40 Years In The Desert

Linkage

2026-06-10T05:56:00.000-04:00

DC Library holds taking forever? You're not alone. (51st News) Baker & Taylor, the largest book distributor to libraries in the United States, has gone bankrupt.
Institutional Rot And The Death Rattle Of America (Off Message) Money quote, "Republican politics has become like Jackass, where degeneracy is a contest, and they applaud one another for new innovations in the field. They revel in vice. They go to the cameras, compete to tell the most outlandish lies, then pat each other on the back like players celebrating in the dugout."
No one wants a permanent gerontocracy (Cory Doctorow) The URL reads, "It's not OK, Boomer." :Public office should not be elder care.
Real-life Snuffleupagus found swimming in the Great Barrier Reef (Popular Science) The similarity is striking.
CEO Receives Violent Threats After Kicking Off AI Layoffs (Futurism) Afflicting the comfortable is a good thing.
Crypto Security Pioneer: 'I Now Consider All of DeFi Unsafe’ (Gizmodo) DeFi = decentralized finance, i.e. crypto and its bastard children. There is a reason that it took over 1,000 years for our financial system to mature. This is not easy stuff.
Inference Is Unlikely to Ever Be a Low Marginal Cost Operational Node (Brad Delong) By, "Inference," Delong means large language model AI.
github and the crime against software (Efron Licht) A good summary of the enshittification of Github as a result of Microsoft's neglect and efforts to add AI to everything.
Elephant declines could trigger wider ecosystem losses in African savannas, 15-year test shows (Phys.org) much like beavers, they are a cornerstone to the ecologies of the areas where they live.
If It Walks Like a Bubble and Quacks Like a Bubble, Then It’s Probably a Bubble (Barron's) On SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. I think that they are wrong. This is not a bubble, it is a bezzle, a yet unrecognized fraud.
Free, Easy, Dead: The Difficult Birth And Predictable Death Of IRS Direct File (Defector) A good program that helped people, but the people that it helped did not have lobbyists.

Trump goes to game 3 of the NBA finals, gets booed:

Primaries Tonight

2026-06-09T23:22:00.000-04:00

The quick summary is tonight's results is notwithstanding the best efforts of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) and the New York Times, Graham Platner is now the official party nominee, getting more than ¾ of the vote, and soon to be former Congresswoman Nancy Mace came in a very distant 5th place in the South Carolina Republican Gubernatorial primary.

One wonders just how egregiously the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) will ignore the whole, "Vote blue no matter who," mantra in Platner's case.

Criminals Gotta Crime

2026-06-09T18:56:00.000-04:00

And by criminals, I mean the criminal enterprise formerly known as Facebook™, who just got caught surreptitiously installing facial recognition software on their smart glasses.

Seeing as how they did not announce this to their users, it would have been a selling point, it is not unreasonable to assume that this was for Meta to spy on its users.

Hell, everything in Meta is about spying on its users.

One day after WIRED revealed that Meta had quietly embedded an unreleased face-recognition system into an app installed on more than 50 million phones, the company removed it, according to a WIRED analysis of the latest version’s code.

The most recent version of Meta AI, a companion app for its line of smart glasses, strips out the unactivated software components that powered the system Meta internally called NameTag. The version published the day of WIRED’s report included several code libraries explicitly named for face recognition. Friday’s release includes none of them.

Andy Stone, Meta's vice president of communications, told WIRED on Monday that the feature is purely exploratory, adding: “No final decision has been made on what to do here, if anything.”

On Thursday, WIRED reported that Meta had quietly integrated substantial portions of the NameTag system into the Meta AI app. Though never publicly enabled, the feature was designed to convert faces captured by the glasses into unique biometric signatures, commonly known as faceprints, and compare them against a database of faceprints stored on the user's device. WIRED also found that faces the system failed to recognize were cropped, indexed, and stored locally for future processing.

Well, this seems completely aboveboard and not suspicious at all.

Adjusting the Facts to Match Their Ideology

2026-06-08T22:47:00.000-04:00

The Trump administration is dismantling a network of ocean sensors that monitor conditions related to anthropogenic climate change, because if they plug their ears and close their eyes, there is no problem.

Attempting to suppress information about an ongoing planet-wide catastrophe will not end well.

The Trump administration is targeting one of the world’s most trusted sources of climate and oceanic data—the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). According to the New York Times, ships will be dispatched this month to remove the more than 900 deep-sea instruments that comprise the network, which, for the past decade, has collected crucial data on physical, chemical, geological and biological conditions from all layers of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans on a continuous basis.

