Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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Nikkolas Smith @4nikkolas.bsky.social · 1d

after millions of views and shares of my Portland Frog art. (thank you all🙏🏾) I got requests to highlight priests, and chickens, and Chicagoans, and T-Rexes, and more… all of us who refuse to bend the knee. so this is for US.
𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚃𝚊𝚕𝚕.
𝚆𝚎 𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚆𝚒𝚗.

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Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 1d

@mit.edu has done an incredibly important service to the nation by being willing to be the first school to reject the administration's "compact."

President Kornbluth focuses—and she's right—on the principle that "scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone."

The document also includes principles with which we disagree, including those that would restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution. And fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone.

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Jonathan @jsench.bsky.social · 1d

Yes.

Megan L. Cook @meganlcook.bsky.social · 1d

TBH, I went into this profession believing there would be a lot more overlap between "reading books" and "being an English professor" than there actually is. Sending emails, managing spreadsheets, handing tissues to weeping people: yes. Reading books, or substantial portions thereof, not so much.

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Slackermom @slackermom.bsky.social · 1d

Was just at a neighborhood school at dismissal. Hundreds of people with whistles surrounding the school and stationed down every block making sure ICE doesn’t snatch anyone. The same is happening at all the schools around here. I love my neighborhood and I love Chicago.

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NightMar on Hicks Street, Part 4: The Rabbit’s Revenge @histoftech.bsky.social · 1d

The Virginia Senate just told UVA it’s not getting state funding if it accepts the compact since UVA exists to serve Virginia, its residents, & their interests—not be a tool of the federal govt. Scoop from our student newspaper, who’ve been doing vital reporting www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2025...

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Steven Van Impe @svanimpe.bsky.social · 4d

#EarlyModern meme! #BookHistory

The bottom of a page of printed text, showing three hands (or printers' fists) pointing at each other.

The spiderman meme: three spidermen pointing at each other.

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Miriam Posner @miriamposner.com · 1d

IDK, man. School started 2 weeks ago for us, and once again students remind me that they’re so curious and interested in the world and anxious to ask big questions. We hear that these questions are no longer useful or relevant, but wherever that’s coming from, it’s not what students believe.

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Miriam Posner @miriamposner.com · 1d

You have to really *try* to convince a 20-year-old that it’s not worth asking what justice or freedom or social good is. They don’t come by that incuriosity naturally.

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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 1d

week 7, in a city under siege for 32 days and counting, and the students who are able to come to class despite the blitz are showing up like their lives depend on those 50 minutes of togetherness, poetry, and big questions

Miriam Posner @miriamposner.com · 1d

IDK, man. School started 2 weeks ago for us, and once again students remind me that they’re so curious and interested in the world and anxious to ask big questions. We hear that these questions are no longer useful or relevant, but wherever that’s coming from, it’s not what students believe.

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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 1d

really nice piece on this btw from @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social sonjadrimmer.com/blog-1/2025/...

"The Printing Press Democratized Knowledge": When Slogans Masquerade as History — Sonja Drimmer

The phrase is said so frequently it seems, like the mechanism it celebrates, to mechanically replicate itself.  It's become a favorite catchphrase among tech boosters of any sort (see my post on...

sonjadrimmer.com

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Ordinary Notes @hystericalblkns.bsky.social · 1d

Love after Love. Derek Walcott.

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Miriam Posner @miriamposner.com · 1d

With the largest and loudest media outlets so thoroughly captured by the interests of billionaires, it feels like we’re screaming for help from behind glass walls. It’s incredibly uncanny, to know we’re in terrible danger yet see that danger nowhere reflected or reported on.

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Prof Anna Watts @profannawatts.bsky.social · 2d

Lol the Nobels can't even acknowledge women's contribution to discovery. But sure let's acknowledge The Machines.

Headline from an article in Nature this week that states "Prizes must recognize machine contributions to discovery. The future of science will be written by humans and machines together. Awards should reflect that reality."

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Jonathan @jsench.bsky.social · 2d

Today I'm thinking about how in RENT we learn that Collins is fired from MIT for "[his] theory of Actual Reality."

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Yonah Freemark @yonahfreemark.com · 3d

Cities are developing a new approach to developing housing: Integrating it into mixed-use library projects. These investments improve neighborhood vitality, add housing & improve services.

In new research @urbaninstitute.bsky.social, I create a database of such projects & point to success stories ⏬

Aging Libraries Could Offer Cities a Unique Opportunity to Build New Housing While Improving Public Services

Since 2000, more than 1,800 apartment units have been built in combined library-housing developments. These projects not only address local housing needs but…

www.urban.org

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Siva @sivav.bsky.social · 3d

The “compact” for higher ed is an unserious document written by unserious people from a position of spectacular ignorance. No one should take it seriously. Sadly, my bosses are taking it seriously.

newrepublic.com/article/2013...

Why This Essay Could Cause the University of Virginia to Shut Down

How Linda McMahon’s latest “compact” would do deep and permanent harm to American higher education

newrepublic.com

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Annie Abrams @annieabrams.bsky.social · 3d

the College Board might not seem like an urgent threat to professors who more or less agree with what they see in AP frameworks, but the system is designed to deplete gen ed enrollment while turning both high school and “college” illiberal

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NightMar on Hicks Street, Part 4: The Rabbit’s Revenge @histoftech.bsky.social · 4d

Never forget that Dolly Parton gave a million bucks for covid research at the *very start* of the pandemic—including money that helped fund the development of the Moderna vaccine.

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Mueller, She Wrote @muellershewrote.com · 4d

Pam Bondi admits she spoke to Apple to "get the ICEBlock app taken down." Sounds an awful lot like coercion to suppress disfavored speech to me. A clear violation of the 1st Amendment.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 4d

Bondi claims that the ICEBlock app was "criminal in that people were posting where ICE officers lived"

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Jonathan Gilligan @jgilligan.org · 5d

The Vanderbilt chapter of @aaup.org has issued a statement condemning President Trump's proposed "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education" as an illegal assault on civil rights, academic freedom, shared governance, and institutional autonomy.

vanderbiltaaup.org/2025/10/06/s...

Statement by the Vanderbilt AAUP Executive Committee on the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education”

October 6, 2025 On October 2nd, Vanderbilt was among nine universities “invited” to sign a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” with the federal government. The Compact, however, i…

vanderbiltaaup.org

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Jonathan @jsench.bsky.social · 5d

Today’s student work at the press.

Letterpress printed broadside that reads “Read Banned Books: Banned Books Week 2025.” Red ink on white paper. The B in Books is actually an open book turned on its side. There is also an image of an owl to the side.

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unraveled @unraveledpress.com · 5d

Kind of feels like feds occupying our city for a month, killing one person and shooting another while attacking neighborhoods with chemical weapons and kidnapping hundreds of people already counts as a civil war whether the Guard arrives or not, but what do we know?

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Math @bigmemath.bsky.social · 6d

I love that Charlie Berens is campaigning against AI data centers

AND that he also has the same '90s Packers locker that I had when I was a kid (I picked "04" for Favre)

Charlie Berens speaking to the news against AI data centers in front of a kid's Packers locker from the 90s

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Owen Barcala @obarcala.bsky.social · 6d

To say what is happening makes you sound like a crackpot on a forum. A federal judge is enjoining the president from unlawfully sending federalized soldiers to invade the states of his political opponents against their will.

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Jonathan @jsench.bsky.social · 7d

Super looking forward to running the Chicago marathon under occupation next weekend.

Governor JB Pritzker @govpritzker.illinois.gov · 7d

In the coming hours, the Trump Administration intends to federalize 300 members of the Illinois National Guard.