Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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Farrukh

@implausibleblog.bsky.social

CEO of Lush says that if you don't agree with his stance in support of the Palestinian people and Gaza

Shop somewhere else

I've been a fan of Lush for years, just wish isn't wasn't so expensive! - Still, another reason to keep shopping there ☺️

December 23, 2025 at 1:39 PM

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The Economist

@economist.com

The power of China’s industrial chokeholds was shown in 2025. The country’s share of global manufacturing value added exceeds one-third, giving it the power to disrupt supply chains overnight

China proved its strengths in 2025—and Donald Trump helped

It was a good year for Xi Jinping

econ.st

December 23, 2025 at 12:20 PM

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Paul Eric

@pauleric70.bsky.social

Source: Time Out Worldwide
search.app/AwG1m

The stunning Sydney Metro Stations have won an esteemed design award

The Sydney Metro doesn't just run speedily and on time – the stations are beautiful.

search.app

December 22, 2025 at 10:38 PM

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East Anglia Bylines

@eastangliabylines.co.uk

Ancient woodland flattened. Protected species ignored. “Compensation” that may never work. If this is Biodiversity Net Gain, who is it really for? Rachel Fuller reports

eastangliabylines.co.uk/environment/...

Biodiversity Net Gain: can developers be trusted?

Developers seem rather too fickle concerning their obligations to protect the environment, and the situation may be about to get worse

eastangliabylines.co.uk

December 22, 2025 at 9:01 AM

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Anna Bower

@annabower.bsky.social

Per NY Times’s Michael Grynbaum on X, this is Sharyn Alfonsi’s email to her “60 Minutes” colleagues in full:

News Team,
Thank you for the notes and texts. I apologize for not reaching out earlier.
I learned on Saturday that Bari Weiss spiked our story, INSIDE CECOT, which was supposed to air tonight. We (Ori and I) asked for a call to discuss her decision. She did not afford us that courtesy/opportunity.
Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices. It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now-after every rigorous internal check has been met is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.
We requested responses to questions and/or interviews with DHS, the White House, and the State Department. Government silence is a statement, not a VETO. Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed
to kill the story.
If the administration's refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we

have effectively handed them a "kill switch" for any reporting they find inconvenient.
If the standard for airing a story becomes
"the government must agree to be
interviewed," then the government effectively gains control over the 60 Minutes broadcast.
We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state.
These men risked their lives to speak with us.
We have a moral and professional obligation to the sources who entrusted us with their
stories. Abandoning them now is a betrayal of the most basic tenet of journalism: giving voice to the voiceless.
CBS spiked the Jeffrey Wigand interview due to legal concerns, nearly destroying the credibility of this broadcast. It took years to recover from that "low point." By pulling this story to shield an administration, we are repeating that history, but for political optics rather than legal ones.

We have been promoting this story on social media for days. Our viewers are expecting it.
When it fails to air without a credible
explanation, the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship. We are trading 50 years of "Gold Standard" reputation for a single week of political quiet.
I care too much about this broadcast to watch
it be dismantled without a fight.
Sharyn

December 22, 2025 at 3:37 AM

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Scotland's No1 Comrade

@scotlandscomrade.bsky.social

Do any of us know the rough costs of a privatised national health system? Well here are some of the wild costs that you could actually pay if Farage gets his way.
I shit you not, We should all be so grateful for our NHS which under the SNP will always be free.
www.newsweek.com/watch-britis...

Watch British People React to Cost of U.S. Health Care: 'Shut the Fridge!'

A new video taken of apparently random British people on the street shows stunned reactions to the costs of U.S. health care.

www.newsweek.com

December 21, 2025 at 7:17 AM

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Carl Quintanilla

@carlquintanilla.bsky.social

December 21, 2025 at 1:36 PM

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T. Ryan Gregory 🇨🇦

@tryangregory.bsky.social

🤖🫧💥

futurism.com/artificial-i...

Professor Warns That the Wealthy Are Trying to Use AI to Seize Control of Everything

Renowned sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom says that AI is a tool for the rich to cement control over society.

futurism.com

December 21, 2025 at 8:05 PM

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Christopher Webb

@cwebbonline.com

Have you ever heard someone go off, and their words are so perfectly chosen, so well said in that moment, that you’re in awe? You think, “There’s nothing to add here,” and you applaud in your head.

That’s exactly this. Pure perfection. 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

December 21, 2025 at 3:40 PM

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Coates is Odd This Day

@oddthisday.bsky.social

Came across Clarissa Dickson-Wright’s autobiography in a charity shop. It is everything a devotee of weird history could hope for

Photo of a page of a book:
I didn't realise that the people who came to the house were often famous. There was the nice man who stood on his head to amuse me and who I called Udi who was Yehudi Menuhin. He once said to my mother, 'Molly, I love you because you never ask me to bring my violin.' Of course he sometimes did. There was the funny little man who once cooked a sponge cake in a frying pan to entertain me who was Philip Harben, the first TV cook.
There was the sweet Welshman who sang to me with a wonderful voice who was Harry Secombe. There was the serious Scotsman Uncle Alex Fleming who did tricks of legerdemain to divert me; and so many others. One of my mother's great friends was Audrey Pleydell-Bouverie who would sweep in smelling wonderful and call me poppet. She was lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mother, and when the King was alive she used to collect risqué jokes from my father for the QM to tell the King who adored them. She was the woman who had introduced the Prince of Wales to Wallis Simpson, thereby doing the country a great favour, as she put it.
The Prince of Wales, later Edward VIll, had a very unpleasant side; he was also born with one ball and a tiny penis so his obsession with Wallis was entirely sexual, and by using alum to…

…shrink her vagina and cold cream to lubricate it she enabled him to have 'normal' sex for the first time. As Audrey said, he wasn't a potential breeder so had the monarchy survived him we would have ended up with Queen Elizabeth in any event.

