Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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Angelle of Death @cityofangelle.bsky.social · 1d

"But when the team looked at the employees’ actual work output, they found that the developers had completed tasks 20% slower when using AI than when working without it. Researchers were stunned. “No one expected that outcome. We didn’t even really consider a slowdown as a possibility.”

🎁link

David Mullin @rdmullin.bsky.social · 1d

www.theatlantic.com/economy/arch...

Just How Bad Would an AI Bubble Be?

The entire U.S. economy is being propped up by the promise of productivity gains that seem very far from materializing.

www.theatlantic.com

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"spooky simchas" daniel s. @self.agency · 1d

yes, i stole the crown jewels but in my defense, i am using them to train an llm in jewelry design and therefore i am within my rights

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Gamers with Glasses @gamerswithglasses.bsky.social · 1d

We're at it again! @mayorhere.bsky.social reviews Back to the Dawn by Metal Head Games, a game that uses anthropomorphism as a powerful estrangement tool through which to explore institutional power dynamics.
www.gamerswithglasses.com/reviews/back...

Back to the Dawn Review: Anthropomorphism as Social Commentary — Gamers with Glasses

Back to the Dawn  by Metal Head Games succeeds because it understands something that effective anthropomorphic storytelling has always known: non-human characters don't make serious themes less s...

www.gamerswithglasses.com

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alex is scary 🩸 @aldermancy.bsky.social · 7d

this is your favorite game designer's next favorite game and i told yanni he can quote me on that.

accidentally loved a game so much i somehow found myself as a stretch goal on it?? please check out ambition, it's so god damn beautiful

gamefound.com/en/projects/...

Ambition by The Press Betwixt - Gamefound

Ambition is a tales & tactics TTRPG for 2-4 Ambitious and a River by Yanni Panagiotopoulos. Reach for Heaven from underneath, Strive for whats beyond it, and Shape the continents into the image of you...

gamefound.com

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Associate Professor Siouxsie Wiles @siouxsiew.bsky.social · 2d

It’s happening people! I’m finally in a position to start crowdfunding to recover some of the costs of taking legal action against my employer. Watch this space :)

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Tof Eklund @tofeklund.bsky.social · 1d

Seeing all these #OVER/UNDER posts and wondering what the hell it is? So was I! #OVER/UNDER is 1) completely insane and 2) this:
samsorensen.blot.im/mothership-m...

Mothership Month 2025 Wargame: OVER/UNDER - Sam Sorensen

You can now join the Discord server and read the rules. Starting on October 14th, as a part of Mothership Month 2025—the annual group-crowdfunding

samsorensen.blot.im

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Robert Evans (the Only Robert Evans) @iwriteok.bsky.social · 4d

honestly I'll call this forgivable given the explanation seems to be "grant morrison doesn't have a smartphone and hasn't read anything about AI and automatically assumed it was a daemon he should befriend"

Comicsbeat @comicsbeat.bsky.social · 4d

Grant Morrison is seemingly dropping the use of AI in their newsletter following a backlash to comments on the subject in a Reddit AMA.

Grant Morrison disavows AI after Reddit AMA discussion

The writer said they will reconsider using AI in their Xanaduum newsletter after a comment in a Reddit AMA sparked a widespread backlash.

www.comicsbeat.com

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Gamers with Glasses @gamerswithglasses.bsky.social · 2d

They say the NES is 40 today. Read what that means for the man.

Gamers with Glasses @gamerswithglasses.bsky.social · 15d

Featuring @aetataureate.bsky.social: "In a volunteer survey, we found almost no significant correlation between the zodiac sign and the favorite Mario items of respondents."
www.gamerswithglasses.com/features/sup...

Super Midlife Brothers: Thoughts on Mario at Forty — Gamers with Glasses

It’s-a Mario’s birthday! Sort of. So here’s a Mario bonanza from your friends at Gamers with Glasses, which in typical fashion includes a scientific* study on Mario and the zodiac, elegiac expressions...

www.gamerswithglasses.com

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Tof Eklund @tofeklund.bsky.social · 6d

It's un-f*cking believable.

"The bill would have banned companies from making AI chatbots available to anyone under 18 years old unless the businesses could ensure the technology couldn’t engage in sexual conversations or encourage self-harm."

apnews.com/article/cali...

