Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Paul C(innamon) Kirby @paulcinnamon.bsky.social · 1d

“In the days after the killing, speculation swirled online that the attacker was an asylum seeker, or it had been racially motivated, or that Ahmad was a drug dealer. None of this was true.”

These are the citizen neighbours we are enjoined to love over strangers.
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

A teenager fled horror in Syria – only to be murdered on a sunny day in Huddersfield

Ahmad Al Ibrahim, 16, was looking to make some friends but died after what should have been an innocuous encounter with Alfie Franco

www.theguardian.com

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Paul C(innamon) Kirby @paulcinnamon.bsky.social · 1d

Release the hostages indeed.

Emissary Of Night | ليلى @diplomatofnight.com · 1d

Netanyahu's mouthpiece, Amit Segal, casually admits on Twitter that his country has been holding 1,700 people from Gaza hostage, including children.

Among other things, according to the decision:

- 250 security prisoners will be released.
- 1,700 residents of the Gaza Strip who were not involved in the events of October 7 and were arrested after the massacre will be released.
- 22 minors under the age of 18, residents of the Gaza Strip who were not involved in the events of October 7 and were arrested after the massacre, will be released.
- 360 bodies of terrorists will be returned.

Reposted by Paul C(innamon) Kirby

emptywheel @emptywheel.bsky.social · 2d

Discount Goebbels: Don't call us fascist.

Also Discount Goebbels: Can I introduce you to my buddy who thinks the Nazis were the good guys?

Prem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · 2d

From Donald Trump's Roundtable on Antifa just now —
"Antifa has been around in various iterations for almost 100 years in some instances, going back to the Weimar Republic in Germany."
— special guest Jack Posobiec

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sean morley @seanmorl.com · 3d

i am truly grateful that all my haters are motivated exclusively by jealousy, if there was any other component to it that would do my head in

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David Wearing @davidwearing.bsky.social · 8d

Our horror at the genocide in Gaza, at the mass murder of civilians on Oct 7 2023, and at today's atrocity in Manchester, comes in each case from the same, inherent part of our shared humanity. We need to assert that shared humanity as loudly as possible, and in as many practical ways as we can.

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Paul C(innamon) Kirby @paulcinnamon.bsky.social · 8d

Of course, wildly veering *is* the strategy, and some people are being well-paid, and occasionally feted as electoral masterminds, for it.

James Ball @jamesrball.com · 9d

“Nigel Farage is wrong in principle, his approach is racist, and we oppose it”

“Nigel Farage is right on immigration, but he doesn’t have the skill or experience to deliver his plans”

At some point, the government has to pick *one* of these narratives, instead of veering wildly between the two.

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Paul C(innamon) Kirby @paulcinnamon.bsky.social · 9d

1970.

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Irenic Bro @irenicbro.bsky.social · 9d

Traveling to the ruins of Austin to consult Elon Musk's holocron

Starfish Who Can’t Think Something Witty @irhottakes.bsky.social · 9d

Prediction: In 20-30 years time we will see either:
1.) mausoleums that the pharaohs of old would find gaudily excessive
2.) a new heresy claiming an AI copy of you is the same thing as eternal life
or most likely
3.) both

New Scientist @newscientist.com · 23d

Tech millionaire turned longevity pioneer Bryan Johnson devotes more than 6 hours a day to trialling different methods to turn back the clock. Can the rest of us learn anything from his radical approach?

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Paul C(innamon) Kirby @paulcinnamon.bsky.social · 9d

The sons and daughters of people who may have fought in World War II.

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cass city @heavenlygrandpa.bsky.social · 14d

meanwhile at the Riyadh Comedy Festival

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lsegender @lsegender.bsky.social · Aug 26

Join us for our first event of the academic year in collaboration with @lseir.bsky.social and other great co-hosts!

Bringing together four leading experts, we will explore the legacy and future of the UN WPS agenda.

www.lse.ac.uk/gender/event...

@aikoiiris.bsky.social @drkmillar.bsky.social

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Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · 11d

Cornell is cancelling a distinguished professor's classes on Gaza and suspending him because of the complaints of a student who previously served in Israel's military surveillance agency and was literally recording the comments of other students in class and deliberately derailing discussion.

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Paul C(innamon) Kirby @paulcinnamon.bsky.social · 11d

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BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 11d

'well, I believed in MedBeds because an attractive young woman looking me in the face directly on Tiktok told me they were real and I was being cheated of relief by the Democratic establishment to help big pharma, but now I've read this paper in 'Semiotics of Health' boy do I feel an ass'

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Dalassa @dalassa.bsky.social · 12d

Screenshot of a tweet
Nathan Goldwag
@GoldwagN.
Evangelicals love to go on Twitter and casually assert something that if written in
500 AD would've led to two Church Councils, a dozen dueling encyclicals, a major schism, three new heresies, and a religious war that lasted for centuries and cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

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Sexy CHOAM Nomsky costume @samthielman.com · 13d

Absolutely beyond parody that Dave Chappelle is headlining a comedy show for Saudi royalty after what, a decade of whining about cancel culture

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Paul C(innamon) Kirby @paulcinnamon.bsky.social · 14d

The Women, Peace & Security Intensive is back!

