Shirley Siluk
LightNews LightNews
ebishirl.bsky.social
Shirley Siluk
@ebishirl.bsky.social
2.6K followers 5.8K following 650 posts
Writer/editor and former journalist. Author of "News Speak: How Language Can Manipulate Meaning in What We Read, Watch and Listen to" and "Prove It!: Fact-Finding Secrets of a Fanatical Online Researcher."
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ebishirl.bsky.social
Fantastic piece, @coreyatad.com Wasn't expecting to see references to Won Kar-wai and The Third Man, but it's that kind of deep and creative thinking that shows you how smart Zohran and the many committed people behind campaign have been. Also love this line:
Quote from article that says: “To be joyful now, given the world, is really hard, and being able to keep some sense of joy in these dark times was really important,” DiMieri said. “There was this channeling of all this negative energy into something positive.”
November 4, 2025 at 4:00 PM
ebishirl.bsky.social
From techstartups.com: OpenAI revenue targets, meanwhile, are ambitious. Bloomberg reported that OpenAI expects to hit $12.7 billion for all of 2025, with plans to more than double that to $29.4 billion next year. But the company doesn’t expect to be cash-flow positive until it reaches $125 billion in revenue, a milestone it doesn’t see coming until 2029.
October 31, 2025 at 3:48 PM
ebishirl.bsky.social
techstartups.com/2025/09/30/o...
From techstartups.com: "“OpenAI generated around $4.3 billion in revenue in the first half of 2025, about 16% more than it generated all of last year, according to financial disclosures to shareholders. The company said it burned $2.5 billion, in large part due to its research and development costs for developing artificial intelligence and for running ChatGPT. Some of its largest expenses were non-cash, including stock payments to employees,” The Information reported."
October 31, 2025 at 3:47 PM
ebishirl.bsky.social
This quote from the study says a lot, doesn't it?
Quote from an academic study on the use of LLMs that says: "Taken together, our findings suggest that one of the major benefits of LLM syntheses—sparing users the need to browse through results and synthesize information themselves—can come at the expense of developing deeper knowledge on a subject in certain contexts. In this sense, one might view learning through LLMs rather than traditional web search as, at times, analogous to being shown the solution to a math problem rather than trying to solve it oneself."
October 28, 2025 at 10:25 PM
ebishirl.bsky.social
Jason Isaac as Field Marshal Zhukov, dramatically throwing off his coat in the movie "Death of Stalin."
September 12, 2025 at 3:24 PM
ebishirl.bsky.social
Colorful graphic with a smiley face at the top showing that the ebishirl.bsky.social account uses alt text for images 100.00% of the time.
September 12, 2025 at 3:17 AM
ebishirl.bsky.social
🤣
Haunted GenAI image of Donald Trump that makes him look a bit like Grandpa Munster with a Jimmy Durante nose. Dates in office include "Jamuay 22, 2017," "Manuary 2d, 2018," "Barler123 27, 2019" and "Januaty 21, 2017."
August 8, 2025 at 8:58 PM
ebishirl.bsky.social
This is such a great story, expressing a really powerful perspective about the possibility of small efforts enabling larger changes. We all need to look for - and address - these "small" opportunities wherever we can.
But here’s the thing about seemingly impossible tasks: they’re only definitively impossible if you don’t attempt them. There’s a curious quantum uncertainty to social change — the act of working toward it alters the probability of its occurrence. Each school we help makes the next one slightly easier. Each conversation changes the parameters of what’s considered normal or acceptable. Even failed attempts leave behind a residue of possibility that wasn’t there before.
July 11, 2025 at 10:41 PM
ebishirl.bsky.social
Zippy has donated!
Gray-faced senior terrier cozy on a gray fleece blanket.
July 11, 2025 at 6:09 PM
ebishirl.bsky.social
Screenshot from Wikipedia entry for "Fluoride" with a note on the bottom that reads, "Not to be confused with 'Floride' or 'Fluorite'" after which a handwritten note in red ink adds, "or Florida."
May 15, 2025 at 8:38 PM
ebishirl.bsky.social
Absolutely brilliant!
Excerpt from FT articles analyzing tell-tale features in Sam Altman's kitchen: "Maybe it’s useful to know that Altman uses a knife that’s showy but incohesive and wrong for the job; he wastes huge amounts of money on olive oil that he uses recklessly; and he has an automated coffee machine that claims to save labour while doing the exact opposite because it can’t be trusted. His kitchen is a catalogue of inefficiency, incomprehension, and waste. If that’s any indication of how he runs the company, insolvency cannot be considered too unrealistic a threat."
