Andrew Sabl
LightNews LightNews
banner
andysabl.bsky.social
Andrew Sabl
@andysabl.bsky.social
3.3K followers 1.7K following 3.6K posts
Political theorist (Univ. of Toronto). Toronto/NYC. Realism, liberalism, toleration, privilege and opportunity, Hume, political ethics—and politics, humo(u)r, puns. Also husband, dad, stepdad.
Posts Replies Media Videos
andysabl.bsky.social
Taking another grass-touching break from here.
Bella the toy poodle lying on some grass
October 30, 2025 at 12:05 AM
andysabl.bsky.social
My dog—the world’d most adorable puppy™️—posing in a pot recently thrown by her dog sitter.
October 26, 2025 at 9:12 PM
andysabl.bsky.social
I just gave blood (a double unit of red cells).

There are shortages of all blood products everywhere, and it’s delaying or preventing life-saving treatments.

Please consider donating.
Selfie of me (Andy Sabl) at a blood donation center with a bandage around my arm after giving blood.
October 25, 2025 at 4:17 PM
andysabl.bsky.social
Stop scrolling and post two characters who bring you happiness (if you feel like)
Milo and Tock from the cover of *The Phantom Tollbooth*
October 22, 2025 at 2:36 AM
andysabl.bsky.social
From NYC
Sign at No Kings NYC protest: TRUMP IS A ____IST [Followed by choices with boxes, all un-ticked except the last:] FASC RAC MISOGYN MONARCH SAD RAP INSURRECTION OPPORTUN NARCISS ALL OF THE ABOVE
October 18, 2025 at 9:20 PM
andysabl.bsky.social
More favorite signs and moments from #NoKings NYC
Sign at No Kings protest in NYC: “It’s still the Gulf of Mexico, Pendejo.” Sign at No Kings NYC protest: TRUMP IS A ____IST [Followed by choices with boxes, all un-ticked except the last:] FASC RAC MISOGYN MONARCH SAD RAP INSURRECTION OPPORTUN NARCISS ALL OF THE ABOVE Sign from No Kings NYC protest: Wonder Woman punching Donald Trump with the sound-caption, “NOPE!” Sign from No Kings NYC protest: Picture of Benicio Del Toro character from the movie “One Battle After Another” and the caption: “WHAT WOULD SENSEI DO?” [small sign as a reply:] “Do Not Have Kings”
October 18, 2025 at 9:12 PM
andysabl.bsky.social
At #NoKings in NYC
“No Kings” poster portraying a panel from the Schoolhouse Rock “No More Kings” video Poster from No Kings protest: “Habeas Corpus/ Due Process /Liberty” No Kings poster: “New Yorkers are too HOT for ICE” Andy Sabl holding American flag at NYC No Kings protest
October 18, 2025 at 3:49 PM
andysabl.bsky.social
Here’s part of the test for Oklahoma teachers that Praeger U wrote.

This test—for *public school teachers*—combines middle school civics with religious Right (esp. anti-trans) ideology. And Praeger U is so proud of it that it took out a full-page NYT ad.
Ad on p. 7 of the August 31, 2025 New York Times, giving a selection of Prager U’s test for Oklahoma teachers. Too many characters to put the whole thing in alt-text, but here’s a link to the whole test: https://www.prageru.com/teacher-qualification-test
August 31, 2025 at 3:20 PM
andysabl.bsky.social
I buried the lede (old now, but not everyone noted the bit about how the Israeli media covered it):
[Headline from The Guardian, 17 August 2025] Ex-Israeli intelligence chief said 50 Palestinians must die for every 7 October victim ‘It does not matter if they are children,’ said Aharon Haliva in recorded comments calling the death toll ‘necessary’
August 18, 2025 at 2:53 AM
andysabl.bsky.social
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...
Haliva's comments about mass killings of Palestinian civilians did not make headlines in other mainstream Israeli outlets. They focused instead on his criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu and warnings of systemic failures in security and intelligence. That coverage highlighted the vast gulf between how the war is perceived and discussed inside Israel's borders and beyond them.
August 18, 2025 at 1:29 AM
andysabl.bsky.social
It’s a lovely typeface: good luck with it.

