Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Mike Diamond

@mikediamond.bsky.social

610 followers 360 following 1.7K posts

✍️ Writing YA Sci-Fi “Brilliance of Earth—Tangle and Tether” (sapphic and STEM) 📘 Nonfiction book on ethical phishing “Swim Like a Phish” (under consideration). 🤲 Excited to help build community! Especially in the arts 💖✨

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Mike Diamond @mikediamond.bsky.social · May 23

💖✨🏳️‍🌈🛸⓮🎓🧶🕳️
The tangled mysteries of Dark meet the emotional resonance of A Wrinkle in Time, with the speculative science of The Three-Body Problem and the heartfelt tethers of His Dark Materials.

More below, also in the Alt text. Feedback appreciated, thanks!

#wippit #SF #YA #LGBT #LF #FBW

Brilliance Overland is a prodigy who craves answers and adventure. Her invention— latticed entanglement aperture passthroughs (LEAP)—opens a quantum-based wormhole to a world more advanced, yet far more backward than she imagined. With her best friend Annie, Brilliance enrolls at Avram Circle, the premier science academy in a system of interlinked worlds, hoping to unravel their origins. But in a place where every relationship is entangled, every truth is knotted with lies, and every discovery leads to deeper complexity, Brilliance finds that her will and scientific principles alone can’t untangle the mess.

Brilliance relies on Annie’s empathy to navigate the social brambles rooted in this new world, but as Brilliance buries her own “unproductive” feelings, Annie’s patience frays. When their friendship is tested, Brilliance must confront the tethers that bind her: Unspoken grief for her mother, whose voice and lessons echo as AI in her mind; the causal chains that connect her actions to unintended consequences; and the realization that even in a universe of infinite possibility, some bonds—of love, loss, and home—are impossible to sever.

To survive forces that want to control them, Brilliance must learn that true understanding isn’t just about unraveling mysteries, but about embracing the beautiful, messy tangle of relationships and the tethers that hold us together—even across worlds.

Themes:
- Quantum entanglement as a metaphor for the complexity and messiness of relationships, regardless of time or distance.
- Tethering as both a source of strength (home, love, memory) and a challenge (grief, responsibility, causality)
- The interplay between scientific genius and emotional intelligence
- The search for origins—of worlds, of self, of the bonds that shape us

13 46 100

Mike Diamond @mikediamond.bsky.social · 9h

I’m even ok with a posthumous trial.

💚🧡💙Oakbrook❤️💛💜 @oakbrook.bsky.social · 9h

I'm looking forward to turning the orange felon murderer over to the ICC for international trial! The whole world will cheer!

Jessica Tarlov @jessicatarlov.bsky.social · 10h

The government has killed 32 people in 7 strikes with no evidence they were traffickers. The admiral leading the mission quit. If we had proof, they’d face a court, not a drone.

The law still applies, even to suspected drug traffickers, and right now, the Administration’s story isn’t adding up.

Mike Diamond @mikediamond.bsky.social · 1d

Perhaps if the Louvre promoted their gift store better, the jewel thieves would have figured out they could buy inexpensive replicas instead? I think that’s at least a one star demotion.

Reposted by Mike Diamond

Mike Diamond @mikediamond.bsky.social · 1d

Gendarmes involved in the case debate relevance of receipt for ladder (taped to ladder) and note on receipt: “Return to ladder store after jewel heist.“

Mike Diamond @mikediamond.bsky.social · 1d

Gendarmes involved in the case debate relevance of receipt for ladder (taped to ladder) and note on receipt: “Return to ladder store after jewel heist.“

Mike Diamond @mikediamond.bsky.social · 1d

Better survival rates! Go mRNA!

Kathryn BrightBOO! 👻 @kebrightbill.bsky.social · 2d

Interesting. Preliminary research suggests that getting an mRNA covid vaccine makes cancer immunotherapy more effective.

The next cancer-fighting mRNA vaccine may already be here

Early-phase research shows Covid mRNA vaccines could give immunotherapies a cancer-fighting boost.

www.nbcnews.com

Mike Diamond @mikediamond.bsky.social · 3d

Vladimir Futon

1 29

Mike Diamond @mikediamond.bsky.social · 3d

Jinny stared at the ornament, transfixed with horror. Looking away brought unbearable pain. But gazing into its dark heart opened a nameless portal.
As the tree burst into violet, otherworldly flames, she imagined a whisper caressing her ever maddening mind…
“Mouth blown.”
This was the Figgining.

