Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

J.M. Berger @jmberger.com · 1h

The ineligible in-group is the key to understanding a lot of what's happening in this country and the world right now.

Joel S. @joelhs.bsky.social · 1h

The US Jewish right is a 30% minority of the community that tries to draw boundaries that exclude most American Jews, so as to portray themselves as the majority. They’d rather rule over a smaller community than work for influence in a larger one.

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Mary Kenney @marykgames.com · 2h

I have never, ever heard a reader say their problem is too few books on the market.

I’ve heard MANY say there are so many that it’s hard to find *quality* reads, which is why they’re loyal to certain authors + publishers.

This “business” is solving a problem that doesn’t exist, using stolen work

Marco Rinaldi @marcorinaldi.bsky.social · Nov 25

Why? Who is this meant to be good for? Nobody wants your shit AI books, never mind 8,000 in a year. Just a terrible idea and a horrible road the publishing industry is heading down.

Bookseller article with the headline "New publisher Spines aims to 'disrupt' industry by using AI to publish 8,000 books in 2025 alone" 🤮🤮🤮

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A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social · 4h

Not gonna link the troll but Bari Weiss clearly represents “thought police” more than 100,000 Bluesky leftists scolding you for writing a defense of Weiss ever will, and ignoring that reality is clearly designed to curry the favor of thought police. You’re not a free thinker, you’re the boot licker.

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Dana Houle @danahoule.bsky.social · 7h

Just about everyone vulnerable has been told to stay inside. There are literally hundreds of trained emergency response people on the streets of the 1.8 sq mile neighborhood. ICE is driving through alleys looking for anyone who’s brown

This is Fugitive Slave Act stuff + foreign occupation

Dana Houle @danahoule.bsky.social · 1d

Rogers Park

Northernmost lakefront n’hood in Chicago

Home of Loyola U (RIP Sister Jean)

One of few n’hoods w no racial majority. One of the most densely populated places in America, & one of the most racially/ethnicly/religiously/linguistically diverse

An amazing community

And under attack

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Adanedhel🌹 @danielwaweru.bsky.social · 5h

Encouraging.

But all is not lost. The cement is still wet, and even as it hardens we can find hope in the common sense of the global public. In a survey by Focaldata, of 36,000 people in 34 countries we find a clear majority are more resistant to an exclusionary nationalism and more willing to embrace international cooperation than many of the leaders who rule over them.

Across the world there is, perhaps surprisingly, only a small group of hardened anti-internationalists representing 16.5% of the global population (even if 25% in today’s US) who either feel coexistence between ethnic and religious groups is impossible or have a zero-sum mindset that if they or their country do well, it has to be at the expense of others doing badly.

But there are another 21% at the opposite extreme, whom we might call committed internationalists, who either still see cooperation across borders through open trade as a positive sum win-win, or are what the US philosopher and writer Kwame Anthony Appiah calls “rooted cosmopolitans”.

From Gordon Brown at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/11/reform-nigel-farage-hard-right-politics-gordon-brown-labour

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Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 1d

I think Brown is very shrewd to identify internationalism as the key battleground.

Far too many on the centre-left and left are still indulging their economic nationalist fantasies – despite Biden and Starmer as clear examples of the shortcomings of such an approach.

Nathan🌹 @nathanwylabour.bsky.social · 1d

A moving and intelligent call to action here from Gordon Brown. And yet another reminder of why he is my political hero.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Don’t fall for the authoritarian hype – Reform and the hard right can be stopped in their tracks | Gordon Brown

From the US to Europe and Asia, grievances are being exploited to gain power. But moderate voices are still in tune with the majority, says former prime minister Gordon Brown

www.theguardian.com

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WhiteRoseAFA @whiteroseafa.bsky.social · 2h

These costumes are driving the propagandists mad. They're struggling to demonize the protesters and their messaging garbage. They'll keep trying different angles though, because they need the propaganda content.

Michael Edison Hayden @michaelehayden.bsky.social · 3h

“They are highly organized … [they] have purchased their own animal costumes”

Andy ngo mad about muppets again — this time in Chicago

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Ed Burmila @edburmila.bsky.social · 2h

Sure, I can’t talk or think and parts of me turn purple and sometimes half my face is 2” lower than the other half and I talk about heaven regularly at inappropriate times but don’t let that fool you I’m as healthy as a horse.

