Dr Helen McGilp
LightNews LightNews
banner
helenmcgilp.bsky.social
Dr Helen McGilp
@helenmcgilp.bsky.social
170 followers 330 following 22 posts
Researcher, Lecturer and Practitioner across areas of Design, Design Process, Creative Process, Recording, Memory, Photography, Drawing, Documenting …
Posts Replies Media Videos
helenmcgilp.bsky.social
Have been swithering for an age, but have finally jumped and bought a @polypane.app subscription. - So many useful accessibility simulations. Fingers crossed it's worth a chunk of my tiny budget. polypane.app
Polypane. The browser for web developers who care about their craft and build for everyone.
Polypane is a powerful desktop browser for web developers, built to streamline responsive design, accessibility, and SEO testing, all in one place.
polypane.app
November 29, 2025 at 12:47 PM
helenmcgilp.bsky.social
The new world of Academia and AI today.

#academicsky
A screenshot of an email from Academia.edu (received today) that shows their logo and a message that reads: “Our Al turned your paper "Recording the Creative" into a shareable comic.” Underneath is a button labelled “Explore Impact Hub”. At the bottom a small message reads “Don't want Al to create outputs of your papers? Change Al Settings.” Are they trolling me? A screenshot of the Academia.edu Google “Al Overview.” It reads: “Academia.edu is a commercial platform for academics to share research papers, discover new work, and connect with other researchers. While it offers free access to read research, it also has paid features and has been criticized for its business practices, such as sending spammy emails and pushing users towards premium subscriptions.”
November 7, 2025 at 4:55 PM
Reposted by Dr Helen McGilp
peterpaulrubens.bsky.social
Flatterers up the *ss of the rich man. Some things never change! Here in 1592 by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, whose day is today.
October 10, 2025 at 6:07 PM
Reposted by Dr Helen McGilp
bhgross144.bsky.social
So this #SHOT2025 panel has nearly wrapped up. But if you want to read more about historical issues surrounding multimedia and the preservation of born-digital collections, check out this piece on #DigiPres at @theul.bsky.social.

(Thanks for bringing this to my attention, @rhiggitt.bsky.social!)
A digital dark age? The people rescuing forgotten knowledge trapped on old floppy disks
From lectures by Stephen Hawking to the letters of British politician Neil Kinnock – it's a race against time to save the historical treasures locked away on old floppy disks.
www.bbc.com
October 10, 2025 at 1:30 PM
Reposted by Dr Helen McGilp
cvcev.bsky.social
Seren is a young person who lives in a really vulnerable household.

Everyone should listen to her story.

💙💜💗 #educationANDlives
September 29, 2025 at 4:02 PM
Reposted by Dr Helen McGilp
quiteclare.bsky.social
Today, academics, ask yourself:

Am I bringing enough of a Flann O'Brien energy to my R&R work?
Image is a snip from Flann O'Brien's letters, reading: "It is a pity you did not like my beautiful book. As a genius, I do not expect to be readily understood but you may be surprised to know that my book is a definite milestone in literature, completely revolutionises the English novel and puts the shallow pedestrian English writers in their place. Of course I know you are prejudiced against me on account of the IRA bombings."
August 15, 2025 at 10:50 AM
Reposted by Dr Helen McGilp
dbellingradt.bsky.social
Detail of a print of 1799 showing a man sitting at a desk, and a shouting man standing in front of him with an arm raised. The man shouts: Footnotes, FFS". Source: http://diglib.hab.de?grafik=graph-a1-243
June 25, 2025 at 10:31 AM
helenmcgilp.bsky.social
Interesting question
www.chronicle.com/article/he-w...
He Wrote a Course Syllabus. Is It Still His?
After an AI expert finished teaching a course at the University of California at Los Angeles, he was alarmed to discover that a version of his syllabus was still being used.
www.chronicle.com
July 8, 2025 at 10:07 AM
Reposted by Dr Helen McGilp
toonhive.bsky.social
bsky.app/profile/toon...
toonhive.bsky.social ToonHive @toonhive.bsky.social · Jun 26
Tiny Chef makes an update following his show being cancelled on Nickelodeon in new TikTok:

