Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Christoph

@thatslife4me.bsky.social

AMAZING Performance of Bunbury at my home Theater in #Münster. The energy on stage was incredible, it was fast-paced, colorful, queer at times poignant and reflective. Theater can be such an enrichment to your life.
👏👏👏👏👏

December 6, 2025 at 7:31 AM

Christoph

@thatslife4me.bsky.social

Das wunderbare Buch „Halbinsel“ von Kristine Bilkau gibt es jetzt auch als Hörspiel. Ich bin sehr gespannt auf die Umsetzung! https://www.ndr.de/kultur/epg/Halbinsel,sendung-32428.html

December 5, 2025 at 2:17 PM

Christoph

@thatslife4me.bsky.social

Wichtiger Artikel auf @perspective-daily.bsky.social zum Thema Datenschutz und den aktuellen Überlegungen in der EU. #digitalerOmnibus Danke @perspectivedirk.bsky.social für Deine immer relevanten und super aufgearbeiteten Texte!!
(Edited 8:20)

November 26, 2025 at 7:20 AM

Reposted by Christoph

Carl Rosman

@carlrosman.bsky.social

🎶 Cinque…
Otto…
Tredici…
Ventuno…
Trentaquattro…
Cinquantacinque… 🎵

(Le Nozze di Fibonacci)

October 24, 2025 at 5:43 PM

Christoph

@thatslife4me.bsky.social

😍Boston😍

Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · Oct 18

MSNBC captured the crowd from the Boston "No Kings" rally:

October 18, 2025 at 8:36 PM

Reposted by Christoph

Jeff VanderMeer

@jeffvandermeer.bsky.social

This heartfelt and meaningful statement by Portland resident and author Cristina Breshears on another social media platform bears reposting here. I don't think the intent is to idealize Portland but to remind all of us what is important and why. (Posted here with permission.)

For nine nights now, the steady thrum of Black Hawk helicopters has circled over Portland. The sound is constant, invasive; a low mechanical beating above our homes. It’s expensive. It’s intimidating. And it’s unnecessary.

Our protests have been largely peaceful. There is no insurrection here. Yet this federalized military presence makes us feel like we are living in a war zone (the very kind of chaos this administration claims to be protecting us from).

The irony is painful: it is only this occupation that makes Portland feel unsafe.

Each hour of helicopter flight costs taxpayers between $2,000 and $4,000, depending on crew, fuel, and maintenance. Multiply that by multiple aircraft over multiple nights, and you’re looking at hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars burned into the sky.

Meanwhile, the Woodstock Food Pantry at All Saints Episcopal Church — which feeds working families, elders, and people with disabilities — has seen its federal funding slashed by 75%. How can we justify pouring public money into intimidation while cutting aid to those who simply need to eat?

This is waste, fraud, and abuse in plain sight:
* Waste of public resources on military theatrics.
* Fraud in the name of “public safety.”
* Abuse of the communities that federal agencies claim to protect.

Portland is a Sanctuary City. A sanctuary city is not a fortress. It’s a promise — a living vow that a community will protect the dignity and safety of everyone who calls it home. It means that local governments and ordinary people alike will refuse to criminalize survival. That schools, clinics, churches, and shelters will remain safe spaces no matter who you are or where you were born. But the term reaches far beyond policy. It’s an ethic of belonging; a refusal to criminalize need, difference, or desperation.

Sanctuary isn’t weakness. It’s courage. It takes moral strength to meet suffering with care instead of punishment, to believe that our neighbors’ safety is bound up in our own, to insist that safety is not achieved through force but through community, inclusion, and trust. It is living Matthew 25:40 out loud and in deed. It is an act of moral imagination and moral defiance. To hold sanctuary is to say: you belong here.

When we hold space for the most vulnerable — refugees, the unhoused, the undocumented, the disabled, the working poor, the displaced — we become something larger than a collection of individuals. We become a moral body. We do more than offer charity. We offer witness. We declare that the measure of a nation is found not in its towers or tanks, but in its tenderness.

