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What a difference a near-decade makes. Back in 2017, the main concerns raised by New York City’s Civilian Complaint Review Board was that officers were routinely violating the right to record police officers.
Sure, there wasn’t nearly as much precedent to rely on then (and we’re still waiting for the Supreme Court to make this right definitive), but it seemed pretty clear no one should be...
Remember when you thought age verification laws couldn’t get any worse? Well, lawmakers in Wisconsin, Michigan, and beyond are about to blow you away.
It’s unfortunately no longer enough to force websites to check your government-issued ID before you can access certain content, because politicians have now discovered that people are using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to protect their privacy...
Twenty years ago, John Jonik released one of the best political cartoons ever regarding attempts to censor and control the internet. In it, a character dressed up as Uncle Sam is placing a gift box labeled “Control of Internet Speech” on a counter. Behind it, a man dressed in a suit, labeled “Corporate Media” is asking Uncle Sam “How would you like this wrapped?”
Behind him are two rolls of...
Become a language expert with a Babbel Language Learning subscription. With the app, you can use Babbel on desktop and mobile, and your progress is synchronized across devices. Want to practice where you won’t have Wi-Fi? Download lessons before you head out, and you’ll be good to go. However you choose to access your 10K+ hours of online language education, you’ll be able to choose from 14...
The Trump administration just lies and lies and lies. Those in charge assume they can just bluster their way past the system of checks and balances. For everything else, there’s AI generated memes depicting Trump taking a shit on the people he serves. Win-win, I guess.
But things haven’t exactly been running smoothly for Trump’s mass deportation program — one that seems to run entirely on his...
Hoping to repay corporate America’s feckless support of authoritarianism, the Trump administration is once again attempting to illegally ban all state and federal oversight of corporate power. Both via executive order, and by withholding already awarded grants from states that refuse to play along.
The Trump administration has already done generational damage to federal consumer protection and...
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is MrWilson with a comment about how fascism is happening live on TV:
Trump’s supporters, like Trump himself, if being honest (ha!) will reply, “I don’t care, I want this to happen.”
They’ve never cared about the Constitution except as a weapon to be used against others and as a get-out-of-responsibility free card to use when someone calls...
Five Years Ago
This week in 2020, Portland, Maine passed a facial recognition ban that said the city can fire employees who violate it, which might have been useful in Seattle where a police detective took Clearview for a spin and possibly violated local laws. The FBI pulled another one of its manufacture-a-terrorist schemes, and was elsewhere seeking to perform an intrusive search of a phone for...
In all of our conversations surrounding RFK Jr.’s appointment to lead HHS and the legitimization of his anti-vaxxer beliefs as a result, we have understandably been hyper-focused on measles. The reason for that is mostly that this is as stark an example of just how stupid and horrible anti-vaccination misinformation is combined with the horror that is measles infections. This disease was...
Until very recently the only member of Congress excused from not having moved to impeach Trump was Rep. Grijalva, because until someone swore her in there was nothing she could officially do. But for everyone else already sworn into this 119th Congress, there was no excuse. There is no excuse. The refusal to act, to even start to pound the drum on impeachment, is an abdication of their own...