Tootfinder

Zelensky meets US Secretary of State Rubio at Munich Security Conference: https://benborges.xyz/2026/02/14/zelensky-meets-us-secretary-of.html

Apropos Volkstheater in Bezirken: https://sound.orf.at/radio/oe1/beitrag/3220317/volkstheater-in-bezirken-state-of-the-union

Volkstheater in Bezirken: "State of the Union"'
In "State of the Union" von Nick Hornby geht es um die Ehe zwischen zwei Leuten, die unter anderen Umständen nicht einmal miteinander befreundet wären, und nun vor den Scherben ihrer Liebe stehen. Volkstheaterdirektor Jan Phlipp Gloger bringt Hornbys Stück mit Johanna Wokalek und Tjark Bernau in Wien auf die Bühne - oder besser, auf die Bühnen. Denn nach der Premiere heute Abend in der Volkshochschule Brigittenau ist "State of the Union" an insgesamt 15 verschiedenen Spielstätten in ganz …

India approves a $1.1B state-backed VC fund to finance high-risk areas like AI and advanced manufacturing, doubling down on an effort that debuted in 2016 (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/14/india-doubles-down…

India doubles down on state-backed venture capital, approving $1.1B fund | TechCrunch
India’s $1.1B fund-of-funds will invest through private VCs to support deep-tech and manufacturing startups.

oooof. this incumbent running for re-election to the SF Bike Coalition board is literally a landlord lawyer.
if you're a member, the voting details are here and there are 10 candidates for 8 seats. https://sfbike.org/news/meet-the-candidat…

Hungary's Prime Minister-elect Peter Magyar says he plans to suspend state broadcaster MTVA and "create independent, objective, and impartial conditions" (Sandor Zsiros/Euronews)
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/04…

Magyar vows to shut down Hungarian state TV akin to 'North Korea'
Magyar has threatened to suspend the state broadcaster following a heated on-air clash, accusing it of spreading “North Korean-style” propaganda and false claims about his family during the election campaign. #EuropeNews

The U.S. State Department has ordered certain public libraries nationwide
to cease processing passport applications,
-- disrupting a long-standing service that librarians say their communities have come to rely on
and that has run smoothly for years.
The agency, which regulates U.S. passports, began issuing cease and desist orders to not-for-profit libraries in late fall,
informing them they were no longer authorized to participate in the Passport Acceptance Fac…

US State Department halts passport services at nonprofit libraries
The State Department has ordered nonprofit public libraries to stop taking passport applications, cutting off a popular local service. In late fall, the agency started sending cease and desist orders, which take effect on Feb. 13. It says these libraries cannot collect and keep passport processing fees under federal rules. Librarians say the service has worked for years and residents still call every day. Members of Congress from several states pushed back in a letter to Secretary of State Marc…

Oh yesss! 🤩 The 2025 #Web #Almanac has just been released. Can’t wait to read a bit …
https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/202

The 2025 Web Almanac
The Web Almanac is an annual state of the web report combining the expertise of the web community with the data and trends of the HTTP Archive.

Trump Administration Orders Restart of Dangerous Santa Barbara Oil Pipeline https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/trump-administration-orders-restart-of-dangerous-santa-barbara-oil-pipelin…

Trump Administration Orders Restart of Dangerous Santa Barbara Oil Pipeline
Center for Biological Diversity: Energy Secretary Uses Defense Production Act, Claiming to Preempt State Law

“The transformation has been bewildering. It feels like the blink of an eye, though I guess it’s been about three years. The culture has changed immensely in that short time. When I identified with the programmer culture, it was about programming. Now programming is a means to an end ("let’s see how fast we can build a surveillance state!") or simply an unwanted chore to be avoided.”
https://ratfactor.com/tech-nope2

Adding even more cameras for a surveillance state: 'autonomous' delivery robots, and 'autonomous' taxis.
Can be combined with facial recognition, of course.
https://www.404media.co/serve-food-delivery-robot…

Food Delivery Robots Are Feeding Camera Footage to the LAPD, Internal Emails Show
Serve Robotics, which delivers food for Uber Eats, provided footage filmed by at least one of its robots to the LAPD as evidence in a criminal case. The emails show the robots, which are a constant sight in the city, can be used for surveillance.

sp_baboons: Baboons' interactions (2020)
Network of interactions between a group of 20 Guinea baboons living in an enclosure of a Primate Center in France, between June 13th 2019 and July 10th 2019. The data set contains observational and wearable sensors data.
This network has 13 nodes and 63095 edges.
Tags: Social, Animal, Offline, Unweighted, Weighted, Temporal, Metadata

Well, the state of play at the end of this morning's work:
'OK, the problem is that make_frame fails to put the arguments into the frame.
I do not (yet) know why not, but that is the problem."
https://git.journeyman.cc/simon/post-s

OK, the problem is that make_frame fails to put the arguments into the frame. · cb3dcb352e
I do not (yet) know why not, but that is the problem.

