Leftovers

• Vintage Everyday ☛ Amazing Photography by Dennis Hopper in the 1960s

  Before Dennis Hopper directed Easy Rider (1969) or became the chaotic icon of New Hollywood, he was blacklisted from major film studios. Following a legendary, combustible fallout with director Henry Hathaway on the set of From Hell to Texas (1958), Hopper found himself unable to get acting work. To survive creatively, his then-wife, Brooke Hayward, bought him a 28mm Nikonis camera for his birthday. Throughout the 1960s, Hopper carried that camera everywhere, hanging it around his neck like a permanent fixture. He didn’t just document the decade; he lived at the exact epicenter of its most explosive cultural shifts.

• Robert Birming ☛ Last blog post

  I’ve decided to sunset this blog and focus on my main blog, robertbirming.com (RSS).

• Kieran Healy ☛ Zero Sum Problems

  Literally none of the measures in the Basketball data above are zero-sum in this way. Both teams could shoot 100% from the free throw line, or zero percent. But because the first three measures shown are percentages, this reinforces the zero-sum impression given by the lines. It certainly did that in my case. But then, starting with Assists, the remaining rows are just absolute numbers. When I started looking at the absolute numbers, I got confused a second time by the length of the lines. “Oh so it’s not a share, it’s the value” I thought—but no, they do correspond in terms of relative proportions to the teams share within each row. But they’re not really shares they’re just magnitudes. But they have to be shown in a fixed space and we want to make them relatively comparable somehow so … Argh.

• Fortra LLC ☛ Defenders Fall Behind, as AI Rewrites the Rules of a Data Breach

  The uncomfortable truth is that the window between a vulnerability being disclosed and it being actively exploited has shrunk from months to hours.

  Verizon's report further claims that only around a quarter of disclosed vulnerabilities ever get fully patched, and on average it takes 43 days to fix half of them — a timeline that is slipping, not improving.

• Timo Furrer ☛ No query strings here either from ~timo

  A couple of weeks ago, Chris Morgan published I've banned query strings. I read it, liked it and then did roughly the same thing on my own site - with two deliberate differences.

  Chris's opening sums up the motivation better than I could: [...]

• Science / Mathematics / Computer Science

  • Science Alert ☛ A Signal of Cognitive Decline May Be Hidden in The Way You Write

    A window into your brain health.

  • Science Alert ☛ Scientists Discover a Fat-Burning 'Dial' That Could Help Strengthen Bones

    "Opens the door to a new kind of treatment."

  • Science Alert ☛ Archaeologists Excavated a Giant Stone Jar And Found a Grim Surprise

    A complicated burial system.

  • Science Alert ☛ Your Daily Rhythms May Help Slow Biological Aging, Study Suggests

    A new way to slow down the aging process?

  • Science Alert ☛ De-Extinction Company Says It's Hatched Chicks From Artificial Eggshells

    Not all scientists are convinced.

  • Science Alert ☛ Two Ancient Clues May Finally Explain Why 90% of Us Are Right-Handed

    We weren’t the only ones.

  • Computational Complexity ☛ Computational Complexity: Range Avoidance

    Let \(f\) be a function mapping binary strings of length \(m\) to strings of length \(n\) with \(n>m\). Since there are more strings of length \(n\) than \(m\), \(f\) is not onto. Can you find a string not in the range? This is known as the range avoidance problems, or AVOID for short

    Let's do an example. Consider \(f\) that outputs an undirected graph on \(n\) nodes and takes as input: [...]

• Career/Education

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Soldier finishes Ranger, Airborne, Air Assault and Pathfinder school

    “I definitely have explained the path of my career, I guess you could say, more times than I can count, to students and instructors,” Veit told Task & Purpose this week, laughing slightly at his unusual position. “It is pretty crazy, because a lot of people are like, ‘Oh, how’d you get all these schools? I’ve been waiting 10 years to get this one’ or something.”

  • Helen Chong ☛ So Long, 42 the School, and Thanks for All the Fish | Helen Chong, Web Developer

    Since 42 only provides physical courses and no online courses to encourage its peer-to-peer learning model, transferring to another 42 campus would require me to either take an hours long trip to attend the school, or relocate to a different place to live, neither of which is practical for my living condition, especially since 42 will only consider our request for campus transfer if we submit it before the end of June, and my parents and I are already preparing to move to a different residential area in our city this year. Therefore, on my part, the only practical choice for me is to drop out from 42 entirely.

  • Zach Flower ☛ The Next Chapter

    Unfortunately, good feels doesn't pay the bills, and as much as I love teaching, the financial realities of the profession (and the economy as a whole in the US in 2026) have made it increasingly difficult for my family to make ends meet. So, after much soul-searching and discussion with my loved ones, I have made the difficult decision to step away from teaching and jump back into the tech industry as a software engineer.

• Hardware

  • The Straits Times ☛ Samsung, union resume negotiations with minister mediating

    The walkout could involve more than 50,000 workers.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Samsung reaches tentative union deal, averting crippling strike

    The union will put a tentative wage agreement with the management to a vote.

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Samsung narrowly avoids 18-day chip strike after last-minute wage deal with 48,000-worker union — tentative deal, subject to workers' vote, suspends billions of dollars worth of potential losses

    Samsung Electronics has temporarily avoided a major 18-day strike at its South Korean semiconductor operations after reaching a tentative wage agreement with its 48,000-member union.

  • Futurism ☛ The “Made in America” Convicted Felon Phone Appears to be a Disguised Cheapo Chinese Smartphone

    "It's simply not possible to deliver what they're promising."

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ Russia's Sberbank wants Chinese chips for its GigaChat Hey Hi (AI) in the face of Western sanctions — faces a long wait behind ByteDance and Alibaba

    CEO German Gref didn’t specify which Chinese chips Sberbank is interested in, but the most likely candidate is Huawei's Ascend 950 family.

  • Hackaday ☛ Magnets Are Bad For Hardware Again

    Take the modern iPhone line, for example. Apple is quite careful to warn against carelessly using magnetic accessories with the smartphone, because it can interfere with the cameras. Specifically, it’s because of the optical image stabilization (OIS) and closed-loop autofocus systems that are built into the cameras themselves. These devices use magnetic position sensors to determine lens position to compensate for focus, vibration, and movement, and use magnetic voice coil actuators to move optical elements, in order to take the best possible photos and videos at all times. If there’s a strong magnetic field in the vicinity of the lenses, it can interfere with this operation.

  • [Old] Dygma Lab SL ☛ Keycap guide: how to choose the best keycaps for you

    It's a combination of the shape of the contact surface, the shape of each row, and the height of a keycap.

    There are four types of contact surfaces.

  • [Old] Varmilo ☛ Ultimate guide on keyboard keycaps：All you need to know.

    The keycap is the face of the keyboard. It connects to your switch, is the only contact point you have with your keyboards. There are a lot of things to know about your keycaps. This guide will broaden your knowledge and help you make the right choice when you change your keycaps.

