Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · May 6

NDAs can silence victims of abuse & harassment. Let's change this! Sign the petition to ensure the Employment Rights Bill bans NDAs in cases of misconduct. #StopAbusiveNDAs #EmploymentRightsBill you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/st...

Stop employers covering up abuse

Hey! Do you remember the Harvey Weinstein case? Non Disclosure Agreements silenced victims of abuse - and it's not just happening in Hollywood. They're used in the UK to cover up all kinds of miscondu...

you.38degrees.org.uk

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Reposted by Andy Smart

Seth Abramson @sethabramson.bsky.social · Apr 10

How could a slavery scandal involving the President of the United States be worse than we thought? This extremely long, extremely detailed, and fully sourced PROOF report explains.

This—not the tariff war—is the most important story in America right now. I hope you will consider checking it out.

The Trump-El Salvador Scandal Deepens

As President Trump prepares to fête brutal far-right El Salvadoran dictator Nayib Bukele in DC on April 14, the scandal involving a vile new international slave trade between the two men is growing.

sethabramson.substack.com

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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · Apr 8

"Building an automated tool to profile people as violent criminals is deeply wrong, and using such sensitive data on mental health, addiction and disability is highly intrusive and alarming.” www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

UK creating ‘murder prediction’ tool to identify people most likely to kill

Exclusive: Algorithms allegedly being used to study data of thousands of people, in project critics say is ‘chilling and dystopian’

www.theguardian.com

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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · Apr 1

Private companies are polluting our rivers, hiking up bills, and failing to deliver. 82% of us want public ownership – let’s make it happen. If you're in the UK please sign the open letter... 👉 you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/pu...

Put Public Ownership of Water Back on the Table

Privatisation of water isn’t failing - it is the failure. The Government is mid-way through a major review of the water sector. But so far, it has refused to consider a potential solution that’s backe...

you.38degrees.org.uk

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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · Apr 1

Private companies are polluting our rivers, hiking up bills, and failing to deliver. 82% of us want public ownership – let’s make it happen! Please sign the open letter! 👉 you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/pu...

Put Public Ownership of Water Back on the Table

Privatisation of water isn’t failing - it is the failure. The Government is mid-way through a major review of the water sector. But so far, it has refused to consider a potential solution that’s backe...

you.38degrees.org.uk

Reposted by Andy Smart

Lynn Huggins-Cooper @hugginscooper.bsky.social · Mar 28

This is outrageous. 'Paul Parker, recording clerk for Quakers in Britain, said: “No-one has been arrested in a Quaker meeting house in living memory.' I am sickened to read this.

Quakers condemn police raid on Westminster Meeting House

Police broke into a Quaker Meeting House last night (27 March) and arrested six young people holding a meeting over concerns for the climate and Gaza.

www.quaker.org.uk

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Reposted by Andy Smart

Pavel Yakovlevich @pavellawrence.bsky.social · Mar 20

Don't listen before bed to this @newyorker.com interview with Gil Duran on "right-wing Silicon Valley technologists who want to use A.I. and cryptocurrency to unmake the federal government".

But listen.

www.newyorker.com/podcast/poli...

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Reposted by Andy Smart

Pam Jarvis @drpam.bsky.social · Mar 2

Hello new followers, so sorry I nearly caught up& now I’m losing it again. I’m busy getting my final draft of the sequel to On Time finished alongside other projects; really proud of this one with @aaronearlyyears.bsky.social & @ruthswailes.bsky.social. It’ll be free to access online from 18 March

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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · Mar 16

50 years on ... youtu.be/zD745mgWMcM?...

Murder in Cairo (Pt 1) - The Death Of Our Star Reporter | The Story

YouTube video by Times Radio

youtu.be

Reposted by Andy Smart

Maria Ressa @mariaressa.bsky.social · Mar 15

Disinformation/information operations? Definitely --- [DECODED] How online supporters made a victim of Duterte after ICC arrest www.rappler.com/technology/d... via @rapplerdotcom

[DECODED] How online supporters made a victim of Duterte after ICC arrest

Through boosted content and entertainment networks, supporters of the former president try to manipulate opinion about his detention at The Hague

www.rappler.com

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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · Mar 16

www.thetimes.com/life-style/p...

These are the best picture books in the world (and no Gruffalo in sight)

The BolognaRagazzi awards are the most prestigious in global children’s publishing — but on World Book Day, it seems the UK is lagging behind

www.thetimes.com

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Reposted by Andy Smart

John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · Mar 14

NEW 🧵 Is human intelligence starting to decline?

Recent results from major international tests show that the average person’s capacity to process information, use reasoning and solve novel problems has been falling since around the mid 2010s

What should we make of this?

www.ft.com/content/a801...

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Reposted by Andy Smart

Psyche Magazine @psyche.co · Mar 10

‘When we bask in the comfort and camaraderie of old friends, we’re feeling the product of 6 million years of evolution.’ Personal autonomy is abundant in the modern world. As a result, many of us get what we want but not what we need.

For a happier life, we must balance two old psychological needs | Psyche Ideas

Personal autonomy is abundant in the modern world. As a result, many of us get what we want but not what we need

buff.ly

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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · Mar 10

"And yet. And yet. Behaviorism and behavioral engineering are still everywhere, particularly in computing – and even, for all the talk about its modeling of "the mind," in artificial intelligence." @audreywatters.bsky.social 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/agents-versu...

