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Lew Riley

@lewriley.bsky.social
712 followers 762 following 57 posts

Professor of physics at a SLAC. I study experimental nuclear structure with gamma rays, protons, and students. Exploring inclusive pedagogy, alternative assessment, UDL.

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Reposted by Lew Riley
Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 03/12/2025
An estimate of the energy cost of producing one single 10 second Sora video: one kilowatt hour. - Deplete and then recharge your iphone 17 68 times - 10% of daily German household use - 5.5 hours of Netflix - ~4hrs of gaming This is probably a huge underestimate www.linkedin.com/posts/alista...
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Ecologies of Technology - research, writing, engagement, workshops, project and proposal developmentEcologies of Technology - research, writing, engagement, workshops, project and proposal development
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I recently posted that creating one 10-second AI video on OpenAI’s Sora app takes 1 kilowatt hour - 10% of the daily energy of a German household. Someone asked: What about Netflix and online gaming - surely they use a lot of energy too?
It’s a good question, and it comes up a lot whenever AI energy is discussed - and answering it helps to put AI’s energy demand in perspective.

Let's start with Netflix - a credible estimate from The Carbon Trust in 2021 said that 1 hour’s streaming took around .18 kilowatt hours. So in that case, making one 10 second Sora Video takes the same as watching 5 and a half of hours of Netflix. And in case you’re wondering, watching HD or 4K makes virtually no difference.

Most of that energy by far is from your own device, so a large TV takes a lot more than a smartphone. In the Sora estimate, a device is not included.

Online gaming is far harder to estimate, there are no clear numbers, but I found some clues.

One analysis looks at hosting Destiny 2, a popular online game, on an AWS “ng4b.16xlarge” instance. (you can find out more how I've calculated in the link below).

By my estimates that will come to around 15 watts per player per hour. But again your home device is doing most of the work - nearly 20 times more. Add a Playstion or PC, that could be 250 watts, so that’s .265 Kwh for every hour of gaming. So making 1 Sora Video takes 4 hours of gaming. And it will be dozens of hours more if you use a smartphone.

But with AI’s energy use, we should take a systemic view; after all, an AI model is a massive industrial system with a truly global impact.

We don’t have p…
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 14/12/2025
This paper contains some good arguments about an issue that concerns me a lot when I hear my colleagues talking about LLM use in developing their research: Whose ideas are you presenting as your own? (Though the fatalist argument the authors make at the end of paper is disappointing/bizarre.)
Screenshot (with final two sentences highlighted): “Academic authorship functions not only to communicate knowledge but also to allocate credit for the labour that produced it.
This credit affects hiring, promotion, funding and broader scholarly standing. To plagiarize is to distort the attribution of insight, misleading readers about origin and credit.
The provenance problem introduced by LLMs is troubling for a similar reason.”Screenshot: “Humans, too, can commit what is sometimes called 'cryptomnesia', in which they reproduce ideas that they have encountered previously but mistakenly believe to be origi-nal. However, what was once an idiosyncratic risk of interpersonal exchange is now a systemic feature of our knowledge infrastructure.
As scholars increasingly use generative artificial intelligence (AI) for writing assistance, those whose work is absorbed into training datasets may shape scholarship without ever being cited, while Al-proficient scholars may enjoy reputational gains built partly on others' uncredited ideas.”

