Lisa Schmeiser
LightNews LightNews
lschmeiser.bsky.social
Lisa Schmeiser
@lschmeiser.bsky.social
2.2K followers 580 following 3.9K posts
Editor in Chief, No Jitter; podcast @ The Incomparable; writer of an intermittent Substack (lschmeiser.substack.com); parent/partner/community volunteer/aspiring long distance swimmer.
Posts Replies Media Videos
lschmeiser.bsky.social
November 24, 2025 at 9:13 PM
lschmeiser.bsky.social
Submitted without comment, the NYT's story introducing SF mayor (and political newbie) Daniel Lurie to its readership:
"Can San Francisco's New Mayor Make the City Shine Again?"
November 20, 2025 at 5:27 PM
lschmeiser.bsky.social
I'd love to know why this particular fact about the new mayor was relevant in introducing her to an audience when a fellow new mayor of a left coast city with a similarly light political background got this treatment:
SF mayor Daniel Lurie, whose political experience is not mentioned anywhere in his headline.
November 20, 2025 at 5:23 PM
lschmeiser.bsky.social
For example, let's look at how the NYT introduced another novice politician who won a mayoral election for a left-coast city:
A screencap of how the NYT chose to frame the election of wealthy businessman Daniel Lurie to the position of San Francisco mayor: "Can San Francisco's New Mayor Make the City Shine Again?"
November 20, 2025 at 5:21 PM
lschmeiser.bsky.social
This blurséd Tuesday ...
A screengrab of the trending topics on Bluesky for Tuesday, November 18 -- Saudi relations, Andrew Tate, Keith Olbermann, Anthropic Investment, Cloudflare Outage and Cowboys vs. Raiders. Truly, we are in the bad place in terms of attention-gobbling current events.
November 18, 2025 at 8:02 PM
lschmeiser.bsky.social
Having a teen is great in so many ways, but every once in a while, I see a holiday outfit like this & the nostalgia for a little one who loved twirly tutu skirts & was amenable to holiday-themed clothing just HITS.
A screengrab from Primary.com in which a lovely lavender t-shirt with a brightly-striped candy cane decal is paired with a lavender tulle tutu, and it is exactly what I would have dressed my daughter in at age 4.
November 8, 2025 at 3:40 AM
lschmeiser.bsky.social
A meme of Bernie Sanders looking very disappointed in all of us for not fighting harder for a more just and fair society, and his genuine irritation diminished by me using it to write, "I am once again asking for term limits on op-ed columnists."
November 6, 2025 at 1:50 AM
lschmeiser.bsky.social
Thinking about this passage in THE STAND a whole lot lately, about how some folks can never create, only destroy, and they still confuse it for actual accomplishment.
She guessed that behind the conscious evil there was an unconscious blackness. That was what distinguished the earth’s children of darkness; they couldn’t make things but only break them. God the Creator had made man in His own image, and that meant that every man and woman who dwelt under God’s light was a creator of some kind, a person with an urge to stretch out his hand and shape the world into some rational pattern. The black man wanted—was able—only to unshape. Anti-Christ? You might as well say anti-creation.
October 31, 2025 at 2:09 AM
lschmeiser.bsky.social
This is why @philipmichaels.bsky.social is my ride or die:
an exchange between two middle-aged editors in which one links to the isaac chotiner interview, the other asks that he never tell chotiner where she lives, and the first vows to do just that.
October 27, 2025 at 11:36 PM
lschmeiser.bsky.social
My eyebrows rose at the highlighted bit below & by the time I got to the sentence where the author admits she posts her kids less not because they'd like her to but because SHE is bored, my eyebrows were orbiting my skull:

www.thecut.com/article/fami...
"I thought about my own Instagram habits and how I’ve aligned with every one of these parents at some point. My now-15-year-old has a particular beef with a post on my permanent, public Instagram feed from 2022, when she was 11, with braces. I’m not taking it down, and she has largely stopped complaining. I supposed I would ask permission from either of my teens before posting now, but I’ve watched how long it takes them to edit their own personal photos, and I’m afraid I’ll be eligible for Medicare before I get the green light. Instead, I’ve mostly stopped posting my family altogether, not just due to teenage pushback but the general boredom that Margot described."
