Tootfinder

So in January 2028, when potus refuses to leave and tries deploying DC, SC, OH and WV National Guard to hold DC, will NY, MD, VA, DE, NJ and PA National Guards have enough forces to counter, or do other states need to build a naval guard elements to retake the capital from the water?
#USpol

Your regular reminder that I've made all my bookmarks on digital harm public since January 2019.

Closing in on 4,000 bookmarks…

Find them here:

https://raindrop.io/axbom/digital-ethics-6334413/

#DigitalEthics

FBI Director Fast-Tracks New Agents as Firings and Departures of G-Men Tied to January 6 and Trump Prosecutions Accelerate (Daniel Edward Rosen/New York Sun)
https://www.nysun.com/article/fbi-director-fast-tracks-new-agents-as-firings-and-departures-of-g-men-tied-to-january-6-and-trump-prosecutions-accelerate
http://www.memeorandum.com/250816/p68#a250816p68

Good Morning #Canada
Rights affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people vary greatly by country or jurisdiction—encompassing everything from the legal recognition of same-sex marriage to the death penalty for homosexuality. Notably, as of January 2025, only 38 countries recognize same-sex marriage, out of 195 recognized nations. Canada has been a leader in LGTBQ rights and, in a recent ranking, places us 5th worldwide in protecting same sex and gender affirmation. The USA ranks 23rd but is likely to drop further as the report was based on 2024 data before the MAGA morons took office.
#CanadaIsAwesome #LGTBQI
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/lgbt-rights-by-country

Trevon Diggs drops bombshell about possible return in 2025 https://insidethestar.com/trevon-diggs-drops-bombshell-about-possible-return-in-2025

bitcoin: Bitcoin transactions (2009-2013)
A network of Bitcoin transactions spanning January 2009 to April 2013. Nodes are public-key "addresses" at some time within the given period, and each edge is marked with the time (at a resolution of seconds) of the transaction.
This network has 6336770 nodes and 16057711 edges.
Tags: Economic, Cryptocurrency, Unweighted, Timestamps

“Former Capitol police officers attacked on January 6 dismissed Trump’s new law-and-order stance in DC, recalling his failure to deploy the National Guard during the riot and criticizing his sudden use of troops against what city leaders say is a nonexistent crime wave.”
https://aaronparnas.substack.c…

The CDC shooting was public health’s Jan. 6: In RFK Jr.’s America, it will never be safe to practice public health or medicine | STAT
https://www.statnews.com/2025/08/15/cdc-shooting-january-6th-for-public-health/?utm_campaign=rss

The price of clown college is out of control!
https://www.mooseburger.com/product-page/moose-camp-registration-2026

IPSO says The Telegraph's calculation in a January article that claimed "one in 12 in London" is an illegal migrant was inaccurate and showed a "lack of care" (Charlotte Tobitt/Press Gazette)
https://

Telegraph inaccurately calculated 'one in 12 in London is illegal migrant' stat, IPSO finds
The Telegraph's sums to conclude that "one in 12 in London" is an illegal migrant were inaccurate, IPSO has confirmed.

All-sky search for long-duration gravitational-wave transients in the first part of the fourth LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Observing run
The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, the KAGRA Collaboration
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.12282

All-sky search for long-duration gravitational-wave transients in the first part of the fourth LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Observing run
We present an all-sky search for long-duration gravitational waves (GWs) from the first part of the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA fourth observing run (O4), called O4a and comprising data taken between 24 May 2023 and 16 January 2024. The GW signals targeted by this search are the so-called "long-duration" (> 1 s) transients expected from a variety of astrophysical processes, including non-axisymmetric deformations in magnetars or eccentric binary coalescences. We make minimal assumptions on the emitted GW …

Dynamic Grid Trading Strategy: From Zero Expectation to Market Outperformance
Kai-Yuan Chen, Kai-Hsin Chen, Jyh-Shing Roger Jang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11921

Dynamic Grid Trading Strategy: From Zero Expectation to Market Outperformance
We propose a profitable trading strategy for the cryptocurrency market based on grid trading. Starting with an analysis of the expected value of the traditional grid strategy, we show that under simple assumptions, its expected return is essentially zero. We then introduce a novel Dynamic Grid-based Trading (DGT) strategy that adapts to market conditions by dynamically resetting grid positions. Our backtesting results using minute-level data from Bitcoin and Ethereum between January 2021 and Ju…

Corbyn and McDonnell face no further action over January 18 Palestine demo | Morning Star
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/corbyn-and-mcdonnell-face-no-further-action-over-january-18-palestine-demo…

If you'd want to protect Democratic (and other non-MAGA) lawmakers, you wouldn't pardon the January 6 thugs.
https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/minnesota-lawmakers-targeted-shootings-cham…

Minnesota political assassin
57-year-old Vance Boelter,
was twice appointed to the nonpartisan Governor’s Workforce Development Council

-- in 2016 under former Gov. Mark Dayton
and again in 2019 under Gov. Tim Walz.
His most recent term expired in January 2023.

