Dr. Jay Barchas-Lichtenstein (they/them)
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drnycnerd.bsky.social
Dr. Jay Barchas-Lichtenstein (they/them)
@drnycnerd.bsky.social
800 followers 730 following 360 posts
Journalism researcher, linguistic anthropologist, fiction writer. Some things I discuss: language & social meaning, news media, #binders, puns, food.

Now: @cnti.bsky.social
Once: @knology.org

My colleagues & I made: https://www.reportingwithnumbers.com/
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Dr. Jay Barchas-Lichtenstein (they/them) @drnycnerd.bsky.social · Jul 31
What do news organizations actually need to know about AI & journalism? A new briefing from @cnti.bsky.social's Global AI & Journalism Research Working Group synthesizes 80+ research studies.

cnti.org/article/aij-...
Briefing #1: AI Literacy & Communication
July 2025
cnti.org
drnycnerd.bsky.social
TIL about a fun Easter egg: try googling "garamond font" or "comic sans font"

It only works for a handful of common ones but it's adorable.
November 7, 2025 at 2:27 AM
Reposted by Dr. Jay Barchas-Lichtenstein (they/them)
erinbiba.bsky.social
The biggest difference by far watching the various campaigns as a New Yorker and all of the messaging we were targeted with I think is an important takeaway for the whole country:

Cuomo’s entire message was threats and fear and cynicism.

Mamdani’s entire message was lightness and joy and hope.
November 5, 2025 at 3:16 AM
Reposted by Dr. Jay Barchas-Lichtenstein (they/them)
grimalkina.bsky.social
This is why if you learn nothing else for evidence literacy, learn to look up survey items and read them for yourself and think about how someone might interpret them.
nicholasgrossman.bsky.social Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 10d
Poll: Americans say “too divided”
Pundit: Dems are being too divisive

Poll: Legal system unfair
Pundit: The public thinks Trump should get away with crimes

Poll: Low trust in media
Pundits: MSM is too far left

Every time they see a nonspecific term and assume everyone thinks like a Republican.
michaelhobbes.bsky.social Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 10d
I will never understand the pundit obsession with getting Democrats to solve "political division."

Not only is this what they're already doing, but Klein admits that Republicans will never do the same. So elections will remain constant GOP smears and simping Democratic promises of bipartisanship.
November 2, 2025 at 3:23 PM
Reposted by Dr. Jay Barchas-Lichtenstein (they/them)
marisakabas.bsky.social
so much of what i think has gone unsaid re: whether zohran is “good” for jewish new yorkers is that many are looking for him to indicate he would protect (whatever that means) jewish new yorkers *above* or to the detriment of non-jewish new yorkers.
November 4, 2025 at 12:32 AM
drnycnerd.bsky.social
JFK is setting expectations really low these days, huh?
Sign at the airport with a quote from Lao Tzu: "A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving."
October 10, 2025 at 10:17 AM
Reposted by Dr. Jay Barchas-Lichtenstein (they/them)
cnti.bsky.social
What does responsible use of AI look like for the future of journalism?

CNTI's @drnycnerd.bsky.social will discuss ways AI is reshaping newsrooms as part of First Amendment Day at UNC.

🗓️ Wednesday, October 8, 2025
🕚 11:00 a.m.
📍 UNC
✅ Free and open to the public

Full details: lnkd.in/g-y2FyUE
October 6, 2025 at 2:45 PM
Reposted by Dr. Jay Barchas-Lichtenstein (they/them)
cnti.bsky.social
In Serbia, a leaked recording has raised fears of political attempts to weaken independent media. As the country adopts the EU’s DSA, a question looms: Will this law protect press freedom—or be misused to suppress it?

👉 Read more from @ewrightwy.bsky.social:
euobserver.com/eu-and-the-w...
How Serbia could use EU Digital Services Act for state censorship
The implementation of the EU's Digital Services Act in Serbia and other countries lacking an independent digital services coordinator risks becoming an EU-based tool for state repression, enabling rul...
euobserver.com
September 26, 2025 at 3:00 PM
Reposted by Dr. Jay Barchas-Lichtenstein (they/them)
emanabdelhadi.bsky.social
Eat. Sleep. Exercise. Nurture the relationships that sustain you. Protect your health. Find joy. Don't mistake any of these for the resistance itself. Joy isn't resistance, neither is rest. But you need to be whole to resist for a lifetime.
September 22, 2025 at 8:46 PM
Reposted by Dr. Jay Barchas-Lichtenstein (they/them)
chanda.blacksky.app
It’s weird to me that people keep starting new Substacks and still don’t know that Substack is extremely bad news

Please get off Substack 😭

www.anildash.com//2024/11/19/...
Don't call it a Substack. - Anil Dash
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.
www.anildash.com
August 17, 2025 at 1:58 AM
Reposted by Dr. Jay Barchas-Lichtenstein (they/them)
joshuabenton.com
GPT-5 is so amazing it can make 52.8 higher than 69.1 on a bar chart

It can even make 69.1 and 30.8 THE SAME SIZE
August 7, 2025 at 5:08 PM
Reposted by Dr. Jay Barchas-Lichtenstein (they/them)
kathrynck.bsky.social
The real secret about genius is that it refers to an emotional experience in the perceiver, not a quality in the perceived. It's an amazing feeling, when someone lights up your brain with their skill. It's why I love my job. But it is a feeling, not an objective event
faineg.bsky.social Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · Aug 4
I am really sick of all these pieces about the DOGE boys who uncritically and unthinkingly repeat the claim that they're "geniuses."

