Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Rhys Needham @rhysneedham.bsky.social · 1h

Aren't there suggestions that Incitatus' elevation to high rank might well have been a satire by Caligula on the Roman equivalents of Mike Johnson?

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Joanne Harris @joannechocolat.bsky.social · 4h

The reason the Right are so invested in the myth that the arts have no value isn’t because the arts don’t generate wealth (they do); it’s that studying the arts teaches people to imagine better ways of judging the value of an idea than by counting how much money it makes…

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Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 7h

This morning I turned on my phone only to find that it had changed my user name to Shirley, and when I tried to enter a simple Google query it came out as "Do you like gladiator movies?"

Then I realised it was in Airplane! mode.

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Rhys Needham @rhysneedham.bsky.social · 1h

It's also where the nickname, Tricky Dick, seems to have originated.

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𝔾𝕆ℝ𝔸ℕ @gorangligovic.bsky.social · 1d

Learning about polo: Oh wow horses that’s awesome.

Learning about water polo, fully expecting dolphins: oh

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Alexander Clarkson @aphclarkson.bsky.social · 10h

In the early 2010s it was infuriating to see endless screeds on "legitimate concerns" against East Europeans from analysts and scholars who seemed oblivious to how the moment political leaders capitulated to this xenophobia it would just lead to escalating hatemongering against other diasporas

Captain Haddock @realcaptainhaddock.bsky.social · 10h

It was inevitable that “too many people speaking Polish” Brexitism would become outright “too many brown people”

And it’s what people like Gove, David Davis and Johnson enabled

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SPOOKY Mistress Usili (Sage) 🏳️‍⚧️ @usili.bsky.social · 2h

As a fun reminder, the paper to come out with the first hard evidence that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs didn't come until 1980 *and* the Chicxulub crater wasn't officially identified as the source until 1990 (despite its discovery in 1978).

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Rhys Needham @rhysneedham.bsky.social · 2h

By Luis Alvarez, who had worked on the Manhattan Project, and his son. Thankfully, his 'character' actually gets a cameo in Oppenheimer (unlike someone even more important like John von Neumann).

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David Henig @davidheniguk.bsky.social · 2h

Sorry, but if you're saying those implausible and shallow Kemi Badenoch announcements constitute a good speech then you're part of the UK's political problem.

Same half-baked "tax cut good / international commitments bad" bearing no resemblance to well formed policy.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 2h

A good example of why direct inflation adjustment of this sort is more deceptive than clarifying when applied over very long stretches of time where consumption patterns are very different.

Basic foods (bread/grain) probably devours a third of Cratchet's income, but not the modern worker's.

Karly Kingsley @karlykingsley.bsky.social · 4h

👇

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Patrick Cosmos @veryimportant.lawyer · Sep 8

“I’m strong and I want to have like fifty kids and a farm” of course you do. You’re twelve. “I don’t want to eat vegetables I think steak and French fries is the only meal” hell yeah homie you’re twelve. “Maybe if there’s crime we should just send the army” bless your heart my twelve year old buddy

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Patrick Cosmos @veryimportant.lawyer · Sep 8

working on a new unified theory of american reality i'm calling "everyone is twelve now"

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Tim Onion @bencollins.bsky.social · 3h

The most important political thread of our time.

Patrick Cosmos @veryimportant.lawyer · Sep 8

working on a new unified theory of american reality i'm calling "everyone is twelve now"

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Chise @sailorrooscout.bsky.social · 2h

GOOD NEWS! Researchers have discovered a powerful antibody, known as 04_A06, that is able to neutralize 98.5% of MORE THAN 300 different HIV strains AND permanently reduce HIV viral load to undetectable levels, making it one of the broadest-acting antibodies against HIV identified to date.

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The Onion @theonion.com · 2h

Area Man Has Far Greater Knowledge Of Marvel Universe Than Own Family Tree https://theonion.com/area-man-has-far-greater-knowledge-of-marvel-universe-t-1819571080/

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Dave Andress @davidandress.bsky.social · 2h

It's amazingly easy to execute an end-run around sounding like some kind of weirdo by simply advocating for children to be supported by society from birth through an appropriate system of universal benefits.

William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 3h

My most controversial take on this is probably that while I think reproductive freedom should be sacrosanct, I don’t really have any problem with additional taxes on (high income) childless people. Someone gotta pay into the pensions!

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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 5h

If I were the leader of the opposition a year after an election, facing an unpopular government, I would simply focus my energy on criticising the current government's policy record rather than constantly bemoaning the last fifteen years of policymaking, in which I was intimately involved.

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Rhys Needham @rhysneedham.bsky.social · 2h

This is after, of course, more than two decades after he was overthrown by his father's former pupil, one Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. Aka Lenin.

Rhys Needham @rhysneedham.bsky.social · 2h

web.archive.org/web/20160731.... Another more tragicomic one where he's holidaying with her relatives in Surfers Paradise, paranoid Stalin is sending asssassins over to kill him.

Which sounds like it could make for an interesting short play in the right hands.

Lateline - 22/09/2003: The Half-Hearted Revolutionary In Paradise . Australian Broadcasting Corp

web.archive.org

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Rhys Needham @rhysneedham.bsky.social · 2h

www.the-independent.com/news/long_re....

There's also the fascinating episode where he ends up spending his wife's last years in Brisbane (the posh part of Clayfield) immediately after the Second World War. After she sped through France after the Fall to get him out of the Nazis' clutches.

What was Russia’s last leader before the Bolshevik revolution like?

Kerensky has been much maligned by the history books. Here, his grandson tells Michael Hughes why he thinks his ‘self-effacing’ grandfather was misunderstood

www.the-independent.com

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Guy Trivago @convolutedname.bsky.social · 3h

These are the headlines Dems are getting for once and the polls to match, but there clout to chase and audiences to capture on niche microblogging sites

Aaron Fritschner @fritschner.bsky.social · 16h

“It’s true, all of it… it’s all true.”

Daily Beast: lol Republicans’ polls suck

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Rhys Needham @rhysneedham.bsky.social · 3h

Is this from before or after they made the ancient 'as the actress said to the bishop' joke less funny?

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Lord Businessman II @lordbusinessman.bsky.social · 7h

USAID was both morally correct and a huge part of our foreign policy, and that duality is hard for people to grapple with in a sincere way. But if we're going to reconstitute USAID after this shitshow is over, we should think about the pressures that creates and how to mitigate them

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Sean Morrow @snmrrw.bsky.social · 4h

"Many would consider him the Fifth Beatle," -Pam Bondi after asking ChatGPT to write some Epstein files for her.

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Elizabeth Boyle @thecelticist.bsky.social · 4h

Reminds me of this excellent sign that I saw at the Tubman African American Museum in Macon, Georgia.

Piano, which once belonged to Little Richard, with a sign on it saying "Do not attempt to play Little Richard's piano. He will know."

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