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Damir Cosic

@damircosic.bsky.social
1.1K followers 2.1K following 202 posts

Economist, immigrant, antifascist, antiracist. Stop the genocide. Trans rights are human rights. At Urban Institute. Views my own.

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Reposted by Damir Cosic
Will Bunch @willbunch.bsky.social · 11h
The Hague is far too good for Stephen Miller
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Stephanie Lamy @stephlamy.bsky.social · 8h
Today's student rally at the historic Place de la Bastille.
Place de la Bastille in Paris chocker block full of students protesting
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jon christian @jonchristian.net · 07/10/2026
NEW: Meta is refusing to remove horrible AI-generated videos of graphic child abuse, including a baby being roasted in an oven futurism.com/artificial-i...
futurism.com
Meta Is Refusing to Remove AI-Generated Facebook Videos of Graphic Child Abuse, Including a Baby Roasting in an Oven
We sent Meta 19 Facebook accounts sharing AI-generated videos of graphic child abuse. 24 hours later, it hadn't taken them down.
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Ken Schwencke @schwanksta.com · 06/10/2026
A year ago, @propublica.org told you immigration agents had detained more than 170 U.S. citizens. We’ve updated our count, and we’ve got all the receipts. The tally: At least 506 citizens detained. Sometimes held at gunpoint, handcuffed, or even deported. projects.propublica.org/american-cit...
projects.propublica.org
More Than 500 U.S. Citizens Have Been Detained, Including Handcuffed or Held at Gunpoint, in Trump’s Immigration Crackdown — ProPublica
The government doesn’t track how often immigration officers detain U.S. citizens. So ProPublica did. We’ve found more than 500 Americans who were held against their will during this Trump administrati...
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Damir Cosic @damircosic.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
According to Gil Duran (the Nerd Reich), there was much more there. He shows that Vance accepted some of Yarvin’s extreme ideas and they also had a personal connection through Thiel.
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Elizabeth Spiers @espiers.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
I was raped at a frat party. It’s a shockingly common experience and preventative interventions in college are way too late.
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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
In the Biden administration, l led the team that developed what was arguably the first White House “AI safety” framework, the AI Bill of Rights. David Robinson, author of this forthright and sobering essay about risk culture at OpenAI and in Silicon Valley was on that team.
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Erin J. Wamsley 🧠📈😴 @wamsleylab.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
The fiscal year is over. The dying Social, Behavioral, and Economic division of NSF ended up awarding 90 total grants this year, as opposed to ~700-800 in recent past years. Source: grantwitness.org/nsf/analyses...
The graph shows the cumulative number of awards made by month across this fiscal year, as compared to the last 6 fiscal years. The line for this year is total flat until June, but then finally gets up to 91 by October. In prior years the increase starts building earlier and ends on average in the 700-800 range (with variability, last year was only between 400-500).
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Karen Attiah @karenattiah.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Mike Pompeo has been rewarded with a teaching fellowship at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. The same school that canceled my class on media, race and international affairs. @columbiasipa.bsky.social share.google/KEvTy5yER71U...
share.google
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to join SIPA faculty
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will join the School of International and Public Affairs as a fellow at SIPA’s Institute of Global Politics in March, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
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Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
The term “remigration” is associated with the extreme right and only came into widespread usage in 2023-4. Even Germany’s AfD avoided using the term in 2024 for fear of scaring away voters. Today the US government is celebrating the “victories” it’s racked up in the “ethnic cleansing” column.
Department of Homelan... • Follow •.• X
5h • 0
Net negative migration for the first time in HALF a CENTURY.
Americans are amassing victories NEVER seen before thanks to President Trump.
We will continue to grow our efforts to fulfill the mandate given to this administration.
