Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Kabi

Scott Mitchell

@scottmitchell.bsky.social

Adelaide writers festival, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne Symphony — in every case of censorship, boards have shown themselves.

They will destroy the reputation of the institutions they lead, to be on good terms with people in their cocktail set.

January 9, 2026 at 4:02 AM

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Leena 🌵

@leena.reuben.games

Expanded on this rant a little on my blog: yeahrighto.substack.com/p/the-point-...

That's not a bug. It's the feature. That's why this is a labour weapon. If this sounds abstract, note that Australian law already treats reputational harm as urgent when the subject is a company, not a woman. Australian courts have accepted that associating a company's trademark with pornography, sexual content, or scandal, can be detrimental to the reputation of a company. Strangely, there's no ambiguity about harm when a man's money is involved. Companies can move fast on infringements of their trademarks. Perhaps I could find a nice company that would like to trademark my likeness so I could be afforded the same swift protections.
Leena van Deventer

January 7, 2026 at 5:46 AM

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Final Fagtasy III: Pixel Remaster

@jygglypuffdaddy.bsky.social

Drag Race producers giving interviews and saying “we never want Drag Race to be political” is fucking wild. You’re showcasing a queer art. What the fuck are you talking about.

January 7, 2026 at 2:26 AM

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Valentenya 🍉 🐈‍⬛

@valentenya.bsky.social

Albo et al finding there’s a big difference between talking about fighting tories at the Uni bar and fighting actual fascists as a grown arse adult.

January 7, 2026 at 1:29 AM

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Kat Tenbarge

@kattenbarge.bsky.social

I've been tracking the spread of nonconsensual deepfakes on X for more than two years. Here's a timeline of how Musk's leadership allowed the practice to flourish from a once-underground market to a viral trend, with little recourse for victims or legal enforcement.
spitfirenews.com/p/grok-csam-...

How Grok's sexual abuse hit a tipping point

Nonconsensual deepfakes on X are nothing new, but now it's built into the platform.

spitfirenews.com

January 2, 2026 at 7:47 PM

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Ted

@tedboothmain.bsky.social

incredibly wild that we live in a country that the government gets you to upload your id in order to have a chug so as to "protect children" while simultanously shurgging as our social media overlords allow for their ai to create inappropriate images of children.

Jim Waterson @jim.londoncentric.media · 13d

This does seem just a little bit bad! Idk the sort of thing you’d think politicians might distance themselves from or something!

January 2, 2026 at 11:50 AM

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Tom Studans

@maximumwelfare.bsky.social

Regardless of the merits of the issue the social media ban is indefensibly poor policymaking and legislation, it's a corporate quid pro quo with News, and the public have been asked to pay for the victory lap.

December 11, 2025 at 1:43 AM

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CAMERON WILSON

@cameronwilson.bsky.social

The Prime Minister credited 36 Months for convincing him to ban teens from social media.

This group accused experts who opposed the ban of being 'bought' by big tech. Meanwhile, it was lining up brand deals, eyeing global expansion & developing an AI tool to track students

www.crikey.com.au/20...

December 9, 2025 at 6:19 AM

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Ben Harris-Roxas

@benhr.bsky.social

Victoria is dismantling VicHealth - the world’s first health promotion foundation and the template for similar agencies globally. This is deeply worrying news for Australian public health and health promotion.

More at Croakey

December 4, 2025 at 5:53 AM

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Jessie L

@jessielilley.bsky.social

Fill out the Sweltering Cities Summer Survey! They run it every two years to see what affect heatwaves and climate related temperature rises have on communities.

Sweltering Cities Summer Survey

How do you feel the summer heat? What can be done to keep our communities safe? Add you voice to the Sweltering Cities Summer Survey

swelteringcities.typeform.com

December 2, 2025 at 5:59 AM

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Ursula

@ladyofsardines.bsky.social

but there’s no such thing as someone else’s children.

(From One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, by Omar El Akkad)

But so many will remember. We say that, sometimes, when it's our children killed: Remember. And it may seem now like it's someone else's children, but there's no such thing as someone else's children. The problem with fixating on the abyss into which one's opponent has descended while simultaneously digging ones own is that, eventually, it gets too dark to tell the difference.

