Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

YY Ahn @yyahn.bsky.social · 20h

Thanks for the posts!

YY Ahn @yyahn.bsky.social · 21h

Thanks! It will be mainly about these two papers + unpublished preliminary results. Let me know if you have any questions & comments!

- www.science.org/doi/full/10....
- www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Emergence of simple and complex contagion dynamics from weighted belief networks

Different classes of social contagion dynamics emerge from a model grounded in fundamental cognitive processes and biases.

www.science.org

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YY Ahn @yyahn.bsky.social · 21h

I'm excited to give a talk tomorrow at the Organizational Behavior Seminar series at the Stanford Graduate School of Business about modeling interconnected human beliefs. See you soon!

www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-rese...

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Stephen Turner @stephenturner.us · 1d

RSVP for Datapalooza 2025: Truth and Accountability in the Age of AI mailchi.mp/2162ba093dc9...

RSVP for Datapalooza 2025: Truth and Accountability in the Age of AI

Whether you are a student exploring the field, a researcher advancing new knowledge, or a community partner curious about responsible AI, Datapalooza offers a front-row seat to the future of data science.

mailchi.mp

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paris martineau @paris.nyc · 1d

my latest investigation for @consumerreports.org is based on months of reporting and 60+ lab tests of leading protein supplements

we found that most protein powders and shakes have more lead in one serving than our experts say is safe to have in a day (🧵)

www.consumerreports.org/lead/protein...

Protein Powders and Shakes Contain High Levels of Lead - Consumer Reports

CR tests of 23 popular protein powders and shakes found that most contain high levels of lead.

www.consumerreports.org

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Altmetric @altmetric.com · 1d

2025 isn't over yet but it's unlikely that Twitter will see a resurgence of research discussions.

Year X/Twitter Research Mentions
2022 28,197,471
2023 24,446,548
2024 17,634,330
2025 9,375,463

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Karl Jacoby @karl-jacoby.bsky.social · 1d

History faculty at Columbia & Barnard decrying the harassment of @mark-bray.bsky.social: "This is the first case in recent memory of a historian who has fled the country after receiving death threats on account of the history that they teach."

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NightMar on Hicks Street, Part 4: The Rabbit’s Revenge @histoftech.bsky.social · 2d

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

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UVA School of Data Science @uvadatascience.bsky.social · 4d

We recently welcomed nine new faculty members to the UVA School of Data Science. Read more about our faculty and their research: https://bit.ly/4pTHPMM

The School of Data Science welcomed nine new faculty in fall 2025. (From top down, left to right: YY Ahn,Hannah Bako, Peter Beling, Jordan Bryan, Tyler Cody, Lei Li, Daniel Graham, Karsten Siller, and Stephen Turner)

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Livable Cville @livablecville.bsky.social · 5d

Good bike infrastructure will make the Charlottesville area a better and safer place to live. We are tired of waiting for it to become a reality. It’s not that hard. We need the city to deliver on its promises asap.

Brent Toderian @brenttoderian.bsky.social · 7d

“When streets became calmer & safer, more people felt comfortable trying a bike commute for the first time. Families began pedaling to the park…Local businesses saw new life…And cycling stopped feeling like a niche activity—it became part of everyday Parisian life.”

Via @momentummag.bsky.social

New Study Shows How Paris Pedaled Its Way to a Cycling Revolution

Cycling through central Paris meant weaving between buses and scooters—a bold choice reserved for the fearless few.

momentummag.com

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 5d

Immigrant Nobel Prize winners exiting the United States

Florian Scheuer @florianscheuer.bsky.social · 5d

I am delighted to share that Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee will join our Department of Economics @econ.uzh.ch at the University of Zurich on July 1, 2026, as Lemann Foundation Professors of Economics.

🧵 1/7

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Mona Sloane @monasloane.bsky.social · 6d

Please join us on 10/22 for a new Co-Opting #AI episode on #antiquity! I am thrilled to be in conversation with Jacqueline Arthur-Montagne, Kevin Donnelly, and Elly R. Truitt to explore ancient concepts of automation, intelligent machines, gods and robots. dtdlab.virginia.edu/event/co-opt...

Co-Opting AI: Antiquity - DTD Lab

Join panelists, Jacqueline Arthur-Montagne, John L. Nau III assistant professor of classics at the University of Virginia, Kevin Donnelly, professor of history at Alvernia University, Elly R. Truitt, ...

dtdlab.virginia.edu

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Steven L. Johnson @stevenljohnson.org · 10d

👋🏽 Cville area peeps! Join us at the Livable Cville drop-in social at Ix Park Brazos Tacos from 5PM to 7PM+ at Ix Park Brazos Tacos. If it's your first time, your umpteenth time, or anywhere else in between, you are welcome!

