2025-06-29



Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

  • Iran Was a Main Driver of Scottish Independence Social Media Campaign.

    It's really rather funny. We keep being warned against Russian interference to promote the right wing, and keep finding interference from adversaries backing the left. Go figure.

  • When politicians gain power, their language becomes garbled

  • The objectivity of Community Notes?

    Unlike previous studies, misleadingness here is determined by agreement across a diverse community of platform users, rather than by fact-checkers. We find that 2.3 times more posts by Republicans are flagged as misleading compared to posts by Democrats. These results are not base rate artifacts, as we find no meaningful overrepresentation of Republicans among X users. Our findings provide strong evidence of a partisan asymmetry in misinformation sharing which cannot be attributed to political bias on the part of raters, and indicate that Republicans will be sanctioned more than Democrats even if platforms transition from professional fact-checking to Community Notes.

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

  • How the Gay Rights Movement Radicalized, and Lost Its Way - The New York Times

    Far from celebrating victory, defending the gains, staying vigilant, but winding down as a movement that had achieved its core objectives — including the end of H.I.V. in the United States as an unstoppable plague — gay and lesbian rights groups did the opposite. Swayed by the broader liberal shift to the “social justice” left, they radicalized. In 2023, the Human Rights Campaign, the largest gay, lesbian and transgender civil rights group in the country, declared a “state of emergency” for gay men, lesbians and transgender people — the first time in the organization’s existence. It had not declared a state of emergency when gay men were jailed for having sex in private, when the AIDS epidemic killed hundreds of thousands of gay men or when we faced a possible constitutional amendment banning marriage equality in 2004. In fact, we found out, this “emergency” was almost entirely in response to new state bills proposing restrictions on medical treatment for minors with gender dysphoria; bathroom and locker room bans; and transgender issues in school curricula and sports.

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

TechSuck / Geek Bait

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

Left Angst

  • An exceedingly rare asteroid flyby will happen soon, but NASA may be left out

  • Why Big Tech Turned Against Democrats – and Democracy

    So what explains the turn away from Democrats and, given Trump’s obvious authoritarianism, democracy? A major factor may have been a shift in attitude and policy on the part of Democrats, especially Biden administration officials, who moved away from uncritical tech boosterism and toward increased regulation. This change in attitude didn’t come out of nowhere. There is growing evidence that social media can do real harm, especially to children. There were, as I’ll explain, good reasons to worry that the benefits of technology were no longer flowing to consumers and business as a whole. And the Biden administration was also reflecting a broader change in perceptions: Many Americans have turned sour on the tech sector and tech leaders. In fact, the industry’s fall from grace has been little short of spectacular.

    It’s hard to believe now, but for a time some tech leaders approached folk-hero status. Mark Zuckerberg was the subject of a biopic, The Social Network, that wasn’t entirely positive but certainly fed perceptions that he was a great innovator. Elon Musk was reportedly a partial inspiration for Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, the Marvel character. More significantly, social media was widely given partial credit for the “Arab Spring” of 2010-2012. And in 2011 Americans were three times as likely to consider technology companies more trustworthy than average as they were to consider them less trustworthy. But that was then. These days Americans don’t consider technology an especially trustworthy industry. They rank it above health insurance and pharma, but that’s a pretty low bar.

  • New Immigration Policies Will Increase Prices for Americans

    • "FWD.us is a lobbying group founded by Mark Zuckerberg nominally to - among other things - promote improved border security."
  • Trump Mobile's phone service actually exists, and it works

  • CDC grant funding is moving so slowly layoffs are happening

  • Tracking the money Trump's tariffs are bringing in

  • The Mystery of Richard Posner – Law & Liberty

    Posner departed the judiciary in 2017 and laid down his pen. Last year, the world learned that he has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He leaves behind a towering body of work, but also a gnawing question. What drove him to produce it?

    Posner had never been one to restrict himself to the issues and arguments presented by the parties. His opinions had always meandered, usefully but inappropriately, down whatever paths caught his attention. In his later years, though, he began to disregard fundamental tenets of judicial conduct. For instance, he took to supplementing appellate records with his own internet research. In a case about inflatable rats that some unions had placed by the side of the road, Posner delved into his personal experience. (“… my Chicago rat was only about three feet from MLK Drive … Here are [my] two photos …”) In a case about workers’ donning and doffing of sanitary gear, he bought the gear in question and timed a clerk putting it on and taking it off. (The dissenting judge was “startled, to say the least,” by this stunt.) Toward the end Posner became a caricature. In a 2016 interview he asked, rhetorically, whether the Supreme Court’s nine justices are among “the thousand best lawyers in the country,” and then answered with an emphatic “No!” A judicial ruling need not “be supported by ‘reason,’ whatever that means exactly, to avoid lawlessness,” he told another interviewer in his final months on the bench. Most “legal technicalities,” he added for good measure, “are antiquated crap.” He urged judges to wield “common sense” (something he once derided, in the same breath as theology, for being untestable by observation).

  • ICE arrested a 6-year-old boy with leukemia at immigration court

  • Senate Republicans make steep cuts to wind and solar in updated megabill text

  • Canada's Trump-Fueled Brain Gain

  • No One Is in Charge at the US Copyright Office

  • MAGA Doesn't Mean Making Profits Great Again

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

  • Washington Post journalist busted by Jeanine Pirro for allegedly possessing child porn 

    A Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post journalist was arrested and charged after authorities allegedly discovered child porn on his work computer, DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced Friday. Thomas Pham LeGro, a 48-year-old video editor at the news outlet, was taken into custody on Thursday after FBI agents raided his Washington, DC, home and discovered a folder on his work laptop which contained 11 videos depicting child sexual abuse material, according to Pirro’s office. FBI agents also discovered “fractured pieces of a hard drive in the hallway outside the room where LeGro’s work laptop was found,” during the execution of the search warrant.

World

Israel

  • IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites

  • Haaretz: The Lies Continue

    As flagged by @YairElsner and posted on X by the relentlessly excellent Eitan Fischberger, Haaretz’s English edition claims that IDF soldiers were ordered to fire at unarmed Palestinians waiting for food in Gaza, but the original Hebrew version? It states they were told to fire towards crowds to keep them away from the aid sites. This represents a significant difference in intent, legality, and moral implications. That is only the start of Haaretz’s deceptive sleight of hand in this grotesquely misleading piece of propaganda masquerading as journalism.

    The author admits they don’t know who is shooting at civilians near these aid distribution centres. Still, rather than consider the possibility that, for example, Hamas might be involved, the article shifts with the loaded line: “The IDF does not permit armed individuals in these humanitarian zones without its knowledge.” Get it? If someone’s firing, and the IDF doesn’t permit any shooters other than themselves in the area, well... wink, wink. Conspiracy complete. There’s no mention of the possibility that gunmen (Hamas, criminal gangs, or rogue actors) could infiltrate these chaotic areas without IDF permission, nor is there any curiosity about how IDF soldiers are getting wounded near those same food sites. Not exactly an idle question, especially in light of some of the video footage released in recent weeks showing Hamas opening fire on their own people.

  • Glastonbury rapper leads ‘death to IDF’ chant

  • Gaza Humanitarian Foundation says Hamas attack has killed multiple aid workers