Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Nina Lager Vestberg @lagernina.bsky.social · 1d

I’m a big fan 🤗

Nina Lager Vestberg @lagernina.bsky.social · 1d

I was listening to the @academiclife.bsky.social podcast episode with the inimitable @lportwoodstacer.bsky.social on my way home today, and lo! what was waiting in my mailbox 🤩 Make Your Manuscript Work finally made it from UK warehouse to my house!

Photo of blue and white cover of the book Make Your Manuscript Work by Laura Portwood-Stacer, posed on top of a mac keyboard on a wooden desktop.

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Reposted by Nina Lager Vestberg

Roland Allen, author of 'The Notebook: a History' @zibaldoni.bsky.social · 1d

This is the sort of shit that people come up with before settling down to a long evening in front of Netflix or Apple TV, watching shows made in the UK by humanities graduates, that attracting inward investment, then generate massive export revenues.

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Nina Lager Vestberg @lagernina.bsky.social · 1d

Starting the day deep in Jay Fitger territory, as I have been asked for a reference which must be submitted through the soi-disant "Refapp" 🤖 OMG how much more time it takes to do things when they're automated.
#academicsky
#dearcommitteemembers

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Nina Lager Vestberg @lagernina.bsky.social · 6d

This is my kind of sociological research:

Jeff Lockhart @jwlockhart.bsky.social · 7d

I'm excited to share my new paper with a former student, Tommy Smith. "'This Work Would Not Have Been Possible without...': The Length of Acknowledgments in Sociology Books"

Open Access in @sociusjournal.bsky.social : doi.org/10.1177/2378...

Main figure from the paper. Violin plots showing the length of acknowledgments sections in books by sociologists, broken out by gender, race, sexuality, parents’ education, millennium of author’s PhD, and publisher type.

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Reposted by Nina Lager Vestberg

Jo VanEvery @jovanevery.bsky.social · 7d

You don’t need a whole day to get writing done. Small amounts, regularly, will lead to progress.

We have a new FREE challenge available to help you get started.

Take the 15 minute Academic Writing Challenge

You CAN write during term time. Research shows that even 15 minutes a day can be effective. I know you can find 15 minutes a day. Try writing for 15 minutes every work day for a term. See what…

jovanevery.co.uk

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Reposted by Nina Lager Vestberg

Jo VanEvery @jovanevery.bsky.social · 9d

If writing is what makes this job meaningful for you, it will make a difference to protect time for it, even when things are busy or uncertain. A Meeting With Your Writing can help. 4 sessions weekly. Will 1 of them work for you? academicwritingstudio.co.uk/a-meeting-wi...

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Reposted by Nina Lager Vestberg

Ole Svarthumle @svarthumle.bsky.social · 9d

Det er alltid ein veldig god grunn til å hogge akkurat dét gamle treet, drenere akkurat den myra, fjerne akkurat den hundremeterskogen, dumpe gruveavfall i akkurat den fjorden, bygge industripark i akkurat den gamalskogen, og grunnen er som regel at nokon skal tene pengar.

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Reposted by Nina Lager Vestberg

The Onion @theonion.com · 9d

Physical Media Collector Pumped For Downfall Of Humanity https://theonion.com/physical-media-collector-pumped-for-downfall-of-humanity/

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Anne Sigrid Refsum @annesigrid.bsky.social · 10d

Les @jilltxt.bsky.social om husmorhæren!

Provoserende husmødre

Husmorreklame i beste sendetid er god butikk.

www.nrk.no

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Nina Lager Vestberg @lagernina.bsky.social · 10d

Tusen takk for tips! Nå fikk jeg et blodferskt eksempel til forelesningen min om (sjekker klokken) 63 minutter 🤗

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Reposted by Nina Lager Vestberg

Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 14d

i made a template you can use to think about what "frame/negation/kirby" looks like for other issues.
For example:

Frame: DOGE is a govt efficiency project to save $

Negation: Actually it made things less efficient and cost $

Kirby: DOGE was a project to break and privatize federal bureaucracy

Top is an empty rectangle with a jagged line in the middle.
The left side is labeled "Frame" "F is happening!"
The right side is labeled "Negation" "F is not true!"
Below is a large image of Kirby, a round pink blob with eyes with a small version of the Frame F shape flying into his mouth. To the right is a large pink rectangle labeled "Kirby" "K is happening, that's why they're saying F"

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Reposted by Nina Lager Vestberg

Yael Rice @yaelrice.bsky.social · 13d

Lol, I was going to joke that they probably conducted the AI analysis using a photograph only (which would be absurd given that paintings demand first-hand study, examination of materials, support, etc), and then I visited the AI co.’s website & saw this on the front page:

Screenshot of text from the AI website reading: “The Art Recognition award-winning AI system verifies the authenticity of an artwork based only on a photograph of it.”

