I’m not sure who out there is in RFK Jr.’s corner anymore, beyond some unfortunately powerful people in seats of federal power at the moment. That Kennedy’s tenure at HHS has lasted even this long is as absurd as it is dangerous, given the mountains of chaos he’s created in a mere year and change thus far. All of this anti-vaxxer nonsense, the seemingly random attacks on Tylenol of all things, an ongoing measles outbreak he’s mismanaging, and an inability to follow proper governmental procedure has produced a sample size of sucking that really should have been enough to get him booted from office at this point. Whatever you might think of Kennedy’s conspiracy theories and policies, there is simply no arguing that he doesn’t completely suck at his job.

The public polling around Kennedy has reflected this reality. Spineless senators who once supported him in the role are turning their backs. And then there are the warning bells being rung from people who were very recently insiders at CDC, such as its former Chief Medical Officer.

Dr. Debra Houry, the former chief medical officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), decried the direction of the agency under Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

“I think the secretary has caused a lot of irreparable harm, and when you look at many of the polls out there, the trust in public health, specifically CDC, has decreased dramatically, over 20 points in many polls,” Houry told host Margaret Brennan in an interview that aired Sunday on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.”

“That’s really difficult to recover from, and when states are removing links to the CDC website and following other medical organizations, I don’t know how you build back that trust overnight,” she added.

You absolutely don’t and this is a point I’ve been making for many months. It doesn’t take much skill or time to destroy the trust the public has in federal health officials. That part is very fast and very easy, as Kennedy is demonstrating. But to rebuild that trust, to win back the faith of the public, is going to take years, or decades, or perhaps may never really happen at all. The consequences of the idiotic placement and confirmation of RFK Jr. to lead HHS is going to span decades. The nihilists who managed to put this current cadre of clowns into federal office may not understand that, or may simply not care. But that is the reality.

A poll conducted by Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the de Beaumont Foundation’s Public Health Listening Lab from March 19 through April 1 found that 50 percent of 2,205 U.S. adults said they trust health recommendations from the CDC. 

In spring 2025, 77 percent of respondents to a similar survey conducted by the joint pollsters said they trust recommendations from the agency.

Whenever this country moves past the MAGA era, it’s going to have what might be the Sisyphean task of repairing all of this damage. And not just in terms of reestablishing good, sane health policies. That’s just part of the task. The other will be the public messaging that must go along with it. That is equally, if not more important to repairing all of the damage Kennedy has and is doing. It’s not enough to have good policy built on science. Someone has to actually get the public to buy into and trust in those policies.

And the public is going to be in a very reasonable place when they ask why they should trust the next government to not be anymore idiotic than this one.

Recently, politicians in the UK pushed forward with plans to eviscerate privacy and free speech on the internet by announcing a ban on social media for users under 16 that is set to take effect in Spring 2027. 

The UK government continues to falsely characterize this policy as a necessary response to growing concerns about online harms for young people. In reality, much like the Online Safety Act, it will cause more harm than it will prevent. 

Users of all ages are burdened with proving their age before accessing content, with social media platforms such as Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and X included in the ban. There remains no reliable, privacy-preserving method of verifying the age of every internet user and methods vary from one platform to the next.

Young people will not simply be protected from being contacted by adults or endlessly scrolling—they’ll also lose access to educational videos on YouTube, local events on Facebook, and potentially cut off from distant friends and family. 

Public policy must be effective, proportionate and respectful of fundamental rights. Young people deserve better than a policy built on panic, and all internet users deserve a safe and free internet. A social media ban generates headlines, but it will not solve the problem. 

A Brief History of Age-Gating in the UK

Age restriction proposals in the UK date back to a decade ago, when the proposed Digital Economy Bill was put forth to (among other things) restrict young people from accessing pornographic websites. While the Digital Economy Act of 2017 passed without age-based restrictions, it laid the groundwork for later age verification measures.

Over the next few years, age checks for porn websites were announced then delayed several times. But it wasn’t until a consultation under the 2016-2019 May government and the 2020 publication of the Online Harms Whitepaper that age verification became a broader idea.

In 2023, the UK passed the controversial Online Safety Act, establishing powers that could weaken privacy protections and freedom of expression for internet users worldwide. In July 2025, the government implemented age assurance measures on sites hosting “harmful” content. 