57-year-old suspect sought in targeted shootings of Minnesota state lawmakers
Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband have died after they were shot at their home in Brooklyn Park.

In light of the political killings in Minnesota, remember what Trump did, #minnesota

Trump Administration Abandoning Efforts to Combat White Supremacist and Far-Right Terrorism and Violence
Since Trump returned to office in January, several government programs to combat domestic terrorism from white supremacists, militias, and other radicalized far-right extremists have been curtailed or abandoned. Public safety, civil liberties, and national security will suffer.

arxiv_authors: Arxiv authors (1993-2003)
Scientific collaborations between authors of papers submitted to arxiv.org, under 5 categories: gr-qc, astro-ph, cond-mat, hep-ph, and hep-th categories, spanning January 1993 to April 2003. If an author i co-authored a paper with author j, the graph contains a undirected edge from i to j. If the paper is co-authored by k authors this generates a completely connected (sub)graph on k nodes.
This network has 68746 nodes and 51971 edges.

The geopolitical #aiarmsrace seems largely unimpressed by people proclaiming #LLMs have plateaued and #AGI is never coming.
Such assessments are only relevant for the market, but not so much for count…

The justification that Trump used to claim (illegally) federalize the California National Guard and deploy the marines is from 10 U.S. Code § 252:
> Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.
Specifically he's called out the "make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States."
Trump cannot legally hold office because of his participation in an insurrection. Trump should have been impeached and removed on day 1 of his first administration based on the Emoluments clause. Trump colluded with Russia to manipulate the election, so even his swearing in was a failure of the US government to "enforce the laws of the United States." The supreme court justices he appointed explictly undermined and continue to "make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States," as with all of his appointees. The troops he has federalized remain deployed, even after being declared illegal.
When, then, do we call the entire time since January 20th, 2017 to now an insurrection and his government an illegal assembly? Who will order them to "disperse?"
#NoKingsDay

Analysis of 1.76M Community Notes received by X from January 2021 to March 2025: 90% of submitted notes are never published, with many notes "stuck in limbo" (DDIA)
https://ddia.org/en/a-deep-dive-into-xs-community-notes-report

A Deep Dive into X’s Community Notes: An Analysis of English and Spanish Contributions Between 2021 and 2025
The Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas (DDIA) examined how X’s Community Notes system functions across English and Spanish, drawing from over 1.76 million notes submitted globally between 2021 and 2025. The report explores submission and publication dynamics, contributor behavior, and systemic challenges like transparency gaps and rating backlogs. As community-driven content moderation becomes a global model, this report sheds light on its potential, and limitations, for building a h…

Been volunteering with @… and @… since January.
We are in the Toronto Star today!
Thanks @…

January Food Benchmark (JFB): A Public Benchmark Dataset and Evaluation Suite for Multimodal Food Analysis
Amir Hosseinian, Ashkan Dehghani Zahedani, Umer Mansoor, Noosheen Hashemi, Mark Woodward
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.09966

January Food Benchmark (JFB): A Public Benchmark Dataset and Evaluation Suite for Multimodal Food Analysis
Progress in AI for automated nutritional analysis is critically hampered by the lack of standardized evaluation methodologies and high-quality, real-world benchmark datasets. To address this, we introduce three primary contributions. First, we present the January Food Benchmark (JFB), a publicly available collection of 1,000 food images with human-validated annotations. Second, we detail a comprehensive benchmarking framework, including robust metrics and a novel, application-oriented overall s…

Since #January, it's essentially been a constant "we're focused on breaking news in the #US so not interested in #global stories" from editors.

route_views: Route Views AS graphs (1997-1998)
733 daily network snapshots denoting BGP traffic among autonomous systems (ASs) on the Internet, from the Oregon Route Views Project, spanning 8 November 1997 to 2 January 2000. Data collected by NLANR/MOAT.
This network has 5016 nodes and 10542 edges.
Tags: Technological, Communication, Unweighted, Temporal

Who could've guessed?
https://ni.hil.ist/@mu/114840348453639236

"Macron says High Seas Treaty could take effect from January after surge in support at ocean summit"
#Oceans #Environment

UN urges countries to ratify landmark High Seas Treaty
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged world leaders to ratify the treaty, warning that fishing, plastic pollution and rising sea temperatures were destroying ocean ecosystems.

