Leftovers

• Deseret Media ☛ Bill Moyers, the former White House press secretary turned acclaimed TV journalist, dead at 91

  In 1988, Moyers produced "The Secret Government" about the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan administration and simultaneously published a book under the same name. Around that time, he galvanized viewers with "Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth," a series of six one-hour interviews with the prominent religious scholar. The accompanying book became a best-seller.

• Los Angeles Times ☛ Bill Moyers dead: PBS journalist and former White House aide dies

  But Moyers was often frustrated with the restraints of corporate-owned media and returned to non-commercial PBS each time.

  At PBS, “Bill Moyers Journal” was the first news program on the service, launched in 1972 just as the Watergate scandal was heating up. His documentaries and series, which included “Now With Bill Moyers” and the weekly interview show “Moyers & Company, ” often examined complex issues and offered serious discussion. He earned top prizes in television journalism, including more than 30 Emmy Awards. His final program for PBS aired in 2013.

• Common Dreams ☛ Free Press Mourns Bill Moyers

  Bill Moyers, the esteemed journalist, presidential adviser and philanthropist, died on Thursday at age 91 in New York. In the early 2000s, Moyers played a pivotal role in creating and promoting Free Press and delivered a series of powerful appearances at the National Conference for Media Reform.

• US News And World Report ☛ Bill Moyers, Broadcaster and LBJ's White House Press Secretary, Dies at 91

  (Reuters) -Bill Moyers, a key member of Democratic President Lyndon Johnson's inner circle who went on to become a guiding force in American journalism during more than 40 years in public television, died on Thursday aged 91.

  Moyers, who announced he was "signing off" from [Internet] journalism in December 2017, three years after retiring from the PBS airwaves, died of complications from prostate cancer at a Manhattan hospital, the Washington Post and New York Times reported, citing his son, William Cope Moyers.

• Joel Chrono ☛ How Time Flies

  This blogpost was inspired by the title alone of this post I saw on my RSS reader, this isn’t a response, I wrote it before reading the actual content of that page so, yeah. I’ll read it after I’m done with mine and maybe do a reply to that in the end if I feel the need to.

  I have been thinking about how quick time is going.

• John Gruber ☛ Daring Fireball: Lake Tahoe Boat Tragedy Claims Longtime Apple Employee Paula Bozinovich

• Ava ☛ blog & website in the age of containerized socials

  Just having a blog and website and no social media is admittedly something I am in a very very sturdy bubble in. I am so deep in it at this point that my default state is somehow assuming that everyone else is like that, too. Unintentionally! I'll catch myself looking for someone's website, or I am convinced asking for someone's e-mail address is totally normal. I'll admit it, I have become blind to how outlandish my online life has to look from the outside.

  Makes me want to do a little evaluation how this has worked for me so far and a little advice, especially for any fencesitters or people who are just curious that I am yet to meet.

• Science

  • SparkFun Electronics ☛ What SparkFun's Spectral Sensors Can Detect

    Have you ever wondered what more there is to see beyond the colors of the rainbow? Our world is awash in light, much of which remains invisible to the human eye. But what if you could peek into these hidden realms of light? In this blog post, we'll dive into the fascinating capabilities of SparkFun's spectral sensors and explore how these devices allow us to detect, analyze, and understand the subtle nuances of light across both visible and non-visible spectrums, unlocking a new dimension of perception for your projects.

  • 404 Media ☛ DNA from Prehistoric Proto-City Reveals 'Surprising' Signs of Female-Centered Society

    An unprecedented study reveals maternal lineages, female-centered practices, and a “surprising shift” in a 9,000-year-old settlement associated with a goddess cult.

  • Computational Complexity ☛ Computational Complexity: The Distribution of Prime Numbers: A Geometrical Perspective

    We introduced a prime number visualization called Jacob’s Ladder. The algorithm plots numbers on a 2D graph that oscillates up and down based on the presence of prime numbers, creating a ladder-like structure. The path ascends or descends based on the primality of subsequent numbers. When a prime number is encountered, the path alters direction, leading to a zig-zag pattern. Number 2 is prime, so it flips and goes down. Now 3 is prime, so the next step changes direction and goes up again, so we move up. But 4 is not a prime, so it continues up, and on it goes.

  • Smithsonian Magazine ☛ The World's Oldest Boomerang Is Even Older Than Scientists Thought, a New Analysis Suggests

    Now, based on new analyses, researchers are more confident in the boomerang’s timeline. It’s likely more than twice as old as it was originally dated, having been carved by nomadic hunter-gatherers between 39,000 and 42,000 years ago, according to a study published Wednesday in PLOS ONE.

  • El País ☛ Boomerang carved from mammoth tusk shows ‘Homo sapiens’ had symbolic thinking 42,000 years ago

    The scientist also knew the artifact had been contaminated with glue used for its restoration, which meant, as with the first dating, the results wouldn’t be reliable. “So we opted for a different strategy: dating the animal bones surrounding the boomerang in the same layer of sediment in which it was found, in addition to reanalyzing a human phalanx that was found there, using noninvasive methods and new treatments that have advanced significantly in recent years,” says Talamo.

  • Dan Slimmon ☛ Lecture: Queueing theory on a cocktail napkin

    When I started to apply just a little queueing theory, it absolutely revolutionized my practice. If you’re responsible for the health of a software service, watch this talk.

  • The Conversation ☛ 2025-06-24 [Older] Is your cat vocal or quiet? The explanation could be in their genes

  • The Conversation ☛ 2025-06-23 [Older] Embarrassed? Why this feeling might actually be good for you

  • The Conversation ☛ 2025-06-25 [Older] The mystery of Mercury’s missing meteorites – and how we may have finally found some

  • The Conversation ☛ 2025-06-25 [Older] Cheeto Mussolini’s f-bomb: a psychologist explains why the president makes fast and furious statements

• Career/Education

  • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Did My Father’s World Die with Him? Grieving the Incalculable Costs of “STEM.”

    It’s created such wreckage to have implied that history and humanities are luxury goods, rather than essential services. It is also contrary to accumulating evidence (in the US and elsewhere) about the vital importance of the humanities for jobs, careers, and the economy. But more to the point, the idea that only science really matters has been enormously destructive. This isn’t the fault of the brilliant scientists who are doing critical work on climate, vaccines, galaxies, and a full universe of subjects. It isn’t the fault of agencies tasked with doing specific work – and to be fair, NSF and others have funded some social science. And it’s not to ignore important efforts at truly multidisciplinary work, in the medical humanities, for example, or among engineers thinking holistically (even humanistically) though this kind of work is always like sledding uphill.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Ness Labs ☛ YAMA: You’re Always Missing Out (And That’s A-Okay)

    Each year, over 50,000 concerts take place in the United States. More than 140 artists performed at Coachella alone. Netflix offers more than 5,000 films and 2,500 series. Meanwhile, U.S. publishers release approximately 275,000 new titles annually.

    This explosion of choice has created a new form of psychological overwhelm that our brains weren’t designed to handle.

  • New Yorker ☛ Why Young People Are Hooking Up Less Than Ever

    Now Kennedy is asserting a position that the U.S. will no longer support vaccination abroad as safe, effective, and a core pillar of medicine and public health. This is disastrous for American leadership in science and health, for children around the world, and, in all likelihood, for children in the U.S. Having established this vaccine policy abroad, we should have no doubt about Kennedy’s intentions for policy at home.

