating (if i do say so myself) this avenue of research. 😈

1 4

Lisa Messeri @lmesseri.bsky.social · 5d

The president of MIT has declined to sign "the compact". Full letter, as shared with the MIT community:

Dear Madam Secretary,

I write in response to your letter of October 1, inviting MIT to review a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” I acknowledge the vital importance of these matters.

I appreciated the chance to meet with you earlier this year to discuss the priorities we share for American higher education.

As we discussed, the Institute’s mission of service to the nation directs us to advance knowledge, educate students and bring knowledge to bear on the world’s great challenges. We do that in line with a clear set of values, with excellence above all. Some practical examples:

• MIT prides itself on rewarding merit. Students, faculty and staff succeed here based on the strength of their talent, ideas and hard work. For instance, the Institute was the first to reinstate the SAT/ACT requirement after the pandemic. And MIT has never had legacy preferences in admissions.
• MIT opens its doors to the most talented students regardless of their family’s finances. Admissions are need-blind. Incoming undergraduates whose families earn less than $200,000 a year pay no tuition. Nearly 88% of our last graduating class left MIT with no debt for their education. We make a wealth of free courses and low-cost certificates available to any American with an internet connection. Of the undergraduate degrees we award, 94% are in STEM fields. And in service to the nation, we cap enrollment of international undergraduates at roughly 10%.

• We value free expression, as clearly described in the MIT Statement on Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom. We must hear facts and opinions we don’t like – and engage respectfully with those with whom we disagree.

These values and other MIT practices meet or exceed many standards outlined in the document you sent. We freely choose these values because they’re right, and we live by them because they support our mission – work of immense value to the prosperity, competitiveness, health and security of the United States. And of course, MIT abides by the law.

The document also includes principles with which we disagree, including those that would restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution. And fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone.

In our view, America’s leadership in science and innovation depends on independent thinking and open competition for excellence. In that free marketplace of ideas, the people of MIT gladly compete with the very best, without preferences. Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education.

As you know, MIT’s record of service to the nation is long and enduring. Eight decades ago, MIT leaders helped invent a scientific partnership between America’s research universities and the U.S. government that has delivered extraordinary benefits for the American people. We continue to believe in the power of this partnership to serve the nation.

Sincerely,

Sally Kornbluth

cc
Ms. May Mailman
Mr. Vincent Haley

3 16

Reposted by Lisa Messeri

Siva @sivav.bsky.social · 8d

I can’t believe my life is being affected by the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment

newrepublic.com/article/2013...

Why This Essay Could Cause the University of Virginia to Shut Down

How Linda McMahon’s latest “compact” would do deep and permanent harm to American higher education

newrepublic.com

5 72 250

Reposted by Lisa Messeri

Laura Lopez @ohdearz.bsky.social · 7d

Valuable info about the Physics Nobel Prize today from Prof. Joseph Barranco at SFSU on Martinis and Devoret being a grad student and postdoc in Clarke's lab at UC Berkeley & Clark and Devoret being immigrants. "California *public* education made this happen. Immigration made this happen." ⚛️

Joseph Barranco posted on social media: Go Bears! Nobel Prize in Physics goes to 3 physicists studying mesoscopic quantum phenomena... Work was done in the 1980s in UC Berkeley Professor John Clarke's lab with his graduate student John Martinis and postdoctoral fellow Michel Devoret... all 3 share the Nobel Prize. Must also point out that both Clarke and Devoret are immigrants from the UK and France, respectively. All 3 are pioneers in the race to build the most powerful quantum supercomputers. California *public* education made this happen. Immigration made this happen.

2 130 400

Lisa Messeri @lmesseri.bsky.social · 8d

Michel was my neighbor for many years. Who knew when he was sitting on the condo board that he would soon be a Nobel Laureate. It was an honor to accidentally receive his mail on occasion.

NPR @npr.org · 8d

The Nobel committee said that the laureates' work provides opportunities to develop "the next generation of quantum technology, including quantum cryptography, quantum computers, and quantum sensors."

The Nobel Prize for physics is awarded for discoveries in quantum mechanical tunneling

The Nobel committee said that the laureates' work provides opportunities to develop "the next generation of quantum technology, including quantum cryptography, quantum computers, and quantum sensors."

n.pr

8

Lisa Messeri @lmesseri.bsky.social · 9d

fieldnote feb 2010. Baby me putting some things together...

"They were employees from Tesla Motors, an electric car company owned by Elon Musk. Musk is also the intrepid owner of spaceX AND a donor to the mars society. A NYTimes article also just tooted him as the future of human space flight."

1

Lisa Messeri @lmesseri.bsky.social · 11d

always vague and also always so unappealing!

