Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Roland Muts

@rhcmuts.bsky.social

430 followers 310 following 8.3K posts

Working hard, sometimes not smart. Weekends traveling to SW WI for some 180 degree mental break. #camping #IslandTime Need to dust off my 80mm scope. Wildlife. Birds. Nature. Dark skies. Air shows. Pi computers. TCM. P1100. Weather station: KILSUGAR31

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Roland Muts @rhcmuts.bsky.social · 3h

So, visited devil's lake multiple times, didn't know about that place!

1 1

Roland Muts @rhcmuts.bsky.social · 3h

Wow. I need to visit that place!

Yeah, this weekend in our happy place. Stuffed pork for dinner tonight. Too many flies around, so dinner inside the camper :-)

But that smoky flavor, oh boy.

Smoked pork chops, butterflies, bread filling

1 1

Reposted by Roland Muts

Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 5h

This heartfelt and meaningful statement by Portland resident and author Cristina Breshears on another social media platform bears reposting here. I don't think the intent is to idealize Portland but to remind all of us what is important and why. (Posted here with permission.)

For nine nights now, the steady thrum of Black Hawk helicopters has circled over Portland. The sound is constant, invasive; a low mechanical beating above our homes. It’s expensive. It’s intimidating. And it’s unnecessary.

Our protests have been largely peaceful. There is no insurrection here. Yet this federalized military presence makes us feel like we are living in a war zone (the very kind of chaos this administration claims to be protecting us from).

The irony is painful: it is only this occupation that makes Portland feel unsafe.

Each hour of helicopter flight costs taxpayers between $2,000 and $4,000, depending on crew, fuel, and maintenance. Multiply that by multiple aircraft over multiple nights, and you’re looking at hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars burned into the sky.

Meanwhile, the Woodstock Food Pantry at All Saints Episcopal Church — which feeds working families, elders, and people with disabilities — has seen its federal funding slashed by 75%. How can we justify pouring public money into intimidation while cutting aid to those who simply need to eat?

This is waste, fraud, and abuse in plain sight:
* Waste of public resources on military theatrics.
* Fraud in the name of “public safety.”
* Abuse of the communities that federal agencies claim to protect.

Portland is a Sanctuary City. A sanctuary city is not a fortress. It’s a promise — a living vow that a community will protect the dignity and safety of everyone who calls it home. It means that local governments and ordinary people alike will refuse to criminalize survival. That schools, clinics, churches, and shelters will remain safe spaces no matter who you are or where you were born. But the term reaches far beyond policy. It’s an ethic of belonging; a refusal to criminalize need, difference, or desperation.

Sanctuary isn’t weakness. It’s courage. It takes moral strength to meet suffering with care instead of punishment, to believe that our neighbors’ safety is bound up in our own, to insist that safety is not achieved through force but through community, inclusion, and trust. It is living Matthew 25:40 out loud and in deed. It is an act of moral imagination and moral defiance. To hold sanctuary is to say: you belong here.

When we hold space for the most vulnerable — refugees, the unhoused, the undocumented, the disabled, the working poor, the displaced — we become something larger than a collection of individuals. We become a moral body. We do more than offer charity. We offer witness. We declare that the measure of a nation is found not in its towers or tanks, but in its tenderness.

Sanctuary cities are not lawless; they are soulful. They represent the conscience of the nation, a place where the laws of empathy still apply. To make sanctuary is to affirm that the United States is not merely a geographic territory, but a moral experiment: a republic that must constantly choose between fear and compassion, between domination and democracy.

A nation’s soul is measured not by the might of its military, but by the mercy of its people. When helicopters circle our skies in the name of order, while food pantries struggle to feed the hungry, we are forced to ask: What are we defending, and from whom? The soul of a nation survives only when we make sanctuary for one another. Not through walls or weapons, but through compassion and collective will. If we allow intimidation to replace compassion, we will have traded our conscience for control.

Please know that despite the hum of war machines overhead, the conscience of our city — whimsical, creative, stubbornly kind — can still be heard.

Portland is not the problem. Portland is the reminder. A reminder that a city can still choose to be sanctuary. That a people can still choose to be human.

5 63 190

Roland Muts @rhcmuts.bsky.social · 4h

🎵"Aaaahwooo! Werewolf in London"🎶

Reposted by Roland Muts

Indivisible ❌👑 @indivisible.org · 6h

“No, Speaker Johnson — the No Kings rally on October 18 is not a hate America rally. In fact, it’s quite the contrary: It’s a love America rally.” #NoKings

410 6.2K 18K

Roland Muts @rhcmuts.bsky.social · 4h

I am surprised how the trees in 60554 have turned so much more compared to 54624. At least we haven't had the October rains that kill all the nice colored leaves.