Sorry to miss it in person and that I cannot stay for the panels on: teacher, gender, inclusion, decolonisation, and future action. Lovely to see and hear so many wonderful colleagues even from a distance.
My fun memory was the cartoon by the talented (then PhD student) Kalifa Damani during my talk on silent exclusion at the REAL Centre in January 2020 before the world shut, and many fun moments with Pauline Rose over the years.
Congratulations! The achievements are remarkable.

News outlet Iran International says that Banished Kitten, a threat group linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, likely installed malware on its journalists' Telegram accounts in two coordinated attacks in 2024 and 2025.
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202507084950

Leaked materials came from previously reported cyberattacks, Iran International confirms
Iran International confirmed on Tuesday that recently published materials from the hacked Telegram accounts of its journalists are linked to two separate cyberattacks carried out in the summer of 2024 and January 2025.

We've Issued Our First IP Address Certificate
#LetsEncrypt

the EU "Stop Killing Games" initiative is doing a great job for video games. We need something the same for home automation devices and cars and stuff:
#stopkillinggames #consumerrights #eol

Belkin is ending support for nearly all its Wemo smart home devices
Wemo hardware will stop working in January 2026 unless it’s been set up in Apple HomeKit. Belkin has announced that it’s made the “difficult decision” to end support for almost its entire line of Wemo smart home devices from January 31st, 2026. The only models that will continue to work after that …

The justification that Trump used to claim (illegally) federalize the California National Guard and deploy the marines is from 10 U.S. Code § 252:
> Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.
Specifically he's called out the "make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States."
Trump cannot legally hold office because of his participation in an insurrection. Trump should have been impeached and removed on day 1 of his first administration based on the Emoluments clause. Trump colluded with Russia to manipulate the election, so even his swearing in was a failure of the US government to "enforce the laws of the United States." The supreme court justices he appointed explictly undermined and continue to "make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States," as with all of his appointees. The troops he has federalized remain deployed, even after being declared illegal.
When, then, do we call the entire time since January 20th, 2017 to now an insurrection and his government an illegal assembly? Who will order them to "disperse?"
#NoKingsDay

Phillip Bump's farewell after being downsized by #ElHefe #Bezos #WashingtonPost is commentary focused on #DJT being unable to simply sell his on…

Despite Musk's claim Apple "makes it impossible" for non-OpenAI AI apps to top its App Store, DeepSeek was #1 in January and Perplexity was #1 in July in India (Henry Chandonnet/Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-

DeepSeek's No. 1 ranking pokes a hole in Musk's Apple criticism
Elon Musk suggested without evidence that Apple blocked AI apps that aren't made by OpenAI from topping the App Store. DeepSeek did it this year.

Copies of this should be hung all over the US...
"‘Don’t forget’: mural brings attention to the January 6 rioters pardoned by Trump"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/07/wall-of-shame-january-6-pardons

As early as 6 January 2021, Donald Darth #Trump demonstrated his intention to overthrow US democracy. Since being elected president for a second time, he has consistently and brutally pursued this goal at the expense of US citizens.
Darth Trump is a #freebooter.

Since @… alerted me to Salerno, Italy slow drone-doom project NIGHTSCAPE's new EP last week, I noticed the project also has a self-titled LP from earlier this year. And just like the EP, it's EXCELLENT. DAMN, am I a fan of drone-doom like this. FFO Black Sky Giant, Pelican, etc.
Nightscape (Vol. 1) LP from January:

„Fingerbanger“ by Optic
Platform: Amiga
Released: 21 January 2023
Specification: 320x256px, 32 colors
Note: 2nd in the Gerp 2023 Amiga Graphics competition
#GFX_Optic #YR_2023 #PF_Amiga

🇺🇦 Auf radioeins läuft...
Millie Turner:
🎵 January
#NowPlaying #MillieTurner
https://open.spotify.com/track/0NWel7MCItXOwPbIWWIWxk

I get the intent, and it might work with some JS to narrow the possibilities to what's valid (like j-{a-nuary,uly-,une-}), but I suspect a simple season picker (like winter-{December,January,February}) would work better.
(HT @…)

...and what court has decided that it's a genocide? Isn't it a legal term that can only be used if the goal post we keep moving is reached?
Not to draw away attention from the Sudan genocide amidst a brutal civil war, I just think it's adequate to point out how easy it is to name the perpetrator, victim, and the action of genocide by its name when Israel isn't involved.

