Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Oran Magal

Molly Jong-Fast @mollyjongfast.bsky.social · 3h

Block the slop

Scientific American @sciam.bsky.social · 2d

Despite early, and familiar, copyright growing pains, Sora may be the prelude to AI-generated on-demand TV and movies

Want to See Marilyn Monroe in Game of Thrones? AI Could Make It Soon

Despite early, and familiar, copyright growing pains, Sora may be the prelude to AI-generated on-demand TV and movies

www.scientificamerican.com

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Charlie Angus @charlieangus104.bsky.social · 3h

This must rank as one of the more hilarious headlines I have seen in a long time.
Nothing like the political media in Ottawa for continually missing the moment as we watch democracy and the rule of law disintegrate on our unguarded border.

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Emily Johnston @enjohnston.bsky.social · 17h

Data centers are "shaping up to be the mother of all political issues...pretty much everyone pays electric rates, & under Trump they’re starting to skyrocket...he’s simultaneously accelerating demand w/ his support for data center buildout, & constricting supply by shutting down cheap solar & wind."

Hey Grok, What's a Waste of Energy?

AI amidst the climate emergency

billmckibben.substack.com

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 3h

New, from me: I break down all that is happening with the shutdown.
Shutdowns are bad. But only Trump and Russ Vought are brave enough to ask: what if shutdowns aren’t painful enough? How can we use this as an opportunity to target our political enemies? 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-shutdo...

The Shutdown Shitshow

As Trump uses the shutdown to settle scores, the public bears the cost

donmoynihan.substack.com

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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 8h

I just checked and this is real. It's on Border Patrol's official Instagram (I don't see it on Facebook) and is being celebrated by Nazis on Twitter, as you can see in the screenshot.

The clip is just 13 seconds long too, so it's a very intentional thing. We've got a Nazi government.

Twitter account: Uncensored @HmanQuotes1945: Official border patrol Facebook page is posting with the banned lyrics of Michael Jackson's song.
"Jew me sue me... Kick me k*ke me."
Epic

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John Pfaff @johnpfaff.bsky.social · 12h

To be clear:

LA County has declared a state of emergency BECAUSE OF the federal government.

The Feds, LA County is (correctly) saying, have CAUSED the emergency.

This is a striking political moment of internal collapse. Local govts feeling compelled to protect their ppl from … their own govt.

Los Angeles County declares state of emergency over immigration raids

Los Angeles County officials voted on Tuesday to declare a state of emergency over ongoing federal immigration raids.

abcnews.go.com

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Mike Boylan-Kolchin @mbkplus.bsky.social · 11h

Of all the books I will never, ever, under any circumstances read, this might be the one that I won’t read the most.

Oliver Darcy @oliverdarcy.bsky.social · 12h

Scoop: Olivia Nuzzi has written a book during her year in exile, in which she is set to in part address her relationship with RFK Jr. Details in @status.news: www.status.news/p/olivia-nuz...

Have I Got Nuzzi For You

Olivia Nuzzi is set to address her relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a forthcoming book, galleys of which are circulating among a select group of readers, Status has learned.

www.status.news

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Full of Contempt @m-theory3.bsky.social · 23h

This is the nation that we are now. This nation is unbelievably sick.

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Oran Magal @oranmagal.bsky.social · 14h

Thanks for that - my kids use it, it hadn’t even occurred to me it’s another vector for undesirable “social networking”. Now it’s all turned off, ugh.

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 15h

Jesus christ. AI coding platform Augment code had to jack up prices because 22.5% of their users were spending 20x of what they paid, and even after raising the prices, they're still running at a loss.
reddit.com/r/AugmentCod...

A handful of users abused the system so all are getting punished.

This isn't about a few high-usage users. The reality is that approximately 22.5% of our users are consuming 20x what they're currently paying us. This isn't sustainable for us to continue delivering the quality service you expect. We have built some very powerful tools and we don’t want to impose artificial limits on what’s possible, but we do need to be able to charge in proportion to the use customers are getting from our platform. Developers are always going to push their tools to their limits, and we encourage that — and we need to be able to charge for it appropriately, too.

You only care about professional developers.

Our core focus is on building the best AI coding agent for professional software engineers and their teams. If people outside of that group are finding value with Augment, they are very welcome to use the product, but we’re not prioritizing features or solutions that non-developers might need, and frankly, there are plenty of vibe coding/low code/no code solutions available on the market that will better serve those customers.

You are just squeezing money out of us at 20x margin.

20x margin sounds great, but isn’t the reality for AI tools: the vast majority are running at a loss, including us, while we work to build sustainable, long-term businesses.

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Chris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · 19h

Unless and until some kind of compelling legal and moral argument is presented as to why this is a legitimate use of deadly force, this is just…mass murder.

Amarnath Amarasingam @amaramarasingam.bsky.social · 19h

The military has now killed 27 people as if they were enemy soldiers in a war zone and not criminal suspects. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/14/u...

