Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Catherine Tan @catherinetan.bsky.social · 3d

My family is visiting. First thing this morning, my father asks “is there a Home Depot around here? I going to fix your doors.”

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Catherine Tan @catherinetan.bsky.social · 5d

Ground the pieces today for panel 1/4 of the “Piscola hunting squirrels at sunset” table lamp. #stainedglass

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Catherine Tan @catherinetan.bsky.social · 5d

I honestly believe that La Fermiere’s primary product is pottery. The yogurt is just bait.

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Catherine Tan @catherinetan.bsky.social · 6d

“We have to reject the idea that our only, best power is our pocketbooks. (…) Our power isn’t in making one of the choices that are presented to us. Our power is in shaping the choices available to us.” Excellent piece by @tressiemcphd.bsky.social

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/o...

Opinion | Mourn, or Else

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Catherine Tan

James M. Thomas (JT) @insurgentprof.bsky.social · 7d

Many of those who were fired were not fired for “controversial views”, whatever that means.

Many were fired for simply expressing that they were having a hard time feeling sorrow for someone who held so many others in open contempt.

Laura Sell @laurasell.bsky.social · 19d

"More professors in the United States have been fired for controversial views in the past week than any other week in all of American history."
www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

Censorship Is the Authoritarian’s Dream

The right to free expression must include the right to say horrible and evil things.

www.insidehighered.com

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Catherine Tan @catherinetan.bsky.social · 7d

An incredibly insightful and important piece by @jenniferreich.bsky.social

“The real solution is better public investments and clearer information that can make parents feel confident in their choices. Instead, parents are left to figure out on their own…”

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/o...

Opinion | What 20 Years of Listening to Vaccine-Hesitant Parents Has Taught Me

www.nytimes.com

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Catherine Tan @catherinetan.bsky.social · 7d

The dry cleaner has been out sick for months, so her daughter moved from Boston to help. I interacted with her once before. Today I went in and she said, “several other Asian customers live around here. I think there are enough of us to have a potluck.” Absolutely. You have my name and number.

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Catherine Tan @catherinetan.bsky.social · 10d

War ravaged Portland

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Catherine Tan @catherinetan.bsky.social · 10d

Sometimes I will ignore a bunch of serious text messages and then suddenly show up again with a video of a French dog screaming at a Starbucks drive through. And that resets the tone.

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Reposted by Catherine Tan

Joseph Rezek @rezekjoe.bsky.social · 12d

Absolutely outrageous to say that a uni’s academic press doesn’t serve its undergraduates. Non-profit university presses support and sustain a scholarly and intellectual system THAT MAKES TEACHING UNDERGRADUATES POSSIBLE. No presses? no fields of study, no professors, no college.

Rebecca Colesworthy @rcolesworthy.bsky.social · 12d

"Bucknell has decided to close its highly respected, decades-old UP in June 2026. The stated reason? The press serves scholars, not Bucknell undergrads. Bucknell undergrads—& some grad students as well—disagree." FANTASTIC piece on BUP's student internship program. networks.h-net.org/group/discus...

Bucknell UP Closure Would Also Mark End of Vital Student Internship Program | H-Net

A post from Feeding the

networks.h-net.org

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Catherine Tan @catherinetan.bsky.social · 14d

Finally, our local Vietnamese restaurant got a kid who does homework in the back and answers the phone.

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Catherine Tan @catherinetan.bsky.social · 15d

Resharing what I wrote about year go...
time.com/7203351/trum...

time.com

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Reposted by Catherine Tan

Elizabeth Kolbert @elizkolbert.bsky.social · 19d

"It was unclear whether the members all understood what they were voting for."

Kennedy’s Advisory Panel Votes to Limit M.M.R.V. Vaccine for Children Under 4

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Catherine Tan

W.E.D.em Boyz @leftistwonk.bsky.social · 21d

This really is worth consistently reminding yourself. With the media, civil institutions, and Dems cowering to the Trump admin, it’s easy to get the perception he’s a popular and unstoppable force. In reality, he’s the least popular president in U.S. history.

G Elliott Morris @gelliottmorris.com · 22d

trump approval hits a new low in today's yougov/economist poll. now worse than he was in yougov's data at this point in 2017 www.economist.com/interactive/...

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Reposted by Catherine Tan

Louis Römer @lromeranth.bsky.social · 23d

How did "free speech" become a cudgel to silence dissent? My latest in @bostonreview.bsky.social

www.bostonreview.net/forum/the-ri...

