Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Mer Francis, PhD, MSW @mwfrancis.bsky.social · 1d

YES!
And you can even *gasp* have non-academic authors on them, including people with lived experience of the thing you are studying!!! 😱

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Reposted by Mer Francis, PhD, MSW

Dr. Sarah Parcak @indyfromspace.bsky.social · 1d

Academic articles can be written in a popular science writing style

Rachel Feder @rachelfeder.bsky.social · 2d

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

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Mer Francis, PhD, MSW @mwfrancis.bsky.social · 3d

Gods, I want one of these but can't imagine how much the international shipping is!

I mean, assuming that they won't just scuttle their own way across the ocean floor to eventually arrive at my door crusted in barnacles

Reposted by Mer Francis, PhD, MSW

Vivian Moira Vampire @itsviviactually.bsky.social · 3d

It's a "Supporting Trans Authors" kinda day

(Every day is a "Supporting Trans Authors" kinda day)

Abra, The Everwife 🏳️‍⚧️ 🇲🇽🌼👻 @pairofclaws.bsky.social · Feb 22

On that note:

Trans authors (I mean authors who are trans, NOT cis people who write about trans people), drop your book links here and I'll try to repost as many as I can throughout the day.

Cis people: Repost trans authors' book links.

Cis people who want to complain about being excluded: gtfo

Abra, The Everwife 🏳️‍⚧️ 🇲🇽🌼👻 @pairofclaws.bsky.social · Feb 22

Being a trans author is fucking weird right now. Hell is actively unfolding all around us but I still need to be like, "hey, everyone, wanna buy my silly little queer book? It won't make anything better, but it's kinda fun?"

So....hey, everyone, wanna buy my silly little queer book?

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Mer Francis, PhD, MSW @mwfrancis.bsky.social · 3d

3000 word limit, inclusive

(trying to get a theoretical article down to 3000 words, inclusive of abstract, tables, figures, and foot/end notes 😱)

(I love explaining to students that you have word/page *maximums* instead of *minimums* the further you go in school and that it's MUCH HARDER lol)

🏰meg⚔️ @Birthright Audiobook! @impavid.us · 6d

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

I'll go first: Six page commercial lease.

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Reposted by Mer Francis, PhD, MSW

NightMar on Hicks Street, Part 4: The Rabbit’s Revenge @histoftech.bsky.social · 5d

The Virginia Senate just told UVA it’s not getting state funding if it accepts the compact since UVA exists to serve Virginia, its residents, & their interests—not be a tool of the federal govt. Scoop from our student newspaper, who’ve been doing vital reporting www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2025...

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Reposted by Mer Francis, PhD, MSW

AmeriKraut @inchargeofthegirls.bsky.social · 5d

sherman, for the love of god!

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Reposted by Mer Francis, PhD, MSW

priscilla page @priscillapage.bsky.social · 8d

have been desperately looking for this old erotic Spanish comic I stumbled on almost 10 years ago called "El secreto de Frankenstein" and I'm so happy to report I finally found it

black & white comic panel depicting a sexy, thicc Frankenstein's monster disrobing in 3 different poses - pulling his shirt of his shoulder, seen at an angle; from the front, shirtless, beginning to take his pants off; then almost totally nude as seen from behind. the words at the top read "Strip-tease de Frankenstein..."

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Reposted by Mer Francis, PhD, MSW

Cranky Bitch Sedai @totallydonna.kitrocha.com · 7d

THESE BOOKS ARE MEDICINAL

NightMar on Hicks Street, Part 4: The Rabbit’s Revenge @histoftech.bsky.social · 7d

doomscroll break

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Reposted by Mer Francis, PhD, MSW

Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 8d

One of the fundamental truths we need to acknowledge in this moment is that domestic violence is where fascists learned how to get away with their violence.

“What did you do to provoke him?” is exactly what victims hear when they try to seek help in an abusive relationship.

Preorder Read This When Things Fall Apart @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 8d

Y'all who keep lecturing protesters to "not give them an excuse" need to pause for a minute. Imagine yourself telling a DV victim, "Be sure not to mouth off or make any mistakes so he won't hit you. Don't give him an excuse! It's what he wants!" That's what you fools sound like.

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Mer Francis, PhD, MSW @mwfrancis.bsky.social · 10d

I want to hold this

Nothings Monstered @nothingsmonstrd.bsky.social · 11d

Grasshopper — Babylonia, c. 1750 BCE
Hematite

Statue of a grasshopper done in a stylized kind of condensed form looks great

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Reposted by Mer Francis, PhD, MSW

Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 10d

Are yall ever just sitting around and out of the blue you remember — again — that all of this is because of ONE Black President?!!

Just the one!!

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Reposted by Mer Francis, PhD, MSW

Dr Lindsey Fitzharris @drlindseyfitz.bsky.social · 12d

Timeline cleanse.

