Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Kit Walsh
“Creating and sharing knowledge are defining traits of humankind, yet copyright law has grown so restrictive that it can require acts of civil disobedience to ensure that students and scholars have the books they need and to preserve swaths of culture from being lost forever.” (10/23/25)
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/10/civil-disobedience-copyright-keeps-science-going
Source: The Findings Substack
by Paul Rosenberg
“I don’t like making comparisons (they encourage envy, status and other stupidities), but with Western civilization having been maligned over decades, I think this one is necessary. The contributions of Western civilization are not just prodigious, but shocking. Compare them to what was produced by any other civilization …” (10/23/25)
https://thefindings.substack.com/p/the-greatness-of-western-civilization
Source: The Intercept
by Séamus Malekafzali
“As of the time of this writing, eight American warships, manned by more than 4,500 Marines and sailors, have been placed just outside of Venezuelan waters. The New York Times has identified guided-missile cruisers moving close to Venezuelan shores, as well as Reaper drones stationed nearby in Puerto Rico, alongside a number of stealth fighter jets. On Wednesday, War Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed on X that the military escalated this campaign by conducting a lethal airstrike on a vessel in the Pacific Ocean for the first time, off of Colombia’s waters, just days after Trump accused its president, Gustavo Petro, of being an ‘illegal drug dealer’ after he criticized the American campaign in the Caribbean. … The target is clear: Nicolás Maduro, president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. But the United States government is not saying that, at least outright.” (10/22/25)
https://theintercept.com/2025/10/22/trump-venezuela-boat-war-justification/
Source: Los Angeles Times
“Early voter turnout exceeds expectations in California’s Nov. 4 special election over redrawing the state’s congressional districts, a Democratic-led effort to counter Republican attempts to keep Congress under GOP control. ‘We’re seeing some pretty extraordinary numbers of early votes that have already been cast, people sending back in their ballots,’ Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a livestream with former President Obama on Wednesday. More than 3.4 million mail ballots have been returned as of Wednesday, with votes from Democrats outpacing ballots from Republicans and Californians registered as not having a party preference, according to a ballot tracker run by Democratic strategist Paul Mitchell. … That’s roughly the same number of ballots returned by this time in the White House contest between then-Vice President Kamala Harris and then-former President Trump in 2024, notable because turnout during presidential elections is higher than in other years.” (10/22/25)
Source: The Chris Hedges Report
“The Rise of the Thielverse and the Construction of the Surveillance State (w/ Whitney Webb).” (10/22/25)
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-the-thielverse-and-the
Source: The UnPopulist
by Renee Diresta
“The real threat to free speech is MAGA officials using this conspiracy to justify their own censorship.” (10/22/25)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/no-there-never-was-a-biden-censorship
Source: Persuasion
by Jean M Twenge
“A firestorm erupted last week when the British professor and commentator Eric Kaufmann made a bold claim: Identifying as transgender is ‘in free fall among the young.’ … last week I analyzed data from the nationally representative Household Pulse survey, which asked directly about transgender identity. … The Household Pulse data showed a decline in trans identification among 18- to 22-year-olds in 2024, but I was cautious about drawing conclusions from it as the decline appeared only in a limited time period …. Then, over the weekend, I found it—a nationally representative survey that asked the same question about transgender identification from 2021 to 2024. It also asked separately about identifying as nonbinary. The data are from the Cooperative Election Study (CES), fielded each year by YouGov and administered by Tufts University. They show that identifying as transgender really is in free fall among the young in the United States.” (10/22/25)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/transgender-identity-really-has-fallen
Source: mint [India]
“Israel’s Supreme Court on Thursday pushed back the hearing of a petition filed by an organisation representing international media outlets in Israel and the Palestinian territories, demanding independent access for journalists to Gaza. Since the Gaza war began in October 2023, Israeli authorities have prevented foreign journalists from entering the devastated territory, taking only a handful of reporters inside on tightly controlled visits alongside its troops. … While Israel has prevented foreign reporters from entering Gaza, its forces have killed more than 210 Palestinian journalists in the territory, Antoine Bernard, RSF’s director for advocacy and assistance, said on Tuesday.” (10/23/25)
Source: Libertarian Institute
“I Unequivocally Condemn …” (10/22/25)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/blog/i-unequivocally-condemn
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Roger Bate
“Nicotine pouches — small, smokeless packets tucked under the lip — deliver nicotine without burning tobacco. They eliminate the tar, carbon monoxide, and carcinogens that make cigarettes so deadly. The logic of harm reduction couldn’t be clearer: if smokers can get nicotine without smoke, millions of lives could be saved. Sweden has already proven the point. Through widespread use of snus and nicotine pouches, the country has cut daily smoking to about 5 percent, the lowest rate in Europe. Lung-cancer deaths are less than half the continental average. This ‘Swedish Experience’ shows that when adults are given safer options, they switch voluntarily — no prohibition required. In the United States, however, the FDA’s tobacco division has turned this logic on its head.” (10/23/25)
https://brownstone.org/articles/fdas-war-on-commonsense-nicotine-regulation/