  • [Old] Minsoo Choo ☛ The Rise and Fall of SPARC: Why No One Misses It

    Once upon a time, there was a company called Sun Microsystems, founded by legendary computer engineers like Bill Joy. Sun shipped products across a remarkable range of domains: programming languages (Java), databases (MySQL, though it originated at a Swedish company), operating systems (SunOS and Solaris), file systems (ZFS), and their own processor architecture (SPARC). Their workstations and servers were enormously popular throughout the 1990s, when enterprises ran Java applications on SPARC machines powered by Solaris. But like many technology companies of that era, Sun suffered massive losses after the dot-com bubble burst. To make matters worse, the industry was migrating toward Intel x86, while Sun continued to bet on SPARC. The result was Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems in 2010.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • New York Times ☛ Ebola Outbreak Is Unlikely to Become Global Threat, W.H.O. Says

    Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organization’s director general, said the outbreak in central Africa was “not a pandemic emergency.”

  • New York Times ☛ Ebola Containment Efforts May Have Been Hindered by USAID Shutdown and CDC Cuts

    Aid cuts by the Convicted Felon administration have shut down crucial disease surveillance networks and medical supply chains in East Africa.

  • Robert Reich ☛ PTSD Nation?

    At the same time, we’ve been experiencing widening inequalities of income, wealth, and opportunity, along with a growing climate crisis.

    When a nation’s people experience these sorts of stresses, they begin expecting stress. They gird themselves for the next crisis. They shut down their capacity to be shocked or appalled.

• Proprietary / SaaS

  • Railay Corp ☛ Incident Report: May 19, 2026- GCP Account Suspension

    Railway experienced a platform-wide service disruption due to Google Cloud incorrectly placing our account in a suspended status. This resulted in a temporary loss of service for all GCP hosted infrastructure. This infrastructure supports our dashboard, API, and pieces of our network infrastructure. As cached network routes expired, the outage extended beyond GCP to affect all Railway workloads.

    Below, we walk through what happened, how we responded, and what we're doing to prevent a similar incident in the future.

  • Matt Fantinel ☛ You don’t have to put up with Google

    This would be tolerable if the results themselves (both AI and links) were actually good. I haven't used Google myself in the past 6 years, but you've probably heard a lot (or even said yourself) that search results have been getting worse over the years. This is not because the web got worse (it did) or because it's now filled with AI slop (it is), but because, if you consider Google Search as a product, showing good results is actually bad for business. Ads make the product profitable, and simply showing you the best results makes you click away from the ads faster.

  • Quantic Dream Layoffs Hitting Up to 95 Jobs Following Game Closure

    Yesterday, Quantic Dream announced that they were closing their long in development 3v3 MOBA-like game Spellcasters Chronicles, after it released in Early access earlier this year. In the Spellcasters Chronicles shutdown announcement there was a hint of Quantic Dream layoffs, but today we have more information about the situation.

    French video game employee union STJV (Le Syndicat des Travailleuresuses du Jeu Video) reported today that one quarter of the company's workers are under threat - or 95 different jobs in France. STJV goes on that Spellcasters Chronicles had been in development for 8 years, and lays the flaws of the product at management's feet stating that worker representatives had raised concerns about the risk and high cost of the game numerous times only to be dismissed. According to STJV, management had said that the 30 years of experience in the field by key decision makers meant success was a given, and there was never any consideration or plan for a less successful outcome.

  • So-Called 'Artificial Intelligence' ('AI') / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Guest Post — When AI Helps Write Research: What Happens to Lived Experience?

      Recent discussions in The Scholarly Kitchen have highlighted the opportunities and risks associated with this shift, including concerns about research integrity, bias, and the changing role of scholarly judgement and practice. As AI writing assistants become embedded in scholarly workflows, another question emerges: what happens to lived experience when its interpretation is mediated by AI?

    • Sean Goedecke ☛ Prompts are technical debt too

      In other words, a set of prompts that you carefully crafted in January this year might be out of date or actively harmful by February. Worse still, you might not even notice. Model capabilities are already so hard to pin down (unless you’re running every problem through different models and tools), and even weak AI systems are surprisingly good at some problems. You might just think “huh, the new Anthropic model isn’t as impressive as the hype”, or “wow, Claude Code has gotten worse recently”.

      In this sense, prompts are a worse form of technical debt than code. When technical debt blows up, it usually causes errors or a tangible slowdown as you try to understand the code. Prompts will decay silently. Also, even janky code tends to be relatively stable when untouched, but every single model upgrade could turn a functional prompt into a non-functional one.

    • Rodrigo Ghedin ☛ Google wants to be the interface for the web

      The opening of Google I/O this year (35-minute video recap) showed a Google less shy about transforming the web into raw material for its AIs.

    • Logikal Solutions ☛ AI Apocalypse

      The featured image of a Trumpville isn’t what most think of when they hear the phrase AI Apocalypse, but it is accurate. Hollywood wants to have images of robots slaughtering humans wholesale and self-driving cars mowing people down. For certain that would eventually come but it will be after The Great Trump Depression of 2026.

    • David Oks ☛ AI is killing the cheap smartphone

      In 1985, if you were a reasonably affluent American, the best computer that you could afford was the IBM PC AT. The PC AT would cost you about $6,000—$19,400 in 2026 dollars—and thus represented about a quarter of the median American’s annual income; and it ran on an Intel 80286 processor, capable of something like 900,000 instructions per second. Today, if you find yourself in a market stall in Nairobi or Lagos, you’ll be able to find a cheap smartphone—like the Tecno Spark Go, manufactured by China’s Transsion—for somewhere between $30 and $120. That phone will run on a processor capable of billions of calculations per second.

      In other words: you can buy a computer thousands of times more powerful than the best consumer device from 40 years ago, for something like 0.3 percent of the price. No other good in history has experienced a decline in cost on that scale: poor people can now carry around in their pockets computers many orders of magnitude more powerful than what the richest slice of the world’s population could afford a few decades ago. And that great cheapening of consumer electronics has enabled a diffusion of computing power to the world’s population that is nothing short of miraculous. Hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest people are able to access the internet because of cheap smartphones like the Tecno Spark Go.

      That era is now coming to an end.

    • Andrew Nesbitt ☛ RFC: Artificial Contributors to Open Source

      Open source projects increasingly receive contributions whose authorship is undeclared and whose volume exceeds the project’s review capacity. Existing contribution guidelines were written on the assumption that the contributor could experience embarrassment. This document updates that guidance for cases where the assumption does not hold.

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Amazon engineers use MeshClaw bot to hit managers’ AI token targets

      Amazon managers were wowed by OpenClaw. So Amazon made MeshClaw, which has been deployed across the company over the past several weeks.

      Amazon has now given AI use targets to 80% of its developers. They even have a leader board in the office, to show who’s been maxing their tokens hardest.