REMIGRATION REPORT
94%)
3.3+
MILLION REMOVALS
INCLUDING DEPORTATIONS AND VOLUNTARY REMOVALS
ASYLUM DENIAL AT 94%
250,000
VISAS REVOKED
REVOKED
TRAVEL BANNED
FROM 39 COUNTRIES
2,600+
287(G)
AGREEMENTS
NATURALIZATIONS
DOWN
75%
1.3K
519
212
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Parkscope Joe @parkscopejoe.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
This is insane.
Christopher Hale w @ChristopherHale
Follow
NEW: According to a bombshell report in the New York Times, Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah threatened to walk out of Pope Leo XIV's Al encyclical launch in May because the pope rejected the idea that machines can be conscious.
Olah's team then privately lobbied the pope's advisers "to take the possibility of model consciousness seriously." Pope Leo XIV held firm.
For months, Anthropic has wined and dined theologians and religious scholars under nondisclosure agreements, hoping they would bless the idea that Claude has moral standing.
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Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Essential reading from Steve Vladeck. And he's right, this is explicitly a regime of "deportation to torture," with the express approbation of SCOTUS. Are the justices committing serious crimes under international law? Yes. They are. And they appear to be proud to enable their dictator.
open.substack.com
254. Four Things That (Really) Bother Me About “D.V.D. III”
“Third-country removals” raise a host of difficult procedural and substantive questions. The Supreme Court should have answered those questions *before* greenlighting deportations to torture.
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
New from @timnitgebru.blacksky.app and me: "It is high time for us to regulate usage of systems sold as “AI”, not because they are magical machines, but because they are error-prone products that shouldn’t be used in high stakes scenarios." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
Forget ‘superintelligence’: error-prone AI nearly sparked world war three this month | Timnit Gebru and Emily M Bender
The risks of AI aren’t what we think they are, as a recent security incident between China and the United States reveals
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Perry Bacon @perrybaconjr.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
"For America to right itself, we need changes on the scale of Reconstruction and the New Deal. And I worry that’s not going to happen if Democrats and the broader anti-Trump left are taking their cues about what’s necessary and politically possible from the Times." newrepublic.com/article/2160...
newrepublic.com
The Left Must Fight The New York Times’ Monopoly Too
The paper’s editorial vision is out of step with the robust liberalism needed today.
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Acid Rain @bearysweet.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
The colder autumn nights in Germany coaxes this magnificent eagle, Oropherion, to spend his nights in his heated indoor winter aviary. This is an African Martial Eagle (Polemaetus bellicosus), the largest eagle species native to Africa. (Cr @birdsofprey_nathalie_denolf) #birds #eagle
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Kate Hagen's House of Horrors 👻 @thathagengrrl.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
"Meanwhile, Jane Doe dropped out of Cornell and was denied her request to get her tuition refunded so that she could transfer to a different college. She hence faced more severe consequences than most of the men who she alleges gang-raped her." www.thecut.com/article/what...
thecut.com
What It Feels Like at Cornell Right Now
As a professor at the Ivy League school, Kate Manne has known many, many victims. There’s a palpable feeling on campus, she writes, that this is big.
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Damir Cosic @damircosic.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
just incredibly shameful. at every step, MAGA justices show that they support the cruelty and racism of this regime.
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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Nearly 40% of survivors who report to their schools are pushed out in one way or another—usually, at the urging of school staff who want them to leave. (In comparison, less than 1% of perpetrators are suspended or expelled.)
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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
The main reason you haven’t heard about campus sexual violence in a few years is because Trump and SCOTUS have made it much, much harder for survivors to come forward. You might vaguely remember that Title IX was a big battleground in his first term. And that we lost.
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More Perfect University @mpuniversity.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
@aoc.bsky.social on justice at Cornell: we have an institution that issues a suspension on track for deportation for someone engaging in free speech and protest on campus, but made rapists write an essay in private.