And despite politicians affirming repeatedly that the Online Safety Act would solve all of the problems with online safety, this year they decided it in fact did not go far enough. American social psychologist and The Anxious Generation author Jonathan Haidt—who has called for age-related social media bans around the world, despite significant scientific doubt about his research—met with the UK Health Secretary in February to push for the ban.

In March, politicians introduced plans for a social media ban into the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to “prevent children under the age of 16 from becoming or being users” of “all regulated user-to-user services,” to be implemented by “highly-effective age assurance measures”—effectively banning under-16s from social media. 

When this proposal came before the House of Commons, MPs defeated and proposed their own amendment: enabling the Secretary of State to introduce provisions “requiring providers of specified internet services” to prevent access by children, under age 18 rather than 16, to specified internet services or to specified features; and to restrict access by children to specified internet services which ministers provide. 

But the social media ban does not stop there. The provision also requires internet service providers to limit the time kids spend online, and has rules about who can contact them online. These extreme rules will take decisions about using technology away from families and put them in the hands of government regulators. 

The history of this proposal shows that the UK government has repeatedly returned to the same flawed idea: restricting access to online services by requiring age checks for everyone. But the fundamental problems have not changed. There is still no widely available way to verify age online without compromising privacy—but even if there were, broad restrictions on social media will inevitably limit access to lawful speech, and valuable online communities, and arts and culture.

Republished from the EFF’s Deeplinks blog.

I think I’ve extensively explained at this point why the $111 billion merger between Paramount/CBS and Warner Brothers is a gargantuan pile of shit that will indisputably harm labor, consumers, markets, creatives, and potentially even national security. It doesn’t matter the company names; every single major media merger of this type ends badly for everyone but the trust fund brunchlords at the top.

Not only that, every single merger involving this particular company (Time Warner, Warner Brothers) in the last quarter century has resulted in nothing but layoffs, price hikes, shittier product, and a lot of whimpering. And there are ample signs that the Paramount folks are even less competent than past suitors, including the AT&T executives, who quickly got too far out over their skis.

While the Trump DOJ has unsurprisingly rubber stamped Larry Ellison’s clumsy effort to dominate what’s left of U.S. corporate media, states keep hinting at the fact they’ll file a collective antitrust lawsuit.

That’s certainly the case in Oregon, where Attorney General Dan Rayfield is asking for a 60 day pause in deal finalization while his office investigates both the deal — and apparently the Trump cronyism that has helped enable it. Rayfield, for one, accuses Paramount of refusing to adequately respond to state AG requests for information about the deal’s impact:

“We’re not going to let Paramount Skydance play hide the ball so they can rush through their massive merger. Oregonians have a real stake in this deal – in our film industry, in our economy, in the choices they’ll have as consumers. Paramount had every opportunity to hand over records and answer a few basic questions. Instead, it is trying to run out the clock and evade scrutiny. We’re asking the court to make sure Oregonians get the answers they’re owed before this deal closes, not after.”

Rayfield says that Paramount has been particularly cagey when asked for data on its interactions with the Trump administration and Trump DOJ. Including details on a federal government influence campaign Paramount internally calls “project warrior”:

“Paramount has not complied. According to court papers, the company declined to accept service of the request, waited weeks to respond, and ultimately sent objections on the day its documents were due – objections the state dismisses as a baseless tactic to avoid turning over the records. Paramount has told Oregon it does not intend to close the deal before July 16 but has not agreed to hold off any longer while the state’s investigation continues.”

So while the $111 billion deal is abjectly terrible, it’s not quite yet a done deal yet. I’d suspect that a joint antitrust lawsuit featuring the handful of states that still care about such a thing will arrive sometime in the next month or two. While it might not succeed in scuttling the deal, it could extend the timeline in a way that could prove costly for Larry Ellison, David Ellison, and their debt-riddled proposal.

Larry is comically over-leveraged on AI, and should an AI bubble pop coincide in significant regulatory delays for his media domination bid, things could get very interesting. As an aside, I’d like you to notice how when the state lawsuits come, all the Republicans who spent last election season pretending they were suddenly interested in antitrust reform will be absolutely nowhere to be found.