December 19, 2025 at 8:31 AM

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Spencer Hayes

@spnkr.bsky.social

Around half of San Francisco is without power right now and something like 1/3rd of intersections I drove through had waymos stopped in the middle of them making a dangerous situation even worse.

Do not let Waymo into your city.

December 21, 2025 at 4:05 AM

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Otto English

@ottoenglish.bsky.social

Everywhere you look in London it's REALLY festive this year.

I genuinely pity the "they've cancelled Christmas" lot.

Like a Milli Vanilli* tribute act they've got nothing to work with

Otto English @ottoenglish.bsky.social · 4d

Joyous festive band in Lewisham shopping centre.

December 20, 2025 at 8:15 PM

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Ed Zitron

@edzitron.com

I don’t know how anyone can still talk about “the AI revolution” with a straight face. Reuters story about a railroad company that has sunk $300,000 into “developing AI products” and appears to have made…a chatbot that doesn’t work?
archive.is/2025.12.17-0...

Companies have also struggled with Al's lack of consistency.
Jeremy Nielsen, general manager at North American railroad service provider Cando Rail and Terminals, said the company recently tested an Al chatbot for employees to study internal safety reports and training materials.
But Cando ran into a surprising stumbling block: the models couldn't consistently and correctly summarize the Canadian Rail Operating Rules, a roughly 100-page document that lays out the safety standards for the industry.
Sometimes the models forgot or misinterpreted the rules; other times they invented them from whole cloth. Al researchers say models often struggle to recall what appears in the middle of a long document.
Cando has dropped the project for now, but is testing other ideas. So far the company has spent $300,000 on developing
Al products.
"We all thought it'd be the easy button," Nielsen said. "And that's just not what happened."

December 21, 2025 at 3:14 AM

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Doug Cameron

@dncameron.bsky.social

Looks like a Royal Commission is on the cards. Terms of Reference will be important. Will it:
•Examine the role of religious extremism in a secular society?
. The impact of Israeli genocide, imperialism, and apartheid on domestic politics?
. The influence of Israel on MPs?

December 20, 2025 at 9:34 PM

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Dr. Jonathan Foley

@globalecoguy.bsky.social

If people could just intuitively understand the difference between a million, a billion, and a trillion, we’d all be better off.

That applies to dollars. To tons of carbon. And so on.

Math. It matters.

December 19, 2025 at 2:47 PM

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Albert Pinto

@70sbachchan.bsky.social

This is a great PHOTO ESSAY on “solar hockey stick of hope”, and countries breaking free of oil and gas dependence.

IF your country's media isn't telling you about the renewables global boom, then consider why....
www.science.org/content/arti...
bsky.app/profile/scie...

Science Magazine @science.org · 6d

Science has named the seemingly unstoppable growth of renewable energy worldwide as the 2025 Breakthrough of the Year.

Learn more about this year's #BOTY and other big advances in science: https://scim.ag/493Tpgx

Qianjiadong Reservoir in southern Hunan, China, produces a double harvest: solar energy and yellow carp. The solar farm produces up to 80 megawatts of power while the fish forage beneath the panels. With a massive scale-up of solar and wind at home and cheap exports of the technology, China is driving a worldwide surge of renewable energy—Science’s 2025 Breakthrough of the Year.

December 19, 2025 at 9:02 PM

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Fran

@artistofnature.bsky.social

December 19, 2025 at 10:43 AM

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Alex Ip 葉清霖

@alexip718.com

Behold: the first-ever list of news outlets that have banned generative AI in their reporting. As of today, this is literally information that you cannot find on Google.

My goal is to fill the starter pack, so please send over suggestions with supporting evidence!

go.bsky.app/8cn1XfT

December 17, 2025 at 7:18 PM

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Sarah Murphy

@13sarahmurphy.bsky.social

Great to have such an enthusiastic support for rejoining Erasmus from the Vice Chancellor of Oxford University on #t4today
No stupid questions about whether this was anti-Brexit.
Just unequivocal celebration of the chance to broaden our horizons again. A step on the road back to sanity.

December 17, 2025 at 7:59 AM

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Saul Staniforth

@saulstaniforth.bsky.social

Let's be very clear what's happened: the BMA has been trying to negotiate with the govt for months (when there was no flu epidemic). As late as November the BMA were trying to get round the table & wrote a letter to Wes Streeting. He didn't bother replying.