Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Andrew Wetzel

Autonomy News

@autonomynews.co

The Trump administration is sending all pregnant migrant girls to the same group shelter in South Texas, 21 state Attorneys General asked a judge to restrict abortion pills nationwide, plus a flurry of state news and attacks on queer people in our weekly roundup:

White House Detains Migrant Girls in Texas Under Abortion Ban: February 16 News Roundup

Plus, what you missed on Autonomy News last week.

www.autonomynews.co

February 16, 2026 at 11:57 PM

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G. Willow Wilson

@gwillow.me

Sorry for the Instagram link, but if you've ever thought to yourself "I wish there was a tailoring influencer like DieWorkWear, but for women," this is she, and she is one of my favorite people on the internet:

www.instagram.com/reel/DUtDtzn...

Instagram

Create an account or log in to Instagram - Share what you're into with the people who get you.

www.instagram.com

February 17, 2026 at 2:54 AM

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Nicole Hemmer

@pastpunditry.bsky.social

Breaking my social media hiatus to share some good news! I’ve just signed a deal with Basic Books for my next book, Impunity, which uncovers the right’s decades-long effort to destroy political accountability and protect their friends in power. I’m so excited for this one!

Publishers Marketplace book deal notice, which reads “Author of PARTISANS and Director of the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Center for the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University Nicole Hemmer's IMPUNITY, a history of how the American right has systematically destroyed political accountability over the last 50 years, in a deliberate, decades-long campaign to protect power and privilege, to Brian Distelberg at Basic, by Lisa Adams at The Garamond Agency.”

February 16, 2026 at 3:08 PM

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Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa

@benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social

Have you read @jordanscarroll.bsky.social's book? Might be helpful in this instance.

www.upress.umn.edu/978151791708...

Speculative Whiteness

Reveals the alt-right’s project to claim science fiction and—by extension—the future Fascists such as Richard Spencer interpret science fiction films a...

www.upress.umn.edu

February 14, 2026 at 5:36 PM

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Mike Caulfield

@mikecaulfield.bsky.social

Reading narrative art as "evidence" of something (including sci fi) rather than a device for the exploration of competing tensions is a massive failure that is most annoying in the "is 2001 racist" quadrant but most dangerous in the "global warming doesn't matter bc we're going to mars" quadrant

February 14, 2026 at 5:37 PM

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Dave Karpf

@davekarpf.bsky.social

Oh FFS.

James says the problem is that we lost our bold, optimistic vision. After the Apollo mission, there was no “massive and aspirational project devoted to advanced energy, biology, etc.”

WHAT ABOUT THE HUMAN GENOME PROJECT, JAMES? EVER HEARD OF THAT, YOU DUMBASS???

post-1973 pace."
This slowing of innovation and tech progress, as measured by TFP, meant Disneyland now found itself with a different sort of Tomorrowland problem.
Rather than struggling to stay fifteen minutes ahead of a fast-accelerating technological present—the theme land was supposed to be grounded in reality—Tomorrowland now lacked a wildly innovative private sector and big-thinking Washington to supply it with just-around-the-corner concepts to build upon. It didn't have to be that way. If not ringing Earth with space stations and colonizing the solar system, perhaps the next big thing after Apollo could have been a massive and aspirational project devoted to advanced energy, biology (far bigger than even the War on Cancer), or trans-portation. But America ventured nothing anywhere near the scale of Apollo.

February 14, 2026 at 7:21 PM

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Dave Karpf

@davekarpf.bsky.social

There is a cottage industry of economists and who are obsessed with the perceived slowdown of technological progress in the 1970s.

They mostly blame the environmentalists (“We could’ve had limitless nuclear energy if not for those damn hippies!”), and propose tearing down all regulations.

Then the unexpected happened—a shock not only to Disney imagi-neers, but also to technologists, Washington policymakers, CEOs, and the burgeoning futurist industry. In the early 1970s, the Space Age was suddenly grounded, the Atomic Age began powering down, and, most impor-tantly, the postwar era of rapid technological progress and economic growth abruptly ended. It had been quite a run, and economists today call the period a "golden age" for good reason. American living standards, as measured by real per capita GDP, more than doubled as the economy overall grew at a rapid 4 percent annually from 1948 through 1973.

February 14, 2026 at 7:13 PM

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Dave Karpf

@davekarpf.bsky.social

Twentieth-century futurism was largely a project of “don’t worry about the problems of the present. Corporations will build you such a lovely future.”