(The sentence about “a systemic feature” is highlighted)Screenshot, with second sentence highlighted: “Nevertheless, Al developers bear obligations to improve attribution capabilities: efforts to trace and cite training data sources could help to preserve intellectual credit chains. But because many models rely on copyrighted or unlicensed material, developers face disincentives to improve provenance, even though traceability is crucial for legal and ethical accountability.”
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
This post (+ the one after it, but starting with this one because context is important) has gotten surprising amounts of attention from folks who think that students are necessarily lazy and malicious. >>
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Bee Quammie @beequammie.blacksky.app · 17/09/2025
Black women like @angryblacklady.bsky.social and @chanda.bsky.social are speaking very clearly and objectively about why registering for a protest isn't a great idea, and white people are fighting them down. It's always "listen to Black women*" with the asterisk meaning "after the fact"
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 17/09/2025
Monarez: "Kennedy demanded 2 things of me that were were inconsistent w/ my oath of office. He directed me to commit in advance to approving every ACIP recommendation regardless of the scientific evidence. He also directed me to dismiss career officials responsible for vaccine policy without cause"
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Mekka Okereke @mekka.mekka-tech.com · 17/09/2025
For years, I've tried to tell y'all what cops know, and what criminal justice reformers know, about how murders really get solved. Look at how massive the manhunt for both Luigi Mangioni and Tyler Robinson were. Then look at how they were actually caught. 🤷🏿‍♂️ Two phone calls.
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 08/08/2025
1. Federal funding for research promotes tech, biomedical, and scientific discovery in the US, and provides training for the sci/tech workforce that has brought immeasurable wealth to the US over the past 75 years. Today's executive order includes a provision that will obliterate both functions.
whitehouse.gov
Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and to improve the process of Federal
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Catherine Fletcher @catherinefletcher.info · 07/08/2025
Obviously a lie, since the definition of PhD-level expertise, standard across universities worldwide, is that you can produce original knowledge.
bbc.co.uk
OpenAI claims new GPT-5 model boosts ChatGPT to ‘PhD level’
GPT-5's release comes as tech firms continue to compete in an effort to claim the world's most advanced AI.
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RDS (formerly shawphd) @rds773.myatproto.social · 03/08/2025
I remember once astonishing a colleague’s husband when he naively asked why we (historians) couldn’t just look something up on the internet and we had to explain that WE are the ones who find the stuff and add it to the internet
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Cat Hicks @grimalkina.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
A lot of conversations I have with software developers reveal a fundamental causal reasoning fallacy around access. Their stance is frequently: "I had interest, and I succeeded, so interest is the driver of success." The real comparison is how many people had interest and didn't succeed anyway
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ACLU @aclu.org · 17/07/2025
Rümeysa Öztürk was unlawfully detained by ICE for over six weeks in retaliation for writing an op-ed. For the first time since her release, Rümeysa opens up about her experiences and advocates for dignity and justice for those still trapped in ICE detention.
vanityfair.com
“Even God Cannot Hear Us Here”: What I Witnessed Inside an ICE Women’s Prison
Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk opens up about her 45 days in a South Louisiana processing facility—and the generous and compassionate women she met.
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Senator Sheldon Whitehouse @whitehouse.senate.gov · 09/07/2025
What's up with Justice Jackson? She started making her mark and speaking out early, and some of her dissents are so pointed Kagan and Sotomayor don’t even join them. The far right is out for her, and even Republican justices are getting snarky. So what's up? Here’s my take 🧵
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Mekka Okereke @mekka.mekka-tech.com · 28/06/2025
Added alt text to the reposted image. I can get behind this. The episodes are painfully short. I wait a whole week, and then it's all over so quickly? Not fair! I am being treated very unfairly!
A "Mamdani's Socialist Promises" meme, composed of a screenshot of Fox News showing a photo of Zhoran Mamdani, with a caption inserted by the meme creator. This version the caption says, "murderbot episodes will be 1 hour long."
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Keith Fitzgerald @keithfitzgerald.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
Worth a watch: Head of Signal, Meredith Whittaker, on so-called "agentic AI" and the difference between how it's described in the marketing and what access and control it would actually require to work as advertised.
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Dr. Lucky Tran @luckytran.com · 14/06/2025
#NoKings protest in Philadelphia
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Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
Jon Stewart is a legend & the way this show is trying to explain to a mainstream audience the gravity what is happening in the US is amazing. It was both thrilling & terrifying to be part of it. Thank you @TheDailyShow 👏 www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG7C...
youtube.com
Carole Cadwalladr - Broligarchs, AI, and a Techno-Authoritarian Surveillance State | The Daily Show
YouTube video by The Daily Show
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Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf @rahmstorf.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
"History tells us that there are times when the dangers of inaction become sufficiently threatening to individuals or the planet that scientists who are able and willing to do so will have to enter the public arena ... This is such a time." www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
More US scientists must speak out - Nature Human Behaviour
The Trump administration has launched an extraordinary and dangerous attack on US science. Climate and water scientist Peter Gleick calls on scientists who are able and willing to do so to speak out p...
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Raider @iwillnotbesilenced.bsky.social · 26/05/2025
There's nothing holy about writing discrimination into the law.
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Denise Norris @denisenorris.bsky.social · 25/05/2025
Repeat after me: Treatment for trans-youth saves lives. "The consensus of the evidence supports that the treatments are effective in terms of mental health, psychosocial outcomes, and the induction of body changes consistent with the affirmed gender in pediatric [gender dysphoria] patients."
motherjones.com
Utah study on trans youth care extremely inconvenient for politicians who ordered it
The state's ban on gender-affirming pediatric care "cannot be justified" by science, a two-year review concluded.
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Nikki T in NYC @nikkitnyc.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
You do NOT have to accept this! Post on the public comments to pressure them to NOT do this! www.regulations.gov/commenton/FD...
