Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

bookswain.bsky.social @bookswain.bsky.social · 2h

Something wrong with the link

Reposted

Michael Shallcross @michaelshallcross.bsky.social · 10h

An unhinged literary opinion needs to be like Muriel Spark believing T.S. Eliot was sending her coded messages through his plays, not 'hear me out, I don't like Dickens'. That is simply a literary opinion. The hinges are very much intact.

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bookswain.bsky.social @bookswain.bsky.social · 5h

Tolkien was a eugenicist?

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bookswain.bsky.social @bookswain.bsky.social · 5h

The rotor is drooping.*

*this happened about 13K MSL in the Hindu Kush

🏰meg⚔️ @Birthright Audiobook! @impavid.us · 4d

In honor of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand

I'll go first: Six page commercial lease.

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Dr Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social · 4d

It's also not "just another" extinction, it's the first from mainland Europe in centuries. CENTURIES.

And there will be others within our lifetime.

That's biodiversity loss.

We'll never hear this sound, ever again xeno-canto.org/398794

XC398794 Slender-billed Curlew (Numenius tenuirostris)

Awful wind noise in the original! See sonogram and notes of the recording circumstances on p12 of Gretton A. (1991) The ecology and conservation of the Slender-billed Curlew (Numenius tenuirostris). ...

xeno-canto.org

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Dr Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social · 4d

Well, it's official. After our paper last year (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....), the Slender-billed Curlew is officially declared Extinct today.

Scientists dream of describing new species, not writing their obituary and epitaph, knowing that they are gone forever #ornithology

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Biodiversity Heritage Library @biodivlibrary.bsky.social · 2d

It's #WorldAlgaeDay! Japanese algologist Kintaro Okamura (1867-1935) provided taxonomies & descriptions in English & Japanese for his monumental work "Nihon sorui zufu" / "Icones of Japanese Algae" (1907-1942). Find it in #BHLib via
#MBLWHOILibrary
www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography... 🧪

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bookswain.bsky.social @bookswain.bsky.social · 6h

Three typos, three reposts. The moral of the story? Don’t post anything before your second cup of coffee.

bookswain.bsky.social @bookswain.bsky.social · 6h

Princess Elisabeth is more well known for her contributions to philosophy, but she also corresponded with Descartes about his mathematical work. In addition helping Van Schooten, English mathematician John Pell enlisted her help in understanding Descartes’ Geometry.
#AdaLovelaceDay #womenInSTEM

bookswain.bsky.social @bookswain.bsky.social · 6h

From my 1649 copy of the first Latin translation of Descartes’ Geometria by Dutch mathematician Frans van Schooten. Like Descartes in his Principia Philosophiae, Van Schooten dedicated the book to Elisabeth of Bohemia, who helped him get hired, expanding the reach of Descartes’ analytical geometry.

Page from a 17th century book in Latin: ELISABETHE,
FRIDERICI BOHEMIE REGIS, Comitis Palatini, & Electoris Sacri Ro-mani Imperii, filia natu maxima.
SERENISSIMA PRINCEPS,
CUm ea Celfitudinis tuæ fit claritas, ut ma-ximorum hominum monumenta , tanti nominis fplendore
illuftrata, in lucem jam pridem prodierint; quid mirum,fi & ego lucubrationes hafce Celfitudini tux confecrandas efle duxerim?
Nam, ut reliquas virtutes, qua in Te eximie funt, taceã, tantâ cum prudentia fingularis ingenii…”

#womeninstem #adalovelaceday

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bookswain.bsky.social @bookswain.bsky.social · 6h

From my 1649 copy of the first Latin translation of Descartes’ Geometria by Dutch mathematician Frans van Schooten. Like Descartes in his Principia Philosophiae, Van Schooten dedicated the book to Elisabeth of Bohemia, who helped him get hired, expanding the reach of Descartes’ analytical geometry.

bookswain.bsky.social @bookswain.bsky.social · 7h

Thanks for that

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Berna Devezer @devezer.bsky.social · Aug 11

I'll make a 🧵 of my notes on this book here. To get us started:

"There's no such thing as the scientific method, and there never was.

And yet, 'the scientific method' is alive and well. […] Why? Because 'the scientific method' is a myth—and myths are powerful things."

🧪#metasci #philsci #STS

Cover of the book The Scientific Method: An Evolution of Thinking from Darwin to Dewey
by Henry M. Cowles

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bookswain.bsky.social @bookswain.bsky.social · 7h

quacking humbugs needs more play in today’s vernacular

Berna Devezer @devezer.bsky.social · Sep 18

James on Herbert Spencer: "Of all the incoherent, rotten, quacking humbugs & pseudo-philosophers which the womb of all-inventive time has excreted [Spencer] is the most infamous."

Wow tell us how you really feel, Bill 👀

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Berna Devezer @devezer.bsky.social · Sep 18

James on Herbert Spencer: "Of all the incoherent, rotten, quacking humbugs & pseudo-philosophers which the womb of all-inventive time has excreted [Spencer] is the most infamous."

Wow tell us how you really feel, Bill 👀

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 8h

Extraordinary woman in STEM for #ald25 #AdaLovelaceDay 👩🏼‍🔬🧪🐡🧮🔭🎢 #histsci

Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · Sep 29

I’m not sure if today’s #SciArtSeptember prompt of “happily ever after” is a thing that happens in real life but I thought of the great mathematician, writer and polymath, Mary Fairfax Somerville (1780-1872). 🧮🎢🐡🧪👩🏼‍🔬🔭#histsci Arguably the best thing that ever happened to her was when she became a 🧵1/n

My linocut portrait of Mary Somerville in a dress with lace collar and fur trim, surrounded by math, physics and astronomy diagrams from her publications, in a gradient of turquoise at the bottom to violet at the top.

