I talked to designers and technologists about how evading surveillance is less about cool patterns and fooling cameras, and more about working with what you've got www.404media.co/the-state-of...

It is truly insane to me that our system has the means to end this insanity but the people who can effect it refuse to…even though we are now at a point where in cannot possibly be in their own interest to keep supporting this shitshow

hell of a line. hell of an embrace of disorder “The United States is itself unwinding its own global order, the world’s most powerful country is in the throes of a political revolution.” www.scmp.com/news/china/a...

During Fiona Hill's testimony to Congress on Oct 14, 2019, she described how Trump and Putin discussed exchanging Ukraine for Venezuela. The quid pro quo was if Trump refuses to help Ukraine fight off a Russian invasion, Putin would not help Venezuela (a Russian ally) resist a US takeover.

Jack Goldsmith on the legality of the Venezuela operation: open.substack.com/pub/executiv...

"And even if courts ultimately reject head-of-state immunity, they may still conclude that Maduro is insulated from liability for “official acts,” especially in light of the Supreme Court’s embrace of a version of constitutional “official act” immunity for President Trump in Trump v. United States."

Likewise, foreign relations historians who called the US an empire were labeled radicals for decades until W's administration, when they announced "we're an empire, we make our own reality"

Why are people assuming US troops and not Eric Prince employees will enforce US order in Venezuela?

Trump on Democrats: "They should say 'great job.' They shouldn't say, 'Oh gee, maybe it's not constitutional.' You know, the same old stuff that we've been hearing for years and years and years."

dusting off the oh-so-effective "Iraqi oil will make the invasion pay for itself" strategy

Holy shit they have zero justification

A college sophomore at an Occupy rally could not have generated such a grotesque outsized caricature of US imperialism

"A woman dressed as a pink Power Ranger hacked a dating site for far-right extremists. She deleted the entire site, but first she made users fall in love with AI bots she ran, thus obtaining information about them. Over 8,000 far-right profiles have now been mapped."

The Trump admin has fused the war on terror with the war on drugs to create a framework for justifying its own acts everywhere from Chicago to Caracas. Remember the helicopter raid on a Chicago apartment building? A key rationale was to go after the Venezuelan TdA.* Same with Caracas raid.

and got to write about the amazing Swamp Dogg, who’s coming to chicago. chicagoreader.com/music/concer...

Personally I think we shouldn’t start wars on the whims of one demented old pedophile

A deluge of work on regime change after the 2003 invasion of Iraq yielded strong (and rare) agreement in IR: it doesn't work & has terrible consequences. @profdownes.bsky.social's book Catastrophic Success lays it out, but it's right there in the title. www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...

Marco Rubio is reportedly saying Maduro will stand trial in US courts. Which means it’s now the US administration’s position that US courts can hold foreign presidents, but not the US president, accountable for crimes.

This feels like a culmination of several deep pathologies: congressional passivity, executive aggrandizement, national security exceptionalism, politics as theater, war as theater.

Happy Public Domain Day! At the start of each year, a new set of works is freed from copyright — ready to be shared, reused, and reimagined. See our highlights — Hannah Arendt, Albert Einstein, Langston Hughes, William Faulkner, and many more. #publicdomain

All it takes is one bad gig.

Finnish police forces have boarded and seized the 132-meter-long Russian shadow fleet cargo vessel Fitburg moments after it destroyed 5 submarine telecommunication cables between Finland and Estonia by dragging its anchor on the seabed. www.hs.fi/suomi/art-20...

It’s the massive group effort.

I am determined as God is my witness to start the Trump fake hand conspiracy theory. His hand isn't showing signs of an undisclosed illness. It's a fake painted Halloween costume hand because his hand was already removed. It's time.

He ran on mass deportation. There were smiling white people holding printed signs at their convention. Much of the commentariat focused on whether or not he could accomplish his goal. People who voted for him were not deceived on this front.

Dystopia watch

Historians: Quibbling Over Exact Definition Of Concentration Camp Sign Of Healthy Society https://theonion.com/historians-quibbling-over-exact-definition-of-concentration-camp-sign-of-healthy-society/

You’ve got a few days left to get your annual National Parks pass without Trump’s face on it.

I don't think most Americans have any idea how dangerous it is for a president to declare an entire ethnic group to be "garbage." This is how the worst atrocities in human history have begun.

Think Tank Called ‘The Himmler Institute’ Assures Nation This All Legal https://theonion.com/think-tank-called-the-himmler-institute-assures-nation-this-all-legal/

Estonia draws a clear red line. FM Margus Tsahkna says any so called green men crossing the border will be met with live fire, and Russian aircraft violating Estonian airspace risk being shot down. This is NATO territory. If Moscow doubts it, Tsahkna says bluntly, test us.

“We’re Americans” ✨🇺🇸

"3.5% rule" "60% of nonviolent protests succeed" You may have heard these cited as fact. But they stem from a single dubious source. In the first in a series @thefreeradical.org debunks these, showing how they're propaganda to erase the power of militant, riotous revolt and peddle passive protest:

Everyone should remember that the entire Greenland thing began as an influence op run by Russian intelligence on Tom Cotton. Cotton & his staff never vetted the letter or verified it, instead he took it right to Trump. 🤦

It's the Woke Mind Virus that is preventing you from seeing the genius of building battleships in an era in which Ukraine, a nation without a Navy, destroyed the Russian Black Sea fleet with about $600 worth of drones

The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5

ICE agents illegally break into a woman's bathroom in a NY nutrition bar manufacturing plant. "Pull up your pants," says a male agent. The agents only had a warrant to review employer documents. They didn't have a warrant to search for, detain, or arrest anyone there.

The MAGA base is a voracious consumer of MAGA AI slop. It's an esthetic that Orwell explains in 1984, the pornography of power. www.404media.co/the-ai-slop-...

40 years since d. Boon died, a loss we never really surmounted

The Trump supporter who runs CBS news just killed a story about Trump’s favorite torture prison. Here’s why America has a liberal media bias problem.

Why did CBS delete this promo and cancel this from airing in full?

In the summer of 1950 most US newspapers ran an AP story about how race had become the main issue in the upcoming Georgia governor's race. Segregationist Herman Tallmadge, governor from '47 to '55 and then a Senator until 1981 made a name for himself by refusing to "apologize for being a white man."

so much winning

DAILY MEMO: The Escalation Continues Before Christmas as ICE, HSI, and Border Patrol Set Record Raids Again This Week

"megachurches are shen yun for white people" is an incredible and damning true statement