Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Noah Berlatsky

@nberlat.bsky.social

24K followers 4.5K following 37K posts

he/him, bylines Public Notice, Chicago Reader, Observer, CNN.com. Poetry collection: Not Akhmatova (Ben Yehuda, 2024) Substack: www.everythingishorrible.net Poetry: https://www.everythingishorrible.net/p/poetry-publications-noah-berlatsky

www.everythingishorrible.net

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · Jul 26

the best way to keep up with my work is to follow my newsletter

www.everythingishorrible.net

alternately you can follow my patreon (same content, different platform:

www.patreon.com/c/noahberlat...

Everything Is Horrible | Noah Berlatsky | Substack

Culture, politics, and misery. Click to read Everything Is Horrible, by Noah Berlatsky, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.

www.everythingishorrible.net

1 5 30

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 11h

it's free!

I designed the cover too, using clip art and photoshop...

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 11h

anyway, this is a free algorithmic chapbook I wrote/put together. didn't use AI...but again algorithmic poetry predates AI. ghostcitypress.com/2025-summer-...

2 3 15

Reposted by Noah Berlatsky

Lindsay Beyerstein @beyerstein.bsky.social · 13h

Of all the clerics they could have popped, those ICE idiots had to hit Hot Priest.

Presbyterian minister David Black on CNN, who was shot with pepper balls while praying outside an ICE facility.

240 1.8K 9.9K

Reposted by Noah Berlatsky

SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 11h

the way LLMs are rolled out is uniquely bad for it, too. the raw llm that would give you good language chaos is deliberately made into this chirpy little customer service bot that can never be interesting

1 1 17

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 11h

not really; someone made those forgeries! like, human artists were still very much involved.

1 1

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 11h

which...I'm skeptical.

1 1 6

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 11h

the thing about the hype around AI is that it's mostly not saying, "oh you can use AI to make new kinds of odd art!"

it's saying, "AI can allow you to make art exactly like old art but somehow without artists."

1 2 8

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 11h

and...no one reads that stuff? like the audience is tiny.

that doesn't mean it's not art or not a valid way to approach experimental art! it just means talking about it as some sort of transformative approach to television scriptwriting is pretty silly.

1 1 6

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 11h

the thing about doing that though is that it's...experimental poetry. it's about the way AI often generates nonsense, and about language kind of nattering to itself. it's part of a history of algorithmic poetry and experimentation.

2 1 8

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 11h

fwiw, as a poet I'm pretty interested in randomization and predict text experiments (like flarf), so...I mean I could see AI being part of that. (I messed around with chatgpt in that vein when it first came out.) 1

Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · 16h

while I acknowledge that LLMs do have some uses for stuff like “producing code with knowledgeable human supervision,” this perfectly reflects how I feel about using it for my own creative work

Juno Rylee Schultz @junoryleejournalism.com · 1d

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

2 1 8

Reposted by Noah Berlatsky

Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 17h

DOJ continues to argue that the president's judgment under 10 USC 12406 — uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?r... — is "unreviewable," similar to the Alien Enemies Act argument.

No court this year, to my knowledge, has agreed with that argument as to either statute.

Jon Seidel @jonseidel.bsky.social · 19h

Hamilton: "The president's judgment is unreviewable."

7 51 190

Reposted by Noah Berlatsky

Scary Mr. Olmec Man @scarymrolmecman.bsky.social · 1d

I see a lot of people circulating the rumors about Chi in Axios, and haven't yet seen people on here share his fairly Shermanesque (and definitely hilarious) denial of those rumors

Tweet thread from Alex Thompson that, among other things, has a quote from Chi Ossé saying "All I have to say is that it would take a very dire situation in order for me to even consider spending the rest of my 20s in DC."

2 6 22

Reposted by Noah Berlatsky

Edward Harrison @edwardnh.bsky.social · 1d

Jeffries may get primaried.

Mamdani ally weighs challenging Hakeem Jeffries www.axios.com/2025/10/09/z...

