Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Garrett Merz @garrettmerz.bsky.social · 3d

Cool fact I just learned: the CMS detector at CERN (@cmsexperiment.bsky.social) sits on the site of a 4th-century Roman farm that was rediscovered during the excavation of the cavern!

www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/may-...

An LHC detector's old Roman roots

Particle physicists probe uncharted territory for remnants of the early universe. But that is supposed to occur after their experiments turn on.

www.symmetrymagazine.org

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Garrett Merz @garrettmerz.bsky.social · 8d

Legitimately starting to think @francescahongwi.bsky.social is Wisconsin's Zohran. Met her earlier this week and have not felt this fired up to go knock doors for someone since the Bernie campaign.

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WomanAstro @womanastro.bsky.social · 9d

OTD in 1847, 178 years ago, America's first woman astronomer, Maria Mitchell, discovered a comet. She was presented with a gold medal for her accomplishment by the king of Denmark.

#WomanAstro
#WomeninSTEM
#WomeninScience

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/1847_...

C/1847 T1 (Mitchell) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

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drewtoothpaste @drewtoothpaste.bsky.social · 9d

"the one year clock" my invention from a few years ago

hey, what's today's date?
looks like... a little past october

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Garrett Merz @garrettmerz.bsky.social · 10d

PHILIP PULLMAN, THE AMBER SPYGLASS:

S knows that LINK SHOULD BE FREE @sknowsthatp.bsky.social · 10d

Dust is woke

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Garrett Merz @garrettmerz.bsky.social · 17d

Oooo shelfmark?

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Open Culture @openculture.bsky.social · 19d

A Massive, Knitted Tapestry of the Galaxy: Software Engineer Hacks a Knitting Machine & Creates a Star Map Featuring 88 Constellations

The next time some non-crafty type disparages your hobby as a frumpy pursuit, show them software engineer Sarah Spencer’s “Stargazing.” The 9’x 15’ knitted tapestry is an accurate equatorial star map...

www.openculture.com

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Prisonculture @prisonculture.bsky.social · 23d

If you have opportunities to get out and do things with others, jump at the opportunity: meetings, classes, social events, etc... Get out and be with other people. It's essential. If virtual is more convenient, then take advantage of those opportunities to be with other people.

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Carin Ruff @carinr.bsky.social · 24d

Noted in @aaronm.bsky.social's weekly roundup of digitized Vatican MSS: this fish, adorning Cicero's De inventione, Bk. 2. Not sure why a fish, but it's a fine one!

Here's the MS at Biblissima portail.biblissima.fr/ark:/43093/m... and at the BAV site: digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Ott...

#medievalsky

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Garrett Merz @garrettmerz.bsky.social · 24d

Belting out a "God ... what have you done?" just a bit too earnestly

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sophia 🦇♥️🦇 @sophamir.bsky.social · 24d

*tired as hell* pink pony club im gonna keep on dancin at the pink pony club

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Joe Mason @moreorloess.bsky.social · 25d

A story on landslides where you might not expect them, featuring geomorphologists Phil Larson and Andy Wickert.

MPR News @mprnews.org · 25d

Frequent landslides and rockfalls cause significant damage to homes, businesses, roads and other infrastructure, and have occasionally turned deadly.

Heavier rains due to climate change causing more landslides and rockfalls in Minnesota

Heavier rainfall due to a warming climate is accelerating erosion in some parts of Minnesota. The sandstone bluffs and hillsides of the Minnesota River Valley are especially vulnerable, leading to mor...

www.mprnews.org

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Reposted by Garrett Merz

Five @5arah.com · 25d

Battle doomscrolling by posting 5 small pleasures in life:
1 fan overhead and late summer crickets
2 giving away baby houseplants to neighbors
3 homemade mocktails
4 yelling “KITTY!” when the cat trots into the room
5 women metal singers

Erika Hall @erikahall.bsky.social · 25d

Battle doomscrolling by posting 5 small pleasures in life:

1. Riding bicycle through places that have good coastal California smells
2. Thumping the small chonky dog like a watermelon
3. Making chicken noises
5. Listening to KEXP
6. Eating a burrito the size of a newborn infant

BOO-trous BOO-trous-Ghoulie @dlbowman76.com · 25d

Battle doomscrolling by posting 5 small pleasures in life:

1. Figuring out what's wrong with a drawing.
2. Watering my roses.
3. Listening to classical music.
4. The cat head-butting me for attention.
5. The satisfaction of a perfect short story.

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Garrett Merz @garrettmerz.bsky.social · 25d

same, kinda? One of my tweets got so big that my therapist showed it to me

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Garrett Merz @garrettmerz.bsky.social · 25d

Who are the writers most commonly referenced by the Substack crowd? As in:

"This summer, I am making ice cream. Film critic (XXX) refers to this practice as (XXX)".

who are the people often quoted? Off the top of my head, Sontag and Arendt and Barthes seem to get a lot of airtime

Garrett Merz @garrettmerz.bsky.social · 25d

I'm a new Odd Lots convert! My friend @natpurser.bsky.social is apparently pals with Joe & co., which is fun

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Bodleian Libraries @bodleian.ox.ac.uk · 25d

Our medieval curator Alison Ray introduces Rawlinson Bodleian Library MS. Rawl. D. 252...a 15th Century necromancer's journal.

This manuscript contains spells written in Latin and Middle English, and would have served as a reference for a professional sorcerer.

#MedievalMonday

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Janet Hill @saskajanet.bsky.social · 26d

As the wheel turns, we arrive at Sandhill Crane migration season. Few nature experiences match the thrill of seeing the mass migration of these characters #birds

A group of tall, elegant birds with red foreheads are wading in a prairie river.

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Chris 🎃 DevPods.gg gamedev community @chrisdeleon.bsky.social · 27d

"ok but chris how much physical space does that data storage take" excellent question here on the left is 4 KB of storage and here in the right is 1 TB or 250 million times as much storage

Big rack of tubes and old wiring in MIT museum, bit larger than a modern refrigerator.

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Chris 🎃 DevPods.gg gamedev community @chrisdeleon.bsky.social · 27d

people have a hard time conceptualizing storage sizes, guide for less technical people:
1 kb = plain text files about your thoughts and feelings about how awesome ducks are
1 mb = store one smartphone photo of a duck
1 gb = around a thousandish photos of ducks
1 tb = about one week of my duck photos

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Marjorie James Keenan @unenthusiast.com · Sep 14

Everything is a joke but also oh boy is it not

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Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies @sims-mss.bsky.social · 28d

Today’s #FragmentFriday is part of a leaf used in a binding. It is from a canon law manuscript, and contains papal decretals of three popes. The fragment shows both main text and commentary. Written in France in the 14th century. (UPenn LJS 119) #medievalsky

🔗: https://bit.ly/4m8XtRn

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Garrett Merz @garrettmerz.bsky.social · 28d

Anyway- trying to compartmentalize a little less, lately. Boxes are for squares.

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Garrett Merz @garrettmerz.bsky.social · 28d

I feel like my response to being super active over the last few years in both queer/lefty/organizing spaces and ML research has been to put on very different faces in different spaces, and I think the dissonance between them has made it kind of hard to hear myself think sometimes.

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Mack @wifeguy.org · 28d

Nightmare fuel

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