I had a puppet replica of Tom Servo from MST3K which I built over 20 years ago. After many years and lots of knocking around, the poor guy had worn out a lot. I replaced some old parts, stripped out the puppetry mechanisms, wired him up as a lamp, and added a color-changing smart bulb and some glass marbles for diffusion. Now he's the sassiest light source in the house!
Mapping out the @dma lighting network tonight
A brief note from last week’s Artificial Light At Night 2025 conference: several biology and ecology researchers made the point in their talks that there is no “wildlife friendly” lighting product (other than the one that is never installed to begin with). And they’re now avoiding that term, and related (e.g., “bat-friendly”) altogether. Instead, they using terms like “wildlife-aware” or “night-sky aware” — not “friendly”. It reflects a growing consensus that all artificial light at night is pollution, and that the main issue at hand is how much of that pollution society is willing to tolerate.
A brief note from last week’s Artificial Light At Night 2025 conference: several biology and ecology researchers made the point in their talks that there is no “wildlife friendly” lighting product (other than the one that is never installed to begin with). And they’re now avoiding that term, and related (e.g., “bat-friendly”) altogether. Instead, they using terms like “wildlife-aware” or “night-sky aware” — not “friendly”. It reflects a growing consensus that all artificial light at night is pollution, and that the main issue at hand is how much of that pollution society is willing to tolerate.
