Laura
@lleigha.bsky.social
"Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world"
The views expressed through the account represent my own opinions and not my employer.
The views expressed through the account represent my own opinions and not my employer.
Pinned
Laura
@lleigha.bsky.social
· Oct 20
“Consciousness of Right”: Jane Austen’s Persuasion and Immanuel Kant - Volume 77, Issue 3, Summer 2025
Jane Austen's last novel, Persuasion (1818), features a heroine in Anne Elliot whose humility, morality, and sense of duty nearly ruin her chances for happiness with Captain Wentworth. Though Anne end...
www.pdcnet.org
My latest article on Jane Austen's reading of Kant in Persuasion: www.pdcnet.org/renascence/c...
Reposted by Laura
"The fact that many men believe they no longer even have to pretend to respect women in order to participate in public life makes it unlikely that anything will change anytime soon. The fish rots from the head. The pig is in the Oval Office." www.theatlantic.com/culture/2025...
President Piggy
This is what consequence-free misogyny looks like.
www.theatlantic.com
November 20, 2025 at 6:36 PM
"The fact that many men believe they no longer even have to pretend to respect women in order to participate in public life makes it unlikely that anything will change anytime soon. The fish rots from the head. The pig is in the Oval Office." www.theatlantic.com/culture/2025...
Reposted by Laura
“The thing that worries me most is the unemployment rate now is at its highest level in four years. It's at a level that we hadn't seen since 2017, except for during the pandemic.” That’s the trend to watch.
November 20, 2025 at 9:38 PM
“The thing that worries me most is the unemployment rate now is at its highest level in four years. It's at a level that we hadn't seen since 2017, except for during the pandemic.” That’s the trend to watch.
Watching PBS Ken Burns’s American Revolution and remembering a great poet
interestingliterature.com/2013/06/gues...
interestingliterature.com/2013/06/gues...
Guest Blog: Writing Against Captivity: Phillis Wheatley’s Illimitable Imagination
By Laura Linker Phillis Wheatley (1753-84), an eighteenth-century black slave taught to read by her owners, composed over 100 poems in her lifetime, many of them drawing on the Bible as a source of…
interestingliterature.com
November 17, 2025 at 2:17 AM
Watching PBS Ken Burns’s American Revolution and remembering a great poet
interestingliterature.com/2013/06/gues...
interestingliterature.com/2013/06/gues...
Reposted by Laura
NYC - Zohran Mamdani (D) is projected to win the NYC mayoral election
November 5, 2025 at 2:08 AM
NYC - Zohran Mamdani (D) is projected to win the NYC mayoral election
Reposted by Laura
Excellent investigative work by WSJ tracks down one of the greatest presidential corruption scandals in US history, www.wsj.com/finance/curr...
Binance Boosted Trump Family’s Crypto Company Ahead of Pardon for Its Billionaire Founder
The giant crypto exchange facilitated a $2 billion purchase of World Liberty’s stablecoin and built its technology. The clemency for Changpeng Zhao—the tycoon known as CZ—surprised some in the adminis...
www.wsj.com
October 30, 2025 at 1:33 AM
Excellent investigative work by WSJ tracks down one of the greatest presidential corruption scandals in US history, www.wsj.com/finance/curr...
Reposted by Laura
The campaign to label art "too woke" or "too liberal" has dark historical echoes. In my op-ed, I draw the parallel to Nazi Germany's "Degenerate Art" exhibitions and the Soviet doctrine of "Socialist Realism." When a government dictates what art is acceptable, we are on a dangerous path.
Trump’s Campaign to Defund the Arts—and Rewrite History
"The campaign to defund the arts, capture our museums, and rewrite our history is a prelude to silencing dissent."
time.com
October 26, 2025 at 1:59 PM
The campaign to label art "too woke" or "too liberal" has dark historical echoes. In my op-ed, I draw the parallel to Nazi Germany's "Degenerate Art" exhibitions and the Soviet doctrine of "Socialist Realism." When a government dictates what art is acceptable, we are on a dangerous path.
Reposted by Laura
October 27, 2025 at 12:24 AM
Reposted by Laura
from "The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy" by Ray D. Madoff
October 25, 2025 at 2:51 PM
from "The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy" by Ray D. Madoff
Reposted by Laura
Reposted by Laura
@joshuajfriedman.com “the image of a wrecking ball hitting the president's house, one of the most important buildings in our country”
October 22, 2025 at 1:15 AM
@joshuajfriedman.com “the image of a wrecking ball hitting the president's house, one of the most important buildings in our country”
Just unbelievably sad. No words.
The White House is asking people not to share pictures of the East Wing because it’s even worse today.
October 22, 2025 at 12:36 AM
Just unbelievably sad. No words.
Reposted by Laura
Everything happening in the U.S. now is easier to understand when you stop thinking a political party took power and realize instead that an organized crime ring did.
October 21, 2025 at 8:23 PM
Everything happening in the U.S. now is easier to understand when you stop thinking a political party took power and realize instead that an organized crime ring did.
Reposted by Laura
October 21, 2025 at 6:52 PM
Reposted by Laura
“.. The Trump administration is criticized for having no coherent strategy toward China, with some experts describing the approach as ‘strategic schizophrenia’ ..
@opinion.bloomberg.com
www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...
@opinion.bloomberg.com
www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...
October 21, 2025 at 12:43 PM
“.. The Trump administration is criticized for having no coherent strategy toward China, with some experts describing the approach as ‘strategic schizophrenia’ ..
@opinion.bloomberg.com
www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...
@opinion.bloomberg.com
www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...
My latest article on Jane Austen's reading of Kant in Persuasion: www.pdcnet.org/renascence/c...
