Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Michael Molcher @molcher.bsky.social · 15h

Saw it for the first time a couple months ago in a local cinema and it blew my mind. Genuinely can't stop thinking about it.

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Reposted by Michael Molcher

Jess O'Thomson @jessothomson.co.uk · 2d

It cannot be made clearer.

If you continue to support the Harry Potter franchise in any way, you are directly funding the removal of trans people's human rights in the UK.

JK Rowling pledges to keep up fight against SNP trans policies

Author vows to bankroll campaigners after Scottish government fails to pay group's legal fees in Supreme Court equality case

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Reposted by Michael Molcher

Matt Henry 🥄 @matthenry.fyi · 20d

When the nazis were coming into power, there was a lag before local law enforcement was fully on board. People were able to get police protection from nazi-aligned paramilitaries. Here, today, police look at rising fascism and say “Finally. We’ve been waiting for this.” www.notus.org/democrats/me...

Democrats' New Fear: They Can’t Rely on Local Law Enforcement for Protection

“They called the local sheriff; they showed up and were going to arrest me,” said Rep. Steven Horsford.

www.notus.org

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Michael Molcher @molcher.bsky.social · 2d

"Life ... not a growth market."

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Michael Molcher @molcher.bsky.social · 2d

There's a scene in THX-1138, in which THX visits a 'confession booth' where a machine provides empty platitudes.

I think about that an awful lot lately.

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Michael Molcher @molcher.bsky.social · 2d

So anything that alleviates that terror, anything that gives us the rush of creation without the fear of inadequacy ... And then when we're reliant on the thing that provides that, that's when they have built a monopoly on being able to live at all.

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Michael Molcher @molcher.bsky.social · 2d

I've been thinking a lot about how fear and grief affects the way a life is lived. Suspect we are so bombarded by messages highlighting our shortcomings that we live in a near-permanent state of terror over how we have "failed", how we have wasted our potential, our lives.

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Michael Molcher @molcher.bsky.social · 2d

"I use it, it's just a tool like Photoshop," is the refrain from people I know that has me biting virtually clean through my tongue.

No. It's emptying you.

MiMi Aye @meemalee.bsky.social · 7d

Author and filmmaker Justine Bateman on generative AI

"They're trying to convince people they can't do the things they've been doing easily for years - to write emails, to write a presentation. Your daughter wants you to make up a bedtime story about puppies - to write that for you." We will get to the point, she says with a grim laugh, "that you will essentially become just a skin bag of organs and bones, nothing else. You won't know anything and you will be told repeatedly that you can't do it, which is the opposite of what life has to offer. Capitulating all kinds of decisions like where to go on vacation, what to wear today, who to date, what to eat.
People are already doing this. You won't have to process grief, because you'll have uploaded photos and voice messages from your mother who just died, and then she can talk to you via AI video call every day. One of the ways it's going to destroy humans, long before there's a nuclear disaster, is going to be the emotional hollowing-out of people." - author and filmmaker Justine Bateman from a piece by Emine Saner for the Guardian

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Reposted by Michael Molcher

Tufty McTavish @tuftymctavish.com · 3d

🔖 It turned into an epic reading project but I completed @molcher.bsky.social’s excellent “I Am The Law” tonight.

The reason for the long elapsed time was I kept going off to read a huge stack of #JudgeDredd: “The Complete Case Files” 🤗

👨‍🏫 #NonFictionBooks 💡📚💙 #BookSky 🦋
🦹‍♂️ #ComicBooks 📚 #ComicSky 🦋

A tall stack of “Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files” beside Michael Molcher’s “I Am The Law” stood up beside them on a table. The case files that I read are stacked flat and tower over the upright paperback beside them. A yellow bookmark sits in front of all the books to denote that they were read.

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Reposted by Michael Molcher

Red Durkin @daedsider.bsky.social · 4d

I am so tired of being told that I, a person who got a significant portion of my diet out of dumpsters in my early 20's, hold elitist & "luxury" beliefs by people who have been Professors of Thinking at Harvard since before I was born.

flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 5d

If your considered analysis is that everyone has gone completely mad except for you, then is it likely that’s what happened? Or is it you that is the arse here.

