Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Bex, if you can keep it

@bextraordinary.bsky.social

6.2K followers 2.4K following 8.1K posts

🇦🇺 in 🇺🇸 (MA). Sr Research Associate, (B)exited academia. Work: Criminal justice, public health, CBPAR, women & girls, IPV/IPH, substance use & harm reduction. Play: Fantasy crochet, pottery, TTRPGs. bextraordinarycreatures.com

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Bex, if you can keep it @bextraordinary.bsky.social · Nov 12

-- I'm a criminal justice and public health scholar interested in the intersection of health and the criminal legal system, especially substance use, harm reduction, and reproductive justice. This year I left my tenured Assoc. Prof. position to work for a research & evaluation nonprofit. It's great!

7 2 73

Reposted by Bex, if you can keep it

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 15h

My first thought was “wow I hope this guy didn’t give out his name because he could absolutely be charged” and yup, he is correct to stay anonymous.

This man’s account is shocking. His neighbors’ situation is shocking. The entire Chicago raid is shocking.

On the other side was a mom and her 7-year-old daughter, pleading for his help.
"I wasn't planning on letting her stay, but I didn't know what the hell was going on," the man said of his Venezuelan migrant neighbors. But he quickly relented. The little girl was inconsolable and hid under his bed.
"I didn't want them to take her," said the man, who didn't want to be named because he fears he'll be targeted by federal authorities for his actions.
"I gave her my bedroom, and I just told her,
'Just stay there. Don't open, don't, shh, just stay quiet," he recalled telling the mom and daughter as he choked back tears.

170 2.3K 7K

Reposted by Bex, if you can keep it

Sheryl Gay Stolberg @sherylnyt.bsky.social · 14h

BREAKING: Friday night massacre underway at CDC. Doznes of "disease detectives," high-level scientists, entire Washington staff and editors of the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) have all been RIFed and received the following notice:

770 7.7K 14K

Reposted by Bex, if you can keep it

Brendel @brendelbored.bsky.social · 16h

I like how the news will be like “while the President claiming Portland was ruled by a giant skeleton named Mr Nibbles is not strictly true, it does speak to the anxiety of many Americans”

120 2K 9.7K

Bex, if you can keep it @bextraordinary.bsky.social · 14h

You know your house build/design team is listening to you when you mention to them that you & your husband used to play World of Warcraft, then you get the renovation digital mockups and they've put WoW on the screens of the computers in the office. 🤩

A small section of a virtual model of a home office that shows a large desk with two chairs and four monitors, each showing World of Warcraft scenes.

1 9

Reposted by Bex, if you can keep it

Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 21h

The random people who called into this C-SPAN session had better questions for Mike Johnson than most corporate media outlets

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 2d

C-SPAN caller to Mike Johnson: "Hearing you say that 'everyone is smiling' in cities where troops have been rolled into feels dystopian and insane watching the response to it."

180 1.6K 7.2K

Bex, if you can keep it @bextraordinary.bsky.social · 16h

That's all with the FDM printer, which I think is the most accessible for beginners. I also have several resin printers, which are more of a pain in the ass to use but awesome for tiny, highly-detailed things like game miniatures and (in my case) tiny horns and other pieces for my models.

Bex, if you can keep it @bextraordinary.bsky.social · 16h

I make: little trinkets for my kids & their friends, yarn bowls, masks (printing a Halloween mask for my son right now), boxes and other storage things, cookie cutters and other tools for pottery, handy little tools (scrapers, painting supports, modular pieces)...

1 1

Reposted by Bex, if you can keep it

Django Wexler @djangowexler.bsky.social · 20h

My boss: so how's our fourth quarter looking?

Me, the sales manager at the company that makes inflatable frog suits: well, you're never going to believe this, but

120 3.4K 17K

Reposted by Bex, if you can keep it

A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social · 23h

Lord give us the Democrats that Republicans warn us about.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 23h

Thune: "If the Democrats had won the majority, they probably would've tried to nuke the filibuster. And then you'd have four new senators from Puerto Rico and DC, you'd have a packed Supreme Court, you'd have abortion on demand ... "

59 530 2.5K

Reposted by Bex, if you can keep it

Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 1d

There’s a reason academics universally rejected the initial push to canonize Charlie Kirk as a saint devoted to free speech.

We know all too well that’s the exact opposite of reality.

