Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

William Okech @willyokech.bsky.social · 18d

Couldn't get past level 17: neal.fun/not-a-robot/

I'm Not a Robot

Prove your humanity once and for all

neal.fun

1

Reposted by William Okech

womensartbluesky.bsky.social @womensartbluesky.bsky.social · Sep 5

Kenyan artist Thandiwe Muriu’s 'Camo series', photographic portraits cloaking models in patterned fabric #WomensArt

180 1.2K

William Okech @willyokech.bsky.social · Aug 29

Oral exams to counter the rise of AI-assisted cheating

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/o...

Opinion | Students Hate Them. Universities Need Them. The Only Real Solution to the A.I. Cheating Crisis.

www.nytimes.com

1

Reposted by William Okech

Nassos Stylianou @nassosstylianou.bsky.social · Aug 23

We've built a football game and it's free to play!

Can you run a Premier League club? Step into the boardroom, navigate financial regulations and guide your team to glory in our new game.

👉 ft.com/football-game ⚽️💸

Can you run a Premier League football club?

Step into the boardroom, navigate profit and sustainability rules and guide your club to glory

ft.com

3 15 30

Reposted by William Okech

Science Magazine @science.org · Aug 10

The appearance of large language models caused a drastic shift in the vocabulary of academic writing, according to an analysis in #ScienceAdvances of more than 15 million biomedical abstracts published from 2010 to 2024.

Learn more:

Delving into LLM-assisted writing in biomedical publications through excess vocabulary

Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT can generate and revise text with human-level performance. These models come with clear limitations, can produce inaccurate information, and reinforce existing biases.

scim.ag

3 31 89

William Okech @willyokech.bsky.social · Jul 27

#dataviz animation thread

Joey Cherdarchuk - Obumbratta @obumbratta.com · May 15

What is #dataviz animation good for? An updated thread with examples.

1 2

William Okech @willyokech.bsky.social · Jul 23

Great use of #rstats and the rdbnomics package

Benjamin Braun @benbraun.bsky.social · Jul 23

What's up with the US international investment position? Understanding the balance of payments is essential, but difficult. Playing with the data yourself helps a lot. My slides for this year's finance summer school try to make that easy, #rstats code included:
benjaminbraun.org/teaching/fin...

Title slide:
Balance of payments crash course
Benjamin Braun

1 4

Reposted by William Okech

Jason Moore @moorejh.bsky.social · Jul 2

What is Vibe Coding and how can it be used to advance biomedical research? @tatonetti.bsky.social & I explain in this editorial biodatamining.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.... #bioinformatics #datascience #coding #vibecoding

Vibe coding: a new paradigm for biomedical software development - BioData Mining

biodatamining.biomedcentral.com

1 4 8

Reposted by William Okech

Jack Stack @jackstack.bsky.social · Jun 9

🧪 PSA regarding fish and fishes.

open.substack.com/pub/fishhist...

Illustrated use of Fish (singular animal), Fish (multiple individuals of the same type of fish) and fishes (multiple kinds or species of fish).

7 23 160

William Okech @willyokech.bsky.social · May 24

"In Sub-Saharan Africa, less than a third of mobile phones connect to the internet at all."

techsafari.beehiiv.com/p/the-towers...

The towers of babble (are falling)

Your internet comes in a sachet now

techsafari.beehiiv.com

2

William Okech @willyokech.bsky.social · May 21

Data Science and the Art of Persuasion

hbr.org/2019/01/data...

Data Science and the Art of Persuasion

Despite heavy investments to acquire talented data scientists and take advantage of the analytics boom, many companies have been disappointed in the results. The problem is that those scientists are t...

hbr.org

1 2

William Okech @willyokech.bsky.social · Apr 29

Great take on modern CS Education

www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Universities Have a Computer-Science Problem

The case for teaching coders to speak French

www.theatlantic.com

Reposted by William Okech

Caroline Ball @heroicendeavour.bsky.social · Apr 27

Love this! Spell out your name using NASA satellite images.
landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/apps/YourNam...

