Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Derek Hennen, Ph.D. @derekhennen.bsky.social · 2h

Holy cow look at these beauties

Nicole aka Nimasprout @nimasprout.bsky.social · 2d

Valid this week only, use code "ACORN" for 20% off your entire order in my shop 🫶

Prints, originals, cards, stickers,.bookmarks and more!!!

nimasprout.shop

Print with purple poppy flowers and magical shool

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Derek Hennen, Ph.D. @derekhennen.bsky.social · 7h

Hell yeah

Archway with text over the door part of a longer message, message over door reads "Be trans"

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Reposted by Derek Hennen, Ph.D.

Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 17h

There must be some mistake, I read 50 Atlantic articles about how RFK Jr just wants to help Americans eat more vegetables

Gravel Influencer @gravelinfluencer.bsky.social · 20h

They continue to eviscerate the public health machinery that has quietly kept Americans, and others around the world, safe and healthy for decades.

The staff of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the journal that reports on health trends and emerging infectious threats, was also laid off. The publication’s storied history includes a June 1981 report that five previously healthy gay men were treated for an unusual pneumonia — the first hint of the AIDS epidemic.

Roughly 70 Epidemic Intelligence Service officers — the so-called “disease detectives” who respond to outbreaks around the globe — received layoff notices, according to a person familiar with them. The service was spared during an earlier round of layoffs in February.

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Reposted by Derek Hennen, Ph.D.

Coleen Murphy @ctmurphy1.bsky.social · 1d

Begging scientists (and media posts about science) to stop using ChatGPT-generated images

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Reposted by Derek Hennen, Ph.D.

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.

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Derek Hennen, Ph.D. @derekhennen.bsky.social · 2d

Look at those beautiful Winklers!

Matt Hamer @entohamer.bsky.social · 2d

Recent fieldwork in Sayap Substation, Sabah, Malaysia

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Reposted by Derek Hennen, Ph.D.

Miles Zhang | 张远濛 @ymilesz.bsky.social · 2d

More wasps from Sichuan! This time we describe a new rose gall found on a protected endemic rose from China. We named the gall wasp Diplolepis nezha and its ichneumonid parasitoid Orthopelma aobing, after characters from the Chinese legend/popular animated film.

mapress.com/zt/article/v...

Movie poster of Nezha II featuring Ne Zha, with its head replaced by Diplolepis nezha

Movie poster of Nezha II featuring Ao Bing, with its head replaced by Orthopelma aobing

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Reposted by Derek Hennen, Ph.D.

Max Kennerly @maxkennerly.bsky.social · 2d

Lisa Cook is still the standout for me. Firing her requires rewriting the relationship between Congress, the President, and the Courts, but it won't have a meaningful impact on policy, she's not particularly hawkish on FOMC. All that effort *solely* because she's a Black woman.

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 2d

yeah, trump has made very clear that he doesn’t think black people deserve to be in jobs of influence! www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/u...

Trump Fires Black Officials From an Overwhelmingly White Administration

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Derek Hennen, Ph.D.

Derek Hennen, Ph.D. @derekhennen.bsky.social · 8d

Millipede fans rejoice: we published our revision of Apheloria! This is the most common cherry millipede genus, but its taxonomy has been riddled with nebulous subspecies names. No longer! We clarify species limits and provide a distribution map. mapress.com/zt/article/v... @apheloria.bsky.social

Revision of the millipede genus Apheloria Chamberlin, 1921 (Polydesmida, Xystodesmidae, Apheloriini) | Zootaxa

mapress.com

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Reposted by Derek Hennen, Ph.D.

Kai Ryssdal @kairyssdal.bsky.social · 3d

This is the lesson of 2025

Quinta Jurecic @qjurecic.bsky.social · 3d

he's going to come after you either way, so you might as well act with integrity

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Derek Hennen, Ph.D. @derekhennen.bsky.social · 3d

I have learned so many local shibboleths since moving here! Then I forget the pronunciation and the cycle begins anew.