Something Is Rotten in the State of America (David French/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/opinion/denmark-greenland-iraq-trump-vance.html
http://www.memeorandum.com/260116/p2#a260116p2

The state of #security these days: #Python #virtualenv package now includes SHA256 sums of their bundled wheels, declaring that it protects against "supply-chain compromise". Because obviously there are so many attack vectors that permit you to alter a .whl file but not the .py file in the same directory.
No, I'm not saying verifying checksum makes no sense, because indeed it can save some pain if fs is damaged somehow. However, calling this a "security" feature is a misnomer at best, and openly giving people false sense of security at worst.

If you still thought Israel's military was defensive, think again.
The annexation of more of Palestine in a permanent Nakba.
Israel approves proposal to register occupied West Bank lands as 'state property' | Morning Star
https://morni…

Red state elections chief accused of breaking state law to satisfy Trump - Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com/wyoming/

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #MorningShow
Pearl Jam:
🎵 State of Love and Trust
#PearlJam
https://thescenicroute.bandcamp.com/track/state-of-love-trust-pearl-jam-cover
https://open.spotify.com/track/6GUoi7rEtaX4grD61qr0uP

What's the current state of the art in electroless copper plating chemistries that i can use to put a solderable, oxidation resistant coating on a bare copper surface?
The ideal would be something with a long shelf life that I can store indefinitely and apply a few microliters at a time with a swab or something, and that isn't exorbitantly toxic or carcinogenic (e.g. no cyanide or hexavalent chromium) and that I can buy in lab quantities rather than "I'm outfitting a P…

ICE director, without evidence, accuses police of sabotaging 2025 Aurora raids - Sentinel Colorado https://sentinelcolorado.com/metro/ice-director-without-evidence-accuses-police-of-sabotaging-2025-aurora-raids/

ICE director, without evidence, accuses police of sabotaging 2025 Aurora raids
“We tried to work with state and local government. They made notifications. So when tactical teams arrived, protesters were already there, and the apartment complex was empty.”

@… I saw this in a theatre record at work today and thought of you: 'Rebellious Susan presents her compliments and love to her numerous admirers, and begs to state that owing to the recent severe weather her case is closed and adjourned till further notice. She, hopes, however, in a few days to be able to fulfil her numerous engagements. Seats may be booked at …

Dallas Cowboys and Houston Texans Team Up to Crown First-Ever Girls Flag Football Texas State Champions at University of North Texas https://www.houstontexans.com/news/dallas-cow…

Today at work, hamalert went off on my phone. @… was activating the state capital, two blocks away from me, on 20m. For once, not in my skip! I grabbed my QMX, ran up three flights of stairs out onto the patio, pulled all the parts together, and...
silence.
I looked off the balcony at the state capital groun…

'... let's face it, "fuck it, I'm out" seems to be the mantra of web application packaging these days. Our deployment and build setups have gotten so complicated that I doubt anyone really has a decent understanding of what is going on, really.'
Note, this is a state of affairs from 10 years ago... I suspect it has only gotten worse since 🫣

Okay, we’re looking for the city hall of Łódź, it should be located somewhere around. I’ll look for a red sign typical for a state institution and find it quickly.
*spends good few minutes looking around*
Meanwhile city hall of Łódź:

Oh, dear thing, did you see a post by a Palestinian facing genocide on your favourite fucking sci-fi hashtag by mistake? You, poor, delicate flower. Do you think you’ll survive? Should we call 911? @… ht…

Maryland passed a bill directing half of the state government's ad money to local news outlets, with a few exceptions; it is slated to take effect October 1 (Rebuild Local News)
https://www.rebuildlocalnews.org/maryland-

Maryland Legislature Passes the Nation’s First State Advertising Set-Aside for Local Newsrooms
The legislation, backed by bipartisan support, will require state agencies to direct 50 percent of their advertising budgets to eligible local news outlets and mandate public reporting of their ad spending.

