Tootfinder

US ethnic cleansing and what to do about it
Reposting link to source article instead of screenshot of tweet that had no alt text:
Data on arrests shows that ICE was heavily engaged in racial profiling in LA, because their arrest numbers fell by ~66% after that were ordered to stop making arrests based just in factors like skin color, with place, or language spoken.
#ICE #USPol

Some non-citizen journalists working in the US are self-censoring, wiping their social media accounts, canceling travel plans, and more, fearing deportation (Angela Fu/Poynter)
https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/…

Foreign journalists in the U.S. are self-censoring to protect themselves from the Trump administration - Poynter
Non-citizen journalists working in the U.S. report wiping their social media accounts, canceling travel plans and pulling bylines.

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/long-island/video-long-island-man-driving-to-work-handcuffed-by-ice-despite-being-citizen/6301068/

Video: NY man driving to work is handcuffed by ICE despite being a U.S. citizen
ICE detained a Brentwood electrician who is also a US citizen.

U.S. citizen detained by ICE in L.A. says she wasn't given water for 24 hours
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/us-citizen-detained-ice-l-says-wasnt-water-24-hours-rcna224493

U.S. citizen detained by ICE in L.A. says she wasn't given water for 24 hours
A U.S. citizen who was detained by immigration agents and accused of obstructing an arrest, before her case was ultimately dismissed, said she is still traumatized by what happened.

'No Kings' Protests, Citizen-Run ICE Trackers Trigger Intelligence Warnings (Dell Cameron/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/no-kings-protests-citizen-run-ice-trackers-trigger-intelligence-warnings/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250613/p128#a250613p128

RAD@home citizen science discovery of two spiral galaxies where the 30-220 kpc radio lobes are possibly shaped by ram pressure stripping
Prakash Apoorva, Ananda Hota, Pratik Dabhade, P. K. Navaneeth, Dhruv Nayak, Arundhati Purohit
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.09518

RAD@home citizen science discovery of two spiral galaxies where the 30-220 kpc radio lobes are possibly shaped by ram pressure stripping
We report the RAD@home citizen science discovery of two rare spiral-host radio galaxies (NGC 3898 and WISEA J221656.57-132042434.1 or RAD-"Thumbs up" galaxy), both exhibiting asymmetric radio lobes extending over 30 to 220 kiloparsec scales. We present a multi-wavelength image analysis of these two sources using radio, optical, and ultraviolet data. Both host galaxies are young, star-forming systems with asymmetric or distorted stellar disks. These disks show similarities to those in galaxies u…

Fears of racial profiling rise as Border Patrol conducts ‘roving patrols,’ and detain U.S. citizens
video: “These guys, literally based off of skin color! My homie was born here!” The friend said Gavidia was being questioned “just because of the way he looks.”
U.S. Border Patrol Sector Chief Greg Bovino,
who oversaw raids that included picking people up at Home Depot
and stopping them on the highway,
has emerged as a key figure in L.A.
He stood alongside…

Fears of racial profiling rise as Border Patrol conducts 'roving patrols,' detains U.S. citizens
Border Patrol agents on 'roving patrol' arrest U.S. citizen on assault charges. Fear of widespread racial profiling gains momentum as Home Depots and car washes raided.

Citizen Lab director warns cyber industry about US authoritarian descent
Ron Deibert, the director of Citizen Lab, one of the most prominent organizations investigating government spyware abuses, is sounding the alarm to the cybersecurity community and asking them to step up and join the fight against authoritarianism.
🕵️

Citizen Lab director warns cyber industry about US authoritarian descent | TechCrunch
Ron Deibert, the head of the prominent digital human rights groups Citizen Lab, sounds the alarm at the Black Hat security conference about the "dramatic descent into authoritarianism," but one that the cyber community can help to defend against.

#Blakes7 Series C, Episode 12 - Death-Watch
DEETA: So, you have an answer for the Summons to Justification. Like what? Surely not a Blood Feud? [rises to face her] I can't have killed someone who's close kin to both of you. Particularly not as your friend here is a citizen of the Vandor Confederacy. As I assume you are. [drops a metal ID card at her feet]
KARLA: [Picks it …

Citizen Lab director warns cyber industry about US authoritarian descent
https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/06/citizen-lab-director-warns-cyber-industry-about-us-authoritarian-descent/

Citizen Lab director warns cyber industry about US authoritarian descent | TechCrunch
Ron Deibert, the head of the prominent digital human rights groups Citizen Lab, sounds the alarm at the Black Hat security conference about the "dramatic descent into authoritarianism," but one that the cyber community can help to defend against.

Paragon spyware activity found on more journalists’ devices https://therecord.media/paragon-graphite-spyware-journalists-apple-devices-citizen-lab

Citizen Science im Bus: Amateure entdecken explodierenden Stern fast in Echtzeit
Im Rahmen des Projekts Kilonova Science kann jeder und jede zwischendurch mal eben nach explodierenden Sternen suchen. Nun gibt es eine erste große Entdeckung.

“Noor, who made so many friends on Bluesky since she started an account there in the summer of 2023, had her account suddenly suspended on Friday. Bluesky did not send a reason for the suspension, so while she wrote an appeal, she did not know what actions she was appealing, so as of now it's still suspended. She’s been silenced, and effectively disappeared.”