Agents versus Agency

There's an argument I make in Teaching Machines that I'd like to repeat here – a setup to this first of many essays in which I work through some ideas about AI, agents, and agency: In 1971 the psycho...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

Reposted by Andy Smart

nissem.bsky.social @nissem.bsky.social · Mar 5

"Literacy and numeracy are essential, but so too is the ability to process trauma, build relationships, and develop resilience." world-education-blog.org/2025/03/03/e...

Education as a lifeline: How foundational learning and SEL empower children in crisis - World Education Blog

When nine-year-old Nahom and his family finally arrived in Mekelle, the capital of Ethiopia’s Tigray region, they were physically and emotionally exhausted. They had fled their home amid violent confl...

world-education-blog.org

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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · Mar 4

Williams says she wants all pupils to be able to make choices, to ask questions and have an opinion, and the oracy project empowers them to do that. “The statistics about the literacy levels of young offenders are real.” www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Inside the London reception class where kids are taught to talk to help them stay out of gangs

A new initiative aims to improve communication, as as pupils lacking speech and language skills more likely to be excluded and caught up in violence

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Andy Smart

Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · Mar 3

AI in education is a failure of the imagination 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/the-war-on-t...

The War on the Imagination

There were numerous news items last week about surveillance and algorithmic decision-making in the workplace. These kinds of stories aren’t new, of course. But as Elon Musk has infiltrated the White H...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · Mar 2

Please sign: you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/st...

Stop the Government from spying on all of our bank accounts

Sir Keir Starmer is pushing plans we defeated under the Conservative Government - to spy on all of our bank accounts on the premise of dealing with welfare fraud and error. It will force banks to fla...

you.38degrees.org.uk

Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · Feb 27

"The problem we seem to be facing is not a whole generation of autocratic young people but a complex question answered quickly in online polls and hugely overinterpreted in subsequent reporting." theconversation.com/only-6-of-ge...

Only 6% of gen Z actually favour dictatorship – not half, as some reports would have you believe

Gen Z don’t hate democracy, they have a problem with the way it is being delivered.

theconversation.com

Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · Feb 26

What a wonderful conversation about curriculum, compassion, curiosity and creativity. soundcloud.com/rethinking-e...

Debra Kidd, Tina Farr and Clare Whyles on how to cultivate hope, joy and belonging

In this episode - our first rodeo as co-hosts - we are joined by Dr Debra Kidd, the author of A Curriculum of Hope, and by Tina Farr and Clare Whyles, the headteacher and deputy head of St. Ebbe’s Pri

soundcloud.com

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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · Feb 16

Hunt describes museum charges as 'the norm'. He doesn't mean that the UK is the only one of our peers. All the amazing public museums in Washington DC have been free to all for years. washington.org/visit-dc/fre...

Free Things to Do: Museums in Washington, DC | Washington DC

Find out why DC is the capital of free museums and interactive exhibits, from groundbreaking cultural museums to art galleries and so much more.

washington.org

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Reposted by Andy Smart

ex-Lethality Jane @lethalityjane.bsky.social · Feb 15

The measles outbreak in Texas is reminding me of the public letter Roald Dahl wrote about losing his daughter to measles in 1962, just before the vaccine was publicly available.

Excerpt from a public letter Roald Dahl wrote encouraging people to vaccinate their children.

Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything.

“Are you feeling all right?” I asked her.

“I feel all sleepy,” she said.

In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.

The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her. That was twenty-four years ago in 1962, but even now, if a child with measles happens to develop the same deadly reaction from measles as Olivia did, there would still be nothing the doctors could do to help her.

On the other hand, there is today something that parents can do to make sure that this sort of tragedy does not happen to a child of theirs. They can insist that their child is immunized against measles. I was unable to do that for Olivia in 1962 because in those days a reliable measles vaccine had not been discovered. Today a good and safe vaccine is available to every family and all you have to do is to ask your doctor to administer it.

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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · Feb 15

"this is a government of the radicalised online right, for the radicalised online right, by the radicalised online right"

Lewis Goodall @lewisgoodall.com · Feb 15

Have written about JD Vance’s Munich speech. In what may prove to be the biggest week for European security since 1991, it’s time Europe listened to what Trump and his Vice President are telling us. open.substack.com/pub/goodalla...

We need to listen to what Trump and Vance are telling us.

This may have been the biggest moment for European security since 1991.

open.substack.com

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Andy Smart @andysmart.bsky.social · Feb 11

"I haven’t encountered a single application that hasn’t requested psychometric testing”

Greg Barradale @gregbarradale.bsky.social · Feb 11

EXC: How UK's biggest companies lock autistic people out of jobs with personality tests

➡️Morrison's, John Lewis, McDonald's, Co-op +more using tests

➡️"I just don't stand a chance" say autistic jobseekers, as charities tell @bigissue.com tests may be discriminatory

www.bigissue.com/news/employm...

UK's biggest companies locking autistic people out of jobs with personality tests

Just three in 10 working age autistic people are in work, and charities say the use of personality tests for roles could be discriminatory.

www.bigissue.com

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