Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

elia ayoub 🌱 @ayoub.bsky.social · 3h

They are generating their own violent fantasies thanks to OpenAI, one of the most dangerous tech companies operating today, and there are already millions of viewers who share such videos not knowing or not caring that they’re fake.

Futurism @futurism.com · 3h

"Lmfao, that was beautiful and before you ask I voted for this!"

Trump Supporters Are Using OpenAI's Sora to Generate AI Videos of Soldiers Assaulting Protesters

It's a fascinating look into the effort to drum up consent for an unprecedented crackdown on American cities.

trib.al

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elia ayoub 🌱 @ayoub.bsky.social · 5h

So I wrote a piece last month on the way Big Tech dipshits like Peter Thiel have co-opted fictional characters and worlds while not understanding anything - and how we need to reclaim storytelling

www.hauntologies.net/p/the-storie...

it’s also in the latest print issue of The Internationalist

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elia ayoub 🌱 @ayoub.bsky.social · 7h

Absolutely horrible news - Saleh was killed today

www.middleeasteye.net/news/saleh-a...

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Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 14h

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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elia ayoub 🌱 @ayoub.bsky.social · 8h

The "triumphs over" is basically Trumpism that's too cowardly to admit it's Trumpism. Trump also "triumphed over" everything. He evaded accountability. He made the bet that he didn't have to give a shit about anything, and there were enough yes-men /women around him to prove him right.

Sally Jenkins @sallyjenx.bsky.social · 10h

This is really smart. Amazed at the hysteria over the ascendance of a woman entrepreneur who clearly knows how to cover and sell news and who's not afraid to take on a mob. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Don’t Bet Against Bari Weiss

The new editor in chief of CBS News triumphs over her critics.

www.theatlantic.com

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elia ayoub 🌱 @ayoub.bsky.social · 8h

I have a feeling you won't be responding to specific questions like this one? bsky.app/profile/jame...

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 8h

Hi Sally. When Weiss published a supposed expose on the death of George Floyd, a veteran criminal justice reporter showed in deep detail that the piece was not just wrong but filled with falsehoods and misrepresentations. Weiss did not retract the piece. What do you think of that?

Sally Jenkins @sallyjenx.bsky.social · 10h

This is really smart. Amazed at the hysteria over the ascendance of a woman entrepreneur who clearly knows how to cover and sell news and who's not afraid to take on a mob. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

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samuel @quilombo.bsky.social · 10h

The Swiss journalist @emilianobos.bsky.social ( @rts.ch ) managed to enter the Gaza Strip with a cameraman on Friday - first foreign journalists that enter Gaza. The below video was taken in Rafah.

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elia ayoub 🌱 @ayoub.bsky.social · 10h

Thanks! Wasn’t sure how it works

Reposted by elia ayoub 🌱

Aslak Raanes @aslak.raanes.name · 10h

@ayoub.bsky.social Maybe it's easier for some users to follow https://bookwyrm.social/user/Thefirethesetimes or @Thefirethesetimes

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elia ayoub 🌱 @ayoub.bsky.social · 10h

If you’re on Bookwyrm - the alternative to Bookreads - you can find me there under Elia Ayoub or [email protected]

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Lynn Becker @cmgiulini.bsky.social · 1d

After spending 43 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, evidence hidden by the prosecution reversed his conviction. Rather than finally enjoying freedom, ICE abducted him for deportation

Depraved.

www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

He was wrongfully imprisoned for 43 years. Moments after being released, ICE took him

Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam now faces deportation.

www.miamiherald.com

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elia ayoub 🌱 @ayoub.bsky.social · 1d

That’s odd. reposting below:

The two tweets by Karlyn Borysenko read: “They give people these posters for free so they will go and wheatpaste them around the city” and “I have a collection going of far left subculture items. These are from a militant queer press affiliated with the bash back movement.
These are the push who created queer Marxism as we know it today.
You probably don't know what this is if yoi don't follow mv work”

The first tweet is a photo of Molly Crabapple’s anti-ICE illustration which reads “ICE out of NYC”

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dltx31.bsky.social @dltx31.bsky.social · 2d

Purchase these signs from @mollycrabapple.bsky.social for the next No Kings March. Stop buying your protest supplies from Amazon who takes that money & feeds it to tRump. Support small / independent businesses / artists. www.mollycrabapple.com/shop/p/icepr...

25-pack of Risographed Fuck ICE posters — Molly Crabapple

Express your feelings towards our American Gestapo with these striking posters, risographed by Molly Crabapple at her beloved Robert Blackburn Studios. These posters are NOT archival. They are printe...

www.mollycrabapple.com

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elia ayoub 🌱 @ayoub.bsky.social · 1d

Disgusting. Parents are British. Her older brother is British.

She’s fucking three years old and they’re denying her British citizenship, which is making her mum’s life a nightmare as a full-time carer of both of her kids.