In a statement dated May 21, the OOI confirmed that the National Science Foundation (NSF) had begun a “descoping” process, including removing all in-water infrastructure from four of the OOI’s five deployed arrays. “This plan includes the removal of all in-water infrastructure from the Irminger Sea, Station Papa, Endurance and Pioneer Arrays, subject to ship scheduling and other operational constraints,” the OOI said in the statement. This covers instruments stationed in the Pacific, as well as others in the waters off the U.S. Atlantic coast and Greenland and Iceland. The initiative was originally meant to run for 25 years.

In a statement, an NSF spokesperson said the intention was not to cancel the OOI but to transition to a “nimbler approach to prioritize support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies, as well as smart lifecycle management within its research infrastructure portfolio.”

The NSF statement is best described as an attempt to get a, "Bullsh%$ bingo," win.

The suppression of this data, which is literally right out of the Project 2025 playbook, will cripple climate science for decades.

It's Official

2026-06-08T22:23:00.000-04:00

Following a flood of mail-in votes favoring Nithya Raman over TV reality star, and complete nut job Spencer Pratt, she has advanced to a runoff against incumbent mayor Karen Bass.

The Republicans, of course, are alleging vote fraud, but there is no evidence of this.

Nithya Raman had 115 days to make her case to Los Angeles voters.
The City Council member made a surprise late entry into the mayor’s race, the last of the major candidates to file for the primary. That left little time for her to form a campaign team, build her name recognition and persuade voters that she would be the best choice to lead the city.
On Monday, the Associated Press called the race, concluding that Raman would have enough votes to make a Nov. 3 runoff against Mayor Karen Bass, the first-place finisher who secured her spot in the showdown last week.
Reality television personality Spencer Pratt, who was in second place on election night, saw his lead over Raman steadily erode as mail-in ballots postmarked as late as June 2 were counted.

On Monday, Raman widened her gap over Pratt to nearly 3 percentage points. Bass had 34.3% of the vote, compared with 28.6% for Raman and 25.8% for Pratt, the latest results showed.

Here's hoping that Raman cleans Bass' clock in the general election. Bass' tenure of mayor has been defined by pro-developer, anti-homeless, and pro police union actions.

To Be Fair, He Could Just Be That F%$#ing Stupid

2026-06-08T19:05:00.000-04:00

We are, after all, talking about Tommy Tuberville, who has the intellectual acumen of bug-on-a-stick moss , so he could have just committed voter fraud by mistake.

One of President Donald Trump's top allies in the U.S. Senate has been busted for voting in a different state.

AL.com's Kyle Whitmire has been doggedly pursuing rumors about Sen. Tommy Tuberville's residency, voting record and, thus, his eligibility to run for Alabama governor, and the columnist has turned up evidence the Republican senator voted in Florida in 2018 – three months after moving back to the state he now represents.

"For years, Tuberville has struggled to convince everybody he was a bona fide Alabama 'resident citizen,'" Whitmire wrote. "Alabama law requires candidates for governor to have lived in the state for the last seven years. The evidence didn’t seem to be on his side."

Tuberville, for nearly two decades, owned a 4,000-square-foot beach house worth at least $4 million on Florida's Gulf Coast but purchased a much smaller home in Auburn, Alabama, in 2017 that he claimed as his primary residence while running for Senate, and he later sold that house in 2023.

"[That] three-bedroom, one-bathroom Auburn house ... has been appraised at about $300,000, less than a tenth of what the Florida beach house is worth. But this is what Tuberville said was his residence," Whitmire wrote. "As a U.S. senator, Tuberville has used campaign funds and taxpayer dollars to fly to Florida often — to dine in its restaurants and to travel by car. As much as, if not more than, he does such things in Alabama."
………

However, Florida election records tell another story.

"The tax records show that Tuberville moved to the Auburn house that August," Whitmire wrote. "But Florida election records show he and his wife, Suzanne, voted in Florida that November, three months after the income taxes say he became an Alabama resident. That’s also after the homestead exemption."

State law requires Senate candidates to live in Alabama for only a day, but gubernatorial candidates must reside there for at least seven years, and Tuberville's voting record suggests he hasn't.

"This is the Tommy Tuberville who stood on the Senate floor this year and demanded the country pass the SAVE Act, the bill to require proof of citizenship to register and a photo ID to vote, to stop people from voting where they’re not supposed to," Whitmire wrote. "In 2018, his vote did count — only in a state where he says his taxes show he no longer lived as a 'resident citizen.'"

Theoretically, Ron DeSantis could sicc his voter police Gestapo on Tuberville, and while I would pay to see this, it won't happen.