Less than a month ago, Trump secured himself a $400 million plane for free — something he certainly couldn’t have accomplished if he weren’t the president of the United States. It’s no longer a mere appearance of corruption: it’s a 250-foot long luxury plane with 2,500 square feet of tangible corruption. Here are some details on the gift/graft, along with a few choice quotes from its recipient:

On Friday afternoon, Trump toured the luxury Boeing 747 plane that initially stirred controversy. The plane was one of the biggest foreign gifts ever received by the U.S. government and raised legal and ethical questions after Qatar offered to replace the presidential jet last year. Trump said last May he’d be “stupid” not to accept the offer. Industry groups originally said the plane could be worth approximately $400 million.

[…]

“This plane was transformed into a flying White House at a level of luxury that nobody’s ever seen before, probably even almost outside of an airplane,” Trump said. 

[…]

“It was time for a change. … Everything was designed good. It was my taste,” Trump said saying that he approved the new color scheme, which reflects the American flag.

Obviously, Trump is a fan. But the problem with this particular “free” Qatari-made Air Force One — well, one of several problems — is that is isn’t as secure as the original Air Force One, which was acquired a bit more honestly using only US tax dollars and perhaps a handful of no-bid contracts. The New York Times noted this in its report, after Trump flew the Qatar version to Turkey, but had to exit the country aboard the old Air Force One.

The new Air Force One, which President Trump flew on earlier this week to Turkey, lacks the same defensive countermeasures that were security features of the old model, including its advanced antimissile capabilities, according to multiple officials who have been briefed on how the jet was retrofitted.

Experts say the absence of those capabilities on the Boeing 747-8 aircraft, which was donated by Qatar, creates potential risk in using the jet abroad, a dynamic underscored by the abrupt decision on Wednesday for Mr. Trump to leave Turkey on the old Air Force One at the urging of the Secret Service.

There’s a metaphor in here somewhere, one that might point out that the corruption-adjacent Air Force One is as unfit for its job as the man who took possession of it on behalf of a nation that never asked for it.

While that reporting was definitely going to generate some Truth Social rants and official statements containing phrases like “fake news” or “failing New York Times,” pretty much no one expected it to generate subpoenas. But that’s the reality we now live in as the Trump administration lurches through the second year of its second term.

The Trump administration issued subpoenas on Friday to several journalists for The New York Times, after the news outlet reported this week on security concerns involving President Trump’s new Qatari-donated Air Force One.

The subpoenas — which seek to force the reporters to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan on Wednesday — were an extraordinary escalation in President Trump’s efforts to threaten and intimidate independent news organizations.

In some cases, the subpoenas were delivered by federal agents who showed up at reporters’ homes.

This isn’t America, I hear you say. But it kind of is, isn’t it? This is Trump’s version of America and the only thing that separates it from actions taken by other autocracies is that these reporters were only accosted by armed officers, rather than directly disappeared. Baby steps. Give Trump another year or so and maybe we can eliminate the relative niceties of merely threatening and intimidating journalists who publish articles the administration doesn’t like.

This follows other actions taken by this administration, like the search of Washington Post reporter’s house earlier this year as the FBI (allegedly) engaged in what what presumably an internal leak investigation. This looks like more of the same — the administration trying to force journalists to give up their sources so they can punish whistleblowers and leakers.

This was also something Trump was angry enough about that he actually managed to get FBI director Kash Patel out of bed/out of the nearest nightclub/sobered up enough to pull an all-nighter at [checks reporting] the White House?

The White House directed Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, to oversee a leak investigation into reporting by The New York Times about security issues with the new Air Force One, leading to a flurry of subpoenas to several Times reporters Friday night, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

Mr. Patel scuttled a planned trip to Chicago and spent roughly eight hours at the White House on Friday, running the investigation from there rather than F.B.I. headquarters — a major departure from historical practice.

This is also extremely unusual. As it appears everyone in the White House has forgotten, the FBI and DOJ are not weapons to be used for politically motivated revenge. They are not foot-soldiers that serve the president. Both are supposed to maintain a certain level of independence, which makes it easy to avoid any appearances of impropriety. But those firewalls have been deliberately destroyed by an administration that not only doesn’t care if this looks shady as shit, but wants to make sure everyone in America — especially the administration’s many enemies — knows this is exactly as shady as it appears.

Things are only going to get worse from here. I can say that with confidence because nothing at all has gotten any better since Trump retook the White House. This administration won’t be happy until it has destroyed all the ideals the United States once stood for. The millions of MAGA faithful who spent Biden’s four years complaining they were being censored are now watching actual censorship being put into action. And, of course, they’re unwilling to speak up because… well, you know: “they came for the fake news and I said nothing, because I was an election denier, etc. etc.”

