Author | Lightnews

Things I'm Reading

@thingsimreading.bsky.social

100 followers 220 following 960 posts

I read everything. DMs open for book, article recs. Will excerpt those sent. Here are excerpts of things I'm reading in 🫖 English 🍉#عربي 🧿🔥 #Español 🌺. #writing 📚🏳️‍🌈 #bdsm 🦯🔞

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Things I'm Reading @thingsimreading.bsky.social · Sep 22

🌈 Not interested in compartmentalizing my interests 🔞but if you only follow me out of interest in one topic and are reallly *not* interested in others, you can mute the topics you are not interested in on your own profile settings. A suggestion 💫

Things I'm Reading @thingsimreading.bsky.social · 17h

Cheerleading, long distance running, “intermittent fasting,” watching Love Is Blind. .

Leather Archives & Museum @leatherarchives.bsky.social · 18h

Quote from Feminism and Sadomasochism by Patrick Califia (in Heresies 12, 1981). Photo from Bondage Adventures No 8 (Oct 1989).

White Woman sitting on rocks in flowy white dress by the sea with one leg folded, arms bound behind her back with rough rope from upper arm to wrist. Text: [Long-distance runners are not generally thought of as perverts, nor is St. Theresa. The fact that masochism is disapproved of when stressful athletic activity and religious martyrdom are not is an interesting example of the way sex is made a special case in our society. We seem to be incapable of using the same reason and compassion we apply to non-sexual issues to formulate our positions on sexual issues.]

Things I'm Reading @thingsimreading.bsky.social · 20h

will align themselves with a conman*

Things I'm Reading @thingsimreading.bsky.social · 20h

The so-called “white working class” is so desperate for a mirror and a voice that they — like the progressive gen-z folks they are quick to deride — for a conman who represents the very institutions who have fleeced their communities i.e. the US military & the corporate/industrial it feeds off of

Things I'm Reading @thingsimreading.bsky.social · 20h

Congratulations! Looking forward to reading it.

1 1

Things I'm Reading @thingsimreading.bsky.social · 20h

I admire David Sirota’s journalism in general, but this interview frankly was disgusting. There is no evidence #Platner has disavowed in a real material way who he is and parroting left internet culture is PR and reputational management.

Things I'm Reading @thingsimreading.bsky.social · 20h

that such figures require “rehabilitation” is something that gets touched but reduced to opinions, not structures. Who gives a shit what memes he shares on reddit? This is the level of dehumanization of the victims of the #GWOT — it is a CORE feature of the U.S. political culture.

Things I'm Reading @thingsimreading.bsky.social · 20h

The issue is not #Platner's “opinions”; it is the fact that he has been a foot soldier and technocrat for the Global War of Terror and all it represents - torture, suspension of rule of law, genocide, and more. Since opposition to this in a real way is not part of any “left” in the US, the idea

Things I'm Reading @thingsimreading.bsky.social · 20h

Sirota offers a narrative that #corporatedems have used to hedge on #progressive issues without committing to them: permission to evolve. (See most of them on #gay marriage.) This is a public relations move.

Things I'm Reading @thingsimreading.bsky.social · 20h

at a time that we are the closest we have been to a civil war. There are signs of an imminent power struggle within the current ruling party (i.e. vance’s takeover of Turning Point). Think.

Things I'm Reading @thingsimreading.bsky.social · 20h

Throughout the interview, he has waffled on the question of armed resistance to fascism. Currently, much of the US military is aligned with the current president. Think! What does it mean that a person like #Platner is being marketed as a rural quote #left saviour and parrots this line here . .

Things I'm Reading @thingsimreading.bsky.social · 20h

That in an instant, he can suddenly come to terms with the whiteness and racism and violence of everything he stands for and align himself perfectly on the side of justice and those crushed under US Empire. This is a #Hollywood fiction.

Things I'm Reading @thingsimreading.bsky.social · 20h

#Platner’s appeal - which his funders and handlers are acutely aware of — is that he embodies the FICTION that a misogynistic, #white supremacist with #nazi tattoos who made a living working at torture and RAPE camps — which is what Abu Ghraib was — can be redeemed

Things I'm Reading @thingsimreading.bsky.social · 20h

#Platner said he thought of himself as a “professional soldier” much of his life — but was totally naive about #military #rape against soldiers who are women or queer. This is IMPOSSIBLE given the scope of this practice and scale of military rape. www.nbcnews.com/investigatio...

