Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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Matthew Lewis is ready for progressive federalism @mateosfo.bsky.social · 3h

At this stage, any pundit or Democratic consultant who says there's no chance GOP tries to shut down elections is gaslighting you. These same people told us Project 2025 was a joke.

Assume things will be much worse than today, and if we're lucky, we'll only end up with the 3rd or 4th worst outcome.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 9h

Pritzker: "He wants to militarize major cities because he wants us to get used to the idea of troops on the streets. I believe he's gonna post people outside of polling places and if he needs to in order to control those elections, he'll assume control of the ballot boxes & count the votes himself"

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Karoli @karoli.bsky.social · 7h

See how he always calls Black Dems "low IQ"?

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 7h

Trump: "They've had hundreds of people shot and then a guy like Pritzker or this low IQ mayor gets up -- the people are all against him. Beautiful Black women are wearing a MAGA hat last night on TV. And they said, 'We don't care who comes, just stop the crime.' They don't care if it's military."

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The Daily Beast @thedailybeast.bsky.social · 14h

Close-up photos have revealed the prepared list of put-downs that Pam Bondi brought to use against senators during her Epstein hearing.

Bondi Accidentally Reveals Her Burn Book for Fiery Epstein Hearing

The attorney general chose to lash out rather than answer questions from lawmakers about the late pedophile.

trib.al

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Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social · 10h

Virginia State Senate Dems just brought down fire and fury regarding the “Compact,” notifying the President and Rector that UVA would lose ALL STATE APPROPRIATIONS if it signs and cedes the University to “federal political control.” Notably, their letter directly restates points made here by @siva.

Siva @sivav.bsky.social · 12h

The “compact” for higher ed is an unserious document written by unserious people from a position of spectacular ignorance. No one should take it seriously. Sadly, my bosses are taking it seriously.

newrepublic.com/article/2013...

Why This Essay Could Cause the University of Virginia to Shut Down

How Linda McMahon’s latest “compact” would do deep and permanent harm to American higher education

newrepublic.com

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David Fedman @dfeds.bsky.social · 7h

So much gold to be mined from the diary of Harada Ryōji 原田良次, a maintenance tech in a Chiba-based aerial interception unit tasked with defending Tokyo's skies

His entries are scribbled in the margins of a book 👇 - in part due to paper shortages, in part to keep record on the sly

A few stand-outs:

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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 8h

A Shortlist of Federal Data the Trump Administration Has Tampered With or Destroyed talkingpointsmemo.com/news/a-short...

A Shortlist of Federal Data the Trump Administration Has Tampered With or Destroyed

The scale and scope of federal data and statistics that have been...

talkingpointsmemo.com

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𝕍∃, Cyber closed shell syndrome relief fund coordinator @vortexegg.com · 8h

In his book Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes, Jaques Ellul predicted that this would be the necessary outcome of the development of increasingly technicized propaganda in a technological society; an arms race eventually converting all forms of politics into the production of propaganda

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𝕍∃, Cyber closed shell syndrome relief fund coordinator @vortexegg.com · 8h

Propaganda in service of the powerful is so lucrative that everyone from social media influencers to the legacy media to the large tech companies want a piece of the action. All the nation’s leaders have either been hired from or converted into propagandists as the first-order way of doing politics

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Brian Bergstrom @brianbergstrom.bsky.social · 8h

It's apparently World Octopus Day, which reminds me of Bashō and his poem about octopuses staring up at the moon from the pots they unwittingly mistook for homes, as well as something I wrote a while back about "shiori" [撓] / "tenderness" in his poetry

