Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Paul McAuley @unlikelyworlds.bsky.social · 14h

Hampstead Heath, 07:23

A pair of rose briars bearing bright red hips arch against a misty sky.

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Jason Major @jpmajor.bsky.social · 1d

Dione in front of Saturn, captured by Cassini 20 years ago today on October 11, 2005 🌖🪐

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Rob T @thexclaim6.bsky.social · 1d

Debenhams is selling idols of Pazuzu, in case you were wondering what stage of late capitalism we’re in…

Pazuzu idol pendant for sale at Debenhams

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Philip Gourevitch @pgourevitch.bsky.social · 1d

RIP Diane Keaton — the news of her death sent me looking for this excellent piece about her and her serious interest in photography by her friend Larry McMurty

www.nybooks.com/articles/200...

Diane Keaton on Photography | Larry McMurtry

1. My friendship with Diane Keaton began about twenty-eight years ago, when I found her, one morning, sitting in the flower bed outside the Madison Hotel,

www.nybooks.com

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Guy Gavriel Kay @guygavrielkay.bsky.social · 1d

Endorsed happily. See the film, it is a delight. It *brings* delight.

Marie Phillips @mariephillips.bsky.social · 1d

I wasn’t sure about I Know Where I’m Going the first time I watched it. Now I am. It is perfect. boxd.it/bkJTol

A ★★★★★ review of I Know Where I'm Going! (1945)

I remember watching this the first time and being a bit baffled by it. It seemed weirdly theatrical, the Scotland unconvincing and clichéd, and I didn’t pick up on any chemistry between Wendy Hillier ...

boxd.it

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Paul McAuley @unlikelyworlds.bsky.social · 1d

The driver of catastrophic global heating in the Quiet War.

David Wallace-Wells @dwallacewells.bsky.social · 1d

“Planet-heating methane is escaping from cracks in the Antarctic seabed as the region warms, with new seeps being discovered at an ‘astonishing rate,’ scientists have found.” www.cnn.com/2025/10/10/c...

Scientists discovered something alarming seeping out from beneath the ocean around Antarctica | CNN

Planet-heating methane is escaping from cracks in the Antarctic seabed, with new seeps being discovered at an “astonishing rate,” raising fears that future global warming predictions may have been und...

www.cnn.com

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Paul McAuley @unlikelyworlds.bsky.social · 1d

Spent the morning sandpapering cracked paint from old window frames and now my iPad doesn’t recognise my fingerprint.

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Neil Hegarty @neilhegarty.bsky.social · 1d

'In Fermanagh, the almost total disappearance of greys and re-emergence of red squirrels is being largely put down to pine martens.' This is a great story.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

Pine martens on the move in Northern Ireland

One of Northern Ireland's rarest native mammals have been turning up in some unusual places.

www.bbc.com

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Live Tapes @livetapes.heads.social.ap.brid.gy · 2d

Television - 1975-01-17 - CBGB, New York City, NY https://archive.org/details/television1975-01-17.unk

Television - 1975-01-17 - CBGB, New York City, NY : Television : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

TelevisionCBGB - 1975-01-17With Richard Hell63:011. Venus2. What I Heard3. Fire Engine4. Friction5. Hard On Love (fast version)6. Blank Generation7. Psychotic...

archive.org

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Juno Rylee Schultz @junoryleejournalism.com · 3d

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems...
SIMON: What?
SHAPIRO: ...Or saying...
SIMON: You imagine that?
SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.
SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.
SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this.
SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

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Paul McAuley @unlikelyworlds.bsky.social · 2d

70 - 75s have to pay for it too (unless immunocompromised or living in a care home).

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Matthew Cobb @matthewcobb.bsky.social · 2d

Getting my jab today, but thanks to Wes Streeting, I have to pay for it (£90)… Many other 65-69s and immunocompromised ppl will not be able to afford it.

@DrJoePajak CSci CChem FRSC @drjoepajak.bsky.social · 3d

Latest England COVID-19 hospital bed occupancy up.
COVID-19 positive tests up.
COVID-19 deaths up.
COVID-19 cases up.
Data source @ukhsa.bsky.social
Why?
Limited vaccine eligibility, waning immunity, lower priority by leaders, mixing in poorly ventilated, cramped spaces. Scant use of face coverings.

Latest England COVID-19 hospital bed occupancy up.
COVID-19 deaths up.
COVID-19 positive tests up.
COVID-19 cases up.
Data source @ukhsa.bsky.social
Why?
Limited vaccine eligibility, waning immunity, lower priority by leaders, mixing in poorly ventilated, cramped spaces. Scant use of face coverings.

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Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 3d

Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE

nyti.ms

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Paul McAuley @unlikelyworlds.bsky.social · 3d

The season when vast underground empires extend fruiting bodies into the upper world.

A shaggy parasol mushroom growing amongst nettles.

A trio of Coprinus species of mushroom growing in leaf litter.

Unidentified mushroom growing in leaf litter.

