Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Alan Rudy

Mark Jacob @markjacob.bsky.social · 4h

Mike Johnson, fake Christian, doesn't think a Republican congressman beating up his girlfriend is "really serious."

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 4h

Q: This has been reported for a while. Cory Mills was accused of beating a girlfriend in his DC apt. Are you concerned about these allegations?

JOHNSON: You have to ask Rep. Mills about that. He's been a faithful colleague. I don't know the details. Let's talk about things that are really serious

64 240 720

Reposted by Alan Rudy

Hamilton Nolan @hamiltonnolan.bsky.social · 3h

Bari Weiss launched her own path to stardom with the argument "it is oppression to dislike me for being bad" and now we will get to see what an entire media ecosystem built with that philosophy looks like

Kurtbert Barlowko @albertburneko.bsky.social · 3h

"disliking me is persecution" describes so incredibly many people's entire outlook these days defector.com/free-press-r...

Free Press Reporter Discovers That Being An Amoral Dickhead Can Cost You Friends | Defector

It can be hard to maintain friendships as an adult. People move to new cities, start families, and experience all sorts of other life events that make it difficult to keep in touch. Sometimes, you end...

defector.com

35 310 1.5K

Alan Rudy @aprudy.bsky.social · 3h

OMG the YAF-loving young Republicans at my small college just west of Chester, PA, in the early 80s... yikes.

2

Alan Rudy @aprudy.bsky.social · 4h

To be clear, I think Raymond Williams was right.

1

Alan Rudy @aprudy.bsky.social · 4h

To treat the category N/nature as Foster does is a prime example of reification and misplaced concreteness. The material abstraction, N/nature, is a general category that has no specifiable empirical referent or utility. The second you step into history, the general is inapplicable.

2

Alan Rudy @aprudy.bsky.social · 4h

The appeal to Jameson is telling. A dialectical approach has the long process of the first historical act producing Universal, external, and human nature. As per D. Sayer, N/nature "does not exist except in particular, empirical forms. As with production, it has no existence as a generality."

1 1

Alan Rudy @aprudy.bsky.social · 4h

Foster, et al., are clear in their commitments. Nature is remarkably complex while being restricted the fundamental, trans-historical, elemental, material, law-like, and non-human objects of the universe. R. Williams was wrong, it is singular and does not contain a lot of human history.

The word nature, we should interject here, is one of the more complex words in modern language, standing as it does in different contexts for the material world and even the universe; the most fundamental domain of existence; the elemental drives of life; the object of natural science; certain timeless, immutable laws; evolution; the non-human and non-social; the non-intellectual and non-spiritual, and so on. So various and yet indispensable are its usages that Max Weber referred to the fundamental
"ambiguity of the concept of 'nature," arguing that the most we can say is that in each of its many usages it refers to "a complex of certain kinds of objects, a complex that is distinguished from another complex of objects, which have different properties."43 Indeed, the concept of nature can be seen as perhaps the prime example of what Fredric Jameson has referred to as a fundamental "ontological rift" in existence, posing dialectical oppositions that can be fathomed but never fully bridged.

2 1

Alan Rudy @aprudy.bsky.social · 7h

Who do you think is overlooking their seriousness? Dems still fiddling and committed to normalization/bipartisanship? I can't think of a single progressive Dem or person further to the left who thinks this shit is simply performative.

2

Reposted by Alan Rudy

Leah Millis @leahmillis.bsky.social · 19h

The @chicago.suntimes.com photographer who risked their personal health and safety to take this photograph is Anthony Vazquez. Please credit photographers and media outlets. In this age of misinformation, a photo with no context could be anything at all.

50501: The People’s Movement ❌👑 @50501movement.bsky.social · 19h

Please remind us who the domestic terrorists are again.

Photo from Chicago: DHS militarized agent holding a gun up directly in someone’s face as the victim has their hands up, pleading for them not to shoot.

69 2.7K 8.3K

Reposted by Alan Rudy

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 18h

Tim Walz: "It's almost unimaginable that he's got Milei in there, giving him $20 billion, so that they can undercut us and China can buy their soybeans from them. And now China has learned they can replace our markets."

520 6K 17K

Reposted by Alan Rudy

Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg.bsky.social · 19h

Literally nothing coming from the Pentagon, DHS, or DOJ should be considered credible unless backed up by an independent source outside of government. (This, for the record, is a huge problem!)

MFordTheRiver @prynnford.bsky.social · 19h

Of all the things that didn’t happen

Screen shot of ABC article with the headline “cartels issuing bounties up to 50k for hits on ICE and CBP agents, DHS says.”

150 890 3.6K

Reposted by Alan Rudy

Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social · 19h

There is no conceivable argument that these ships, even if we assume they were carrying narcotics, could not be dealt with in some other way. I think we can just drop the caveats and say: This is mass murder.

Chris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · 23h

Unless and until some kind of compelling legal and moral argument is presented as to why this is a legitimate use of deadly force, this is just…mass murder.

Amarnath Amarasingam @amaramarasingam.bsky.social · 1d

The military has now killed 27 people as if they were enemy soldiers in a war zone and not criminal suspects. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/14/u...

