Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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Running Dog @runningdog.bsky.social · Aug 24

Free broadband: absurd communism, what would they even use it for
Psychosis Wormhole Premium in every home: Mr Altman, you’ve charmed me

Fabio Chiusi @fabiochiusi.bsky.social · Aug 24

“The non-binding deal could give OpenAI access to government data and lead to its software being used in education, defence, security and the justice system”

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Deal to get ChatGPT Plus for whole of UK discussed by Open AI boss and minister

Exclusive: Deal that could have cost £2bn was floated at meeting between technology secretary Peter Kyle and Sam Altman

www.theguardian.com

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Emily Mark-FitzGerald @emilymfg.bsky.social · Aug 23

Laurie Anderson anticipating AI at the Hirshhorn Museum

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L @banalplay.bsky.social · Aug 14

People are lonelier than ever, so here is a robot you can talk to. It won't make you less lonely but it will drive you insane. That will be five thousand dollars.

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Lora Kolodny @lorak.bsky.social · Aug 10

never take freedom of the press or access to news for granted. www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/8/...

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Siún Carden @s-carden.bsky.social · Aug 4

Belfast friends bringing home bar receipts from a night out in Dublin so we could all marvel at the cost of a round

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Hannah Alpert-Abrams @halperta.bsky.social · Jul 23

Hot take: most online courses taught in universities right now are not designed to maximize student learning.

Why not? Because instead of spending money on recruiting and training excellent educators, universities are spending their money on Learning Management Systems that don't work.

Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · Jul 23

“…faculty members will be able to click an icon that connects them with various AI features…, like a grading tool, a discussion-post summarizer… Canvas’s parent company, Instructure, is also in partnership w/ OpenAI… so instructors can use generative-AI technology as part of their assignments.”

Instructors Will Now See AI Throughout a Widely Used Course Software

New features integrated into Canvas include a grading assistant, a discussion-post summarizer, and even a way to pair assignments with generative AI tools.

www.chronicle.com

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Kieran Hurley @kieranhurley.bsky.social · Jul 21

remembered this today, which I wrote back at the end of 2023, and thought about how most of the people in the images and videos that prompted it will likely be dead now. My son is about to turn 7

Fighting Age Males

[2 columns of text. The column on the right starts first. It is narrow, 1-3 words per line. At the end the lines become longer but more broken and fragmented. The text is transcribed below]

video taken on a phone silent men walking through the rubble young men, boys really old men dust and concrete an armchair now and then a part of lamp shards of once lived-in domesticity the men have found someone a child under the wreckage dust still alive one man pulls the child out lifts him up into the strong safe heat of his arms they look to the sky and praise God scroll on still image now men stood against a wall in a line warm colour of their fleshy human skin stark against grey all naked blindfold heads bowed soft bellies skinny legs the shameful shock of it oh fuck scroll past - scroll back- naked men gun point young men, boys really old men thirty to forty fighting age males stripped with hands bound not civilians it says but fighting age at them it says look at these males it says look men look at these Arab men look see look that are these fighting age males look

[see alt text of following post for text of left column]

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Matt Davies @halcyene.bsky.social · Jul 20

Absurd, and deeply troubling. Anyone with even a passing concern for basic democratic norms should be alarmed at what is happening in the UK at the moment.

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

Two UK pro-Palestine organisations have bank accounts frozen

Groups say having access to funds cut off raise fears of wider attempt to silence voices speaking out about Gaza

www.theguardian.com

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Rebecca Ruth Gould @rrgould.bsky.social · Jul 5

Read the entire thread! Very perceptive analysis.

madoc cairns @madoc.bsky.social · Jul 5

So: recruitment & funding aren't critical issues for PA; commitment is give-what-you-can; targets are plentiful (shutting down factories, not smashing the state); local groups can self-direct. This is why they previously survived very heavy policing. It's why they'll likely survive proscription too.

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Colin Murray @colinmurray.bsky.social · Jul 4

In a week when the divide between direct action protest and terrorism disappeared for the UK Government, Anne Alexander, @aliceellafinden.bsky.social and I share our thoughts on the dangerous chilling effect for Art 10/11 ECHR rights with @opendemocracy.net:

www.opendemocracy.net/en/palestine...

Palestine Action ban: We must learn from university protests

Government’s proscription of the group follows months of similarly chilling repression on campuses across the UK

www.opendemocracy.net

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Peter Geoghegan @petergeoghegan.bsky.social · Jun 29

This is a *really* extraordinary story from @kenzabryan.ft.com www.ft.com/content/84d9...

The extraordinary life and mysterious death of a carbon credits broker

How an Italian fugitive used diplomatic immunity to work with Dubai royalty and Liberia’s fallen hero

www.ft.com

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Aoife Gallagher @aoifegall.bsky.social · Jun 20

Research from us looking at how social media platforms once again failed to take action on content inciting violence in Northern Ireland last week

Institute for Strategic Dialogue @isdglobal.org · Jun 20

After 2 Romanian teenagers were charged with an attack on a teenage girl in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, social media platforms were at the heart of a coordinated campaign of anti-migrant violence. Read ISD's analysis of an increasing pattern of online mobilisation translating into offline violence.

“Get them out, keep them out”: How social media fuelled violent attacks against migrants in Northern Ireland

After two Romanian teens were charged in an attack on a girl in Ireland, online hate fueled violence in Northern Ireland—the latest in a wider trend where platform failures lead to real-world harm.

www.isdglobal.org

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Siún Carden @s-carden.bsky.social · Jun 17

Baubi Urquhart of Yell, Shetland: "photographs of Baubi were once used to illustrate two quite different stories – one about folklore, specifically tales of ‘seal women’ or ‘selkies’ from the Northern Isles of Scotland, and the other about women’s work in the rural economy of the 19th century."

