Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Dr² Philip Skiba

Darcy James Argue @darcyjamesargue.com · 1d

Imagine saying this to DAVID FUCKING SIMON. It’s like telling Ray Harryhausen “I could imagine you thinking, boy, I wish I had had CGI to solve all those thorny stop-motion problems.”

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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Dr² Philip Skiba @drphilipskiba.bsky.social · 2d

Anthony Hopkins is hysterical. I have a cousin who spent an entire summer quoting him:

“Yeah, she was in great pain! Then we cut off her head, and drove a stake through her heart, and burned it, and then she found peace.” 🤣

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Dr² Philip Skiba @drphilipskiba.bsky.social · 2d

For your #booksky 💙📚📚🖋️reading pleasure, this rare gem from my college writing prof. Dr. Leslie was a superb writer, teacher and mentor. His characters are as real as they get. He died of lung cancer in 2013, but our last conversation was what convinced me to write the book I’ll publish next year.

Reposted by Dr² Philip Skiba

Kathleen Bachynski @bachynski.bsky.social · 2d

“In 1961, when I was just eight years old, I contracted measles. There was no vaccine available at the time. Like many of my classmates, I suffered through dangerously high fevers — mine reached 106 degrees — and nearly died. The disease left me almost totally deaf.” cc @jackiantonovich.bsky.social

Commentary: A plea to protect our children

Vaccination requirements kept our communities safe. Do not listen to anti-vaccine rhetoric. Do not gamble with your child’s health.

www.orlandosentinel.com

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Dr² Philip Skiba @drphilipskiba.bsky.social · 2d

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/07/w...

A Plea From Doctors: Cool It on the Supplements

www.nytimes.com

Reposted by Dr² Philip Skiba

Mark Hertling @markhertling.bsky.social · 3d

This article by @radiofreetom.bsky.social is a must read for all those wearing the uniform, but as importantly for all those wanting to maintain our Constitutional republic.

www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

The Civil-Military Crisis Is Here

The leaders of the U.S. military may soon face a terrible decision.

www.theatlantic.com

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Dr² Philip Skiba @drphilipskiba.bsky.social · 3d

Kill it with fire.

Dr² Philip Skiba @drphilipskiba.bsky.social · 3d

Boom.

Keith W. Dickinson @keithwdickinson.bsky.social · 3d

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

The Verge @theverge.com · May 26

Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry

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Reposted by Dr² Philip Skiba

The Oatmeal @theoatmeal.bsky.social · 4d

Let’s talk about AI art.

theoatmeal.com/comics/ai_art

A cartoonist's review of AI art - The Oatmeal

This is a comic about AI art.

theoatmeal.com

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Dr² Philip Skiba @drphilipskiba.bsky.social · 4d

This week’s (re)reading: Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not. Source of one of my favorite quotes: “I’m crazy… it’s just like being in love except it always works out right in the end.” 📚💙 #booksky

Cover of To Have and Have Not by Hemingway

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Reposted by Dr² Philip Skiba

Duaa Eldeib @deldeib.bsky.social · 4d

They are one of the industry’s best-kept secrets, and only a tiny fraction of those eligible actually use them.

How a little-known appeal could force your insurer to pay for lifesaving care

www.propublica.org/article/heal...

This Little-Known Appeal Could Force Your Insurer to Pay for Lifesaving Care. Here’s How to File It.

When a health insurer refuses to pay for your treatment, you may have the right to have the denial reviewed — and potentially overturned — by an independent provider. Here are six steps experts sugges...

www.propublica.org

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Dr² Philip Skiba @drphilipskiba.bsky.social · 4d

I will ride or die for Zelda.

Dr Kat Day (she/her) @chronicleflask.katday.com · 4d

Daughter of Robin Williams, Zelda Williams 💔

zeldawilliams
20m
From Create Mode
••
Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad. Stop believing I wanna see it or that I'll understand, I don't and I won't. If you're just trying to troll me, I've seen way worse, i'll restrict and move on. But please, if you've got any decency, just stop doing this to him and to me, to everyone even, full stop. It's dumb, it's a waste of time and energy, and believe me, it's NOT what he'd want.
To watch the legacies of real people be condensed down to 'this vaguely looks and sounds like them so that's enough,
, just so
other people can churn out horrible TikTok slop puppeteering them is maddening. You're not making art, you're making disgusting, over-processed hotdogs out of the lives of human beings, out of the history of art and music, and then shoving them down someone else's throat hoping they'll give you a little thumbs up and like it.
Gross.

And for the love of EVERYTHING, stop calling it 'the future. Al is just badly recycling and regurgitating the past to be reconsumed. You are taking in the Human Centipede of content, and from the very very end of the line, all while the folks at the front laugh and laugh, consume and consume.

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Reposted by Dr² Philip Skiba

Vincent Alexander @nonsenseisland.bsky.social · 6d

Maybe the Looney Tunes short most relevant to our times: 1956's TO HARE IS HUMAN, in which Wile E. Coyote creates a computer to think for him and slavishly obeys everything it tells him to do, no matter how self-destructive.

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Dr² Philip Skiba @drphilipskiba.bsky.social · 6d

Preach.

