Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 17h

repost this if an editor has ever saved you from yourself

violent alien @blipstress.bsky.social · 17h

An actual hot take: Too many authors are afraid of editors watering down their voice or whatever and not afraid enough of editors letting you put any old slop on the page.

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Julia Rose Kraut @juliarosekraut.bsky.social · 1d

Happy Banned Books Week! 🗃️

For more information on Book Bans, check out this recent report from @penamerica.bsky.social

pen.org/report/the-n...

Read Banned Books under a shelf of books.

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Petra Meier @pmeierprof.bsky.social · 6d

35 years ago today this happened. I’d grown up in the belief it could never happen, but then it did. It’s not been easy and even now reunification is an ongoing process. However, it makes me wonder what good things may be just around the corner that we currently think are impossible.

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Josiah Mortimer @josiah.writes.news · 8d

Some good news.

London is meeting legal limits for toxic NO2 pollution for the first time – almost 200 years earlier than predicted – following the Mayor’s "world leading air pollution policies," City Hall announces.

The Ultra Low Emissions Zone - and similar policies - really do work.

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Jen Calleja @jencalleja.bsky.social · 9d

Happy International Translation Day!

Here’s part of my translation manifesto, which can be found in full at the end of Fair: The Life-Art of Translation.

(Written out in replies)

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Alex Zucker @alexzucker.bsky.social · 17d

📢 Translators, you too can join the @alcs.co.uk and get paid for having your books checked out of the library.

A lifetime membership costs just £36. They take it out of your first payment, so you don’t pay a penny up front.

Since I joined in 2020, I have received £515.45! What are you waiting for?

ALCS @alcs.co.uk · 17d

🥳 This week, we will pay 31,487 members their share of £11,588,572!

Find out more:
www.alcs.co.uk/news/your-di...

Your distribution questions answered

This week, we will pay 31,487 members their share of £11,588,572. Get answers to your most pressing questions about our latest distribution.

www.alcs.co.uk

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Miranda Prynne @mirandaprynne.bsky.social · 20d

Academics in #Gaza reflect on how a virtual fellowship scheme with the @bristoluni.bsky.social has offered "a lifeline for researchers, fighting to keep our voices heard despite the #war and the destruction of our academic institutions" and explain how it works: ow.ly/yfsl50WZisX #academicsky

Virtual fellowships as ‘material solidarity’ against scholasticide

Gaza virtual research fellows and UK-based scholars share reflections, alongside a practical overview of the design, development and early implementation of a virtual fellowship

ow.ly

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Raven Crime Reads @ravencrime.bsky.social · 21d

It's here! The Petrona Award 2025- Best Scandinavian Crime Novel Of The Year- The Shortlist. #PetronaAward25

ravencrimereads.wordpress.com/2025/09/18/p...

Petrona Award 2025- Best Scandinavian Crime Novel Of The Year- The Shortlist #PetronaAward25

Outstanding crime fiction from Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden shortlisted for the 2025 Petrona Award. Seven impressive crime novels from Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden have been shortlist…

ravencrimereads.wordpress.com

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Kat Hall 📚 @kathall.bsky.social · 24d

Hope that goes smoothly, or at least as smoothly as German admin can go!

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Kat Hall 📚 @kathall.bsky.social · 24d

Waving from Hamburg! 👋 Great to see you’ve made the move. Wishing you every happiness in Berlin - such an amazing city x

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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.
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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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Kat Hall 📚 @kathall.bsky.social · Sep 1

Herzlichen Dank!

Kat Hall 📚 @kathall.bsky.social · Aug 31

Thanks so much! Look forward to trying out some of those.

Sorry to hear about your bookshop. Which one was that?

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Joanne Harris @joannechocolat.bsky.social · Aug 31

Unsolicited writing advice, no. 13:
If you are lucky enough to be translated into other languages, always know this: you are NOTHING without your translator. Your translator has skills far beyond just putting words into another language. A good translator is a stylist, an interpreter, a composer.