May 11, 2025 at 4:02 PM
ebishirl.bsky.social
We'll be posting this image soon enough... and we'll have the answer.
April 4, 2025 at 9:30 PM
ebishirl.bsky.social
This guy! ❤️
Photo of man at Tesla Takedown protest holding a sign that says, "Coming soon Spirit Halloween"
March 22, 2025 at 10:14 PM
ebishirl.bsky.social
Yes, you see plenty of that theme in "Andor" as well, and it's handled so well. It's encapsulated perfectly by Luthen's response to Lonni in the last episode of season 1: "I'm condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them."
Text of Luthen's response to Lonni in the last episode of season 1 of "Andor": Lonni Jung: And what do you sacrifice? Luthen Rael: Calm. Kindness. Kinship. Love. I've given up all chance at inner peace. I've made my mind a sunless space. I share my dreams with ghosts. I wake up every day to an equation I wrote 15 years ago from which there's only one conclusion, I'm damned for what I do. My anger, my ego, my unwillingness to yield, my eagerness to fight, they've set me on a path from which there is no escape. I yearned to be a savior against injustice without contemplating the cost and by the time I looked down there was no longer any ground beneath my feet. What is my sacrifice? I'm condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them. I burn my decency for someone else's future. I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I'll never see. And the ego that started this fight will never have a mirror or an audience or the light of gratitude. So what do I sacrifice? Everything! You'll stay with me, Lonni. I need all the heroes I can get.
March 21, 2025 at 4:57 PM
ebishirl.bsky.social
This quote from Chrisman Frank, co-founder of the Musk/DOGE-friendly AI-powered Synthesis Tutor, is horrifying - & also sums up what Trump/DOGE believes: that AI is capable of replacing humans in any task. (It's not, & it won't, but we're all going to suffer the impacts of their current experiment.)
Text from a Mother Jones article quoting Synthesis Tutor co-founder Chrisman Frank: "'First step,' he also wrote in March, 'stop teachers from teaching.'"
March 21, 2025 at 3:15 PM
ebishirl.bsky.social
I agree. Personally, I've been boiling down some of the most egregious developments into one-pagers that I can share with people on and offline. (And I can share PDF versions with anyone else who'd like to do the same.)
Elon Musk is attacking veterans • The administration plans to cut more than 80,000 jobs from the Department for Veterans Affairs. • “[T]he system is slowly being starved.”—Robert Thomas, president of Paralyzed Veterans of America. • “We are watching the gutting of the Department of Veterans Affairs.”—Lindsay Church, director of Minority Veterans of America • “[Elon Musk] was not elected... His cuts are harmful... I do not believe they have Americans’ best interest behind them”—Jammie Mosser, a veteran who served the US for 30 years. • Speak up. Don’t let this happen. Visit Legion.org, then call your elected representatives and urge them to defend veterans’ jobs. Elon Musk wants to kill Social Security • More than 73 million people, including 56 million retirees, depend on monthly Social Security benefits to survive. • The Social Security Administration hasn’t missed a monthly payment since it began making those in 1940. • Elon Musk and DOGE plan to close all 7,500 Social Security field offices across the US and fire thousands of employees who manage benefits. • DOGE employees are rifling through the Social Security Administration's databases, including your personal information. • “Ultimately, you’re going to see the system collapse and an interruption of benefits. I believe you will see that within the next 30 to 90 days.”—Martin O’Malley, former commissioner of the Social Security Administration, said on March 3, 2025. • “If Congress does not act soon to stop him, our Social Security system may never recover.”—Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works. • Speak up. Don’t let this happen. Visit SocialSecurityWorks.org, then call your elected representatives and urge them to defend Social Security. They want to sell off our National Parks • Protected public lands generate more than $1 trillion for the economy. • They preserve nature for campers, hikers, anglers, hunters and all citizens to enjoy. • Yet the new House Rules package proposes to “effectively consider public lands to have no monetary value.” • Why? To sell our parks to investors for mining or development. • Speak up. Don't let this happen. Visit NoLandGrab.com, then call your elected representatives and urge them to defend our National Parks.
March 17, 2025 at 3:09 PM
ebishirl.bsky.social
DOGE is at the front lines of this. See what I wrote about this here.
