Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Nanjala @nanjala.bsky.social · 34m

This list pleases me.

Nanjala @nanjala.bsky.social · 44m

Fun fact: Paul Biya (92), President of Cameroon, has been the president of Cameroon almost twice as long as Monique Akoa-Makani (24) has been alive (43 years). Biya is currently running for another term in office.

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Nanjala @nanjala.bsky.social · 49m

Andscape with another profile of an African player in the W, last woman standing Monique Akoa-Makani. #wnba

Sean Hurd @seanahurd.bsky.social · 2h

Phoenix Mercury rookie Monique Akoa Makani is the first player from Cameroon 🇨🇲 to play in the WNBA Finals.

She hopes her visibility will inspire the next generation of Cameroonian players to chase their own basketball dreams.

“It only takes one person.”
andscape.com/features/pho...

Phoenix Mercury's Monique Akoa Makani derives pride, purpose from African roots - Andscape

The Phoenix Mercury's Monique Akoa Makani is the first player from Cameroon to play in the WNBA Finals.

andscape.com

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Nanjala @nanjala.bsky.social · 2h

Phew. And everything is just getting smaller and smaller and smaller.

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Nanjala @nanjala.bsky.social · 2h

One silent victim of all of these changes in the multilateral space is people’s mindsets. Working with people who are stuck in a scarcity mindset and trying to save their jobs instead of trying to do their jobs is actually really hard.

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Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 3h

All anyone wanted to do with OpenAI's new Sora 2 app was make clips of copyrighted characters. Now they can't, they're pissed. Literally what is the point of this app www.404media.co/sora-2-conte...

People Are Crashing Out Over Sora 2’s New Guardrails

OpenAI’s Sora 2 platform started just one week ago as an AI-generated copyright infringement free-for-all. Now, people say they’re struggling to generate anything without being hit with a violation er...

www.404media.co

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Naomi Alderman @naomialderman.bsky.social · 10h

feels like yet again time to mention that the *videogames* industry (that's a creative industry, which people do creative degrees in) brings in more than twice the amount to the British economy as the fishing and steel industries *combined*

Naomi Alderman @naomialderman.bsky.social · 10h

I cannot understand what these people think the purpose of human life is?

It is *not* "pursue joy, deal justly, love well, try to understand as much and see as much of this beautiful world and of the deepness, richness and variety of human culture and experience as you can before you die"?

Tim Worthington @outonbluesix.bsky.social · 10h

How is this repeatedly made into a policy issue - by *all* parties - when the blunt fact of the matter is that grown adults who are obliged to pay for their own education, and relentlessly pursued to repay their loans, should be able to study whatever the fuck they want.

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Financial Times @financialtimes.com · 9h

OpenAI and Anthropic are considering using investor funds to settle potential claims from multibillion-dollar lawsuits on.ft.com/4mWEfyK

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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 22h

I don't even know what to say about @aaron.bsky.team announcing that actually they feed all images posted on Bsky into an AI that just a year ago they told everyone they had banned from using Bsky images

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Nanjala @nanjala.bsky.social · 1d

Cathy, trying to find a way to remove Phee and A’ja from the list. #wnba

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Rev Laura Everett @reveverett.com · 1d

My rage, in graphs: #wnba #nba

“The W.N.B.A. makes more money than the N.B.A. did at the same point in its history”

The W.N.B.A. makes more money than the N.B.A. did at the same point in its history
ANNUAL REVENUE
$500 million
Projected revenue the 2026 season
W.N.B.A/
400
N.B.A.
1982-83-season
300
1968-69
season
200/
100
< 2019 season
23
25
27
29
31
SEASON
33
35
37
Sources: Rodney Fort's Sports Business Data • Note:
N.B.A. revenue is in 2025 dollars.

much.
÷96
Players get a tiny cut of the W.N.B.A.'s revenue, even as the league has grown significantly
ANNUAL REVENUE
How much money -
$300 million
the W.N.B.A. makes
Money the players would 250 mshare, if they were paid
like N.B.A. players
200 Möney that W.N.B.A. players actually make
150 mil.
100 mil.
50 mil.
2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025|
Sources: Bloomberg, Forbes, Sportico, Rodney Fort's
Sports Business Data
Some of this is educated
guesswork. The W.N.B.A. doesn't release official revenue data —