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One thing that we’ve heard for many years in covering a variety of ridiculous civil and criminal court cases is the belief that when a crazy case is filed, the person accused of wrongdoing should “just walk into court and tell the judge what really happened.” While that might feel right, it’s really not how these things work. There is a procedure, and having an actual lawyer who understands how things work is incredibly valuable.

When we first wrote about “Reckless” Ben Schneider and his valiant attempt to help Bryan Mansell get back the Lego sets (and/or money) he was owed from the company Bricks & Minifigs, we mentioned that almost everyone in the dispute should have talked to lawyers earlier in the process than they did. We had a lot of people get mad at us for making that claim, but I stand by it. Especially after Schneider has dropped Part 3 (after a federal court fixed the extremely problematic injunction from a state court that had blocked him from releasing it originally), and it again shows why Schneider really needs to hire a lawyer.

As lots of people are rightly noting, the video itself shows a ton of pretty sketchy behavior by Bricks & Minifigs and the cops — police walking a witness through how to invent charges while mocking Schneider, and Bricks & Minifigs caught telling wildly different stories depending on who was listening. And then, right on schedule, after the video came out Bricks & Minifigs followed it up with a new blog post on Friday that somehow makes things worse.

Schneider certainly knows how to make pretty viral video content, but representing himself in court seems particularly stupid, especially as he’s doing it here in a criminal case. He is right that the deck is stacked against him and that the prosecutors and the judge don’t seem to be listening to him or taking his claims seriously, but that’s in large part because he’s bumbling into court without a lawyer, and when he’s being asked fundamental procedural questions is telling the judge “have you looked at the evidence we submitted?”

Again, this might feel like the right way to handle a case where you feel you’re being railroaded, but procedurally, the court isn’t supposed to be looking at the evidence at this stage of the case, so Schneider making out like the court is treating him unfairly just misses the point that basically any lawyer could have told him regarding how cases like this proceed.

That’s not to defend the prosecutors, the police, or Bricks & Minifigs. While the video is (again) only showing Schneider’s side of the story, there are a whole bunch of things in the video that are incredibly damning to all three.

Let’s go through a few key points: First up: what the cops told Schneider about the charges against him, and what they were actually hiding.

Schneider plays some audio from one of the criminal cases against him (it’s a little unclear which one, since he suggests it’s the case in American Fork, but a screenshot he shows briefly suggests it may be the other case in Provo), where he says that the prosecutor and the court won’t even share what he’s being charged with, though the video clips don’t show that. Rather they show prosecutors trying to get out of providing body cam footage in discovery to Schneider, claiming that they’re upset he’ll make video commentary out of it. Discovery of evidence is not the same as knowing what the charges are, even if the evidence is related to the charges.

Even so, the claim is bullshit. The fact that Schneider might create public commentary with the videos is no excuse for not providing discovery. If that’s the concern, prosecutors can seek to have a protective order put over how the discovery materials are used, and if Schneider violates that order, then he could face contempt charges. Simply denying discovery is ridiculous.

But it’s the second case, out of Provo, where the bodycam footage stops looking like sloppy policing and starts looking like something much more problematic. Schneider was able to obtain bodycam footage from the police who were handling the charges against him based on statements from Bricks & Minifigs’ CEO Ammon McNeff. Again, we’re only seeing the evidence as selected and edited by Schneider, but it’s difficult to see how there’s anything else that would exonerate how the Provo police acted here.

They literally have one police officer talking to McNeff (repeatedly), talking about how McNeff’s original claim of extortion isn’t supported by the evidence but offering to help him find some other charges, and then asking McNeff to confirm specific elements to turn it into commercial obstruction. The police officer’s quote here is deeply problematic:

“We agree that there really was no extortion code that would fit your situation, however, you know, at the end of the day, we do want to help you guys so you’re not having to deal with this fool… [sigh]… all his issues. We did find that there was another code that fit and it’s called aggravated commercial obstruction….”

Having the police call Schneider a “fool” and saying they want to help find charges that will stick is not great. They then walk McNeff through what they need him to say/do to get such charges, including claiming that he asked Schneider to leave the Bricks & Minifigs premises multiple times and Schneider refused. Schneider shows his own video recordings (and security footage) that appears to directly contradict this — specifically showing that when asked to leave they did so.