21st-century futurism has mostly been billionaires and their courtiers whining about the mean environmental movement blocking their cool ideas.

February 14, 2026 at 6:26 PM

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Dave Karpf

@davekarpf.bsky.social

First line of the introduction: “‘Conservative futurism’ might seem to be a comical oxymoron.”

SIGH.

James, let me stop you right there. Alvin Toffler was conservative. Herman Kahn was conservative. I have trouble thinking of a single brand-name futurist who WASN’T conservative.

INTRODUCTION
America's Tomorrowland Problem
one of the most famous Americans of the twentieth century, certainly quali-fed as a conservative futurist. Let's start with the conservative part. Walt was a capitalist and right-winger, through and through. There's no question about that. On October 24, 1947, he testified in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee-popular actor and future American president Ronald Reagan had testified the day before-about union activity at his company and employees he believed to be communists.! Walt was also a supporter of Republican politicians Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Barry Goldwater: When Walt received the Presidential Medal of Freedom-the nation's highest civilian award—from President Lyndon Johnson in 1964, he wore a Goldwater button under his lapel.
Walt Disney was also perhaps the most important American futurist of the twentieth century. (Walt's futurism coexisted with a deep streak of nos-talgia, a perspective expressed through his films and television shows Song of the South, Johnny Tremain, Davy Crockett, as well as Disneyland itself, where
9

February 14, 2026 at 6:26 PM

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Dave Karpf

@davekarpf.bsky.social

Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot” essay in 1991 urged that we focus on fighting AIDS, reducing homelessness, and developing green energy sources instead of trying to colonize space.

Pethokoukis mentions all this but then says that today we have Elon Musk, so he thinks a Sagan would be psyched for Mars now.

$about we canent and Tuture residents of that pixel-not to mention the future health of the pixel itself. As Sagan elaborated, "There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Set-tle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand." I always fixate on the "not yet" part of that quote. There's no doubt Sagan desired that humanity become, in the words of electric car and space entrepreneur Elon Musk, a "multiplanetary species." Doing so would be "a step more significant than the colonization of land by our amphibian ancestors some 500 million years ago," Sagan wrote in a 1991 essay? Yet in that same piece, the astronomer dismissed President George H. W. Bush's plan, announced in 1989, to land the first human on Mars in 2019. Such a journey was simply too expensive in the view of Sagan, who in a 1991 essay cited reducing homelessness, fighting the AIDS epidemic, and finding alternatives for fossil fuels among the "clear, crying national needs" that outweighed space colonization. Earth will never be bigger than the size of a pixel, no matter how many times such a photo is taken from the outer edge of the solar system. But the pale blue dot of progress gets a bit bigger—and maybe a bit brighter—all the time, thanks to humanity's endless ingenuity. When Bush announced his plan to send Americans to the Red Planet, the New York Times highlighted cost estimates of $400 billion to reach both the moon and Mars.® But there's been a lot of progress since then, especially in the past few years. Improvements in rocket production and, more importantly, rocket reusability—in large part due to innovation at Musk's SpaceX—means launch costs are a fraction of what they were when Bush made his announcement. And those costs are headed lower still. For maybe just a sliver of the cost of that Bush plan, a Mars colony could one day be established? If he were still alive, I would like to think Sagan would be am…$

February 14, 2026 at 5:31 PM

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Dave Karpf

@davekarpf.bsky.social

Oh this is gonna be rough.

The preface opens with Carl Sagan’s “pale blue dot” photo of earth from deep outer space.

Pethokoukis wants to reimagine the dot, not as the fragile planet we inhabit together, but as the past two centuries of technological and economic progress.

This guy sucks.

know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civiliza-tion, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of mor-als, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.?
Consider again that image and that pale blue pixel, but in a different con-text. That dot? That's the roughly two-hundred-year era of modern technological progress and economic growth amid the two-hundred-thousand-year lifespan of Homo sapiens, millennium after millennium with little of either of those wonderful things. ("Spectacularly brief," in the words of Stanford University economist Charles I. Jones, who specializes in the study of economic growth.) During these past two centuries or so have been invented almost every gadget and gizmo, almost every machine and mechanism, almost every contrivance and contraption that make our lives something more than "soli-

February 14, 2026 at 5:25 PM

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Erik Nordman

@eriknordman.bsky.social

The 90 MW project near Lansing, Michigan will be reviewed by the Michigan Public Service Commission, which has some authority to approve certain renewable energy projects over the objections of local zoning boards. The project would produce enough power for 20,000 homes. #EnergySky

