Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Kerry @kerrypolka.bsky.social · 1d

yes! like is it a good solution, no, is it understandable that people are using it, totally! (it is not a good solution because the problem is not a good problem, could be resolved by "internet isn't full of scammy slop" rather than "environment destroying machine helps me filter out scammy slop")

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Kerry @kerrypolka.bsky.social · 1d

it feels like a problem created entirely by profit-seeking - that what people want is "to ask a question in natural language, and receive a reasonably clear and reliable answer, most of the time", and yet this has to keep being reinvented (RIP Google Search) because each one fills up with sludge

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Kerry @kerrypolka.bsky.social · 1d

finding correct, clear information on any topic online takes effort and time now! People don't want to spend half an hour trying to figure out which weirdly written scammy site is legit and if it answers their question, they want to ask "hey will this lightbulb work in my lamp?" & have an answer

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Kerry @kerrypolka.bsky.social · 1d

I know many people who are not obviously awful or deluded who use ChatGPT and Copilot, and just realised they are mostly using it to search for relatively simple information that should be easy to find, but isn't, because there is so much dreck online and search engines don't help any more.

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Kerry @kerrypolka.bsky.social · 1d

"Hedda" (2025) was great fun, esp Nina Hoss' Eileen Lovborg who is about 500% more interesting than Eilert and gets some great material to get stuck into (from a few scenes offstage in the play)

Sorry but Tom Bateman is too handsome for Tesman! needs to be a big loser or at least loser adjacent

A photo, taken by me on my phone, in the BFI NFT1 last night of the director, cast and producers at the London premiere of "Hedda" (2025). Director Nia DaCosta is speaking enthusiastically about the sound quality in the cinema, and being a bit sarcastic about the director's cut of "Kingdom of Heaven".

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Reposted by Kerry

Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 3d

This heartfelt and meaningful statement by Portland resident and author Cristina Breshears on another social media platform bears reposting here. I don't think the intent is to idealize Portland but to remind all of us what is important and why. (Posted here with permission.)

For nine nights now, the steady thrum of Black Hawk helicopters has circled over Portland. The sound is constant, invasive; a low mechanical beating above our homes. It’s expensive. It’s intimidating. And it’s unnecessary.

Our protests have been largely peaceful. There is no insurrection here. Yet this federalized military presence makes us feel like we are living in a war zone (the very kind of chaos this administration claims to be protecting us from).

The irony is painful: it is only this occupation that makes Portland feel unsafe.

Each hour of helicopter flight costs taxpayers between $2,000 and $4,000, depending on crew, fuel, and maintenance. Multiply that by multiple aircraft over multiple nights, and you’re looking at hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars burned into the sky.

Meanwhile, the Woodstock Food Pantry at All Saints Episcopal Church — which feeds working families, elders, and people with disabilities — has seen its federal funding slashed by 75%. How can we justify pouring public money into intimidation while cutting aid to those who simply need to eat?

This is waste, fraud, and abuse in plain sight:
* Waste of public resources on military theatrics.
* Fraud in the name of “public safety.”
* Abuse of the communities that federal agencies claim to protect.

Portland is a Sanctuary City. A sanctuary city is not a fortress. It’s a promise — a living vow that a community will protect the dignity and safety of everyone who calls it home. It means that local governments and ordinary people alike will refuse to criminalize survival. That schools, clinics, churches, and shelters will remain safe spaces no matter who you are or where you were born. But the term reaches far beyond policy. It’s an ethic of belonging; a refusal to criminalize need, difference, or desperation.

Sanctuary isn’t weakness. It’s courage. It takes moral strength to meet suffering with care instead of punishment, to believe that our neighbors’ safety is bound up in our own, to insist that safety is not achieved through force but through community, inclusion, and trust. It is living Matthew 25:40 out loud and in deed. It is an act of moral imagination and moral defiance. To hold sanctuary is to say: you belong here.

When we hold space for the most vulnerable — refugees, the unhoused, the undocumented, the disabled, the working poor, the displaced — we become something larger than a collection of individuals. We become a moral body. We do more than offer charity. We offer witness. We declare that the measure of a nation is found not in its towers or tanks, but in its tenderness.

Sanctuary cities are not lawless; they are soulful. They represent the conscience of the nation, a place where the laws of empathy still apply. To make sanctuary is to affirm that the United States is not merely a geographic territory, but a moral experiment: a republic that must constantly choose between fear and compassion, between domination and democracy.

A nation’s soul is measured not by the might of its military, but by the mercy of its people. When helicopters circle our skies in the name of order, while food pantries struggle to feed the hungry, we are forced to ask: What are we defending, and from whom? The soul of a nation survives only when we make sanctuary for one another. Not through walls or weapons, but through compassion and collective will. If we allow intimidation to replace compassion, we will have traded our conscience for control.

Please know that despite the hum of war machines overhead, the conscience of our city — whimsical, creative, stubbornly kind — can still be heard.

Portland is not the problem. Portland is the reminder. A reminder that a city can still choose to be sanctuary. That a people can still choose to be human.

