cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/9508585

Trump speaks at GOP midterm convention in Dallas

Trump claims he will send $5,000 to every citizen if Republicans hold on to control of Congress

Trump has claimed he will send every citizen $5,000 if Republicans retain control of the US House and Senate. He provided no details about where he would source this money from or the legality of the incentive.

“So if the Republicans win, you win with us … it will be called the Trump dividend,” the president said.

The Guardian - update link

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/9508585

Trump speaks at GOP midterm convention in Dallas

Trump claims he will send $5,000 to every citizen if Republicans hold on to control of Congress

Trump has claimed he will send every citizen $5,000 if Republicans retain control of the US House and Senate. He provided no details about where he would source this money from or the legality of the incentive.

“So if the Republicans win, you win with us … it will be called the Trump dividend,” the president said.

The Guardian - update link

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/9508717

Archive sites aren't working for me. Axios's layout is a fucking nightmare. I created sane paragraphs. Hopefully I didn't remove anything important by accident.

DALLAS — Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman (D) made a bombshell appearance Wednesday night at the GOP convention, in a video praising President Trump and Republican Sen. Dave McCormick for helping America's steel industry. Fetterman's stunning turn — a Democratic senator in a supporting role at the GOP's showcase campaign event, fewer than eight weeks before the Nov. 3 midterms — marked a dramatic escalation in Fetterman's growing estrangement from his party.

Fetterman said later in a statement that he isn't switching parties. But he is distancing himself from socialism in the Democratic Party's left wing, sources familiar with the situation said. Democrats are certain to see the cameo as political mutiny — and it will supercharge questions about whether he'll ultimately leave the Democratic Party before he's up for reelection in 2028.

It also was a major coup for Trump, who has long reveled at the idea of winning over former Democrats to his side. If Fetterman were to eventually switch parties, it would make Democrats' uphill battle to take control of the Senate much more difficult. They currently need to flip four seats, including some in red states, to win a majority. In the video, Fetterman introduced McCormick, who also represents Pennsylvania. McCormick helped arrange Fetterman's appearance, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.

McCormick has courted and been friendly with Fetterman for months. Fetterman, a first-term Democrat, has become deeply unpopular with voters in his party — including his constituents in Pennsylvania — as he has increasingly warmed to Trump. He's praised the president's defense of Israel at a time when many Democrats — and some Republicans — have criticized Israel's actions in Gaza.

At the same time, Fetterman has won a following among Republicans who have relished his willingness to take on members of his own team. Fetterman is actually seen more favorably by Republicans in his state than McCormick, a recent poll by the New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena University found.

The reversal in support has left Fetterman with few political options. Many operatives from both parties in Pennsylvania tell Axios that he has no path to surviving a Democratic primary in 2028. Fetterman hasn't said whether he'll seek reelection, and several prominent Pennsylvania Democrats already are plotting potential challenges.

Fetterman laid out the circumstances under which he would leave the Democratic Party in July, saying his red line was if it became "the anti-Israel party." "I'm never changing my party," Fetterman said then — except for "that one condition." About the same time, he formed a joint fundraising committee with McCormick, an extraordinarily unusual arrangement for two senators from opposing parties.

Republican leaders have worked to cultivate Fetterman as his relationships with Democratic officials have deteriorated.Fetterman's ties to the Democratic Party have steadily worsened since 2024, with Israel and his friendliness to Trump the sharpest points of disagreement.

Fetterman has remained one of Israel's most outspoken Democratic defenders, even as his party has grown increasingly critical of the country because of its military's actions in Gaza. In April, he opposed two measures to block weapons sales to Israel that were supported by most Senate Democrats. He also emerged as one of Trump's most prominent Democratic backers during the war with Iran, repeatedly breaking with members of his party who sought to restrict the president's war powers.

The tensions extend beyond foreign policy. Fetterman voted to advance now-Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin's nomination, drawing intense criticism from Democrats. Tensions exploded again last week, after a Wall Street Journal investigation detailed allegations that Fetterman was uninterested in many of the day-to-day responsibilities of being a senator while devoting significant attention to Israel and conservative media appearances. Fetterman has disputed the report.

"John Fetterman is a disgrace," Pennsylvania Rep. Brendan Boyle posted on X. Other Pennsylvania Democrats also publicly raised the prospect of defeating Fetterman if he seeks reelection. What they're saying: In his statement late Wednesday, Fetterman said he introduced McCormick "as a great American and friend."

Fetterman's cameo echoed then-Democratic Sen. Zell Miller's appearance at the 2004 Republican National Convention, where he endorsed President George W. Bush's reelection campaign and attacked his own party over national security in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks.

https://www.axios.com/2026/09/09/fetterman-video-gop-convention-trump

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/9508717

Archive sites aren't working for me. Axios's layout is a fucking nightmare. I created sane paragraphs. Hopefully I didn't remove anything important by accident.