A Future for Noor and Her Children
Hello! I'm Meave, a U.S. citizen sponsoring this fundraiser on behalf of my dear friend Noor Hassan and her children. Noor and her son Abdul Rahman are kind, generous people; though their original fundraiser succeeded last summer, supporting themselves and their extended family cost them everything. This fundraiser will allow them to support themselves and save up to buy passage to Egypt and pursue a better future.

U.S. citizen detained in San Pedro by masked federal agents during an observation patrol | Los Angeles | calonews.com
https://www.calonews.com/communities/los-angeles/u-s-citizen-detained-in-san-pedro-by-masked-federal-agents-during-an-observation-patrol/article_b70b7de3-356e-4800-9014-53a89ce0e96d.html

Apple fixes an iPhone zero-day used in Paragon spyware hacks after a Citizen Lab report found two European journalists had their iPhones hacked with the spyware (Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/12/appl

Apple fixes new iPhone zero-day bug used in Paragon spyware hacks | TechCrunch
The iPhone maker quietly updated a February security advisory to publicize a flaw that was used to hack at least two journalists in Europe.

Citizen-Go, rechtslastig und fragwürdig? In jedem Fall!
https://www.sueddeutsche.de/medien/frauke-brosius-gersdorf-richterin-bundesverfassungsgericht-ngo-petition-citizengo-li.3290401

Citizen-Go: Wie groß der Einfluss der spanischen NGO im Fall Brosius-Gersdorf ist
Citizen-Go ist eine spanische NGO. Die Organisation mobilisiert gegen Abtreibung und LGBTQ-Rechte - auch in Deutschland.

Disabled veteran who is a US citizen was taken during Camarillo immigration raid, family says (Josh Haskell/ABC7)
https://abc7.com/post/disabled-veteran-is-us-citizen-was-taken-during-camarillo-immigration-raid-family-says/17072476/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250711/p93#a250711p93

Giant Outer Transiting Exoplanet Mass (GOT 'EM) Survey - Confirmation of a Long-period Giant #Planet Discovered with a Single TESS Transit: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/add88b -> UNM astronomers confirm new gas giant exoplanet with help from citizen scientists worldwide: https://news.unm.edu/news/unm-astronomers-confirm-new-gas-giant-exoplanet-with-help-from-citizen-scientists-worldwide -> NASA exoplanet-hunting spacecraft and citizen scientists discover a cool new alien world: https://www.space.com/astronomy/exoplanets/nasa-exoplanet-hunting-spacecraft-and-citizen-scientists-discover-a-cool-new-alien-world

I'm not saying any new shit:
"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."
- Letter from a Birmingham Jail, MLK

If the media continues to refer to people as "undocumented" when they have valid work/student visas, green cards, and judicial orders allowing them to be here.. Then they will also refer to a US citizen as "undocumented" when ICE takes them (you).

US Citizen beaten to death by mob of Israeli #settlers in #Gaza violence . Family said in a statement Saif Musallat "was brutally beaten to death by Israeli settlers while he was protecting his family’s land from settlers who were attempting to steal it...We demand justice.”
The US State Department said "…

Ron Deibert,
the director of Citizen Lab, one of the most prominent organizations investigating government spyware abuses,
is sounding the alarm to the cybersecurity community
and asking them to step up and join the ⭐️fight against authoritarianism. 
On Wednesday, Deibert will deliver a keynote at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas,
one of the largest gatherings of information security professionals of the year. 
Ahead of his talk, Deibert …

Citizen Lab director warns cyber industry about US authoritarian descent | TechCrunch
Ron Deibert, the head of the prominent digital human rights groups Citizen Lab, sounds the alarm at the Black Hat security conference about the "dramatic descent into authoritarianism," but one that the cyber community can help to defend against.

Pregnant US citizen detained by ICE nearly a month after agents raided her home – NBC Los Angeles
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/pregnant-us-citizen-speaks-out-ice-immigration/3761282/

Citizen science study determines that more than one light per person is still on late at night in Germany #Germany

Citizen science study determines that more than one light per person is still on late at night in Germany
Nighttime satellite images have shown that cities are getting brighter, and light pollution is now recognized as an environmental issue. But how should local governments even begin the work of resolving this if nobody really knows what the sources of all this light are? A large citizen science project led by Dr. Christopher Kyba, at the time geographer at Ruhr University Bochum and the GFZ Helmholtz Center for Geosciences, is now shedding light on the matter.

Researchers find evidence that a second fanpage.it journalist, along with an anonymous European journalist, were targeted using Graphite spyware (The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/jun/12/…

If the National Guard kills a US citizen for littering, would that be allowed by the Constitution?
https://news.sky.com/story/flatplan-13410192

Donald Trump will deploy National Guard troops to Washington DC to 're-establish law and order'
The US president announced he was deploying the National Guard to Washington DC, saying the capital "should be one of the safest, cleanest and most beautiful cities anywhere in the world and we're going to make it that".

[OT] Saturday June 14: No Kings protests https://www.nokings.org Could be US citizen's last chance to save US democracy from oligarchy and a police state

No Kings
On June 14—Flag Day—Donald Trump wants tanks in the street and a made-for-TV display of dominance for his birthday. A spectacle meant to look like strength. But real power isn’t staged in Washington. It rises up everywhere else.

