Demonstrators blocked the exit of ICE vehicles from a parking lot using garbage bags and metal barriers

A raid by federal immigration authorities on Saturday in New York City was thwarted by about 200 protesters, several of whom were arrested after scuffles with police officers.

The episode was the latest in which citizen activists have stood up to agents enforcing Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration agenda through targeted raids in various cities across the country after his second presidency began in January.

Similar recent actions by federal authorities elsewhere, including in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Chicago, Illinois, have been met with resistance by citizens opposed to the administration’s escalating program of detentions and deportations.

A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a lower court decision that disqualified Alina Habba, who served as a personal lawyer to Trump, as the acting U.S. attorney in New Jersey.

The decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit was unanimous against the Trump administration, which has attempted to use a novel mechanism to place lawyers who have not received Senate approval into temporary U.S. attorney positions across the country.

The case before the 3rd Circuit arose after three men facing criminal charges in New Jersey challenged the validity of Habba's appointment as a violation of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act and sought to have their indictments dismissed.

Literally stole this comment form somewhere but it got a smile out of me. Felt a tad to real

Arise ye Glaciers from your slumbers Arise ye prisoners of heat

Can we start referring to almost shitting your pants as a "carrington event"?

not neseserily just this artical but over the past few months I have noticed RNZ with a number of articles along the lines of "10 steps to change party leadership" with their target firmly on Luxon.

Not that i disagree with thier assesment. The dude is little more than an empty suit. It is funny that RNZ is trying to manufacture it, although maybe its a case of "where there is smoke there is fire"

It would be election suicide though. One of Nationals big cards are that they are not the Greens party or Te Pati Maori. Rolling Luxon would send a signal that only Labour is solid. Then again if they already think this election is a loss then rolling Luxon now is a great idea.

Comments

Advocates are fighting against the $16.7bn global smart-toy market, decrying surveillance and a lack of regulation

427 students

$153 million

To be fair, that's $153m over 4 years and the student numbers will probably increase. Let's pretend there were 1000 students, so that's 153,000,000 / 4 / 1000 = $38k per student per year.

For the rest of the school system, the govt spends ~$10k per student per year, see page 10, point 1.2. So Charter schools still cost nearly 4x as much and they don't even work.

Why did development slow down?

We spent a long time debugging and stabilizing IPFS-related issues that affected content reliability. These fixes were essential before building new features otherwise the protocol wouldn’t scale.

Is the team big?

No, the project is small, and the current budget only allows paying two developers. Progress is steady but slower because everything is done properly instead of rushed.

How does anti-spam work?

Each community chooses its own challenge: captcha, crypto ENS, SMS, email OTP, or custom rules. This keeps spam protection decentralized instead of relying on a global, platform-wide filter.

Why not use Mastodon/ActivityPub/Bluesky/Nostr/Farcaster/Steemit/Blockchain

mastodon / lemmy / activitypub Instance admins can delete user accounts and communities. Instance admins can block other instances.

Bluesky instances cannot delete user accounts and communities (as long as they are backed up somewhere else), but they can block user accounts and communities.

plebbit solves each problem:

instances/hubs/rpcs cannot block a user account or community, because there are no instances, it's directly peer to peer. a community node can be run from home on consumer internet, no server, domain name, SSL, sync time, etc. it's as easy as running a bittorrent client.

it can scale infinitely because there are no historical ledger like a blockchain or hub, it's like bittorrent, if a community no longer has any seeds, it stops existing. (this is also a downside of plebbit, but scaling is more important, not scaling makes the system useless) it has no cost to publish, like bittorrent, because is has no historical ledger that each node must sync. users seed their communities for free while they use it, like bittorrent.

a community node can communicate a challenge to a user to post to his community (like a minimum user account age, or karma, or a captcha, whitelist, etc), because it's directly peer to peer, the community node is the instance, so it can gatekeep it however it wants. (this is also a downside of plebbit, a community node must be online 24/7, but it's also possible to delegate running a node to an RPC/instance/hub, you just lose some censorship resistance, so it's not inferior in this regards, it's strictly superior because of the optionality).

Is this running on ETH?

the plebbit protocol itself it not a blockchain, it's a content addressed network like Bittorrent, built using IPFS/libp2p.

I’m looking for perspectives on which countries most effectively combine high quality of life with low social and economic inequality.