      So the engineers are using MeshClaw as much as they can: [...]

    • Berryville Institute of Machine Learning ☛ No Security Meter for AI [PDF]

      Let’s say you wanted to make sure that your AI is secure. Can you just maximize the security and privacy benchmark and call it a day? Nope, because benchmarks don’t actually work for measuring AI capabilities (even when they are NOT emergent systemic properties like security). So let’s take a step back: how do you measure security in the first place? Good question. Over the last 30 years, security engineering for software evolved from black box penetration testing, through whitebox code analysis and architectural risk analysis to de facto process-driven standards like the Building Security In Maturity Model (BSIMM). Software had a very deep impact on business operations, and it appears that AI is going to have an even deeper impact. Will a software security-like measurement move work for AI? Probably. In the meantime we can make real progress in AI security by cleaning up our WHAT piles and managing risk by identifying and applying good assurance processes. (Spoiler alert: no matter what we do, we still don’t get a security meter for AI, so we need to be extra vigilant about security.)

  • Social Control Media

    • The Strategist ☛ Fighting online youth radicalisation, Australia and India can teach each other

      Two democracies, very different in scale, are grappling with the same problem: how to protect young people from radicalisation through online gaming. After Australia’s worst terrorist attack, the Bondi Beach massacre in December, the federal government this month committed A$74 million to a new Counter Terrorism Online Centre to monitor gaming platforms, chat rooms and online forums. India, with an estimated 600 million gamers, passed Online Gaming Act in 2025 to bring its vast digital ecosystem under regulatory oversight.

      Neither country has solved the problem. But together, they hold many of the pieces needed to do so.

    • India Times ☛ Australian court upholds $465,000 fine against Elon Musk's X

      An Australian federal court upheld on Thursday a fine against Elon Musk's X for failing to comply with child [Internet] safety regulations, capping a three year legal fight between the tech giant and Canberra.

    • Futurism ☛ Why Is Mark Zuckerberg Taunting His Employees Before Firing Them?

      Those layoffs went into effect today, and it’s exactly as brutal as everybody anticipated. Mark Zuckerberg, however, evidently decided the usual cruelty and angst that comes with massive layoffs wasn’t enough. In newly leaked audio from an all-hands meeting at Meta, released by More Perfect Union, the Meta CEO seems to actually be taunting the thousands of workers who were about to be let go by pointing to how the company was harvesting employee data to train its in-house AI models ahead of the massive layoffs.

    • Court House News ☛ TikTok attempts to duck Hawaii child safety lawsuit

      The state cited internal company documents it says show executives knew about the harms and prioritized profit anyway. Hawaii seeks fines of up to $10,000 per violation of its consumer protection law, potentially totaling hundreds of millions of dollars.

    • The Record ☛ Tech giants promise British regulator they will tweak platforms to protect kids online

      Ofcom indicated that it will ratchet up its efforts to get platforms to comply more fully.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Andrew Quinn ☛ Back up your TOTP codes by just printing themAndrew Quinn's TILs

      One nice property of this is that, because the math to calculate TOTPs is not owned by anyone proprietary, there are actually a lot of privacy-focused third party apps that can handle TOTP codes if you’re not entirely trusting of Google or Microsoft. I like Aegis, and Aegis and I have a mutual understanding that the instant I start to think it’s seeing anyone else this relationship is finito.

      One even nicer property of this is that you can just print TOTP QR codes and scan them later. Your coworkers or loved ones can scan them. An estate planner helping a tech-clueless loved one sort through your things will probably figure out what these QR codes are in a matter of minutes, and then it’s more of a question of figuring out what they actually correspond to than anything.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • The Rise of the Military Retail Industrial Complex

      When it was reported that Wegmans grocery stores were utilizing facial recognition technology (FRT) to collect data on their customers, the company declined to disclose the software-end of its surveillance machine. Their reticence may be related to the FRT industry’s deep ties to the national security state — leaving consumers’ data just a knock away from American intelligence agencies.

    • Purism ☛ DHS Inspector General Study

      Two I&A‑built apps used to share intelligence with first responders had three unpatched vulnerabilities, despite DHS knowing about them.

    • Purism ☛ Privacy Under Siege: Why Purism’s User Sovereignty Model is the Way Forward

      Meanwhile, applications like the Firefox browser is flirting with AI integration. While this may seem appealing to some, there’s a big catch that comes with this integration: AI in browsers could become the ultimate tracking machine if users are not careful.

    • EDRI ☛ Research study: Evaluation of EU’s Law Enforcement Directive shows implementation still fragmented and insufficient

      This study commissioned by EDRi analyses the implementation of the Law Enforcement Directive (LED) in five EU Member States. It shows that even eight years after the LED’s entry into application, the implementation of this crucial instrument for digital rights remains fragmented and insufficient.

    • NYOB ☛ noyb success: ORF.at must correct misleading cookie banner

      The Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) must amend its cookie banner on ORF.at to bring it into line with the GDPR. This has now been decided by the Federal Administrative Court (BVwG), thereby upholding a decision made by the Austrian Data Protection Authority in 2024. Specifically, the ORF must ensure that the buttons to ‘accept’ or ‘reject’ tracking cookies are designed equally so that visitors are not tricked into agreeing. Currently, the ‘Accept’ option is misleadingly highlighted in colour, which can lead to unintended consent.

    • Papers Please ☛ Immigrant and human rights groups call for California not to upload driver’s license data to national ID database

      Before a hearing last week before the California Assembly Budget Subcommittee #4 on Transportation, a coalition of 170 immigrant and human rights groups and allied organizations submitted a joint letter opposing the plan to upload data about all holders of California driver’s licenses and state-issued IDs to the SPEXS national ID database.

      The joint letter and testimony by some of the witnesses at the hearing called on legislators to reject the proposal by Governor Newsom and the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to appropriate $55 million and amend California’s driver’s license privacy law to allow the upload, which would be prohibited by current state law.

    • The Record ☛ Europe dismantles VPN service used by cybercriminals to hide ransomware attacks

      Authorities notified users of the shutdown and informed them they had been identified. An investigation is ongoing.

    • Wired ☛ A Bipartisan Amendment Would End Police License Plate Tracking Nationwide

      One line tucked into a federal highway bill would strip funds from cities and states unless they kill their automated plate tracking programs—effectively banning the tech for all but toll collection.

    • Nick Heer ☛ Ontario Police Are Fighting to Keep Their Spyware Secret

      The details of this report align with research published last year by Citizen Lab about Paragon’s Graphite spyware, including a likely link to the Ontario Provincial Police. It is not the only police force in Canada using ODITs, either. In 2022, the RCMP acknowledged its own use; Christopher Parsons, a civil rights advocate and director at the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, keeps a small library of related policies.