870-acre solar farm proposed in Ingham County

A proposal for a nearly 900-acre, $100 million solar farm in the southwest corner of Ingham County is now being reviewed by state officials.

www.lansingstatejournal.com

February 16, 2026 at 2:44 PM

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Isaac Rowlett

@isaacrowlett.bsky.social

Madison, Wisconsin — 2026

Aerial photo of Madison’s state capital building with both sides of the isthmus visible

February 17, 2026 at 2:22 AM

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Bill Amend

@billamend.bsky.social

Tonight’s dumb napkin cartoon…

February 16, 2026 at 11:52 PM

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The People's Fabric

@peoplesfabric.com

ICE killed a teacher in Georgia today when they chose to chase a man who posed no danger and had no criminal history.

Savannah teacher killed in crash by man fleeing from ICE

According to the Chatham County Police Department, Monday morning’s fatal crash was the result of a chase between Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and a suspect.

www.wtoc.com

February 17, 2026 at 12:28 AM

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Alli DeJong

@allidejong.bsky.social

I will be voting for Juliana in the primary and if you live in IL you should too

Juliana Stratton @julianastratton.bsky.social · 11h

🚨🚨🚨 I want to abolish ICE. Period. @rajaforil.bsky.social thanked ICE, funded ICE, and took money from an ICE contractor.

February 17, 2026 at 2:20 AM

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Katie Mack

@astrokatie.com

Discovered today that Instagram had turned on (without my opt-in) automatic AUDIO translation of any reel that shows up in my feed not in English USING AI TO MIMIC THE SPEAKER’S VOICE and WOW it was creepy and upsetting.

You can turn it off in “Language & Translations” in Settings. 🙅🏻‍♀️

February 17, 2026 at 1:57 AM

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Coach Finstock

@coachfinstock.bsky.social

What's awesome about JCO is she'll RT some eyeroll inducing Liam Nissan meme but then her next post is tearing out some fuckers soul with a line that's both more poetic and mean than I could ever hope to be on my best day

Mrs. Detective Pikajew, Esq. @clapifyoulikeme.favrd.social · 11h

joyce is going after elon again

Joyce Carol Oates @JoyceCarolOates
how is it possible to cram so much
ignorance--"English-Scott-Irish origin" -- into such a small space?
miracle of a person said to be "world's richest man" has no more grasp of US history than a crumpled paper tissue underfoot in a men's restroom not recently cleaned.

February 17, 2026 at 2:11 AM

Andrew Wetzel

@circlereader.bsky.social

"Help may be given, but it may not be asked for" 🎯

badgersnmaps.bsky.social @badgersnmaps.bsky.social · 11h

I agree. I think one of the regions great cultural pits is a general sense that help may be given, but it may not be asked for, and that then mixes with a fear of offending someone with help being taken as smug condescension.

Maintaining a ”balanced“ obligation checkbook is overemphasized.

February 17, 2026 at 1:30 AM

Andrew Wetzel

@circlereader.bsky.social

Ope, got football-pulled by a big account

a cartoon of a girl holding a football in a field with the words `` uuuuuuuhhhgg '' .

Alt: GIF of Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown after offering to hold it for him, so that he misses his kick, then noting her trick of a non-notarized signed document. Shifting the goal-posts, as it were, of their collaboration.

media.tenor.com

February 17, 2026 at 1:29 AM

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Florence Ashley

@floralashes.bsky.social

It’s doubtless just an issue of space and inadvertence, but you may naturally assume that 19.8% of participants in this study reported regrets about hormone therapy.

Which isn’t false—19.8% reported a number above zero on a 0 to 100 scale But the average regret reported by that 19.8% was 19.14/100!

Patient-reported outcomes and satisfaction with gender-affirming hormone therapy among transgender and gender-diverse individuals in South Korea: a multicenter prospective study

Knowledge of gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT) among transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) individuals outside Western countries remains limited. This study aimed to investigate GAHT-related e...

www.tandfonline.com

February 17, 2026 at 12:20 AM

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Raider

@iwillnotbesilenced.bsky.social

A Marine veteran who witnessed Alex Pretti shooting claims that federal agents held a gun to his head, detained him, seized his phone, took fingerprints and DNA without a warrant, and held him for eight hours before releasing him without charges into subzero temperatures.