Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Dr Nick Dickinson

mady castigan✨ 🏳️‍⚧️ @madycast.com · 1d

He hasn't signed the other bills yet, but he still has days to do so
This headline is misleading for not mentioning that.

The gender education veto is bad, but far from the most important trans rights bill on his desk.

There's still time to contact Newsom for the rest!

www.gov.ca.gov/contact/

13 310 500

Dr Nick Dickinson @nickdickinson.bsky.social · 7h

If anyone is a bit lost on the tech aspects of the Blacksky discussion, this is a really useful explainer plus.flux.community/p/banning-co...

Banning controversy reveals Bluesky’s federation isn’t there yet

Bluesky’s protocol is so complicated that not even the biggest alternative network has figured out how to become independent

plus.flux.community

Dr Nick Dickinson @nickdickinson.bsky.social · 1d

Having four parties within 10pts of each other and no one over 30% is a recipe for an almost completely random vote-to-seat conversion. Any majority government that managed to emerge will be the least legitimate in history since the 1918 RPA.

2 9

Dr Nick Dickinson @nickdickinson.bsky.social · 1d

Don't mind sounding like a broken record here.

This will be a constitutional disaster if it persists into 2028/9 under FPTP.

YouGov @yougov.co.uk · 1d

Latest YouGov Westminster voting intention (5-6 October 2025)

Reform UK: 27% (-2 from 28-29 Sept)
Labour: 20% (-2)
Conservatives: 17% (+1)
Lib Dems: 17% (+2)
Greens: 12% (+1)
SNP: 4% (+1)

yougov.co.uk/topics/polit...

1 5 10

Dr Nick Dickinson @nickdickinson.bsky.social · 2d

'Big bang' reforms to politics are mostly overrated but, alongside PR, well funded German-style party research foundations would be genuinely transformational. I don't expect it to ever happen.

Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 2d

Just as the level of 'the basic quality of what they produce', not on a 'do I agree with this?' basis the Tory party is coming out with stuff far beneath the quality of what the Lib Dems 2019-24 managed when their 'costing process' was 'one bright guy called JJ'. Where does the Short money GO?

David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 2d

The Tory Party has gone mad..

Dr Nick Dickinson @nickdickinson.bsky.social · 2d

I’m confused, isn’t it a good thing getting all that plant oestrogen out of the food supply that’s been turning everyone gay or whatever

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 2d

Hassett: "China has stopped buying US soybeans. The silos are full and there are soybeans sitting on the ground w/tarps over them. That's unacceptable to POTUS. We're calling up our soybean customers around the world as part of our trade negotiations & we'll strong policies to support our farmers"

1 5

Dr Nick Dickinson @nickdickinson.bsky.social · 2d

The party of Lincoln, only just the bits where he overrode the constitution and without a good reason this time

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 2d

i guess someone told Miller before bed

6h
There is no legal distinction between a state volunteering guardsmen to guard the border and volunteering guardsmen to guard a federal immigration facility.

Either we have a federal government, a supremacy clause, and a nation, or we don’t.

2 3

Dr Nick Dickinson @nickdickinson.bsky.social · 2d

For one thing they could just fire the entire cabinet the second they tried it.

Dr Nick Dickinson @nickdickinson.bsky.social · 2d

Neither of those procedures works that way though. Impeachment is generally understood to be for specific unconstitutional or illegal acts, and the 25th covers incapacity in the sense of unconsciousness or loss of everyday function. It has extremely questionable utility if a President contested it.

Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 3d

Every Trump speech now produces approximately two dozen 30-second clips peppering the feed that each alone should trigger impeachment or 25th amendment proceedings and are indistinguishable from what your worst uncle would produce if he had any idea how to make ai-generated videos

1

Dr Nick Dickinson @nickdickinson.bsky.social · 3d

1 2

Dr Nick Dickinson @nickdickinson.bsky.social · 4d

This saga such an odd mix of 2000s policy and old media headlines that HIGNFY columnists remember and 2020s wild internet conspiracy theories.

Zoë Crowther @zoecrowther.bsky.social · 4d

Oh my god.

Have I Got News For You just referred to this completely false claim as a fact!!

1

Dr Nick Dickinson @nickdickinson.bsky.social · 4d

Put it down to the weird affinity for British stuff I guess. Maybe we’ll get a less depressing song out of it

Dr Nick Dickinson @nickdickinson.bsky.social · 4d

The first part of this is absolutely not true and it’s why people do it

Jay 🦋 @jay.bsky.team · 5d

Harassing the mods into banning someone has never worked. And harassing people in general has never changed their mind.

