News

Tuesday 2026-02-03

03:00 PM

The CDC Has Mysteriously Frozen Vaccine Databases Without Explanation [Techdirt]

In any war, information is power. Be it kinetic wars, cyberwarfare, or information wars, data is everything. And since RFK Jr. has clearly declared war on vaccines in America, it’s not a huge surprise that he is looking to control information about vaccines. Or, as it turns out, simply sweep that information away.

Nearly half of the databases that public health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were updating on a monthly basis have been frozen without notice or explanation, according to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

The study—led by Janet Freilich, a law expert at Boston University, and Jeremy Jacobs, a medical professor at Vanderbilt University—examined the status of all CDC databases, finding a total of 82 that had, as of early 2025, been receiving updates at least monthly. But, of those 82, only 44 were still being regularly updated as of October 2025, with 38 (46 percent) having their updates paused without public notice or explanation.

Examining the databases’ content, it appeared that vaccination data was most affected by the stealth data freezes. Of the 38 outdated databases, 33 (87 percent) included data related to vaccination. In contrast, none of the 44 still-updated databases relate to vaccination. Other frozen databases included data on infectious disease burden, such as data on hospitalizations from respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

The following are points that should be as uncontroversial as they are plain and clear. Medical and health professionals cannot operate without data and information. Government agencies and professionals cannot make good public health decisions without good and current data and information. Operating in a vacuum could mean a death sentence for some, or mere horrific health outcomes for others.

Whatever Kennedy is aiming at when it comes to American health, it clearly isn’t for the sort of positive health outcomes mentioned above. If it were, this obviously coordinated attack on information about vaccinations and the diseases they combat in these databases wouldn’t be carried out.

“Given the vaccine skepticism of the Secretary of Health and Human Services, it is concerning that nearly 90 percent of the paused databases related to vaccination surveillance, with additional gaps in respiratory disease monitoring,” Freilich, Jacobs, and their co-authors write in the study.

These databases and the information within them are used to identify under-vaccinated populations relating to specific diseases so that public health officials can coordinate on responses to outbreaks of those diseases. Responses that typically involve vaccination campaigns to protect a population that hitherto has failed to protect themselves.

But it’s clear this iteration of government isn’t interested in those kinds of responses. You can see it plain as day in the reaction, or rather inaction, concerning the country’s current measles outbreak. Ostriches don’t actually stick their heads in the sand when in danger, but it appears RFK Jr. does. Or perhaps this isn’t being done out of fear. Perhaps this is all part of a coordinated plan.

In an accompanying editorial, Jeanne Marrazzo, CEO of the Infectious Disease Society of America and former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, stated the concern in starker terms, writing: “The evidence is damning: The administration’s anti-vaccine stance has interrupted the reliable flow of the data we need to keep Americans safe from preventable infections. The consequences will be dire.”

Marrazzo emphasizes that the lack of current data not only hampers outbreak response efforts but also helps the health secretary realize his vision for the CDC, writing: Kennedy, “who has stated baldly that the CDC failed to protect Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic, is now enacting a self-fulfilling prophecy. The CDC as it currently exists is no longer the stalwart, reliable source of public health data that for decades has set the global bar for rigorous public health practice.”

This is dangerous. I would love to hear a single, coherent explanation why it would be a good thing for this data to no longer be available to public health professionals. Other than Kennedy wanting to play hide and seek due to his anti-vaxxer stances, of course. What good comes of us being more ignorant?

There is no answer, of course. There is only agenda. Facts inconvenient to that agenda will be disappeared.

01:00 PM

Kanji of the Day: 似 [Kanji of the Day]

似

✍7

小5

becoming, resemble, counterfeit, imitate, suitable

ジ

に.る　ひ.る

似合う   (にあう)   —   to suit
真似   (まね)   —   imitating
に似て   (ににて)   —   similar to
類似   (るいじ)   —   resemblance
似合い   (にあい)   —   well-matched (esp. of a couple)
似顔絵   (にがおえ)   —   portrait
真似し   (まねし)   —   copy cat
疑似体験   (ぎじたいけん)   —   simulated experience
擬似   (ぎじ)   —   pseudo
疑似   (ぎじ)   —   pseudo

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

Kanji of the Day: 曇 [Kanji of the Day]

曇

✍16

中学

cloudy weather, cloud up

ドン

くも.る

曇り   (くもり)   —   cloudiness
曇らせる   (くもらせる)   —   to cloud
曇り空   (くもりぞら)   —   cloudy sky
曇る   (くぐもる)   —   to mumble
曇りがち   (くもりがち)   —   mainly cloudy
曇天   (どんてん)   —   cloudy sky
花曇り   (はなぐもり)   —   hazy weather in spring
薄曇り   (うすぐもり)   —   slightly cloudy
曇りガラス   (くもりガラス)   —   frosted glass
雨曇り   (あまぐもり)   —   overcast weather

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

10:00 AM

Beware: Government Using Image Manipulation For Propaganda [Techdirt]

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem last week posted a photo of the arrest of Nekima Levy Armstrong, one of three activists who had entered a St. Paul, Minn. church to confront a pastor who also serves as acting field director of the St. Paul Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office. 

A short while later, the White House posted the same photo – except that version had been digitally altered to darken Armstrong’s skin and rearrange her facial features to make it appear she was sobbing or distraught. The Guardian one of many media outlets to report on this image manipulation, created a handy slider graphic to help viewers see clearly how the photo had been changed.  

This isn’t about “owning the libs” — this is the highest office in the nation using technology to lie to the entire world. 

The New York Times reported it had run the two images through Resemble.AI, an A.I. detection system, which concluded Noem’s image was real but the White House’s version showed signs of manipulation. “The Times was able to create images nearly identical to the White House’s version by asking Gemini and Grok — generative A.I. tools from Google and Elon Musk’s xAI start-up — to alter Ms. Noem’s original image.” 

Most of us can agree that the government shouldn’t lie to its constituents. We can also agree that good government does not involve emphasizing cruelty or furthering racial biases. But this abuse of technology violates both those norms. 

“Accuracy and truthfulness are core to the credibility of visual reporting,” the National Press Photographers Association said in a statement issued about this incident. “The integrity of photographic images is essential to public trust and to the historical record. Altering editorial content for any purpose that misrepresents subjects or events undermines that trust and is incompatible with professional practice.” 

Reworking an arrest photo to make the arrestee look more distraught not only is a lie, but it’s also a doubling-down on a “the cruelty is the point” manifesto. Using a manipulated image further humiliates the individual and perpetuate harmful biases, and the only reason to darken an arrestee’s skin would be to reinforce colorist stereotypes and stoke the flames of racial prejudice, particularly against dark-skinned people.  

History is replete with cruel and racist images as propaganda: Think of Nazi Germany’s cartoons depicting Jewish people, or contemporaneously, U.S. cartoons depicting Japanese people as we placed Japanese-Americans in internment camps. Time magazine caught hell in 1994 for using an artificially darkened photo of O.J. Simpson on its cover, and several Republican political campaigns in recent years have been called out for similar manipulation in recent years. 

But in an age when we can create or alter a photo with a few keyboard strokes, when we can alter what viewers think is reality so easily and convincingly, the danger of abuse by government is greater.   

Had the Trump administration not ham-handedly released the retouched perp-walk photo after Noem had released the original, we might not have known the reality of that arrest at all. This dishonesty is all the more reason why Americans’ right to record law enforcement activities must be protected. Without independent records and documentation of what’s happening, there’s no way to contradict the government’s lies. 

This incident raises the question of whether the Trump Administration feels emboldened to manipulate other photos for other propaganda purposes. Does it rework photos of the President to make him appear healthier, or more awake? Does it rework military or intelligence images to create pretexts for war? Does it rework photos of American citizens protesting or safeguarding their neighbors to justify a military deployment? 

In this instance, like so much of today’s political trolling, there’s a good chance it’ll be counterproductive for the trolls: The New York Times correctly noted that the doctored photograph could hinder the Armstrong’s right to a fair trial. “As the case proceeds, her lawyers could use it to accuse the Trump administration of making what are known as improper extrajudicial statements. Most federal courts bar prosecutors from making any remarks about court filings or a legal proceeding outside of court in a way that could prejudice the pool of jurors who might ultimately hear the case.” They also could claim the doctored photo proves the Justice Department bore some sort of animus against Armstrong and charged her vindictively. 

In the past, we’ve urged caution when analyzing proposals to regulate technologies that could be used to create false images. In those cases, we argued that any new regulation should rely on the established framework for addressing harms caused by other forms of harmful false information. But in this situation, it is the government itself that is misusing technology and propagating harmful falsehoods. This doesn’t require new laws; the government can and should put an end to this practice on its own. 

Any reputable journalism organization would fire an employee for manipulating a photo this way; many have done exactly that. It’s a shame our government can’t adhere to such a basic ethical and moral code too. 

Republished from the EFF’s Deeplinks blog.

09:00 AM

Arti 2.0.0 released: Relay, directory authority, and RPC development. [Tor Project blog]

Arti is our ongoing project to create a next-generation Tor implementation in Rust. We're happy to announce the latest release, Arti 2.0.0.

While "2.0" may sound like an exciting release number, it's actually fairly mundane. Semver requires us to bump our major version number when making breaking changes, and we had a couple breaking changes we wanted to make in order to keep our APIs tidy. These breaking changes are:

  • Removing support for the long-deprecated proxy.socks_port and proxy.dns_port configuration options (proxy.socks_listen and proxy.dns_listen should be used instead).
  • Removing support for the old syntax for specifying directory authorities. The new syntax can be seen in the example configuration.
  • Marking all APIs in the arti crate experimental. These APIs are likely to get moved into other crates or removed in the future, and anyone who uses APIs from the arti crate directly (as opposed to arti-client or other lower-level crates) should file an issue explaining their usecase, so that it can be considered as we move these APIs elsewhere.

Other than removing deprecated features, this release adds support for using the inet-auto socket type to automatically pick an unused TCP port for the RPC server.

There is also a significant amount of behind-the-scenes work on relay and directory authority functionality in this release.

On the relay front, this includes our new generic and modular circuit reactor architecture, the ability to launch relay channels, the ability to respond to handshakes, and the groundwork for relays to act as the server side of a TLS connection.

On the directory authority front, we've done significant work on authority certificate management, allowing Arti to download, validate, and store authority certificates.

While running Arti as a relay or directory authority is not yet supported, we're making good progress towards those long-term goals.

For full details on what we've done, including API changes, and for information about many more minor and less-visible changes, please see the CHANGELOG.

For more information on using Arti, see our top-level README, and the documentation for the arti binary.

Thanks to everybody who's contributed to this release, including Niel Duysters, carti-it, hjrgrn, and sjcobb!

Also, our deep thanks to our sponsors for funding the development of Arti!