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Middlerage @middlerage.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
This should have gotten a hell of a lot more news! The United States was the only NO vote at the Commission on the Status of Women, at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Monday. America voted AGAINST women’s rights! healthpolicy-watch.news/us-isolated-...
healthpolicy-watch.news
Only US Votes Against Women’s Rights Document At UN Commission - Health Policy Watch
President of the UN General Assembly Annalena Baerbock told the opening of CSW that the backlash against women's rights "feels as though we are forced to
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Democracy Docket @democracydocket.com · 25/09/2026
🚨 BREAKING: In a major loss for voters, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to allow the Trump administration to initiate voter roll purges using a flawed database involving Americans' private data. The ruling will disproportionately impact naturalized citizens who've been wrongly flagged in the system.
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Damir Cosic @damircosic.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
theguardian.com
US supreme court lifts restrictions on controversial voter database
Trump and officials claimed it combats voting by noncitizens but critics said it could disenfranchise eligible voters
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Damir Cosic @damircosic.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I know, I was wondering about that too. Why would the court go along with it?
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Damir Cosic @damircosic.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I tried a few in the top 20, but the only two I liked enough to see all episodes are the Wire and Atlanta.
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Jack Jenkins @jackjenkins.me · 25/09/2026
In which my RNS colleague @bmietana.bsky.social tracks the "Rise of the Jim Crow theobros." Fascinating an unsettling reporting here, but this is a key line: "…along the way, they are turning outrage into cash." religionnews.com/2026/09/24/t...
religionnews.com
The rise of the Jim Crow theobros
(RNS) — A group of Reformed pastors and influencers has wedded old-school segregationist theology with the hypermasculinity of the manosphere and the savvy of the attention economy to preach and sell ...
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Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Georgia’s second-largest school district has abruptly banned Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” from school library shelves
gpb.org
Georgia school system abruptly bans Toni Morrison’s ‘The Bluest Eye’
Georgia’s second-largest school district is once again at the center of a political controversy over the appropriateness of school materials.
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Damir Cosic @damircosic.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Journal article references. LLMs often make them up. Not because they want to do it but because a made up reference is indistinguishable from a real one in their probabilistic world. A person can make this distinction with certainty.
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Damir Cosic @damircosic.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Not because of different nature. I don’t claim to know why we know some things absolutely, but we do, and LLMs don’t.
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Damir Cosic @damircosic.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
We can, at least for some categories of statements. There are no such categories for LLMs. Everything is probabilistic, which is why the hallucinations problem is so difficult to solve. It’s inherent to how they are built.
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Damir Cosic @damircosic.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Knowing the facts plays a key role in human reasoning. If we’re talking about LLMs’ “reasoning”, we have to consider what it means that their “knowledge” of facts is probabilistic.
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Damir Cosic @damircosic.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
A key feature of human cognition is that, for some types of statements we can determine with absolute certainty whether they are true or not. There are no such statements for LLMs. Every determination they make is probabilistic.
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Damir Cosic @damircosic.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
This is not getting at my question. Sure we can measure the rate at which an LLM distinguishes facts from fiction and that rate is probably better than chance. But if we are talking about LLMs’ “reasoning” and how different it is from human reasoning, we have to go beyond that.
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Damir Cosic @damircosic.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Where do you stand on LLMs’ ability to distinguish facts from fiction?
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 22/09/2026
Sen. Susan Collins helped steer millions in federal defense contracts to Navatek, whose CEO illegally funneled thousands of dollars to her campaign. The FBI sought to launch a probe and was eyeing Collins and other lawmakers. Then Trump gutted the unit in charge. THREAD 🧵
Martin Kao, CEO of defense contractor Navatek, poses next to Sen. Susan Collins for a photo. Collins is holding a model of a boat in her hands. Behind them is a large sign with the Navatek logo.
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
DC locals, come join us for a screening and a panel discussion this Thursday!
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The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Wilber’s attorney: “Wilber has a bullet lodged near his spine and is losing feeling on the left side of his body.” #AbolishICE @DoorDash
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Truthout @truthout.org · 21/09/2026
A UN report has concluded that the U.S.’s boat strike campaign in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean has violated international law and “plausibly” amounts to crimes against humanity, a label reserved for the worst human rights violations in global conflicts.
truthout.org
UN Report Finds US Boat Strikes Violate International Law, Are “Plausibly” Crimes Against Humanity
The report says that the US must prosecute those responsible, suggesting murder charges.