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Kat Hall 📚 @kathall.bsky.social · Aug 31

Thanks! I’ve never been 🙂

Kat Hall 📚 @kathall.bsky.social · Aug 31

I’ll be visiting Hamburg for soon for two weeks. I know the city pretty well, but haven’t been back for 7 years. Those of you in the know, do you have cafe, bookshop, restaurant recommendations? Places that you really, really love? 💛🇩🇪

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Kat Hall 📚 @kathall.bsky.social · Aug 31

Love it!

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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · Aug 21

People are constantly asking me — what can I do? Between now and the 2026 midterm elections, here are five practical steps you can take to make a difference.

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Sam Godfrey @skgodfrey.bsky.social · Aug 22

I occasionally do proofreading and editing for non-English organisations. Absolutely spending way more time trying to decipher AI translated nonsense that completely erases original language nuances and meaning (and assume these jobs will dry up now bc I'm costing people more). Hire translators!

Amanda Levendowski Tepski @tepski.tech · Aug 22

www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/ai-killed-...

AI Killed My Job: Translators

Few industries have been hit by AI as hard as translation. Rates are plummeting. Work is drying up. Translators are considering abandoning the field, or bankruptcy. These are their stories.

www.bloodinthemachine.com

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Marina Sofia @marinasofia.bsky.social · Aug 22

And that's really one of the biggest issues I have with AI: it trivializes everything and turns it into “content” that is “good enough,” turning everything into a worthless mush; just stuff to fill our (work)days. AI killed everyone's capacity to care about anything but the bottom line...

Peter Lipman @peterlipman.bsky.social · Aug 22

AI Killed My Job: Translators www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/ai-killed-...

AI Killed My Job: Translators

Few industries have been hit by AI as hard as translation. Rates are plummeting. Work is drying up. Translators are considering abandoning the field, or bankruptcy. These are their stories.

www.bloodinthemachine.com

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Kat Hall 📚 @kathall.bsky.social · Aug 21

This is an important thread & piece about the negative impact of AI on the translation sector - sobering & illuminating #xl8

Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · Aug 21

Since 2023, translators and interpreters have seen work dry up, rates plummet and their jobs reduced to editing AI-generated output. Some are leaving the field, others are considering bankruptcy. All despite any major upgrade in translation quality.

This is how AI is killing translation work:

AI Killed My Job: Translators

Few industries have been hit by AI as hard as translation. Rates are plummeting. Work is drying up. Translators are considering abandoning the field, or bankruptcy. These are their stories.

www.bloodinthemachine.com

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Gargarin @gargarin.bsky.social · Jan 20

I love the competing ideas 70's British production designers had about the future .
Bladerunner : eating noodles in the rain
Flash Gordon : Decadent Disco Dystopia
Star Wars: Bath Robes and Nazis
Alien : Atari Sex Lizards
Blake 7 : Gravel pit egg box Totalitarianism

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Kat Hall 📚 @kathall.bsky.social · Aug 16

Signed!

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Raven Crime Reads @ravencrime.bsky.social · Aug 14

It's here! The longlisted books for the #PetronaAward25 and what a cracking line up from Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Finland. Congratulations to all the authors and translators....
🇸🇪 🇳🇴 🇮🇸 🇫🇮

#PetronaAward25

#BookSky 💙📚

ravencrimereads.wordpress.com/2025/08/14/p...

Petrona Award 2025- Best Scandinavian Crime Novel Of The Year- The Longlist #PetronaAward25

OUTSTANDING CRIME FICTION FROM FINLAND, ICELAND, NORWAY, AND SWEDEN LONGLISTED FOR THE 2025 PETRONA AWARD Twelve crime novels from Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden have made the longlist for the…

ravencrimereads.wordpress.com

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Brian Cutts @briancutts.bsky.social · Aug 9

#WITmonth Mallorca-born author Maria-Antònia Oliver who writes in Catalan has also been translated into English, specifically her crime trilogy with a social/feminist theme. Not read them yet but this post gives a good idea what they're about + details=> jiescribano.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/2...

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