Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Kate Louise Mathis @drmaudbailey.bsky.social · 2h

I'm pretty sure my grandparents' draught excluder was made from this pattern! (or one very like it), except that theirs was stuffed with newspaper. Very weird unexpected flashback.

(the cat is amazing and has big Monday-of-the-last-week-of-teaching-before-half-term vibes)

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John Swinney @johnswinney.bsky.social · 19h

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇵🇸 Thank you, Ambassador Zomlot.

Scotland will always proudly stand with the people of Palestine, in the pursuit of peace, justice and a lasting two-state solution.

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Izzy Jayasinghe @ijayas.bsky.social · 1d

🤖 If you use LinkedIn, please be aware that they automatically use your profile to train their GenAI. To turn off, go to Settings > Data Privacy > Data for Gen AI improvements.

Screenshot of LinkedIn’s menu: “How LinkedIn uses your data”. Near the bottom, is the option to turn off “Data for Generative AI improvement”, shown with a red arrow.

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Women's History Scotland @womenshistscot.bsky.social · 21h

📣 NOW ACCEPTING ESSAYS! The Leah Leneman Prize for research on women’s or gender history is open to students & independent scholars. Submit your 8-10k word essay by 22 Dec 2025 📅

Full details: womenshistoryscotland.org/projects-and...

Front cover of Leah Leneman's 'The Scottish Suffragettes' featuring an image of an Ewardian woman in front of a 'Womens Freedom League' banner, and a second image of a busy suffrage march with banners that read 'Votes for Women'.

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Scotland's Churches Trust @scotchurchestrust.bsky.social · 21h

Day 12 of #31DaysOfGraves - Notable Woman

An unassuming slab of stone off the Fife coast at Torryburn covers the mortal remains of Lilias Adie, the only known grave of an accused witch in Scotland

Buried beneath the tidal line by superstitious villagers in 1704, her grave was rediscovered in 2014

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Kate Louise Mathis @drmaudbailey.bsky.social · 20h

Good.

Let's hope one specific example singled-out by the UN, no less, is right on top of the list: www.ucuedinburgh.org.uk/blog/7nhe6nf... #EdinUni #Divest

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Emily ✨🎃 @emilyoram.bsky.social · 1d

God love Kew, this is incredible

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Kate Louise Mathis @drmaudbailey.bsky.social · 21h

'Reviewer 2 has responded'

Marjorie James Keenan @unenthusiast.com · 1d

In honour of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand.

rm -rf ~/

hammancheez @hammancheez.bsky.social · 1d

"The chancellor approved it"

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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 1d

This is such a clever idea on taking kids to museums/galleries
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Nadia from London has an idea that sounds such fun you'll be booking a day out asap.
"I've always loved museums," she says,
"but they can be overwhelming for children. For decades now, I've done something called 'playing postcards'
We do
the museum backwards, visiting the gift shop first. Each child gets to choose three postcards. Then they take it in turns to find that particular artwork in the museum and give us a little information about the piece from the details on the postcard, or from any gallery plaque. At the end of this treasure-hunt-style activity, we vote for our favourite in the cafe."

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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 23h

The soft opening for this was telling teachers to necromance chatbots out of Anne Frank. There’s a historical parallel to this I’ve been chewing on, a bit of gristle stuck in my teeth since I wrote this footnote about a public debate in Weimar Germany on the educative potential of replicas. 🧵

The use of copies to fill lacunae in collections was by no means always hitched to a progressive cause, as it was in this debate. For example, the Nazi-sponsored traveling exhibition Deutsche Größe of the early 1940s comprised replicas entirely. See Diebold
2015•

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The Past and other Places @pastandotherplaces.bsky.social · 1d

Jean Payton Reid, architect and town planner (1917-97). Liberton Kirkyard, Edinburgh. Thought to have been Scotland's first female town planner. Family monument - pink granite obelisk.
#31DaysOfGraves day 12 notable women. #herstory
thepastandotherplaces.wordpress.com/2023/01/14/a...

Greek-style tall pointed obelisk in polished pink granite standing in a kirkyard. Most of the other gravestones are smaller and grey. The tower of the Kirk is prominent in the background. There are green shrubs and several bare-branched trees in the background.

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David Benedict @eggsbened.bsky.social · 1d

EXACTLY!
‘Where once there was a yearning to be “exposed to something extraordinary”, today politicians and arts administrators are besotted by the notion of “relevance”, of the arts as something with which people must immediately identify or recognise.’ observer.co.uk/news/columni...

It’s not opera that’s elitist but the idea that art is to...

The myth that culture has not been for the masses is debunked in a new book

observer.co.uk

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#9 Dream @gayfabfourfan.bsky.social · 1d

In the last 5+ years, we should’ve instituted clean indoor air beginning in schools & hospitals, ensured doctors & healthcare workers wear good masks, & properly informed the public abt airborne transmission & the true dangers of COVID. Instead the gov’t opted for basically pretending it all away.

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University of London Press @uolpress.bsky.social · 17d

Stephen Mullen's excellent book on this topic, The Glasgow Sugar Aristocracy: Scotland and Caribbean Slavery, 1775–1838 is available to read for free from our website:

uolpress.co.uk/book/the-gla...

#OpenAccess #History #Slavery #Scotland

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Marushka-T @marushka-t.bsky.social · 19d

So why is there no public health messaging about this ongoing #pandemic? That #COVID is caused by a fully airborne virus that can infect and disable anyone at any age, vaxxed or not?