The Trump administration
elected in 2016
came in riding on a lie about American carnage in American cities.
This was also a period of dramatically declined crime rates and violent crime rates, in particular, across U.S. cities.
So, there is nothing here that is factual in terms of the pretext for the calls here.
What is consistent is Donald Trump’s use of racist rhetoric,
racist ideas, and the use of policing to enact a domestic policy agenda.

“Slide Towards Fascism”: Khalil Gibran Muhammad on Racist Roots of Trump D.C. Takeover
After announcing the federal takeover of law enforcement in D.C. in the White House briefing room, President Trump painted a grim picture of the capital — including “roving mobs of wild youth” — that contrasts with crime figures showing D.C. reached a 30-year low in violent crime last January. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, professor of African American studies and public affairs at Princeton University, says the move is an extension of Trump’s “use of racist rhetoric, racist ideas, and th…

Over 210,000 Russians sign contracts for war in Ukraine in first half of 2025, Moscow says: https://benborges.xyz/2025/07/02/over-russians-sign-contracts-for.html

Everyone suddenly riding that high horse of utter confusion and anger, and most of all, righteousness: get off it.
Wakey, wakey: there's no such thing as a free lunch. If it wasn't for big business there wouldn't be any Linux whatsoever anyway.
So walk the talk and move over to Codeberg or BitBucket.
Like I did in January 2024 (except for one last repo).
Howzat for riding a high horse 😜

Use of Signal rapidly growing in the Netherlands since Trump took over in the US: 25 times more monthly new users since January. The Netherlands now has 2 million Signal users, putting it in the top-5 worldwide.
https://www.volkskra…

Gebruik Signal in Nederland explodeert: nu 25 keer hoger dan voor aantreden Trump
Het gebruik van de versleutelde communicatiedienst Signal is in Nederland fors gegroeid sinds het aantreden van president Trump in januari. Het aantal nieuwe maandelijkse registraties bij Signal ligt 25 keer hoger dan begin januari. Het aantal gebruikers is opgelopen tot ruim twee miljoen.

Football Manager Handheld: coincidences
I'm currently second in League Two after a run of poor results in January. But that's not what I want to talk about today. This morning I was knocked out of both the FA Cup (4th round, against Crystal Palace) and the LDV Vans Cup (Southern semi-final, against MK Dons). Both defeats came about because I had a player sent off, and the opposing team was awarded a penalty.

49ers' Demarcus Robinson pleads no contest to misdemeanor DUI charge, per report

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/49ers-demarcus-robinson-pleads-…

‘The Most Violent Moment in Recent History in DC Was January 6’
https://washingtoncurrent.substack.com/p/the-most-violent-moment-in-recent

Pastor comitted crypto fraud, blames god for telling him to do it!! #hipocracy #religion

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #RileyAndCoe
Lung Leg:
🎵 Kung Fu on the Internet (Radio 1 Session, 29th January 1995)
#LungLeg
https://lungleg.bandcamp.com/track/kung-fu-on-the-internet
https://open.spotify.com/track/0vFPN8xDwz6xWrFrAQvIoz

Harvard Crimson on Harvard’s Racism
‘A Campaign of Anti-Palestinian Racism’: HDS Students, Alumni Decry Program Suspension
In January, RPL Associate Dean Diane L. Moore and Assistant Dean for RPL Hussein Rashid departed unexpectedly. In a blistering resignation letter, Rashid accused Harvard of enabling anti-Muslim bias by failing

Hussein RashidHarvard Crimson on Harvard’s Racism
‘A Campaign of Anti-Palestinian Racism’: HDS Students, Alumni Decry Program Suspension In January, RPL Associate Dean Diane L. Moore and Assistant Dean for RPL Hussein Rashid departed unexpectedly.…

Feds Used Local Cop's Password to Do Immigration Surveillance With Flock Cameras https://www.404media.co/feds-used-local-cops-password-to-do-immigration-surveillance-with-flock-cameras/

route_views: Route Views AS graphs (1997-1998)
733 daily network snapshots denoting BGP traffic among autonomous systems (ASs) on the Internet, from the Oregon Route Views Project, spanning 8 November 1997 to 2 January 2000. Data collected by NLANR/MOAT.
This network has 512 nodes and 1273 edges.
Tags: Technological, Communication, Unweighted, Temporal
…

Sources and docs: Amazon Prime Video ad load has increased to 4-6 minutes per hour, up from 2-3.5 minutes when ads were first introduced in January 2024 (Mark Stenberg/Adweek)
https://www.adweek.com/media/amazon-doubles-prime-video-ad-load/

EXCLUSIVE: Amazon Doubles Prime Video Ads to 6 Minutes Per Hour
The move could lower CPMs but potentially hurt performance.

