Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Tom Spoors @tomspoors.bsky.social · 4h

The media are too busy becoming the news rather than reporting it. The gap between fact and editorial opinion is increasingly narrow and our politicians are happy to live there like trolls under the bridge.

James O’Brien @mrjamesob.bsky.social · 5h

I sometimes worry I exaggerate the collective madness of our media but the people who cheered Brexit, Boris Johnson & Liz Truss's mini-budget are now applauding Kemi Badenoch's speech. 'Parallell universe' doesn't come close. I suppose her not falling over is a win of sorts for them at the moment.

Tom Spoors @tomspoors.bsky.social · 4h

Josh Johnson is an acute observer of humanity. He's also very funny and empathetic.
youtu.be/QU93N7saW_E?...

MAGA Mega Mad over Bad Bunny Bowl

YouTube video by Josh Johnson

youtu.be

Tom Spoors @tomspoors.bsky.social · 5h

Given that they interviewed 300,000 people globally from companies employing 1000 or more people when the 160,000,000 employees in the US alone let alone globally, the sample is hardly representative of working life.

Forbes @forbes.com · 1d

The 900 companies on this year's list of the top global employers offer employees generous benefits, career growth opportunities and a healthy work-life balance.

Meet The World’s Best Employers 2025

The 900 companies on this year's list of the top global employers offer employees generous benefits, career growth opportunities and a healthy work-life balance.

www.forbes.com

Reposted by Tom Spoors

altNOAA 🇺🇸 @altnoaa.bsky.social · 7h

"Getting elected to this office doesn't change you, it just amplifies who you are." ~ Pres. Obama

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Reposted by Tom Spoors

Peter Brannen @peterbrannen.bsky.social · 12h

Just remembered this jaw-dropping graph by @oceansclimatecu.bsky.social showing the rate of change in CO2 during the previous two deglaciations of the Pleistocene (which, as a fun aside, featured ~400 feet of sea level rise) as compared with today

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Tom Spoors @tomspoors.bsky.social · 6h

This anger is so warranted, so necessary. We CANNOT be complacent right now. But everything seems to be designed to reduce attention, demoralise, and then divert your energies elsewhere so all you can do is turn off your brain. @MyMampa from comments to the video.

Tom Spoors @tomspoors.bsky.social · 6h

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz0o...

"The extent to which these very powerful people feel NO sense of #responsibility to ANYthing makes me feel like maybe they shouldn't have this much power". Hank Green

#AI taking people’s #jobs isn’t the worst outcome - we managed to find a worse one!

Give me a single reason why Sora2 should exist.

YouTube video by Hank Green

www.youtube.com

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Tom Spoors @tomspoors.bsky.social · 6h

We used to have a branch of the Police in the UK called Traffic Wardens. They managed the administrative side of who was parking where and when leaving the police to police. Now it's all faux tax collectors in official-looking uniforms.

David Graeber Institute @davidgraeberinst.bsky.social · 1d

David Graeber on the police.

From an interview he gave a few years ago with the Scottish publication called Bella Caledonia. davidgraeber.org/interviews/t...

"The police don’t actually end up spending their time
fighting violent criminals. Instead, they enforce
administrative regulations and endless rules. So
rather than protecting us against violence, police
actually bring the threat of violence into situations
where it would have never occurred otherwise.
Most incidents of violence —domestic violence,
a drunken brawl, or gang fights— the police don’t
get involved. On the other hand, try driving down
the street with no license plates: how long will it
be before you are surrounded by people with weapons."

- David Graeber

Tom Spoors @tomspoors.bsky.social · 6h

Missing the point in Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" but REALLY getting exactly what it's about and not realising it!

But $700 dollars for a seat - that's surreal!

Jason @jxsxpx.bsky.social · 12h

On the one hand, this is like the perfect reaction to Waiting for Godot. This person took the themes and material and internalized them so profoundly that they didn't even know that they did it. On the other, please say sike.

Lux Alptraum @luxalptraum.com · 16h

TFW you paid $1400 to see Beckett’s most famous work without knowing anything about it

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Reposted by Tom Spoors

Aaron Milstein @neurosutras.bsky.social · 1d

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Tom Spoors @tomspoors.bsky.social · 22h

In Daniela's immortal words, "Don't be a silly koala!".
Trump has lost over 90% of his legal cases.
youtube.com/shorts/vIbmz...

Get Your Facts Straight: He is Not Winning Legal Battles

YouTube video by Knitting Cult Lady

youtube.com

Tom Spoors @tomspoors.bsky.social · 22h

Donald Tusk talks plainly. A man arrested under a European warrant is in detention while a tribunal decides if he should be extradited for his suspected role sabotaging Nord Stream 2 (NS2). Tusk posted, "The problem with NS2 is not that it has been destroyed. The problem is that it had been built."

Tom Spoors @tomspoors.bsky.social · 22h

The uploaded file was in slow motion and looked even better!

Reposted by Tom Spoors

The Editorial Board @editorialboard.bsky.social · 23h

There's a new book coming out called Crime and No Punishment by Penn's Marie Gottschalk. I got a promotional email with talking points. They are an accurate description.

