Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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melissagaskill.bsky.social @melissagaskill.bsky.social · 10h

And it needs to be pointed out that Americans are buying this cocaine. No demand, no supply.

Sanho Tree @sanho.bsky.social · 11h

Approximately 8% of US cocaine comes through the eastern Caribbean (and virtually none of it involves fentanyl). Conversely, about 74% of US cocaine comes up the Pacific coast from Ecuador and Colombia. Trump’s objectives in Venezuela aren’t about drugs.

Why Blowing Up Venezuelan Boats Won’t Stop the Flow of Drugs (Gift Article)

President Trump says striking drug traffickers from Venezuela will prevent deadly drugs from reaching the United States. But the major smuggling routes are elsewhere.

www.nytimes.com

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elia ayoub 🌱 @ayoub.bsky.social · 10h

24h into the ‘ceasefire’, Israel bombed a residential building in Gaza.

bsky.app/profile/just...

Justin Salhani @justinsalhani.bsky.social · 10h

Israeli attacked a residential building in Gaza City and, according to Al Jazeera, killed and injured more than 70 civilians with most of them still under the rubble.

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elia ayoub 🌱 @ayoub.bsky.social · 11h

This is actually what is going to happen.

That’s already what’s happening in Lebanon. Israel kills regularly, violates the ceasefire agreement on an hourly basis.

It’s just not on the news anymore.

This is why pressure against Israel mustn’t just continue, but increase.

The Onion @theonion.com · 12h

Israel Agrees To Go Back To Killing Palestinians On Less Frequent Basis

CAIRO—As part of a historic ceasefire agreement with Hamas following two years of war, the Israeli government reportedly agreed Thursday to go back to killing Palestinians on a less frequent basis. “I...

theonion.com

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Ethan @strangebirds.bsky.social · 11h

oh I’m so sorry. Fergus! You are missed!

Ethan @strangebirds.bsky.social · 11h

Successful US farmers don’t grow or harvest anything.

🐸 Spooky Laminariales Fax Machine 📠 @kelpkelpkelp.bsky.social · 11h

So US taxpayers are buying Argentinian pesos so that Argentina can sell soybeans to China, and separately also paying US farmers bribe money to shut up about how Trump is to blame.

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🐸 Spooky Laminariales Fax Machine 📠 @kelpkelpkelp.bsky.social · 11h

So US taxpayers are buying Argentinian pesos so that Argentina can sell soybeans to China, and separately also paying US farmers bribe money to shut up about how Trump is to blame.

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Ethan @strangebirds.bsky.social · 15h

That would be awesome. I’m chuckling imagining his apoplectic rant.

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Ethan @strangebirds.bsky.social · 19h

I love it when a sublime dish is something pretty common but executed really well.

Cooks fist-pumping in the kitchen over how well the crab cakes or mashed potatoes or whatever turned out.

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Caleb Dume @thacalebdume.bsky.social · 19h

Child-exploitation cases are among those affected. Several current and former agents said investigations that require subpoenas, warrants or grand-jury testimony have been postponed or canceled outright.

Informant networks are also fraying. Building trust with sources inside drug gangs or child-trafficking rackets takes time in the field, investigators say—time they no longer have. In some cases, agents said that it has become more difficult to offer the visas that once kept informants inside the U.S. Some have resorted to asking informants to be extra careful, avoid incidents that could draw attention and to call them if they get caught up in a traffic stop.

The strategy of the Trump administration is to address crime through immigration enforcement, said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington.

"They think they can take care of drug trafficking, sex trafficking and child trafficking just by deporting people," Bier said.

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Mark Bray @mark-bray.bsky.social · 9d

I teach a history of antifascism course @ruhistorydept.bsky.social and figured I'd start an ongoing thread this semester to share some insights from course readings and recommend some great works on antifascism.

🧵

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E the soc @ethesoc.blacksky.app · 19h

Pretty much the moralization of whiteness and white supremacy through christian frameworks. Remember, white supremacy and whiteness existed as all forms of Christianity developed here. They are all affected by it in some form. Just need to critically examine how.

Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 20h

A White Christian nationalist pastor argued recently on a right-wing podcast that the Bible--specifically Deuteronomy 21, about how a father must bring his rebellious son to the town square to be stoned--justifies state violence against Black boys and young men.

www.theroot.com/why-this-whi...

Article from "The Root" by Asheea Smith. Published October 8, 2025

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Reconstructionist @unavaleable.bsky.social · 1d

YOURE FUCKING KIDDING ME

Stephen Totilo @stephentotilo.bsky.social · 1d

SCOOP: Last year, Ubisoft cancelled an Assassin's Creed game set during Reconstruction. Was to feature a Black Assassin who, among other things, fought the rise of the Klan

Sources: Leadership nixed it over concerns re: U.S. political climate, backlash to Yasuke

www.gamefile.news/p/scoop-ubis...

