Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Paul Rosenberg

@paulrosenberg.bsky.social

17K followers 820 following 21K posts

Words. At Salon: https://www.salon.com/writer/paul_rosenberg
& Random Lengths News: https://www.randomlengthsnews.com/archives/author/paul-rosenberg
Election take: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:xy5et7tjp2m5vcse6ky23v2x/post/3lajp4jwy2s2n

Posts Replies Media Videos

Paul Rosenberg

@paulrosenberg.bsky.social

Limits to growth lead to social collapse, as societies fail to adjust their ideologies to adjust. There are obvious chilling parallels between the collapse of the first pan-European culture & the threatened collapse of world civilization facing climate catastrophe.

Zeeb-Lanz thinks sites like Herxheim were ways to reinforce cultural connections in an increasingly unfamiliar world, perhaps through human sacrifices or some other Stone Age bonding rites. “We’re looking at a change in ideology over a generation or two. Social ideas and cohesion aren’t working well,” Zeeb-Lanz says. “And ritualistic violence is a very strong way to bring cohesion in a community.”
Penny Bickle, an archaeologist at the University of York, suggests a culture accustomed to constant expansion might have simply run out of room. Around 5100 B.C.E., the furious pace of the LBK’s territorial expansion slows, then stops, as it reaches the edges of the fertile loess zone. “Maybe the society reaches the limits of the landscape where expansion makes sense. Moving on and making new settlements doesn’t work as a social system anymore, so they start to look inwards,” Bickle says. “There’s a shift in how people are relating to each other.”

November 28, 2025 at 12:04 PM

Paul Rosenberg

@paulrosenberg.bsky.social

Along these same lines, I challenged Joe Uscinski's #bothsidesism pointing out that just because conspiracist cognition was ~evenly distributed across the ideological spectrum that atomic-level observation said nothing about how molecular structures were formed.
www.salon.com/2018/08/18/q...

But, dont believe the journalists. The extant studies, if they show a difference between right and left in terms of conspiracy belief, show little difference. Certainly not enough difference to suggest that the left is sound and savvy while the right is a bunch of conspiracy nuts

— Joe Uscinski (@JoeUscinski) August 3, 2018

The problem with this tweet is twofold: first, there are some individual differences between left and right — which I wrote about in that March 2016 article mentioned before — and second, individual-level differences are not the whole story — not by a long shot. Diamonds and coal are both made of carbon. At the atomic level, they’re identical. At the molecular level, not so much. It’s not what they’re made of that makes them different, it’s how they’re put together.

November 27, 2025 at 9:21 PM

Paul Rosenberg

@paulrosenberg.bsky.social

I've just finished writing up story re Project Censored Top 10 Stories & #3 is "Indigenous Communities in the US Underfunded and Exploited by Federal and State Governments," so I've read a lot about the subject very recently.

November 23, 2025 at 10:07 PM

Paul Rosenberg

@paulrosenberg.bsky.social

Two parties but 3 ideological groupings?
Not according to Pew, who's been tracking this for decades, with periodic updates using cluster analysis. 2021 snapshot here: www.pewresearch.org/politics/202...

2021 political typologu. General public, Rep/lean Rep & Dem/Lean Dem shown in columns with % of each falling into one of 9 different socio-political groups, from "Faith & Flag conservatives" to "Progressive left"

November 22, 2025 at 9:57 PM

Paul Rosenberg

@paulrosenberg.bsky.social

It's also based on fallacious evolutionary history. Humans evolved as a prey species like all other small primates. We only became successful predators in groups relatively recently, as Kurt Gray argues in "Outraged! Why We Fight About Morality and Politics"
www.salon.com/2025/03/01/i...