If your first reaction against the crimes of the state of Israel is to atack jews, whatever their perspectives on those crimes might be, you're just an antissemite.
If your first reaction to any sort of criticism of the crimes of the state of Israel is to cry "antissemitism", you're just a piece of nazi crap.

A national majority vote for president is one step closer to reality after the Virginia governor, Abigail Spanberger, signed the national popular vote bill into law,
joining an interstate compact with 17 other states and the District of Columbia.
Under the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, states would assign their presidential electors to the winner of the popular vote, regardless of the results within the state.
The compact takes effect when states representing a …

How Trump's opposition to state-level AI regulation has driven a wedge in GOP, killing Florida's proposed AI Bill of Rights, which was backed by Gov. DeSantis (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/16/technol

How Trump Drove a Wedge Between Florida Republicans Over A.I.
A Florida bill that would have regulated artificial intelligence, backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, failed to gain traction after President Trump made it clear he did not want states to rein in the technology.

from my link log —
The state of Rust memory allocators in 2026.
https://cetra3.github.io/blog/state-of-allocators-2026/
saved 2026-03-12 https…

"I’d interpret this as follows: this likely came down to a discussion involving Secretary of State Marco Rubio and a few other Iran hardliners. That’s where the decision was going to be made. There were probably people on the margins […]. But they would have known these buzzkill remarks weren’t what Trump or his inner ring of advisors wanted to hear. This is the nature of personalist rule. It’s down to the leader’s gut impulses. He doesn’t want to hear about problems."

Quando l'archiviazione del codice sorgente viene riconosciuta come bene pubblico digitale: spunti dal percorso decennale di Software Heritage presso l'UNESCO
Senza conservazione, le societŠ perdono la capacitŠ di comprendere come sono stati costruiti i sistemi, perché sono state prese le decisioni e come la conoscenza si è evoluta nel tempo. La conservazione, quindi, non significa guardare al passato; significa consentire la continuitŠ. Quando il software viene preservato, la c…

Make a passport a requirement to vote. Then block the issuing of new passports. Magats in action.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/nonprofit-libraries-ordered-by-state-department-to-stop-processing-passport-a…

Hi all, just a tardy reminder that a few (a bunch?) of us will be meeting at https://meeting.iridescent.nz at 20:00 NZST tonight (Tue 14 Apr) to discuss libre/open source state of play. This is coming on heels of the weekend's Ōtautahi InstallFest which went quite well, I think! We'll have a debrief on t…

New Gist: A Denial of Service Attack
"The state is happy to assert it can achieve incredible and unprecedented feats of change, later, while always arguing that it can't so much as buy a new pair of shoes right now."
https://www.thegist.ie/the-gist-a-denial-of…

The Gist: A Denial Of Service Attack
The fuel blockade demonstrated state fragility and inability. This is the Gist.

Raiders land massive DT talent in Mel Kiper’s 2-round mock draft https://raiderswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/raiders/2026/04/15/raiders-select-ohio-state-dt-kayden-mcdonald-mel-kip…

Marines, this ain’t a park in Los Angeles you’re trying to invade this time.
Iran is over half a million square miles (1.6 million square kilometers) and over 92 million Iranians, with mountains and terrain so fierce even the Romans avoided invading it, but 2,500 USMC soldiers (with planning by kegsbreath and the geriatric bone spur) are gonna move the needle. Right.
Building a graveyard isn’t good for anyone.

Blast near pro-government demonstration in Iran after Israeli warning
A large explosion rocked an area of Iran’s capital where thousands were gathered for an annual state-organized rally to support the Palestinians and call for Israel’s demise. Israel had warned earlier Friday that it would operate in the area in central Tehran. There were no immediate reports of casualties. But the decision to proceed with the mass demonstrations, and Israel’s threat to target the area, underscored the fierce determination on both sides nearly two weeks into a war that has…

The State of #Java on #Kubernetes 2026: Why Defaults are Killing Your #Performance

All this means is Amazon / Ring won’t again make the mistake of telling us, with or without puppies, that it’s continuing to grow its panopticon in service of the surveillance state.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/02/a…

After “creepy” Super Bowl ad sparks outrage, Ring abandons Flock deal
“This is definitely not about dogs,” senator says, urging a pause on Ring face scans.