ON POETRY AND 'TENDERNESS'—
I was teaching Basho, the haiku master, last class, and one of the things he does is write about poetry, and he says haiku should possess three qualities: sabi (loneliness), shiori (tenderness), and hosomi (slenderness).
They're all pretty vague, of course, but loneliness is something like the ironies that remind one of the transience of life (his example is old men with white hair acting as "flower guards" beneath cherry blossoms, which are associated with youth and freshness), and "slenderness" is basically what we would call "restraint" these days -- prizing simplicity in phrasing over needless decoration or pretty language/allusion.
But "tenderness" is so hard to teach, and hard for students to understand. It's a quality that basically (I think?) is a reaction to the corrosive ironies and cleverness of "low" poetry of the time that ridiculed stock characters or known figures in a pursuit of showing off. Basho, at least in my interpretation, wanted to reject the pretensions of "high" poetry -- the kind that prized the clever allusion built on extensive education in classical forms -- while keeping its seriousness of purpose and philisophical depth; he also wanted to reject the empty cleverness and spiritual poverty of "low" poetry while keeping its unembarassed willingness to treat humble, everyday, or even vulgar subjects (one of his more famous poems describes a horse peeing near where he's trying to sleep), and use of plain, unforced language. I think that's what "tenderness" as a poetic quality means -- an embrace of the subject of the poem without critical or other kinds of distance, to be "tender" toward it, a respect for the thing being described/evoked that becomes an obligation to evoke it as fully and directly as possible (which is where the other principles come in).
As I was (probably confusingly) trying to talk about this in class, I realized that this becomes, in modernity/modernism, "objectivity" as a grounding of r…

Anyway, here are my own translations of some of his poems; unlike many translators, I tried to keep the 5/7/5 meter even in English [hence, the technically incorrect use of "ocotopi"; so sue me, grammar nerds]:
---
O, the ancient pond!
A frog jumps into its depths:
The sound of water
---
Fishermen’s faces.
At first light, what do I see?
White poppy flowers.
---
Suma’s fishermen.
What cries from their arrowpoints?
Flying nightingales.
Nightingales flying
disappear into the distance:
A single island
At Suma temple
Listen to the ancient flutes
Beneath the trees’ shade
---
Octopi in pots
Dream unattainable dreams
‘neath the summer moon.
---
The moon is there, but
there’s a feeling of absence.
Summer in Suma.
I can see the moon
yet, something is still missing.
Summer in Suma.
---
Hair shaven and shed
On Kurokami mountain –
Old robes changed for new.*
*[by his companion on The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Sora, who took the tonsure at the beginning of the journey]
For a little while
I watch the waterfall’s spray.
My first summer’s rite.
---
How cruel it seems!
Beneath this warrior’s helmet:
Only a cricket.
---
Whiter than the white
stones of Stone Mountain Temple
blows the autumn wind.

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Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 8h

This powerful JB Pritzker response to Trump's lawless threats is another reminder of what I tried to argue this morning: Pritzker understands Stephen Miller's theory of this moment, and he's responding accordingly:

newrepublic.com/article/2014...

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David Hull 胡大衛 @hushuo.bsky.social · 11h

The more I look at this (and I've watched it a lot), the more I really respect the Dinosaur's groove.

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 16h

#WarRavagedPortland

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Christopher Webb @cwebbonline.com · 22h

Stephen Miller said the quiet part out loud. Trump has “plenary authority,” then suddenly went silent. Their plan wasn’t to be public yet. Clearly, someone hit the panic button in his earpiece.

It gets weirder: CNN uploaded the interview with the “plenary authority” comment edited out.
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Anthony Michael Kreis @anthonymkreis.bsky.social · 1d

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Anne Caprara @annecaprara.bsky.social · 14h

Greg has correctly articulated our theory of the case - and accurately laid out the one battleground on which Governors and other electeds can successfully fight the feds, other than the courts (and there is delicate strategy there as well that I’m not sure everyone fully appreciates.)

Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 15h

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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Janet Hill @saskajanet.bsky.social · 1d

Look at her go!
#invertebrates 🌿

Screen shot of Project Monarch app map of progress of a monarch butterfly from southern Ontario to Oklahoma.

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Chris Brockett @chrisbrockett.bsky.social · 1d

Who needs AI to generate propaganda when Fox News can create it for you with an artisanal touch for verisimilitude?

