Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Elizabeth Cantwell

George Gantsoudes @pedsortho.bsky.social · 9h

Please remember that the disgust people have over Christopher Columbus is not based on some modern, 21st century “woke” ideology, but rather on contemporaneous accounts of atrocities that make many modern genocides appear quaint in comparison.

Below, are the accounts of Bartlomé de las Casas.

But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had in-vested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.
The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.

After each six or eight months' work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died.
While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants.
Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides... they ceased to pro-create. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and fam-ished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desper-ation.... In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk ... and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fer-tile... was depopulated... My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write....

20 1.9K 4.5K

Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 1d

I know I’m doing SOMETHING right as a parent because my generally apathetic 8 year old just asked if they could start a book club

2 24

Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 1d

Okay we watched half of it last night and I love it

4

Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 1d

I also keep this in mind when grading bad essays. Give me a million bad essays that are not AI!

3 8

Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 2d

I’m sure I will love it!

Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 2d

Is this when I confess that I’ve never seen REDS

1 10

Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 2d

Baseball: the most masochistic sport?

2 10

Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 2d

I get really upset about the framing of grading as something that takes time away from teachers’ “free time”/ability to go for a run/etc. Giving feedback to students should be a big part of why you want to do this job!

1 2

Reposted by Elizabeth Cantwell

John Warner @biblioracle.bsky.social · 3d

I strongly urge everyone to not just read this warning from @marcwatkins.bsky.social, but heed it, and be vocal and forceful pushing back against using AI to grade student writing. This must be anathema if we're going to have a world where learning means something. substack.com/inbox/post/1...

The Dangers of using AI to Grade

Nobody Learns, Nobody Gains

substack.com

7 120 280

Reposted by Elizabeth Cantwell

Chris Cantwell @ifyoucantwell.bsky.social · 3d

Man I dunno going to the NLCS on such a brutal E-1 feels like it will awaken John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness

John Carpenter’s shrouded Prince of Darkness emerges from a doorway

1 1 14

Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 4d

2025

Dialogue on Mother from Alien: WHAT ARE MY CHANCES? / DOES NOT COMPUTE

2 16 62

Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 4d

godDAMMIT what are they DOING

3

Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 4d

The best part about walking your dog during a Dodgers postseason game in LA is that you can check in on the game through the windows of your neighbors’ houses

1 6

Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 6d

I got nervous there at the end but just nervous enough to make life fun!!

1 1

Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 6d

God I love the Dodgers

1 5

Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 7d

I know everyone is feeling something similar right now, but it is SO bizarre to have to flip from watching videos of military troops beating citizens to, like, washing dishes and grading papers

4 36

Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 8d

this got me

1

Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 8d

Both films are about daughters who have to find a way to be who they are inside despite what their fathers think they want for them.

1 3

Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 8d

The Hours and Candyman are on constant rotation for me. So perfect.

1 14

Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 9d

That movie has some GENUINELY scary scenes. The seance really messed me up.

1

Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 9d

It’s all for you!

1

Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 9d

Totally in the realm of possibility!

1

Elizabeth Cantwell @eccantwell.bsky.social · 9d

Once again pondering what scary movie to ambush my kid(s?) with this October … we always do a classic monster movie but I’d love to push the 12yo just a little more. He’s done Poltergeist and Jaws and Evil Dead II and Terminator (not horror but totally horror adjacent) …

7 3

Reposted by Elizabeth Cantwell

Greg Pak @gregpak.net · 9d

WHO did it, CNN? Actice voice, please.

CNN @cnn.com · 9d

Adults and children alike were pulled from their Chicago apartments, crying and screaming, during a large overnight raid that has left tenants and neighbors shaken. https://cnn.it/4pPCXIt

37 people arrested and American kids separated from parents after ICE raid at Chicago apartments | CNN

Adults and children alike were pulled from their Chicago apartments, crying and screaming, during a large overnight raid that has left tenants and neighbors shaken.

www.cnn.com

3 70 290

Reposted by Elizabeth Cantwell

MiMi Aye @meemalee.bsky.social · 9d

Author and filmmaker Justine Bateman on generative AI

"They're trying to convince people they can't do the things they've been doing easily for years - to write emails, to write a presentation. Your daughter wants you to make up a bedtime story about puppies - to write that for you." We will get to the point, she says with a grim laugh, "that you will essentially become just a skin bag of organs and bones, nothing else. You won't know anything and you will be told repeatedly that you can't do it, which is the opposite of what life has to offer. Capitulating all kinds of decisions like where to go on vacation, what to wear today, who to date, what to eat.
People are already doing this. You won't have to process grief, because you'll have uploaded photos and voice messages from your mother who just died, and then she can talk to you via AI video call every day. One of the ways it's going to destroy humans, long before there's a nuclear disaster, is going to be the emotional hollowing-out of people." - author and filmmaker Justine Bateman from a piece by Emine Saner for the Guardian

20 1.8K 3.9K