Emil Bove declines to rule out 3rd Trump term or denounce Jan. 6 rioters in Senate questionnaire (Scott Macfarlane/CBS News)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/emil-bove-senate-questionnaire-trump-third-term-january-6/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250711/p52#a250711p52

Potential science with GW250114 -- the loudest binary black hole merger detected to date
Aleyna Aky\"uz, Alex Correia, Jada Garofalo, Keisi Kacanja, Labani Roy, Kanchan Soni, Hung Tan, Vikas Jadhav Y, Alexander H. Nitz, Collin D. Capano
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.08789

Potential science with GW250114 -- the loudest binary black hole merger detected to date
On January 14, 2025 the LIGO interferometers detected a gravitational wave from the merger of two black holes, GW250114. Using publicly available information, we estimate that the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of GW250114 was $\sim 80$. This would make it three to four times louder than any other gravitational wave detected to date. GW250114 therefore offers a unique opportunity to make precise measurements of its source parameters and to test general relativity. In anticipation of its public dat…

Steve Bannon [a rightwing podcast and former Trump adviser] is flooding the zone. We need to flood the zone too but with the truth.”//
‘Don’t forget’: mural brings attention to the January 6 rioters pardoned by Trump - The Guardian https://apple.news/AEm6YfzZtRVa9_uBrpAejlw…

‘Don’t forget’: mural brings attention to the January 6 rioters pardoned by Trump — Guardian US
A giant new mural, titled Wall of Shame, has launched in Brooklyn, New York, to remind people of the alleged crimes committed by more than 1,500 Maga loyalists

Belkin announces it is ending support for its Wemo devices and app on January 31, 2026; a limited number of devices will continue to function via HomeKit (Ben Schoon/9to5Google)
https://9to5google.com/2025/07/10/belkin-wemo-smart-home-shutdown-list/

Belkin pulls the plug on Wemo smart home products which will stop working in 2026
Belkin has announced that it will shut down all services for its Wemo smart home products in early 2026, and there's a full list.

arxiv_authors: Arxiv authors (1993-2003)
Scientific collaborations between authors of papers submitted to arxiv.org, under 5 categories: gr-qc, astro-ph, cond-mat, hep-ph, and hep-th categories, spanning January 1993 to April 2003. If an author i co-authored a paper with author j, the graph contains a undirected edge from i to j. If the paper is co-authored by k authors this generates a completely connected (sub)graph on k nodes.
This network has 89209 nodes and 237010 edges.

Trump has turned the presidency into a branding machine that fills his coffers with cash.
He has also become the grand dispenser of rent -- deciding by himself which eager rent-seekers receive government benefits and subsidies.
In January 2016, Trump explained why he had been so generous to both parties with campaign donations.
“I’ve got to give to them, because when I want something, I get it. When I call, they kiss my ass,” he said

Trump’s honest graft
The president has turned himself into the central dispenser — and recipient — of economic opportunity.

Pam Bondi fired him for prosecuting January 6 rioters. He’d do it again: ‘it’s about justice’ | US Capitol attack | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/10/mike-gordon-trump-administration-january-6

😡
#USpol

I haven't visited the U.S. since January 2020 (business travel prior to retirement), but my social media commentary, like the example above, means I won't be traveling there anytime soon. I'm likely to be "disappeared" once they get access to my phone.
Thankfully, I'm not remotely interested in going there.
#ElbowsUp

Sources and docs: Amazon Prime Video ad load has increased to 4-6 minutes per hour, up from 2-3.5 minutes when ads were first introduced in January 2024 (Mark Stenberg/Adweek)
https://www.adweek.com/media/amazon-doubles-prime-video-ad-load/

EXCLUSIVE: Amazon Doubles Prime Video Ads to 6 Minutes Per Hour
The move could lower CPMs but potentially hurt performance.

wiki_science: Wikipedia Map of Science (2020)
A network of scientific fields, extracted from the English Wikipedia in early 2020. Nodes are wikipedia pages representing natural, formal, social and applied sciences, and two nodes are linked if the cosine similarity of the page content is above a threshold. See <http://www.s…

Cybersec information overload got you down? Then don't miss today's Metacurity for a concise run-down of the most critical infosec developments you should know, including
--1,000 CISA employees have decamped from the agency since January
--Victoria's Secret postpones earnings release after cyberattack,
--New security fixes for Qualcomm chips,
--AFP nabs nearly two dozen in sextortion sting,
--Marriott can't be sued for breach,
--Trump dumps …

