Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Omair Ahmad

Abu Aardvark’s Ghost @abuaardvark.bsky.social · 4h

Good riddance. Total and deeply cynical fiasco from the start.

Rima I Anabtawi @rimaanabtawi.bsky.social · 4h

Gaza deal’s secret humanitarian annex omits GHF, which isn’t poised for postwar role

www.timesofisrael.com/gaza-deals-s...

Gaza deal’s secret humanitarian annex omits GHF, which isn’t poised for postwar role

Document says 'other organizations' to assist in aid distribution but the US- and Israel-backed group not slated to be among them, as it runs out of funds and its leader departs

www.timesofisrael.com

3 11

Reposted by Omair Ahmad

Jayaprakash has a mastertape @jayaprakash777.bsky.social · 6h

Same, bestie ❤️

womensartbluesky.bsky.social @womensartbluesky.bsky.social · 8h

I will cut adrift—I will sit on pavements and drink coffee—I will dream; I will take my mind out of its iron cage and let it swim—this fine October.

- Virginia Woolf
#Womensart

Monochrome photograph featuring a white woman sitting sideways on a patterned armchair dressed in a dark jacket and skirt and with her hand raised to her face

1 1 8

Reposted by Omair Ahmad

Emily L. Hauser (she/her) ❌👑 @emilylhauser.bsky.social · 11h

Here's the thing.

I feel like, if you'd spoken to a group of women, of any & all backgrounds, they could have predicted this. Same-same Black people. Same-same LGBTQIA+ folks. Same-same Jews.

I'm never surprised when men ~joke~ about raping women & non-Jews about shoving Jews into ovens.

Politico @politico.com · 20h

EXCLUSIVE: Thousands of leaked messages show leaders of Young Republican groups joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape in a private Telegram chat.

Inside rising GOP leaders’ racist chats — obtained by POLITICO and spanning more than 7 months👇

‘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

2 20 77

Reposted by Omair Ahmad

Roxana Hadadi @roxana-hadadi.bsky.social · 1d

from me -- a profile of Jafar Panahi, a filmmaker whose work has perfectly met our age of surveillance and interrogation and asks the imperative question of: Who are we, and what comes next? IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT = masterpiece, imo.

Vulture @vulture.com · 1d

Since his 2010 imprisonment, the director has been in an endless game of chicken with the Iranian regime. In his defiant new film, ‘It Was Just an Accident,’ a group of Iranians consider killing the man who tortured them in prison.

Jafar Panahi’s Cinematic Rebellions

Since his 2010 imprisonment, the director has been in an endless game of chicken with the Iranian regime. In his defiant new film, ‘It Was Just an Accident,’ a group of Iranians consider killing the man who tortured them in prison.

www.vulture.com

4 43 120

Reposted by Omair Ahmad

Karthik @beastoftraal.bsky.social · 9h

'Dharma' can be trampled upon to pay for a war and be pally with a warmonger. 'Dharma' can be trampled upon to legitimize a barbaric, terrorist regime. But BJP continue to act as if they care for Dharma. Hindu Gods would be devastated by BJP's abhorrent, despicable behavior.

1

Reposted by Omair Ahmad

Joshua Eaton @joshuaeaton.bsky.social · 18h

If you’re a man in the room and a public official says this about your female colleague, you don’t continue as if nothing happened.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 18h

Trump ignores a question from a woman reporter but says, "I just like to watch her talk. Good job. Thank you darling."

9 640 2.7K

Reposted by Omair Ahmad

Michael McDonald @electproject.bsky.social · 18h

It is to the shame of all the male reporters in the room that they do not immediately leave

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 18h

Trump ignores a question from a woman reporter but says, "I just like to watch her talk. Good job. Thank you darling."

140 860 3.9K

Reposted by Omair Ahmad

Emissary Of Night | ليلى @diplomatofnight.com · 21h

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

10 180 650

Reposted by Omair Ahmad

Sophia Babai @swingingstorm.bsky.social · 21h

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.

9 290 430

Reposted by Omair Ahmad

Brian Klaas @brianklaas.bsky.social · 1d

The president (or maybe not president) of Madagascar—a radio DJ who overthrew the island’s yogurt kingpin in a coup d’état—just fled the country in a French helicopter after Gen Z protests. I wrote about the most interesting island you know nothing about, with bonus pictures of me with lemurs:

The yogurt kingpin, the radio DJ coup, and the most interesting island on Earth

Madagascar is a fascinating island home to 30+ million people. It's also home to bizarre, volatile politics that virtually nobody knows about. And the president just escaped on a helicopter.

www.forkingpaths.co

6 100 330

Reposted by Omair Ahmad

watertigernyc @watertigernyc.bsky.social · 2d

I missed Caturday, so enjoy this.

A close up of a cat, with a man in the background. The tweet says, "I have absolutely no idea who this dude is. Just wandered in."