  • Vox ☛ The Supreme Court’s disastrous new abortion decision, in Medina v. Planned Parenthood

    On Thursday, however, the Republican justices ruled, in Medina v. Planned Parenthood, that Medicaid patients may not choose their health provider. And then they went much further. Thursday’s decision radically reorders all of federal Medicaid law, rendering much of it unenforceable. Medina could prove to be one of the most consequential health care decisions of the last several years, and one of the deadliest, as it raises a cloud of doubt over countless laws requiring that certain people receive health coverage, as well as laws ensuring that they will receive a certain quality of care.

  • Axios ☛ Supreme Court ruling on patients rights' could devastate Planned Parenthood

    Driving the news: The case, Medina v. Planned Parenthood, stemmed from South Carolina's move to block Medicaid recipients from getting care at Planned Parenthood clinics in the state.

  • RTL ☛ Planned Parenthood: Top US court allows states to defund largest abortion provider

    Planned Parenthood is already barred from receiving federal money for abortion care but the 6-3 ruling would also allow states to cut off reimbursements for other medical services it provides to low-income Americans under the Medicaid program.

  • Vox ☛ Do Apple Watches and Oura Rings really make use healthier?

    What I learned from obsessively tracking my health for half a year is that paying too much attention to what your body is doing can ruin your life. Or at least it can ruin your understanding of healthy living, since too much information can steer your brain toward assuming the worst. Looking at the readouts from these fitness tracking apps sent me down dark holes of Googling symptoms and self-diagnosing conditions that my doctor assured me I did not have. But, I reasoned, he did not have all of the data that the health tracker collected, so he could be wrong, and AI, which is increasingly embedded in this tech, is very good at diagnosing things.

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Contributor: Social Security is headed for a cliff. When will voters care?

    Considering recent news, you may have missed that the 2025 trustees reports for Social Security and Medicare are out. Once again, they confirm what we’ve known for decades: Both programs are barreling straight toward insolvency. The Social Security retirement trust fund and Medicare Hospital Insurance trust fund are each on pace to run dry by 2033.

    When that happens, seniors will face an automatic 23% cut in their Social Security benefits. Medicare will reduce payments to hospitals by 11%. These cuts are not theoretical. They’re baked into the law. If nothing changes, they will be made.

• Proprietary

  • Flamed Fury ☛ How I Use Kagi

    The main selling point for me is that Kagi isn’t powered by AdTech and allows us who have the money to pay a monthly fee for a pleasant search experience. I’m paying $14 USD/month for the Duo Family plan that gives me and my wife a Professional Plan each. That alone would make me happy, nice ad free web searching. A subscription worth having.

  • TechCrunch ☛ iPhone customers upset by Apple Wallet ad pushing 'F1' movie

    Apple customers aren’t thrilled they’re getting an ad from the Apple Wallet app promoting the tech giant’s original film “F1 the Movie.” Across social media, iPhone owners are complaining that their Wallet app sent out a push notification offering a $10 discount at Fandango for anyone buying two or more tickets to the film.

  • Ava ☛ cloudflare breaking my quartz navigation | ava's blog

    I'm having an interesting issue with Cloudflare again, possibly once again due to Caching.

  • Scoop News Group ☛ Citrix users hit by actively exploited zero-day vulnerability

    Citrix on Wednesday disclosed an actively exploited zero-day vulnerability affecting multiple versions of NetScaler products, an alarming development from a vendor that’s been widely targeted in previous attack sprees.

  • Security Week ☛ Critical Cisco ISE Vulnerabilities Allow Remote Code Execution 

    “An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by uploading a crafted file to the affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to store malicious files on the affected system and then execute arbitrary code or obtain root privileges on the system,” Cisco explains in its advisory.

  • Security Week ☛ Critical Citrix NetScaler Flaw Exploited as Zero-Day

    Successful exploitation of the security defect could lead to unintended control flow and denial-of-service (DoS), Citrix notes in its advisory.

  • Zimbabwe ☛ Don’t Be Loyal, Be Smart: How to Choose Your Next Smartphone

    Be warned though that you will have to jump through hoops to share stuff between a Windows laptop and an iPhone for example. So, you might want to hold off on iPhone if you’ll need access to some cheap, free, or cracked software.

  • The Register UK ☛ Glasgow council yanks services offline amid attack cleanup

    The local authority has confirmed the attack started on June 19 and attributed it to a supply chain issue involving a third-party contractor's supplier.

  • Digital Camera World ☛ There are 40,000 easily hacked security cameras out there – are they helping Iran and Israel wage war?

    The issue is that hackers working for one side can use the cameras in the opposing country to gather military intelligence, either to plan an attack or to assess the effectiveness of one.

    This has been highlighted by Refael Franco, who used to be the director general of the Israel National Cyber Directorate, but now runs the cybersecurity crisis firm Code Blue. He specifically said that: [...]

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • IP Kat ☛ 2025-06-24 [Older] [Book review] The Moral Rights of Authors and Artists: From the Birth of Copyright to the Age of Artificial Intelligence [Ed: Slop is not "Artificial Intelligence", stop repeating the lies]

    • Pivot to AI ☛ Verizon’s new AI chatbot — customer disservice

      So up to 10% of responses are not accurate.

      One notorious Verizon bot is Personal Shopper, which is famous for adding random stuff to customer bills: [...]

    • Drew Breunig ☛ How to Fix Your Context | Drew Breunig

      Following up on our earlier post, “How Long Contexts Fail”, let’s run through the ways we can mitigate or avoid these failures entirely.

      But before we do, let’s briefly recap some of the ways long contexts can fail: [...]

    • Ben Tsai ☛ You think?

      I think this is a slippery slope. Let’s take one area that came up personally—self-assessments and reflections at work.

      Reflections and assessments are an area where I believe authenticity and transparency are critical. Using an LLM to "help write" can save time. But, I think it's critical to consider, at what cost?

    • Techdirt ☛ Trump NHTSA ‘Investigates’ Tesla Robotaxis Failing To Adhere To Basic Austin Traffic Laws

      So you may have seen that Elon Musk’s long-hyped Robotaxis have finally “launched” in Austin. And it’s going just about how you’d expect if you’re familiar with the fit and finish of Elon Musk promises.

      There are about a dozen Robotaxis now operating; Model Ys with a human observer in the front seat to try and avoid calamity. And despite years of hype about this product, social media is filled with videos of Robotaxis engaging in all sorts of problematic and dangerous behavior, including routinely veering into the wrong lane, failing to accomplish basic turns, or responding poorly to unique situations.

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ A Tech-Backed Influencer Wants to Replace Teachers With AI

      Backed by tech money, entrepreneur MacKenzie Price is growing a network of private K–12 schools that promises to replace all classroom teachers with an “AI tutor” that students learn from while glued to their laptop screens.

    • Futurism ☛ ChatGPT Tells User to Mix Bleach and Vinegar

      Unfortunately, the AI industry is making little progress in eliminating the hallucinations [sic] these models spit out, even as the models otherwise become more advanced — a problem that will likely get worse as AI embeds itself ever more deeply into our lives.

