Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

matthew ellis @matthiasellis.com · 9h

Watching the bear in the little car

matthew ellis @matthiasellis.com · 15h

It’s Hungary week on @tpnwicmfp.bsky.social as we discuss a film that didn’t win the Nobel Prize (but is still awesome), THE TRAGEDY OF MAN podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

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Bulldog @harpua.bsky.social · 2d

Portland City Council member Angelita Morillo humorously criticizes Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, leading to laughter from CNN's Boris Sanchez.

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matthew ellis @matthiasellis.com · 2d

maybe the answer to all of this is a public/private partnership

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matthew ellis @matthiasellis.com · 2d

This is the concern right. It's clear the right has no intention of ever losing an election ever again. It's good that normie liberals are starting to realize the danger of the moment, but does anyone have any idea what to do if they change the rules to make what they are doing legal?

Regime Accountant, CPA ☠️🎢 @regimecpa.bsky.social · 2d

So uh you should ask for these machines to be removed from your state.

Jacob Shamsian @jayshams.bsky.social · 2d

I've been wondering why Dominion Voting Systems suddenly reached settlements with Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and One America News.

Turns out, it's been purchased by a Republican-owned election tech firm that insisted on it, per Axios.

www.axios.com/2025/10/09/d...

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matthew ellis @matthiasellis.com · 2d

yeah i'm not going to lie it feels very bad to be in portland right now, they are trying to start his here lol

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matthew ellis @matthiasellis.com · 2d

The liberals were not wrong in their focus on Russia during the first Trump admin, but because they were mostly raised during the end of the Cold War they couldn't see it through any other lens beyond The Dangerous Slavic Mind Controlling Trump. What we see instead is rapid imperial decline

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missingjigsaw.bsky.social @missingjigsaw.bsky.social · 2d

American Yeltsin has felt like the most apt comparison and, while it's got all the flaws you can expect from a one-to-one comparison, it isn't getting less apt.

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Xander Lenc @xlenc.bsky.social · 2d

Lately I've been wondering if the opioid crisis should be thought about alongside the post-1991 epidemic in alcohol-related deaths in Russia.

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matthew ellis @matthiasellis.com · 2d

Feeling more and more like we need to spend less time imagining precise analogies to Germany in the 1930s—some of which are real to be clear—and start thinking more about what happened to Russia from 1992-the 2010s

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matthew ellis @matthiasellis.com · 3d

yo lmao

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matthew ellis @matthiasellis.com · 3d

man this is real not good

Mark Bray @mark-bray.bsky.social · 3d

“Someone” cancelled my family’s flight out of the country at the last second.

We got our boarding passes. We checked our bags. Went through security. Then at our gate our reservation ‘disappeared.’

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rob @ok-but-still.bsky.social · 3d

i predict a series of wonderful events will close out 2025

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Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 3d

If the regime does go after DSA, the appropriate response will be for as many people as possible to become dues-paying members.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 3d

Jonathan Choe to Trump: "Another group right now that is behind antifa and working with antifa very closely based on the research that we have right now that we're gonna give to you and your team are the Democratic Socialists of America."

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matthew ellis @matthiasellis.com · 4d

we need to build new universities since the ones we have are not up for the task

Chris Morran @themorrancave.bsky.social · 4d

NEW: As Linda McMahon guts the Dept. of Education, she’s operated in what she calls “a parallel universe” to radically shift how future kids will learn -- seeking to dismantle the public school system in favor of private and Christian schools or homeschooling.

These Activists Want to Dismantle Public Schools. Now They Run the Education Department.

Under Trump, the Department of Education has been bringing in activists hostile to public schools. It could mean a new era of private and religious schools boosted by tax dollars — and the end of publ...

www.propublica.org

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matthew ellis @matthiasellis.com · 4d

man they are really scraping the bottom of the barrel at this point

CNN @cnn.com · 4d

The Trump administration has ordered FBI employees in Washington, DC, to immediately search their workstations and digital media for any records pertaining to the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, a law enforcement source told CNN.