Someone replies, "Choosing to read this from the POV of the cat"

1 24 210

Reposted by Omair Ahmad

mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 1d

You're living through one of the biggest technological transformations in world history and it has nothing to do with AI

Jan Rosenow @janrosenow.bsky.social · 2d

Grid scale batteries are changing our electricity system. Excellent new visual story on batteries in FT today shows just how far this technology has evolved.

Fasten your seatbelts, this is just the beginning.

ig.ft.com/mega-batteri...

32 590 2.1K

Reposted by Omair Ahmad

FOREVER WARS @foreverwars.bsky.social · 1d

“If Israel wants to actually prevent the next October 7, in whatever form it will take, it must free Palestine,” writes @attackerman.bsky.social. “The rest is commentary. Or avoidance.”

‘The Barbarism of The Enemy’

Notes on the third ceasefire, and prayers that there won't have to be a fourth. Free Marwan Barghouti. Free Palestine

www.forever-wars.com

4 44 150

Reposted by Omair Ahmad

L @banalplay.bsky.social · 2d

Bari Weiss puts a lot of evil out into the world but, like Charlie Kirk, if it wasn't them it would be someone else with the same backing. Neither is/was charismatic nor even photogenic. They just have the backing of the people who decide which views are legitimate and amplified.

8 33 400

Reposted by Omair Ahmad

Mai El-Sadany @maitelsadany.bsky.social · 2d

In relief beyond words that the bombardment has stopped and that those taken are reuniting with their loved ones, but there is something so deeply gross at the levels of self-congratulation global leaders are now partaking in.

Stopping a genocide two years in is not success.

6 32 140

Reposted by Omair Ahmad

Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 2d

The freakout in NYC isn’t about Mamdani’s race, but his critics’ perception of his politics (and to some extent his religion).

As the seemingly endless NYC mayoral campaign enters its final weeks, the howls of the Democratic establishment in the city are only getting louder.
They've really convinced themselves that the election of a (gasp) Democratic Socialist will mean the absolute destruction of the city. Cops will quit! Billionaires will flee! Dogs and cats, living together!
I've been trying to place where l've heard this same rhetoric before, and it finally hit me this weekend - this is exactly what southern whites said when the first wave of African American
mayors took power.

18 110 520

Reposted by Omair Ahmad

Jason Major @jpmajor.bsky.social · 3d

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

7 91 430

Reposted by Omair Ahmad

Emissary Of Night | ليلى @diplomatofnight.com · 2d

To to return to my point, the Palestinian can't return to his village because he's not a Jew, the Palestinian can't get citizenship because he's not a Jew, the Palestinian can't live in certain places because he's not a Jew, the Palestinian isn't protected from displacement because he's not a Jew.

1 22 240

Reposted by Omair Ahmad

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 2d

Heidegger, Pound, Webern, Jung all supported the Nazis.

fascism is a moral error, not an intellectual one. being educated isn't a prophylactic.

Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 2d

Most of these people are deeply trained, or at least highly educated, in humanities. Knowing isn’t being.

brasidas @brasidas.bsky.social · 2d

Anyone who claims that Silicon Valley would be better with more humanities education has to grapple with the fact that Peter Thiel was a philosophy major.

11 90 390

Reposted by Omair Ahmad

Jesse @requiemarm.bsky.social · 2d

this is by far the worst reading of Alan Moore’s Watchmen I’ve ever seen and if you spend an appreciable amount of time online you will know what a crowning achievement that is

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 3d

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.

31 210 1K

Reposted by Omair Ahmad

Avishay BSG (Ben-Sasson-Gordis) @avishaybsg.bsky.social · 2d

🧵 I'm excited to share that my article "Democratic Backsliding and the Limits of Civilian Control of the Military" has been accepted @thejop.bsky.social.

It answers the question "how ought militaries act when civilian leaders turn on democratic institutions?"

1/
#CivMilSky #PolTheory

20 200 740

Reposted by Omair Ahmad

Carolyn Ownbey, PhD @carolynownbey.bsky.social · 2d

If you haven’t seen it, this footage from @apnews.com is incredibly important.

The intent here seems unmistakable, in two ways: (1) just read the genocide convention, here it **absolutely** is, and (2) this level of infrastructural destruction is, no question, meant as pre-development demolition.

14 270 450

Reposted by Omair Ahmad

Karthik @beastoftraal.bsky.social · 3d

"Indianness in anything survives precisely because it is unfaithful to itself, constantly retranslated, mispronounced, misidentified, reimagined."

1 2

Reposted by Omair Ahmad

Ashok Swain @ashoswai.bsky.social · 4d

The global war economy is thriving — while humanity bleeds. When defense stocks soar with every airstrike, peace becomes bad business. My latest op-ed about the Merchants of War: Defense Corporations and Defense Contractors. #MyPiece

2 4 4

Reposted by Omair Ahmad

Taniel @taniel.bsky.social · 3d

This was among the 180+ races on my cheat sheet of elections to watch this fall. Nearly all are coming up in early November… so save this page for when you can explore it! boltsmag.org/whats-on-the...

2 21 170