Sanctuary cities are not lawless; they are soulful. They represent the conscience of the nation, a place where the laws of empathy still apply. To make sanctuary is to affirm that the United States is not merely a geographic territory, but a moral experiment: a republic that must constantly choose between fear and compassion, between domination and democracy.

A nation’s soul is measured not by the might of its military, but by the mercy of its people. When helicopters circle our skies in the name of order, while food pantries struggle to feed the hungry, we are forced to ask: What are we defending, and from whom? The soul of a nation survives only when we make sanctuary for one another. Not through walls or weapons, but through compassion and collective will. If we allow intimidation to replace compassion, we will have traded our conscience for control.

Please know that despite the hum of war machines overhead, the conscience of our city — whimsical, creative, stubbornly kind — can still be heard.

Portland is not the problem. Portland is the reminder. A reminder that a city can still choose to be sanctuary. That a people can still choose to be human.

October 12, 2025 at 1:02 AM

Christoph

@thatslife4me.bsky.social

Viel Gefühl, große Gesten und ein begeistertes Publikum heute Abend im Konzerthaus Dortmund. @igorpianist.bsky.social mit leisem Kommentar zum Jahrestag des Hamas-Anschlags. Es gilt, die Hoffnung zu bewahren, dass es aus dem Dunkel immer noch einen Weg ans Licht gibt. Was für ein schönes Konzert!

October 7, 2025 at 9:21 PM

Christoph

@thatslife4me.bsky.social

Verspielt und fröhlich, mit klarer Referenz auf die Commedia dell‘arte Herkunft der Figuren, wunderbar gesungen und musiziert, ein Feelgood-Opernabend im Theater #Münster.

October 5, 2025 at 8:35 PM

Christoph

@thatslife4me.bsky.social

Now listening… #donizetti #opera

October 3, 2025 at 2:29 PM

Christoph

@thatslife4me.bsky.social

Gute Gedanken von Ann-Kathrin Nezik in der SZ: https://www.sueddeutsche.de/meinung/usa-trump-medien-zeitungen-social-media-kommentar-li.3315992

Medienmacher, die sich als Kultur-
kämpfer verstehen, das ist wahrlich
kein erstrebenswerter Trend
Aber in Deutschland verschiebt sich
ebenfalls etwas. Auch dort findet das
rechtspopulistische Nius ein Publikum, ein
Onlineportal, das spalten will. Und dem das
wie im Fall der Schmutzkampagne gegen
die Kandidatin für das Bundesverfassungs-
gericht, Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf, auch
gelingt. Auch die jüngste Debatte um die
ARD-Moderatorin Julia Ruhs ist von der
Idee getrieben, dass im öffentlich-
rechtlichen Rundfunk rechter und linker
Journalismus stattfinden muss. Platz für
Moderatorinnen mit unterschiedlicher
Haltung muss es selbstverständlich geben.
Aber was soll das sein: eine rechte oder
linke Reportage? Man sollte doch viel eher
darüber streiten, ob eine Reportage
gelungen ist statt über die Frage, ob sie den
richtigen politischen Filter hat.

October 1, 2025 at 5:02 AM

Reposted by Christoph

Tim Onion

@bencollins.bsky.social

Spent the last decade reading conservative blogs use the word "Orwellian" more than they used the word "the" and now they're literally just saying "War is Peace" out loud in front of everybody.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · Sep 30

Hegseth: "As history teaches us, the only people who actually deserve peace and those who are willing to wage war to defend it. That's why pacifism is so naive and dangerous."

September 30, 2025 at 3:18 PM

Reposted by Christoph

an.schläge - das feministische Magazin

@anschlaege.at

Man Park - SNL

YouTube video by Saturday Night Live

www.youtube.com

February 11, 2025 at 5:30 PM

Reposted by Christoph

JoGo

@mywitsend.bsky.social

Having “thoughtful conversations with Jimmy” is a weird way to say “Our stock took a $3B hit and we’ve become a social pariah for every meaningful celebrity who cares about freedom of expression” but whatever it takes I guess. Welcome back Jimmy Kimmel @jimmykimmel.com

deadline.com/2025/09/jimm...

