Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Kelsey McKinney @mckinneykelsey.bsky.social · 1d

ooooh

Kelsey McKinney @mckinneykelsey.bsky.social · 1d

I loved this series when @sabs.bsky.social started it for us at Defector.com in March!!! defector.com/meet-the-civ...

Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 1d

Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE

nyti.ms

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Kelsey McKinney @mckinneykelsey.bsky.social · 3d

thank you for reading!

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Kelsey McKinney @mckinneykelsey.bsky.social · 3d

ty rebecca lmao

Reposted by Kelsey McKinney

Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 3d

The state of online media is such a bummer, I sometimes think: who cares? Then, I read something so smart and so funny and so uniquely the product of this compromised but generative space, that I remember: I care!
This, by @mckinneykelsey.bsky.social, is a tour de force. defector.com/taylor-swift...

No Good Art Comes From Greed | Defector

The packages arrived square and thin and carefully wrapped on Saturday afternoon. There were three of them, but only one was mine. If I could have rejected my package, sent it back from whence it came...

defector.com

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Reposted by Kelsey McKinney

Kim Kelly @kimkelly.bsky.social · 3d

support worker-owned media and leftist independent journalism while you still can

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Reposted by Kelsey McKinney

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 4d

once again encouraging you all to support independent, worker owned, billionaire free News media when and how you are able

Kat Tenbarge @kattenbarge.bsky.social · 4d

Installing someone like Bari Weiss as the head of a major news organization isn’t even about profit or longevity. In effect it’s about continuing to shrink the traditional news industry smaller and smaller and weaker and weaker and less and less journalism based until it ceases to exist

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Reposted by Kelsey McKinney

Defector @defector.com · 4d

No good art comes from greed: defector.com/taylor-swift...

No Good Art Comes From Greed | Defector

The packages arrived square and thin and carefully wrapped on Saturday afternoon. There were three of them, but only one was mine. If I could have rejected my package, sent it back from whence it…

defector.com

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Reposted by Kelsey McKinney

patrick @redford.bsky.social · 4d

I wrote about Bari Weiss as the grim future of mainstream media under billionaire control: defector.com/bari-weiss-s...

Bari Weiss Signs Huge Deal To Usher CBS News Into Its Vichy Era | Defector

On Monday, newly appointed Paramount CEO David Ellison announced that his company had acquired the Free Press, the smirking blood-and-soil blog founded and run by former New York Times hall monitor Ba...

defector.com

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Kelsey McKinney @mckinneykelsey.bsky.social · 4d

uhoh they let me cook

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Kelsey McKinney @mckinneykelsey.bsky.social · 4d

same lmao

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Kelsey McKinney @mckinneykelsey.bsky.social · 4d

ty!

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Reposted by Kelsey McKinney

Meredith Shiner @meredithshiner.com · 4d

You could read @mckinneykelsey.bsky.social’s excellent take or you could trust @rollingstone.com’s four star review given after they fired all their critics (conveniently shared in Taylor’s Instagram stories!). I’m going to choose the former and certainly did not click on the latter.

There is very rarely money in trying to make something that matters to you. But there is a lot of money in making things that are just good enough to get people to buy them. That's how we end up with Marvel movies and infinite remakes and one
thousand books about fucking vampires and bad paintings reselling for millions of dollars. If you're willing to compromise everything-to have no public morals or beliefs, to make your work palatable to everyone-there is so, so much money to be made. Of course, that compromise is going to be the version of art that corporations want made. An artist is supposed to fight against that, to try to make something good even if it doesn't make them a billion dollars. Greed will always destroy good work, because money and art have drastically different priorities. On The Life of a Showgirl, it's undeniable which path Taylor Swift has decided to value more.

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Reposted by Kelsey McKinney

Luis Paez-Pumar @lpp.bsky.social · 4d

Great @mckinneykelsey.bsky.social blog on The Greed Of A Showgirl: defector.com/taylor-swift...

No Good Art Comes From Greed | Defector

The packages arrived square and thin and carefully wrapped on Saturday afternoon. There were three of them, but only one was mine. If I could have rejected my package, sent it back from whence it came...

defector.com

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Kelsey McKinney @mckinneykelsey.bsky.social · 4d

i wrote about The Life of a Showgirl

Defector @defector.com · 4d

No good art comes from greed: defector.com/taylor-swift...

No Good Art Comes From Greed | Defector

The packages arrived square and thin and carefully wrapped on Saturday afternoon. There were three of them, but only one was mine. If I could have rejected my package, sent it back from whence it…

defector.com

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Reposted by Kelsey McKinney

Sabrina Imbler @sabs.bsky.social · 4d

simply a brilliant blog from @redford.bsky.social on billionaire bootlicker bari weiss taking over cbs news
defector.com/bari-weiss-s...

