Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Nanna B Thylstrup

Philip Bump @pbump.com · 2h

I use archival images for my posts so that I don't have to 1) pay for good ones or 2) steal them or 3) use shitty AI ones, which means I do a lot of searches in the National Archives index for things like "FBI" which sometimes yield unusable but awesome images like this. Check out the hat!

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Lea Ypi @leaypi.bsky.social · 7h

no words

Young lives cut short on an unimaginable scale: the 18,457 children on Gaza’s list of war dead

Every name on a list compiled by health authorities in Gaza of the child victims of Israel’s offensive

www.theguardian.com

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Nanna B Thylstrup @nannathylstrup.bsky.social · 11h

I love teaching Minsoo Kang’s book Sublime Dreams of Living Machines

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Lori Emerson @loriemerson.net · 12h

if you were to teach a class on the pre/history of AI in terms of key concepts ideas, what would they be? the mind/body problem? abstraction vs materialism? history of the database? automation?

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Louise Amoore @amoorelouise.bsky.social · 1d

Such a nice paper on feature extraction as a project of perception - drone enclosures in digital India. “Feature extraction is an entirely speculative endeavour” rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers | RGS Journal | Wiley Online Library

Svamitva drone survey in Rajasthan. Source: Author.

rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Matthew Cobb @matthewcobb.bsky.social · 1d

Hey Colossal - spend some of your money on saving this real bird!

BirdGuides @birdguides.bsky.social · 1d

Conservationists are calling for urgent global funding to save Samoa's Tooth-billed Pigeon, a Critically Endangered species often referred to as 'little dodo':

Funding urgently needed to save Samoa's 'little dodo' from extinction

Samoa's Critically Endangered Tooth-billed Pigeon, or 'little dodo', is facing imminent extinction due to deforestation, hunting and invasive species, reports BirdGuides. Conservationists warn that without urgent international funding for large-scale forest protection and monitoring, this unique and elusive bird could vanish forever. Tooth-billed Pigeon is one of the world's most evolutionarily distinct birds, yet remains poorly known, with no clear wild photographs and few recent sightings.

bit.ly

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Dolly Jørgensen @dollyjorgensen.bsky.social · 2d

It’s real!!
I just got my first copy of Ghosts Behind Glass and it is beautiful. You all really need to order your copies. You will not regret it. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Double page spread with a photo of diorama

Chapter 3 Cursed treasures on left, lion on right

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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 4d

Lotta “A.I. bubble” talk this week — but this time, it’s coming from the folks inventing it, selling it, buying it and financing it. 👀

@cnbc.com @fortune.com @axios.com
fortune.com/2025/10/03/s...

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Nanna B Thylstrup @nannathylstrup.bsky.social · 7d

✨Deeply honoured to deliver this year's Annual Digital Lecture at The National Archives! Drawing on our @erc.europa.eu Data Loss project, I'll explore how preservation creates loss in the digital age and what that means for the politics of archives. Nov 20 6pm at Senate House, London. Do join us!

Jane Winters @jfwinters.bsky.social · 7d

Join us on 20 November for the Annual Digital Lecture, a partnership between The National Archives, UK and the School of Advanced Study. The wonderful @nannathylstrup.bsky.social will be speaking about ‘When saving becomes loss: archival memory in the digital age’. Free to register!

When saving becomes loss: Archival memory in the digital age

Explore archival memory, data loss, and attempts to preserve the past in the digital age at this year’s Annual Digital Lecture.

www.eventbrite.co.uk

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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 10d

public goods

"47% have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher ed institutions, w a net positive rating of 33—up 13 points since 2023. more confidence in higher ed than in the police (44%), the medical system (38%)+large tech companies (25%)"

www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-t...

Poll: Public Confidence in Higher Ed Growing

Despite the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks on colleges and universities, American confidence in higher education is growing.

www.insidehighered.com

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keep your electric eye on me @ubisurv.net · 13d

To the surprise of no-one, #Albania 's supposed #AI Minister is revealed as a human actress on green screen... the whole thing being a smokescreen for some dubious government procurement dealings.

your #3 source for absurdist true crime 🔨 @davidgerard.co.uk · 17d

Albania’s AI minister speaks! And turns out to be an actor

with bonus Mira Murati from Thinking Machines and OpenAI!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKBv... - video
pivottoai.libsyn.com/20250920-alb... - podcast

time: 4 min 04 sec

Anila Bisha playing Diella the AI minister

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Patrice Le Foll @plefoll.bsky.social · 22d

“We are not working on building an AI agent. We are working to protect Signal from the invasion of AI agents that threaten privacy and that are being implemented in irresponsible ways”

Rich Stein (he/him) @runrichrun.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 23d

It's Signal. It's worth using. Good interview with @Mer__edith
https://english.elpais.com/technology/2025-09-14/signal-president-meredith-whittaker-in-technology-its-way-too-easy-for-marketing-to-replace-substance-thats-whats-happened-with-telegram.html
h/t

#signal

Signal president Meredith Whittaker: ‘In technology, it’s way too easy for marketing to replace substance. That’s what’s happened with Telegram’

The app best known for respecting privacy looks to grow, despite anti-privacy efforts

english.elpais.com

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Rohan Pearce @rohan-p.bsky.social · 12d

Can't believe I missed an Ombudsman report with that title! Media release: www.ombudsman.gov.au/__data/asset... (PDF)

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Prem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · 14d

Remarkable document: hundreds of European politicians are calling to mobilize European resources to protect the Sumud aid flotilla as it faces escalating attacks on its way to Gaza.

