Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Nick Wanserski @nickwans.bsky.social · 2h

Listening to Heroin by the Velvet Underground and trying to imagine Lou Reed in the year 1065 sulking his way across the prow of some Saxon trading vessel. Dude would be tossed in the ocean so fast.

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Nick Wanserski @nickwans.bsky.social · 5h

Frog from Chrono Trigger sez:

Beloved video game character Frog shares a heartfelt sentiment.

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Nick Wanserski @nickwans.bsky.social · 8h

Her situation isn’t that bad when you learn she was already suffering from a terrible personality before she wrote the article.

Free Press Reporter Discovers That Being An Amoral Dickhead Can Cost You Friends | Defector

It can be hard to maintain friendships as an adult. People move to new cities, start families, and experience all sorts of other life events that make it difficult to keep in touch. Sometimes, you end...

defector.com

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Nick Wanserski @nickwans.bsky.social · 12h

Even for the height of the medium, it’s still astonishing something this ambitious and beautiful got made.

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Nick Wanserski @nickwans.bsky.social · 1d

The 30 Rock Jeffrey Wienerslav expanded universe

Jeff Yang @originalsp.in · 1d

Thousands of posts from a private Young Republican Telegram chat reveal a culture of casual racism/antisemitism, rape jokes and celebration of Hitler/Nazism.

Some of the ringleaders are below: We live in a world where 4chan types now occupy positions of real power.
www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

Peter Giunta, chair of the New York State Young Republicans

Bobby Walker, vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans

William Hendrix, communications assistant for Kansas’ Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach

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Nick Wanserski @nickwans.bsky.social · 1d

It’s awful that Struzan’s passing feels like the death of the artist is symbolic of the death of the art form.
No one is doing it like this any longer. And granted, even in his time Struzan was singular. A technical master whose easy confidence allowed a dynamic playfulness. But now? Nothing close.

io9 @io9dotcom.bsky.social · 1d

Drew Struzan, the King of the Movie Poster, Has Died

The beloved artist, who illustrated iconic posters for 'Star Wars', 'Indiana Jones', 'Back to the Future', and more, was 78.

gizmodo.com

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Nick Wanserski @nickwans.bsky.social · 1d

I agree that he’s not providing a 1 to 1 template for the rest of the country.
Mostly because charisma and an easy humanity are not replicable traits.
But lord, I sure do think he can provide a successful philosophical alternative to our current bloodless donor class model.

Richard M. Nixon @dicknixon.bsky.social · 1d

Mamdani is going to win. The question will now be, "Can you reproduce this?" It's doubtful. He's talented. But it's possible, first of all, if you remember all politics is local, and the more local you get - the more people recognize you - the more things like age and parties cease to matter.

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Nick Wanserski @nickwans.bsky.social · 1d

I think of all the mass-scale philanthropy billionaires could run at a loss that wouldn’t even register as a blip on their excel sheets.
As it is Bezos will keep this thing running down to the last confused subscriber just to maintain a reputation laundry for fascists.

karl rove knausgård @uhactually.bsky.social · 2d

Lmao WaPo has fewer than 100K circulation now. It turns out “alienate your liberal subscriber base” is not a good strategy when the Republicans also hate you. www.forbes.com/sites/andyme...

The Washington Post Is Running Out Of Readers Willing To Pay

Once a titan of American journalism, The Washington Post now struggles to reach even 100,000 print subscribers most days.

www.forbes.com

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Nick Wanserski @nickwans.bsky.social · 1d

I hope Kain’s lance kills me before his “m’lady?” does.

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Nick Wanserski @nickwans.bsky.social · 2d

We no longer live in a time where the wealthy and powerful can be brought low by an ingrown toenail or high fever. But we’ll always have the occasional jousting accident.

The New York Times @nytimes.com · 2d

Doug Lebda, the chief executive and chairman of LendingTree, an online loans marketplace, died on Sunday following an all-terrain vehicle accident on his family’s North Carolina farm, according to a company spokeswoman. He was 55.

Doug Lebda, LendingTree C.E.O. and Founder, Dies in ATV Accident

LendingTree named its chief operating officer, Scott Peyree, as its new chief executive.

nyti.ms

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Nick Wanserski @nickwans.bsky.social · 3d

Giving the full levers of power to a handful of men who have siloed themselves away from humanity and cooked their brains on a lifetime of designer drugs and online discourse was a bad idea.

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.

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Nick Wanserski @nickwans.bsky.social · 4d

We’ve ceded righteous fury to the right for too long. My biggest problem with being agnostic is losing the language to properly call out people who foul the universe by their discarded humanity.

Rich Raho @richraho.bsky.social · 4d

Chicago priest Fr. Larry Dowling describes procession to ICE facility: “No one had the courage to speak directly to us. No one from Homeland Security could stand in the presence of the Monstrance holding the Blessed Sacrament. No wonder. Evil is repelled, recoils in the presence of Christ.”

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Nick Wanserski @nickwans.bsky.social · 4d

I should only be allowed to own philodendrons. They are contemptuous of my neglect and grow unabated to remind me of my shortcomings as a caretaker.

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Nick Wanserski @nickwans.bsky.social · 5d

Welcome to our fine city and our regional contribution to novelty molten cheese delivery cuisine.

