Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Nick Jackson @nbj914.bsky.social · 16h

Unburying the Remains of the Third Reich: “Yet even as the country has sought to avoid reminders of its history, the remains of that past keep turning up — the war graves of 8,000 to 12,000 Germans are uncovered each year.” www.nytimes.com/2025/03/27/m...

Nick Jackson @nbj914.bsky.social · 16h

The Case for Telling Total Strangers to Shut Up: “Shushing was once commonplace, if a little snooty and silly. Now, however, a phone-addicted culture has made us all seemingly oblivious to just how annoying we are in public.” www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/m...

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Nick Jackson @nbj914.bsky.social · 1d

What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero: “He was a perfect little parable about something both universal and, to me, very personal: the tension between alienation and belonging, rejection, and rejecting.” www.nytimes.com/2025/03/09/m...

Nick Jackson @nbj914.bsky.social · 1d

Lessons From Germany on a Better Bratwurst: “In that house, I learned what ‘German bread’ meant, and for the first time in four years began to understand why my fiancé eats so much bread. It’s his white rice.” www.nytimes.com/2025/03/19/m...

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Nick Jackson @nbj914.bsky.social · 2d

The Comedian Who Anticipated Our Reality-Bent World: “In the history of comedy, no one has shown a fuller commitment to cultivating silence, awkwardness, concern, bewilderment, and vitriol than Andy Kaufman.” www.nytimes.com/2025/03/25/m...

Nick Jackson @nbj914.bsky.social · 2d

The One Place on Social Media That Still Feels Human: “The items on Facebook Marketplace are jumbled together so haphazardly that they remind me of the lawless tumble of images that graced GeoCities’ pages.” www.nytimes.com/2025/03/18/m...

Nick Jackson @nbj914.bsky.social · 3d

How the Creator of Shtisel Fled His Ultra-Orthodox Life — and Returned: “Despite the ultra-Orthodox ban on television and the blocks installed on their devices to prevent most internet access, many found a way to watch the series.” www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/m...

Nick Jackson @nbj914.bsky.social · 4d

Vanity Fair’s Heyday: “I started out telling friends the magazine was for the jet set and those who aspired to it; later I took to calling it a guilty pleasure for the intelligentsia.” yalereview.org/article/burr...

Nick Jackson @nbj914.bsky.social · 4d

The Comedian Looking for Something All of America Can Laugh At: “He is a master of the leisurely, even comforting, story that plays to his audience’s expectations of what is good, kind, and virtuous, only to foil those expectations with a well-timed word....” www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/m...

Nick Jackson @nbj914.bsky.social · 5d

Ed Yong Wants to Show You the Hidden Reality of the World: “‘All of it is about the idea that much of the world is hidden from us, that we don’t perceive it and don’t understand it, and that it is worth understanding and it is necessary to understand.’” www.nytimes.com/2025/02/22/m...

Nick Jackson @nbj914.bsky.social · 6d

The Rise of Plant Poaching: How a Craze for Succulents Is Driving a New Illegal Trade: “The vast majority of illegally harvested conos end up in east Asian countries, where they have become status signifiers, posted by their owners on social media.” www.ft.com/content/13af...

Nick Jackson @nbj914.bsky.social · 6d

Janet Malcolm Understood the Power of Not Being ‘Nice’: “Even at the most turbulent points in her career, she had an untouchable confidence, a rare and fruitful independence from other people’s opinions.” www.nytimes.com/2025/02/12/m...

Nick Jackson @nbj914.bsky.social · 7d

The Morning Ritual That Helps Me Resist the Algorithm: “Whom do I need to respond to? What have I missed? What do I need to do next? Memorizing a poem first thing in the morning became a way of attuning me to a different logic.” www.nytimes.com/2025/02/25/m...

Nick Jackson @nbj914.bsky.social · 7d

Nevada’s Lithium Could Help Save the Earth. But What Happens to Nevada?: “In our rush to harness green energy, what consequences might we be inviting?” www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/m...

Nick Jackson @nbj914.bsky.social · 8d

Is It OK to Read a Newspaper Online When I’ve Stopped Paying for It?: “While citizen journalism has its place, professional journalism — with its skilled reporters, photographers, editors, illustrators, and more — requires real investment.” www.nytimes.com/2025/02/08/m...

Nick Jackson @nbj914.bsky.social · 8d

Invasive Crabs Have Taken Over New England. One Solution? Eat Them.: “The species possesses many traits that aid its spread; its small size is the one that has protected it from human consumption, so far.” www.nytimes.com/2025/01/31/m...

Nick Jackson @nbj914.bsky.social · 9d

Want an Authentic Travel Experience? Try McDonald’s.: “I’m looking for a very specific encounter with normality. I want to see people living as I do, under global capitalism.” www.nytimes.com/2025/01/21/m...

Nick Jackson @nbj914.bsky.social · 9d

A Mountain Lion Attacked My Nephews. What Could Have Stopped It?: “What we love about this region can never be separated from the ways that it will remain ... untamed, with its plunging river canyons and sheer rock pitches, dense thickets of chaparral and manzanita.” www.nytimes.com/2024/12/31/m...

Nick Jackson @nbj914.bsky.social · 10d

How Bad Is Bypassing Paywalls?: “Shell out for every well-regarded online newspaper, newsletter, and magazine, and your monthly bill for subscription-based news, analysis, and text entertainment would rival what Dril drops on candles.” theringer.com/2024/12/31/m...

Nick Jackson @nbj914.bsky.social · 10d

Can I Ban Books From My Front-Yard Little Free Library?: “Private providers of reading material aren’t bound by the political ideal of free expression....” www.nytimes.com/2025/01/10/m...

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Nick Jackson @nbj914.bsky.social · 11d

How Sign Language Can Help Us All Be Better Communicators: “Letting go of the need for 'precise' language, and the need to translate every signed sentence into an English one in my mind, was possible only after I embraced ASL’s emotionality.” www.nytimes.com/2025/01/07/m...

Nick Jackson @nbj914.bsky.social · 11d

Cook With Warmth and Hospitality. Cook With Vegetables.: “It was all heart. It was spirited. It was all love, delicately sketched into pages, with zero embarrassment for how sweet, and gonzo delicious, cooking can be.” www.nytimes.com/2025/01/08/m...

Nick Jackson @nbj914.bsky.social · 13d

Overlooked No More: Karen Wynn Fonstad, Who Mapped Tolkien’s Middle-Earth: “Fonstad’s atlases became objects of cult veneration, and today, the ranks of the gaming industry and of fantasy and sci-fi publishing are filled with cartographers influenced by her work.” www.nytimes.com/2025/01/13/o...

Nick Jackson @nbj914.bsky.social · 13d

Could This Tiny School Break Down the Wall Between Church and State?: “‘We will bring God back to schools and prayer back in schools in Oklahoma,’ Ryan Walters told an audience at a Family Research Council meeting in September last year.” www.nytimes.com/2024/12/12/m...

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Nick Jackson @nbj914.bsky.social · 14d

What Broadway Gets Right and Wrong About Journalism: “Of course, plays are not meant to explain the journalistic process — they are for entertainment. And playwrights do get some things right: The long hours. ... The punishing deadlines.” www.nytimes.com/2024/12/20/i...