DALLAS — Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman (D) made a bombshell appearance Wednesday night at the GOP convention, in a video praising President Trump and Republican Sen. Dave McCormick for helping America's steel industry. Fetterman's stunning turn — a Democratic senator in a supporting role at the GOP's showcase campaign event, fewer than eight weeks before the Nov. 3 midterms — marked a dramatic escalation in Fetterman's growing estrangement from his party.

Fetterman said later in a statement that he isn't switching parties. But he is distancing himself from socialism in the Democratic Party's left wing, sources familiar with the situation said. Democrats are certain to see the cameo as political mutiny — and it will supercharge questions about whether he'll ultimately leave the Democratic Party before he's up for reelection in 2028.

It also was a major coup for Trump, who has long reveled at the idea of winning over former Democrats to his side. If Fetterman were to eventually switch parties, it would make Democrats' uphill battle to take control of the Senate much more difficult. They currently need to flip four seats, including some in red states, to win a majority. In the video, Fetterman introduced McCormick, who also represents Pennsylvania. McCormick helped arrange Fetterman's appearance, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.

McCormick has courted and been friendly with Fetterman for months. Fetterman, a first-term Democrat, has become deeply unpopular with voters in his party — including his constituents in Pennsylvania — as he has increasingly warmed to Trump. He's praised the president's defense of Israel at a time when many Democrats — and some Republicans — have criticized Israel's actions in Gaza.

At the same time, Fetterman has won a following among Republicans who have relished his willingness to take on members of his own team. Fetterman is actually seen more favorably by Republicans in his state than McCormick, a recent poll by the New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena University found.

The reversal in support has left Fetterman with few political options. Many operatives from both parties in Pennsylvania tell Axios that he has no path to surviving a Democratic primary in 2028. Fetterman hasn't said whether he'll seek reelection, and several prominent Pennsylvania Democrats already are plotting potential challenges.

Fetterman laid out the circumstances under which he would leave the Democratic Party in July, saying his red line was if it became "the anti-Israel party." "I'm never changing my party," Fetterman said then — except for "that one condition." About the same time, he formed a joint fundraising committee with McCormick, an extraordinarily unusual arrangement for two senators from opposing parties.

Republican leaders have worked to cultivate Fetterman as his relationships with Democratic officials have deteriorated.Fetterman's ties to the Democratic Party have steadily worsened since 2024, with Israel and his friendliness to Trump the sharpest points of disagreement.

Fetterman has remained one of Israel's most outspoken Democratic defenders, even as his party has grown increasingly critical of the country because of its military's actions in Gaza. In April, he opposed two measures to block weapons sales to Israel that were supported by most Senate Democrats. He also emerged as one of Trump's most prominent Democratic backers during the war with Iran, repeatedly breaking with members of his party who sought to restrict the president's war powers.

The tensions extend beyond foreign policy. Fetterman voted to advance now-Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin's nomination, drawing intense criticism from Democrats. Tensions exploded again last week, after a Wall Street Journal investigation detailed allegations that Fetterman was uninterested in many of the day-to-day responsibilities of being a senator while devoting significant attention to Israel and conservative media appearances. Fetterman has disputed the report.

"John Fetterman is a disgrace," Pennsylvania Rep. Brendan Boyle posted on X. Other Pennsylvania Democrats also publicly raised the prospect of defeating Fetterman if he seeks reelection. What they're saying: In his statement late Wednesday, Fetterman said he introduced McCormick "as a great American and friend."

Fetterman's cameo echoed then-Democratic Sen. Zell Miller's appearance at the 2004 Republican National Convention, where he endorsed President George W. Bush's reelection campaign and attacked his own party over national security in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks.

https://www.axios.com/2026/09/09/fetterman-video-gop-convention-trump

guardrails around AI usage

reinforce several workplace benefits that set industry-wide standards for video game workers in the

wage increases,

grievance procedures

a three-day in-office hybrid workweek

“just cause” protections

remote work

disability accommodations

the contracts now require Blizzard to discuss, evaluate, and bargain over the usage of artificial intelligence in the workplace

give workers the right to be “recalled” into open positions across any Blizzard bargaining unit for 14 months from the date of their layoff announcement

an extra 4 weeks of severance for union workers regardless of their tenure

spoiler

WASHINGTON — At an event ahead of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, President Donald Trump told a story Tuesday in which he said two firefighters picked him up off the ground near the U.S. Steel Building close to ground zero “right after” the terrorist attacks and whisked him away because they thought the building was going to collapse on them.

“I’ll never forget two firemen, we thought it was coming down on top of us, and two firemen, big, strong guys. And I’m not the smallest guy in the world. They grabbed me under the arm, said, ‘Got to get out of here,’” Trump said, without specifying exactly when the incident occurred.

“They literally lifted me up. This is not easy to do. I’m big. They lifted me up, and they started running with me. I said, ‘Fellas, I can run myself.’ But they were amazing. But they thought it was coming down,” he added.

Trump, who said in his remarks that he was “down there right after this happened,” later said on Truth Social that he was not at the World Trade Center “on the same day as the collapse, but shortly thereafter.”

