Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Gady Epstein @gadyepstein.bsky.social · 1d

Such disrespect for the tron arcade game

mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 2d

Pretty confused by how TRON became a big-budget movie franchise. Was it a bit hit when it came out? No. Did it become a big hit on video/TV? Also no. Do people have fond nostalgic memories of it? Eh kinda but not really. Was it secretly great and critically acclaimed? No again

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Daniel Knowles @dlknowles.bsky.social · 4d

Good reporting on the South Shore raid from South Side weekly here.

Confirms one thing I was told but didn't put in my own piece because I didn't have a second source and it seemed too insane: border agents segregated arrested residents by race

southsideweekly.com/federal-agen...

Federal Agents Storm South Shore Building, Detaining Families and Children

Families were woken by flashbangs and helicopters as hundreds of federal agents raided their homes. Days later, neighbors are still searching for the missing.

southsideweekly.com

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Jack Jenkins @jackjenkins.me · 4d

Gonna be thinking about this lede for a minute.

(RNS) — Last month, the Rev. David Black stood in front of a Chicago-area U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility and spread his arms wide. Adorned in all black and wearing a clerical collar, the pastor looked up at a group of masked, heavily armed ICE agents on the roof and began to pray.

“I invited them to repentance,” Black, a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), said in an interview. “I basically offered an altar call. I invited them to come and receive that salvation, and be part of the kingdom that is coming.”

But when Black began to lower his arms a few seconds later, the agents responded to his spiritual plea by firing pepper balls, or chemical agents that cause eye irritation and respiratory distress, video footage shows. One struck Black in the head, exploding into a puff of white pepper smoke and forcing him to his knees. Fellow demonstrators rushed to his aid, and as the pastor rubbed his face in pain, the agents continued to fire.

“We could hear them laughing,” Black said.

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Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · 4d

Read this graf pls

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 5d

perhaps the biggest story TFPever ran was a catastrophically shoddy argument that George Floyd ackshully died of an overdose. When confronted with irrefutable evidence that the piece was simply wrong, Weiss didn’t take it down, she asked her critic, @radleybalko.bsky.social, to come on a podcast.

max tani @maxtani.bsky.social · 5d

David Ellison’s note to staff on Paramount’s acquisition of the Free Press

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Gady Epstein @gadyepstein.bsky.social · 6d

I’m demonstrating faux-bravery on here by not taking the bait from that troll

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Bill Kristol @billkristolbulwark.bsky.social · 7d

"The twentieth century’s worst episodes did not begin with gunfire. They began with named categories—“parasites,” “vermin,” “degenerates,” “enemies of the people”—ways of talking that prepared the ground for ways of acting."

newrepublic.com/article/2009...

Charlie Kirk, Ezra Klein, and the Cost of Civility-Theater Liberalism

“Talking across divides” is laudable—until it becomes a license to launder antidemocratic and dehumanizing ideas.

newrepublic.com

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 8d

Whoa. The criminal charge was for failure to file a change of address under 8 USC 1306(b), which makes it a crime for any noncitizen (of any legal status) to fail to register a change of address with the government within 10 days of moving.

Unheard of to charge for that.

Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney.bsky.social · 8d

JUST IN: Magistrate Faruqui continues sounding alarms about defective criminal cases brought by federal prosecutors in D.C

This time he says prosecutors sought to "gin up" a charge against an immigrant for misreading a confusing form — to jump start deportation. www.dcd.uscourts.gov/sites/dcd/fi...

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Tim Onion @bencollins.bsky.social · 9d

"Johnson said he was left tied up outside the building for nearly three hours.

'I asked [agents] why they were holding me if I was an American citizen, and they said I had to wait until they looked me up. I asked if they had a warrant and I asked for a lawyer. They never brought one.'"

Massive immigration raid on Chicago apartment building leaves residents reeling: 'I feel defeated'

The Department of Homeland Security said federal agents with Border Patrol, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives arrested 37 people in the raid.

chicago.suntimes.com

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Ryan Marino, MD @ryanmarino.bsky.social · 11d

This is why we fund scientists to study things like oyster slobber even if you don’t think it sounds important

Leah McElrath @leahmcelrath.bsky.social · 12d

⚠️ Chinese researchers have invented bone glue that mimics how oysters stick to surfaces underwater.

The adhesive can reportedly repair orthopedic fractures in 2-3 minutes, even in blood-rich environments, and is bioabsorbable.

interestingengineering.com/science/chin...

China's oyster-inspired 'bone glue' bonds fractures in minutes

A new oyster-inspired Bone-02 adhesive can revolutionize bone repair without metal fasteners.

interestingengineering.com

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Gady Epstein @gadyepstein.bsky.social · 10d

“The censorious right does not represent the entirety of conservatism, but it is one of the movement’s most persistent and dominant strains” — much-needed corrective on the real history of cancel culture www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/o...

Opinion | We Have Seen the ‘Woke Right’ Before, and It Wasn’t Pretty Then, Either

www.nytimes.com

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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 10d

Vance: "If you're an American citizen & you've been to the hospital in the last few years, you've probably noticed wait times are especially large & very often somebody who's there in the ER is an illegal alien. Why do those people get healthcare benefits at hospitals paid for by American citizens?"

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Gady Epstein @gadyepstein.bsky.social · 10d

He’s so good at the practice of politics and persuasion, to coin a phrase that’s popular this week

Razzball @razzball.bsky.social · 10d

Zohran Mamdani calling it a genocide on The View and getting applause.

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Jonathan Cohn @jonathancohn.bsky.social · 10d

"An attorney for a building trades union told me that a witness in a wage theft case in another state was recently targeted and deported by ICE. The union believes the employer encouraged ICE to target the worker, in a bid to undercut the wage theft case. "

prospect.org/labor/2025-1...

How ICE Terror Campaigns Are Used to Discipline Labor

While Chicago sees a surge of ICE detentions, workers are facing retaliation as immigrants when they advocate for their rights.

prospect.org

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Gady Epstein @gadyepstein.bsky.social · 11d

Good succinct thread on the scorching opinion re targeted deportations of pro-Palestinian academics

Joey Fishkin @fishkin.bsky.social · 11d

Honestly, this entire opinion is just jaw-dropping. The first postings I saw on Bluesky were about the first page, which is lovely in its own right and exemplifies one of the less-well-explored roles of a judge in a democracy: to explain what is going on legally to non-lawyers.

There's way more.

Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie @audrelawdamercy.bsky.social · 11d

reposting this (an excerpt from the district court's opinion in AAUP v. Rubio, a case about the government targeting noncitizen students and faculty for their pro-Palestine advocacy) w alt-text !

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

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Gady Epstein @gadyepstein.bsky.social · 11d

Great piece

Andrea Pitzer @andreapitzer.bsky.social · 11d

I wrote about Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ezra Klein, why swallowing live frogs is a bad idea, and how context and history can release you from bright-kid syndrome, the illusion that you yourself are going to have every answer or fix the world.

You don't have to swallow frogs

Klein and Coates show that if you don't know what your core beliefs are, you're going to get played.

degenerateart.beehiiv.com

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Tom Scocca @tomscocca.bsky.social · 11d

Sup Brett Kavanaugh

Screenshot of text:

But like in Lyons, plaintiffs have no good basis to believe
that law enforcement will unlawfully stop them in the
future based on the prohibited factors—and certainly no
good basis for believing that any stop of the plaintiffs is
imminent. Therefore, they lack Article III standing:
“Absent a sufficient likelihood” that the plaintiffs “will
again be wronged in a similar way,” they are “no more
entitled to an injunction than any other citizen of Los
Angeles; and a federal court may not entertain a claim by
any or all citizens who no more than assert that certain
practices of law enforcement officers are unconstitutional.”

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Gady Epstein @gadyepstein.bsky.social · 11d

I do!

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Gady Epstein @gadyepstein.bsky.social · 11d

Chappelle’s defense of his anti-trans material, unpersuasive as it was already, certainly hits different now: “The more you say I can’t say something, the more urgent it is for me to say it.”

www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...

US comedians defend decision to play in Saudi Arabia: ‘They’re paying me enough to look the other way’

Usual supporters of free speech are under fire for signing on to Riyadh festival despite the government’s human rights abuses

www.theguardian.com

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Gady Epstein @gadyepstein.bsky.social · 12d

“Kavanaugh stop” seems objectively accurate here

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 12d

oh the border patrol accomplished this bit of work with the help of a kavanaugh stop www.chicagotribune.com/2025/09/29/i...

Mother, children detained by ICE at Millennium Park Sunday held at O’Hare with other families: ‘We never imagined’

The mother said she felt her family was targeted because of their appearance. “There were a lot more people there, but the agents came directly to us because of how we look,” she said.

www.chicagotribune.com

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Kevin Gannon (now a Moo Deng fan account) @thetattooedprof.bsky.social · 12d

"one officer smiled for a selfie with her as she cried."

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Gady Epstein @gadyepstein.bsky.social · 13d

Very good thread, the category error Klein makes on Hillary Clinton’s remarks (confusing the dishonest narrative about them for their actual substance) is pretty telling

Larry Glickman @larryglickman.bsky.social · 13d

I wanted to share some thoughts on this Ezra Klein discussion with Ta-Nehisi Coates.
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/o...

Opinion | Ta-Nehisi Coates on Bridging Gaps vs. Drawing Lines

www.nytimes.com

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 13d

Forcing everything through a narrow lens of campaign strategy is not only morally flawed, it overweights small movements in polls far from elections, prompts negotiating against yourself, and creates excuses for weakness.

Everyone doing that type of “strategic” thinking would make for bad strategy.

Perry Bacon @perrybaconjr.bsky.social · 13d

This was revealing. Worth reading. The basic demand is that Coates spend less time thinking/writing his true feelings and more time playing political strategist. Klein asks him over and over him to do Dem strategy; he says no, over and over. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/o...

Opinion | Ta-Nehisi Coates on Bridging Gaps vs. Drawing Lines

www.nytimes.com

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Gady Epstein @gadyepstein.bsky.social · 16d

Very notable move by Microsoft

Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · 16d

Microsoft will no longer allow Israel to use its cloud services to enable its mass surveillance of occupied Palestinians – "the first known case of a US technology company withdrawing services provided to the Israeli military since the beginning of its war on Gaza"

Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its technology in mass surveillance of Palestinians

Exclusive: Tech firm ends military unit’s access to AI and data services after Guardian reveals secret spy project

www.theguardian.com

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Gady Epstein @gadyepstein.bsky.social · 17d

Very good piece

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 18d

"Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply."

me on why Ezra Klein should be ashamed / why shame is Good Actually

www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

How Can We Live Together? - Boston Review

Ezra Klein is wrong: shame is essential.

www.bostonreview.net

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