We have to stop regurgitating out the label of "genius" exclusively for a certain type of special white little boy.
arithmetc.bsky.social Ari @arithmetc.bsky.social · Aug 4
We are also mythologizing his brilliance because he fits the mold of the singular boy genius tech stereotype. We need to stop and question that too.
August 4, 2025 at 7:09 PM
drnycnerd.bsky.social
I finished reading "The AI Con" last week and I'm going to be sitting with it for a long time.

As a researcher it affirms my frustration with the slipperiness of "AI" as a term. All the research shows that people don't understand it consistently.
August 1, 2025 at 10:24 AM
Reposted by Dr. Jay Barchas-Lichtenstein (they/them)
drnycnerd.bsky.social
What do news organizations actually need to know about AI & journalism? A new briefing from @cnti.bsky.social's Global AI & Journalism Research Working Group synthesizes 80+ research studies.

cnti.org/article/aij-...
Briefing #1: AI Literacy & Communication
July 2025
cnti.org
July 31, 2025 at 1:05 PM
Reposted by Dr. Jay Barchas-Lichtenstein (they/them)
q.pheevr.ca
🥇 Black: The good, normal way to have coffee

🥈 Milk, no sugar: Not bad at all, but superfluous (unless the coffee is too strong)

🥉 Milk and sugar: Fine if I think of it not as coffee, but as a coffee-flavoured dessert (affogato lite?)

💩 Sugar, no milk: O gods this is vile, why would you do this
July 31, 2025 at 3:58 PM
drnycnerd.bsky.social
What do news organizations actually need to know about AI & journalism? A new briefing from @cnti.bsky.social's Global AI & Journalism Research Working Group synthesizes 80+ research studies.

cnti.org/article/aij-...
Briefing #1: AI Literacy & Communication
July 2025
cnti.org
July 31, 2025 at 1:05 PM
Reposted by Dr. Jay Barchas-Lichtenstein (they/them)
bradlander.bsky.social
The mass starvation & killing of Palestinians in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli gov’t is a chillul hashem, a desecration of God.

Jewish leaders who criticized Zohran Mamdani for three words he doesn’t use should raise their voices loudly here as well.
forward.com/opinion/7575...
Gaza is starving. Where are the American Jewish leaders?
A fear of being labelled antisemitic still deters American Jews and Jewish institutions from taking a position that is morally correct.
forward.com
July 24, 2025 at 10:04 PM
Reposted by Dr. Jay Barchas-Lichtenstein (they/them)
erinbartram.bsky.social
Setting aside the ethical and environmental concerns of AI, I'm really offended by a bunch of elite dudes telling us our minds aren't good enough when they've had to steal everything human minds have created to create their pretend mind and it doesn't even work right!
July 26, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Reposted by Dr. Jay Barchas-Lichtenstein (they/them)
edzitron.com
Now Anthropic is strongly considering weekly limits on Claude Code. Users making it clear they won't accept this or pay more than $200 a month. I am confident this happens because as my analysis suggests they are losing tons of money on each user!
www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode...
Weekly limits are coming... Join I was recently invited to participate in a brief Al-moderated interview by Apthropic which I completed because they were offering a $250 Amazon gift card. I was invited because I am supposedly "one of our most engaged Max 20x users" which was surprising to me. 1 log some pretty long hours and hit limits almost daily with CC but I wouldn't consider myself a power user at all. I don't even use mcp servers... Just a vibe coder building ai slop projects I probably have no business trying to build. Anyways, the reason I am posting is because I was disappointed to learn that they are strongly considering or have already decided they will be implementing weekly limits. Meaning you could, depending on your usage, max out your limits by Monday or Tuesday, even on the 20x plan and then be locked out for a week or need to upgrade or purchase additional utilization. I voiced my concerns in the interview and let them know how I felt about that. But I haven't seen anyone else talk about this and I feel like more of you should be able to let Anthropic know if you support this or not. I do apologize for not screenshoting some of the questions it was super early morning when I did it and wasn't really expecting them to talk about changing the limits in this manner. I can share screenshot of the email if anyone doesn't believe but I don't think it's that serious. dolmdemon • 5h No way in hell Im shelling out more than $200/month. That's already more than my electric bill. I think we need to push back here. If they get CC to stop doing stupid ubercoder throw all the things at the codebase shit, we wouldn't need so much token usage wrangling it. …今Reply&个17少 Medicaided OP • 4h yeah $200 is my limit too I really can't justify more. Let alone more than a car payment which I imagine some of the next plans will be. It would be cool if they could adopt a model kinda like google workspace where its lower cost for personal accounts and more for businesses. So average people can build ideas for lower costs, and businesses who are gaining real serious value from Al, can pass that Al cost (or savings) on to their customers and afford to front the cost of Al. Better-Cause-8348 • 5h Yep, I'll be cancelling if they do this, as I'm sure many others will as well. I've already downgraded from 20x to 10x and may even go lower, because the quality is still horrible. I'm constantly having to explain things so in-depth that I might as well do it myself. I can barely get 10 minutes into anything before I have to stop. No, this is what I mean. No, this is what you need to do. No, that's not what I said at all. No, did I ask for that? The crazy part to me is that it's probably costing them far more money now that they're running a more quantized version than if they'd left it the way it was and simply rate-limited or imposed stricter limitations. Now, it might take me four or five back-and-forths before I can get what I need, if I can get what I need, whereas before, it would have happened on the first try. And yes, I get that others aren't having any issues and it's rainbows and unicorns for them still, happy for you. Don't be a dummy and assume you're experience is the only one, there are PLENTY of others on here saying the same things again and again, clearly there is an issue somewhere and it can't always be the user. • Reply&个 少 Medicaided OP • 4h I find myself priming the convo until I have probably 20-30% context left before I let CC fix anything. Then as soon as the fix is over I need to do it again for the ne to maintain decent project alignment and remove an, over engineering
July 27, 2025 at 2:56 AM
drnycnerd.bsky.social
What do we know about how journalists and the public think about "journalism" and the people who create it?