regulations.gov
Regulations.gov
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Maggie Tokuda-Hall @maggietokudahall.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
Please use this image as the reply post to all dems who're trying to compromise right now. You have my blessing.
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Andrew Simon @simongandrew.bsky.social · 29/03/2025
One of many moments in Omar El Akkad’s new book, “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This,” that will stop you in your tracks.
There is an impulse in moments like this to appeal to self-interest. To say: These horrors you are allowing to happen, they will come to your doorstep one day; to repeat the famous phrase about who they came for first and who they'll come for next. But this appeal cannot, in matter of fact, work. If the people well served by a system that condones such butchery ever truly believed the same butchery could one day be inflicted on them, they'd tear the system down tomorrow. And anyway, by the time such a thing happens, the rest of us will already be dead.
No, there is no terrible thing coming for you in some distant future, but know that a terrible thing is happening to you now. You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice. You are being asked to dismantle the machinery of a functioning conscience.
Who cares if diplomatic expediency prefers you shrug away the sight of dismembered children? Who cares if great distance from the bloodstained middle allows obliviousness. Forget pity, forget even the dead if you must, but at least fight against the theft of your soul.
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Helen Czerski @helenczerski.bsky.social · 26/04/2025
The scientific news from America is grim. The Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) has resigned and hundreds of existing grants are ending. NSF grant money isn't paid out in a chunk at the start - you invoice as you need it, so gov can just stop paying. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Hundreds more NSF grants terminated after agency director resigns
Sethuraman Panchanathan abruptly leaves helm of US funding agency after Elon Musk’s DOGE arrives.
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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 25/04/2025
PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081
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Lew Riley @lewriley.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
Quantum Frost xkcd.com/3076/
xkcd.com
The Roads Both Taken
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David Malakoff @davidmalakoff.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
NEW: The number of new grants handed out by the National Science Foundation since President Donald Trump took office has fallen by nearly 50% compared with the same 2-month period 1 year ago. | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
NSF has awarded almost 50% fewer grants since Trump took office
The reasons aren’t clear—and the agency’s director claims the president’s policies haven’t slowed grant awards
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Mekka Okereke @mekka.mekka-tech.com · 30/03/2025
Hey, yall thought I was harsh when I said this over the years. I said what I said. Do you still think it's harsh now? Some of y'all think you are somewhat safe but you are not, because you are surrounded by unreliable people. It's better to have a smaller group that will not cash you in.
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Ana Marie Cox @anamariecox.com · 29/03/2025
My friends, let me introduce you to Tim Walz.
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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 25/03/2025
It's critical for everyone to remember what an Executive Order is. It is the President communicating orders to members of the executive branch. Policies to pursue, actions to take, etc. They are not laws. They are not close to being laws. They are formalized memos to employees. That's all.
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Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 25/03/2025
Morning Bluesky.
Stagg - What's the latest on the weather?
The weather looks good for June 6.
Ok, mark that as D-Day for Operation Overlord, got that everyone?
This is Montgomery, confirmed for the British.
Tedder here, confirmed for the air.
Leigh-Mallory, same.
Ramsey -confirmed for Neptune.
This is a reporter for Völkischer Beobachter,
should I be on this?
???!!!
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Talia Argondezzi @taliaargondezzi.bsky.social · 16/03/2025
Here’s my new McSweeney’s, It’s a Shame We Have to Betray Our Allies, Starve the Poor, Halt Scientific Progress, Destroy the Environment, and Eliminate the Freedoms Enshrined in the Bill of Rights, but at Least My Investment Portfolio Is Also Tanking
mcsweeneys.net
It’s a Shame We Have to Betray Our Allies, Starve the Poor, Halt Scientific Progress, Destroy the Environment, and Eliminate the Freedoms Enshrined in the Bill of Rights, but at Least My Investment Po...
“Mr. Trump has acknowledged, despite all his confident campaign predictions that ‘we are going to boom like we have never boomed before,’ that the ...
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Jen Jennings @jenjennings.bsky.social · 23/03/2025
Must-read book for every university president
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Roopika Risam @roopikarisam.bsky.social · 23/03/2025
I really wish everyone would read EMPTY PLANET, which has a few good case studies of what this attitude gets you. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/545397...
penguinrandomhouse.com
Empty Planet by Darrell Bricker, John Ibbitson: 9781984823229 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
An award-winning journalist and leading international social researcher make the provocative argument that the global population will soon begin to decline, dramatically reshaping the social, politica...
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Microplastics Sommelier @leastactionhero.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
standing by to detect any noises from the harper's letter "campus wokeness is stifling free speech" crowd related to mahmoud khalil's arrest
Old timey photo of a man with a giant listening device, with two metal dishes piping into his ears
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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 16/03/2025
This is great.
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Mekka Okereke @mekka.mekka-tech.com · 16/03/2025
If you think the US is getting to Mars anytime soon without NASA, the NSF, research universities, and a functioning FAA, you are not being serious. I'm not arguing with y'all on this. The European Space Agency is now closer to Mars than the US is (2040). And they might get there with our scientists
theregister.com
France offers to take in US scientists
: Aix-Marseille University rolls out welcome mat for American researchers facing funding cuts
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Lew Riley @lewriley.bsky.social · 15/03/2025
www.nytimes.com/2025/03/15/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Colleges Are Under Attack. They Can Fight Back. (Gift Article)
This is a moment to trumpet the strengths of higher education and address its weaknesses.
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Dr. Lucky Tran @luckytran.com · 10/03/2025
You can no longer order free COVID tests from the government. Despite still having $500 million worth of COVID tests stockpiled, covidtests.gov is closed.
COVID-19 Testing

