Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Dartastic @dartastic.bsky.social · 1h

I really hope that the D’Angelo news isn’t real. 😢

Dartastic @dartastic.bsky.social · 2h

Paseo serves some of the best sandwiches I’ve had in my life. You should go there.

Dartastic @dartastic.bsky.social · 21h

Hey Tim! I worked in compliance at EA and had the pleasure of getting Brutal Legend through that phase of testing. It was easily one of the best things I got to work on, thanks for making such a wonderful game!

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Reposted by Dartastic

Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 2d

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.

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Dartastic @dartastic.bsky.social · 2d

You know how you can tell that Thiel is a dumbass? He completely missed the most obvious, central theme of One Piece and puts some dumb Christian nonsense on it. At its core, One Piece is about FREEDOM.

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Dartastic @dartastic.bsky.social · 2d

a close up of a cartoon character 's face with a necklace around his neck

ALT: a close up of a cartoon character 's face with a necklace around his neck

media.tenor.com

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Dartastic @dartastic.bsky.social · 2d

How can Luffy be like Christ if he ate a DEVIL FRUIT. HAHA CHECKMATE.

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Dartastic @dartastic.bsky.social · 2d

As a One Piece fan, Luffy would kick the ever loving shit out of Peter Thiel for a McDonald’s hamburger. There’s a reason you’re seeing the Straw Hat Jolly Roger popping up at protests around the world.

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 2d

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.

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Dartastic @dartastic.bsky.social · 2d

Hey, this “both sides” shit is actively putting the people of Portland in danger, so maybe cut this shit out?

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Dartastic @dartastic.bsky.social · 2d

God he’s so full of shit. If it’s not obvious to everyone yet, it’s FINE here in Portland.

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Dartastic @dartastic.bsky.social · 3d

Yes, or perhaps videos from 2020. It’s certainly not the recent videos because the inflatable frog ones and stuff are accurate 😂

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Dartastic @dartastic.bsky.social · 3d

Wait. Does this mean that Galaxy 2 isn’t a mainline Mario then? 😱

Dartastic @dartastic.bsky.social · 3d

@janochoa.bsky.social re: newest Bombcast mailbag, thought you’d be interested in this. www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/...

The Spurs, ‘StarCraft’ and its link to the 1999 NBA title

NBA teams are often known to spend travel time playing cards. In their championship year of 1999, the San Antonio Spurs played a real-time sci-fi strategy game.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Reposted by Dartastic

Bulldog @harpua.bsky.social · 4d

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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Dartastic @dartastic.bsky.social · 5d

So they’re going to just start randomly blowing up American citizens?

Prem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · 5d

My gosh. After the US bombed multiple boats in the middle of the ocean, murdering people on grounds that they were allegedly "carrying drugs," the US Attorney General says "Just like we did with cartels, we're going to take the same approach, President Trump, with Antifa."

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Dartastic @dartastic.bsky.social · 7d

I feel that you’re putting me and my fellow Portland citizens in danger by using such an old photo as your lead image. It’s not helpful.

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Reposted by Dartastic

Tom Bogert @tombogert.bsky.social · 7d

What a career Darlington Nagbe has had.

After the Crew won MLS Cup in 2023 I was covering the celebrations in the locker room.

Two different champagne-soaked Crew staffers made sure to tell me:

“He’s the best fucking player this league has seen. You can fucking tweet that.”

Tom Bogert @tombogert.bsky.social · 7d

BREAKING: Columbus Crew midfielder and MLS legend Darlington Nagbe is retiring after the 2025 MLS season, per sources.

Nagbe, 35, is a four-time MLS Cup winner (2015, 2018, 2020, 2023) with three clubs (Portland, Atlanta, Columbus).

One of MLS's best-ever midfielders 👏

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Reposted by Dartastic

Brent M. Diskin @diskin.bsky.social · 7d

ok.

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Reposted by Dartastic

jeff com-BOO-ters @helldude.bsky.social · 8d

im going to go out on a limb and say, this is psychotic

it's instructive to ask, what would have stopped them from doing this? what could anyone have done differently that would have led them to conclude this extraordinary thing was unnecessary? and the answer is nothing

Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney.bsky.social · 8d

UPDATE: Hegseth today called up 400 members of the Texas National Guard, with Gov. Abbott's apparent permission, to be deployed "where needed, including in the cities of Portland and Chicago." www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

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Dartastic @dartastic.bsky.social · 8d

This fall is craaaazy.

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Dartastic @dartastic.bsky.social · 8d

I never played it… I really want to but I’m too busy with Hades 2 and Ghost of Yotei 😭

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Dartastic @dartastic.bsky.social · 8d

Congrats, it’s well earned.

Dartastic @dartastic.bsky.social · 8d

…the Philadelphia Union won the MLS Supporters Shield though for the second time in club history. I’m sure those fans are quite happy.

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Dartastic @dartastic.bsky.social · 8d

Our president is certifiably insane.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 8d

Trump: "Please remember I wrote Osama bin Laden exactly one year ago, one year before he blew up the World Trade Center. And I said, 'You gotta watch Osama bin Laden!' ... I gotta take a little credit."

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Dartastic @dartastic.bsky.social · 9d

Everyone except Diego Chara. ❤️

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