16 850 3.4K

Reposted by Alan Rudy

Samhain Goldstein @goldstein.bsky.social · 23h

www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat

Thousands of private messages reveal young GOP leaders joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape.

www.politico.com

1 8 13

Reposted by Alan Rudy

Coach Finstock @coachfinstock.bsky.social · 1d

Dem staffers tell the people you work for that if they use the words 'across the aisle' or 'bipartisan', we're all gonna remember this shit come election time

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 1d

POLITICO: “.. They referred to Black people as monkeys and ‘the watermelon people’ and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies .. and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.

@politico.com
www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

4 62 280

Reposted by Alan Rudy

Sophia Babai @swingingstorm.bsky.social · 1d

So far TODAY Israel has:

- bombed Gaza City
- bombed Khan Younis
- shot and killed five Palestinians in Gaza City
- refused to open the Rafah border crossing
- announced they would once more block aid

This is what a "ceasefire" with Israel looks like. This is what it has always looked like.

9 290 440

Reposted by Alan Rudy

Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 1d

Mike Johnson — man of deep faith, we are told — wants pastors to be shot in the head with pepper balls.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

Q: We've seen images out of Chicago of federal agents shooting faith leaders with pepper balls and arresting journalists. Where's the limit for you on what's acceptable conduct by federal agents?

MIKE JOHNSON: I've not seen them cross the line yet.

51 530 1.8K

Reposted by Alan Rudy

rosebongiovanni.bsky.social @rosebongiovanni.bsky.social · 1d

aje.io/hkwdmc?updat...
Earlier, people who tried to go to their homes in the east of Gaza City and in southern Khan Younis were shot and killed by Israeli troops. At least nine Palestinians were killed despite the ceasefire.
#gaza
#GazaCity
#KhanYounis
#ceasefire

‘You cease, I fire’: Israel kills 9 Palestinians despite Gaza truce

Israeli army confirmed it opened fire saying a group of people approached soldiers before being targeted.

aje.io

3 29 28

Reposted by Alan Rudy

Emissary Of Night | ليلى @diplomatofnight.com · 1d

The very purpose of these phased deals is to allow for Israel to maintain veto points over key elements of what would be considered the march to peace. It was bad when the previous administration embraced the phases approach and even worse now.

2 33 140

Reposted by Alan Rudy

Emissary Of Night | ليلى @diplomatofnight.com · 1d

Sums it all up

Martin Konený
@MartinKonecny
X.com
EU Commission press briefing
yesterday:
Journalist: You've said that Russia should repay for reconstruction of Ukraine. Do you believe Israel should repay for reconstruction of Gaza?
EU chief spox: It's an interesting question, on which I have no

10 180 660

Reposted by Alan Rudy

Trevon Logan @trevondlogan.bsky.social · 1d

As I have long said, the “free and open debate” folks were given extraordinary latitude to define the terms of what “academic freedom” meant and the continual presumption of good faith long after all evidence said the opposite.

4 14

Reposted by Alan Rudy

Hell-issa Johnson, PhD 🎃 @ladyhistorian.bsky.social · 1d

Even more crazy when you look at the OP's feed and learn they added this to their prompts because they asked the LLM how to get better results and this is what it said

Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 2d

Seeing people nonchalantly post stuff like makes me feel like I'm going crazy honestly.

A post from an academic on blue sky that says: "I'm learning about "prompt engineering" when asking LLMs to extract data. I now add this to all instructions:

Style
Be concise, analytic, and specific (cite page/figure if provided). If essential info is missing, keep going but flag Unclear and exact data needed. Never invent data.

#academicsky"

8 5 41

Reposted by Alan Rudy

Charlotte Lydia Riley @lottelydia.bsky.social · 1d

Even more annoying is that the original poster is using the LLM to “wade through a mountain of papers for a systemic review”. Which means feeding a lot of academic material into the plagiarism machine that always lies, without the consent of the authors.

Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 2d

Seeing people nonchalantly post stuff like makes me feel like I'm going crazy honestly.

5 49 190

Reposted by Alan Rudy

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 1d

The entire incident is infuriating and terrifying. She’s a Latina woman who was working a service job. On her way home late at night, with her headphones in, she was detained for an hour by masked federal agents who wouldn’t give her their names.

Maria Greeley, 44, had just finished working a double shift at the Beach Bar on Ohio Street
earlier this month when she said she was surrounded by three federal agents who grabbed her, forced her hands behind her back and zip tied her.
Headphones in, Greeley had been focused on getting home to her two dogs for a walk.
Instead, she said she was detained by masked agents who did not answer when she asked for names. They questioned her for an hour, she said.

200 2.4K 6.1K

Alan Rudy @aprudy.bsky.social · 1d

Grandad was a central PA fascist, after the Navy, at Reed, Dad married a post-Quaker gal with +/- socialist parents... never looked back.

Reposted by Alan Rudy

Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 1d

canadian media would never have this courage

Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · 2d

Front page of Scottish newspaper The National today.

5 70 340