Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by jonathan friedman

ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 3h

if blue state governors and mayors aren't already thinking about the reliability of various police forces nominally under their control, they should start immediately

southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 3h

The situation in America is not great. www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 2h

“Our country has never been hotter.” 🤡

@financialtimes.com
www.ft.com/trump-tariffs

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jonathan friedman @jonathanfriedman.com · 9h

Strange that a ton of folks (not just on bsky) seem to think this is ok

Yashar Ali 🐘 @yasharali.bsky.social · 16h

Someone who used to work with Katie Porter sent me this clip from a train wreck interview with her and said “now imagine what she’s like when there aren’t cameras around.”

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Melanie D’Arrigo @darrigomelanie.bsky.social · 17h

I feel like this photo of masked, armed men pepper spraying a pastor protecting his community is going to be a defining picture of this moment in America for a long, long time.

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David Mack @davidmackau.bsky.social · 15h

the return of conversion therapy is incredibly depressing

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Peter Hamby @peterhamby.bsky.social · 14h

New for @puck.news:

Democrats won the first round of the shutdown messaging fight, and there’s a big reason why — they’re finally starting to understand the content game

puck.news/how-democrat...

How Democrats Finally Won the Internet

After years of churning out digital cringe, Democrats finally seem to have found a human message during the government shutdown, leveraging the left’s messy creator ecosystem to beat the Trump meme ma...

puck.news

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Jack Jenkins @jackjenkins.me · 17h

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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jonathan friedman @jonathanfriedman.com · 17h

This is such a strange framing for the story. Why are they comparing being against a new corporate headquarters to being against a new housing project?

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Walter Hickey @walthickey.bsky.social · 17h

this is only surprising if you cannot comprehend the difference between "pay Amazon $1.7 billion to open an office" and "build 15,000 housing units across 54 blocks of warehouses"

The Upshot @upshot.nytimes.com · 18h

Years ago, progressives defeated a plan to build headquarters for Amazon in Queens. Now a new kind of development is gaining their support. From NYT Metro:

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/n...

In Ashes of Amazon Fight, Tensions Emerge in Huge Bet on N.Y.C. Housing

www.nytimes.com

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jonathan friedman @jonathanfriedman.com · 18h

“One of our theories is that stories become notable when notable people are talking about them…”

Liked this bit from Casey’s intro to this new curated links section of Platformer — speaks to the reality of what Twitter used to do back in the day

Casey Newton @caseynewton.bsky.social · 1d

In this edition we're also launching the Following feed, part of our new approach to curating links. Each day we're giving you three to five stories we're following, why we're following them, and what people are saying about them. Today we wrote about reactions to Sora

Zelda Williams, daughter of the late comedian Robin Williams, begged people in an Instagram story to stop sending her Sora videos of her dad. "You're not making art, you're making disgusting, over-processed hotdogs out of the lives of human beings, out of the history of art and music, and then shoving them down someone else's throat hoping they'll give you a little thumbs up and like it," she wrote. "Gross."

Meanwhile, what do average users want? Fewer content restrictions. We found App Store reviews reading “It’s so censored it’s not even fun,” and “the “safeguards in place prevent you from making anything worth watching,” among other complaints.

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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 20h

“We’ll tell our grandkids that we defeated fascism with six-dollar clickers”: how a group of community activists is tracking ICE’s movements in Los Angeles.

The Volunteers Tracking ICE in Los Angeles

How a small group of activists dubbed the “Peace Patrol” stymie the deployment of federal agents in California.

www.newyorker.com

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jonathan friedman @jonathanfriedman.com · 20h

“This all makes the Napster threat look like kindergarten.”

“The idea that Altman and OpenAI think they’re entitled to our hard work for their plagiarism machine is infuriating.”

Great feedback section re: AI/Sora in @mattbelloni.bsky.social’s latest dispatch

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jonathan friedman @jonathanfriedman.com · 20h

“The big picture: Workers on H-1B visas in the sciences and tech generally increase productivity and wages for native-born Americans, studies have found.

Losing them is expected be a hit to economic growth and lead to a ‘brain drain.’”

Trump's H-1B visa bombshell: What comes next

Small businesses and startups say the changes will effectively block them from hiring foreign talent.

www.axios.com

jonathan friedman @jonathanfriedman.com · 20h

“How does one mourn and commemorate an atrocity against your people in the midst of an atrocity done to another people in your name?”

The Zionist consensus among US Jews has collapsed. Something new is emerging | Shaul Magid

Two years after the 7 October massacre and the onset of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, American Jewry has been profoundly transformed

www.theguardian.com

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tony romm @tonyromm.bsky.social · 21h

NEW: The White House has threatened mass layoffs if the government shutdown continues, saying they have the power and must protect vital services.