For those of you in or adjacent to the software development world, this is a pretty interesting article on both the state of the art and the social issues its generating.
#AIandSociety #AI
https://steve-yegge.medium.com/the-ai-vampire-eda6e4f07163

The functions in the {withr} package allow to change your environment temporarily. E.g. create a temp file for a {testthat} test and clean it up afterwards. #rstats

Run Code With Temporarily Modified Global State
A set of functions to run code with safely and temporarily modified global state. Many of these functions were originally a part of the devtools package, this provides a simple package with limited dependencies to provide access to these functions.

#UK #Journalism still exists. Important work,

Intellexa's founder says his firm sells surveillance tech exclusively to governments, reviving claims of state spying in Greece after being sentenced last month (Eliza Triantafillou/OCCRP)
https://www.occrp.org/en/news/convicted-spywa…

Convicted Spyware Dealer Links Greek Government to Surveillance Scandal
The founder of the commercial spyware firm Intellexa, recently convicted in a landmark wiretapping trial, says his company sells its technology exclusively to governments—an admission opposition leaders claim proves the state orchestrated a massive domestic espionage campaign.

A push by the Department of Justice to open an investigation into the widow of Renee Nicole Good
after her tragic killing at the hands of a federal immigration officer
has sparked a mass resignation of federal prosecutors in Minnesota, reports say.
According to reports, at least a dozen federal prosecutors across Washington and Minnesota have indicated their plans to resign.
This includes six federal prosecutors in the state who left their jobs on Tuesday,
and a…

DOJ Push to Investigate Renee Good’s Widow Sparks Mass Resignation
Rather than open an investigation into Good’s killer, top DOJ officials want to look into her grieving widow.

Swing state officials accused of secretly meeting to help Trump seize election files - Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-fulton-county-2676716468/

RE: https://sfba.social/@drahardja/116394275247729227
All this. And note that Hungarians didn’t •just• vote; they organized the heck of themselves, they built coalition on top of coalition, they fought and finagled their way around state control, and •then• they voted.
The election wasn’t the •cause• of Orbšn’s defeat; it was the •tool•.

Heads up, #Utahns and #SaltLakers
We have a concentration camp purchased in Salt Lake close to the #Airport for #ICE

"Hot-dry extremes could hit 28% of humanity five times more often by end of century"
#Climate #ClimateChange
https://

Hot-dry extremes could hit 28% of humanity five times more often by end of century
In their current state, climate policies around the world could leave a significant chunk of the global population exposed to simultaneous extreme heat and drought over five times more often by the end of this century than during the mid-to-late 20th century.

RE: https://glammr.us/@jessamyn/116064378371973762
I think a lot of anarchists miss the utilitarian paths because we are blinded by ideology. Like, yeah, you can't really reform the government into being good. Government is bad as a thing.
But you absolutely can infiltrate and subvert the system in ways that produce positive outcomes. It's easy to miss the subtle difference.
There are also other strategies that become available when you don't just flat-out refuse to interact with the state. Like, you can use pincer strategies where you organize in the community and subvert in the government.
We can do more and be more creative.

Carceral Nation: Twenty Years from Blog Post to Book
In December 2006, I published an article on this blog about mass incarceration, racial disparities in the American prison system, and a concept I was trying to name: the carceral citizen, the person whose freedom exists in a state of permanent conditional revocation. The article was one entry among many in the Boles Blogs Network, which at its peak ran fourteen blogs across a range of subjects.

Carceral Nation: Twenty Years from Blog Post to Book | David Boles, Blogs
In December 2006, I published an article on this blog about mass incarceration, racial disparities in the American prison system, and a concept I was trying to name: the carceral citizen, the perso…

A dozen states have tried so far, but Maine is now on the verge of becoming the first in the US with a state-wide data center ban. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jonippolito_mepolitics-aiethics-datacenter-share-7449821151343775744-PlEQ

Cowboys Predicted to Lose Key Starter to In-State Rival During Free Agency https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/onsi/news/dallas-cowboys-predicted-lose-key-starter-in-state-rival-during-free-agency

