This is the closest America’s come to election theft in my lifetime, and it goes unpunished — an invitation to do more and worse in this year’s elections.

Excerpt: I went digging to understand the origins of that claim and what I found is that Judge Oldham (and his colleague, Judge James Ho) are willing to totally misrepresent things for partisan gain. There is a very out of context quote saying that “mail-in ballots are not secure” but in context it’s making a wholly different argument (one against voter-suppressing voter ID laws) and all the supporting documentation directly cuts against Oldham’s completely fabricated claim that “voting by mail jeopardizes election integrity and democracy itself.”

There is nothing that supports that claim. Not the rulings Oldham cites (which actually suggest mail-in ballots are vital!) nor the actual data.

Trump, who rails against voting by mail, votes by mail again in Florida

For six months, James Patrick Lyons’ life was twirled upside-down, but the feds always knew they had no case. The prosecution is the punishment. It’s harassment. Why is this legal? Shouldn’t someone be arrested and/or disbarred?

Excerpt: “In today’s society, you know, everybody’s filming everything, everybody has a cell phone,” Glueck said. If an officer punches someone on camera, that can go viral in an instant; even a standard taser leaves puncture wounds. But “the glove is low optic, and it looks better on camera, and it looks better to those witnesses. With a glove, there are no burn marks or scars.”

This story is getting broad play, with every blog in my surf cycle linking to it, but it’s just another dumbshit Republican who thought Trump will only hurt other people, never me, never us.

And the headline is a lie: After his legal immigrant wife was arrested, jailed 16 days, only got out because he had $50,000 for bail, and now has to wear an ankle monitor, this 3-time Trump voter complains a lot, but never says that he won’t vote MAGA again.

Excerpt: The point of the research on scrutiny is you notice things when you pay attention. And in predominantly white countries, they pay attention to Black people especially “acting above their station.”

There’s nobody at Fox News who gives a damn about women’s sports, so lemme take a moment to say: I’ve seen big-time women’s basketball and hockey, and it’s always a lot of fun — like men’s sports, but with fewer assholes.

Even with all of Trump’s insanities and cruelties, it surprises me that he’d go after the lifeblood of a giant corporation. Bet it surprised Disney/ABC, too, especially after they’d paid him off.

Trump’s World Liberty Financial will be the first crypto business that’s legally a “bank.” I’m sure that regulatory clearance was earned fair and square, by being America’s most honest, stable, and trustworthy crypto business.

Excerpt: The plan has drawn backlash from critics, who raised concerns about conflicts of interest. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in a statement that “we have never seen financial conflicts or corruption of this magnitude.”

The Trump family’s crypto business exemplifies all of the sleaziest aspects of the president’s code of conduct, if we can call it that.

Excerpt: The president’s name was added to the building last year, but the judge ordered the letters taken down, finding that only Congress had the authority to change the institution’s name. The center removed Mr. Trump’s name in June but is appealing the ruling.

Me again: ① There’s no conclusive evidence that Trump’s name was removed as ordered; the building’s nameplate remains shrouded behind ginormous drapes. ② An ‘inscription’ would be vandalism. ③ “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump” is the opposite of what’s happened: Trump has dismantled and literally closed the facility. But mostly it’s ④: Has any human ever been more in love with themselves than Donald Trump ♥ Donald Trump?

Washington DC will soon be renamed Trump DC; the only question is whether it’ll be before the man’s death or after.

Excerpt: “So I said, ‘What is this?’ ‘Sir, this is our digital catapult system’”, Trump went on. “It sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is digital? And it’s very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out. And I said – and now they want to buy more aircraft carriers – I said, ‘What system are you going to be’– ‘Sir, we’re staying with digital.’ I said, ‘No you’re not. You[’re] going to goddamned steam, the digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it’s no good’.”

A Guardian review of Trump’s public remarks shows that he has retold that story, with variations, every year since 2017.

Me again: And now the US will spend billions of dollars ripping out superior technology and re-installing steam catapults.

Fuck off, Paramount — see if I ever buy another authorized Star Trek model kit.

Excerpt: “I’m not here to speak for our CEO.”

“I thought that was why you were here.”

