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Rümeysa Öztürk:

I was looking forward to taking a short walk and catching up with friends at the interfaith center, when I was suddenly surrounded and grabbed by a swarm of masked individuals, who handcuffed me and shoved me into an unmarked car.

Suddenly, I was thrust into a nightmare. Thousands of questions crept up in the hours that passed. It felt like an eternity as my shackled body was jostled from one location to another. Who were these people? Had I been a good enough person if today was my final day? I was relieved to have finished filing my taxes, but I couldn't shake the thought of a book I needed to return to the library.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Caitlín Doherty:

I went to Dubai wrongheaded. I learnt nothing and left nauseated. I had thought it would be fun -- funny, even -- to experience the disorientation of standing at the pivot point between two world systems. Instead, it was merely disorientating -- sickeningly so. There are hells on earth and Dubai is one: an infernal creation born of the worst of human tendencies. Its hellishness cannot be laid solely at the feet of the oligarchs, whose wealth it attracts, nor the violent organised criminals who relocate there to avoid prosecution. It is hellish because, as the self-appointed showtown of free trade, it provides normal people with the chance to buy the purest form of the most heinous commodity: the exploitation of others. If you want to know how it feels to have slaves, in the modern world -- and not be blamed openly for this desire -- visit Dubai. But know that you will not be blameless for doing so. Every Instagram post, every TikTok video, every gloating WhatsApp message sent from its luxury is an abomination. A PR campaign run by those who have already bought the product, and now want only to show you that they can afford it. [...]

If you try to humanise the place you will lose your mind. If you ask yourself what the woman at the hair-braiding stand left behind to be here, and why, you will lose your mind. If you accept the kindness of the staff with whom you make a paltry effort to speak each morning as they clear your dirty breakfast plate, you will lose your mind, because your tip is the only kindness you can meaningfully offer in return. Trying to attend to your own towel by the pool might cause the man who stands for hours in the ferocious sun to do so for you to lose his job. Being served makes us cruel infants. It demeans us all.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Elon Musk's Neuralink filed as 'disadvantaged business' before being valued at $9 billion:

Elon Musk's health tech company Neuralink labeled itself a "small disadvantaged business" in a federal filing with the U.S. Small Business Administration, shortly before a financing round valued the company at $9 billion. [..] Neuralink's filing, dated April 24, would have reached the SBA at a time when Musk was leading the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency. [...]

According to the SBA's website, a designation of SDB means a company is at least 51% owned and controlled by one or more "disadvantaged" persons who must be "socially disadvantaged and economically disadvantaged." An SDB designation can also help a business "gain preferential access to federal procurement opportunities," the SBA website says. [...]

Jared Birchall, a Neuralink executive, was listed as the contact person on the filing from April. Birchall, who also manages Musk's money as head of his family office, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Previously, previously, previously, previously.

These photos are from the future. A future somewhere between Don Davis and Simon Stålenhag.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Law and Order ICE: "In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups. The secret police who throw suspects into unmarked vans, and the secret attorneys who deport them to third world concentration camps. These are their stories."

ICE Lawyers Are Hiding Their Names in Immigration Court:

"I've never heard of someone in open court not being identified," said Elissa Steglich, a law professor and co-director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas at Austin. "Part of the court's ethical obligation is transparency, including clear identification of the parties. Not identifying an attorney for the government means if there are unethical or professional concerns regarding [the Department of Homeland Security], the individual cannot be held accountable. And it makes the judge appear partial to the government."

"Part of the court's ethical obligation is transparency, including clear identification of the parties." [...]

When Judge ShaSha Xu omitted the ICE lawyer's name, Attorney Jeffrey Okun asked her to identify who was arguing to deport his client. She refused.

Xu attributed the change to "privacy" because "things lately have changed." Xu told Okun that he could use Webex's direct messaging function to send the ICE lawyer his email, and the ICE lawyer would probably respond with her own name and address. [...]