Reposted by Roland Muts

Ratatosk the Norse Squirrel God™️ @ratatosk.bsky.social · 4h

A rare white beaver! 🦫🤍 #PowerToTheRodents!!!
#Beaver
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Rare white beaver wows Ottawa-area wildlife watchers | CBC News

Ottawa wildlife photographers have captured stunning images of a rare leucistic beaver.

www.cbc.ca

3 6

Roland Muts @rhcmuts.bsky.social · 4h

The rate I'm bookmarking skeets, I need folders or some shit in #bluesky

@bsky.app

Reposted by Roland Muts

andy™ @andylevy.net · 4h

it will never not be weird that there are people who believe this shit

Reuters @reuters.com · 1d

Trump, 79, has "cardiac age" of 65-year-old, doctor says reut.rs/4mZNZbu

Trump, 79, has "cardiac age" of 65-year-old, doctor says

Donald Trump was found to be in "exceptional health" in a medical evaluation, the U.S. president's doctor said in a memo released by the White House on Friday, with his "cardiac age" 14 years younger than in "chronological age."

reut.rs

31 27 450

Reposted by Roland Muts

Lynn Becker @cmgiulini.bsky.social · 4h

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

260 3.2K 6K

Reposted by Roland Muts

George Conway 👊🇺🇸🔥 @gtconway.bsky.social · 9h

Robert De Niro: “Now we have a would-be king — King Donald the First. Fuck that. I’m Robert De Niro and I’m asking you to stand up and be counted in the nationwide No Kings protest on October 18th”

👉👉 nokings.org

150 3.1K 9.8K

Roland Muts @rhcmuts.bsky.social · 4h

He's got nothing to lose.

Reposted by Roland Muts

Khashoggi's Ghost @urocklive1.bsky.social · 4h

Just a reminder that Wikipedia is the only remaining reliable source of information that right wing billionaires can't control. (Although they'll never stop trying.)

Please donate to them whenever you can. Even a little bit helps.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

37 650 1.2K

Roland Muts @rhcmuts.bsky.social · 4h

Totally.

Roland Muts @rhcmuts.bsky.social · 4h

I hope if we win, Brewer Nation will support the Cubbies going all the way ;-)

(Also, the other way, but I got in first :-) )

NL Central gotta stick together in post season!

1 1

Reposted by Roland Muts

Constant Scream @ajaxsinger.bsky.social · 5h

The Salvation Army has always been a brutal christianist organization which holds help hostage in exchange for souls, but this is a new fucking low.

unraveled @unraveledpress.com · 8h

It’s dinner time for the police. Appears to be pizza from a Salvation Army van.

Broadview’s “free speech” curfew starts soon, at 6pm.

7 15

Roland Muts @rhcmuts.bsky.social · 4h

@jsgjames.bsky.social great game, though, right?

2 1

Roland Muts @rhcmuts.bsky.social · 5h

Gonna stop for tonight. Cubs Brewers enough aggravation ;-)

2 1

Roland Muts @rhcmuts.bsky.social · 5h

Just for reference.

#salvationArmy

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholi...

Roland Muts @rhcmuts.bsky.social · 5h

Wonder what was fed to the brown shirts in 1930s Germany, by similar organizations.

#SalvationArmy

Roland Muts @rhcmuts.bsky.social · 5h

Salvation Army. Huh.

#salvationArmy

unraveled @unraveledpress.com · 8h

It’s dinner time for the police. Appears to be pizza from a Salvation Army van.

Broadview’s “free speech” curfew starts soon, at 6pm.

Reposted by Roland Muts

unraveled @unraveledpress.com · 7h

Quick update on what we just saw here—*before curfew*, ISP troopers, Broadview PD and CCSO deputies began menacing demonstrators outside the ICE facility. Several arrests.

Pepper ball guns at the ready, a bit of a standoff going with remaining protesters. All people are doing is playing music.

5 200 570

Reposted by Roland Muts

dmercer.bsky.social @dmercer.bsky.social · 7h

Chicago skyline

2 7 36

Reposted by Roland Muts

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 7h

really striking the degree to which not a single person working in the trump administration appears to be interested in serving the american people

200 1.4K 7.7K

Roland Muts @rhcmuts.bsky.social · 6h

Illinois' Finest

(derogatory)