Scoop: Mamdani ally weighs challenging Hakeem Jeffries

Just talking about a potential campaign could drive a further wedge between Mamdani — the democratic socialist in line to be New York's next mayor — and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.)

www.axios.com

4 5 58

Reposted by Noah Berlatsky

TrumpsTaxes @trumpstaxes.com · 1d

Mikie Sherrill took Jack Ciattarelli to the woodshed in the #NJGov debate tonight (his face says it all).

I had no idea about Ciattarelli’s role in getting people addicted to opioids.

I know it now.

52 240 620

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 11h

Sherrill's polling is still pretty good, though I know she's not running a great campaign.

Reposted by Noah Berlatsky

Aubrey Gilleran @aubreygilleran.bsky.social · 1d

I assume that CBS will continue to do legitimate polling (as Fox News still does), which means that takes like this are going to bump up against polling showing Democrats winning the shutdown.

David Roberts @volts.wtf · 1d

This is the kind of free-thinking, hard-hitting journalism they're going to be getting at CBS soon.

1 7 40

Reposted by Noah Berlatsky

borderless @borderless.bsky.social · 11h

Trump rolled out fortress Europe along the southern border during his first term, complete with pushbacks and all.

In '21 we begin to see the expansion of Frontex and a switch to a "detain and deport" model.

Now Stephen Miller is doing the UK's failed "Rawanda Plan".

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 12h

I think fascism is best understood as (in part) a transatlantic phenomenon with Europe borrowing ideas from the US and the US borrowing ideas from Europe throughout its history (including now.)

Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 22h

When I see this, I wonder if people realize that Jim Crow racism in the American south was a type home-grown fascism. It was not (just) a superficially genteel system of social deference. Refusing to defer was often met with incredible violence designed to terrorize the entire Black community.

8 20

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 11h

yeah; this is ugly. many people in red states are the most oppressed.

Tim Byrne @tbyrne75.bsky.social · 11h

It sounds ridiculous, but I've also heard people on the left talk about 'kicking red states out of the Union' and so forth, treating the Democrat-voting 40% of their population as surplus to requirements.

5 2 31

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 11h

it's not just govts either; it's also intellectual or imaginative products.

The Camp of the Saints is a huge influence on Stephen Miller, for example. Henry Ford's rantings were a big influence on Hitler. etc.

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 12h

I think fascism is best understood as (in part) a transatlantic phenomenon with Europe borrowing ideas from the US and the US borrowing ideas from Europe throughout its history (including now.)

Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 22h

1 4 11

Reposted by Noah Berlatsky

En Buen Ora - "Hell Çid" 😈 @enbuenora.bsky.social · 11h

On the European side tons of intellectuals and scholars note the role of colonialism & colonial occupation in forming legal systems, administration, behaviors of oppression, mass slaughter & extermination, but brought back to the home nations & populations.

archive.org/stream/Disco...

archive.org

1 4 7

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 11h

I think he believes he can cut all health care only in blue states.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse @whitehouse.senate.gov · 12h

What exactly is a “Democrat program”?

Medicare? Medicaid? Health insurance? 🤔

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 21h

Trump: "We'll be making cuts that will be permanent. And we're only going to cut Democrat programs. I hate to tell you."

1 4 21

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 11h

well, I think there are a certain number of scholars of fascism who don't read anything about US Indian policy.

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 11h

I strongly suspect that trump thinks basically everyone in trump states is a loyalist and everyone in blue states is an enemy.

which sounds ridiculous, but he is really that ignorant and uncurious.

"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 14h

From a strategic perspective, I'm struck by how the Trump administration seems to view its strategy as using 'red states' to hold down 'blue states' but the actual gap between Illinois and Texas is fairly small - IL is D+6, TX is R+6 or so. These aren't even 55/45 states, they're both 53/47 states.

3 14 80

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 11h

yes. but Black activists in the 30s and 40s were well aware! thus the Double V campaign.

Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 11h

(I said in part because there's also a fascist tradition in Japan, in India...in a range of other places, which also borrow from and are picked up by Europeans and Americans.)

1 9