Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 8h

I think this is very astute

Sara Hinkley @boneysoups.bsky.social · 2d

which is why fandom as a site of exchange between writers and readers/fans is also a site of contestation. some fans really seem to hate the creators of the thing they love, as if they resent their power to impose problems. even when they don't there's for sure a kind of jockeying that goes on

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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 8h

You're living through one of the biggest technological transformations in world history and it has nothing to do with AI

Jan Rosenow @janrosenow.bsky.social · 1d

Grid scale batteries are changing our electricity system. Excellent new visual story on batteries in FT today shows just how far this technology has evolved.

Fasten your seatbelts, this is just the beginning.

ig.ft.com/mega-batteri...

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 7d

Appalachia, 1900. Things ancient and dead haunt the green hills. A young woman — cast out by strange tragedy — walks the road on her wooden leg, practicing witchery and settling spirits. (The hardest to settle might be her own.)

Digital copies of GHOST DAYS are $6! Grab one for spooky season!

Ghost Days ebook — ASHER ELBEIN

A short story collection about a wandering witch in 1900s Appalachia

www.asherelbein.com

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 9h

I've probably been listening to too much @mikeduncan.bsky.social lately, but you can definitely at the Islamic conversion of Arabia as something akin to a social revolution that is in some ways wildly successful and in other ways fails and ends with the same ruling clique in charge for a while

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 9h

Reading Reza Aslan's NO GOD BUT GOD, his history of the Islamic development, and it's interesting how... counter-revolutionary a lot of the Qureshi caliphs are not long after Mohammad's death, and how much the false hadiths assist in the project of rolling back a lot of the social/gender reforms

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 9h

You can read her masters thesis here, and should, if you're interested in paleobotany at all

ttu-ir.tdl.org

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 9h

There's very little about Dr. Abbott to be found online: just her papers and her masters thesis on collecting Carboniferous fossils in North Central Texas, which is how I stumbled on her. I just spent a few hours going through her papers at Sul Ross. A very interesting and lively woman.

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 9h

Dr. Maxine “Max” Abbott (née Langford) is an oft-forgotten paleontologist of early 20th century Texas. Born in the 1920s, this pint-sized paleobotanical powerhouse worked on the Carboniferous swamps of North America and the Cretaceous jungles of Texas.

(All photos from her papers at Sul Ross.)

A dark-haired woman with an upturned nose, a white shirt, a ribbon and a plaid skirt holds up a piece of carboniferous plant material from her work desk, where she's been painting it with clear varnish to preserve it

A 1950s news article about Maxine Abbott's NSF grant, which notes that she was previously conducting her paleobotany research as a volunteer while at Cincinnati and working in a local department store office three days a week to pay research costs.

A black and white photo of a young Maxine Langford in the 1930s at Texas Tech, smiling at the camera from a bench. She's wearing a knee-length dress, a plaid short sleeved shirt, and glasses. She's clearly very small.

A photo of undergraduate Maxine Langford posing climbing in through the window of an abandoned stone building new Mexico, wearing field pants, boots, and a short sleeve shirt. It's a great look, honestly.

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 10h

That is not quite my read on the situation: I think there are certainly elements in the administration that want to escalate fully in a pedal-to-the-metal fashion, but I think more broadly they seem to feel shaky and insecure. (Which does not make them less dangerous!)

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ashley scarebanks 💀🕯️ @ziibiing.com · 19h

lol “find your own instead of stealing” in defense of columbus day

AJ West • 1h
Find your own holiday instead of stealing. Today is Columbus Day as designated by the federal government
Reply
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Ville Sinkkonen @villesinkkonen.bsky.social · 1d

Drawing them carboniferous creepy crawlies #sciart

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 20h

fundamentally they do not believe in citizens, only subjects, and barely sentient ones at that

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Literally Miguel 🇻🇪 @literallymiguel.bsky.social · Sep 1

Kostensuchus atrox, one of the coolest discoveries from this year, and the best peirosaurid crocodyliform yet found in my opinion

very innocently running up to play with an Isasicursor! how wholesome! #paleoart

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Ferwen @ferwen.bsky.social · 21h

Quantitative assessment of community structure of fossil forests from the Devonian to Jurassic periods 🧪⚒️ 🌴
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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Greg Pak @gregpak.net · 21h

NO KINGS, y'all! October 18! Find a rally near you and GO!

nokings.org

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 21h

Wait, yeah, some of that's coming back to me now. I do wonder whether some of the change in coverage/tone of the threats is because there's zero counter-programming this time around

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 21h

Okay I know I've been Posting a lot this morning but, genuinely: the adminstration didn't publicly freak out nearly this much during the No Kings protest earlier this year, right? I don't remember as many threats and dire warnings issued ahead of time. Am I just misremembering?

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 21h

These people are evil and dangerous but also, it is important to note, very stupid

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 21h

But, of course, they *are* essentially authoritarians, so naturally they are tripping over themselves to call a No Kings! demonstration un-american, bleating that it's funded by (((foreign actors))) and hinting darkly that they may have to use violence to suppress it

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 21h

The way to take the wind out of the No Kings protests -- if the administration were smart -- would be celebrating it as an example of our wonderful constitutional rights of free speech and assembly

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 21h

Actually, I should amend this slightly: a lot of column B *also* aren't actually protestors and are engaging in They Aren't Protesting The Right Way, just from the oppositie direction

Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 22h

I think some of the Frogsuit discourse arrives from a.) the contingent of experienced, radical protestors who are pre-emptively defensive about being told by non-protestors that They Aren't Protesting The Right Way and b.) the contingent of protestors offended by a protest looking cringe or silly

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 21h

Anyway, the main takeaway is: get together with all of your friends and hit the streets on October 18th. The point is to be visible, difficult to ignore, and make the administration look like the authoritarian thugs they are. Could do a lot worse than an inflatable costume

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 22h

The former I have a fair amount of sympathy for, because there was a lot of important protesting that happened during the Biden era that was subject to continual, bad-faith criticism about being too shrill, too loud, too aggressive.

The latter is just Operator culture shit on the left

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 22h

I think some of the Frogsuit discourse arrives from a.) the contingent of experienced, radical protestors who are pre-emptively defensive about being told by non-protestors that They Aren't Protesting The Right Way and b.) the contingent of protestors offended by a protest looking cringe or silly

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 7d

Kirkus Reviews called GHOST DAYS "A finely constructed linked story collection," with "prose [that's] crisp and highly sensory, building tension within each fable with the skill of a veteran storyteller" and "marvelous full-page illustrations" from @tiffanyturrill.bsky.social.

Ghost Days ebook — ASHER ELBEIN

A short story collection about a wandering witch in 1900s Appalachia

www.asherelbein.com

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