Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Tom Freeman

@tomfreeman.bsky.social

1.9K followers 170 following 2.6K posts

Occasional editor and writer. Purveyor of half-baked opinions. Intermittently able to make my nieces laugh. (SnoozeInBrief on Twitter) My blog on usage, editing and suchlike: https://stroppyeditor.wordpress.com

stroppyeditor.wordpress.com

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 9h

Tell me your most literary opinion about hinges

1 4

Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 12h

(Yes I am deliberately pretending to misunderstand for minuscule comedy effect)

Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 12h

About time too. I walked past a building site the other day and asked one of the Polish lads working on it to discuss the representation of social class in DH Lawrence's Sons & Lovers, and he bloody well couldn't do it, it's a disgrace

The Independent @the-independent.com · 15h

Migrants will need A-level standard English to work in UK

www.independent.co.uk

2 1 5

Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 19h

I'm afraid all my literary opinions are quite boringly hinged

Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 20h

I find myself thinking of this

George W Bush standing in front of the "mission accomplished" sign and giving a thumbs-up in May 2003

1 8

Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 1d

(I have literally written that essay, during a hyper-caffeinated all-nighter in 1996. Or maybe it was me-in-1996 who wrote the essay, and bequeathed increasingly patchy memories of it to a succession of me-in-the-futures. I forget which. Ask Locke, Hume, Shoemaker, Parfit, Williams, Wiggins & Lewis)

Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 1d

The fact that the meme is "Post you from a different era" and not "Post yourself from a different era" implies that we are conceiving of "you from a different era" as being a different person from "you now", rather than both being temporal parts of the same, persisting person. In this essay I will

3 1 16

Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 1d

A life well lived

1 2

Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 1d

Post you from a different era

2298

1 6

Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 1d

Well ok, but I assume it's still helpful to specify that a character is nodding *their head*, as opposed to their knees or their hips or their spleen

1 4

Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 1d

It's a shame that Claire's Accessories got into financial trouble, but when your business model consists of dealing with people who aid and abet criminals, it's hardly surprising

Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 1d

I think Strunk and White are the biggest culprits here. Elements of Style's section on PV/AV starts out more or less OK but then segues seamlessly into using "passive" and "active" to talk about how energetic, direct or explicit a sentence is. Almost as if designed to confuse.

1 3

Reposted by Tom Freeman

Jeremy Limb @jlimb.bsky.social · 3d

That really moving Marseillaise scene in Casablanca is now 400% more moving youtu.be/CbWgOpG1988

Casablanca - Marseillaise Scene (extended edition)

YouTube video by Jeremy Limb

youtu.be

24 81 190

Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 1d

The role of ideas in this movement isn't as tools for understanding the world or devising ways to change it; the ideas are just mood music, vibes to make you feel edgy/radical/smart. In the phrase "intellectual energy" here, 99% of the importance comes from the "energy". www.ft.com/content/61d4...

"In the panic about young people flirting with fascism, this difference is important. Because one of the main reasons the young are drifting not just to the right, but to the radical or even far right, is its intellectual energy — a fresh fizz of ideas about the ways in which we organise society. That appeals to young people looking for something to get excited about, and something that feels like a departure from — a rebellion against — what their stodgy liberal parents believe.
And while there are plenty of prominent theorists on the right offering radical ideas — Yarvin himself argues that democracy should be replaced with monarchy — there is a distinct deficit of such thinkers, or even of new ideas, on the left. The young men who might once have been excited about Noam Chomsky’s arguments about the media manufacturing consent are now immersing themselves in the pseudonymous rightwing writer Bronze Age Pervert’s Nietzschean critiques of modernity, and his enthusiasm for pre-civilisational masculinity."

2 2 3

Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 1d

Nick Robinson interrupts a three-correspondent discussion of "these images" (on the radio) to say, in apparent sincerity: "I think people do want to know, Donald Trump now coming down the steps"

2 10

Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 1d

Yes, today is looking like a good day, some great news so far on hostage releases and hopefully more to come... but this stuff right now is poor coverage of literally nothing. Especially on the radio

1 1 9

Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 1d

Radio 4 (yes, radio) giving extensive live coverage of people waiting for Trump to get off his plane. The sort of vapid gushing the BBC usually reserves for royal weddings

3 7 31

Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 2d

OK so I've agreed to cook dinner for 11 people in an airbnb kitchen of uncertain facilities, I'm sure nothing can possibly go wrong

2 2

Reposted by Tom Freeman

Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 4d

I finally realised what AI dependency reminds me of

A mock-up of an old D&D guide detailing the properties of magical items, featuring "Altman’s Quill of Artifice". The entry reads:
This enchanted quill, made from the feather of a harpy, serves as a magical scribe and sage, able to answer all its owner’s queries. The owner must use it to write a question at the top of a piece of paper or parchment, such as “Where is the secret entrance to the King’s treasury?” or “How can I cure lycanthropy?” Acting under its own power, it will write an answer. But despite its apparent (and often genuine) usefulness, this item is cursed.
Roll d20 to determine the result of any query: 1 Hopelessly wrong, 2-5 Contains major errors, 6-10 Contains minor errors, 11-16 Accurate but incomplete, 17-20 Fully accurate.
Apply modifiers in line with the rules for consulting sages (see Table 62) depending on the nature of the question (general 0, specific -2, exacting -4) and the availability of relevant knowledge (complete 0, partial -2, non-existent -6). The DM should choose the nature of any errors, as well as the consequences of believing them.
If the answer is less than fully accurate, that will not be obvious, as the quill of artifice writes in a confident and authoritative manner. A reader may scrutinise the answer to attempt to notice any problem, but to succeed they must pass an intelligence check at a penalty of -2. Anyone who has previously failed such a check makes all future checks at -4. The owner of the quill is particularly vulnerable, permanently losing one point of intelligence with each inaccurate answer that is believed. The owner will be unaware of this loss, and will become fiercely possessive of the quill, refusing to give it up and distrusting anyone who doubts its output.
A remove curse spell may make the owner willing to part with it, but the loss of intelligence is irreparable.

2 17 31

Reposted by Tom Freeman

Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 2d

SCIENCE FACT: The Bristol Stool Chart uses a log scale

18 15 170

Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 2d

Swans in front of Alexandra Palace (and Hornsey water treatment works, which is maybe a tad less photogenic) #NewRiverBirds

Two swans on a river. Behind the river are a bunch of water pipes and industrial buildings, and behind all that, on the top of a hill, is Alexandra Palace.

1 3

Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 2d

Ah yes, Sauron, a keen amateur jeweller and vulcanologist, the antihero struggling to bring unity to a world riven by ethnic rivalries

Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 2d

SCIENCE FACT: The Bristol Stool Chart uses a log scale

18 15 170

Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 2d

Got my first ever Charlie-coin today. Doesn't entirely look real. But I like the bees on the flipside

A pound coin with something that looks slightly like Charles's head on it

The tails side of the same coin, depicting two bees and a sort of honeycomb-ish graphic

1 8

Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 2d

I won't quote him, because I'm sure his mentions are quite enough of a seething mass already, but I think one of the biggest "internet literacy" problems is not the inability to read and understand but the assumption that you don't need to bother reading, you can just glance and then mouth off