08:00 AM

ICE, CBP Brag About Stealing A Legally-Impossible $14,000 From US Citizens At The Minneapolis Airport [Techdirt]

Let’s just clear the air right up front: this is just the government mugging Somalis because they’re currently at the top of Trump’s shitlist. Prior to last month’s escalation (and subsequent murder) because some white MAGA shitbird became famous for supposedly uncovering a whole lot of Somali-based fraud in Minneapolis, Minnesota, it’s possible ICE would have bragged about robbing money from people at an international airport.

But because this other thing (the MAGA dude) happened first — and because Minneapolis residents have proven incredibly resilient in the face of vengeful federal operations — ICE had to get out its X bullhorn and yell about taking money from people the MAGA faithful have been encouraged to hate by their dimwitted handler, Donald Trump. (For a bit of catharsis, here’s a wonderful recording of the so-called “MAGA influencer” Jake Lang being welcomed to Minneapolis by counter-protesters while he tried to get his anti-migrant hate on. It seems this mook forgot protesters burned a police station to the ground following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.)

This X post comes to us via Dom Ervolina on Bluesky. But since that post can’t be seen by people who aren’t logged in, I’m going to screenshot the X post in all of its ingloriousness, because we certainly aren’t going to be linking to and/or embedding a post from that particular den of depravity that’s overseen by a landlord who can’t seem to decide whether he should be an absentee landlord or a cheerleader for his CSAM-creating, Hitler proxy AI, Grok.

Here goes nothing:

It’s an official post by the X ICE account. Although ICE wasn’t directly involved with this airport robbery, it was first in line to celebrate it. Here’s what it says:

UNDECLARED CASH SEIZED AT MSP

On January 18, HSI St. Paul and @CBP seized $14,135 from two Somali-born U.S. citizens who were departing on international flights from MSP.

ICE and CBP remain vigilant in detecting and preventing the illegal movement of funds across borders to protect national security.

It’s accompanied by a photo of the alleged $14,135 scattered across a Formica table apparently located adjacent to (and somewhat blocking) an airport walkway.

Note that it says $14,135. $14,000 should have been enough. But the bottom right corner of the photo makes it clear federal officers weren’t satisfied until they’d rifled through these people’s wallets.

Yep, that’s $35 dollars, splayed across the table like it’s the focal point of a video produced by the least-successful SoundCloud rap artist ever.

Also, note the way this phrase is… um, phrased:

“…from two Somali-born U.S. citizens…”

You see what the government led with, right? They expect everyone who’s going to cheer whatever they do to stop reading after the “i” in “Somali” (or maybe the “n” in “-born” at best). And they expect everyone to ignore the words that follow that: “U.S. citizens.”

The rabble will get roused because it has something to do (however adjacently) with the people Trump hates and who will do all they can to stoke that hatred, even if that means the occasional bout of hypothermia. (See above link about Maga dudebro getting railed by the locals.)

Ignore the rest of the racist dogwhistling and you get nothing more than ICE celebrating the fact that the CBP stole $14,135 from US citizens.

But that’s not even the stupidest part of ICE masturbating on main. The rules for taking money out of the country are pretty simple: you must declare any amount over $10,000 to Customs. There were two people and $14,000 involved here. Even the laziest of elementary school students should be able to spot the problem here.

No matter how you slice it up, CBP cannot use a customs violation to justify the seizure of $14,000 from two people. If one person was over the limit, the other person was carrying an amount of cash that didn’t need to be declared. If both were carrying half, neither of them were violating the law.

And since the government has yet to give us more details on this, we’re left to assume the government grabbed $14,000 from two US citizens just because it thinks it can get away with it.

Now, it’s entirely possible the government will claim the two people were working together to smuggle more than $10,000 out of the country. But if it does, it should be directly and persistently challenged by the court that takes this case. If that doesn’t happen, the government will be able to steal any amount of cash from any number of passengers boarding the same plane if that total manages to clear the $10,000 mark.

And it will also assume it can free-associate connections between people boarding different flights carrying cash by pretending these unconnected people are engaged in a conspiracy to violate a customs law that seemingly only exists to allow the government to pick people’s pockets (figuratively but also LITERALLY) at our nation’s airports.

On top of that, there are the activities of other federal agencies like the DEA and ATF, who pretend any mildly significant amount of cash in travelers’ luggage must be the end result of illegal activity. And this is so fucking maddening because it has NEVER been illegal to carry cash from place to place, much less try to leave the country with an (undeclared) stack of greenbacks (under $10,000) that tend to produce better results in vacation destinations and ancestral homelands whose currency isn’t worth as much as the US dollar.

There’s no shaming the government into behaving better — not when it’s headed by some of the most shameless government officials ever to hold executive branch offices. But, for the time being, you can possibly sue them into submission. And that’s what needs to happen now. The government is engaging in racism and mouthing empty phrases about “national security” to justify its abusive xenophobia. Sure, this sort of thing predates Trump. But it doesn’t mean we should consider it acceptable just because it’s been SOP for most of this century.

Six Months Of ‘AI CSAM Crisis’ Headlines Were Based On Misleading Data [Techdirt]

Remember last summer when everyone was freaking out about the explosion of AI-generated child sexual abuse material? The New York Times ran a piece in July with the headline “A.I.-Generated Images of Child Sexual Abuse Are Flooding the Internet.” NCMEC put out a blog post calling the numbers an “alarming increase” and a “wake-up call.” The numbers were genuinely shocking: NCMEC reported receiving 485,000 AI-related CSAM reports in the first half of 2025, compared to just 67,000 for all of 2024.

That’s a big increase! And it would obviously be super concerning if any AI company were finding and detecting so much AI-generated CSAM, especially as we keep hearing that the big AI models (perhaps with the exception of Grok…) have been putting in place safeguards against CSAM generation.

The source of most of those reports? Amazon, which had submitted a staggering 380,000 of them, even though most people don’t tend to think of Amazon as much of an AI company. But, still, it became a six alarm fire about how much AI-generated CSAM Amazon had discovered. There were news stories about it, politicians demanding action, and the general sentiment was that this proved how big the problem was.

Except… it turns out that wasn’t actually what was happening. At all.

Bloomberg just published a deep dive into what was actually going on with Amazon’s reports, and the truth is very, very different from what everyone assumed. According to Bloomberg:

Amazon.com Inc. reported hundreds of thousands of pieces of content last year that it believed included child sexual abuse, which it found in data gathered to improve its artificial intelligence models. Though Amazon removed the content before training its models, child safety officials said the company has not provided information about its source, potentially hindering law enforcement from finding perpetrators and protecting victims.

Here’s the kicker—and I cannot stress this enough—none of Amazon’s reports involved AI-generated CSAM.

None of its reports submitted to NCMEC were of AI-generated material, the spokesperson added. Instead, the content was flagged by an automatic detection tool that compared it against a database of known child abuse material involving real victims, a process called “hashing.” Approximately 99.97% of the reports resulted from scanning “non-proprietary training data,” the spokesperson said.

What Amazon was actually reporting was known CSAM—images of real victims that already existed in databases—that their scanning tools detected in datasets being considered for AI training. They found it using traditional hash-matching detection tools, flagged it, and removed it before using the data. Which is… actually what you’d want a company to do?

But because it was found in the context of AI development, and because NCMEC’s reporting form has exactly one checkbox that says “Generative AI” with no way to distinguish between “we found known CSAM in our training data pipeline” and “our AI model generated new CSAM,” Amazon checked the box.

And thus, a massive misunderstanding was born.

Again, let’s be clear and separate out a few things here: the fact that Amazon found CSAM (known or not) in its training data is bad. It is a troubling sign of how much CSAM is found in the various troves of data AI companies use for training. And maybe the focus should be on that. Also, the fact that they then reported it to NCMEC and removed it from their training data after discovering it with hash matching is… good. That’s how things are supposed to work.

But the fact that the media (with NCMEC’s help) turned this into “OMG AI generated CSAM is growing at a massive rate” is likely extremely misleading.

Riana Pfefferkorn at Stanford, who co-authored an important research report last year about the challenges of NCMEC’s reporting system (which we wrote two separate posts about), wrote a letter to NCMEC that absolutely nails what went wrong here:

For half a year, “Massive Spike In AI-Generated CSAM” is the framing I’ve seen whenever news reports mention those H1 2025 numbers. Even the press release for a Senate bill about safeguarding AI models from being tainted with CSAM stated, “According to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, AI-generated material has proliferated at an alarming rate in the past year,” citing the NYT article.

Now we find out from Bloomberg that zero of Amazon’s reports involved AI-generated material; all 380,000 were hash hits to known CSAM. And we have Fallon [McNulty, executive director of the CyberTipline] confirming to Bloomberg that “with the exception of Amazon, the AI-related reports [NCMEC] received last year came in ‘really, really small volumes.'”

That is an absolutely mindboggling misunderstanding for everyone — the general public, lawmakers, researchers like me, etc. — to labor under for so long. If Bloomberg hadn’t dug into Amazon’s numbers, it’s not clear to me when, if ever, that misimpression would have been corrected. 

She’s not wrong. Nearly 80% of all “Generative AI” CyberTipline reports to NCMEC in the first half of 2025 involved no AI-generated CSAM at all. The actual volume of AI-generated CSAM being reported? Apparently “really, really small.”

Now, to be (slightly?) fair to the NYT, they did run a minor correction a day after their original story noting that the 485,000 reports “comprised both A.I.-generated material and A.I. attempts to create material, not A.I.-generated material alone.” But that correction still doesn’t capture what actually happened. It wasn’t “AI-generated material and attempts”—it was overwhelmingly “known CSAM detected during AI training data vetting.” Those are very different things.

And it gets worse. Bloomberg reports that Amazon’s scanning threshold was set so low that many of those reports may not have even been actual CSAM:

Amazon believes it over-reported these cases to NCMEC to avoid accidentally missing something. “We intentionally use an over-inclusive threshold for scanning, which yields a high percentage of false positives,” the spokesperson added.

So we’ve got reports that aren’t AI-generated CSAM, many of which may not even be CSAM at all. Very helpful.

The frustrating thing is that this kind of confusion wasn’t just entirely predictable—it was predicted! When Pfefferkorn and her colleagues at Stanford published their report about NCMEC’s CSAM reporting system they literally called out the potential confusion in the options of what to check and how platforms would likely over-report stuff in an abundance of caution, because the penalty (both criminally and in reputation) for missing anything is so dire.

Indeed, the form for submitting to the CyberTipline has one checkbox for “Generative AI” that, as Pfefferkorn notes in her letter, can mean wildly different things depending on who’s checking it:

When the meaning of checking a single checkbox is so ambiguous that absent additional information, reports of known CSAM found in AI training data are facially indistinguishable from reports of new AI-generated material (or of text-only prompts seeking CSAM, or of attempts to upload known CSAM as part of a prompt, etc.), and that ambiguity leads to a months-long massive public misunderstanding about the scale of the AI-CSAM problem, then it is clear that the CyberTipline reporting form itself needs to change — not just how one particular ESP fills it out. 