“Consciousness of Right”: Jane Austen’s Persuasion and Immanuel Kant - Volume 77, Issue 3, Summer 2025
Jane Austen's last novel, Persuasion (1818), features a heroine in Anne Elliot whose humility, morality, and sense of duty nearly ruin her chances for happiness with Captain Wentworth. Though Anne end...
www.pdcnet.org
October 20, 2025 at 11:21 PM
My latest article on Jane Austen's reading of Kant in Persuasion: www.pdcnet.org/renascence/c...
Reposted by Laura
Join us in Rome or online for a seminar on plant illustrations on 6 November! 🪴🌻🌿
Through images of mandrakes and ferns, @fabribald.bsky.social and I will be discussing issues in the role of images in early modern botany.
www.biblhertz.it/events/43483...
Through images of mandrakes and ferns, @fabribald.bsky.social and I will be discussing issues in the role of images in early modern botany.
www.biblhertz.it/events/43483...
The Role of Images in Early Modern Botany
This seminar brings together two experts on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century plants. Zooming in on the dilemma of visualizing plants (or not), and how images could become part of epistemic methods w...
www.biblhertz.it
October 20, 2025 at 10:02 AM
Join us in Rome or online for a seminar on plant illustrations on 6 November! 🪴🌻🌿
Through images of mandrakes and ferns, @fabribald.bsky.social and I will be discussing issues in the role of images in early modern botany.
www.biblhertz.it/events/43483...
Through images of mandrakes and ferns, @fabribald.bsky.social and I will be discussing issues in the role of images in early modern botany.
www.biblhertz.it/events/43483...
Reposted by Laura
Reposted by Laura
MAGA: Make Argentina Great Again
October 15, 2025 at 6:46 PM
MAGA: Make Argentina Great Again
"Countries that neglect science become dependent on those that don’t. U.S. post-WWII dominance came from basic science investments...Long-term military and economic advantage (nuclear weapons, GPS, AI) trace back to scientific research ecosystems."
No startups, no science: How the Republican Administration switched off America's most important engine of economic success.
steveblank.com/2025/10/13/n...
steveblank.com/2025/10/13/n...
Steve Blank No Science, No Startups: The Innovation Engine We’re Switching Off
Tons of words have been written about the Trump Administrations war on Science in Universities. But few people have asked what, exactly, is science? How does it work? Who are the scientists? What d…
steveblank.com
October 14, 2025 at 6:52 PM
"Countries that neglect science become dependent on those that don’t. U.S. post-WWII dominance came from basic science investments...Long-term military and economic advantage (nuclear weapons, GPS, AI) trace back to scientific research ecosystems."
Reposted by Laura
We're living through the stupidest time in history - vast numbers of people who have the world's accumulated knowledge at their fingertips are incapable of recognising the basics of reality.
October 12, 2025 at 11:20 AM
We're living through the stupidest time in history - vast numbers of people who have the world's accumulated knowledge at their fingertips are incapable of recognising the basics of reality.
Reposted by Laura
MIT's response to the Trump admin's proposed "compact" is excellent and should be a model for other universities. orgchart.mit.edu/letters/rega...
October 10, 2025 at 2:14 PM
MIT's response to the Trump admin's proposed "compact" is excellent and should be a model for other universities. orgchart.mit.edu/letters/rega...
Reposted by Laura
Why Cartesianism appealed to women and became the inspiration for a pioneering feminist, Poullain de la Barre; and why Cartesianism was not the only option for women philosophers of the age. | @histphilosophy.bsky.social www.historyofphilosophy.net/cartesianism... #Descartes #women #philsky
www.historyofphilosophy.net
October 7, 2025 at 1:05 AM
Why Cartesianism appealed to women and became the inspiration for a pioneering feminist, Poullain de la Barre; and why Cartesianism was not the only option for women philosophers of the age. | @histphilosophy.bsky.social www.historyofphilosophy.net/cartesianism... #Descartes #women #philsky
Reposted by Laura
Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci, whose mathematical abilities, acquired from Clavius, made it possible for him as the first European in the 17th century to penetrate Chinese society & build a bridgehead for the Jesuit mission, was born 6 October 1552 #histsci
thonyc.wordpress.com/2012/10/06/a...
thonyc.wordpress.com/2012/10/06/a...
An Italo-Chinese Jesuit
The first history of science post that I wrote for The Renaissance Mathematicus was about the Jesuit mathematicus and educational reformer Christoph Clavius and his introduction of the mathematical…
thonyc.wordpress.com
October 6, 2025 at 8:04 PM
Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci, whose mathematical abilities, acquired from Clavius, made it possible for him as the first European in the 17th century to penetrate Chinese society & build a bridgehead for the Jesuit mission, was born 6 October 1552 #histsci
thonyc.wordpress.com/2012/10/06/a...
thonyc.wordpress.com/2012/10/06/a...
Reposted by Laura
This is so good from Cory Doctorow on all the tricks Amazon uses to get both consumers to pay more, and how businesses on the platform end up paying it 45-51 cents on every dollar.
Plus he rightly calls for regulatory change, not just individual consumer action
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Plus he rightly calls for regulatory change, not just individual consumer action
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish?
Sick of scrolling through junk results, AI-generated ads and links to lookalike products? The author and activist behind the term ‘enshittification’ explains what’s gone wrong with the internet – and ...
www.theguardian.com
October 5, 2025 at 8:19 AM
This is so good from Cory Doctorow on all the tricks Amazon uses to get both consumers to pay more, and how businesses on the platform end up paying it 45-51 cents on every dollar.
Plus he rightly calls for regulatory change, not just individual consumer action
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Plus he rightly calls for regulatory change, not just individual consumer action
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...