Source: The Atlantic
by Ian Bogost & Charlie Warzel
“If you were tasked with building a panopticon, your design might look a lot like the information stores of the U.S. federal government — a collection of large, complex agencies, each making use of enormous volumes of data provided by or collected from citizens. The federal government is a veritable cosmos of information, made up of constellations of databases …. A fragile combination of decades-old laws, norms, and jungly bureaucracy has so far prevented repositories such as these from assembling into a centralized American surveillance state. But that appears to be changing.” (04/27/25)
“US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. says that HHS and the US Food and Drug Administration will phase out the use of petroleum-based food dyes over the next two years to ‘Make America Healthy Again.’ … As long as sellers truthfully disclose what they’re putting in their products, we’re free to buy or not buy — and one positive outcome of the ‘information age’ is that we have instant access to both scientific information and others’ opinion (well-informed or not) on the ingredients in our food. In the normal course of things, I might or might not give credence to RFK Jr.’s opinion on the matter when deciding what to put in my shopping cart and in my body. You might or might not as well. That’s fine. What’s not fine is him just deciding for all of us, whether we like it or not.” (04/26/25)
“Harvard University and Hillsdale College have a lot more in common than you might expect: Both are home to many good and serious students and faculty, neither is very much like the cartoon of itself outsiders see, and they both have the one big important thing that kept Donald Regan from getting bossed around by Nancy Reagan — it is, after all, to Ronald Reagan’s irascible treasury secretary that we reportedly owe the popularization of the term ‘f—k-you money.’ ‘Why does Harvard need such a big endowment?’ people used to ask. ‘Why is Hillsdale so insistent about not taking government money?’ others demanded. Now you know.” (04/25/25)
“A surveillance state is being erected around the American public at an alarming rate. In many urban and suburban settings, anyone traveling on public streets or sidewalks will have his image captured by the ubiquitous surveillance cameras. A leisurely stroll around the neighborhood, as well as any conversation along the way, might be recorded if the city uses surveillance-enabled street lights. Even our own front yards might not be safe from the prying eyes of the state if a neighbor has a ‘smart’ doorbell that shares data with law enforcement.” (04/25/25)
“Is President Donald Trump blinking? I certainly hope so. Because what he’s touched off is not just a trade war; it risks turning into a run on the United States of America. Financial markets can be unpredictable, but relationships tend to hold. For example, when you impose tariffs, your currency should strengthen, because foreigners still need to buy your currency to purchase your exports, while you’re buying less of their currency to purchase their exports. (At least, until they impose retaliatory tariffs that crush your exports.)” (04/26/25)
“Prior to Trump’s proclamation identifying alleged Tren de Aragua members as ‘alien enemies,’ that 227-year-old statute had been invoked just three times: during the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II. ‘The government seeks to invoke this limited wartime authority to execute removals wholly untethered to any actual or imminent war or to the specific conditions Congress placed in the statute,’ the ACLU notes. The Supreme Court has not yet addressed the legality of Trump’s proclamation. But the historical evidence overwhelmingly indicates that Congress understood an ‘invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States’ in military terms. … the courts ultimately will have to determine whether Trump’s invocation of the AEA against alleged gangsters makes any sense in light of the statute’s language and history. Spoiler alert: It does not.” (04/25/25)
“The Trump administration’s campaign against sanctuary jurisdictions took a big step forward on Friday when federal agents arrested a county judge in Milwaukee after the judge allegedly helped an illegal [sic] immigrant accused of multiple crimes hide from federal immigration officials who had come to detain him. The judge is Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan. The illegal [sic] immigrant is Eduardo Flores-Ruiz. According to court documents, Flores-Ruiz, a Mexican, came illegally [sic] to the United States more than a dozen years ago. Immigration authorities issued a final removal order for him in January 2013. He was deported but at some point reentered the U.S. illegally [sic]. Now, he is still in the U.S. illegally [sic], and he is also charged with domestic violence — three counts known as battery-domestic abuse-infliction of physical pain or injury.” (04/26/25)
“As much as I dislike Hegseth and think he should be fired and should have never been appointed, he is still everything he was when Trump selected him: a good communicator who is unqualified to lead the Pentagon. Even still, there is little incentive for Trump to abandon him so quickly. Americans shouldn’t expect the revolving door of Cabinet members that was commonplace in the first Trump administration. His increased power over the Republican Party reduces the likelihood of frequent firings, even if this Cabinet is more outlandish. Whether it be Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or Hegseth, incompetence isn’t a trait that is punished in a Trump administration. It’s actually ignored as long as these Cabinet members remain loyal. Nothing else matters to Trump and, increasingly, Republican leaders.” (04/25/25)
“Imagine you are about to crack open a new book and begin reading. The opening sentence goes like this: ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity …. the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.’ You might think ‘worst’ refers to the now on-going Trumpian fascistic makeover of government, economy, culture, health, education, and indeed all of U.S. society and beyond. Goodbye empathy.” (04/26/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“We really need a name for the mental illness that comes with obscene amounts of wealth. Elon Musk’s bizarre progeny obsession. All the weird shit Michael Jackson did. The stories you hear about rich families making their servants clean their toilets after every use or throw away plates after every meal. Call it rich-brain or something. That psychological phenomenon where extreme wealth causes people to lose their mental moorings and spin off into deep space because there’s no one in their lives telling them ‘no’ or holding them to any standards of normal human behavior. Where their ability to shape their day to day lives however they want with no limitations lets them fly off into uncharted psychological territory where they’ll have whole teams of people orchestrating elaborate scenes and projects to accommodate their debilitating neuroses.” (04/27/25)