Stop this shit. Just stop it.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

‘Clear parallels’ with Windrush as UK-born toddler denied passport

Campaigners say lessons not being learned as three-year-old’s mother is asked to prove right to free NHS treatment

www.theguardian.com

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Dan Sohege @danielsohege.bsky.social · 1d

At least one senior Labour official seems to finally remember they aren't in Reform.
The changes won't just harm economy and country, they'll destroy families and force more people into becoming undocumented, leading to more deportations. They need scrapping not pausing.
www.bbc.com/news/article...

Sir Sadiq Khan calls for pause on new immigration rules

The mayor of London said the changes had "moved the goalposts".

www.bbc.com

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Musa Okwonga @okwonga.bsky.social · 1d

“The situation has gone beyond disaster and genocide inside the city, and the world remains silent.”

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

Militia drone strike kills at least 30 in Sudan displacement camp, says El Fasher group

RSF paramilitary group hit Dar al-Arqam shelter on university grounds in western city, says resistance committee

www.theguardian.com

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elia ayoub 🌱 @ayoub.bsky.social · 1d

I don’t know what it’ll take the rest of the world to fully understand that we cannot rely on the US for something as fundamental as dealing with health crises and epidemics.

Due to the global influence of the US, the Trump regime is probably the most dangerous entity in the world right now.

Lena Sun @lenasun.bsky.social · 1d

NEW: @CDCgov hit hard by massive firings that several staff describe to me as a “bloodbath.”
Among those RIFd:
—leadership of the center for immunization and respiratory diseases;
—leadership of global health center
—leadership of the measles outbreak response; 1/4

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elia ayoub 🌱 @ayoub.bsky.social · 1d

TIL that Ben Shapiro doesn’t know what lions do most of their time, and doesn’t know that the British Empire collapsed bcs of the two World Wars and decolonisation struggles — and not because of Welfare (lol)

Cool Zone Media @coolzonemedia.bsky.social · 3d

New Behind the Bastards 📖

Robert and Cody Johnston sit down to read Ben Shapiro's latest non-fiction book, which seems to be based entirely on him not understanding how lions work.

@iwriteok.bsky.social @codyjohnston.bsky.social @whysophiewhy.bsky.social

www.iheart.com/podcast/105-...

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Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie @audrelawdamercy.bsky.social · 2d

aaand we are officially in the hide-your-neighbors stage

Sophie Sherry @sophiesherry.bsky.social · 2d

During a military-style raid on a building in Chicago’s South Shore, one resident heard a knock on his door.   It wasn’t the feds — it was a mom and her 7-year-old daughter, pleading for help.

He let them hide in his unit for the next 3 days.

chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/...

Neighbor shielded 7-year-old during South Shore federal raid: ‘I didn’t want them to take her’

During the Sept. 30 raid one tenant protected a terrified girl and her mom. Remnants at the complex, including a detailed map of all the units, offer clues to what authorities may have known before th...

chicago.suntimes.com

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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 1d

Shout out to the worker who put Rump instead of Trump on the watch these people paid $650 for lol

derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 3d

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David Corn @davidcorn.bsky.social · 1d

A classic case of irresponsible both-sidesism from the NYT. The story is that Trump and MAGA propagandists are lying about Portland to incite a conflict, not that there are different views of the matter.

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Preorder Read This When Things Fall Apart @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 1d

They're talking about killing leftist activists. They're talking about murdering people organizing in defense of immigrant communities, doing mutual aid work, and protesting their violence. They are talking about murdering people like me and my friends. We must do more than acknowledge it's fascism.

Prem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · 4d

My gosh. After the US bombed multiple boats in the middle of the ocean, murdering people on grounds that they were allegedly "carrying drugs," the US Attorney General says "Just like we did with cartels, we're going to take the same approach, President Trump, with Antifa."

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Zohran Kwame Mamdani @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · 1d

UNTIL IT’S DONE, Ep. 4: Sylvia Rivera

In the 1970s, queer New Yorkers had been pushed to the margins of NYC. Our trans neighbors faced immense cruelty. But in Sylvia Rivera, they found a champion.

As we combat Trump’s politics of darkness, her legacy can light the path forward.

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elia ayoub 🌱 @ayoub.bsky.social · 1d

Labour in January: we will mainline AI into the veins of the British efonomy.

Bank of Eng now: “Concerns over an AI bubble bursting have grown lately, with analysts recently finding that it’s 17 times the size of the dotcom-era bubble and four times bigger than the 2008 financial crisis”

Cool cool

รℓσαɳε ℓყรɓεƭɦ 🏳️‍🌈 @sloanelysbeth.bsky.social · 1d

👍🏻

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elia ayoub 🌱 @ayoub.bsky.social · 1d

The brain worms required to post this.

An Anarchist book fair is open doors. to ‘infiltrate’ it requires walking in.

And imagine going into an Anarchist book fair and being like these people are Marxists

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