In the process, Weiss gets to continue two of her lifelong passion projects: trying to get people fired, and mainstreaming previously verboten ideological strands, like how the Nazi salute means something else or how genocidal starvation is actually fine. Even in the most generous reading—where her entire career and indeed life might reflect anything more than the cold calculus of a pure cynic who wants the approval and patronage of the world's richest and vainest reactionaries—Weiss's entire worldview is in the negative. She positions herself as a freewheeling intellectual and iconoclast, taking on the stilted orthodoxies of liberal power, but the irony is that her effectiveness is totally circumscribed by the limits of that orthodoxy. She does not have an original thought in her head, merely a list of supposed excesses and hypocrisies riddling the elite liberal world.

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Kelsey McKinney @mckinneykelsey.bsky.social · 4d

"If you are a billionaire buying a media organization in order to consolidate your power, you could not find a more eager servant than [Bari] Weiss."

defector.com/bari-weiss-s...

Bari Weiss Signs Huge Deal To Usher CBS News Into Its Vichy Era | Defector

On Monday, newly appointed Paramount CEO David Ellison announced that his company had acquired the Free Press, the smirking blood-and-soil blog founded and run by former New York Times hall monitor Ba...

defector.com

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Kelsey McKinney @mckinneykelsey.bsky.social · 6d

"It's entirely possible that this is just some toady trying to score brownie points," said the source.

Defector @defector.com · 6d

Treasury Department has plans to mint dollar coin featuring Donald Trump's likeness: defector.com/treasury-dep...

Treasury Department Has Plans To Mint Dollar Coin Featuring Donald Trump's Likeness | Defector

The United States Department of the Treasury has developed, to the brink of production, a dollar coin that features the face and likeness of President Donald Trump, according to a source within the Tr...

defector.com

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Reposted by Kelsey McKinney

Defector @defector.com · 6d

Treasury Department has plans to mint dollar coin featuring Donald Trump's likeness: defector.com/treasury-dep...

Treasury Department Has Plans To Mint Dollar Coin Featuring Donald Trump's Likeness | Defector

The United States Department of the Treasury has developed, to the brink of production, a dollar coin that features the face and likeness of President Donald Trump, according to a source within the Tr...

defector.com

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Reposted by Kelsey McKinney

Alex Sujong Laughlin @alexlaughs.bsky.social · 9d

when they tell you publishing is slow they mean S L O W

i've been working on this for five years and we sold it six months ago but now i get to announce to the world! i'm writing a book! never say the word "talent" around me if you don't want a whole ass dissertation!!!!!

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Reposted by Kelsey McKinney

Josh Cook @joshthelibromancer.bsky.social · 9d

Must read for the book world from @defector.com and something I would have cited the hell out of in Art of Libromancy if it'd been out before I wrote it. tl;dr: Publishing is always ideological, especially when we claim it's not.

Good Riddance To ‘The Best American Poetry’ | Defector

When David Lehman, a poet then working as a book critic for Newsweek, proposed the project for The Best American Poetry anthology, he was searching for a national platform. His first anthology project...

defector.com

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Reposted by Kelsey McKinney

josh boerman @bosh.worstpossible.world · 9d

can't get enough of this sound

Kelsey McKinney @mckinneykelsey.bsky.social · 9d

totally normal blog nothing to see here defector.com/camera-absol...

Camera Absolutely Wrecked By Baseball | Defector

Smack! Pop! Crack! Woosh! Thump! Ping! Thud! Zing! Thwack! Whomp! Bam! BOOM! These are the normal, old-hat sounds of baseball. But a new baseball sound just dropped, which is important and also good: ...

defector.com

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Kelsey McKinney @mckinneykelsey.bsky.social · 9d

totally normal blog nothing to see here defector.com/camera-absol...

Camera Absolutely Wrecked By Baseball | Defector

Smack! Pop! Crack! Woosh! Thump! Ping! Thud! Zing! Thwack! Whomp! Bam! BOOM! These are the normal, old-hat sounds of baseball. But a new baseball sound just dropped, which is important and also good: ...

defector.com

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Reposted by Kelsey McKinney

Jennifer Prokop @jenreadsromance.bsky.social · 10d

In case the WNBA coverage isn't enough, the fact that this interesting cultural tale about poetry is in defector should be enough to get you to subscribe... i honestly love a poetry beef so much.

Defector @defector.com · 10d

Good riddance to ‘The Best American Poetry’ defector.com/good-riddanc...

Good Riddance To ‘The Best American Poetry’ | Defector

When David Lehman, a poet then working as a book critic for Newsweek, proposed the project for The Best American Poetry anthology, he was searching for a national platform. His first anthology…

defector.com

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Reposted by Kelsey McKinney

Sarah Dowling @sarahmdowling1.bsky.social · 10d

Nearly impossible to pull a quote from this fantastic essay—each sentence more fantastic than the last!

Nick Sturm @nicksturm.bsky.social · 10d

It's the end of The Best American Poetry.

I wrote about the forty-year anthology project, poetry’s place in Big Five publishing, and editor David Lehman's culture wars vision of American verse.

defector.com/good-riddanc...

Good Riddance To ‘The Best American Poetry’ | Defector

When David Lehman, a poet then working as a book critic for Newsweek, proposed the project for The Best American Poetry anthology, he was searching for a national platform. His first anthology project...

defector.com

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