May 16, 2025 at 12:50 PM

Reposted by Kabi

The Conversation AUNZ

@aunz.theconversation.com

Being exposed to trauma in childhood is linked to serious mental and physical health issues later in life. These findings show trauma is not rare.

New study finds 2 in 5 Australians experience traumatic events as children

theconversation.com

November 18, 2025 at 7:57 AM

Reposted by Kabi

Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City

@thefoxandthecity.com

Man, and here I was thinking I was being too hard on planning in my most recent piece...

thefoxandthecity.com/articles/urb...

Unfortunately, however, the planning academy has also needed to be a credentialization program designed to certify students to work with specific tools (again like zoning) in a very specialized realm. As a result, while planning schools still do a lot of excellent research and produce many excellent thinkers, other parts of the field are explicitly designed to train a specific set of technocratic workers for a very specific modern municipal setting. At its reductive worst, professional planners spend their days working to apply rules they didn't create (and have major qualms with) before, every twenty years or so, being able to work on their own master plan that then will go on to be largely ignored itself. As a result, more than a few urban planners have quit the field to enter consulting or to find other related urban jobs because, to use a line common in the industry, they had no interest in being, "zoning customer service representatives."

November 11, 2025 at 3:49 AM

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Greg Jericho

@grogsgamut.bsky.social

Gough raised unemployment benefits to their highest level relative to poverty - then Fraser (and his treasurer John Howard) fucked it up as soon as they could.

Hawke/Keating repaired some of the damage... then Howard fucked it up for good
thepoint.com.au/opinions/251...

Graph showing unemployment benefits relative to poverty

November 11, 2025 at 12:45 AM

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John Delmenico

@thebigjohnnyd.bsky.social

It’s crazy that the marketing wing of an Aussie gambling company runs a large platform dedicated to radicalising teen boys into the alt-right pipeline as a way to get the kids illegally gambling, and it doesn’t get any coverage in Aussie media

Kickstreaming: Welcome to the Kick family @Asmongold

June 3, 2025 at 1:21 AM

Kabi

@kab-i.bsky.social

As anticipated, Hannah Conda is the highlight of the drag race finale.

April 19, 2025 at 8:18 AM

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freaky hacker chick

@joofarc.bsky.social

February 3, 2025 at 4:03 AM

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Pop Base

@popbase.tv

“DEI is not a threat. It’s a gift.”

— Alicia Keys accepting the Global Impact Award at the #GRAMMYs .

February 3, 2025 at 4:27 AM

Kabi

@kab-i.bsky.social

This makes me so sad 🙁

Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · Jan 8

Meta literally created a LGBTQ exception for calling someone mentally ill as an insult. You can't do it for any other group except LGBTQ people.

The image is from a "Transparency Center" document and lists guidelines regarding acceptable and prohibited content for insults. It mentions:

1. Insults about:

Character, such as cowardice, dishonesty, criminality, and sexual promiscuity or immorality.

Mental characteristics, including but not limited to accusations of stupidity, intellectual capacity, and mental illness, as well as unsupported comparisons among politically correct (PC) groups based on inherent intellectual traits.

2. Highlighted section:

The document allows allegations of mental illness or abnormality when tied to gender or sexual orientation, referencing political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality. It also acknowledges the non-serious use of terms like "weird."

January 8, 2025 at 10:30 AM

Kabi

@kab-i.bsky.social

Hear hear!!

My petty gripe: the pride movement has come so far, but it’s high time for rainbows’ end

I am an out and proud inner north Melbourne lesbian. We don’t do colour and we definitely do not wear rainbow

www.theguardian.com

January 3, 2025 at 4:14 AM

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Royce Kurmelovs

@roycerk2.bsky.social

I first reported on this story in 2019, and I have doggedly pursued it since. It involved many hours, often unpaid, and it may not have won me any awards, but I remain fiercely proud of this work. There's not many who can say their reporting helped get a community uranium-free drinking water.