MiMi Aye @meemalee.bsky.social · 7d

Author and filmmaker Justine Bateman on generative AI

"They're trying to convince people they can't do the things they've been doing easily for years - to write emails, to write a presentation. Your daughter wants you to make up a bedtime story about puppies - to write that for you." We will get to the point, she says with a grim laugh, "that you will essentially become just a skin bag of organs and bones, nothing else. You won't know anything and you will be told repeatedly that you can't do it, which is the opposite of what life has to offer. Capitulating all kinds of decisions like where to go on vacation, what to wear today, who to date, what to eat.
People are already doing this. You won't have to process grief, because you'll have uploaded photos and voice messages from your mother who just died, and then she can talk to you via AI video call every day. One of the ways it's going to destroy humans, long before there's a nuclear disaster, is going to be the emotional hollowing-out of people." - author and filmmaker Justine Bateman from a piece by Emine Saner for the Guardian

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Dr² Philip Skiba @drphilipskiba.bsky.social · 6d

Me, except Jaws, Star Trek, and first-pressing Bob Marley vinyl cc: @drmarkburnley.bsky.social

The Onion @theonion.com · 6d

Physical Media Collector Pumped For Downfall Of Humanity

MESA, AZ—Gleefully describing the inevitable day when society would collapse and digital files would become unusable, local physical media collector David Campbell confirmed Wednesday he was “absolute...

theonion.com

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Reposted by Dr² Philip Skiba

Walker Bragman @walkerbragman.bsky.social · 9d

Watching a Jane Goodall documentary. There’s a part where the chimps suffered a devastating polio outbreak in Gombe. The outbreak started in humans.

She and her team vaccinated the chimps because the vaccines save lives.

Unreal that our HHS Secretary is actively trying to convince us otherwise.

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Dr² Philip Skiba @drphilipskiba.bsky.social · 9d

Sad news, but an extraordinary legacy.

Greg Jenner @gregjenner.bsky.social · 9d

Farewell to one of the greats
www.nbcnews.com/news/obituar...

Jane Goodall, renowned chimpanzee researcher and animal advocate, dies at 91

"Dr. Goodall's discoveries as an ethologist revolutionized science, and she was a tireless advocate for the protection and restoration of our natural world," the Jane Goodall Institute said in a Wedne...

www.nbcnews.com

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Dr² Philip Skiba @drphilipskiba.bsky.social · 9d

Amen.

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 10d

Here I am in 2020 in the flimsiest, most pitful PPE - like so many other NHS staff, some of whom died from the Covid they caught in their hospitals.

Tory peer Michelle Mone - who today lost her legal case & must repay the govt £122m - dares to claim she’s been ‘scapegoated’.

What, Michelle? 🧵

Rachel wearing very flimsy looking apron, mask and visor in NHS setting

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Reposted by Dr² Philip Skiba

Dr Rachel Clarke @drrachelclarke.com · 10d

Here I am in 2020 in the flimsiest, most pitful PPE - like so many other NHS staff, some of whom died from the Covid they caught in their hospitals.

Tory peer Michelle Mone - who today lost her legal case & must repay the govt £122m - dares to claim she’s been ‘scapegoated’.

What, Michelle? 🧵

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Reposted by Dr² Philip Skiba

ProPublica @propublica.org · 10d

Internal documents and former company executives revealed how Cigna doctors rejected patients’ claims without opening their files.

“We literally click and submit,” one former company doctor said.

(Published March 2023 w/ @capitolforum.bsky.social)

How Cigna Saves Millions by Having Its Doctors Reject Claims Without Reading Them

Internal documents and former company executives reveal how Cigna doctors reject patients’ claims without opening their files. “We literally click and submit,” one former company doctor said.

www.propublica.org

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Dr² Philip Skiba @drphilipskiba.bsky.social · 12d

They killed it in Asbury Park too

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Reposted by Dr² Philip Skiba

Brandon Kennedy @bicycleidiot.bsky.social · 14d

RIP Kaleb Horton
kalebhorton.ghost.io/2025-so-far/

I also have advice. Everybody loves reading advice on the computer, so I'll share it: the best thing you can do right now is log off as hard as you can. Go outside, talk to people in real life where it's actually kind of rude to talk about the news, try to actually see the friends you usually just text message. Go for a long drive and turn the phone off while you do it. Get back into your hobbies or pick one and learn it for a while. Watch one of those studio movies that reviews called "wildly miscalculated" and you haven't seen since high school. Play an album you like but find embarrassing. Go to free community events even if they sound stupid. If you take the freeway, try the surface streets. Go to a bad diner and just order some bad coffee because even bad coffee is good coffee.
You can't help anybody when you're exhausted and keep posting one million college-educated rewordings of "I would love to be dead right now" on the computer. Walk away from the thing and try out some of those normal things you hear about and if you get bored that's wonderful because we're not supposed to get bored anymore. It turns out boredom is the Cadillac of feelings.

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Dr² Philip Skiba @drphilipskiba.bsky.social · 14d

Squad goals

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Dr² Philip Skiba @drphilipskiba.bsky.social · 14d

Brilliant article sent to me by a friend, which fuels the ever-present back-and-forth in my mind. Given the success of my other work (many multiples of the advances I was offered), do I skip the whole game and publish nontraditionally?

thewalrus.ca/the-publishi...

The Publishing Industry Has a Gambling Problem | The Walrus

Companies keep betting on the next bestseller. Literature is poorer for it

thewalrus.ca

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Reposted by Dr² Philip Skiba

Bryan Vargas @bryanvargas.bsky.social · 14d

There’s an easier solution: STOP. USING. SPOTIFY.

Stereogum @stereogum.bsky.social · 15d

Spotify says it's cleaning up AI slop (but hasn't gotten to Volcano Choir's page yet)

Spotify Says It's Cleaning Up AI Slop (But Hasn't Gotten To Volcano Choir's Page Yet)

AI was a problem for Spotify long before Daniel Ek invested in AI weapons of war, causing a growing number of artists to remove their music from the platform in protest. Some artist pages on the strea...

www.stereogum.com

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