Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by J.M. Berger

Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 2h

the subreddits for luxury watches are some of the darkest places on earth

Rolex subreddit post:

My uncle has Alzheimer's and is often forgetful of his possessions. One of them is a Rolex Submariner. Would I be justified in taking and caring for it as my own instead of having it left neglected and forgotten in his jewelry box? Thanks.

49 130 1.5K

Reposted by J.M. Berger

John Pfaff @johnpfaff.bsky.social · 4h

To be clear:

LA County has declared a state of emergency BECAUSE OF the federal government.

The Feds, LA County is (correctly) saying, have CAUSED the emergency.

This is a striking political moment of internal collapse. Local govts feeling compelled to protect their ppl from … their own govt.

Los Angeles County declares state of emergency over immigration raids

Los Angeles County officials voted on Tuesday to declare a state of emergency over ongoing federal immigration raids.

abcnews.go.com

130 3.6K 8.8K

J.M. Berger @jmberger.com · 4h

Every single thing that story was worried about is now in play.

11

J.M. Berger @jmberger.com · 4h

I forgot, the Washington Post blew the thread up into a story:

www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-na...

We rely on the government for lots of data. What happens to that in the Trump era of “alternative facts”?

"Will they just make up the facts?” wonders one statistician.

www.washingtonpost.com

1 1 8

J.M. Berger @jmberger.com · 4h

I was right, but I was one Trump term too early.

1 8

J.M. Berger @jmberger.com · 4h

I did a thread about this back on the old place when Trump 1 began, but there's going to be hell to pay now that the former gold standard government-issue pedestrian information of all sorts is deceased.

Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg.bsky.social · 6h

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 · 6h

Of all the things that didn’t happen

1 5 21

Reposted by J.M. Berger

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 4h

Thanks goodness Pete Hegseth is eliminating political correctness and letting warriors be warriors*

*if you guys did not watch the mandatory video, or mocked it, expect to be punished

Prem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · 5h

NEW: Pentagon officials are forcing staff to watch Pete Hegseth's "Warrior" speech he forced generals to listen to.

Officials are even "testing" staff to see if they watched — and are threatening consequences if they lie about watching it or if they mock it, sources tell @swin24.bsky.social and I.

The Pentagon Is Ordering Staff to Watch Hegseth’s ‘MAGA Garbage’ Speech… Or Else

Defense Department sources tell Zeteo that staff have been warned that if they don’t watch or read the speech, or if they speak negatively of it, they could face severe consequences.

zeteo.com

42 110 540

J.M. Berger @jmberger.com · 6h

Spree killers

Chris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · 10h

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 · 10h

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...

17

Reposted by J.M. Berger

web3 is going just great @web3isgoinggreat.com · 7h

Reddit shuts down its NFT avatars project

August 28, 2025
https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=reddit-shuts-down-nft-avatars

20 63 380

Reposted by J.M. Berger

Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · 8h

good news everyone!

chatGPT is now able to “mitigate the serious health issues,” according to trustworthy source Sam Altman, which means humanity can be trusted with the Revenge Porn Madness Spigot

Matt Burgess (WIRED) @mattburgess1.bsky.social · 13h

Oh good, ChatGPT is getting "erotica for verified adults" later this year

We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. We realize this made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems, but given the seriousness of the issue we wanted to get this right.

Now that we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues and have new tools, we are going to be able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases.

In a few weeks, we plan to put out a new version of ChatGPT that allows people to have a personality that behaves more like what people liked about 4o (we hope it will be better!). If you want your ChatGPT to respond in a very human-like way, or use a ton of emoji, or act like a friend, ChatGPT should do it (but only if you want it, not because we are usage-maxxing).

In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our “treat adult users like adults” principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults.

15 51 310

J.M. Berger @jmberger.com · 6h

To be fair, they're probably also lying about the one

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 9h

Remember when Stephen Miller claimed the Chicago apartment raid was on a building “filled with Tren de Aragua terrorists”?

Well, DHS has now dropped the number of alleged TdA members arrested in the building from 2 to 1.

Just one "verified" Tren de Aragua member and one U.S. citizen with an active warrant were among the 37, DHS said, without saying how it had verified that gang affiliation. Others taken that day, the agency said, were "illegal aliens."

