Billionaire investors are already eyeing up Greenland to build a high-tech and stateless Freedom City, "a new, libertarian-minded municipality characterized by minimal corporate regulation and a focus on accelerating emerging technologies like AI and mini nuclear reactors." This is an old story of colonisation dressed up in semiconductors & utopianism, where the self-celebrating 'bold free will' of the invader comes at the cost of exploitation, extraction & oppression.
Popular Science
Billionaires dream of building utopian techno-city in Greenland
The 'freedom city' is the latest effort to create stateless cities with minimal corporate regulation.
The current US administration is positioning any support of Palestinian people as a vehicle for bootstrapping the implementation of processes & precedents for crushing dissent. While Mahmoud's own rights must be fought for tooth & nail, it is a mistake to assume his deportation is solely about him & his views. They have used him to prepare the ground for wide scale criminalisation of protest itself. For the Far Right, speech is only free when it comes from their mouths
AP News
Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil can be deported, immigration judge rules
A Louisiana immigration judge has ruled that the U.S. can deport Mahmoud Khalil based on the federal government’s argument that he poses a nation...
So-called de-extinction draws the same moral hazard as carbon capture's license to pollute. It makes driving species to extinction less awful bc, well, we can always keep a copy & de-extinct later. But can we? Truth is, the Dire Wolf was not "brought back". The animals have millions of base pairs of difference from Dire wolves. Julie Meachen (Vertebrate Paleontologist from Des Moines Uni) puts it well: “We have a mostly gray wolf that looks like a dire wolf" https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/have-dire-wolves-which-went-extinct-more-than-10000-years-ago-really-been-brought-back-to-life-180986385/
An ok overview of security considerations & mitigating controls to protect privacy and reduce risk of harm when crossing the US border. The author misses some utterly crucial details however. 1) When your encrypted device is on, it is in an *unlocked* state. Only by powering off such a device is it in an encrypted state. Further, MicroSD cards are often unencrypted. Check before you fly, and power off before the border. 2) (next post)
the Guardian
How to protect your phone and data privacy at the US border
With reports of people being turned away at airports over messages found on devices, here’s what to do to minimize risks
 #privacy #infosec
Soon, all human rights and environmental protest in the US may be deemed illegal. Universities may be purged.
Gizmodo
State Department Will Use AI to Search for ‘Pro-Hamas’ Students to Deport
The new move is part of a broader attack by the Trump administration on free speech and free expression.
 The machine has been started. It will now follow its own logic.
Guardian article in advance of forthcoming series on UK spy cops. It details how 1/5th of those sent to infiltrate political movements ended up in intimate relationships with women therein, some even fathering children while using fake identities. In my work for defenders of human rights & the environment I hear many awful stories as regards infiltration - the worst of social engineering. Arguably the UK has among the lowest, most disgraceful history within this space
the Guardian
Revealed: at least 25 UK ‘spy cops’ had sex with deceived members of public
Total shows scale of dishonesty in undercover operations over more than three decades