The Frito Bandito @thefritobanditoo.bsky.social · 2d

Guys, every person you see on Fox News in a mask is just Robert O'Neill, retired Navy Seal and occasional Fox News contributor. He's the former Antifa, former Gazan, former gang member. His eyes are very unique.

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Jason Linkins @dceiver.bsky.social · 1d

love that we had a whole national reckoning over the media's coverage of Biden's advanced age and none of the scolds who High Horsed us can be bothered to spend even a minute reflecting on the fact that Trump has basically become Mr. Burns in the "Spruce Moose" episode of THE SIMPSONS

CNN @cnn.com · 1d

The Trump administration has ordered FBI employees in Washington, DC, to immediately search their workstations and digital media for any records pertaining to the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, a law enforcement source told CNN.

FBI employees ordered to immediately search for records related to Amelia Earhart, source says | CNN Politics

The Trump administration has ordered FBI employees in Washington, DC, to immediately search their workstations and digital media for any records pertaining to the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, a la...

www.cnn.com

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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 1d

Picture here is from 1992. LA riots. Ive seen this called bad news judgment. In any real journalism outfit this is more like a firing offense. I basically say such things. Beyond belief.

CNN @cnn.com · 1d

"President Donald Trump and his top aides are using the word 'insurrection' more frequently to describe anti-ICE protests in places like Portland," writes Zachary B. Wolf. https://cnn.it/4pWYmzr

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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 1d

Never before in American history has one state's military force been deployed in another state over its objection.

I say never because the Civil War involved states whose governments legally ceased to exist, their offices vacated by constructive resignation, with no legitimate governors to object.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d

thank you brett kavanaugh!

Daniel Knowles @dlknowles.bsky.social · 1d

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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Chris Brockett @chrisbrockett.bsky.social · 1d

It's around now that one begins to wonder whether Congress might never resume sessions. If Trump can do this, then he has no need for Congress. He has a money stream from tariffs and he can rule by executive order. I think this is considered a dictatorship.

George Pearkes @peark.es · 1d

Well that's not how appropriations work at all

*WHITE HOUSE TO TRANSFER TARIFF REVENUE TO FUND WIC: LEAVITT

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Chris Brockett @chrisbrockett.bsky.social · 2d

This is an excellent read on some feelings that I suspect a lot of people in both academic and industrial research are experiencing right now, irrespective of their field.

PessoaBrain @pessoabrain.bsky.social · 2d

Michael X Cohen on why he left academia/neuroscience.
mikexcohen.substack.com/p/why-i-left...

Why I left academia and neuroscience

Don't worry, this isn't yet another story of rage-quitting.

mikexcohen.substack.com

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Quirin Press @quirinpress.bsky.social · 2d

🎉This week we celebrate the 6th 🎂 birthday release of our

❝Poems on Poetry❞

by John Timothy Wixted

quirinpress.com/ISBN/9781922...

Direct order this title in the next 7 days & get a 30% discount
from $69.89 ⤵️ $48.92USD [offer ends 14 Oct 25]

quirinpress.com/direct-order...
🍾Use code: OctPoP

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Jenny Cohn @jennycohn.bsky.social · 1d

“[M]ilitary lawyers & legal experts told Military.com the administration's firings of the Air Force, Army & Navy's top judge advocates…sets an alarming precedent for a crucial job in the military, all as…Trump has mused about using the military in unorthodox & potentially illegal ways.” 2/25/25…1/

'People Are Very Scared': Trump Administration Purge of JAG Officers Raises Legal, Ethical Fears

Military lawyers and legal experts told Military.com the administration's firings of the Air Force, Army and Navy's top judge advocates general politicizes and sets an alarming precedent for a crucial...

www.military.com

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Jenny Cohn @jennycohn.bsky.social · 1d

The CIA’s deputy director has “abruptly demoted” the CIA’s acting general counsel & installed himself in that role, thus taking “control of making legal judgments for the agency while continuing to help lead it…” (This follows Hegseth’s termination of top military legal officials in Feb.) 10/6/25 1/

C.I.A. Deputy Director Has Replaced Agency’s Top Legal Official With Himself

www.nytimes.com

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