“I was jarred at how the administration openly gloated and shamelessly lied about the use of lethal force by DHS against people who posed no threat. It only got worse after the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. The lies the administration told after those killings aren’t the lies you tell to cover something up. They’re the lies you tell when you want to project to the country that you can get away with anything. The lies themselves are their own display of authoritarianism. The government is telling us, ‘You know we’re lying. We know that you know we’re lying. And there isn’t a goddamn thing you can do about it.’ They lie about everything. When they’re caught in a lie, they lie again. They lie when the facts aren’t on their side, but also when they are. And they never, ever admit that they lied.” (03/28/26)
“Protesters filled the streets Saturday at more than 3,300 rallies across all 50 states for No Kings, a movement that bills itself as nonviolent opposition to what organizers view as authoritarian rulers in the White House and beyond. … While real-time turnout is tough to measure, the coalition of left-leaning groups steering No Kings expected this weekend’s headcount to break records. The last eruption of nationwide gatherings in October drew approximately 7 million people, according to their tally.” (03/28/26)
“At airports across the US, Transportation Security Administration agents have been ‘working’ — that is, impeding, harassing, ogling, and groping air travelers — without pay since Valentine’s Day due to a congressional feud over funding for their parent department. Well, some of them, anyway. Several hundred have quit; quite a few are calling in sick more often. On March 27, US president Donald Trump directed the Department of Homeland Security to start paying TSA employees again, using ‘funds that have a reasonable and logical nexus to TSA operations.’ They may start getting paid again as soon as Monday. They should also STOP getting paid again as soon as possible. Permanently. The very existence of the TSA has been a costly 25-year mistake.” (03/28/26)
“Bitcoin briefly fell to $65,112, its lowest level since the war-related February crash, before rebounding above $67,000 as Asian markets opened. The latest escalation in the conflict, including Houthi involvement, new U.S. troop deployments and Iranian attacks on aluminum facilities, rattled global markets and pushed Brent crude to about $115 a barrel. Bitcoin’s drop below its recent pattern of higher lows raises questions about whether its war-time trading range will hold, while surging oil and metals prices threaten broader inflation and could delay Federal Reserve rate cuts.” (03/30/26)
“Louisville, Kentucky, Detective Joshua Jaynes lied when he applied for the March 2020 search warrant that resulted in Breonna Taylor’s death. Then he lied about his lies. Sgt. Kyle Meany, the supervisor who approved the warrant application, also tried to cover up its shortcomings. According to an August 2022 federal indictment, both officers knew that police did not have probable cause to search Taylor’s apartment. … Taylor’s death did not flow inexorably from the warrant that Jaynes obtained. It is nevertheless true that Taylor would not have died in a hail of gunfire but for Jaynes'[s] fraudulent and misleading affidavit, which Meany approved. That reality underlines the potentially grave consequences of letting police officers make shit up to manufacture probable cause—a danger that does not seem to trouble the main Justice Department official charged with protecting Americans’ civil rights.” (03/28/26)
“All three people who died in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon were television journalists, it has been confirmed. The Lebanese trio were travelling in a car when they were killed on Saturday. Fatima Ftouni, an Al Mayadeen reporter, and Ali Shoaib, an Al Manar correspondent, were among those who died. It has emerged the third person killed was Ms Ftouni’s brother, cameraman Mohammed Ftouni. Fatima Ftouni had done a live report from southern Lebanon just before the strike in the Jezzine region. … Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun said the attack on the journalists was a war crime. … The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) described the bombing as a ‘targeted strike’ and claimed that Ali Shoaib was ‘a terrorist in the intelligence unit of Hezbollah’s Radwan Force.’ It added: ‘Additionally, the terrorist engaged in incitement against IDF troops and Israeli civilians, using his position as a channel to disseminate Hezbollah propaganda materials.'” (03/28/26)
“What is the information state? It is a regime that governs not through legislature or courts or votes, but through the invisible digital architecture that now mediates nearly every dimension of public life. Siegel’s definition is evolutive: ‘a state organized on the principle that it exists to protect the sovereign rights of individuals’ is replaced by ‘a digital leviathan that wields power through opaque algorithms and the manipulation of digital swarms.’ … Its goal, Siegel insists, was never simply to censor, never merely to oppress. It was to rule. The kind of brazen censorship we observed during the Biden era and that is so tempting to our warring rulers again is not a bug; it is a feature of the new normal.” (03/28/26)
“Russia’s Baltic Ust-Luga port, one of its largest petroleum export hubs, was damaged again on Sunday by a Ukrainian drone attack which sparked a blaze later brought under control, Russian officials said. It followed several Ukrainian drone strikes last week on Russia’s western energy corridor when facilities at the ports of Ust-Luga and Primorsk came under fire, igniting storage tanks and forcing a suspension of oil and oil product loadings. … The port, operated by Russian oil pipeline monopoly Transneft handles around 700,000 barrels per day of oil exports, and, according to sources, shipped 32.9 million metric tons of oil products in 2025.” (03/29/26)
“I have little sympathy for the multibillion-dollar tech companies, Meta and Google, which were this week forced to pay out a combined $6million in damages to a 20-year-old woman. But I have even less sympathy for the notion of ‘social-media addiction’ that led to this extraordinary payout. … The real issue raised by this case is the aversion to responsibility that now prevails in the West. This is aided by the commanding influence of the narrative of ‘addiction.’ We live in a world where bad habits, as they used to be called, have been rebranded, medicalised and diagnosed as addictions. … The flourishing of the addiction industry is partly driven by individuals’ demand to be relieved of responsibility for their bad behaviour. It is also fuelled by the Therapy Industrial Complex, which aims to turn people into vulnerable patients.” (03/28/26)