Redactions everywhere ...
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/feb/13/italian-broadcaster-accused-of-censoring-leonardo-da-vincis-vitruvian-man-in-winter-olympics-c…

Redactions everywhere ...
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/feb/13/italian-broadcaster-accused-of-censoring-leonardo-da-vincis-vitruvian-man-in-winter-olympics-c…

RE: https://mastodon.social/@amnestyfrance/116059242762210920
And, to be fair, she didn’t say it but she could have and it *still* would be fine. If a state that’s commiting genocide is not a common enemy of humanity, that’s a damning inditement of h…

A push by the Department of Justice to open an investigation into
👉the widow of Renee Nicole Good
after her tragic killing at the hands of a federal immigration officer
💥has sparked a mass resignation of federal prosecutors in Minnesota, reports say.
According to reports, at least a dozen federal prosecutors across Washington and Minnesota have indicated their plans to resign.
This includes six federal prosecutors in the state who left their jobs on Tuesday,

DOJ Push to Investigate Renee Good’s Widow Sparks Mass Resignation
Rather than open an investigation into Good’s killer, top DOJ officials want to look into her grieving widow.

My former colleague Hamza Diman @… just published his wonderful book:
Hamza Diman (2026): "Fuelwood, Lomé and the State: 1907-2025", Langaa
If you are interested in the history of #energy

Fuelwood, Lomé and the State: 1907-2025
This book examines domestic fuelwood energy in Togo, with a focus on the capital, Lomé, from 1907 to 2025. Despite a ‘butanisation’ programme introduced in the 1980s to promote a gradual shift to liquefied petroleum gas, charcoal remains central to everyday cooking, particularly in Lomé. While fuelwood has been extensively studied by natural scientists as […]

Republicans worry shutdown will overshadow Trump's State of the Union (Politico)
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/13/trump-state-of-the-union-shutdown-00781266
http://www.memeorandum.com/260213/p118#a260213p118

Naming Things Is Hard
Big Tree™ (no understatement!) at Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, 2019.
This beautiful individual is 1500 years old, but will it or its kind survive another 1500 years (or even just 150 years) of human presence?
#ThickTrunkThursday #NaturePhotography

Nearly 1 in 4 people seeking abortions out of state chose Illinois. Here’s why. • Louisiana Illuminator
https://lailluminator.com/2026/04/15/repub/abortions-illinois/

Palantir's ELITE App: "Kind of Like Google Maps" for Finding Deportation Targets | State of Surveillance https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/palantir-elite-ice-targeting-app-confidence-scores-2026/

ProdPro: movie and TV on-location production filming slowed across the US in Q1, except for New Jersey, based on count of projects and production spending (Erik Hayden/The Hollywood Reporter)
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/bu…

Film Shoots Are Down in U.S. This Year, Except In New Jersey
So far, California, New York and Georgia declined in filming counts while the Garden State saw gains.

Anthropic partners with CodePath to help redesign computer coding curricula at hundreds of US community and state colleges, integrating Claude AI tools (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-take…

Tech billionaires are leveraging tens of millions of dollars
to influence California politics
in a marked uptick from their previous participation in affairs at the state capitol.
Behemoths such as #Google and #Meta are getting involved in campaigns for November’s elections,
as are venture capitalist…

"Dorsey is a sincere person. Even his most strident critics believe the SoMa supe means well."
I'm right here, Joe. I think he's a sadistic piece of shit. https://missionlocal.org/2026/04/sober-housing-mat…

Will a new state law put teeth in S.F. supe Dorsey’s plan to fund only drug-free homeless housing? 
YIMBYs fear and loathe the plan, and deride it as mere ‘virtue signaling.’ But a proposed change to California law could change all that. 

RE: #enshitificaton of software, hardware, and services and the austerity to fascism pipeline. The state is just an older type of walled garden. The solution isn't to improve the walled garden, but to leave it forever.
When we build systems, together, that cannot be shut down, that exist outside of these political systems, then we are opting out. Anarchism is the open source option of political ideologies.

> fight the coming crises by spending, not cutting
It seems (neo)liberal democracy with its idea of running a state as a business (cutting public services by making them lean/profitable or even privatizing crucial ones such as healthcare, education) is driving the rise of populism leading to extremists/fascists governments in the future...