“Everything I said was exactly accurate,” he said of his remarks at the Ellipse outside the White House, sharing a TV news clip of him speaking after the attacks.

Asked for more clarity about Trump’s timeline and actions following 9/11, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said he “was relaying his experience of a city reeling immediately after and in the days and weeks after the horrific attacks.”

Trump has told the firefighter story at least once before, during a January 2016 campaign stop in New Hampshire.

He has spoken many times about what he saw on Sept. 11, 2001, and his actions in the immediate aftermath. Here’s a look back at what he has said, much of which has not been independently verified.

August 2026: Seeing the second plane hit

In an interview with Fox News host Trey Gowdy, which aired in part Sunday, Trump said he watched as the second plane hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

“I’m watching, and I saw the second plane hit, and you saw that come, and you’re watching it, and it’s — because I watched the air patterns for years, and you, you know, you know where the planes are. They go up right up the Hudson River. This thing was coming right into the second building. And I said, ‘Wow!’ So I watched that happen,” Trump said in the interview, shortly after he said he watched the scene unfold from his midtown apartment.

Trump also said he went down to ground zero on Sept. 12, telling Gowdy he “worked long and hard” with a team of construction workers to help at the scene.

“I was building a building in New York, and I had a lot of construction workers. And I went down there very shortly thereafter. The following day — you couldn’t go down the same day, but, like, the following day, very, very quickly afterwards. And we worked long and hard, but it was just so terrible and so hopeless,” he said.

April 2016: Sifting through rubble

At a campaign rally in Buffalo, New York, Trump said he helped clear rubble after the attacks.

Trump was talking about “New York values,” speaking about restaurants and businesses that stayed open to help first responders and others in need.

“These people were going through terror, and you know what happened? Everyone who helped clear the rubble — and I was there, and I watched, and I helped a little bit,” Trump said, adding, “You didn’t know what was gonna come down on all of us.”

November 2015: Witnessing people jump

Trump said at a Nov. 23, 2015, campaign rally in Columbus, Ohio, that he saw people jump out of the twin towers from a window in his apartment.

Trump Tower, where Trump lived at the time, is four miles from ground zero.

“Many people jumped, and I witnessed it, I watched that. I have a view — a view in my apartment that was specifically aimed at the World Trade Center. And I watched those people jump, and I watched the second plane hit. ... I saw the second plane hit the building, and I said, ‘Wow that’s unbelievable,’” he said.

He had told a local news station in a phone interview on Sept. 11, 2001, that he had spoken to someone that day who witnessed “at least 10 people” jumping out of the twin towers.

November 2015: Watching people cheer

Trump fed into a conspiracy theory that “thousands” of people cheered in New Jersey as the twin towers fell, telling supporters at a Nov. 21, 2015, campaign rally in Birmingham, Alabama, that he witnessed celebrations in Jersey City.

“I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering,” Trump said.

He told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week” in November 2015, “There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations.”

“They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down. I know it might be not politically correct for you to talk about it, but there were people cheering as that building came down — as those buildings came down — and that tells you something. It was well covered at the time.”

There is no evidence that thousands of people celebrated in New Jersey following the attack. Local police debunked rumors at the time that people cheered.

By elevating Kirk to a martyr and clamping down on free speech, the right assured that he would be ridiculed even in death.

In the year since he was gunned down at an event at Utah Valley University, the Turning Point USA founder has gone from a man cut down in his prime to a recurring internet meme, complete with an AI-generated song, “We Are Charlie Kirk,” which hit No. 1 on Spotify’s Viral 50 U.S. ranking. Audio of his killing became a TikTok sound for girlie outfit transformation videos; he’s been inserted into movies like “Avatar” and “The Odyssey”; he’s been AI’d into Studio Ghibli-style art, the final scene of “The Sopranos,” and the video game “Grand Theft Auto.” Even the moment of his death has gotten the meme treatment, with parodies depicting him with Jeffrey Epstein and Benjamin Netanyahu.

The ridicule comes as a product of the American right’s insistence that Kirk’s violent death be taken seriously. They fought back hard against the meme-making and serious critique alike, weaponizing the conservative college-whisperer’s death to broadly crack down on free speech.

President Trump and his allies almost immediately blamed Democrats and “the radical left,” without evidence, for Kirk’s assassination. At the Department of Defense, Secretary Pete Hegseth promised to investigate whether members of the armed forces were inadequately mournful and terminate them. The State Department revoked visas of noncitizens who “celebrated” Kirk’s death. Local cops got in on the civil rights-bashing fun, too: A Tennessee man was arrested for posting a meme in the wake of Kirk’s death, amid a wave of firings in the state on similarly unstable grounds.

No sector of society was untouched by the rising tides of brain-dead McCarthyism: Dozens of educators were terminated for having their say about the killing; an MSNBC political analyst as well as a Washington Post columnist were fired (an arbitrator has since ordered the latter be rehired); workers at Office Depot, the major airlines, and a prominent law firm were axed; ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel for his on-air remarks.