To its credit NCMEC did respond quickly to Pfefferkorn, and their response is… illuminating. They confirmed they’re working on updating the reporting system, but also noted that Amazon’s reports contained almost no useful information:

all those Amazon reports included minimal data, not even the file in question or the hash value, much less other contextual information about where or how Amazon detected the matching file

As Pfefferkorn put it, Amazon was basically giving NCMEC reports that said “we found something” with nothing else attached. NCMEC says they only learned about the false positives issue last week and are “very frustrated” by it.

Indeed, NCMEC’s boss told Bloomberg:

“There’s nothing then that can be done with those reports,” she said. “Our team has been really clear with [Amazon] that those reports are inactionable.”

There’s plenty of blame to go around here. Amazon clearly should have been more transparent about what they were reporting and why. NCMEC’s reporting form is outdated and creates ambiguity that led to a massive public misunderstanding. And the media (NYT included) ran with alarming numbers without asking obvious questions like “why is Amazon suddenly reporting 25x more than last year and no other AI company is even close?”

But, even worse, policymakers spent six months operating under the assumption that AI-generated CSAM was exploding at an unprecedented rate. Legislation was proposed. Resources were allocated. Public statements were made. All based on numbers that fundamentally misrepresented what was actually happening.

As Pfefferkorn notes:

Nobody benefits from being so egregiously misinformed. It isn’t a basis for sound policymaking (or an accurate assessment of NCMEC’s resource needs) if the true volume of AI-generated CSAM being reported is a mere fraction of what Congress and other regulators believe it is. It isn’t good for Amazon if people mistakenly think the company’s AI products are uniquely prone to generating CSAM compared with other options on the market (such as OpenAI, with its distant-second 75,000 reports during the same time period, per NYT). That impression also disserves users trying to pick safe, responsible AI tools to use; in actuality, per today’s revelations about training data vetting, Amazon is indeed trying to safeguard its models against CSAM. I can certainly think of at least one other AI company that’s been in the news a lot lately that seems to be acting far more carelessly.

None of this means that AI-generated CSAM isn’t a real and serious problem. It absolutely is, and it needs to be addressed. But you can’t effectively address a problem if your data about the scope of that problem is fundamentally wrong. And you especially can’t do it when the “alarming spike” that everyone has been pointing to turns out to be something else entirely.

The silver lining here, as Pfefferkorn points out, is that the actual news is… kind of good? Amazon’s AI models aren’t CSAM-generating machines. The company was actually doing the responsible thing by vetting its training data. And the real volume of AI-generated CSAM reports is apparently much lower than we’ve been led to believe.

But that good news was buried for six months under a misleading narrative that nobody bothered to dig into until Bloomberg did. And that’s a failure of transparency, of reporting systems, and of the kind of basic journalistic skepticism that should have kicked in when one company was suddenly responsible for 78% of all reports in a category.

We’ll see if NCMEC’s promised updates to the reporting form actually address these issues. In the meantime, maybe we can all agree that the next time there’s a 700% increase in reports of anything, it’s worth asking a few questions before writing the “everything is on fire” headline.

06:00 AM

Precision vs. accuracy [Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect]

Precision requires producing the same results each time. Repeatable, measurable, dependable.

Accuracy means hitting the target.

The only way to consistently be accurate is to be precise.

But there are plenty of precision methods that don’t yield the most desired outcomes.

Simon Winchester’s book on precision is magnificent. As we enter a new age of automation, understanding the thrills and costs of previous revolutions adds a useful perspective.

And you’ll learn about the person who invented shoe sizes as well as the time Queen Victoria hit a bullseye with a rifle.

The world we live in is recent, and was created by a revolution in precision. We’re still working on accuracy.

      

Pluralistic: Stock swindles (02 Feb 2026) [Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow]

->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->-> Top Sources: None -->

Today's links


A detail from a US$100 bill showing Benjamin Franklin's portrait. It has been altered. Franklin's face has been overlaid with an orange sad clown, surmounted by Trump's hair. The zeroes in '100' above and below the portrait have been extended to run its entire length.

Stock swindles (permalink)

There are plenty of American historical antecedents of Trumpism – fascist movements like the Jim Crow reign of terror, the McCarthy hearings, the gleeful genocide of indigenous people. But when you're thinking about the rise of Trumpism, never forget that America isn't just a nation of cruel bigots; it's also a nation of rich swindlers.

We call Trump a "reality TV star" and it's true, as far as it goes. Trump did play a billionaire on TV long before he grifted actual billions, using his status as the poor man's idea of a rich man to secure liar loans and rip off creditors, contractors, business partners, workers, and governments – local, state and federal.

He rose to power on this, boasting on stage that cheating "makes me smart":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/04/its-not-a-lie/#its-a-premature-truth

Like so many crooked officials, Trump's brand is "He steals, but he works" (except of course that he doesn't – at any given moment, odds are that he's either taking a nap, watching Fox News, or playing golf):

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskBalkans/comments/utui8s/in_romania_we_have_a_saying_about_corrupt/

Remember: the right is the movement that says that governments are inefficient and corrupt, so right wing elected leaders make their own case by being incompetent and corrupt. Someone like Trump has to convince people that they can't rely on institutions or their neighbors. His path to power lies through convincing people that the system is rigged and that he – as a man who is an expert at cheating – knows how to rig it in your favor:

https://www.factcheck.org/2016/07/trumps-rigged-claim/

But merely claiming "the system is rigged" doesn't actually win the day. If you want to convince people that the system is rigged, it really helps if the system is actually rigged. Want to convince people that elections are corrupt? Legalize unlimited dark money spending and fill our polling places with defective, unauditable voting machines made by Beltway Bandits selling into no-bid contracts:

https://web.archive.org/web/20210203113531/https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/02/03/voting-machines-election-steal-conspiracy-flaws/

Want to convince people that there's a shadowy cabal of rich pedophiles hiding children in a pizza parlor basement? It helps if there's an actual cabal of rich pedophiles hanging out on a private island, abusing more than a thousand children (and counting). Want to convince people that the financial system is a rigged casino so you might as well just gamble on cryptocurrency and betting markets? It helps if the actual financial system is run by banks who receive billions in public money and then steal millions of Americans' homes after Obama takes Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's advice to "foam the runways" for the banks using Americans' houses:

https://keystoneky.com/article/all-we-can-do-is-put-foam-on-the-runway-tim-geithner-speaking-before-the-collapse-of-lehman/

Which is all to say, if you want to understand the origins of the surge of suckers for fascists who are desperate for a strong man to cheat on their behalf in a rigged system, it helps to look beyond racism and xenophobia, to the ways in which the system is, indeed, rigged. Racism and misogyny alone aren't enough to bring about fascism. To groom a nation of fascist patsies, you first need a crooked system:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/22/all-day-suckers/#i-love-the-poorly-educated

This is why it's worth understanding finance. The finance sector hides its sins behind the Shield of Boringness (h/t Claire Evans). The layers of overlapping jargon and performative complexity make it hard for everyday people to criticize the finance sector. Finance ghouls exploit this, leveraging confusing ambiguities in the system to insist that their critics don't know what they're talking about and that everything is fine, actually. This is an incredibly destabilizing dynamic. Living in a system where you're being fleeced every day but where people who seem smarter than you have reasonable-seeming explanations about why it's all legit and above-board is a recipe for abandoning all faith in the system, in experts, and in lawful processes, and throw your lot in with a strongman who promises to cheat on your behalf.

Take stock buybacks, a form of stock swindle that was illegal until 1982. In a stock buyback, a company buys its own shares on the open market. When the number of shares goes down, the price per share goes up. This is just a form of "wash-trading," like when NFT and shitcoin scammers buy their own products in order to make it look like they're valuable and desirable:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/06/computer-says-huh/#invisible-handcuffs

Advocates for markets as a system of allocation (as opposed to allocating via a democratically accountable state, say) insist that markets are efficient because prices "encode information" about the desirability, viability, and other qualities of goods and services. This is the whole argument for the new crop of rigged casinos we call "prediction markets" that are grooming the next generation of fascist footsoldiers by robbing them blind and then insisting that the whole process was not only legitimate, but scientific, a way to retrieve the "encoded information" about the world around us.

In a market system, stock prices are supposed to reflect the aggregated information about the health and prospects of a company. When a company buys its own stock back, though, its price goes up while its value goes down.

I mean that literally: say a company that's sitting on a billion dollars cash is valued at $10 billion. From this, we can infer that the company's capital stock (factories, inventory, etc), IP (patents, processes, copyrights, etc) and human capital (payrolled employees, contractors) are worth $9 billion. That's a reliable estimate, because we know exactly how much one billion dollars cash is worth: it's worth one billion dollars.

Now, let that company piss that billion dollars up the wall with a stock buyback. The company is relieved of its billion dollars cash on hand, leaving it with no cash, only its physical capital, IP and human capital, which are worth $9b. The company is now worth less than it was before the stock buyback.

What's more, the drop in corporate valuation is more than the billion the company just blew on its buyback. A company with no cash reserves is brittle and prone to failures. Without a cash cushion, any rent shock, change in market conditions, or other adverse incident will leave the company scrambling to borrow money (at punitive rates, thanks to its desperation) to weather the storm. If share prices are actually "encoding information" about a company's worth, a billion dollar buyback should lop more than a billion dollars off the company's share price. Instead, it sends the share price up.

This is just stock manipulation, which is why it was illegal until 1982. But apologists for this system will tell you that a stock buyback is just a dividend by another name – just another way for a company to return value to its shareholders, who, after all, are the owners of the company and entitled to extract those profits.

This is categorically untrue. Dividends do take money out of the company's coffers and distribute them to its shareholders, sure – but a dividend is a bet on the company's future success, which is why a company's share prices rise after a dividend is declared. Investors observe a company that is so well-run that it can afford to drain some of its cash reserves in favor of its shareholders, so they buy the company's stock in anticipation of more dividends derived from more skilled operations.

But imagine if a company parted with a dividend so large that it meant that the firm would struggle to keep its doors open in the coming year. Imagine a publisher, say, whose dividend was so large that it couldn't afford to pay advances for any more books in the next season, meaning it could only make money from the backlist titles it already had in the warehouse, but was entirely out of the running when it came to publishing next year's blockbuster book.

That dividend would not send investors chasing the company's stock. Why would you bet on a stock whose management had just doomed the company to a bad season, and maybe an unrecoverable death-spiral? Without new books to sell, the company won't have any cash to pay dividends, and when it stops paying dividends, its stock price will fall, leaving shareholders with a hole in their own balance-sheets.

Contrast that with buybacks: to do a buyback, the company need merely spend its free cash flow, or money it borrows, or money derived from the sale of key capital, or money saved through mass layoffs, to buy its own stock. Then the share price goes up.

In other words: when a company's stock price rises on news of a dividend, that's "encoding information" about the market's confidence in the company's management and its future growth. When a company's stock price rises on news of a buyback, that's "encoding information" about the market's confidence in the company's future looting to the point of collapse.