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Ryan Marino, MD @ryanmarino.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Toxicologist here. If you have a working liver and kidneys then you are already “detoxing.” Supplement use is one of the leading causes of liver and kidney failure. The only thing you’re getting rid of when you fall for these predatory wellness grifts is your money.
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Ben Johnson @ailaexecdir.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
DHS purposely broke the asylum system and now has the audacity to blame immigration lawyers & AILA for the wreckage. AILA won’t stand for the false claims, rather, we stand for the highest standards of professional responsibility.
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Jack Jenkins @jackjenkins.me · 17/09/2026
Two notes here: 1. Hard to convey how unusual it is for an admin to be pitted against this many religious groups in *so many different ways* all at the same time in court. The Trump admin is an outlier here. 2. I’m a religion reporter, but unclear why this trend hasn’t gotten more attention.
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Christopher Mathias @letsgomathias.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
In response to my @talkingpointsmemo.com story, the Florida Democratic Party issues statement calling on Florida GOP leaders — Ron DeSantis, Byron Donalds, and Ashley Moody — to take a stand against Marshall Rawson. "We don't need to send a Nazi to Tallahassee." floridadems.org/2026/09/flor...
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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
i'm not sure if robert kraft quite grasps what he started
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Erin Fogg says Free Link @criminalerin.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
"In the video, 45-year-old Rahiem Kubisty is heard saying, “I need an ambulance.” An officer responds, “What do you need an ambulance for, big dog?” followed by, “You ran from us,” and, “Stupid bitch,” and again, “You ran from us. You’re lucky you didn’t get more.”"
21alivenews.com
21Investigates: Suspect’s family, witness challenge FWPD actions in viral arrest
Two Fort Wayne police officers are off patrol and on restrictive duty after video of an arrest surfaced on social media over the weekend. The suspect’s family says officers crossed the line into retal...
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Janai Nelson @janainelson.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
VICTORY! The Supreme Court held the Postal Service CANNOT enforce restrictions on mail-in voting that would have disenfranchised countless voters after LDF and co-counsel blocked the rule on behalf of a coalition of nonpartisan organizations. When we FIGHT,we WIN! www.naacpldf.org/press-releas...
naacpldf.org
U.S. Supreme Court Blocks Postal Service From Restricting Mail Ballots
Court leaves a preliminary injunction in place through the November election; USPS cannot withhold mail ballots from voters  In a major win for voting rights, election integrity, and democracy, the U....
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NBER @nber.org · 14/09/2026
Federal flood buyouts help households adapt to climate risk. But households of color receive at least 6 percent less compensation, with stark differences in where families relocate, from Kay Jowers, Lala Ma, and Christopher D. Timmins www.nber.org/papers/w35726
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Dear Democrats, You will never be able to triangulate your way through racism/sexism/transphobia, because pushing a lighter, politer form of bigotry is always a lose-lose proposition. The bigots want the uncut stuff, while normal people aren't drawn to cowards who sell out. Stand your ground.
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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Researchers across the country are turning to side hustles to fund their work. Behind the cuts sits a bigger shift: whether American science can still sustain durable research capacity. @lindseydcameron.bsky.social and I examine the stakes in a new piece @science.org: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
The wrong platform for science
Daniel Blumstein recently sat in a Colorado meadow waiting for yellow-bellied marmots to appear, as the ecologist and evolutionary biologist had done many times before, the New York Times reported. Bu...
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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 09/09/2026
The last few days is like a DDOS attack from these companies 🙄 I just finished drafting an op-ed and then see another OMG Machine god is going to kill everyone 😱 post Ok walk me through the step by step action this super intelligent chatbot takes to render everyone us extinct?
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