The TESS Ten Thousand Catalog: 10,001 uniformly-vetted and -validated Eclipsing Binary Stars detected in Full-Frame Image data by machine learning and analyzed by citizen scientists
Veselin B. Kostov, Brian P. Powell, Aline U. Fornear, Marco Z. Di Fraia, Robert Gagliano, Thomas L. Jacobs, Julien S. de Lambilly, Hugo A. Durantini Luca, Steven R. Majewski, Mark Omohundro, Jerome Orosz, Saul A. Rappaport, Ryan Salik, Donald Short, William Welsh, Svetoslav Alexandrov, Cledison Marcos da Si…

The TESS Ten Thousand Catalog: 10,001 uniformly-vetted and -validated Eclipsing Binary Stars detected in Full-Frame Image data by machine learning and analyzed by citizen scientists
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has surveyed nearly the entire sky in Full-Frame Image mode with a time resolution of 200 seconds to 30 minutes and a temporal baseline of at least 27 days. In addition to the primary goal of discovering new exoplanets, TESS is exceptionally capable at detecting variable stars, and in particular short-period eclipsing binaries which are relatively common, making up a few percent of all stars, and represent powerful astrophysical laboratories for …

Gerade laufen die Nebula-Award-Ceremonies. Aktuell spricht die diesjährige SFWA Grandmaster Nicola Griffith: https://nebulas.sfwa.org/grand-masters/nicola-griffith/

Skimming through 'Citizen science in libraries worldwide: A systematic review' - it's impressive work, but it's also odd how a focus on publication databases can exclude some practitioners and generate an entirely different bibliography for a field
https://jo…

Not surprisingly, after spending weeks chasing innocent people around, a horny drunk armed U.S. #BorderPatrol Officer assaulted a female in a #SouthernCalifornia parking lot earlier this week...
Apptly this man's service to #MAGA

Border Patrol Agent Who Arrested U.S. Citizen In Pico Rivera Charged With Drunkenly Assaulting L.B. Cop ~ L.A. TACO
“No one is above the law, regardless of their position or badge. Law enforcement officers have a responsibility to always conduct themselves with integrity and professionalism. Our office will pursue prosecution accordingly to ensure justice is served.”

Class conditional conformal prediction for multiple inputs by p-value aggregation
Jean-Baptiste Fermanian (IMAG, IROKO), Mohamed Hebiri (LAMA), Joseph Salmon (IMAG, IROKO)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.07150

Class conditional conformal prediction for multiple inputs by p-value aggregation
Conformal prediction methods are statistical tools designed to quantify uncertainty and generate predictive sets with guaranteed coverage probabilities. This work introduces an innovative refinement to these methods for classification tasks, specifically tailored for scenarios where multiple observations (multi-inputs) of a single instance are available at prediction time. Our approach is particularly motivated by applications in citizen science, where multiple images of the same plant or anima…

GOTO065054 593624 - an 8.5 mag amplitude dwarf nova identified in real time via Kilonova Seekers: #Kilonova Seekers - the GOTO project for real-time citizen science in time-domain astrophysics: https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/533/2/2113/7735340?login=false -> A citizen science project has already identified 20 new astronomical discoveries: https://www.port.ac.uk/news-events-and-blogs/news/citizen-science-project-identifies-20-new-astronomical-discoveries

Lawsuit: ICE Agents Deported Citizen Children in Secret, Including 4-Year-Old on Chemo (Nicolae Viorel Butler/Migrant Insider)
https://migrantinsider.com/p/lawsuit-ice-agents-deported-citizen
http://www.memeorandum.com/250807/p137#a250807p137

US citizen arrested during Ice raid in what family describes as ‘kidnapping’;
Andrea Velez, 32, a graduate of Cal Poly Pomona, had just been dropped off at work by her mother and sister
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/26/immigration-ice-raid…

Ein Bürgerforschungsprojekt hat über 234.000 #Lichtquellen in deutschen Städten erfasst.
Nach Mitternacht bleibt im Schnitt pro Person ein Licht an. #Straßenlaternen sind dabei nur ein kleiner Teil. Besonders häufig leuchten private Fenster,

Citizen science illuminates the nature of city lights - Nature Cities
This study employs a citizen science approach to identify and classify over 230,000 light sources in German city centers, suburbs and villages. The results underscore the pivotal role of citizen science in expanding knowledge of artificial light emissions and bolstering policymaking efforts to mitigate urban light pollution.