    • BoingBoing ☛ "We will find you: How a flawed algorithm terrorized welfare recipients

      Moynihan concludes: "The public really, really does not like governments using automated systems to punish them."

    • Drew Breunig ☛ Prompts vs. Context

      I am a nerd for terminology and selecting the right word. Anytime I find myself debating terms, seeking to map out the detail they bring to our discussions, I end up making a table, like so: [...]

    • Jamie Zawinski ☛ Under Attack, Please Stand By

      My server is getting absolutely obliterated by AI scrapers today. Load is 140+ and I just manually banned 58,000 IP addresses.

  • Social Control Media

    • Vox ☛ 2025-06-23 [Older] The internet’s favorite way to hate women — and still sound feminist

    • Vox ☛ 2025-06-24 [Older] Is the decline of reading poisoning our politics?

• Linux Foundation

  • PowerDNS ☛ PowerDNS Achieves Sylva Project Validation

    The Sylva Project, led by Linux Foundation Europe, is a collaborative open-source initiative aimed at developing a telco-grade cloud and edge computing framework tailored to the specific needs of European network operators. Among the project’s key supporters are some of the largest names in the telecom industry, including Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Vodafone, Telecom Italia, and Telefónica, as well as leading infrastructure providers like Ericsson and Nokia. The initiative seeks to reduce fragmentation in telecom infrastructure while ensuring compliance with the European Union’s strict requirements for data protection, security, and energy efficiency.

• Security

  • CISA

    • CISA ☛ 2025-06-25 [Older] CISA Adds Three Known Exploited Vulnerabilities to Catalog

    • CISA ☛ 2025-06-24 [Older] CISA Releases Eight Industrial Control Systems Advisories

    • CISA ☛ 2025-06-24 [Older] New Guidance Released for Reducing Memory-Related Vulnerabilities

    • CISA ☛ 2025-06-24 [Older] Kaleris Navis N4 Terminal Operating System

    • CISA ☛ 2025-06-24 [Older] Delta Electronics CNCSoft

    • CISA ☛ 2025-06-24 [Older] Schneider Electric Modicon Controllers

    • CISA ☛ 2025-06-24 [Older] Schneider Electric EVLink WallBox

    • CISA ☛ 2025-06-24 [Older] ControlID iDSecure On-Premises

    • CISA ☛ 2025-06-24 [Older] Parsons AccuWeather Widget

    • CISA ☛ 2025-06-24 [Older] MICROSENS NMP Web+

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • [Old] Kevin B McGowan ☛ Why I hate e-mail

      Unfortunately, also, capitalism. Even at the University where I work, which should be above such things, aspiring fascist administrators and their toady IT staff routinely modify, scan, delete, and monitor users’ e-mail. It is used as a tool of control. Just last year, my University reached into our inboxes and deleted a message from our Union coordinating some activism. You can’t trust e-mail for personal communication, it is an instrument of your oppression, and it’s usually the worst tool for collaborative woirk.

      Can we please stop using an outmoded collaboration tool that amounts to sifting through a public litterbox multiple times per day to see if maybe one of the neighborhood cats dropped anything we might want in there?

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • PC World ☛ Best VPN for South Dakota: Pornhub workarounds

      The law is set to take effect on July 1, 2025, and Pornhub’s parent company Aylo will begin restricting access to its adult sites for residents in South Dakota in protest on June 30, 2025. Aylo and other privacy advocates claim that these laws not only violate free speech, but will infringe on personal privacy protections. By forcing individuals to hand over personally identifiable information to third parties, it creates the environment for potential government overreach and data misuse.

    • EFF ☛ California’s Corporate Cover-Up Act Is a Privacy Nightmare

      The Corporate Cover-Up Act is a massive carve-out that would gut California’s Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) and give Big Tech and data brokers a green light to spy on us without consent for just about any reason. If passed, S.B. 690 would let companies secretly record your clicks, calls, and behavior online—then share or sell that data with whomever they’d like, all under the banner of a “commercial business purpose.”

      Simply put, The Corporate Cover-Up Act (S.B. 690) is a blatant attack on digital privacy, and is written to eviscerate long-standing privacy laws and legal safeguards Californians rely on. If passed, it would: [...]

    • Sightline Media Group ☛ Lawmakers press VA for details on DOGE access to vets records

      “VA is required by [numerous laws] to protect veteran private health information,” the letter stated. “It is your job to ensure veteran privacy is being maintained at VA. Your inability to answer simple questions about who is accessing veterans’ private health records, and why, is an affront to the millions of veterans who use VA healthcare.”

    • The Register UK ☛ Kaseya CEO: Why AI adoption is below industry expectations

      One reason is "the data is not connected; AI is only powerful when the data is connected. So if you want an agent to handle customer success, that agent needs to not only go into your customer success platform and tooling, but it also [needs] your CRM, your inventory system, and your financial systems."

    • [Repeat] Michael Geist ☛ Why Bill C-2 Faces a Likely Constitutional Challenge By Placing Solicitor-Client Privilege at Risk

      The implications for the legal community, who face strict solicitor-client confidentiality requirements, are particularly notable. Under Bill C-2, lawyers could be compelled to confirm whether they have provided services to client, whether they have information about the client, and when they provided the service, including when a person became a client. If they are aware of other service providers, they must provide that information as well. These disclosure demands come without a warrant or court oversight and lawyers could be barred from advising their clients about the demand for a year. Lawyers would undoubtedly seek to challenge the demand, but would only have five days to do so.

  • Confidentiality

    • CBC ☛ 2025-06-21 [Older] Spy agency says it 'improperly' shared Canadians' data with international partners

• Defence/Aggression

  • Mike Brock ☛ Ideas Without Love

    What disturbed me was something far more subtle and far more dangerous: watching someone with extraordinary wealth and influence treat the most consequential questions of human existence—the survival of our species, the collapse of democracy, the rise of authoritarianism—with the detached fascination of someone solving an abstract puzzle.

  • TwinCities Pioneer Press ☛ Other voices: The push to end Iran’s nukes must continue

    Following Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Trump and Joe Biden all in turn have insisted that Tehran cannot have nukes.

    Last week, at their summit in Alberta, the G-7 nations of the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Britain were united: “We have been consistently clear that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.” The key word is “never.”

  • Los Angeles Times ☛ Column: The Supreme Court's deference to Trump is astounding

    In a blistering 19-page dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, marshaled legal arguments, damning examples of Trump administration dissembling and defiance of lower courts, and warnings of more defiance of federal courts from an emboldened president.

    In contrast, the ruling from the Supreme Court majority was just one paragraph — unsigned legal mumbo-jumbo, its decision wholly unexplained, as is typical in the cases that the court takes all too frequently on an emergency basis, the aptly named “shadow docket.” (In two other shadow docket rulings in May, Trump was allowed to revoke the legal status of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, Cubans, Nicaraguans and Haitians, many of whom were here under programs created to protect refugees from violent, impoverished and repressive countries. Why? Who knows?)

  • Security Week ☛ Bipartisan Bill Aims to Block Chinese AI From Federal Agencies

    Legislation introduced Wednesday in Congress would block Chinese artificial intelligence systems from federal agencies as a bipartisan group of lawmakers pledged to ensure that the United States would prevail against China in the global competition over AI.