This was fun to work on -- my colleague Sam is so, so smart!

journalistsresource.org/media/what-j...
What journalists and the public think of journalism and technology
Researchers shed light on a mismatch between how journalists and the public view journalism in the age of artificial intelligence.
journalistsresource.org
July 17, 2025 at 11:15 PM
drnycnerd.bsky.social
Speaking as both a NYC voter and a media researcher, I think this is well worth a read.
kendrawrites.com Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · Jun 26
A FAIR analysis of media coverage of the top six Democratic candidates (based on polling through the end of May) found that Cuomo’s name appeared in headlines seven times more often than Zohran Mamdani, ... and nine times more often than Brad Lander....
Cuckoo for Cuomo: Ex-Governor’s Name Dominated Coverage of NYC Mayoral Race
A FAIR analysis of New York mayoral primary coverage found that Andrew Cuomo’s name appeared in headlines seven times more often than Zohran Mamdani's.
fair.org
June 26, 2025 at 4:52 PM
Reposted by Dr. Jay Barchas-Lichtenstein (they/them)
kendrawrites.com
I'm not going to reskeet the skeet that made me feel the need to say this but: NYC is a very Jewish city - public schools are closed for Yom Kippur. It's also a very Muslim city - public schools are closed for Ramadan. It's also one of the most Catholic cities in the nation.
June 26, 2025 at 2:11 AM
drnycnerd.bsky.social
Sweet relief is coming soon:
Screenshot of the forecast. It's predicted to be 79 degrees Fahrenheit tomorrow, which is 24 degrees cooler than today.
June 26, 2025 at 2:13 AM
drnycnerd.bsky.social
This series is so powerful and so hard to read and so, so, so important right now.
cnti.bsky.social Center for News, Technology & Innovation @cnti.bsky.social · Jun 23
Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is the most documented war in history , yet Ukraine’s newly occupied territories remain sealed off, their suffering cloaked in darkness. Ukrainian reporter Tanya Kozyreva shares her experience covering occupied territories: tinyurl.com/mpudf3d3
June 23, 2025 at 2:56 PM
drnycnerd.bsky.social
The next letter in @cnti.bsky.social 's press freedom series is up today. It's a beautiful meditation on what Nigeria can teach the US:

cnti.org/guest-essay/...
A Letter from Nigeria
In the darkest and most ferocious moments of Nigeria's totalitarian experience, two survival strategies worked for us: courage and community. Courage from journalists, but also courage from publishers...
cnti.org
June 16, 2025 at 1:05 PM
drnycnerd.bsky.social
I'm so excited about @cnti.bsky.social 's series of "letters from the field" on press freedom.

Today's letter comes from Serbian journalist Teodora Ćurčić: cnti.org/guest-essay/...
A Letter from Serbia
In Serbia, media freedom has never been a given. We have never had a solid foundation of transparency or accountability. Journalists have been working under pressure for decades.
cnti.org
June 11, 2025 at 12:53 PM