This is actually real. Story of the Killdozer

June 4, 2004

When Marvin Heemeyer of Granby, Colorado, reached a dead-end in his fight with the local zoning commission, the logical response would have been to petition them once again and await a future reply from them. After all, Marvin Heemeyer was known to have been a logical man, so it was expected that he would have taken a logical approach.

Instead, Marvin Heemeyer went home, outfitted his Komatsu D355A bulldozer with armored plates, a layer of concrete, and bulletproof plastic, and drove it through the town in a rampage, knocking down 13 buildings and causing $7 million worth of damage with his makeshift “killdozer.”

“We were at a village that Israeli settlers had destroyed, they had destroyed the school, they had destroyed that village, and we were just looking at it,” said Khanna, a progressive lawmaker from California in the U.S. House of ​Representatives.

“And these hoodlums come in with machine guns – M4, an American-made machine gun – and they detain us. They block off the road. And then they call the IDF and ​the IDF is on their side, not on the side of the Americans,” Khanna said, referring to the Israeli military.

An aide to ⁠Khanna who was in the group, Cameron Kasky, said they were held for more than an hour and made appeals to the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem for help. A group ​of officers who appeared to be police eventually intervened, leading to their release, Kasky said.

[two characters are talking]
Vaccines have saved millions of lives you know

[a blue character points at them proudly]
Heh, look at those idiots over there, they believe in the most obvious propaganda

[the blue character is shown doing various faces]
Anyway, did you know communism killed 100 million people?
I've seen that 20% of the people commit 80% of the crime
Our military keeps the world a safer place
Everyone starts with opportunities, you have to earn your place in society, work harder

[sixteen variations of the blue character are shown on a multicolored grid]
Crime is out of control and keeps getting worse
Men are natural leaders, women's nature is to nurture
Billionaires create jobs
Poor people just keep making bad decisions in life
Migrants are taking our jobs
Socialism is when we all share the same paycheck
If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear
If minimum wages go up, everyone will get fired, it's math
We brought modernity to the countries we colonized
The wage gap is a myth you're just looking at it wrong
Immigration mathematically causes crime
Developing countries are poor because of corruption
We are the good guys
If workers were worth more, they would be paid more
Universal healthcare is communism
Patriotism means supporting the troops

[a large drawing of a serious Garfield is surrounded by the infinitely repeating phrase]
YOU ARE NOT IMMUNE TO PROPAGANDA

https://thebad.website/comic/trust_no_one_not_even_yourself

But then again, who doesn’t love Glycerin?

The question is purely academic. I am not having technical issues and I am NOT asking for technical support.

I understand that technically, my ISP had probably choked the previous port.

I also know that some nation states, organizations or other actors - such as ISPs - block Tor connections for whatever (political?) reasons.

What I don't understand is what legal grounds they have to do this. I have read the Terms of Service. Twice. And there is nothing explicit about having specific ports blocked for whatever reason. It does say that they have the right to limit my bandwidth if they deem that my usage is impacting their other customers' connection negatively. Perhaps they somehow force it into this paragraph? As in, according to them, running a Tor relay doesn't count as "normal use"?

If you have any experience or knowledge on the matter, please advise. 😊

The question is purely academic. I am not having technical issues and I am NOT asking for technical support.

Germany's Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament, backed a bill to criminalize the denial of Israel's right to exist on Friday, a motion that constitutional experts said could jeopardize freedom of expression.

According to the bill, anyone denying Israel's right to exist or calling for its abolition would be punished with a prison sentence of up to five years under the regulation. The bill will be examined by the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, after its summer recess.

Ive been using google's services since 2017-2018, now its time to finally depart from that. I just got it in the mail yesterday and I'm already in love with it. So much lighter and easier to carry than my samsung galaxy. Gonna transfer everything over in a sim card, switch to Tmobile and ill be good to go. 😁

"We were at a village that Israeli settlers had destroyed, they had destroyed the school, they had destroyed that village, and we were just looking at it," said Khanna, a progressive lawmaker from California in the U.S. House of ​Representatives.

"And these hoodlums come in with machine guns – M4, an American-made machine gun – and they detain us. They block off the road. And then they call the IDF and ​the IDF is on their side, not on the side of the Americans," Khanna said, referring to the Israeli military.

An aide to ⁠Khanna who was in the group, Cameron Kasky, said they were held for more than an hour and made appeals to the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem for help. A group ​of officers who appeared to be police eventually intervened, leading to their release, Kasky said.

The European Commission ... has approved definitive anti-dumping duties on imports of certain tires from China used on passenger cars and light trucks and buses.

...

The duties range from 4.3% to 45.3%, depending on the manufacturer. The Commission said the measures are intended to offset the effects of dumping and help ensure fair competition for tire makers operating within the EU.

