Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Kelly Lynn Thomas @kellylynnthomas.bsky.social · 12h

Which is to say, I've just downloaded this book and look forward to reading it! Hell yeah open access!

Kelly Lynn Thomas @kellylynnthomas.bsky.social · 12h

I've actually been thinking a lot about utopia (because of Le Guin, of course), specifically in the context of dystopia—both because of the dystopia we seem to be living in and because of how popular dystopian fiction has always been compared to utopian fiction.

University of Michigan Press @uofmpress.bsky.social · 16h

Did you know it is Banned Books Week? We're featuring our new book "Fear the Future" by Matthew Benjamin Cole, which discusses frequently banned books like 1984, Brave New World, and Handmaid's Tale and how dystopian stories have influenced political thought. Read it at doi.org/10.3998/mpub...

A stack of copies of "Fear the Future" appear the text discussing banned books, 1984, Brave New World, Anthem, The Handmaid's Tale, Never Let Me Go, and We

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Kelly Lynn Thomas @kellylynnthomas.bsky.social · 15h

Governor Shapiro needs to get on this. Just because PA hasn't been targeted for this yet doesn't mean we won't be. "Bad things" happen in Philadelphia, after all.

Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 21h

JB Pritzker and Gavin Newsom are doing something new and important: They understand Stephen Miller's theory of fascist power politics, and they've developed a theory on how to combat it. More Dems need to reckon with Miller's understanding of the moment.

New from me:
newrepublic.com/article/2014...

Inside Stephen Miller’s Secret Plan to Normalize Trump’s Dictator Rule

He wants to supercharge searing civil tensions to get low-information voters to embrace their inner authoritarian. Exactly two Democrats appear to fully grasp this.

newrepublic.com

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Kelly Lynn Thomas @kellylynnthomas.bsky.social · 18h

"How do you do it? / You get through it then you put yourself through it again"*

FOREVER by Charly Bliss is the '90s vibes pop(ish) album I need at the end of my 30s.

*This lyric is talking about love but it applies pretty well to life in general.

charlybliss.bandcamp.com/track/how-do...

How Do You Do It, by Charly Bliss

from the album FOREVER

charlybliss.bandcamp.com

Kelly Lynn Thomas @kellylynnthomas.bsky.social · 1d

I am in danger of turning into a person who listens to specific albums with specific audio setups based on minor sound differences.

Is . . . Is this my mid-life crisis?

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Kelly Lynn Thomas @kellylynnthomas.bsky.social · 1d

We've been thinking about moving for a number of reasons, and it seems we can afford very few neighborhoods in the city itself. It's very expensive to be a single gay male these days!

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Kelly Lynn Thomas @kellylynnthomas.bsky.social · 1d

TIL I am a single gay male. Guess I have a lot of self-reflection to do.

Berny Belvedere @bernybelvedere.bsky.social · 1d

fellas is it gay to live in a city

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Reposted by Kelly Lynn Thomas

ProPublica @propublica.org · 2d

Records obtained by ProPublica indicate that food banks across the country were expecting more than 27 million pounds of chicken, 2 million gallons of milk, 10 million pounds of dried fruit and 60 million eggs that never arrived.

Trump Canceled 94 Million Pounds of Food Aid. Here’s What Never Arrived.

ProPublica obtained records from the Department of Agriculture that detail the millions of pounds of food, down to the number of eggs, that never reached food banks because of the administration’s cut...

projects.propublica.org

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Kelly Lynn Thomas @kellylynnthomas.bsky.social · 2d

Big mood. I did enjoy the chance for some revision as I typed up drafts, but it was such a process. I have tendinitis now thst makes it harder to handwrite as much as I used to, though.

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The Librarians Film @thelibrariansfilm.bsky.social · 2d

@librarianjones.com is a hero and a well-deserved Time100 “The World’s Most Influential Rising Stars”!

time.com/collections/...

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Kelly Lynn Thomas @kellylynnthomas.bsky.social · 2d

A bunch of these are in my TBR as well!

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Kelly Lynn Thomas @kellylynnthomas.bsky.social · 2d

And here is a helpful list of Banned and challenged books by living marginalized authors!

Bisexual Kaiju @bisexualkaiju.myatproto.social · 2d

So you want to support living marginalized banned authors but your local banned books week displays and events are full of famous dead people?

Not to worry: your helpful non-binary bookseller is here to help!

A thread!

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Kelly Lynn Thomas @kellylynnthomas.bsky.social · 2d

Started reading THAT LIBRARIAN by Amanda Jones (@librarianjones.com) yesterday in honor of Banned Book Week.

Librarians and library workers have been on the front lines of the modern fight for intellectual freedom for decades. Follow them, read them, listen to what they have to say.