New Talking Points

The United States is an exceptionally militarized, lethal, and violent country.
Rising corporate impunity, the financialization of the economy, militarized policing, the burgeoning carceral state, the opioid crisis, the Great Recession, and blowback from the forever wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere have fostered violence in America.
This includes not just interpersonal violence but also state, economic, structural, and political violence.
The growing concentration of military, economic, and political power has contributed to declines in life expectancy and quality of life as more people in the United States are at risk of losing their homes, health care, livelihoods, and savings.
This concentration of power has also siphoned off vital resources, preventing the country from mitigating the root causes of violent interpersonal crime.
Over the last five decades, the United States retreated from policing, prosecuting, and punishing elite-level corporate misconduct.
Meanwhile it doubled down on militarizing its police forces and punishing street crimes, drug crimes, and immigration offenses as the country became a world leader in incarcerating its people.
Donald Trump's electoral success is incomprehensible without a deeper understanding of how these developments have fostered violence in America and delegitimized and destabilized the political and economic systems.
The US failure to protect its people from all these harms has increased the brittleness of democracy in America, raising the prospect of a bleak, undemocratic future as violence begets more violence, and the country morphs into a dysfunctional state.

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Tom Spoors @tomspoors.bsky.social · 23h

Quadratic Equations are the bane of pupils' mathematical lives. Surely, though, these curves are beautiful to watch. This is the water ornament opposite La Bourse (old Stock Exchange) in Brussels.
#quadratic

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Tom Spoors @tomspoors.bsky.social · 1d

Another powerful singer/songwriter returns! Tanita Tikaram, Suzanne Vega, and Tori Amos were the backdrop to a changing part of my life. Outstanding lyrics and brilliant production that were just what I needed at the time. I'm happy she's back.
youtu.be/1__bGitHUvs?...

How Tanita Tikaram Became a LIAR - Documentary Trailer

YouTube video by TanitaTikaram

youtu.be

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Tom Spoors @tomspoors.bsky.social · 1d

The arts (music, plays, film), humanities (philosophy, language) and social sciences (history, geography, politics, economics) are vaccines against bad thinking, and the rich soup from which healthy culture grows.
They are anti-vaccines. They want to rule over the corpse of what makes the UK great..

Huw C. Davies @huwcdavies.bsky.social · 1d

Badenoch and friends hate universities and especially the arts, humanities and social sciences. They blame them for 'poisoning' and 'brainwashing' the minds of the young.

Reposted by Tom Spoors

Moose Allain @mooseallain.bsky.social · 1d

The sort of cartoon you'd expect to see from me

www.worldofmoose.com/products/con...

Cartoon showing a man reading from a dictionary to another. He says "So, it turns out confirmation bias means exactly what I expected it to mean|"

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Reposted by Tom Spoors

CEEFAUX @ceefaux.bsky.social · 1d

22.00 FILM: EVRI-THING, EVRI-WHERE ALL AT ONCE. Award-winning multiverse adventure when you parcel is somehow at the depot, in transit, in your safe place, left with a neighbour, delayed, returned to sender, in your green bin, all at the same time- but never actually with you.

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Tom Spoors @tomspoors.bsky.social · 1d

How many ministers have PPE degrees from Oxbridge? Politics and philosophy are all about the words you use and how you use them. No room for Plato or Bacon or Machiavelli or Mill or, or, or...
Culture is all in the language - denying language is denying culture.

The Bear @bearlypolitics.co.uk · 1d

So, the plan is to cut English, the arts, and sociology - the degrees that actually study culture - while on another part of your platform claiming to “defend” British culture.

It’s performance nationalism with a reading age of seven.

Badenoch: Curb students taking 'rip-off' degrees such as English
The performing arts, sociology and anthropology are among the subjects the Conservatives would like to cut

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Tom Spoors @tomspoors.bsky.social · 1d

An estimated percentage is all well and good (so to speak) but how many are paying for it?

Techmeme @techmeme.com · 1d

An overview of detailed AI usage reports from OpenAI and others, as Microsoft's AI for Good Lab estimates that 15% of the world's working population is using AI (Financial Times)

Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

Tom Spoors @tomspoors.bsky.social · 1d

If Western officials are "puzzled" (IISS* words) then it's a failure on their part to see the world as it is. One problem with 80 years of peace is that one loses one's edge, one's ability to see beyond one's self-imposed limits of strategic thinking.
*International Institute for Strategic Analysis

Keir Giles @keirgiles.bsky.social · 1d

Here is @nigelgould-davies.bsky.social on Russia’s disruption campaign against Europe. I’m not sure I would be so optimistic on the Kremlin being worried by US & EUR behaviour, but the conclusion is unshakeable: absent a serious response, this will get much worse.

www.iiss.org/online-analy...

Screenshot from linked article, saying Western officials are puzzled, but they shouldn’t be.

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Tom Spoors @tomspoors.bsky.social · 1d

Amy's focus on Eisenhower accepting full responsibility f the D-Day landing failed to gain a foothold. It shows the full power of the active voice. Words and grammar matter. Compare the power of, "I did this" versus the sloppier, "This has been done".

youtube.com/shorts/ltFKt...

What if D-Day had failed? #shorts #history

YouTube video by The Vintage Space

youtube.com

Tom Spoors @tomspoors.bsky.social · 1d

Dana inspires again. Who'd want to be Pam Bondi right now?
youtube.com/shorts/MOl6U...

Pam’s petulance…

YouTube video by danasinspired

youtube.com

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Tom Spoors @tomspoors.bsky.social · 1d

Elle Cordoba giving Bobby Pickett vibes..
youtube.com/shorts/4Iu3g...

They did the Monster Slash

YouTube video by Elle Cordova

youtube.com