October 24, 2025 at 6:55 PM
lschmeiser.bsky.social
Serendipitous reading today from @espiers.bsky.social: talkingpointsmemo.com/tpm-25/what-...
A screengrab of a quote from Elizabeth Spiers' piece in TPM: "Early blogging was slower, less beholden to the hourly news cycle, and people were more inclined to talk about personal enthusiasms as well as what was going on in the world because blogs were considered an individual enterprise, not necessarily akin to a regular publication."
October 21, 2025 at 10:42 PM
lschmeiser.bsky.social
Live footage of Dr. Doom on his socials:
A cartoon panel of Marvel supervillain Dr. Doom saying, "My greatest flaw. I surround myself with idiots."
October 21, 2025 at 8:26 PM
lschmeiser.bsky.social
I read this Stewart Stevens quote back in 2020 and I think about it near daily (nymag.com/intelligence...)
"What Trump does is take people who are mediocre talent at best, who know they could never have the position they have if it were not for Trump, and it creates this instant loyalty to Trump. When you look at Trumpworld, it’s all these people who weren’t involved in presidential races, and it wasn’t because they didn’t want to be; it was because nobody would hire them."
October 20, 2025 at 4:29 PM
lschmeiser.bsky.social
Extremely into the discourse where someone's faith is challenged when confronted with 1 John 3.17 -- "But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?"
A tweet in which Pope Leo XIV says "The poor are not there by chance or by blind and cruel fate. Nor, for most of them, is poverty a choice. Yet tehre are those who still presume to make this claim, thus revealing their own blindness and cruelty," and some twonk immediately replies that the Pope is ungodly and unCatholic.
October 17, 2025 at 5:51 PM
lschmeiser.bsky.social
Banger of a conclusion to this review of "One Battle After Another:" www.thecut.com/article/revi...
"The film reminds us that the key to meaningful resistance is showing up with love, through each battle, over and over again: for those who make up your family, your community, your town or city. Progress occurs along a continuum that requires generational persistence against seemingly insurmountable odds. In the face of violent systems of power intent on oppressing us and keeping us living in terror, it is imperative that we stand up in small and large ways, to lead with hope even when filled with righteous anger, and to use whatever tools we have at hand to help create a more just world."
October 17, 2025 at 4:15 PM
lschmeiser.bsky.social
Extremely prepared for kale salad desk lunch today.
A bowl of kale salad accompanied by a small green box of Oral B dental floss
October 9, 2025 at 7:17 PM
lschmeiser.bsky.social
October 8, 2025 at 11:39 PM
lschmeiser.bsky.social
To understand the semiotics (and swindle) of the current administration & their ability to tap into Americans' primal identities as consumers first, citizens second, read @greatdismal.bsky.social's "Zero History," specifically Chapter 41, "Gear-Queer."

Relevant excerpt below:
Our best analyst thinks it’s not a tactical design. Something for mall ninjas.” “For what?” “The new Mitty demographic.” “I’m lost.” “Young men who dress to feel they’ll be mistaken for having special capability. A species of cosplay, really. Endemic. Lots of boys are playing soldier now. The men who run the world aren’t, and neither are the boys most effectively bent on running it next. Or the ones who’re actually having to be soldiers, of course. But many of the rest have gone gear-queer, to one extent or another.” Bigend’s teeth showed. “We had a team of cultural anthropologists interview American soldiers returning from Iraq. That’s where we first heard it. It’s not wholly derogatory, mind you. There are actual professionals who genuinely require these things—some of them, anyway. Though they generally seem to be far less fascinated with them. But it’s that fascination that interests us, of course.” “It is?” “It’s an obsession with the idea not just of the right stuff, but of the special stuff. Equipment fetishism. The costume and semiotics of achingly elite police and military units. Intense desire to possess same, of course, and in turn to be associated with that world. With its competence, its cocksure exclusivity.” “Sounds like fashion, to me.” “Exactly. Pants, but only just the right ones. We could never have engineered so powerful a locus of consumer desire. It’s like sex in a bottle.”
