Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted

David Roberts

@volts.wtf

Tesla finally found a customer for cybertrucks! It's, uh, SpaceX.

Elon Musk's SpaceX bought tens of millions worth of Cybertrucks Tesla can't sell

As demand for the Cybertruck can’t reach more than about 10% of Tesla’s planned production capacity, Elon Musk used his...

electrek.co

December 19, 2025 at 1:08 AM

Reposted

Philip Gourevitch

@pgourevitch.bsky.social

Factory farming humans — one more reason there should be no billionaires

“Videogame executive Xu Bo, said to have more than 100 children, and other elites build mega-families, testing citizenship laws and drawing on nannies, IVF and legal firms set up to help them”

www.wsj.com/us-news/chin...

The Chinese Billionaires Having Dozens of U.S.-Born Babies Via Surrogate

Videogame executive Xu Bo, said to have more than 100 children, and other elites are building mega-families—testing citizenship laws and drawing on nannies, IVF and legal firms set up to help them.

www.wsj.com

December 14, 2025 at 1:32 PM

Reposted

Karl Jacoby

@karl-jacoby.bsky.social

When students use AI to write their papers and professors use AI to grade them.

Erin Biba @erinbiba.bsky.social · 9d

An absolute horrific nightmare of two AI bots caught in a loop with each other is the perfect example of the total nothingness of AI “brains”.

December 13, 2025 at 2:44 PM

Reposted

Prasad Jallepalli, MD, PhD

@prasad.bsky.social

BIER: Immigrants today are assimilating faster than prior generations. They are more likely to know English, graduate college, be economically productive, & beneficial to govt budgets than in the early 20th century. /1

Walter Olson @walterolson.bsky.social · 6d

Zachary B. Wolf at CNN asked my Cato colleague David Bier to respond to some comments by White House aide Stephen Miller denouncing immigrants and liberal immigration law generally. This is David's response. /1

Screenshot from CNN reading "I put Miller’s comments to David Bier, a critic of the Trump administration’s immigration policy at the libertarian-leaning CATO institute. Bier disagreed, to put it mildly."

Screenshot from CNN reading: "“His views are baseless smears based on bias, not serious analysis,” he told me by email, adding a point-by-point deconstruction of what Miller said.

BIER: Immigrants to the United States today are assimilating faster than prior generations. They are more likely to know English, more likely to have graduated college, are more economically productive, and more beneficial to government budgets than in the early 20th century. They have more experience with democracy than past waves of immigration, and they are more patriotic and more supportive of US institutions than the US-born. By the time they naturalize they have adopted almost the same political views, except for immigration policy. They are less likely to commit crimes and be incarcerated than those in the early 20th century. Immigrants today cost less to the health care system than the US-born. They are less likely to commit and be incarcerated for crimes than the US-born. Immigrants increase the returns to education for the US-born, leading more US-born to graduate. They make the US-born more productive, increasing their wages and living standards."

December 13, 2025 at 1:20 AM

Reposted

Aaron Rupar

@atrupar.com

I hope people understand that if Trump gets his way America will soon be part of the global axis of evil if we aren't already. You see it in the Caribbean, you see it in Ukraine, and you see it with Trump trying to buddy up to Xi. We are a malevolent force.

December 10, 2025 at 9:23 PM

Reposted

Judah Grunstein

@judah-grunstein.bsky.social

Watch the whole thing. Absolutely chilling.

The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 8d

MINNEAPOLIS: “All I did was step outside as a Somali American citizen, and I got chased by a masked person, assaulted, kidnapped. It was inhumane. If this is what’s happening to a 🇺🇸 citizen on camera, imagine what could happen to your loved ones.”

December 11, 2025 at 12:20 PM

Reposted

Ray Radlein

@radlein.bsky.social

ICE trying to ORDER a church to REMOVE A NATIVITY SCENE is one of the most astonishing First Amendment violations I've seen in ever

Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 9d

ICE’s acting director ordered a Boston Catholic parish to tear down its Advent Nativity scene—stripped of baby Jesus and branded with the message “ICE WAS HERE.” The parish priest is refusing, citing he pope’s call to stand with migrants. It's another chapter in Kristi Noem's war on Christians.