I used to think that this was the whole stock buyback story, but as is ever the case with finance, buybacks are fractally corrupt. This week, I've been reading Boston College law prof Ray D Madoff's book The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy, and I've learned even more scummy truths about buybacks:

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo256019296.html

For tax purposes, dividends are "ordinary income," meaning that they are taxed at up to 37%. Meanwhile, if you sell your shares after a stock buyback juices the price, the profits are treated as "capital gains," whose tax rate caps out at about half that (20%). This means that shareholders pay half the tax on money that comes from strip-mining a company than they would get from money derived from managing a company for sustainable growth.

It's worse than that, though, because capital gains can be offset by capital losses. If you invested in a stock that tanked, you can hold that stock in your portfolio until you are ready to sell a profitable stock, and deduct your losses from the gains you've made.

But you don't even have to sell the stock to realize tax-free income from it: the ultra-rich live according to a financial arrangement called "buy, borrow, die" that lets them avoid all taxes.

Here's how that works: if you're sitting on a bunch of stock, you can stake it as collateral for a loan that is tax-free. Better than that, if you're smart, some or all of the interest on that loan is tax-deductible. If you're rich enough, you don't have to make regular payments on the loan, either – you just wait as the stock continues to grow while your loan is maturing, and when it's due, you borrow even more money against the new valuation and pay off the old loan.

That's "buy" and "borrow." Here's "die." When you die, you transfer your assets to your kids, who benefit from something called the "step-up in basis," which lets them avoid all capital gains on the appreciated value of your assets.

Now, maybe you're thinking that you can benefit from this arrangement. I've got bad news for you: you won't qualify for one of those cool loans that you don't need to pay regularly! What's more, if you own any stock you almost certainly own it through a retirement plan like a 401(k), and when you cash out that 401(k), that is treated as "ordinary income" at nearly twice the rate that our plutocrat overlords pay.

Buybacks, then, are part of a system whereby rich people get much richer every time a company that makes something good and employs ordinary people guts itself and sets itself on the path to bankruptcy. Meanwhile, working people don't benefit from this system, even if they own stock. They just get to live in a world where businesses are looted and shuttered and public services are slashed thanks to balanced budget rules that mean that governments can't spend when rich people don't pay taxes.

This is why buybacks have apologists. Buybacks – a stock swindle that was illegal in living memory – make rich people richer, and they spend some of that loot to fund an army of reply-ghouls who push the message that buybacks are dividends by another name.

It's part of the ripoff economy that has seen crypto-billionaires lobby, bribe and terrorize lawmakers into merging their speculative assets with the real economy, endangering the economic well-being of everyday people:

https://www.levernews.com/what-tech-wants-crypto-reign-of-terror/

It's part of the ripoff economy that has seen AI bros put the global market in peril with crooked accounting and empty promises:

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-enshittifinancial-crisis/

The ripoff economy is baked into the American experience. It is the foundation of Trumpism. It is the financial basis for things like "Project 2025" – literally! The Heritage Foundation (who created Project 2025) was founded and funded by the founders of Amway, a destructive Ponzi scheme that was rescued from criminal prosecution when Gerald Ford (Congressman to Amway's founders) became president and ordered the FTC to let them off the hook:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/05/free-enterprise-system/#amway-or-the-highway

Trump's right: the system is rigged. If you're going to pull the people you love back from the nihilistic descent into fascism, you have to be able to understand and explain how the rigging works. We can't insist – as Hillary Clinton did – that "America is already great":

https://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-dem-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/03/clinton-america-is-already-great-220078

America is not great. It has been gutted by the Epstein class, who robbed us blind, raped our kids, and are now selling us shitcoins and chatbots and the spectacle of protesters being shot in the streets. But it's not enough to know that the system is rigged. Everybody knows the system is rigged. To build a movement and save our future, we have to know how it is rigged and who rigged it.

Hey look at this (permalink)


A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago Acme License-Plate Maker https://www.acme.com/licensemaker/licensemaker.cgi?state=California&text=NSHITKN&plate=1987&r=943099606

#15yrsago Apple implements iStore changes, prohibits Sony from selling competing ebook app https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/technology/01apple.html?_r=3

#15yrsago IPv4 is exhausted https://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/02/01/0036227/Last-Available-IPv4-Blocks-Allocated

#15yrsago Harper’s publisher rejects $50K worth of pledges, will lay off staff anyway https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdDoZvxCvsax1zkMKANucBCQU8v-08tcw6VIDrtnmnqLY9I0A/viewform?formkey=dGdtbXUtNUV3cmtpaXJienJ5bldwcUE6MQ

#15yrsago South Dakota senator introduces mandatory gun-ownership law https://www.newser.com/story/111031/south-dakota-bill-every-adult-must-own-a-gun.html

#10yrsago UK Snooper’s Charter is so broad, no one can figure out what it means https://web.archive.org/web/20160202092111/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/tech-firms-are-unclear-on-new-uk-surveillance-laws-warns-government-committee

#5yrsago The good news about vaccination bad news https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/01/dinos-and-rinos/#mixed-news

#5yrsago Unidirectional entryism https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/01/dinos-and-rinos/#entryism

#15yrsago Inside Sukey the anti-kettling mobile app https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/feb/02/inside-anti-kettling-hq

#10yrsago Swatting attempted against Congresswoman who introduced anti-swatting bill https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/02/01/cops-swarm-rep-katherine-clark-melrose-home-after-apparent-hoax/yqEpcpWmKtN6bOOAj8FZXJ/story.html

#10yrsago A would-be clinic-bomber & friends are terrorizing a charter school for being too close to a future Planned Parenthood office https://web.archive.org/web/20160318235447/https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/inside-the-bizarre-war-anti-abortion-zealots-are-waging-against-school-kids

#10yrsago Ross and Carrie become Scientologists: an investigative report 5 years in the making https://ohnopodcast.com/investigations/2016/2/1/ross-and-carrie-audit-scientology-part-1-going-preclear

#10yrsago Exclusive: Snowden intelligence docs reveal UK spooks’ malware checklist https://memex.craphound.com/2016/02/02/exclusive-snowden-intelligence-docs-reveal-uk-spooks-malware-checklist/

#5yrsago The free market and rent-seeking https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/02/euthanize-rentiers/#poor-doors

#5yrsago Criti-Hype https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/02/euthanize-rentiers/#dont-believe-the-hype

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

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A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.

Recent appearances (permalink)


A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..

Latest books (permalink)


A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.

Upcoming books (permalink)

  • "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026

  • "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

  • "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026

  • "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026


Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America (1007 words today, 19588 total)

  • "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

  • "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

  • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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They’re Losing the ICE Battle [The Status Kuo]

Photos courtesy of Euronews

If politics is downstream of culture, yesterday’s cultural leaders are sending a resounding message to the regime: ICE must go.

Several artists at the Grammy Awards, including Billie Eilish and Bad Bunny, used their acceptance speeches to blast ICE and appeal to the American public to end support for its activities.

Meanwhile, even in the “manosphere,” the drumbeat continued. Popular podcaster Andrew Schulz, who once hosted and supported Trump on his program, publicly withdrew his support for ICE and spoke out forcefully.

These cultural shifts aren’t lost on Trump, who vented his frustration in a public tirade on Truth Social. But they are also not lost on our lawmakers, judges and within ICE itself.

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From the Grammys to the manosphere, vocal opposition to ICE

Award shows have often been the best gauge of which way and how hard the political winds are blowing. Yesterday’s Grammys were no exception.

Song of the Year winner Billie Eilish said “Fuck ICE” in her acceptance speech, adding “No one is illegal on stolen land.”

Album of the Year winner Bad Bunny also used his time on stage to demand “ICE Out”—as the crowd cheered. “We’re not savages, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens. We are humans, and we are Americans.”

This Sunday, Bad Bunny will take center stage at the Super Bowl halftime show with a performance mostly in Spanish, and he’s reportedly going to wear a dress. Cue MAGA heads exploding…

But sure, these are left-leaning progressive artists, and they’re expected to make such statements. But this time, they aren’t alone. Cultural icons on the right have begun to speak out as well.

Joe Rogan, whom most here rarely agree with on anything, had this to say on ICE around 12 days ago:

“What ICE is doing, like fucking shooting that lady, seems kind of crazy. Grabbing people that happen to be American citizens and fucking dragging them out onto the snow and asking them for their papers. That seems kind of fucking crazy.”

Andrew Schulz of the bro-focused Flagrant podcast has also come around on the question of ICE, saying over the weekend,

“I didn’t know that this was possible to happen in the United States of America. What we’ve seen ICE doing entering homes without warrants, it’s unconstitutional. When you’re willing to shred the Constitution to preserve your ideas of what should happen, it is incredibly un-American. I just think it’s an important thing to speak out against, I think it’s horrific.”

While it’s admittedly frustrating, even maddening, that men like Rogan and Schultz are so very late to the obvious danger Trump posed (and should never have supported him to begin with), the fact that they have turned on his ICE policies is no small matter. This is especially true for the terminally online members of Trump’s cabinet, including JD Vance and Stephen Miller, who understand what this will mean for their own base of support.

Nor should these statements by artists and podcasters be dismissed as mere personal opinions. For much of the U.S. that isn’t tuned into politics, when musicians, actors, comedians and even idiotic talking heads weigh in against ICE, the cultural ground begins to shift rapidly, along with the politics built on top of it.

Donald Trump actually understands this. That’s why he lashed out at the Grammys on Truth Social, calling them “the WORST” and “virtually unwatchable.” He railed, “CBS is lucky to not have this garbage litter their airwaves any longer” and even threatened to sue host Trevor Noah for joking about Trump being on Epstein Island with Bill Clinton.

This isn’t the only cultural battle Trump knows he is losing. After artist after artist canceled appearances at The Kennedy Center, now taken over completely by Trump, he announced he was closing it for two years to undergo “renovations.” Better that than endure the constant condemnation and bad press from the nation’s most acclaimed and accomplished cultural figures.

The pushback on ICE and Trump has now reached the main stage of the Grammys, the manosphere podcasters and the country’s most prestigious cultural stage. The groundswell of condemnation and resistance from popular culture will add fuel to those battling ICE on the ground, in the courts, and in the halls of Congress. And that’s already paying dividends.

Liam Ramos and his father are home

Nationwide protests over Liam Ramos and his father, detained by ICE despite being in the U.S. legally, forced their release and return to Minneapolis. Across social media, those following the story of the little boy in the bright blue bunny hat erupted in cheers at the news, with many supporters crying tears of joy.

There are so many other children being held as Liam was, without due process and without legal basis. But as with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and heroes to the cause Renee Good and Alex Pretti, movements often require human stories and compelling images to break through the media noise, and that is precisely what happened here.

In his release order, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery, blasted the government for its behavior.

“The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children.”

On the blatant violations of the Fourth Amendment, Judge Biery schooled the DOJ. “Civics lesson to the government,“ he wrote. “Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster. That is called the fox guarding the henhouse. The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer.”

Judge Biery also took direct aim at those in charge of the entire program, including presumably Stephen Miller. “[F]or some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency,” he wrote.

