Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Madeline Ashby @madelineashby.bsky.social · 7h

Generally yes, although the LA seasons mark a sharp downturn in quality.

Reposted by Madeline Ashby

💫Allison Cassandra Ashtear🏳️‍⚧️🔞 @jayeallisonashtear.bsky.social · 8h

In America, the average reactionary conservative often appeals to "freedom", but they aren't using the term in any way most people would recognize.

What they often mean is that a particular "way of life" or set of conservative folkways should be allowed to exist entirely unencumbered.

✨ Erinyes ✨ @erinyes.diy · 1d

a lot of the hate for us is because they can't even imagine the world we live in, where you can choose your gender and your shape of love and your unamerican dream. the freedom is incomprehensible to them,, ,

which is why you should make out with your lesbian polycule in public as often as possible

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Madeline Ashby @madelineashby.bsky.social · 8h

Generally I’d call this a high pencil arch, or a “30’s pencil arch,” because it was popular then. A version of this was also popular in the 90’s, especially with (appropriated, exoticized) chola and R&B looks, sculpted baby hairs, etc. Some girls at my middle school had these brows.

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Madeline Ashby @madelineashby.bsky.social · 8h

Choosing to believe that Thiel cloistered his lectures because he legit feared Alan Moore bringing that “I will kick you down the stairs while cursing you and yours into the next century,” smoke from FEUD: YEATS VS CROWLEY. www.mentalfloss.com/posts/willia...

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Madeline Ashby @madelineashby.bsky.social · 8h

I’m choosing to believe these lectures were cloistered because he’s mortally afraid of Moore kicking him down a flight of stairs, like Yeats did to Crowley. www.mentalfloss.com/posts/willia...

‘The Battle of Blythe Road’: When William Butler Yeats and Aleister Crowley Had a Magic Duel

It ended, as magic duels often do, with someone being kicked down a flight of stairs.

www.mentalfloss.com

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Reposted by Madeline Ashby

Hari Kunzru @harikunzru.bsky.social · 9h

God help us if he watches Serial Experiments Lain

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 15h

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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Reposted by Madeline Ashby

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 13h

a key thing about vought — and all of these guys — is that they have a totally top down and hierarchical vision of the world. they believe that the cultural changes they hate can be turned off by destroying the federal government because they can’t imagine that they emerged bottom-up in society

Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 13h

What he’s railing against is a profound shift in culture, status… He’s obsessed with the idea that America is controlled by a leftist “ruling elite” - but “elite” isn’t defined socio-economically or by political power, it means something like: Getting to define “real America” and who gets to belong.

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Reposted by Madeline Ashby

Kashana @kashana.blacksky.app · 14h

So thankful that dudes without game now have the option of driving all of our energy bills up to come up with devastating lines like it was nice to meet you

C. Buckthorn @cbuckthorn.bsky.social · 19h

This is amazing. I laughed out loud www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

As 32-year-old Rich points out, though, "it's not like using ChatGPT guarantees success".
When he met someone in a bar one Friday night and swapped social media handles, he asked AI what his next move should be.
ChatGPT discerned that sending an initial message on Monday midmorning would set the right pace. "Then it gave me some options for what the message could be," says Rich.
"Keep it light, warm, and low-stakes so it reads as genuine interest without urgency," the bot advised. "Something like: Hey Sarah, still laughing about [tiny shared moment/reference if you've got one] - good to meet you!" Rich went back and forth with ChatGPT until he felt they'd hit upon exactly the right message ("Hey Sarah, it was lovely to meet you") but sadly she never replied, he says. "It's been two weeks now."

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Madeline Ashby @madelineashby.bsky.social · 13h

Petition to add Sigourney Weaver’s kitchen in GHOSTBUSTERS to the Nancy Meyers Kitchen Canon as an honorary member. m.youtube.com/watch?v=icML...

Ghostbusters 1984 - Fridge Creature

YouTube video by NotoriousDillinger

m.youtube.com

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Reposted by Madeline Ashby

Marie Le Conte @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · 18h

this is sociopathic behaviour and I think we need to treat it as such! just because something has become easy to do doesn't mean it has become less creepy, or more acceptable!

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Reposted by Madeline Ashby

Bubba Okie @kentlucas.bsky.social · 17h

Why wasn't this bigger news? These reductions in risk of dementia by being vaccinated are huge! Shingles and flu vax -- get them!

wapo.st/3W1xeS4

4 vaccines linked to a lower risk of dementia

Some vaccine-preventable diseases are linked to accelerated brain atrophy and increased dementia risk years down the line.

wapo.st

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Reposted by Madeline Ashby

Strange Days at Blake Hol(e)sey High 👻 🍑 @reactionordinary.bsky.social · 4d

The RIAA was suing teenagers. We had to sit through ⬇️ this shit anytime we wanted to watch a DVD. A whole generation shamed for using Limewire and torrents. Only for these silicone valley assholes to now find copyright infringement a necessary evil they shouldn’t have to answer for

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Reposted by Madeline Ashby

Mary Gillis @marygillis.bsky.social · 23h

I did this, took like 30 min.
Points I kept hammering: domestic cloud, regulations around copyright and likeness rights, focusing on machine learning with concrete, real world uses (creating new drugs, etc), the damage done by slop, the need to listen to AI experts who are realists, not boosters.