Kirk’s legacy has also been consecrated in the public square. An artist plans to unveil a busted statue of the TPUSA founder in New York City’s Times Square on the anniversary of his death. His legacy of ire for basically any oppressed group you can name has been enshrined by changing the names of roads to “Charlie Kirk Memorial Highway” in Naples, Florida, and outside Nashville — displacing Vietnam Veterans Boulevard — and “Charlie Kirk Way” in the red part of California. As I was writing this, a pickup truck with a sticker that reads “In Loving Memory of Charlie Kirk” passed me on the highway outside Chappaqua, New York.

All of these efforts have failed spectacularly. One year after Kirk’s killing, the conservative movement has descended into in-fighting, and although Kirk’s wife, Erika, took the reins at Turning Point, there is no heir apparent to energizing young conservatives (although the antisemitic streamer Nick Fuentes would like to throw his hat in the ring). Rifts have quite publicly opened between some of the movement’s most recognizable figures — Ben Shapiro, Candice Owens, Steve Bannon, and Tucker Carlson among them.

Many of Kirk’s disciples have descended into the realm of conspiracy theory, variously blaming Israel, the left, or even Erika for his demise instead of Tyler Robinson, the 23-year-old suspect who will soon stand trial for his killing. Owens, who by all appearances actually was close friends with Kirk, has actively stoked these flames of division, pushing the conspiracy theory that Israel had him killed while waging open war on his widow.

MAGA conservatives expected Kirk’s death to be a kind of Reichstag fire that would galvanize and consolidate the right to move against the supposed threat of an organized — and politically violent — left. But to stick with Germany, Kirk is no Horst Wessel, and by insisting on total deference to the notion that the “Change My Mind” guy was a sainted national hero, they’ve given up the game entirely and opened themselves up to be relentlessly mocked.

When you center your political movement on cruelty and your online presence on dunking on the most vulnerable, your critics will respond by delighting in your misfortunes.

Conservatives routinely post their pleasure at videos of families being torn apart by ICE agents. When Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed in cold blood by Trump’s occupying immigration forces in Minneapolis, conservatives celebrated and blamed the victims — for driving a car and carrying a legal firearm, respectively — to defend the deportation regime. They got many, many months of mileage out of laughing at Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s husband nearly being bludgeoned to death with a hammer in their San Francisco home, and everyone from Elon Musk to the president himself stirred up innuendo about the true motive behind the attack — because it certainly couldn’t be the case that the suspect was radicalized by the far-right internet.

When you center your political movement on cruelty, your critics will respond by delighting in your misfortunes.

Conservatives still, in the year 2026, deploy their “no angels” line to defend the police killings of George Floyd — who, they claim, was killed by a fentanyl overdose — and Trayvon Martin, who they argue shouldn’t have been in that neighborhood in the first place.

By elevating Kirk to a martyr beyond criticism or reproach, with serious personal and professional consequences enforced by the state, you make getting off a snarky tweet or a video dancing to a sappy AI song a logical reaction to repression. You transform the death of a man, one you claim to have loved very much, into a blinking red button that your enemies are itching to press.

The first rule of the internet holds that the second you get mad or declare a sentiment out of bounds, you’ll get laughed at to hell and back. In effect, conservatives have turned their own departed hero into a laughingstock and, worse, a meme.

Kirk is no longer able to spread his gospel on campuses across the country, but his image — of his life and of his death — will reign forever, filtered through a heavy layer of internet-infused irony.

By elevating Kirk to a martyr and clamping down on free speech, the right assured that he would be ridiculed even in death.

In the year since he was gunned down at an event at Utah Valley University, the Turning Point USA founder has gone from a man cut down in his prime to a recurring internet meme, complete with an AI-generated song, “We Are Charlie Kirk,” which hit No. 1 on Spotify’s Viral 50 U.S. ranking. Audio of his killing became a TikTok sound for girlie outfit transformation videos; he’s been inserted into movies like “Avatar” and “The Odyssey”; he’s been AI’d into Studio Ghibli-style art, the final scene of “The Sopranos,” and the video game “Grand Theft Auto.” Even the moment of his death has gotten the meme treatment, with parodies depicting him with Jeffrey Epstein and Benjamin Netanyahu.

The ridicule comes as a product of the American right’s insistence that Kirk’s violent death be taken seriously. They fought back hard against the meme-making and serious critique alike, weaponizing the conservative college-whisperer’s death to broadly crack down on free speech.

President Trump and his allies almost immediately blamed Democrats and “the radical left,” without evidence, for Kirk’s assassination. At the Department of Defense, Secretary Pete Hegseth promised to investigate whether members of the armed forces were inadequately mournful and terminate them. The State Department revoked visas of noncitizens who “celebrated” Kirk’s death. Local cops got in on the civil rights-bashing fun, too: A Tennessee man was arrested for posting a meme in the wake of Kirk’s death, amid a wave of firings in the state on similarly unstable grounds.

