Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Az

Wouter Wagemakers @wouterwagemakers.bsky.social · 10h

Always make sure to read the Letters to the Editor in @lrb.co.uk

Dirty Books:
Barbara Newman, writing about Boccaccio, notes that ‘in modern Italian, the adjective boccaccesco mean “lascivious”’ (LRB, 14 August). She might have added that in the UK, ‘Chaucerian’ means about the same, though with a scatological edge. Meanwhile here in Japan the Decameron has a special following because slang for ‘big’ is deca and for ‘penis’ is Mara, while ron means ‘a treatise’.

Timon Screech, Kyoto

11 34 260

Reposted by Az

John Avocado 宇杰 @supercroup.com · 7h

You, an idiot: goon bag.

The Chinese, a nation of intellectuals:

1 2 3

Reposted by Az

Ryan North? But - he died... 30 years ago this very night!! @ryannorth.ca · 8h

I used to get mad when people misused "decimated" to refer to things that weren't 1/10th destroyed, but I've given it some thought and now I've done a complete 360 on it

96 400 3.1K

Reposted by Az

Sardonicus @sardonicus.eu · 10h

Dedication in PG Wodehouse’s autobiography, 1957

To Who
J. Alastair Frisby
Who
Told Me I Would Never Have A Book Published
And
Advised me
To
Get a job selling jellied eels
SUCKS TO YOU, FRISBY

2 88 340

Az @amisamileandme.bsky.social · 9h

Achievement: a successful Right Wonga

(The Right Wonga: a delicate manoeuvre consisting of turning right off Canterbury road at Wonga Street without being swiped by a rail replacement bus, stuck for multiple traffic light cycles, or caught with one’s vehicle stuck in the intersection)

2

Az @amisamileandme.bsky.social · 13h

My baking today turned out very poorly.

2

Reposted by Az

Kevin Hearne @kevinhearne.bsky.social · 19h

The reclaiming/reframing of frogs as Antifascist after enduring years of the execrable Pepe is glorious and I am here for every scrap of new heroic frog art

Christopher Doll @blackbirdcd.bsky.social · 20h

This is Space Frog

6 68 320

Az @amisamileandme.bsky.social · 13h

… well that looks suspiciously similar to an ANZAC biscuit (lacks the golden syrup)

Caitlin G. DeAngelis @caitlindeangelis.bsky.social · 16h

"Australian Shortbread" shows up in British newspapers during the First World War. The recipe is recognizable as the flapjack known in the UK today. I can't find any oat bars called flapjacks in the papers before 1928, but the Australian Shortbread seems to be the same thing.

from the Forest Hill & Sydenham Examiner, 31 August 1917, a recipe calling for 1/2 pound rolled oats, 3 oz margarine, 1 1/2 oz granulated sugar, 1 tsp salt

Reposted by Az

Caitlin G. DeAngelis @caitlindeangelis.bsky.social · 19h

Now I'm looking up historical flapjack recipes. Pure chaos.

from the South Durham Herald, 5 July 1890

screenshot of a recipe from an old newspaper
Flap-Jacks
Mince the breast of a chicken with some lean ham, half an anchovy, a little parsley, three or four shallots, and lemon-peel. Season with pepper, salt, cayenne, and beaten mace.

7 8 70

Reposted by Az

Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 18h

I googled “patron saint of frogs” for a bit and then immediately abandoned the bit because I would so much rather actually talk about St. Ulphia the 8th century hermit who cursed her local frogs for keeping her up at night and making her sleep through church

Her hermitage was located in a marshy wetland, inhabited by frogs whose loud croaking kept her up all night. One day, she was so tired that she slept through when Domitius knocked at her door, and he, thinking she had already gone on ahead, left without her. Legend states that Ulphia placed the frogs in the area around her under interdict as a result of their loud croaking, which kept her awake at nights.
A 19th century hagiographer noted that the frogs in the area around the oratory of Saint Ulphia were, indeed, very quiet. However, if these frogs were taken elsewhere, they became boisterous once again.
At the end of her life, she formed and directed a community of religious women at Amiens.
In iconography, she is depicted as a young nun seated in prayer on a rock with a frog in the pool near her.

4 100 460

Reposted by Az

NPR @npr.org · 23h

French President Emmanuel Macron has reappointed Sébastien Lecornu as prime minister, just days after his resignation, asking him to try again to form a government and produce a budget.

Macron puts Lecornu back as France's prime minister just days after he quit

French President Emmanuel Macron has reappointed Sébastien Lecornu as prime minister, just days after his resignation, asking him to try again to form a government and produce a budget.

n.pr

17 41 200

Reposted by Az

Alicia Spencer-Hall @aspencerhall.bsky.social · 1d

The perfect genderqueer shirt doesn't exi--

An oversized cotton button-down shirt. The upper portion features a classic shirting panel in pale blue, while the lower half shifts into a playful polka dot print for visual contrast. Diagonally placed floral sequin embellishments sweep across the front forming the border between the two fabrics

2 3 17

Reposted by Az

Alex West @alexwest.bsky.social · 2d

Moon’s superpower is looking like she’s never done anything wrong when in fact she has done many things wrong.

16 8 250

Reposted by Az

Jonathan Edward Durham @thisone0verhere.bsky.social · 2d

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became grown, I put away childish things. Then when I became a bit more grown, I rebought those same childish things from a vintage reseller and kinda don’t know how to feel about it

22 88 660

Reposted by Az

GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com · 1d

FROGS TOGETHER STRONG is fucking incredible

The Oregonian @oregonian.com · 1d

Things are happening at Portland's ICE facility tonight.

Read more of our protest coverage here: www.oregonlive.com/crime/2025/1...

38 430 1.8K

Reposted by Az

Az @highly-reckons.bsky.social · 1d

This is worth a read. It’s more than fluff - an interesting interview with two friends (not partners) in their 70s about their respective gay experience.

www.courier-journal.com/story/news/l...

'It's glorious.' At 72, Louisville man finds courage to come out as gay

Lou Tingle knew he was attracted to men, but never said it out loud. Then, at 72, after his second wife died, he finally had the courage to come out.

www.courier-journal.com

1 1

Reposted by Az

Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcc.bsky.social · 2d

Higgledy piggledy
Timothée Chalamet
Has a name meriting
Endless design

Much like his forerunner
Benedict Cumberbatch:
Hexasyllabically,
Easy to rhyme

tweet from childish branzino @absflora:
timothée chalamet is the new benedict cumberbatch in the sense that you can say ANYTHING and we know who you mean. tiffany chevrolet. timpanogos charlemagne. symphony cabernet. jiminy castaway.

52 620 2K

Reposted by Az

Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 1d

Okay this is a good headline

Guardian Australia @australia.theguardian.com · 1d

You won’t believe what degrading practice the Pope just condemned

Communication must be freed from clickbait and misguided thinking, head of Catholic church tells journalists The Pope has condemned clickbait as a “degrading” part of journalism, at a private audience with global newswires. Australian media representatives were among those to hear directly from Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican on Thursday with about 150 members of newswire alliance MINDS International. Continue reading...

www.theguardian.com

26 760 3.6K

Reposted by Az

Tate Collection @tate.bsky.social · 1d

Edwin Henry Landseer, A Distinguished Member of the Humane Society, 1838
https://botfrens.com/collections/14375/contents/1111834

24 88

Az @amisamileandme.bsky.social · 1d

Sydneysider of the day: grey-haired woman in a summer dress, on the bus with her partner. She is wearing what looks like a rosary as a wrapped bracelet, and is carrying a bouquet with a purple bow.

The bouquet contains fake flowers (purple, white and yellow) and exactly one lavender stuffy monster.

1

Az @amisamileandme.bsky.social · 1d

I received an email a while back enquiring if an interrupter had been arranged.

Reposted by Az

Moby Dick @mobydickatsea.bsky.social · 2d

What is a Fast-Fish? Alive or dead a fish is technically fast, when it is connected with an occupied ship or boat, by any medium at all controllable by the occupant or occupants,—a mast, an oar, a nine-inch cable, a telegraph wire, or a strand of cobweb, it is all the same.

1 16 77

Reposted by Az

The Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) @themerl.bsky.social · 2d

someone get us a time machine so we can go back to our founders in 1951 and describe how 74 years later we'd be flouncing our giant hog on the Internet

3 10 95

Reposted by Az

John Bull @garius.bsky.social · 2d

this is art

Joshua J. Friedman @joshuajfriedman.com · 2d

"The views expressed by users @kaioken8026, @mrright8439, and @ZxZNebula ... do not alter the Court’s analysis."

The Court holds, based upon a full consideration of the context in which “Not Like Us” was published, that a reasonable listener could not have concluded that “Not Like Us” was conveying objective facts about Drake. The views expressed by users @kaioken8026, @mrright8439, and @ZxZNebula, and the other YouTube and Instagram commentators quoted in the Complaint, Am. Compl., ¶¶ 73-74, do not alter the Court’s analysis. In a world in which billions of people are active online, support for almost any proposition, no matter how farfetched, fantastical or unreasonable, can be found with little effort in any number of comment sections, chat rooms, and servers. “[T]hat some readers may infer a defamatory meaning from a statement does not necessarily render the inference reasonable under the circumstances.” Jacobus, 51 N.Y.S.3d at 336.

5 50

Reposted by Az

c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 2d

The global whaling industry experienced a boom c. 1840-1950 as technology allowed whalers to hunt the Southern Ocean around Antarctica.

Under standard models, we would have expected krill populations to have *exploded*.

Instead, they DROPPED exponentially.

Let's talk about the KRILL PARADOX.

Change in distribution and abundance of southern right whales. (A) Shows historical and contemporary wintering distributions (Figure 1 from Carroll et al., 2018), and (B) shows decline in abundance and subsequent recovery (solid line is the mean, dashed line shows upper and lower 95% CI). Modified Figure 1 from Jackson et al. (2008). Contemporary sightings are divided into regions where large aggregations are seen during winter: Argentina (ARG), Brazil (BZL), South Africa (SAF), southwest Australia (SWA), south central Australia (SCA), and New Zealand sub-Antarctic (NZSA) and regions where sightings are typically of small numbers of individuals per year. The large aggregations are IWC management units and correspond to historical whaling grounds, although another 5 whaling grounds show little sign of recovery. Summer feeding areas are poorly described and so not shown.

4 110 230