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Nick Wanserski @nickwans.bsky.social · 5d

First they came for John Bolton and I said nothing because he fucking suuuuuuuucks

emptywheel @emptywheel.bsky.social · 7d

WSJ reports that DOJ is going to charge John Bolton.

In case you needed anyone less sympathetic to rally behind than Jim Comey.

www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Prosecutors in Maryland are expected in coming days to charge one of Trump’s first-term national security advisers, John Bolton, now a top Trump critic, with mishandling classified information, according to people familiar with the matter.

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Nick Wanserski @nickwans.bsky.social · 5d

What a delightful thing to learn

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Nick Wanserski @nickwans.bsky.social · 5d

I’m going to suggest, in part because it’s otherwise unheard of, that it’s due to the indelible art direction.
The look of these movies are iconic, and frankly, singular.
Nothing else about these films linger except for the luminescent red and blue Mondrian lines.

mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 6d

Pretty confused by how TRON became a big-budget movie franchise. Was it a bit hit when it came out? No. Did it become a big hit on video/TV? Also no. Do people have fond nostalgic memories of it? Eh kinda but not really. Was it secretly great and critically acclaimed? No again

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Nick Wanserski @nickwans.bsky.social · 6d

50,000,000 Mavis Fans Can't Be Wrong

K. Thor Jensen @kthorjensen.bsky.social · 7d

This is the aesthetic of the future

Kyle wolf
@CRXSSF4DE
.
someone on the Motorola forums was having the same problem with the camera I've been having, but I just have to share the image they posted to demonstrate the issue.
it's the funniest shit I've ever seen in my life dude

The photo is of an elderly woman in gray clothes that has been so bizarrely processed that it looks both totally over and desaturated

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Nick Wanserski @nickwans.bsky.social · 6d

While Morning Edition and All Things Considered have ushered in their own irrelevance with the most toothless, deferential journalism, it should be noted that Ari Shapiro in particular is a spectacular dumbass.

Matt Negrin still host of Hardball on MSNBC @mattnegrin.bsky.social · 6d

That (NPR!) journalists think AI is a creative engine that can finesse iconic productions is not just context for the crap quality of writing in media but alarmingly the inability among a class of supposedly professional scrutinizers to distinguish between art and slop, good and bad, truth and lie

Juno Rylee Schultz @junoryleejournalism.com · 6d

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

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Nick Wanserski @nickwans.bsky.social · 6d

Neko Case. She embodies this amazing paradox where she writes the smartest, sharpest lyrics like nothing you’ve ever heard before that are also immediately identifiable and universal.

Emily, a Two-Shoes-Gooder @rebelmusicteach.bsky.social · 9d

I also need to know: I am fairly middle-of-the-road on Taylor Swift but someone I know called her the Greatest Living Lyricist. She is not.

Who is yours? Either the greatest or your favorite?

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Nick Wanserski @nickwans.bsky.social · 6d

Granted, if I tried to do even one of those things now, I would die. But that’s what your twenties are for!

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Nick Wanserski @nickwans.bsky.social · 6d

I had one book assigned to read all semester on 19th century Chinese civil society.
Cracked the spine the first time the night before my 10-page majority grade paper was due. Skimmed it, wrote it, got an A.
Went to work hallucinating from lack of sleep, went home and passed out watching Finding Nemo

Dane 🔜 NYCC AA L-34 @monkeyminion.com · 7d

I wrote a 15 page report on heraldic symbolism in medieval armor and weapon design for my art history class the night before it was due (8am class). Made up 90% of it (only found one book for reference) and got an A. GenAI could fucking never.

wrote 20 pages on Faulkner's The Bear four hours before final papers were due on trucker pills and coffee and cigarettes and got an A, fuck you.
You people couldn't hang with real slackers.
finn
wokeupchic • 4d
It's fuck Al till your homework due in 25 minutes

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Nick Wanserski @nickwans.bsky.social · 7d

“Are you sure I don’t need to take my whole shirt off to get the shot?”

Governor Tim Walz @governorwalz.mn.gov · 7d

Can’t believe I have to say this, but in Minnesota you will continue to have the freedom to get your COVID and flu shots.

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Nick Wanserski @nickwans.bsky.social · 7d

Like, pretty much all companies are cowards. But Ubisoft enjoys a unique place in cowardice for borrowing the aesthetic of historical and political engagement but absolutely meaning nothing with any of it. And more, they’re frightened of their own pretend thoughtfulness.

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Nick Wanserski @nickwans.bsky.social · 7d

Years ago, Gameological (rest in power) visited an Ubisoft event for the release of AC 3.
It was a gallery show featuring paintings like George Washington as a king or the protagonist framed with graffiti like ‘rebel!’
When asked what any of it meant, the pr person basically said, “uh, nothing.”

Stephen Totilo @stephentotilo.bsky.social · 7d

SCOOP: Last year, Ubisoft cancelled an Assassin's Creed game set during Reconstruction. Was to feature a Black Assassin who, among other things, fought the rise of the Klan

Sources: Leadership nixed it over concerns re: U.S. political climate, backlash to Yasuke

www.gamefile.news/p/scoop-ubis...

Scoop: Ubisoft cancelled a post-Civil War Assassin’s Creed last year

Company leadership deemed the project too controversial for the moment, sources tell Game File

www.gamefile.news

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