Alex the Headless Wordsman @authoralexharvey.bsky.social · 6d

It's also not lost on me that erotica writers and artists are being banklocked at every opportunity to "protect children" and "keep investors happy" but AI is TOTALLY okay to just waltz in and do it. Makes perfect sense /s

Maybe support REAL creators and not murderous theft machines.

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Tof Eklund @tofeklund.bsky.social · 6d

Kim Crawford? That's grocery-store wine here in Aotearoa New Zealand. Not saying I'd say no to a glass. I moved here because they have Kim Crawford sauvingnon blanc in the grocery stores.

Tof Eklund @tofeklund.bsky.social · 6d

Mike Johnson feels threatened. Is that "deep-seated insecurity" threatened or "embarrassed I look like a total ass" threatened, Mike?

The Oregonian @oregonian.com · 6d

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson calls Sunday's naked bike ride in protest of the Portland ICE facility and and Trump troop deployment "the most threatening thing I’ve seen yet"

www.oregonlive.com/portland/202...

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Brian Stelter @brianstelter.bsky.social · 7d

The Pentagon is telling beat reporters to sign restrictive new rules by Tuesday or surrender their press passes by Wednesday. Many news organizations are rejecting the ultimatum and saying they will not sign. Here's my latest >>> www.cnn.com/2025/10/13/m...

Media outlets, including MAGA channel Newsmax, refuse to sign Pentagon’s press access rules | CNN Business

The Pentagon is telling beat reporters to sign restrictive new rules by Tuesday or surrender their press passes by Wednesday. Many news organizations are rejecting the ultimatum and saying they will n...

www.cnn.com

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Mewtype Ghost @mewtype.online · 9d

tumblr shitpost poll
do you think ms understands consent?
yes <1%
remind me in 3 days 99.2%

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Tof Eklund @tofeklund.bsky.social · 8d

OMFG, I can't believe this is real. I don't know what's worse, Thiel's shite theology or his shite fanfic.

On some level, he has to know that it would only take Alan Moore, Luffy, and JFC five seconds to put aside their differences and beat his ass.

firstthings.com/voyages-to-t...

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 9d

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.

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Tof Eklund @tofeklund.bsky.social · 8d

For a moment there I thought MTG meant "Magic: the Gathering" and I was kinda excited and confused.

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Tof Eklund @tofeklund.bsky.social · 8d

He still looks like a blancmange poured into a suit, but now the pudding's getting runny.

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🇵🇸 Caleb 𓇼 ⋆｡˚ 𓆝⋆｡˚ 𓇼 🏳️‍⚧️ @littlestpersimmon.bsky.social · 8d

the boy from the garden

A smiling boy with gooey green hair and antennae. He is framed with vines and snails and lilies

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Gamers with Glasses @gamerswithglasses.bsky.social · 8d

Come for the great stuff in the roundup, stay for that critical chaser (feat. @corndruid.bsky.social, @srtrzinski.bsky.social, @aguaspoints.bsky.social, and @aetataureate.bsky.social)!

Critical Distance | Where’s all the good writing about games? @critdistance.bsky.social · 8d

This week: history, ahistory, mythology, and much more:

critical-distance.com/2025/10/12/o...

October 12th

Welcome back readers. It’s a holiday weekend here in Canada, but it would be a shame to break CD’s recent on-time-ish streak, so here I am with 17 fresh reads! I usually take a whole on…

critical-distance.com

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A Spooky Goose @anarchygoose.bsky.social · 10d

I don't think I've reposted this since I got a bunch of new followers so, here's the general vibe:

A goose with a butterknife in her beak stands before an anarchist circle-A. An old english poem is next to it:

The law locks up the man or woman
Who stealthe goose off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose.

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back.

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Tof Eklund @tofeklund.bsky.social · 10d

Maybe next year?

The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 11d

“I’m worried about my community… I’m out here in a frog costume to show how ridiculous the notion that we’re violent terrorists is, and showcase how that narrative is wrong…”

Serious Q: is it too late to give this dude the Nobel Peace Prize? 🐸 🏆

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Barack Obama @barackobama.bsky.social · 11d

Congratulations to new Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado for her courageous struggle to bring democracy to Venezuela.

Live Updates: María Corina Machado of Venezuela Is Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

www.nytimes.com

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James Medlock @jdcmedlock.bsky.social · 11d

“I’ll declare war on you if you don’t give me the peace prize” is an incredible bit

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 11d

Tomorrow: The AI Bubble is built on impossible promises. GPUs die in 5 years, nobody has built a 1GW data center, and they have the power to do so. Stargate Abilene won't have enough power before 2028.