Pushback from within DHS and DOJ

Despite leadership rot, many career civil servants within DHS and DOJ have taken issue with the handling of the Good and Pretti murders, including the refusal to release the names of the agents who first fired upon Alex Pretti before eight more bullets were put into him, resulting in a murder in cold blood on the streets of Minneapolis.

As a telling indication of this internal dissent, someone with access to the files and investigation leaked to ProPublica the agents’ names who fired those first shots in Alex Pretti from behind. Their names are Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez and they are Latino, which may help explain why many agents committing abuses hide their identities.

Two thoughts here.

First, anyone who has suffered under the boot of fascism knows that the worst people are often those who collaborate with oppressors against their own communities. The visceral hatred toward these betrayers is understandably more intense. After all, they sold their own souls to join the monsters devouring their own people.

Second, the leak from within the federal government should be a warning to all DHS agents that no amount of facial masking and badge hiding will prevent their identities from being known. They should begin worrying about who within their ranks will turn them over to face accountability. And they should never assume they can act with impunity because of total anonymity.

The receipts are there. When political power changes hands, we must demand all the information and pursue justice against all violators of the law and our Constitution.

Stealing the spines of Congress

The twin murders in the Twin Cities area, coupled with a nationwide outpouring of rage and protest, changed the calculus for many elected leaders on both sides of the aisle. The House had already approved funds for DHS as part of a “mini-bus” appropriation bill for the remaining half of the government yet to be funded, with seven center-right Democrats voting for the bill.

Outcry following the vote dogged these Congress members. Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) was so beset by angry constituents that he apologized for his vote.

Sensing a seismic shift in public opinion, the Senate blocked DHS funding and demanded negotiations over it, with new limits on ICE. The White House, unexpectedly, agreed to strip DHS funding out of the appropriations bill, and as things stand DHS remains unfunded and subject to demands for basic reforms and guardrails. We’ll have to see what Democrats can wring out of this, but it is far better already than what we were faced with in the House version.

To put an exclamation point on the week, in Texas, Latinos and independents revolted in a special election, flipping a state senate the GOP’s held since 1991. The needle moved 32 points bluer, which may force the GOP to completely recalibrate its strategy of gerrymandering to hold on to power in the House. No amount of map drawing can withstand a Bluenami of that size.

The Texas victory will cause Democrats to take notice as well and lean into anti-ICE sentiment across the country. Meanwhile, the Trump regime has yet to learn its lesson. It is reportedly planning to surge ICE enforcement in Ohio, where there are competitive races for governor and senate and where the GOP was hoping its gerrymander-light would pay House dividends.

A national consensus is growing, but the White House is stuck

There are few things Americans still agree on these days, but the artists and influencers who are speaking out have hit upon a few.

One is that you shouldn’t murder U.S. citizens who are peacefully observing officials, then lie about what happened in the face of compelling video evidence.

Another is that you shouldn’t break into people’s homes without a judicial warrant, nor should you demonize victims for having a licensed firearm on their person at the time you shoot them in the back.

A third is that you shouldn’t arrest and detain 5-year-olds who are here with their parents legally.

The fact that the regime was unwilling to concede any of these things is telling. Even now, Trump appears to be stuck in his thinking and unwilling to accept reality. As The New Republic reported,

Donald Trump appears in deep denial about how widely hated his ICE raids have become. He let out a strange, rambling tirade to reporters about how the “silent majority” is still behind what ICE is doing, bizarrely citing approval of the raids among his own White House employees to make the case. In another rant, he lied uncontrollably about the protesters, about crime in Minneapolis, and more. Interestingly, this comes as a poll from none other than Fox News finds Trump deeply underwater on immigration. It also finds that very large majorities of independents think ICE is being too aggressive. Incredibly, even majorities of rural whites and non-college whites—loyal base voter groups—think the same.

Even if the White House wanted to change course, that might not be so straightforward. As JD Vance recently conceded in a different context about the poor state of the economy, “You don’t just turn around the Titanic overnight.” (That vessel, many have ironically noted, also famously sunk because of ice.)

The cruelty, lawlessness and violence of ICE and CBP are now fully baked into the department’s DNA, thanks to their recruitment of the worst of the worst and the tens of billions thrown DHS’s way. That means the Trump regime will own—and the American people must continue to endure and resist—their horrors for months if not years to come.

05:00 AM

FBI Raids Fulton County, Georgia To Seize Ballots On Behalf Of A Guy Who Refuses To Believe He Lost The 2020 Election [Techdirt]

Trump’s going to win the election he lost, no matter what he has to do to make that happen. Surrounding himself with a better set of sycophants this time around has really allowed him to gain some ground in his “be the despot you wish to see in the world” efforts.

His top appointees are just as willing to lie, defame, deride, and overstep the long-accepted limitations of their positions as the president himself. Now that Trump has pardoned the people who raided the Capitol on his behalf in January 2021, he’s going after everyone and everything that pissed him off about that particular election cycle.

Trump’s Revenge Time Machine is taking him and his administration back to Georgia to engage in an unprecedented seizure of voting records, as ABC News reports:

Fulton County, Georgia, officials said Wednesday that the FBI seized original 2020 voting records while serving a search warrant at the county’s Elections Hub and Operations Center.

[…]

The search warrant authorized the FBI to search for “All physical ballots from the 2020 General Election,” in addition to tabulator tapes from voting machines and 2020 voter rolls, among other documents, according to a copy of the warrant obtained by ABC affiliate WSB. 

The warrant says the material “constitutes evidence of the commission of a criminal offense” and had been “used as the means of committing a criminal offense.”  It was signed by Magistrate Judge Catherine Salinas.

It’s not surprising that Trump would attempt to extract some sort of penance from Georgia after he failed to convert that state into electoral college votes. The governor of the state, Brian Kemp, did all he could to swing the state back into Trump’s favor post-election, including being sued by the DNC for claiming (with zero facts in evidence) that the Democratic party had “hacked” his state’s voting machines.

Trump kept this issue alive by bringing Heather Honey — a fellow 2020 election denier from Georgia — into the in-group, appointing her to a high-level position in the DHS where she would [vomits] help oversee future election security efforts.

What is surprising is that any judge would sign this warrant. The allegations range from “threadbare” to “hallucinatory.”

Specifically, the warrant listed possible violations of two statutes — one which requires election records to be retained for a certain amount of time, and another which outlines criminal penalties for people, including election officials, who intimidate voters or to knowingly procure false votes or false voter registrations.

Records were seized, which means it’s unlikely records were deleted prematurely. And there’s been nothing shown to this point that any sort of voter intimidation occurred… at least not on the behalf of the Democratic Party.

This appears to be voter intimidation of a different sort. Last month, the DOJ sued Fulton County (where the raid took place) for access to 2020 election records. This followed attempts to hold Trump accountable for trying to overturn the 2020 election — acts that included Trump asking the Secretary of State to “find” the votes needed to swing the state, as well as its targeting of Fulton County DA Fani Willis, who brought election interference charges against the then-outgoing Trump.

And, for some fucking reason, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard attended the raid to seize these voting records.

Accompanying FBI agents on a raid is unprecedented for the chief of U.S. intelligence, whose job is to track threats from foreign adversaries. In her role overseeing the country’s spy agencies, Gabbard is prohibited by law from taking part in domestic law enforcement. Her predecessors took pains to keep their distance from Justice Department cases or partisan politics.

Asked about the rationale for her visit to Georgia, a senior administration official said: “Director Gabbard has a pivotal role in election security and protecting the integrity of our elections against interference, including operations targeting voting systems, databases, and election infrastructure.”

Whatever, “senior administration official.” This is Gabbard hoping to show up on Trump’s radar again, after being sidelined during actual foreign-facing activity, like the kidnapping of Venezuela’s president. Perhaps she’s tired of seeing Kristi Noem flouncing from photo op to photo op as Barbie-in-Chief of the DHS’s invasion of the United States.

I mean…

Two senior officials with knowledge of the matter said Gabbard’s presence in Fulton County was unnecessary and was not requested by the Justice Department. 

Yes, it’s another performance from the most performative administration in US history. And it will always play well because people who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like. The GOP is a flat circle, or perhaps more accurately, a human centipede.

Breaking up this endless cycle of shit ingestion and shit creation are the side effects of this sort of mutual masturbation: the constant shedding of talent from agencies that already don’t have enough of it, thanks to the administration’s constant purging of anyone who’s not MAGA enough.

The special agent in charge of the FBI’s Atlanta field office was forced out this month after questioning the Justice Department’s renewed push to probe Fulton County’s role in the 2020 election, two people familiar with the matter told MS NOW.

Paul Brown was ousted after expressing concerns about the FBI’s investigation into President Donald Trump’s longstanding and unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud in the county anchored by Atlanta, and for refusing to carry out the searches and seizures of records tied to the 2020 election, according to the sources, who spoke to MS NOW on condition of anonymity.

Remember all the shit we talked about the USSR and its efforts to rid itself of anyone but party loyalists? Well, we’re doing it right here and now, nearly 40 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The GOP says there’s nothing wrong with this as long as it’s the GOP doing it. The MAGA faithful have no problem with this as long as it’s the MAGA front doing it. And the rest of us are expected to live with it, because the opposition party still seems to believe there’s a polite, non-confrontational set of options to be deployed. Let’s hope they’ll realize that’s no longer the case long before they have to issue a strongly-worded social media post about objecting to being first against the wall.

Daily Deal: Rosetta Stone (All Languages) [Techdirt]

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03:00 AM

Hey Gavin Newsom! Investigating TikTok’s Moderation Is Just As Unconstitutional As When Texas & Florida Tried It [Techdirt]

We called bullshit when Republicans tried to order websites to carry content. We’re calling bullshit now when Democrats are trying to do the same.

We spent years explaining to politicians across both parties why the government can’t dictate how private platforms moderate content. During the Biden admin, GOP governors seemed most aggressive about trying to tell platforms they couldn’t moderate. We wrote many thousands of words words about why Texas’s HB20 and Florida’s SB7072 were flagrantly unconstitutional. We cheered when courts, up to and including the Supreme Court, agreed.

And now California Governor Gavin Newsom has decided to… do the exact same thing, just from the other direction.

Cool. Cool cool cool.

Here’s Newsom, announcing that he’s launching a review of TikTok’s content moderation practices:

That’s Newsom’s “press office” announcing:

NEW: Following TikTok’s sale to a Trump-aligned business group, our office has received reports — and independently confirmed instances — of suppressed content critical of President Trump.

Gavin Newsom is launching a review of this conduct and is calling on the California Department of Justice to determine whether it violates California law.

We could save a lot of taxpayer dollars by just giving him the answer: no, it does not violate California law. It cannot. Because of the First Amendment.

It’s even worse if you dig down one level and see what Newsom is responding to:

That’s a rando X account with just a few thousand followers tweeting that “you can’t even mention epstein lmao” showing a TikTok warning that her trying to post the word “epstein” “may be in violation of our community guidelines.”

