Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Chet Scoville @chesterscoville.bsky.social · 1h

The story of the 21st century so far in miniature: unambiguous advancement getting tossed onto the fire.

ProPublica @propublica.org · 1h

NEW: After decades of fluoridating drinking water to improve public health, some communities are increasingly wavering on the practice.

In one Michigan county, the medical director is mirroring Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s efforts against fluoridation.

On the Front Line of the Fluoride Wars, Debate Over Drinking Water Treatment Turns Raucous

After decades of fluoridating drinking water to improve public health, some communities are wavering on the practice. In one Michigan county, the medical director is mirroring Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s efforts against fluoridation.

www.propublica.org

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Reposted by Chet Scoville

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 2h

underrated part of this is that stoller very clearly has no idea what "the passive voice" is

Ghostin this Hell @hoovybaby.bsky.social · 14h

no quarter given lmao

Matt Stoller & @matthewstoller • 2h
UPS had seven months of warning about the de minimis change, but is still taking packages w/o getting required customs info & is making tariff charge errors.
Nice use of passive voice though!

derek guy
@dieworkwear • 2h
i apologize using a passive voice. i was not born in london to a wealthy bank executive, sent to an exclusive private prep school in new hampshire, and then studied at harvard before larping as a champion of the people. you have to work with my low upbringing.

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Kat Tenbarge @kattenbarge.bsky.social · 9h

Conservatives have built their own social media platforms, Trump has his own Twitter alternative, his allies are buying major social media platforms to weaponize for their propaganda and influence and we’re still arguing if having a left-leaning social media platform is a bad thing

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Dr Kat Day (she/her) @chronicleflask.katday.com · 4h

… and speech is not free (except for them) and women and girls are worse off than they ever were before.

But that’s fine because they never actually wanted those things.

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Dr Kat Day (she/her) @chronicleflask.katday.com · 4h

They always start with free speech. It sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Free speech? And they can use it to shut down anyone who criticises them, because it’s all “free speech”

After “free speech” it’s “protecting women and girls”

And then it’s whatever they actually wanted.

Henry Mance @henrymance.ft.com · 4h

The right-wing campaign group that helped topple Roe v Wade in the US is now working to roll back abortion laws in the UK, with the help of Nigel Farage.

Its first step? Trying to create a debate around "free speech"
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/13/w...

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Chet Wydrzynski @realchet.bsky.social · 4h

This @cnn.com pissed me off. None of these people are "innocent" if they can't be bothered to understand why we are pissed off and don't have the courage to say Trump is ruining their businesses. They aren't innocent, they are complicit.

www.cnn.com/2025/10/13/b...

Canada’s boycott America movement is hurting innocent bystanders | CNN Business

Virginia Distillery CEO Gareth Moore was bullish on his company’s American single malt whisky sales north of the border when 2025 kicked off.

www.cnn.com

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Chet Scoville @chesterscoville.bsky.social · 11h

That sucked

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Adam Radwanski @aradwanski.bsky.social · 12h

Reminding myself that the ‘92 Jays lost Game 1 of both the ALCS and the WS before winning in 6. Not against a guy who might not even be a playoff starter normally, but still.

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Chet Scoville @chesterscoville.bsky.social · 12h

Ooooof

James G @orth.ca · 12h

21 balls in play, 1 hit

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Chet Scoville @chesterscoville.bsky.social · 12h

What bats

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Chet Scoville @chesterscoville.bsky.social · 12h

Did you guys leave your hitting shoes in the Bronx or something

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Tom Scocca @tomscocca.bsky.social · 19h

Please nobody tell professional writer praising professional journalists Caitlin Flanagan what "out of whole cloth" means

Screenshot of text:

Not now but soon enough, there will be major stories about The Free Press being the creation of three female founders who constructed a hugely successful digital business out of whole cloth.

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Jay Rosen @jayrosen.bsky.social · 19h

A thing I have learned from being online since 1995:

If you're a writer, editor, journalist, academic, you have to be ready to go contrarian when you feel it. And if you're feeling it all the time, such that it's become your idenitity, that's a signal. You broke your mind.

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utopia deferred @utopia-defer.red · 21h

Little over a month ago, I was told I was hysterical for being upset about the urban occupations by a white guy working in the beltway.

Gregory Pratt @royalpratt.bsky.social · 21h

ICE / Border Patrol threatening to arrest a cyclist for following and recording in Chicago

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 21h

They Were Academics Who Dared to Have Non-MAGA Views. Charlie Kirk Started a Watchlist to Make People Like Them Pay

Elizabeth Spiers @espiers.bsky.social · 23h

I was trying to put my finger on what bothered me about this portrayal and I think it’s that it just takes the guy’s words at face value, like he was a nice guy and reaction to Charlie Kirk’s death just pushed him over the edge www.nytimes.com/2025/10/12/u...

She Despised Charlie Kirk. He Resolved to Make People Like Her Pay.

www.nytimes.com

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Chet Scoville @chesterscoville.bsky.social · 23h

“Uh, he’s not a liberal, so he must be a conservative. That covers all the possibilities, right? Let me look up the word in this dictionary from the 80s”

Chet Scoville @chesterscoville.bsky.social · 23h

This is of course what happens when political journalists have a two-word vocabulary

Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 1d

About a week ago, the New York Times’ “The Daily” podcast portrayed Russell Vought as a devout Christian, a true “small government” conservative who loves the free market, and a man with a great work ethic. A remarkable combination of credulousness and deliberate whitewashing.

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 23h

"Look at the picture... One of these is a member of a private militia that supports the President and was involved in a violent effort to overturn the election, the other is an agent of the state. Can you tell the difference?" donmoynihan.substack.com/p/purge-merg...

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Sickos Committee @sickoscommittee.org · 4d

When the Yankees get eliminated

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Chet Scoville @chesterscoville.bsky.social · 1d

In honour of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand.

“Reviewer 2 has comments.”

Catelli @catelli.bsky.social · 1d

In honour of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand.

"The root cert expired."

Victoria McIntosh @vmcntosh.bsky.social · 1d

In honour of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand.

“We are GDPR certified.”

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Chet Scoville @chesterscoville.bsky.social · 1d

Gotta wonder if Alan Moore had written Watchmen now, if Ozymandias would have been a SV techbro like Thiel.

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Chet Scoville @chesterscoville.bsky.social · 1d

Ozymandias isn’t an early-modern person, Dr. Manhattan says “Nothing ever ends,“ and there is no world government, but apart from that sure, man

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Chet Scoville @chesterscoville.bsky.social · 1d

When you can’t even grasp the point of one of the best-known comic books

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 1d

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.

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Chet Scoville @chesterscoville.bsky.social · 1d

Ya don’t say

Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 1d

"Sceptics are privately - and some now publicly - asking whether the rapid rise in the value of AI tech companies may be, at least in part, the result of what they call 'financial engineering'. In other words - there are fears these companies are overvalued."

A tangled web of deals stokes AI bubble fears in Silicon Valley

Some are worried that the rapid rise in the value of AI tech companies may be a bubble waiting to burst.

www.bbc.com

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Atrios @eschatonblog.com · 1d

After decades of pretending The Left has been censoring things by writing "this character is a bit problematic" on tumblr, it is now just accepted that conservatives are going to throw a massive tantrum that should be listened to (just capitalism) every time a black person appears on screen

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