Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Sophie Ploeg @sploeg.bsky.social · 2d

Plastic Soup has an app that reads ingredients lists of any product and tells you whether it has micro plastics in it. Scanning anything in my house.. very interesting results!! www.plasticsoupfoundation.org/en/

One wave towards a plastic free future - Plastic Soup Foundation

More and more scientists point out the health risks of plastic. We eat, drink and breathe plastic. Help us turn off the plastic tap.

www.plasticsoupfoundation.org

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Reposted by Sophie Ploeg

Vero @vero99999999.bsky.social · 4d

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/n...

Rutgers Expert on Antifa Flees to Spain After Death Threats

www.nytimes.com

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Sophie Ploeg @sploeg.bsky.social · 5d

Not gonna even start until it’s all there…..

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Coates is Odd This Day @oddthisday.bsky.social · 5d

Being forced to wait a week between episodes of Slow Horses should be prohibited under the Geneva Convention

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Sophie Ploeg @sploeg.bsky.social · 8d

A real life Dan Brown novel featuring a European wide web of antique book thieves. What an amazing (and concerning) story 📚🧐
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/o...

The Pushkin job: unmasking the thieves behind an international rare books heist

The long read: Between 2022 and 2023, as many as 170 rare and valuable editions of Russian classics were stolen from libraries across Europe. Were the thieves merely low-level opportunists, or were bi...

www.theguardian.com

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Sophie Ploeg @sploeg.bsky.social · 11d

Promising exhibition of 18th century pastel paintings at the @holburnemuseumbath.bsky.social but at £16.50 a ticket a bit expensive for what is no doubt not a huge exhibition. Hm. Will think about it.
#pastelpainting #Liotard #Bath
holburne.org/events/powde...

Powder and Presence: Pastel Portraits in the Eighteenth Century - The Holburne Museum

This autumn, the Holburne is delighted to unveil Powder and Presence: Pastel Portraits in the Eighteenth Century, a new temporary collection display on the 2nd floor. In the 1700s, pastel rose...

holburne.org

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Dr. Jeroen W.P. Wijnendaele @drdragases.bsky.social · 13d

*Laughs hollowly in 2025*

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The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities @iashedinburgh.bsky.social · 15d

Out now! Our latest book, "Women Who Dared", is released today from Edinburgh University Press. You can purchase direct from @edinburghup.bsky.social via their website or at all good bookshops: edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-women-w...

Women Who Dared

edinburghuniversitypress.com

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Sophie Ploeg @sploeg.bsky.social · 15d

hey @waterstones.bsky.social you're a book shop, why can't we just win a book?
www.waterstones.com/win

Prize Draws | Waterstones

Discover our full range of books, gifts, toys, stationery and audiobooks at Waterstones.com. Click & Collect within 2 hours or buy online with Free UK Delivery on Orders Over £25.

www.waterstones.com

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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 17d

“AI” isn’t a tool or technology or even a cluster of technologies with a misleading name. It’s the infrastructure at the foundation of a form of capitalism dependent on data brokering. We should be teaching our students about this and not teaching them about “responsible” use.

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Kate Merkel-Hess @katemh.bsky.social · 15d

Incredibly thoughtful piece on the uses (or lack thereof) of AI. Historians will find this thinking relevant too.

Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 16d

Read the long version here. www.artforum.com/features/gen...

MACHINE YEARNING

Sonja Drimmer critically examines art historians’ recent embrace of generative AI as a tool for humanities research.

www.artforum.com

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Reposted by Sophie Ploeg

Raul Pacheco-Vega @raulpachecovega.bsky.social · 15d

“If you’re a writer, your first duty, a duty you owe to yourself and your readers, and to your writing itself, is to become wonderful. To become the best writer you can possibly be.”
― Theodora Goss

#WritingSky #AcademicSky

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Nina Willburger @drnwillburger.bsky.social · 16d

Children loved to play with toys in #Roman times too: some 1,800 years ago, a child in Cologne was buried with a terracotta horse with a rider on wheels. It was certainly a much-loved which the child was also supposed to play with in the afterlife.

📷 Römisch-Germanisches Museum Köln
🏺 #archaeology

The picture shows a terracotta horse with a rider on four wheels.

