Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Nat Ciesla

@natciesla.bsky.social

Going to tell kids this is the birch society.

A gorgeous multi trunk birch tree, mid color change.

October 20, 2025 at 1:00 AM

Reposted by Nat Ciesla

Nathan Nun

@nathannun.bsky.social

"The 10 Commandments" (c.1909) was published and widely used in the Socialist Sunday Schools of the early 20th century. Today's #inktober is a cat version with mostly the original text. #sundayschool

An ink illustration of a plaque or tablet entitled "Socialist Sunday School - Ten Commandments". On either side of the plaque are kittens playing and doing various activities: writing, art, playing ball, and making biscuits (etc.). The main body of text is the 10 commandments some of which are 1. Love your schoolfellows, they will become your fellow workers and companions in life. 2. Love learning, which is the food of the mind; be as grateful to your teacher as to your parents. 3. Make every day holy by good and useful deeds and kindly actions. 4. Honour good people, be courteous and respect all, bow down to none (etc.). At the bottom is a "declaration" which reads, "We desire to be just and loving to all our fellow men and women, to work together as brothers and sisters, to be kind to every living creature, and so help to form a New Society, with Justice as its foundation and Love its law."

October 19, 2025 at 3:22 PM

Reposted by Nat Ciesla

•Anti-capitalist meme pebbler•

@seizethememez.bsky.social

"It is the heart of US policy to use fascism to preserve capitalism while claiming to save democracy from communism."
-Michael Parenti

September 26, 2025 at 8:41 PM

Nat Ciesla

@natciesla.bsky.social

Billy Bragg continues to be wonderful. www.youtube.com/watch?v=1axj...

Billy Bragg - Hundred Year Hunger

YouTube video by Billy Bragg

www.youtube.com

September 3, 2025 at 2:54 AM

Nat Ciesla

@natciesla.bsky.social

Kleo Straub, from Netflix Germany’s Kleo.

August 12, 2025 at 1:26 AM

Reposted by Nat Ciesla

Nol Malone ☭

@nolmalone.bsky.social

It's good shit, but can really mess you up if you aren't careful. 😕❤️

Original artist: mastodon.social/@MrLovenstein

A "drug dealer" in yellow is approached by a person in red with a gold hammer and sickle mark on their shoulder. The person in red asks, "you dealin'?" The person in yellow says "You want uppers, downers, pills?" The person in red says, "I want the hard stuff." The person in yellow reaches into their pocket and responds, "You sure? This shit will fuck you up." Person in red says " I need it." The person in yellow holds out a bag labeled "empathy while under capitalism". The person in red looks at the bag and is sweating with a terrified look on their face.

August 11, 2025 at 4:42 PM

Reposted by Nat Ciesla

Nathan Nun

@nathannun.bsky.social

Stand fast, then, oh worker cats,
Pull together housecat and stray.
Link your paws like a chain the world round.
On this International Cat Day.

Let's see some cats from the world round for #InternationalCatDay

A cat poster in the style of a 1930s soviet propaganda poster. The poster is black and white except for a large, red flag held up by a black cat. It reads "Many Furs - One Working Class." Below the black cat, in a row looking forward, are four other cats of various types and fur colours with arms forward and claws out in an aggressive stance. Behind them is a statue of two cats holding up a star. The text below the image reads "United against capitalist domination and fascist barbarity we can make a world belonging to all." Small print at bottom reads "Third Socialist Cat Congress" and "United Upright Cats International (UUCI)". Nathan Nun 2019

August 8, 2025 at 2:04 PM

Nat Ciesla

@natciesla.bsky.social

SCO Unix is the Leon Trotsky of the unix world and I will not taking further questions at this time.

June 27, 2025 at 6:29 PM

Reposted by Nat Ciesla

Kat Abughazaleh

@katmabu.bsky.social

That's actually the theme for one of our campaign embroidery kits!

a picture of an embroidery hoop with the pattern "I hate Illinois Nazis" on it

June 25, 2025 at 12:28 AM

Reposted by Nat Ciesla

victoria scott

@victoriascott.bsky.social

the era of neoliberalism is over, and realpolitik is dead. you have to grow a spine. you have to have morals. you have to have red lines. you have to develop a sense of right and wrong that is not based in pragmatism or law, but in your heart and empathy for your fellow man. then, we can win

June 13, 2025 at 2:44 PM

Reposted by Nat Ciesla

Standplaats Kraków could really use some cash!

@standplaatskrk.pl

My father says
socialism's the work of the devil.
Well, if poverty is the work of God,
then I'm with the devil.

Two women in white dresses having a conversation:

"My father says socialism's the work of the devil."

"Well, if poverty is the work of God, then I'm with the devil."

Rebellion Season 1, Episode 3 - a 2016 historical drama television serial written and created by Colin Teevan for RTÉ. The series is a dramatization of the events surrounding the 1916 Easter Rising.

November 9, 2024 at 11:32 PM

Reposted by Nat Ciesla

Your Internet Friend Tom Tomorrow

@tomtomorrow.bsky.social

Elon Musk is actually the name of the monster, he was created by Dr. Capitalism

March 9, 2025 at 5:34 PM

Nat Ciesla

@natciesla.bsky.social

I think this also relates to the Left's allergic avoidance of imagining what good could look like.

victoria scott @victoriascott.bsky.social · Feb 26

the thing about the word “enshittification” that I hate is that it obfuscates the actual reason everything gets worse constantly, which is “the profit motive”

February 26, 2025 at 6:22 PM

Reposted by Nat Ciesla

victoria scott

@victoriascott.bsky.social

the thing about the word “enshittification” that I hate is that it obfuscates the actual reason everything gets worse constantly, which is “the profit motive”

February 26, 2025 at 4:41 PM

Reposted by Nat Ciesla

Your Internet Friend Tom Tomorrow

@tomtomorrow.bsky.social

my general take on nicknames for musk or trump: we don't live in a 60s mad magazine and anything you come up with is almost certainly cringe and the only question is whether you recognize that or not. I will tell you this: the trick to growing older gracefully is to not become a facebook grandparent

February 12, 2025 at 1:45 AM

Nat Ciesla

@natciesla.bsky.social

If you’ve dunked on Apple Maps in the past, have I got a surprise for you.

