Author | Lightnews

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Dan Xinemesis 💀 @danximenes.bsky.social · 2h

Copilot murdered clippy and is wearing its skin

Tom Warren @tomwarren.co.uk · 3h

Clippy is back as an Easter egg in Copilot’s new Mico character. If you tap on Mico multiple times then Clippy appears

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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 2h

It was a shithole wing nymag.com/intelligence...

Trump Defends White House Demolition, Says East Wing Was Ugly Anyway

“The East Wing was not much,” Trump argued, so it shouldn’t “hurt a very expensive, beautiful building” like his White House ballroom.

nymag.com

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Ian Carrillo @iansociologo.bsky.social · 9h

Tapping the sign

Why Underachievers Dominate Secret Police Organizations: Evidence from Autocratic Argentina
Adam Scharpf and Christian Gläßel

Autocrats depend on a capable secret police. Anecdotal evidence, however, often characterizes agents as surprisingly mediocre in skill and intellect. To explain this puzzle, this article focuses on the career incentives underachieving individuals face in the regular security apparatus. Low-performing officials in hierarchical organizations have little chance of being promoted or filling lucrative positions. To salvage their careers, these officials are willing to undertake burdensome secret police work. Using data on all 4,287 officers who served in autocratic Argentina (1975-83), we study biographic differences between secret police agents and the entire recruitment pool. We find that low-achieving officers were stuck within the regime hierarchy, threatened with discharge, and thus more likely to join the secret police for future benefits. The study demonstrates how state bureaucracies breed mundane career concerns that produce willing enforcers and cement violent regimes. This has implications for the understanding of autocratic consolidation and democratic breakdown.

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Stuart Horrex @stuarthorrex.bsky.social · 2h

Trump, with his tariffs and his threats, may well discover that what goes around comes around

China Gets Tough on Trump

Beijing explores the leverage it now has to work its geopolitical will.

www.theatlantic.com

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Ian Dunt @iandunt.bsky.social · 3h

If it's mandatory for work, it's de-facto mandatory share.google/ulfGaMN5b9Jt...

Digital ID to be voluntary... unless you want a job (or benefits)

Keir Starmer has relaunched the controversial policy, stressing its use for every day life

share.google

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Ian Dunt @iandunt.bsky.social · 3h

The easy way to deal with this is to simply make it voluntary for work. A genuinely voluntary card would be perfectly justifiable. But of course they won't do that because it neutralises their anti-immigrant bullshit.

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Stuart Horrex @stuarthorrex.bsky.social · 2h

Goes well with the peanut butter and Vegemite on toast we eat too...

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Stuart Horrex @stuarthorrex.bsky.social · 2h

We do this at our house

Pull a couple of espresso shots onto ice - then add carbonated water and more ice

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Katie Drummond @katie-drummond.bsky.social · 3h

Great edition of the @wired.com Made in China newsletter today, about a Chinese influencer who went viral for mimicking AI slop videos:

The Man Who Makes AI Slop by Hand

Chinese creator Tianran Mu went viral for mimicking the eerie, unsettling aesthetic of AI videos, but his work is 100 percent human.

www.wired.com

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Stuart Horrex @stuarthorrex.bsky.social · 3h

Muted and blocked

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NY Times Pitchbot @nytpitchbot.bsky.social · 5h

Graham Platner's Nazi tattoo raises new questions about Zohran Mamdani's criticism of the Israeli government.

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Coates is Odd This Day @oddthisday.bsky.social · 16h

Did you know, it’s 30 years to the day since the Financial Times killed one of Britain’s finest poets? They didn’t mean to. It’s just that Gavin Ewart was 79, and – according to legend – the day before they’d bought him a lunch that involved enough booze to fell an ox 🧵

The menus were not printed until 2003, so we cannot be sure of the all-time record for the most expensive lunch. It may have been achieved when Spivey met the 79-year-old poet Gavin Ewart at the Café Royal in October 1995. The exact cost is lost somewhere in the bowels of the FT accounts department. But the bill was somewhat overshadowed by the aftermath.

The main item on the agenda was alcohol, not food. Ewart began with several negronis (gin, vermouth, Campari), which is not an amateur’s drink, and carried on from there. “We departed the Café Royal in a moderately straight line,” Spivey said in the article. He put Ewart on a bus home then lurched off himself. The following day he received a call from Mrs Ewart.