    • Numeric Citizen ☛ Where Life & Tech Collide

      We usually bike to work. As we were leaving the bike lane, we parted ways to head to our offices. When I arrived at my office, I received an SOS notification on my watch and iPhone. Apparently, she had hit something hard. I tried to call her back, but she couldn’t speak. I assured her I’d go back and pick her up. Using Find My, I discovered she was only 400 meters away from my office. The ambulance eventually arrived because her iPhone automatically called 911. She was quickly taken to the nearest emergency room for examination and treatment. Thankfully, she’s doing well.

    • Michael Geist ☛ The Government Tries to Make the Case for Bill C-22: Why Its Own Use Cases Reveal Disproportionate Overreach

      Faced with growing criticism of Bill C-22, the government this week mounted a coordinated defence, with senior officials from CSIS, the RCMP, and Public Safety Canada sitting for on-the-record briefings with the Globe and Mail, the CBC, and others. While officials tried to make the case for lawful access, they failed to make the case for Bill C-22, as their use cases reveal a consistent pattern of overreach. Indeed, whether the issue is metadata retention or the technical capabilities the bill would mandate, the powers it would grant extend well beyond the targeted needs the officials describe, resulting in a disproportionate bill in need of significant amendment.

    • Doc Searls ☛ #MyTerms at #CPDP2026

      CPDP stands for Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection. The theme of this year’s CPDP is “Competing Visions Shared Futures.” The MyTerms future is replacing consent with contract in our online dealings with websites and digital services.

  • Confidentiality

    • Mariusz Zaborski ☛ A Private pkg Repo Behind Mutual TLS

      I am a big fan of mutual TLS ("mTLS" if you prefer the shorter spelling, "client certificates" if you are describing the half a user actually touches). Strangely, I rarely see it used in the wild. That probably says something worrying about how I choose to spend free time, but they are a neat fit for small private infrastructure.

      Most people reach for HTTP Basic, an API token, or a VPN, and call it a day. A private pkg repository is one of those quiet little places where mutual TLS fits perfectly: a well established mechanisms, no humans typing passwords, and a server that should only answer questions from boxes I actually have access to.

      This is the story of putting a FreeBSD repository over HTTPS, and make nginx accept only clients with certificates signed by my own tiny certificate authority. This can be usefull if you want to for example build a "enterprise repo" where only subscribed user can have access, or test repo that only friends can access.

    • Scott Helme ☛ XSS Is Deadly for Passkeys: The Hidden Risk of Attestation None

      A single XSS vulnerability can turn passkeys from a phishing-resistant login mechanism into a persistent account takeover backdoor. If malicious JavaScript can run on your page, it may be able to register an attacker-controlled passkey against the victim’s account. The user sees nothing, the website records a successful registration, and the attacker walks away with a valid authentication backdoor.

• Defence/Aggression

  • NYPost ☛ Nimitz Carrier Strike Group arrives in the Caribbean as Convicted Felon admin ups pressure on Cuba

    The strike group includes the Nimitz aircraft carrier, its air wing – F/A-18 Super Hornets, EA-18G Growlers, E-2D Hawkeyes, C-2A Greyhounds and MH-60R/S Sea Hawks – the USS Gridley destroyer and the USNS Patuxent replenishment oiler.

  • New York Times ☛ Inflation Fears Cloud G7 Economic Agenda as Iran War Persists

    The United States and Europe were at odds over the Convicted Felon administration’s decision to ease oil sanctions on Russia.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Nuclear energy, Taiwan and Convicted Felon’s ‘Golden Dome’: Key points from the Xi-Putin talks

    No breakthrough was announced for the major natural gas pipeline between Russia and China.

  • New York Times ☛ Thailand Tightens Visa Rules for Tourists From Dozens of Nations, Including U.S.

    The country had loosened entry requirements after the pandemic to attract visitors, but will now limit many travelers to 30 days without a visa.

  • Meduza ☛ Two Muslim clerics arrested in Russia amid confusing, unconfirmed reports of wider crackdown

    Law enforcement agencies had previously taken notice of representatives of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims. In August 2025, the Moscow City Court added to the list of extremist materials the encyclopedic dictionary “Islam in the North Caucasus,” published by the Medina publishing house under the editorship of the deputy chairman of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims, Damir Mukhetdinov. The administration said at the time that the articles “Wahhabis of the North Caucasus” and “History of Islam in Chechnya” mentioned individuals involved in terrorist activity.

  • The Strategist ☛ Every country should understand space as a warfighting domain

    A country may operate militarily in space without calling it a warfighting domain. This was a rational ambiguity when space actors were few and actions were constrained, before the realisation of important technological advances. But this is no longer the case.

    Space is no longer a distant frontier; it is part of the infrastructure of modern life. Once the preserve of two superpowers, activity in space has seen radical growth this century, including much wider military activity.

  • RFA ☛ Satellite imagery shows new North Korea-Russia bridge nearing completion

    Satellite imagery has revealed that North Korea and Russia are scrambling to complete a new high-capacity road bridge across their Tumen River border, and experts told Radio Free Asia that the fervor for completing the project quickly is a sign of increased cooperation and warm relations between Pyongyang and Moscow.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ We analyzed the TikTok history of 142 men. Here's what it taught us about the manosphere

    Interest in the manosphere has recently surged yet again, with the recent Louis Theroux documentary catapulting the term "manosphere" back to the forefront of our cultural psyche.

    The term has become a catchall for the most inflammatory content and communities in young men's digital worlds. Alarm bells are ringing, but our understanding of what the manosphere actually is—where it begins and ends—has more questions than answers.

  • Project Censored ☛ State “Tax the Rich” Campaigns Gain Momentum Across the Country

    Coordinated “Tax the Rich” campaigns have launched across the country, spurred by Massachusetts’s “millionaires tax” that has raised billions to fund public services. According to Brad Reed for Common Dreams in January 2026 and Lex McMenamin for The Guardian in April 2026, a coalition of labor organizers and community advocates launched a campaign to pressure state governments to implement wealth taxes to mitigate funding cuts from the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act. The bill guts Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), “while showering corporations and the wealthy with more tax cuts,” said Reed. “Tax the Rich” legislation is being proposed in states such as Rhode Island, Michigan, and California, as well as New York state, which is building on the momentum of Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral agenda.

  • Wired ☛ The EU Is Going Through a Trump-Fueled Breakup With Big Tech

    “We are not just explaining what we want to do,” Stéphanie Schaer, the head of DINUM, France’s digital transformation ministry, tells WIRED over a call on the nation’s video-calling platform Visio. “We already did it in a few matters.” So far, more than 40,000 French government staff have started using the home-grown video platform, while the rest will move away from Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and others by 2027. “We are confident enough to use it every day and we are not dependent on just one actor that will tell us you have to use my video conference,” Schaer says.

    Across France’s central government agencies and vast civil service, officials plan to shift to as many French, European, and open source technology alternatives as possible in the coming years. Schaer says it is important for the French government to be in control of the technology that it is using, with data being stored locally in the country, not abroad.

