Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Ash

A. Parise @jerseyoutwest.bsky.social · 14h

It is once again time to dust these off

Geordi LaForge meme:

“No” to “robust, fault-tolerant infrastructure”

“Point yes” to “us-east-1.”

Ash @feralbogwitch.bsky.social · 16h

The SWAN comet will be in the northeastern horizon in the predawn sky, in the Sagittarius constellation.

Astro binocs or a small telescope will make for easier viewing, however both should be visible by the naked eye! Go and find some darker skies and look up!

2

Ash @feralbogwitch.bsky.social · 16h

The Lemmon comet will be in the western horizon just after sunset, near the scorpius and Libra constellations, it will also have a green tint from its coma (gas cloud) containing diatomic carbon interacting with sunlight! Cont.

1 2

Ash @feralbogwitch.bsky.social · 16h

Space rock updates for the northern hemisphere!

New moon sky, plus Orionids peak tonight mean that a venture out to darker skies will result in excellent shooting star viewing. There are also two new comets (discovered earlier this year) that will have their highest visibility tonight. Cont.

1 1 3

Ash @feralbogwitch.bsky.social · 1d

Get out and look up.

2

Ash @feralbogwitch.bsky.social · 4d

Just a li'l guy.

A green praying mantis walking across a developed dirt trail. Cable rails border the walk way through fall chaparral shrub.

Reposted by Ash

Jill-Duh @gildafoster.bsky.social · 5d

Housing is the answer, and then the services that people need to live
Food, medical care, etc.
It's very difficult to rest when you are homeless. A lot of people use alcohol or drugs to cope with being on the streets. Stable housing is the place to start

LA Street Care & Mutual Aid @lastreetcare.bsky.social · 5d

(Text is in alt text)

To Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, Eric Ares, & The Council District 1 Team:

The sweep your office ordered on Thursday, October 9 has caused devastating and ongoing harm to every person who was living at the Mountain View & Beverly encampment in your district.

Cops arrived before 6am—more than an hour prior to the sweep—and slashed tents, dragging people into the street. Cops violently zip-tied, photographed, and fingerprinted every person at the encampment, including people living in nearby shelters who came to help friends move their belongings in advance of your sweep. Everyone was cited with Los Angeles Municipal Code 41.18, the city law that criminalizes sitting, lying, or having personal belongings in public spaces—for the crime of being poor in public.

LAPD barred people from returning to their tents to retrieve belongings until minutes before your sweep began. Everyone grabbed what they could carry before being abruptly chased out. Your sweep destroyed every single tent, leaving every person at the encampment without shelter even as our city faces flash flood warnings this week.

Eric, you refused to commit to providing anything to anyone when the encampment asked to speak with you about shelter and housing options. You did not offer services, replacement tents, help with citations, or even an apology for the brutality and trauma everyone experienced—simply because they are too poor to have a home. And not for lack of trying. The Mountain View Community publicly issued demands about housing to Councilmember Hernandez in May of this year. Your office has failed to provide it.

Last month, a woman from the Mountain View encampment tearfully recounted to you how a cop repeatedly sexually harassed and assaulted her at your August sweep. You consoled her, but that same predator cop again oversaw your sweep on Thursday and will continue to return for future sweeps you order. You do not get to wash your hands of this. Your sweeps bring this sexual predator into contact with the women he has repeatedly targeted. You have a moral obligation to put an end to this.

When another woman was brutalized by a different cop on Thursday, she pleaded with him to stop hurting her, explaining that he was triggering a trauma response related to her surviving domestic violence. The cop continued to manhandle her anyway. This is the type of brutality that occurs at your sweeps. You’ve been made aware of it. This is unacceptable.

When you sweep an encampment, you create a permission structure for cops and NIMBYs to threaten, further displace, and inflict violence on your poorest constituents. On Friday, the day after your sweep, people working at the auto shop behind the encampment hurled car bumpers and other debris at people living on the sidewalk.

Later, cops raided the encampment again in the middle of the night, chasing everyone—including elderly and disabled people across Beverly Blvd into Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez’s district. Since resettling across the street, the encampment has experienced continual harassment and threats from several housed neighbors and the same cops who brutalized them at your sweep. On Sunday, a housed person in a Lexus told the encampment that he has violent tendencies and threatened to return to set the encampment on fire. Cops constantly drive up and down the block, threatening this community and vowing to continue displacing them.

This is not what care looks like. This is certainly not what abolition looks like. Now is the time to take action. Your silence and complacency will no longer be tolerated.

Over the past few days, the Mountain View Community has updated their demands:

1. We demand permanent housing.
2. If permanent housing isn’t available, we demand shelter with our own private space, our own bathroom, quality meals, and mental health services.
3. We demand access to a private P.O. Box so that we can have a mailing address for employment, be able to do our taxes, and receive personal documents like ID, disability checks, and social security cards.
4. Move the porta-potty on Mountain View to where we were forced to relocate. Some of us are old, and it’s hard to walk that far.
5. We demand that the Councilmember fight to get our 41.18 tickets expunged.
6. We demand that the Councilmember fight to get rid of this law and stop cops from threatening us. It’s been nonstop since the sweep.