Voter fraud only counts when the accused is not white.

The Mask Slips

2026-06-08T18:52:00.000-04:00

If when arguing about a President's ability to create or change public monuments and government buildings your lawyers have to argue that Donald Trump has the unrestricted power to tear down the Statue of Liberty, you have already lost.

A federal appeals court panel expressed skepticism Friday about the Trump administration’s view that courts are powerless to stop the construction of the White House ballroom now that the East Wing had been demolished.

Two members of a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit repeatedly pressed administration lawyers about its argument that President Donald Trump’s pet project — now well underway — could not be stopped by the courts even if it was found to be illegal, because it was too far along and involved significant national security interests.

“When did it become a fait accompli?” Judge Patricia Millett asked. “If this were complete lawlessness by the government … it couldn’t be stopped?”

“On these theories, I think that’s right,” replied Yaakov Roth, a Justice Department attorney.

Millett, an Obama appointee, peppered Roth with questions about the extent of the Trump administration’s view of its power to “move fast and break things” without being subject to legal challenge.

“If the government decides, very quickly, to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty — the people whose ancestors that was the first thing they saw coming to this country, but the government moved too fast — nothing can be done?” the judge asked.

“I think that’s right, yes,” Roth responded.

Once again, I am left staring at the fiasco with an expression on my face like that of a cow that has just stepped on its own udder.

Linkage

2026-06-08T05:29:00.000-04:00

Are Trump's critics guilty of treason? Here's what the law says. (Reason) The answer is no. The answer is the same going the other way. Treason is the only crime defined in the Constitution, and the definition is very restrictive.
The American Missile Crisis (Contrary Research) In addition to all of the other bottlenecks, we have a shortage of ammonium perchlorate oxidizer used in all current solid fuel rocket motors.
Meet the Communist Mayor Offering 50 Cents for Trump's Capture (Current Affairs) Unfortunately, this mayor is in Spain. He's only offering 50¢ because he thinks that all Trump is worth. I think that he is overpaying.
DHS issued ‘be on the lookout’ alert for comedian Ben Palmer (Injustice Watch) Palmer created a spoof ICE tip line, and DHS is attempting punish him for this. I did Nazi see this coming.
ICE Recruitment Tweets Are So Racist That Cops Feared They Could Incite Neo-Nazi Violence - (The Intercept) This is a feature for ICE, not a bug.
LLMs Are Revealing How Low the Bar Is (And Lowering It Even Further) (Counter Craft) The fact that they are winning awards for their slop is a mark of how low the state of the art of art. Money quote, "If a story this poorly written can win an award, the issue isn’t AI."
Scientists uncover Feynman’s formula for finding best holiday restaurant (The Guardian) I am not surprised that Richard Feynman did this, though I do wonder if he had his tongue firmly planted in his cheek when he did so.
Why it took 65 years for L.A. to build its most important rail line (Los Angeles Times) Spoiler, it was mostly political bullsh%$

One of the old classics of YouTube:

Yes

2026-06-07T19:56:00.000-04:00

In response to the question, "Screwworm Is Back In Texas Cattle—Is DOGE To Blame?" the answer is, "Yes."

DOGE killed the programs fighting the flesh eating maggots, because they all are flesh eating maggots.

New World screwworm, a parasitic fly with larvae that burrow in healthy tissue of cattle, deer, horses and other warm-blooded animals, was discovered in La Pryor, Texas.
The case is the only one that has been identified in the country so far, according to the USDA, but a wider outbreak could severely impact already-suffering cattle numbers and put even more of a strain on ranchers as they spend money on treatment and prevention.
In turn, the price of beef—which has gone up roughly 75% since December 2020—could continue to rise.
The U.S. cattle herd is already at its lowest level in 75 years, and a major screwworm outbreak would cause more calves to die, adult cattle to lose weight and limit what animals are suitable for sale, meaning fewer pounds of beef reaching the market.
Even without a major outbreak, containment efforts may cause the government to implement widespread cattle movement restrictions, limit border crossings or impose quarantine on certain herds, all of which would further impact the nation’s cattle numbers.
The return of screwworm comes after the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, launched by the Trump administration, last year cut funding for a project dedicated to monitoring and containing New World screwworm in Central America.
The funding was axed days before the U.S. ended a temporary suspension of cattle imports from Mexico, meaning livestock was allowed to cross the border without any of the monitoring previously funded by the U.S. Agency of International Development (USAID).
Agriculture officials and cattle industry leaders raised alarm about the cuts at the time and, for the last several months, pleaded with the government to step in as they monitored screwworm infections moving north through Mexico—but they were ignored, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller told NBC News.