October 1, 2025 at 10:39 PM
lschmeiser.bsky.social
A screengrab of a scene at the end of Animal House whereupon the grossly underqualified Douglas Niedermeyer is revealed to have been shot by his own troops once he finally led a platoon.
September 30, 2025 at 8:58 PM
lschmeiser.bsky.social
Also, this passage hits in 2025. Bring me the punditry where someone examines THE STAND in post-pandemic America and sees how and why it holds it in this moment.
Glen’s smile had not changed, and he had only flinched a little at the gunshot. “I repeat, if you must shoot somebody, shoot him. He’s really not human at all, you know. I once described him to a friend as the last magician of rational thought, Mr. Henreid. That was more correct than I knew. But he’s losing his magic now. It’s slipping away from him and he knows it. And you know it, too. Shoot him now and save us all God knows how much bloodshed and dying.” Flagg’s face had grown very still. “Shoot one of us, anyhow, Lloyd,” he said. “I got you out of jail when you were dying of starvation. It’s guys like this that you wanted to get back at. Little guys who talk big.” Lloyd said: “Mister, you don’t fool me. It’s like Randy Flagg says.” “But he lies. You know he lies.” “He told me more of the truth than anyone else bothered to in my whole lousy life,” Lloyd said,
September 19, 2025 at 5:11 PM
lschmeiser.bsky.social
My favorite character in Stephen King's THE STAND is Glenn Bateman and the moment where he demonstrates how to deal with blustering bullies who rely on others to do the real dirty work is a handy life lesson.
“Stop laughing.” Glen laughed harder. “Stop laughing at me!” “You’re nothing!” Glen said, wiping his streaming eyes and still chuckling. “Oh pardon me … it’s just that we were all so frightened … we made such a business out of you … I’m laughing as much at our own foolishness as at your regrettable lack of substance …”
September 19, 2025 at 5:05 PM
lschmeiser.bsky.social
(apologies for the swear but really, this reaction is 👨‍🍳)
September 17, 2025 at 4:56 PM
lschmeiser.bsky.social
When CEOs began talking about AI as "digital labor" and "the digital workforce" and "your digital colleagues," they were specifically introducing the idea that AI = people.

Ask yourself who benefits from the framing that a human being is interchangeable with a bundle of code.
Wherein CEO Jeanine Wright claims that half the people on the planet will be AI, which really introduces some fascinating philosophical questions around sentience and humanity that will go absolutely unaddressed in this puff piece on why we need to accep AI podcasts as the future.
September 10, 2025 at 12:28 AM
lschmeiser.bsky.social
Yale Law, everyone!
An exchange over on Vichy Twitter wherein the vice president of the United States, a man who made his bones at Yale Law -- home of serial harasser Jed Rubenfeld and his tiger mom wife Amy Chua, plus proud cradle of associate justice Cavanaugh's law career -- decides there is no such thing as the rule of law any more. Way to go, Elis!
September 6, 2025 at 8:06 PM
lschmeiser.bsky.social
I also think a lot about Granny Weatherwax's take on how to be faithful, per CARPE JUGULUM:
"If I thought there was some god who really did care two hoots about people, who watched ’em like a father and cared for ’em like a mother . . . well, you wouldn’t catch me sayin’ things like ‘there are two sides to every question’ and ‘we must respect other people’s beliefs.’ You wouldn’t find me just being gen’rally nice in the hope that it’d all turn out right in the end, not if that flame was burning in me like an unforgivin’ sword. And I did say burnin’, Mister Oats, ’cos that’s what it’d be. You say that you people don’t burn folk and sacrifice people anymore, but that’s what true faith would mean, y’see? Sacrificin’ your own life, one day at a time, to the flame, declarin’ the truth of it, workin’ for it, breathin’ the soul of it. That’s religion. Anything else is just . . . is just bein’ nice. And a way of keepin’ in touch with the neighbors.”"
August 28, 2025 at 6:52 PM