Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Mel Gillman @mgillman.bsky.social · 3d

Another week's worth of artist residency diary comics are up on my Patreon! This week: many bugs. patreon.com/mgillman

A three panel black and white comic titled "9/23/25". Panel 1: A woman bends over to look at a wooly bear caterpillar crossing the road. Text reads: "All over the farm, wooly bears are crossing the road." The woman says "Where're you going, little one?" Panel 2: A drawing of a large moth on a white sheet at night. Text reads: "One night, I set up a moth light on the lawn and spot its adult form -- the Isabella tiger moth." Panel 3: two figures in silhouette talking near the moth light set up. Text reads: "and the moth listens to me & Ayda talkin' gay stuff." Mel is saying "Every time I go to a SF lesbian bar, an older dyke tells me about her illegal gold mining rig..." The moth thinks "Sigh..."

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Reposted by Mel Gillman

ashley fairbanks @ziibiing.com · 4d

this felt too informative not to share

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Mel Gillman @mgillman.bsky.social · 6d

Ooooh, thank you — this might work for what I need!

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Mel Gillman @mgillman.bsky.social · 6d

I do have a genuine reason for asking, but it is a Top Secret 🤐

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Mel Gillman @mgillman.bsky.social · 6d

I have a very weird question I'm hoping a smart Photoshop person can answer for me: in an image like the one below, is there a way to ask PS (or another similar program) to tell me exactly how many pixels, or exactly how much surface area in the image, is blue?

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Reposted by Mel Gillman

Eric Michael Garcia @ericmgarcia.bsky.social · 11d

Ok. So there's A LOT of misinformation about the government shutdown, the continuing resolution and gender-affirming care. There was one article in PinkNews that was VERY shoddy about what Trump said. So let's breakdown what's true and what's BS. 1/
www.thepinknews.com/2025/09/29/t...

Trump threatens to shut down US government unless all trans health care is banned

The US government's looming shutdown hinges on anti-trans measures after Donald Trump refused to speak to Democrats unless they were passed.

www.thepinknews.com

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Mel Gillman @mgillman.bsky.social · 11d

new holiday alert?? (another week of diary comics from my artist residency went up on my patreon! patreon.com/mgillman )

A four panel black and white comic called "9/17/25". Panel 1 shows a basket filled with chestnut acorns. Text reads: "Rea brought me a basket of chestnut acorns to process." Panel 2 shows Mel and Rea weeding in a garden. Rea: "Sorry to say I gathered them on September 14th." Mel: "??" Rea: "You know, the Devil's Nutting Day?" Mel: "?????" Panel 3 shows a very cartoony devil picking up an acorn. Text reads: "That's the day the devil gathers his nuts!" Panel 4 shows Mel and Rea talking. Mel: "You gave me DEVIL NUTS?" Rea: "Yeah, sorry. Can't wait to taste the acorn bread..."

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Mel Gillman @mgillman.bsky.social · 12d

gonna roast it and get all my housemates at this artist residency to eat it with me >:)

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Mel Gillman @mgillman.bsky.social · 12d

Both are edible, but I can only vouch for the flavor of one…

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Mel Gillman @mgillman.bsky.social · 12d

Showing off this maitake that’s bigger than my head!!

A perfect maitake mushroom that is, in fact, larger than Mel’s head

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Reposted by Mel Gillman

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

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Mel Gillman @mgillman.bsky.social · 26d

I'm spending the next few weeks at an ecological artist residency in rural Virginia! As usual, I'm documenting the trip with semi-daily diary comics. The week 1 batch just went up on my patreon for $2+ subscribers, but here's a freebie~ patreon.com/mgillman

A three panel black and white inked comic labeled "9/8/2025". Panel 1 shows a farm landscape with rolling hills, mature hardwood trees, old barn buildings, and a rock wall with a gate. Text reads "For the next 5 weeks, I'm doing an artist residency on an old Virginia farm." Panel 2 shows Mel walking through a garden with sunflowers and a wooden fence alongside a man. Text reads: "Patterned after English estates, it looks and feels like a Jane Austen set." The man says to Mel "It's still a law here that if you're on a horse, you can ride through any land, private or not." Panel 3 reads "Instantly fascinated by HORSE LAW" and shows Mel imagining a man on a horse saying "We're going to the PENTAGON"

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Reposted by Mel Gillman

otava heikkilä @claystorks.bsky.social · 27d

my thank you note, which Blue @bluedelliquanti.bsky.social graciously read for me while receiving the award in my stead! thank you to everybody who voted for "home by the rotting sea" at the ignatz awards from the bottom of my heart

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Reposted by Mel Gillman

🔞Keesh 🍁🏳️‍🌈 @rakeeshsorrel.bsky.social · 29d

The official Canadian Petition to reign in payment processor censorship has stalled out just under 10k signatures.

