Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Rebekah Higgitt @rhiggitt.bsky.social · 21h

I'm glad I still have several to discover!

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Rebekah Higgitt @rhiggitt.bsky.social · 1d

Hope you enjoy it!

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Rebekah Higgitt @rhiggitt.bsky.social · 1d

I read Robertson's The Testament of Gideon Mack earlier this year (a wise recommendation from the local library), which was inspired by Hogg's Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, which I'd finally read last year. Well written, funny, moving etc. Another one for your list!

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Rebekah Higgitt @rhiggitt.bsky.social · 1d

Current reading: James Robertson's 2003 Joseph Knight, an excellent charity shop purchase. Recommended as a novel & for the research on Scotland & slavery that underpins it. It's all there: Dundas's delay, Hume's racist footnote, Scots colliers etc en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_... #BlackHistoryMonth

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Reposted by Rebekah Higgitt

Dr Matt Pope @mattpope.bsky.social · 1d

Awful news from Wales, the St Fagan's Museum has been broken into and prehistoric goldwork has been taken. Its painful to think what objects might now be at risk. Thoughts with the museum team who must be devastated, all speed to the police and a curse on the crooks.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

St Fagans: Bronze Age gold jewellery stolen from musuem

Police are investigating a burglary at St Fagans museum in the early hours of Monday morning.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Rebekah Higgitt @rhiggitt.bsky.social · 1d

We, globally, are using ever-more electricity and renewables are supporting the rise, adding to rather than replacing use of fossil fuels (overall there's barely a decline, and there was an increase in the US and EU)
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Global renewable energy generation surpasses coal for first time

Record solar expansion and steady wind growth driving world’s shift away from fossil fuels in 2025, report finds

www.theguardian.com

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Rebekah Higgitt @rhiggitt.bsky.social · 3d

Enjoying the music and John Rae/ Arctic exploration theme on Cerys Matthews this morning, but wish she had a slightly less hagiographical 'expert' talking about it!

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Reposted by Rebekah Higgitt

Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 3d

Finally, an article that at least touches on teaching quality and staff workload issues. Not that it suggests any viable alternatives to the current state of play. (And for 'colleges' in the headline, read 'universities', a telling choice of nomenclature.

Grade deflation, overcrowding and ‘chaos’ as colleges scr...

Russell group hoovers up international students to stave off budget deficit fears

observer.co.uk

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Reposted by Rebekah Higgitt

New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 4d

For anyone else who's two weeks into the term and wondering if it was ever thus.

This is "H2O", aka John Logie Baird, writing for his student magazine in November 1912.

The Lecturer’s Lament
Woe! unto ye. Woe! Woe! Woe! for ye have hidden the chalk, and have omitted the dates from your exercises, and ye are all utterly condemned, save only Mr Brash, who hath gotten him full marks.

Woe! unto ye. Woe! for the day of the final examination cometh, and all of ye stand unprepared except only Mr Brash, who hath full marks.

Verily I say unto you, there shall be lamentation and great weeping, and many shall cry “Sir, Sir. Give unto me a class certificate,” and there shall be none given unto them.

And there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Ye laugh and make merry; ye make a great tumult with your feet; and one among you hath smitten me with a pea.

But woe unto Mr Russell, who sitteth on a back bench and doeth his mathematical exercise. Verily it shall be exceeding hard for him on the day of the examination.

What came ye here for to see? Fain would I have shown you crystals of Perthalium Tetroxide, very beautiful. Yea, and the Rhomboidal crystals of Formaloid, like unto which there are none others, and ye would not; putting me to confusion with your tumult.

And when I would have shown you Alums, very precious, ye mocked me, singing, “I care not for the stars that shine.”

Depart ye far from me. Get ye hence unto monkey houses; depart ye unto breweries, for I, having suffered long, will tarry here no longer with you.

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Rebekah Higgitt @rhiggitt.bsky.social · 5d

I haven't read the David Wootton review of @philipcball.bsky.social's Alchemy book, but Philip's response is insightful and well worth reading #histSTM philipball86.substack.com/p/was-alchem...

Was alchemy a load of nonsense?