There is one point where McNeff asks them to leave but then keeps talking to them anyway, so that almost certainly doesn’t count as a legitimate request to leave. And none of the footage Schneider shares matches even remotely what McNeff told the police. There is footage of Schneider (stupidly) saying “we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” which is not fatal to Schneider’s argument, but can certainly be read as a threat. In all these videos, that’s the one point that isn’t great for Schneider, though in the full context it’s pretty clearly a threat to release more videos and publicly shame Bricks & Minifigs. Still, that line hurts Schneider’s argument a bit.

McNeff also tells the police that Schneider threatened to burn the offices down, even though in their own civil lawsuit against him they admit that various threats have not come from Schneider directly but from some of his fans online. If Schneider had directly threatened them, you’d think they would have included that in the civil complaint. While most of the video evidence has only been selectively released, at this point not a single bit of evidence shows Schneider actually threatening any sort of violence towards Bricks & Minifigs (indeed, it seems that his whole schtick is to sort of do the dopey, hapless, inquisitor thing).

Based on the current evidence, it sure looks like McNeff just lied to the cops, and the cops not only took his side, but helped nudge McNeff about what he should say or do to give them enough to charge Schneider.

Not great!

Even worse, when the same cop figures out what they can charge them with, the body cam footage shows her laughing with glee. You kinda have to watch the clip directly (starting at 16:15) where the cop gets kinda gleeful that McNeff told her enough to charge Schneider with a second degree felony (Schneider falsely calls it a “secondary” felony). This is actually two separate clips from Schneider’s video, though it sounds like they’re directly connected to one another:

Cop: However, the tricky thing is is that we have to prove that this individual either entered or remains unlawfully on the premise. When he came to the property, did you have to ask him more than once to leave?

McNeff: Yes.

Cop: Okay.

McNeff: You know, ‘we’re not leaving until we we get it.’ …

[other video interspersed before cutting back to this exchange]

McNeff (trying to reconstruct the scene for the cop): ‘Guys, at this point, I’ve asked you to leave. Please leave.’ ‘Well, we we you know, like you have to listen to us. You have to pay us this money.’ ‘No, guys, you need to leave and you’re not leaving.’ Like, but I asked multiple times. They did not leave.

Cop: Looks like that might be a second degree felony. [laughs joyfully] He’s facing felony charges. It is a felony…

That is all… pretty damning. Later the same cop mocks Schneider’s first video: “I’m really curious if this fool makes any money doing this YouTube stuff?” Even later, she says to McNeff “well, I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you. Hopefully no more issues” and “there’s so many other things that this guy could be talking about, right?” Just completely supporting McNeff and dismissing Schneider’s side entirely.

Though I will note that Schneider also has a misunderstanding that “reporting a crime” (as he tries to do with McNeff) is “opening a case.” While police can investigate claims of a crime, until a prosecutor charges it, there is no actual “case.”

But it does seem overwhelmingly clear, from what’s presented in this video at least, that the police immediately believed and sided with McNeff and dismissed/ignored everything Schneider presents in response… to the point that they sent a subpoena to Google seeking a bunch of Schneider’s emails, communications, and other documents. There’s a suggestion in the video that McNeff got Schneider to email him just to get his email for the sake of the subpoena, though it seems clear that McNeff had other means of getting Schneider’s email address. Schneider points out that he emailed via the website contact form and had received a reply from someone at Bricks & Minifigs. And while McNeff acts like he’s never heard of that email address and it has nothing to do with him, that’s clearly bullshit, and he could easily talk to whatever employee manages that account to get Schneider’s email address.

Set the criminal case aside for a second, because there’s a parallel thread here that’s just as bad for the company: McNeff’s own claims about the inventory list don’t survive contact with reality. McNeff tells Schneider that he’ll happily share the inventory they did of the store they took over if he sends an email to the one specific address, and says he told Mansell the same thing. However, when Schneider emails that address and follows up, he receives this reply:

If you can’t read that, it says:

Mr. Schneider,

• BAM Franchising, Inc. will not participate in any form of communication that appears designed for public provocation, harassment, or manipulation of facts for the purpose of media content.
• Attempts to obtain privileged or confidential information through misrepresentation or the creation of fraudulent documents may constitute criminal misconduct, and we reserve all rights to refer such behavior to appropriate legal authorities.