“ICE Was Here”: Pope Leo-Inspired Nativity Scene Sparks MAGA Outrage

A Nativity scene missing Jesus — and marked with an “ICE was here” sign — has triggered cries of “politicizing Christmas.” The parish priest says he’s answering Pope Leo's call to welcome stranger.

www.thelettersfromleo.com

December 10, 2025 at 2:00 AM

Reposted

Spencer Ackerman

@attackerman.bsky.social

They're using the confinement box, one of the most horrific methods of CIA torture in the post-9/11 black sites, against migrants now. This is the direct result of the lack of consequences for the architects of the torture program. Either there will be criminal penalties for this or it will expand.

Torture Techniques from CIA Black Sites Were Used at Alligator Alcatraz

Amnesty International, interviewing migrant detainees, identifies use of the confinement box. There can be no denying it is a torture prison

www.forever-wars.com

December 8, 2025 at 9:40 PM

Reposted

Republicans Against Trumpism

@rpsagainsttrump.bsky.social

WATCH: An ICE agent pushes away a home security camera as she approaches a house.

This is what a police state looks like.

December 8, 2025 at 11:30 PM

Reposted

Q. McLamore

@ghawinriver.bsky.social

To yes-and this: these network states aren't even new. They're just sharecropper and company towns but with touchscreens and "minimalist" (read: lazy) design iconography slapped everywhere instead of Queen Anne or Neoclassical

Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 11d

The thing to understand about all these network states is:

(1) they require a permanent underclass to do all the labor that keeps cities functional,

(2) they have no answers to how or why free people en masse would sign up to be that permanent underclass

And

(3) that’s because they want slaves.

December 7, 2025 at 6:28 PM

Reposted

Moon-Watcher

@bobsmyusername.bsky.social

Who has made this 🤣

Buster from the tv show ‘Arrested Development’ holding an arm full of plushies while he looks at his mother Lucille, saying, “these are my awards, mother, from FIFA.“

December 7, 2025 at 1:49 PM

Reposted

Adrian Monck

@amonck.bsky.social

From the @wsj.com chief foreign correspondent

December 7, 2025 at 9:42 AM

Reposted

Raider

@iwillnotbesilenced.bsky.social

In the face of fear and oppression, our greatest strength lies in unity. Despite being broken and humiliated, residents of a Chicago apartment building rise together, finding power through their struggle.

December 7, 2025 at 4:11 AM

Reposted

Keegan Lannon

@keeganlannon.bsky.social

One interesting statistic from the article followed by two equally interesting statistics about U Nebraska:

A paragraph from the Daily Nebraskan article that reads: The university is expected to save $6.7 million by eliminating about 50 positions within the associated programs and $2 million from the department mergers.

A screen shot of an ESPN article about Nebraska head football coach Matt Rhule’s contract extension that reads: “Rhule's salary throughout the course of the deal has an AAV of more than $11.7 million (including retention bonuses). That number puts him in the highest echelon of college coaches over the course of the deal.
Rhule's two additional years are at $12.5 million, the same as the final year of his current deal in
2030. The deal remains 90% guaranteed.
This season, Rhule is currently in the top 15 in salary at $8.5 million. Prior to the extension, the deal included significant escalators in the contract, as in 2027, he'll make $11 million (with retention bonus).
The new deal comes at a time when Nebraska is trending toward the program's best season in nearly a decade, as Nebraska hasn't reached back-to-back bowls since 2016. That 9-4 season under Mike Riley is also the last year the Cornhuskers won more than eight games in a year.”

A screen shot of the B1G Conference standings for the 2025 football season that shows Nebraska had a 4-5 conference record and a 7-5 overall record, putting them 10th in the conference. They were not in the top 25 NCAA teams.

December 7, 2025 at 3:18 AM

Reposted

derek guy

@dieworkwear.bsky.social

MacKenzie Scott: *donates $50M every 10 hours°

Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of Palantir: "I want to see people hang"

December 7, 2025 at 12:15 AM

Reposted

Jonathan Lemire

@jonlemire.bsky.social

NEW: www.theatlantic.com/national-sec...

December 6, 2025 at 1:46 PM

Reposted

Peter Baker

@peterbakernyt.bsky.social

Trump said last year that he would focus on deporting immigrants who were violent criminals. But a study of arrests in major operations in DC, LA, Illinois and Massachusetts shows that the vast majority of those swept up by ICE have no criminal record.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

ICE Arrest Data Shows Many Immigrants With No Criminal Record

In high-profile operations, more than half of those arrested had no criminal record, an analysis shows.

www.nytimes.com

December 6, 2025 at 4:02 PM

Reposted

Rachel Cohen Booth

@rcobooth.bsky.social

“Only about half of cases before 1991 were a result of transmission from an infected mother.”

just…staggeringly dangerous stuff

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/h...