The LLM-Powered Idiocratic Matrix It feels like the mask is fully off now: tech companies aren’t going to see a return on their many billions of dollars’ worth of investment in LLMs (large language models) like Grok and ChatGPT by shaving a few hours off of everyone’s time spent writing emails or meeting summaries. They aim to recoup their funds through a massive de-employment program. The business case for those LLMs has never felt especially compelling in light of all the less-than-exciting returns on investment these companies have been touting. But Elon Musk’s moves with DOGE and those poorly timed emails to federal employees asking them to “send me five bullets of what you accomplished last week”? With those developments and the news that DOGE wants to further automate the federal reduction-in-force mechanism, it’s easy to see where they’ve found the dollar signs: in getting rid of as many employees as possible. Imagine: doing everything that your multinational enterprise (or national government) can do now, but with 10 percent of the people expense. Sure, the results are going to be much poorer products and services to citizens, voters and customers. But that doesn’t really matter to the Musks of the world, does it? Twitter (I’m not calling it by the new name) sucks now. It’s full of abusive bros and Nazis and crypto weirdos and scam artists. It’s no longer the digital public square for respectable journalism and elected officials and decent businesses. But it still runs, kinda sorta. The lights are still on, metaphorically speaking. And with Musk appointing himself as the most powerful person in the US, it could well be on track to become a real gravy train. Advertisers fled after Twitter became… that thing. But they’re more likely to return now because they see an opportunity to gain favor with the real leader of the nation. Win win… except for the citizens, voters, customers and regular folks. How much louder do Musk and Co. have to say it? We regular …
March 15, 2025 at 3:37 PM
ebishirl.bsky.social
During Trump I, I wrote a collection of poetry - one poem for every month in office - to preserve my thoughts at the time. In month 10, I wrote a poem called "Salted Earth." It captures exactly my feelings about today's news.
Text of a poem titled, "Ten - Salted Earth" "Ten—Salted Earth Standing on this rooftop, We watch From a distance As the city is sacked. The hall of diplomats Stands empty, Its dark and broken windows Like eye sockets in a rotting skull. Students in tattered robes Pour out of the university, Their arms filled with stolen books Ahead of the mercenaries’ arrival. Already underfed and uncared for, Animals in the zoo Pace, agitated— The most majestic of them Will soon be trophies On the generals’ walls. And everywhere we look, The invader’s loyalists Fan out through the streets, The parks, The fields, The forests, Trailed by servants carrying heavy bags From which they pull out salt to sow, Fistful after fistful, Upon the trampled ground."
March 14, 2025 at 8:15 PM
ebishirl.bsky.social
Want to print and distribute a flyer protesting Elon Musk and DOGE's attack on Social Security? Feel free to share this.
Image of a flyer opposing Elon Musk and DOGE's attack on Social Security. Text reads as follows: "Elon Musk wants to kill Social Security • More than 73 million people, including 56 million retirees, depend on monthly Social Security benefits to survive. • The Social Security Administration hasn’t missed a monthly payment since it began making those in 1940. • Elon Musk and DOGE plan to close all 7,500 Social Security field offices across the US and fire thousands of employees who manage benefits. • DOGE employees are rifling through the Social Security Administration's databases, including your personal information. • “Ultimately, you’re going to see the system collapse and an interruption of benefits. I believe you will see that within the next 30 to 90 days.”—Martin O’Malley, former commissioner of the Social Security Administration, said on March 3, 2025. • “If Congress does not act soon to stop him, our Social Security system may never recover.”—Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works. • Speak up. Don’t let this happen. Visit SocialSecurityWorks.org, then call your elected representatives and urge them to defend Social Security." The flyer also features an image of a Social Security card and two QR codes, one that links to https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials and a second linking to SocialSecurityWorks.org.
March 10, 2025 at 2:29 AM
ebishirl.bsky.social
Here's a second flyer to distribute, this one in support of veterans and against Elon Musk's plan to cut more than 80,000 jobs from Veterans Affairs.