1 13

Mike Diamond @mikediamond.bsky.social · 3d

Once carton’s torn and dandy brandy
Adorns your mug of brown
Every swallow that follows,
When you’re down, a gold crown 👑
A foe to the frown ☹️🥊
So sound the horn!
Huzzah for the buzz
‘Cuz the kernel’s reborn!
3/3

Mike Diamond @mikediamond.bsky.social · 3d

Palpitations quickening
Salivation thickening
To think I would drink
A drop uncorned, sickening
It’s handy having candy corn in liquid form.

2/3

1 1

Mike Diamond @mikediamond.bsky.social · 3d

A poem in 3 parts:
Dreamiest God Bod by Creamiest Nut Pods

I’ve sworn a stand against the bland.
Those grand aloof, forlorn
By tooth worn 🦷
Or gums torn
And youth already mourned,
Shorn so soon past being born
Would scorn this toffee coffee porn. ☕️

1/3
#Poetry

A candy corn flavored coffee creamer from nut pods.

1 3

Mike Diamond @mikediamond.bsky.social · 3d

I cut myself on a piece of writing today, it stung! Sobbed a bit. Then I remembered, that’s the point.
#writincommunity #writerscommunity

Mike Diamond @mikediamond.bsky.social · 5d

It’s not self aggrandizing to fire staff members and then turn that into a story… Is it?

Mike Diamond @mikediamond.bsky.social · 8d

If you see this, post a robot

Mike Diamond @mikediamond.bsky.social · 13d

Photo credit: Fabian Bimmer

Mike Diamond @mikediamond.bsky.social · 13d

Local clown unit infiltrates ICE in Portland, Oregon during the attempt to bring federal trips to occupy the peaceful city as a step toward dismantling the last bastion of voting and democracy in the United States, it’s blue cities that have federal bank buildings.

Mike Diamond @mikediamond.bsky.social · 16d

So tricky revisiting anything after its cultural moment.

Mike Diamond @mikediamond.bsky.social · 16d

My adult children play video games. I watch their streams and listen to their struggles. It’s enough gaming for me 😂

Mike Diamond @mikediamond.bsky.social · 16d

If you write poorly, you suffer the slow improvement of practice AND the struggle to shape what you feel.

If you write well, you suffer that same practice, that same struggle, AND reliving your artful embodiment of emotions.

#writingcommunity

Mike Diamond @mikediamond.bsky.social · 17d

Let’s not try to be
Right or wrong
Let’s not try to be
Weak or strong
Let’s just try to move along
Together

Let’s not try to be
Last or first
Let’s not try to be
Best or worst
Let’s stop moving in reverse
Together

#poetry

Mike Diamond @mikediamond.bsky.social · 19d

Yus!

Mike Diamond @mikediamond.bsky.social · 20d

As long as it’s not taken during brunch, or at 11 exactly

Mike Diamond @mikediamond.bsky.social · 20d

But existential dread community is so 14 hours in the future 🤓

Mike Diamond @mikediamond.bsky.social · 21d

Writing as a pilgrimage…

…may not necessitate deep suffering—but discomfort?
Ch-yeah.
It’s a journey to, in part, develop patience. A cerebral lurch to the church. Ego’s skin baking in the sun, flayed in the wind. Nourishing the soul in lieu of the flesh (coffee over food 😅).
#writingcommunity

Mike Diamond @mikediamond.bsky.social · 21d

Without downloading anything new, where are you mentally?
#existentialdreadcommunity

Mike Diamond @mikediamond.bsky.social · 21d

Challenge accepted

A paper flyer pinned to a corkboard in a coffee shop. From a distance, it looks like a lost cat flyer was little phone number tabs at the bottom that people can tear off, which some people already have done. By upon reading the flyer, it’s something much deeper. Here’s the text:
LOST!
Are you lost? Depressed? Hopeless about the climate crisis, rising fascism, and the possibility of a lost future? This is your sign to join Sunrise Movement.
Sunrise is building a movement of young people across race and class to stop the climate crisis and win a Green New Deal. We will force the government to end the reign of fossil fuel elites, invest in Black, brown and working class communities, and create millions of good union jobs. We're on a mission to put everyday people back in charge and build a world that works for all of us, now and for generations to come.
This cat's name is Remi. She's fine. But are you?
SUNRISE MOVEMENT
smymt.org/pdxlink
I need hope
Billionaires can eat my ***
Anything for comrade Remi
I'm about to be so optimism pilled
This movement will change me forever

1 3

Mike Diamond @mikediamond.bsky.social · 21d

Challenge accepted