Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

🎃🦇👻 Michael Scare-anicolas 👻🦇🎃 @karanicolas.bsky.social · 1d

If you consider the historical context, it makes total sense that tech bros and boomers responded to getting ratioed on Twitter by driving the country into nihilistic fascism.

🎃🦇👻 Michael Scare-anicolas 👻🦇🎃 @karanicolas.bsky.social · 1d

The American revolution was literally started because wealthy colonists didn’t want to pay their taxes and felt looked down on by the British aristocracy. It’s petulance all the way down, and kind of hilarious how it was recast as a yearning for freedom over the years.

Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 1d

the idea that freedom is in our DNA is just a misinterpretation of the fact that we’re a nation of finicky whiners who don’t like to be personally inconvenienced

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🎃🦇👻 Michael Scare-anicolas 👻🦇🎃 @karanicolas.bsky.social · 1d

The American revolution was literally started because wealthy colonists didn’t want to pay their taxes and felt looked down on by the British aristocracy. It’s petulance all the way down, and kind of hilarious how it was recast as a yearning for freedom over the years.

Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 1d

the idea that freedom is in our DNA is just a misinterpretation of the fact that we’re a nation of finicky whiners who don’t like to be personally inconvenienced

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Reposted by 🎃🦇👻 Michael Scare-anicolas 👻🦇🎃

William Lafi Youmans @willyou.bsky.social · 1d

I wrote this essay for the anniversary of Alex Odeh’s still unsolved murder. I tried to focus more on Alex the person and his legacy for the community than the frustrating story of a failed investigation, which I will write about elsewhere. mondoweiss.net/2025/10/40-y...

40 years after Jewish extremists murdered a Palestinian activist in California, no one has been held accountable

On October 11, 1985, Palestinian-American Alex Odeh was killed when a bomb destroyed his office. Despite suspicions that Jewish Defense League members carried out the attack, no charges have ever been...

mondoweiss.net

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Reposted by 🎃🦇👻 Michael Scare-anicolas 👻🦇🎃

🎃🦇👻 Michael Scare-anicolas 👻🦇🎃 @karanicolas.bsky.social · 4d

The ironic thing about this is that at the end of the day China and Russia will probably have more complete records about this administration’s activities than the National Archives.

George Conway 👊🇺🇸🔥 @gtconway.bsky.social · 4d

Apart from helping Comey's selective prosecution defense, this also means the president of the United States uses direct messages on Truth Social to communicate with cabinet officials.

I didn't know that, but we can be sure intelligence agencies all over the planet already did.

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🎃🦇👻 Michael Scare-anicolas 👻🦇🎃 @karanicolas.bsky.social · 2d

Next month @schulichlaw.bsky.social is hosting the inaugural Canadian Technology Law Conference, with a keynote from Justice Minister Sean Fraser, and more great speakers.

Register at www.eventbrite.ca/e/canadian-technology-law-conference-democracy-and-the-information-society-tickets-1748859769649

Poster for the Canadian Technology Law Conference on Democracy and the Information Society, featuring photos of Sean Fraser, Bram Abramson, and Suresh Venkatasubramanian.

🎃🦇👻 Michael Scare-anicolas 👻🦇🎃 @karanicolas.bsky.social · 2d

Funny, I would have thought Canada is a much more natural place to land than, say, Switzerland or France, given the common language and cultural similarities, plus the large immigrant population.

Maybe they're dissuaded by the 51st state talk. I think more likely what's missing is the money though.

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🎃🦇👻 Michael Scare-anicolas 👻🦇🎃 @karanicolas.bsky.social · 3d

Imagine if Canada was out there trying to recruit brilliant American researchers the way E.U. universities are. This is a once-in-a-generation moment to capitalize on an outflow of talent from the U.S., and we're sitting on our hands.

Florian Scheuer @florianscheuer.bsky.social · 3d

I am delighted to share that Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee will join our Department of Economics @econ.uzh.ch at the University of Zurich on July 1, 2026, as Lemann Foundation Professors of Economics.

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Reposted by 🎃🦇👻 Michael Scare-anicolas 👻🦇🎃

Mike Stabile @mikestabile.bsky.social · 3d

Buried in Michigan's antiporn bill is a provision to effectively outlaw "circumvention tools," such as VPNs.

Mark my words: legislators will increasingly leverage porn panic to restrict or ban VPNs, and to limit internet privacy far beyond adult sites.

Experts raise privacy concerns over Michigan bill targeting pornography and VPNs

Rep. Josh Schriver, the bill’s sponsor, says the law is designed to target only producers and distributors of pornography, not everyday internet users.

www.wilx.com

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🎃🦇👻 Michael Scare-anicolas 👻🦇🎃 @karanicolas.bsky.social · 4d

This is classic elite mindset - they're worried about the tables being turned on them, personally. They're not thinking about whether accountability for criminal conduct is in the best interests of the country, or American democracy. Exactly the kind of insular thinking that led us here.