Image of a flyer to distribute in protest of Elon Musk's plan to cut more than 80,000 jobs from Veterans Affairs. The image at the top shows a graphic of a Veterans Affairs ID card. The text below reads: "Elon Musk is attacking veterans • The administration plans to cut more than 80,000 jobs from the Department for Veterans Affairs. • “[T]he system is slowly being starved.”—Robert Thomas, president of Paralyzed Veterans of America. • “We are watching the gutting of the Department of Veterans Affairs.”—Lindsay Church, director of Minority Veterans of America • “[Elon Musk] was not elected... His cuts are harmful... I do not believe they have Americans’ best interest behind them”—Jammie Mosser, a veteran who served the US for 30 years. • Speak up. Don’t let this happen. Visit Legion.org, then call your elected representatives and urge them to defend veterans’ jobs." Also featured are two QR codes, one linking to https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials and the other linking to an American Legion article at https://www.legion.org/information-center/news/veterans-healthcare/2025/march/keeping-our-promise-to-the-nations-veterans
March 8, 2025 at 8:46 PM
ebishirl.bsky.social
Inspired by @pronounced-ing.bsky.social's post, I'm starting a thread of flyers I'll be creating to print, post and distribute, so please share. First one is an updated version of a flyer in support of the National Park Service.
Image of a flyer to distribute in support of the National Park Service. It features an image of a white sand shoreline with water in the background and the text: "They want to sell off our National Parks • Protected public lands generate more than $1 trillion for the economy. • They preserve nature for campers, hikers, anglers, hunters and all citizens to enjoy. • Yet the new House Rules package proposes to “effectively consider public lands to have no monetary value.” • Why? To sell our parks to investors for mining or development. • Speak up. Don't let this happen. Visit NoLandGrab.com, then call your elected representatives and urge them to defend our National Parks." Also included are two QR codes, one to https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials and a second linking to NoLandGrab.com
March 8, 2025 at 8:41 PM
ebishirl.bsky.social
Sharing this one to raise awareness of the risks to public lands.
PNG image of National Park Service beach with the following text: They want to sell off our National Parks Protected public lands generate more than $1 trillion for the economy. They preserve nature for campers, hikers, anglers, hunters and all citizens to enjoy. Yet the new House Rules package proposes to “effectively consider public lands to have no monetary value.” Why? To sell our parks to investors for mining or development. Speak up. Don't let this happen. Visit NoLandGrab.com, then call your elected representatives and urge them to defend our National Parks. Includes two QR codes directing people to the website NoLandGrab.com and USA.gov/elected-officials
March 4, 2025 at 11:36 PM
ebishirl.bsky.social
Aww, happy birthday, Armani. And 15-year-old rescue Zippy - who also has diabetes - wishes you the same.
Photo of an elderly terrier mix, with a very gray-flecked coat and eyes clouded by cataracts, resting on a soft gray blanket on a couch.
February 28, 2025 at 10:16 PM
ebishirl.bsky.social
Or to accomplishments@doi.gov.
Screenshot of skeet from Jen Bendery that says: "Despite OPM guidance, Dept of Interior told workers today they have to submit their weekly accomplishments - and prepare to do this potentially every week. They even created a new email for it: accomplishments@doi.gov. 'Definitely nothing indicating it's voluntary,' said one worker. [emoticon of 'thinking' face]"
February 25, 2025 at 12:55 AM
ebishirl.bsky.social
Nonsense. LLMs like ChatGPT require subject matter expertise, knowledge & healthy skepticism to use effectively. If you don't know anything, you won't know if the answer you get is reasonably accurate or is BS. Microsoft researchers found that overreliance on GenAI hurts critical thinking skills.
Conclusion of a study by Microsoft researchers on how GenAI tools hurt critical thinking: "We surveyed 319 knowledge workers who use GenAI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Copilot) at work at least once per week, to model how they enact critical thinking when using GenAI tools, and how GenAI affects their perceived effort of thinking critically. Analysing 936 real-world GenAI tool use examples our participants shared, we find that knowledge workers engage in critical thinking primarily to ensure the quality of their work, e.g. by verifying outputs against external sources. Moreover, while GenAI can improve worker effi- ciency, it can inhibit critical engagement with work and can poten- tially lead to long-term overreliance on the tool and diminished skill for independent problem-solving. Higher confidence in GenAI’s ability to perform a task is related to less critical thinking effort. When using GenAI tools, the effort invested in critical thinking shifts from information gathering to information verification; from problem-solving to AI response integration; and from task execu- tion to task stewardship. Knowledge workers face new challenges in critical thinking as they incorporate GenAI into their knowledge workflows. To that end, our work suggests that GenAI tools need to be designed to support knowledge workers’ critical thinking by addressing their awareness, motivation, and ability barriers."
February 17, 2025 at 7:08 PM