Author | Lightnews

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Micah @rincewind.run · 14h

their plainly stated goal is to starve forty million people until they get what they want, which is to rip health care away from millions more

that this is too monstrous for most news organizations to tell the truth about does not change the facts

Catherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 15h

The USDA sent an email to grocery stores telling them they are prohibited from offering special discounts to customers affected by the SNAP funding lapse.
I'm aware of at least 2 stores that had offered struggling customers a discount, then withdrew it after receiving this email

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Captain Easychord @capneasychord.bsky.social · 14h

It's all over

Karen Attiah @karenattiah.bsky.social · 14h

I had a 45 year old rideshare driver tell me recently that he uses AI for therapy.

I asked him which one. He said “Grok— I like the voice it uses, the tone doesn’t talk down to me like ChatGPT’s does.”

He bragged that he had a 4 hour “therapy session” talking to Grok.

Chat, are we cooked?

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Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social · 16h

I’ve noticed this as well: Starting to see ads for obviously AI products where “AI” is conspicuously never mentioned, as though they suspect clients are getting sick of hearing it.

Virginia S. O'Possum @virginiaopossum.bsky.social · 17h

Tiny interesting thing I am seeing at work: Tech vendors selling to government agencies are moving away from calling everything "AI" and hedging it with reintroducing the term "machine learning." Govies still flock to info about "AI" but vendors preparing for backlash?

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 19h

If you thought masked, unidentified federal agents grabbing people off the street were a frightening step toward dystopia, wait until it's private contractors chasing cash bonuses for rounding up human beings at scale

Sam Biddle @sambiddle.com · 2d

ICE is planning to offer private sector bounty hunters cash bonuses for quickly tracking down the home addresses of immigrants across the US, according to a DHS document I reviewed. ICE encourages potential contractors to use "all technology systems available.” theintercept.com/2025/10/31/i...

ICE Plans Cash Rewards for Private Bounty Hunters to Locate and Track Immigrants

Companies hired by ICE would be given bundles of information on 10,000 immigrants at a time to locate.

theintercept.com

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Brian PJ Cronin @brianpjcronin.bsky.social · 19h

Recently my brother in law explained what gerrymandering was to a coworker and they didn’t believe him because if that were really happening there would be riots in the street

Sheryl Weikal and the colorful Parrotlegals @leftistlawyer.com · 19h

This week I had someone tell me they're not worried about SNAP being cut off because "that's illegal, so it's impossible Trump could do that, so obviously it's just media sensationalism." Another person told me they weren't worried about ICE because "they can't detain you if you're legally here."

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Captain Easychord @capneasychord.bsky.social · 1d

They're doing illegal stuff. They know they're doing illegal stuff. They don't want anyone else to know that they're doing illegal stuff.

Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 1d

Kash Patel was angry about his publicly-available jet logs indicating he’d flown to see his musician girlfriend perform so he forced out a senior FBI official overseeing aviation, Bloomberg reports

news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/...

The FBI forced out a senior official overseeing aviation shortly after Director Kash Patel grew outraged about revelations of his publicly-available jet logs indicating he’d flown to see his musician girlfriend perform, said three people familiar with the situation.

Steven Palmer, a 27-year veteran of the FBI, became the third head of the critical incident response group—which includes FBI pilots—to be fired or removed in Patel’s short regime, adding to a year filled with retributive terminations.

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lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 1d

too late; for i have already pictured myself as the hyperphantasic adult who can conjure visual fantasy worlds and you as the typical imager with pruned neuronal connections

Reeder had tested children’s imagery and believed that most children were hyperphantasic. They had not yet undergone the synaptic pruning that took place in adolescence, so there were incalculably more neuronal connections linking different parts of their brain, giving rise to fertile imagery. Then, as they grew older, the weaker connections were pruned away. Because the synapses that were pruned tended to be the ones that were used less, Reeder thought it was possible that the children who grew up to be hyperphantasic adults were those who kept on wanting to conjure up visual fantasy worlds, even as they grew older. Conversely, perhaps children who grew up to become typical imagers daydreamed less and less, becoming more interested in the real people and things around them. Maybe some children who loved to daydream were scolded, in school or at home, to pay attention, and maybe these children disciplined themselves to focus on the here and now and lost the ability to travel to the imaginary worlds they’d known when they were young.

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Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 2d

80% of air traffic controllers absent at New York facilities.

The system is at breaking point.

