When you read this and watch the video, remember that Stanford is basically Silicon Valley Techbro Training Academy. And even there, it would appear the kids are all right.

https://www.businesstoday.in/trending/world/story/free-free-palestine-over-100-students-walkout-as-sundar-pichai-delivers-keynote-address-at-stanford-536829-2026-06-15

Via @timnitGebru

Trump’s White House UFC Event Features False Michelle Obama Smear https://newsfactsnetwork.com/trump/trumps-white-house-ufc-event-features-false-michelle-obama-smear/

New in PN: The US under Trump is a global scourge

"Authoritarians disregard the voices and needs of their own people, but they are even less constrained when they deal with people that are not their own. If you want to see what Trump would like to do at home, you have only to look to the misery he has unleashed in Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and Africa. It’s a bleak and terrifying picture."

https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-global-pariah

"Vance got to the point. They needed to invoke the Insurrection Act, swiftly, to crush the unrest in Minnesota. It would be painful in the short term, he said, but the message it would send — that paid agitators could not get away with disrupting ICE operations — would make sure no one tried it again. (There was no evidence that either Mr. Pretti or Ms. Good had been paid activists.)"

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/15/us/politics/trump-scharf-habeas-corpus-insurrection-act.html

TRUMP SURRENDERS TO IRAN

Iran says respecting Lebanon's sovereignty is part of the interim agreement with the United States.

Israel vows not to leave Lebanon

Iranian state media claims US agreed to present $300,000,000,000 reconstruction plans for Iran.

US to release $12,000,000,000 in frozen assets to Iran.
#AureFreePress #News #press #wariniran

TRUMP SHIT SHOW

Israel says it will not withdraw from Lebanon.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is trying to arrange in-person meeting with Trump to discuss Iran deal.
#AureFreePress #News #press #wariniran

Video shows a U.S. Marine Corps F/A-18 Hornet crashing into a hillside near Rimrock Lake, Washington, on Saturday.
#AureFreePress #News #press

I've got a dusty old Windows 11 system running in a virtual machine, and when I booted it up the other day I was met not with MS's usual login prompt but instead w/ a BitLocker recovery blue screen.

Then I remembered the cause (when all else fails, check your own site doh!): As we warned in January 2026, Microsoft is expiring a bunch of older Windows Secure Boot certificates in June 2026 and October 2026. Once these 2011 certificates expire, Windows devices that do not have the new certificates can no longer receive Secure Boot security fixes.

Fortunately in this case I was able to recover the Win11 system and update the certificates by pasting the supplied recovery key at aka.ms/myrecoverykey. But I suspect things can get far more complicated for organizations having to deal with this on a large number of machines.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/01/patch-tuesday-january-2026-edition/

Since Trump is putting his name on everything in Washington, I hereby christen this algal disaster at the Reflecting Pool "Trump's Swamp."
Though we the taxpayers paid for it.

The Reflecting Poo It’s Monday. There are 141 days until the midterm elections. Happy for Gotham, a disgraceful night at 1600 and Trump surrenders to Iran. Again.

The Reflecting Poo

You have to give Trump credit: He promised no Iran deal without complete capitulation. He delivered. He just failed to mention he meant *our* capitulation.

Barak Ravid: "One of the things Trump told me is that he thinks Netanyahu has 'no f**king judgement.' He used the F-word I think three times during our call in the context of what Netanyahu did when he ordered the strike in Beirut."

Trump’s MMA Extravaganza Was The Ultimate Symbol Of Our Dark American Moment

Like so many moments in the second Trump administration, the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s “Freedom 250” event on Sunday night began...

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-mma-ufc-freedom-250

Ukraine is officially starting European Union membership negotiations, launching a long process that will require government reforms while the country is fighting off Russian aggression. Ukraine views admission to the EU as an especially important “security guarantee,” as U.S. President Donald Trump has ruled out the country’s admission to NATO. Read more from @AssociatedPress

https://flip.it/bzx4jR

#Ukraine #EU #NATO

"Genocidal threats are in themselves a form of terror aimed at civilians. And while Trump has thankfully not dropped nukes, has continued to attack non-military targets. Last week, for example, he reportedly ordered strikes on Iranian water facilities, attacks that likely constitute a war crime."

https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-global-pariah

Bitcoin has lost nearly half its value since reaching a record high above $123,000 in July 2025, CNBC writes. Funny how so many of the people hyping AI once hyped virtual currencies. Kind of makes you wonder about the odds on the massive all-in and circular bets being placed on AI.

"After years of bitcoin rewarding those who held through periods of volatility, the selloff is just the latest test of investors' mettle."

"But bitcoin's recent decline doesn't appear to reflect a fundamental change in the investment, says Daniel Sotiroff, associate director of ETF and Passive Strategies Research at Morningstar.

"I think a lot of this is crypto being crypto," he says.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/12/bitcoins-price-drop-is-forcing-investors-to-revisit-why-they-own-it.html

Yeah, that's just the way the crypto crumbles, dude.

#sadtrombone

2/ LLMs. I should have added the term LLMs because they are the chatbots, the genAI, the horrible brain-rotting trash the gigantic, environment-destroying, data centers are for.

“Iranian negotiators will now travel to Doha to try to work out some of the shaky implementation aspects of the deal before a signing ceremony on Friday in Geneva – the city US negotiators left on 28 February, the day the war began, when a far superior nuclear offer to now was being offered by the Iranians.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/15/analysis-us-iran-peace-deal-shipping-sanctions-relief-nuclear-talks-ballistic-missiles

Over the weekend, I did an interview about my forthcoming book *The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI* (a book about being a better AI critic), and the interviewer said she was surprised that I wasn't an AI booster, based on my demographics and work history:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/15/vernacular/#hypercardian

1/

Unfortunately, this fight to protect our civil liberties isn’t over. Email your Members of Congress and demand they don’t vote to reauthorize FISA without major reforms like closing the loopholes that allow warrantless mass surveillance and the purchasing of private data: https://act.indivisible.org/sign/tell-congress-say-no-warrantless-ai-mass-surveillance/?source=mastodon