1,000 CISA employees have left the agency since January
Victoria's Secret postpones earnings release after cyberattack, New security fixes for Qualcomm chips, AFP nabs nearly two dozen in sextortion sting, Marriott can't be sued for breach, Trump dumps AI Safety Institute, Indian grocery delivery startup wiped out by hack, so much more

Dak Prescott to Rams brass: 'We'll meet y'all in the NFC championship' https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/cowboys/2025/08/10/dak-prescott-bold-prediction-rams-nfc-championship/85599974007/

Calls coming in are reports of homeless encampments, mental health crises and people sleeping on sidewalks.
Those calls will now be directed to Los Angeles County’s Emergency Centralized Response Center,
a new department designed to consolidate over 150 outreach teams across 88 cities, all under one roof.
The department soft-launched in January of this year following a motion that was introduced by LA County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath back in September 2024
Officials…

A look inside LA County's new emergency dispatch center for homelessness
The department hopes to increase accountability and deliver results

Harvard Crimson on Harvard’s Racism
‘A Campaign of Anti-Palestinian Racism’: HDS Students, Alumni Decry Program Suspension In January, RPL Associate Dean Diane L. Moore and Assistant Dean for RPL Hussein Rashid departed unexpectedly. In a blistering resignation letter, Rashid accused Harvard of enabling anti-Muslim bias by failing to respond to “racist” and “false” statements against RPL by Harvard affiliates.

Hussein RashidHarvard Crimson on Harvard’s Racism
‘A Campaign of Anti-Palestinian Racism’: HDS Students, Alumni Decry Program Suspension In January, RPL Associate Dean Diane L. Moore and Assistant Dean for RPL Hussein Rashid departed unexpectedly.…

Bilt Rewards, which offers rewards points for rent payments, raised $250M led by General Catalyst and GID at a $10.75B valuation, up from $3.1B in January 2024 (Paige Smith/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Analysis: Community Notes submissions on X fell from a high of 120,000 in January to fewer than 60,000 in May; Musk now rarely mentions the feature (Joe Murphy/NBC News)
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/x-twitter-community-not…

Use of Community Notes on Elon Musk's X has plummeted in 2025
Half as many crowdsourced Community Notes were created in May than were created in January.

How the GOP Brought Trump Back from the Dead (The Bulwark)
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/how-the-gop-brought-trump-back-from-dead-2020-2024-january-6-republicans-dawsey-pager-arnsdorf-trial-primary
http://www.memeorandum.com/250708/p129#a250708p129

A giant new mural, titled
"Wall of Shame",
has launched in Brooklyn, New York,
to remind people of the crimes committed by more than 1,500 MAGA loyalists on January 6, 2021
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/j

Chronicle of Higher Education Appearance
In Public, Harvard Is Fighting Trump. Quietly, It’s Dismantling a Program the White House Doesn’t Like. In the spring of 2024, Omer was told her contract with Harvard would not be renewed. In January of 2025, Diane L. Moore, then the associate dean of the Religion and Public Life program, was removed from the deanship, months ahead of her planned retirement in July.

Hussein RashidChronicle of Higher Education Appearance
In Public, Harvard Is Fighting Trump. Quietly, It’s Dismantling a Program the White House Doesn’t Like. In the spring of 2024, [Israeli scholar Atalia] Omer was told her contract with Harvard would…

Displaced Palestinians return to refugee camp Jabalia, bombed by Israel, in northern Gaza, during a ceasefire, 19 January 2025.
By Omar Al-Qattaa / AFP in
https://www.volkskrant.nl/buitenland/de-we

De wereld kijkt eindelijk naar Gaza, maar een oplossing is nog lang niet in zicht – is er een uitweg?
In hun hele geschiedenis hebben de Palestijnen het nog nooit zo slecht gehad als nu. Tegelijkertijd lijkt de internationale gemeenschap eindelijk oog te hebben voor hun lot. Wat gebeurt er, en wat levert het op?

wiki_science: Wikipedia Map of Science (2020)
A network of scientific fields, extracted from the English Wikipedia in early 2020. Nodes are wikipedia pages representing natural, formal, social and applied sciences, and two nodes are linked if the cosine similarity of the page content is above a threshold. See <http://www.s…

No such thing as a slow cybersecurity news day anymore, so don't miss today's Metacurity for the critical infosec developments you should know, including
--Top cyber vendors hope to clean up crazy threat group naming practices,
--Coinbase knew of data leak in January,
--Prolific swatter pleads guilty,
--Cartier confirms data breach,
--Abilene gropes for recovery after rejecting ransom payment,
--North Face customers' data stolen in credential s…

Top cyber vendors hope to clean up crazy threat group naming practices
Coinbase knew of data leak in January, Prolific swatter pleads guilty, Cartier confirms data breach, Abilene gropes for recovery after rejecting ransom payment, North Face customers' data stolen in credential stuffing attacks, $11.5m stolen from BitoPro hot wallets, much more

Ikea plans to relaunch its smart home line with 20 new Matter-over-Thread devices, set to release in January 2026, and updates its Dirigera smart home hub (Jennifer Pattison Tuohy/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/smart-home/701697

Thread count: Ikea is stitching together a smarter home
With more than 20 Matter-over-Thread smart devices set to launch next year, Ikea is switching things up as it looks to make the smart home simpler and more affordable.