If the next Democratic President does not prosecute the sh%$ out of these folks, they will have betrayed their obligations at the most basic level.

Gee, Ya Think?

2026-06-07T19:07:00.000-04:00

Following reports of massive noise, an inexhaustible demand for water, and massive pollution, polling is now showing that data centers are about as popular as hemorrhoids.

Well, I am shocked by this.

A silent war is playing out across rural America.

Residents are packing themselves into local county meetings in incredible numbers and calling on their representatives to oppose gargantuan data center projects, developments that could cause electricity prices to spike, drain water supplies, and generate copious amounts of noise.

Farmers are being hailed as heroes for rejecting millions of dollars to turn their land into data centers, while claims of the facilities bringing jobs to the area are being met with incredulity and frustration.

In short, the AI backlash has grown immensely over the past year or so — and the latest numbers put the trend in stark relief.

According to a new Heatmap poll, at least seven in ten Americans would oppose a data center being built near their home. That’s a seismic shift from last September, when a similar poll found only 42 percent of Americans were opposed.

By February, the same question resulted in just 51 percent saying they were against having a data center project near their home, indicating that the opposition grew substantially in a strikingly short period of time.

“The public has swung 49 points against data centers in just nine months, underscoring the heightened political salience of the facilities and the AI industry that they embody,” Heatmap noted in in its writeup.

Gee, why would the public object to projects that pollute their air, take their water, and throw them out of work? I have no clue.

Not Enough Bullets

2026-06-07T18:39:00.000-04:00

Go old school?DOGE and DHS tried to get the Social Security Administration to declare that 2.7 million people were dead in an attempt to harass immigrants.

Everyone involved in this should never see the sky as a free man.

The Trump administration had plans to classify 2.7 million living people — including some U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents — as dead as part of its immigration enforcement efforts, according to a former senior Social Security executive.
The previously unreported plan, which the Social Security Administration said was not carried out, would have used one of the government’s most consequential identity databases to effectively erase people from the financial system, potentially cutting them off from wages, banking, government benefits and other services.
Jeremiah Schofield, who worked at Social Security for 25 years and helped lead the agency’s IT modernization efforts before leaving in October, said he refused to help implement the plan after agency lawyers warned that falsely marking living people as dead could violate federal law. Schofield said he realized the plan’s possible intent — to intimidate and worsen the finances of immigrants — as well as its potential unlawfulness after taking a sample of people from the 2.7 million and discovering they were all alive. Some were U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, teenagers and senior citizens, including one widow who was a legal permanent resident receiving survivor benefits.

Schofield has provided details on the plan in a 49-page whistleblower disclosure to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who is on the Senate Finance Committee, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the ranking member on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The disclosure was reviewed by The Washington Post, and it offers the most detailed account yet of how officials from Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service sought to use Social Security data in service of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

In an interview with The Post, Schofield said he is speaking publicly for the first time because he believes Americans need to understand how government data can be misused and, in some cases, already has been.

………

Schofield’s whistleblower complaint describes a tumultuous period inside Social Security, as career officials questioned the legality of such efforts and watched DOGE officials gain access to some of the government’s most sensitive databases. In one meeting, Schofield said, a DOGE official working with the Department of Homeland Security described the goal of declaring 2.7 million living people dead: making immigrants so miserable that they self-deported or went to Social Security offices for help, where they could be arrested.

I'm beginning to think that if the DOGE boy's parents had decided to drown them all at birth, (I'm looking at YOU, Mae Musk) the world would be a far better place.

Headline of the Day

2026-06-07T18:09:00.000-04:00

Obama Blasts Dems for Their Most Obama-Like Traits
—Jacobin on how the Democrats spelunker in chief should not be lecturing the party on caving

It's not surprising that he is lecturing though, it's kind of his thing.

As Democrats debate how and whether to use power if they regain control of Congress and the White House, former President Barack Obama has lambasted his party for failing to more aggressively challenge or circumvent obstructions to enacting their campaign promises.

“There’s been some unwillingness on the part of Democrats in the past to break down some of the institutional barriers for us getting stuff done, just because, well, it’s always been done that way,” he lamented to a YouTube host earlier this year.

Obama said he was frustrated during his presidency with Senate filibuster rules, which require sixty votes to pass most legislation. He suggested it was a mistake for Democrats to preserve the filibuster “when it blocks us from making government effective,” arguing that it “makes people feel like government is corrupt.”