  • Marcy Wheeler ☛ The Returns of 1776: "Just Pay Your Taxes So I Can Enjoy Your Money"

    Is there any part of the slush fund settlement that would prevent citizens, in opposition to Trump and trumpism, making a claim for compensation from the fund? By use of the infamous passive voice, distinguishing between being a so called victim of state sanctioned violence of having one’s fists, clubs, flagpoles, etc. injured by striking the bodies of capital police aggressively preventing the claimant’s attempt to enter the Capital while in session, vs. the psychological injuries caused by the trauma of seeing an insurrection unfold in real time.

    Flood the zone with claims of victimization.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: Shopping isn’t politics (21 May 2026)

    I've written before about the futility of "voting with your wallet." Billionaires love it when you try to vote with your wallet, because while billionaires only represent 0.00004% of the population, their wallets are 100,000 times larger than average, which means that when we vote with wallets, a billionaire's vote counts 100,000 times more than yours: [...]

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • Latvia ☛ Keep calm, carry on, examine algorithms, says Latvian President

      Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs on Wednesday called on the public to stay calm and not rise to Russia's repeated attempts at intimidation.

    • France24 ☛ Germany's Merz proposes Ukraine as EU ‘associate member’ without voting rights

      German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has proposed granting Ukraine “associate member” status in the European Union without voting rights while it pursues full membership, according to a letter seen by AFP on Thursday. The plan would allow Kyiv representation at EU summits, the European Commission and parliament, but without voting powers.

    • The Strategist ☛ Beyond the front line: Ukraine is deepening its drone wall

      Long-range Ukrainian strikes have dominated recent headlines, and for good reason: they are causing lasting damage. In April, Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, said strikes on Russian military infrastructure had caused around $25.5 billion in damage.

    • New York Times ☛ After Eurovision Final, Dismay That Politics Didn’t Play a Bigger Role

      Politics isn’t supposed to influence the international song contest, but some people wanted relationships between countries to hold more sway in this year’s voting.

    • CS Monitor ☛ Iran war opened doors for drone-savvy Ukraine. Zelenskyy is seizing the moment.

      Ukraine has turned its advances in drone technology into a diplomatic asset. Not so long ago, President Zelenskyy visited foreign capitals to beg for assistance. Now, he seals deals for drone sales and tech-sharing – as a desirable security partner.

    • RFERL ☛ Kyrgyzstan Shuts 50 Companies In New Crackdown On Russia-Related Sanctions Evasion

      Kyrgyzstan has taken sweeping action to clamp down on companies suspected of circumventing Western sanctions imposed on Russia following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

    • LRT ☛ ‘The hardest thing is the language’: Indian citizens face integration hurdles in Lithuania

      
      

    • New York Times ☛ Days After Hosting Convicted Felon, Pooh-tin Serves Up Tea and Smiles to Putin

      During a state visit, the Chinese and Russian leaders cast themselves as a stabilizing force in a world thrown into tumult by Washington.

    • The Straits Times ☛ China’s Pooh-tin and Russia’s Putin unite in criticism of US, but fail to clinch big gas deal

      The Kremlin signalled ahead of the Beijing meeting that it was seeking further agreements on energy.

    • The Straits Times ☛ When Putin met Xi: Was timing everything?

      The Russian President is the latest foreign leader to visit Beijing, pointing to China's pivotal role in the world today.

    • Satellite imagery shows new North Korea-Russia bridge nearing completion

      Experts say the rush to open the bridge indicates Kim Jong Un’s enthusiasm for cooperation with Moscow.

    • France24 ☛ 'Very bad optics for Kremlin': Putin's China visit regarded as 'crisis & relations management trip'

      Delano D'Souza is pleased to welcome Dr. Una Aleksandra Bērziņa-Čerenkova, Latvian Institute of International Affairs. She argues that “whichever way you slice it, this is very bad optics for the Kremlin,” framing the visit less as a confident display of a strong, vibrant alliance and more as “a crisis and relations management trip.” She cuts through the ceremonial language surrounding Sino-Russian relations to expose the asymmetries, anxieties, and strategic calculations right beneath the surface. Although she acknowledges the durability of the partnership, noting the “30th anniversary of their strategic partnership” and Putin’s “25th official visit to China”, she warns against accepting Moscow’s narrative at face value. “Russia wants to say that China’s on its side, even though it’s not fully on its side”, highlighting the careful ambiguity that defines Beijing’s position on the war in Ukraine. For Dr. Bērziņa-Čerenkova, symbolism matters as much as policy, where “optics of weakness” can coexist with declarations of eternal friendship, and where Beijing and Moscow present themselves not as disruptors, but as guardians of “global stability.”

    • France24 ☛ Ukrainian PM Lisa Yasko asserts: Any country trading with Russia is on 'the wrong side of history'

      Nadia Massih is pleased to welcome Lisa Yasko, Ukrainian MP for Zelensky's political party "Servant of the People". Ms Yasko offers a striking portrait of a country caught between diplomacy and survival. Speaking against the backdrop of deepening ties between Pooh-tin Jinping and Vladimir Putin, China, she argues, remains “on the wrong side of history” so long as it continues trading with Russia, even while Kyiv still hopes Beijing could “play a bigger role” in mediation. On the United States, she acknowledges the “huge” diplomatic efforts undertaken by The Insurrectionist, while simultaneously lamenting how the wars in the Middle East and tensions involving Iran have displaced Ukraine from the center of Washington’s strategic focus.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Dissenter ☛ Whistleblower Law Safe From US Supreme Court—For Now

    In 2022, a jury ordered the multinational pharmaceutical corporation to pay $61 million after whistleblower Ronald Streck alleged that the company had underpaid rebates that drug manufacturers must pay as part of Medicaid. Since damages were trebled and interest accrued, Eli Lilly was instructed to pay over $220 million.

  • Project Censored ☛ Shadow Foundation Invests $100 millions in [Cryptocurrency], Filling Trump Pockets

    In July 2025, Jacob Silverman of The Nation reported that the Dubai-based Aqua 1 Foundation, one of President Trump’s biggest [cryptocurrency]-backers, may not exist. On June 26, 2025, the Aqua 1 Foundation announced a $100 million investment in World Liberty Financial. Under the terms of a deal between Trump and World Liberty Financial, the president receives 75 percent of revenue from token sales. However, before the investment, the Aqua 1 Foundation was unheard of. Silverman points out that there’s little to no information that the foundation actually exists. Its website was established on May 28, 2025, and “contains no information about the company beyond some fintech buzzwords and an e-mail address.”

    Even in the UAE databases, Silverman was unable to find any information or documentation on this investor group. He was, however, able to find alleged co-founder Dave Lee. Lee didn’t respond to any questions, and no one matching his name and description could be found on any other sites.