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Kerry @kerrypolka.bsky.social · 4d

ahh just found out my brother was at the Mariners game, atmosphere envy off the charts

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Reposted by Kerry

Sardonicus @sardonicus.eu · 4d

Cover of L&NER’s Wandering On The Continent booklet, 1937

two hikers on a grassy gnoll, they are looking at a schloss and Max Schrecks house on a distant mountain.

WANDERING ON THE CONTINENT WITH THE AID OF YOUTH HOSTELS
1937
No 37
VIA HARWICH, GRIMSBY OR HULL

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Kerry @kerrypolka.bsky.social · 5d

🌹

pumpkin spice amb 🎃 @amb.fyi · 5d

in the second cnn portland city councilor hit of the day, the anchor couldn’t keep a straight face

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Kerry @kerrypolka.bsky.social · 6d

"Stereophonic" for the E Street Band (it's just Bruce yelling "STICK" at Max Weinberg for three hours including interval)

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Reposted by Kerry

Ashley C. Ford @smashfizzle.bsky.social · 6d

Listen. ONE of the reasons I rock with Dolly (Capricorn Gang) is because she’s always proven to me that integrity may cause you pain, but it will never be the reason you suffer. Which is not to say that suffering won’t come, but it’ll never be because you abandoned yourself. That’ll keep you going.

PJR23 @stixx23.bsky.social · 6d

I hear she has supported school bands as well: www.thepinknews.com/2022/10/10/d...

Dolly Parton quietly funded Black school bands: 'The woman is a national treasure'

Dolly Parton paid for band uniforms and instruments for kids at majority Black high schools with zero publicity, a writer has revealed.

www.thepinknews.com

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Kerry @kerrypolka.bsky.social · 7d

yes

Kerry @kerrypolka.bsky.social · 9d

briefly concerned this was going to be like Lucky Town or Working on a Dream but no

album cover of "The Rising" (2003), Bruce Springsteen's twelfth studio album which is a masterpiece both in the colloquial and original sense (a piece of art demonstrating mastery of form)

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Kerry @kerrypolka.bsky.social · 9d

"I've never seen an integrated wardrobe that was a good use of space if I'm BRUTALLY honest," pronounced the posh dad, and have to admit I had never until that moment considered the issue enough to have any kind of firm opinion on integrated wardrobes, but by god apparently some people do

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Kerry @kerrypolka.bsky.social · 9d

I can forget how ludicrous the British class system is, until it protrudes into casual life, like overhearing a conversation this weekend between a posh young man and his parents who were paying for his house remodel (as they presumably had the house)

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Kerry @kerrypolka.bsky.social · 9d

that's my senator ❤️❤️❤️✊

Senator Ron Wyden @wyden.senate.gov · 9d

They’re using American tax dollars to fund infrastructure in Argentina because that’s where they’re all going to flee when we kick them out of office

Ryan Grim @ryangrim.bsky.social · 13d

After announcing a $20 billion bailout of Argentina, the White House now says it's pausing $18 billion in funding for NYC infrastructure projects

Russ Vought would love nothing more than to tear this country down to its studs

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Reposted by Kerry

KOJAMF🤘🖤🤘 @kojamf.bsky.social · 10d

Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.

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Rufus jones @rufeydoof.bsky.social · 12d

Amazon have removed the guns from their Bond posters, giving the tantalising impression that Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan think you’re a wanker.

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Reposted by Kerry

Michael Caley @michaelcaley.bsky.social · 21d

Putin taking huge risks to get Trump elected in order to destroy the American-led global order from within, succeeding, and then failing to get anything out of it because his brain was soupified during the pandemic is gonna be one of the greatest bag fumbles of all time

FinTwitter @fintwitter.bsky.social · 21d

*TRUMP SAYS UKRAINE IS POSITIONED TO WIN ALL TERRITORY BACK

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Kerry @kerrypolka.bsky.social · 25d

it's nice and good for stories be a certain length and have an ending

erika @yeeeerika.bsky.social · Jan 13

i don't want to hear your most boomer complaint. what's your most millennial complaint?

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Reposted by Kerry

The Onion @theonion.com · 26d

Left-Wing Group Too Disorganized For FBI Agents To Infiltrate https://theonion.com/left-wing-group-too-disorganized-for-fbi-agents-to-infi-1848923025/

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Kerry @kerrypolka.bsky.social · 25d

Is Caledonian Road (end to end) the best street for restaurants in London? For variety, quality, range

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Kerry @kerrypolka.bsky.social · 28d

I'd add the stage show does skimp on explaining this in dialogue IMO, but the scene in the film overexplains and kills the pacing, so understand the adaptation choice

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Kerry @kerrypolka.bsky.social · 28d

We went to The Producers revival last night and ahh it's still so good how utterly naff "Springtime for Hitler" is as a production

obv not a new observation but yeah, fascist aesthetics are mostly just crap and tacky, and at constant possibility of falling into camp! nailed it mel!!

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Kerry @kerrypolka.bsky.social · 28d

Oh yeah with that part I definitely think it was the percentages issue (sold more than 100% of profits so could never pay out)

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