Paywall? https://archive.is/O47ME

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has asked smartphone companies in India to preinstall a state-developed cybersecurity application that allows users to report fraudulent calls and messages, and stolen mobile phones, The Indian Express has learnt. Users should not be able to delete the application, the Department has told smartphone companies.

SponsorBlock and Generated Summary:

SponsorBlock:

1. 0:00.000 - 0:19.000 Hook/Greetings
2. 0:19.000 - 0:26.500 Unpaid/Self Promotion
3. 1:36.000 - 2:12.000 Interaction Reminder
4. 1:08:00.000 - 1:08:20.000 Palestine Youth Movement (PYM) on The Katie Halper Show Tomorrow, Dec. 02 2025, at 7 PM ET
5. 1:08:21.300 - 1:08:28.000 Unpaid/Self Promotion

Video Description:

Click here for the full interview with Marta Havryshko and Nicolai Petro: [https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/full-episode-ukrainian-scholar-exposes?r=je5va]

Watch this week's Friday Free-For-All: Fmr Obama Speechwriter: "Genocide is Bad" Is WRONG Takeaway of the Holocaust at [https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/fmr-obama-speechwriter-genocide-is?r=je5va]

Katie Halper and Aaron Maté go over the worst moments of the Sunday morning news shows that they watch so you don’t have to.

If it's Monday Morning, it's #mondaymourning

Generated Summary:

This transcript is from an episode of the podcast/stream "Useful Idiots," hosted by Katie Halper and Aaron Maté, where they critique and satirize coverage from mainstream ("corporate") Sunday news shows.

Main Themes & Critiques

1. Immigration & "Blowback" from Foreign Policy: The hosts critique coverage of a fatal attack on National Guard members by an Afghan asylum seeker. They argue corporate media omits crucial context: the suspect worked with a CIA unit involved in night raids and civilian casualties. They frame this as "blowback" — the inevitable consequence of decades of U.S. invasion and occupation, a point they say is consistently whitewashed.

2. Trump's Venezuela Policy & Alleged War Crimes: A major segment focuses on a Washington Post report alleging U.S. forces launched a second strike on a damaged Venezuelan boat to kill survivors. The hosts:

   • Contrast the reactions of Democrats (Sen. Chris Van Hollen called it a potential war crime/murder) and Republicans (Sen. Markwayne Mullin dismissed it as unverified "allegations").
   • Mock the legal premise of a "war on drug cartels" used to justify the strikes.
   • Criticize the broader regime-change policy towards Venezuela, highlighting its oil reserves and the hypocrisy of pardoning convicted Honduran narco-trafficker Juan Orlando Hernández while accusing Venezuela's Maduro of drug trafficking.
   • Lambast rhetoric from officials like Sen. Eric Schmitt and Rep. María Elvira Salazar, who frame intervention in Venezuela as "America First" and predict easy success.

3. Ukraine War & "Peace" vs. "Proxy War": They discuss Trump's negotiations with Russia to end the war in Ukraine.

   • Credit Trump for engaging diplomatically, contrasting it with Biden's approach.
   • Argue the Washington establishment (like Rep. Mike Turner) refuses to make peace, clinging to a debunked "Russia-gate" narrative and demonizing Russia to maintain a proxy war aimed at preserving "Western hegemony."
   • Criticize figures like Rep. Don Bacon for viewing concessions (like Ukraine not joining NATO) as "surrender," arguing this condemns more Ukrainians to die in a losing war.

4. Domestic Politics & Economy:

   • Dismiss Black Friday economic optimism from Trump adviser Kevin Hassett, arguing it reflects a "K-shaped" recovery where spending increases are driven by the wealthy and higher prices, not broad-based wage growth.
   • Mock Tim Walz's non-answer about Kamala Harris's 2028 prospects, arguing Democrats have learned nothing from their 2024 loss, specifically refusing to address the impact of their stance on Gaza, which alienated key voters.

