Tootfinder

See, this — •this• — is what ICE CBP are actually for under this regime. •This• is why they got a budget the size of Russia’s entire military.
It’s nothing to do with immigration. It’s about the would-be dictator having his own private military that:
- can be deployed domestically
- at will
- unbeholden to the UCMJ etc
- or disciplined military culture
- or any accountability whatsoever
- with unpredictably violent behavior
- applied indiscriminately
- to anyone
- so that the entire population is terrified of it
…because for them, the problem with Jan 6 was that the coup wasn’t violent enough and didn’t have enough weapons.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/04/steve-bannon-ice-immigration-agents-polling-sites-midterm-elections

Cybersecurity firm @… has a new blog out on how to use Azure Blob storage as a C2 for their Mythic C2 framework. This is a difficult one to defend against as it’s really hard to develop and maintain an enterprise-wide allow list for blob storage URLs. But it is a reminder to look for these URLs in your threat hunts.

Weaponizing Whitelists: An Azure Blob Storage Mythic C2 Profile
Mature enterprises lock down egress but often carve out broad exceptions for trusted cloud services. This post shows how reviewing deployment guides can help identify those exceptions and weaponize them with a new Mythic C2 profile called azureBlob.

Russian officials call for 'more powerful weapons' to attack Ukraine as temperatures drop: https://benborges.xyz/2026/01/31/russian-officials-call-for-more.html

In what may be close to an impossible job,
the “head of preparedness” at OpenAI
will be directly responsible for defending against risks from ever more powerful AIs to human mental health, cybersecurity and biological weapons.
That is before the successful candidate has to start worrying about the possibility that AIs may soon begin training themselves amid fears from some experts they could “turn against us”.
“This will be a stressful job,
and you’ll jump into …

At last a sensible note on the bond problem that underpins the tax rises in #Budget2025.
"Slowing quantitative tightening, having the Bank of England absorb its own losses on its balance sheet and reducing the amount of interest paid out on reserves all offer ways for the government to recoup these losses and invest in public services and infrastructure. "
Budget tax rises to…

Budget tax rises to be overshadowed by Bank of England bond sales and losses
Bank of England to make cumulative losses of £112bn until 2030/31, wiping out the £78bn in tax rises raised in today’s budget

After #Trump finally crashes and burns (I'm still saying I don't think he makes it to the mid terms, and I think it's more than possible he won't make it to the end of the year) we'll hear a lot of people say, "the system worked!" Today people are already talking about "saving democracy" by fighting back. This will become a big rally cry to vote (for Democrats, specifically), and the complete failure of the system will be held up as the best evidence for even greater investment in it.
I just want to point out that American democracy gave nuclear weapons to a pedophile, who, before being elected was already a well known sexual predator, and who made the campaign promise to commit genocide. He then preceded to commit genocide. And like, I don't care that he's "only" kidnaped and disappeared a few thousand brown people. That's still genocide. Even if you don't kill every member of a targeted group, any attempt to do so is still "committing genocide." Trump said he would commit genocide, then he hired all the "let's go do a race war" guys he could find and *paid* them to go do a race war. And, even now as this deranged monster is crashing out, he is still authorized to use the world's largest nuclear arsenal.
He committed genocide during his first term when his administration separated migrant parents and children, then adopted those children out to other parents. That's technically genocide. The point was to destroy the very people been sending right wing terror squads after.
There was a peaceful hand over of power to a known Russian asset *twice*, and the second time he'd already committed *at least one* act of genocide *and* destroyed cultural heritage sites (oh yeah, he also destroyed indigenous grave sites, in case you forgot, during his first term).
All of this was allowed because the system is set up to protect exactly these types of people, because *exactly* these types of people are *the entire power structure*.
Going back to that system means going back to exactly the system that gave nuclear weapons to a pedophile *TWICE*.
I'm already seeing the attempts to pull people back, the congratulations as we enter the final phase, the belief that getting Trump out will let us all get back to normal. Normal. The normal that lead here in the first place. I can already see the brunch reservations being made. When Trump is over, we will be told we won. We will be told that it's time to go back to sleep.
When they tell you everything worked, everything is better, that we can stop because we won, tell them "fuck you! Never again means never again." Destroy every system that ever gave these people power, that ever protected them from consequences, that ever let them hide what they were doing.
These democrats funded a genocide abroad and laid the groundwork for genocide at home. They protected these predators, for years. The whole power structure is guilty. As these files implicate so many powerful people, they're trying to shove everything back in the box. After all the suffering, after we've finally made it clear that we are the once with the power, only now they're willing to sacrifice Trump to calm us all down.
No, that's a good start but it can't be the end.
Winning can't be enough to quench that rage. Keep it burning. When this is over, let victory fan that anger until every institution that made this possible lies in ashes. Burn it all down and salt the earth. Taking down Trump is a great start, but it's not time to give up until this isn't possible again.
#USPol

"The trick.... is to make sure that each limited mechanical part of the Web, each application, is within itself composed of simple parts that will never get too powerful."
—Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving The Web

Just finished "The Word for World is Forest" by Ursula K. Le Guin. Can't believe I didn't read this one earlier, and this strengthens my resolve to finish off the rest of her stuff I have yet to read sooner. I think it benefits somewhat from having read it after "Four Ways to Forgiveness" which gives more of the Hainish context. Certainly none of the blurbs I had read about it did it any measure of justice, which is one reason I hadn't prioritized it. More than being about colonization, it's about a solution to the paradox of tolerance, and both the price and imperfections of that solution. As usual with Le Guin's science fiction, it's a rich companion to anarchist thought.
I think the typical objection to seeing it as an answer to the warlord question would be that it serendipitously positions the indigenous population with more power and a less ruthless opponent than in the imagined scenario, and it uses the League of Worlds as a sort of deus ex machina to foreclose further retribution. Ultimately that's why I think it's more about the paradox of tolerance than anything else, but I also think in regards to the warlord problem that we are too quick to underestimate just how numerous and enthusiastic the opponents of a warlord might be, and to overestimate the strength of technological weapons wielded by frail (and psychologically unarmored) humans.
In any case, Le Guin gives this book's alien humans yet another fascinatingly credible capability, and getting to see the introduction of ansible technology with all its implications is pretty cool too. Maybe not

Walking In Two Worlds: The WW1 Story Of Ngarrindjeri ANZACs Cyril & Rufus Rigney
Weaving together different voices, this 7-part podcast powerfully explores the stories of the teenage Rigney brothers, Cyril and Rufus...
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: https://www.greataustralianpods.com/wal…

The central problem for American national security:
By itself the United States cannot keep up with China’s soaring industrial capacity,
which translates directly into military might.
China has close to a 28 percent share of global manufacturing,
while the United States has around 17 percent.
By one count, it is acquiring advanced weapons systems and equipment five to six times faster than America is.
One Chinese shipyard can build more than all Americ…

Opinion | To Outbuild China, America Needs Friends
For the sake of global security and freedom, the world’s democracies must collaborate better.