Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by George A. LaBonty

Jacob Geller @jacobgeller.com · 9h

Just had a call with Lyle where we talked about possible edits to his essay, while at any time, North Carolina could decide to throw him in a gas chamber. How is it possible to create a system this cruel.

1 15 470

Reposted by George A. LaBonty

Jacob Geller @jacobgeller.com · 9h

Due to a new bill signed by NC Governor Josh Stein (a Democrat), the moratorium on our state's death penalties has been ended and may now proceed via *any* method. Welcome back, barbarity.

Jacob Geller @jacobgeller.com · 19d

In the book, my essay “The False Evolution of Execution Methods” will be accompanied by a new essay by Lyle May. May interrogates capital punishment from his singular perspective; he has been incarcerated on North Carolina’s death row for over twenty years.

Jacob Geller @jacobgeller.com · 22d

THEY LET ME WRITE ANOTHER BOOK

"You’re Not Overthinking It" is available for pre-order right now. It collects the most meaningful essays of my career alongside hundreds of new annotations on each piece’s creation, background, and legacy. Far more details below: www.lostincult.co.uk/overthinking

4 91 720

George A. LaBonty @galabonty.bsky.social · 10h

is more like "people *can* afford kids but would rather do something else with their money."
As to what you do about that, I agree, since we all need kids to take care of us in the retirement homes, we would ideally like to tax incentivize it so that it is at least economically net neutral

1

George A. LaBonty @galabonty.bsky.social · 10h

Oh I see im following your argument now and I think we agree. My point at the beginning is about the naive framing of the issue you encounter online so much "people dont have kids because they don't make enough money" when the actual phenomenon...

1 1

George A. LaBonty @galabonty.bsky.social · 10h

The $150k household could have a kid or even 2, take a 50% hit to their income with one parent becoming a full time stay at home, and still be well above the national median income, and way above the standard of living of the $10k household with or without kids

1

George A. LaBonty @galabonty.bsky.social · 10h

But in a more literal sense, in terms of a hit to a percentage of your household income, a 50% decline in household income plus ~$250k lifetime childhood expenses hurts more for a $10k income household (the bracket with the highest fertility rate) than for a $150k income household (lowest bracket)

1

George A. LaBonty @galabonty.bsky.social · 10h

I like the opportunity cost framing: in some sense its "more expensive" for a corporate lawyer to move to part time or stay at home status than for a barista to make the same transition in the sense that the corporate lawyer is taking a bigger pay cut

1 2

George A. LaBonty @galabonty.bsky.social · 11h

*with the exception of a small cohort of ultra rich freaks like elon who have a million kids. But at scale, generally fertility declines with income, both within the United states and globally. If cost of kids was the main downward driver of fertility, surely the opposite case would hold?

1 3

George A. LaBonty @galabonty.bsky.social · 11h

Its weird to me how common the take that "people arent having kids because its too expensive" is, because while it sounds superficially plausible (raising kids is expensive) it isnt supported by the data really at all. birthrates go down with income level, not up.*

William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 11h

I think the thing with the debate about ‘Pro-Natalism’ is that everyone kind of dances around saying explicitly is that revealed preferences show lots of people think having kids of sort of sucks for the parent but is clearly necessary for society.

1 1 7

Reposted by George A. LaBonty

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.

30 270 1.1K

Reposted by George A. LaBonty

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

92 2K 7.4K

Reposted by George A. LaBonty

L @banalplay.bsky.social · 1d

A bill that basically allows teachers to acknowledge that trans people exist is too spicy for this nazi fluffer

Republicans latched onto the legislation as an example of "gender ideology" at work in state government, with the Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones (R) demanding Newsom veto it.
The bill promotes the "theory that reproductive anatomy does not necessarily determine a person's gender," Jones wrote in a message to Newsom.
"For third grade students the framework states,"
'When
providing instruction on sexual and reproductive organs, teachers can introduce the concept that gender does not always match the sexual and reproductive organs described," Jones said.
"Teaching controversial gender theories to students as young as eight or nine years old is not a practice that most Californians support, nor want to see happening in our schools."

