As you’ll likely recall, in late 2023, Elon Musk told advertisers to “go fuck yourself” and “don’t advertise” in response to a question about advertisers feeling uncomfortable placing their brands next to the kind of content that Musk was promoting via the ExTwitter algorithm. But the full context of the quote is interesting in retrospect: […]
Palantir has never had a great reputation. Even before it teamed up with Trump to create a massive, abusable database of American residents’ information, it was working with forward-looking cop shops, that wanted similar massive, abusable databases of their own, even if those were limited to surveilling people in their own jurisdictions. The company is […]
Today we need to examine something that reveals the machinery of authoritarian propaganda with surgical precision: how a handful of violent incidents across a few city blocks in Los Angeles was transformed into a “crisis” justifying the deployment of federal troops against American citizens. And how easily that transformation succeeded. I write this from Los […]
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We’ve written a few times about the case of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University grad student who was one of the first people detained by ICE and told he was being kicked out of the country solely because Marco Rubio said he doesn’t belong here. No due process. No hearing. Just Rubio’s arbitrary say-so. A […]
We’ve noted many times that there are two major reasons the U.S. doesn’t have a functional privacy law for the modern internet era. One, we’re too corrupt and greedy to do the right thing, causing us to prioritize making money over literally everything else — including public safety. And two, the government long ago realized […]
While the Justin Baldoni legal fight with Blake Lively is still going on, one half of the dispute has been thrown in the dumpster… for now. If you’re not up on the case, here is the TL;DR version. Baldoni and Lively costarred in the movie It Ends With Us. Lively filed a claim of workplace […]
I already wrote about the GOP’s bloodthirsty desire to use the military on Americans. They manufactured a nonsense “crisis” by over-aggressively sending in ICE agents to grab people off the streets, leading to protests, which were focused on provoking protestors into violence, which would then be used to justify an even more violent crackdown. Given […]
The Trump administration on June 4, 2025, announced travel restrictions targeting 19 countries in Africa and Asia, including many of the world’s poorest nations. All travel is banned from 12 of these countries, with partial restrictions on travel from the rest. The presidential proclamation, entitled “Restricting the Entry of Foreign Nationals to Protect the United States from […]
On the latest episode of the always excellent “The Bugle” podcast, comedian Alice Fraser amusingly describes the horror of what’s happening in Los Angeles the following way: So let’s just clarify: this is arguably unlawful deployment of military force to enforce peace on peaceful protests over illegal arrests of illegal immigrants. Here’s what actually happening […]
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We’re just supposed to assume that the masked person brandishing a gun and ordering us to get into an unmarked vehicle is a federal agent, rather than a criminal. We’re just supposed to buy into this new, hideous version of immigration enforcement that utilizes military gear, long guns, and a complete lack of identification as […]
After spending election season whining that the program was taking too long, Republicans have been introducing massive new changes to a $42.5 billion infrastructure bill broadband grant program (BEAD) that not only don’t serve the public interest, but could also introduce years of potential new delays. Their changes are twofold: one, they want to strip […]
As RFK Jr. has presided over the decimation of the Health & Human Services department he runs, along with HHS’ child agencies, his anti-vaxxer stance has shown through. And, really, his appointment, confirmation, and subsequent actions should fully put to bed any question of the utility of congressional approval of cabinet positions. During those hearings, […]
U.S. consumer protection (or what’s left of it after several devastating Supreme Court rulings and Trump executive orders) is on life support. But one bright spot continues to be the “right to repair” movement, which is working to fight repair monopolies and make it cheaper and easier to repair the tech you own. Washington state […]
Support us on Patreon » Way, way back during the SOPA/PIPA fight, a very important part of the resistance against the bills was coming from infrastructure operators who explained how they were technically incoherent and dangerous. One prominent group was the Internet Infrastructure Coalition, co-founded by Christian Dawson. Today, with legislative amnesia setting in and new […]
Appeasing bullies never works. Not only does it reveal your willingness to abandon principles, but bullies will never be satisfied — they’ll always demand more. Columbia University is learning this lesson the hard way. The school quickly caved to Trump’s demands to crack down on pro-Palestinian protests and discipline faculty. Meanwhile, Harvard stood up and […]
The only laws the Trump Administration respects are the laws it gets to inflict on others. The rule of law, however, doesn’t mean the laws don’t apply to those who make the rules. And yet, here we are, seeing another flagrant refusal to comply with oversight laws just because the DHS and ICE feel they […]
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We’ve noted how Republicans are busy screwing up the infrastructure bill’s $42.5 billion BEAD broadband grant program. After performatively whining that the program wasn’t moving quickly enough for their liking during the election season, the GOP announced it would be significantly slowing fund dispersal just to make life harder on poor people and to throw […]
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