  • RFERL ☛ Where’s Iran’s Uranium? In Wake Of US Bombing, A Mystery And An Anxious Hunt

    “I think the safest way of describing it is that Iran knows where it is, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the public doesn't, and if the [Americans/Israelis] do, they're not telling,” said Richard Nephew, who served as the Iran director for the National Security Council under President Barack Obama.

  • The Moscow Times ☛ Russia Has Imported 1Bln Euros in Sanctioned Aircraft Parts Since 2022 – Yle - The Moscow Times

    The report shows that Russia has built a vast international network of 360 companies to bypass Western sanctions banning the sale of Airbus and Boeing parts to Russia. Many of these companies were added to Western sanctions lists after their involvement with Russia was revealed.

  • Meduza ☛ ‘The geopolitical situation has changed’: Russian authorities move to fully ban Ukrainian language from schools in occupied territories

    In annexed Crimea and the occupied parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Ukrainian has long been available only upon parental request. Under the new order, even that option is set to be removed: in the coming school year, students in these territories will no longer be able to study Ukrainian at all.

  • The Nation ☛ These Trump Supporters Hope Bombing Iran Will Trigger the Apocalypse

    Yet, for all the genuine reluctance that prominent MAGA figures are airing over the prospect of veering into another Middle East quagmire, there’s a bedrock constituency that has always promoted aggressive military action against Iran: the increasingly influential evangelical wing of the Trump movement. For ardent evangelicals and Christian [sic] nationalists, a military confrontation with Iran is far from a threat to upend the region’s delicate balance of power or to derail US diplomatic aims in the Middle East. A war with Iran is, instead, a fulfillment of biblical prophecy and a step on the path to final redemption for embattled Christians.

  • Reuters ☛ WhatsApp banned on US House of Representatives devices, memo shows

    The notice said the "Office of Cybersecurity has deemed WhatsApp a high risk to users due to the lack of transparency in how it protects user data, absence of stored data encryption, and potential security risks involved with its use."

  • The Guardian UK ☛ Are we witnessing the death of international law?

    Over the past decade, key institutions upholding the international order have been diminished, crippled or compromised. The recent US withdrawal from a vast array of international organisations and agreements – the Paris climate accords, the World Health Organization, the UN human rights council – has further damaged the system; US sanctions on the international criminal court (ICC) have undermined the court’s credibility and created serious financial obstacles to its investigations of war crimes in Ukraine and Gaza. The UN security council has been deadlocked for well over a decade, thanks to the veto power of its permanent members.

  • Mike Brock ☛ How to Stay Free in Unfree Times

    In this live stream, I explore the relationship between personal spiritual practice and political engagement, arguing that maintaining conscious control over our attention is fundamental to preserving democratic society. I discuss why so many people find current political reality overwhelming, and offer a framework for staying grounded and future-oriented even when facing hard truths about institutional collapse.

  • Mike Brock ☛ A New Liberal Enlightenment

    They’re all wrong. Liberalism isn’t a political tribe or a set of policy preferences. Liberalism is the cognitive architecture that makes pluralistic societies possible—the systematic approach to how conscious beings can pursue truth together across disagreement, uncertainty, and fundamental difference.

    And right now, that architecture is under systematic assault by forces that understand exactly what they’re destroying.

  • Task And Purpose ☛ Marine Corps' Lightning Carrier concept explained

    The concept, which the Corps began testing in 2016, turns amphibious assault ships, like the Navy’s America-class USS America, which is both easy to remember and ultra patriotic in a “Team America” kind of way, into small, agile flat-top carriers bristling with F-35B Lightning II aircraft and about 1,800 Marines. With the F-35B vertical take-off and landing capability, they can fit up to 20 on the deck that can support Marines as they secure or defend remote outposts through the Pacific.

  • Techdirt ☛ We Have All Become Too Comfortable With Corruption

    Lately, of course, it feels like the corruption is becoming more and more blatant. But there’s something telling about how soft corruption works: it operates by creating an atmosphere where everyone implicitly understands the game, but no one says it out loud. Though, apparently, that may be changing. Teddy Schleifer got a fascinating quote from Wall Street investor (and LimeWire founder… and RFK Jr. anti-vax funder) Mark Gorton, who was one of Andrew Cuomo’s biggest donors in his complete flop of a New York City mayoral run/comeback from disgrace: [...]

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • CPJ ☛ 2025-06-26 [Older] Russia and Belarus release 2 journalists who had been detained for years

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-26 [Older] EU Leaders Meet to Discuss Tougher Russia Sanctions, US Tariffs and Middle East Conflicts

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-26 [Older] Lavrov Says NATO Spending Increase Won't Significantly Affect Russia's Security

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-26 [Older] North Korea May Send Military Construction Workers to Russia as Early as July or August

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-26 [Older] North Korea May Send More Troops to Russia in July or August for Ukraine War, Seoul Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-26 [Older] Russia Says It Wants Iran to Keep Cooperating With UN Nuclear Watchdog

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-26 [Older] Slovakia Demands Delay in Vote on Russian Sanctions Over Energy Concerns

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-26 [Older] Ukraine Halts Russia's Advance in Northern Sumy Region, Commander Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-26 [Older] Ukraine's Top General Says Ukraine Stopped Russian Advances in Northern Sumy Region

    • Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2025-06-25 [Older] The US Started Both the Old and New Cold Wars

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-06-25 [Older] Did NATO expansion drive Russia to war in Ukraine?

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-06-25 [Older] Ukraine, CoE to set up tribunal targeting Russian leadership

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-06-25 [Older] Why does Germany pay taxes for Russian propaganda?

    • International Business Times ☛ 2025-06-25 [Older] After Iran, Is Taiwan Next? China Military, Russia Said To Combine Forces To Invade Asian Nation

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-25 [Older] Drone Debris Found in Ukraine Indicates Russia Is Using New Technology From Iran

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-25 [Older] No Alternative to Higher Defence Spending Amid Russian Threat, NATO's Rutte Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-25 [Older] Russia Says It Is Too Early to Assess US Bomb Damage to Iranian Nuclear Facilities

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-25 [Older] Russia Says It Wants Rule of Law in Armenia After Foiling of Alleged Coup Plot There

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-25 [Older] Russia's Medvedev Calls EU an Enemy, Says Ukrainian Membership Would Be Dangerous

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-25 [Older] US Will Not Sanction Russia Yet, Rubio Tells Politico

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-25 [Older] Zelenskyy Will Sign off on Special Tribunal to Prosecute Russian Leaders Over Ukraine

    • CBC ☛ 2025-06-24 [Older] Russian attacks on Ukraine kill 18 as Zelenskyy meets Western leaders

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-06-24 [Older] Germany updates: Merz condemns Russia, urges Gaza ceasefire

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-24 [Older] Ukraine Says Russian Drone Attack Kills Boy, Two Adults in Sumy

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-24 [Older] Fearing War With Russia, Finland Hardens NATO's Northern Frontier

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-24 [Older] Lavrov Says Russia Favours Israel-Iran Ceasefire, but Hard to Say if It Will Last

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-24 [Older] Russian Air Defences Destroy Dozens of Ukrainian Drones, Officials Say

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-24 [Older] Russian Attacks Kill 18 Civilians in Ukraine as Zelenskyy Seeks More Western Help