Steam for Chromebooks will stop working in January 2026, after debuting in alpha in March 2022 ahead of the launch of the first Gaming Chromebooks (Abner Li/9to5Google)
https://9to5google.com/2025/08/07/steam-chromebook-2026/

Google ending Steam for Chromebook support in 2026
After introducing in 2022, Steam for Chromebook will stop working in early 2026. At the time, it was a big effort...

NBC News Story
How a Harvard initiative studying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict collapsed
“Nobody came to our defense,” said Hussein Rashid, the program’s former assistant dean, who resigned from his post in January and left at the end of June. “Our students were fantastic — our administrators were cowards.”…The next day, Rashid sent his own scathin

Hussein RashidNBC News Story
How a Harvard initiative studying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict collapsed “Nobody came to our defense,” said Hussein Rashid, the program’s former assistant dean, who resigned from his post in Ja…

Since January, the NWS—a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)—has reduced its workforce by nearly 600 people as a direct result of staffing cuts ordered by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, as part of Trump’s mission to eviscerate numerous federal agencies.
This policy is in line with Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-led blueprint for a far-right overhaul of the federal government that calls for “dismantling” NOAA. Trump has also cal…

As flood deaths rise, Texas officials blast faulty forecast by DOGE-gutted National Weather Service
"Experts warned for months that drastic and sudden cuts at the National Weather Service by Trump could impair their forecasting ability and endanger lives during the storm season," said one critic.

https://coincentral.com/coinbase-hid-massive-data-breach-for-months-before-going-public/
“Coinbase knew about a TaskUs employee data breach in January but only disclosed it publicly in May after rejecting hackers' ransom demands.”

Coinbase Hid Massive Data Breach for Months Before Going Public - CoinCentral
Coinbase knew about a TaskUs employee data breach in January but only disclosed it publicly in May after rejecting hackers' ransom demands.

arxiv_authors: Arxiv authors (1993-2003)
Scientific collaborations between authors of papers submitted to arxiv.org, under 5 categories: gr-qc, astro-ph, cond-mat, hep-ph, and hep-th categories, spanning January 1993 to April 2003. If an author i co-authored a paper with author j, the graph contains a undirected edge from i to j. If the paper is co-authored by k authors this generates a completely connected (sub)graph on k nodes.
This network has 26197 nodes and 28980 edges.

Number of wildfires in Turkey, January-July, 2008-2025.
From article in @nrc.nl today.

New York-based sales tool startup Clay raised $100M led by CapitalG at a $3.1B valuation, up from $1.25B in January 2025, and expects $100M in revenue in 2025 (Michael J. de la Merced/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/05/business/dealbook/c…

Clay, a Sales Tool for the A.I. Era, Raises $100 Million
Investors valued the company, which describes its core user as a kind of marketing engineer, at $3.1 billion.

NBC News Story
How a Harvard initiative studying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict collapsed “Nobody came to our defense,” said Hussein Rashid, the program’s former assistant dean, who resigned from his post in January and left at the end of June. “Our students were fantastic — our administrators were cowards.”…The next day, Rashid sent his own scathing resignation letter, accusing Harvard of failing to intervene on behalf of the program against what he viewed as months…

Hussein RashidNBC News Story
How a Harvard initiative studying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict collapsed “Nobody came to our defense,” said Hussein Rashid, the program’s former assistant dean, who resigned from his post in Ja…

Analysis: Community Notes submissions on X fell from a high of 120,000 in January to fewer than 60,000 in May; Musk now rarely mentions the feature (Joe Murphy/NBC News)
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/x-twitter-community-not…

Use of Community Notes on Elon Musk's X has plummeted in 2025
Half as many crowdsourced Community Notes were created in May than were created in January.