This is a reminder for Canadians, this is an OFFICIAL petition that will be responded to. Show your support in protecting our free speech!

www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en...

e-6695 (Consumer protection)

Keywords
Censorship Credit cards Internet Pornography

E-petition
Initiated by Carmen Tam from Waterloo, Ontario

Original language of petition: English
Petition details
Petition to the House of Commons
Whereas:

Mastercard, Visa, and other payment platforms have been leveraging their power over consumer ability to purchase legal content;
In 2021, Mastercard changed its policies to regulate adult entertainment by preventing the use of its payment platform on numerous adult entertainment sites;
As of July 2025, video game distribution service Steam now cites rule 15, that “adult only” content is not permitted on the platform if it goes against payment processor’s policies. Steam does not describe what content is defined as “adult only”;
As of July 2025, video game distribution website Itch.io has “deindexed” all adult NSFW content from browse and search pages. Users that previously purchased legitimate video games cannot access games that have been removed; and
This has set an unsettling precedent of corporate censorship, causing concern in video game development teams, including developers, voice actors, and artists in other creative fields as their livelihoods are in limbo.

We, the undersigned, citizens of Canada, call upon the House of Commons to
1. Stop financial discrimination by payment platforms against legal goods and services;
2. Ensure transparency to consumers about content restrictions and the rationale behind them; and
3. Protect creators' rights to make legal adult content and ensure a fair appeals process for any penalized media.

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Mel Gillman @mgillman.bsky.social · Sep 9

time to pioneer a new storytelling medium: the conkphic novel

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Kristen Haas Curtis @hellomizk.bsky.social · Sep 8

SO EXCITED TO SHARE THIS! Announcing the Newberry Medieval Minicomic Prize: two juried mini-grants of $250.00 each to support emerging artists l for the creation of a new minicomic that engages with medieval culture. More details available here:
www.newberry.org/calendar/new...

Newberry Medieval Minicomic Prize

Juried mini-grants for emerging comic artists interested in engaging with medieval culture.

www.newberry.org

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Mel Gillman @mgillman.bsky.social · Sep 1

SFZF was so much fun! Here are little panelist portraits from the two panels I got to watch.

Oh, the Horror: Tara Benhudjiriras, Avy Jetter, Nico B., Harry Nordlinger

Guests of Honor: Gene Luen Yang, Briana Loewinsohn, Julia Wertz, Jason Shiga, Thien Pham, and Raina Telgemeier

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Mel Gillman @mgillman.bsky.social · Aug 31

yes!! No recipe will ever be quite as good as “sun warmed berries right off the bush, shoved into your mouth”

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Mel Gillman @mgillman.bsky.social · Aug 31

This is the cutest dessert name?? :0

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Mel Gillman @mgillman.bsky.social · Aug 31

West coasters: what huckleberry recipes do you like best? I already made jam from a previous batch, and I have about a pint of berries I picked today.

A hand holding a jar of evergreen huckleberries

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Mel Gillman @mgillman.bsky.social · Aug 30

this morning, as a new day dawns, watto sadly folds his néglige back into the dresser drawer. but he knows in his heart…it will not be there forever

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Mel Gillman @mgillman.bsky.social · Aug 28

No-context pencils from this week

A pencil drawing on gray paper of a woman’s face with long wavy hair and a stern expression

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Reposted by Mel Gillman

Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · Aug 27

Hi authors! Please remember to file a claim!

Ars Technica @arstechnica.com · Aug 27

AI advocates have warned that if every author in the class action filed a claim, it would "financially ruin" the entire industry.

Authors celebrate “historic” settlement coming soon in Anthropic class action

Advocates fear such settlements will “financially ruin” the AI industry.

arstechnica.com

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Reposted by Mel Gillman

Michael DeForge @michaeldeforge.bsky.social · Aug 26

small batch of Sunbird shirts up from Soft Hand, last to be printed in a while - 100% of proceeds going to direct aid to Gaza

softhand.bigcartel.com/product/sunb...

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Mel Gillman @mgillman.bsky.social · Aug 24

I haven’t ever been brave enough to try the fruit! They are very cute to look at, though — they look like the rubbery part of earphones to me.

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