PBS executives forced the makers of an Art Spiegelman documentary to cut derogatory mentions of Donald Trump from the film before it could air. “If PBS isn’t going to stand up for free speech, who is?” https://www.documentary.org/online-feature/c-censorship-pbs-cuts-art-spiegelman-doc-and-other-dubious-acts-embattled

Signal Messenger is warning that Recall, the AI tool rolling out in Windows 11 that will screenshot, index, and store everything a user does every three seconds, poses a risk to its users. Effective immediately, the Windows Desktop version will by default block the ability of Windows to screenshot the app. Of course, Microsoft provides no API to disable Recall from screenshotting specific apps, so Signal is getting creative. They are invoking a digital rights management API that blocks the screenshotting of copyrighted material.

https://signal.org/blog/signal-doesnt-recall/

My latest on the clean OPSEC saga: TeleMessage customers include DC Police, Andreesen Horowitz, JP Morgan, and hundreds more https://micahflee.com/telemessage-customers-include-dc-police-andreesen-horowitz-jp-morgan-and-hundreds-more/

The NIH is the greatest engine of biomedical research in the world, but now this entire infrastructure is being dismantled before our eyes due to reckless management and defunding. Pausing grants, removing funding, and threatening universities who do the research will hamper medical innovation for years, perhaps decades.

Meanwhile, we are on the precipice of a revolution in gene therapy that promises to transform many areas of medicine, not to mention many other medical breakthroughs at every stage of development.

If you are not outraged by this, then that is because you don’t know that you should be.
https://c.im/@cdarwin/114548903727161388

Me, 1996: No, "Goodtimes" is a hoax, an email can't run computer code or give you a virus

Me, 2000, miserable: Microsoft did something weird and now emails can give you a virus. Bubbleboy is real

---

Me, 2010: No, the "Enhance" bit from CSI is not real. There aren't algorithms that can add information to an image.

Me, 2025, miserable: Microsoft did something weird and now the "Enhance" button is real, but the details are fake. Law enforcement IS using it and innocent people will go to prison

Excellent (of course) by Jamelle Bouie.
Gift link:
Trump Is Waging War on the Future https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/21/opinion/trump-maga-movement-future.html?unlocked_article_code=1.I08.AuJu.W7Uf5uTjEMHv&smid=tw-share

Let's be clear: The FDA is being led by people who have consistently spread misinformation about Covid and vaccines. Their record indicates that they cannot be trusted to implement evidence-based guidance for vaccines, and their policies will kill people and make them sicker.

I've done my own research and I'd like the SARS-CoV-2 booster.

RAW MILK TIME

I was surprised to find most of the "raw milk cures ___" talking points from the last 20+ years come from one (1) raw milk dairy farmer in California.

Let's get to know him!

Mark McAfee, 5th generation dairy & almond farmer in CA, complains "the government is out to get him." Just because he's been accused of starting multiple outbreaks!

But he's a good guy! He visits those sick kids in the hospital in his private plane.

(source: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/01/raw-farm-raw-milk-mark-mcafee/)

It's a very old observation that the real purpose of totalitarian propaganda is not to promote lies, but to dissolve the idea that there is something called the truth, and that it matters.

Using AI slop in the practice of journalism looks a lot like complicity in that dissolution, like the "author" is collaborating in the process of eroding the value of truth whether they realize it or not, whether they know that's what they're doing or not.

@rmondello anyone want to troubleshoot when it goes awry with family members?

Nice pictograph from today's canyon exploration! Green is a rare pigment in pictographs.

#Archaeology #Art #Desert #Canyon #Photography

Trump uses $5,000,000 of US taxpayers money to ‘compensate’ the family of an insurrectionist rioter shot dead as she tried to seize the Capitol.

The rule of law is dead in America.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-doj-ashli-babbitt-family-5m-settlement_n_682b7a80e4b0dc52ee2c04f8

One more paper by the AWS team, showing it's safe to use non-repeating keys derived from a PRP beyond the birthday bound (even if they have unnaturally no collisions).

The implication is that it's safe to encrypt more than 2^64 messages with XAES-256-GCM. Great work!

https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/878

I just remembered an odd little interaction at my doctor's appointment yesterday.

Nurse: Are you wearing a mask because you're experiencing symptoms of COVID?

Me: No, I’m wearing a mask because I don’t want to put myself at risk of catching COVID.

I seriously don’t know how this is still a question, especially in a medical setting where I think EVERYONE should be wearing masks, even before COVID was a thing.

Wow. National Geographic and Disney recklessly, despite warnings, did not blur the faces or alter voices of the men who helped US forces in Afghanistan in a documentary they also won an award for. As a result, one was tortured and murdered. They are being sued. Someone should go to jail for murder too. They should lose that award too. That is a very shitty, negligent, disrespectful documentary.
They took the movie offline, but it’s too little too late.
https://youtu.be/zb37dYpYdG0

#DOGE has turned its attention to small, #independent entities

NPR has identified close to 40 entities — inside, adjacent to & OUTSIDE of the #government — where DOGE & the #Trump admin have turned their attention in recent weeks.

It's the latest example of how DOGE is attempting to expand its reach beyond high-profile Cabinet agencies, & in some cases far beyond the #ExecutiveBranch & the #FederalGovernment entirely.

#law #SeparationOfPowers #AmericanAutocracy
https://www.npr.org/2025/05/17/nx-s1-5401392/doge-federal-agency-nonprofits-cpb-usip-vera-institute

Excellent video by
@flintdibble.bsky.social
: We need to speak up! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5PvwzgfKKw&feature=youtu.be