Mr Nobody Against Putin is an Oscar-winning documentary that tells the story of Pavel “Pasha” Talankin,
a primary school teacher and videographer who becomes an international whistleblower.
After being reluctantly drawn into Putin’s propaganda machine, he starts documenting how ordinary Russians are indoctrinated with pro-war messages and recruited for the war.
We speak to Talankin and the film’s co-director, David Borenstein.

“Mr Nobody Against Putin”: Oscar-Nominated Film on Russian Teacher Who Takes on State Propaganda
Mr Nobody Against Putin is an Oscar-nominated documentary that tells the story of Pavel “Pasha” Talankin, a primary school teacher and videographer who becomes an international whistleblower. After being reluctantly drawn into Putin’s propaganda machine, he starts documenting how ordinary Russians are indoctrinated with pro-war messages and recruited for the war.

Say, #GavinNewsom , isn't California supposed to be a leader in climate action? And yet we cannot do this in California yet?
Virginia to become second state that allows balcony… | Canary Media
https://www…

Virginia to become second state that allows balcony solar
Residents of the state will soon be able to use the tech to lower their electricity bills. Gov. Spanberger has made affordability a top legislative…

Say, #GavinNewsom , isn't California supposed to be a leader in climate action? And yet we cannot do this in California yet?
Virginia to become second state that allows balcony… | Canary Media
https://www…

Virginia to become second state that allows balcony solar
Residents of the state will soon be able to use the tech to lower their electricity bills. Gov. Spanberger has made affordability a top legislative…

A Q&A with NYT reporters on handling the Epstein files, including creating tools to make them searchable, prepping for the release, and dealing with redactions (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/insider/jeffrey-epstein-files-documents.html…

How The Times Is Digging Into Millions of Pages of Epstein Files
Two dozen journalists. A pile of pages that would reach the top of the Empire State Building. And an effort to find the next revelation in a sprawling case.

Paradigm Shift in the Palmetto State: A New Approach to Online Protection-by-Design
https://fpf.org/blog/paradigm-shift-in-the-palmetto-state-a-new-approach-to-online-protection-by-design/
@…

The little-known story of emerging ecotourism in the Central African Republic https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/the-little-known-story-of-emerging-ecotourism-in-the-central-african-republic/

The little-known story of emerging ecotourism in the Central African Republic
BAYANGA, Central African Republic — For many outside the country, the Central African Republic remains defined by a set of familiar images: conflict, instability, weak infrastructure and a state that struggles to extend its authority much beyond Bangui, the country’s capital. These realities are not imaginary. They continue to shape daily life across much of […]

us_air_traffic: U.S. air traffic
Yearly snapshots of flights among all commercial airports in the United States from 1990 to today. Metadata include passengers, distance, carrier, airport located city, state, and month of the flight.
This network has 2278 nodes and 6390340 edges.
Tags: Transportation, Airport, Unweighted, Metadata, Temporal

Trump wants to put U.S. boots on the ground in Mexico to
fight "drug cartels",
once again reinforcing his complete disregard for the concept of state sovereignty.
According to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum,
Trump has been pushing for
“the participation of U.S. forces,”
even though Mexico says it’s not necessary.
Nonetheless, The New York Times has reported that the Trump administration prefers to send
either Special Forces (gre…

Trump Pushes for U.S. Troops in Mexico After Venezuela Coup
The Trump administration is pressuring Mexico to let troops in to fight cartels.

Q&A with New York Assembly member and ex-Palantir staffer Alex Bores on running for Congress, Palantir, opposition from super PAC Leading the Future, and more (Katie Drummond/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/the-big-interview-podcast-new-…

Silicon Valley Is Spending Millions to Stop One of Its Own
Alex Bores, a former Palantir employee, helped pass one of the country’s toughest AI laws. Now Silicon Valley’s biggest names are trying to stop his rise to Congress.

Easy-to-install solar panels that plug into a regular outlet are getting attention just as Americans are worried about rising energy costs.
These plug-in or balcony solar panels start shaving off part of a homeowner's or renter's utility bill right away.
⭐️The panels are already popular in Germany, where more than 1.2 million of the small plug-in systems are registered with the German government.
For the panels to become more widely available in the U.S., state lawmak…

State Department Tells Human Rights Watchdog to Ignore Trump’s Extrajudicial Killings #murder

State Department Tells Human Rights Watchdog to Ignore Trump’s Extrajudicial Killings
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights “lacks the competence” to review Trump’s campaign of deadly boat strikes, a State Department spokesperson said.