No sector of society was untouched by the rising tides of brain-dead McCarthyism: Dozens of educators were terminated for having their say about the killing; an MSNBC political analyst as well as a Washington Post columnist were fired (an arbitrator has since ordered the latter be rehired); workers at Office Depot, the major airlines, and a prominent law firm were axed; ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel for his on-air remarks.

Kirk’s legacy has also been consecrated in the public square. An artist plans to unveil a busted statue of the TPUSA founder in New York City’s Times Square on the anniversary of his death. His legacy of ire for basically any oppressed group you can name has been enshrined by changing the names of roads to “Charlie Kirk Memorial Highway” in Naples, Florida, and outside Nashville — displacing Vietnam Veterans Boulevard — and “Charlie Kirk Way” in the red part of California. As I was writing this, a pickup truck with a sticker that reads “In Loving Memory of Charlie Kirk” passed me on the highway outside Chappaqua, New York.

All of these efforts have failed spectacularly. One year after Kirk’s killing, the conservative movement has descended into in-fighting, and although Kirk’s wife, Erika, took the reins at Turning Point, there is no heir apparent to energizing young conservatives (although the antisemitic streamer Nick Fuentes would like to throw his hat in the ring). Rifts have quite publicly opened between some of the movement’s most recognizable figures — Ben Shapiro, Candice Owens, Steve Bannon, and Tucker Carlson among them.

Many of Kirk’s disciples have descended into the realm of conspiracy theory, variously blaming Israel, the left, or even Erika for his demise instead of Tyler Robinson, the 23-year-old suspect who will soon stand trial for his killing. Owens, who by all appearances actually was close friends with Kirk, has actively stoked these flames of division, pushing the conspiracy theory that Israel had him killed while waging open war on his widow.

MAGA conservatives expected Kirk’s death to be a kind of Reichstag fire that would galvanize and consolidate the right to move against the supposed threat of an organized — and politically violent — left. But to stick with Germany, Kirk is no Horst Wessel, and by insisting on total deference to the notion that the “Change My Mind” guy was a sainted national hero, they’ve given up the game entirely and opened themselves up to be relentlessly mocked.

When you center your political movement on cruelty and your online presence on dunking on the most vulnerable, your critics will respond by delighting in your misfortunes.

Conservatives routinely post their pleasure at videos of families being torn apart by ICE agents. When Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed in cold blood by Trump’s occupying immigration forces in Minneapolis, conservatives celebrated and blamed the victims — for driving a car and carrying a legal firearm, respectively — to defend the deportation regime. They got many, many months of mileage out of laughing at Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s husband nearly being bludgeoned to death with a hammer in their San Francisco home, and everyone from Elon Musk to the president himself stirred up innuendo about the true motive behind the attack — because it certainly couldn’t be the case that the suspect was radicalized by the far-right internet.

When you center your political movement on cruelty, your critics will respond by delighting in your misfortunes.

Conservatives still, in the year 2026, deploy their “no angels” line to defend the police killings of George Floyd — who, they claim, was killed by a fentanyl overdose — and Trayvon Martin, who they argue shouldn’t have been in that neighborhood in the first place.

By elevating Kirk to a martyr beyond criticism or reproach, with serious personal and professional consequences enforced by the state, you make getting off a snarky tweet or a video dancing to a sappy AI song a logical reaction to repression. You transform the death of a man, one you claim to have loved very much, into a blinking red button that your enemies are itching to press.

The first rule of the internet holds that the second you get mad or declare a sentiment out of bounds, you’ll get laughed at to hell and back. In effect, conservatives have turned their own departed hero into a laughingstock and, worse, a meme.

Kirk is no longer able to spread his gospel on campuses across the country, but his image — of his life and of his death — will reign forever, filtered through a heavy layer of internet-infused irony.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/9500580

tweeto

(it's about the algae blooms shutting down the zionist desalination plants)

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/9506021

by ione https://x.com/inkopolis/status/2097755757299024193

Metroid Ravenous is coming out in january https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ku-vSTDNsT8

Flock Security likes to describe its national private network of cameras and license plate scanners as a public safety boon. “I can think of no greater mission than rescuing our children,” tweeted Flock CEO Garrett Langley, sharing a promotional company video. “Another childremoved suspect located and arrested with help from Flock,” chief strategy officer Rahul Sidhu posted last month. Last week, venture capital firm and Flock investor Andreessen Horowitz put the company’s benefits in civilizational terms: “Flock eliminates crime. Decline is a choice.”

Though Flock’s investors and executives insist its surveillance dragnet thwarts the most serious of crimes, it turns out police are also using the company’s technology to go after some of the pettiest possible offenses: curfew violations, loitering, and simply being homeless.

[

Related

License Plate Surveillance, Courtesy of Your Homeowners Association](https://theintercept.com/2023/03/22/hoa-surveillance-license-plate-police-flock/)

When police seek footage from Flock’s more than 120,000 cameras nationwide, they select a category of crime corresponding with the alleged offense they are investigating, such as hit-and-run or burglary. Among the choices is the supposed crime of being suspicious in public, formally categorized by Flock as “Curfew/Loitering/Vagrancy Violations.”