“The argument of this book is simple," Gray writes: "We have a harm-based moral mind. Our evolutionary past makes us worry about harm, but people today disagree about which threats are most important or most real, creating moral outrage and political disagreements.” His book, he adds, covers three big ideas, first, “why harm drives our minds,” going deep into our evolutionary past and our similarities and differences with other species; second, “how harm fuels morality,” even when that's not obvious; and third, “the practical takeaways of our harm-based mind — what can we do to better manage moral conflict?”
Each of these is explored in separate sections, and paired with the myths that Gray argues have blocked our understanding. First is the myth of humans as apex predators. Gray discusses the key archaeological find supporting that myth — Raymond Dart's 1924 discovery of the Taung child — an early bipedal human from about 2.8 million years ago — whom he assumed had butchered by another prehistoric human. But later investigations revealed that the site was littered with eagle eggshells — the child had likely been taken by birds of prey, not an uncommon fate for mammals of small stature.
Why does our evolutionary past matter for morality? “If we are predators, then morality might have evolved to make sure that the spoils of the hunt were evenly distributed," Gray argues, but a "prey-based morality would focus more on preventing [other] people from exploiting our vulnerabilities.”
“If humans are predators," he later continues, "then in modern life, when someone roars their moral outrage at us, it is because they are aggressive and trying to be threatening." But if we are by nature prey animals, "then modern moral outrage is just people trying to protect themselves from threats.”

November 18, 2025 at 12:50 AM

Paul Rosenberg

@paulrosenberg.bsky.social

Do you know WHY Texas has such a strong wind energy sector? It's because 20+ years ago they engaged in a deliberative process (akin to a jury, but for policy purposes) that let the people decide:
www.salon.com/2025/06/14/d...

You also had another energy-focused deliberative poll, here in the U.S.

Years ago, when I first started, we did a number of projects in Texas about how the state was going to get its energy, because it was growing very fast. The Public Utilities Commission sanctioned these projects with each of the eight utility companies in the state, and the result was a big surprise.

We had an independent advisory group, we had good samples of each of the areas of Texas the utilities served and we had all the options for providing electricity: coal, natural gas, conservation — meaning cutting the need for energy — and renewable energy, especially wind power. The big surprise in all eight areas was that when people were asked if they would pay more on their monthly bill — and remember, these are representative samples, in some areas involving quite poor people — they were willing to pay more for wind power, because it was clean.

November 15, 2025 at 1:21 PM

Paul Rosenberg

@paulrosenberg.bsky.social

Answer: No!
Try an ACTUAL scientific approach. Empirically-grounded theory generating a testable model, applied to 100s of historical examples. Structural demographic theory explains cycles of socio-political integration & disintegration, including collapse/crises.
peterturchin.com/structural-d...

Chart showing interactions between the state, elites, population and instability, with constituent representations of each.

November 13, 2025 at 5:17 PM

Paul Rosenberg

@paulrosenberg.bsky.social

I don't THINK so!
(You can't spell "BlueSky" without BS!)

I was suspended from BlueSky for defending the honor of Johnny Cash.

I wish I were joking.
In early October, I referenced the “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die” lyric of “Folsom Prison Blues” in response to a terrible Wall Street Journal article saying that Johnny Cash was uncool. I quote-tweeted the article and everyone understood the reference. There was no outcry.
I stand by my assessment that Johnny Cash is cool.
I do not like being the subject of so much attention, especially when I cannot see the discussion. But the BlueSky admins are now claiming that I wrote a post saying, out of nowhere, “I want to shoot the author of this article just to watch him die”. They are not posting a screenshot of the actual tweet, which shows that I am quote-tweeting an article about Johnny Cash, and that my post is obviously not a threat but a play on “Folsom Prison Blues.”

November 12, 2025 at 11:16 PM

Paul Rosenberg

@paulrosenberg.bsky.social

Pro-Tip: $3 =/= $2!

Today's AAA National Average
$3.084
Price as of 11/6/25

November 7, 2025 at 1:44 AM

Paul Rosenberg

@paulrosenberg.bsky.social

I just learned my friend Jesse Marquez has died. He was the greatest environmental justice advocate of his generation in the LA harbor area. The Port of LA likes to pride itself as the worlds leading green port. Jesse dragged them kicking & screaming there.
www.randomlengthsnews.com/archives/202...

Picture of Jesse Marquez, grinning broadly in a semi-desolate port-adjacent landscape, with a small pack of small dogs.

November 3, 2025 at 8:52 PM

Paul Rosenberg

@paulrosenberg.bsky.social

Life expectancy was actually the LAST indicator of social well-being to turn negative out of ~30 tracked by Peter Turchin, published in *Ages of Discord* in 2016 (it turned negative afterwards). These are proxies for aspects of social integration, which turned negative around 1970 +/-10 years.

