Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by C.L. (Cyndi) Pauwels

Joyce White Vance @joycewhitevance.bsky.social · 10h

There are hard questions we need to ask ourselves right now. But no matter what this administration is planning, we know who we are—we love democracy & plan to fight (peacefully) for it. In a moment where knowledge is power, here is what you need to know. open.substack.com/pub/joycevan...

Are We the Nazis Now?

How do we meet this moment?

open.substack.com

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Brandon Friedman @brandonfriedman.bsky.social · 18h

Promoting the editor-in-chief's personal side project. Zero named sources in a story that promotes the editor-in-chief's personal political position. Misspelling the subject's name. It took one day for CBS News to become a conservative blog.

www.cbsnews.com/video/some-n...

CBS News: Some NYPD officers worry about Mandani becoming NYC mayor the Free Press reports.

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The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 9h

FLORIDA now requires public schools to share space with charter schools, and “one charter operator intends to occupy space in more than 100 public schools (!)” 🤔

Privatizing public schools at breakneck speed, filling their pockets with taxpayer funds. www.fox13news.com/news/charter...

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Qasim Rashid, Esq. @qasimrashid.com · 9h

Presenting the plague of frogs on Portland. And yes, I choose to believe God has a sense of humor & is laughing at this too.

There’s no better way to show how absurd a bully is than to ridicule their absurdity. Kudos to Portlanders! Stand United & keep exercising your 1A right to protest tyranny!❤️✊🏽

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The New Republic @newrepublic.com · 18h

Last week, Hegeth announced the United States would build a facility in Idaho to “host a contingent of Qatari F-15s and pilots,” and this week Vance is insisting that Hegseth’s own statement was “largely a fake story." trib.al/xzhWdHI

JD Vance Completely Undercuts Pete Hegseth on Qatar Military Base

Vance insisted that Hegseth’s own statement was a “fake story.”

trib.al

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George Takei @georgetakei.bsky.social · 17h

Soon it will be show us your papers. This must stop.

A tweet by James Surowiecki replying to David J. Bier. Surowiecki asks, “Where in the Immigration and Nationality Act does it say that US citizens have to prove that they're citizens or else be arrested?” The quoted tweet by Bier reads, “ICE agents to US citizen: Turn around or you're getting the dog,” accompanied by a photo of a man wearing a face mask and standing near vehicles at night.

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Mother Jones @motherjones.com · 17h

Trump’s cronies fired critical public health workers. Regret set in immediately.

The White House is already walking back hundreds of federal layoffs

Trump's cronies fired critical public health workers. Regret set in immediately.

www.motherjones.com

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C.L. (Cyndi) Pauwels @clpauwels.bsky.social · 18h

Training brains in all the wrong way

NPR @npr.org · 18h

Data from a large, ongoing study of adolescents shows a link between increasing social media use and lower cognition and memory in teens. n.pr/42BJyMB

Kids who use social media score lower on reading and memory tests, a study shows

Data from a large, ongoing study of adolescents shows a link between increasing social media use and lower cognition and memory in teens.

n.pr

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Ron Filipkowski @ronfilipkowski.bsky.social · 18h

How about supporting them instead of dressing as them?

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Mother Jones @motherjones.com · 18h

The human costs of Trump's war on government

For many disabled workers, federal jobs were decent, human, and accommodating: everything the president hates.

www.motherjones.com

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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 18h

Tobias is an award-winning writer, a tech nerd and a professor, ie, a veritable font of information, so yes, ask him a bunch of stuff

Tobias S. Buckell @tobiasbuckell.bsky.social · 18h

Okay, it's Fall Break, and I'm working on some boring stuff that'll be cool later, so I'm doing an AMA (ask me anything) on BlueSky until 3:10pm ish. I'll keep checking in here and answering.

Craft, software, hardware, whatever...

AMA:

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C.L. (Cyndi) Pauwels @clpauwels.bsky.social · 19h

“Will we keep erasing forms of understanding through the hierarchies we’ve built, and find ourselves scrambling to colonise Mars because we never learned to listen to those who knew how to live sustainably on Earth?”

Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · 23h

The training data for generative AI is far from the sum total of human knowledge. As well as oral cultures, many languages are absent, creating significant blindspots in AI’s understanding of human experience

Generative AI has access to a small slice of human knowledge | Aeon Essays

Huge swathes of human knowledge are missing from the internet. By definition, generative AI is shockingly ignorant too

buff.ly

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Ron Filipkowski @ronfilipkowski.bsky.social · 23h

Today, House Republicans will take their 70th day off with pay in the last 82 days.