• Environment

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ EU is failing to cut pesticide use

    As the sales volume of pesticides doesn't account for toxicity and application rate, it reveals little about the risks to people and the environment. Pesticides have been linked to biodiversity loss and have been found to be extremely harmful to fish and other species.

    When present in groundwater and soils, these chemicals damage bees, birds and aquatic life, according to a 2022 UN report . Yet their residue in many European rivers far exceeds the EU's safe thresholds set up since 2000 for each individual pesticide.

  • Energy Mix Productions Inc ☛ Climate Change is a Public Health Crisis, and Pandemic Preparedness is Failing

    “The climate crisis may not be a pandemic, but it’s still a public health emergency that threatens humanity’s very health and survival,” Jakobsdóttir added in an interview with the Guardian. “And if we don’t act more quickly and comprehensively, many millions more people could die or face life-changing illness.”

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Mercury Over 43ºC for First Time in Hyderabad

    In Hyderabad, the highest temperature was recorded at 43.4°C in Karwan, while Amberpet touched 43°C. In most areas of the city, the maximum temperature remained above 42°C through the day.

  • The Hindu ☛ Mercury touches 48.1°C in Piduguralla, second highest in A.P. since 2016

    IMD says ‘severe heatwave’ is likely in East Godavari, Konaseema, Eluru, West Godavari, NTR, Krishna, Palnadu, Guntur, Bapatla, Prakasam, and SPSR Nellore districts on May 23 and 24

  • Hindustan Times ☛ India’s hottest district shuts at 10 am as mercury breaches 48 degrees Celsius mark | India News

    On April 27 this year, Banda recorded 47.6°C, the highest temperature anywhere in India that day and its highest since 1951, surpassing its previous April peak of 47.4°C reached on April 30, 2022, and April 25, 2026. On Tuesday, Banda was again the hottest in India at 48.2°C, setting a new record.

  • Robert Bryce ☛ Top 10 Reasons Why Communities Are Fighting Data Centers

    Indeed, the look on Eric Schmidt’s face when he got booed on Saturday by students at Arizona State University during his speech, when he talked about AI, was worth 1,000 words. Schmidt (net worth: $42 billion) was flustered and appeared genuinely bewildered that he — one of the titans of Silicon Valley — would get booed over anything. Further, he seemed hurt that the students who were there to hear his wisdom (“build a team”) were not down with his vision of AI as their virtual companion. At one point, he even pleaded with the boo-birds, “If you’d let me make this point, please...” (The full video of his speech is available here.)

    Schmidt’s disastrous speech shows that young Americans, in particular, are pissed off. It also shows how Big Tech, including Google, which withdrew its plans for a big data center project in Indianapolis last year before Indy’s city council could reject it, is drawing more and more public anger.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • Mexico News Daily ☛ Mexico’s air traffic controllers threaten to strike over ‘exhausting’ work conditions

      According to union secretary José Alfredo Covarrubias, there is currently a shortage of 500 air traffic controllers at Mexican airports.

    • The Nation ☛ The Oil Era Is Ending

      But the era of oil is ending, Watts contends, as the global economy “shifts from molecules to electrons”—or from burning oil, gas, and coal to generating solar, wind, and other forms of renewable energy. The implications are profound, not least for the chances of limiting global temperature rise to a survivable level.

    • Jim Grey ☛ The struggle to complete the US 36 bridge over the Wabash River at Montezuma, Indiana

      The main street through Montezuma, Crawford Street, was relocated slightly south to meet the new bridge. Interestingly, the original path of Crawford Street was left mostly intact.

  • Overpopulation

    • El País ☛ How long can a civilization survive before it collapses? ‘Stable utopias are the least likely scenarios’

      In the mid‑20th century, when humanity discovered it had the ability to wipe itself out, Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer imagined a symbolic clock measuring how close we were to disaster. But the threat was never limited to the nuclear realm. A recently published paper shows as much. Resource depletion, institutional fragility, and potential technological crises have all served as key variables for a group of researchers trying to determine how long a civilization can remain active before collapsing. In that effort, the authors sketched out 10 possible futures a thousand years from now.

    • Western Water ☛ Groundwater warning signs grow worldwide

      Researchers reviewed groundwater trends in 47 countries over 20 years. Falling groundwater levels are affecting farms, drinking water, and ecosystems.

    • Western Water ☛ Las Vegas water backup plan becomes law

      “In Las Vegas, nearly three million people all currently rely on just one pipeline,” Cortez Masto said in a statement released May 20, 2026Opens in a new tab.. She warned that a major system failure could threaten water deliveries for a large portion of Southern Nevada residents and businesses.

• Finance

  • The Strategist ☛ How to build a northern Australia economic hybrid zone

    Northern Australia is often described as constrained by distance, workforce and cost. That framing misses the point.

  • Chris ☛ The stock market returns 4 %

    These are all correctly computed under their respective assumptions, but they are very misleading because whatever those assumptions were, they’re not relevant for most calculations. You should assume 4 % in your calculations. Here’s one way to arrive at that: [...]

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • ACLU ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man Administration Attack on Southern Poverty Law Center Puts Democracy at Risk

    Targeting Southern Poverty Law Center, a major civil rights organization, is the Convicted Felon administration's latest effort to punish groups it doesn't like.

  • The Nation ☛ [Cryptocurrency] and AI-Funded Super PACs Are Metastasizing

    The proliferation of these industry-funded super PACs, rivaling the size of the giant spending groups controlled by the Democratic and Republican parties, is making its mark on 2026 elections. In the last midterms, the four top spending outside groups were the super PACs tied to House and Senate leaders, crowned by the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF) backing Republican candidates. This year, they face competition from [cryptocurrency] and AI industry war chests willing to target both parties.

  • Seth Godin ☛ Value creation, bullshit jobs and the future of work

    Bullshit jobs will disappear, especially as the meme of corporations with less ballast catches on. More status will be earned by having a smaller workforce, not a larger one. CFOs will get more value (for a while) from laying people off than from hiring them. The turmoil is certain, the human costs will be real, but the likely outcome is more value created by more people, over time. That’s not much solace for someone who has invested and trained to create value under the old rules, but consumers of value don’t often care about that.

  • Paul Krugman ☛ Challenging the Narrative of European Decline: Revised, Free Repost

    I’m gratified to have started a wider discussion, with smart observers like Noah Smith and Luis Garicano weighing in. Judging from the conversation so far, however, I need to do more to explain my central point — which is that widely used comparisons of productivity growth can’t be used to judge European versus U.S. economic success.

    In today’s post, then, I’ll try to offer more explanation, backed by some additional data and what I hope are useful analogies.

    Below I will address the following: [...]

  • Derek Thompson ☛ Can America Escape the Cycle of Vicemaxxing?

    Editors note: I really did not want to write this essay. Every time I wanted to write something to address political corruption under Donald Trump, I thought: what is there to say about this subject beyond the fact that it is extremely bad? But I finally broke down when all of the following things happened in a 48-hour period: [...]

