Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Very Terry 🔥

@bookseditorial.bsky.social

520 followers 390 following 1K posts

Publisher. Of books - critical/creative/cultural management and the like. Once known as @RoutledgeEditor on the other place. From Southport to London, via Cardiff. YNWA.

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Very Terry 🔥 @bookseditorial.bsky.social · 23d

What's that? You'd prefer a one page visualisation of what an academic & professional publisher needs to see in your book proposal? Here's one I made earlier.

Crafting an Academic Book Proposal - an aide memoire. A visualisation of academic book proposal guidelines featuring sections on "working title", "structure", "description & aims", "chapter synopses", "length & schedule", "competition", "Market & audience", and "what about you"

3 3

Very Terry 🔥 @bookseditorial.bsky.social · 6h

I am somewhat reminded of David Graeber on the phenomenology of giant puppets per @leninology.bsky.social recently Richard Seymour · Baseline Communism: David Graeber’s Innovations share.google/xojKqBQGnxvR...

the second of these essays, originally published in 2007, Graeber reverts to his role as participant-theorist to consider the secret rules governing the dynamic between anticapitalist activists and the police in the US. ‘Cops hate puppets,’ he observes, discussing their habit of seizing and destroying giant papier-mâché puppets before protests. ‘Activists are puzzled as to why.’ Graeber detects an answer in the way the puppets, made from salvaged trash and worn as garish, outsized costumes, are put to work during direct actions. Police, he writes, are ‘bureaucrats with guns’, and the surest way to prov0ke violence is to ‘challenge their right to define the situation’. That was the role of the puppets. Just as a conventional stand-off was developing, the puppets would trundle through police lines and upset the co-ordinates. Graeber engages in a sustained reflection on the various political and ideological conditions which might lead the police, trained to believe they protect the innocent, to become violent towards protesters whose concerns may not seem personally unreasonable to them – a critical problem, because when governments are toppled ‘it is usually at the point when the police refuse’ to fire on protesters.

1 5

Very Terry 🔥 @bookseditorial.bsky.social · 1d

"Say Yes, then Do Nothing" - reminiscent of Mel Brooks' on managing upwards - "you say yes, and you never do it" faroutmagazine.co.uk/comedy-class...

The mischievous Brooks grinned, “I’d learned one very simple trick: say yes.” It really was that straightforward, with Brooks admitting, “That was the end of it. You say yes, and you never do it.” He applied the same principle to many of his other films, too, such as when the head of Warner Brothers told him to remove the fart jokes and the scene in which Mongo punches a horse from Blazing Saddles. He’d say reassuring things like, “You’ll never see it again,” and “You’re absolutely right. It’s out,” and then carry on his business as usual.

Ultimately, Brooks found this approach saved him countless hours of unnecessary stress and arguments, and he even applied it to life outside Hollywood from time to time. “Don’t fight them,” he mused. “Don’t waste your time struggling with them and trying to make sense to them. They’ll never understand.”

Reposted by Very Terry 🔥

Atrios @eschatonblog.com · 1d

NOBEL PEACE PRICE COMMITTEE: WE GIVE THIS AWARD, FOR PEACE

...

FIVE MINUTES LATER

Leah McElrath @leahmcelrath.bsky.social · 1d

Machado issues her first statement since being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and makes a thinly-veiled appeal to Trump for US intervention in Venezuela:

María Corina Machado ©
@MariaCorinaYA
Follow
This recognition of the struggle of all Venezuelans is a boost to conclude our task: to conquer Freedom.
We are on the threshold of victory and today, more than ever, we count on President Trump, the people of the United States, the peoples of Latin America, and the democratic nations of the world as our principal allies to achieve Freedom and democracy.
I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause!
8:34 AM • 10/10/25 • 30K Views

54 220 730

Very Terry 🔥 @bookseditorial.bsky.social · 1d

x.com/jackclarkSF/...