What It Would Look Like to Pay W.N.B.A. Players What They Deserve
By David Berri
Graphics by Sara Chodosh
Mr. Berri is a professor at Southern Utah University who studies sports economics.
Oct. 3, 2025
@ Share full article
564
The 2025 W.N.B.A. season has set records for attendance, both in total and per game, even before the playoffs. More than three million fans have flocked to see stars like A'ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces and Alyssa Thomas of the Phoenix Mercury, whose
@ nytimes.com

year.
•+95
What the top 10 W.N.B.A. players should have earned this year
Players were ranked by how much their box score statistics, like points and rebounds, affected wins.
1 mil. 2 mil. 3 mil. $4 mil
A'ja Wilson
Alyssa Thomas
eronica Burton
Chelsea Gray
Jackie Young
pheesa Collier
Aliyah Boston
Allisha Gray
irtney Williams
Skylar Diggins
Each player's current salary
Source: Original box score stats used in calculations from Basketball Reference
What about Caitlin Clark? She missed most of the season with a groin injury. But during her magical rookie season in 2024,

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Edward Luce @edwardluce.bsky.social · 1d

"None — repeat none — of America’s fentanyl has been found to originate from Venezuela. Yet Trump and Pete Hegseth, his compulsively strutting “secretary of war”, insist that the country is fuelling America’s opioid epidemic." Me on Trump's wag the dog script. www.ft.com/content/5b3e...

Venezuela is Trump’s useful enemy

Despite the president’s claims, the South American country is nowhere close to being the US’s biggest drug supplier

www.ft.com

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Nanjala @nanjala.bsky.social · 1d

David Adler, a coordinator at @progintl.bsky.social is still being led by the Israeli government even while other members of the Global Sumud Flotilla were released. Please consider signing this petition demanding his release.

actionnetwork.org/letters/free...

Free David Adler

Please take this action with us to demand the release of David Adler. He is a beloved friend, community member, and Angeleno. David bravely joined over 450 volunteers to sail to Gaza with the sumud fl...

actionnetwork.org

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Nanjala @nanjala.bsky.social · 1d

Are we watching the same thing? Because clearly Dana pushed into her first?

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Chibdm @chibdm.bsky.social · 1d

Robin Williams' daughter has some quality thoughts on AI slop

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Nanjala @nanjala.bsky.social · 2d

For real?? 😦

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Nanjala @nanjala.bsky.social · 2d

Oh my bad! 😆

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Nanjala @nanjala.bsky.social · 2d

The WNBA only has 13 teams. They don’t have conferences for the playoffs - just the 8 best teams

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ESPN @espn.com · 2d

Amid the WNBA Finals, two of the most powerful people in the game in Minnesota Lynx star Napheesa Collier and WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert are locked in a contentious battle — for public opinion, power and money.

'Beyond repair': Napheesa Collier, Cathy Engelbert and a WNBA teetering on the brink

Amid the WNBA Finals, two of the most powerful people in the game are locked in a contentious battle -- for public opinion, power and money.

spr.ly

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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.bsky.social · 2d

an ai video of Sam Altman shoplifting but much more interesting what's in the training data. there's no way these models can reimagine camera viewpoints unless a nearest neighbour exists in the training dataset. looks like target video feed must have entered the dataset

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Al Jazeera English @aljazeera.com · 2d

BREAKING: Israel deports 171 Gaza Sumud Flotilla activists, including Greta Thunberg.

🔴 LIVE updates: aje.io/erhxpu

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Nanjala @nanjala.bsky.social · 2d

Just seen video that Cameroonian President Paul Biya (96) who is running for office again, and his wife Chantal, could not attend a campaign event in Cameroon due to ill health so they sent literal puppets instead.

What a news cycle to be offline @thecontinent.org 😂

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Nanjala @nanjala.bsky.social · 2d

I know some of you don’t like seeing posts from the other place but this is important and many of the people who were on the Flotilla do not have a presence on Bluesky.

That's when Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel's Minister of National Security, arrived.
He came to Ashdod to make sure we were treated as terrorists. He screamed it at us — that we were terrorists. Right in front of him, the police wanted to show their zeal: they blindfolded us and tightened plastic handcuffs around our wrists until they cut into the skin.
They loaded us into an armored vehicle wearing only light shirts. The air conditioning was blasting; it was freezing. A Scottish boy managed to loosen his cuffs and, with help from an Italian named Marco, released the others. When we saw the others getting off, their hands were purple. Some had been tied since the interception - traveling to prison with their hands bound from 2 a.m. to 4 p.m.