Should you believe you are entitled to any specific information under applicable law, we suggest that you pursue such requests through formal and lawful legal procedures.

This will serve as our final response to your inquiry unless we are contacted by duly retained legal counsel representing a party of standing.

That shows pretty clearly that McNeff was full of shit when he said he’d be happy to email Schneider a copy of the inventory. And, sure, you can say that between Schneider visiting them and the time this email was sent they decided that they didn’t like how they were going to be portrayed, but there’s a pattern here. In the video Schneider releases, he shows McNeff saying “I think we have sent it to Bryan” in reference to the inventory list, and later says that if Schneider and Mansell get on an email thread together he’ll send it to both of them.

They also show McNeff going on TV news interviews claiming that they had told Mansell and Mansell’s lawyer that they were happy to work on going through the inventory list, but that Mansell’s lawyer stopped responding. McNeff said: “we’ve tried to share those with Mr. Mansell in hopes that he can see that we were not attempting — in any shape or form — to withhold anything. Those were then offered to him, and the initial offer was rejected.”

Except that Mansell has the receipts in the form of the email thread between his lawyer and Bricks & Minifigs, which seems to show pretty clearly a very different story. Even as we only see snippets of the emails, it’s hard to square this with what McNeff keeps claiming. The emails show Mansell’s lawyer asking multiple times how to get the money owed or the sets back and finally getting a stiff arm email saying that the two guys who Bricks & Minifigs handed the store to, “Brandon Best and Joshua Johnson, have no legal obligation to return any of the LEGO product.”

And then, even more damning is the closing of the email, saying “We consider this matter closed and will not be returning any LEGO products to you.”

That, uh, does not seem like a company that claims that it has no problem trying to work with Mansell to resolve this issue. Last week we mocked Bricks & Minifigs for having their crisis comms person send us an email about how the company was so eager to help make Mansell whole. That already seemed ridiculous since they’re suing Mansell for $1.3 million claiming RICO. But also, that was before we’d seen this email where the company basically says “shove it.”

Anyway, even as this is just coming from Schneider’s side, it’s hard to see how there’s any additional info that would acceptably square the claims made by McNeff with what’s been presented. There’s now plenty of discussion about how Schneider likely has civil claims he could bring against McNeff. Arguably he could also claim that the police in both American Fork and Provo violated his rights, but that’s likely an extreme longshot (not because the cops are in the right, but because it’s next to impossible to sue the cops for violating your rights).

Either way, we now know that Schneider has legal representation for the civil case, and hopefully that means he can also secure legal representation for the criminal case as well, because that would clearly be helpful. Yes, all of this is tremendous content, but your strategy in court when facing felony charges and your strategy for making viral content can (and should) be somewhat different.

Honestly, given how much attention this has gotten, and the legal help that has started to step up, there’s a decent chance that the criminal cases will go away, but that’s very much not the norm. Planning to go viral is not a strategy any lawyer would recommend for fighting criminal charges.

Anyway, while Schneider’s legal troubles play out, it’s worth remembering that Bricks & Minifigs certainly was not blindsided by Schneider’s Part III. They knew it was coming and that it was blocked by the broader injunction they had obtained in court. They knew that they had negotiated a pared back injunction, which meant Part III would be released soon. They basically had weeks to prepare a PR response to all the damning stuff that video was going to show.

And this is what they came up with.

The company released yet another tone deaf blog post on Friday, which talks about all the “changes” they’re making to respond to some of the criticism they’re getting. Half of them basically read as admissions of how badly run the company is. They admit that they’re going to work more closely with franchises (apparently they’ve recently jacked up franchise fees) and have put in place a “standardized inventory and trade system” effectively admitting that they had nothing before.

There are also some comments on the lawsuit that look written by the world’s worst crisis comms team. I mean, this is embarrassing:

Some have asked why Bricks & Minifigs hasn’t simply dropped the pending litigation connected to this matter. The answer is that accountability and integrity must run both ways. We remain open to a mediated, amicable resolution, and we don’t view litigation as the preferred path. We’re also not willing to submit to manipulation, threats and unsupported accusations.