Jack Clark on X: "Microsoft trains a 530billion parameter GPT3-style language model. This is the largest LM in existence. (There's also the mysterious multi-modal 1.5trillion+ 'Wu Dao' MOE model but little known about it). Microsoft trains on 'The Pile' dataset. https://t.co/md03QzqlxA" / X

Microsoft trains a 530billion parameter GPT3-style language model. This is the largest LM in existence. (There's also the mysterious multi-modal 1.5trillion+ 'Wu Dao' MOE model but little known about it). Microsoft trains on 'The Pile' dataset. https://t.co/md03QzqlxA

x.com

Very Terry 🔥 @bookseditorial.bsky.social · 1d

Four years ago Co-Founder of Anthropic put out this thread which I just stumbled across and it's kind of interesting to revisit

Tweet from Jack Clark, 11th October 2021: Microsoft trains a 530billion parameter GPT3-style language model. This is the largest LM in existence. (There's also the mysterious multi-modal 1.5trillion+ 'Wu Dao' MOE model but little known about it). Microsoft trains on 'The Pile' dataset.

Subsequent Tweet in thread: Datasets here. It's going to be very interesting to watch the politics around datasets play out. Effectiveness of this data-centric approach suggests people are going to try and (eventually) bottle up all the text on the internet to feed their models.

Subsequent Tweets in thread:

I should note that this is the largest public model in existence, in the sense of being publicly disclosed.

One of the reasons I co-wrote this paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.12427 was because it's clear AI development is becoming very resource intensive and generating a bunch of related issues (large datasets have problems, big compute creates asymmetries), so should make legible to govs

1 1

Reposted by Very Terry 🔥

Max Rushden @maxrushden.bsky.social · 1d

Article about Liverpool, losing 3 games in a row, the loss of Diogo Jota and the superficiality of all football analysis x www.theguardian.com/football/202...

Liverpool go to work and Diogo Jota is not there. Why wouldn’t that affect them? | Max Rushden

We know so little about players’ personal feelings. It means everyone’s analysis of the game is fundamentally superficial

www.theguardian.com

3 13 59

Very Terry 🔥 @bookseditorial.bsky.social · 1d

So much UK corporate creativity in finding ways to say "cost control" and making it sound like something else.

Very Terry 🔥 @bookseditorial.bsky.social · 2d

Awaiting my Doctor appointment here and the Receptionist sounds like Sophie from Stath Let's Flats. She just asked her colleague about some correspondence - "is this from GPChatChat?" This amuses me greatly.

Very Terry 🔥 @bookseditorial.bsky.social · 2d

"jobocalypse" surely to God. Jobpocalypse is unsayable? But also yes to everything you are saying.

Very Terry 🔥 @bookseditorial.bsky.social · 2d

"People keep misunderstanding me, Am I bad at communicating? No, it's the readers who are wrong." A sentiment one sees a lot, including on here.

Reposted by Very Terry 🔥

Routledge Business, Economics & Law Editors @routledgeeditor.bsky.social · 2d

#RoutledgeRevisited

Prosperity Without Growth
@timjackson.org.uk

"Cuts through the intellectual clamour with clarity, courage & hope" @naomiaklein.bsky.social
"Essential reading for those refusing to succumb to a dystopic future" @yanisvaroufakis.bsky.social

www.routledge.com/Prosperity-w...

Front cover of the book, "Prosperity Without Growth"

6 9

Very Terry 🔥 @bookseditorial.bsky.social · 2d

Not quite, but joining them on Patreon seemed to help another issue I had there.

Very Terry 🔥 @bookseditorial.bsky.social · 2d

Can try asking the surgery,. perhaps in person, how they are making this feasible share.google/bVpeT12rtiNC...

Online GP appointment requests available everywhere from today

From today, patients will be able to request appointments online throughout the day rather than calling their surgery or visiting in person.

share.google

Very Terry 🔥 @bookseditorial.bsky.social · 3d

Reminded of Bill Hicks on taking philosophy class with jocks youtube.com/clip/Ugkxjmt...

Very Terry 🔥 @bookseditorial.bsky.social · 3d

Now do New Public Governance!