Harvard Crimson on RCPI Suspension
Harvard Divinity School Suspends Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative
The RPL program has already seen significant leadership turnover in recent months. Its director, Diane L. Moore, announced her retirement in January, departing a semester earlier than originally planned.And its assistant dire

New York Post will launch a version of the rightwing tabloid in California in 2026
It comes at a trying time for news outlets in the Los Angeles area.
The storied Los Angeles Times,
the state’s biggest paper and once one of the most influential regional outlets in the US,
lost more than 20% of its newsroomlast January,
months after laying off 74 staffers amid advertising declines in 2023.
On top of losing tens of millions of dollars a year, it also suffe…

Harvard Crimson Student Reflection
Harvard Dismantled the Program That Changed My Life
Three weeks ago, HDS announced it would “suspend” RCPI amidst budget cuts and accusations of one-sidedness. HDS also let go of Hilary Rantisi, a dedicated teacher, scholar, and mentor — and the only Palestinian American employed at HDS. In January

“This is another snake-oil salesman’s pitch to make him look good and reward the billionaires and millionaire executives and stakeholders for US Steel,”
said Doug May, who worked for 43 years as a steel worker at a mill in Granite City, Illinois, from the age of 19.
“He’s a proven flip-flopper.
Just look at his trade cases:
on again, off again.”
Trump ditched his opposition to the deal
– which Joe Biden blocked in January, citing national security concerns …

Dublin-based cross-border payment startup NomuPay raised a $40M Series C at a $290M valuation, following a $37M Series B at a $200M valuation in January 2025 (Kate Park/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025…

Irish fintech NomuPay lands $40M at a $290M valuation from SoftBank | TechCrunch
As global trade evolves, there's an increasing demand for diverse cross-border payment options. That's why an Irish-based fintech startup called NomuPay

Harvard Crimson on Discrimination Complaints
Nearly 200 Harvard Affiliates File Complaints Alleging ‘Hostile Environment’ for Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims Both Jay Ulfelder, program director of Harvard Kennedy School’s Nonviolent Action Lab and Hussein Rashid, Assistant Dean of Religion and Public Life at the Harvard Divinity School, submitted resignation letters in January.

This year’s spike in fire activity appears to be driven by several large fires across
Central and Southern California, including three major fires that devastated parts of Los Angeles County in January.
But even without those unprecedented January fires
— the Palisades, Eaton and Hughes
— this year would still outpace the five-year average for this point in the season

Harvard Crimson on RCPI Suspension
Harvard Divinity School Suspends Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative The RPL program has already seen significant leadership turnover in recent months. Its director, Diane L. Moore, announced her retirement in January, departing a semester earlier than originally planned. And its assistant director, Hussein Rashid, announced plans to resign at the end of this year in a letter to affiliates that same month, in which he slammed…

Confirmation of an investigation into Jack Smith comes after Arkansas senator Tom Cotton, a Republican,
requested last week that Smith be investigated for
“unprecedented interference in the 2024 election”.
The Hatch Act,
a federal law passed in 1939, limits certain political activities of federal employees.
Trump, along with other prominent Republican lawmakers, have argued that Smith’s investigations into Trump amounted to illegal political activity.
Smi…

DappRadar: NFT lending market volume has dropped 97% from a peak of ~$1B in January 2024 to ~$50M in May 2025, with borrower activity falling by 90% (Stephen Katte/Cointelegraph)
https://cointelegraph.com/news/real-world-assets-revitalize-dy…

CoinMarketCap: bitcoin's share of crypto market value grew to 64% this year, highest since January 2021, and altcoins lost $300B , as big investors flock to BTC (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

While it may not feel like it since January,
the rule of law still matters.
The U.S. remains a signatory to dozens of international agreements related to the use of force,
which ultimately protect our national security interests.
We have a raft of U.S. laws, including a Constitution and Bill of Rights,
that determine how and when our nation may legally engage in conflict abroad.
We are ill-served as a public when the most crucial decision a government can …

Trump endangers US by ignoring rule of law – Marin Independent Journal - EUROPE SAYS
Congressional approval for military engagement still matters. Here’s why.

Senior State Department staffer Darren Beattie,
a passionate Putin supporter behind the move to dismantle a key agency fighting Russian propaganda,
is married to a Russian woman whose uncle is a longtime Kremlin ally, according to The Telegraph.
Yulia Kirillova grew up in Moscow, studied abroad in North America, and married Beattie in 2021 in Florida.
She moved to D.C. in January.
Her uncle Sergei Cherniko is a drinks magnate who had an estimated net worth of $1…

Trump Official Behind Controversial Russia Decision Has Kremlin Ties
Darren Beattie dismantled a key agency fighting Russian propaganda. There’s a reason why.

Sources: Quince, a DTC luxury brand that is viral on Instagram and TikTok, raised ~$200M led by Iconiq at a $4.5B valuation, after raising $120M in January 2025 (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-…