The free at-home COVID-19 test distribution program is not currently accepting orders.
At-home COVID-19 tests are sold at pharmacies, grocery stores and many other retailers nationwide. Tests ordered before 8:00 PM EDT, Sunday, March 9, 2025, will be shipped. If you have an issue with an order you placed, such as a lost or damaged package, please contact USPS by calling 1-800-ASK-USPS (1-800-275-8777).
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Nicole Tersigni @nicsigni.bsky.social · 05/03/2025
you’re fired. wait you’re rehired. email us a list of things you’ve done today wait forget it you’re fired again. come back your job was important. you’re fired. or hired. come in to the office. wait the office has no computers go home. we are the department of government efficiency.
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Christine Esposito @msespo.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
When you want to teach persuasive/argumentative writing and kids pick "Are grades a fair representation of student success?" and you can find absolutely no articles that suggest they are.
media.tenor.com
a man in a black sweater is making a face and the word yikes is on his face
Alt: a man in a black sweater is making a face and the word yikes is on his face
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JA Westenberg @joanwestenberg.com · 04/03/2025
Elon Musk wants you to think Republicans, X, and the assholes wrecking the planet and crushing the vulnerable are punk rock. They’re not. The open web is punk rock. Decentralization is punk rock. Billionaire bootlicking? That’s just embarrassing. www.joanwestenberg.com/big-tech-wan...
joanwestenberg.com
Big Tech Wants You Trapped. The Open Web Sets You Free
Big Tech designed their platforms to keep you trapped. YouTube, X, Instagram, and TikTok aren't neutral spaces. They're businesses built on capturing your attention and data. Their algorithms, notification systems, and content policies all serve one purpose: keeping you engaged on their terms. And their terms alone. There's no freedom
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Nicole Tersigni @nicsigni.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
trump: I’m going to protect women women: no thank you trump: I’m gonna do it women: please don’t trump: I have kicked those 7 trans girls off the jv volleyball team women: what trump: and brought back andrew tate women: why trump: YOU’RE WELCOME WOMEN also you can’t vote anymore
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Mekka Okereke @mekka.mekka-tech.com · 25/02/2025
If you can't afford to pay for any journalism at all, that's fine too. 👍🏿 All I'm saying is, it's silly to pay for bad journalism and then complain about it. 🙂🙃 Just... switch. You have options.
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Tris @trisresists.bsky.social · 25/02/2025
Just going to leave this here should it become useful to anyone…
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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 25/02/2025
Resegregation
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🎃Darin S Pumpkins🎃 @darinself.com · 23/02/2025
Suggested changes: The far-right AfD, backed by JD Vance and Elon Musk, was rejected by 80 percent of voters, exit polls suggest. Mainstream parties plan to form a coalition without them because voters don't want them to govern.
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Beth Popp Berman @epopppp.bsky.social · 18/02/2025
1/ I am seeing a lot of comments on the slashing of NIH support along the lines of “universities should just spend their huge endowments.” I’m the last person to cheer on the institutional stratification rising endowments have contributed to. But let me explain why this is not a solution.
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Celeste Ng @pronounced-ing.bsky.social · 22/02/2025
If you called in to Target: you helped send this message. Thank you. (And if you called Costco to thank them for keeping DEIA, same!) Don't think that your voice doesn't matter. It does.
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George Takei @georgetakei.bsky.social · 22/02/2025
He nails it.
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