Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Oliver Bown

Anthony Etherin @anthonyetherin.bsky.social · 2d

INFINITE PALINDROME

…cosmic,
I’m so cosmic,
I’m so cosmic,
I’m so cosmic,
I’m so cosmic,
I’m so cosmic,
I’m so cosmic,
I’m so c…

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Oliver Bown @olliebown.bsky.social · 4d

Well worth a read.

The New York Times @nytimes.com · 4d

In @nytopinion.nytimes.com

As post-liberal tendencies take hold, “they take substantially different forms on the left versus the right — and those differences help explain why people on either side of the divide struggle so mightily to understand their opponents,” our columnist Ross Douthat writes.

Opinion | Why Left and Right Can’t Understand Each Other’s Fears

Getting past the urge to reduce all politics to existential conflict.

nyti.ms

Oliver Bown @olliebown.bsky.social · 6d

A circus musician goes into a bar.
The bar goes wah wah waaah.

Oliver Bown @olliebown.bsky.social · 6d

It's hard to miss the perfect portrayals of Trump and Vance.

Popehat Agitates And Irritates @kenwhite.bsky.social · 7d

Every few months now I re-read this "Who Goes Nazi?" piece from 1941 and am blown away by how it captures the people we are dealing with 80 years later.

harpers.org/archive/1941...

Who Goes Nazi?, by Dorothy Thompson

harpers.org

Oliver Bown @olliebown.bsky.social · 6d

Still time to sign up for a half-day seminar "Adapting to AI in the Creative Industries" on Oct 17th - a powerful resource with so much to keep up with everything going on in copyright, content licensing, new business models. www.eventbrite.com.au/e/adapting-t...

Adapting to AI in the Creative Industries

Learn what experts are saying about the anticipated trends for AI capability across creative industries in Australia.

www.eventbrite.com.au

Oliver Bown @olliebown.bsky.social · 6d

Humprhy Davy, is this epically cynical or epically enlightened?

"The art of living happy is, I believe, the art of being agreeably deluded; and faith in all things is superior to Reason, which, after all, is but a dead weight in advanced life, though as the pendulum to the clock in youth."

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Oliver Bown @olliebown.bsky.social · 6d

Music indies sound the alarm bells!! So called "attribution technology" will be nothing like the world of streaming or record sales where a successful artist can track their popularity. It will be a murky tech-metricocracy that will benefit those with the most compute.

www.ft.com/content/1a1a...

Music labels close to landmark AI licensing deals

Universal and Warner seek payment structure similar to streaming as more disruption looms

www.ft.com

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Oliver Bown @olliebown.bsky.social · 9d

Excellent take. If you add up the value of the knowledge needed to train AI and cost it properly, this cannot possibly be something a private corporation can be allowed to own and seek rent on. But can anyone be trusted?

theconversation.com/generative-a...

Generative AI might end up being worthless — and that could be a good thing

GenAI does some neat, helpful things, but it’s not yet the engine of a new economy — and it might not ever be.

theconversation.com

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Oliver Bown @olliebown.bsky.social · 13d

Thanks. Perfect. Old is fine.

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Oliver Bown @olliebown.bsky.social · 13d

I maintain, this will end up with AI robots ambling down the street with microphone on, loitering near shopfronts, passing cars, and picnicking families, as a way of capturing music "inadvertently" for training.

www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/inspired-by-...

Inspired by Anthropic’s $1.5B book piracy payout, record labels accuse Suno of illegally ‘stream ripping’ music from YouTube

The labels are now seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work infringed, as well as up to $2,500 for each act of YouTube stream ripping…

www.musicbusinessworldwide.com

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Oliver Bown @olliebown.bsky.social · 14d

Generative image/audio folks, I'm looking for contemporary examples of training data used in different ways. e.g., one set of image data used for learning object structure and another used for learning painterly style. Any and all examples welcome, particularly academic papers.

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Oliver Bown @olliebown.bsky.social · 14d

Sydney, I'm speaking at this awesome curated series of talks at the Uni of Western Sydney, as are my two fabulous PhD students Chloe McFadden and Tom Willma, along with a great line up of talks about art and AI.