21 260 840

George A. LaBonty @galabonty.bsky.social · 4d

Imagine a gsc magos reading theory at you in maoist standard low gothic

1

George A. LaBonty @galabonty.bsky.social · 4d

Species 8472 is so transcendently woke it doesnt even register as woke to the other wokes. They dont even have a frame of reference for what 8472 is waking up against

2

Reposted by George A. LaBonty

James Myall @jamesxmyall.bsky.social · 5d

So much to mourn here. ICE shot and killed a single father just after he has dropped his two kids off at daycare. Their justification for stopping him was traffic violations form 12 years ago. Their justification for shooting him was that he was driving away.

A completely needless tragedy.

David Bier @davidjbier.bsky.social · 7d

ICE lied about the person it shot, claiming he was a "criminal," but NBC finds that he had no criminal history whatsoever. Not even traffic tickets in 12 years! It also lied about the extent of the injuries to its agents....

14 580 1.2K

Reposted by George A. LaBonty

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 5d

Justice Jackson is obviously correct. SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE are now illegally going to have their status terminated early — as every court other than the Supreme Court has found so far.

Not a single word of justification from the Justices in the majority to justify this. NONE. Not one.

Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 5d

Sotomayor and Kagan would deny the application.

Jackson, alone, writes, accusing the majority of "privileging the bald assertion of unconstrained executive power over countless families’ pleas for the stability our Government has promised them."

Our lower court colleagues have already chosen the obvi-ous—i.e., least disruptive and most humane-answer to that question.? So, this stay application presents us with an antecedent decision: whether the Government's interest in terminating TPS right now is so urgent that this Court, rather than the able judges currently exercising jurisdiction over the matter, should be the one to decide those individuals' interim fate. See Noem v. Doe, 605 U.S. .
(2025) (JACKSON, J., dissenting from grant of application for stay) (slip op., at 7-8); see also Magnum Import Co. v.
Coty, 262 U. S. 159, 164 (1923) (explaining that "this Court requires an extraordinary showing" before it will override the stay decision of a lower court, rendered "with a much fuller knowledge [of the case] than we can have"). Only if the Government demonstrates such a time-sensitive need should we even consider vetoing the lower courts' unanimous judgment about the most equitable interim status.
The Government has made no such showing. Yet, for the second time in this same case, the Court grants it the

JACKSON, J., dissenting
extraordinary relief it seeks. We once again eschew re-straint—ignoring the need for exigency or any other prudent threshold limitation on the exercise of our discretion— and wordlessly override the considered judgments of our colleagues. We once again use our equitable power (but not our opinion-writing capacity) to allow this Administration to disrupt as many lives as possible, as quickly as possible.
I view today's decision as yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket. This Court should have stayed its hand.
Having opted instead to join the fray, the Court plainly misjudges the irreparable harm and balance-of-the-equities factors by privileging the bald assertion of unconstrained executive power over countless families' pleas for the stability our Government has promised them. Because, re-spectfully, I cannot abide our repeated, gratuitous, and harmful interference with cases pending in the lower courts while lives hang in the balance, I dissent.

19 240 620

Reposted by George A. LaBonty

Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 6d

You can't raid and arrest everyone in an entire apartment building, or even legitimately get a warrant to do that, any more than you could for a whole neighborhood. That would be a general warrant. This is the most specific core the-British-did-it-to-us thing the Fourth Amendment is written to ban.

The TRiiBE @thetriibe.com · 8d

NEW — An estimated 40 people were taken by federal agents in an overnight raid in South Shore, a predominantly-Black neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side.

A couple who live nearby said they were shocked to see the enormous militarized raid in their community.

thetriibe.com/2025/09/feds...

Feds detain dozens of immigrants in 'massive' South Shore apartment building raid in Chicago • The TRiiBE

An estimated 40 people were taken by federal agents in the course of the overnight raid in the predominately-Black neighborhood.

thetriibe.com

110 1.7K 4.6K

Reposted by George A. LaBonty

Parker Butler @parkerbutler.bsky.social · 6d

Last year, CNN ran a “fact check” of Kamala HQ that claimed we were lying for saying Trump’s plan is Project 2025.

Now Trump is outright admitting it’s his plan.

Legacy media failed the country.