Reposted by Very Terry 🔥

Academic Publishing News @acadpubnews.bsky.social · 3d

US library wholesaler Baker & Taylor
has laid off over 500 employees and plans to wind down the business by January 💔 https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/98777-baker-taylor-prepares-plan-to-shut-down.html

Baker & Taylor Prepares Plan to Shut Down

At a town hall yesterday, B&T owner and CEO Aman Kochar announced that following the termination of the ReaderLink acquisition deal, he does not see a path to keep the library wholesaler in business.

www.publishersweekly.com

2 1 1

Reposted by Very Terry 🔥

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Sep 6

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

96 1.6K 3.1K

Very Terry 🔥 @bookseditorial.bsky.social · 3d

Good Lord!

Reposted by Very Terry 🔥

Academic Anarchy🏴 - Antifa Founder @johnbrownbread.bsky.social · 3d

The nazis themselves were not some clever masterminds where everything they did went perfect. They were also comical idiots who did ridiculous things, like invading Russia in the winter.

They gained power because the opposition couldn’t understand that the fascists were not rational agents.

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · Feb 5

that said: I think the "it's not fascism unless they're good at it" brand of analysis probably isn't the move

17 290 1K

Very Terry 🔥 @bookseditorial.bsky.social · 4d

"We think wine is meant to be diplomacy in a glass, not a hostage in a trade war. Using it as a pawn doesn’t just sour the palate—it makes the entire policy look corked ... We will not be top Trumped, ever!" London's historic Cork & Bottle wine bar's latest email newsletter...

'REALITY CHECK'

Well, here’s a toast no one wanted to raise: seemingly and conveniently swept under the cellar carpet European wines and spirits are now lumped with a shiny new 15% U.S. tariff. Cheers to that, right?
France and Italy pleaded for mercy, but Washington’s ears were otherwise occupied. To the bureaucrats, wine is some frivolous indulgence. Reality check: it props up farmers, importers, restaurants, shopkeepers—the very people who keep glasses filled and jobs alive. But sure, let’s pretend it’s all about protecting the poor consumer from Bordeaux.

The hospitality industry is already bleeding cash. One trade group reckons nearly half a billion evaporated in a single month. Importers are lawyering up, restaurants are rewriting menus, and drinkers can look forward to paying 30% more by autumn. Bravo Donald!
And for the “buy American” crowd? Sorry to burst the barrel: when wine prices jump, people don’t suddenly rush for Sonoma. They just stop buying. Meanwhile, U.S. producers can’t gloat too much—corks, barrels, and equipment from Europe are in the same tariff net. So, higher costs all round. Perfect.

We think wine is meant to be diplomacy in a glass, not a hostage in a trade war. Using it as a pawn doesn’t just sour the palate—it makes the entire policy look corked. We are still exhausting all avenues to bring you quality and value for money and of course you will always get the legendary C&B service.

We will not be top Trumped, ever!
Glory in a glass! - Salut, Will

Reposted by Very Terry 🔥

Books Upstairs @booksupstairs.bsky.social · 5d

A small fire at the front of the bookshop was started last night after rubbish bags that were awaiting collection were set on fire. The guards don’t have reason at this time to believe it was a targeted attack. Thankfully the damage was limited and everyone is safe. We are open for business as usual

13 85 330

Very Terry 🔥 @bookseditorial.bsky.social · 5d

perhaps they took the "learn to code" advice before the shift to vibe coding. What now - learn to prompt?

Very Terry 🔥 @bookseditorial.bsky.social · 5d

but what a bubble though. One that can apparently be seen from space, which is where folks will also need to travel to avoid seeing food poverty.

1 2

Very Terry 🔥 @bookseditorial.bsky.social · 5d

AI is a "good bubble" and "millions of people will be living in space ... in the next couple of decades”. Sure Jeff. on.ft.com/4nBsWwL

Jeff Bezos hails AI boom as ‘good’ kind of bubble

Amazon founder’s comments follow warning by Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon that ‘it’s not different this time’

on.ft.com

1 1 4