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-24 [Older] Russian Missile Attack Kills Nine, Damages Passenger Train in Southeast Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-24 [Older] Russia Says NATO Needs to Demonise It to Justify 5% Defence Spending Target

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-24 [Older] The Fighting Between Iran and Israel Raises Questions About Russia's Influence in the Middle East

    • NL Times ☛ 2025-06-23 [Older] Pro-Russian hackers disrupt Dutch government websites ahead of NATO summit

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-06-23 [Older] Ukraine says seven killed in overnight Russian strikes on Kyiv

    • International Business Times ☛ 2025-06-23 [Older] Is Vitaly Zdorovetskiy About To Go Free? Russian YouTuber Bail Approved

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-23 [Older] Russia's Attack on Kyiv Kills Five, Sparks Fires, Ukraine Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-23 [Older] Russian Attacks on Ukraine Kill at Least 6 and Injure Over a Dozen

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-23 [Older] Ukraine Says It Attacked Oil Depot in Russia's Rostov Region

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-22 [Older] Senior Russian Official Says Cheeto Mussolini Has Started New War on Iran That Will Strengthen Khamenei

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-22 [Older] Ukraine Fighting 10,000 Russian Troops in Kursk Region, Ukrainian Commander Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-22 [Older] UN Security Council Meets on Iran as Russia, China Push for a Ceasefire

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-21 [Older] Putin Says Russia Has Told Israel There's No Evidence Iran Wants Nuclear Weapons, Sky News Arabia Reports

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-21 [Older] Russian Attacks Kill One in Eastern Ukraine, One in the North

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-21 [Older] Russian Troops Captured Village of Zaporizhzhya in Ukraine's Donetsk Region, TASS Reports

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-21 [Older] Ukraine Received at Least 20 Bodies of Russian Soldiers in Recent Exchanges, Zelenskyy Says

    • InfoSecurity Magazine ☛ 2025-06-20 [Older] Russia Expert Falls Prey to Elite Hackers Disguised as US Officials

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-06-20 [Older] What's next for Ukrainians returning from Russian prisons?

    • The Local SE ☛ 2025-06-20 [Older] European countries announce joint action against Russia's 'shadow fleet'

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-20 [Older] Zelenskiy Says Ukraine Developing Interceptor Drones to Counter Russian Attacks

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-26 [Older] China Never Supplied Weapons to Parties in the Ukraine War, Foreign Ministry Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-26 [Older] Erdogan Says Cheeto Mussolini Would Join Ukraine Peace Talks in Turkey if Putin Attends

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-26 [Older] Kremlin Says No Date Yet for Next Round of Ukraine Peace Talks

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-25 [Older] Africa on a Shoestring: Ukraine Seeks Allies With Aid and Embassies

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-25 [Older] Learning From Ukraine and Israel, Taiwan to Issue New Air-Raid Guidance

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-25 [Older] Ukrainian President Zelenskyy Sidelined as NATO Leaders Meet to Agree Defense Spending Boost

    • NL Times ☛ 2025-06-24 [Older] Zelenskyy addresses Tweede Kamer as Dutch govt. unveils €175M military aid for Ukraine

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-24 [Older] Netherlands to Send 175 Million Euros of Military Aid to Ukraine, Expands Drone Cooperation

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-24 [Older] Zelenskiy Urges NATO Before Hague Summit to Support Ukraine Defence Industry

    • 2025-06-23 [Older] Ukrainian Web3 security auditing company Hacken suffered an attack that allowed a hacker to create 900 million HAI tokens

    • NL Times ☛ 2025-06-23 [Older] Ukrainian president Zelenskyy to speak in Tweede Kamer during NATO summit in The Hague

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-23 [Older] Ukrainian Drone Triggers Fire in Apartment Building West of Moscow, Official Says

    • US News And World Report ☛ 2025-06-21 [Older] Ukraine Asks Allies to Allocate 0.25% of GDP to Boost Its Weapon Production

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ 2025-06-20 [Older] Putin: 'All of Ukraine is ours' in theory, eyes Sumy city

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Jacobin Magazine ☛ Trump’s Tax Bill Is Bought and Paid for by Big Business

    At its core, the bill defies logic. It is as politically unpopular as it is bad for the economic well-being of the majority of Americans. It’s so catastrophic that you’d expect more than a handful of congressional Republicans to publicly raise concerns about the political cost. But as Senate Republicans now scramble to try to pass the bill by the July 4 deadline demanded by President Donald Trump, the majority aren’t taking their cues from their constituents. They’re listening to the wealthiest Americans and big businesses who’ve gamed the political system to their benefit.

    How do we know? Just look at who’s funding the fight.

  • Josh Withers ☛ Abel Tasman's Voyage to Tasmania Journal in 1642

    “Too far south for spices, and too close to the rim of the earth to be inhabited by anything but freaks and monsters” is a powerful line.

    So while in Amsterdam I went searching for the journal so I could read the line in context because in all my research I couldn’t find it online.

• Environment

  • The Nation ☛ CBS News Leans Into the Climate Connection

    This week, CBS News decisively broke that pattern. David Schechter, the network’s national environment correspondent, aired two pieces that left no doubt that the ghastly heat afflicting tens of millions of Americans is climate change in action. Schechter also helped viewers understand how such climate change–driven heat can hurt not only their health but their pocketbooks too.

  • Omicron Limited ☛ Researchers uncover cause of uranium groundwater contamination

    The researchers discovered that uranium becomes dangerously mobile in specific underground environments—a finding that could help local communities monitor and manage this health threat. With over 25 million people in the region relying on groundwater for more than 70% of their drinking water, these insights could lead to targeted solutions, such as where to site wells and localized treatment at affected well-heads.

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ Cargo ship sinks en route to Mexico

  • Energy/Transportation

    • The Conversation ☛ 2025-06-26 [Older] UK’s F-35A fighter jet deal problem: the RAF has no aircraft to refuel them in mid-air

    • Semafor Inc ☛ US rooftop solar companies are bracing for devastation

      Plans to kill the tax credit by the end of the year would be tantamount to a death sentence for much of the residential solar industry and bring major layoffs, Ben Airth, policy director at Freedom Forever, told Semafor. The Senate is expected to vote on the “One Big Beautiful Bill” as soon as this week, legislation that would scale back many tax benefits for clean energy, but hit rooftop solar especially hard. Analysts project that the measure would cause the amount of rooftop solar installed in the US to fall in 2026 by more than half compared with its 2024 level.

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ It’s officially summer, and the grid is stressed

      Large swaths of the US have seen brutal heat this week, with multiple days in a row nearing or exceeding record-breaking temperatures. Spain recently went through a dramatic heat wave too, as did the UK, which is unfortunately bracing for another one soon. As I’ve been trying to stay cool, I’ve had my eyes on a website tracking electricity demand, which is also hitting record highs.

    • The Register UK ☛ AI's power needs could short-circuit US infrastructure

      Power required by AI datacenters in the US may be more than 30 times greater in a decade, with 5 GW facilities already in the pipeline..

    • Greece ☛ Scientists retrace 30,000-year-old sea voyage, in a hollowed-out log

      Two new studies published Wednesday in the academic journal Science presented the results of those experiments. In one report, advanced ocean models recreated hundreds of virtual voyages to pinpoint the most plausible routes for the crossing. “We tested various seasons, starting points and paddling methods under both modern and prehistoric conditions,” Kaifu said.