How the US democracy is designed to avoid representation
Right now in the US, a system which proclaims to give each citizen representation, my interests are not represented very well by most of my so-called representatives at any level of government. This is true for a majority of Americans across the political spectrum, and it happens by design. The "founding fathers" were explicit about wanting a system of government that would appear Democratic but which would keep power in the hands of rich white landowners, and they successfully designed exactly that. But how does disenfranchisement work in this system?
First, a two-party system locked in by first-post-the-post winner-takes-all elections immediately destroys representation for everyone who didn't vote for the winner, including those who didn't vote or weren't eligible to vote. Single-day non-holiday elections and prisoner disenfranchisement go a long way towards ensuring working-class people get no say, but much larger is the winner-takes all system. In fact, even people who vote for the winning candidate don't get effective representation if they're really just voting against the opponent as the greater of two evils. In a 51/49 election with 50% turnout, you've immediately ensured that ~75% of eligible voters don't get represented, and with lesser-of-two-evils voting, you create an even wider gap to wedge corporate interests into. Politicians need money to saturate their lesser-of-two-evils message far more than they need to convince any individual voter to support their policies. It's even okay if they get caught lying, cheating, or worse (cough Epstein cough) as long as the other side is also doing those things and you can freeze out new parties.
Second, by design the Senate ensures uneven representation, allowing control of the least-populous half of states to control or at least shut down the legislative process. A rough count suggests 284.6 million live in the 25 most-populous states, while only 54.8 million live in the rest. Currently, counting states with divided representation as two half-states with half as much population, 157.8 million people are represented by 53 Republican sensors, while 180.5 million people get only 45 seats of Democratic representation. This isn't an anti-Democrat bias, it's a bias towards less-populous states, whose residents get more than their share it political power.
I haven't even talked about gerrymandering yet, or family/faith-based "party loyalty," etc. Overall, the effect is that the number of people whose elected representatives meaningfully represent their interests on any given issue is vanishingly small (like, 10% of people tops), unless you happen to be rich enough to purchase lobbying power or direct access.
If we look at polls, we can see how lack of representation lets congress & the president enact many policies that go against what a majority of the population wants. Things like abortion restrictions, the current ICE raids, and Medicare cuts are deeply unpopular, but they benefit the political class and those who can buy access. These are possible because the system ensures at every step of the way that ordinary people do NOT get the one thing the system promises them: representation in the halls of power.
Okay, but is this a feature of all democracies, inherent in the nature of a majority-decides system? Not exactly...
1/2
#uspol #democracy

Andrea Velez, a US Citizen & CalPoly Pomona grad, was in Los Angeles when she was forced to the ground, handcuffed & 'disappeared' by ICE.
ICE is utterly lawless.
▶️ U.S. citizen detained by ICE agents in downtown Los Angeles speaks out - KTLA
https://youtube.com/watch?v=IfVq6qfE…

According to @…'s newsletter this morning, the Citizen's Advice Bureau is now requiring #Trans employees (? and clients?) to use toilets according to their gender assigned at birth, which, if true, is not a good look at all. Journalist is Steph Paton, who I sli…

Scots charity in trans rights row after announcing change to bathroom access
A Scottish charity may be discriminating against transgender staff after announcing a change to bathroom access following the recent UK Supreme Court ruling on the Equality Act, say legal experts.

The USA is doing so much wrong lately. It is very frustrating to care about human beings and see what our society is doing to harm them.
In this video John Green explains how $20 a year (from you and every other USA citizen) has helped save 91,000,000 human lives since 2000.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ…

Signals as a First-Class Citizen When Querying Knowledge Graphs
Tobias Schwarzinger, Gernot Steindl, Thomas Fr\"uhwirth, Thomas Preindl, Konrad Diwold, Katrin Ehrenm\"uller, Fajar J. Ekaputra
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.03826

Signals as a First-Class Citizen When Querying Knowledge Graphs
Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) tightly integrate computation with physical entities, often generating vast amounts of time series data from thousands of sensors. Although knowledge graphs offer a powerful means to contextualize these data, existing approaches to integrating knowledge graphs with time series data lack a concept to model the continuous temporal values inherent in CPSs. This gap can make expressing computations on the sensor data cumbersome. In this work, we propose the integration…

A gay school superintendent US citizen was detained and traumatized by CBP personnel at Houston airport returning from vacation.
#lgbtq #cbp #ice

Outrage after CBP detains gay VT superintendent for hours
Local officials and national lawmakers are expressing anger over U.S. citizen Wilmer Chavarria’s “deeply disturbing” encounter while returning from vacation with his husband.

Italy arrests Chinese citizen Xu Zewei; a source says Xu is linked to hacking group Hafnium that breached Microsoft in 2021 to steal COVID-19 vaccine secrets (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/f7299b6f-2b58-46c0-bbe5-e650357e8f48

Feds: Just change your State's whole way of doing things and make your ID's "Real ID". That way we can be sure they aren't fake.
Also Feds: This "Real ID" looks fake, we're deporting you!
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/us-ci…

U.S. citizen with REAL ID handcuffed in Alabama immigration raid and held before release
A U.S.-born citizen who was wrestled into the dirt, handcuffed and detained in a vehicle as part of an immigration raid had a REAL ID on him that was dismissed as fake, the man's cousin said Friday.

Immigration officers were caught on video -- celebrating proudly -- after using chokeholds and a stun gun to arrest two undocumented immigrants in Florida.
The owner of the video,
an 18-year-old American citizen,
was threatened and charged
after he refused to delete the footage revealing the harsh tactics used by immigration authorities
to meet the Trump administration's mass deportation goals.
Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio was on his way to work on the mor…

This U.S. citizen recorded an immigration arrest. Officers told him to delete it or face charges.
The peaceful traffic stop in Florida turned violent after immigration officers arrived and used chokeholds and a stun gun to make arrests.

