![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
Saturday, October 4th, 2025 11:30 pm
ICE agents clash with protesters, deploying rubber bullets and pepper spray amid Chicago immigration demonstrations.
Saturday, October 4th, 2025 11:27 pm
Department of Homeland Security officials, including puppy killer Kristi Noem, were barred from entering Broadview City Hall to use the bathroom facilities, and she is big mad. Of course, ICE Barbie blamed Democratic Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, alleging that he's not cooperating with ICE. And she was with an entourage, including YouTuber Benny Johnson, who was previously secretly funded by Russian state media employees to churn out English-language videos that were “often consistent” with the Kremlin’s “interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions to weaken U.S. opposition” to Russian interests.
Meanwhile, Johnson was getting a chubby reporting on Noem's Illinois invasion by her jackbooted thugs. She tried to use the bathroom to do her pee thing, presumably after her latest puppy kill, but that didn't work out.
Look at Johnson in his Big Boy uniform:
I remember when I used to go out with the police on patrols and raids. Because it was a part of my job. What is this cosplaying bullshit? Did you get that uniform at a Spencer’s store? https://t.co/67yPFOzSwg
— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) October 3, 2025
Saturday, October 4th, 2025 11:27 pm
Who among us has never had the urge to tear down a Trump banner? This owner seems so surprised that after two warning shots, someone actually fired back. Isn't that how it works in the Deep South? I'M SO CONFUSED. Via WPDE:
SWAIN COUNTY, N.C. (WLOS) — A Georgia man faces multiple felony charges after an apparent case of vandalism at a Swain County rafting business led to an exchange of gunfire.
In an Oct. 1 social media post, the Swain County Sheriff's Office said Benjamin Michael Campbell, of Atlanta, was charged with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill or inflict serious injury, discharging a firearm within an enclosure to incite fear, and willful and wanton injury to personal property on Sept. 30, 2025, after the incident that occurred weeks earlier.
Mark Thomas, the owner of the Paddle Inn Rafting Company, told News 13 he was watching his CCTV cameras when he saw the driver of a Jeep slam on the brakes, exit the vehicle, walk across the road and tear down a Donald Trump banner.
Thomas said he took his rifle to his porch and fired two shots into the air. In response, Thomas said, the man in the Jeep fired back several rounds from the road.
Saturday, October 4th, 2025 10:30 pm
Fri, 10/03/2025
Saturday, October 4th, 2025 10:30 pm
Speaker Mike Johnson continues to prove he's very bad at his job. Republicans have been talking out of both sides of their mouth and lamely trying to defend the indefensible on the government shutdown, along Trump's bizarre shit-posting on Truth Social.
Johnson gave a press conference on the shutdown this Friday, and even the Fox "news" reporter wasn't buying his nonsense on Trump and Vought:
Republicans are scrambling to downplay just how much enjoyment President Donald Trump is evidently extracting from preparations to fire federal workers by the thousands amid the government shutdown.
Saturday, October 4th, 2025 11:13 pm
Stephen Taylor riffs on “The State of the Union is Grim” with a much better post, “Has the Constitution Failed?” He provides a much more thoughtful, but still downbeat, assessment of our possible trajectory and what, specifically, about our institutional design isn’t working. He lays out five possibilities:
1. Deeper fascism. Trump (more likely Miller, Vance, Vought, Homan, etc.) finds a way to truly move the country into a clearer dictatorial structure. This is the nightmare scenario, which I think is unlikely, but is real enough that I can’t discount it.
2. Competitive Authoritarianism. There are two versions of this in my head,
2a. Competitive Authoritarianism. There are two versions of this in my head,
2b. One-Party. Here, the GOP is able to manipulate the system in 2026 and 2028 in a way that looks like we are having competitive elections, but the playing field is tilted towards the GOP sufficiently that they win regardless of the actual popular preference. This is the US version of Hungary, at least in broad brushstrokes.
3. Two-Party. In this version, the Democrats are able to win back power, but the system is sufficiently broken that they will govern like Trump has: by fiat and with the Congress being basically a vestigial organ. This is a broken democracy at best.
4. Pluralist Democracy. This is going to require reforms and could only come about under current conditions if the Democrats win back power and do what they failed to do in 2021: use their majority to institute change. My post from August of 2020 provides a starting spot: Reforms: the Possible, the Improbable, and the Unpossible. I might change some of those recommendations if I rewrote the post, but the basic gist remains, I think, on point.