  • The New Stack ☛ "Morally repugnant shortsightedness": Why open source security leaders say companies must stop freeloading on maintainers

    The Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), a cross-industry initiative of the Linux Foundation focused on sustainably securing open source software, on Thursday announced five new members have joined the foundation.

  • [Old] The Onion ☛ FBI Uncovers Al-Qaeda Plot To Just Sit Back And Enjoy Collapse Of United States - The Onion

    Multiple intelligence agencies confirmed that the militant Islamist organization and its numerous affiliates intend to carry out a massive, coordinated plan to stand aside and watch America’s increasingly rapid decline, with terrorist operatives across the globe reportedly mobilizing to take it easy, relax, and savor the spectacle as it unfolds.

    “We have intercepted electronic communication indicating that al-Qaeda members are actively plotting to stay out of the way while America as we know it gradually crumbles under the weight of its own self-inflicted debt and disrepair,” FBI Deputy Director Mark F. Giuliano told the assembled press corps. “If this plan succeeds, it will leave behind a nation with a completely dysfunctional economy, collapsing infrastructure, and a catastrophic health crisis afflicting millions across the nation. We want to emphasize that this danger is very real.”

    “And unfortunately, based on information we have from intelligence assets on the ground, this plot is already well under way,” he added.

  • Jürgen Geuter ☛ On Google declaring war on the Web

    This is a literal revolution but one against the participatory web, against us: The goal is to take away the web and guide people into Google’s abstraction on top of it. An abstraction they control and moderate. It’s about monopolizing access to information. A true Metaverse unbound by open standards and your ability to build your own corner of the web according to your needs and desires. Which – given how strong Google’s influence is on web standards – will change the shape of the standards for the technological landscape we are building the web on.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • MinnPost ☛ Does a new Minnesota law ban ‘aimless driving’? - MinnPost

      The post falsely claims the governor signed a House bill numbered 626; similar versions circulating in other states used the same number. In Minnesota, the last House File 626 is from 2025 and proposed age exemptions for small game and fishing licenses.

    • CS Monitor ☛ Iran’s ‘Lego’ social media opens new front in war with US

      The stream of near-daily videos has brought the Islamic Republic’s point of view directly onto American computer and phone screens like never before. The viral success reflects a confluence of capabilities for Iran, analysts say: generative artificial intelligence in the hands of young tech wizards; a social media fluency that spreads their pro-Iran content globally; and investment in political, visual storytelling that dates from the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s.

      It was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, after all, founder of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, who reassured followers not to worry about their lack of weapons, with the words: “Propaganda is explosive as a grenade.”

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Finland to Deport Anti-War Russian Who Donated to Navalny’s Banned Political Group

    Dozens of people have been jailed in Russia for donating to Navalny’s FBK, according to the exiled news outlet Mediazona. Providing money to an “extremist” organization carries a maximum sentence of eight years in prison.

  • New York Times ☛ U.N. Official Who Says U.S. Punished Her for Speech Wins a Round in Court

    The U.S. government on Wednesday removed the official, Francesca Albanese, from its sanctions list, complying with a federal judge’s order last week in the District of Columbia. The judge, Richard J. Leon of the District Court, made a preliminary finding that the sanctions violated Ms. Albanese’s First Amendment right to free speech, but the case will continue to play out in court.

  • Techdirt ☛ Tennessee Book Ban Update: State Jumps The Shark By Banning ‘Roots’

    And this has to be a jump the shark moment when it comes to banning books. Roots is incredibly important as a major cultural moment in race relations and the historical understanding of slavery in America. Banning it isn’t about protecting children from inappropriate content. It isn’t about saving children from misinformation about American history. I would love to hear from anyone who wants to argue that the content portrayed in Roots is historically inaccurate. Go for it. I always enjoy someone who wants to demonstrate just how wrong they can be about something public.

  • Project Censored ☛ Censored Classrooms Shaping Student Learning

    Despite ongoing pressure for academic freedom in recent years, political intervention in 2025 has increased threats to classroom autonomy across the United States. In a February 2026 article for Exposed by CMD, Mari Hernandez reported that state legislatures, federal agencies, and right-wing advocacy groups are reshaping what educators can teach, research, and say. While there is corporate media coverage of the individual issues, such as the banning of books, revocation of student visas, and changes to the curriculum, they are largely viewed separately, as siloed individual efforts. The article argues that restrictions on race, diversity, gender, and US history are no longer isolated incidents, but part of a broader campaign to narrow classroom discussion and public higher education.

    Hernandez draws heavily on PEN America’s recent report, “Expanding the Web of Control,” to show how quickly this campaign has accelerated. In 2025 alone, ninety-three censorship bills were introduced across the United States, and twenty-one became law. Hernandez also reports that the Trump administration issued nineteen executive orders related to education, challenged Title IX protections, and threatened to withhold billions in federal funding. Taken together, these actions suggest that political actors are not simply debating education policy. They are trying to redefine the limits of legitimate teaching and inquiry.

  • International Business Times ☛ Texas Woman Arrested for Facebook Post Warning Residents About Poor Water Quality Sues City

    In her digital message, Combs stated the municipality's water issues caused residents to seek medical treatment. The post read, 'We have received reports that some citizens have been hospitalized due to bacteria in the water. This is a serious public health concern that deserves immediate attention.' She urged locals to reach out, adding, 'If your water looks discolored, contains sediment, has a strong odor, or you have experienced related health issues, please send us a message. We are gathering information and reporting findings to the state.'

  • Richard J Tofel ☛ The New York Times and Our Freedom

    Everyone who reads this newsletter understands, I hope, that these are difficult times for press freedom in this country. Tonight will be the last time the oligarch who owns CBS will permit one of the President’s smartest critics to ridicule him. The FCC has been thoroughly corrupted, turned into a partisan weapon against free speech in a manner appalling even to Ted Cruz.

  • CBS ☛ Michigan township treasurer resigns, citing death threats over data center

    A Saline Township treasurer announced that she was resigning from her position after she says she received numerous deaths threats over the development of a data center. Other city officials say the threats have come through emails and phone calls.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Press Gazette ☛ Yellow top: The Canary launching daily left-wing tabloid newspaper

    Some 25,000 copies will be distributed at 8,000 newsagents in England and Wales.

  • Press Gazette ☛ French political title Contexte hits first profit on revenue of €12.9m

    Title offers in-depth political coverage entirely funded by subscriptions.

  • Press Gazette ☛ James Murdoch buys Vox, New York Magazine and podcast network [Ed: Vox becomes Murdoch, i.e. same as Fox, NYPost and other Cheeto-loving propaganda networks]

    Deal is reportedly worth more than $300m and does not include The Verge and Popsugar.