Newspaper clipping, 1906.

A newspaper clipping from 1906 that reads: "Noisy, Hungry Frogs Sadden Farmer's Life. They scare his cattle and they also eat his flannel shirt."

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Mer Francis, PhD, MSW @mwfrancis.bsky.social · 11d

PORM

Richard Kadrey @richardkadrey.bsky.social · 13d

Good morning

The most commonly misspelled porn search terms by state

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Reposted by Mer Francis, PhD, MSW

Your Internet Friend Tom Tomorrow @tomtomorrow.bsky.social · 12d

America is currently a giant experiment to see how long we can keep stuffing a year's worth of news and outrage into every single day before everyone's heads explode

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Mer Francis, PhD, MSW @mwfrancis.bsky.social · 14d

I'm pretty sure I will owe the same $25K for the rest of my life, especially now that I didn't get my NIH loan repayment program award renewed. I basically pay the interest unless I miraculously have extra to dump into it, and if I have that, it's going into retirement instead.

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 14d

“.. he worries he won’t be able to keep up with his monthly loan payments and may have some of his paycheck withheld by the government. .. ‘I’m going to be working until the day I die,’ Fausone said.”

@wsj.com
www.wsj.com/personal-fin...

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Mer Francis, PhD, MSW @mwfrancis.bsky.social · 14d

LLMs can only produce results based on their input data. This is also true of human samples, of course, because sampling strategies affect who is included. But humans are FAR more complex than we can model, so we will never make LLMs with as much variability as even the most limited human sample.

Jamie Cummins @jamiecummins.bsky.social · 27d

Can large language models stand in for human participants?
Many social scientists seem to think so, and are already using "silicon samples" in research.

One problem: depending on the analytic decisions made, you can basically get these samples to show any effect you want.

THREAD 🧵

The threat of analytic flexibility in using large language models to simulate human data: A call to attention

Social scientists are now using large language models to create "silicon samples" - synthetic datasets intended to stand in for human respondents, aimed at revolutionising human subjects research. How...

arxiv.org

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Mer Francis, PhD, MSW @mwfrancis.bsky.social · 17d

I'd like to say that I'd stay up all night, but I'd actually get cranky and fall asleep somewhere around 10 PM 😂

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Mer Francis, PhD, MSW @mwfrancis.bsky.social · 17d

Someone once told me that *buying* art/craft supplies and *using* them were two different hobbies and I have never felt so seen or called out in my life.

At least I've leveled up my Art Hoard hobby by buying high-quality supplies now?

K.B. Spangler @kbspangler.com · 17d

My stack of untouched blank sketchbooks: See what you could do if you tried?

Me: You’re right, let me buy another blank sketchbook.

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Mer Francis, PhD, MSW @mwfrancis.bsky.social · 17d

I am so tired of explaining that I'm real to others. I would love to hear your deep dive on Godzilla instead, especially if we can get into the psychological aspects of why we need monster myths and how shared cultural experiences shape what form those myths take!

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Reposted by Mer Francis, PhD, MSW

Riley Black 🦕 🏳️‍⚧️ @restingdinoface.bsky.social · 17d

We’re not a puzzle to work out. It’s not my obligation to prove I’m not a threat. I don’t have to ask for the space where I stand.

The picking apart of how we fit into a world no one is happy with, that we could all change if you took in our wisdom… I should get paid if it’s going to go like this.

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Reposted by Mer Francis, PhD, MSW

Riley Black 🦕 🏳️‍⚧️ @restingdinoface.bsky.social · 17d

It’s always a little strange when cishet acquaintances ask me to explain transness to them. I try my best to educate and make connections, but it can be so draining. I could give you a deep dive on Godzilla. We could talk music, food, pets. But here I am, in front of you, having to explain I’m real.

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Mer Francis, PhD, MSW @mwfrancis.bsky.social · 17d

The worst I worry about in cities is tripping on the effing sidewalks that always need repair and that someone will clip my car mirror while trying to drive their obnoxiously large SUV down a normal-sized city street.

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Mer Francis, PhD, MSW @mwfrancis.bsky.social · 17d

I've lived in big cities most of my adult life, and spending time in small towns freaks me the fuck out. I did a long run in extremely rural Iowa while visiting family and worrying about meeting some conservative whackjob with a gun on the dirt roads 2 miles into empty cornfields.

Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · 17d

the amount of raw, unadulterated fear that many Americans have of even small cities is never going to stop being darkly hilarious to me

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Mer Francis, PhD, MSW @mwfrancis.bsky.social · 17d

This is so important.

Sometimes we lose, but that doesn't give us permission to stop trying. We regroup, we mourn and heal in community, and then we keep going. We're in it for the long haul, not just this one part.

whet moser @whetmoser.com · 17d

of all the things about ta-nehisi coates’s philosophy i wish people would internalize the main one is: sometimes you lose

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