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Laurence H. Tribe @tribelaw.bsky.social · 23h

On Indigenous Peoples Day (which Trump insists on calling Columbus Day): For an honest history of the 15th and 20th century origins of a national holiday and its layers of meaning, read Heather Cox Richardson today 👇🏼
open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...

October 12, 2025

On October 9, President Donald J.

open.substack.com

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Brevity / Dinty W. Moore @dintywmoore.bsky.social · 22h

"Sentences are the bricks as well as the mortar, the motor as well as the fuel. They are the cells, the individual stitches. Their nature is at once solitary and social. Sentences establish tone, and set the pace. One in front of the other marks the way." ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

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Mother Jones @motherjones.com · 21h

Clients of a Trump-connected lobbying firm keep landing no-bid ICE contracts

Ballard Partners is helping companies cash in on the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

www.motherjones.com

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NPR @npr.org · 21h

NPR is highlighting Indigenous stories from across its network in celebrations of Indigenous Peoples Day. n.pr/47nGDK8

Highlighting Indigenous stories from across NPR's network

NPR is highlighting Indigenous stories from across its network in celebrations of Indigenous Peoples Day.

n.pr

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Kameron Hurley @kameronhurley.com · 21h

Pretty cool

Ada Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · 21h

Scientists in China have developed a tough new bamboo-based plastic that biodegrades in 50 days. The new material matches the strength of engineering plastics used in cars and appliances while retaining 90% of its durability after recycling. buff.ly/zXWVoIS
#ShareGoodNewsToo

Biodegradable plastic made from bamboo is strong and easy to recycle

Bamboo is a highly renewable resource, and its cellulose fibres can be turned into a hard, mouldable plastic for use in cars and appliances

buff.ly

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The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 1d

When they tell you they plan on throwing out the constitution, believe them.

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God @thegodpodcast.com · 1d

Adelita Grijalva won her election 19 days ago and she still hasn’t been sworn in.

The government has been shut down for 12 days with no end in sight.

They can stall as long as they want but the Epstein files ain’t going away.

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Grandiloquent Word of the Day @grandiloquentwords.bsky.social · 1d

Prevaricate [pruh-VAIR-ih-keyt]
(v.)
- To deliberately evade the truth; to speak misleadingly; to lie.

Used in a sentence:
"Poor Pinocchio’s pernicious propensity to prevaricate promotes probiscal protuberance prolongation.”

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Rachel Maddow @maddow.msnbc.com · 1d

tell me more about republicans being the pro-business party.

www.nbcnews.com/business/bus...

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The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 1d

Sick

Caitlin G. DeAngelis @caitlindeangelis.bsky.social · 1d

ICE kidnapped a 7th-grader with a pending asylum claim and spirited him out of state without notifying his parents, seemingly with the cooperation of the local police in Everett, MA.

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/12/m...

Everett 13-year-old arrested by ICE and sent to Virginia detention facility
By Marcela Rodrigues Globe Staff,Updated October 12, 2025, 44 minutes ago

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A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Everett after an interaction with members of the Everett Police Department and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia, according to his mother and immigration lawyer Andrew Lattarulo.

The boy’s mother, Josiele Berto, was called to pick her son up from the Everett Police Department on Thursday, the day he was arrested. After waiting for about an hour and a half, she was told her son was taken by ICE, Berto told the Globe in a phone interview.

“My world collapsed,” Berto said in Portuguese.

From the police department, the boy was taken to ICE’s holding facility in Burlington on Thursday evening, where he spent a night before being transferred by car to the Northwestern Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Winchester, Va., on Friday morning, his mother said. The juvenile facility is more than 500 miles away from Everett.

The boy is a 7th-grader at Albert N. Parlin School in Everett, his mother said. The teen and his family, who are Brazilian nationals, have a pending asylum case and are authorized to work legally in the United States, Lattarulo said.

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Ron Filipkowski @ronfilipkowski.bsky.social · 1d

We should mandate a work requirement for House Republicans to get their health care. How about they have to work at least one week a month to keep their government health insurance?

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C.L. (Cyndi) Pauwels @clpauwels.bsky.social · 1d

prospect.org/politics/tru...

Trump Labor Department Says His Immigration Raids Are Causing a Food Crisis

In a filing in the Federal Register, the Labor Department argues there are “immediate dangers to the American food supply” due to a lack of migrant agricultural workers.

prospect.org

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