Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Trout in Plaid

Mark Gerretsen @markgerretsen.bsky.social · 17h

🏡 The new Housing Design Catalogue makes it easier to build homes across Canada — with 50+ ready-to-build designs for rowhouses, multiplexes & accessory units.

Built by local experts to fit regional needs & build a stronger, more affordable Canada.

🔗Learn more: www.housingcatalogue.cmhc-schl.gc.ca

Image of townhouses in the background with text overlay promoting “The Housing Design Catalogue.” The text reads:
50+ standardized designs, from rowhouses to multiplexes.
Created by local architects and engineers across Canada.
Tailored to regional building codes and climates.
Free and open to everyone: homeowners, builders, municipalities.
Let’s build more homes, faster.
At the end, Mark Gerretsen (with a small maple leaf icon).

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Reposted by Trout in Plaid

The Ubiquitous J-Man @theubiquitousj-man.bsky.social · 1d

"Government secrecy clouds $237 million in funding to groups that endorsed Doug Ford"...

www.thestar.com/politics/pro...

#OnPoli
#OntarioSkillsDevelopmentFundScandal
#FordAbomiNation
#FordFailedThePeople
#FordCorruptAF
#NeverVoteConservative

Government secrecy clouds $237 million in funding to groups that endorsed Doug Ford

Seventeen trade unions and industry groups that endorsed Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives in the February election received $237 million from the government’s controversial Skills Develop...

www.thestar.com

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Reposted by Trout in Plaid

Electronic Frontier Foundation @eff.org · 7h

If you are going to a No Kings protest this weekend, be sure to review our Surveillance Self Defense guide for attending a protest and bring Rayhunter along for the ride! ssd.eff.org/module/atte.... eff.org/rayhunter.

Meet Rayhunter: A New Open Source Tool from EFF to Detect Cellular

Rayhunter is a new open source tool we’ve created that runs off an affordable mobile hotspot that we hope empowers everyone, regardless of technical skill, to help search out cell-site simulators

www.eff.org

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Trout in Plaid @troutinplaid.bsky.social · 12h

Uncovering the history of the Curve Lake Day School peterboroughcurrents.ca/in-depth/cur...

Uncovering the history of the Curve Lake Day School

New book reveals a pattern of abuse, cultural erasure, and systemic neglect by the Canadian government

peterboroughcurrents.ca

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Emanuel Maiberg @emanuelmaiberg.bsky.social · 1d

wikipedia's data shows that AI is siphoning traffic away from the site, which is a danger to its sustainability. ironically Wikipedia is more important than ever to users who want reliable information instead of slop, and to AI companies that need it for training data www.404media.co/wikipedia-sa...

Wikipedia Says AI Is Causing a Dangerous Decline in Human Visitors

“With fewer visits to Wikipedia, fewer volunteers may grow and enrich the content, and fewer individual donors may support this work.”

www.404media.co

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Chris Glover @chrisgloverndp.bsky.social · 1d

I’m calling on the government to create a grant program for artificial intelligence governance and safety research at Ontario’s public colleges and universities.

If you agree, add your name at chrisglover.ca/aisafetygrant

#ONpoli

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stophiddenquarry.bsky.social @stophiddenquarry.bsky.social · 1d

I'm shocked said no one ever!!! #DougFordIsCorrupt #FordSoldOntario #onpoli

ruthko @ruthmkb.bsky.social · 1d

ON govt secrecy clouds $237M in funding to groups that endorsed Doug Ford!

17 trade unions & industry groups that endorsed Ford’s PC in the February elxn received $237M from the government’s controversial Skills Development Fund. 🤨

#FordIsCorrupt #onpoli #cdnpoli

www.thestar.com/politics/pro...

Government secrecy clouds $237 million in funding to groups that endorsed Doug Ford

Seventeen trade unions and industry groups that endorsed Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives in the February election received $237 million from the government’s controversial Skills Develop...

www.thestar.com

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Trout in Plaid @troutinplaid.bsky.social · 1d

Pay attention to stuff like this. While Ford is playing tough guy to tariff negotiations (as if he has a clue about international economic diplomacy), his ministers are quietly installing unelected people to oversee school boards across Ontario. The name of the game is privatization of education.

Don Cochrane 🇨🇦 @doncochraneyow.bsky.social · 1d

What an ass. What exactly is your job, then?

"Robert Plamondon says it's 'not my job' to explain his policies to the press."

Sorry, this parent wants the press to get answers. We don't want one-way communication from you, where you get to choose the topics.

OCDSB supervisor refusing to speak to media as public meetings go offline | CBC News

As the board bans livestreaming, Robert Plamondon says his job is to communicate directly with staff and parents, not to explain himself to journalists.

www.cbc.ca

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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 2d

A nationwide backlash to AI data centers is brewing.

And for good reason: while AI enriches Big Tech CEOs and props up the stock market, data centers are sucking up communities’ water and power.