1

Lisa Messeri @lmesseri.bsky.social · 11d

the definition of 'the metaverse' that Zuck offered in Connect 2025 is awesome revisionist history: "Our goal is to build great looking glasses that deliver personal super intelligence and a feeling of presence using realistic holograms. And these ideas combined create what we call the metaverse."

1 2

Lisa Messeri @lmesseri.bsky.social · 11d

i'm much madder at Big Tech than i was when i first submitted this article. I offer my tracked changes revision as evidence of entering the no holds bar stage of my career.

And yet, both of these corporate futures have far more in common than in distinction. Especially as spatial computing has, like the metaverse, failed to garner the enthusiasm corporate overloads had anticipated, it is important to understand these terms in the context of the larger computing visions they seek to proffer. This vision wants users to be permanently and inescapably immersed in a world of digital overlays, such that the corporate product, in whatever technical form (headset, glasses), is the mediating screen through which we always and only experience the physical world. This is a vision we ought to refuse, and this article offers an admittedly modest strategy for refusal. I do so by offering a reading of the technological fictions that convey the spatialities and socialities of spatial computing

1 1 17

Reposted by Lisa Messeri

Gregg Gonsalves @gregggonsalves.bsky.social · 13d

This is extortion. Faculty, students, staff, alumni across the country need to get to their Presidents & Trustees today. Just say no. This blackmail only works if most everyone folds. Capitulation now means the end of American higher education for a generation. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/u...

Trump Administration Asks Colleges to Sign ‘Compact’ to Get Funding Preference

www.nytimes.com

21 210 430

Lisa Messeri @lmesseri.bsky.social · 13d

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/u...

Trump Administration Asks Colleges to Sign ‘Compact’ to Get Funding Preference

www.nytimes.com

2 2

Lisa Messeri @lmesseri.bsky.social · 13d

Horrifying.

Sarah Milov @allofmilov.bsky.social · 13d

So the compact is also a poison pill for the humanities and social sciences.

1 1 2

Lisa Messeri @lmesseri.bsky.social · 19d

About to give the first of a few Fall book talks. If you’re in Princeton and free in an hour or so, come through!

anthropology.princeton.edu/events/land-...

In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual and Other Realities in Los Angeles

Lisa Messeri's anthropological research focuses on the norms, aspirations, and consequences of work done by expert communities as they forge new fields of knowledge and invention. Messeri's first book...

anthropology.princeton.edu

4

Reposted by Lisa Messeri

M.J. Crockett @mjcrockett.bsky.social · 24d

Glad Science collected this data (though the results are entirely unsurprising). GenAI cannot accurately summarize scientific papers, sacrificing accuracy for simplicity.

And shame on publishers who are pushing genAI summaries on readers. Great way to accelerate an epistemic apocalypse.

3 73 170

Lisa Messeri @lmesseri.bsky.social · 26d

"the AI apocalypse ...is simply our own world... Instead of superintelligent AI, we have super-wealthy tech oligarchs; like the hypothetical AI, the oligarchs want to colonize the universe; like the hypothetical AI, the oligarchs don't seem to care abt the desires and well-being of the rest of us."

Joe Bak-Coleman @jbakcoleman.bsky.social · 26d

Fantastic review by @adambecker.bsky.social of what looks to be a truly awful book.

www.theatlantic.com/books/archiv...

What AI’s Doomers and Utopians Have in Common

Those who predict that superintelligence will destroy humanity serve the same interests as those who believe that it will solve all of our problems.

www.theatlantic.com

9

Lisa Messeri @lmesseri.bsky.social · 27d

This has a healthy dose of schadenfreude

And/but this product makes me nervous. Zuck's quest is to "connect." For him this means having the digital always present. He has never understood the tradeoff by which being connected digitally disconnects us from those with whom we are physically present.

Shacknews @shacknews.com · 27d

LiveAI demo fails on the first prompt at Meta Connect 2025. #Meta #AI #LiveAI

5

Lisa Messeri @lmesseri.bsky.social · Sep 15

Turns out, Mapquest still labels the body of water to the west of Florida The Gulf of Mexico. Welcome to the resistance, Mapquest.

screen shot of a map, showing that the "gulf of Mexico" has not been relabled.

8

Lisa Messeri @lmesseri.bsky.social · Sep 9

oh oh! "this one" (i thought the study, not the original claim) got misunderstood by me :)

1

Lisa Messeri @lmesseri.bsky.social · Sep 9

I know. When I first read it I hemmed and hawed about sharing it. But bc I see people increasingly saying how good GPT is at summarizing, this is right now the only empirical study I have to retort with. Very happy to update reference if you have a better one!

1 1

Lisa Messeri @lmesseri.bsky.social · Sep 9

and also, it's not:
www.cjr.org/analysis/i-t...

1 1 5