(The below is from the Wikipedia entry en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avenir_... )
Frutiger described Avenir as his finest work: "The quality of the draftsmanship - rather than the intellectual idea behind it — is my masterpiece. (...) It was the hardest typeface I have worked on in my life. Working on it, I always had human nature in mind. And what's crucial is that I developed the typeface alone, in peace and quiet - no drafting assistants, no-one was there. My personality is stamped upon it. I'm proud that I was able to create Avenir."
July 21, 2025 at 9:29 PM
andysabl.bsky.social
At a Tokyo pub having a Slava Ukraine
July 5, 2025 at 11:28 AM
andysabl.bsky.social
Without downloading any new pics, where are you mentally?
Woman crying while singing during the “Marseillaise” scene in *Casablanca*
July 3, 2025 at 4:16 AM
andysabl.bsky.social
Great Caesar’s Ghost..

americanmind.org/features/don...
The importance of character traits such as “caring for people like me" or "experience," which had mattered so much in late 20th-century mass democracy, faded away. Swathes of the electorate would of course still look for their therapist-in-chief or expert-in-chief. But more wanted a boss who asserted control, and expected those under him to follow his lead.
July 2, 2025 at 1:23 AM
andysabl.bsky.social
Hands like this one?
White Hand of Saruman on a banner, from The Two Towers movie.
June 26, 2025 at 2:06 AM
andysabl.bsky.social
Everyone: this widely-shared headline tops a COLUMN by Bret Stephens—who has never pretended to be anything but a neocon.
Anyone portraying it as a NYT editorial board position (1) has been deceived; (2) is doing the deceiving; or (3) has no idea how newspapers work.
Headline of a Bret Stephens column in The New York Times, 22 June 2025: “Trump’s Courageous and Correct Devision [to bomb Iran]”
June 23, 2025 at 4:13 AM
andysabl.bsky.social
The most important thing I’ll read in the New York Times today.
Full-page ad in the New York Times for June 22, 2025: the front page of The Onion, including the editorial “CONGRESS: NOW MORE THAN EVER, OUR NATION NEEDS YOUR COWARDICE” (https://theonion.com/letter-to-congress/) as well as crucial investigative stories “Entitled Child Expects To Eat Lunch Every Day” (sub-head “Girl Literally Wants Food to Be Handed to Her on a Plate”) and “Christian Faith An Important Part Of Who Senator Pretends To Be” [sic for in-House Onion style of capitalizing Every Word In A Headline]
June 22, 2025 at 2:05 PM
andysabl.bsky.social
I’ve just checked “Today” and the below is the twelfth story down.
If you aren’t seeing it, it could be that everyone has a different personalized feed: blame the algo, not the editors.
As Trump Celebrates Army's Founding, His Critics Take to the Streets President Trump held a military parade the same day that hundreds of protests took place, in what amounted to a split-screen show of force. [With a big photo of a protest, linking to a video]
June 15, 2025 at 7:08 PM
andysabl.bsky.social
Not bad. Not bad at all.

Don’t let anyone tell you that protests don’t matter and will never be covered. The media don’t *like* covering peaceful protests—but if enough happen, in enough places, for long enough, they will.