Newsom is quote tweeting this saying:

It’s time to investigate. I am launching a review into whether TikTok is violating state law by censoring Trump-critical content.

There’s so much wrong here.

Let’s start with the obvious: these “reports” are sketchy as hell. Beyond it coming from some rando account, TikTok has already explained that there was a data center power outage that caused “a cascading systems failure” affecting content posting and moderation. This happens! Content moderation systems fail all the time. Also, moderation systems make mistakes. All the time! As we’ve discussed approximately ten thousand times, even with 99.9% accuracy, you’re going to have hundreds of thousands of “mistakes” every single day on a platform the size of TikTok. That’s just math.

For the Governor of California to jump from “some rando users reported upload problems during a technical outage” to “we must investigate whether this violates California law” is… not how any of this should work.

But, who even cares about that? There’s a bigger issue here: even if every single one of these reports were accurate—even if TikTok were deliberately, systematically moderating content to favor Trump—that would be totally legal under the First Amendment.

Content moderation decisions are editorial decisions. They are protected speech. A private platform can legally decide to promote, demote, or remove whatever content it wants based on whatever criteria it wants, including political viewpoint. It can decide what it doesn’t want to host. It can do so for ideological reasons if it wants.

This is the same thing we’ve been saying for years when Republicans howled about “anti-conservative bias” on social media. And, arguably, Newsom merely investigating TikTok for its editorial choices creates chilling effects that themselves raise First Amendment concerns.

When Texas passed HB20, which tried to prohibit large social media platforms from moderating based on “viewpoint,” we pointed out that this was flagrantly unconstitutional because it would compel platforms to host speech against their will. The Supreme Court agreed, with Justice Kagan noting during oral arguments that Texas’s law would mean “the government can force you to have certain speech on your platform.”

When Florida passed SB7072 with similar provisions, we said the same thing. The Eleventh Circuit agreed, calling it “an unprecedented attempt to compel private platforms to host speech,” which violates “the First Amendment’s long-held protection for the editorial discretion of private businesses.”

So now Newsom wants to do the exact same thing, just from the other direction? He wants California to investigate whether a platform’s content moderation choices—choices protected by the First Amendment—somehow “violate California law”?

What California law would that even be? The state has attempted a variety of social media laws, which keep getting thrown out as unconstitutional (just like we warned Newsom).

Is he just making up new theories now about how a state can control the editorial decisions of private platforms based on which political direction those decisions allegedly lean?

How is this different from when Josh Hawley or Ted Cruz threatened to strip Section 230 protections from platforms they accused of “anti-conservative bias”? How is this different from when Ron DeSantis tried to punish Disney for political speech he disagreed with?

The answer is: it’s not different. It’s the same unconstitutional impulse to use government power to control private editorial decisions, just wearing the other team’s jersey. We’ve detailed time and time again that both Republicans and Democrats are super quick to reach for the censorship button whenever they see online speech they don’t like, but it’s particularly egregious here because the courts have already ruled on this exact issue.

The Supreme Court already made it quite clear that Newsom can’t do what he’s doing just a couple years ago in the Moody ruling, directed at the governors of Texas and Florida:

But a State may not interfere with private actors’ speech to advance its own vision of ideological balance. States (and their citizens) are of course right to want an expressive realm in which the public has access to a wide range of views. That is, indeed, a fundamental aim of the First Amendment. But the way the First Amendment achieves that goal is by preventing the government from “tilt[ing] public debate in a preferred direction.” Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc., 564 U. S. 552, 578–579 (2011). It is not by licensing the government to stop private actors from speaking as they wish and preferring some views over others. And that is so even when those actors possess “enviable vehicle[s]” for expression. Hurley, 515 U. S., at 577. In a better world, there would be fewer inequities in speech opportunities; and the government can take many steps to bring that world closer. But it cannot prohibit speech to improve or better balance the speech market.

TikTok could, tomorrow, announce that they’re going to remove every single piece of content critical of Trump and promote only pro-Trump material. That would be stupid. It would probably be bad for their business. Users would likely flee to competitors. But it would be legal, because private platforms have the First Amendment right to make their own editorial choices, even bad ones.

Newsom knows this. Or he should. We’ve been explaining it to politicians of both parties for years: the First Amendment protects against government control of speech, including a platform’s editorial decisions about what to host. It doesn’t guarantee anyone a right to have their preferred content amplified on someone else’s platform.

We called bullshit when Republicans tried this. We’re calling bullshit now when Democrats like Newsom are doing the same thing.

The state has no role in dictating editorial practices of any media entity. Period.

02:00 AM

Trump Is Helping Elon Musk’s Starlink Get Billions In Taxpayer Dollars With No Oversight [Techdirt]

We’ve long noted how the 2021 infrastructure bill included $42.5 billion for broadband grants dubbed the Broadband, Equity, Access And Deployment (BEAD) program. The program wasn’t without its warts, but it had the potential to be truly transformative for U.S. broadband access.

But Republicans illegally rewrote the program to redirect money away from stuff like affordable, gigabit, community fiber, and into the pockets of billionaire Elon Musk. In exchange for congested, expensive, Low-Earth-Orbit (LEO) satellite broadband access the company planned to deploy anyway.

This alone was a pretty big grift. But Trump has also threatened to illegally withhold planed state broadband grants if they dare try to make sure the resulting taxpayer broadband is affordable, or attempt to hold companies accountable for failing to delivered promised service.

When states like Virginia have balked at the idea of prioritizing Elon Musk’s satellite service over more reliable fiber, Starlink has cried and pouted like a petulant child. More recently, Starlink has been attempting to attach a rider to its grant agreements with states, saying they can’t be held responsible if the broadband Starlink provides is slow, expensive, or not installed properly:

“The concessions sought by SpaceX “would limit Starlink’s performance obligations, payment schedules, non-compliance penalties, reporting expectations, and labor and insurance standards,” wrote Drew Garner, director of policy engagement at the Benton Institute. Garner argued that SpaceX’s demands illustrate problems in how the Trump NTIA rewrote program rules to increase reliance on low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite providers.”

So basically Musk — who likes to pretend he hates subsidies despite his entire existence being propped up by them — wants untold billions in new subsidies and no serious way for his company to be held accountable should it fail to deliver the promised, substandard product.

Under a functional broadband grant program, states would push fiber as deeply into rural communities as possible, ideally in the form of “open access” fiber networks that generate local competition and challenge regional monopolies by dramatically lowering the cost of market entry. From there, you’d address the rest of the gaps using fixed wireless and 5G.

Only then would you fill in the remaining holes with Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite broadband options like Starlink, which are ideally suited only for the most remote areas (and even then, Starlink is generally too expensive for most of the lower-income rural Americans who really need it).

Under an ideal program, you’d also confirm that the companies you’re giving taxpayer money to can actually deliver what they’re promising. The Trump FCC didn’t do that with an earlier program (the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, RDOF), resulting in a whole bunch of companies (including Musk’s Starlink) gaming the system to try and get money for projects they didn’t deserve or couldn’t finish.

Republicans have, in an open act of corruption, thrown this entire logic on its head to curry favor with their favorite white supremacist extremist billionaire. They’re prioritizing Elon Musk’s substandard satellite network (which will only become more congested as more people use it), then ensuring nobody can meaningful hold Musk accountable when he inevitably fails to deliver reliable, affordable access.

Who is going to hold Musk accountable if he fails to deliver? Trump’s bootlicker at the FCC, Brendan Carr? The FTC, where Trump illegally fired all the Dem Commissioners? The NTIA, which is now run by a former Ted Cruz staffer who thinks affordable fiber optic broadband is “woke?” States, who risk losing out on a generational influx of subsidies if they challenge Elon Musk’s greed or stand up to telecoms?

Musk’s DOGE was always about destroying the regulatory state so he and other billionaires could sell the country for scrap off the back loading dock under the pretense of innovative efficiencies while being slathered with tax cuts and subsides. It’s grotesque, historic levels of corruption in a fucking hat.

You might recall, folks like Ezra Klein made a big, extended stink about the fact this original BEAD program was taking a long time to deliver (for some obvious reasons). But since Elon Musk hijacked the program creating a lot of headaches, wasted money, and entirely new delays, I curiously haven’t heard the “abundance” folks make a single, solitary peep.

The business and telecom press (and many folks in policy circles) have also already seemingly normalized hijacking a massive subsidy program to the benefit of a white supremacist billionaire. But as somebody that’s been studying the challenges of broadband access for a quarter century, I guarantee that we’re going to be documenting the damage (and lost potential) of this corruption for decades to come.

Monday 2026-02-02

06:00 PM

Danish Students Face Legal Action and Fines Over Textbook Piracy [TorrentFreak]

textbookOnline piracy is often associated with entertainment, such as movies, games, and music. However, there are millions pirating content for educational purposes too.

This isn’t a new phenomenon at all. Roughly two decades ago, there were already dedicated torrent sites that specialized in textbook releases. Since then, book piracy has become much more widespread.

In Denmark, local anti-piracy group Rights Alliance has had this issue on its radar for a while. In the past, the group has been tracking down individuals said to have profited from the sale of pirated textbooks. This resulted in several convictions against suppliers and sellers.

Despite these high-profile convictions, student sharing habits have remained remarkably stagnant. According to the most recent 2025 survey from Epinion, textbook sharing is widespread. Of all students who use digital textbooks, more than half (57%) have acquired at least one textbook illegally.

Survey results (TF translated)

Most students are well aware of the fact that sharing textbooks, either online or offline, is illegal. Regardless, the survey found that 74% of the students nonetheless believe that it is acceptable to do so.

Anti-Piracy Group Will Sue Pirating Students

The Rights Alliance has clearly had enough of the continued popularity of textbook piracy. To send a clear message on behalf of publishers, the group will start filing lawsuits against pirating students this month.

“For many years we have tried to reach students through dialogue and information, but the effect cannot be seen in the measurements we have conducted over a seven-year period,” Rights Alliance director Maria Fredenslund says.

“When more than half are still sharing textbooks illegally, we need to send a clearer signal. There must be consequences if the law is broken – just like in all other areas of society.”

The Rights Alliance plans to file civil lawsuits based on the local Copyright Act and will focus on cases where it is clear that the textbook sharing is illegal. The anti-piracy group notes that, if found guilty, students can be ordered to pay a fine to the state.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Rights Alliance said that these fines are estimated to be several thousand Danish kroner (1000DKK = 160USD), in part dependent on how much textbooks are shared.

‘Zero Tolerance’

People who share dozens of books are understandably risking a higher fine than those who share a single copy. However, Rights Alliance stresses that there’s a zero-policy stance, as even a single instance of unlawful sharing is enough to trigger a lawsuit.

Crucially, this is not a traditional “settlement” scheme. The Rights Alliance confirmed to TorrentFreak that they are not seeking damages or private settlements. There is no profit motive; the goal is simply to force a cultural change through the court system.

Rights Alliance preferred not to tell us how many students it expects to target. Similarly, the anti-piracy group did not want to mention which platforms or services are monitored to gather evidence. Instead, it simply said that it maintains an active presence on multiple platforms and in various groups.