The FAA
@FAANews• 42m
• • .
Nearly 13, 000 air traffic controllers have been working without pay for weeks, ensuring the safety of more than 50,000 daily operations across the national airspace system (NAS).
As we head into this weekend, a surge in callouts is straining staffing levels at multiple facilities, leading to widespread impacts across the NAS. Currently, half of our Core 30 facilities are experiencing staffing shortages, and nearly 80 percent of air traffic controllers are absent at New York-area facilities.
After 31 days without pay, air traffic controllers are under immense stress and fatigue.
The shutdown must end so that these controllers receive the pay they've earned and travelers can avoid further disruptions and delays.
As we continue to reiterate, we will never compromise on safety. When staffing shortages occur, the FAA will reduce the flow of air traffic to maintain safety. This may result in delays or cancellations.
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T. Greg Doucette @gregdoucette.bsky.social · 2d

Guillotines

www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

'Happy Halloween!': DHS spokeswoman responds to report of immigration agents wearing horror masks in L.A.

The story by a local news site featured images posted to social media showing what the outlet says were agents in unmarked cars donning Chucky and Momo masks.

www.nbcnews.com

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Chris Murphy @chrismurphyct.bsky.social · 2d

The AI industry doesn’t want you to know that massive job displacement is coming. They don’t want government to do anything to slow it or protect workers from it because AI leaders are planning to become trillionaires (not kidding) by destroying your jobs.

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Captain Easychord @capneasychord.bsky.social · 2d

yep

Clipping @clppng.bsky.social · 2d

Thanks NPR Music

clipping.: Tiny Desk Concert

YouTube video by NPR Music

youtu.be

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Shikha Dalmia @shikhadalmia.bsky.social · 2d

The central goal of NSPM-7 is to establish special privileges for a conservative ideological minority, whose views are to be protected from criticism or opposition, w/ such criticism in treated as literal terrorism. @tracinski.bsky.social @theunpopulist.net
www.theunpopulist.net/p/trumps-new...

Trump's New Directive Could Treat All Those Who Oppose Him as Terrorists

NSPM-7's scope is so broad and vague it would allow the president to target anyone who speaks out against him or MAGA as a national security threat

www.theunpopulist.net

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Captain Easychord @capneasychord.bsky.social · 3d

Two S-tier jams ("Miss You Much", "Waiting for a Star to Fall") are not enough to make this a good list; not when at least half of the rest are D-tier or worse. bsky.app/profile/toms...

Tom Scocca @tomscocca.bsky.social · 4d

People need to stop retconning literally the worst era in American popular music history into something it wasn't, just because there were also some amazing records that like 250 people happened to be hunting down and listening to

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Raider @iwillnotbesilenced.bsky.social · 4d

WTF 🤬

A police officer in Baltimore, Maryland, attempted to run over and kill a civilian who refused to answer their questions.

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Radley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 4d

Just want to reiterate that there’s no reason for this. There is no increase in crime. There are no riots. There’s no insurrection. They’re doing this without provocation. At least until they create one.

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 4d

“.. A top US military official has ordered the national guards of all 50 US states .. to form ‘quick reaction forces’ trained in ‘riot control’, including use of batons, body shields, Tasers and pepper spray, according to an internal Pentagon directive ..”

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

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Captain Easychord @capneasychord.bsky.social · 4d

Multiple things can be true:
1) There were a bunch of good albums and songs that came out in 1989
2) The most enduring music isn't always what tops the charts
3) The top 20 from Billboard's 1989 year end chart is particularly dire

Tom Scocca @tomscocca.bsky.social · 4d

People need to stop retconning literally the worst era in American popular music history into something it wasn't, just because there were also some amazing records that like 250 people happened to be hunting down and listening to

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Doghouse Reilly @chadstanton.blacksky.app · 5d

Cannot emphasize enough that we’re being asked to treat these people seriously and these concerns as legitimate, so that leaders at prominent institutions never have to address the sentiments driving these politics.

Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 5d

"We would have cheaper groceries if we let 40 million people including children starve" is a hell of take.

A post on X (formerly Twitter) from user Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) dated October 28, 2025, at 8:38 AM. The post claims that the food stamp program artificially increases grocery prices because the federal government subsidizes groceries for 40 million people. It asserts that the rise in grocery costs matches the increase in food stamp recipients, arguing that working Americans are being “scammed twice”—through taxes and higher grocery prices. The post ends by stating that people are “paying twice so that morbidly obese people can buy Doritos,” calling it “infuriating.” The post has 510.9K views.

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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 5d

This is so bleak:

www.404media.co/a16z-is-fund...