U.S. Military Kills Another 6 People in 5th Caribbean Strike, Trump Says

www.nytimes.com

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Oran Magal @oranmagal.bsky.social · 18h

Such a worthy reason to use vast amounts of energy, resources, and trillions of dollars.

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Tuffy @smtuffy.bsky.social · 19h

The pivot from “I’m building god” to “I’m building a jerkoff tool” is pretty funny

Reuters @reuters.com · 19h

OpenAI to allow mature content on ChatGPT for adult verified users starting December reut.rs/3J8NTAi

OpenAI to allow mature content on ChatGPT for adult verified users starting December

OpenAI will allow mature content for ChatGPT users who verify their age on the platform starting in December, CEO Sam Altman said, after the chatbot was made restrictive for users in mental distress.

reut.rs

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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 18h

The entire first two months of the Biden administration were taken up by obsessive complaining about how he wouldn't do press conferences & wasn't taking policy questions (bsky.app/profile/mcop...).

This? Gone tomorrow. Totally different set of standards applied to two totally different parties.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 20h

Trump: "I don't take questions from ABC fake news after what you did with Stephanopoulos to the vice president of the United States."

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Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 20h

Unprecedentedly illegal & unconstitutional crimes - things that make Nixon's presidency-ending crimes look like harmless high school pranks - now happening daily:

Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 20h

Trump is no longer even pretending to have any kind of argument that his murdering of people in the Caribbean Sea has any kind of statutory validity. Just straight up declaring that he has quasi-unlimited power to execute people based on (nominal) suspicion.

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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 20h

It’s been fun being attacked for years for saying bigotry motivates these people more than low taxes and small government

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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 20h

Turns out your assumptions about what republican group chats are like is correct www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat

Thousands of private messages reveal young GOP leaders joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape.

www.politico.com

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Oran Magal @oranmagal.bsky.social · 20h

But we have been assured that markets reflect the reasoned aggregate “wisdom of the crowd” and rational business behaviour! /s

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Darin Self @darinself.com · 21h

I love that markets are like "WOOOO RATE CUTSSS" as the head of the Fed is saying "The economy is flashing critical signs of distress"

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 21h

Powell on Trump's immigration policies: "Stronger policy than most people had expected. We've seen a very sharp decline in growth of the labor force and in and people entering the country ... new people that come into the workforce create supply but they also create their own demand."

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 21h

Anger at Kaepernick is one of the more egregious examples of “how dare a Black man say racism is bad instead of being grateful for white America letting him succeed.”

He walked into Lambeau and beat the Packers in a playoff game. He lead the Niners to a Superbowl. He wasn’t in the NFL as a favor.

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Oran Magal @oranmagal.bsky.social · 20h

Very much in the spirit of Camus who calls on us to find meaning in an absurd universe more or less as a rebellion against that absurd and indifferent universe. “No meaning, eh? Well I’ll make it myself, damn you!” [Camus is a far better writer than me, alas for my part.]

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Sam @samd.bsky.social · 22h

it’s funny how Jeff bezos dedicated the Washington post to embracing “free markets” and the free market of newspaper subscribers completely rejected it

karl rove knausgård @uhactually.bsky.social · 1d

Lmao WaPo has fewer than 100K circulation now. It turns out “alienate your liberal subscriber base” is not a good strategy when the Republicans also hate you. www.forbes.com/sites/andyme...

The Washington Post Is Running Out Of Readers Willing To Pay

Once a titan of American journalism, The Washington Post now struggles to reach even 100,000 print subscribers most days.

www.forbes.com

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Eve Harms, Gourd Respecter @eveharms.com · 22h

What a coincidence, The Atlantic has no value and lots of functional substitutes.

The Atlantic @theatlantic.com · 23h

Tariffs have rapidly increased the price of coffee—a drink with almost no nutritional value and lots of functional substitutes. Yet coffee may also be the one thing Americans can’t live without, @elcush.bsky.social writes:

The Drink That Americans Won’t Give Up Without a Fight

Coffee has almost no nutritional value and lots of substitutes. It’s also, apparently, too important to lose.

bit.ly

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Oran Magal @oranmagal.bsky.social · 21h

“God is saved! Oh, thank God.”

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Mike Masnick @mmasnick.bsky.social · 22h

I seem to recall that it was the biggest 1st Amendment attack in American history when the Biden admin alerted social media companies to some content and said "hey does this violate your policies?" Will Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger and (lol) CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss call this out?

Tweet from Pam Bondi:

Today following outreach from
@thejusticedept
, Facebook removed a large group page that was being used to dox and target
@ICEgov
agents in Chicago.

The wave of violence against ICE has been driven by online apps and social media campaigns designed to put ICE officers at risk just for doing their jobs. The Department of Justice will continue engaging tech companies to eliminate platforms where radicals can incite imminent violence against federal law enforcement.

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