Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Soma

@somasacademy.bsky.social

220 followers 94 following 560 posts

Soma (Any/All).
History Educator.
BA in History and Anthropology, MA in Precolonial West African History.
I'll be able to call myself a Youtuber if I ever develop a reliable upload schedule
(Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@SomasAcademy)

Posts Replies Media Videos

Soma

@somasacademy.bsky.social

I'm going to kill and murder

YouTube notification with a hideous corporate artstyle cartoon of a purple-skinned person with a tiny head and giant hands turning some knobs and the text "We've changed some of your settings; We couldn't verify that you're an adult. Learn More" followed by the options "Got it" and "Verify age"

November 5, 2025 at 5:19 PM

Soma

@somasacademy.bsky.social

The question every parent dreads hearing

September 20, 2025 at 11:48 PM

Soma

@somasacademy.bsky.social

I like how MAGAs keep accidentally arguing that we should do things the Patriots listed as blatant tyranny in the Declaration of Independence

Tweet reading "Last night’s J7 Democrat insurrection has left me LITERALLY SHAKING. The violent attacks against law enforcement cannot go unpunished. At a minimum, every one of these individuals should face life in prison—after being tried in a federal court located in a deep-red district." with the last sentence highlighted

Screenshot from Wikipedia showing Grievance 19 of the Declaration of Independence:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses."

On the fifteenth of April, 1774, Lord North introduced a bill in Parliament, entitled "A bill for the impartial administration of justice in the cases of persons questioned for any acts done by them in the execution of the laws, or for the suppression of riots and tumults in the province of Massachusetts Bay, in New England." This bill, known as the Administration of Justice Act, provided that in case any person indicted for murder in that province, or any other capital offense, or an indictment for riot, the resistance of the magistrate, or impeding the revenue laws in the smallest degree, he might, at the option of the Governor, or, in his absence, of the Lieutenant Governor, be taken to another colony, or transported from the colonies, for trial.

July 19, 2025 at 3:39 PM

Soma

@somasacademy.bsky.social

The US census at least classifies Spain and Portugal as "Hispanic or Latino" along with Latin America (although the US census also has "White Latino" and "Non-White Latino" options)

June 22, 2025 at 12:33 PM

Soma

@somasacademy.bsky.social

Anyway I'm gonna block her now since at this point she just keeps repeating the same insults over and over, so I guess this'll be the end of the thread lol, sorry I'm closing your window into the unhinged shit she posts. Here's one for the road:

"Anthropology is colonialism" lmao of course she'd believe that

June 15, 2025 at 5:22 AM

Soma

@somasacademy.bsky.social

And then she got really racist with it lmao, I was jokingly calling her anti-Black and KKK to riff on her calling me Anti-Jewish and Hitler but then she started repeating common racist talking points (wonder if she randomly brought up Indians cause she realized where my name was from or...)

June 15, 2025 at 5:22 AM

Soma

@somasacademy.bsky.social

Okay so I sent her a source, she skim-read the screenshots and declared that the source disproved something I never said and that I was therefore wrong even though the screenshots directly support what I actually said, and then tried to own me again by insulting my degrees
bsky.app/profile/soma...

June 15, 2025 at 5:22 AM

Soma

@somasacademy.bsky.social

I literally explicitly said Hadrian expelled Jews from Jerusalem and killed enough Jews in his campaign that the population was heavily reduced in Judea, but Jews remained the majority "elsewhere in Palestine," you illiterate jackass. Refund your elementary school education, jesus fuck.

June 15, 2025 at 4:45 AM

Soma

@somasacademy.bsky.social

Volume 4, chapter 16 is the relevant part, as it covers Jewish life in Roman Palestine from the 3rd to the 7th century.

Screenshot from the Cambridge History of Judaism, Vol IV.
"CHAPTER 16
THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY IN THE LAND OF ISRAEL, C. 235 – 638

DAVID GOODBLATT
I INTRODUCTION
The chronological boundaries of this chapter are based on well-known
events in world history. The year 235 saw the end of the Severan dynasty of Roman emperors, while the Muslim invasion of Palestine began in 634. These dates also have some logic in terms of the traditional periodization of Jewish history.1 The beginning of our period more or less coincides with the end of the tannaitic and the start of the amoraic era, conventionally marked by the death of the Patriarch Judah I, around 225. And the transition from Byzantine Christian rule to that of Muslim Arabs is generally seen as a major turning point, though recently scholars have emphasized both material and cultural continuities between late Byzantine and early Islamic Palestine.2 Still, discussing the Jewish community of Late Roman and Byzantine Palestine as a unit makes more sense than any alternative.3"

POLITICAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY Page 405:

[A long paragraph of text, omitted for character limits.]
"II DID THE JEWISH COMMUNITY SUFFER A DEMOGRAPHIC DECLINE?