That… doesn’t answer the question. And sure, fine, accountability and integrity should run both ways, but you’re the one out there claiming that you’re trying to make Mansell whole… while telling him you won’t give him any of his stuff back and then suing him for $1.3 million.

The blog post also suggests they have to keep the lawsuit going because Schneider’s conduct “has crossed the line from fair criticism into harassment, misrepresentation, and targeted harm.” But that’s Schneider, not Mansell. It’s also laughable given the footage that’s been shown so far.

And of course they try to avoid the fact that all the presented evidence makes them look terrible with this favorite line:

We will not try this matter on social media, and we will not use this statement to relitigate every disputed detail. Those issues belong in mediation and, if necessary, the legal process.

Again, that makes sense in certain contexts, but here where you’ve been running your mouth off constantly on TV show after TV show with claims that directly contradict what corporate actions and emails have said, it does the opposite of building credibility.

At basically every turn where Bricks & Minifigs could have made the situation better, they’ve dug in and made it worse. It seems like a bad strategy. So bad it’s even worse than going to court and trying to defend yourself from criminal charges without a lawyer.

For years I’ve noted that while Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite broadband system can be very useful for people with no other options (warzones, RVs, boats, rural Americans), the network has struggled to maintain performance as it grows into more mainstream markets, resulting in not only widespread slowdowns, but also the company socking users with massive “congestion surcharges.”

These surcharges are actively designed to deter use because the network is struggling to handle the load. They started at around $100 a few years ago, then jumped to $750. And last week, Reddit users began complaining that they were automatically hit with a $1500 demand surcharge. And because Musk’s companies historically don’t invest in customer service, calling up to complain doesn’t really help:

“I have been charged 1500 dollars demand surcharge for simply verifying my address that I have subscribe to 3 years ago. I have contacted starlink customer support but it’s pretty worthless. I have been getting tossed from one agent to another agent for the past 5 days.”

Last year, a study from researchers at X-Lab quietly showed that Starlink struggles to manage the load as the network grows, making it ill-suited as serious game changer for U.S. access. So as the network scales up, Starlink will be forced to impose more and more limits and restrictions on usage to ensure that most people have an acceptable experience. The laws of physics are kind of annoying like that.

That a niche broadband option gets congestion normally wouldn’t be that big of a deal; the problem is Trump Republicans have hijacked and retooled the $42.5 billion infrastructure bill broadband grant program to throw billions of dollars — and millions of new customers — at Musk’s Starlink as a personal favor to one of the U.S. president’s biggest donors.

Ideally, sensible U.S. broadband policy involves pushing fiber optic cable as deeply into American communities as possible, then covering a lot of the remainder with either fixed wireless or cellular tech. Only then can low-Earth orbit satellite broadband options like Starlink (or Amazon’s Leo) act as niche options that fill in the gaps.

These technologies were never really designed to be the primary avenue for broadband delivery across the bandwidth-hungry country. They’re simply not useful in many more densely populated areas. But the Trump extended infotainment universe is convinced that Starlink is akin to some kind of magic simply because Musk’s name is involved.

So they’re redirecting billions of taxpayer dollars away from better, higher-capacity fiber options and toward Musk’s Starlink, which is only going to result in greater congestion as the network begins to strain under the heavily subsidized load. People will only start to figure this out long after Musk has pocketed billions of dollars in subsidies in exchange for Starlink service SpaceX already planned to deploy.

I’ll repeat that because it gets missed: Musk is getting billions in subsidies, which he professes to hate, in exchange for doing nothing differently. Extremely innovative.

There’s been an additional layer of stupidity created by the SpaceX IPO and its utterly bogus proclaimed valuations. The prospectus pretends that Starlink will somehow magically scale from 10 million current subscribers to more than 300 million in very short order with no headaches, but reality and the laws of physics are going to have something very different in mind.

And again (just like Tesla Solar), because Starlink customer service is largely nonexistent, folks shoveled toward Starlink by the Trump administration aren’t going to have a good time. This is all before you get to the fact that Starlink has also been criticized for harming astronomical research and the ozone layer, and is generally too expensive for the folks most in need of reliable broadband access.

That’s not to say that services like Starlink don’t have very real uses, but the company and its tech (like everything Musk touches) is being wildly misrepresented in a way that’s going to become increasingly and problematically apparent in the next few years.