February 11, 2025 at 2:44 AM

Nat Ciesla

@natciesla.bsky.social

Proud to have been a part of this.

Misty Gedlinske @mistygedlinske.bsky.social · Feb 2

Do y'all want to read something from the archives today about a time when Pride and joy won out over bass-ackward bigotry?

I thought you might. Here it is.

buttondown.com/queeringthed...

Nothing Angers Quite Like Joy

Joy is restorative. Joy is resistance. Joy is punk as hell.

buttondown.com

February 2, 2025 at 8:19 PM

Nat Ciesla

@natciesla.bsky.social

Year Zero sure hits different now.

February 1, 2025 at 11:35 PM

Nat Ciesla

@natciesla.bsky.social

I'm kind of surprised we haven't seen the return of the giant lasers in space project yet.

January 27, 2025 at 10:38 PM

Reposted by Nat Ciesla

Phil Lewis

@phillewis.bsky.social

Colombian President Gustavo Petro's full post ordering an increase of import tariffs on U.S. goods, says he doesn't really like traveling to the U.S. because it's “a bit boring” and invokes the ancestors

Trump, I don't really like travelling to the US, it's a bit boring, but I confess that there are some commendable things. I like going to the black neighbourhoods of Washington, where I saw an entire fight in the US capital between blacks and Latinos with barricades, which seemed like nonsense to me, because they should join together.

I confess that I like Walt Whitman and Paul Simon and Noam Chomsky and Miller

I confess that Sacco and Vanzetti, who have my blood, are memorable in the history of the USA and I follow them. They were murdered by labor leaders with the electric chair, the fascists who are within the USA as well as within my country

I don't like your oil, Trump, you're going to wipe out the human species because of greed. Maybe one day, over a glass of whiskey, which I accept, despite my gastritis, we can talk frankly about this, but it's difficult because you consider me an inferior race and I'm not, nor is any Colombian.

So if you know someone who is stubborn, that's me, period. You can try to carry out a coup with your economic strength and your arrogance, like they did with Allende. But I will die in my law, I resisted torture and I resist you. I don't want slavers next to Colombia, we already had many and we freed ourselves. What I want next to Colombia are lovers of freedom. If you can't accompany me, I'll go elsewhere. Colombia is the heart of the world and you didn't understand that, this is the land of the yellow butterflies, of the beauty of Remedios, but also of the colonels Aureliano Buendía, of which I am one, perhaps the last.

You will kill me, but I will survive in my people, which is before yours, in the Americas. We are peoples of the winds, the mountains, the Caribbean Sea and of freedom.

You don't like our freedom, okay. I don't shake hands with white slavers. I shake hands with the white libertarian heirs of Lincoln and the black and white farm boys of the USA, at whose graves I cried and prayed on a battlefield, which I reached after walking the mountains of Italian Tuscany and after being saved from Covid.

They are the United States and before them I kneel, before no one else.

Overthrow me, President, and the Americas and humanity will respond.

Colombia now stops looking north, looks at the world, our blood comes from the blood of the Caliphate of Cordoba, the civilization of that time, of the Roman Latins of the Mediterranean, the civilization of that time, who founded the republic, democracy in Athens; our blood has the black resistance fighters turned into slaves by you. In Colombia is the first free territory of America, before Washington, of all America, there I take refuge in its African songs.

My land is made up of goldsmiths who worked in the time of the Egyptian pharaohs and of the first artists in the world in Chiribiquete.

You will never rule us. The warrior who rode our lands, shouting freedom, who is called Bolívar, opposes us.

Our people are somewhat fearful, somewhat timid, they are naive and kind, loving, but they will know how to win the Panama Canal, which you took from us with violence. Two hundred heroes from all of Latin America lie in Bocas del Toro, today's Panama, formerly Colombia, which you murdered.

I raise a flag and as Gaitán said, even if it remains alone, it will continue to be raised with the Latin American dignity that is the dignity of America, which your great-grandfather did not know, and mine did, Mr. President, an immigrant in the USA,

Your blockade does not scare me, because Colombia, besides being the country of beauty, is the heart of the world. I know that you love beauty as I do, do not disrespect it and you will give it your sweetness.

FROM TODAY ON, COLOMBIA IS OPEN TO THE ENTIRE WORLD, WITH OPEN ARMS, WE ARE BUILDERS OF FREEDOM, LIFE AND HUMANITY.

I am informed that you impose a 50% tariff on the fruits of our human labor to enter the United States, and I do the same.

Let our people plant corn that was discovered in Colombia and feed the world

January 26, 2025 at 10:21 PM

Nat Ciesla

@natciesla.bsky.social

A brief meditation on Twin Peaks and current events: The reason the horror in Fire Walk with Me works is not because of the unknown, it's because you've encountered every event in the second half of the movie in the first two seasons, and you know what awaits.
The inauguration felt exactly like this

January 21, 2025 at 7:59 PM