What the death of Direct File tells us about state capacity (Don Moynihan/Can We Still Govern?)
https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/what-the-death-of-direct-file-tells
http://www.memeorandum.com/260413/p35#a260413p35

A Texas court interpreter who was arrested by ICE after living in the US for more than 35 years
is speaking out from detention, saying she has been “treated like a criminal”
and fears being deported to a country where she has never been.
Meenu Batra is the only licensed Punjabi, Hindi and Urdu court interpreter in the state,
and has served as an interpreter for hundreds of people in immigration court.
Then, last month, immigration agents at Harlingen internation…

The Chatbot Moment: Mapping the Emerging 2026 U.S. Chatbot Legislative Landscape
https://fpf.org/blog/the-chatbot-moment-mapping-the-emerging-2026-u-s-chatbot-legislative-landscape/
@…

OpenAI's economic agenda is oddly socialist and wildly hypocritical, and is largely undermined by OpenAI's support for Republicans who attack welfare programs (Eric Levitz/Vox)
https://www.vox.com/politics/485461/openai-economic-policy-superpac-sam-altm…

OpenAI is pivoting to…socialism?
Last week, OpenAI endorsed a long list of highly progressive economic reforms. And yet, the company’s leadership is bankrolling Republican opponents of the welfare state.

Bike and walking trails lose hundreds of millions under Trump • Washington State Standard
https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2026/03/12/repub/bike-and-walking-trails-lose-hundreds-of-millions-under-trump/

ISIS-linked Mohamed Bailor Jalloh ID'd as Old Dominion gunman who sought out ROTC before opening fire (New York Post)
https://nypost.com/2026/03/12/us-news/old-dominion-university-gunman-idd-as-former-national-guardsman-convicted-of-plotting-attack-to-support-islamic-state/
http://www.memeorandum.com/260312/p110#a260312p110

The Virginia State Bar rejects a disciplinary complaint from a press freedom group against a DOJ lawyer over the raid of WaPo reporter Hannah Natanson's home (Charlie Savage/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/us/politics/virgini…

Bar Punts on Ethics Complaint Over Application to Search Reporter’s Home
A press freedom group accused a prosecutor of violating an ethics rule by not telling a judge about a law limiting searches for journalistic work product.

Coal power in WA Legislature’s crosshairs after talk of Centralia plant’s revival • Washington State Standard
https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2026/02/12/coal-power-in-wa-legislatures-crosshairs-after-talk-of-centralia-plants-revival/

Trump entered the Kaseya Center shortly after 9pm
alongside several members of his family and UFC chief Dana White,
who has been a supporter of the president since his first term.
Seated nearby was Secretary of State Rubio as well as the US ambassador to India, Sergio Gor,
the rapper Vanilla Ice and former FBI deputy director Dan Bongino.
“The Secretary of State skipped the Iran negotiations in Pakistan to attend a UFC fight.
So did the Special Envoy for …

Trump nominates Sarah B. Rogers, a State Department official, as chief executive of USAGM, after a judge ruled Kari Lake has been illegally running the agency (Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/03/12/trump-kari-lake-sarah-roger…

Trump names new head for VOA parent after court rebukes Kari Lake
Lake, who a federal judge recently said was running the Voice of America parent agency illegally, said she’ll stay at USAGM as deputy CEO.

Oklahoma, where a Catholic charter school tried to get public money...
Drummond Sues State Board Over Handling of Jewish Charter School Application - Oklahoma Watch
https://oklahomawatch.org/2026/03/11/drummond-sues-state-board-over-handling-of-jewish-charter-school-application/

The State Department has slashed by about 80% the fee for Americans to formally renounce their U.S. citizenship.
After years of legal battles with several groups representing Americans wanting to give up their citizenship,
the department on Friday published a final rule in the Federal Register that reduces the cost from $2,350 to $450.

The Trump administration ordered the restart of a Santa Barbara oil pipeline shut since the 2015 Refugio spill -- invoking emergency powers under the Defense Production Act.

California officials say the move defies court orders and state oversight.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said the state will sue.
The order escalates a fight over whether federal authority can override California regulators blocking Sable Offshore’s plan to restart the pipeline.