...

The measures were adopted under the European Union’s trade defense framework, which permits anti-dumping duties when imported goods are found to be priced below their normal value and to have caused harm to producers in the bloc.

The decision comes amid broader trade frictions between Brussels and Beijing, with both sides pursuing trade-related investigations and other measures affecting a range of industrial products.

...

Archived

I've watched the big shows it's more less obvious ones I'm after

Hello fellow ADHD people!

I had a weird idea today. I've noticed that sometimes I have a single specific task that I avoid incredibly painfully, to the point where, even on my best days, I basically do everything else. And it makes other things easier because the more I think about the task that I'm avoiding, the more my brain is running away to do other things.

It made me wonder, maybe I can make a dummy task that isn't really critical, but make myself think that it is, and avoid it, therefore increasing my motivation to do other tasks as a form of avoidance.

Any opinions or experiences about this?

Small sand dollar.

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/49306586

The Houston shooting is just the latest instance of a disturbing trend that continues to play out across the country. And it shows why, when federal agencies deploy lethal force on city streets, city and local governments must not cooperate. 

The chilling blueprint for federal immigration enforcement operations was demonstrated earlier this year with “Operation Metro Surge” in Minneapolis, where an unprecedented deployment of 3,000 federal agents — dwarfing the city’s 600-officer police department and essentially occupying the city. 

Following the killing of Renée Good, federal authorities simultaneously refused to investigate and completely stonewalled local oversight. The FBI seized Good’s vehicle, blocking local forensic teams from examining it, while the Department of Justice refused to provide investigative files to Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty. 

Seventeen days later, a Border Patrol agent in Minneapolis shot and killed Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. 

These incidents closely resembled prior encounters across the country where DHS accounts were later determined to be false. In October, federal agents shot Carlitos Parias in Los Angeles, accusing him of ramming vehicles; a U.S. District Judge later dismissed the indictment with prejudice due to blatant prosecutorial misconduct. In October, Border Patrol Agent Charles Exum shot Marimar Martinez in Chicago under similar claims; a federal judge dismissed those charges after bodycam footage proved the agent had steered his own vehicle into Martinez’s truck. In an earlier incident in Harrisburg, Pa., federal agents relied heavily on the designation of a “weaponized vehicle” — a controversial term that has itself been weaponized by DHS to justify immigration agents’ rampant use of excessive force. 

Let’s start with federal immigration agents’ high-risk traffic stops, a common theme of these shootings. This maneuver falls well outside their core purview, and agents are dangerously ill-equipped for it, as evidenced by their frequency of firing upon moving vehicles — a tactic local police heavily restrict. 

Constraining these stops would save lives, but that would require either a major DHS policy shift or congressional action. Neither is realistic. The Trump administration won’t curb the practice, and a Republican-controlled Congress continues to acquiesce to the president, locking in, through budget reconciliation, nearly a quarter-trillion dollars in immigration-enforcement funding through the end of Fiscal Year 2029. Federal intervention isn’t likely.

That’s precisely why Houston Mayor John Whitmire should be ordering a city-led investigation.  

Local authorities aren’t powerless bystanders. Though state and local governments cannot dictate how federal agents operate within their boundaries, they can limit federal involvement. Like federal officials, state and local officials take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. Taking this oath seriously creates a clear tension, as cooperating with federal immigration enforcement has become fundamentally incompatible with the solemn oaths state and local officials take to uphold the Constitution. 

When local authorities assist or stand aside for an unaccountable federal apparatus that operates beyond standard police protocols, violates constitutional rights with impunity, and actively evades oversight, they betray their sworn duty to defend their constituents’ constitutional rights.

Local authorities that resist are on strong legal footing. Though the Trump Administration may try to subpoena recalcitrant officials, threaten to withhold federal funds or even remove Customs agents from “sanctuary city airports,” the anti-commandeering doctrine is a cornerstone of American federalism rooted in the Tenth Amendment. The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that the federal government cannot conscript, coerce or commandeer state and local officials or resources to enforce federal prerogatives like immigration enforcement. The doctrine ensures that state and local governments remain responsive to their own communities rather than serving as an involuntary, uncompensated extension of federal power.

Despite Texas’ history of challenging federal authority, Gov. Greg Abbott has taken a page out of the Trump administration’s playbook in an attempt to restrict the autonomy of Texas municipalities as they attempt to protect their residents from federal overreach. 

Local authorities retain the sovereign option to safeguard their communities by immediately withholding local law enforcement personnel, intelligence, facilities and logistical support from federal operations that run afoul of constitutional parameters. Withholding that cooperation is the only way for local officials to stay true to their constitutional oaths.

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