2 5

Ash @feralbogwitch.bsky.social · 4d

One of my recent projects at work involved concepting, designing, and doing the layout for a number of book covers for an audio book series release. The type requirements were a good 2/3rds of the space. It was quite a challenge to design illustrations around that!

Michael Whelan @michaelwhelan.bsky.social · 4d

No. As a general rule, I reserve top third for type and the publisher handles the rest. We dedicated a newsletter to the topic recently if you'd like a more detail on that:

theartofmichaelwhelan.substack.com/p/setting-type

1

Ash @feralbogwitch.bsky.social · 7d

Ah yes, the all important box tithe

2

Reposted by Ash

the Mountain Goats @themountaingoats.bsky.social · 8d

I won't go on & on about it. But what Dr. Demento put out into the world was special. It connected who knows how many people to music they didn't know they needed. to weird music. to big laffs, which we need. his final show will cost you three bucks, but it's priceless. 3/3 drdemento.com/online.html

Dr. Demento - Streaming

drdemento.com

10 67 470

Ash @feralbogwitch.bsky.social · 8d

#CicLAvia Heart of LA, still wild riding down streets that I'm normally fighting against cars with (or it needs to be 2am in order for the streets to be empty) - even with the crazy hecticness of it. One of my fav rides.

3

Reposted by Ash

Hank Green @hankgreen.bsky.social · 11d

I heard someone on a podcast say that music is boring now and, look, I am saying this as kindly as I can…skill issue.

160 340 3.7K

Reposted by Ash

John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 16d

Only tech dudes would reframe the relentless management exploitation of their time and talent as a feature, not a bug. They're self-exploiting, and then they'll be tossed aside when their value is depleted.

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/b...

Would You Work ‘996’? The Hustle Culture Trend Is Taking Hold in Silicon Valley.

www.nytimes.com

59 88 740

Reposted by Ash

John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 18d

Some brief thoughts on the Anthropic settlement, and why I think most authors should claim their share of the settlement if they can, inadequate though I think it is:

whatever.scalzi.com/2025/10/02/a...

Authors, Time to Get That (Anthropic) Bag

To begin, for those of you who do not follow such things with intense interest, a little context about the “AI” company Anthropic being sued for stealing authors’ works and reachi…

whatever.scalzi.com

12 120 470

Ash @feralbogwitch.bsky.social · 18d

Gods this, I see them treated like you would any database too and it's maddening. You can't query predictive models like they're your standard database as they can't reconstruct their stored data because it works off predicted patterns, not precise records that you normally query.

Reposted by Ash

Natalie @nataliehall.bsky.social · 19d

🥱

6 270 1.2K

Reposted by Ash

Reactor Magazine @reactorsff.bsky.social · 21d

EVERYONE STOP EVERYTHING Mychal the Librarian is hosting the Reading Rainbow revival!!!

reactormag.com/reading-rain...

Reading Rainbow Is Back, With Mychal the Librarian Hosting! - Reactor

The butterfly is back in the sky; can’t wait to fly twice as high.

reactormag.com

130 2.6K 8.5K

Ash @feralbogwitch.bsky.social · 20d

Sometimes it is very surreal to be looking at so many systems falling apart - but I can't focus on that right now because the paycheck requires tentacle monster paintings be done.

Reposted by Ash

NE Ohio Regional Sewer District @neorsd.org · 20d

I’m a sewage system. I also have a great personality.

Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD
@elizabethjacobs.bsky.social
I'm an epidemiologist. Sewage systems are sexy.

Dosco Jones @doscojones.bsky.social
I'm an engineer. Sewage systems are sexy.

150 1.1K 8.6K

Ash @feralbogwitch.bsky.social · 20d

Cannot get this game outta my head.

#HadesII #DeathtoChronos #Melinoë #WIP #digitalart

2

Ash @feralbogwitch.bsky.social · 26d

Just so we're clear, autism is not a disease to be cured, it is not an epidemic to be wiped out (that would be eugenics, which is bad).

1 4

Ash @feralbogwitch.bsky.social · Sep 18

I live in a densely populated neighborhood that has seen a rise in coyote sightings. And while I believe good education about how to interact with wildlife (leave them the fuck alone) creates more peaceful cohabitation - again, Miska is a very large dog. A single coyote wants nothing to do with her.

Ash @feralbogwitch.bsky.social · Sep 18

While it was kind of the beat cops to pull over and warn me of the coyote up the street...

While I was walking my 100# shepherd.

And the double take I got when I thanked them but they usually left her (the shepherd) alone, was priceless.

1

Reposted by Ash

The Onion @theonion.com · Sep 18

Report: You To Be Fired For Reading This Headline About Charlie Kirk

NEW YORK—Insisting your fate was sealed the moment you clicked the link, a report released Tuesday found that you will be fired for reading this headline about Charlie Kirk. “Shortly after you navigat...

theonion.com

110 2K 8.3K

Reposted by Ash

JesteniaS @citrusfoam.bsky.social · Sep 16

Cascade

Two Capricorns, one purple with green fins and the other green with purple fins, swimming around each other in a circular motion

6 230 1K