Hosts' Perspective & Tone

The hosts position themselves as left-wing critics of both political establishments and mainstream media. Their tone is sarcastic, mocking, and deeply cynical. Key elements of their perspective include:

• Anti-interventionism: They are sharply critical of U.S. foreign policy, regime change, sanctions, and military actions, viewing them as immoral and creating unintended consequences.
• Media Critique: They accuse corporate media of being propagandistic, omitting crucial context (like U.S. war crimes or the causes of migration), and serving elite interests.
• Hypocrisy Watch: They consistently point out contradictions, such as Republicans suddenly embracing neocons they once denounced, or Trump pardoning a narco-trafficker while accusing Maduro of drug crimes.
• Cynical Bipartisanship: They see little substantive difference between the two parties on core issues of war, empire, and serving corporate power, despite performative conflicts.

Notable Cultural References & Asides

• The opening references Keith Olbermann's "Worst Persons" segment and his evolution from criticizing Bush-era neocons to embracing them during Russiagate.
• They use songs by Pink's What About Us and The Magnetic Fields' Absolutely Cucko to humorously underscore points about broken promises and instability.
• They share personal trivia, like Maté's childhood commercial for "Men of Metal" and the height/youth of Judge Boasberg (who they mockingly defend against charges of being an "activist judge").

In essence, the episode is a diatribe against what the hosts see as the corrupt, hypocritical, and destructive consensus in Washington and the media that supports endless war, demonizes adversaries, and ignores the root causes of global and domestic crises.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/30924029

Tensions grow after research in England finds there may not be enough water for planned carbon capture and hydrogen projects

archived (Wayback Machine)

This is why I support open source operating systems.

Without open source, you control the technology. Without open source, the technology controls you.

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1. 14:10.300 - 14:26.251 Unpaid/Self Promotion

Video Description:

Krystal and Saagar discuss the CIA linked Afghan who shot DC National Guards.

Guest Seth Harp: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/730414/the-fort-bragg-cartel-by-seth-harp/

Generated Summary:

This transcript is from an interview segment on "Breaking Points" discussing a shooting incident in Washington DC, where two National Guardsmen were shot, one fatally. The suspected gunman is identified as an Afghan national who was allegedly part of CIA-backed units ("zero units" or "death squads") in Afghanistan before being granted asylum in the US.

The host interviews investigative journalist Seth Harp, who outlines the suspect's background:

• Recruited by the CIA at age 15 into a "zero unit" (specifically the Kandahar Strike Force).
• This unit was reportedly led by a powerful Afghan drug lord and warlord, Ahmad Wali Karzai.
• These units conducted night raids/assassinations and were involved in criminal activities, including drug trafficking and the practice of "bacha bazi" (sexual exploitation of boys).
• The suspect was later brought to the US under a special immigrant visa program.

Key discussion points:

1. Imperial Blowback: The interview frames the incident as a potential consequence ("blowback") of US foreign policy and covert operations in Afghanistan. The trauma and skills from these operations, combined with difficulty integrating into American society, are suggested as factors in the violence.
2. Vetting and Political Narrative: They critique statements from officials like Rep. Claudia Tenney, who suggested the suspect was not properly vetted and may have been "radicalized" in the US. The interviewer and Harp argue the radicalization likely stemmed from his experiences in the CIA-backed units, not Islamist ideology. They also note his asylum was granted under the Trump administration, countering attempts to make it a partisan issue.
3. Pattern of Violence: Harp references a prior incident where another Afghan veteran of similar units shot a police officer in Virginia, citing a viral video that showed the man's distress and professional combat skills.
4. Systemic Issues: The discussion highlights the moral and practical consequences of using proxy forces (like the zero units) and then repatriating thousands of such individuals to the US, suggesting they represent a potentially unstable population.

The tone is critical of US covert operations, the military-industrial complex, and what the host calls the "deep state." The segment concludes by promoting Harp's investigative work and encouraging viewers to support independent media.

I'm one of those hipsters who doesn't use streaming services.

I did, a while ago, but I quit using them because the experience is kind of awful, and I'm happier now for it. I collect physical media and watch it using Jellyfin on my Linux-based home theater PC, and I'm completely satisfied with how it works.

I'm making this video because I am really troubled by algorithmic helplessness, and I feel like corporate-centralized streaming media makes that worse. Maybe this video will encourage someone else to cut the cord and rediscover an appreciation for owning your media and being choosy about what to "watch next". Or maybe I'm just wasting time. Who knows? I suppose, you know, you're reading this description, right?

If you read the description, say "algorithmic helplessness sucks" in the comments. That'll make me feel better.