Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Will @popher.bsky.social · 1m

Man eurotrash was so formative and yet I had completely forgotten it.

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Will @popher.bsky.social · 2m

Thanks!

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Will @popher.bsky.social · 19m

Is there a brief summary of this, I've never heard of her and her entire feed seems to just be links to her YouTube videos and I ain't watching hours of videos. It's not that I don't believe you, but I'm not gonna call out her followers unless there's some citeable evidence

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Will @popher.bsky.social · 2h

It's the same smell every time? Is it a food or a flower or a chemical or a malodorous smell?

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Reposted by Will

Ardem Patapoutian @ardemp.bskyverified.social · 12h

During these uncertain times, I’m very happy to see that my institution, @scripps.edu has an open tenure-track Assistant Professor position. Any field in Chemistry or Biology is welcome. I’d especially love to see fellow neuroscientists apply. Please repost!

apply.interfolio.com/174756

Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio

apply.interfolio.com

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Will @popher.bsky.social · 4h

Why are you equivocating.

It is murder. It is unlawful. It is extrajudicial. It is an abuse of power. It is blatantly criminal.

Chris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · 10h

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 · 10h

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...

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Star Marshall of NC 🇺🇸 🏳️‍🌈🇺🇦🇨🇦 @andrewtravler.bsky.social · 6h

“This bullshit has to stop” is a quote for the ages.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 8h

Q: Politico reported on a group chat of young Republicans. Does this just reflect some bad apples?

HOCHUL: Some bad apples? These are the future of the GOP. This is so vile it's hard to find the words to put into context ... there's gotta be consequences ... this bullshit has to stop.

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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 5h

They're trying to prevent the student newspaper from printing news, period. Not just a particular story.

"The Media School directed us to print no news in the paper... nothing but information about homecoming — no other news at all, and particularly no traditional front page news coverage."

Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 6h

Indiana University has fired the staff director of the student newspaper, after disputes in which university leadership tried to pressure him to prevent students from publishing news.

IndyStar 2 . Follow
1h:
"All Media School and IU students, faculty and staff
should be scared by this blatant attack on someone
standing up for what's right," student Editors-ln-Chief
Mia Hilkowitz and Andrew Miller said in a statement.
Read more: bit.ly/43ebKW1
IndyStar.
IDS
The original investigative student
newsroom of Indiana University
Barge suspends Bloomingtonr
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IDS
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Indiana University fires IDS
adviser amid push to control
student newspaper's content

The director of student media at Indiana University was fired amidst a dispute between university leadership and editors at the Indiana Daily Student over what content gets printed in the student newspaper.

As director of student media, Jim Rodenbush did not directly oversee or have any say over the content published in the IDS, per a charter between the IDS and the university. But he told IndyStar his firing follows a series of meetings with IU Media School leadership in which it grew increasingly apparent they were expecting him to officially prohibit students from publishing news.

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Rob MacWolf, Werewolf Hitchhiker @robmacwolf.thevoice.dog · 10h

When we write or draw porn or erotica, we get banned from having a bank account and our livelihoods get seized even if we give it away for free.

When billionaires steal what we've written or drawn to churn out a slop-approximate of porn, they're allowed to charge for it.

Matt Burgess (WIRED) @mattburgess1.bsky.social · 13h

Oh good, ChatGPT is getting "erotica for verified adults" later this year

We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. We realize this made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems, but given the seriousness of the issue we wanted to get this right.

Now that we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues and have new tools, we are going to be able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases.

In a few weeks, we plan to put out a new version of ChatGPT that allows people to have a personality that behaves more like what people liked about 4o (we hope it will be better!). If you want your ChatGPT to respond in a very human-like way, or use a ton of emoji, or act like a friend, ChatGPT should do it (but only if you want it, not because we are usage-maxxing).

In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our “treat adult users like adults” principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults.

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Will @popher.bsky.social · 9h

I got sent a resume and Adobe went full shade.

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Chris Murphy @chrismurphyct.bsky.social · 19h

Senate is back in session today.

1/ So a quick 🧵on where things are at on the shutdown.

You get a lot of propaganda and spin thrown at you, so I want to give you the real, behind-the-scenes tea.

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Will @popher.bsky.social · 10h

I implore everyone to spend a little time learning how these tools work, like actually work, and then you'll understand why this sort of prompt is ineffective.

Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 1d

Seeing people nonchalantly post stuff like makes me feel like I'm going crazy honestly.

A post from an academic on blue sky that says: "I'm learning about "prompt engineering" when asking LLMs to extract data. I now add this to all instructions:

Style
Be concise, analytic, and specific (cite page/figure if provided). If essential info is missing, keep going but flag Unclear and exact data needed. Never invent data.

