Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Rhys Needham @rhysneedham.bsky.social · 4h

The Germans declared war on the US after Pearl Harbor, technically, but, yes.

Basically it's that week that the German offensive got closest to capturing Moscow and the first Soviet counter-offensive that pushed them back started.

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Waitman Wade Beorn, PhD, FRHistS @waitmanwbeorn.com · 4h

I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of historians suddenly cried out...

Karly Kingsley @karlykingsley.bsky.social · 10h

History warned us about tyrants. Nobody warned us they’d be this dumb.

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Men in Blazers Media Network @meninblazers.bsky.social · 4h

The Faroe Islands—population just 55,000—beat the Czech Republic 🤯

An astonishing result. The territory's population is smaller than the capacity of six Premier League stadiums, yet they've just won a third straight international game 🇫🇴

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Gabriel Milland @gabrielmilland.bsky.social · 4h

This will create almost as much joy in the Nordics as Sweden losing to Kosovo did last month.

Men in Blazers Media Network @meninblazers.bsky.social · 4h

The Faroe Islands—population just 55,000—beat the Czech Republic 🤯

An astonishing result. The territory's population is smaller than the capacity of six Premier League stadiums, yet they've just won a third straight international game 🇫🇴

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Rhys Needham @rhysneedham.bsky.social · 5h

There's a good chance Arendt underestimated how bad Eichmann actually was. Some of the leaders in the Jewish ghettos and his own deputy have attested how much of a fanatic he actually was, that he participated in the burning of synagogues at Kristallnacht. Later scholarship, too.

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Hypocaust @hypocaust.bsky.social · 5h

Highest successful women's ODI run chase

331 AUS v IND at Visakhapatnam, today
302 SL v SA at Potchefstroom, 2024
289 AUS v NZ at North Sydney, 2012
283 AUS v IND at Wankhede, 2023
282 AUS v IND at Chandigarh, 2025
280 NZ v IND at Queenstown, 2022
278 AUS v IND at Auckland, 2022

#CWC25

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Tom Brogan @tombrogan.bsky.social · 1d

A great bit from Al Pacino’s autobiography when Diane Keaton finds out he’s broke.

Extract from page 248 of Al Pacino’s 2024 autobiography where Diane Keaton goes to speak with his entertainment lawyer.

Extract from page 249 of Al Pacino’s 2024 autobiography where Diane Keaton goes to speak with his entertainment lawyer.

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Old White Nepo Hat @kenwhite.bsky.social · 6h

/5 I mean if you think your peers in an elite, rarefied environment are being kind of silly you can say so, and maybe endure some occasional hissing, or you can just make being mad at it your whole personality, forgetting that rarefied cultures are commonly silly.

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Rhys Needham @rhysneedham.bsky.social · 5h

www.espncricinfo.com/series/icc-w....

Australia beat India by three wickets.

IND-W vs AUS-W Cricket Scorecard, 13th Match at Visakhapatnam, October 12, 2025

Live Cricket Scoreboard: Get India Women vs Australia Women 13th Match, cricket scorecard, ICC Women's World Cup 2025/26 dated October 12, 2025.

www.espncricinfo.com

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Boo-is @louisevans.bsky.social · 22h

"Rumored Tryst Between Alleged Castro Lovechild and Lady Astronaut" at LAST we are getting the HEADLINES OF THE FUTURE promised by the 1960s

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Rhys Needham @rhysneedham.bsky.social · 5h

The fear of admitting and telling the truth to himself almost as much as anything, is my impression. To do away with all the rationalisations, justifications, and excuses.

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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 7h

STEPHANOPOULOS: I didn't insinuate anything. I asked you whether Tom Homan accepted $50k as was heard on an audio tape recorded by the FBI in September 2024. You did not answer the question. Thank you for your time.

VANCE: No, George, I sai--

STEPHANOPOULOS: We'll be right back

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brasidas @brasidas.bsky.social · 6h

Anyone who claims that Silicon Valley would be better with more humanities education has to grapple with the fact that Peter Thiel was a philosophy major.

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BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 6h

it's very funny to me that his delusional misreadings can include both Watchmen, one of the great 20th century novels, and One Piece, a fun comic serial for children. But it's not good that this man is genuinely mad and a major political and financial force in the United States of America.

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 10h

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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Rhys Needham @rhysneedham.bsky.social · 6h

We're all well into the bellboys giving stock tips stage, to boot?

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Jonn Elledge @jonnelledge.bsky.social · 11h

it's the americans who are most exhausting

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Chise @sailorrooscout.bsky.social · 6h

GOOD NEWS! Researchers have developed a cancer vaccine that has shown STUNNING results, PREVENTING up to 88% of MULTIPLE aggressive cancers by harnessing dual-pathway nanoparticles that train the immune system to recognize and destroy tumor cells. In some cases, it COMPLETELY prevented metastasis.

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Rhys Needham @rhysneedham.bsky.social · 6h

Ed Miliband eating a bacon sandwich strangely?

Malcolm Turnbull eating a pie with a knife and fork?

Tony Abbott chomping away at a raw onion?

Or, conversely, the time Bob Carr managing to control an entire day's news cycle criticising a journalist's choice of a sausage roll for breakfast?

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 7h

This is an obsession of mine - a huge pathology of the press is coverage suggesting that politicians who are less skilled performers are somehow less "authentic"

Me on Romney coverage in CJR: www.cjr.org/united_state...

Me on Hillary Clinton coverage in The Upshot:
www.nytimes.com/2015/10/02/u...

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Old White Nepo Hat @kenwhite.bsky.social · 6h

/2 Plus as a huge nerd I find his ”let’s see how this nerd thing can be interpreted in a wholly subnormal fascist way” vibe to be extremely gross. But it attracts certain subnormal types.

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Gabriel Milland @gabrielmilland.bsky.social · 7h

Aka "ship money".

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 8h

Vance claims "tariff revenue" will be used to pay the troops

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Old White Nepo Hat @kenwhite.bsky.social · 6h

Every time someone makes me read something Peter Thiel said it’s like “Scrooge McDuck is Jesus Christ and Huey, Dewey, and Louie are Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel and Daisy is Mary Magdalene and that’s why women voting has lowered American sperm count.”

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Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 9h

most normies are mad at thiel for being incomprensible

we are mad at thiel for not understanding philosophy and theology

Orddu, Orwen, or Orgoch @troynovaunt.bsky.social · 9h

I DEEPLY resent that I have to take seriously the stunted, juvenile political and theological opinions of Peter Thiel

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ceej @ceej.online · 7h

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 · 10h

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

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Bhim Adhikari 🇳🇵 @bhimabish.bsky.social · 6h

INCREDIBLE SCENES FROM OMAN!

Nepal have clinched the last ball thriller against UAE. Nepal are now an inch away from the World Cup spot.

🚨 What a match! What a thrilling finish! 🥶🇳🇵

Nepal Men's Team registers their 100th international win (ODIs + T20Is)🇳🇵

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Waitman Wade Beorn, PhD, FRHistS @waitmanwbeorn.com · 6h

I’m guessing it has something to do with the violent fatal antisemitic attack on a synagogue last week…because, you know, current events.

Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 14h

BBC asking Bridget Phillipson at length about rising antisemitism in the UK (which actually fell last year according to new figures, albeit still very high) but not at all about rising Islamophobia, which is up by 19% year-on-year

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