You know, “this” used to be a perfectly innocent word. Nothing special, but a solid citizen of the grammar ecosystem. Who could have predicted it would turn into a major clickbait villain, meaning “We’re not going to tell you what this article is about until you click on it.”
FWIW I think I’m not alone in consciously avoiding clicking on such links.
#enshittification

BREAKING: Israeli Settlers Kill American Citizen in Occupied West Bank, Family Says
https://zeteo.com/p/breaking-israeli-settlers-kill-american

BREAKING: Israeli Settlers Kill American Citizen in Occupied West Bank, Family Says (Prem Thakker/Zeteo)
https://zeteo.com/p/breaking-israeli-settlers-kill-american
http://www.memeorandum.com/250711/p111#a250711p111

“Every part of society, every citizen of this country has a role to play,” #warmonger #Starmer
Well Keith, I'm fucking not going to play any part in your plans for mass destruction, and I assure you, nor will any of my family.
‘If government cared about security, it would end child pove…

I’ve long thought that top govt folks (the elected ones) should have the same healthcare/pension as the poorest citizen.
And take transit to work. https://mastodon.social/@VeroniqueB99/114797404531262958

Vee (@VeroniqueB99@mastodon.social)
Attached: 1 image Let them eat cake.

Regular reminder of signing the Stop Killing Games petition if you’re an EU citizen and haven’t already. It’s almost there!!

Bridging Synthetic and Real-World Domains: A Human-in-the-Loop Weakly-Supervised Framework for Industrial Toxic Emission Segmentation
Yida Tao, Yen-Chia Hsu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.22002

Bridging Synthetic and Real-World Domains: A Human-in-the-Loop Weakly-Supervised Framework for Industrial Toxic Emission Segmentation
Industrial smoke segmentation is critical for air-quality monitoring and environmental protection but is often hampered by the high cost and scarcity of pixel-level annotations in real-world settings. We introduce CEDANet, a human-in-the-loop, class-aware domain adaptation framework that uniquely integrates weak, citizen-provided video-level labels with adversarial feature alignment. Specifically, we refine pseudo-labels generated by a source-trained segmentation model using citizen votes, and …

Detaining US citizen upon returning to US in attempt to compromise student information in a school system, claiming they have no Constitutional rights, is ice this week.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/videos/vermont-school-superintendent-detained-tri…

Vermont school superintendent detained after trip to Nicaragua
Wilmer Chavarria, the superintendent of the Winooski School District, was held by U.S. Customs and Border Protection while returning to the country after...

Upcoming special issue in Urban Planning (cogitatio): Citizen-Centric Urban Planning Through Participatory Sensing Data and Digital Tools
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/urbanplanning/issue/futureissues#i530
Abstract submission deadline in December.

Future Issues | Urban Planning
Urban Planning is a new international peer-reviewed open access journal of urban studies

Ars Technica author Ashley Belanger presents both consumer rights advocacy group Public Citizen's position against the use of AI in toys, and toy maker Mattel's and Open AI's. Public Citizen's tone is baselessly alarmist, given that "Both companies [have] emphasized that safety, privacy, and age-appropriateness would be front of mind in designing Mattel's AI products."
"Toy-maker Mattel accused of planning 'reckless' AI social experiment on k…

‘A good day’: Detained U.S. citizen said agents bragged after arresting dozens at Home Depot.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-06-20/border-patrol-agents-brag-in-front-of-detained

Detained citizen says agents bragged after arresting dozens at Home Depot
A U.S. citizen who was tackled and arrested by border agents after filming and yelling at them said his 'blood was boiling' when agents high-fived each other after grabbing dozens at Home Depot on Thursday.

@… My wife found the information at https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refug

Ukraine needs to be part of the EU 🇪🇺 and NATO to guarantee its security and prosperity.
So say Bosnia Herzegovina 🇧🇦 Croatia 🇭🇷 Albania 🇦🇱 Greece 🇬🇷 Moldova 🇲🇩 North Macedonia 🇲🇰 Romania 🇷🇴 Slovenia 🇸🇮 Montenegro 🇲🇪 and of course Ukraine 🇺🇦.
As a proud citizen of Canada🇨🇦 and Spain 🇪🇸 I agree.
The full statement is interesting. It is here (I used Safari’s translate function to read it in English)
#russiaUkraineWar #Russia #Ukraine #Peace #War #NATO #EU

Checked. Seems to be true.

Replaced article(s) found for cs.CE. https://arxiv.org/list/cs.CE/new
[1/1]:
- Predicting Tweet Posting Behavior on Citizen Security: A Hawkes Point Process Analysis
Cristian Pulido, Francisco G\'omez

