Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 7h

(I normally have my phone set up to not remind me of random things but hadn't turned the setting off on my new phone, so it decided me to serve me this banger as a treat)

Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 8h

It's ten years ago this month that I made the UniMelb meme pages because it turns out a week 10 lecture on theories of neoliberal urbanism wasn't a big drawcard when studio assignments were due that week

Student view of a nearly empty lecture theatre. Two people behind the lectern are finishing up a previous class. Lauren (white with blonde hair, dark rimmed glasses, blazer) is sitting in the front row of the lecture theatre waiting to set up her slides. Text over image reads "Week 10 lecture be like... let's just have a one on one tutorial"

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Reposted by Lauren Pikó

Michael Klapdor @mklapdor.bsky.social · 15h

quote from @jeremypoxon.bsky.social: 'gotta give it to Hendo' [Ronald Henderson]

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 14h

Awesome stuff as always, though I have to say I'm gonna start quoting "you've gotta give it to Hendo" when talking about poverty line measurement

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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 21h

I don’t think a long book is even primarily about plot, or character, or any of the patterned information on its pages. A long book is practicing over time a way of being in the world. Reading even a very good summary is not the same as giving over some portion of your own life to that practice.

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 15h

Truly, what a treat!

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Leanne Veronica @leanneveronica.bsky.social · 17h

"Every age assumes the dislocations of its time are exceptional, but the present one seems particularly indifferent to earlier moments of technologically induced disequilibrium."

Jon Piccini @jonpiccini.bsky.social · 3d

The war against 'false news' is not 'new', but has been a concern of international organisations for over 100 years. The ever captivating Roland Burke launches a new Guardian column, Past/Present, sponsored by the @austhistassoc.bsky.social.

The fledgling UN tried to rein in mass-scale misinformation. The world turned its back and is now paying the price | Roland Burke

The ruinous result of the US approach to freedom of information and media has made anti-democratic contagion impossible to ignore

www.theguardian.com

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 16h

Always happy to see my bro on the timeline

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 16h

Absolutely, though I love the flipside of that where it's always shifting with you and you get to remeet it as a whole new person every time! The joy of both knowing something deeply and feeling that it is unknowable 💜

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 17h

Rereading is the real joy, to the extent that if it was worth reading once it's worth reading 20 times

Rachel Feder @rachelfeder.bsky.social · 1d

Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat

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AHA (Australia) @austhistassoc.bsky.social · 19h

A new initiative from the AHA: a monthly column in The Guardian providing an historical perspective on present-day events! We're starting with Roland Burke, thinking about misinformation and the links between the UN of today and the 1930s. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The fledgling UN tried to rein in mass-scale misinformation. The world turned its back and is now paying the price | Roland Burke

The ruinous result of the US approach to freedom of information and media has made anti-democratic contagion impossible to ignore

www.theguardian.com

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 17h

This is also why a certain flavour of modern reader loved them as a child because you get to learn what all the references mean and unpack the lost meanings of jokes and research all the context and yes I was always like this what do you mean

John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 18h

Most "classics" are boring as fuck to a modern reader in no small part because the context of the story is not understood by them and so many of the allusions and "inside jokes" known to then-contemporary readers have been lost in time and in translation

Rachel Feder @rachelfeder.bsky.social · 1d

Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 1d

That sounds way more charming than what my poor left eye is delivering right now, but given everything in the world I'm absolutely taking it as a win that I can't see all the housework I haven't done!

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 1d

Beats being able to actually see what's happening right now tbh

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 1d

While normally I'd complain about having to wear an eyepatch on my normally-good eye, meaning that I have to rely on one that doesn't get enough circulation and doesn't focus properly, I can actually wholly recommend engaging with the world through a cosy fuzzy fog.

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Professor Euan Ritchie @euanritchie.bsky.social · 1d

"One consultant totalled $85,000...almost $3,000 a day".

"Last year, a NTEU report estimated universities across Australia spent $734 million a year on consultants, a practice across the sector which the union has strongly criticised."

Here's an idea, hire more staff instead of consultants on $$$!

Professor Euan Ritchie @euanritchie.bsky.social · 1d

This nonsense must end, one would have hoped we'd learnt from the damage done to the Australian public service and government decision-making, but clearly not www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10...

Uni staff outraged as high-paid consultants work on redundancies

As Western Sydney University prepares to shed hundreds of staff due to its dire finances, leaked documents reveal it is paying consultants as much as $2,850 a day.

www.abc.net.au

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Reposted by Lauren Pikó

El Gibbs @bluntshovels.bsky.social · 3d

'Why is there so little nature writing by disabled Australian writers?' Jessica White

www.artshub.com.au/news/opinion...

Why is there so little nature writing by disabled Australian writers?

Author Jessica White considers ecobiography, and how deafness shapes her relationship with natural and built environments.

www.artshub.com.au

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Radio Reversal @radioreversal.bsky.social · 5d

This chat draws on Anastasia's chapter in this book, Histories of Fascism and Anti-Fascism in Australia, edited by @evansmithhist.bsky.social, @drjpersian.bsky.social & Vashti Jane Fox - great and useful read if you can find a copy!

www.routledge.com/Histories-of...

Histories of Fascism and Anti-Fascism in Australia

Histories of Fascism and Anti-Fascism in Australia provides a history of fascist movements and anti-fascist resistance in Australia over the past century.In recent years, the far right has become a re...

www.routledge.com

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 7d

Oh god, I just remembered I unironically said "all that is solid melts into air" during a workplace wellbeing meeting 🫠

My laptop should have set itself on fire in protest

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 7d

Have been referring folks at work to these and they are immensely enjoying them! 💜

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 7d

Not to be an enabler, but I haven't forgotten you mentioning a potential future avenue of bolshy disability history, and if/when that magical day arrives it would be my dream to talk shop with you on that 💜

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 7d

The planning and heritage industries do a terrible job in general of engaging with the horrors of what went on in these sites, often with grotesquely whitewashed results (e.g. "Springthorpe", the generic suburban estate built on the grounds of Mont Park Hospital in northeast Melbourne).

El Gibbs @bluntshovels.bsky.social · 7d

any further changes must include justice for the thousands of disabled people who lived and died in these places, and who also fought for liberation

www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10...

Psychiatric hospital to 'urban parkland': Sydney's public space dilemma

The challenge of transforming a major piece of Sydney's public space from a former mental health hospital to an "iconic urban parkland" is a delicate dance for the state government.

www.abc.net.au

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Asher Wolf @asherwolf.bsky.social · 7d

When we talk about the things that should haunt us, memory does not last long beyond the survivors unless testimony is recorded. And most of the communities that housed these sites have no desire to have those stories on the record, because it is a source of eternal shame

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Asher Wolf @asherwolf.bsky.social · 7d

I regularly come across older people with disabilities who were held at ‘Mayday Hills’ previously known as the ‘Beechworth Lunacy Asylum’. The site is now used for ghost tours, even while some of the old Mayday Hills workers are still employed elsewhere as disability support workers

El Gibbs @bluntshovels.bsky.social · 7d

any further changes must include justice for the thousands of disabled people who lived and died in these places, and who also fought for liberation

www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10...

Psychiatric hospital to 'urban parkland': Sydney's public space dilemma

The challenge of transforming a major piece of Sydney's public space from a former mental health hospital to an "iconic urban parkland" is a delicate dance for the state government.

www.abc.net.au

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Lauren Pikó @booklearning.bsky.social · 7d

Disabled person with a long family history of workers in those institutions; the stories I have heard are genuinely awful, and truly make me fear for the ones I haven't heard.

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