"The first night, they wouldn't let us sleep — waking us constantly, forcing us to stand, or blaring loudspeakers.
The second night, they switched our cells. No bottled water, only hot tap water...
In the second cell, with me, was a former Turkish deputy foreign minister under Ahmet Davutoglu. His arm was broken and swollen; he bandaged it himself, denied any medical care. No medicine for anyone - not even an epileptic prisoner. We protested until consular assistance arrived. The Italian consul asked if we had been abused and said that if we signed the
deportation papers, we'd be sent home

Many agreed to sign, but I don't know what happened to those who didn't - fifteen Italians remain imprisoned. I signed: it was a document waiving trial and agreeing to deportation within 72 hours. No admission of guilt.
They held new interrogations. A judge asked questions without a lawyer present. We requested one — they said it wasn't necessary, "just a chat." We stayed silent. I only said I was a journalist doing my job and wouldn't answer further without legal or consular support. They asked why I wanted to go to Gaza, if I didn't know there was a blockade. Others were asked more "political" questions - about the Muslim Brotherhood.

That night the guards were even more violent. The consul had just left, having gathered more deportation signatures, when special forces burst in. They stormed the cells, pointed rifles at us with laser sights, and called roll. In some cells, they unleashed dogs. In one, they found the word "Palestine" spelled out using scraps of pepper and water. To erase it, they poured bleach on the floor — prisoners slept on mattresses soaked with it.
That night, as punishment, they overcrowded the cells: from ten people to fifteen, leaving no space to lie down.
We turned the mattresses sideways so we could all rest our heads. In my cell were Maso Notarianni and a Lombardy Democratic Party councilor, Paolo Romano.

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Nanjala @nanjala.bsky.social · 2d

Lorenzo D’Agostino is one of the journalists who has been covering the illegal pushbacks of refugees in the Mediterranean Sea. If you know something about these pushbacks it is in part because of work he has done. This is his account of his detention and capture on the Global Sumud Flotilla.

It appears that the Italian state, government, and parts of the Church tried to stop the Flotilla not to prevent an armed clash with Netanyahu, but to avoid the media exposure of a country increasingly radicalized and indefensible - except through repressive laws - and to suppress reports of egregious human rights violations.
"We were intercepted at 1:58 a.m. on Thursday. On my boat, the Hio, part of the Global Sumud Flotilla mission, five Israeli soldiers boarded with rifles pointed at us, lasers aimed. Exactly one month after our departure from

On board, the soldiers allowed us to go to the bathroom, eat, drink, and smoke.
Then they redirected the boat toward the port of Ashdod. We stayed moored for a couple of hours. Before letting us disembark, one soldier wanted to speak to our captain: "My friend, my friend, listen to me, you'll like this one: when dwarfs cast long shadows, it means the sun is low." That was the last thing he said.
As we disembarked, someone from the other boats shouted, "The police will be worse." As soon as I stepped onto land, an officer grabbed my arm, twisting it behind my back to cause maximum pain. They made us sit on the ground, on a concrete esplanade.
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Greta Thunberg was wrapped in the Israeli flag like a war trophy. They sat her in a corner; officers surrounded her, taking selfies.
Then they turned on another girl, Hanan, forcing her to sit in front of the flag so she'd have to look at it. They kicked people, ordered us to lower our heads and look at the ground — anyone who looked up was forced to kneel. An older activist wet himself.
Anything associated with Palestine was ripped away, thrown to the ground, and trampled. They tore bracelets off everyone's wrists; one girl was dragged because hers wouldn't break. It wasn't even the Palestinian flag — it was Somali.
4/10

We stayed on the concrete for hours.
They asked for Italian passports and took us through immigration control.
There they opened our bags: anything linked to Palestine was thrown in the trash. When they found a copy of the Quran in my bag, they went berserk — convinced I was Muslim. For two hours, every officer passing by mocked me.
In my toiletry bag they found pink wet wipes and laughed, saying "you're a woman." They slapped each other's backs, amused. After border control, they forced us to strip down to our underwear. We went through two interrogations — only one with a lawyer present. They asked if we wanted to be deported. Then came the
announcement: we were going to jail.
5/10

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