      The other paper charts the 45-hour journey that Kaifu’s crew made from eastern Taiwan to Yonaguni Island in the southern Ryukyus. The mariners, four men and one woman, paddled the 25-foot canoe, a hollowed-out cedar log christened Sugime, for 122 nautical miles on the open sea, relying solely on the stars, sun and wind for their bearings. Often, they could not see their target island.

    • H2 View ☛ TES, CPC Finland launch JV to build 500MW Finnish hydrogen-based e-NG project

      Tree Energy Solutions (TES) and CPC Finland have launched a joint venture (JV) to develop a 500MW green hydrogen-to-synthetic natural gas (e-NG) project.

  • Wildlife/Nature

    • CS Monitor ☛ In troubling times, I found my untroubled waters in Walden Pond

      I’ve been swimming at Walden since high school, some 50 years ago. Little has changed since then. There’s a bigger parking lot, and a gift shop now, along with a nearby replica of Thoreau’s cabin.

• Finance

  • [Repeat] MIT Technology Review ☛ The Bank Secrecy Act is failing everyone. It’s time to rethink financial surveillance.

    Many Americans may associate financial surveillance with authoritarian regimes. Yet because of a Nixon-era law called the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and the digitization of finance over the past half-century, financial privacy is under increasingly serious threat here at home. Most Americans don’t realize they live under an expansive surveillance regime that likely violates their constitutional rights. Every purchase, deposit, and transaction, from the smallest Venmo payment for a coffee to a large hospital bill, creates a data point in a system that watches you—even if you’ve done nothing wrong.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Jérôme Marin ☛ The profitable ventures of OpenAI alumni

    The company is already valued at $10 billion. The scale of this fundraising is unprecedented, even in the generative AI sector where money is flowing freely. The deal largely hinges on the identity of its founder: Mira Murati, former CTO of OpenAI, who rose to AI stardom following the sensational launch of ChatGPT.

  • Southeast Ohio ☛ Anduril’s Choice: Ohio Becomes Home to Autonomous Weapons Facility

    Anduril, an American defense technology company specializing in autonomous systems and products used by the military, is landing in Pickaway County.

  • Silicon Angle ☛ Meta reportedly recruits four former OpenAI researchers to its superintelligence lab

    The three other OpenAI researchers who have reportedly joined Meta are Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov and Xiaohua Zhai. The Wall Street Journal cited sources as saying that the trio helped establish the company’s office in Zurich late last year. They earlier worked at Alphabet Inc.’s Google DeepMind machine learning research lab.

  • TechCrunch ☛ Meta hires key OpenAI researcher to work on AI reasoning models | TechCrunch

    Meta has hired a highly influential OpenAI researcher, Trapit Bansal, to work on its AI reasoning models under the company’s new AI superintelligence unit, a person familiar with the matter tells TechCrunch.

  • Digital Music News ☛ ByteDance Taps Rumblefish to Manage TikTok Rights Admin

    ByteDance has chosen HFA’s Rumblefish—owned by SESAC—to handle data, licensing, and royalty management services to ByteDance in support of TikTok and CapCut.

  • India Times ☛ Tech lobby group urges EU leaders to pause AI Act

    Europe's landmark AI rules entered into force in June last year with various provisions to be implemented in a phased manner.

    Important provisions of the EU AI Act, including rules for general purpose AI (GPAI) models, were due to apply on August 2. But some parts of the GPAI, which were expected to be published on May 2, got delayed.

  • Linuxiac ☛ The Curious Case of XLibre Xserver

    Freedom of choice in Linux? The XLibre Xserver case suggests it's not as simple as it sounds, raising questions about openness and control.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • The Atlantic ☛ Pro-Palestine Activists Fell for Iran’s Propaganda

      By backing various regimes and militias in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Gaza, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been responsible, directly or indirectly, for the death of hundreds of thousands of Arab and Muslim people in the conflicts it has fomented. Iranian meddling in the region has provided Arab dictators such as Syria’s Bashar al-Assad with both the moral and material means to suppress dissent, crush reform, and extend their autocratic rule. The pro-Palestine messaging ignores the fact that a nuclear-armed Iran would be far more belligerent and dangerous than the regime already has been for the past three decades.

    • Society for Scholarly Publishing ☛ Debate: Journal Editors Do Not Need To Worry About Preventing Misinformation From Being Spread

      The 18th General Assembly and Conference of the European Association of Science Editors (EASE) was held in Oslo, Norway on May 14-16, 2025. The event’s final session was a debate, where Haseeb Irfanullah argued in favor of a motion declaring that journal editors do not need to worry about preventing the spread of misinformation, while Are Brean argued against it. This article is based on that debate.

    • The Register UK ☛ Top AI models parrot Chinese propaganda, report finds

      Five popular AI models all show signs of bias toward viewpoints promoted by the Chinese Communist Party, and censor material it finds distasteful, according to a new report.

      Just one of the models originated in China.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Surveillance is inequality’s stabilizer

    Closely related to the dictator's dilemma is "authoritarian blindness," where an autocrat's censorship regime keeps them from finding out about important, socially destabilizing facts on the ground, like whether a corrupt local official is comporting themself so badly that the people are ready to take to the streets: [...]

  • 404 Media ☛ 'My Bad:' Babyface Vance Meme Creator On Norwegian Tourist's Detainment

    “My initial reaction was ‘dear god,’” the creator of the original iteration of the meme, Dave McNamee, told me in an email, “because I think it's very bad and stupid that anyone could purportedly be stopped by ICE or any other government security agency because they have a meme on their phone. I know for a fact that JD has these memes on his phone.”

  • Open Caucasus Media ☛ Georgian radio company’s accounts and assets frozen

    The Hereti radio holding company brought together three stations: Radio Tbilisi in the capital, Radio Hereti in Kakheti, and Radio Tsitrusi in Adjara.

    According to Samkharadze, before the freeze was imposed, the company had already begun the process of renewing its license with the National Communications Commission and had paid the licensing fee.

  • Rolling Stone ☛ Will J.D. Vance Memes Now Get You Turned Away at U.S. Border?

    That’s the claim that Mads Mikkelsen, a 21-year-old Norwegian tourist (not to be confused with the Danish actor of the same name), made to his hometown newspaper Nordlys after a planned two-month vacation to the states was cut short before it even began. Mikkelsen said that he was detained by immigration authorities for hours at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey earlier this month, interrogated about terrorism and drug trafficking, and ultimately sent home to Norway because border agents discovered a Photoshopped picture of the vice president with a bald, egg-shaped head on his phone — having threatened him with a hefty fine or jail time if he didn’t give them access to the device.

  • Rik Huijzer ☛ "Let's get real about free speech" - Rik's Weblog

    First he clarifies that not all speech should be free. Some speech acts like incitement of violence should not be protected. But opinions should always be free.

    The main four points of the talk are that [...]

