Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

acb @acb.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 7h

Design history nerds: there are scans of a few pages of a 1989 book titled “British Rail: Architecture, Design and Environment”, published officially by the as yet unprivatised BR, on Flickr. The pages cover the BR logo, Rail Alphabet and the BR colours:

https://flic.kr/p/2ry1112

One weird […]

Original post on mastodon.social

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acb @acb.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 9h

Werner Herzog is to epistemology what Pablo Picasso is to representational art

acb @acb.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 9h

Werner Herzog has a new book out, titled “The Future of Truth”, and it sounds much like what you’d expect a Werner Herzog book titled “The Future of Truth” to be:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/oct/08/the-future-of-truth-by-werner-herzog-review-profound-or-just-a-prank

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Reposted by acb

Matthew Haughey @mathowie.xoxo.zone.ap.brid.gy · 12h

a tweet from years ago that I think about often was about some guy who went out of his way to get $10 worth of quarters so he could do laundry after work, then he trips on a sidewalk and crashes down to the pavement and someone sitting at a bus stop says to him "you good, Sonic?"

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acb @acb.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 15h

@jon @stefanlindbohm @burger_jaap SJ would probably be authoritative on that one

acb @acb.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 20h

@jon by comparing it to the USA/New Zealand/Iceland perhaps?

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acb @acb.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 1d

This exhibition in Berlin about video games in East Germany looks interesting:

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2025/oct/07/stasi-coldwargames-its-all-a-game-alliiertenmuseum-berlin

Reposted by acb

hex @hex.kolektiva.social.ap.brid.gy · 1d

Because this has shown up trending every couple of days for the last week or so, these are not clowns from #Portland. These are clowns from Germany in 2007. #pdx has it's own creative resistence. Let's celebrate the real things they're doing right now.

I'm […]

[Original post on kolektiva.social]

Clown posse posing behind German law enforcement, in Germany... Not Portland.

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Ron Jeffries @ronjeffries.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 1d

LLMs reading too much alternate history SF or what?
https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/115333293925162054

Thomas 🔭🕹️ (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 image How many trillions of dollars have been invested into this technology so far?

hachyderm.io

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Reposted by acb

Paco Hope wishes ill for JK Rowling @paco.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 1d

Thanks to my hardware store. New insult unlocked.

Photo of a white plastic bag with a UPC bar code. The text of the product name reads “BALLCOCK SHANK NUT BAG.”

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acb @acb.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 2d

Not enough is made of the fact that “malefactor” and “motherfucker” are essentially the same word

acb @acb.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 2d

A somewhat more minimal #looptober entry today: just an arpeggio and synth pad.

[Audio] Original post on mastodon.social

mastodon.social

Reposted by acb

Viss @viss.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 2d

cool lets give these systems control of everything!

https://vgel.me/posts/seahorse/

Why do LLMs freak out over the seahorse emoji?

Investigating the seahorse emoji doom loop using logitlens.

vgel.me

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Reposted by acb

troy_s :praxis_100: @troy-s.mastodon.art.ap.brid.gy · 3d

“There Is No Nobel Prize in Economics

Sweden’s Central Bank quietly snuck it in with all the other Nobel Prizes to give free-market economics for the 1% credibility. […] “Few realize, especially outside of economists, that the prize in economics is not an “official” Nobel. . . . The award for […]

Original post on mastodon.art

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acb @acb.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 3d

And today's #looptober entry: this is a follow-up on a synth riff I jotted down some years and at least one laptop ago, now layered with approximations of the percussion and analogue/FM warbles I had in mind. It doesn't quite sound like what I had in mind, but it's getting there, and shifting […]

[Audio] Original post on mastodon.social

mastodon.social

acb @acb.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 3d

Finally saw The Phoenician Scheme. Entertaining, though did seem like Anderson was pastiching his own work (Zsa Zsa Korda was essentially Royal Tenenbaum with a bit of the Michael Gambon character from Life Aquatic, for example), and the superficial […]

[Original post on mastodon.social]

the DVD cover of The Phoenician Scheme, with the three main characters facing the camera

acb @acb.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 4d

Also on playing around with music: after playing around with granular synthesis, I wondered whether it would be feasible to use an arbitrary buffer of audio, trimmed to the pitch of a note, as an instrument, so put together an experimental Max For Live patch […]

[Original post on mastodon.social]

acb @acb.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 4d

Another #looptober entry: today, almost a minute of semi-intelligent dance music in 5/4 time (though too languid to be hit'em), based around a riff on a square-wave FM synth:

[Audio] Original post on mastodon.social

mastodon.social

Reposted by acb

Misha @mishavelthuis.social.edu.nl.ap.brid.gy · 5d

Geological timescales FTW

Cartoon showing two hills.

First scene: "hey Frank" (hill 1 to hill 2, while hill 2 has a castle on top of it)
Second scene: "what?" (hill 2 to hill 1, while hill 2 has a full-blown modern city on top of it).
Third scene: "nevermind, you had something on your head, but it's gone now" (hill 1 to hill 2, while hill 2 only has a bunch of rubble on top of it).

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acb @acb.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 4d

There’s a new, impressively cheap 600W USB charger. It can only produce 170 watts, but, you see, that’s OK, as the “600W” prominently emblazoned on its side is a model number:
https://hackaday.com/2025/10/03/when-usb-charger-marketing-claims-are-technically-true/

This reminds me of the urban […]

Original post on mastodon.social

mastodon.social

acb @acb.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 4d

Porsche magnate buys the hilltop villa the writer Stefan Zweig lived in until 1934, which he had kept deliberately inaccessible to cars, uses his clout to get an underground road tunnel added, against much opposition […]

Original post on mastodon.social

mastodon.social

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David B. Himself @davidbhimself.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 5d

Your reminder that you DON'T have to talk about politics and other negative and depressing things on #socialmedia.

Facebook and Twitter brainwashed us into thinking this is what social media is for, and this is in great parts why we can't have nice things.

Stop spreading doom and gloom. Talk […]

Original post on mastodon.social

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acb @acb.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 5d

Happy #caturday!

#cativitypub #catsofmastodon

Doris, a tortoiseshell cat, lying on her side on a sofa, her front paw resting on the hand of a human whose fingers her chin is resting on.

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acb @acb.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 5d

@futurebird @alice Does proximity to water cancel it out, or are the Beach Boys country as well?

acb @acb.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 5d

@futurebird didn’t “country music” start meaning “Southern rock” some time around the Bush 2 era? If so, that could explain it.