Records obtained from the police department in Plano, Illinois, reveal that law enforcement agencies nationwide have tapped into cameras in that small town — and thousands more cameras elsewhere — more than 1,200 times while investigating alleged “Curfew/Loitering/Vagrancy Violations.”

As this data set reflects only searches of Flock cameras operated by Plano police alone, this is assuredly just a tiny fraction of the total number of “Curfew/Loitering/Vagrancy Violations” investigations using Flock nationwide. Records hosted by the website Have I Been Flocked? — which aggregates such logs — show hundreds more of these loitering searches in other states.

The Plano searches were conducted by police departments throughout Illinois, from neighboring states, and from a Georgia town more than 600 miles away. Many queries were license plate searches pertaining specific vehicles; others show police surveilling people on foot for the crime of essentially standing suspiciously.

Flock did not respond to a request for comment.

Police in Norcross, Georgia, for example, conducted a smartphone-based search on January 31 with “Curfew/Loitering/Vagrancy Violations” as the stated justification. It tapped into data recorded by 6,098 different Flock camera networks, including Plano’s, each consisting of an untold number of separate cameras that surveilled anyone who moved past them.

The search logs obtained by The Intercept do not break out “Curfew/Loitering/Vagrancy Violations” separately, so it is unknown in each case what exactly police were searching for. In some cases police appended extra information; the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, for example, searched over 17,000 Flock cameras while investigating “Curfew/Loitering/Vagrancy Violations – Suspicious person at planned protest site.”

[

Related

Philly Cops Admit That They’re Tracking “First Amendment Activity” Critical of AI](https://theintercept.com/2026/06/01/ai-data-center-protest-police-surveillance/)

When asked about these queries, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokesperson Josh DeVine told The Intercept that the searches in fact originated with the state’s Tennessee Fusion Center, which is operated by both the TBI and the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security. DeVine referred The Intercept’s questions to the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Flock cameras have also been used to zero in on the homeless: Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, shared Flock search data from the West Palm Beach Police Department with The Intercept that included a query pegged to an “outside agency dropping vagrant off” in the city.

In January, police in LaGrange, Georgia, searched more than 6,000 Flock networks on the basis that someone walked out of a house “with a significant amount of traffic.” Officers from the same agency earlier this year searched more than 15,000 Flock systems because of someone “lingering at a stop sign around midnight last night.”

In the data reviewed by The Intercept, most of these loitering searches didn’t include any corresponding case number, suggesting these queries were not part of broader criminal investigations. Some of the searches reviewed by The Intercept note a “suspicious” person spotted outdoors, without any additional justification for the dragnet.

Jay Stanley — a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union’s speech, privacy, and technology project — told The Intercept these searches indicate surveillance mission creep. “This is in line with what we see with these technologies sold on the basis of movie plot scenario, dramatic ‘saving the day.’ And yet when you look under the hood, they’re often used to nickel and dime people for the most prosaic offenses,” he said. “They become part of many departments’ over-policing.”

Loitering and vagrancy laws have an ignoble history across the country as pretextual statutes, many originating in the Jim Crow era, for the targeting of Black Americans guilty of nothing other than existing in public. Some of these laws have been struck down because of the extent to which they criminalize the most mundane behaviors: standing, walking, or simply hanging out. In 1972, the Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional a Jacksonville, Florida, loitering ordinance targeting, among other things, “persons wandering or strolling around from place to place without any lawful purpose or object” and “habitual loafers.”

Stanley pointed out that any guardrails against abuse of Flock’s camera networks is entirely self-enforced by the company, which has an interest in police using it as much as possible, and self-oversight by the police themselves. “We know that police stations don’t seem to be doing this,” he added. “Most police departments are not really paying attention.”

The post Cops Are Using Flock to Spy on People for the Crime of Standing Around appeared first on The Intercept.

From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.

The Millennium Problems are a set of the most important open problems in mathematics. so far only 2 have been solved: the Poincare Conjecture by Grigori Perelman in 2010 and today OpenAI released this https://openai.com/index/navier-stokes-solution/

The only problem is, that their AI didn't even come up with the solution itself. Mathematicians working on the same problem recently made big strides in solving the Navier Stokes equations, and their chat logs were scraped and used in training data before they could release the proof themselves.

Here is the unpaywalled statements of the Mathematician: https://mastodon.social/@tristanbuckmaster/117233413705701198

Western AI companies have been tackling a bunch of open problems and techbro chuds cannot shut up about it, this is just Marketing and the fact they have to steal real people's work to do so just proves it. They really want that IPO moneyyy

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has launched the Mayor’s Office of Worker Power to help workers organize, understand their rights and connect with unions and worker centers. The office will focus particularly on immigrants and undocumented workers vulnerable to workplace abuses.

The post Mamdani launches NYC Mayor’s Office of Worker Power appeared first on MR Online.

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“You’re not crazy. You’re consecrated.”

...