Speculative politics
As an anarchist (okay, maybe not in practice), I'm tired of hearing why we have to suffer X and Y indignity to "preserve the rule of law" or "maintain Democratic norms." So here's an example of what representative democracy (a form of government that I believe is inherently flawed) could look like if its proponents had even an ounce of imagination, and/or weren't actively trying to rig it to favor a rich donor class:
1. Unicameral legislature, where representatives pass laws directly. Each state elects 3 statewide representatives: the three most-popular candidates in a statewide race where each person votes for one candidate (ranked preference voting would be even better but might not be necessary, and is not a solution by itself). Instead of each representative getting one vote in the chamber, they get N votes, where N is the number of people who voted for them. This means that in a close race, instead of the winner getting all the power, the power is split. Having 3 representatives trades off between leisure size and ensuring that two parties can't dominate together.
2. Any individual citizen can contact their local election office to switch or withdraw their vote at any time (maybe with a 3-day delay or something). Voting power of representatives can thus shift even without an election. They are limited to choosing one of the three elected representatives, or "none of the above." If the "none of the above" fraction exceeds 20% of eligible voters, a new election is triggered for that state. If turnout is less than 80%, a second election happens immediately, with results being final even at lower turnout until 6 months later (some better mechanism for turnout management might be needed).
3. All elections allow mail-in ballots, and in-person voting happens Sunday-Tuesday with the Monday being a mandatory holiday. (Yes, election integrity is not better in this system and that's a big weakness.)
4. Separate nationwide elections elect three positions for head-of-state: one with diplomatic/administrative powers, another with military powers, and a third with veto power. For each position, the top three candidates serve together, with only the first-place winner having actual power until vote switches or withdrawals change who that is. Once one of these heads loses their first-place status, they cannot get it again until another election, even if voters switch preferences back (to avoid dithering). An election for one of these positions is triggered when 20% have withdrawn their votes, or if all three people initially elected have been disqualified by losing their lead in the vote count.
5. Laws that involve spending money are packaged with specific taxes to pay for them, and may only be paid for by those specific revenues. Each tax may be opted into or out of by each taxpayer; where possible opting out of the tax also opts you out of the service. (I'm well aware of a lot of the drawbacks of this, but also feel like they'd not necessarily be worse than the drawbacks of our current system.) A small mandatory tax would cover election expenses.
6. I'm running out of attention, but similar multi-winner elections could elect panels of judges from which a subset is chosen randomly to preside in each case.
Now I'll point out once again that this system, in not directly confronting capitalism, racism, patriarchy, etc., is probably doomed to the same failures as our current system. But if you profess to want a "representative democracy" as opposed to something more libratory, I hope you'll at least advocate for something like this that actually includes meaningful representation as opposed to the current US system that's engineered to quash it.
Key questions: "Why should we have winner-take-all elections when winners-take-proportionately-to-votes is right there?" and "Why should elected officials get to ignore their constituents' approval except during elections, when vote-withdrawal or -switching is possible?"
2/2
#Democracy

AI-based Approach in Early Warning Systems: Focus on Emergency Communication Ecosystem and Citizen Participation in Nordic Countries
Fuzel Shaik, Getnet Demil, Mourad Oussalah
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.18926

AI-based Approach in Early Warning Systems: Focus on Emergency Communication Ecosystem and Citizen Participation in Nordic Countries
Climate change and natural disasters are recognized as worldwide challenges requiring complex and efficient ecosystems to deal with social, economic, and environmental effects. This chapter advocates a holistic approach, distinguishing preparedness, emergency responses, and postcrisis phases. The role of the Early Warning System (EWS), Risk modeling and mitigation measures are particularly emphasized. The chapter reviews the various Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabler technologies that can be …

Replaced article(s) found for cs.SI. https://arxiv.org/list/cs.SI/new
[1/1]:
- Predicting Tweet Posting Behavior on Citizen Security: A Hawkes Point Process Analysis
Cristian Pulido, Francisco G\'omez

As federal immigration agents attacked a U.S. citizen, they warned him:
“You’ve got no rights here.”
What began as a simple traffic stop for Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio, an 18-year-old Floridian, in May,
turned into a traumatizing arrest when U.S. Customs and Border Protection arrived at the scene.
Alongside his mother and two undocumented male companions,
Laynez-Ambrosio was laughed at, ridiculed, and violently detained by a group of officers,
according to vide…

Immigration Agents Laugh at U.S. Citizen as He Records His Own Arrest
Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio, 18, turned on his camera as immigration agents arrested him—after he told them he’s a U.S. citizen.

spending a week in my time machine, dining out at SF vegan restaurants that no longer exist. Herbivore, Indochine, Source, Gracias Madre, Beach’n, Citizen Fox, Cafe Gratitude… maybe hop across the bay to Saturn Cafe

Radio Galaxy Zoo: EMU -- paving the way for EMU cataloging using AI and citizen science
Hongming Tang, Eleni Vardoulaki, RGZ EMU collaboration
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.16138

Radio Galaxy Zoo: EMU -- paving the way for EMU cataloging using AI and citizen science
The Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU) survey with ASKAP is transforming our understanding of radio galaxies, AGN duty cycles, and cosmic structure. EMUCAT efficiently identifies compact radio sources, yet struggles with extended objects, requiring alternative approaches. The Radio Galaxy Zoo: EMU (RGZ EMU) project proposes a general framework that combines citizen science and machine learning to identify around 4 million extended sources in EMU. This framework is expected to enhance the EM…

"Microplastics are everywhere—but our methods to track them are all over the place"
#Microplastics #Plastic #Plastics

Microplastics are everywhere—but our methods to track them are all over the place
A new study from the University of Portsmouth has highlighted the growing role of citizen science in tackling one of the planet's most pervasive pollution problems: microplastics and mesoplastics. While researchers often warn that a lack of standardized protocols risks muddying the waters, this research shows that public involvement could be key to plugging the data gaps and that comparability rather than conformity is key.