A major theme in both popular perceptions and scholarly accounts of this period is a decline in the strength and influence of the Jewish community in Palestine. Jewish tradition asserted that the destruction of the Second Temple, like that of the First, was accompanied by an exile of the Jews from their homeland. The amidah prayer of the additional (musaf ) service on festivals expresses the traditional view: ‘‘Because of our sins we were exiled from our land and driven far from our soil.’’ Historians were aware that in" [cont. next page]

page 406

[cont from prev page] "fact that the Romans did *not* carry out extensive deportations of Judeans as the Assyrians and Babylonians had done centuries earlier. . Still, most believed that the fall of Jerusalem in 70 C E and the suppression of the Second Revolt in 135 were the beginning of the end of a Jewish majority in Israel. They also believed that the steady decline in demographic strength, coupled with an increasingly precarious political standing when the Roman Empire became Christianized, led to a loss of hegemony within the Jewish world.5 Long the regnant view, this position needs to be revised. Few would disagree that, in the century and a half before our period began, the Jewish population of Judah (in the narrow sense, distinguished from Samaria, Galilee, etc.) suffered a serious blow from which it never recovered.6 The destruction of the Jewish metropolis of Jerusalem and its environs and the eventual refoundation of the city as the Roman colony of Aelia Capitolina had lasting repercussions."

HIGHLIGHTED SECTION: "However, in other parts of Palestine the Jewish population remained strong. Literary and archaeological evidence indicates that in the Late Roman-Byzantine era Jewish communities thrived along the eastern, southern, and western edges of Judah, in the Galilee, the Golan, and the Bet Shean region. And a strong Jewish presence continued throughout this period in many poleis, including Caesarea and Scythopolis. Thus it is difficult to see any decline outside of Jerusalem and the heart of Judah.7"

Screenshot from page 409 with the highlighted text:
" If both estimates are accepted, this would indicate that the percentage of Jews in the province remained stable from the Late Roman to the Byzantine era. This is precisely the conclusion of one scholar, who argues that the Jews constituted the largest population group in the province at the beginning of the fourth century and still held this position in the early fifth. That is, they continued to outnumber the pagans, Samaritans, and Christians.17 Literary evidence from the turn of the fourth to the fifth century tends to support this conclusion. John Chrysostom, writing in the 380s, claimed that the Jews were very numerous in Palestine. The Life of Bar-Sauma, describing the situation at the beginning of the fifth century, asserts that the pagans were numerous and that the Jews and Samaritans outnumbered the Christians. Writing in the first decade of the fifth century, Jerome complained that the Jews were breeding like worms.18"

June 15, 2025 at 4:15 AM

Soma

@somasacademy.bsky.social

All this while trying to own me by bringing up my field of academic expertise, except she tried to be smart by filling in that when my bio said "precolonial West Africa" I meant "Muslim Sahelian states" because she apparently thinks West Africa has no other history 💀

June 15, 2025 at 3:51 AM

Soma

@somasacademy.bsky.social

Yup she was trying to make an analogy between Palestinians and Anglo-Americans (since as we've established she thinks Jews were all displaced from Palestine and modern Palestinians moved there recently) but this is what she actually said:

June 15, 2025 at 3:25 AM

Soma

@somasacademy.bsky.social

Integrated them?

June 14, 2025 at 10:53 PM

Soma

@somasacademy.bsky.social

May 1, 2025 at 9:10 PM

Soma

@somasacademy.bsky.social

Was just scrolling through older comments on one of my videos looking for a citation I sent someone and found this exchange lmao

YouTube comment saying "Is he LGBT?" with the reply "The narrator is a woman, obviously"

April 13, 2025 at 3:25 PM

Soma

@somasacademy.bsky.social

I looked up the name of the "digital artist" who made the piece, Juanjo Ortega G., and while I can't guarantee this is the same guy, here's the instagram page of the only person I could find with that name:

Screenshot of an instagram page full of AI generated images of the Roman Empire

April 6, 2025 at 4:23 PM

Soma

@somasacademy.bsky.social

WOOOO

March 2, 2025 at 5:33 AM

Soma

@somasacademy.bsky.social

lmao

February 6, 2025 at 3:55 AM

Soma

@somasacademy.bsky.social

This feels pertinent

Excerpt from a 1923 interview with Adolf Hitler, reading:
[Asked, "What would you do with the Jew?", Hitler said], We would disfranchise him. [Even if he is born in Germany, because] birth in itself is no sufficient qualification for citizenship. Citizenship depends upon a clear recognition of the duties implied in its rights. The Jews are not German. They are an alien people in our midst, and manifest themselves as such....

January 25, 2025 at 5:22 PM

Soma

@somasacademy.bsky.social

I like how these two videos in my recommended have almost identical thumbnails except the second one inexplicably seems to have used an AI recreation of the official art instead of just using the art itself