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Dorothy Parker Fucks @dorothyparkerfucks.bsky.social · 2h

around two years ago i made the point that genAI technologies were a fascist project designed to undermine facts, truth and history and so here is some slop machine humiliating a hero of the american civil rights movement

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 2h

ai is a fascist tool. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Ilyasah Shabazz didn’t want to look at the AI-generated videos of her father, Malcolm X. The seemingly realistic clips — made by OpenAI’s new video-maker Sora 2 — show the legendary civil rights activist making crude jokes, wrestling with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and talking about defecating on himself.

“It is deeply disrespectful and hurtful to see my father’s image used in such a cavalier and insensitive manner when he dedicated his life to truth,” Shabazz, whose father was assassinated in front of her in 1965 when she was 2, told The Washington Post. She questioned why the developers were not acting “with the same morality, conscience, and care … that they’d want for their own families.”

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Juno Rylee Schultz @junoryleejournalism.com · 3d

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems...
SIMON: What?
SHAPIRO: ...Or saying...
SIMON: You imagine that?
SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.
SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.
SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this.
SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

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Social Media Lab @socialmedialab.ca · 2h

They arrested people on the job, so it’s not about being unemployed. They arrested people in court seeking legal status, so it’s not about legality. They used the IRS to track the undocumented, so it’s not about taxes. This is about punishment, not justice. #crueltyIStheONLYpoint

Julie DiCaro @juliedicaro.bsky.social · 5h

So Kilmer Abrego-Garcia will not challenge a deportation to Costa Rica, who has agreed to for him residency, but DHS won’t agree to send him there because it’s not cruel enough.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/u...

For weeks, Mr. Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national who is married to a U.S. citizen, has made clear that he would not challenge his deportation if he were sent to Costa Rica, which has promised him legal residency and guaranteed that he would not be sent back to El Salvador.

But the Trump administration has refused to deport him to Costa Rica, and in an earlier hearing this week, Judge Xinis pressed the administration to consider the option or clarify why it was unacceptable.

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Sarah J. Jackson @sjjphd.bsky.social · 1h

I’m sorry this just did me in.

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 2h

ai is a fascist tool. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

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Jess Davis @jessmarindavis.bsky.social · 14h

By popular demand, we have unlocked our latest article on JNIM and its financing. Have a read! Only available without a paywall for a short time:

newsletter.insightthreatintel.com/p/gold-guns-...

Gold, Guns, and Cattle: JNIM’s $100 million War Economy in the Sahel

Group Profile

newsletter.insightthreatintel.com

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Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin @ecmclaughlin.bsky.social · 3h

it would take to pull off a general strike here that wouldn’t result in millions getting fired, starving and dying would be the largest organizing effort in human history.

It’s not impossible, but it is a long way off. If you want it, you need to start organizing locally and take responsibility

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Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin @ecmclaughlin.bsky.social · 3h

Every time someone drops into my comments asking about a general strike, I have to remind folks that unlike in Europe we have at will employment here allowing essentially anyone to be fired at any time for any reason, and health insurance tied to employment.

The amount of organizing

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Caitlin G. DeAngelis @caitlindeangelis.bsky.social · 3h

ICE kidnapped a 7th-grader with a pending asylum claim and spirited him out of state without notifying his parents, seemingly with the cooperation of the local police in Everett, MA.

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/12/m...

Everett 13-year-old arrested by ICE and sent to Virginia detention facility
By Marcela Rodrigues Globe Staff,Updated October 12, 2025, 44 minutes ago

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A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Everett after an interaction with members of the Everett Police Department and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia, according to his mother and immigration lawyer Andrew Lattarulo.

The boy’s mother, Josiele Berto, was called to pick her son up from the Everett Police Department on Thursday, the day he was arrested. After waiting for about an hour and a half, she was told her son was taken by ICE, Berto told the Globe in a phone interview.

“My world collapsed,” Berto said in Portuguese.