Can anyone here help explain the "status of a #Slovak living abroad"?
It is available to a) citizens and b) descendants of citizens. I understand the purpose of the status for the second group. But why would a Slovak citizen need the status document?

Citizen science illuminates the nature of city lights: #LightPollution

"Citizen science in libraries worldwide: A systematic review" #CitizenScience

https://apnews.com/article/swatting-plot-thomasz-szabo-60de50b8bf1dd35b3ea403072a58f1cd
Romanian man pleads guilty to ‘swatting’ plot that targeted an ex-US president and lawmakers

Romanian man pleads guilty to 'swatting' plot that targeted US lawmakers
A Romanian citizen has pleaded guilty to engaging in a plot to use “swatting” calls to intimidate and threaten dozens of people with bogus police emergencies, including a former U.S. president and several members of Congress. Thomas Szabo, 26, is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 23 by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington. Szabo pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and one count of making bomb threats. He was extradited from Romania in November 2024 after he was indicte…

MALDEF TAKES A STEP TOWARD CIVIL RIGHTS LAWSUIT ON BEHALF OF U.S. CITIZEN DETAINED BY ICE (MALDEF)
https://www.maldef.org/2025/07/maldef-takes-a-step-toward-civil-rights-lawsuit-on-behalf-of-u-s-citizen-detained-by-ice/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250702/p141#a250702p141

Leaked Whistleblower Memo Shows the Trump Administration Illegally Terminated USAID Foreign Assistance Awards - Public Citizen
https://www.citizen.org/news/leaked-whistleblower-memo-shows-the-trump-administration-illegally-terminated-usaid-foreign-assistance-awards/

On the day the UK parliament voted to proscribe the citizen peaceful direct action group Palestine Action as supposedly terrorist, Channel 4 showed the searing Basement Films documentary "Gaza doctors under attack". It showed the actions of the Israeli terrorist State in destroying Gaza's healthcare system, murdering civilians of all kinds and targeting health workers some of whom have died following torture. Sprinkled throughout were the repetitive lies of the occupation.

A third of North American bird species are rapidly declining, study warns https://www.speciesunite.com/news-stories/a-third-of-north-american-bird-species-are-rapidly-declining-study-warns?utm_source=Mastodon

A third of North American bird species are rapidly declining, study warns — Species Unite
Researchers tracked 495 species using citizen data and found nearly 75 percent are plummeting in the regions they once thrived.

Takeover of British Russia expert’s email accounts used novel phishing tactic https://therecord.media/keir-giles-russia-expert-email-attack-gtig-citizen-lab-reports

Elizabeth May is up soon after, presenting a petition on Elector Reform and urging a Citizen's Assembly.
#CanPoli #CdnPoli

@… Heck, even as a white, now US-citizen, immigrant to this country, *I* am starting to rethink whether I need to arm myself explicitly for protection *from* the law.
And if I am thinking that in my position of relative privilege, you bet others are too.

“You can’t begin to understand why one party would pass a bill that is unbelievably unpopular for stripping health care from poor people unless you understand Citizens United,”
said Robert Weissman, co-president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, in an interview.
The case that the Supreme Court agreed to hear calls on the First Amendment in an attempt to dismantle one of the last remaining pillars of campaign finance law.
With Trump appointees among a solid conservative …

A New Supreme Court Case Could Give the Wealthy Even More Political Power
A GOP court challenge could lead to the biggest erosion in campaign spending limitations since “Citizens United.”…

We should probably open our borders wiiiiide open if it means we finally start electing non-shitty mayors.
https://mastodon.social/@QasimRashid/114750496166939453

Qasim Rashid, Esq. (@QasimRashid@mastodon.social)
Attached: 1 image A reminder that it was never about following the law and being documented—it was always about banning non-white immigration, period. Elon Musk, an white undocumented immigrant, can destroy the Govt & he's praised. A brown immigrant and US citizen can get elected to NYC Mayor & he's a danger. smh

Cybersecurity threats continue to mount, so eyes akimbo and don't forget to check out today's Metacurity for the most critical infosec developments you should know, including
--Airlines, transportation sector are Scattered Spider's latest targets,
--Sinaloa cartel used hacked phone records and surveillance cameras to help kill FBI informants,
--Germany orders Apple and Google to remove DeepSeek from app stores,
--Fake US bank accounts fuel romance scam indu…

Airlines, transportation sector are Scattered Spider's latest targets
Sinaloa cartel used hacked phone records and surveillance cameras to help kill FBI informants, Germany orders Apple and Google to remove DeepSeek from app stores, Fake US bank accounts fuel romance scam industry, Trump builds giant US citizen database, Canada orders Hikvision to shut down, more

Video footage captured by Laynez-Ambrosio, an 18-year-old US citizen, show a group of officers in tactical gear working together to violently detain the three men, two of whom are undocumented.
They appear to use a stun gun on one man,
put another in a chokehold
and can be heard telling Laynez-Ambrosio:
“You’ve got no rights here. You’re a migo, brother.”
Afterward, agents can be heard bragging and making light of the arrests,
calling the stun gun use “f…