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ʕᵔᴥᵔʔ Milla Lorelei Mélomane 💙 ʕᵔᴥᵔʔ @britpoptarts.bsky.social · 3d

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Kelly Lynn Thomas @kellylynnthomas.bsky.social · 3d

Hah! In general I'm just not a huge TV or sitcom person. My spouse loves Curb, but I'll probably never watch it. I've found I have particular comedic tastes and that style of comedy generally doesn't align. I also (perhaps blasphemously) don't find Mel Brooks to be all that funny.

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Kelly Lynn Thomas @kellylynnthomas.bsky.social · 3d

As someone who grew up in a strict Evangelical household, I have some big cultural gaps, but I've been working on filling them in.

I've still never seen more than 5 minutes of Friends or Seinfeld. I guess it's also culturally weird for me to have never seen Elf.

Hannah Fearn @hannahfearn.bsky.social · 4d

Inspired by a post I just saw in which someone admitted they hadn’t seen a single episode of Friends nor the film Love Actually… what cultural hole do you have that’s a bit weird for your generation?

I’ll go first: I haven’t seen Dirty Dancing.

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Kelly Lynn Thomas @kellylynnthomas.bsky.social · 4d

It's like she's talking about AI here, but this essay is from 1982.

From Le Guin, "A Non-Euclidean View of California as a Cold Place to Be," 1982.

"to count upon technological advance for anything but technological advance is a mistake"

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Chill Subs @chillsubs.bsky.social · 5d

It’s always hard to start up a lit mag and get momentum, but we think these folks have cracked the code 💥💪 Here’s 10 amazing places to submit if you want to support publications that are coming into the spotlight! ✨🩵

www.chillsubs.com/lists/new-li...

#writingcommunity #publishing #poetry

New lit mags blowing up right now and they want your writing!

• Strange Pilgrims #Real, surreal & brutally beautiful

• Seedlings #Roots in the old world and branches in the new

• RUNT Magazine #Proudly elevating the small and scrappy

• Heavy Traffic Magazine #Unbounded, instinctual writing

• Vellichor Literary #Raw, indie, and DIY expression

• Trash Cat Lit #Treasure in unexpected places

• Bread and Butter Magazine #Simplicity and the core of the human experience

• The CryptoNaturalist #David Attenborough meets The X Files

• The Bloomin' Onion #All stories come from somewhere

• wildscape. literary journal #Whimsical, chaotic, gentle, and everything in-between

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Kelly Lynn Thomas @kellylynnthomas.bsky.social · 5d

I'm picking up albums from Charly Bliss and Driveways today!

How about you?

Bandcamp @bandcamp.com · 9d

This Friday is Bandcamp Friday! On October 3rd, from midnight to midnight PST, we'll once again waive our revenue share and pass the funds directly to artists & labels.

This Friday is Bandcamp Friday

daily.bandcamp.com

Kelly Lynn Thomas @kellylynnthomas.bsky.social · 7d

"Microsoft says its Agent Mode in Excel has an accuracy rate of 57.2 percent in SpreadsheetBench, a benchmark for evaluating an AI model’s ability to edit real world spreadsheets."

This is supposed to be a selling point, Microsoft? 57.2 percent accuracy?

The Verge @theverge.com · 9d

Microsoft launches ‘vibe working’ in Excel and Word

Vibe working is all about Office’s new Agent Mode.

buff.ly

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Kelly Lynn Thomas @kellylynnthomas.bsky.social · 7d

I'm reading a collection of essays by Ursula K. Le Guin right now (because I want to begin my 40th year the correct way), and the amount of wisdom and foresight this woman had in the '70s continues to blow me away. What a gift she is. What a gift her words continue to be.

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Kelly Lynn Thomas @kellylynnthomas.bsky.social · 7d

It does feel like there's been at least a little resurgence in niche hobby areas. I know so many people getting back into vinyl and CDs (and even cassettes!) and canceling their streaming services. So . . . maybe it's less of a fantasy than we might think!

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Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 7d

We are thrilled to announce that our NEW Large Language Model will be released on 11.18.25.

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Matt Bell @mdbell79.bsky.social · 27d

Anyway! I like this idea of being a utopian: doing the work, following the process, building toward the better world. The point isn’t that the better world doesn’t ever fully arrive. It’s that you did your part to inch everyone else toward it.

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Tommy Stella @tommystella.bsky.social · Aug 20

Hey you! You can now read issue 1 of MUSTN'T TELL for free! Right now! Click this link! If you enjoy it, there's a link to back the Kickstarter right there for you! Also let me know what you think about it. We're really proud of this story and I love sharing it. bindings.app/read/s76RCTjM

Mustn't Tell Issue 1 (of 5)

A horror story full of humor, heart, and 2000s nostalgia! What are the monsters that live under our bed? Are they real? Does that even matter?

bindings.app

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