Quite frankly, since the early days of this term, most specifically because of what DOGE did (and as amplified by a string of shadow docket decisions by SCOTUS), I think that the most likely outcome of all of this is 2b: Two-party competitive authoritarianism, with every four to eight years one of the two parties comes to power and governing largely through executive action in a version of what Guillermo O’Donnell once called “delegative democracy” (which was a critique of the poor quality of Latin American democracy in the post-authoritarian period–something I have been meaning to write about). This would continue until one side was able to move us to 2a (or worse). It would look like the constitutional order was still functioning, but that would be an illusion.
You should go read the whole thing &c
The post Is Our Constitution Learning? appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.
Saturday, October 4th, 2025 08:41 pm
Still weekending
Saturday, October 4th, 2025 10:23 pm
Hamas says 'yes' to parts of President Trump's plan for the Strip.
Saturday, October 4th, 2025 09:42 pm
In the Spring 1957 issue of Pi Mu Epsilon Journal, C.W. Trigg points out that, by two continuous cuts, the surface of a cube can be divided into two pieces that can be unfolded and assembled into a hollow square:
The cuts divide the cube’s surface into two congruent pieces, each composed of six connected isosceles right triangles. Joining these two pieces forms a hollow square with exterior side 
Saturday, October 4th, 2025 09:39 pm
Donald Trump urges Hamas to move quickly to release captives and finalise negotiations over his plan to end the war.
Saturday, October 4th, 2025 09:02 pm
Estevao's injury-time goal seals 2-1 win for Chelsea over Liverpool as Arsenal take EPL top spot beating West Ham 2-0.
Saturday, October 4th, 2025 08:38 pm
Activists describe mistreatment after Israel intercepted Gaza aid flotilla and detained about 450 people.
Saturday, October 4th, 2025 07:44 pm
And for the past two years, it has played well the ‘arsonist and the fireman’ scam.
Saturday, October 4th, 2025 08:44 pm
Links for you. Science:
lung.fish Data Explorer
Phages with a broad host range are common across ecosystems
This is what could happen to a child who doesn’t get vaccinated
Trump administration to award a no-bid contract on research into vaccines and autism
Gut infections often overlooked in men who have sex with men
Data investigation: Childhood vaccination rates are backsliding across the U.S. A monthslong NBC News data investigation finds that much of the U.S. doesn’t have the protection needed to stop the spread of deadly diseases. St. Louis is a window into the problem communities face nationwide.
Other:
Democrats: Stand Up this September and Shut Trump Down. Democratic leaders can use budget negotiations to protect science — and democracy
Tom Homan was investigated for accepting $50,000 from undercover FBI agents. Trump’s DOJ shut it down.
In Trump’s D.C. surge [occupation], helicopters hovered and surveilled day and night
The MAGA Movement Is Not a Debating Society
It’s Always 2003 To These Fucking People
Why Charlie Kirk Had No Counterpart on the Left
SF Streamlined Its Street Teams. Now, Fewer People Are Getting the Help They Need
City of Portland will issue land use violation notice for ICE facility, triggering process to determine next steps at the site
Charlie Kirk Was ‘Face of Christian Nationalism’ Trying to Conquer the Education ‘Mountain’
A Call-Up From the Anti-Monopoly Bench
Appeals court judges publicly admonish Supreme Court justices: ‘We’re out here flailing’
Chicago Starbucks Worker Did Not Write ‘Loser’ On Order Honoring Charlie Kirk, Company Says (“the note appears “to have been added after the beverage was handed off, likely by someone else,”” Lol at the attempt at outrage farming)
Charlie Kirk DID say stoning gay people was the ‘perfect law’ — and these other heinous quotes
Chalk messages at Arlington home of top White House official strike a nerve with GOP heavyweights
The Sagrada Família Takes Its Final Shape
The Vibes Economy
An exemplary survey of race portends trouble for the Smithsonian
Green Shoots
Pentagon demands journalists pledge to not obtain unauthorized material
Why are some liberals turning Charlie Kirk into a martyr for liberal democracy?
OpenAI won’t say whose content trained its video tool. We found some clues.
Should We Let Public Transit Die?