Matt Gabriele @profgabriele.com · 1d

I know this case is all over - & it should be - but Turning Point USA has waged a harassment campaign against faculty for more than a decade. I know of at least a half dozen other faculty, personally, who have received death threats and several of those who felt so unsafe they too left their homes

David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 1d

Are we great yet?

Mark Bray, a Rutgers University professor and expert on anti-fascist groups, is fleeing to Spain with his family due to death threats that stem from a campaign by Turning Point USA and other conservative groups to get him fired, falsely labeling him as an antifa member.

23 490 2.1K

Reposted by Bex, if you can keep it

Jessica Kant @jessdkant.bsky.social · 1d

One curious thing on this site about speaking out against the encroachment of LLMs is that inevitably you get accused of being anti-tech. I don’t hate technology. I’ve used machine learning in my own code before. But I also recognize that oligarchs are so hellbent on pushing this tech for a reason.

73 470 2.2K

Bex, if you can keep it @bextraordinary.bsky.social · 1d

I just got mine at CVS and it was possibly the least painful shot I've ever had?? Like, I didn't even feel it! Crazy.

Bex, if you can keep it @bextraordinary.bsky.social · 1d

Got a really lovely (too much, really!) shout-out at work and man. I wish more organizations would realize that words of appreciation cost you nothing but mean so much. I know not every org can dig up more money for salaries or bonuses or other benefits, but being SEEN goes a long way.

Bex, if you can keep it @bextraordinary.bsky.social · 1d

hot girl summer < fully-vaccinated fall

1 9

Reposted by Bex, if you can keep it

Kevin Collins @kwcollins.bsky.social · 1d

And that's the conservative estimate. By other measures, over 70% of Lucid respondents in the study were professional survey takers. For comparison, by that same alternative measure only 16% of YouGov respondents were

2 2 15

Reposted by Bex, if you can keep it

Kevin Collins @kwcollins.bsky.social · 1d

More than a third of Lucid (now Cint) respondents in 2019 were "professional" respondents according to a new article in @polanalysis.bsky.social , and that's the conservative estimate

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

3 12 40

Reposted by Bex, if you can keep it

Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 1d

JB Pritzker has also been emphatically placing Trump's mental decline squarely on the agenda. On our pod, he adds a new element: People around Trump are using his decline to manipulate him, so they're less likely to intervene. More Dems should say this. 1/

newrepublic.com/article/2016...

76 1.4K 4.1K

Bex, if you can keep it @bextraordinary.bsky.social · 1d

I hope you do!!

Bex, if you can keep it @bextraordinary.bsky.social · 1d

(The freakiest thing that I saw was the steam coming out of the manhole cover things, which I hadn't seen before and made me think we were walking through a scene from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.)

Bex, if you can keep it @bextraordinary.bsky.social · 1d

Haha, I was just telling someone yesterday about when we moved from Australia to metro Detroit in '98 and my parents would just like, merrily take us all to dinner in the city, and all the white suburbanites were like YOU WHAT. We didn't know their 'rules' so we just went and it was fine 🤷🏼‍♀️

1 2

Reposted by Bex, if you can keep it

A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social · 1d

*guy sticking up a gas station* why have I not been named Employee of the Month

Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 1d

This is like writing about someone hoping to get a Best Actor Oscar despite not appearing in any films

3 34 340

Reposted by Bex, if you can keep it

Reuters @reuters.com · 1d

BREAKING: Venezuela's Maria Corina Machado wins the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 reut.rs/42uh3Aw

46 240 890

Reposted by Bex, if you can keep it

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 1d

Immigrant Nobel Prize winners exiting the United States

Florian Scheuer @florianscheuer.bsky.social · 1d

I am delighted to share that Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee will join our Department of Economics @econ.uzh.ch at the University of Zurich on July 1, 2026, as Lemann Foundation Professors of Economics.

🧵 1/7

48 850 3K

Bex, if you can keep it @bextraordinary.bsky.social · 2d

This sounds like it covers routine care, but does it cover things like hospitalizations, surgeries, etc?

Reposted by Bex, if you can keep it

Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 2d

A striking thing about articles I’ve read claiming to “study the effects” of generative AI on student writing skills and consumption of information is that (1) they nearly always find the effects are negative and (2) most “conclusions” are still written assuming that we must use AI, for some reason.

28 570 1.7K