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Reposted by Sophie Ploeg

John McCafferty @jdmccafferty.bsky.social · 15d

Portrait of a woman
Michiel Jansz. van Miereveld, 1628.
The Wallace Collection.

For fans of galactically proportioned ruffs.

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Reposted by Sophie Ploeg

Dr Crom @doccrom.bsky.social · 15d

#OnThisDay - 29 September - in 106 BC Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus was born. Pompey was a key figure of the Late Republic, forming the First Triumvirate with Caesar and Crassus, but would be killed in Egypt one day shy of his 58th birthday. #AncientHistory 🏺

Image: Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen

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Reposted by Sophie Ploeg

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 15d

This is my regular reminder to everyone that jstor is open to the general public now; a free account there will give you access to 100 papers a year.

Marie Le Conte @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · 16d

regrettably if you try to point this out online you'll get yelled out by 79208 journalists going OH SO YOU WANT JOURNALISTS TO STARVE??? even if you're, say, a journalist yourself, and point out that while there are clearly no easy answers, the status quo isn't exactly working for society

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Sophie Ploeg @sploeg.bsky.social · 15d

www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Third of women report facing sexual harassment at university in England, survey finds

Higher education regulator’s findings from survey of 50,000 final-year students described as ‘national scandal’

www.theguardian.com

Reposted by Sophie Ploeg

Chapps @chapps.bsky.social · 17d

Another #Etruscan gem. This bust is a fragment of a statuette depicting the god Hermes (Turms) or the hero Perseus (Ferse), identified by the remains of wings emerging from either side of his head. Beautiful modeling, and quite a heavy jaw, with inlaid silver eyes. 🏺

150-50 BCE. #BritishMuseum
📸 me

Bronze bust of Hermes (Etruscan Turms) or Perseus (Etruscan Ferse), the eyes inlaid with silver. Identified by remains of wings emerging from either side of his head. He has a very pouty lower lip and a large softly rounded jaw. This head was seemingly once part of a large statuette, as you can see from the rough edges around the bottom of the neck, as if it were torn away from the larger sculpture.

Etruscan, Etruria, Italy, ca. 150-50 BCE. Bronze and silver.

Height: 10.16 cm (4 in.)

British Museum, London (1884,0604.60)

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Reposted by Sophie Ploeg

Kevin Wilbraham @kpw1453.bsky.social · 19d

The bronze head of the goddess Sulis Minerva which was discovered in 1727 during the construction of sewer under Stall Street in Bath. Now part of the museum collections at The Roman Baths in Bath. 📸 My own. #FindsFriday #RomanBritain #Bath

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Sophie Ploeg @sploeg.bsky.social · 19d

www.theguardian.com/books/2025/s...

New research may rewrite origins of the Book of Kells, says academic

Exclusive: Author challenges assumption monks on Iona created manuscript, instead positing its origins are Pictish

www.theguardian.com

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Coates is Odd This Day @oddthisday.bsky.social · 20d

So, happy 31st anniversary to this diary entry in which 86-year-old writer and country house expert James Lees-Milne hears about a new-fangled thing called The Internet (from a gallery owner, jewellery dealer, Cartier expert, and all-round posh chap)

Diary entry, 25 September 1994: Harry Fane, whom I met last night dining with his mother Jane Westmorland, never reads a book, but knows everything about computers. He swears that books will cease to exist within thirty years and all reading will be done on computers. Already there is some kind of central information exchange accessible by computer which you can contact for any facts - the varieties of bamboo, child welfare in Peru, anything. Within minutes, all human knowledge on the subject is submitted on the computer screen. I suppose the modern equivalent of Selfridge's Information Bureau. Harry is supplied with these devices, so there is no subject in the world which he can't learn about in twenty minutes.

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Sophie Ploeg @sploeg.bsky.social · 20d

If only this could be published in English as it applies to the UK as much as The Netherlands. Excellent piece on freedom of speech at universities

Peter de Bode @peterdebode.bsky.social · 20d

Dit geweldige stuk bewijst weer eens mijn stelling dat de beste artikelen tegenwoordig van vakspecialisten komen. Ik hoop dat de slijpsteenmensen ook meelezen want dan snappen ze dat Kirk's opvattingen samenvatten als "controversieel" nogal een eufemisme was.

www.volkskrant.nl/columns-opin...