Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

saul badman @saulelbein.bsky.social · 15h

These books rule. They are an oasis in the modern wasteland of dried-out IP, you will not get a better use of your time for $6

Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 21h

Fuck Prime Day. PDFs of GHOST DAYS and IN THE SNOW, THE JUNGLE are on sale for just 3$ today, which means you can grab this fully illustrated short story collection AND its followup novella for just $6.

Get your Appalachian historical folklore/horror fix here!

www.asherelbein.com/store

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saul badman @saulelbein.bsky.social · 19h

This is a really good job for a Texas journalist looking to build a platform, and The Barbed Wire is a great outfit to be associated with.

Olivia Messer @oliviamesser.bsky.social · 20h

A vast majority of Texas outlets’ coverage of queer life in the focuses on our disenfranchisement, but queer people in Texas aren’t always victims of a tragedy. Often we’re the hero, the performer, the jokester, the observer. We want to tell those stories too.

www.journalismjobs.com/job-listing/...

JournalismJobs.com - Job Listing - Queer Texas Culture & Newsletter Writer

JournalismJobs.com has journalism and media job listings with digital media, newspapers, tv stations, radio stations, magazines, nonprofits, and academia.

www.journalismjobs.com

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saul badman @saulelbein.bsky.social · 1d

Who knew that taxonomy needed so badly to be Disrupted

Karen James @kejames.bsky.social · 1d

I definitely did not have this on my bingo card when I started out in taxonomy and systematics. 😩

saul badman @saulelbein.bsky.social · 1d

Tapping the sign

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saul badman @saulelbein.bsky.social · 1d

oh fuck they followed them literally

saul badman @saulelbein.bsky.social · 1d

Listen I gave them *very* precise instructions, it should be fine

saul badman @saulelbein.bsky.social · 1d

Worth remembering that civilians don't *have* a commander in chief, as @samadlerbell.bsky.social and @mattsitman.bsky.social pointed out a while ago

David Gilbert @davidgilbert.bsky.social · 1d

I see the possible arson attack at a judge's home over the weekend (that nearly killed members of her family) has not impacted Matt Walsh's incendiary rhetoric about judges....

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saul badman @saulelbein.bsky.social · 1d

Listen I gave them *very* precise instructions, it should be fine

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saul badman @saulelbein.bsky.social · 1d

If you think of Bari Weiss's main art as the mountebank-ish performance of journalism, then I think we have to recognize the CBS thing as her Mona Lisa — as I argued to @oliviamesser.bsky.social

Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 1d

This, to me, is so telling. When proven wrong, Bari Weiss invites her critic on a podcast. The rotten fruit of the "debate" tree, the fetishization of debate as a conversation in which one "wins" or "loses," "owns" or is "owned." A side-effect of capitalism's anti-intellectual higher ed arms race.

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d

perhaps the biggest story TFPever ran was a catastrophically shoddy argument that George Floyd ackshully died of an overdose. When confronted with irrefutable evidence that the piece was simply wrong, Weiss didn’t take it down, she asked her critic, @radleybalko.bsky.social, to come on a podcast.

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saul badman @saulelbein.bsky.social · 1d

More on this later, probably in Heat Death, I'm going mushroom foraging with this cool new book I just generated in Gemini

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saul badman @saulelbein.bsky.social · 1d

But they are like scalpels: specialized tools. You don't want to just go waving one around in the workplace without training.

Unfortunately the trillion dollar valuations of the industry weren't built on the idea that they were making cool but problematic tools with narrow, specialized use cases

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saul badman @saulelbein.bsky.social · 1d

To be clear (and this is a point of debate between me and @asherelbein.bsky.social) : LLMs are really cool. They mean, for example, that I can more or less code in python. They are incredible search engines and text retrieval tools ... provided you have the bandwidth and skill to fact check them.

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saul badman @saulelbein.bsky.social · 1d

and the problem with LLMs is that a lot of what they produce pass superficial muster as good work.

So you have Google or Microsoft aggressively pushing you to save time and effort by using their built-in tools ... which is an easier thing to do the more you do it.

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saul badman @saulelbein.bsky.social · 1d

Far from enhancing productivity, the push to add AI tools to every scrap of enterprise software may be ... destroying it?

Which makes sense! There's been a madcap push to stick addictive work-simulating software into every digital space where people collaborate ...

hbr.org/2025/09/ai-g...

