Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Brian Wasik @brianrwasik.bsky.social · 5h

Ruhroh

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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 5h

I’ve been sitting with this the last few hours. It’s really hitting me just how fucking depraved you have to be to respond to an inquiry about an abducted child with a screenshot of a post on elon musk’s hellsite smearing this kid who has no ability to defend himself. It’s unfathomable.

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 6h

Kavanaugh stop

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 7h

What if the unidentified masked men with guns don't accept the validity of your papers?

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Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 9h

Our public money to support research at our universities is mandated by our Congress.

It is not the personal slush fund of the president, to withhold at will or dole out as largesse, rewarding those who please him.

Those who seek reform of universities can use laws, not arbitrary extortion.

Robert Kelchen @robertkelchen.com · 10h

After getting zero firm commitments to this point from the first nine invitees, the Trump administration is extending its proposed compact to all colleges. Expect some red-state publics to say yes.

Trump Offers All Colleges Preferential Funding Plan Rejected by MIT

The Trump administration is inviting all US colleges to participate in a compact — initially rejected by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — that would grant preferential federal funding in re...

www.bloomberg.com

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ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 7h

Yglesias of all people had a real insightful post on this 15 years ago, probably because he is prone to the same exact behavior archive.thinkprogress.org/four-reasons...

So that’s that. You can, however, always get more psychological. I was 21 years old and kind of a jerk. Being for the war was a way to simultaneously be a free-thinking dissident in the context of a college campus and also be on the side of the country’s power elite. My observation is that this kind of fake-dissident posture is one that always has a lot of appeal to people. The point is that this wasn’t really a series of erroneous judgments about Iraq, it was a series of erroneous judgments about how to think about the world and who deserves to be taken seriously and under which circumstances.

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ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 7h

is this the lady who went to the Columbia bookstore and posted a breathless vlog flipping out about how students read the Koran

southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 16h

Auspicious start for the new CBS News, laundering unattributed cop shit-talking through the incoming editor-in-chief’s blog and failing to correct a misspelling of the story subject’s name in the web headline for three days.

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George Gantsoudes @pedsortho.bsky.social · 20h

Please remember that the disgust people have over Christopher Columbus is not based on some modern, 21st century “woke” ideology, but rather on contemporaneous accounts of atrocities that make many modern genocides appear quaint in comparison.

Below, are the accounts of Bartlomé de las Casas.

But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had in-vested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.
The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.

After each six or eight months' work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died.
While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants.
Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides... they ceased to pro-create. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and fam-ished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desper-ation.... In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk ... and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fer-tile... was depopulated... My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write....

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Brian Wasik @brianrwasik.bsky.social · 8h

I keep yelling through the menu 'Speak to Comrade!'

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The Ass is the father of the legs @internethippo.bsky.social · 11h

Mr Trump sir do not let woke antifa change the clocks this year. They plan to do it and they say you are powerless to stop them

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🎃 public HELLth guy 🎃 @publichealthguy1.bsky.social · 20h

that last line

Under Dr. Mermin’s leadership, new H.I.V. infections in the nation dropped by 36 percent, and resurgent sexually transmitted infections showed the first signs of a plateau nationwide.

He also directed health departments to spend the bulk of their money on prevention. It was “a very precise and scientific and logical approach” to make the biggest impact for the least money, said Greg Millett, who worked as a deputy for the Office of National AIDS Policy in the Obama White House.

Now, however, Dr. Mermin is spending his days at home with his chickens and his misbehaving cat. The fate of the H.I.V. division hangs in the balance, and he worries that lawmakers may not realize its importance. “What if no one cares?” he said.

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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 12h

Obama: "When you see an administration suggest that ordinary street crime is an insurrection or a terrorist act, that is a genuine effort to weaken how we have understood democracy."

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Brian Wasik @brianrwasik.bsky.social · 11h

You didn't get an invite from the college student union, ya dolts.

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Brian Wasik @brianrwasik.bsky.social · 11h

You took MBS blood money to launder their evil... and are now giving them the exact propaganda they paid for, pro bono.

You can tell yourself its about taking freedom to Saudis... but how much walking around and alt venues were you given unrestricted access to, folks?

Worse to lie to yourself.

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Brian Wasik @brianrwasik.bsky.social · 11h

WC is crazy. But still mad at Burr and others for trying a flavor of this, 'why don't you want to bring free expression to Saudis?'

You weren't a guest of oppositional citizens of Riyadh... you were a guest of the CROWN PRINCE AND HIS REPRESSIVE REGIME.

The A.V. Club @avclub.com · 15h

Cummings accused those upset with her participation in the Saudi Arabian event of ignorance and hypocrisy.

www.avclub.com/whitney-cumm...

