I wonder whether Spielberg is considering making a sequel to "Schindler's List", but this time focusing on a person who is helping Palestinians escape Israeli terror?
(A significant part of my extended family vanished - and we can guess where - in Germany and Poland in the period 1939-1945.)
"Israeli settlers burn olive trees, injure journalist in West Bank attack"
Quick reminder - der letzte Tesla für 10-Jährige gilt heute als "biggest flop in automotive history". https://futurism.com/advanced-transport/cybertruck-biggest-flop-automotive-history
This is a big deal.
Of course the United States owns the work product of its president.
Were this claim to succeed one might wonder who gets title to "the ballroom" and "the arch"?
"Do Americans own the president's papers? Appeals court to weigh in"
https://www.npr.org/2026/10/16/nx-s1-5996836/trump-who-owns-presidential-records-act-appeals-court
One does not collaborate with an AI tool. One uses the tool. If there is a collaboration, it is with those who trained it, including the authors of its training data.
Did Space-X's Starlink just commit slow-suicide?
By demonstrating that its service is in the hands of self-absorbed, knee-jerk, children, such as Musk and trump, how can any potential customer of Starlink have trust that the service will work when they need it to work?
Alternatives to Starlink are slowly coming online - and I suspect that many who might have considered Starlink will chose to use those new services, instead.
Washington Post photographer is brutally attacked by Israeli settlers engaged in a pogrom. (My ancestors would be appalled.) www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/1...
Israeli settlers attack Palest...
2/N There are plenty of exclusions in the Privacy Act of 1974, mostly having to do with law enforcement and national security. But there is certainly an open question whether the DHS/DOJ database on that USB stick is being used for such a purpose.
It is easy for an individual to file a Privacy Act claim - it only takes a letter.
However, agencies like to try to avoid the rather strict requirements of the Privacy Act with the less stringent obligations of the Freedom of Information Act - The PA is 5 USC 552a and FOIA is 5 USC 552 - that little 'a' at the end makes a world of difference.
I am considering making a Privacy Act claim about that USB-stick database. If I do I will post my letter.
If any of you do pursue Privacy Act, and I hope you do, make sure that you call out in huge letters that you are making a Privacy Act claim - 5 USC 552a - and *NOT* a FOIA request, 5 USC 552.
1/N So the DOJ is suing California because Calif. refuses to look at the a USB drive with names of people they are accusing of maybe, perhaps voting in the future without credentials.
OK, let's dig deeper ... There is the Privacy Act of 1974 that regulates "systems of records" that contain personally identifiable information. There is no doubt that this USB drive fits within that definition.
The Privacy Act does require that the existence and other aspects of each such system of records to be published into the Federal Register.
There is no evidence that the database on the USB drive has ever been published on the Federal Register.
The privacy act gives every person in the US the individual power to enforce the privacy act, and there are short time limits and criminal penalties that can befall government people who fail to properly respond.
To be continued...
@arclight
AWK is a powerful and surprisingly underappreciated tool for this kind of thing. Also it's already available everywhere, and has stayed compatible across decades. We don't always need to reinvent the wheel.
OK, this is as weird as the time a person near here had lost a pregnant ostrich ...
"Loose emu runs in and out of traffic in Santa Cruz County, CHP says"
https://www.ksbw.com/article/loose-emu-runs-santa-cruz-county-california/74138490
Every Washington journalist knew damn well that Trump’s vandalism claim was lunacy, and that the arrests were a travesty. presswatchers.org/2026/08/the-... 3/3
The Reflecting Pool story is a...
Monarchs are heading southward to their winter home and the fruit pods of Milkweed plants, whose blooms sustained them during summer days, have split open in the autumn air, allowing the white, fluffy comas to parachute their seeds to new ground.
#WildflowerWednesday #bloomscrollling #seeds #fluff #autumn #AutumnBeauty #October #nature #NaturePhotography #SolaceInNature
This one took a second for me to get, but then I laughed my head off. The whole world is waiting for this one.
I'm not sure, but my noggin and un-researched historical memory suggest to me that the US has lost more wars in the only quarter-finished 21st century than in more than in the two+ prior centuries.
And in the past 22 months that loss rate has certainly increased - to effectively 100% loss.
Good thing the US isn't attempting to defend itself against the Duchy of Grand Fenwick.
(Of course you remember that Peter Sellers film, The Mouse That Roared. You don't?)
When I think of how the trump/maga movement depends so much on ignoring law I am reminded of the concept of "outlaw" and wonder whether in this case it ought to be revived.
From Wikipedia:
"An outlaw, in its original and legal meaning, is a person declared as outside the protection of the law. In pre-modern societies, all legal protection was withdrawn from the criminal, so anyone was legally empowered to persecute or kill them."
Color me confused - I thought the old Ford tank factory was part of Rosie The Riveter National Park?
(What! You never heard of Rosie the Riveter National Park? It is well worth a visit - it is on the site where Henry Kaiser et al built Liberty Ships - in as short as five days time.)
I am firmly in the camp that says that AI's can cause enormous damage.
(I don't doubt that AI tools can be useful. Rather this is a thought about harms. Much as a surgical scalpel has many good uses, a scalpel can also cause great harm.)
Consider how an utterly low-to-non intelligence did such damage to our world: the Covid virus. It's level of creativity was merely the prime diredctive of evolution: survival long enough to reproduce - yet it seriously gut-punched humanity.
"Inside Trump’s Plan to Fence Off a Historic Protest Site
The president’s proposal to enclose a park in Washington could alter how the space has been used for generations."
A cop tried to shame this hero for slashing ICE's tires, the crowd goes wild...
Ahhh the local/fed partnership proving why ACAB starts with "ALL"
Time to bring back the classics I guess.