Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Mario Trujillo
“In the past year, DHS has consistently targeted people engaged in First Amendment activity. Among other things, the agency has issued subpoenas to technology companies to unmask or locate people who have documented ICE’s activities in their community, criticized the government, or attended protests. These subpoenas are unlawful, and the government knows it. When a handful of users challenged a few of them in court with the help of ACLU affiliates in Northern California and Pennsylvania, DHS withdrew them rather than waiting for a decision. But it is difficult for the average user to fight back on their own. … That is why we, joined by the ACLU of Northern California, have asked several large tech platforms to do more to protect their users …” (02/10/26)
“You don’t sell surveillance out of the gate with a system that tracks down a person in the neighborhood behind on taxes or child support. No, you sell it as a system to find that adorable lost dog (notice not even generic pets or certainly not cats because dogs are the new children for this generation). They can fight all the backlash by saying, ‘Oh come on, who can be against finding lost dogs?’ Then, months or years later, the terms and conditions have morphed and broader search capabilities are enabled without the user even knowing …. When it really gets scary, they are not even going to tell you about it. I do not believe this is just a marketing mistake — Ring appears to have adopted neighborhood surveillance as their core business model.” (02/10/26)
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Education
by Amanda Nordstrom
“Public universities don’t get to pick which political viewpoints are safe to express. But administrators at two major universities are trying to do just that. At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, administrators treated the College Republicans’ pro-ICE political message like a civil rights violation. … At Penn State, an anti-ICE poster discovered outside the student center on Jan. 29 sparked heated reactions across the ideological spectrum. When some people raised the call to identify and punish whoever created the poster, Penn State responded by condemning it and announcing that University Police and Public Safety were investigating. These incidents are two sides of the same coin: administrators using official investigations to police protected political speech, in this case, on opposing sides of the immigration debate.” (02/10/26)
“Novo Nordisk recently introduced Wegovy in pill form, at a price of about $150 a month. Hims & Hers had planned to offer the same chemical compound, without Wegovy branding, for about $50 a month. The whole POINT of Novo Nordisk’s attempt to enforce its patent is to CREATE a shortage of semaglutide in pill form. Why? Money. The patent, if enforceable, allows Novo Nordisk to charge customers AT LEAST three times as much for its pill as the market says it can be sold profitably for. Hims & Hers wouldn’t offer it for $50 if it expected to lose money doing so.” (02/10/26)
“After Leave won the Brexit vote in 2016, lots of thinkers who accepted the economic case for high immigration started flirting with a political case against high immigration. While the details of this political case were often vague, one word was painted on its banner: BACKLASH. The central insinuation was that staunch support for high immigration is what philosophers call ‘self-defeating’: When immigration gets too high, voters reliably shift their support to right-wing populists, who in turn reliably slash immigration. I’ve long maintained that the rhetoric of ‘immigration backlash’ is classic motte-and-bailey. If ‘backlash’ merely means ‘More immigration leads to more complaining about immigration’ then the claim is almost surely true, but also trivial.” (02/10/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Australian authorities were fully aware that inviting Israel’s president for a visit was going to ignite unrest and furious opposition. They invited him anyway, and sent in the police to assault the protesters. I saw a video of two cops pinning a kid in a keffiyeh face down on the ground and proceeding to punch him over and over again long after he’d been subdued. I saw another video of police repeatedly punching a middle-aged man who was holding his hands in the air until he fell to the ground. I saw another video of police repeatedly pepper spraying a demonstrator directly in the face as he was visibly complying with their demands to move and providing no resistance whatsoever. I saw another video of police manhandling Muslim men who were literally on their knees praying, presenting no possible threat of any kind.” (02/10/25)
Source: The UnPopulist
by Kathrina Szymborski Wolfkot
“As the U.S. Supreme Court rolls back long-standing constitutional protections, advocates are increasingly looking to state courts and constitutions to protect civil rights and liberties. The shift toward state constitutions as sources of expanded rights crosses ideological lines and issues, from abortion to criminal sentencing to property rights. It reflects a basic, often overlooked, truth about our system of government: States can provide more expansive protections for individual rights and liberties than the federal Constitution.” [editor’s note: Constitutions aren’t sources” of rights. They may protect, not protect, or violate rights, but the rights exist regardless of what the documents say – TLK] (02/10/26)
“Today, during my slog through the Substack messages, newspaper headline notices, and podcast reminders that hit my inbox every morning, two stories drew my attention. Both had to do with the fact that human beings have always moved around this planet …. I was reminded of a decades-old song by the Venezuelan singer Soledad Bravo, ‘Punto y Raya’ (‘The Dot and the Dash’) … ‘Between your people and mine’, says the song, ‘there’s a dot and a dash. The dash says, ‘No entrance’ and the dot, ‘The road is closed’…’ Bravo goes on to say that, with all those dots and dashes outlining the borders of nations, a map looks like a telegram. If you walk through the actual world, though, what you see are mountains and rivers, forests and deserts, but no dots or dashes at all.” (02/10/25)
“Archaeology is now revealing the grit and hustle of the Roman middle class, reminding us that civilizations depend not on elites, but on the conditions that allow ordinary people to thrive.” (02/10/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Douglas E French
“In the real world, where people actually buy things, those who can, dictate what currency they wish to be paid in. … Singer Bette Midler (influenced by manager Aaron Russo) insisted on payment in gold bullion for a planned British concert tour in the fall of 1978. The ‘Divine Miss M’ is believed to be the first major performer to be paid in bullion. … Fast forward to 2026. Wasteland Capital posted on X, ‘The big news from Davos is that the luxury hookers have stopped accepting Bitcoin but are happy to take Gold bars and DRAM sticks.'” (02/10/26)