#academicsky"

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Gabby HC, but a ghost, hiding in a corner @scriblit.bsky.social · 12h

Sometimes there'll be a joke written by someone who's been dead for tens, hundreds of years & i'll stop and think about another human reaching through time to make another human laugh, long after they're gone, and it's so beautiful it makes me well up.

John Wiswell @wiswell.bsky.social · 14h

Tell me your most life-affirming literary opinion.

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Michael McDonald @electproject.bsky.social · 11h

It is to the shame of all the male reporters in the room that they do not immediately leave

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 11h

Trump ignores a question from a woman reporter but says, "I just like to watch her talk. Good job. Thank you darling."

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Will @popher.bsky.social · 10h

They look exactly like you would expect sad little racist nazi virgin weirdos to look. Full shade.

Jeff Yang @originalsp.in · 11h

Thousands of posts from a private Young Republican Telegram chat reveal a culture of casual racism/antisemitism, rape jokes and celebration of Hitler/Nazism.

Some of the ringleaders are below: We live in a world where 4chan types now occupy positions of real power.
www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

Peter Giunta, chair of the New York State Young Republicans

Bobby Walker, vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans

William Hendrix, communications assistant for Kansas’ Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach

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Will @popher.bsky.social · 10h

Didn't they all sue the last admin about efforts to fight COVID misinformation?

Hypocrisy is rife and the first amendment is dead.

Chicago Sun-Times @chicago.suntimes.com · 11h

At the request of the U.S. Department of Justice, a Facebook group used by nearly 80,000 people to report sightings of federal immigration agents in the Chicago area has been taken down by the social media giant Meta, Facebook’s parent company.

Facebook suspends popular Chicago ICE-sightings group at Trump administration’s request

The group, "ICE Sighting-Chicagoland," has been increasingly used in the last five weeks of President Donald Trump’s intense deportation campaign to warn neighbors that federal agents are nearby.

trib.al

Will @popher.bsky.social · 10h

Looking at a protocol and the first two steps are both very much, "not in my bloody lab!"

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Will @popher.bsky.social · 11h

Where are all the young people???

And by young, I mean not 12 years past retirement.

The Washington Post @washingtonpost.com · 11h

The Senate campaign of Maine Gov. Janet Mills, 77, has prompted some criticism and reignited a debate in the Democratic party about age.

She would be the oldest freshman senator ever if she wins.

Is this top Senate recruit too old to run? Some Democrats think so.

Maine Gov. Janet Mills, 77, would be the oldest freshman senator ever. Her Tuesday campaign launch has prompted some criticism and reignited a debate in the party about age.

www.washingtonpost.com

Will @popher.bsky.social · 11h

This is a very bizarre story and would make an interesting biopic

Andrew @generalising.bsky.social · 1d

I got very curious about this. You can trace Shearer's unit (21 CCS) and you can see what looks like the echo of his little blaze of fame: in Sept 1916 you get visits from various grandees including ... the editor of the BMJ, who presumably came to see for himself.

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Nick Brown @steamtraen.eu · 1d

Next time an institution tells you how seriously it takes research misconduct, ask them if it's *this* seriously. www.bmj.com/content/297/...

In 1916 the BMJ published an article about the work done by James Shearer, an American physician working in the British Army as a sergeant (because he had no British qualification). He had described a
"delineator" which was better than x rays for portraying gunshot wounds. This caused a sensation and a lot of interest — but on investigation the work was found to have been invented. The BMJ published a retraction, but Shearer was tried by court martial and sentenced to death by firing squad.

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Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan.bsky.social · 12h

“Epithets like “f----t,” “retarded” and “n--ga” appeared more than 251 times combined”

If you ever had any doubt that the youth wing of the GOP is fully radicalized and proudly racist these days:

‘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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dag @davidallengreen.bsky.social · 13h

A must-have, for every home.

Clare Clarke @clareclarke.bsky.social · 14h

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Will @popher.bsky.social · 22h

When I've been saying that the job market is tough right now, and getting worse, and worse than it's been in years... Yeah the stats back it up.

(UK numbers)

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Will @popher.bsky.social · 1d

"unforeseeable" future feels like a rather deliberate and poetic choice, rather than the more typical choice of "foreseeable" future....

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Will @popher.bsky.social · 1d

I started rewatching House of Cards and, the first season especially of course, it truly is an incredibly well made show.

There's some really subtle writing which I missed previously and still discover and it's just, they put so much care* into it.

(With the exception of due diligence on actors)

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