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Bloof with a comment about Wikipedia banning its co-founder:

Guy was one of many people involved in the start of Wikipedia, left in a snit to start rival project after rival project more in line with his personal vision, each dying a death because his vision doesn’t make for a useful website with a thriving community. After these sites rotted on the vine, he decided to do return, contribute nothing worthwhile for years and right wing media tours to help signal boost right wing attempts to attack the site because they won’t let them hijack the site the way they have everything else.

He’s the intellectual equivalent of a J6er, he openly tried to do a coup, got punished because the rules should be applied equally regardless of political beliefs, and expects sympathy, only there’s no Trump to wave the get out of consequences free card for him.

In second place, it’s That One Guy with a simple response to ICE rebutting Nazi allegations by going full Gestapo:

Someone doth protest too much

If not nazi, why nazi shaped?

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from Whoever about how speech laws designed to protect the powerless get abused by the powerful:

Another example

In the UK, the wealthy and powerful are able to get “Superinjunctions” to prevent speech, and, significantly, even the existence of the injunction cannot be disclosed.

Combined with strict libel laws (even truth is not an absolute case in the UK — the case of George Galloway against the Daily Telegraph showed this), the powerful in the UK can be used to restrict speech that criticizes them.

Next, it’s Stephen T. Stone with a comment about the FCC claiming the First Amendment allows it to ban porn:

Porn is, was, and always will be the canary in the censorship coal mine. Censors count on people being too embarassed about defending porn to stop censorship. If they take even the most innocuous pornography away from you⁠—I’m talking Playboy pinups here⁠—and you do nothing about it because “who wants to defend smut”, every other kind of speech is on the table. This really is a “first they came for” situation, so if you’re not willing to openly defend porn as protected speech, the least you can do is not openly support the censors when they use your triggers against you.

“Remember, pornographers have always been on our side. Brave, ready to fight for our rights. Smut is our friend.” — John Waters

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is Bloof with a comment about Trump taking out his anger over the reflecting pool on a US olympic canoeist:

If he’s mad about the Olympian, wait until he hears about that idiot who drove a motorcade of heavy, armoured vehicles across it before they filled it back up. That guy will be in sooo much trouble.

In second place, it’s Zeus with another joke about the whole debacle:

LMFAO

A narcissist obsessed with a reflecting pool?

Not again. Sheesh.

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with an anonymous comment about time travel:

You don’t reseaerch time travel: you just make a decision to research time travel and if your future self doesn’t promptly show up to say hi then you know that your research would have failed.

Finally, it’s MrWilson responding to the FCC General Counsel’s complaint about porn being widely available and cheap or free:

Well something needs to be affordable in our society if it’s not going to be food, housing, education, energy, and other basic human needs.

That’s all for this week, folks!

This Week in 2016

• ‘Most Transparent’ President Signs Into Law FOIA Reform Bill That Won’t Affect His Administration
• Documentary About Freeing Happy Birthday From Copyfraud Comes Out The Day After Happy Birthday Officially Declared Public Domain
• Why The Latest Supreme Court Ruling In Kirtsaeng May Have A Much Bigger Impact On Copyright & Fair Use
• Appeals Court Says That Sharing Passwords Can Violate Criminal Anti-Hacking Laws
• FBI Vacuums Up Local Law Enforcement Documents To Block Open Records Requests About Orlando Shooting
• Facebook Experiments With End To End Encryption In Messenger

This Week in 2011

• Smear Campaign Ramps Up Against Those Who Believe Free Speech Is More Important Than Hollywood’s Obsolete Business Model
• Homeland Security Working Hard To Make Sure No One Wants To Use .com Or .net Domains
• Video Gamers Realizing Streaming Criminalization Bill Might Make A Lot Of Them Into Criminals
• Senator Jerry Moran Removes Himself As A PROTECT IP Co-Sponsor
• RIAA Accounting: How To Sell 1 Million Albums And Still Owe $500,000
• Did The Entertainment Industry Backdoor In Forcing ISPs To Kick People Offline, While Claiming It Did Not?

This Week in 2006

• Throwing Away Privacy In The Blink Of An Eye
• New Casino Business Model: Any Time Someone Wins, Blame The Software
• Australia Wants To Regulate YouTube As Well
• Attention English Teachers: Google Is Officially A Verb
• Will The MPAA Now Lobby For A Ban On The Print Screen Button?
• Is The Navy Trying To Patent The Firewall?