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/14/u...
New York Times front page (paper) for June 15, 2025. Large photo of the Manhattan No Kings protest on top of a large photo of Trump saluting troops at his parade. Big headline: “MILITARY MIGHT, PROTEST POWER.” Sub-head: “Two Visions of U.S. Take to the Streeets.” By David E. Sanger President Trump presided over a show of American military might in the nation’s capital on Saturday evening, a celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States Army that became a test of wills and competing imagery, with demonstrators around the country decrying his expansion of executive power. Mr. Trump sat in a reviewing stand on Constitution Avenue as armored vehicles dating from two World Wars and overflights of 80-year old bombers and modern helicopters shook downtown Washington. The city was locked down, divided by a wall of tall, black crowd-control fences designed to assure that the parade, the first of its kind since American troops returned from the Gulf War in 1991, was an uninterrupted demonstration of history and American power. It went off without a hitch, but also without even a nod to the current moment. When Mr. Trump left his seat between his wife, Melania Trump, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, it was to swear in new soldiers — “Have a great life,” he told them after the brief ceremony — and then, at sundown, to recall the Army’s greatest moments. He invoked George Washington and recalled Gettysburg. Yet he spoke more to the Army’s power than to its purpose. “Time and again, America’s enemies have learned that you threaten the American people, soldiers are coming for you. Your defeat will be certain, your demise will be final, and your downfall will be total and complete.” Hours before he left the White House, the day had already encapsulated the sharpness of America’s divide over immigration, free speech and Mr. Trump’s determination to reshape the government, universities and cultural institutions to adopt his worldview. …
June 15, 2025 at 2:17 PM
andysabl.bsky.social
#NoKings in Midtown NYC
My sister in law and I holding American flags at the #NoKings protest in NYC Sign at #NoKings protest in NYC: “I have friends everywhere” Sign at #NoKings in NYC: shows Lowly Worm in his apple car with the caption, “MY OTHER CAR IS RFKJR'S BRAIN REMOVE RFK JR NOW” Sign at #NoKings NYC: shows Beaker the Muppet with the caption, “THIS IS THE ONLY ORANGE MUPPET I TRUST TO TELL ME ABOUT SCIENCE”
June 14, 2025 at 8:18 PM
andysabl.bsky.social
I’ve chased down the source: Williams’ review in the *Sunday Times* (1981): p. 186 of the posthumously collected *Essays and Reviews* (Princeton, 2014).
In its historical aspects, MacIntyre’s account is a brilliant nostalgic fantasy. What we have now is not so much the collapse of a fine Aristotelian tradition under the deformations of the modern world, but rather the outcome, under those modern pressures, of faults which have always existed in the Western moral consciousness. If, at our present juncture, we do have to choose between Aristotle and Nietzsche, it may rather be Nietzsche who is right: it has finally got out that there is something wrong with morality. But it is itself one of MacIntyre’s most illuminating exaggerations to claim that this is the only choice that we have.
May 27, 2025 at 7:52 PM
andysabl.bsky.social
This seems as good a time as any to introduce Bella…
Bella, toy poodle puppy, lying on a faux sheepskin looking unbearably cute.
May 26, 2025 at 11:08 PM
andysabl.bsky.social
#FreudianSlip

(Sorry, but I found the rhetoric of Starmer’s “Island of Strangers” speech beyond appalling.)
“Details” notes for The Rest Is Politics’ 21 May Question Time Podcast (“The U-Turn Starmer Can’t Avoid”) featuring the question, “Can the Labour Party still identify as centre-right [sic]?”
May 24, 2025 at 11:52 PM
andysabl.bsky.social
Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem gives a telling non-answer to a simple question….
(Sorry: subscribers only, no gifting allowed)

messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/dynamic/rend...
Is the United States under Mr. Trump still part of the global trading system? Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was here [at the G7 conference] for the full three days. He was very engaged and fully participating. I look at his own comments coming out of the meeting. I think he found it productive. So yes, I think you are definitely seeing the U.S. engage on a multilateral basis with its six colleagues.
May 24, 2025 at 3:28 PM
andysabl.bsky.social
[Quotation from *Watchmen* TV series:] Laurie Blake / Silk Spectre: You know how you can tell the difference between a masked cop and a vigilante? Me neither.
May 10, 2025 at 3:14 AM