2 8 25

William Okech @willyokech.bsky.social · Apr 27

On the responsible (and ethical) use of LLMs in academia datavizsp25.classes.andrewheiss.com/resource/ai-...

AI, LLMs, and BS – Data Visualization with R

Use R, ggplot2, and the principles of graphic design to create beautiful and truthful visualizations of data

datavizsp25.classes.andrewheiss.com

1

William Okech @willyokech.bsky.social · Apr 13

Vibe coding, hallucinated package names, and malware 🤯

www.theregister.com/AMP/2025/04/...

LLMs can't stop making up software dependencies and sabotaging everything

: Hallucinated package names fuel 'slopsquatting'

www.theregister.com

2

William Okech @willyokech.bsky.social · Mar 27

Felgona Oyuga on life, love, and everything in-between

www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-yy...

Not a Bitter Divorced Woman | Felgona Oyuga

YouTube video by Engage Talk

www.youtube.com

2

William Okech @willyokech.bsky.social · Feb 19

The African Cancer Atlas (TACA)

www.businesswire.com/news/home/20...

Yemaachi Biotechnology Launches The African Cancer Atlas, in Partnership with Roche

Yemaachi Biotech, a pioneering genomics research company based in Ghana, announced today a partnership with Roche to launch The African Cancer Atlas (

www.businesswire.com

2 9

William Okech @willyokech.bsky.social · Jan 27

Global AI Talent Tracker: macropolo.org/interactive/...

The Global AI Talent Tracker 2.0 - MacroPolo

Since launching our talent tracker in 2020, artificial intelligence (AI) has taken the world by storm. Ostensible breakthroughs in large language models and machine learning methods, as well as stagge...

macropolo.org

1

William Okech @willyokech.bsky.social · Jan 3

getpocket.com/explore/item...

Tsundoku: The Art of Buying Books and Never Reading Them

Be honest, how many books on that shelf have you actually read cover to cover?

getpocket.com

1 4

William Okech @willyokech.bsky.social · Jan 3

Interesting times ahead 🤯

www.nytimes.com/2025/01/03/t...

Religious Leaders Experiment with A.I. in Sermons

Modern religious leaders are experimenting with A.I. just as earlier generations examined radio, television and the internet.

www.nytimes.com

2

Reposted by William Okech

milos makes maps @milos-makes-maps.bsky.social · Dec 31

🌍 Want to tackle real-world challenges with R and cutting-edge datasets?

Here are 7 incredible FREE data sources you can connect to in R—and how to get started. Let’s dive in! 🧵👇

4 10 43

William Okech @willyokech.bsky.social · Dec 29

🤯🤯 undark.org/2024/12/19/o...

Most College Science Professors Aren’t Trained to Teach

Opinion | STEM faculty are hired predominantly for research expertise, not necessarily teaching skill. This can hurt students.

undark.org

1

William Okech @willyokech.bsky.social · Dec 22

Want to dive into the world of data analysis? No prior programming experience? No problem!

The email course “R for Novices” is for you 👇🏾

Digital Research Academy @digiresacademy.bsky.social · Dec 22

🎄 Day 22 of our DRAdvent Calendar! 🎄

Are you interested in learning R and don't know where to begin?
Check out our free email course from @willyokech.bsky.social!

#rstats

https://heidiseibold.kit.com/d949a4d18c

R for novices

heidiseibold.kit.com

3

William Okech @willyokech.bsky.social · Dec 15

Maximizing Time for Reading
open.substack.com/pub/blakebut...

Maximizing Time for Reading

Why reading—and reading widely—is more important than ever, and how to go about creating habits and practices to allow yourself the space and time

open.substack.com

2

William Okech @willyokech.bsky.social · Dec 10

Why You Need a News Vacation
open.substack.com/pub/davideps...

Why You Need a News Vacation

We're not made for 24/7 feeds of catastrophe

open.substack.com

1 3