Sean Li
LightNews LightNews
seansli.bsky.social
Sean Li
@seansli.bsky.social
510 followers 130 following 23 posts
A dad! And a student of the intersection of technology and society.

I used to run trust, safety and policy teams.

He/him.
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Sean Li
brandyzadrozny.bsky.social
I’ve been thinking and it’s kind of exceptional that not a single person said “Hey now” after the piggy comment.
November 19, 2025 at 1:36 AM
Reposted by Sean Li
dlknowles.bsky.social
Quite a world when a federal judge has to call in a federal official to specifically tell him he can't use tear gas on children in Halloween costumes
October 28, 2025 at 3:19 PM
Reposted by Sean Li
chronicleflask.katday.com
Daughter of Robin Williams, Zelda Williams 💔
zeldawilliams 20m From Create Mode •• Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad. Stop believing I wanna see it or that I'll understand, I don't and I won't. If you're just trying to troll me, I've seen way worse, i'll restrict and move on. But please, if you've got any decency, just stop doing this to him and to me, to everyone even, full stop. It's dumb, it's a waste of time and energy, and believe me, it's NOT what he'd want. To watch the legacies of real people be condensed down to 'this vaguely looks and sounds like them so that's enough, , just so other people can churn out horrible TikTok slop puppeteering them is maddening. You're not making art, you're making disgusting, over-processed hotdogs out of the lives of human beings, out of the history of art and music, and then shoving them down someone else's throat hoping they'll give you a little thumbs up and like it. Gross. And for the love of EVERYTHING, stop calling it 'the future. Al is just badly recycling and regurgitating the past to be reconsumed. You are taking in the Human Centipede of content, and from the very very end of the line, all while the folks at the front laugh and laugh, consume and consume.
October 6, 2025 at 8:45 PM
Reposted by Sean Li
zacheverson.com
Today marks the 7th anniversary of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder.
bgrueskin.bsky.social Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · Oct 3
“It’s easier to talk here than it is in America.”

— Dave Chappelle, doing his shtick in front of a whooping, cheering crowd in … Riyadh.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/w...
At Saudi Comedy Fest, American Free Speech Becomes the Punchline
www.nytimes.com
October 3, 2025 at 1:31 AM
Reposted by Sean Li
karenattiah.bsky.social
For everyone saying political violence has no place in this country…

Remember two Democratic legislators were shot in Minnesota just this year.

And America shrugged and moved on.
September 10, 2025 at 8:53 PM
Reposted by Sean Li
bencollins.bsky.social
Holy shit, they did it. They wrote the headline.
NYC Mass Shooting Was Nearly Impossible to Prevent, Experts Say
July 30, 2025 at 1:10 AM
Reposted by Sean Li
sarahgailey.bsky.social
Last night, I had the privilege of delivering a keynote speech at the Locus awards. You can view the speech and read the full text here.

stone-soup.ghost.io/hammer-speech/
Hammer Speech
Last night, I got to stand up in front of the audience at the Locus Awards ceremony. I wound up presenting the Locus Award for Best Short Story (congratulations, Isabel J. Kim!) – but first, I deliver...
stone-soup.ghost.io
June 22, 2025 at 6:59 PM
Reposted by Sean Li
tochitruestory.bsky.social
A few nights back, as a Guest of Honor at the Locus Awards, I was asked to give a speech, and chose the occasion to think out loud about a few things that've been on my mind: tochionyebuchi.substack.com/p/some-remar...
Some remarks on representation
Guest of Honor Tings
tochionyebuchi.substack.com
June 23, 2025 at 3:02 PM
Reposted by Sean Li
hillaryclinton.bsky.social
The Trump budget in one chart: Cut programs that help families and make America a leader of the world, pour money into kidnapping grad students and deporting toddlers.
Proposed budget change by agency
May 5, 2025 at 6:23 PM
Reposted by Sean Li
xkcd.com
PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081
April 25, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Reposted by Sean Li
aaronrosspowell.com
With Andor Season 2 dropping tomorrow, it's worth recalling that Season 1 contained the best bit of writing ever in Star Wars.
There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they've already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And then remember this. The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire's authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. Remember this. Try.
April 21, 2025 at 8:45 PM
Reposted by Sean Li
sarahjeong.bsky.social
incredible array of quotes www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/b...
Paul Weiss Deal With Trump Faces Backlash From Legal Profession
Paul Weiss, a law firm targeted by President Trump, reached a deal to settle a conflict. Many in the legal field are condemning the agreement.
www.nytimes.com
March 22, 2025 at 6:57 PM
Reposted by Sean Li
riana.bsky.social
I have a guest post up today at @ericgoldman.bsky.social ’s blog about a court ruling finding (at MTD stage) no immunity for reporting age-difficult content that turned out not to be CSAM to NCMEC - a ruling any ESP that reports to the CyberTipline should read.

blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/202...
Verizon and Its Cloud Vendor Must Face Lawsuit for Reporting “CSAM” That Wasn’t - Lawshe v. Verizon (Guest Blog Post) - Technology & Marketing Law Blog
by guest blogger Riana Pfefferkorn Child sex abuse material, or CSAM, is a longstanding scourge on the Internet. Like the baseball diamond in “Field of Dreams,” if you build a service that allows file...
blog.ericgoldman.org
March 11, 2025 at 3:51 PM
Reposted by Sean Li
adrianaguatame.bsky.social
A friend included this anti-acknowledgement section on her PhD thesis. She also added the proposition: “Systematic bullying and undermining of girls and women in STEM starts early on and is the reason why they do not stay in science and related fields.”
Absurd we still need to go through this
🧪👩‍🔬
There have been people less than helpful in my journey here. I wanted to acknowledge those too, bc I know I am not unique in this experience. No thank you to the physics study assoc that made me sing songs about how women couldn't study physics without sleeping with the professor, the day I stepped into university life. No thank you to the 5th year physics student that decided to assign me a stripper name within the first minute of meeting me in the physics coffee corner in my first year. No thank you to the technician that was responsible for onboarding me on the use of the cluster in my third year who raised his eyebrows and asked me if that meant I was some sort of computer girl. No thank you to the senior researcher that sent me utterly inappropriate texts after a conference, then proceeded to apologise months later by telling me they had not been meant for me anyway so no hard feelings remain hopefully And no thank you to him for attending every conference I've been to since. No thank you to the people who told me that it was surprising that I was doing a PhD since I was a girl. No thank you to the man who mistook me for a coffee lady at a conference, and after having to correct him two times that I did not work there, responded with you should consider it. No thank you to the researcher that asked me what I was wearing underneath my outfit during a conference. No thank you to the physicist who declared to a room full of other physicists that biologists don't know how to design an experiment. No thank you to the people who have called me scary instead of strong and intimidating instead of intelligent. And finally, no thank you to the exec board of the TU Delft, whose knee-jerk reaction to being held up a mirror about the social safety at the university, was to sue the party holding up the mirror instead of looking at the problems they highlighted. ... You have made me feel like I do not belong in science & I cannot forgive you for that.
March 6, 2025 at 4:40 PM
Reposted by Sean Li
legalminimum.bsky.social
Just because I’m no longer on their board doesn’t mean I don’t still have friends there. I am told that the Trump DOJ has advised NCMEC that if they don’t scrub their website for any public-facing references to TQIA+ kids this week, they are at risk of losing their funding.
February 6, 2025 at 10:46 PM
Reposted by Sean Li
marisakabas.bsky.social
New — The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) was told this week by DOJ that they'd lose their funding if the org didn't remove any mentions of LGBTQIA+ issues from their public materials, I've learned. Staff were told they need to deadname trans kids in their reports to comply.
February 7, 2025 at 3:30 AM
Reposted by Sean Li
indyfromspace.bsky.social
For sale, arc of universe, never bent
February 4, 2025 at 3:42 AM
Reposted by Sean Li
kenwhite.bsky.social
Trump Administration Makes Deliberate Brutality Of Criminal Justice System 8% More Explicit