The publishers believe that if textbook piracy continues at the current pace, there might not be a market for Danish textbooks in the future. This is not just a problem for publishers but also for educational institutions, which are asked to help teach their students about these concerns.

“We do not want to punish individuals, but to create a cultural change where students understand that illegal sharing has consequences,” Fredenslund says, adding that institutions are also encouraged to sanction copyright infringement under their roof.

In closing, it’s worth stressing that the textbook ‘piracy’ problem isn’t just limited to students. The Danish Epinion survey found that for students who received an illegal book via their official study intranet, 37% received the file directly from their teachers, lecturers, or professors.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

12:00 PM

Kanji of the Day: 勢 [Kanji of the Day]

勢

✍13

小5

forces, energy, military strength

セイ　ゼイ

いきお.い　はずみ

姿勢   (しせい)   —   posture
勢い   (いきおい)   —   force
大勢   (おおぜい)   —   crowd of people
情勢   (じょうせい)   —   state of things
勢力   (せいりょく)   —   influence
態勢   (たいせい)   —   attitude
武装勢力   (ぶそうせいりょく)   —   armed group
攻勢   (こうせい)   —   offensive (movement)
県勢   (けんせい)   —   prefectural strengths (conditions, resources)
優勢   (ゆうせい)   —   superiority

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

Kanji of the Day: 窯 [Kanji of the Day]

窯

✍15

中学

kiln, oven, furnace

ヨウ

かま

窯元   (かまもと)   —   pottery (i.e., the place)
窯業   (ようぎょう)   —   ceramics
窯出し   (かまだし)   —   removing pots from kiln
焼き窯   (やきがま)   —   oven
窯場   (かまば)   —   kiln-equipped pottery workshop
穴窯   (あながま)   —   very old type of kiln made by digging a hole in the side of a hill
炭窯   (すみがま)   —   charcoal kiln
土窯   (どがま)   —   earthen kiln
窯印   (かまじるし)   —   potter's mark
官窯   (かんよう)   —   governmental porcelain furnace

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

07:00 AM

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt [Techdirt]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Raphael with a comment about Trump demanding billions from the IRS:

This reminds me, Trump loves to rant and rave about how poorly and dysfunctionally the countries of origin of many migrant to the USA are run, and how bad things look like there.

You know why those countries are so poorly run, Donald? You know why things are so bad there?

Because countries like that are usually run by people who love to pay out large amounts of public money to themselves. Because they’re usually run by people who love to name everything after themselves. Because they’re usually run by people who love to decorate everything in sight with lots of glittering gold. Because they’re usually run by people who love to have their subordinates praise them to high Heaven all the time. Because they’re usually run by people who let their armed goons do whatever they want. #

In short, because they’re run by people like you.

In second place, it’s dfbomb with a comment about calling what’s happening by its proper name:

Minneapolis checking in.

They’re still disappearing my neighbors.

They’re still jumped up shits afraid of a city that cares for each other.

They’re still doing ethnic cleansing.

They’re still nazis.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from Heart of Dawn about Tom Homan’s “look what you made us do” comments:

That’s exactly how abusers talk. “Don’t fight back. Its your own fault if I hurt you.”

Next, it’s MrWilson with a comment about right wing “comedy”:

Right wingers don’t tell jokes. Their humor is just disgust and dehumanization of out groups and implied threats, with a lol as punctuation.

Speaking of comedy, over on the funny side our first place winner is David with a theory about the Trump Phone’s failure to materialize:

Probably camera problems

Test video recordings still don’t match Kristi Noem’s scene descriptions, and the phone keeps recording when it should have an unfortunate failure.

In second place, it’s dfbomb again with another comment from Minneapolis:

Minneapolis would cordially like to invite Tom Homan outside for a game of “Hide and go fuck yourself.”

Things were a little slow on the funny side this week, so we’ll just do one editor’s choice — an anonymous comment about a brief line in one of our posts where we described a document in case “you can’t read it”:

THAT’S LIBERAL BIAS!

That’s all for this week, folks!

06:00 AM

More trouble than it’s worth [Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect]

This is the hallmark of projects that turn out to be worth doing.

The trouble might be a symptom that we’re onto something that others don’t care enough to do.

And the things that are obviously worth doing are probably already being done.

      

A Letter On Justice And Open Debate About Raping Children [The Popehat Report]

Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. Powerful protests against raping children are leading to overdue demands that people not rape children, along with wider calls for greater avoidance of raping children across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts. But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments against raping children that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity. As we applaud the first development, we also raise our voices against the second. The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy and to the generous funding of elite doctors, professors, writers, and intellectuals like us. But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of anti-child-raping dogma or coercion—which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting. The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides regarding promoting and socializing with people who rape children.

The free exchange of information and ideas with rich and powerful people irrespective of whether they have raped children, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty that raping children is bad and that people who rape children are bad, even if they can give us rides on helicopters and make us feel important. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech against raping children from all appropriate and qualified quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought, such as socializing with and promoting child-rapists and treating them as cherished friends. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Crucially, these punishments are not just levied against regular employees whose role is to listen to us. They’re being imposed on us: editors, writers, journalists, professors, the heads of organizations, the people widely and justifiably recognized as the leaders of society. These leaders are are being ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes, like engaging in prolonged and mutually admiring correspondence with child rapists. We have reached the point where praising and celebrating a child rapist is seen as worthy of public condemnation even if we waited until the child rapist was not in the course of raping a child to praise them.

Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said to child rapists about how great their parties are without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, doctors, professors, journalists, and other leaders of America who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement, that being special friends with child rapists is “bad.”

This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time, which child-rapists tell us they are willing to fund and promote, often at really great parties. The restriction of debate and social interaction, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society that discriminates against anyone who socializes with child-rapists, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat child rape is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish child rapists away or turning down their dinner invitations or not flying to their islands to socialize amongst the children who are, we are certain, merely coincidentally present. We refuse any false choice between opposing child rape and embracing child rapists. We reject the censorial and repressive demand that we reflect on whether our normalization and promotion of child rapists enables them to rape more children. As doctors, professors, thinkers, writers, and other deserved elite of society we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes in terms of exactly how much engagement to exercise with child rapists, especially when the child-rapists are funny and kind of awesome. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement about whether to accept money and plane rides from child rapists without dire professional consequences. If we won’t defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn’t expect the public or the state to defend it for us. Please join the few proud and brave institutions that realize that we should continue to thrive in our careers even if, for completely defensible reasons that prominent people like us are best suited to understand, we think child rapists are cool.


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Good News From Texas… and Baby Pics! [The Status Kuo]

I’m with family up in the Hudson Valley, so I’ll make this short and fun.

There was a special Texas state senate election (SD-9) last night to fill a vacancy in Tarrant County. That’s the third largest county in the state, the home of Fort Worth and a longtime stronghold of GOP power. A Democrat has not represented SD-9 since 1991, and in the last election, Trump won the district by 17 points.

That run ended last night.

Democrat Taylor Rehmet, whose Republican opponent outspent him 7 to 1 and who had the strong and public endorsement of Trump, trounced her by 15 points, meaning a 32 point swing in the heart of Texas toward the Dems.

A collapse in Latino support for the GOP helped fuel this flip, but you don’t get this kind of result without major tectonic shifts across multiple demographic groups.

There is a Blue Tsunami coming in November, triggered by those shifts. I call it the “BlueTsu” and the GOP is terrified.

The Democrats also finally filled a long-vacant congressional seat after Gov. Greg Abbott let it sit empty for as long as he could without holding a special election. Democrat tChristian Menefee prevailed in a seat Democrats were certain to win, but importantly his presence on Capitol Hill will change the make-up of the House to 218R / 214D. This means that Speaker Johnson can only afford a single defection on any vote, because two would create a tie at 216 to 216 and every bill needs a majority to pass. With Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) often voting with the Democrats on key measures, the GOP House majority is about as thin as it can get.

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I want to take this moment to thank folks who signed up recently to help support this newsletter. Holding down multiple roles as writer, Broadway producer and chair-elect of HRC—on top of my main job as Ba to my babies Riley and Ronan—can feel daunting at times. But it’s your support that makes it at all doable!

Speaking of babies, here are some pictures and videos from recent weeks!

My sister Mimi (known as gugu or aunt on the father’s side) is visiting this week and helping out. It takes a village!

Riley is learning new words and songs each day with the help of my babysitter Luzminda.

Getting this next shot was not easy!

Ronan at ten months of age goes through six bibs a day while drooling from teething, but he’s a very happy little guy.

Riley at just a year and five months already loves to participate in internal martial arts practice with her gugu!

The kids’ dynamic is already apparent. Riley is da jiejie (big sis) and it’s gonna be that way forever!

My kids are proof positive that it’s possible to be happy in America, even while I am very unhappy with America. And with each victory, protest and collective step forward, my hope for a brighter future for them grows.

Have a great Sunday! I’ll see you back here tomorrow.

Jay

Sunday 2026-02-01

12:00 PM

Kanji of the Day: 急 [Kanji of the Day]

急

✍9

小3

hurry, emergency, sudden, steep

キュウ

いそ.ぐ　いそ.ぎ　せ.く

緊急   (きんきゅう)   —   urgency
急に   (きゅうに)   —   swiftly
急増   (きゅうぞう)   —   rapid increase
急速   (きゅうそく)   —   rapid (e.g., progress)
急激   (きゅうげき)   —   sudden
救急   (きゅうきゅう)   —   first-aid
急死   (きゅうし)   —   sudden death
急ぐ   (いそぐ)   —   to hurry
早急   (さっきゅう)   —   immediate
急いで   (いそいで)   —   hurriedly

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

Kanji of the Day: 賄 [Kanji of the Day]

賄

✍13

中学

bribe, board, supply, finance

ワイ

まかな.う

収賄   (しゅうわい)   —   accepting bribes
贈賄   (ぞうわい)   —   bribery
賄う   (まかなう)   —   to supply (goods, money, etc.)
収賄罪   (しゅうわいざい)   —   bribery
贈収賄   (ぞうしゅうわい)   —   bribery
贈賄罪   (ぞうわいざい)   —   crime of bribery
賄い   (まかない)   —   boarding
賄賂   (わいろ)   —   bribe
賄い付き   (まかないつき)   —   with meals
受託収賄罪   (じゅたくしゅうわいざい)   —   bribery

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

08:00 AM

This Week In Techdirt History: January 25th – 31st [Techdirt]

Five Years Ago

This week in 2021, we looked at the future of net neutrality under the new interim FCC boss, and at how broadband monopolies continued to get money for networks they never fully deployed. Twitter got immunity from a banned user’s lawsuit thanks to Section 230, while dozens of human rights groups were telling congress not to gut Section 230 on their behalf, and we wrote about how revoking 230 would not “save democracy”. This came as House Republicans announced their big, unconstitutional, ridiculous plan to take on Big Tech, and we wrote about how they could actually tackle the sector by just trying to stop being insane.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2016, the New York Times filed a ridiculous copyright lawsuit over a book mocking the paper for glamorizing war, a writer tried to claim libel and copyright infringement over a screencap of her tweet appearing in an article, and a judge tossed out the silly idea that the monkey of monkey selfie fame could hold the copyright to the photo. Meanwhile, copyright troll Malibu Media trotted out an “expert” witness who appeared to be completely clueless, Pissed Consumer got the go ahead to take on Roca Labs over its bogus DMCA takedowns, and we dedicated an episode of the podcast to looking at just how bad the TPP was.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2011, the big copyright troll in the news was ACS:Law, as an accounting firm that was helping it collect fines tried to call off the whole thing followed by ACS:Law apparently giving up entirely, but soon there was a new trolling operation on the block involving Paris Hilton’s sex tape, and another with a porn company trying out a twist on the technique, while a copyright troll in Germany was using debt collectors to pressure people to pay up. Meanwhile, IP experts were saying ACTA was inconsistent with EU law, the US government was pushing pro- and anti-privacy internet rules at the same time, and Apple began using its special security screws to prevent people from opening their iPhones.