Scoop: Ubisoft cancelled a post-Civil War Assassin’s Creed last year

Company leadership deemed the project too controversial for the moment, sources tell Game File

www.gamefile.news

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Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 1d

JB Pritzker and Gavin Newsom are doing something new and important: They understand Stephen Miller's theory of fascist power politics, and they've developed a theory on how to combat it. More Dems need to reckon with Miller's understanding of the moment.

New from me:
newrepublic.com/article/2014...

Inside Stephen Miller’s Secret Plan to Normalize Trump’s Dictator Rule

He wants to supercharge searing civil tensions to get low-information voters to embrace their inner authoritarian. Exactly two Democrats appear to fully grasp this.

newrepublic.com

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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 1d

France asking for reparations from Haiti for losing their slaves is basically a moral monstrosity.

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Jack Jenkins @jackjenkins.me · 1d

Reporter's notebook: I actually began working on this story shortly after footage of the incident showed up last month.

But by the time I finally got ahold of folks, the story grew: 2 *other* faith leaders I spoke with *also* reported being shot w/pepper balls while protesting this ICE facility.

Jack Jenkins @jackjenkins.me · 2d

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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Coach Finstock @coachfinstock.bsky.social · 1d

There are groups of Antifa Mermen who come up to shore near the Navy Pier after midnight, vote illegally, and then disappear

Tom Hearden @followtheh.bsky.social · 1d

Chicago peeps let’s hear your gang names and colors

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Sophia Babai @swingingstorm.bsky.social · 1d

Eternally disturbed by the number of Democrats who seem to see “affirming everyone’s basic right to freedom and safety is just too radical” as a reasonable argument.

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Daniel Knowles @dlknowles.bsky.social · 2d

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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Walter Olson @walterolson.bsky.social · 1d

It's out at the Dispatch:

DHS Says Videotaping ICE Agents Is Illegal. Federal Courts Disagree.

Filming law enforcement serves important goals central to a free republic.

thedispatch.com

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Winifred Tylenol Spice Burton @authorwinifred.blacksky.app · 1d

Y'all's incredulity and inability to focus on root problems (I guess before a SCOTUS ruling Black people in South Shore were safe from life altering racial profiling) amounts to "Be re-enslaved without much fuss please, or else they'll start a war (on us too). Then we'll never see The Files!"

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Typewriter Skeleton @tpwrtrmnky.bsky.social · 1d

Oslo University Hospital caught using trans patients' journals for research purposes:
- Without the patients' consent to participate in research
- Affecting minors
- 1700 of them
- Taking highly sensitive information from said journals

This is a HUGE breach.

Anine Hartmann @aninehartmann.bsky.social · 2d

Tidligere i år meldte vi et forskningsprosjekt til redelighetsutvalget ved OUS og UiO.

Nå er forskerne felt for alvorlige brudd på forskningsetiske normer.

Oslo universitetssykehus felt for ulovlig forskning på transpersoner

Forskere ved Oslo universitetssykehus har forsket på transpersoner uten godkjenning. Nå er de felt for alvorlige brudd på forskningsetiske normer.

www.forskning.no

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Suzan the chalant goth @sillysyntax.bsky.social · 1d

"An English degree is a rip off" said by the people who are currently ripping everyone off. They don't want you to be literate, to understand the context, the references or the rhetoric they are using to scam you.

A rip off for THEM. If you can read, write and parse meaning, you're harder to fool.

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Andy @andyoregon.bsky.social · 3d

Jess Waters recycling the same guy over and over to represent “former” different enemies

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Ethan @strangebirds.bsky.social · 3d

I feel that if the arc of the universe bends towards justice there is only one, hilarious, first victim to a Starlink reentry.

Ewamore, Quoth the Raven @ewacat.bsky.social · 3d

Can you imagine being the first person killed by one of Elon's goddamn satellites

David Roberts @volts.wtf · 4d

"There are currently one to two Starlink satellites falling back to Earth every day ... Soon, McDowell told us, there will be up to 5 satellite reentries per day." 😳

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Dr. Johnathan Flowers, Blade Wielding Bisexual (Lordean arc) @shengokai.blacksky.app · Dec 13

Every digital space is ontologically unsafe because of the organization of the digital world by colonialism and whiteness. Every. Single. One.

Liberalism of the kind you're espousing, and the kind that user-driven moderation evangelists seem to subscribe to, misses this fundamental fact.

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