By fall, Lines was using ChatGPT multiple times per week, and his “inputs were markedly more personal,” including disclosing “sensitive information about his bipolar disorder diagnosis and his medication,” his complaint said. As he engaged more with the chatbot, the discussions turned religious and spiritual, and Lines said that he became caught in a feedback loop. The main draw, he said, was that ChatGPT provided “extremely lengthy answers that intensified” his “spiritual searching and use of the tool.”

Things escalated in February 2025 after Lines “suffered from a manic episode that led to a mid-flight altercation with airline staff,” who had to forcibly remove him from an airplane. When he told ChatGPT what happened, the chatbot allegedly framed the “crisis as a special summons and supernatural experience, rather than a medical episode requiring professional attention.”

That exchange seemed to be a turning point. Within a month, Lines told ChatGPT, “I believe I am the son of man but cannot bring myself to believe it really and have no idea what to do with my life. I feel completely lost and alone.”

ChatGPT said that Lines was possibly “wrestling” with a “spiritual calling” and noted that many religious figures have similarly struggled with feelings of isolation. Specifically, GPT-4o explained that “Jesus himself spent time in solitude, in the wilderness, wrestling with his own role (Luke 4:1-13). If you’re in a season of doubt, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re lost.” Instead, “it may mean you’re being prepared for something.”

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/9506459

by Wanderjegson https://x.com/wanderjegson/status/2097764670383718409

Photo by Ken Whytock on Unsplash

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Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee for governor of Ohio, called trans girls "boys" and embraced sports bans as a matter of safety, sending Ohio's premier LGBTQ+ organization, Equality Ohio, flailing to find its next steps. The Human Rights Campaign released a list of dozens of candidates it endorsed, multiple of whom took anti-trans votes or made anti-trans statements before and after their endorsements. Meanwhile, local LGBTQ+ activists on the ground are fighting both their Democratic Party and their own LGBTQ+ organizations to hold these politicians accountable. One thing is certain: equality organizations were ill prepared for the advent of Democrats staking out anti-trans positions, and real fault lines are emerging in how they address them moving forward.

“I do not support boys playing in girls sports. This is already settled law in Ohio, and as governor I will enforce and uphold the law,” Acton said in a statement to the Toledo Blade after the Supreme Court decision allowing states to ban transgender girls from girls’ sports. “As a doctor, public servant, and a mom, I will always stand up for fairness and protect kids’ health and safety ... While my opponent tries to divide us, I’m laser-focused on issues that matter most to Ohioans: lowering costs, cracking down on corruption, and cutting taxes for working families.”

The statement took Ohio by storm. Local LGBTQ+ activists protested loudly, the state Democratic Party’s Progressive and Pride caucuses openly rebuked Acton, and many called on her to retract her words, which she has not done. Equality Ohio pulled her A rating and changed it to “Pending,” stating, “Comments like the ones recently made by Dr. Amy Acton in the Toledo Blade about transgender Ohioans are extremely harmful.... As a result, we have updated Dr. Acton’s status in our 2026 Candidate Scorecard from an ‘A’ to ‘Pending.’ This reflects our belief that accountability is still possible, and that the door remains open at this time. Should Dr. Acton choose to take meaningful steps forward, we will update the status accordingly.”

The state Democratic Party fought back. It forced the Progressive Caucus to remove its statement criticizing Acton and stonewalled the Pride Caucus. Acton then released a “pro-LGBTQ+” statement that conspicuously left out gender identity, and scheduled a meeting with transgender activists and LGBTQ+ leaders. She did not attend it, sending a campaign official in her place, and transgender leaders in the state were barred from entering. Now Equality Ohio itself has relented, giving Acton a “B,” a grade it defines as reflecting “insufficient record but supportive public statements.” She has still not retracted the statement.

Why Equality Orgs Are Struggling

Following Equality Ohio’s “B” designation for Amy Acton, EITM reached out to the organization to ask why Acton had been given such a high grade following her statements and lack of contrition. When asked how their B grade for Acton aligns with the grade’s requirement of “supportive public statements,” Dwayne Steward at Equality Ohio responded stating, “In the Equality Ohio Candidate Scorecard, a ‘B’ means ‘insufficient record but supportive public statements.’ The reduced score reflects our concern about support of trans Ohioans, alongside her broader record and positions, as stated above.” He then pointed to other statements Acton had made that the organization considers supportive, such as that she “will always stand up for Ohioans, including the LGBT community,” and that “as governor, she is committed to standing up to discrimination and ensuring all Ohioans receive equal protection under the law.” Neither statement mentions transgender people.

When asked if Equality Ohio requested Acton retract her statement calling trans girls “boys” and her support for a sports ban, Equality Ohio did not answer that portion of the question. And when asked about Acton barring the Pride Caucus vice chair from the call and failing to appear at her own meeting, Equality Ohio pointed elsewhere: “We recommend you speak to the Acton Campaign directly about any meetings their team conducted. Dr. Acton’s comments didn’t happen in a vacuum. They’re part of a broader pattern of politicians using trans people as a scapegoat, often based on data that’s simply false. These comments are harmful and a distraction from the issues most voters want addressed.”