Rob Henderson © @robkhenderson • 11h
"the left has allowed itself to become shackled by unpopular luxury beliefs: abolishing the police, opening the borders, the corruption of female-only spaces. Everyone has gone mad...associated with the observable decline in literacy across the rich West"

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Michael Molcher @molcher.bsky.social · 5d

Give 'em time...

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Reposted by Michael Molcher

English Civil War @englishcivilwar.bsky.social · 6d

We're still buzzing after our final event of the year – occupying the town of Newent in Gloucestershire for Newent Celebrates! What an amazing weekend, check out what we got up to here 👇👇👇
earlofmanchesters.co.uk/no-tears-all...

No tears, all fun as Newent Celebrated!

What an amazing end to our reenactment season – Newent Celebrates! may have ended up a bit wet but the only tears were those of our competition-winning onion eaters! Newent is a historic town in the h...

earlofmanchesters.co.uk

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Reposted by Michael Molcher

Social Media Lab @socialmedialab.ca · Apr 22

"A fascist society is one in which some people are deputized to do violence, and everyone else is forced to defend themselves. Those who have lived under an authoritarian regime know how it weakens collective self-defence." www.bostonreview.net/articles/mut...

Mutual Aid in the Age of Fascism - Boston Review

As people are being deputized to do violence, building connections is political resistance.

www.bostonreview.net

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Michael Molcher @molcher.bsky.social · 6d

Haha yeah, at least Children of Dune is a manageable length 😂

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Michael Molcher @molcher.bsky.social · 6d

We'd have missed out on a pontificating worm in a go-cart though...

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Michael Molcher @molcher.bsky.social · 6d

Also, Herbert does Chani real dirty. Would have loved to see the Kwisatz Haderach fall, prescience cease, and for her to take his place.

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Michael Molcher @molcher.bsky.social · 6d

TBH I only get to read fiction on holiday, which is now over, and the experience of chewing through over 1,000 pages of boredom has left me exhausted and unwilling to try any more. Such a shame, loved the first book.

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Michael Molcher @molcher.bsky.social · 6d

By the fourth book, I yearned for the worm to come and take me, if only to release me from more of Leto II's endless bullshit. Notable that all the action takes place over the last 20 pages of a 480-page book, meaning you've had to wade through it all for the only pay off.

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Michael Molcher @molcher.bsky.social · 6d

Spoilers, but what struck me with book three was how much taking the desert out of the equation removed the structure and framing that drove so much of the first book's story and depth.

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Michael Molcher @molcher.bsky.social · 6d

After enjoying Dune so much, I took the three sequels on holiday. Alas, they felt like wading through quicksand – none of the elements that made the first so arresting, but plenty of naval-gazing and farting around.

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Reposted by Michael Molcher

Kate Watson @loreandordure.com · 6d

So rather more than ten times the number of violent, coked-up, pissed-up fascists they arrested the other week?

Huh? How ‘bout that.

Julia Leggs📎I'm🏳️‍⚧️&🇬🇧.I support🇺🇦NATO🇺🇳💙 I'm in the UK🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿.🇬🇧Veteran @julialeggs.bsky.social · 6d

BBC News - Police make 355 arrests at pro-Palestinian protest in London
www.bbc.com/news/article...

London Pro-Palestine protest: Met Police make 355 arrests

Demonstrations went ahead despite calls from politicians and police leaders for the protests to be postponed in wake of the Manchester synagogue attack.

www.bbc.com

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Michael Molcher @molcher.bsky.social · 6d

Christmas ads playing in Sainsbury's klaxon.

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Michael Molcher @molcher.bsky.social · 7d

*taps the sign again*

2000ad.com/news/i-am-th...

The cover to 'I Am The Law: How Judge Dredd Predicted Our Future', showing a right cop with red paint on their visor imitating the shape of Judge Dredd's helmet.

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Reposted by Michael Molcher

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · Sep 23

“What was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, ‘I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ,’ the response would not be, ‘I apologize.’ The response would be, ‘Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak,’” Moore said."

newrepublic.com/post/174950/...

Christianity Today Editor: Evangelicals Call Jesus “Liberal” and “Weak”

A former evangelical leader is sounding the alarm about the direction his religion is headed in.

newrepublic.com

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Michael Molcher @molcher.bsky.social · 22d

OOO

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