Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Paul Park @pauljunhyuk.bsky.social · 1h

As in, “read, she-wolves?” Would she-wolves even be a derogatory term in Rome, given the founding?

“Quid vita optimum est? Hostes vastare, fugentes videre, et lamentationes audire.”

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Paul Park @pauljunhyuk.bsky.social · 2h

Amazing just how many obscure but brilliant films are available for free on Plex. Lady for a Day, The Devil and Miss Jones, Nothing Sacred, The Kennel Murder Case. Not to mention less obscure ones such as Meet John Doe, The 39 Steps, and Ball of Fire.

Paul Park @pauljunhyuk.bsky.social · 14h

They also miss a lot of puns and references, though. The English translation is brilliant but the French is even better.

Paul Park @pauljunhyuk.bsky.social · 20h

Yup, eco-fascism is very much a thing and very popular with our upper classes, right to the top. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofasc...

Ecofascism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Paul Park @pauljunhyuk.bsky.social · 20h

This great essay also reminds me that several billion people would have starved to death or never been born if Norman Borlaug hadn’t led the Green Revolution in the 50s/60s, and that‘s still the best example of timely inventions overcoming global disaster - no guarantee it can ever happen again.

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Paul Park @pauljunhyuk.bsky.social · 20h

What‘s the difference between cottagecore and subsistence farming, which is one of the least efficient forms of food production known to man?Especially since it’s likely that the UK won’t be able to grow almost any of its own calories in about 10 years due to climate change.

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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 1d

In any discussion of food and farming, unless your solution can be scaled to feed 8 billion people, you shouldn't be taken seriously. Unfortunately, cottagecore fantasies that would feed only the richest consumers, leaving billions to starve, are all too common.
www.monbiot.com/2023/10/04/t...

The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed People

The astonishing story of how a movement’s quest for rural simplicity drifted into a formula for mass death

www.monbiot.com

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Jon Cooper @joncooper-us.bsky.social · 1d

👇👇

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Peter Stefanovic @peterstefanovic.bsky.social · 1d

Labour has already delivered or making progress towards two-thirds of its manifesto pledges

www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/lab...

Labour has already delivered or making progress towards two-thirds of its manifesto pledges

The Labour government has already delivered or is making progress towards around two thirds of its manifesto pledges.

www.thelondoneconomic.com

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Paul Park @pauljunhyuk.bsky.social · 1d

There are, in turn, things about the US that Xi would like to emulate – the global influence, the financial power of the dollar. “Maybe we should just let Xi and Trump switch places. We wouldn’t need to do anything. They could leave the rest of us out of it.”

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

‘Americans are democracy’s equivalent of second-generation wealth’: a Chinese journalist on the US under Trump

The long read: Once a stalwart of Hong Kong’s journalism scene, Wang Jian has found a new audience on YouTube, dissecting global politics and US-China relations since the pandemic. To his fans, he’s p...

www.theguardian.com

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Lum @brokentoys.social · 2d

i'm frequently about the doom and gloom regarding the present day (justified!) and nostalgia for when i was young in the 90s (also very justified!) but if you're a cranky gen-xer like me this is your feel-good link of the day

My Ordinary Life: Improvements Since the 1990s

A list of unheralded improvements to ordinary quality-of-life since the 1990s going beyond computers.

gwern.net

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Paul Park @pauljunhyuk.bsky.social · 2d

Our visual cortex makes up about 80% of what we see anyway, which is kind of catastrophic for reading new stuff - it’s easy to slip into a scan state where you miss most of what you read and just see what you expect to see. Reading slowly and deliberately, as if we were proofreading, takes effort.

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Paul Park @pauljunhyuk.bsky.social · 2d

“When elite universities send an inordinate number of their graduates to narrow corporate career tracks, they intensify inequality and divert young people away from serving the common good,” she told me. “It’s an important piece of the puzzle in why the public sees higher ed as a bad actor.”

Mother Jones @motherjones.com · 2d

How America’s elite colleges breed high-status careers—and misery www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

How America’s elite colleges breed high-status careers—and misery

“They funneled the shit out of me.”

www.motherjones.com

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Paul Park @pauljunhyuk.bsky.social · 2d

Though it should be noted that early Christians made a point of currying favour with the Romans and distinguishing themselves from Jews (especially after the razing of Jerusalem), eventually leading to Christianity becoming the state religion and the dominant faith it is now.

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Paul Park @pauljunhyuk.bsky.social · 2d

I must say I’d never heard of Tunny or Tommy Flowers despite having visited Bletchley a few times. Colossus, yes.

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

Move over, Alan Turing: meet the working-class hero of Bletchley Park you didn’t see in the movies

The Oxbridge-educated boffin is feted as the codebreaking genius who helped Britain win the war. But should a little-known Post Office engineer named Tommy Flowers be seen as the real father of comput...

www.theguardian.com

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Paul Park @pauljunhyuk.bsky.social · 2d

Indeed - though it means people are more likely to see fruit as luxury items anyway. unseen-japan.com/luxury-fruit...

$650 Watermelon?! The History of Luxury Fruit in Japan - Unseen Japan

Would you pay $20 for a bunch of grapes? Many people in Japan do. Here's more on the history and purpose behind luxury fruit.

unseen-japan.com

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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 2d

This two-parter below is exactly why it's hard to make clothes in the United States.

Let's look at how much it costs to produce a button-up shirt in the US. 🧵

Someone on Twitter replies to me: "meh. buy american or stfu."

Two hours later, in a separate thread, the write: "$30 for a single button-up is ridiculous unless it is decent quality silk."

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Paul Park @pauljunhyuk.bsky.social · 2d

Lownie said in a recent talk that he hoped that the money from Entitled would make up for the enormous amount he had to spend on the lawsuit with the University of Southampton about the Mountbatten files. I hope so, I don’t think biography is a very lucrative field.

Paul Park @pauljunhyuk.bsky.social · 2d

Great article. I read Q recently and his kid gloves around Her Maj are very evident. I quite liked the way he makes clear that nobody had a good word to say about the Queen Mum and Louis Mountbatten.

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Paul Park @pauljunhyuk.bsky.social · 3d

Have you had a read of Entitled?

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Paul Park @pauljunhyuk.bsky.social · 3d

Yeah, we have no idea what the odds will be in the 2029 election (assuming it isn’t called earlier for whatever reason). Reform are definitely having a moment but so are the Greens, who knows where the dice will fall in four years. The constant polls just make us more stressed.

Paul Park @pauljunhyuk.bsky.social · 3d

Unless you’re Delita, in which case you should resist tyranny with a view to doing tyranny later.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 3d

a key thing about vought — and all of these guys — is that they have a totally top down and hierarchical vision of the world. they believe that the cultural changes they hate can be turned off by destroying the federal government because they can’t imagine that they emerged bottom-up in society

Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 3d

What he’s railing against is a profound shift in culture, status… He’s obsessed with the idea that America is controlled by a leftist “ruling elite” - but “elite” isn’t defined socio-economically or by political power, it means something like: Getting to define “real America” and who gets to belong.

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Paul Park @pauljunhyuk.bsky.social · 3d

There is just so much train in Tokyo, even taking the overall size of the city into account. There were three train stations and five subway stations within a few minutes’ walk of our hotel in Ueno, which seemed a little excessive.

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Paul Park @pauljunhyuk.bsky.social · 3d

This is absolutely heartbreaking given how well NZ was doing under Labour. The problem with shallow political institutions is that your country turns on a dime and can make things worse faster as well as better.