Reading

The FBI trawled NSA records without a warrant to investigate a man suspected of trying to join a terror group, prosecutors admit.

The post FBI’s Warrantless Search Ruled Unconstitutional in a Blow to Government Spying appeared first on The Intercept.

Trump’s TikTok repeal may be short-lived relief for free speech advocates, as potential buyers like Meta and Elon Musk raise concerns about even more censorship on the platform.

The post TikTok’s Future: New Owners, Even More Censorship appeared first on MintPress News.

As Damascus shifts allegiance to the West, Syria’s new HTS-backed leadership faces hurdles in gaining legitimacy under Trump’s administration.

The post Syria’s New Pro-Western Government Struggles for Recognition in Trump’s Washington appeared first on MintPress News.

Here's a look at what you need to know about Doctor Who Season 2 writers Juno Dawson, Inua Ellams, Pete McTighe, and Sharma Angel-Walfall.

Campaigners claim to be turning his own tweets "into a weapon against the far right"

In one picture is a pile of lifeless bodies. A group of inmates who are still alive — known as the Sonderkommandos — are being forced to chuck the dead into a fire pit, hidden by a huge cloud of smoke. Another picture shows a group of women, naked, moments before their execution in a […]

SURVEILLANCE REPORT #4891

SUBJECT: American Social Media Behavioral Analysis
DATE: 01/22/2025
AGENT: Chen Wei

I continue to monitor American social media trends on TikTok to identify opportunities for ideological influence and assess potential threats to collectivist ideals. Below are my findings on key creators of interest.

@corporatebestie

A twenty-eight-year-old marketing coordinator living in a major metropolitan area, simultaneously critiquing and participating in late-stage capitalism. Her content primarily revolves around “day in the life” videos and career advice.

January 27, 2025 Heterogenius Why and How to Stop Dividing People into Us and Them By Alfie Kohn How can we use each other’s differences in our common battles for a livable future? – Audre Lorde Even as a child I was puzzled by people who wanted to hang out only with those who were very much like themselves. I ... Read More

So, a Chinese financial firm (not even a software or computer company) has put out an open source AI model which is 50 times more efficient than Chat-GPT or any other American AI. It’s so simple you can run it on some phones, it doesn’t have to call home.

The sound you hear is Sam Altman screaming at the Devil as he realizes he sold his soul to become the world’s richest man, and it ain’t gonna happen.

(Faintly, in the background, the devil laughing his ass off.)

Absolutely hilarious. Oh, and they did it with a tiny team for hardly any money. Didn’t take billions. Doesn’t require massive amounts of energy.

And that whole open source thing matters: everyone else can build off their model. Deepseek, being Chinese, has some censorship in it (type Xi Jingping’s name to see it in action), but you can build your own without the censorship.

Hear echoes of the Victorian age, captured in some of the world’s first audio recordings, in this video essay on the phonograph

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

As a psychoanalyst, I’ve seen how reflecting on the emotional symbolism of hair loss can be therapeutic for many men

- by Tom Wooldridge

Read at Psyche

The case of Mexico shows that, despite a proliferating discourse that it is over, neoliberalism is as relentless as ever

- by Inés Escobar González

Read at Aeon

The world's richest man is amplifying a series of often extreme Alt Right voices bent on radically reshaping our politics

This blog post is a long time in gestation and I could have written in 2009 which is the relevant year of the events that I will document in this two-part series. My conversations with government officials during my working trip to the Philippines last week highlighted several things, including their sheer terror of IMF…

You’ll be fine Progressives are allowed to have their advocates too. I’m very sorry if that offends the right wingers who are supported by just about every business on the planet (and believe me they are losing their shit over this ad) but that’s how it is.

The Australian parliament has legislated what’s commonly described as as “social media ban” for people under 16. More precisely, it will require selected social media platforms to implement (unspecified) age verification technology for people wishing to create accounts. This measure was rushed through at the end of last year, at the expense of proposed legislation […]

Was there ever any doubt? From Leigh Ann Caldwell at Puck: Last weekend, before his inauguration, Trump floated in conversations the notion of redirecting funds from the $370 billion Inflation Reduction Act, the massive infrastructure bill with a hilariously disingenuous name, to projects he wants to underwrite. The idea also came up earlier this week when he met with Republican congressional leaders, according to a person who received a rundown of the meeting. Rep. Sam Graves, the new chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, told me that’s not an immediate priority, but will happen “later in the year.” Graves said it would be part of the Surface Transportation Reauthorization bill, which funds highways and, well, surface transportation projects, which will begin to come into focus in the second half of the year. Or, Trump could ignore the Impoundment Act, the law that requires the administration to spend money on what Congress legislated, as his allies have suggested for a host of issues. Someone needs to ask Russ Vought what he plans to do on this. I don’t think it was in any of their plans to be spending money on this stuff.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon