Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Lily Mason

ceej @ceej.online · 2h

the disastrous refusal of the self-styled silicon valley technokings to keep anyone in their lives capable of questioning their increasingly incomprehensible politics has lead to a crisis of thinking so severe that a fifty-eight year old man believes something is important because he knows about it

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 5h

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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Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 4h

Sunday reading:

I wrote about the aggrieved extremist who is currently firing thousands of federal workers and ravaging state capacity based on conspiratorial nonsense - and about mainstream media’s infuriating tendency to sanitize Russell Vought and the regime he serves.

This week’s piece:

We need to talk about Russell Vought – But Properly

Why certain mainstream outlets insist on sanitizing Vought as a devout “small government” conservative – and what actually animates his war against pluralistic democracy

steady.page

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 3h

a key thing about vought — and all of these guys — is that they have a totally top down and hierarchical vision of the world. they believe that the cultural changes they hate can be turned off by destroying the federal government because they can’t imagine that they emerged bottom-up in society

Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 3h

What he’s railing against is a profound shift in culture, status… He’s obsessed with the idea that America is controlled by a leftist “ruling elite” - but “elite” isn’t defined socio-economically or by political power, it means something like: Getting to define “real America” and who gets to belong.

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David Corn @davidcorn.bsky.social · 1d

A classic case of irresponsible both-sidesism from the NYT. The story is that Trump and MAGA propagandists are lying about Portland to incite a conflict, not that there are different views of the matter.

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Filipe Campante @filipecampante.bsky.social · 2d

It might be hard to convey to people outside economics just how seismic this is. The Trump effect has most certainly arrived to US academia.

Florian Scheuer @florianscheuer.bsky.social · 2d

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.

🧵 1/7

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Ryan Enos @ryanenos.bsky.social · 5d

"Everyone I contacted for this column described what Trump is doing as a clear violation of democratic rules and guidelines governing peacetime activities" says Edsall in the New York Times
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/07/o...

Opinion | Trump Is Not Afraid of Civil War. Neither Is Stephen Miller.

www.nytimes.com

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Lily Mason @lilymasonphd.bsky.social · 3d

Haha! Small worlds indeed!

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Hahrie Han @hahrie.bsky.social · 4d

Totally, completely flabbergasted. #MacFellow

hub.jhu.edu/2025/10/08/h...

Johns Hopkins political scientist Hahrie Han receives MacArthur genius grant

Han, who studies political organizing and collective action and who has led the university's SNF Agora Institute since 2019, among 22 individuals to receive coveted MacArthur Foundation recognition

hub.jhu.edu

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Melanie D’Arrigo @darrigomelanie.bsky.social · 4d

I feel like this photo of masked, armed men pepper spraying a pastor protecting his community is going to be a defining picture of this moment in America for a long, long time.

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Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 4d

"It wanted to signal strength. Instead, it’s revealing its weakness. The administration’s need to break the academy is forcing it to make a desperately risky gamble." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...

Opinion | You Beat Trumpism by Banding Together. It’s as Hard and as Simple as That.

www.nytimes.com

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David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social · 4d

I really believe that huge majorities of Americans don’t want masked soldiers shooting priests in the street. They don’t want naked children ripped out out of their apartments in the middle of the night and handcuffed. We win by making sure these stories get told.

Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 4d

The same people who insisted devout Catholic Joe Biden was leading a “war on Christianity” are now cheering Trump on as his armed goons assault clergymen.

The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 4d

WATCH: Trump’s lawless Ice goons shoot an unarmed priest in the head with a pepper ball. Completely out of control.

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Nour Kteily @nourkteily.bsky.social · 5d

@elijfinkel.bsky.social
& I are recruiting a postdoc in the #LitowitzCenter for Enlightened Disagreement at Northwestern University. We seek research excellence regarding navigating conflict.

Application deadline: Nov. 17.

Salary: ~$80k.

facultyrecruiting.northwestern.edu/apply/MjQzNw==

Northwestern Faculty Search -

facultyrecruiting.northwestern.edu

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Charlotte Garden @charlottegarden.bsky.social · 5d

One thing to take from this is that legacy media’s attempts to win back GOP audiences have utterly failed. If those attempts have also eroded trust among Dems and Independents, then they’re a massive own-goal.