14 51

Reposted by J.M. Berger

Ari Cohn @aricohn.com · 2d

I have some bad news for JD Vance if he thinks violating the oath of office is "pretty criminal."

abcnews.go.com/Politics/pri...

60 200 1K

Reposted by J.M. Berger

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 9h

while 'young republicans are literal nazis' is well known to folks here, the extent of it is surprisingly not that commonly known even in media and analyst circles, let alone normal people.

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 12h

a real water is wet scenario here

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 13h

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...

38 380 2.5K

Reposted by J.M. Berger

Rainesford Stauffer @rainesford.bsky.social · 7h

“But he told IndyStar his firing follows a series of meetings with IU Media School leadership in which it grew increasingly apparent they were expecting him to officially prohibit students from publishing news.”

Indiana University fires IDS adviser amid dispute over student newspaper's content

The director of student media was fired after he pushed back against a university directive over what gets printed in the Indiana Daily Student.

www.indystar.com

1 14 22

Reposted by J.M. Berger

Ian Boudreau @ianboudreau.com · 7h

The one good thing about them taking the horny restraints off ChatGPT is that we will never hear from some people again

60 260 2.3K

Reposted by J.M. Berger

Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 8h

As I've noted, central to Stephen Miller's propaganda is the claim that the Chicago complex targeted by ICE was "filled" with Tren de Aragua "terrorists."

Now @jacobsoboroff.bsky.social reports that the number of TdA members netted in that raid is down to *one.*

newrepublic.com/article/2016...

92 1K 2.5K

Reposted by J.M. Berger

Senator Chris Van Hollen @vanhollen.senate.gov · 8h

Trump is saying the quiet part out loud: he sent a $20B taxpayer-financed bailout to help his far-right buddy Milei cling to power.

Meanwhile our government is shut down, public servants aren't getting paid & we're barreling toward a Trump-made health care crisis. Sounds like Argentina First to me.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 11h

Trump on Milei: "If he loses, we will not be generous with Argentina."

66 530 1.8K

Reposted by J.M. Berger

Arizona fRight Watch 🎃 @azrww.bsky.social · 11h

The Arizona Young Republicans chairman mentioned in this, Luke Mosiman, was one of the Turning Point affiliates demanding that Phoenix Suns sports writer be fired for not properly mourning Kirk to their liking

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 13h

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...

10 210 540

Reposted by J.M. Berger

Mike Masnick @mmasnick.bsky.social · 13h

I seem to recall that it was the biggest 1st Amendment attack in American history when the Biden admin alerted social media companies to some content and said "hey does this violate your policies?" Will Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger and (lol) CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss call this out?

Tweet from Pam Bondi:

Today following outreach from
@thejusticedept
, Facebook removed a large group page that was being used to dox and target
@ICEgov
agents in Chicago.

The wave of violence against ICE has been driven by online apps and social media campaigns designed to put ICE officers at risk just for doing their jobs. The Department of Justice will continue engaging tech companies to eliminate platforms where radicals can incite imminent violence against federal law enforcement.

39 870 3.2K

Reposted by J.M. Berger

𝕍∃, Cyber closed shell syndrome relief fund coordinator @vortexegg.com · 9h

“What if you could fuck the singularity?” is the apotheosis of technofuturism

3 6 22

Reposted by J.M. Berger

Hyo Yoon Kang 강효윤 @hyoyoonkang.bsky.social · 9h

academics being asked to attend inane seminars to train students in ai "literacy" whilst chat gpt is introducing sexting

1 11 59

J.M. Berger @jmberger.com · 9h

This was going to be a plot point if Optimal 2 ever happened.

1 4

J.M. Berger @jmberger.com · 9h

I would be very interested/likely horrified to see data on whether and how users abuse their new AI "lovers"

3 4 16

Reposted by J.M. Berger

Radical Reports @radicalreports.bsky.social · 11h

The Vast, Terrifying Scale of Trump’s Detention State

The vast, terrifying scale of Trump’s detention state

With $75 billion and thousands of masked agents, ICE is just getting started.

www.motherjones.com

1 26 39

Reposted by J.M. Berger

Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 9h

groyper occupied government

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 13h

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...

1 15 68