U.S. military sexual assault rates 2 to 4 times higher than govt estimates, study says

The Brown University report faults the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as putting the military's long-standing issue of sexual assault secondary to force readiness.

www.nbcnews.com

Things I'm Reading @thingsimreading.bsky.social · 20h

David Sirota does not challenge him on his claim he never worked for Blackwater. Blackwater RENAMED itself as Constellis and #Platner most certainly worked for them in 2018. #Platner lies flatout about this.

Things I'm Reading @thingsimreading.bsky.social · 20h

This is one of the most disingenuous and fawning interviews with this guy that you will see. Its giving the kind of soft ball treatment that #Kamala Harris and #Biden were given post-concentration camp closure in #Gaza. Here are a few of the worst moments 🧵:

David Sirota @davidsirota.com · 1d

NEW: How can we know whether Attentional Candidates will become @johnfetterman.com betraying their stated principles just to get themselves more attention once they win office?

Some thoughts after I talked to @grahamformaine.bsky.social & threw Lever readers’ tough questions at him.

Graham Platner And The Fetterman Question

How can we know that Attentional Candidates will not sell out for attention once elected?

www.levernews.com

Things I'm Reading @thingsimreading.bsky.social · 4d

#climatechange #climatecatastrophe #greencapitalism #ocean #air #pollution #carbon #globalwarming #ecology #environmentalism #capitalism
2/2

Things I'm Reading @thingsimreading.bsky.social · 4d

From the #Climate and Community Institute: The United States needs somewhere between 270 and 485 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind to decarbonize by 2050; however, based on states’ current plans, only about 50 GW is planned to be online.

climateandcommunity....

1/2

A Federal Offshore Wind Authority: A Public Moon Shot for Offshore Wind

We propose that a future administration establish a federal Offshore Wind Authority to supercharge buildout and deliver affordable electricity.

climateandcommunity.org

1 2

Things I'm Reading @thingsimreading.bsky.social · 4d

From “Hardwiring Normalization” by Rafeef Ziadeh
www.merip.org/2025/1...

#Indigenous #FirstNations #NativeAmericans #Nativelit #booksky #reading#booksky #reading #indigenous #palestinian #palestine #occupation
10/10

Hardwiring Normalization—Infrastructures, Extraction and Gaza’s Future

In the summer of 2025, a 38-page blueprint circulating inside the Trump administration was leaked to the press: the Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation (GREAT) Trust. At first glance, it resembled countless other speculative development schemes, renderings of luxury resorts, free-trade zones and smart cities. Gaza, the plan insisted,

www.merip.org

Things I'm Reading @thingsimreading.bsky.social · 4d

This vision seeks to fold Gaza into Israeli, Egyptian and Gulf networks under US trusteeship, merging Gulf capital and Israeli technology while reducing Palestinians to obstacles to be displaced or bypassed.
9/10

Things I'm Reading @thingsimreading.bsky.social · 4d

In addition to an “Abraham Gateway” logistics hub at Rafah, it proposed an “MBS Ring” highway (after Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia) and an “MBZ Central Highway” (after Emirati president Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan).
8/10

Things I'm Reading @thingsimreading.bsky.social · 4d

IMEC takes that logic further, turning the promises of the Accords into concrete form: railways, pipelines and data cables that tie Israel even more tightly to Gulf and European economies.

The document even names Gulf rulers directly.
7/10

Things I'm Reading @thingsimreading.bsky.social · 4d

Marketed as a diplomatic breakthrough, the Accords pushed the idea of “economic peace,” that trade, investment and infrastructure could stand in for political resolution. In practice, it meant connecting Israel into Gulf supply chains while sidelining Palestinian rights and sovereignty.
6/10

1 1

Things I'm Reading @thingsimreading.bsky.social · 4d

The leaked document was less a plan to rebuild Gaza than an add-on to the Abraham Accords, the US-brokered normalization deals struck in 2020 between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain, and later joined by Morocco and, to a varying degree, Sudan.
5/10

Things I'm Reading @thingsimreading.bsky.social · 4d

In the plan’s diagrams, Gaza was to become a node of this east–west trade artery, its coastline and land rezoned for ports, pipelines and digital cables.
4/10

Things I'm Reading @thingsimreading.bsky.social · 4d

The proposal imagined Gaza not as a territory with a people and political rights, but as a logistics hub folded into the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), the transport, energy and data corridor linking South Asia, the Gulf and Europe, via Israel, launched in 2023.
3/10