Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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Dr Cora Beth Fraser @corabeth.bsky.social · Jul 25

Free ebook! (co-edited by my brother-in-law) 🎉

Helena Heald @helenaheald.bsky.social · Jul 25

Happy Friday! May I interest you in a free book? SLAVERY AND HONOUR IN THE ANCIENT GREEK WORLD is out now in Open Access! This edited collection from David Lewis, Mirko Canevaro and Douglas Cairns explores the complexities of honour and dishonour in ancient Greek slavery.

A photo of a hardback book, Slavery and Honour in the Ancient Greek World, edited by David Lewis, Mirko Canevaro and Douglas Cairns. The cover includes an ancient vase painting of a shackled humanoid figure.

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Hell-issa Johnson, PhD 🎃 @ladyhistorian.bsky.social · Jul 26

Yep, 100% this. Also some fun witchcraft allusions if you're looking for them

🎃Cabin in the Woodsey🎃 @norahwoodsey.com · Jul 26

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell is a love story and about family conflict, but also, like… a really great introduction to labor organization. Unions should have book clubs and this should be one of the books.

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Neville Morley @nevillemorley.bsky.social · Jul 26

One like, one Thucydides opinion.

Mateusz Fafinski @calthalas.bsky.social · Jul 25

One like, one history opinion

Kerstin Hall @kerstinhall.bsky.social · Jul 25

one like, one writing opinion.

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Natasha Simonova @philistella.bsky.social · Jul 21

They can even market it as 'Jane Austen's favourite novel! Before there was Mr Darcy, there was...SIR CHARLES GRANDISON.'

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David Quantick @quantick.bsky.social · Jul 7

I suspect a coyote did this.

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News Eye @newseye.bsky.social · Jul 5

🚨2 months ago, every National Weather Service Director of the last 34 years took the unprecedented step of signing a joint, open letter.

“Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life.”

The Houston office is 44% UNDERSTAFFED.

Headline of New York Times story from May 2nd.

It reads:

Former Weather Service Leaders Warn Staffing Cuts Could Lead to 'Loss of Life'

The former agency directors say current employees will face an "impossible task" to maintain service just as hurricane season begins.

By Camille Baker
May 2, 2025
Five former National Weather Service directors have taken the unusual step of signing onto an open letter warning that cuts to the organization by the Trump administration may soon endanger lives.
"N.W.S. staff will have an impossible task to continue its current level of services," they write in the letter, dated Friday. "Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life."
Hundreds of Weather Service employees, or about 10 percent of the agency's total staff, have been terminated or accepted buyout offers since President Trump began his second term, according to the letter.

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Mark Williams @mrfw17thc.bsky.social · Jul 5

Look all I really want to see are rants by the cast members about the evils of roving Machiavelociraptors.

#earlymodern #RenSoc25

Mark Williams @mrfw17thc.bsky.social · Jul 5

I choose to believe that this is about the time Erasmus, More, Leonardo da Vinci, Copernicus, and Lucrezia Borgia all got trapped on an island full of dinosaurs and had to ad fontes their way out of it using their unique skill sets.

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Tom Cox @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social · Jun 22

In other good news, Swift Press will also be publishing the paperback of 1983 in August (and the rest of my Unbound backlist shortly afterwards): blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/pro...

1983

Benji is an imaginative eight-year-old boy, living with his parents in a mining village in Nottinghamshire amidst the spoil heaps and chip shops that characteri

blackwells.co.uk

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Jessica Ellis @baddestmamajama.bsky.social · Jun 18

If you wonder how life is in the second decade of a marriage, my husband and I just declared tomorrow Waffles&Weasels day, where we shall eat waffles and go look for some local elusive weasels in a park, and hopefully not get these goals confused

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Dr Crom @doccrom.bsky.social · Jun 18

ClassicsBluesky 🏺🧵

#LatinForTheDay – 18 June #Horace

“Romae principis urbium
dignatur suboles inter amabilis
vatum ponere me choros,
et iam dente minus mordeor invido.
o, testudinis aureae
dulcem quae strepitum, Pieri, temperas,
o mutis quoque piscibus...

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The Whimsical Muse @whimsicalmuse.bsky.social · Jun 18

Be the kind of person who supports your local library, theatre, bakery, bookstore, and café.

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Greek Myth Comix @greekmythcomix.bsky.social · May 22

🧿YOU ARE ODYSSEUS - 25/09/25👁️

An interactive novel retelling of the Odyssey, faithful to Homer’s original and its many translations.

by @lejenksbrown.bsky.social of Greek Myth Comix!