Mushroom, possibly Agaricus vaporarius, amongst grass and leaf litter.

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Paul McAuley @unlikelyworlds.bsky.social · 3d

So I went for a walk today

View across slopes of trees taking on autumn colours towards the brow of Beacon Hill, Buckinghamshire.

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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 3d

China's Tianwen-2 is on its way to Kamoʻoalewa, an asteroid that currently doubles as a "quasi-moon" of Earth. The spacecraft will collect samples & bring them back home.

On its outward trajectory, Tianwen-2 looked back and got this lovely view of our planet. 🧪🔭

english.news.cn/20251001/ef3...

This image released by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) on Oct. 1, 2025 shows a view of the Tianwen-2 probe alongside Earth, captured by the probe during its deep-space journey. The newly released image, acquired by a monitoring camera mounted on the probe's robotic arm, showcases China's five-starred red flag and the white return capsule against the backdrop of a distant, blue Earth. (Some slight image processing by me.)

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Anne Charnock @annecharnock.bsky.social · 3d

This is the novel everyone will be talking about. It’s wonderful. And a beautiful blogpost from @catamaroon.bsky.social to mark its release today. 📚💚📚

E. J. Swift @catamaroon.bsky.social · 3d

When There Are Wolves Again is out in the UK today! I wrote something about the book, and keeping going, and some personal stuff I dithered over but, well, it's been A Year.

I'm so glad the book is out there and thank you so much to everyone who has supported it 🐺🤍

ejswift.co.uk/2025/10/09/w...

Hardback edition of When There Are Wolves Again by E. J. Swift, with cover featuring a wolf and branch/leaf/flower design, photographed in the garden with the author's cat in the background being dramatic

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IEEE Spectrum @spectrum.ieee.org · 4d

Researchers have found a way to get close-up images of nearby #stars and #exoplanets within 25 years. These new probes would be tiny disks with optical sensors, accelerated into space by lasers, travelling at 0.2 times the speed of light. spectrum.ieee.org/high-speed-i...

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Prof Sam Illingworth @samillingworth.com · 4d

🧠 Alzheimer’s reversed in mice

A new study found that injecting nanoparticles can 'remind' the blood–brain barrier to function properly again, restoring normal brain activity in mice. Human trials could follow within years.

🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#SciComm #Alzheimers 🧪

Rapid amyloid-β clearance and cognitive recovery through multivalent modulation of blood–brain barrier transport - Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy

Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy - Rapid amyloid-β clearance and cognitive recovery through multivalent modulation of blood–brain barrier transport

www.nature.com

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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 4d

Amazing: Comet ATLAS formed some 8 billion years ago. It made about 3 dozen circuits around our galaxy. It entered our our solar system & just passed 30 million kilometers from Mars...

...where ESA's ExoMars orbiter captured these images of the interstellar comet! 🧪🔭

www.esa.int/Science_Expl...

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Richard Kadrey @richardkadrey.bsky.social · 5d

My new book, THE FLESH KING is out today and available everywhere your get your books. But I’d feel like an ass if I didn’t mention new books by two of my favorite writers: THE ESSENTIAL HORROR OF JOE R. LANSDALE and SHADOW TICKET by Thomas Pynchon. Why not go nuts and get all three?

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Alex Spahn 🌋🌪️☄️ @spahn711.bsky.social · 5d

Just found this image of the 2021 Fagradalsfjall eruption in Iceland that I've never shared before. Being in the presence of this volcano and feeling the intense heat of the Earth on my skin was genuinely the best experience of my life and its not even close. #photography

An erupting volcano. A black spatter cone with a gap in the front has lava fountaining out, hundreds of feet into the air, smacking against the cone, and flowing along a snaking lava river toward the camera. A plume of gas rises into the air with mostly cloudy sky in the background.

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Colin Peters (Scary Pumpkin) @colinpeters.bsky.social · 5d

Is this a plan to make solar power contribute to global warming?

David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 5d

Whisper: Maybe we should stop messing with the radiative balance of Earth.

Plan to Reflect Sunlight to Power Solar Panels at Night Upsets Astronomers

Reflect Orbital aims to launch its first of a planned 4,000 satellites into orbit next year. Scientists worry that it would be “ruinous” for research.

www.bloomberg.com

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Andy Brockman @andybrockman.bsky.social · Sep 19

Everybody makes money out of academic authors except the authors...News.

Wiley is the latest academic publisher to reach a multi-million deal to allow access to its content to AI developers, with no opt out, let alone payment, for the authors who created that content.

Wiley set to earn $44m from AI rights deals, confirms “no opt-out" for authors

The US publisher is the latest to capitalise on deals to give tech firms access to its authors’ content to train their Large Language Models (LLMs).

www.thebookseller.com

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Gilly @gillyarcht.bsky.social · 5d

OMG

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 6d

Royal Portuguese Cabinet of Reading, Rio de Janeiro

Very ornate library with beautiful glass ceiling

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