210 2.5K 8.1K

Reposted by George A. LaBonty

shaun @shaunvids.bsky.social · 6d

your core users are people who have already demonstrated a willingness to abandon a more popular social media site for another, in the most part for disliking the politics of the people who run it. write this on a big whiteboard somewhere in the office

22 1.1K 5.7K

Reposted by George A. LaBonty

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 6d

Your occasional reminder that Russ Vought, who is claiming the right to fire civil servants for whatever reason he sees it, once refused to quit a political appointment position even after Trump had lost.

russ vought saying "no, its a three year term" when Biden asks for his resignation on the naval academy visitors board

77 1.3K 4.1K

George A. LaBonty @galabonty.bsky.social · 6d

Someone could make a lot of money inventing "protestantism but with Latin mass" since thats clearly what all the trads crave

1 4

Reposted by George A. LaBonty

Zohran Kwame Mamdani @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · 7d

In a city of world-class artists and production crew hunting for the next gig, Andrew Cuomo made a TV ad the same way he wrote his housing policy: with AI.

Then again, maybe a fake Cuomo is better than the real one?

An AI generated image of Andrew Cuomo driving a train.

An AI generated image of Andrew Cuomo working on the outside of a building.

An AI generated image of Andrew Cuomo on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

160 1.3K 7.2K

Reposted by George A. LaBonty

Joshua J. Friedman @joshuajfriedman.com · 7d

One of my favorite anecdotes from THE PREHISTORY OF THE FAR SIDE: "That doesn't sound like the Jane Goodall we know."

A few days after this cartoon was published, my syndicate received a very indignant letter from someone representing the Jane Goodall Institute.
Not only did my syndicate and I both get read the Riot Act, there was a vague implication that litigation over this cartoon might be around the corner.
I was horrified. Not so much from a fear of being sued (I just couldn't see how this cartoon could be construed as anything but silly, but because of my deep respect for Jane Goodall and her well-known contributions to pri-matology. The last thing in the world I would have intentionally done was offend Dr. Goodall in any way.
Before I had a chance to write my apology, another complication arose.
The National Geographic Society contacted my syndicate and expressed a

desire to reprint the cartoon in a special centennial issue of their magazine. My editor, aware of what had just occurred, declined, explaining why.
Apparently, whoever it was that sent the inquiry from National Geographic was shocked. They told my editor that "that doesn't sound like the Jane Goodall we know." They did some checking themselves, and an interesting fact was eventually discovered: Jane Goodall loved the cartoon. Furthermore, she was totally unaware that any of this "stuff" was going on. Some phone calls were made, and the cartoon was not only reprinted in the centennial issue of National Geographic, but was also used by her Institute on a T-shirt for fund-raising purposes.
I've since had an opportunity to visit Dr. Goodall at her research facility in Gombe. It's a wonderful place (sort of like right out of National Geographic).
"To refer to Dr. Goodall as a tramp is inexcusable even by a self-described 'loony' as Larson. The cartoon was incredibly offensive and in such poor taste that readers might well question the editorial judgment of running such an atrocity in a newspaper that reputes to be supplying news to persons with a better than average intelligence. The cartoon and its message were absolutely stupid." —Excerpt from the above-mentioned letter that started the ruckus

28 2.2K 6.4K

Reposted by George A. LaBonty

emptywheel @emptywheel.bsky.social · 7d

This is a VERY well crafted lawsuit.
1) Plaintiff is natural born.
2) He was detained 2X in a fast-growing part of Alabama, not in a city that Brett Kavanaugh could be easily duped into believing was all migrants.
3) Unwarranted detentions were on private property.
4) He showed Real ID both times.

Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney.bsky.social · 7d

JUST IN: A U.S. citizen from Alabama who has been detained twice by ICE while working at a construction site, has filed a class action suit claiming ICE's broad warrantless arrest powers violate the constitution. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

120 3.1K 10K

George A. LaBonty @galabonty.bsky.social · 7d

A lot of us who live on the computer/in wealthy nations have the ability to pick which version of reality we adopt purely as an aesthetic choice, like a sports team affiliation, but there are domains where the hard facts of reality still dominate and cannot be put aside