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Stephen Collins @stephencollins.bsky.social · May 14

british fan chat

cartoon for the guardian by Stephen Collins - script as follows:

[Scene is a darkened LOFT. Amongst the boxes and junk are FOUR KNACKERED OLD FANS - three tower fans and one circular, with cracked grey plastic and buttons missing. One fan, TOWER FAN 1, is a bit taller than the others, and is addressing them]

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TOWER FAN 1:
Right lads, get ready.

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TOWER FAN 1:
This is our time.

3
TOWER FAN 1:
The time when we remember who we are, and why we’re here.

4
TOWER FAN 1:
We are the four crap fans in a British person’s loft,

and we are here to make absolutely no difference whatsoever.

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TOWER FAN 1:
I know what you’re
thinking, lads:

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TOWER FAN 1:
Surely this will be the year they finally replace us?

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TOWER FAN 1:
Our plastic’s gone all brown... I haven’t oscillated since 2018...

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TOWER FAN 1:
Dave here sounds like a spitfire and blows like a sad cat’s sigh…

TOWER FAN 2:
Cheers mate

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TOWER FAN 1:
But no. These people are British, and every year, they forget the sun exists.

By the time they remember,
new fans will cost *four million pounds* on Amazon.

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TOWER FAN 1:
So we’ll be back down there... shovelling thick air across the moaning faces of a species that cannot comprehend the concept of air conditioning, or even just closing the curtains when it’s hot out...

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TOWER FAN 1:
...while they incessantly bang on about normally hot countries which this country is now temporarily a bit hotter than.

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[The loft hatch opens and a person comes up the ladder]
PERSON:
APPARENTLY IT’S HOTTER THAN GREECE, LISA

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CantabKitty @cantabkitty.bsky.social · Jun 18

Astonishing that this article has to spell out in detail how to use a fan to cool yourself down in summer

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Dr R🎃b @robheighton.bsky.social · Jun 18

It's called Microsoft Outlook

Headline: Scientists have discovered 'third state' between life and death

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Florence Smith Nicholls @florencesn.bsky.social · Jun 18

Do you ever think about how smart phones are essentially a more cursed form of tamagotchi that we have to tend to and maintain daily

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Jonathan Edward Durham @thisone0verhere.bsky.social · Jun 18

I take my coffee like I take my books: shamelessly purchased for enough happy brain tingles to drag me through another day even though I already have plenty at home

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News Eye @newseye.bsky.social · Jun 18

Pretty sure Carney turns and winks at Macron as the felon starts talking here.👌

You just know the truckload of ridicule he gets behind his back.

(🎥 Jasmine Lorimer)

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Emma Mitchell @silverpebble2.bsky.social · Jun 14

Our brains love the colour gradation in rainbows, maybe due to our ancestors searching for sources of water. Looking at plants helps us recover from stress & looking at something we think is beautiful causes dopamine release.
I've posted this photo to alter your brain biochemistry for the better 🌿

An rainbow arrangement of garden flowers placed on white fabric

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Kate Violette @kateviolette.com · Jun 8

"ohhh snap, this book comes with a MAP": me, about to have a very good time

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Fishbourne Roman Palace @romanpalace.bsky.social · Jun 3

Seriously. What else did you expect from us on #WorldBicycleDay?

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · May 29

At an alumni rally earlier the same day in support of Yale standing up to the Trump administration, there was a historic, unheard-of call-and-response cheer:

"Who do we love?"
"HARVARD!"

"Who do we love?"
"HARVARD!"

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Dr Ella Hawkins @ellamchawk.bsky.social · May 29

One more bookish set for good measure.

These biscuits are inspired by the weird and wonderful world of medieval illustration.

9 square biscuits decorated with illustrations from medieval manuscripts, including Reynard the Fox, a dog, a knight fighting a snail, a peacock, a hedgehog, a bat, and a fish. The set features shades of rich russet red, cobalt blue, gold, brown, turquoise, and green. Some biscuits include small sections of blackletter calligraphy.

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The Guardian @theguardian.com · May 25

‘I lived my passion’: how Christine Beckers and a group of intrepid female drivers blazed a trail in 1970s Monaco

New book shines a light on the women who stole headlines on an F1 support bill 50 years ago, with Beckers going on to star at Le Mans and hold the Guinness World Record

www.theguardian.com

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