Table of timing of trend reversals of structural demographic variables reflective of social integration & well being. Most reversed around 1970+/- 10 years. Life expectancy was the sole exception, which had not reversed by 2016, the date of publication of "Ages of Discord* from which the chart comes.

November 1, 2025 at 5:10 PM

Paul Rosenberg

@paulrosenberg.bsky.social

Yeah, sure, Jake. Young voters just LOVE MAGA:

Chart of Trump's approval from Jan 25 to now, showing 30-point drop for voters under 30, roughly half as much 30-44 year olds.

October 30, 2025 at 7:51 PM

Paul Rosenberg

@paulrosenberg.bsky.social

IN Gov. Mike Braun (R) with a ludicrous redistricting rationale:

"I am calling a special legislative session to protect Hoosiers from efforts in other states that seek to diminish their voice in Washington..."

He's equating "Hoosiers" with Republicans, because otherwise, this is pure nonsense.

IN Gov. Mike Braun (R) calls special legislative session on redistricting.

Key passage: "I am calling a special legislative session to protect Hoosiers from efforts in other states that seek to diminish their voice in Washington and ensure their representation in Congress is fair."

October 27, 2025 at 3:45 PM

Paul Rosenberg

@paulrosenberg.bsky.social

Up next: Trump: I'm a big fan of Abraham Lincoln, but he was bad on abolishing slavery. Very bad on abolishing slavery.

Trump: I'm a big fan of Ronald Reagan, but he was bad on trade. Very bad on trade.

October 26, 2025 at 5:42 PM

Paul Rosenberg

@paulrosenberg.bsky.social

Even beyond inflation, in 2024 EVERY incumbent party in the world (~80 national elections) lost voter share & US Dems lost the least. In battleground states where campaigns were focused Dems lost 1/2 what they lost elsewhere.

In short, Dems did REMARKABLY WELL vs unprecedented worldwide headwinds.

Head Text: Every governing party facing election in a developed country this year lost vote share, the first time this ever happened.

Chart shows incumbent parties gains/losses in vote share from 1950 to 2024, with US vote share loss the least this year.

October 26, 2025 at 3:33 PM

Paul Rosenberg

@paulrosenberg.bsky.social

In "Let America Be America Again," Langston Hughes writes: 3/4

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

October 26, 2025 at 12:28 PM

Paul Rosenberg

@paulrosenberg.bsky.social

The values of civic virtue & democratic accountability vs those of feudalism, taken seriously in the manner of antebellum abolitionist black liberals: www.salon.com/2024/11/10/h...

“All men are created equal,” wrote slaveholder Thomas Jefferson, in words that have been a source of consternation ever since. That was less true, perhaps, for a significant group of Black abolitionist writers who clearly understood Jefferson’s vision as limited by his belief in a natural hierarchy of color, even as he sought to break with the feudal hierarchies of England and the Old World.

Those writers’ vision blossomed in the early 19th century even as the popularity of artificial hierarchies rebounded among American white people, particularly in the South. A new book from Harvard scholar Keidrick Roy, “American Dark Age: Racial Feudalism and the Rise of Black Liberalism,” lays out their pioneering critique of the enduring power of feudalism on American thought, along with a coherent framework of liberal ideas shaped by their individual and collective lived experiences.

What emerged was arguably more robust, and more progressive, than the liberalism developed by white theorists. Roy focuses in particular on how these Black writers responded to the experience of the Middle Passage — the traumatic journey from Africa to America made by newly enslaved people — which he describes as “cheating social death,” and on how they used “the established part of an existing system to create a new one that serves a fundamentally different form or function.” For example, the ideas of moral and intellectual advancement that Jefferson championed in the context of a so-called natural aristocracy were reinterpreted within a framework of collective advancement for all Black Americans.

October 25, 2025 at 6:36 PM

Paul Rosenberg

@paulrosenberg.bsky.social

Reagan loved a free hand. That's what Trump & Reagan have in common. But Reagan's default opposition to tariffs couldn't be clearer. Here's the uncut original.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5t5Q...