From the police department, the boy was taken to ICE’s holding facility in Burlington on Thursday evening, where he spent a night before being transferred by car to the Northwestern Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Winchester, Va., on Friday morning, his mother said. The juvenile facility is more than 500 miles away from Everett.

The boy is a 7th-grader at Albert N. Parlin School in Everett, his mother said. The teen and his family, who are Brazilian nationals, have a pending asylum case and are authorized to work legally in the United States, Lattarulo said.

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A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social · 2h

Send every ICE employee to the fucking Hague.

Caitlin G. DeAngelis @caitlindeangelis.bsky.social · 3h

ICE kidnapped a 7th-grader with a pending asylum claim and spirited him out of state without notifying his parents, seemingly with the cooperation of the local police in Everett, MA.

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/12/m...

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The New Republic @newrepublic.com · 5h

“I … met with the governor, met with the mayor, met with the chief of police, and the superintendent of the highway patrol. They’re all lying, and disingenuous, and dishonest people,” Noem said, because they wouldn’t back up her baseless claims that the streets were overrun with terrorists.

ICE Barbie Says an Entire State’s Worth of Officials Are “Lying”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is convinced, against all evidence, that Portland is a war zone.

trib.al

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🎃 Trick or Pete 🎃 Lucier @peterlucier.bsky.social · 2h

After commenters deriding the appearance of TX NG troops made photos of their deployment to Chicago go viral, the Texas Military Department quietly recalled and replaced them

For their appearance.

They didn’t send the Guard to serve.
They sent them to be seen.

taskandpurpose.com/news/texas-n...

Some Texas National Guard troops replaced in Illinois after failing to meet standards

An unspecified amount of Texas National Guard troops were replaced in Chicago, shortly after photos of their appearance were mocked.

taskandpurpose.com

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𝕍∃, Cyber closed shell syndrome relief fund coordinator @vortexegg.com · 6h

A billionaire group chat in the hands of every subject

J.M. Berger @jmberger.com · 6h

We aren't quite there yet, but Zuck has said it's his goal: People surrounded by "communities" of chatbots that replace humans as participants in the social construction of reality, which will lead us nowhere good.

*Parasocial construction of reality*

You heard it here first (I think).

No results for "Parasocial construction of reality" on DuckDuckGo

No results for "Parasocial construction of reality" on Google

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J.M. Berger @jmberger.com · 6h

OTOH maybe I already wrote it

amzn.to/4nJucOt

Optimal

Amazon.com: Optimal eBook : Berger, J.M.: Tienda Kindle

amzn.to

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J.M. Berger @jmberger.com · 6h

Oh man there's a book in this, isn't there. Just what I needed, another fucking idea for the pile.

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J.M. Berger @jmberger.com · 6h

We aren't quite there yet, but Zuck has said it's his goal: People surrounded by "communities" of chatbots that replace humans as participants in the social construction of reality, which will lead us nowhere good.

*Parasocial construction of reality*

You heard it here first (I think).

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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 6h

Solipsism as a service. www.wsj.com/tech/persona...

With Sora, you can do exactly that, in 10-second increments. Soon, your phone might be filled with hundreds of fond memories of things that never happened and places you never went, moments you can sit back and “relive” when there’s nobody else around except your AI pals.

Generative AI already has the power to put us in little boxes, isolated from one another. Why wait for a friend to answer your text when ChatGPT will cheerfully answer right away? Why go through the trouble of making a new friend when you can turn to digital companions embedded in apps like Instagram or X?
These new forms of entertainment are becoming the lake to our Narcissus: You can gaze into your phone and see yourself staring back, having all kinds of thrills, spills and chills.

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 6h

Also seems reasonable to note the transparent racism is reacting to a protest about Palestine, in London with a call to deport Muslims (who may have nothing to do with either Palestine or London!) from the United States.

Racializing a religious identity so he can do racism to it.

Joel S. @joelhs.bsky.social · 6h

United States Congressman calls for the deportation of all Muslims from the US.

All Jewish groups should join together to denounce this.

Tweet from Congressman Randy Fine: "Muslims calling for the destruction of Israel — after the peace deal.

It was never about Gaza.

Why did the UK allow these demons in?

We must ban Sharia in the United States and deport them ALL before this becomes us.

Religion of peace."

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