  • New Eastern Europe ☛ Russian media-in-exile faces existential crises: funding cuts, faltering audiences, declining morale - New Eastern Europe

    Meduza has been one of the most significant and influential publications reporting on Russia. This group was founded in Latvia in 2014 by Russian journalists who left their publication in Russia for greater press freedom abroad. But even this media stronghold has found itself in a war of attrition.

    In April 2021, Meduza was labelled a “foreign agent” by the Russian government, which, according to Kate Levina, Meduza’s back-office head, cost the organization around 90 per cent of all its advertising revenue overnight. The Russian government revoked Meduza’s right to advertise, erasing their business model.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Turkey targets press freedom in trial of DW's Alican Uludag

    DW correspondent Alican Uludag, accused of publicly insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, spreading misleading information and disparaging state institutions in a total of 22 social media posts, will appear in court for the first time on Thursday.

    Uludag was arrested at his apartment in Ankara on February 19 and transferred to Istanbul, where he was placed in pre-trial detention. Although he is being held in Istanbul, his trial is taking place in Ankara. Despite his specific request to present his defense in person, Uludag is only allowed to participate in the proceedings via video conference.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Facebook restricts local newsbrand page over court story

    “The rule that it says it broke is ‘promoting drug use’. It’s obviously not. It’s the complete opposite. It’s a story about a person who’s been charged and sentenced for drug use.”

    An appeal against the decision was rejected and there has been no response to an escalation to Meta’s oversight board (whose members include former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger), which acts as an independent body to check the company’s content moderation decisions.

  • Ben Werdmuller ☛ Why micropayments can't save news

    This keeps coming up in software circles: I’ve heard, again and again, that an approach like Altman describes would help provide revenue for publishers in an AI-intermediated information ecosystem. I disagree; while I think there’s certainly value for utility-style pricing on the web, proposals to use it for news are based on a misunderstanding of how journalism is valued and paid for today, set up the wrong incentives for publishers, and conflate every kind of publisher into one very flat model.

    So, let’s talk about it.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • BIA Net ☛ Court rules after-hours WhatsApp messages qualify for overtime pay

    Digital records have increasingly become the subject of lawsuits in labor courts since the pandemic, as remote work has become more common.

  • Advance Local Media LLC ☛ The Indigenous exhibit that Trump failed to stop

    Yuutka is both the first mixed-reality display in the Lawrence’s history and the first to be designed in a novel collaboration with young people from the Ohlone community, whose traditional homeland the museum sits on.

  • CS Monitor ☛ Can humanitarian superpower Norway replace a withdrawing US?

    There is no question of the influence Norway has built in the humanitarian and peacemaking world since.

  • Project Censored ☛ Most Americans Can’t Afford “Minimal Quality of Life,” Study Finds

    Wage stagnation, coupled with increasing prices, makes it increasingly difficult for many Americans to meet their basic needs. A May 2025 article by Sharon Zhang for Truthout shared an analysis from the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP), which found that “a ‘minimal quality of life’ is out of reach for the bottom 60 percent of American households, or those with incomes of about $100,000 a year or less.” Researchers report the cost of a minimal quality of life has doubled since 2001; the largest increase within a single year was in 2023.

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ The Real Cost of Union Busting Is Much Higher Than You Think

    A new study conducted by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and LaborLab estimates that employers spent about $1.7 billion on union avoidance specialists and union-busting attorneys in 2024. The jointly authored report is one the most expansive and thorough estimates of union avoidance costs performed in decades.

    “Seventy percent of Americans support unions, and millions would join one if they could. The report shows how far employers are willing to go to keep the deck stacked against workers,” said Bob Funk, founder and executive director of LaborLab. “Union busting is a profitable investment, because it provides employers with a bulwark against both workers and public scrutiny.”

  • Calum Ryan ☛ Every day accessibility awareness

    This year I haven’t had much time or mental energy to write a full article or prepare a talk in time for Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). Accessibility isn’t something I think about once a year, it’s my job, and it’s what matters to me. I want to help make the web a more accessible place for everyone, applying and advocating for inclusive design principles whenever and wherever I can.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Nieman Lab ☛ More than 340 local [sic] news outlets are limiting the Internet Archive’s access to their journalism

    Our new analysis shows that more than 340 local [sic] news sites across the United States are now limiting the Internet Archive’s ability to access and preserve their stories. Many sites in our sample are owned by five of the seven largest local news publishers in the country: USA Today Co., McClatchy, Advance Local, MediaNews Group, and Tribune Publishing. The latter two are both subsidiaries of the “vulture hedge fund” Alden Global Capital.

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • The Verge ☛ States ask judge to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster

    More than 30 states are asking Judge Arun Subramanian to order a sale of the ticketing giant, a “sufficient number” of large amphitheaters, and limit its ability to tie access to its remaining amps to the use of its promotions services. In April, a jury found that the company is an illegal monopolist, after more than a month of trial. The initial remedies proposal doesn’t include a further breakup of some other parts of Live Nation’s business that California Attorney General Rob Bonta told The Verge and other outlets earlier this week they were considering, but the states say they reserve the right to make additional requests as they learn more.

  • Trademarks

    • Right of Publicity

      • Rolling Stone ☛ Ozzy Osbourne to Come Back as Digital Avatar, Answer Your Questions

        The CEO of Hyperreal, Remington Scott, tells Rolling Stone that it created the Ozzy avatar using patented technology that allows the avatar to operate in real time. The company uses patented “Digital DNA” technology to gather the data it needs to create the avatars. “It can perform live, respond to audiences, and exist within interactive environments,” Scott says. “This isn’t pre-rendered content playing on a loop. It’s a living performance, built exclusively from authenticated source material: curated, consented, and controlled by the people closest to Ozzy.”

  • Copyrights

    • Digital Music News ☛ D4vd’s ‘Arcane’ Anthem Removed From Spotify, Fashion Company Apple Music, and Other Streaming Services

      D4vd’s track “Remember Me” from DRM spreader Netflix and Riot Games’ “Arcane” series has been removed from some streaming services and official playlists.

    • Digital Music News ☛ After Watching 80% of Their Earnings Evaporate, Successful Music Production Duo Sues Suno for $35 Million

      Suno faces a copyright monopoly infringement lawsuit filed by ambient instrumental duo The American Dollar, alleging the platform ingested 236 of their songs to train its Hey Hi (AI) models.

    • Digital Music News ☛ 'Protect Working Musicians Act' Reintroduced in Congress

      A federal lawmaker has reintroduced the Protect Working Musicians Act, which is designed to enable indie musicians “to collectively negotiate music licensing terms with” on-demand streaming and gen AI platforms.

    • Digital Music News ☛ Good Grief! 'Peanuts' Music Owner Fires Off Four Copyright Suits

      What do the federal government, video game publisher GameMill Entertainment, Heritage Auctions, and belt-buckle specialist Buckle-Down have in common? For one thing, they’re facing infringement lawsuits from Lee Mendelson Film Productions (LMFP), which controls the Peanuts music catalog.