In past rounds of moral panics on campus, when “cancel culture” and “trigger warnings” were still the threats du jour, pundits and social media outrage peddlers converged to frame campus protests at large as threats to “free speech.” Responding to the steady churn of outrage-bait framing protesting students as “snowflakes” and “crybullies,” state legislatures across the country passed a flurry of “campus free speech” bills drafted by right-wing think tanks, which expanded the range of anti-protest measures available to college administrators. To be sure, boycotts and deplatforming protests were useful props in these efforts. Still, what made it possible to inflate deplatforming incidents into threats that required expansion of repressive state power was the failure to question a securitized vision of liberty that, since Bush’s “they hate our freedoms” speech, has become increasingly dominant.

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Catherine Tan @catherinetan.bsky.social · 22d

In sci-fi, dystopian futures are usually not this… idiotic.

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Catherine Tan @catherinetan.bsky.social · 22d

The shooter was a right wing extremist, so let’s blame the left…? The dumbest people are trying to gaslight an entire country in broad daylight.

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/u...

White House Plans Broad Crackdown on Liberal Groups

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Catherine Tan

Raul Perez @raulperez.bsky.social · 23d

Recent coverage in msm on the use of coded memes and humor by the far-right looks at this phenomenon as a new problem or development, a product of genZ or social media. But the far right has been weaponizing violent humor over the last 5 decades. And it has gone from the fringes to the White House

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Reposted by Catherine Tan

Alex Hanna-ween @alexhanna.bsky.social · 24d

These media outlets are more than ready to carry water for the far-right dream of trans genocide.

Axios @axios.com · 24d

NEW: Authorities are investigating whether Tyler Robinson believed Charlie Kirk's views on gender identity were "hateful" to people like Robinson's transgender roommate, six sources familiar with the case tell Axios.

Sources: Kirk suspect's transgender roommate "aghast," may be key to motive

Investigators believe Robinson's anger at Kirk's views could be a key to establishing a motive for the slaying.

www.axios.com

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Reposted by Catherine Tan

Will Bunch @willbunch.bsky.social · 25d

None of the young male mass shooters and now political assassins I've written about in recent years had stayed in higher education and pursued a bachelor's degree. Crazy enough, it's almost like college is a positive socializing force, not a radicalizing one

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 25d

So:
a) none of political assassins were students, or even shared a coherent ideology - shameful to blame universities
b) Trump is already engaged in the attack on campus speech the Free Press wants
c) I worry a lot more about the animosity to campus The Free Press is fueling than any of my students

The acceleration of political violence has been frightening: from the attack on the Capitol in January 2021, to the murder of a healthcare executive allegedly by Luigi Mangione, to the attempted assassinations of Trump, to the killing of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., to the shooting of state lawmakers in Minnesota. And now Kirk’s murder.

There are many guilty parties in the rise of political violence. But to our minds, among the biggest culprits are the universities. In the same way that madrassas radicalize jihadis, America’s campuses are among the places in the U.S. most hostile to disagreement and debate. Where they preach “inclusion,” they actually practice exclusion—shouting down speakers they disagree with, for instance. Where they promote “diversity,” they actually enforce a uniformity of thought, denying tenure to dissenters.

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Reposted by Catherine Tan

Aaron Fritschner @fritschner.bsky.social · 25d

The mortgage fraud claim against Lisa Cook is false, per documents obtained by Reuters.

Bill Pulte's accusation, the sole pretext Trump used to fire her from the Fed, was that she claimed two homes as primary residence.

These docs show she did not.
www.reuters.com/world/us/fed...

Exclusive: Fed Governor Cook declared her Atlanta property as “vacation home,” documents show

A loan estimate for an Atlanta home purchased by Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve governor accused of mortgage fraud by the Trump administration, shows that Cook had declared the property as a “vacation home,” according to a document reviewed by Reuters.

www.reuters.com

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Catherine Tan @catherinetan.bsky.social · 25d

The New York Times is such trash. Now that we know it’s a white guy, they’re pushing this familiar narrative—lone wolf, great promise, unknown motive—and avoiding the relevant details: access to arms, involvement in white nationalism, and MAGA family.

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Catherine Tan @catherinetan.bsky.social · 26d

I opened up my Notes app. Why do I have a note from 2024 titled “ideas” and the only thing in it is: “A sandwich with turkey, spam, lettuce, tomato—call it ‘in da clurb we all spam’”?

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Reposted by Catherine Tan

Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 27d

Mainstream pundits have instantly sanitized and ignored Charlie Kirk's core political project and its impacts. He has been remembered by the mainstream press as someone they merely disagreed with, a debate me-guy whose words and actions had zero consequences:

www.404media.co/charlie-kirk...

Charlie Kirk Was Not Practicing Politics the Right Way

The mainstream media seems entirely uninterested in explaining Charlie Kirk's work.

www.404media.co

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Reposted by Catherine Tan

Shannon Watts @shannonrwatts.bsky.social · 27d

The problem with allowing guns everywhere is that no one is safe anywhere.

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