  • Becky Spratford ☛ RA for All: EveryLibrary Institute's Free Report on Censorship Acceleration

    As the library world is preparing for the 2025 ALA Annual Conference (beginning Friday), the EveryLibrary Institute released a FREE and compressive report on the state of censorship in libraries since 2020. Below I have reposted the introduction to the report (found here) which includes the key takeaways and has access to the form you can fill out to receive the full PDF report.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • CPJ ☛ Cuban journalist targeted with threats, intimidation after refusing police summons

    Figueredo refused to comply with a June 23 police summons, reviewed by CPJ. On that same day she received three private number phone calls warning her that a police investigation had been opened against her and Correa for “dangerousness,” the journalists told CPJ. On June 16, a local police officer parked outside the journalists’ home told them that they weren’t allowed to leave in an incident witnessed by others in the neighborhood.

  • BIA Net ☛ Journalist Zeynep Durgut receives threats after reporting on alleged sex trafficking ring in Şırnak

    Zeynep Durgut, a reporter for the Mesopotamia Agency (MA), has been threatened following her coverage of a prostitution network case in the Kurdish-populated southeastern province of Şırnak. The case, initially uncovered in 2013, led to an indictment only after 11 years.

  • Meduza ☛ Chinese journalist reportedly injured in drone attack in Russia’s Kursk region

  • The Vietnamese Magazine ☛ Does Journalism Truly Exist in Việt Nam?

    According to some Vietnamese researchers like Đặng Thị Vân Chi, early newspapers like Gia Định Báo and Phan Yên Báo in Sài Gòn might primarily serve as propaganda tools for the French colonial government, rather than as sources of information or progressive ideas for the Vietnamese public. The French quickly issued decrees to restrict press freedom, granting the Governor-General sole authority to license newspapers. These licenses could be granted or revoked at will; obtaining one was notoriously difficult.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Brand safety: Why social is far more risky than news for marketers

    Advertising agency Stagwell spends around $5bn per year on marketing for its clients and is urging them to spend at least 3% of their media buy on news.

  • Hollywood Reporter ☛ Why Abundance Author Derek Thompson Left The Atlantic for Substack

    One of the writers of the No. 1 New York Times bestselling book Abundance is betting that by leaving legacy media, he can keep the conversation going around the book, which has become a focal point of political discourse since its release in March.

    Derek Thompson, a staff writer for The Atlantic, says that he is leaving the publication after 17 years to launch a Substack, where he hopes to embrace the freedom of independence to explore the topic of abundance, as well as the rapidly changing worlds of science, technology and culture.

  • Open Caucasus Media ☛ Georgian court fines person over Facebook comment about a government official

    Tbilisi City Court has fined a person for a comment made on Facebook about an Interior Ministry representative. The case followed a series of fines imposed on several government critics over social media posts.

  • The Georgia Recorder ☛ Trump drive to defund NPR, PBS resisted by Republicans from rural states

    Numerous GOP lawmakers on the Appropriations Committee, including Chairwoman Susan Collins, expressed concern at how the proposed rescissions would affect American “soft power” as well as local radio and television stations that rely on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — many in rural America.

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • FAIR ☛ ‘Their Goal Is to Equate Protests for Palestine With Support for Terrorism’: CounterSpin interview with Chip Gibbons on freeing Mahmoud Khalil

    Janine Jackson interviewed Defending Rights and Dissent’s Chip Gibbons about freeing Mahmoud Khalil for the June 12, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

  • Papers Please ☛ Asymmetric demands for ID

    Recent events have focused attention on the asymmetry of police demands for ID:

    Government agents demand that ordinary citizens provide evidence of our identity, even when we are exercising rights — such as traveling by common carrier — that don’t depend on our identity. But those same government agents typically refuse to provide the same sort of evidence of their identity, even when they are asserting claims to authority that depend on their identity and status as law enforcement officers.

    Masked, armed gangs dressed in the mismatched assortment of military-surplus clothing that characterizes “militias” in failed states are snatching people off the streets of US cities and towns and taking them away in unmarked vehicles, some with no license plates.

  • FAIR ☛ ‘To Address Migration Requires a Reorientation of How the US Relates to the Global South’: CounterSpin interview with Michael Galant on sanctions and immigration

    Janine Jackson interviewed CEPR’s Michael Galant about sanctions and immigration for the June 20, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

  • International Business Times ☛ Why Do ICE Agents Wear Masks? Boss Defends Move Amid Surge in Doxxing and Death Threats

    Agents of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are facing scrutiny after the public saw them wearing masks during their operations. Tired of criticisms, the agency's Acting Director Todd Lyons finally released a statement explaining why his men are wearing face covers.

  • International Business Times ☛ Hyatt Hotels Cuts Hundreds of US Jobs in Favour of Workers in El Salvador Earning $400 a Month and AI

    They also reported that Hyatt's front-line call work will now be handled out of El Salvador and the Philippines. Workers in El Salvador are reportedly earning £291.70 ($400) a month for full time work.

  • Federal News Network ☛ Judge blocks Trump order curtailing federal union rights, citing ‘plausible’ retaliation concerns

    The American Federation of Government Employees, the lead plaintiff in the case, argued the Trump administration’s selective enforcement of the executive order — allowing agencies to recognize some unions while barring others — amounted to unconstitutional retaliation, targeting unions that speak out against the administration’s federal workforce polices and challenge them in court.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Inside Towers ☛ British PM Wants Rural Broadband Deployment to Count as Defense Spending

    Apparently, the Starmer government would consider Project Gigabit’s $6.8 billion program budget as the fiscal equivalent of a Royal Air Force squadron of F-38B Lightning fighter jets. Project Gigabit is the U.K.’s version of the U.S. BEAD program, notes Broadband Breakfast. The U.K.’s goal is to reach 99 percent of premises with gigabit speeds by 2032.

  • The Telegraph UK ☛ Starmer to count rural broadband as ‘defence spending’

    Broadband and bridge repairs are to be counted as defence spending under Sir Keir Starmer’s plans to redraw the definition of national security.

    The Government’s national security review, due to be published before a [NATO] summit next week, will expand the definition to include economic stability, food prices, supply chains, crime and the [Internet].

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: What’s a “public [Internet]?”

    But "technological soveriegnty" is a slippery and easily abused concept. Policies like "national firewalls" and "data localization" (where data on a country's population need to be kept on onshore servers) can be a means to different ends. Data localization is important if you want to keep an American company from funneling every digital fact about everyone in your country to the NSA. But it's also a way to make sure that your secret police can lay hands on population-scale data about anyone they might want to kidnap and torture: [...]

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Six Colors ☛ Apple makes big App Store changes in the EU

  Apple on Thursday announced major changes to its EU app policies. Here’s the gist: [...]

• The Register UK ☛ Security pro counts the cost of Microsoft dependency

  Another issue we rarely see addressed is the extreme reach of Microsoft in business computing. The problem is not just bigwigs who mostly don't know a hypervisor from an email server; the techies who advise them are also a problem. We have personally talked to senior decision-makers and company leaders who know nothing but Windows, who regard Macs as acceptable toys (because they can run MS Office and Outlook and Teams), but who have never used a Linux machine.

  There's a common position that a commodity is only worth what you pay for it, and if you don't have to pay for it, then it's worthless. Many people apply this to software, too. If it's free, it must be worthless.

  It's hard to get through to someone who is totally indifferent to software on technical grounds. When choices of vendors and suppliers are based on erroneous assumptions, challenging those false beliefs is hard.

