Excerpt: More than two-million people in the U.S. who take prescription drugs bought them from outside the country to save money, according to a 2020 study published in JAMA Network Open, some of the most recent research available on the topic. …

These patients are racing to stock up on medications before late October, when a rule goes into effect requiring medications mailed from abroad to go through a customs process requiring a licensed customs broker and a financial guarantee—a bar few individual mail-order prescriptions have ever had to clear.

Excerpt: At one point, the processor rejected as fraudulent more than 80% of the deposits it was handling, a rate that far exceeded industry standards of roughly 1%. Polymarket employees quickly raised their concerns with Chief Executive Shayne Coplan, according to people familiar with the events.

The compliance team, those people recalled, was floored by Coplan’s response: Just keep growing and pay a fine if regulators ever find out.

Anyone who knows anything about advertising knows that subtleties of design are never an accident. It is simply not possible that in designing, approving, photographing, and publishing this image, nobody involved was aware of the obvious lynching and KKK imagery. It ain’t even subtle.

Only in a shit-hole country could this even be conceivable.

Are we sure he was talking about Iran?

He srsly thinks illegally banning CNN from the White House means they can’t cover him any more.

Excerpt: A federal judge has temporarily blocked tactics used by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to conduct warrantless immigration raids on construction sites in southern Alabama in response to a lawsuit filed by a Latino construction worker who has been detained three times, despite being a U.S. citizen.

I look forward to learning that the agent wasn’t wearing a bodycam, or didn’t have it switched on, or that the video footage can’t be released because blah blah blah. And then…

ICE officer who shot man in Austin had been issued a body cam but wasn’t wearing it

DoorDash driver shot by ICE in Austin has a bullet lodged in his back and was denied medical care

Excerpt: The Trump administration has deported over 23,000 people over the last year and a half to countries they have no relationship with, where they may not speak the language, and where they generally have no legal status. Sometimes, it deports people to conflict zones or countries where they are likely to face persecution or even torture.

Excerpt: A Venezuelan man shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer and taken to a detention center in Texas with a bullet still lodged in his back was back in the hospital by Monday night, the man’s attorney said.

Me again: I share this not because of the news, but because of the coverage. It’s true, I suppose, that Wilber Rafael Garces Perez is a Venezuelan man, but much more pertinent to AP’s readership, he’s a Texan. As in, A Texas man shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer and taken to a detention center in Texas with a bullet still lodged in his back was back in the hospital by Monday night, the man’s attorney said.

Pretty thorough telling of the tale.

Excerpt: Workers renovated Mr. Trump’s three theater boxes in the center, installing gold plumbing fixtures and tearing up newly laid tile whose color was not to the liking of the White House. In one email, a Kennedy Center staff member, Lisa Dale, alerted colleagues to Mr. Trump’s demand for a certain type of tree on campus: “Our Chairman loves maple trees and is insisting we plant maple trees from a very specific Grove by a very specific gardener. 🙂 I actually love this about him!”

Thinks that make you go, hmmm. Or maybe I’ve seen too many ‘insurance fraud’ episodes of Mannix.

Fuck Gavin Newsom. Fuck Rob Bonta. Fuck the Democratic Party.

So, Minnesota, your choice between two Republicans.

It would be excellent, awesome, and amazing if the Democratic Party had the courage and principles to simply announce that John Fetterman is no longer a Democrat. Refuse him entry to caucus meetings. Stop taking his calls.

That’s the minimum an opposition party would do, so the Democrats won’t.

There is probably no recovery from the damage he’s already done, but clearly no limit to the damage he could still do. If he’s not removed from office, and quite likely even if he is, Trump will continue getting insaner and insaner.

The Trump regime has no respect for the rule of law, certainly including international law, so there’s a greater than zero chance that Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian will be assassinated or abducted while he’s in New York.

Excerpt: Any entity-wide sanctions imposed by the US Treasury would prohibit US citizens and companies from providing funds, goods or services ‌to the ‌court without a licence from the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Banks often over-comply with such US sanctions because ‌they depend on access to the American financial system.

Me again: Not that the ICC is particularly great at pursuing international justice, but I’m a fan of trying, and they’re the only institution that even half-ass tries.

The ICC, the UN, and every person and organization outside America needs to stop doing business with American banks and in American dollars. I have nearly no notion how difficult that would be, but there’s gotta be an alternative to remaining at the mercy of America’s bonkers leadership.

Each of these murders at sea are exactly that, murders. Trump, Hegseth, and all the officers issuing such illegal orders, and all the enlisted men following officers’ illegal orders must be prosecuted. And won’t be.

‘Space must be free of weapons’: noted pacifist nations Russia & China slam US for ‘preparing for war in space’

Vought knows diddlysquat about health or science, and the White House has no legal power over NIH grants.

A rally is nice, but what’s needed is a 24/7 vigil with lots of folks on a phone blast for when the wrecking ball approaches.

Excerpt: “We have asked OpenAI to disclose these chats. They have refused. We should all be asking them: Why?”

Excerpt: Here is the question nobody is asking clearly enough: should a handful of select, market-dominant AI companies from Silicon Valley get to define the rules and safety standards of a generational technology for the entire world? All while simultaneously determining how fast this technology progresses? We have tried that before with very poor results. Once again using fear under the pretext of protecting the public, these oligopolies are now requesting to bend competition rules and be permitted to dictate the terms for everyone else. A wolf in sheep’s clothing, a cartel by any other name.

Excerpt: Beauregard said Solomon will automatically lose his taxpayer-funded city pension, where he had already collected $1-million in benefits since his 2021 retirement.

This sounds so fabulous! Just as a super-shy introverted guy, all I want is to blend into a crowd — I can’t imagine but sure have empathy for women who are always, always being stared at and hit on or worse, in any and every public setting.