If you're looking for a deep and steep intro to WPS - from international law to grassroots activism, participation to cyberwar, Afganistan to Ukraine - then this course is for you, or maybe a friend.

Spread the word.

www.lse.ac.uk/women-peace-...

Women, Peace and Security Intensive Course

Apply for the two-day intensive course on women, peace and security hosted by the LSE Centre for Women, Peace and Security.

www.lse.ac.uk

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Paul C(innamon) Kirby @paulcinnamon.bsky.social · 15d

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

www.ft.com/content/3206...

Microsoft cuts off some services to the Israeli military

Software giant’s move follows investigation into use of its products to surveil Palestinian civilians

www.ft.com

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Nathan Goldwag @goldwagnathan.bsky.social · 15d

Anyways, I think anti-feminist backlash/male identity politics is going to be one of the dominant pan-ideological elite obsessions going forward, for much the same reason that transphobia is so popular: It lets you cosplay as a brave outsider while pandering to the most powerful people in the room.

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Paul C(innamon) Kirby @paulcinnamon.bsky.social · 17d

Sure, Kissinger was one of the great war criminals of the 20th century, but on the other hand he was curious and generous enough to perceive that Star Wars had a politics so who can really say?

southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 17d

Isaac Chotiner interviews Cass Sunstein. www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

=
THE NEW YORKER ICO
In terms of human rights, I've always found it a little bit puzzling, given what you write, and given who your wife is, that you two were so close to Henry Kissinger. Of all the pre-Trump political figures in America, he is the one I think of as in some ways the opposite of liberal, given his behavior toward the rest of the world.
I'll tell you a story. I wrote a book a few years ago on Star Wars. We invited Dr.
Kissinger to my Star Wars book party, and he said, "You wrote a book about Star Wars? Why'd you write a book about Star Wars?" He was puzzled and courteous, but really confused. And then he came to the book party, which was quite generous. He was a busy person.
But, despite his busyness, he came to the book party.
Yeah, and then I gave a talk on Star Wars, and he came up to me afterward and he said, "Oh, I see why you wrote a book on Star Wars. There's a lot there.
It's, like, about families and it's about governments and freedom." The amount of curiosity and generosity that he showed was incomparable. I don't know anyone who showed that level of curiosity and generosity. And we really got into Star Wars. He just wanted to think about it. I know there are strong views about his career, and I'm hardly an expert on his career.

But your wife is one of the great human-rights experts in the world. I asked you about him being anti-liberal, and your response was that he was very nice to you about your book.
About Star Wars.
It is certainly a touching story. But that's not totally an answer to the question.
Yeah. Well, I don't know. What he would think of this book I'd love to know.
But no second thoughts about being friends with him or anything?
I feel generally very grateful for friendship, and he was, when I knew him, a person of immense kindness.
Those who think of him as someone who was something horrible or worse, 1 don't know what to say about that.

But you could have an opinion on it.
You have an opinion on all kinds of things, right?
Well, on him and his role in
government, that's not something I've particularly studied, so I don't know. I know some people who think he was a horrible historic figure. They would say,
"Would you be friends with Genghis Khan? Would you be friends with Stalin?" And I wouldn't be friends with Stalin, so I concede that.
Well, the next time someone brings up a terrible anecdote about Cambodia or Vietnam, I will definitely drop the Star Wars story to show that people have two sides.
Yeah. And I get those who think you shouldn't be friends with someone who did terrible things. I hear that. I can just say that he was, as a very large number of people would say, though many fewer would say it publicly, an extraordinarily generous friend.
Professor, thank you so much for doing this.
Great, thanks. If we go light on the Kissinger part, I wouldn't complain, because it could dwarf everything else. *

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Paul C(innamon) Kirby @paulcinnamon.bsky.social · 17d

“In a way, Donald Trump cares too much about other people”.

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Paul C(innamon) Kirby @paulcinnamon.bsky.social · 17d

An inspiring commute for the first week of term, watching the UCL student in front of me repeatedly paste module questions into deepseek chat and then type the instant answers back into his assessment form.

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 18d

It just straightforwardly *insane* how much political chatter in the United Kingdom is about the next general election, an event that is a long way in the future, and how basically none of it is about 'uh, this policy agenda doesn't look adequate to the scale of the inherited problem'.

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Paul C(innamon) Kirby @paulcinnamon.bsky.social · 19d

Honest question: why do you need a deal with ChatGPT-5 to digitise Bodleian Libraries’ collections? www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-09...

Oxford becomes first UK university to offer ChatGPT Edu to all staff

OpenAI’s flagship GPT-5 model will be provided across the University and Oxford Colleges through ChatGPT Edu, a version of ChatGPT built for universities that includes enterprise-level security and

www.ox.ac.uk

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Paul C(innamon) Kirby @paulcinnamon.bsky.social · 19d

“The trouble is on the ground; the actual state people are talking about is shrinking by the minute,” he said. “Since Oct. 7 on the West Bank alone, the amount of new territory taken by Israeli settlers is about three times the size of Gaza.”

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/w...

Can France’s Palestinian Proposal Change 75 Years of Failed Diplomacy?

www.nytimes.com