Trump invokes emergency powers to restart CA coastal pipeline. Newsom vows to sue
Trump is using Cold War-era emergency powers to force a California oil pipeline back online — and Gov. Newsom vows to sue, to block the move.

The source of bad data was a Department of Homeland Security tool called the
"Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements," or SAVE.
Once used mostly to check immigrants’ eligibility for public benefits,
SAVE has undergone a dramatic expansion over the last year at the behest of Donald Trump,
who has long falsely claimed that millions of noncitizens lurk on state voter rolls, tainting American elections.
At Trump’s direction, DHS has pooled confiden…

“Not Ready for Prime Time.” A Federal Tool to Check Voter Citizenship Keeps Making Mistakes.
The Department of Homeland Security pushed out the revamped tool while it was still adding data. That led to widespread misidentification, particularly for citizens born outside the U.S.

The City of #SantaBarbara released the design for an upcoming public street art project, which will transform the corner of State and Carrillo streets into a vibrant display inspired by Mixtec and Zapotec weaving patterns.
The project is part of Bloomberg’s Asphalt Art Initiative, which selected the city as one of 10 cities in North America to receive a $100,000 grant for a public street art pr…

Bloomberg Asphalt Art Initiative — Santa Barbara County Office of Arts & Culture

California Statewide Ballot Initiatives 2026
25-0029A1 - Expands Liability and Imposes Duties on Rideshare Companies RE: Sexual Misconduct Imposes stricter background check requirements on rideshare companies and expands their legal liability for incidents of sexual assault or misconduct committed by drivers.
25-0018A1 - Requires University of California to Provide Downpayment Home Loans to Certain Staff Mandates the University of California system create a home loan assistance p…

Despite heavily tilting the electoral playing field in its favor
—through extreme gerrymandering,
extensive use of state resources for partisan ends,
near-total media dominance,
flagrant use of deepfake videos,
and alleged vote-buying
—Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party suffered a crushing, historic defeat in the country’s election Sunday.
Orban conceded defeat and congratulated his opponent,
Tisza Party leader Peter Magya…

Why Viktor Orban’s Fidesz Party Lost
The opposition’s stunning victory offers lessons for U.S. Democrats—and a warning for Trump’s allies.

With baby Arthur too young for the measles vaccine and a sibling due in June,
the Otwells grew nervous when the threat of the highly contagious virus started affecting their grocery run.
“We go to the Costco that was kind of a hotbed,” said John Otwell after his state health department's warnings of public exposures at the store

Babies are ‘sitting ducks’ as US measles outbreak spreads to more states
Dropping vaccination rates have eroded protection across the nation

The Montana Plan uses the States authority to define what powers corporations get
-- and stops giving them the power to spend in our politics.
Montana can do it,
and your state can too!
Learn how!
https://montanaplan.org/

Transparent Election Initiative - Our Fight Against Corporate Money in Politics
Join our fight for transparent elections. The Montana Plan uses state constitutional authority to keep corporate money out of politics and restore democracy to the people.

In Maricopa County Arizona, a federal grand jury subpoenaed digital data related to a 💥partisan audit 💥of the county’s vote,
according to Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen, the subpoena’s recipient.
This material — which may have included scans and photos of ballots — was stored by the Senate, not the county.
Maricopa County destroyed the original ballots after two years, as state law requires.
The firm hired by Senate Republican leaders to run the audit,

Election Records Handed Over to the FBI in Maricopa County, Arizona, Could Be Fatally Flawed, Experts Say
Unlike in Fulton County, Georgia, where actual ballots were seized, a federal grand jury subpoenaed digital data related to a partisan audit of the county’s vote.

US state department’s
Sarah B Rogers
has become face of
White House’s hostility to
European liberal democracies
As Donald Trump redoubled his war of words on the European Union and Nato in recent weeks,
a senior state department official,
Sarah B Rogers, was publicly attacking policies on hate speech and immigration by ostensible US allies,
and promoting far-right parties abroad.
Rogers has arguably become the public face of the Trump adm…

Saudi Arabia’s state oil company has warned of
“catastrophic consequences”
for the world’s oil markets
if the US-Israeli war with Iran
continues to block shipping
in the strait of Hormuz.
The world’s biggest oil company
expects to be able to export
about 70% of its usual crude output
despite the stranglehold on the vital trade artery,
but its chief executive warned that
there would still be
“drastic” consequences
f…