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Reposted by Nina Lager Vestberg

Ben Williamson @benpatrickwill.bsky.social · 13d

First, OpenAI got keen, hand-picked educators on board with advance models to hype up its pedagogic possibilities. This was step one in educator habituation - revealing exemplar prompts and techniques for other educators to emulate and experiment with
openai.com/index/teachi...

Teaching with AI

We’re releasing a guide for teachers using ChatGPT in their classroom—including suggested prompts, an explanation of how ChatGPT works and its limitations, the efficacy of AI detectors, and bias.

openai.com

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Reposted by Nina Lager Vestberg

Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 14d

“Part of the misunderstanding of the deepfake threat stems from the idea that it is a problem of bad information, rather than a problem of desire (or the material conditions that shape desire)” Claire Wilmot @lrb.co.uk www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/se...

Claire Wilmot | Fascistic Dream Machines

Part of the misunderstanding of the deepfake threat stems from the idea that it is a problem of bad information, rather...

www.lrb.co.uk

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Reposted by Nina Lager Vestberg

Gil Durán @gilduran.com · 15d

1/ A longtime Wired editor just wrote a mush-brained essay about how he totally missed the political rot of Silicon Valley (& still doesn't get it).

But in the late 1990s, a Wired journalist warned of a toxic ideology bubbling up from tech. Paulina Borsook has largely been erased. Let's change that

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Camilla Holm Soelseth @supercamilla.bsky.social · 17d

This.

#bibliosky

Liz Suelzer @esuelzer.bsky.social · Aug 26

The 80 workers laid off at OCLC, the elimination of Violet Fox’s position at Northwestern, and thousands of other displaced catalogers represent more than statistical casualties—they embody decades of accumulated expertise in organizing human knowledge that, once lost, cannot be easily recovered. When AI systems can silently block searches for “Gaza War” or “Tulsa race riot” while achieving only 26% accuracy on subject classification, we witness the replacement of human intellectual judgment with corporate algorithmic control that serves surveillance capitalism rather than scholarly inquiry.

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Reposted by Nina Lager Vestberg

Steffen Siegel @steffensiegel.bsky.social · 19d

People think it is content which endures; but it is form which enables content to endure. (Ben Okri)

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Reposted by Nina Lager Vestberg

Lauren Woolsey @cgsunit.bsky.social · 19d

In 3.7: "LLMs do not improve one's writing ability much like taking a taxi does not improve one's driving ability." Love this! I tell my physics students, watching a football game doesn't make them better at playing, and watching me do examples isn't enough to build their problem solving abilities.

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Reposted by Nina Lager Vestberg

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 21d

An actual quote from the Secretary of State for Business and Trade

Too often people go to university to ‘explore research and knowledge’

Look forward to Wes S saying 'too often people go to hospital to have operations' or Heidi Alexander saying 'too often people go to the station to catch a train'

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Camilla Holm Soelseth @supercamilla.bsky.social · 21d

(Hallusinasjon brukes som en metafor for det som gjør at mening i output avviker fra etablert sann informasjon om noe)

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Reposted by Nina Lager Vestberg

Camilla Holm Soelseth @supercamilla.bsky.social · 21d

Herregud, nei, hallusinasjon er ikke et fagbegrep for løgn eller bløff.

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Reposted by Nina Lager Vestberg

Camilla Holm Soelseth @supercamilla.bsky.social · 21d

Herregud, nei, det er ikke derfor.

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Nina Lager Vestberg @lagernina.bsky.social · 21d

Herregud kan de ikke ansette en kompetent teknologijournalist i Aftenposten snart.

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Nina Lager Vestberg @lagernina.bsky.social · 22d

Oh goody. Our institution is moving to Canvas in autumn 2026 and will be moving all our old courses onto the platform from Blackboard during the spring term. Waste not want not, I guess🙃

Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 22d

It appears Instructure has removed the capacity to delete old courses in Canvas. In many cases (depending on institutional settings) those course are also uneditable.

But they definitely aren't stealing our IP and using it to train algorithms.

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