• Futurism ☛ Microsoft Is Having an Incredibly Embarrassing Problem With Its AI

  As Amgen senior vice president John Bruich told Bloomberg [it has a website but i wouldn't call it a website when it has a print magazine], employees at the pharmaceutical company still use Copilot when they're forced to by Microsoft-specific apps like Outlook and Teams. Nevertheless, they seem to prefer ChatGPT for tasks like research and document summarizing because, apparently, it's just better and more enjoyable.

• Trademarks

  • IP Kat ☛ 2025-06-23 [Older] Small cars, big trouble – The final chapter!? Court denies claims of Volkswagen against model cars

  • IP Kat ☛ 2025-06-25 [Older] Post-sale confusion alone can be a basis for trade mark infringement, UK Supreme Court confirms

• Copyrights

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Meta beats Kadrey, AI training was fair use — what this means

    Chhabria thinks “the companies, to avoid liability for copyright infringement, will generally need to pay copyright holders for the right to use their materials.” But claiming fair use is specific, not general. Fair use under US law depends on the facts and circumstances in the particular case. There are four factors to consider.

  • Wired ☛ Disney Just Threw a Punch in a Major AI Fight

    Disney and Universal recently filed suit against Midjourney, an AI image generation startup, alleging the company has become a “bottomless pit of plagiarism,” and that it freely reproduces the studio's copyrighted content, including their most iconic characters. We dive into the details of this case and others, and explain how this conflict gives us a window into the growing tensions between AI companies, publishers, and creators.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Quavo Still Faces Sculptor Copyright Suit Despite Hybe Dismissal

    Following the points to their logical conclusion, and particularly given the alleged infringement’s nature, it’s possible that the suit could wrap sooner rather than later. (Since our initial coverage in April, Quavo has seemingly removed the allegedly infringing social posts as well.) In any event, the Arsham v. Quavo case isn’t the only unique music-world copyright battle delivered by 2025’s opening half.

  • Techdirt ☛ Two Judges, Same District, Opposite Conclusions: The Messy Reality Of AI Training Copyright Cases

    Within days of each other, two federal judges in the same district reached completely opposite conclusions about AI training on copyrighted works. Judge William Alsup said it’s likely fair use as transformative. Judge Vince Chhabria said it’s likely infringing because of the supposed impact on the market. Both rulings came out of the Northern District of California, both involve thoughtful judges with solid copyright track records, and both can’t be right.

    The disconnect reveals something important: we’re watching judges fixate on their personal bugbears rather than grappling with the fundamental questions about how copyright should work in the age of AI. It’s a classic case of blind men and an elephant, with each judge touching one part of the problem and declaring that’s the whole animal.

  • Techdirt ☛ Judge Alsup: Training AI On Copyrighted Works? Fair Use. Building Pirate Libraries? Not So Much

    The ruling has sparked predictably divergent takes, with observers claiming it’s both a big win and a big loss for AI. But the real story is more interesting: Alsup has essentially created a roadmap that validates legitimate AI training while drawing clear lines around what crosses into infringement.

    The bottom line: this may cost Anthropic some serious money, but it’s actually great news for generative AI development generally should it stand up.

  • The Walrus ☛ The Death of the Middle-Class Musician | The Walrus

    And Pemberton’s star did rise. His debut album, Breaking Kayfabe, earned him a cover story in Exclaim! magazine and a nomination for the Polaris Prize, which recognizes the best Canadian album of the year. He released more music, played the legendary Glastonbury and Lollapalooza festivals, DJ’d Sacha Trudeau’s birthday party, and performed for Queen Elizabeth II at the 2010 Canada Day festivities on Parliament Hill. By then, Edmonton had selected Pemberton as the city’s poet laureate, and the CBC had picked him to sit on the panel of its battle-of-the-books show, Canada Reads. He was everywhere. From the outside looking in, it seemed that Pemberton had made it, and then some.

    Behind the scenes, however, he was scraping by, living off earnings from freelance writing gigs, informal DJ sets, seasonal retail shifts, and $11,130 worth of additional advances that Upper Class paid him for his second and third albums. All the other money he made was being collected by Upper Class; per Pemberton’s contract, the label was entitled to collect his portion of revenues (20 to 50 percent, depending on the source) until they’d fully recouped his advances as well as tens of thousands of dollars the label had invested in recording, marketing, and touring, including covering the costs of Pemberton’s flights, car rentals, and hotels. As a result, he was playing hundreds of shows a year yet making no money.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Meta Scores Partial Fair Use Win in AI Training Lawsuit

    That said, while Judge Chhabria’s ruling in the authors v. Meta suit represents another legal setback for rightsholders, the precedent at hand isn’t nearly as sweeping. In fact, the judge determined that mass-training, though transformative, is “likely” illegal “in most cases.”

    “There is certainly no rule that when your use of a protected work is ‘transformative,’ this automatically inoculates you from a claim of copyright infringement,” Judge Chhabria wrote, also directly addressing the decision in the mentioned Anthropic suit. “And here, copying the protected works, however transformative, involves the creation of a product with the ability to severely harm the market for the works being copied, and thus severely undermine the incentive for human beings to create.

    “Under the fair use doctrine, harm to the market for the copyrighted work is more important than the purpose for which the copies are made,” he continued.

    Similarly, the court refuted the “ridiculous” idea that rulings in favor of rightsholders will stunt the growth trajectory of LLMs. “These products are expected to generate billions, even trillions, of dollars for the companies that are developing them,” he stated. “If using copyrighted works to train the models is as necessary as the companies say, they will figure out a way to compensate copyright holders for it.”

  • Digital Music News ☛ Anthropic Scores Major Fair Use Win in Authors' Copyright Lawsuit

    “Here, if the outputs seen by users had been infringing, Authors would have a different case,” Judge Alsup wrote in the summary judgement order. “And, if the outputs were ever to become infringing, Authors could bring such a case. But that is not this case.” With the significant distinction out of the way, today’s summary judgement decision encompasses a few components, all with potentially far-reaching implications for the music space.

  • Digital Music News ☛ Gunna Is Planning to Sign An AI Artist—Move Over Timbaland

    That move is in stark contrast to producer Timbaland’s recent controversy in the space. He recently launched an AI-focused entertainment company called Stage Zero and introduced his first AI artist he calls TaTa. TaTa’s music is created in collaboration between human creators and the AI music platform Suno. But that partnership drew ire when Timbaland released a video showcasing him taking an original beat created by K Fresh—without approval—and feeding it into the AI platform.

  • India Times ☛ AI and copyrights: The fight for fair use

    This was the first time a US court ruled on whether using copyrighted material without permission for AI training is legal.

  • India Times ☛ Getty drops copyright allegations in UK lawsuit against Stability AI

    Seattle-based Getty's decision to abandon the copyright claim removes a key part of its lawsuit against Stability AI, which owns a popular AI image-making tool called Stable Diffusion. The two have been facing off in a widely watched court case that could have implications for the creative and technology industries.

  • Torrent Freak ☛ Meta Secures Bittersweet Fair Use Victory in AI 'Piracy' Case

    In a pivotal moment for artificial intelligence and copyright law, Meta has secured a bittersweet partial fair use victory in its defense of a 'piracy' lawsuit filed by several book authors. While granting Meta summary judgment on specific claims, the court outlined how copyright challenges against AI developers might succeed in the future. The decision emphasizes the critical importance of proving potential market harm, specifically by AI-generated books.