Charlotte Clymer @charlotteclymer.bsky.social · 5d

Gallup has been surveying Americans' trust in legacy media since 1972. This year, a mere 28 percent of the public have "a great deal" or "a fair amount" of trust in legacy media, its lowest level in more than five decades of tracking.

news.gallup.com/poll/695762/...

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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 6d

The way the right builds their "violent left" narrative is being hyperreactive to any action by anyone they perceive to be on the left and blasting it all over conservative media while systematically ignoring any violence by the far right. Mainstream media covers the former but barely the latter.

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Andrew Weinstein @andrewjweinstein.com · 7d

ICE admits that up to 50% of arrests in its Chicago raids are "collateral.” These aren't statistics. They are parents taken from their children, neighbors taken from our communities. When does a "collateral" U.S. citizen child's trauma matter? This isn't law enforcement; it's a campaign of terror.

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David Corn @davidcorn.bsky.social · 6d

Once upon a time, if a president head lied this brazenly, it would be considered a disgrace by both political parties

Acyn @acyn.bsky.social · 6d

Trump: Portland is burning to the ground—insurrectionists all over the place. The politicians are afraid for their lives. That’s the only reason they say there’s nothing happening.

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KOJAMF🤘🖤🤘 @kojamf.bsky.social · 7d

Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 7d

Popularists, or pollingists—or whatever you call the pundit/consultant thinking that dominates Dem politics—take on the straw man "no one should use data," but avoid the more substantive criticism "you're using data poorly."

This, by @anatosaurus.bsky.social, is an excellent version of the latter.

Bringing a Survey to a Gun Fight

“Pollingism” Has Failed Democrats and Voters. Here’s Why, and What to Do Instead.

www.weekendreading.net

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Patrick Cosmos @veryimportant.lawyer · Sep 8

working on a new unified theory of american reality i'm calling "everyone is twelve now"

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 8d

This is what authoritarians do - use the powers of the state to humiliate and degrade their opponents in public so that others will not challenge them

Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 8d

“The source told CBS News that [Kash Patel and Dan Bongino] asked for "large, beefy" agents to conduct an arrest of Comey "in full kit," including Kevlar vests and exterior wear emblazoned with the FBI logo.” The leadership of the FBI is now in the hands of infantile psychopaths.

The FBI is weighing an arrest and perp walk for Comey — and suspended an agent for refusing to help, sources say

The FBI is considering carrying out a "showy" arrest and perp walk of the agency's now-indicted ex-Director James Comey, sources tell CBS News.

www.cbsnews.com

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Dave Infante @dinfontay.com · 8d

“'The fact that we don't have money to pay journalists, but we have money to pay Bari Weiss between $100 and 200 million is indicative of what the Ellisons' true goal here is,' a network correspondent said. 'And it's not journalism.'"

CBS News staffers are ‘literally freaking out’ about Bari Weiss taking over newsroom

EXCLUSIVE: ‘People are using words like depressing and doomsday – feels like some sort of doomsday,’ one source told The Independent about the mood inside CBS News right now.

www.independent.co.uk

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Jennifer N. Victor @jenvictor.bsky.social · 8d

It could not be clearer how low the bar has become for assessing this administration.

Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 9d

Chris Murphy says Dems should lay down a simple marker for Trump: No Dem support for anything that funds his lawbreaking.

"if you want our votes, it can’t be for rampant lawlessness. This isn't a normal time...the world [is] watching to see what we stand for." 2/

newrepublic.com/article/2013...

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Philip Bump @pbump.com · 9d

comic book authors: we invented the punisher as a cautionary tale about vigilante crime fighting
the director of the fbi: at long last, we are implementing the ethos from the classic comic book the punisher

Sam @samd.bsky.social · 9d

reddit occupied government

Ken Dilanian
@DilanianMSNBC
Follow
The challenge coins being handed out by @FBIDirectorKash. Seems someone put a lot of thought into this.

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Lily Mason @lilymasonphd.bsky.social · 9d

There are a few links in our CES data!

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Rebekah Tromble @rebekahtromble.bsky.social · 9d

Hand holding a frying pan with a fried egg in it, with the words “This is your university if you sign” at the top. Image is from the 1980s “This is your brain on drugs” campaign.

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