“There are two things you need to know,” she said. “The first is that Gavin came home yesterday happier than I have seen him in a long time. The second – and you are not to feel bad about this – is that he died this morning.”

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Stuart Horrex @stuarthorrex.bsky.social · 15h

Why China is winning the trade war

It has rebuffed America and rewritten the norms of global commerce

www.economist.com

Stuart Horrex @stuarthorrex.bsky.social · 15h

As ANZ duped customers and ignored hardship notices, the bank’s bosses raked in $26m in bonuses

The bonuses – awarded during the bank’s three years of misconduct – have been condemned as ‘indefensible’ and ‘tone-deaf’, especially given recent job cuts

search.app

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

In the audience tonight is Charlotte Bennett, one of the 13 women that Andrew Cuomo is credibly alleged to have sexually harassed while they worked in his government.

She can't speak for herself because Cuomo's lawyers have hounded her.

So I confronted him.

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Stuart Horrex @stuarthorrex.bsky.social · 19h

Shopping trolley - Western Australia

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Stanley Johnson @branddna.bsky.social · 22h

Meanwhile at a pub in Soho, a copywriter is quietly chuckling to himself about the ironic headline he wrote that the London Business School approved. #LastDrinks

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Jeremy Poxon @jeremypoxon.bsky.social · 20h

"[The Deloitte AI scandal] is such important story, because of how serious the underlying issue is"

"Is [the government] paying hundreds of thousands of recipients of welfare correctly or is it illegally docking their payments?"

good gear from ‪‪@paulkarp.bsky.social‬ www.afr.com/podcast/the-...

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Antoinette Lattouf @antoinettelattouf.bsky.social · 20h

This is a little taste of my long chat with Chris Hedges.
You're welcome.

Ette Media @ettemedia.bsky.social · 20h

Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Chris Hedges and I have plenty to cover — his remarkable career, the betrayal of Palestinian journalists, the National Press Club fiasco, and *that* ABC Late Night Live interview.

We Used To Be Journos bonus episode drops Friday, 5am AEDT.

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Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 22h

Congrats, The Atlantic and The New York Times, this is the country you've created.

Dr Matt Lodder @mattlodder.com · 2d

Incredible scenes.

www.wdbj7.com/2025/10/19/t...

Teen removed from boys basketball tryouts, told to join girls team over birth certificate error

The boy's parents say a mix-up at the hospital led to him being mistakenly listed as female on his birth certificate.

www.wdbj7.com

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Independent Australia @independentaus.bsky.social · 1d

The Australian Public Service has evolved into a revolving order of consultants working for mini warlords.
~ Vince Hooper

Managing warlords in the workplace: Inside Australia’s bureaucratic feudalism
independentaustralia.net/politics/pol...

Managing warlords in the workplace: Inside Australia’s bureaucratic feudalism

The Australian Public Service has evolved into a revolving order of consultants working for mini warlords.

independentaustralia.net

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Demos @demos-uk.bsky.social · 1d

🧵 Across the world, democracy isn’t just under pressure, it’s facing epistemic collapse: a breakdown in the shared ability to know what’s true, to reason together and to hold power to account.

A new guest paper by @eliothiggins.bsky.social and @drnataliemartin.bsky.social explores how to fix it.

Verification, Deliberation, Accountability: A new framework for tackling epistemic collapse and renewing democracy

Demos is Britain’s leading cross-party think-tank. We produce original research, publish innovative thinkers and host thought-provoking events.

demos.co.uk

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Miriam Cosic @miriamcosic.bsky.social · 1d

I hate the way the political commentariat refers to the Far Right now as "conservative".

Apart from its misogyny, the Far Right isn't conservative. It's radical. Like fascism is radical.

This literary review by Mark Lilla:

#politicaltheory
www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

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Miriam Cosic @miriamcosic.bsky.social · 1d

When I was teaching Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism in political philosophy a scant decade ago, I found it a historically powerful explainer.

Today I find it chillingly resonant, as I just posted, amid the deeply unnerving confronting shift in contemporary politics ...

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Otto English @ottoenglish.bsky.social · 1d

Nelson's Victory crew included a Brazilian and a Russian, 2 Indians, 2 Swiss, 2 Portuguese, 3 Danes and 3 Norwegian sailors. There were 3 Germans, 4 Italians, 6 Swedes, 7 Dutchmen, 9 West Indians and an African, as well as 21 Americans, 63 Irish, 64 Scots, 441 English.... oh, and 3 French men, too.

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