Teachers got mad about a cheat button in Chrome. Now Google’s pausing it.
Charlie Kirk Is A Means To An End
This state will be the first to offer free child care, regardless of income
Telling the truth about Charlie Kirk is now a radical act worthy of punishment
Whistleblower says U.S. organ transplants corrupted by greed and bias
How Do You Stop A Serial Killer?
Late-night hosts pretend to flatter Trump after Kimmel’s removal from ABC
Running the FBI? Kash Patel believes his job is getting attention
Low-income Americans slash spending, a worrying sign for the economy
Saturday, October 4th, 2025 07:49 pm
The Wonderland Book Awards are a recognition presented annually at BizarroCon for superior achievement in bizarro fiction writing. Preliminary voting on 2025 the awards, for books published in 2024, has ended and the final ballot was announced September 29. The winners will be revealed … Continue reading
Saturday, October 4th, 2025 07:51 pm
…and indirect.
Courtesy of ChatGPT:
“On their Tumblr “About Me” section, there is a purported address listed (which appears to be too detailed / personal):
“Address: New Illawarra Road, Lucas Heights, NSW 2234” Tumblr
But note: such Tumblr entries may not be reliable or up to date, and disclosing exact residential addresses is a privacy concern.”
I don’t make use of Tumblr but I set up an autopost from this blog to Tumblr years ago and it is still going.
As readers may have surmised, this little experiment was inspired by the actions of a character in the 1946 story “A Logic Named Joe”. The protagonists ex-girlfriend uses the networked computer system to find out his contact details via an AI system that circumvents the normal restrictions.
ChatGPT won’t tell you somebody’s address but it will look up publicly available contact information. So, actually yes, it will tell you somebody’s address because it assumes that if it can find an address then that address has been released publicly. Note that above, ChatGPT gives the address and then says giving it “is a privacy concern”.
It will do other things as well such as try and find a person’s other names by scraping data from PDF metadata. It also offered to look in the EXIF data from uploaded images (metadata in image files that can include location) but when I suggested it did so, it said it didn’t actually know how to do that.
I tried a few LLM services. Depending on the query, they will bring up the failed 2018 doxxing attempt by Antonelli et al but also says the supposed identity was incorrect/debunked, sometimes citing Jim Hines’s post about that weird event.
Anyway, instead of scrubbing metadata from images or PDFs, I might start actively adding disinformation in them.
Saturday, October 4th, 2025 07:34 pm
Opposition protests turned violent as riot police used tear gas and water cannon after disputed local elections.
Saturday, October 4th, 2025 06:50 pm
[Clears throat] EMAILS!
A senior White House official accidentally leaked details of plans to send an elite army unit to Portland, in the latest intelligence leak by the Trump administration.
Anthony Salisbury, a top deputy to Stephen Miller, the influential White House policy adviser, was observed using Signal in a public place to discuss a plan to deploy the army’s 82nd airborne division to Portland, the Democratic-run Oregon city which Donald Trump has repeatedly castigated as being “war-ravaged”.
The Minnesota Star Tribune obtained images of Salisbury’s Signal messages, which it said were sent while the official was “in clear view of others” in Minnesota.
In the messages, sent last weekend, Salisbury chatted with Patrick Weaver, a senior adviser to the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and other high-ranking federal officials, the Star Tribune reported.
Weaver wrote that Hegseth wanted Trump to expressly tell him to send troops to Portland.
“Between you and I, I think Pete just wants the top cover from the boss if anything goes sideways with the troops there,” Weaver said. He wrote that Hegseth would prefer to send in the national guard due to potential backlash over using the army.
“82nd is like our top tier [quick reaction force] for abroad. So it will cause a lot of headlines,” he added. “Probably why he wants potus [Trump] to tell him to do it.”
“But at least they’ll make the trains run on time” no, no they won’t. Authoritarianism does not in fact mean competence, and normally it doesn’t.
The post The information security administration appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.
Saturday, October 4th, 2025 06:27 pm
Tuning out for a bit.
Saturday, October 4th, 2025 06:07 pm
While train tracks get all the publicity as sources of silent era peril (and I have written extensively on how they were neither common nor taken particularly seriously), burglars were the real sources of suspense and comedy. This month is going to focus on burglars in silent movies, suspenseful, silly and everything in between! To […]