Me again: The man asking the questions is Sullivan County (Utah) Commissioner Joe Carr. The guy sidestepping the questions, I don’t know or give a rip who he is.

Another excerpt: “I believe that Flock right now is one of the most hated, most corrupt companies in America, and quite frankly sir, I don’t think we can make America great again without hanging your CEO publicly for treason. Your company is an enemy of the American people.”

Me again: This was immediate critiqued as a threat, but it only sounds like an opinion to me. Pretty decent opinion, though. So rare when anyone in power expresses a decent opinion.

Excerpt: “Why is it always the poor people that are helping the poor people?”

Excerpt: In a legal filing this spring, the president’s lawyers sought to show Harvard’s “long, sordid history of antisemitism” by citing Judah Monis, a Jew hired as a professor of Hebrew some 300 years ago, who had to convert to Christianity to join the faculty. That injustice was in 1722, decades before the Declaration of Independence.

Excerpt: 1. Build cities around everyday life, 2. Design transport for everyone, 3. Preserve a sense of place, 4. Maintain manners in shared spaces.

At a work function a few years ago, I was walking across a parking lot with a co-worker who was way, way into cars, and an electric car went past us, its driver looking for a parking space. “What a pussy car,” the guy said. “You can’t even hear the engine.”

Anecdotal, sure, but you know that’s what damned near every carbrain thinks.

A public service announcement from me: Speed cameras are good, and not to be confused with Flock and the other shitty AI surveillance cameras. Flock is a total surrender of privacy for drivers all across America. Speed cameras are not — they’re not tracking your travels. Speed cams just sit there at an intersection, ready to penalize dangerous drivers. And dangerous drivers should be penalized.

The President of the United States calls lily-livered liberals ‘communists’, while being buddies with an actual communist dictator, and weakening the US’s links with its allies.

Excerpt: “In November of 2024, I traveled from outside of New York State to Manhattan. I then emailed UnitedHealthcare leadership posing as an investor at a firm managing over $50 billion in assets and requesting information about the conference,” he said.

“Unlike my previous interactions with insurers, I received an immediate response within an hour. Before traveling to New York, I used a 3-D printer to make part of a gun, and I equipped the gun with the silencer and magazine. My travel to New York and email to UnitedHealthcare was with the intent to shoot Brian Thompson.”

Mangione concluded: “On the morning of December 4, 2024, I shot Mr Thompson in Manhattan and he died. When I did so, I understood that my actions would place him in fear of death or serious bodily injury. I knew what I was doing was illegal.”

Me again: I would contribute whatever I can afford toward a Luigi statue in Manhattan, either at the scene of his heroism or somewhere in the heart of Wall Street.

Excerpt: Google enabled A.I. features for K-12 schools that have allowed student access to Gemini. Until this week, Google automatically enabled Gemini in Classroom only for students 18 or older.

Excerpt: If you set out to design from scratch a tool to facilitate authoritarian rule, it would look exactly like AI.

Excerpt: An expert witness testifying in a lawsuit about liability for a Houston explosion that killed three people and destroyed roughly 200 homes used ChatGPT to write significant portions of his “expert report.” The man, who was hired by the industrial product conglomerate 3M, exposed his AI prompts publicly. They showed that he asked ChatGPT to help him “create an exceptional expert witness report defending the standard of care at 3M,” and that the report should “show how 3M is 0% at fault for the explosion at Watson Grinding.”

“Accomplice to murder” is what this is.

Excerpt: Hite’s path to feminism was unusual. While enrolled on a PhD at Columbia University in New York, she worked as a model, sometimes doing fashion jobs, sometimes porn (which paid better), and was hired by Olivetti typewriters to appear in an advertisement. But, as Hite later recalled, when the advertisement was published, she found her image appeared beneath a sexist caption: ‘The typewriter is so smart that she doesn’t have to be.’

That prompted the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) to launch a protest. They marched through Manhattan with placards that proclaimed ‘Don’t Drown In The Olivetti Typing Pool’. Hite was overjoyed by the support. She contacted NOW and soon became involved in political campaigns and consciousness-raising groups (CR), the key tactic of women’s liberation.