Cheers. Livable Cville Meetup! Thursday, October 9, 5-7pm at Brazos Tacos Ix Art Park, 923 2nd St SE

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Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 11d

Resolution of the University of Virginia Faculty Senate (thus not institutional policy and entirely non-binding, but still inspirational):

Resolution Opposing the
"Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education"
WHEREAS the United States Secretary of Education has requested that the University of Virginia enter into a "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education", and WHEREAS the Compact contains provisions antithetical to the mission and traditions of the University, and
WHEREAS the Compact contains provisions which endanger the independence and integrity of the University, and
WHEREAS the compact likely violates state and federal law, and infringes upon the constitutional rights of members of the University community, and WHEREAS the University of Virginia exemplifies American academic values of the highest standard, including universal right to free speech and the cultivation of academic freedom; therefore
BE IT RESOLVED that the Faculty Senate of the University of Virginia firmly opposes this Compact as written and calls upon Interim President Mahoney and the Board of Visitors to also reject this Compact outright as well as any similar proposal compromising the mission, values, and independence of the University.
Feature Date:
Friday, October 3, 2025

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Caitlin Rivers @cmyeaton.bsky.social · 11d

The government shutdown interrupted CDC's disease updates, so Team Force of Infection spent our Saturday going to the websites of all 50 health departments to check on Covid-19, flu and RSV. caitlinrivers.substack.com/p/cdc-data-i...

CDC data interrupted, so we went state by state

A look at Covid-19, flu and RSV trends in each state

caitlinrivers.substack.com

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Maria Antoniak @mariaa.bsky.social · 10d

This makes me so hopeful 🥹

Does anyone know of similar comparisons that focus on task-specific evals (like medical tasks)?

Nathan Lambert @natolambert.bsky.social · 11d

A ton of attention over the years goes to plots comparing open to closed models.
The real trend that matters for AI impacts on society is the gap between closed frontier models and local consumer models.
Local models passing major milestones will have major repercussions.
buff.ly/ccMJydQ

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Chris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · 12d

According to eyewitnesses, armed ICE agents dragged kids out of their beds in the middle of the night, zip tied them and put them in rented vans while raiding an * entire apartment building* on the South Side of Chicago.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOXO...

‘F--- them kids’: ICE agents drag children out of bed, ransack Chicago building

YouTube video by MSNBC

www.youtube.com

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Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 14d

Jane Goodall, ethologist and conservationist, has died. She was 91

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Armin Ronacher @mitsuhiko.at · 16d

“Is 90% of code going to be written by AI? I don’t know. What I do know is, that for me, on this project, the answer is already yes.” lucumr.pocoo.org/2025/9/29/90...

90%

AI is writing 90% of the code I was in charge of

lucumr.pocoo.org

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Aaron Clauset @aaronclauset.bsky.social · 18d

It took me 2 minutes to write about how this proposed rule would eliminate all foreign PhD students, who are a critical part of US science and technology, and drive US innovation and economic growth

Dr. Kat Napaaqtuk❄️ @napaaqtuk.bsky.social · 18d

Comment period ends on Monday for a proposed rule change that would terminate student visas after 4 years. It also puts limits on exchange visitors and reps of foreign media, and shortens the length of time at the end of the visa from 60 days to 30 days.

www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...

Establishing a Fixed Time Period of Admission and an Extension of Stay Procedure for Nonimmigrant Academic Students, Exchange Visitors, and Representatives of Foreign Information Media

Unlike most nonimmigrant classifications, which are admitted for a fixed time period, aliens in the F (academic student), J (exchange visitor), and most I (representatives of foreign information media...

www.federalregister.gov

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Alexander Doria @dorialexander.bsky.social · 18d

And new paper out: Pleias 1.0: the First Family of Language Models Trained on Fully Open Data

How we train an open everything model on a new pretraining environment with releasable data (Common Corpus) with an open source framework (Nanotron from HuggingFace).

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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YY Ahn @yyahn.bsky.social · 20d

c-ville.com/car-light-fa... A nice article by @nathanalderman.com! It's awesome to see so many people biking in Charlottesville *despite of* pretty terrible infrastructure (@cvillecityhall.bsky.social 👀)

It reminds me of an old tweet that I can't agree more.

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Livable Cville @livablecville.bsky.social · 21d

As the seasons change, you might be wondering about biking in different weather conditions.

E-Bike Dad and Livable Cville member @yyahn.bsky.social wrote a very nice guide to biking in the cold weather months.

Check it out! yyahn.com/wiki/Bike/Wi...

Winter cycling - YY Ahn

yyahn.com

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Livable Cville @livablecville.bsky.social · 22d

The Week Without Driving starts a week from today!

For Charlottesville to have a transportation system that works for everyone, we need a collective vision that includes community members who cannot drive.

#WeekWithoutDriving seeks to expand that vision.

Livablecville.org/WeekWithoutDriving

WEEKWITHOUTDRIVING
September 29-October 5, 2025
PUBLIC TRANSIT • WALKING • BIKING
TAKE THE WEEK WITHOUT DRIVING CHALLENGE!

What would a Week Without Driving look like?

The Week Without Driving is a chance to see Charlottesville through the eyes of neighbors who already rely on walking, biking, and transit. Exploring these transportation options highlights both the connections they create and the gaps we need to address as a community.
Public transit and other connected mobility choices strengthen neighborhoods, bring people together, and open doors to opportunity. Together we can build a system that works for every age, ability, and income.
#WeekWithoutDriving
Livablecville.org/WeekWithoutDriving

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The Verge @theverge.com · 23d

Why your next car should be an electric cargo bike

Rewiring cities for more human-centric transportation

buff.ly

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