Nico Mara-McKay 🦇 (they/iel) @nicomaramckay.com · 4d

Canadians: The federal government is seeking public input on how AI should be developed and used in business, research, and the military.

If this scares the shit out of you, please let them know:

Help define the next chapter of Canada's AI leadership

Current status: Open from October 1 to October 31, 2025 Canada helped invent modern AI. To stay a leader—and protect our digital sovereignty—we're running a 30-day national sprint to shape a renewed...

ised-isde.canada.ca

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Reposted by Madeline Ashby

Nick Tsergas @nicktsergas.ca · 23h

I'm sure this would be "digitally sovereign" much in the way all the grapes at Loblaws are "grown in Peru."

ANALYSIS | Why OpenAI wants to help Canada build homegrown artificial intelligence | CBC News

OpenAI wants to help Canada build a sovereign digital infrastructure for artificial intelligence, putting the country in a tough spot as it tries to distance itself from overreliance on U.S. tech comp...

www.cbc.ca

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Madeline Ashby @madelineashby.bsky.social · 23h

I think it goes beyond even that for non-Catholics, many of whom will have seen movies where the presence of the host is used to, say, exorcise demons. It’s very close to saying, “You are possessed by an unclean spirit only the power of Christ can compel.” It’s the ultimate, “I’m praying for you.”

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Olivia Waite @oliviawaite.com · 1d

She was the person who taught us the term “social justice,” long before social media. Catholic work to combat inequality and oppression has a long and surprisingly persistent history; you love to see it.

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Reposted by Madeline Ashby

Olivia Waite @oliviawaite.com · 1d

In my Catholic all-girls’ high school, the nun who taught our history of religion class once brought in a sub for a week because she was flying to DC to protest the School of the Americas. “I may be longer if I get arrested,” she said nonchalantly, raising all our teenage eyebrows.

Rich Raho @richraho.bsky.social · 1d

Chicago priest Fr. Larry Dowling describes procession to ICE facility: “No one had the courage to speak directly to us. No one from Homeland Security could stand in the presence of the Monstrance holding the Blessed Sacrament. No wonder. Evil is repelled, recoils in the presence of Christ.”

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Reposted by Madeline Ashby

Lisa Laman @lisalamanfilmfan.bsky.social · 1d

Imagine if the $180 million spent on Tron: Ares had gone into four or five $35-45 million original movies instead geared towards todays younger folks. To quote Alan Bradley in Tron: Legacy, "wouldn't that be something."

Charlie Jane "Lessons in Magic and Disaster" Anders 🏳️‍⚧ @charliejane.bsky.social · 1d

Instead of spending a fortune to revive ancient IP, just ... make something new. Maybe it'll also bomb, but maybe you'll create a new franchise.

@lisalamanfilmfan.bsky.social says this all the time, with more eloquence.

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Reposted by Madeline Ashby

HerRoyalBOO👻bies @ourflagmeansbeth.bsky.social · 1d

This but an entire country’s economy lol

toddkramer.eth
@toddkramer1
I been hacked.
all my apes gone. this just sold please help me
11:10 PM • 12/29/21

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Madeline Ashby @madelineashby.bsky.social · 1d

This is about THE SHINING, but could also be about multiple Nicholson films/performances. (FIVE EASY PIECES leaps to mind, in which Jack plays the Danny Torrance part years later.)

Talia Lavin @swordsjew.bsky.social · 1d

anyway Jack Nicholson does an incredibly good job in this version of the story, which, irrespective of supernatural elements, is basically the story of the terror and isolation of domestic abuse

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Madeline Ashby @madelineashby.bsky.social · 1d

Definitely the case, given King’s story about Kubrick’s random witching hour phone call.

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Reposted by Madeline Ashby

Kieran Healy @kjhealy.co · 4d

“Habeas corpus” is what Sam Altman joyfully shouts when he thinks he has finally secured all the training-data legal rights to other people’s copyrighted work.

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Madeline Ashby @madelineashby.bsky.social · 1d

There’s probably a whole oral history to be written about the (seeming) decision to hide Gillian Anderson’s pregnancy by dressing her like “Stop Making Sense”-era David Byrne, and if/how it influenced other costumers.

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Madeline Ashby @madelineashby.bsky.social · 1d

That said, I think the “hourglass inside a box,” silhouette is timeless, but tells the story of the 90’s in a really specific way, of hiding the Calvin Klein body under layers (see also: Dana Scully).

…See, THAT’s overthinking it.

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Madeline Ashby @madelineashby.bsky.social · 1d

The silhouette is very 90’s, but the t-shirt should be an undershirt or tank, because the silhouette was endemic to music videos made in California that appropriated/fetishized/stereotyped cholo/a silhouettes. Signed, Someone Who Grew Up Without Cable TV And Failed To Grasp This Until Years Later.

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