However, amid Obama’s media tour unveiling his new $850 million presidential center, documents obtained by Zeteo and the Lever through an open records request show Obama as president scoffing at demands that he more forcefully navigate those same barriers on health care policy, when he and his party controlled the White House and large majorities in Congress.

Yeah, pretty much.

He lectures on this when there is no personal cost for him to do so.

The last 'graph of the article says it all, "Obama’s new presidential center, which will open later this month, has received at least $1 million from the health insurer Health Care Service Corporation, which is part of Blue Cross Blue Shield."

Well, Trash Belongs in Trash Bags

2026-06-06T20:35:00.000-04:00

As the backlash against Flock AI driven license plate readers grow, more and more municipalities are canceling their contracts.

They find two problems, canceling the contract is difficult because of their Byzantine nature, and even when canceled, Flock does not remove them, so the cameras remain on their poles, where anyone with a Flock contract (think ICE) can continue to use them.

Some towns have an interesting way of dealing with this, they are sending out government workers to cover the cameras with trash bags. (alternate link)

The city of Dayton, Ohio has covered its Flock automated license plate reader cameras with black trash bags in part because police there are unsure whether the cameras are still active and the city also doesn’t seem to know whether it is allowed to take the cameras down. The move comes after months of resident outrage, a scandal in which the city was sharing Flock camera data for immigration enforcement apparently on accident, and a $30,000 audit into how the cameras are being used.
Joe Parlette, the deputy city manager of Dayton, said at a city commission meeting last week that the “Dayton Police Department agreed to work with Public Works to put bags over the cameras” as a stop-gap measure until Flock cameras could be removed entirely. I spoke to multiple people in Dayton who said they had seen bagged cameras in the last few days. The Dayton Daily News first reported on the baggings.
Dayton is not the first city to cover its Flock cameras with trash bags because they can’t figure out how to immediately terminate the use of the cameras. Late last year, the city of Evanston, Illinois also covered its cameras with trash bags while it was waiting for the company to remove them from the city. Cities around the country have been reconsidering their relationship with the surveillance company after reporting from 404 Media and local news outlets that showed data from the cameras was making its way to Immigration and Customs Enforcement through Flock’s national camera network.

Flock cameras are usually solar powered, so once installed, it costs more to take them down than it does to leave them there, particularly if the data can be sold to someone else.

Garbage bags are a decent solution to this dynamic.

Gee, Imagine That

2026-06-06T20:09:00.000-04:00

In the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, a "millionaires tax" is generating far more revenue than anticipated.

Gee, who could have seen that coming?

Billionaires tax is more like it.

The state’s surtax on its highest earners has already generated more than $3.1 billion in revenue this fiscal year, with still two months to be counted, likely leaving lawmakers with a generous surplus to dole out next spring.

The amount, disclosed in a letter released by the state Department of Revenue, already tops the $3 billion the state collected from the so-called millionaires tax during fiscal year 2025. It also far surpasses the $2.4 billion the state projected to spend from the levy in the fiscal year that ends next month.

The constitutional amendment approved by voters in 2022 applies a 4 percent surtax on annual income “in excess” of $1 million. But the measure also included a trigger linking that seven-figure threshold to any changes in the cost of living, meaning the amount someone has to earn to hit the tax increases with inflation. For tax year 2026, for example, only income over $1.1 million is now taxed.

Before the measure passed on the ballot, the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, a left-leaning think tank, projected it could generate at least $2 billion a year.

It’s repeatedly topped that. Around this time last fiscal year, the surtax had already produced $2.6 billion in revenue. The year before, it had produced about $1.8 billion by around this time.

The estimates immediately buoyed supporters’ claims that the surtax would deliver much-needed revenue for the state despite fears it could drive some of the state’s wealthiest residents to move to locales with lower tax burdens.

Yeah, they always say that, and it doesn't really ever happen.

Yesterday Was The Monthly Jobless Report

2026-06-06T19:47:00.000-04:00

The numbers are quite good, 172K new jobs in the non-farm payroll and was unemployment unchanged at 4.3%.

What is notable is where the job growth occurred, largely leisure and hospitality and local and state government employment.

The former is driven by the World Cup being in the United States, though it increasingly looks like this will be a bit of a bust, because foreigners do not want to be subject to the tender mercies of Customs and Border Patrol or ICE.

I'm not sure were the local government pickup is coming from, though a part of it could be from former federal civil servants finding new jobs.

These numbers make a rate hike by the Federal Reserve almost certain.