When the AI bubble bursts, the rest of us will be stuck holding the bag. Be warned.

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Shawn Micallef @shawnmicallef.bsky.social · 2d

In “timing” tonight Maggie Helwig’s book Encampment, very critical of city + local councillor Saxe, won the Toronto Book Award & tomorrow the city is evicting the encampment at her church. Epic timing.

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Rachel Gilmore @rachelgilmore.bsky.social · 2d

On Monday, Pierre Poilievre shared his party’s petition to “end DEI” and “restore the merit principle.”

Just before that, another Conservative MP posted that “Canada must now place restrictions on birthright citizenship”

If it all sounds a bit Trump-y, that’s probably because…it is:

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Reposted by Trout in Plaid

Pam Herd @pamherd.bsky.social · 2d

Medicare has stopped paying physicians due to the shut down. Standing right on the third rail www.statnews.com/2025/10/15/c...

Medicare payments to doctors paused as government shutdown drags on

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is pausing Medicare payments to doctors, as negotiations tied to the government shutdown drag on.

www.statnews.com

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Eric Eh 🍁 @ericeh1.bsky.social · 6d

Why the GE demolition plan could hurt Peterborough's tax base peterboroughcurrents.ca/analysis/ge-...

Why the GE demolition plan could hurt Peterborough's tax base | Peterborough Currents

With fewer buildings on it, the GE property will likely be taxed less. That would mean higher bills for everyone else.

peterboroughcurrents.ca

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bugsye.bsky.social @bugsye.bsky.social · 2d

"GE's financial and moral obligations to the municipality of Peterborough should be established prior to making any decision on the fate of these buildings." - Dale DeMatteo , Peterborough Occupational Disease Action Committee - kawarthanow.com/2025/10/15/h...

‘History will remember’: Peterborough city council to allow demolition of contaminated GE buildings | kawarthaNOW

By Bruce Head. Public delegations urged council to consider environmental and public safety concerns before permitting GE Vernova to demolish buildings.

kawarthanow.com

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Trout in Plaid @troutinplaid.bsky.social · 2d

This makes me happy. Look for the Books By People stamp to ensure your book is not AI.

@Galleybeggars @galleybeggars.bsky.social · 2d

Here's the stamp on the back!

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Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 2d

New York health officials have confirmed the first locally transmitted case of the chikungunya virus which causes high fever, joint pain and fatigue.

It’s usually a tropical virus, but there are now infected mosquitoes spreading in New York. (NYT)

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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Sep 6

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

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Reposted by Trout in Plaid

Joelle Kovach @joellekovach.bsky.social · 3d

All this would be "reasonable," says @alexbierk.bsky.social ... "What we're doing instead is accepting GE's plan, on GE's terms," and trusting the same MOE that has allowed this brownfield to sit "for generations."

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Joelle Kovach @joellekovach.bsky.social · 3d

GE "built and then abandoned this city," says @alexbierk.bsky.social .... And to not hold them accountable "is a missed opportunity."

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Joelle Kovach @joellekovach.bsky.social · 3d

"It should be a concern of all the citizens of Ptbo - not just those living in that area. Because these contaminants can travel," says Bongard.

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Joelle Kovach @joellekovach.bsky.social · 3d

Now: Jane Scott, citizen. She asks why council "is in such a hurry" to allow demolition of buildings on a "highly contaminated site."

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Joelle Kovach @joellekovach.bsky.social · 3d

Asbestos will not stay contained in demolition, he says, and even a single fiber can cause cancer, Miskin says.

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Reposted by Trout in Plaid

Joelle Kovach @joellekovach.bsky.social · 3d

If demolition of GE happens without strict controls, he says he's concerned that buried contaminants "will rise again," and potentially harm people's health.

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Trout in Plaid @troutinplaid.bsky.social · 3d

This is it. Stolen content. AI garbage infecting education, research and academia. Tax dollar investments. Environmental disaster. It was all about porn. Rich men getting richer on porn. AI can never be ethical. Just ban it.🤑

404 Media @404media.co · 3d

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced in a post on X Tuesday that ChatGPT is officially getting into the fuckable chatbots game, with “erotica for verified adults” rolling out in December.

🔗 www.404media.co/chatgpt-erot...

ChatGPT’s Hail Mary: Chatbots You Can Fuck

As recent reports show OpenAI bleeding cash, and on the heels of accusations that ChatGPT caused teens and adults alike to harm themselves and others, CEO Sam Altman announced that you can soon fuck t...

www.404media.co

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Joelle Kovach @joellekovach.bsky.social · 3d

Sue JAmes, who worked at GE, says now she opposes the proposed demolition of 25 GE buildings. She lost her father to lung cancer in 1996; he'd worked there too. She's a noted health advocate who asked for justice for workers who developer cancer after working for GE.

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