The Story of a Seal-Woman from Shetland – MAA Digital Lab

Baubi Urquhart’s portraits tell two stories—mythical ancestry and rural industry. Eona Bell explores how this woman embodied both in 19th-century Scotland.

www.maadigitallab.org

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The Nahwhal @the-nah-whal.bsky.social · May 29

Seems today is the day for Irish politicians to use technology to make a holy show of themselves.
www.thejournal.ie/ciaran-mullo...

Irish MEP used AI to write open letter about Gaza which quoted Swedish House Mafia

Ciaran Mullooly – a former journalist – also included an emotional story from a “fictional” girl in Gaza.

www.thejournal.ie

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Joe Noonan @joenoonan.bsky.social · May 20

The EU was asked 15 months ago by Spain and Ireland to consider suspending the favourable trade deal it has with Israel. They were ignored.

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Hari Kunzru @harikunzru.bsky.social · May 20

Trying to get my head round how this could make it to print. Many warning signs for all of us

Rachael King @rachaelking70.bsky.social · May 20

This was just posted by @tbretc.bsky.social on another platform. The Chicago Sun-Times obviously gets ChatGPT to write a ‘summer reads’ feature almost entirely made up of real authors but completely fake books. What are we coming to?

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Hari Kunzru @harikunzru.bsky.social · May 17

I didn’t realize that *every* literary arts grantee, all 51, were terminated by the NEA. lareviewofbooks.org/article/we-d...

We Don’t Have Any Reserves | Los Angeles Review of Books

Adam Morgan writes on the impact of Trump’s coup at the NEA for small publishers and literary magazines.

lareviewofbooks.org

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James Kelleher @jameskelleher.pilcrow.ie · May 19

“The inmate must never know whether he is being looked at at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so.”

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · May 17

In an effort to avoid accusations of cheating, some students are recording their own screens for hours at a time or using keystroke loggers.

A New Headache for Honest Students: Proving They Didn’t Use A.I.

www.nytimes.com

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Tim Oliver @tjoliver.bsky.social · Feb 19

Local journalism is one of the cornerstones of a democratic society. @manchestermill.bsky.social's work on the University of Greater Manchester (formerly Bolton) is a reminder of just what we're missing as so many local papers become hollow shadows of themselves manchestermill.co.uk/the-universi...

The Casablanca Deal: Secret contracts and unexplained payments at the University of Greater Manchester

EXCLUSIVE: Senior executives at the university tried to divert hundreds of thousands in tuition fees into a private company which one of them owns

manchestermill.co.uk

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Kieran Connell @kieranconnell.bsky.social · May 12

The epilogue from my book. Siva said it best - “what Powell says today, the Tories say tomorrow and Labour legislates on the day after”

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Shetland Library @shetlandlibrary.bsky.social · Apr 25

Worrying days for The Shetland Times and all of us. We hold all the editions on microfilm and it’s an essential historical resource. If we lose our newspapers it gets much harder to find and preserve consistent output by trained journalists.

Shetland Elects @shetlandelects.bsky.social · Apr 25

The Shetland Times, Shetland's only print newspaper, has been put up for sale after 131 years of ownership by the Wishart family.

If a buyer cannot be found, the newspaper - along with its publishing arm and bookshop - could come to an end.

www.shetlandtimes.co.uk/2025/04/25/u...

Uncertain future for The Shetland Times - The Shetland Times

After more than a century and a half, the future of The Shetland Times looks far from certain.

www.shetlandtimes.co.uk

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Dr Matthew A. L. Gault @malgault.bsky.social · Apr 8

The Irish Journal of Anthropology (IJA) has just released its special issue on "Islandness", which will be of interest to all scholars of Ireland, and of islands more broadly. The IJA is open access and hosted by University College Cork on behalf of the Anthropological Association of Ireland (AAI).

Vol. 26 No. 1 (2023): Irish Journal of Anthropology-Special Issue: Islandness | Irish Journal of Anthropology

journals.ucc.ie

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Siún Carden @s-carden.bsky.social · Apr 3

It's nearly 9 years since I moved to Shetland, so it must be at least 8 since my first Sunday Tea, which happened to be run by the Ex-Whalers Association. Delighted to have somehow snuck them into Irish Pages, via a poem called 'Swallowing the Anchor'. Looking forward to reading this Scotland issue.

Vol. 12 No. 2: Scotland – The Irish Pages Press

Ten years after the Independence Referendum, Irish Pages asks diverse Scottish writers of distinction – established, mid-career and new – to think about their country, and take stock of the current st...

irishpages.org

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UHIHistory.bsky.social @uhihistory.bsky.social · Mar 5

📣 Islands Symposium registration is now OPEN 📣

Book your place for Island Narratives of Kinship, Place and the Weather, bit.ly/3F0ESa0

📆 3-4 April 2025
📍 Hosted at Cnoc Soilleir with Ceòlas Uibhist &
UHI North, West and Hebrides (South Uist) and online

Islands symposium

Island narratives of kinship, place, and the weather 3rd & 4th April 2025 hosted at Cnoc Soilleir with Ceolas Uibhist and UHI NWH (South Uist) and online This 2-day hybrid event is hosted by th…

bit.ly

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will o’the wisp pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · Mar 25

look my ALCS payment isn’t going to be life changing but you know what it’s a lot more than any of the corporations paid me to rip off my work for their LLMs

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