David Wootton seems to think so; I disagree.

philipball86.substack.com

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Rebekah Higgitt @rhiggitt.bsky.social · 5d

You're ever-generous in your critique! It looks like he's embraced the caricature of alchemy - the elements defined as not science in the 18thC - so it's apples and pears with what you've written about

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Reposted by Rebekah Higgitt

Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 5d

The breadth of Jewish disapproval of Netanyahu is significantly under-reported in UK media. Views are never monolithic but the median British Jew feels an attachment to Israel and feels Netanyahu has been a disaster for Israel (Institute for Jewish Policy Research)
www.jpr.org.uk/reports/what...

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Rebekah Higgitt @rhiggitt.bsky.social · 5d

Would that Wootton review annoy me as much as the first few lines suggest it might?

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Reposted by Rebekah Higgitt

Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 5d

This is wonderful. I had no idea ideas per Lakoff about the centrality of metaphor in language go back so far. Delighted that my Alchemy book stimulated such thoughts.

Brigitte Nerlich @bnerlich.bsky.social · 5d

Today's post is of course about #metaphor, but also about #alchemy, about the history of science and about what we can learn from it for today's #genomic talk and #scicomm makingsciencepublic.com/2025/10/03/m...

Metaphor, alchemy and lessons from the 17th century

Philip Ball has just published a magnificent book on the history of alchemy: Alchemy: An Illustrated History of Elixirs, Experiments, and the Birth of Modern Science. This made me think about metap…

makingsciencepublic.com

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Rebekah Higgitt @rhiggitt.bsky.social · 6d

A bit of both - or maybe the latter, who use the former as an excuse!

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Rebekah Higgitt @rhiggitt.bsky.social · 6d

I visited the studios working on the Aeronauts film with Eddie Redmayne, and was very impressed by the design side and the research they put in. I even took them to the RAS to see archive notebooks, which they painstakingly recreated. Maybe seconds in the film?

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Rebekah Higgitt @rhiggitt.bsky.social · 6d

Good font work - they had fun!

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Rebekah Higgitt @rhiggitt.bsky.social · 6d

Now I know what to do with my free morning in Cambridge later this month 📜 www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...

Cats, coffins and sick notes: discovering Egypt’s forgotten workers in broken pottery

Cambridge exhibition showcases the lives of skilled workers who built some of the most famous sites in ancient Egypt

www.theguardian.com

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Rebekah Higgitt @rhiggitt.bsky.social · 7d

Was it really years ago? I remember this story exceptionally well

Laura Phillips @lauraphillips.bsky.social · 7d

Michael Crick, journalist: ‘Today's accusation by David Lammy about Farage & the Hitler Youth probably stems from a story I did years ago about a teacher at Dulwich College writing to the headmaster to say Farage was unsuitable to be a prefect since a colleague said he had "neo-fascist" views.’

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Rebekah Higgitt @rhiggitt.bsky.social · 8d

Will prepare to hunker down!

Rebekah Higgitt @rhiggitt.bsky.social · 8d

Hoping some at the Labour Party Conference are reading and digesting this

Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 8d

On the morning of Keir Starmer's conference speech here's a new post on an odd psychopathology in British politics - our main parties don't like the people who vote for them - the dreaded Professional Managerial Class. And so they are acting out like a divorced dad seeking cooler voters. 1/n

British Politics' Midlife Crisis

Why British Parties Can't Make Peace with Their Actual Voters

benansell.substack.com

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Rebekah Higgitt @rhiggitt.bsky.social · 8d

It has quite the list of alumnae!

Rebekah Higgitt @rhiggitt.bsky.social · 8d

That wasn't intended as a reason not to!

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Rebekah Higgitt @rhiggitt.bsky.social · 8d

Holst, of course, was inspired by astrology rather than astronomy to write The Planets (Rosalind Franklin, incidentally, did not thrive under his music teaching)

Marcus Chown @marcuschown.bsky.social · 9d

Gustav Holst was the school music teacher of Cecilia Payne, who discovered the chemical composition of the stars. He tried to get her to become a musician but she ignored him. She went on to write the most important astrophysics PhD of the 20th century and become the first woman professor at Harvard

New Leibniz @newleibniz.bsky.social · 17d

#classicalmusic #opera When I see "Gustav Holst" I can't help but wishing that he had stopped writing "The Planets" long before he got to Neptune. 🤮

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Rebekah Higgitt @rhiggitt.bsky.social · 8d

And your Radio 1 music now on Radio 2...

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