AI-Generated “Workslop” Is Destroying Productivity

Despite a surge in generative AI use across workplaces, most companies are seeing little measurable ROI. One possible reason is because AI tools are being used to produce “workslop”—content that appea...

hbr.org

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saul badman @saulelbein.bsky.social · 1d

stop don't make me love them

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saul badman @saulelbein.bsky.social · 1d

what's frustrating is that there is obviously something there ... that machine is groping blindly towards, as microrhizzae seek springtails to murder

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saul badman @saulelbein.bsky.social · 1d

We've also been getting a lot clearly AI generated fungus-themed pitches, so if you have those please send.

To be clear, we categorically won't use them, and will probably blacklist those who send them, as we do other AI submissions.

But! They *would* be helpful for a coming piece, so

Gretchen Felker-Martin 🍉 @scumbelievable.bsky.social · 7d

Saul and Asher write beautifully on a number of ecological, sociological, folkloric, and art/cultural topics, and the essays they commission are just fantastic across the board. Really, really recommend shifting away from big pubs and into reading things like Heat Death.

Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 7d

We're just nine people away from hitting our 500th subscriber. Anyone want to help us get there?

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saul badman @saulelbein.bsky.social · 1d

I like to think it's network-being solidarity

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saul badman @saulelbein.bsky.social · 1d

Tapping the sign

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saul badman @saulelbein.bsky.social · 4d

@melissaryan.bsky.social I’m curious what other outlets are on your normie politics index

saul badman @saulelbein.bsky.social · 4d

Are they … explicitly promising that it will make Donald Trump young again

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Reposted by saul badman

Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 7d

We're just nine people away from hitting our 500th subscriber. Anyone want to help us get there?

Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 8d

If you like the kind of writing we publish on Heat Death, all we ask is that you share our pieces, spread the word, and subscribe!

(And just a reminder: our paid HEAT DEATH subscriptions are for either $2 or $5 a month, which is -- frankly -- a steal.)

Heat Death

A newsletter about yesterday, tomorrow, and all the crises in between.

heat-death.ghost.io

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Reposted by saul badman

Gretchen Felker-Martin 🍉 @scumbelievable.bsky.social · 7d

Saul and Asher write beautifully on a number of ecological, sociological, folkloric, and art/cultural topics, and the essays they commission are just fantastic across the board. Really, really recommend shifting away from big pubs and into reading things like Heat Death.

Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 7d

We're just nine people away from hitting our 500th subscriber. Anyone want to help us get there?

Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 8d

If you like the kind of writing we publish on Heat Death, all we ask is that you share our pieces, spread the word, and subscribe!

(And just a reminder: our paid HEAT DEATH subscriptions are for either $2 or $5 a month, which is -- frankly -- a steal.)

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saul badman @saulelbein.bsky.social · 6d

Your occasional reminder that there are a small, specific, known and deeply unpopular group of people both

1. pushing for this outcome and
2. that we do nothing to avoid or even forecast it

Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 7d

“If we continue, however, with the policies that we have out there, we are clearly on a pathway now of 2.7 degrees or 3 degrees where adaptation is simply not doable anymore. This is just what it is. We cannot protect Amsterdam from sea level rise of 3m. This is just not doable,” Thallinger said.

Why insurers worry the world could soon become uninsurable

Günther Thallinger, a board member at Allianz, one of the world's biggest insurers, says the climate crisis could make adaptation economically unviable.

www.cnbc.com

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saul badman @saulelbein.bsky.social · 6d

The big question is: does the Democratic Party have within it the structural ability for real reform?

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Reposted by saul badman

Mitch Anderson @manderson98.bsky.social · 7d

www.desmog.com/2025/09/29/r...
Follow the money. Exactly zero companies are betting their own $ on a new bitumen pipeline, while global investments in renewables and battery storage are surging. Canada needs to skate to where the puck is going, not where it was last decade. @mark-carney.bsky.social

Renewables Are a Global Economic Engine, Not a Culture War Threat

Energy companies are learning this lesson faster than Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.

www.desmog.com

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saul badman @saulelbein.bsky.social · 7d

… at a time when there is a real right-wing push to treat homelessness as crime

Brian Goldstone @brian-goldstone.bsky.social · 7d

If the Trump administration has its way, nearly *four million* people—half of them children—will be at imminent risk of eviction and homelessness.

Let that sink in.

Millions Could Lose Housing Aid Under Trump Plan

Drafts of unpublished rules obtained by ProPublica detail plans that would open the door to full-time work requirements, two-year limits on living in federally supported housing and stripping aid from...

www.propublica.org

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