Human cost of Tory and Labour welfare cuts.
UK is no longer a Welfare State: it's becoming a Warfare State wiith reckless militarisation, and a war without bullets on the "surplus population".
'I've got no money. I'm constantly cold. I don't want to be here anymore' - Manchester Evening News

'I've got no money. I'm constantly cold. I don't want to be here anymore'
The Manchester Evening News spent a day at Citizen's Advice to find out what impact Labour's controversial welfare cuts could have

The Trump administration is planning to change the visa system for skilled foreign workers,
a program at the center of a dispute between immigration hard-liners and tech industry leaders,
said the new director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Joseph Edlow, the director of U.S.C.I.S., said the test to become a U.S. citizen was "too easy" and should change.
“The test as it’s laid out right now, it’s not very difficult,”
Mr. Edlow said on Thur…

Trump Administration Plans Changes to H-1B Visas and U.S. Citizenship Tests
In an interview with The New York Times, the new director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said the test to become a U.S. citizen was too easy.

JD Vance Knows Who Belongs (Jamelle Bouie/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/opinion/jd-vance-claremont-american-citizen.html
http://www.memeorandum.com/250723/p29#a250723p29

This U.S. Citizen Recorded an Immigration Arrest. Officers Told Him To Delete It or Face Charges.
The peaceful traffic stop in Florida turned violent after immigration officers arrived and used chokeholds and a stun gun to make arrests.
https://youtu.be/nX7I4znDOKk

Here's the latest. -- The suspect is an Egyptian citizen who stayed in the United States ... (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/06/02/us/boulder-colorado-attack-suspect
http://www.memeorandum.com/250602/p104#a250602p104

Outrage after border agents subject detained gay Vermont superintendent to hours of 'psychological terror' (Christopher Wiggins/Advocate)
https://www.advocate.com/news/vermont-gay-citizen-detained-cbp
http://www.memeorandum.com/250723/p148#a250723p148

#ICEBlock, an iPhone app that allows users to anonymously report sightings of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents,
⭐️has rocketed to one of the coveted top spots in Apple’s U.S. App Store rankings.
The upshot: Criticism from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi helped get it there.
Most of ICEBlock’s users
— about 20,000
— are in Los Angeles,
where ICE ra…

ICEBlock, an app for anonymously reporting ICE sightings, goes viral overnight after Bondi criticism | TechCrunch
The citizen app for anonymously reporting ICE agents and raids went viral after criticism from the U.S. Attorney General.

American killed in Syria amid growing sectarian violence, State Department says (ABC News)
https://abcnews.go.com/US/state-department-confirms-us-citizen-hosam-sarayas-killed/story?id=123953299
http://www.memeorandum.com/250722/p78#a250722p78

ICE arrests chiropractor outside his kid’s Beaverton preschool
The man is married to a U.S. citizen
and has completed his green card application.
https://www.opb.org/article/2025/07/16/ice-imm…

ICE arrests chiropractor outside his kid’s Beaverton preschool
Federal immigration officers arrested a 38-year old Iranian man outside his child’s preschool in Beaverton on Tuesday, according to school and law enforcement officials. The man is married to a U.S. citizen and completed his green card application.

Assimilation and Its Discontents -- We should expect anyone who wishes to be a citizen ... (Andrew Beck/The American Mind)
https://americanmind.org/features/assimilation-and-its-discontents/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250730/p155#a250730p155

After decades in the U.S., Iranians arrested in Trump’s deportation drive
Mandonna “Donna” Kashanian lived in the United States for 47 years,
married a U.S. citizen and raised their daughter.
She was gardening in the yard of her New Orleans home when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers handcuffed and took her away, her family said.
Kashanian arrived in 1978 on a student visa and applied for asylum,
fearing retaliation for her father’s support of…

After decades in the U.S., Iranians arrested in Trump’s deportation drive
Some Iranians are getting arrested by immigration authorities after living decades in the United States. 'Who picks up a grandmother?' says the husband of a detained woman who has lived in the U.S. for 47 years.

Across the country, Republican lawmakers have been working to undermine or altogether undo the will of the voters -- by making it harder to pass amendments and laws through citizen-led initiatives.
In #Missouri, the 2025 legislative session was dominated by Republican lawmakers trying to reverse two major measures that voters had put on the ballot and approved just months before;
one made

Red State Voters Approved Progressive Measures. GOP Lawmakers Are Trying to Undermine Them.
In the wake of ballot measures that increased abortion access and improved sick leave for workers, a coordinated effort is unfolding across the country to restrict direct democracy — and shift power to partisan legislatures.

Immigration agents told a teenage US citizen: 'You've got no rights.' He secretly recorded his brutal arrest (Clare Considine/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/25/florida-teen-immigration-arrest
http://www.memeorandum.com/250725/p74#a250725p74

Iran vowed swift retaliation Saturday following the U.S. military’s strikes on the Iranian nuclear program.
“Every American citizen or military personnel in the region is now a target,” a commentator on Iranian state media said.
Al-Asad Air Base, an Iraqi installation 150 miles west of Baghdad that is operated jointly by the Iraqi and U.S. air forces, houses thousands of American troops,
the largest U.S. deployment in the country.
Iran and its proxies have in recent…

U.S. bases that could attack Iran — and become targets
A number of U.S. military sites in the Middle East could face reprisals if Trump strikes Iran.