I think that the analysis from the CEPR is a good summary:

Jobs are growing far faster than the breakeven rate
Wages are not keeping pace with inflation
Workers are still reluctant to leave jobs
Job-killing AI is not visible in the data
Self-employment is lagging

The last one is not at all surprising. When the social safety net is reduced, striking out on one's own as an entrepreneur becomes far more risky.

Of course, all of the above is predicated on accepting that the numbers are real, so YMMV.

Crap

2026-06-06T18:56:00.000-04:00

Slate Auto promises to put out a low cost, bare bones, and spyware free electric pickup truck, which sounds good, but then I discovered that Jeff Bezos is a major backer of the firm.

My eldest had expressed an interest in something like this, so I need to tell them not to buy this.

Ahead of its launch late this year, Jeff Bezos-backed Slate Auto is figuring out how it’s going to sell its all-electric small pickup truck, and it’s reportedly getting on board with online automotive retailer Carvana.

According to TechCrunch, Carvana was given a warrant for shares in Slate Auto last year, based on documents from the State of Delaware Division of Corporations. The move comes as the startup automaker prepares to release details such as official prices later this month, as well as the end of reservations and the beginning of preordering. Since last year, Slate Auto has offered a $50 reservation fee to be among the first in line and reported 100,000 reservations in two weeks.

(emphasis mine)

So both Bezos and Carvana. That is a truly toxic mixture.

………

The Slate Truck was announced in April 2025 as a back-to-basics EV that won’t come standard with features such as power windows or an infotainment system. Buyers, however, will be able to customize the vehicle with vinyl wraps and even an enclosed SUV body with a rear seat. By doing this, the company targets a sub-$30,000 starting price.

Yeah, pretty bare bones.

Today in Unbelievably Crappy OpSec

2026-06-06T18:48:00.000-04:00

I have done a Google reverse image search, and this image, and there are literally dozens of copies of this floating around the web.

We know the size of the boom, the size of the F-16, and the size of Palm Jumeirah precisely.

This means that the location of this shot can be determined with a big of basic map work and trigonometry to well within 10 meters.

Not a good look, unless, of course, you are a member of the IRGC.

Demanding the Right to Murder Black Men

2026-06-05T21:18:00.000-04:00

At the state convention Minnesota Republicans held a moment of silence for Derek Chauvan, who murdered George Floyd.

They are offended that white cops are not allowed to murder black men whenever they want.

The Minnesota Republican party’s decision to hold a moment of silence for Derek Chauvin, the former police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd, has angered the state’s attorney general – who was the lead prosecutor in the case.

Keith Ellison, a Democrat, said Saturday’s gesture at the state Republicans’ annual convention in Duluth was “an act of profound cruelty” to Floyd’s family and “disrespectful” to Minnesota’s law enforcement personnel.

“This decision dishonors the memory of George Floyd and wounds his loved ones all over again,” Ellison said in a statement.

Alluding to how the murder had happened six years earlier almost exactly, Ellison added: “To honor the man convicted of murdering George Floyd – days after the very anniversary of that terrible day – is an act of profound cruelty to the Floyd family and to every Minnesotan who believes in accountability under law.

These are really truly awful people.

Bummer of a Birthmark, Elon

2026-06-05T20:56:00.000-04:00

Unlike Nasdaq and a number of other stock indices, S&P will not be waiving its rules for inclusion into its S&P 500 index for the SpaceX IPO.

These requirements are:

Last quarter earnings and the sum of the last four quarterly earnings must both be positive.
Annual trade volume must meet or exceed the market cap.
12 months have passed since the initial public offering.
US-based. The company trades on a US exchange, a plurality of its assets are US-based, and the headquarters are in the US
The company must be a corporation that issues common stock. It cannot have multiple share structures.
Unadjusted market cap is at least $8.2 billion.
The IWF is at least .10.

With a $75 billion IPO on a $1.75 trillion (IWF=0.04) it means that SpaceX would not qualify for inclusion for well over a year.

The company fulfills only one of the requirements for a listing.

Considering the large number of funds that either in whole or in part invest in the S&P 500 as an index fund, this means that about $14 billion in forced purchase of the stock will not occur.

So about 20% of guaranteed demand for the IPO won't be there.

Despite an expected record-breaking IPO, SpaceX will still have to follow the rules and wait at least a year before it’s added to the S&P 500, the benchmark behind many Americans’ retirement funds

S&P Dow Jones Indices announced Thursday that it is keeping its eligibility rules intact for the S&P 500 and several other major indexes. Indexes are benchmarks that track specific slices of the stock market. The best known is the S&P 500, which tracks 500 of the largest publicly traded companies in the United States.

