Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Lauren Beukes

Pete Paphides @petepaphides.bsky.social · 8h

I'd love to know what every comedian who played the Riyadh Comedy Festival thinks of this piece by Jonathan Liew. It's an electrifying read. And really hard to think what any counter-justification from the participating comics would consist of. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

We know what the comedians got out of the Riyadh comedy festival. What about the Saudi regime? | Jonathan Liew

The tawdry event was an ultimately doomed attempt by the Saudi government to buy the kind of authentic grassroots culture it is unwilling to countenance, says Guardian columnist Jonathan Liew

www.theguardian.com

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Deb Chachra @debcha.bsky.social · 19h

You get to read the book, *other* people get to read the book, and every interaction like this that you have with your local library sends a message that it is valued and supported by the community.

Apart from everything else, now is a great time to support civic institutions!

Charlie Jane "Lessons in Magic and Disaster" Anders 🏳️‍⚧ @charliejane.bsky.social · 24d

Hey, I know books are expensive and money is tight right now.

But if there's a brand new book you really wanna read — including my own Lessons in Magic and Disaster — you can help get the book into way more hands by requesting it from your local library!

It's easy! Check your library's website.

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Kragar @kragar.bsky.social · 22h

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Andrew F. Sullivan @afsulli.bsky.social · 22h

great summary of the scams getting rained down upon us

Kate Heartfield @kateheartfield.com · 1d

Today's newsletter is about the patterns in fake book club and other scam emails sent to authors.

How to spot an author scam email

I’ve grumbled enough on social media about the rise in AI-generated scam emails that now, more than one of my author friends has sent an email to me, asking...

buttondown.com

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Lauren Beukes @laurenbeukes.com · 1d

also curious!

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Erin Reed @erininthemorning.com · 1d

1. A new journal report in the prestigious Medical Journal of Australia eviscerates the Cass review, saying it is filled with fallacies and launders anti-trans disinformation.

It methodically goes through each problem in the review.

The latest from S. Baum.

Subscribe to support our journalism

New Journal Report: Cass Review “Echoes Fallacies Promoted By Anti-Trans Disinformation”

While American lawyers pushed the anti-trans Cass Review this week, Australia’s top scholars rebuked it.

www.erininthemorning.com

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Don Linn @donlinn.bsky.social · 1d

Claim and celebrate ALL the victories

The New York Times @nytimes.com · 1d

A library director in Wyoming who was fired two years ago because she refused to remove books with sexual content and LGBTQ themes from a library’s children and young adult sections was awarded $700,000 in a settlement on Wednesday.

Librarian Fired in Books Dispute to Receive $700,000 Settlement

County officials in Wyoming fired Terri Lesley, a library director, after she refused to purge children and young adult books that contained sexual content and L.G.B.T.Q. themes.

nyti.ms

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GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com · 1d

this kid’s a good egg

Willamette Week @wweek.com · 1d

Jack Dickinson, 26, says “we’re winning this.”

An Interview With the Portland Chicken

Rachel Saslow

www.wweek.com

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 1d

This is the genius of the Portland protests - they make the claims of lawlessness look not just wrong, but comical

The Daily Show @thedailyshow.com · 1d

The following is REAL footage from Portland, 2025. Viewer discretion is advised.

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Lauren Beukes @laurenbeukes.com · 1d

This is a phenomenal read

Mark Bray @mark-bray.bsky.social · 8d

3c) Want to take the opportunity to share this great article from @truthout.org about racism/fascism and The Punisher character

Marvel’s “Punisher” Was a Hate Symbol Long Before Police Co-opted His Character

The Punisher has long been embraced as a classic superhero, but his comics spread reactionary ideology.

truthout.org

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Rob Milton @therobmilton.com · 4d

- put down the damn AI.

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Deb Chachra @debcha.bsky.social · 1d

I mean, this was (and remains) the great promise of the web — that we could create, share and connect with each other exactly like this, peer-to-peer, without gatekeepers, rather than one-to-many broadcast. It’s just that now we’re trying to do it while pollution is being dumped into the ecosystem.

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Joe Boo-nenwald @joegrunenwald.bsky.social · 25d

Somehow the legendary Karen Berger (@karenpberger.bsky.social) has fewer than 1000 followers here. This must be corrected. You know what to do, comics folks.

Karen Berger currently only has 982 followers on Bluesky. What in the WORLD.

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Juno Rylee Schultz @junoryleejournalism.com · 2d

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems...
SIMON: What?
SHAPIRO: ...Or saying...
SIMON: You imagine that?
SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.
SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.
SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this.
SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

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Lauren Beukes @laurenbeukes.com · 1d

I've travelled to multiple countries this year on the new system from Rwanda to Denmark and it's been okay if very deeply annoying and inconvenient. Just a very tedious process every single time, unnecessarily as a tax paying and voting UK resident

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Lauren Beukes @laurenbeukes.com · 1d

I feel like Oz cartoonist Kaz Cooke's Rough Guide to Pregnacy is a great example of this: all the info, citations, trust you are a complex thinking human capable of smart decisions on properly cited evidence plus hilarious illustrations

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Lauren Beukes @laurenbeukes.com · 1d

PeepGPT would also have human experts do searches for you and present all the relevant info with citations AND an easy to understand debrief on best practice critical analysis so you could make up your own mind with all the info

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Lauren Beukes @laurenbeukes.com · 1d

I do feel like maybe at least some of us are gonna trend more human, more messy, more weird, more hard copy (zines, paper, film prints)

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Lauren Beukes @laurenbeukes.com · 1d

I wanna start a PeepGPT where we charge subscribers the same amount to access actual human experts willing to write that email / make that image / generally tell you you are okay

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Lauren Beukes @laurenbeukes.com · 1d

I just need a physical doc/card! Currently in Morocco and really looking forward to spending 30-60 min with Ryanair's online support team tomorrow explaining this

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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 3d

sooner or later we are going to have to get to grips with cognitive decline, and start taking seriously the idea that lots of old people need as much or more protection young people, in both cases whether they want it or not.

Max Colbert @mc00.bsky.social · 3d

I feel like if you had to ban social media for any group of people for their own protection, you should probably start with people over 60.

Jacob Öberg @profjacob.bsky.social · 3d

🚨🚨 #Denmark aims to ban #socialmedia for children under 15. PM Mette Frederiksen says "We have unleashed a monster" to Danish lawmakers. 🧵https://www.politico.eu/article/denmark-mette-frederiksen-partially-ban-social-media-children-under-15/

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𝔾𝕆ℝ𝔸ℕ @gorangligovic.bsky.social · 2d

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to lofi hip hop radio beats to relax/study to

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ciarangallagher.bsky.social @ciarangallagher.bsky.social · 2d

I think this is particularly true of the “what if someone transitions in name only just for the woman’s heavy weight boxing final” which appeals a lot to lawyers brained elites and is easily dismissed with “why would anyone do that?” by normies.

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Kathleen Bachynski @bachynski.bsky.social · 2d

A study of nearly 300,000 people published today in the New England Journal of Medicine found “that last season’s 2024–2025 mRNA COVID vaccines reduced people’s risk of emergency department visits by 29 percent, their risk of hospitalizations by 39 percent and their risk of death by 64 percent.”

Annual COVID Vaccines Save Lives, New Study Shows

A new study shows that receiving an updated COVID vaccine reduced people’s risk of severe disease and death in all age groups, regardless of immunity from prior infection or vaccination

www.scientificamerican.com

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David Barnett @davidmbarnett.bsky.social · 3d

Weird how they put all their efforts into using technology to replace human creativity and art and then say creative arts degrees are useless.

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