In other words: European politicians are trying to protect humanitarian volunteers *from Israel.*

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Tim Bannister @lmktfy.bsky.social · 13d

Things that depend on the UN quietly doing work, #42:
The internet

From undersea cables to satellite radio links to the entire ITU (including the X.509 standard that's part of security for most popular websites), the UN has put in place pieces we would struggle to manage without. Really struggle.

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Nanna B Thylstrup @nannathylstrup.bsky.social · 14d

Excited to co-host this seminar! Join us Oct 6 as Professor @daniel-solove.bsky.social explores and explains privacy rights in the age of AI. In-person @ucph.bsky.social or hybrid. Co-organized with Mette Birkedal Bruun/CoE PRIVACY & @tgammeltoft.bsky.social/@mobileucph.bsky.social! @erc.europa.eu

Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen @tgammeltoft.bsky.social · 19d

What does AI mean for the future of privacy rights? October 6, Daniel Solove - world-leading expert on privacy - presents his newest book. Join in-room or hybrid for this seminar co-organised w/ fellow CoE PRIVACY and ERC project DALOSD cms.ku.dk/preview/4965... @dg.dk @nannathylstrup.bsky.social

Book Launch with Daniel Solove

"On Privacy and Technology" by Daniel Solove

cms.ku.dk

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Nanna B Thylstrup @nannathylstrup.bsky.social · 18d

Huzzaah and congratulations Ben! Such a wonderful project- looking forward to the years to come

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DeSmog @desmog.com · 20d

In rural Georgia, residents are waking up to the massive impacts that "hyperscale" data centre projects will have on local habitats, water and air quality -- and starting to push back.
buff.ly/7PyHWjc

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Nanna B Thylstrup @nannathylstrup.bsky.social · 20d

Data dispossession

Ordinary Notes @hystericalblkns.bsky.social · 20d

If you’re on academia dot edu, let me suggest that you strongly consider deleting your account.

The new TOC from academia dot edu.

By creating an Account with Academia.edu, you grant us a worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable license, permission, and consent for Academia.edu to use your Member Content and your personal information (including, but not limited to, your name, voice, signature, photograph, likeness, city, institutional affiliations, citations, mentions, publications, and areas of interest) in any manner, including for the purpose of advertising, selling, or soliciting the use or purchase of Academia.edu's Services.

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Nanna B Thylstrup @nannathylstrup.bsky.social · 22d

♥️

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Jenny Cohn @jennycohn.bsky.social · May 14

“Pirate Wires”—a media project of Peter Thiel ally Mike Solana—has been circling Greenland & Guantanamo like a hawk. Its latest is by Palmer Luckey, founder of Anduril, which is backed by Founders Fund.

Solana is a VP at Founders Fund—started by Thiel & Ken Howery (now ambassador to Denmark). 1/

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Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · Sep 8

Always fascinating to read about replication before the 20th century.

Here it's Pasteur doing a live demonstration of the efficacy of his animal anthrax vaccine (the third vaccine ever developed).

Certainly, Pasteur will have been well aware of the risk-laden use of inoc-
ulation by smallpox itself to produce immunity. When he addressed the prob-
lem, he mentioned Jenner, but one can only infer that probably he had in
mind Jenner’s use of the milder form of pox that affl icted cows to protect
against the more virulent smallpox. Having succeeded with chicken cholera,
he turned his energies to anthrax (in the literature of the time also described
as “splenic fever”). This disease was destroying 25% to 30% of sheep and cat-
tle across much of Europe. To attenuate this organism was no simple matter.
In its spore form anthrax retained virulence for years and could not be
cultured. However, the organism also exists in an active form of rods or
fi laments. Pasteur found a way around the diffi culty with spores by cultur-
ing the rods or fi laments of the organism before they could form spores.
Again a problem arose, in that injecting rod forms into animals apparently
killed them, although in the dead carcasses no organisms could be found.
Once more Pasteur undertook the attenuation of virulence by exposure of the
rods to oxygen at the 42/43 degree centigrade temperature range. In 1880 he
announced that he had produced a vaccine.
Although triumphant, he was still not without the harassment of critics.
Hippolyte Rossignol, editor of the Veterinary Press, cuttingly greeted the
result of “the Pontiff, the learned Mounsier Pasteur” as “microbiolatry.”
Thus challenged by skeptics, Pasteur devised a controlled experiment. He
vaccinated a number of sheep, left the controls unvaccinated, and put them
out to graze in a small anthrax-infected enclosure. Many skeptics and local
luminaries came to see the outcome, which demonstrated complete effi cacy
of the vaccine.

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CJ 🏳️‍🌈🤘 @nemoblue.bsky.social · Sep 7

going down a bit of a YouTube rabbit hole this morning, and I've somehow never come across this clip of Wendy Carlos—the first trans Grammy winner all the way back in 1970!—giving the all-time greatest lecture about what a synthesizer is and how it works.

1970: WENDY CARLOS and her MOOG SYNTHESISER | Music Now | Retro Tech | BBC Archive

YouTube video by BBC Archive

www.youtube.com

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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.
1/n

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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Alex Hanna-ween @alexhanna.bsky.social · Sep 8

That's how I feel about defenders of "AI literacy" in the classroom; you've added additional tasks for your students to perform critical evaluation of tools that nobody asked for (except administrators and LLM salesmen).

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