Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Lydy

rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 3h

If you can afford it, a *monetary* donation (it goes a lot farther!) to your local food bank would be a most excellent thing to do right now.

jenn m. jackson @jennmjacksonphd.bsky.social · 12h

I want more people to care that SNAP benefits are being cut off on November 1. 40% of SNAP beneficiaries are children. This is callous and vile.

4 180 340

Reposted by Lydy

Alisha Grauso (She/Her) @alishagrauso.bsky.social · 19h

If Democrats were media-savvy (they aren't), they'd do a supercut of all the times Johnson has never heard of something that makes Trump look bad & run it as a national ad: "Speaker Mike Johnson doesn't seem to know anything. It is any surprise he doesn't know how to keep the government open?"

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 22h

Q: A pardoned January 6 rioter was charged with threatening to kill Hakeem Jeffries

MIKE JOHNSON: Terrible. That's the first I've heard of that. I don't know anything about it.

3 18 59

Reposted by Lydy

John Wiswell @wiswell.bsky.social · 13h

This is what they've done.

Senator Chris Larson @senchrislarson.bsky.social · 22h

ICE is stockpiling arms, including chemical weapons, guided missile warheads and explosive components. The spending dwarfs anything we've ever seen in the agency - a 700% increase.

The President is building an army to attack his own country.

3 9 14

Reposted by Lydy

Peter M.J. Gross @petermjgross.bsky.social · 16h

I can’t stop thinking about all the hoopla over removing confederate statues and the phony appeals to “heritage.” But this is done without discussion. It was always about displays of dominance.

14 390 2.4K

Reposted by Lydy

Katelyn Boo-urns @katelynburns.com · 13h

Putting a Democrat with a Nazi tattoo in the Senate normalizes Naziism in our federal politics for a long ass time.

All these recent stories about secret Nazi group chats? Anytime that happens going forward will be met with "But Platner."

It's not a purity test. Think through the consequences.

47 1.5K 6.3K

Reposted by Lydy

John Wiswell @wiswell.bsky.social · Sep 19

This is what they've done.

Effie Seiberg @effies.bsky.social · Sep 19

This is super cool bc:

1) Many of the highest-risk conditions, like ME/CFS & Long Covid, aren't on the list

2) The best way to protect the vulnerable is to protect the population so others don't infect them

3) None of this accounts for Novavax which is not mRNA

www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...

CDC panel votes to limit who is eligible for this fall's Covid vaccine

Only people 65 and over or with underlying health conditions should get the shots, the advisory group recommended. There may be insurance roadblocks for others.

www.nbcnews.com

4 96 310

Reposted by Lydy

Greg Pak @gregpak.net · 20h

why the hell are they confirming trump's judges when trump's speaker of the house won't swear in Grijalva?

Senate Press Gallery @senatepress.bsky.social · 21h

By a vote of 66-32, the #Senate invoked cloture on the nomination of Harold D. Mooty III to be US District Judge for the Northern District of Alabama.

22 880 3.4K

Lydy @lydy.bsky.social · 18h

So, yeah, I agree w/your points about the state and federal governments. But what you are describing isn't anarchy. Which is fine! But yes, good next steps.

1

Lydy @lydy.bsky.social · 1d

That, too. But he's destroyed the Rose Garden and now he's actually demolishing the building and that really feels profound and wrong.

1

Lydy @lydy.bsky.social · 1d

I don't quite know why this is so shocking, but it is shocking. I don't even like the White House, and it feels like a desecration. For the serious patriots and America fetishists, surely this must look even worse?

Jonathan Edwards @jonathanreports.bsky.social · 1d

Scoop: Trump has started demolishing the White House's East Wing facade to build his ballroom. The president had claimed construction of the $250 million building wouldn’t ‘interfere’ with the existing White House structure. /W @ddiamond.bsky.social wapo.st/4hqBNiU

White House begins demolishing East Wing facade to build Trump’s ballroom

The president had claimed construction of the $250 million ballroom wouldn’t ‘interfere’ with the existing White House structure.

wapo.st

2 5

Reposted by Lydy

Dr. Sarah Parcak @indyfromspace.bsky.social · 1d

History shows us what happens when corrupt Kings destroy palaces and temples to rebuild for their golden visions and it often ends in flames and looting and razing when they die, just speaking as an archaeologist here, nothing whatsoever to do with anything modern *clutches pearls*

9 160 830

Reposted by Lydy

Scarecasmorator @sarcasmorator.bsky.social · 1d

Whatever you think of the White House as a building or a symbol, the fact is that the image of it being torn apart on a whim two days after 7 million people hit the streets against autocracy is going to make a HUGE amount of people really, really angry, and that's an energy that should be harnessed.