04:00 AM

The infinite tail [Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect]

The Long Tail was a profound cultural insight. When we created YouTube, Amazon, Roon, recipe websites and Netflix, the culture changed. When you give people a choice, they make a choice.

We went from the Top 40 to millions of songs. From Blockbuster to every movie ever made. From the local bookstore to all the books, all the time. Pick what you want instead of what other people picked.

There are still hits, but the majority of what we consume are titles that weren’t even available to us a few years ago.

It’s hard to believe this was a breakthrough idea only 21 years ago.

Now, with LLMs, it’s all going to change again.

That’s because it doesn’t matter how many cookbooks you own… Claude can invent a new recipe for you, one that’s never been seen before. You can do this today, the tech works.

Soon, it won’t matter if you have 400 Grateful Dead albums; AI systems will be able to generate live recordings from 1974 that never happened.

And eventually, Netflix will generate TV shows that no one has ever seen, for an audience of one.

The generative long tail will go on and on and on.

Most of the time, it’ll degenerate into slop and banality. The humanity of the movies, books and recordings it creates will fade, and we’ll be left with mindless airport music.

But that will evolve over time, and the arc will go in the other direction. Things that work, done more often. Combinations and evolving insights that move even faster than we can keep up with.

Slop and magic, in an eternal braid, a lot like the stuff humans have been producing for decades.

A golden road to who knows where.

      

Just for Skeets and Giggles (1.31.26) [The Status Kuo]

Good morning! If you enjoy these weekly funnies and my political and legal analysis during the week, consider tipping your writer! New voluntary paid subscriptions aren’t keeping up with normal attrition, and I found myself staring at the ceiling at 2 a.m. last night wondering whether I can truly juggle all of this. (Or maybe it was just my daily overdose of the headlines.) If you’re able to buy me a cup of coffee a month as a thanks for my work, I’d be so grateful! — Jay

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Another shout out to the people of Minneapolis for leading the way through these scary times and giving us hope.

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We’re all just trying to live our lives, and they keep sending out the goons. This clip made the rounds again as a harbinger of what’s heading our way.

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Note: Xcancel links mirror Twitter without sending traffic. Some GIFs may load, just swipe them down. Issues? Click the gear on the Xcancel page’s upper right, select “proxy video streaming through the server,” then click “save preferences” at the bottom. For your sanity, don’t read troll and bot comments boosted by Musk’s algo. Still won’t load? Copy link into a browser and remove “cancel” after the X in the URL to view the original tweet.

This, too, was a warning:

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Trump is a liar, but he’s also a hot mess.

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On the subject of messes, here’s Jimmy Kimmel on Trump and his regime’s current set of problems.

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I’m no fan of Sen. Thom Tillis. But then again, he’s no fan of the regime. Especially Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller.

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The White House, along with most of the right, had a head-spinning response to the murder of Alex Pretti, blaming the victim for (checks notes) legally carrying a firearm he never even unholstered. Here’s Jon Stewart on what we all thought of that.

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They say that politics is downstream of culture, so when you’ve lost the cat bongo community…

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I watched this way too many times.

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Cartoonist Rick McKee with the dunk.

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Speaking of those Epstein files, the DOJ released another 3mil or so, with plenty still withheld. To access some of the files, you need to affirm that you’re an adult.

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And just when you thought the regime might dial back the fascism, it arrests two independent journalists. But don’t worry, Fox News!

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Most of the country: WTF ICE?!

JD Vance:

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Riley Gaines weighed in and was told to take a seat:

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This thing on the right started happening, where they filmed community response in Minnesota and said it must be a conspiracy.

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Or, more succinctly,

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Keep it going!

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Borowitz on the GOP’s spinelessness:

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And again with the fire:

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Best pun of the week goes to Stephen Colbert:

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New T-shirt print just dropped:

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The White House is trying to signal that it is de-escalating, even while it continues to conduct immoral and illegal detentions, switching out Bovino foot-and-mouth for the Homan Immunity Virus.

Or as Borowitz put it,

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Later, Fascilicia.

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It’s just One Battle After Another with these guys. Until it isn’t?

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Trump put the guy caught with a $50K bribe in charge of (checks notes) fraud deterrence in Minneapolis?

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This took me a minute, and then I felt bad for laughing.

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To be clear, it’s not his height but his imagined stature that has always bothered me.

With Bovino out and Miller admitting the CBP may not have been following “protocol,” many had the same thought.

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She’s definitely not smarter than a head of lettuce.

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Speaking of not so smart, Congressman Brad Finstad posted this.

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I guess Brad is just following orders.

Melania Trump released her much awaited (not) documentary. She probably wants Kimmel off the air now, too, for his take on it.

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The rest of the world is laughing so hard at us.

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My favorite review:

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Too soon?

My second plea! Before we move on to the doggos and the kitties, take a moment to become a paid supporter and feel good about sustaining independent reporting!

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Hooray for animals, who are oblivious to our troubles. Sound up for this booty-shaking wonder!

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The owner of this dog swears this reel is real, but it’s the audio that makes it superb!

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The snow is piled high at my building in NYC, but not quite this high!

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The algo has figured out I love animal voiceovers by RxCKSTxR. And I do.

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Let me guess, they named him Damian.

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Nothing to see, just the blind leading the blinds.

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My own cat Shade would last three seconds before bouncing.

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A cat-toon of life with a cat.

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Maybe the trick to cat-turing the moment is to just leave the video running.

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His ambition is as big as his appetite.

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Pop culture has its G.O.A.T.s

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Speaking of which, are they kidding with this cuteness?

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One more time but with voiceover!

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What’s the META-for, after all?

I did not know seals made this sound. I won’t be able to think of them again without laughing.

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All guys ever talk about are boobies.

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A wolverine rescue? And not the handsome kind with knives for knuckles?

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While we’re on the subject of unexpected animal encounters,

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Okay, just one more animal voiceover. I watched it too many times lol.

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On to human foibles. SNL’s humor is appropriate for these times. This is for fans of the new film…

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Sausage pic?

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The big non-political news affecting hundreds of millions this week was the snow and ice storm across half the country.

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Here’s another common experience.

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I fell for this one. Amazing.

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Watch for the icing with that cake!

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A friend sent me this, and I thought, “Oh God, some gay man made this without realizing, didn’t he!”

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I’m just gonna leave the top comments here for you. Reader discretion advised! 🤣

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This one goes out to my Asian peeps, but it’s universal if you sub in other races, too.

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This chicken has the perfect dad joke for the rest of my day.

Have a great weekend!

Jay

02:00 AM

Saturday 2026-01-31

07:00 PM

Bari Weiss Pauses Her Pathetic Podcast To Focus Full Time On Ruining CBS [Techdirt]

If you’ve been napping, Trump-allied billionaire Larry Ellison and his nepobaby son David hired an unqualified troll named Bari Weiss to “run” CBS News. And by “run” CBS news, I mean destroy what little journalism was left at the media giant and create an alternate-reality safe space for radical right wing billionaire extremists. While pretending to be “restoring trust in journalism.”

It’s… not going well.

Weiss’ inaugural “town hall” with opportunistic right wing grifter Erika Kirk was a ratings dud, her new nightly news broadcast has been an error-prone hot mess, and her murder of a 60 Minutes story about Trump concentration camps — and the network’s decision to air a story lying about the ICE murder of Nicole Good — has spurred a revolt among the CBS journalists that haven’t quit yet.

Weiss has, as all fail-upward media brunchlords do, repeatedly tried to blame her staffers for both her incompetence and for not doing more to coddle her public image. Things have gotten so heated at the crumbling CBS that Weiss has had to “pause” her “Honestly” podcast to put out fires at CBS:

“Thursday morning on her Free Press platform, Weiss said that taking on CBS News is a “huge responsibility,” before continuing, “So here is the news: ‘Honestly’ is taking a little bit of a pause. I know it is hard to hear that, it’s definitely hard for me to do that because I love doing this show. But I think and I hope that you will understand why.”

“Don’t worry, it’s not forever; we’ll be back in just a few short months,” she added.”

There’s a dash of hubris there for Weiss to think that she can fix the problems at CBS in “just a few short months.” There’s every indication Weiss not only has absolutely no idea what she’s doing, but that she lacks the introspection to be able to realize that she’s the problem and to adjust accordingly. That likely means she continues to flounder until she’s inevitably replaced by somebody even worse.

As we’ve noted previously, the problem for Weiss isn’t that she’s bad at journalism (though that’s certainly true). The problem for Weiss is that she’s bad at ratings-grabbing propaganda, the primary function she was hired for. If you’re going to create noxious state race-baiting propaganda, you have to at least make it entertaining — something Roger Aisles understood well.

Weiss’ incompetence is trouble for a CBS/Paramount parent company that has not only seen ratings in free fall at CBS, they’ve watched their stock drop 40 percent since Larry Ellison’s clumsy hostile takeover attempt of Warner Brothers (and CNN, HBO).

Ellison, fresh off his new co-ownership stake in TikTok, clearly wants to dominate both old and new media and to create a modern version of state television. The sort of thing we’ve seen in countries like Russia and Hungary, where autocrats have hollowed out what was left of media and turned it into an extension of the state (something we’ve already seen across much of U.S. corporate media and Fox News):

During the Soviet era, at times of govt instability, the state broadcaster would typically preempt scheduled broadcasts by airing performances of Swan Lake

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw.bsky.social) 2026-01-26T02:59:44.529Z

If there’s any bright spot to this mess, it’s that absolutely nobody in this chain of dysfunction, from the trust fund nepobaby son of Larry Ellison, to the weird contrarian culture war trolls they’re hiring to spread agitprop, have the slightest idea what they’re doing.

If U.S. media and democracy is saved from these zealots, it won’t be thanks to competent media reforms by the opposition party (which pretty broadly don’t exist in the United States, yet), it will be thanks to the raw, blistering hubris and incompetence of folks like Bari Weiss and David Ellison.

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