www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...
January 21, 2025 at 6:30 PM
Reposted by Sean Li
kateconger.com
Scoops w/ @mikeisaac.bsky.social and @sheeraf.bsky.social:
-Zuck overhauled Meta’s hate speech policy in Nov after convos with Andreessen about progressives policing speech
-Kaplan led the policy rewrite, championing the removal of language protecting trans people www.nytimes.com/2025/01/10/t...
Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Sprint to Remake Meta for the Trump Era
After visiting President-elect Donald J. Trump in November, Mr. Zuckerberg decided to relax Meta’s speech policies. He asked a small team to carry out his goals within weeks. The repercussions are jus...
www.nytimes.com
January 10, 2025 at 7:03 PM
Reposted by Sean Li
mgoldstein.nyc
If you publish words or posts on the internet professionally, it is worthwhile to keep on top of what the platforms are doing and who they are aligning with. As the web becomes )(more) a series of walled gardens you should carefully select which spaces are worth your time and effort to cultivate.
marisakabas.bsky.social Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · Dec 17
substack just announced a new enterprise media offering (whatever that means) in partnership with bari weiss’ website “because of its commitment to pursuing high-integrity journalism.”

if you’re still publishing there, it’s time to get the fuck out.

on.substack.com/p/the-new-me...
The new media, powered by Substack
Partnering with The Free Press to better support media organizations
on.substack.com
December 17, 2024 at 5:49 PM
Reposted by Sean Li
stevenstrogatz.com
Hi Adam, I take your point that the quadratic formula can be presented in a way that does not inspire understanding or affection. And it sounds like that's how it was taught to you. So let me try to make a better case for it. Here's how I discussed it in my book The Joy of x. (1/9)
December 15, 2024 at 1:31 AM
Reposted by Sean Li
sarahjeong.bsky.social
I actually think one of the really interesting things going on with the intellectual whiplash around gen AI and fair use is a proposition that seems intuitive to the lay person but unintuitive to lawyers: the creation of more information leads to less knowledge, not more
November 27, 2024 at 5:02 PM
Reposted by Sean Li
qjurecic.bsky.social
thinking about this paper today www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/mis...
What this suggests is that pointing to poor socioeconomic performance by democratic governments and citizen anger about that performance as the primary drivers of democratic backsliding is a mistake. The onus for backsliding belongs on those leaders who gain power for a wide range of reasons, including in many cases by promising to renovate democracy, but then once in power relentlessly amass unconstrained power by overriding countervailing institutions and undercutting basic democratic norms and procedures. Backsliding in these cases is thus less about a failure of democracy to deliver than about a failure of democracy to constrain—that is, to curb the predatory political ambitions and methods of certain elected leaders.
November 9, 2024 at 8:42 PM
seansli.bsky.social
You know, in 2016, you could give a person the benefit of the doubt.

But in 2024?
November 6, 2024 at 7:51 AM
Reposted by Sean Li
mcsweeneys.net
"Should I trust the Dark Lord who attempted to topple the White City of Gondor? Or do I trust the Elf Queen representing the coalition of Men and Elves who defeated Sauron when he tried to enslave the Free Peoples, but could maybe do more meet-and-greets?"
www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-...
I’m an Undecided Hobbit, Torn Between a Dark Lord Who Promises an Age of Chaos and an Elf Queen Whom I Just Wish I Knew More About
I’m a well-informed Hobbit—a Boffin from Overhill, thank you very much—who is in a kerfuffle about whom to throw my Hobbit-sized support behind. Fo...
www.mcsweeneys.net
October 16, 2024 at 1:10 AM