But such cuts may be unlawful and unnecessary, budget experts, legal scholars and unions say

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/07/u...

Mass Layoffs Trump Is Threatening in Shutdown Fight May Be Illegal

www.nytimes.com

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jonathan friedman @jonathanfriedman.com · 20h

Hallelujah

9to5Mac @9to5mac.com · 1d

iPadOS 26.1 beta 2 restores Slide Over multitasking back to iPad

Apple released iPadOS 26.1 beta 2 to developers today, and it comes with a major returning feature: Slide Over multitasking is back on the iPad. Here’s how it works. more…

9to5mac.com

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James Fallows @jfallows.bsky.social · 1d

Draw on your own experience:

Is there any situation you've ever been part of, with you or anyone else in the hot seat, in which a person who does NOT have something to hide, reacts the way Bondi does?

I've been on trial juries that concluded "we can't trust that witness," after evasions like this

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

NOTABLE -- Pam Bondi refuses to answer direct questions about if the FBI has incriminating photos of Trump with half-naked young women, but instead deflects from them by attacking Sen. Whitehouse

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Josh Sternberg @joshsternberg.com · 1d

New survey reports from the retail frontlines of the impact of Trump's tariffs:

-76% report more out-of-stocks or empty shelves
-47% say leadership has told them to expect delays or reduced inventory
-26% have been told to reduce their workforces or cut hours.

www.retailbrew.com/stories/2025...

More than 3 in 4 store managers report more empty shelves since tariffs hit

Half have reduced staff in the last six months, per GreyOrange.

www.retailbrew.com

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ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 1d

more and more I am convinced a good share of why Trump 2 is so much worse than before is because of what Elon did to Twitter. it's like those group chats where people gassed themselves up to join ISIS, scaled up a millionfold

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southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 1d

I’m a career prosecutor who took a $25,000 check from an affiliated entity of Donald Trump’s while investigating Trump University and later left my lobbying firm to become Donald Trump’s personal impeachment lawyer, White House aide, and Attorney General. So don’t you DARE question my integrity.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 1d

Bondi to Blumenthal: "You lied. How dare you? I'm a career prosecutor. Don't you ever challenge my integrity. Do not question my ability to be fair and impartial."

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Matt Zoller Seitz @mattzollerseitz.bsky.social · 1d

"A rave of a movie that acts as its own hallucinogen, best experienced on a huge screen with a state-of-the art sound system. If they’d played it again right after I saw it for the first time, I would have gladly stayed in my seat." My **** review of TRON: Ares. www.rogerebert.com/reviews/tron...

TRON: Ares movie review & film summary (2025) | Roger Ebert

“TRON: Ares” is spectacularly designed, swiftly paced, thoughtfully written, and directed within an inch of its neon-hued life.

www.rogerebert.com

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Olivia Messer @oliviamesser.bsky.social · 1d

I kind of can’t believe this Bari Weiss quote is even real, and yet www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/b...

“I know that there are some people in this room who don’t believe that my marriage should have been legal … and that’s ok. Because we’re all Americans who want lower taxes.”

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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 1d

“.. Lower population growth as the president presses ahead with mass deportations will knock between 0.5 and one percentage points off America’s GDP growth between mid-2025 and mid-2026, according to S&P Global Ratings.”

@telegraphnews.bsky.social
www.telegraph.co.uk/business/202...

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Oliver Darcy @oliverdarcy.bsky.social · 1d

Inside CBS News, there is a mood of wary resignation as the long-awaited Bari Weiss era begins. “Trepidation,” in the words of one staffer.

Meanwhile, David Ellison's news philosophy is showing major cracks under scrutiny.

My full report in @status.news: www.status.news/p/bari-weiss...

Weiss and Shine

The Bari Weiss era has begun at CBS News, and David Ellison’s push to reshape the storied network has staffers holding their breath about the future of the outlet—especially as the mogul's talking poi...

www.status.news

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jonathan friedman @jonathanfriedman.com · 1d

“…thousands of federal agents once tasked with investigating drug smuggling, sexual exploitation and organized crime have been redirected to immigration enforcement…”

Daniel Michael Hernandez @longdrivesouth.bsky.social · 1d

WSJ: Actual crime-stopping by feds is dropping for the spectacle-first brown-people purge, former agents say.

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

www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Trump’s Immigration Push Diverts U.S. Agents From Drug, Money and Sex-Crime Cases

Federal investigators are resigning, and morale is low, as they juggle complex cases and detain migrants.

www.wsj.com

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