Jimmy Kimmel Is Back: ABC Returning Late-Night Show On Tuesday

Jimmy Kimmel is coming back to the airwaves. ABC just revealed that Jimmy Kimmel Live! is returning on Tuesday night after “thoughtful conversations” with parent company Disney. A spokesman said, “Las...

deadline.com

September 22, 2025 at 7:50 PM

Christoph

@thatslife4me.bsky.social

#NowReWatching #StarTrek ❤️

September 11, 2025 at 7:21 PM

Reposted by Christoph

Omas* gegen Rechts Leipzig 🌈🦄🏳️‍🌈

@omasgegenrechtsle.bsky.social

Der Sommerhit 2025 ist allerorten weiter auf Tour. Hier in Berlin. 😃🔊🎶
#ScheißAFD

September 6, 2025 at 11:48 AM

Reposted by Christoph

Anne Applebaum

@anneapplebaum.bsky.social

August 29, 2025 at 11:59 AM

Christoph

@thatslife4me.bsky.social

I had totally forgotten about this little gem of a show. Rewatching it brings back a ton of warm memories and it feels like this comes from a time much longer ago than 10 years. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/03/arts/television/mozart-in-the-jungle-where-classical-music-meets-soap-opera.html

August 31, 2025 at 10:02 AM

Reposted by Christoph

Joerg Lau

@joerglau.bsky.social

Very much to the point

August 28, 2025 at 8:38 PM

Reposted by Christoph

taz

@taz.de

Albrecht Weinberg überlebte drei Konzentrationslager. Er gab sein Bundesverdienstkreuz aus Protest gegen die Abstimmung der CDU mit der AfD zurück – und warnt weiter vor dem Machtzuwachs der Neuen Rechten.
👉 taz.de/!6103396/

Zu sehen ist Albrecht Weinberg. Dazu das Zitat: „Wenn diese Partei in der deutschen Politik an Akzeptanz gewinnt, kann ich das Bundesverdienstkreuz nicht mehr an meinem Sakko tragen, sonst müsste ich gebeugt herumlaufen. Albrecht Weinberg gab sein Bundesverdienstkreuz aus Protest gegen die Abstimmung der CDU mit der AfD zurück – und warnt weiter vor dem Machtzuwachs der Neuen Rechten

„Ich war acht Jahre alt, als Paul von Hindenburg in Potsdam Hitler die Hand gereicht hat. Kaum im Amt, hat Hitler einen Boykott jüdischer Geschäfte, Ärzte und Rechtsanwälte eingeführt. Als ich im Fernsehen sah, dass die CDU gemeinsame Sache mit der AfD machte, fühlte ich mich an diesen Moment erinnert.“ Albrecht Weinberg

August 21, 2025 at 8:00 AM

Reposted by Christoph

Seth Cotlar

@sethcotlar.bsky.social

I find myself thinking about historian Robert Paxton’s 2004 definition of fascism far too often than I’d like these days. Note that these sentences were written back when Donald Trump was a NYC playboy libertine who donated to Democrats.

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legalrestraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

June 29, 2025 at 5:45 PM

Christoph

@thatslife4me.bsky.social

https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2025/06/28/american/ moving reminder of what it means to be an American and what the idea is behind this big beautiful country. Nothing like the corrupt and terrible government they have now.

August 20, 2025 at 6:13 AM

Reposted by Christoph

Ingwar Perowanowitsch

@ingwarpero.bsky.social

Paris hat die letzten Monate für 9,6 Mio. Euro seinen Rathausvorplatz entsiegelt und einfach in einen neuen Stadtwald verwandelt. Das Ergebnis sieht so wunderschön aus❤️