Whitney Cummings calls critics of Riyadh Comedy Festival "racist"

www.avclub.com

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 14h

Wow, wow, wow. This has always been legally possible but the law has virtually never been enforced — and now this is the SECOND case I've heard of in the last month (first involving a person with a green card) of a noncitizen being charged for failure to carry their papers.

Gregory Pratt @royalpratt.bsky.social · 15h

NEWS: ICE gave a Rogers Park man a $130 ticket for not having his papers on him. They rounded him up last week and eventually let him go, but not without a fine that some critics say is un-American. Trump admin enforcing little-used law
www.chicagotribune.com/2025/10/13/i...

ICE tickets Chicago man with legal residency $130 for not having his papers on him: ‘It’s not fair…I’m a resident’

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement fined Rueben Antonio Cruz $130 for not having his papers with him.

www.chicagotribune.com

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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 16h

Looking forward to this discussion at the STAT Summit in Boston this Thursday.

Inside the Upheaval at NIH session with Jeremy Berg, Eric Green, and Mallory Harris, moderated by Anil Oza.

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Stephen West @stephenwest.bsky.social · 14h

How W. E. B. Du Bois responded to government policing of "anti-American" sentiment during the 1910s:

"I took great satisfaction in being able to sit back in my chair and answer blandly, 'We are seeking to have the Constitution of the United States thoroughly and completely enforced.' ”

Federal agents invaded even the offices of The Crisis and the National Association for the advancement of colored people and asked searching questions: " just what, after all, were our objects and activities?” I took great satisfaction in being able to sit back in my chair and answer blandly, “We are seeking to have the constitution of the United states thoroughly and completely enforced.” It took some ingenuity, even for Southerners, to make treason out of that.

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Brian Wasik @brianrwasik.bsky.social · 14h

Pairs nicely with this new NYT piece on Orban's hybrid regime
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/12/w...

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Eric Umansky @ericumansky.bsky.social · 16h

ICE agents blocked an ambulance that was trying to take an injured protester to hospital.

"We are still not being allowed to leave by ICE officers.” an EMT said on radio

When driver tried to get out, an agent yelled, "DON’T YOU EVER DO THAT AGAIN, I WILL SHOOT YOU"

www.wweek.com/news/2025/10...

Documents Allege a Federal Agent at Portland ICE Threatened to Shoot an Ambulance Driver

Feds delayed medics who had come to pick up an injured protester. Then, according to confidential incident reports, the agents became aggressive.

www.wweek.com

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Larry Glickman @larryglickman.bsky.social · 18h

The idea that political dissent can only be the product of “paid protesters” or “outside agitators” has a long history. Here is the Mississippi columnist Tom Ethridge in June 1963 concerned that attendees at the upcoming March on Washington might be “whipped into a frenzy by skilled agitators.”

“Aug 28 has been set as the date for this mass invasion of the captial by upward of 100,000 negroes…”

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southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 18h

James Michael Johnson, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, is fanatically devoted to Donald Trump and expresses his adoration by endeavoring to give Trump everything he wants, despite never having heard a word Trump has written or said or any specific account of anything Trump has done.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 18h

REPORTER: We know the president moved forward with mass layoffs. We're also learning there were significant cuts to staff at special education services. Are you comfortable with those cuts?

MIKE JOHNSON: I haven't seen the specifics of that and I don't know

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Brian Wasik @brianrwasik.bsky.social · 17h

'What did you do for ME lately' is everything

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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 18h

This is a powerful account from a PhD student whose fellowship was terminated by NIH because it was part of a "diversity" program without any other considerations or understanding of what the program or the students were actually doing.

undark.org/2025/10/09/o...

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NIH Student Grant Cancellation Will Weaken Scientific Innovation

The termination of federal F31 diversity fellowships puts many graduate students in a bind — and U.S. science at risk.

undark.org

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 18h

Congress could, at any time, stop this shitshow by telling Vought to end the RIFs and impoundments. It has very clear institutional reasons to do so. But obeying to Trump rules all, and instead the Speaker of the House will pretend he does not know what is happening while opining on Bad Bunny.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 18h

REPORTER: We know the president moved forward with mass layoffs. We're also learning there were significant cuts to staff at special education services. Are you comfortable with those cuts?

MIKE JOHNSON: I haven't seen the specifics of that and I don't know

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Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 17h

If Trump looks unpopular, his entire authoritarian project collapses. Self-interest might even do most of the rest of the work. He’s hurting a lot of powerful people and institutions! They’re just all glancing around nervously, seeing little resistance, and deciding to keep quiet themselves.

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