Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Ellie @ellie.bsky.social · 13h

Oh the things my NDAs have seen.

Ellie @ellie.bsky.social · 13h

Every time I see the phrases "hustle culture" or "grindset" I become Neo at the end of the Matrix and whisper "No," commanding the bullet points of a hundred LinkedIn Founder Mindset™ posts to drop uselessly to the ground.

a man in a black shirt is standing in front of a wall with a drawing of a spiral on it

ALT: a man in a black shirt is standing in front of a wall with a drawing of a spiral on it

media.tenor.com

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Ellie @ellie.bsky.social · 13h

If I could yank my past self out of the fire before reaching burnout it would have avoided years of pain and disruption. Burnout will 100% fuck you up. You can't recover from it with a couple weeks of vacation, a social media detox, or muting your notifications. It's a severe mental health injury.

Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · Mar 4

I'm not sure which of you need to hear this, but:

If you push yourself to your limits and burn out for a company, you are trading years of your future productivity for minor gains in the present.

Burning out will _fuck you up_, it's like brain fog or depression, and it takes years to recover

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Ellie @ellie.bsky.social · 15h

Today my parter turned to me and said, with all seriousness, "I could lacquer pots for ten bucks, easy."

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Reposted by Ellie

Juno Rylee Schultz @junoryleejournalism.com · 1d

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems...
SIMON: What?
SHAPIRO: ...Or saying...
SIMON: You imagine that?
SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.
SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.
SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this.
SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

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Ellie @ellie.bsky.social · 2d

The fire alarm goes off so often in my building that our neighbours have invested in a wee pair of headphones for their baby. The alarms suck, but I do enjoy Headphone Baby looking unbothered at all of us adults like, “Tinnitus? I don’t know her.”

Ellie @ellie.bsky.social · 2d

Spooky

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Ellie @ellie.bsky.social · 3d

✨ The Dream✨

The Guardian @theguardian.com · 3d

Nobel committee unable to reach prize winner who is ‘living his best life’ hiking off grid

Fred Ramsdell was among those honoured with a 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine but might not know because he is somewhere in Idaho and uncontactable The Nobel committee has been unable to reach a winner of this year’s prize for medicine who is “living his best life” on an “off the grid” hiking foray. Fred Ramsdell shared Monday’s prestigious prize with Mary Brunkow of Seattle, Washington and Shimon Sakaguchi of Osaka University in Japan for their discoveries related to the functioning of the immune system. Continue reading...

www.theguardian.com

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Ellie @ellie.bsky.social · 3d

If you are even remotely interested in learning how to set up your own website start to finish, this is a great way to do so. My formal dev experience is a 3 hour Intro to HTML & CSS workshop and using markdown on forum posts and this was feasible for me!

Lars • Iskotaa @lars.bsky.social · 3d

I finally buckled and wrote a tutorial I've been meaning to write for ages.

If you're a non-tech person that is tired of having to change social media platforms and want a simple blog on the web, this is for you 🪄

iskotaa.com/blog/2025-10...

Create your own free & portable website (for non-techies)

Astro is easy for anyone to set up, and hosting static files is often free, so you don't need to spend a lot to curate your presence on the web.

iskotaa.com

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Ellie @ellie.bsky.social · 3d

I know most of you follow me for the figure skating takes, thank you for humouring my periodic yammering about tech stuff.

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Ellie @ellie.bsky.social · 3d

I have no special insight into the particular quirks of how this platform runs, but I have worked with startups long enough to recognize the symptoms of a system under stress and how that situation develops.

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Ellie @ellie.bsky.social · 3d

So: pair fresh leadership with lopsided resources, constant financial pressure, and little experience in public relations and you will get a shitstorm. You just don't often see it in public because early stage startups are generally small outfits out of the limelight. Not here.

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Ellie @ellie.bsky.social · 3d

If you're wondering "Where are the adults?" when comms go off the rails at a startup, the answer is: they're not there yet. That's a Series C or later addition. The Boring People (Ops, Legal, HR, & FT CFO, Marketing + PR) are expensive, & come in much later (and their work is cut out for them).

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Ellie @ellie.bsky.social · 3d

Startup leadership can reliably get advice on how to do competent sales, marketing, and finance, but actual leadership coaching is an incredibly dodgy proposition. It's often SV brainrot all the way down. Mentorship comes from people who survived the same rotten system.