Many index funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) hold stocks that mirror these benchmarks in an effort to replicate their performance. These funds are a key part of many 401(k)s, pension funds, and retirement accounts.

………

Other index providers, including Nasdaq and FTSE Russell, have already changed their rules to allow companies like SpaceX to join some of their indexes sooner.

But the S&P 500 remains the most widely tracked equity benchmark in the world. Roughly $7.5 trillion in passively managed funds follow it, Bloomberg reports.

If SpaceX had been fast-tracked into the index, it would have resulted in about $14 billion in forced passive buying of the company’s stock, according to an estimate by Bloomberg Intelligence.

How dare they interfere with Elon Musk's God given right to commit stock fraud.

Today in Bullsh%$

2026-06-05T20:04:00.000-04:00

In response to complaints about the Paramont takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery about dodgy foreign funding, mass layoffs, and the destruction of journalism at the merged entity, chief legal officer Makan Delrahim is saying that this is all just antisemitism.

Way to minimize the credibility of any claims of antisemitism.

Paramount is clearly getting nervous about the growing opposition to its $111 billion merger with Warner Brothers, which is being intensely criticized for dodgy overseas funding, its dire impact on journalism, and the inevitable mass layoffs, consumer price hikes, and shittier overall product that always results from debt-fueled mega-media consolidation.

There’s a certain desperation creeping into their arguments as state regulators send signals that they’re considering filing an antitrust lawsuit. Top Paramount lawyer Makan Delrahim recently sat down for an interview with the billionaire-owned LA Times (non-paywalled alternative), and insisted that opposition to the company’s terrible merger spree is somehow antisemitic:
“Let’s be honest,” he told the Times. “There’s a lot of fear-mongering, particularly from people in Washington, D.C. They are running a political campaign. Some of these people are trying to inflict harm on this transaction, really because of their own antisemitic views. Regulators and law enforcement officials will see right through that.”
That is, of course, a whole lot of bullshit. Delrahim is trying to pretend that opposition to the deal stems from the fact that billionaire Trump-donor Larry Ellison, who has retooled CBS News to be more friendly to Benjamin Netanyahu, is Jewish. But if there’s any personal ire directed at Ellison as it pertains to the deal, it’s that he has a generational track record of being a foundationally terrible person.

The real-world concerns about the deal have focused on things like the fact it’s heavily financed by Saudi Arabia and China. And there’s fifty years of history showing that deals like this (especially deals involving Warner Brothers) routinely result in mass layoffs, higher prices, and both a shittier company and a less healthy film and television production market.

Way to give Nazis an excuse to Nazi.

Support Your Local Police

2026-06-05T19:50:00.000-04:00

It appears that an officer at ICE protests used the injury of a journalist to steal her bag full of photographic equipment.

At least time, he was charged.

A law enforcement officer in New Jersey was charged on Thursday with stealing the camera equipment of a photojournalist who was covering a protest outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark.

The photojournalist, Angelina Katsanis, 25, dropped her camera bag after she was injured at the protest on Saturday, she said in an interview. The bag contained roughly $10,000 worth of equipment, according to a statement from the state attorney general, Jennifer Davenport.

The bag was later tracked using an Apple AirTag to the home of Darryl Brown, 43, a sergeant with the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, the statement said. Sergeant Brown, of Sparta Township, N.J., had been deployed to Delaney Hall during the protest, prosecutors said.

………

A law enforcement officer in New Jersey was charged on Thursday with stealing the camera equipment of a photojournalist who was covering a protest outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark.

The photojournalist, Angelina Katsanis, 25, dropped her camera bag after she was injured at the protest on Saturday, she said in an interview. The bag contained roughly $10,000 worth of equipment, according to a statement from the state attorney general, Jennifer Davenport.

The bag was later tracked using an Apple AirTag to the home of Darryl Brown, 43, a sergeant with the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, the statement said. Sergeant Brown, of Sparta Township, N.J., had been deployed to Delaney Hall during the protest, prosecutors said.

………

Later that night, Ms. Katsanis and another photographer, who was on assignment for The Times, made their way to a nearby hospital using a wheelchair given to her by a medic at the scene.

From a hospital bed, she watched on her phone as the AirTag in her camera bag traveled across northern New Jersey — on the highway, then to a private residence, and then to a bar close to that home, she said.

Ms. Katsanis said her boyfriend and the other photographer went out to track the AirTag and found that it had been removed from her bag and was on the side of the road. She said that her name and contact information were still clearly written on the AirTag.