6 3.4K 12K

Reposted by Lydy

John Wiswell @wiswell.bsky.social · Sep 9

Unveiling the cover for THE DRAGON HAS SOME COMPLAINTS!

Garrodigh is a curmudgeonly three-headed dragon who pretends to be tame so he can eat for free at the local dragon-riding academy. Unfortunately, the rider he's assigned to is... a lot.

Coming Summer 2026 from DAW (US) and Arcadia (UK)!

A cover illustrated by James Fenner. A woman with long red hair and padded clothing sits on the ground, petting the head of a smiling serpentine dragon. But the dragon has more than one head! On the left, a second giant dragon head emerges, frowning, looking at her while wearing a monocle. On the right, a third giant dragon head emerges, jaws wide, screaming in anger. The text is teal, contrasting sharply against the red and maroon of the creatures. The text on the cover reads "THE DRAGON HAS SOME COMPLAINTS. JOHN WISWELL, author of the Nebula and Locus Award-winning SOMEONE YOU CAN BUILD A NEST IN."

100 320 1.1K

Lydy @lydy.bsky.social · 1d

I do not disagree. But how that “authority" is constructed and empowered need not be along the lines of coercive capitalism.

1

Lydy @lydy.bsky.social · 1d

Again, you are assuming ownership, jobs, and resources being allocated based on a market. This is not anarchy.

1

Lydy @lydy.bsky.social · 1d

But to describe anarchism as a system in which we are all subject to the whims of "owners" is to fundamentally misunderstand the entire point of anarchy.

1

Lydy @lydy.bsky.social · 1d

Capitalism is a "sticky metaphor". It alters our ability to think about distribution of rights, goods, services, and luxuries on any basis other than ownership and ability to pay. We won't get out of that trap anytime soon, which is why I don't think we're ready for anarchism.

1 1

Lydy @lydy.bsky.social · 1d

What you are describing is anarcho-capitalism, which is to say, Libertarianism.

Under anarchism, there would be a community understanding of who was valuable, and who would have access to necessities and luxuries, it wouldn't be down to individual "owners".

2

Lydy @lydy.bsky.social · 1d

To say that something came about organically is not useful in understanding it. Both disease and health happen "organically". We are beings with agency, choice, and discernment. However, you can't ignore the way capitalism has built structures to defend itself.

1

Lydy @lydy.bsky.social · 1d

I mean, medicine and germ warfare are both things that humans have done. Capitalism is a thing humans did, yes. Which they then imposed on other humans. Slavery was a thing imposed on people by people, and abolition was also imposed on people by people. We contain multitudes.

1 1

Lydy @lydy.bsky.social · 1d

We aren't perfect on that, gods know. But our understanding of who is a person, who should have rights, who matters, has generally been expanding and not contracting. It is one of the things this fight is actually about. Are blacks people? Women? Gays? Trans? The Nazis want to roll it back.

1

Lydy @lydy.bsky.social · 1d

But the thing is, we can strive to be better. What exists now is not identical to any point in the past. What we build will be different than what was. A thing which genuinely has improved over the course of human history is an expansion of who we accept as people.

1

Lydy @lydy.bsky.social · 1d

History is a lot more complicated than that. There have been communities throughout history where power and wealth were more equally distributed. And others where it was much less equitably distributed than now. We tend to cherrypick our examples...I am no exception.

1

Lydy @lydy.bsky.social · 1d

But we aren't going to get there quickly. In the mean time, one of the things government does is moderate the power of capital. (Granted, right now it's not doing a very good job.) We can't get rid of government if we don't have a plan to prevent capital from reinstituting chattel slavery.

Lydy @lydy.bsky.social · 1d

To be sure, there is a range of human behavior. But capitalism is a system that privileges selfishness and power-mongering. You will still have greedy and cruel people in other systems, but a system that does not reward such behavior will diminish its power.

1 2