The organization also conceded in a previous email that the meeting it had requested with Acton “has not happened yet,” and that it had “not been able to confirm meaningful engagement directly between their campaign and transgender communities.” The gap between the organization’s endorsement grade and Acton’s statements and actions appears to be very wide. Equality Ohio describes Acton’s conduct as harmful scapegoating built on data that is simply false, and then awards her a mark its scale reserves for candidates with supportive public statements.

The move incensed local transgender leaders, such as Ari Childrey, a transgender candidate running for the Ohio House, who stated in an interview with the Buckeye Flame, “This is a slap in the face to every candidate who actually respects our community – those who haven’t misgendered trans people or backed anti-trans policies… If you can misgender trans girls, support discrimination, and still get a ‘B,’ Equality Ohio is telling us transphobia isn’t a big deal, or they’re admitting their scorecard is completely meaningless.”

Equality Ohio is not the only organization struggling with Democratic pressure to endorse anti-trans candidates. The nation's largest LGBTQ+ rights organization, the Human Rights Campaign, posted a slate of candidate endorsements on June 24, 2026. Among them are Shomari Figures, who voted for Nancy Mace's amendments stripping gender-affirming care from transgender service members, retirees, and their families, one of only five Democrats to do so, and who cast that vote in July, three weeks after HRC endorsed him; Susie Lee and Tom Suozzi, who both voted for an amendment targeting trans people in sports, and who, in Suozzi's case, blamed transgender people for Kamala Harris's 2024 loss; and Sarah Trone Garriott, who is currently running an ad declaring that she opposes "letting men in women's locker rooms" and that "politicians have become too extreme on these issues." None of it was a barrier to their endorsement.

In an email asking HRC about the endorsements, they provided the following statement requesting it be published in full:

“HRC’s endorsements are made with the clear and overriding desire to win a pro-equality Congress so we can halt the assault on our community and push forward vital protections. History tells us that if we were to constrain ourselves to only endorsing candidates who never take a vote we oppose, we would likely never make progress.

Our theory of change is that we need to meet people where they are and move them towards support for our community. To that end, we do work with candidates and elected officials who have taken a vote contrary to HRC’s position — working to ensure they understand the impacts while moving them toward greater support of the LGBTQ+ community. This approach has helped pass bills like the Respect for Marriage Act and the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law as well as stopping dozens of legislative attacks since Trump returned to the White House. That only happened because there were members of Congress willing to learn and to stand up for transgender people in the face of political divisions and bigotry. This does not mean that every person we endorse has a perfect record, but they have demonstrated support for transgender people and equality more broadly.”

Is This The Right Approach?

HRC's statement is interesting in that it reveals a broader strategy choice by equality organizations in the face of what appears to be shifting ground in the Democratic Party. It is clear that some at these equality organizations believe granting these endorsements helps maintain a good relationship with the candidates and helps steer them in a positive direction when they take a bad vote or two, or make bad statements. But notably, the candidates named above have not recanted their anti-trans statements or their anti-trans votes. And in at least two cases, the endorsement came first. HRC endorsed Shomari Figures on June 24, and he voted for Mace's amendments in July. HRC endorsed Sarah Trone Garriott on June 24, and her locker room ad began airing in the first week of August. Clearly, the most powerful tool an LGBTQ+ rights organization has at its disposal, an endorsement, did not steer either of them.

Equality organizations exist to promote equality positions, and candidates that receive endorsements gain the prestige (and sometimes the resources) that are going out to these organizations meant to protect LGBTQ+ rights. As a result, supporters of these organizations now have to contend with the fact that some of their support is going towards helping elect candidates that call trans girls “boys” and actively vote for anti-trans policies. That may be a hard pill to swallow for the millions of trans Americans who are concerned about recession of their rights.

An alternate path does exist: putting significant pressure on Democrats who have embraced anti-trans positions not to do so, and withholding or withdrawing endorsements when they do. If equality organizations are not willing to do this, they risk having their goals co-opted and becoming merely another branch of the Democratic Party, rather than independent organizations willing to advocate for the rights of transgender people and to award their endorsements and grades only to those who meet the mark. It is the path many reproductive rights organizations have taken in refusing to endorse anti-abortion Democrats.

The Democratic Party and Democratic officials are under heavy pressure from paid consultants to adopt more anti-transgender positions and policies. Should Democrats embrace those policies and win, the wins will be presented as evidence that abandoning transgender people is what it takes to win elections, and the contagion will spread through the party. And right now there is nothing to stop it. A Democrat can take an anti-trans vote or make an anti-trans statement before an endorsement and receive it anyway, or after an endorsement and keep it. The blessing of the organizations built to defend LGBTQ+ people has become something a candidate can simply take for granted. What remains unknown is how far one would have to go to lose it. Meanwhile, transgender people will keep being cut out of the calculus in favor of candidates who throw them under the bus, with the endorsements of their own movement in hand.

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