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Derek Hennen, Ph.D. @derekhennen.bsky.social · 3d

Brag time: I just excelled at small talk on the elevator. Made a topical joke and everything, big laughs. Felt good.

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Reposted by Derek Hennen, Ph.D.

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 3d

The elimination of USAID is a moral atrocity and all involved made a choice to enable, and then lie about, ending the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in the world.

MAE SOT, Thailand (AP) - Mohammed Taher clutched the lifeless body of his 2-year-old son and wept. Ever since his family's food rations stopped arriving at their internment camp in Myanmar in April, the father had watched helplessly as his once-vibrant baby boy weakened, suffering from diarrhea and begging for food.
On May 21, exactly two weeks after Taher's little boy died, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio sat before Congress and declared: "No one has died" because of his government's decision to gut its foreign aid program. Rubio also insisted: "No children are dying on my watch."
That, Taher says, "is a lie."

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Reposted by Derek Hennen, Ph.D.

Keith W. Dickinson @keithwdickinson.bsky.social · 3d

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

The Verge @theverge.com · May 26

Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry

Paul McCartne, Elton John and others signed an open letter.

buff.ly

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Derek Hennen, Ph.D. @derekhennen.bsky.social · 4d

Academics when they hear not all science jobs are research jobs

Surprised Pikachu GIF

Alt: Surprised Pikachu GIF

media.tenor.com

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Derek Hennen, Ph.D. @derekhennen.bsky.social · 5d

An excellent Narceus! A male, you can see the enlarged 7th ring.

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Derek Hennen, Ph.D. @derekhennen.bsky.social · 5d

Of course!! Winkler, Berlese, potato-potato :)

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Derek Hennen, Ph.D. @derekhennen.bsky.social · 5d

Added!

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Derek Hennen, Ph.D. @derekhennen.bsky.social · 5d

Done! Welcome aboard!

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Derek Hennen, Ph.D. @derekhennen.bsky.social · 5d

Happy to add you if you want! I'll post my set up soon.

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Derek Hennen, Ph.D. @derekhennen.bsky.social · 6d

There's no better place to see pretty millipedes than the Appalachians! They come in all colors of the rainbow here.

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Derek Hennen, Ph.D. @derekhennen.bsky.social · 6d

I started a list for scientists and others interested in leaf litter fauna, please share and let me know if you want to be added! Do you love a good hand lens, soil sieves, and Berlese funnels? Perhaps this is the place for you.

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Reposted by Derek Hennen, Ph.D.

🪾santiago, phd 🐈‍⬛ @santiagokique.bsky.social · 7d

Like...this is the biggest corruption scandal the NIH has experienced in its entire history and its not even close. Half of a BILLION dollars to a single project as a result of political spoils. That's the equivalent of several hundred R01s.

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Reposted by Derek Hennen, Ph.D.

🪾santiago, phd 🐈‍⬛ @santiagokique.bsky.social · 7d

Even though it's crisis #192308 in our current time, I don't think it's sufficiently sunk in with ppl in the academic community that getting federal funding for your research will primarily depend on whether Trump political appointees find you and your work useful
kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

Changes at NIH Give Political Appointees Greater Power To Fund or Block Research - KFF Health News

The National Institutes of Health’s long-held standard of peer review for grantmaking has been subverted by President Donald Trump and NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, who gave unprecedented power to po...

kffhealthnews.org

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Reposted by Derek Hennen, Ph.D.

Erik Linstrum @eriklinstrum.bsky.social · 6d

Must-read by Joseph Fishkin: the Trump higher ed "compact" demands "a near-complete surrender of core academic freedoms" and lets DOJ pull "federal benefits to which the university and its faculty and students are entitled under federal law." A deal for suckers balkin.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-...

Balkinization: The Art of Replacing the Law with the Deal

A group blog on constitutional law, theory, and politics

balkin.blogspot.com

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