Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Nicki Clarkson

Greg Jenner @gregjenner.bsky.social · 20h

Just to say that teachers do an incredibly difficult job, with all the right intentions, and can be the defining influence on a young person's life. They are the exact opposite of poisoners because good teaching provides the antidote to so many dangers

The Guardian @theguardian.com · 21h

Nigel Farage says UK teachers are ‘poisoning our kids’ and predicts strikes as PM

Exclusive: Reform UK leader, speaking at event for private US college, also claimed the ‘Marxist left’ controls education Nigel Farage has predicted teachers would go on strike within weeks of a Reform UK government, and accused them of “poisoning our kids” by telling them that black children are victims and white children oppressors. The Reform UK leader set out his view on British schools in an event for a private US Christian college in Michigan, claiming the “Marxist left” was “now in control of our education system”. Continue reading...

www.theguardian.com

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LSE Impact Blog @lseimpactblog.bsky.social · 7d

💥New: Open educational resources should be central to the public mission of universities

✍️ @niamhtumelty.bsky.social & @heroicendeavour.bsky.social

#OpenResearch #AcademicSky #HigherEducation (@lsepress.bsky.social)

Open educational resources should be central to the public mission of universities - Impact of Social Sciences

Why open educational resources should form a central part of university strategies for public engagement.

blogs.lse.ac.uk

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Nicki Clarkson @nickiclarkson.bsky.social · 4d

Can you imagine the chaos? 😱

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Nicki Clarkson @nickiclarkson.bsky.social · 4d

This beautiful little menace (who featured in my comedy set at the uni Open Day this afternoon) has found a new way to get to my houseplants which does not bode well for them

Me, holding a black and white cat to take a selfie. I look happier about it than he does!

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British Library @britishlibrary.bsky.social · 8d

Hwæt! 🐉

Ever wondered what the epic poem Beowulf sounds like spoken in Old English?

#NationalPoetryDay

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Popehat Agitates And Irritates @kenwhite.bsky.social · 8d

Every few months now I re-read this "Who Goes Nazi?" piece from 1941 and am blown away by how it captures the people we are dealing with 80 years later.

harpers.org/archive/1941...

Who Goes Nazi?, by Dorothy Thompson

harpers.org

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Charlotte Lydia Riley @lottelydia.bsky.social · 11d

Yep yep yep. I teach courses that are based on my expertise as a researcher and my work in the archives. Why on earth would I add a conservative pundit to one of those courses? What would they add?

Jonathan Ladd @jonmladd.bsky.social · 13d

Inviting pundits to give "talks" is just not what professors/departments do. Some schools have "institutes of politics" that do this, like @gupolitics.bsky.social at Georgetown, which invites conservatives regularly. Departments invite scholars for talks, and I rarely know their personal politics.

James Medlock @jdcmedlock.bsky.social · 13d

More than anything, they want to be patted on the head and told they're a good boy by the liberal elites

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Orkney Library & Archive @orkneylibrary.bsky.social · 13d

Mordor on the Orient Express

Biographies of J.R.R. Tolkien and Agatha Christie

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Laurie Stras @lauriestras.bsky.social · 14d

OMG Peter @nickiclarkson.bsky.social you are genius

Peter Webster @peterwebster.bsky.social · 15d

Introducing the Southampton Digital Scholarship team mascot:

Just who is Peter the Penguin?

library.soton.ac.uk/digital-scho...

Inside Digital Scholarship - Digital Scholarship - LibGuides@Southampton at University of Southampton Library

library.soton.ac.uk

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Nicki Clarkson @nickiclarkson.bsky.social · 15d

The whole series of #AHistoryOfEnglandIn25Poems is incredible. I was unfamiliar with most of the poems so it was a delight to discover them, and hear Catherine unwrap and explain the words and their context. The absolute best of audacious empathy

Catherine Clarke @cathamclarke.bsky.social · 18d

Just finished listening to the first episode of #AHistoryOfEnglandIn25Poems. Did they play me out with Elgar's Nimrod? Of course they did! Broadcast every day this week at 11.45 (repeated at half past midnight) + on BBC Sounds: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand...

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Micah @rincewind.run · 21d

Discworld QOTD, from Eric

“‘Multiple exclamation marks,’ he went on, shaking his head, ‘are a sure sign of a diseased mind.’”