Ryan J. Reilly “paints a vivid and urgent portrait of… disarray” @ryanjreilly.com · 4d

“What we don’t want to become the norm is where people think, ‘OK, there’s a new administration, now everyone in the old administration gets prosecuted. That’s an incredibly dangerous cycle where nobody wins.”

www.nbcnews.com/politics/jus...

Experts fear impact of deepening polarization and perceived political prosecutions

Reforms enacted after Watergate to bolster public confidence in the impartiality of prosecutions are proving dated and ineffective, legal experts warn.

www.nbcnews.com

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🎃🦇👻 Michael Scare-anicolas 👻🦇🎃 @karanicolas.bsky.social · 4d

The ironic thing about this is that at the end of the day China and Russia will probably have more complete records about this administration’s activities than the National Archives.

George Conway 👊🇺🇸🔥 @gtconway.bsky.social · 4d

Apart from helping Comey's selective prosecution defense, this also means the president of the United States uses direct messages on Truth Social to communicate with cabinet officials.

I didn't know that, but we can be sure intelligence agencies all over the planet already did.

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🎃🦇👻 Michael Scare-anicolas 👻🦇🎃 @karanicolas.bsky.social · 4d

Man, what were those Antifa lunatics in Weimar Germany so stirred up about anyway?

Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 4d

"Antifa has been around in various iterations for almost 100 years in some instances, going back to the Weimar Republic in Germany."

- Jack Posobiec at Trump's roundtable on antifa

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🎃🦇👻 Michael Scare-anicolas 👻🦇🎃 @karanicolas.bsky.social · 4d

This is what happened at UCLA. They couldn't allege discrimination based on race, due to the pesky fact that large numbers of the encampment protesters were Jewish, so they created "pro-Zionist" as its own protected class.

To me, that sounds like it's based on political belief, but what do I know.

Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 4d

My read on this is that as schools found themselves pressured to investigate Jewish students for antisemitism, there was a scramble to come up with other forms of discrimination charges, incl “Veteran status” and adumbrating “pro-occupation American Jews” under “Israeli” as a nationality group.

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🎃🦇👻 Michael Scare-anicolas 👻🦇🎃 @karanicolas.bsky.social · 4d

Really wild how these concepts are being reframed across the board: they strip protections from religious and racial minorities while creating new rules to protect ICE agents and IDF soldiers. They crush DEI for historically disadvantaged groups while demanding it for Republicans.

Joseph Howley @illdottore.bsky.social · 4d

An underreported part of US campus repression post-2023 was the pivot to making “[IDF] military veteran” a protected class coterminous with “[pro-occupation Israeli/Jew]”. Students protesting the Gaza war were charged with *discrimination based on veteran status*. migrantinsider.com/p/scoop-appl...

SCOOP: Apple Quietly Made ICE Agents a Protected Class

Internal emails show tech giant used anti-hate-speech rules meant for minorities to block an app documenting immigration enforcement.

migrantinsider.com

Reposted by 🎃🦇👻 Michael Scare-anicolas 👻🦇🎃

kedeveaux.bsky.social @kedeveaux.bsky.social · 5d

#Denmark PM announces in #Parliament that the government will push to ban social media for those under 15 years of age. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

Denmark plans social media ban for under-15s as PM warns phones ‘stealing childhood’

Mette Frederiksen links social media use to anxiety, depression and lack of concentration

www.theguardian.com

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🎃🦇👻 Michael Scare-anicolas 👻🦇🎃 @karanicolas.bsky.social · 5d

Tell Trump to knock off the 51st state talk and we’ll summon them back home. Ball’s in your court.

Rick Weinmeyer @rickweinmeyer.bsky.social · 5d

The only immigration problems the city of Chicago and state of Illinois are facing is the dangerous crisis of Canadian Geese along the running and biking trails.

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🎃🦇👻 Michael Scare-anicolas 👻🦇🎃 @karanicolas.bsky.social · 6d

Wtf. I came back to Canada explicitly because I wanted a Supreme Court with fancy santa robes. Why even be a law professor?

Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social · 6d

Tragic news from Canada where the Canadian Supreme Court has gone from the official dress on the left to the one on the right

Canadian Supreme court. Everyone is dressed in bright red wooly gowns, with a beige trim. It looks sort of like a Santa robe

The Canadian Supreme court. Everyone is dressed in black gowns with a bright white kravat, and two thin red vertical lines on the side of the robe

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Reposted by 🎃🦇👻 Michael Scare-anicolas 👻🦇🎃

Robert Diab @robertdiab.bsky.social · 6d

Thank you to @karanicolas.bsky.social for alerting me to this: Liberals backtracking on C-2, tabling a revised bill this week... www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

Government to table new border bill amid privacy concerns over C-2: sources | CBC News

The federal Liberals are set to introduce a new bill expected to mirror much of what's in their already tabled border legislation — but with some clauses that sparked concerns from opposition parties ...

www.cbc.ca

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🎃🦇👻 Michael Scare-anicolas 👻🦇🎃 @karanicolas.bsky.social · 7d

All of the chaos that we've seen in the U.S. this year has happened in the context of a relatively stable economy. When this bubble inevitably pops things are going to go absolutely off the rails.

Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 7d

"The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year... In a way, then, America has become one big bet on AI."

America is now one big bet on AI

It’s seen as the magic fix for every threat to the US economy

www.ft.com

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Reposted by 🎃🦇👻 Michael Scare-anicolas 👻🦇🎃

darth™️ @darthbluesky.bsky.social · 9d

"just upload a scanned image of your drivers license no big deal"

The Verge @theverge.com · 9d

Discord customer service data breach leaks user info and scanned photo IDs

An “unauthorized party” may have accessed the names of users, the last four digits of credit card numbers, and more.

buff.ly

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Dave Willner @dwillner.bsky.social · 9d

So, the first part of this is plainly false, both historically and currently. I don’t think it’s a good thing in most cases…but it’s plainly the case that pressuring the people in charge of moderation to either ban (or not ban) people works *All The Time*. It is why people do it!

Jay 🦋 @jay.bsky.team · 10d

Harassing the mods into banning someone has never worked. And harassing people in general has never changed their mind.

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🎃🦇👻 Michael Scare-anicolas 👻🦇🎃 @karanicolas.bsky.social · 10d

I think the craziest aspect of this story is that the IDF somehow needs to pay for dead bodies.

southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 10d

I love when student journalists break a crazy story, especially about their own school. This one is extraordinarily macabre. www.uscannenbergmedia.com/2025/10/01/u...

USC sold dead bodies to U.S. military to train IDF medical personnel

A review of seven years’ worth of contracts unveiled more than $860,000 to use cadavers in surgical trainings involving the Israeli Defense Forces.

www.uscannenbergmedia.com

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🎃🦇👻 Michael Scare-anicolas 👻🦇🎃 @karanicolas.bsky.social · 10d

I am struck by the Privacy Commissioner's confidence that these technologies can be implemented in a privacy protective manner. Last year, the California Privacy Protection Agency reached the opposite conclusion.

What does he know that they don't?

digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcont...

"Currently, age verification systems are likely not sufficiently advanced to ensure accurate age verification while protecting privacy."

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Reposted by 🎃🦇👻 Michael Scare-anicolas 👻🦇🎃

Doctor Memory @blank.org · 10d

Stipulating in advance that I probably agree with everyone’s critiques of Newson:

This is the way. Make it clear in advance that compliance has a price too.

Governor Gavin Newsom @governor.ca.gov · 10d

IF ANY CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITY SIGNS THIS RADICAL AGREEMENT, THEY'LL LOSE BILLIONS IN STATE FUNDING — INCLUDING CAL GRANTS — INSTANTLY.

CALIFORNIA WILL NOT BANKROLL SCHOOLS THAT SELL OUT THEIR STUDENTS, PROFESSORS, RESEARCHERS, AND SURRENDER ACADEMIC FREEDOM.

New York Times: "Trump Administration Asks Colleges to Sign ‘Compact’ to Get Funding Preference."

The White House asked nine top universities to pledge support for President Trump’s agenda to help ensure access to research funding.

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🎃🦇👻 Michael Scare-anicolas 👻🦇🎃 @karanicolas.bsky.social · 10d

Sure why not.

I mean - he's not going to acknowledge his glaring hypocrisy, so I guess the only move left is for him to go all in on Saudi Arabia as a bastion of free speech.

The Hollywood Reporter @thr.com · 10d

Dave Chappelle criticized the status of free speech in the United States while on stage at the Riyadh Comedy Festival in Saudi Arabia.

Dave Chappelle Criticizes Free Speech in America at Saudi Arabia Comedy Festival

Dave Chappelle criticized the status of free speech in the United States while on stage at the Riyadh Comedy Festival in Saudi Arabia.

bit.ly

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🎃🦇👻 Michael Scare-anicolas 👻🦇🎃 @karanicolas.bsky.social · 10d

Not sure who this matters to, but David Simon seems to have had a significant evolution in his perspective re: Israel's conduct towards the Palestinians:

Online post from David Simon a year ago decrying, in pretty salty terms, any accusation Israel is guilty of genocide or apartheid.

Post from David Simon earlier today, announcing he was refusing speaking gigs in Israel as a result of his disgust at the present government's conduct.