Last week, I wrote about Doublespeed, essentially a click farm that sells “synthetic influencers” to astroturf whatever product or service you want across social media, despite it being a clear violation of every social media platform's policy on inauthentic behavior. But that was just the tip of the iceberg.

a16z’s Speedrun is also backing:

Creed: An AI company “rooted in Christian Values” which produces Lenny, a “Bible-based AI buddy who's always got your back with wise words, scripture-inspired guidance, and a listening ear whenever you need it.”
Zingroll: The “world’s largest Netflix-quality AI streaming platform,” which is another way of saying it’s a Netflix populated exclusively with AI Slop.
Vega: which is building “AI-powered social orbits.” What does that mean? Not entirely clear, but the company has produced one of the most beautiful Mad Libs paragraphs I’ve ever seen: “We’re building the largest textual data moat on human relationships by gamifying the way people leave notes for each other. For the first time, LLMs can analyze millions of raw, human-written notes at scale and turn them into structured meaning, powering the most annotated social graph ever created.”
Moona Health: an AI-powered Sleep care app the company says is covered by insurance. “Our AI-powered platform automates insurance claims and scheduling and analyzes sleep data – providing personalized session guidelines to therapists,” Moona says.
Jooba: “The world’s first autonomous recruiting firm.”
Margin: “The World’s first AI powered credit card.” Margin says “Customers earn points, with dynamic rewards that adapt to their preferences in real time.”
First Voyage: A wellness app that gives you AI “mythological pets that turn wellness into play.”
Axon Capital: billed as “DeepMind for Finance,” Axon says it has “pioneered brain-inspired, low-latency AI for financial markets.”

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Captain Easychord @capneasychord.bsky.social · 6d

reminder: the only uses for cryptocurrency are scams and crime

Mark Cuban @mcuban.bsky.social · 6d

finance.yahoo.com/news/64-vote...

64% of Voters Believe Candidate’s Stance On Crypto ‘Very Important,’ New Poll Shows

64% of voters believe a candidate’s stance on digital assets is important when deciding who to vote for, according to a new Mclaughlin & Associates poll in partnership with The Digital Chamber.New Dig...

finance.yahoo.com

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mattie lubchansky @mattielubchansky.com · 7d

i should be able to click a button at the beginning of a sports season that says “i’m normal” and i don’t get served any ads for crypto or gambling

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Daniel Abraham @abraham.bsky.social · 7d

If I were running the DNC, there would be Democratic Party sponsored food relief banks across the country right now that specifically welcomed anyone regardless of party affiliation.

Along with the food, there could be voter registration and links to runforsomething.net

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K. Thor Jensen @kthorjensen.bsky.social · 9d

the elite class becomes easier to understand when you realize they think everybody is as dumb as they are

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Technical appreciator @whatahellofawaytodad.com · 12d

Reminder that Violent J of Insane Clown Posse has the correct response to a lot of the shitty things he said in the early days.

STEREOGUM: People my age, we talk about how we were lucky that we didn’t have social media growing up, and there’s no record of all the dumb shit we said and did. You didn’t have social media, but everything you said and did in those years is on record, and you’ve got to live with it now. That’s tough.

VIOLENT J: And the amount of gay Juggalos out there is really surprising. I think about them doing their research and getting the old records, getting excited about it, and getting their hearts broke or something, you know? I tell my daughter, “For the rest of your life, when your friends ask why your dad said that, say it’s because your dad was a fool. Don’t defend me. Say I was a fool then, but I’m not now.” There’s no excuse. I was going with the flow, and that’s the very thing we preach against — being a sheep. And that’s what I was doing.

https://www.stereogum.com/2083804/icp-interview-juggalos/interviews/weve-got-a-file-on-you/

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Max Kennerly @maxkennerly.bsky.social · 18d

Feels quaint, almost cliché, to say this about a Trump action, but just for the record:

This is all illegal, the President can't simply disregard the laws passed and agencies created by Congress, and both Vought & Trump would be impeached if the Constitution or the rule of law mattered to the GOP.

Reuters @reuters.com · 18d

White House budget director Vought plans to shut down CFPB within months, says it's no longer protecting consumers reut.rs/4qjMIyT

White House budget director Vought plans to shut down CFPB within months, says it's no longer protecting consumers

White House budget director Russell Vought said he wants to close the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and expects to do so within the next two to three months.

reut.rs

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Jeff Lazarus @jlazarus.bsky.social · 18d

Great 🧵; this is the main point. If the President can spend money on whatever he wants without congressionally mandated appropriations we don't have separation of powers, or even really a constitutional republic (at least under the terms of our constitution). We just don't.

Bobby Kogan @bbkogan.bsky.social · 18d

So just how bad is this? I got a text from an appropriator friend saying "The Republic has fallen. Pack it in."

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