Here's a link for $10 off premium.

edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo...

Everybody is very casual with how they talk about Sam Altman’s theoretical promises of trillions of dollars of data center infrastructure, and I'm not sure anybody realizes how difficult even the very basics of this plan will be.
Nevertheless, everybody is happily publishing stories about how “Stargate Abilene Texas - OpenAI’s massive data center with Oracle - is open,” by which they mean two buildings, and I’m not even confident both of them are providing compute to OpenAI yet. There are six more of them that need to get built for this thing to start rocking at 1.2GW - even though it’s only 1.1GW according to my sources in Abilene.
But, hey, sorry - one minute - while we’re on that subject, did anybody visiting Abilene in the last week or so ever ask whether they’ll have enough power there?
Don’t worry, you don’t need to look - I’m sure you were just about to, and had simply been busy! - but I did the hard work for you and read up on it, and it turns out that Stargate Abilene only has 200 megawatts of power - a 200 megawatt substation that, according to my sources, has only been built within the last couple of months, with 350 Megawatt of gas turbine generators that connect to a natural gas power plant that might get built by the end of the year in the event that one of the multiple construction firms involved . Said turbine is extremely expensive, featuring volatile pricing (for context, volatility fell in Q2 2025…to 69% annualized, meaning that if you had these prices across the entirety of a year you’d see swings of 69% up or down) and even more volatile environmental consequences, and is, while permitted for it (this will download the PDF of the permit), impractical and expensive to use long-term.
Analyst James van Geelen, founder of Citrini Research recently said on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast that these are “not the really good natural gas turbines” because the really good ones would take seven years to deliver due to a natural gas turbine shortage.
But th…

$Stargate Abilene does not have sufficient power to run at even half of its supposed IT load of 1.2GW, and at its present capacity - assuming that the gas turbines function at full power - can only hope to run 370MW to 460MW of IT load. I’ve seen article after article about the gas turbines and their use of fracked gas - a disgusting and wasteful act typical of OpenAI - but nobody appears to have asked “how much power does a 1.2GW data center require?” and then chased it with “how much power does Stargate Abilene have?” The answer is not enough, and the significance of said “not enough” is remarkable. Today, I’m going to tell you, at length, how impossible the future of generative AI is. Gigawatt data centers are a ridiculous pipe dream, one that runs face-first into the walls of reality. The world’s governments and media have been far too cavalier with the term “gigawatt,” casually breezing by the fact that Altman’s plans require 17 or more nuclear reactors’ worth of power, as if building power is quick and easy and cheap and just happens. I believe that many of you think that this is an issue of permitting - of simply throwing enough money at the problem - when we are in the midst of a shortage in the electrical grade steel and transformers required to expand America (and the world’s) power grid. I realize it’s easy to get blinded by the constant drumbeat of “gargoyle-like tycoon cabal builds 1 gigawatt data center” and feel that they will simply overwhelm the problem with money, but no, I’m afraid that isn’t the case at all, and all of this is so silly, so ridiculous, so cartoonishly bad that it threatens even the seemingly-infinite wealth of Elon Musk, with xAI burning over a billion dollars a month and planning to spend tens of billions of dollars building the Colossus 2 data center, dragging two billion dollars from SpaceX in his desperate quest to burn as much money as possible for no reason. This is the age of hubris - a time in which we are going to watc…$

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Gamers with Glasses @gamerswithglasses.bsky.social · 12d

Nate and Samantha set out to recap and wrap up our summer series on games, childhood, and nostalgia, and end up…somewhere else. We cover all the deep questions, like, “Do any of us leave childhood unscathed?”; and, “Isn’t Assassin’s Creed just Sly Cooper?”
www.gamerswithglasses.com/gwgpodcast/t...

The Gamers with Glasses Show, Episode 35: Who Is the Donkey Kong? — Gamers with Glasses

In this episode, Nate and Samantha set out to recap and wrap up our summer series on games, childhood, and nostalgia, and end up…somewhere else. We cover all the deep questions, like, “Does nostalgia ...

www.gamerswithglasses.com

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Tof Eklund @tofeklund.bsky.social · 11d

Hugs, love, and self-care. ❤️

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