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Ellie @ellie.bsky.social · 3d

Execs are also often coached to prize loyalty to the vision above all things. If someone is not absolutely committed to the thing you're building the advice is to pitch 'em overboard as fast as possible. They're deadweight and you can't afford to float them.

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Ellie @ellie.bsky.social · 3d

Startup leadership is coached by their investors, mentors, and boards to behave in certain ways. Speed, experimentation, and boldness are prized, almost to the point of fetishization. Anything that seems cautious or reserved is often downplayed in favour of sprinting at whatever The Goal is.

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Ellie @ellie.bsky.social · 3d

A lot of the things you might take for granted in a regular workplace simply don't exist at an early stage startup. That's because it's usually Founder/CEO + CTO + an assortment of people who got in early. There's a wild mix of skills, but it's often heavy on engineering & light on everything else.

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Ellie @ellie.bsky.social · 3d

It's tempting to think of tech startups as Just Like Regular Businesses, But With More Hoodies and Beer Fridges. They are not. They are volatile and stressful and often attract people who thrive in those conditions.

Think about that kind of personality. It's a fast twitch.

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Ellie @ellie.bsky.social · 3d

Given what I would politely call The Current Situation here, I think it's time for a little explainer for anyone who has not experienced an early-stage startup. I think at least part of what we're seeing right now a consequence of that environment. 🧵

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Ellie @ellie.bsky.social · 3d

Zack is of course right here: you need the images to fully discuss comics. I'm bummed great work won't see the light of day because of rights.

Sidebar: when I wrote my MA thesis on comics, clearing the image permissions was the nerviest part of the process, even with North American publishers.

Zack Davisson @zackdavisson.com · 3d

On another platform, @debaoki.bsky.social wrote a magnificent rant about how many of these books are killed by Japan's uncompromising image rights restrictions.

Comics are a visual medium. To properly write books discussing comics, you NEED visuals. But for Japanese publishers, the answer is no.

Zack Davisson @zackdavisson.com · 3d

This will go down as the most heartbreaking thing of my career. An absolute Mount Rushmore of manga scholars I was honored to be included with. Everyone included, such as myself and @okazu.yuricon.com did some of the best work of our lives. A brilliant book.

Now dead. Because of image rights.

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Reposted by Ellie

Ellie @ellie.bsky.social · 4d

I went to a spectacular @danmanganmusic.com show at the Vogue last Friday. Writing about that concert rolled into writing about all the Dan Mangan concerts I've seen over the years and the joy of returning to his music again and again.

elzyg.com/blog/2025-10...

Dan Mangan is in Your Corner | Elzyg

It's impossible to listen to Dan Mangan and not think of the blizzards and the broken glass. His music has provided the soundtrack for moments great and small for the best part of 20 years.

elzyg.com

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Ellie @ellie.bsky.social · 4d

Heartily seconding this. Astro has been great to use for my site: flexible, straightforward, and robust. elzyg.com approved 👍

Lars • Iskotaa @lars.bsky.social · 4d

I can't recommend Astro enough. Both @ellie.bsky.social and I have our sites hosted on Cloudflare for free, using the basic setup: docs.astro.build/en/guides/in...

Even without dev knowledge, it's pretty easy to get a theme going.

@astrojs/cloudflare

Learn how to use the @astrojs/cloudflare adapter to deploy your Astro project.

docs.astro.build

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Ellie @ellie.bsky.social · 4d

I went to a spectacular @danmanganmusic.com show at the Vogue last Friday. Writing about that concert rolled into writing about all the Dan Mangan concerts I've seen over the years and the joy of returning to his music again and again.

elzyg.com/blog/2025-10...

Dan Mangan is in Your Corner | Elzyg

It's impossible to listen to Dan Mangan and not think of the blizzards and the broken glass. His music has provided the soundtrack for moments great and small for the best part of 20 years.

elzyg.com

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Ellie @ellie.bsky.social · 4d

I know less than nothing about baseball, but I do know that I enjoy the sight of despondent Yankees in the dugout.

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Ellie @ellie.bsky.social · 4d

I've been re-learning how to use real cameras this Fall, not just popping out the iPhone for everything. I'm really enjoying the texture from shooting this way and not getting the automatic glossy, HDR boost of a camera phone.

Little bird stares off into the grey mist while perched on a power line.

Backlit leaves on a tree, layers of sunset tinted clouds behind.

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