1 3

Dr Nick Dickinson @nickdickinson.bsky.social · 4d

The US is so cheated by primarily getting televised justice and not the unique interpretative brilliance of courtroom illustrations.

Robert Evans (the Only Robert Evans) @iwriteok.bsky.social · 4d

this is hardly the most important piece of Diddy news today but it's pretty funny that the court sketch artist drew the Bailiff's badge as a circle A anarchist symbol

Sketch of Diddy finding out he'd been sentenced to more than 4 years in prison. Behind him is a bailiff with a circle A instead of a badge on his chest.

Dr Nick Dickinson @nickdickinson.bsky.social · 4d

And regardless her real problem is this is third party stuff. You only heat anything about the Conservatives when she says something stupid

3

Dr Nick Dickinson @nickdickinson.bsky.social · 4d

And regardless her real problem is this is third party stuff. You only heat anything about the Conservatives when she says something stupid.

Jane @localnotail.bsky.social · 5d

no excuse for being this bad

Dr Nick Dickinson @nickdickinson.bsky.social · 5d

Reminder that California is the largest economy in the United States, with a $4.048 trillion gross state product as of 2024. It is the largest sub-national economy in the world and ahead of Japan if it was an independent state.

Anil Kalhan @akalhan.bsky.social · 5d

Newsom: "If any California university signs this radical agreement, they’ll lose billions in state funding – including Cal Grants – instantly. California will not bankroll schools that sell out their students, professors, researchers, and surrender academic freedom"

California vows to ‘instantly’ cut funding to universities that cave to Trump ‘compact’

Governor Gavin Newsom urges schools not to sign ‘radical agreement’ to cuts to departments, students and speech

www.theguardian.com

4 18

Reposted by Dr Nick Dickinson

Sarcophagus Gibbs @sararoseg.bsky.social · 6d

You don’t actually have to both sides this. The Jewish community in the UK is not the Israeli government. You can just condemn the murder of two British Jews killed in their place of worship and you don’t have to say a single other thing.

6 940 3.6K

Dr Nick Dickinson @nickdickinson.bsky.social · 8d

There’s a good reason generals and judges don’t cheer for politicians in a democracy

Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1.bsky.social · 8d

Trump opens with a threat to the generals:

"I've never walked into a room so silent … Have a good time. And if you want to applaud, you applaud ... If you don't like what I'm saying, you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank, there goes your future. but you just feel nice and loose."

2

Dr Nick Dickinson @nickdickinson.bsky.social · 9d

For some groups it would also be a second betrayal. Hong Kongers already lost one country on the backs of broken British promises and they’re now being threatened with losing another.

Ian Dunt @iandunt.bsky.social · 9d

There is a key moral distinction between immigration policy on new arrivals, no matter how draconian, and on people who have already been granted status, on set conditions. It is about being a country that keeps its word. If we're not that, we might as well fucking give up now.

1 4

Reposted by Dr Nick Dickinson

Ian Dunt @iandunt.bsky.social · 9d

If she does this, the gap between her policy and Farage's will narrow considerably. Retrospective legislation is the choice of tinpot dictators and intellectual vegetables. It means no-one could take Britain's word seriously.

The i Paper @theipaper.com · 9d

The Home Secretary is understood to be considering applying the policy to deal with concerns about the so-called ‘Boriswave'.

Read more: trib.al/WewVODg

58 270 940

Dr Nick Dickinson @nickdickinson.bsky.social · 9d

Another thing on this: it's right to say Reform have activated more non-voters since 2024 than others, but also that Reform are about as uninteresting to the majority of the politically disengaged as any other party. There's no surge of politicisation of the 'left out' going on here.

2

Dr Nick Dickinson @nickdickinson.bsky.social · 9d

In other words we have all become late 20th century Trotskyists. This may explain a few things

Robin Wilde @robinwilde.me · Aug 28

All discourse now involves groups of degree-holding middle class people accusing one another of being middle class and holding degrees. I don't make the rules.

1

Dr Nick Dickinson @nickdickinson.bsky.social · 9d

Half remembering a two decade old story about Peter Mandelson and guacamole, which isn’t true anyway, and making some sweeping generalisations about Labour today. Me for whoever will print it

Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 9d

"It's genuinely hard to imagine today's Labour activists going to a northern fish and chip shop" is a really self-incriminating sentence. Yeah, when I sit down in The Scrap Box in York or, frankly, anywhere in Whitby, I think 'I can't imagine a middle class person eating here'.

Robin Wilde @robinwilde.me · 9d

3