I'll tell you why. Because politics. Because capitalism.

#disability #healthcare #MillionsMissing #MECFS #maskup

Cat in the Hat @catinthehat.bsky.social · Jun 29

[27 Jun 2025] @DrTedros at WHO media briefing:

“We cannot talk about COVID-19 in the past tense. Although the crisis has passed, the virus remains.

It continues to evolve, it continues to kill, and millions of people continue to live with post COVID-19 condition or long COVID.”

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#9 Dream @gayfabfourfan.bsky.social · 1d

Untreated HIV can take on average around 10 years to progress to AIDS. This means HIV was unknowingly circulating throughout the ‘70s (and likely before). Going by this rough timeline, we won’t know what damage a single COVID infection, let alone several, does long term until around 2030.

Oni Blackstock, MD MHS @oniblackstock.bsky.social · 1d

The first reports of what would eventually be called AIDS and its causative agent identified as HIV were published in the MMWR in 1981 alerting health care and public health systems across the country. A tremendous loss for public health.

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M. J. Grant @campaignbear.bsky.social · 2d

Exactly. There has been zero transparency about why the cuts are/have become necessary and a complete dereliction of (legal) duty as regards informing campus unions.

Kate Louise Mathis @drmaudbailey.bsky.social · 2d

Thanks #BBC for more neglectful reporting: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article.... Not only does it give the last word to a false, unchallenged statement by UoE's Principal, it doesn't include any of the interview provided ostensibly for the same article by @ucuedinburgh.bsky.social President Sophia Woodman.

Thousands more university jobs cut as financial crisis deepens

University workers will vote on national strike action this month over a 1.4% pay offer made in the summer.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Kate Louise Mathis @drmaudbailey.bsky.social · 1d

See also the mysterious 'chest infection' that's done for at least 50% of my (predominantly unmasked) students in the last fortnight.

#WearARespie #CovidIsNotOver #OngoingPandemic

Prof Christina Pagel @chrischirp.bsky.social · 2d

Also, if you're "in bed with flu", it's almost certainly Covid.

Prof Christina Pagel @chrischirp.bsky.social · 2d

After a long pause, I've just done another England Covid & NHS update as we head into the autumn/winter season.

TLDR: we're in a significant Covid wave now, the NHS is stretched, get boosted if you're eligible.

christinapagel.substack.com/p/england-is...

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UCU Edinburgh @ucuedinburgh.bsky.social · 2d

@edinburgh-uni.bsky.social we're wondering if UoE management are proud to be the top of the 'slash jobs' league table?

www.timeshighereducation.com/news/cuts-eq...

Cuts equivalent to 15,000 jobs planned at UK universities – UCU

Proposed job losses almost triple since March as unions prepare to vote on nationwide industrial action

www.timeshighereducation.com

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Dr David Joffe MB BS(Hons), PhD, FRACP @davidjoffe64.bsky.social · 2d

Influenza versus Cövid.

826 COVID vs 89 flu deaths, and within 90 days, 1,391 COVID vs 149 flu deaths, showing worse outcomes for COVID-19

Rough maths? About 10 times more fatal

journals.plos.org/plosmedicine...

Comparative risk of post-acute sequelae among adults following SARS-CoV-2 or influenza virus infection: A retrospective cohort study among United States adults

Author summary Why was this study done? It is known that people may suffer medical complications long after COVID-19, which are called post-acute sequelae (PAS). Similar sequelae are also known to h...

journals.plos.org

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Róisín Ní Neachtain @roisinnineachtain.com · 2d

Hello to all lovers of poetry, poetic prose. To the romantics and the political.

I have written this book. It is my third book and my first independently published book.

It is unlike any of my other writing. It is not for the traditionally-minded. You might like it if you like the surreal.

Róisín Ní Neachtain @roisinnineachtain.com · 6d

This happened just now.

Pre-orders up!!! Deeply grateful to @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social and all my teachers at UCD and the kind writers who wrote the blurbs including @gagebybell.bsky.social and @martinadalton.bsky.social and so many others …

www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page...

Róisín Ní Neachtain - I, bird | Broken Sleep Books

Róisín Ní Neachtain's I, bird is a fragmented, lyrical reckoning with grief, trauma, and the porous boundary between body and voice. Structured in poetic prose and verse, the collection moves between ...

www.brokensleepbooks.com

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Jonathan Healey @jonathanhealey.bsky.social · 3d

It was two OUP books.

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Kate Louise Mathis @drmaudbailey.bsky.social · 2d

Live footage of academics trying and failing to close their inboxes on a Friday night without ticking off just one more thing that'll otherwise lurk mentally all weekend...

AmeriKraut @inchargeofthegirls.bsky.social · 3d

sherman, for the love of god!

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Kate Louise Mathis @drmaudbailey.bsky.social · 2d

She and her sister hung out with the Arts & Crafts crowd in 1910s Edinburgh, which is what Yes arises from. I'm interested in it because it contains a character based on the artist John Duncan (who painted several of the medieval Gaelic prose tales' heroes that I write about in their Revival guise).

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Kate Louise Mathis @drmaudbailey.bsky.social · 2d

Perhaps you could consider a follow-up, printing the material you've already been given and speaking with the students whom the branch had lined up to be interviewed too. All of which would provide actual context for the Principal's claims of 'transparency' with his staff (very much not accurate).