“Cheffy's ok just feeling his feels through music...if you want to help keep Cheffy in socials please click link in our bio.”
June 26, 2025 at 8:26 PM
Reposted by Dr Helen McGilp
drseanmullen.bsky.social
Text: The Pandemic Isn’t Over Just Because You’re Over It. Image at bottom in purple is wastewater levels of SARS-CoV-2 in the US since 2020, with more infections since Biden took office than when Trump was in office.
March 25, 2025 at 11:05 AM
Reposted by Dr Helen McGilp
shannonmattern.bsky.social
Things are disastrous, but we’re hoping that learning together, celebrating public knowledge + the gloriously noncompliant, can be ✨✊❤️‍🩹🌱. We’re hosting our first zoom info session this Friday at noon ET; sign-up @ the bottom of the page:
June 17, 2025 at 3:19 AM
helenmcgilp.bsky.social
A strange case between The Yves Klein Estate and Stuart Semple. For two self-styled ‘provocateurs’ of paint, the infringement outlined seems fairly mundane and petty. For info: gofund.me/41ee201c
Screenshot of the available information (from Stuart Semple), which reads: Well it's a bit weird - you’d expect it was that l'd spent 10 years of my life making a blue paint as good as his. But no - they admit my formula is different. Their problem is me using the word KLEIN on the packaging. They asked the judge to seize all the paint and destroy it. Luckily the judge said no. They also complained about me painting my hand blue as Yves did that too. They won that argument. Seems they now have ownership of artists painting their hands blue. Screenshot of the Wall Street Journal video made on the paint development - which can be accessed via the link in post.
April 30, 2025 at 1:07 AM
Reposted by Dr Helen McGilp
hypervisible.blacksky.app
Tons of thoughts about this essay, but parts like this, beyond eliciting thoughts of ELIZA, are striking because of the report that the most profound experience of attention this person has ever achieved is from a bot.
What this student had come to say was that she had descended more deeply into her own mind, into her own conceptual powers, while in dialogue with an intelligence toward which she felt no social obligation. No need to accommodate, and no pressure to please. It was a discovery—for her, for me—with widening implications for all of us. “And it was so patient,” she said. “I was asking it about the history of attention, but five minutes in I realized: I don’t think anyone has ever paid such pure attention to me and my thinking and my questions . . . ever. It’s made me rethink all my interactions with people.”
April 26, 2025 at 2:22 PM
helenmcgilp.bsky.social
Co-constructed realities through Google AI search and response.
gregjenner.bsky.social Greg Jenner @gregjenner.bsky.social · Apr 23
Someone on Threads noticed you can type any random sentence into Google, then add “meaning” afterwards, and you’ll get an AI explanation of a famous idiom or phrase you just made up. Here is mine
• Al Overview The idiom "you can't lick a badger twice" means you can't trick or deceive someone a second time after they've been tricked once. It's a warning that if someone has already been deceived, they are unlikely to fall for the same trick again. Here's a more detailed explanation: • Licking: "Licking" in this context means to trick or deceive someone. • Badger: The badger is a wild animal, and the phrase likely originates from the historical sport of badger baiting where dogs were used to harass
April 23, 2025 at 8:44 PM
Reposted by Dr Helen McGilp
lostglasgow.bsky.social
Watch the birdie...

A fascinating deep dive into Glasgow's early pioneering photographers. While some names, and work, are familiar to me, there plenty new rabbit holes to explore.

Top hat doffed to the author, the mysterious 'Cicerone'.
merchantcityglasgow.wordpress.com/2025/04/06/g...
Glasgow & Photography, part I (1839-1844)
Working on the early development of Buchanan Street and identifying its close relationship with early commercial photography in Glasgow at Kemp’s warehouse used by photographer John Urie and notici…
merchantcityglasgow.wordpress.com
April 15, 2025 at 10:24 AM
Reposted by Dr Helen McGilp
citizenwald.bsky.social
Oddest eBay description of the day

Hundreds--count 'em!
screen shot of auction page: photo of 17th-century manuscript Item title 1623 100's of French words in brown ink (400+ Year Old) Untranslated Document!
April 13, 2025 at 5:48 PM
Reposted by Dr Helen McGilp
artinsociety.bsky.social
Handwritten recipes for dyes used in William Morris’s fabric designs, from the Merton Abbey Dye Book (1882-91)
April 11, 2025 at 6:06 AM
Reposted by Dr Helen McGilp
lottelydia.bsky.social
amazing how the cyber attack on the British Library still means that all recently published work (and that's a definition that stretches back several years) is completely unavailable to researchers, since they only acquired ebooks and that system is still down
April 7, 2025 at 11:47 AM
Reposted by Dr Helen McGilp
hypervisible.blacksky.app
“Every morning, Dan Siroker wakes to a flurry of judgment. Not from his spouse. Not from his mother, but from a coin-sized AI listening device on his collar that records every utterance, argument and backhanded compliment.” 🥴
This disc records everything you say — to make you a better person
Limitless hopes its AI wearable device will be used as a life coach and productivity tool by millions
www.thetimes.com
April 5, 2025 at 4:55 PM
Reposted by Dr Helen McGilp
bylines.scot
George Orwell wrote his epic novel 1984 on the Scottish island of Jura. 'The Ministry of Truth' seems to have been fully embraced; where black is white and where free-speech means censorship.

bylines.scot/podcast/orwe...
Alt text
March 19, 2025 at 6:49 PM
Reposted by Dr Helen McGilp
iandunt.bsky.social
The speed of the liberal collapse in the US is harrowing.
March 19, 2025 at 7:49 PM
Reposted by Dr Helen McGilp
dbellingradt.bsky.social
The story of communication with paper artifacts includes a big chapter on storing, dear #skystorians. A thread or those enjoying #paperhistory and #bookhistory alike.

You see Abraham Gorlaeus (or his brother David), both being born around mid sixteenth-century, sitting at a desk in #Haarlem.

1/7
You see Abraham Gorlaeus or his brother David, both being born around mid sixteenth-century, in Haarlem. The man in the engraving is sitting at his desk in the year 1580. You see Abraham Gorlaeus or his brother David, both being born around mid sixteenth-century, in Haarlem. The man in the engraving is sitting at his desk in the year 1580. Highlighted are details of the image that the thread explains.
November 13, 2024 at 6:49 AM
Reposted by Dr Helen McGilp
dorothyjberry.bsky.social
Now more than ever
Me, a very light skinned Black woman in black wire glasses and big hair holding up a black poster that says "THERE IS NOTHING MORE EPHEMERAL THAN A WEBSITE" in gold ink
March 16, 2025 at 10:33 PM
Reposted by Dr Helen McGilp
trishgreenhalgh.bsky.social
Read the whole thread. Most of my research would be airbrushed out of all funding and publication in USA right now. NB good luck doing epidemiology research without the word 'bias'. #academicsky #episky
darbysaxbe.bsky.social Darby Saxbe @darbysaxbe.bsky.social · Feb 4
🚨BREAKING. From a program officer at the National Science Foundation, a list of keywords that can cause a grant to be pulled. I will be sharing screenshots of these keywords along with a decision tree. Please share widely. This is a crisis for academic freedom & science.
list of banned keywords
February 4, 2025 at 8:51 AM