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Oliver Bown @olliebown.bsky.social · 14d

What's the best way to write some text for future flexibility. Needs to mange citations in a sensible way. MD, HTML, RTF, .docx, TeX? Or is that moot because we can convert so easily? I started writing my new book in HTML1 😀📜 but I don't have a referencing solution.

Oliver Bown @olliebown.bsky.social · 14d

Yes. Watch and share. Viralise the hell out of this. Do you want to look back at this and say, "remember when we had freedom to criticise our leaders" or look back and say "this was the moment people stood up to authoritarianism in the US". Nothing is decided yet.

Wajahat Ali @wajali.bsky.social · 14d

Jimmy Kimmel's Monologue now has 14.3 MILLION VIEWS on YouTube.

It would be a shame for you to share it

www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1tj...

Jimmy Kimmel is Back!

YouTube video by Jimmy Kimmel Live

www.youtube.com

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Oliver Bown @olliebown.bsky.social · 14d

100%. Any government that's not the current US administration has an interest in supporting civil society alternatives.

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Oliver Bown @olliebown.bsky.social · 15d

Had a dream where if I held my breath my hair would grow slowly out into this giant afro until I breathed out and it went back to normal. I went around showing off my party trick. Got it to go a full metre in diameter. Good dream.

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Oliver Bown @olliebown.bsky.social · 16d

Not sure I've raved enough about the inaugural AI Music Studies Conference last year in Stockholm, which showcased an exceptional standard of scholarship. In March 2026 it comes to Nottingham. Delighted to be on the Steering Committee. I just hope I can make it!

www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/gro...

Aims 2026 conference - The University of Nottingham

www.nottingham.ac.uk

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Reposted by Oliver Bown

Pete Buttigieg @petebuttigieg.bsky.social · 20d

What's happening with Jimmy Kimmel is about politics and power.

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Oliver Bown @olliebown.bsky.social · 20d

❤️🎵🎛️Thanks Joe!

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Reposted by Oliver Bown

Oliver Bown @olliebown.bsky.social · 22d

I'm running another iteration of my webinar "Adapting to AI in the Creative Industries".

Online, Friday 17th October 2025. 10am-1pm (AEST - Sydney).
Cost $50 (AUD). Register here www.eventbrite.com.au/e/adapting-t...

Adapting to AI in the Creative Industries

Learn what experts are saying about the anticipated trends for AI capability across creative industries in Australia.

www.eventbrite.com.au

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Oliver Bown @olliebown.bsky.social · 21d

What will it take for foreign leaders, especially US allies, to unite in calling out Trump's authoritarianism? We could do it politely.

The Conversation U.S. @us.theconversation.com · 21d

Many news outlets still shy away from calling Trump an authoritarian — but scholars warn that failing to name it can help normalize it and speed democratic backsliding.

buff.ly/i94mMGx

Why journalists are reluctant to call Trump an authoritarian – and why that matters for democracy

Media framing shapes people’s understanding of the world. A political communication scholar says that journalistic outlets’ failure to call Donald Trump an authoritarian is a problem for democracy.

buff.ly

Oliver Bown @olliebown.bsky.social · 22d

The course is aimed at professionals in the creative industries interested in insights and strategies for dealing with the rapid uptake of AI in the sector. This includes those who are keen adopters as well as those resisting AI and campaigning for safe and equitable policies.

Oliver Bown @olliebown.bsky.social · 22d

I'm running another iteration of my webinar "Adapting to AI in the Creative Industries".

Online, Friday 17th October 2025. 10am-1pm (AEST - Sydney).
Cost $50 (AUD). Register here www.eventbrite.com.au/e/adapting-t...

Adapting to AI in the Creative Industries

Learn what experts are saying about the anticipated trends for AI capability across creative industries in Australia.

www.eventbrite.com.au

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Oliver Bown @olliebown.bsky.social · 22d

UNSW PhD student Chloe McFadden's performance artwork gets you to examine your relationship to trust in the predictive algorithms around you, especially those pesky LLMs and their reassured confidence.

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Oliver Bown @olliebown.bsky.social · 22d

Trump visits the one man in the UK who truly understands his woes with the democratic process.

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