Micah @rincewind.run · 22d

Discworld QOTD, from The Last Hero

Just a moment, boys," said Mrs McGarry quietly. "Are we thinking this one through? Look around you."
They looked around.
"Well?" Cohen demanded.
"There’s me, and you," said Vena, "And Truckle and Boy Willie and Hamish and Caleb and the minstrel."
"So? So?"
"That’s seven," said Vena. "Seven of us, against one of him. Seven against one. And he thinks he’s going to save the world. And he knows who we are and he’s still going to fight us…"
"You think he’s a hero?" cackled Mad Hamish. "Hah! Wha’ kind o’ hero works for forty-three dollars a month? Plus allowances!"
But the cackle was all alone in the sudden quietness. The Horde could calculate the particular mathematics of heroism quite quickly.
There was, there always was, at the start and finish… the Code. They lived by the Code. You followed the Code, and you became part of the Code for those who followed you. The Code was it. Without the Code, you weren’t a hero. You were just a thug in a loincloth.
The Code was quite clear. One brave man against seven… won. They knew it was true. In the past, they’d all relied on it. The higher the odds, the greater the victory. That was the Code.
Forget the Code, dismiss the Code, deny the Code… and the Code would take you.

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Nicki Clarkson @nickiclarkson.bsky.social · 21d

Fantastic, congratulations 🎉🎉🎉

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Nicki Clarkson @nickiclarkson.bsky.social · 24d

I showed my teenager daughter your beautiful book in Waterstones and mentioned that I sort-of know you. She looked at me with actual awe!

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Will Jennings 🗳️ @drjennings.bsky.social · 26d

A Labour government that does not fight back against the far right, racism and extremism fundamentally misunderstands the nature of its electoral support.

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Jamie Reilly 🦜 @reilly-coglab.com · 28d

As a parent of a trans kid, the only ideology I know of is that people want to be allowed to be themselves and stay alive. It’s pretty minimalist as far as ideologies go. Shit is so dangerous right now.

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Nicki Clarkson @nickiclarkson.bsky.social · Sep 8

My phone showed me this memory from 4 years ago

A collage of 4 photos, all featuring someone wearing an inflatable dinosaur costume. The main photo shows the front cover of the book Jurassic Park with the dinosaur in the background behind a bay of books. The smaller images show the dinosaur holding a copy of the Veterinary Record, standing behind a map cabinet, and looming through bays of books.

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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · Sep 3

Something I didn't get to say yesterday:

We heard over and over during the event about "human-centered" approaches to "AI". But if refusal is not on the table (at every level: individual students and teachers right up through UNESCO) then we have in fact centered the technology, not the people.

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · Sep 3

It has been really interesting to attend UNESCO's Digital Learning Week (though unfortunately I'm not able to stick around). My public lecture from yesterday can be found here:

www.youtube.com/live/l-OWi6V...

>>

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Micah @rincewind.run · Sep 1

Discworld QOTD, from Men at Arms

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars.

Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.

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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · Aug 31

The Somebody Else's Problem field is much simpler and more effective, and what's more can be run for over a hundred years on a single torch battery. This is because it relies on people's natural disposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain.

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Eleanor Morton @eleanormorton.bsky.social · Aug 29

We Have AI Now

www.youtube.com/shorts/8-lgJ...

We Have AI Now

YouTube video by Eleanor Morton

www.youtube.com

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Alex von Tunzelmann @alexvont.bsky.social · Aug 28

It’s nice they’ve left a lot of space to fill in some extra words. I feel like we could cheer these up:
Employ Capybaras
We Are All British
Up the Workers

Matthew Holehouse @matthewholehouse.bsky.social · Aug 28

Anduril campaign in Westminster tube. The agency got the “securonomics is back” memo

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Vanessa is the name of the Doctor! @hpsvanessa.bsky.social · Aug 27

Remember when prime ministers would lose their jobs for, like, leaving a mic on and saying something honest about a member of the public. God, the innocent, sweet days when anyone cared about anything and there were actual consequences and not just mush and horror.

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Eize Basa @eizebasa.baby · Aug 9

This is why physical media is still so important.

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Nicki Clarkson @nickiclarkson.bsky.social · Aug 24

Look how gleeful I am to be at Southampton Pride with the amazing Hannah from our Digital Scholarship team, using the team’s portable 3D printer

Selfie of me, a middle aged white woman, grinning with Hannah behind me looking far more normal

3D printer in operation, printing 9 yellow keyrings in the shape of stars with cutout hearts in the centres

The 3D printed keyrings when they are nearing completion

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Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · Aug 20

To be clear, we write and review stuff for all these publishers for free.

Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · Aug 20

Jisc and UUK seeking 5-15% price reductions from Big 5 publishers – Elsevier, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, Wiley and Sage. The negotiations, which are not going well, conclude on 29 August. If they fail, several universities may be walking away from their current deals, losing access in 2026.

‘Business-as-usual’ offers from publishers raise walk-away fears

Disappointing offers which ‘miss financial reality’ faced by UK higher education have heightened speculation that institutions will ditch proposed deals

www.timeshighereducation.com

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