The government's mystery attorney, who was prosecuting both Okun's and Gonzalez-Venegas's clients, wore glasses and a navy blue suit; her hair was pulled back primly from her face. She spoke quietly, with a tinge of vocal fry. Her name, according to Gonzalez Venegas, was Cosette Shachnow.

Shachnow, 33, began working for ICE in 2021, shortly after she graduated from law school, according to public records and her LinkedIn account. The latter lists "Civil Rights and Social Action" among her "favored causes."

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Bald Baby J.D. Vance Meme Can Now Be Your Boarding Pass:

James Steinberg has designed an app that allows you to change the background your digital airplane boarding pass to display a now-infamous image of the vice president as a bald, bearded baby-man. [...]

He says there was no issue at security. "The TSA tried not to show emotion but looked mildly amused," Steinberg says. "Maybe I should try in a less liberal airport."

As someone who, regrettably, has a lot of experience with Apple Wallet, I was curious how he's altering the picture, since pkpass files are signed. He's not! He's taking your info and issuing a new pkpass with the same content.

One of the cool features of pkpass is that they receive push updates, so that, for example, if the time of the event / flight changes, your pass can be updated remotely and notify you. Bald Boarding almost certainly breaks that connection.

Previously.

Just a little fuzz testing for them. Absolutely free of charge.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

DHS is urging local police to consider a wide range of protest activity as violent tactics, including mundane acts like riding a bike or livestreaming a police encounter:

Blaming intense media coverage and backlash to the US military deployment in Los Angeles, DHS expects the demonstrations to "continue and grow across the nation" as protesters focused on other issues shift to immigration, following a broad "embracement of anti-ICE messaging."

Don't threaten me with a good time.

The guidance urges officers to consider a range of nonviolent behavior and common protest gear -- like masks, flashlights, and cameras -- as potential precursors to violence [...] Protesters on bicycles, skateboards, or even "on foot" are framed as potential "scouts" conducting reconnaissance or searching for "items to be used as weapons." Livestreaming is listed alongside "doxxing" as a "tactic" for "threatening" police. Online posters are cast as ideological recruiters -- or as participants in "surveillance sharing."

One list of "violent tactics" shared by the Los Angeles -- based Joint Regional Intelligence Center -- part of a post-9/11 fusion network -- includes both protesters' attempts to avoid identification and efforts to identify police.

That can't be correct. Skateboarding, I have been reliably informed, is not a crime.

In advance of protests, agencies increasingly rely on intelligence forecasting to identify groups seen as ideologically subversive or tactically unpredictable. Demonstrators labeled "transgressive" may be monitored, detained without charges, or met with force.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

In xscreensaver-settings, any time I select a different item in the list, I get a crash with:

GLib: g_ptr_array_unref: assertion 'array' failed

This assertion fires late, with none of my code on the stack, so I have no idea what it is complaining about; and valgrind provides no clues. It started happening recently, but happens against releases as far back as XScreenSaver 6.05, so something about GTK changed, not my code. Commenting out every call to g*_free does not make it go away. Happens under X11 or Wayland.

I have no patience for dealing with GTK, so I would be very appreciative if someone else would figure this out...

Update: I am seeing this consistently on GTK 3.24.38-2 on Raspbian 12.11, but a few people have told me that they can't reproduce it. So that's even weirder.

Previously.

Jack Dorsey says his 'secure' new Bitchat app has not been tested for security.

Security researcher Alex Radocea found that it's possible to impersonate someone else and trick a person's contacts into thinking they are talking to the legitimate contact. [...]

"Security is a great feature to have for going viral. But a basic sanity check, like, do the identity keys actually do any cryptography, would be a very obvious thing to test when building something like this." [...]

Referring to his and other people's findings, Radocea criticized Dorsey's warning that Bitchat has not been tested for security.

"I'd argue it has received external security review, and it's not looking good," he said.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.