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bookswain.bsky.social @bookswain.bsky.social · 8h

That said (my post), whatever it takes to shine the light.

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bookswain.bsky.social @bookswain.bsky.social · 8h

IMHO, as far as deserving a day to recognize #womenInSTEM, Mary Sommerville’s contributions to science far outweigh her contemporary Ada Lovelace’s.
Less famous father though.
#AdaLovelaceDay

bookswain.bsky.social @bookswain.bsky.social · 11d

I own a book by one of the “Women Who Dared.” My 1837 French edition of On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences by Scottish polymath Mary Somerville, the first person to be referred to as a "scientist” in an 1833 review of this book. 🧪

An almost 200 years old book with a paper blue cover. In black type is printed: DE LA CONNEXION
DES
SCIENCES PHYSIQUES
OU
EXPOSÉ SIMPLE ET RAPIDE
DE TOUS LES YRINCIPAUX PRÉNOMÈNES
ASTRONOMIQUES, PHYSIQUES, CHIMIQUES, GÉOLOGIQUES, ET MÉTÉOROLOGIQUES;
ACCOMEAORE
DES DÉCOUVERTES ET EXPÉRIENCES
LES PLUS BEMARQUABLES DES SAVANS MODERNES, TANT
PRANCAIS QU'ETRANCHES:
MARY SOMERVILLE;
Traduit de lAnglais
SOUS LES AUSPIGES DE M. ARAGO, PAR M"• MEULIEN.
PARIS,
LIBRAIRIE DE F. G. LEVRAULT.
RUE DE LA HARPR, 81;
KT MÊME MAISON, A STRASBOURG, NUE DES JUIFS, 33,
1837.

#HistSci 📚💙 #Womeninstem

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bookswain.bsky.social @bookswain.bsky.social · 8h

“Hoffman, who represents the region and grew up in Bethel, said its climate has changed, forcing the village of Newtok to relocate.
‘There has been more and more warming that is disrupting lives in the Y-K Delta from the last 25 years that I can tell,’ he said.”
#climatecrisis

Officials say storm 'completely devastated' Western Alaska communities

A Coast Guard commander recounted scenes of Alaskans swimming in floodwaters in the middle of the night, searching for debris to hold onto.

alaskapublic.org

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bookswain.bsky.social @bookswain.bsky.social · 20h

Title page. It’s quite scarce.

Title page of a book published in 1819: TRANSACTIONS
OF THE
HISTORICAL & LITERARY COMMITTEE
OS THE
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY,
HELD AT PHILADELPHIA, FOR PROMOTING
USEFUL KNOWLEDGE.
VOL. I.
Invenies illic et facta domestica vobis ;
Sepè tibi pater est, stepè legendus avus,— OvID.
PHILADELPHIA:
Printed and Published by Abraham Small, No, 112, Chesnut Street,
1819.”

#Booksky 📚💙

bookswain.bsky.social @bookswain.bsky.social · 20h

A sobering page from my first volume of "Transactions of the Historical and Literary Committee of the American Philosophical Society" published in 1819, which includes ‘An Account of the History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations’ by John Gottlieb Ernestus Heckewelder.
📚💙

Above from an over 200 year old book.
“« it, they kill us! There is no faith to be placed in their « words. They are not like the Indians, who are only « enemies, while at war, and are friends in peace." They «will say to an Indian, "my friend! my brother!»
"They will take him by the hand, and at the same mo-« ment destroy him. And so you (addressing himself to « the Christian Indians) will also be treated by them be-«fore long. Remember! that this day I have warned
" you to beware of such friends as these. I know the long
" knives; they are not to be trusted."
Eleven months after this speech was delivered by this prophetic chief, ninety six of the same Christian Indians, about sixty of them women and children, were murdered at the place where these very words had been spoken, by the same men he had alluded to, and in the same manner that he had described. See Loskiel's History, Part III. ch. 10.”

#BookSky #Vastearlyamerica #history Indigenous Peoples Day

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bookswain.bsky.social @bookswain.bsky.social · 1d

I of course completely made that up, but who knows? I noticed the angry bird a while ago when I was looking at the full portion of the tapestry depicting the comet of 1066, now know as Halley’s Comet. ☄️
#MedievalSky

The portion of the Bayeux
Tapestry depicting Comet Halley in its 1066 appearance flying horizontally across the sky above buildings and a group of folks staring and pointing at it. A bird is below the group and the way its feathers are depicted it looks like it's giving them the bird.

🪶

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bookswain.bsky.social @bookswain.bsky.social · 1d

My owl avatar is an illustration from an 18th century, German children’s encyclopedia. The engraving on laid paper was completely colored by hand.
🪶 🐡 #booksky

A colored illustration of an owl staring at the viewer perched on the branch of a stump above a vegetated landscape.

#sciart

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bookswain.bsky.social @bookswain.bsky.social · 1d

Fantastic

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bookswain.bsky.social @bookswain.bsky.social · 1d

This is a portion of a large plate in my 1789 copy of Transactions of the American philosophical Society depicting the 1769 transit of Venus across the Sun. The pyramid shape in Figure 2 is Venus’s atmosphere as observed and recorded by astronomer David Rittenhouse, who created the entire diagram. 🔭

A portion of a large fold out astronomical diagram depicting Venus at different points as it transited the sun in 1769 as recorded in Norriton, Pennsylvania. There are three separate figures enlarging Venus just as it transited the edge of the sun.

#Astronomy #Celestial #stars #venus #sun

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RSPB @rspb.bsky.social · 1d

Lapland Buntings delight in today’s #AutumnArrivalSpotlight! ❄️

These Arctic travellers are a rare and special sight, weaving through our saltmarshes and coastal fields during their migration.

Listen for their twittering flight calls on crisp autumn mornings.

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