FBI employees ordered to immediately search for records related to Amelia Earhart, source says | CNN Politics

The Trump administration has ordered FBI employees in Washington, DC, to immediately search their workstations and digital media for any records pertaining to the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, a la...

www.cnn.com

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Hemry, Local Bartender @bartenderhemry.bsky.social · 4d

I think the failing washington post is illustrative: people don't just get brainwashed or hoodwinked by this shit, they cancel their subscriptions and stop engaging with it. This is still much worse than having actually good media but it's not the nightmare scenario, it's not actually persuasive

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Alissa Azar @alissaazar.bsky.social · 4d

I need people not from Portland to understand that a majority of the escalations happening here are the direct result of the far right grifting machine. They are another arm of the fascist regime and have been manufacturing content and spreading lies to manufacture consent. It's as simple as that.

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Christopher Webb @cwebbonline.com · 4d

Stephen Miller said the quiet part out loud. Trump has “plenary authority,” then suddenly went silent. Their plan wasn’t to be public yet. Clearly, someone hit the panic button in his earpiece.

It gets weirder: CNN uploaded the interview with the “plenary authority” comment edited out.
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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 5d

public research universities, holding on:
veronica gago wowed uic tonight with her forthcoming book, adapted here ctjournal.org/2025/06/03/n...

New Authoritarianism as Counterrevolution - Critical Times

Translated by Liz Mason-Deese Reflections on Authoritarian Times What is new about the authoritarianism that we are currently witnessing? It is useful to situate this authoritarianism within, and to...

ctjournal.org

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W.E.D.em Boyz @leftistwonk.bsky.social · 5d

MTG is awful in more ways than I can count, but she does happen to be a normal person as compared to all the lawyer-pipeline Ivy grads in Congress. She’s a bigoted crank, but like the kind your aunt is friends with on Facebook.

Sahil Kapur @sahilkapur.bsky.social · 5d

👀 Marjorie Taylor Greene breaks with Republicans on Obamacare funding, saying she’s not a fan of the law but demands action to prevent a premium hike. “I’m absolutely disgusted that health insurance premiums will DOUBLE if the tax credits expire this year.” She says GOP leaders don’t have a plan.

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matthew ellis @matthiasellis.com · 5d

We're lucky to have writers like China Miéville for this moment

Beyond Folk Marxism: Mind, Metaphysics and Spooky Materialism - Salvage

Why, and how, are any of us capable of self-reflective thought? Of experiencing emotion, ratiocination, preference, cold, whim, melancholy, joy? Anything at all?

salvage.zone

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Ben Williamson @benpatrickwill.bsky.social · 5d

Scholarslop: The Dangers of an Algorithmic Idea of the University - great piece by @berrydm.bsky.social

"academics will need to find new means to defend the university and contest the use of scholarslop before it is too late" stunlaw.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-...

Scholarslop: The Dangers of an Algorithmic Idea of the University

Understanding digital media, technology, theory, culture and society.

stunlaw.blogspot.com

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Kai Bosworth @kaibosworth.bsky.social · 5d

out now in @societyandspace.bsky.social, a volume of shorter interventions on new (and renewed) forms of reactionary environmentalisms around the world. my contribution below.

Chloe Ahmann @chloeahmann.bsky.social · 7d

📣 Friends, sharing a new collection on “Everyday and Emergent Ecofascisms” – edited with Zeynep Oguz for @societyandspace.bsky.social – that we hope folks find useful in These Times. Together, we “tend to the mundane ways ecofascist tenets organize the everyday...

t.co/JUowfqw7cB

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/02637758251374876

t.co

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Chris Yogerst @chrisyogerst.com · 5d

New column up at @thr.com where I offer a history of the Committee for the First Amendment, then and now.

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