Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Brett Gray @bcgray.bsky.social · 7h

This virus has, on day six, moved from ‘I hate this and it’s annoying’ to ‘this is some bullshit!’. Covid tests negative. Sending texts to the offspring charging them with burning my journals avenging me on my enemies.

Brett Gray @bcgray.bsky.social · 1d

While whatever I caught in Fresher's Week is nasty, it's done that fun thing to my voice where I start popping out some urban New England diphthongs. A liturgical voice that can make a blessing sound like a proposition you can't refuse?

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Brett Gray @bcgray.bsky.social · 1d

The lesson I should have taken from my youth was to take Rage Against the Machine a little more seriously.

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Brett Gray @bcgray.bsky.social · 2d

The truth about Trump and his lackeys is that they actually hate America, and Americans. They can't stand who we actually are, and so they are trying to erase it and replace it with a white bread nostalgic America which never actually was.

He is the anti-patriot.

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Reposted by Brett Gray

The Lincoln Project @lincolnproject.us · 5d

Guy who is zip-tying American children and shooting pastors on the head with pepper balls wants Peace Prize.

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Reposted by Brett Gray

Josh Moody @byjoshmoody.bsky.social · 5d

MIT rejects "compact" proposed by the Trump administration.
MIT prez wrote: it "would restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution" and "is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone."
orgchart.mit.edu/letters/rega...

Regarding the Compact | MIT Organization Chart

orgchart.mit.edu

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John Rogers @johnrogers.bsky.social · 6d

ME: Now Mom, just remember, there's a lot of disinformation and AI in your social feed and your friends' Facebook.
MOM: I know! My friend sent me this crazy post where someone used AI to make an image of a giant frog fighting Army troops!
ME: ... okay, no, that one's ... goddamit, Portland.

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Erin Jean Warde @erinjeanwarde.bsky.social · 6d

It’s so extremely Southern that Dolly basically got put on a prayer list and days later had to do an “I’m not dead yet!” to let the international news know that she was not on death’s door

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Lucius Fox In The Box @carnegro.bsky.social · 6d

Pope Leo is spitting.

www.npr.org/2025/10/09/n...

Leo questioned a world where the wealth of the elite grows
"exponentially" while many "millions of people die of hunger or survive in conditions unfit for human beings." He also criticized "ideologies that defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation,"
with false promises "that a free-market economy will automatically solve the problem of poverty."

Leo described a "new tyranny," which shuns any kind of oversight and where the economy is structured "in such a way that sacrifices are demanded of the masses in order to serve the needs of the powerful." The poor, he wrote, are only allowed "drops that trickle down."

The pope openly challenged "prosperity theology" and called Christians to the practice of giving charity. "It will not solve the problem of world poverty, yet it must still be carried out, with intelligence, diligence and social responsibility," he wrote.

Popular movements that challenge "the empire of money," invite people to take on the cause to combat poverty alongside the poor, instead of on their behalf, and "make history," the pope said. It our duty, Leo said, to "make their voices heard, albeit in different ways, in order to point out and denounce such structural issues, even at the cost of appearing foolish or naïve."

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Melanie D’Arrigo @darrigomelanie.bsky.social · 7d

I feel like this photo of masked, armed men pepper spraying a pastor protecting his community is going to be a defining picture of this moment in America for a long, long time.

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Reposted by Brett Gray

General Boles @generalboles.bsky.social · 8d

Everyone who advocates for turning the UK into the UAE assumes they'll be the one with a marina penthouse rather than the guy working on a building site in 50c heat

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Brett Gray @bcgray.bsky.social · 7d

Giving away Betts was just such a profoundly bad move by Boston...

Molly Knight @mollyknight.bsky.social · 7d

While both Dave Roberts and Rob Thomson flailed with poor strategy in the ninth last night, Mookie Betts stepped in and took over. mollyknight.substack.com/p/mookie-bet...

Mookie Betts wins game with his brain

Dodgers' shortstop outsmarts both managers in ninth inning to give team a commanding 2-0 NLDS lead over the Phillies

mollyknight.substack.com

Brett Gray @bcgray.bsky.social · 9d

Thinking about it a few days on, 'One Battle After Another' is one of the strangest, most wondrous, intriguing, and just plain great films I've seen in a long time. It's a definite must see.

Reposted by Brett Gray

Harry Turtledove @hntdove.bsky.social · 9d

Hell of a thing to put next to a statue of Joan of Arc. (h/t David Pilling)

Fire extinguisher next to a statue of Joan of Arc

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meliss-AAAH! @mel.bzky.team · 10d

that's not a very nice way to refer to London museums

Isabelle Marie @isabellemarie.bsky.social · 11d

Multi-generational vulture nests hold 700 years of human artifacts.
www.popsci.com/environment/...

Multi-generational vulture nests hold 700 years of human artifacts

Crossbow bolts, sandals, slingshots, and more.

www.popsci.com

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Brett Gray @bcgray.bsky.social · 11d

Democratically elected leaders don't put their faces on currency. That's what monarchies and autocrats do.

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Brett Gray @bcgray.bsky.social · 12d

Bracing for the coming revelations of institutionalised misogyny in the Church of England.

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Brett Gray @bcgray.bsky.social · 12d

Thinking of my mom, who got involved as a lay woman in the campaign for women's ordination. She lived to see women ordained priests. She'd be tickled by a woman as the Archbishop of Canterbury.

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TACC @tacc.org.uk · 13d

Teachers say trans pupils 'limiting food and drink' to avoid school toilets

The new guidance said students will be asked to use toilet facilities which correspond to their biological sex.

news.stv.tv

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Brett Gray @bcgray.bsky.social · 12d

My hopes for the new Archbishop? That they will, without qualification, dissimulation, or prevarication, recognise the full humanity and holiness of all God’s children, and that they will have the courage and wisdom to oppose the cooption of Christianity by populist nationalism and nascent fascism.

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Brett Gray @bcgray.bsky.social · 15d

More Ta-Nehisi Coates than Ezra Klein.

Brett Gray @bcgray.bsky.social · 16d

First porridge of the autumn. Hit it with a little salt and maple syrup, compliment it with some good black coffee, and you can take on the world.

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Brett Gray @bcgray.bsky.social · 17d

It was never meant to be workable. It was meant to push trans folk to the margins of society.

UK businesses fear new EHRC guidance on toilets will be ‘unworkable’

Exclusive: Stonewall writes to ministers and warns cost of compliance could be ‘significant’ for struggling companies

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Brett Gray

Catherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 17d

“They’re, they’re animals anyway. That’s what I would tell my kids all the time,” said the ICE agent, according to body cam footage. spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-...

Man detained in Cato ICE raid wrongfully deported, separated from his family

Body camera footage released from the raid shows agents referring to immigrants as 'animals.'

spectrumlocalnews.com

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Nate Wolff @natewolff.bsky.social · 17d

reminder:

Tropes invented by Herman melville
weird guy
Something in the natural world is a symbol weird animal
Only one bed at the inn!
Love triangle
Workplace romance
Interesting details
The sea

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