“That was a pretty clear sign to me that this was a theft and not just a law enforcement officer holding onto this bag for safekeeping,” said Ms. Katsanis, who reported the missing bag to the attorney general’s office.

This is likely far more common than is reported in the press.

A Bucket of Crabs

2026-06-05T19:09:00.000-04:00

In a bid for self preservation Pam Bondi fingered Todd Blanche as responsible for the non-release of the Epstein Files.

Even if true, Bondi is still responsible, and still could be subject to things like bar discipline, because she had to know what was going on.

Former attorney general Pam Bondi told lawmakers that Todd Blanche, the man Donald Trump has lined up to replace her, was “in charge” of the US Department of Justice’s controversial handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case.

Appearing before the House oversight and reform committee, which is investigating the late financier and convicted sex offender, Bondi also said she was “not certain of the extent” that Trump knew about the crimes of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime associate of Epstein who is serving a 20-year sentence for sex-trafficking crimes, before they became public.
………
Blanche, who served as Bondi’s deputy at the justice department, was responsible for the “entire release of the Epstein files”, Bondi claimed, according to a transcript released by the committee on Thursday. Blanche was appointed as acting attorney general following Bondi’s ouster, and Trump said this week he planned to nominate him for the role permanently.

How about we disbar them both?

It's Bank Failure Friday!!!

2026-06-05T18:51:00.000-04:00

We another credit union failure, the 5th (sort of) the year, Beverly Hills City Employees Federal Credit Union of Beverly Hills, California.

If this sounds familiar, that is because it is. It was conserved on 22 January, and on Tuesday it was merged with Nuvision Federal Credit Union. I'm calling it number 6 of the year, but it could be just an extensions of the 2nd closure of the year, or you could call this an additional ½ credit union closure.

Thoroughly confused now?

Anyway, here is the Full NCUA list, and the direct link for this year.

Clarence Thomas Learned Corruption from the Master

2026-06-05T18:29:00.000-04:00

In news that should surprise no one, Scalia Cheney engaged in virtually identical corrupt behavior, and engaged in a virtually identical defense of the indefensible.

In recent years, Justice Clarence Thomas’s fondness for taking luxury vacations on billionaire-owned superyachts has made Supreme Court ethics reform perhaps the single easiest campaign promise for Democratic politicians to make. But two decades ago, the real-world particulars of Supreme Court conflict-of-interest scandals were smaller in scale: for example, the physical proximity of Justice Antonin Scalia to Vice President Dick Cheney when the two men were sitting in duck blinds, shotguns in hand, waiting to kill some birds.

The saga began in January 2004, shortly after Cheney and Scalia—good friends since their time working together in the Ford administration—traveled to Louisiana for an annual duck hunt hosted by an acquaintance of Scalia’s. Cheney invited Scalia to join him on a government plane for the flight from Washington; Scalia, along with his son and son-in-law, accepted.

The objectionable part of this story (legally speaking, I mean) was that several weeks earlier, the Court had granted certiorari in a case about whether Cheney had to disclose details about clandestine meetings with fossil fuels executives while he was leading a task force responsible for the Bush administration’s energy policy. The Sierra Club had argued that Scalia, fresh off a vacation with the vice president and a free flight on Air Force Two, should recuse himself from the case, on the grounds that his impartiality “might reasonably be questioned.”

Scalia refused, however, releasing a 21-page memo in which he assured the public that he and Cheney had not discussed the case, and had never even been alone together—in duck blinds or otherwise—during the entirety of the trip. After running through a brief history of social relationships between Supreme Court justices and elected officials, from poker games to dinner parties to Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone’s early-morning medicine-ball workouts with members of the Hoover administration, Scalia asserted that a rule requiring the justices to recuse themselves from cases involving their famous friends would be “utterly disabling.”

Gee, it sounds awfully familiar.

Scalia did, as Thomas, Alito, and Roberts do, found press coverage of corruption to be the real problem.

A Feature, Not a Bug

2026-06-04T20:06:00.000-04:00

Much like when the criminal enterprise formerly known as Facebook™ used micro-targeting of its employment advertisements to exclude minorities, the news that AI algorithms reject minority job applicants at hire rates seems to me to be more of a deliberate choice than an accident.

AI algorithms exhibit racial bias in job candidate screening, and they discriminate more frequently against those applying for multiple jobs at different companies, according to Stanford-led researchers.

The boffins evaluated algorithmic hiring decisions across multiple employers that use the same hiring vendor. The resulting algorithmic monoculture, they say, is problematic.

The vendor in this instance was talent platform pymetrics, acquired by Harver in 2022. Harver did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Nothing to see here, move along.