literature.cafe

After the Trump administration charged a sitting judge and a sitting mayor in separate cases, a Democratic member of Congress has joined the list.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has arrested a sitting judge and a sitting mayor, leaving many to wonder whether a member of Congress might soon join the list. Wonder no more.

The acting U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, Alina Habba, announced on Monday that her office was charging Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., with "assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement."

The basic elements of the story are straightforward. Earlier this month, a group of Democratic officials, including three members of Congress, visited Delaney Hall, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in New Jersey. The point, according to the lawmakers, was to conduct oversight, which is a core congressional responsibility.

Who's a pussy-wussy snowflake? Yes you, yes you are..

In 2012, Palantir quietly embedded itself into the daily operations of the New Orleans Police Department. There were no public announcements. No contracts made available to the city council. Instead, the surveillance company partnered with a local nonprofit to sidestep oversight, gaining access to years of arrest records, licenses, addresses, and phone numbers all to build a shadowy predictive policing program.

Palantir’s software mapped webs of human relationships, assigned residents algorithmic “risk scores,” and helped police generate “target lists” all without public knowledge. “We very much like to not be publicly known,” a Palantir engineer wrote in an internal email later obtained by The Verge.

After years spent quietly powering surveillance systems for police departments and federal agencies, the company has rebranded itself as a frontier AI firm, selling machine learning platforms designed for military dominance and geopolitical control.

"AI is not a toy. It is a weapon,” said CEO Alex Karp. “It will be used to kill people.”

The 14 year old's mother left an old laptop in a closet and now alleges it's adult sites' problem that he watched porn.

A Kansas mother who left an old laptop in a closet is suing multiple porn sites because her teenage son visited them on that computer.

The complaints, filed last week in the U.S. District Court for Kansas, allege that the teen had “unfettered access” to a variety of adult streaming sites, and accuses the sites of providing inadequate age verification as required by Kansas law.

A press release from the National Center for Sexual Exploitation, which is acting as co-counsel in this lawsuit, names Chaturbate, Jerkmate, Techpump Solutions (Superporn.com), and Titan Websites (Hentai City) as defendants in four different lawsuits.

“The root causes of the conflict.”

These were startling words from a man purportedly on the path to peace.

But it is the nub of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s position of what must be solved for peace, after two weeks, or three months, depending on how you count, of mounting pressure for an immediate unconditional 30-day ceasefire. Unbothered, taking this most consequential of calls at a music school on the Sochi coast, the Kremlin head has returned to the start – to his false narrative about this war of choice being sparked by NATO expanding too fast.

Cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/21571852

Another example: https://lemm.ee/post/64307085

MEXICO CITY — Leading human rights activist, Ruth López, has been arrested in El Salvador, after the Attorney General's office accused her of embezzlement of state funds. López leads the anti-corruption and justice program for the human rights organization Cristosal.

López has been an outspoken critic of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. She and her organization have documented human rights abuses in El Salvador — including inhumane conditions in jails and the extended state of emergency, during which the government has suspended many constitutional rights and imprisoned tens of thousands of suspected gang members without following due process.

HOUSTON — A Houston man is suing Whataburger for nearly $1 million after he says his burger had onions on it.

Turns out he had asked for a no-onions order.

On July 24, 2024, Demery Ardell Wilson had an allergic reaction after eating a burger that had onions on it at Whataburger, court documents say. He alleges that he requested the fast-food chain to take them off before serving him the burger.

This is apparently a seminal classic, but I've only just come across it.

It has surprisingly good pacing, acting, and writing for the time. Interestingly, it was directed by John Huston, who I personally knew from voicing Gandalf in the 1977 Ralph Bakshi animated Lord of The Rings movie, so that was a fun surprise!

The direction this one goes surprised me a few times, and I'm glad I saw it. Would recommend.

The interim U.S. attorney in New Jersey said Rep. LaMonica McIver is accused of “assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement.”

The Justice Department said it filed charges Monday against Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., alleging she assaulted law enforcement officials this month at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Newark.

The acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Alina Habba, made the announcement on X, where she accused McIver of “assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement.”

McIver called the charges “purely political” in a statement and said she looks forward “to the truth being laid out clearly in court.”

I just went down an interesting rabbit hole. I'm a huge car guy. Started off by some news videos about Koenigsegg that turned out to be long AI narrated videos of generic footage with very short interview clips with Christian von Koenigsegg himself interspersed in between. Tbh I only watched one, the rest I clicked on just to confirm my suspicion that they're all bs. Discovered the following YouTube disclaimer on some of the videos:

How this content was made Altered or synthetic content Sound or visuals were significantly edited or digitally generated.

Now those videos were clickbait and misleading, but they're far from the worst. They get some hundreds of thousands of views each, and get shat out by these channels at a rapid pace.

Things get more interesting with fake car reviews and such. Years ago you'd see videos that were looking at photos of concept cars and narrating them with a bunch of bullshit.

Now they have AI generate the concept car imagery. The supposed new car looks different in every "photo". Like completely different designs, down to the entire body shape. AI narrator talking about conservative styling on the Mercedes S-Class saying "around the back you see slimmer taillights" while the image being shown is the front quarter of an extremely low grand tourer type car that couldn't clear a speed bump, has tire only on the bottom of the wheel (it just disappears as you go higher up the wheel), has no possibility of suspension travel as there's no distance between the wheel and the top of the wheel well, the wheel itself isn't entirely round, the brakes look like a cartoon, and while there's a visible separation between the front bumper and the front quarter panel... There isn't one between the quarter panel and the hood, or the hood and the front bumper. So really it's all one piece that can never be removed. I'm surprised the door is separate from the front quarter panel at this point. This video is here. The S-Class is a luxury sedan, available also as a coupe or convertible, but never has it been whatever... this is.

Buick is also bringing back the Series 40 after a century. Looks almost the same too!. Featuring a rear license plate saying "Series 80" in the lovely font called AI slop.

These videos get shat out at an even more rapid pace. Most have relatively few views, some have quite a lot, and there are people asking if they can buy these cars for real. They come up on google when doing highly specific searches to see if some manufacturer has a car in some category, etc.

So it's similar to the fake movie trailers that have already been talked about, but this is distracting people looking for actual products. It might just be cars in my examples, but I'm sure the same is happening in all kinds of video genres and different product types. I know a lot of you already know about it too, but I was shocked to find out how prevalent it really is.

Also YouTube has the disclaimer that video uploaders can use, and that their own AI tools automatically add, so there's already a database field they could check. But thay have added no AI content filtering.

St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer told MSNBC on Monday that FEMA had yet to assist after the city was ravaged by a tornado days prior.

The tornado first touched down in St. Louis on Friday. The storm — reportedly 20 miles in length at its strongest — killed at least five people in St. Louis County at the time of writing. Spencer reported during a press conference that 38 people had been injured, and that number was expected to increase as recovery efforts continued.

Friday’s tornado was one of many that affected the region over the weekend, with Kentucky also being hit by storms. At the time of writing, dozens of the dead had already been found.

MEXICO CITY — Leading human rights activist, Ruth López, has been arrested in El Salvador, after the Attorney General's office accused her of embezzlement of state funds. López leads the anti-corruption and justice program for the human rights organization Cristosal.

López has been an outspoken critic of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. She and her organization have documented human rights abuses in El Salvador — including inhumane conditions in jails and the extended state of emergency, during which the government has suspended many constitutional rights and imprisoned tens of thousands of suspected gang members without following due process.