Linkage

WTF? I don't get it.

Three federal lawmakers are calling on the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to stop any initiatives involving cryptocurrency and the blockchain, saying the scantly regulated technologies should be kept far away from the agency’s work overseeing the nation’s housing sector.

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The letter is a response to reporting by ProPublica that the housing agency recently discussed taking steps toward using cryptocurrency. The article described meetings in February in which officials discussed incorporating the blockchain — and possibly a type of cryptocurrency known as stablecoin — into the agency’s work. The discussion at one meeting centered on a pilot project involving one HUD grant, but a HUD finance official in attendance indicated the idea could be applied much more expansively across the agency.

“We are looking at this for the entire enterprise,” he said in that meeting, a recording of which was obtained by ProPublica. “We just wanted to start in CPD,” he added, referring to HUD’s Office of Community Planning and Development. The office administers billions of dollars in grants to support low- and moderate-income people, including funding for affordable housing, homeless shelters and disaster recovery, raising the prospect that these forms of aid might one day be paid in an unstable currency.

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The HUD official pushing the idea internally was Irving Dennis, the agency’s new principal deputy chief financial officer, a staffer said at one of the meetings. Dennis denied to ProPublica that HUD was considering any such experiment. He published a book in 2021 in which he wrote that HUD should use the blockchain.

The blockchain is a digital ledger most commonly used to record cryptocurrency transactions. Boosters of the technology depict it as a way to cut middlemen such as banks out of financial transactions and to make those transactions more transparent and secure. One such evangelist is Robert Judson, an executive at the consulting firm EY, who is listed in a document obtained by ProPublica as an attendee of one of the HUD meetings. Judson has written glowingly about the potential of blockchain to prevent aid money from being misused. (Dennis was previously a partner at EY.)

The headlines in the budget reconciliation bill that passed the House by one vote early Thursday morning are well known: massive tax cuts for the rich financed by crippling program cuts in Medicaid and food stamps, raising the federal debt by $3.3 trillion over a decade, and in turn spooking bond markets. But a lot of other mischief is buried in the fine print. Here are ten of the worst:

Crippling Courts. The bill, hiding behind the premise that it is an appropriations measure, prohibits any funds from being used to carry out court orders holding executive branch officials in contempt. This is designed to enable Trump and his officials to continue defying court orders. It is almost certainly unconstitutional—if courts have the nerve to say so.

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More Savaging of Migrants. The bill adds $45 billion to build immigration jails—more than 13 times ICE’s current detention budget. The bill would allow indefinite detention of immigrant children. It also adds several fees intended to harass. The measure charges families $3,500 to reunite with a child who arrived alone at the border, and a person seeking asylum will have to pay an “application fee” of at least $1,000.

Terminating the Tax Status of Nonprofits. The reconciliation text gives the administration the power to define nonprofits as “terrorist-supporting organizations” and expedite the ending of their tax status. This is ostensibly directed against pro-Palestinian groups, but could be used to suppress the free speech and activism of climate organizations and others.

Blocking State Regulation of AI. The bill prohibits any state or subdivision from passing “any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the 10-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act.” It requires the repeal of any such laws already on the books. According to The Lever, the language could be stretched to block efforts by local governments to regulate private equity firms and other landlords using AI software to jack up rents.

During oral arguments in the Supreme Court case United States v. Skrmetti last December, Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked then-Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar whether there has been a history of discrimination against transgender people. The answer seemed obvious. Anti-trans discrimination is well-documented. At least for trans people, the instinctive response to Justice Barrett’s question is, “Look around.”

But what Justice Barrett was asking specifically, is whether there is a history of de jure—meaning explicit, government sanctioned—discrimination against transgender people. “At least as far as I can think of, we don't have a history of de jure, or that I know of, we don't have a history of de jure discrimination against transgender people, right?” Justice Barrett asked.

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As legal historian Kate Redburn has documented, throughout the twentieth century, local ordinances across the country threatened people who defied gender norms with prosecution and even prison sentences. Some even required people whose appearances did not match their sex assignment to wear badges visibly declaring their birth sex—a precursor to President Donald Trump’s own policy for transgender passport holders. These laws, in essence, made it a crime to be trans in public and equated trans existence with deviance in ways that legitimized decades of public and private discrimination.

Decades of criminalization harmed trans communities who were forced to the margins of society. Generations of trans elders died prematurely because of this history, which also now fuels the insidious myth that transgender people are “new.” The irony is that in order to avoid further discrimination, we must convince the Court that this discrimination occurred in the first place—and that it still occurs today. 

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Let’s say the Supreme Court decides that transgender people have not suffered a sufficiently long or sufficiently clear history of discrimination to warrant heightened scrutiny. That would set a chilling precedent for when the government decides to target a small and politically unpopular group for discrimination.

We are getting dangerously close to making it a crime to exist as a transgender person in the United States. If that does not trigger scrutiny by the courts, then what will it signal to government leaders who are looking for groups of people to blame for social, political, and economic conditions?

As Justice Sotomayor noted at the Skrmetti arguments, “When you're 1% of the population, or less, [it’s] very hard to see how the democratic process is going to protect you.” That is abundantly clear right now.

Over the past year, GPs across the UK have announced they are no longer prescribing the life-saving medical treatment for hundreds of trans patients due to a claimed “lack of expertise” and “lack of support.”

Far Lane Medical Centre – a GP in Sheffield – became the most recent to withdraw its care after writing to patients saying the work is “outside of our expertise.”

Patients of other practices that have ceased care, including a set of GPs in the East Midlands, have said they are “terrified” of the implications and have considered self-medicating if they can’t feasibly access NHS treatment.

In the UK, Gender Identity Clinics (GICs) require that GPs prescribe HRT to trans patients under a shared care agreement since most GICs in the UK do not have the power to prescribe medication.

Under the agreement, GICs or private organisations advise GPs on the prescriptions they give to patients. Without this, trans people are forced to pay hundreds for private care.

Speaking to PinkNews, clinical psychologist and director of CQC-approved private healthcare service Gender Plus, Dr Aidan Kelly, says that the impact of banning HRT prescriptions on patients isn’t being considered by GPs ceasing care, adding that there’s “no nuance to it.”

“There’s no allowing for complexities in people’s individual situations. I don’t think there’s any appreciation for that,” he said. “I don’t think it’s done, perhaps, from a malicious point of view, but I think it’s done from fear.”

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“GPs have expertise in prescribing hormones, they do it for cis people all of the time,” he says. “The only bit where I could see where there’s an argument that there is more particular expertise needed is in the initial assessment and to work out how best to support people.”

Franz Kafka, himself legally qualified, would have appreciated one paragraph in a witness statement made on behalf of the US federal government during the ongoing case on the legality of forced deportations under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.  

The deportations concern Venezuelans allegedly associated with the Tren de Aragua (TdA) criminal gang. And in paragraph nine of this statement, Robert L Cerna—the acting field office director of enforcement and removal operations within ICE—states:

"While it is true that many of the TdA members removed under the [Alien Enemies Act] do not have criminal records in the United States, that is because they have only been in the United States for a short period of time. The lack of a criminal record does not indicate they pose a limited threat. In fact, based upon their association with TdA, the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose. It demonstrates that they are terrorists with regard to whom we lack a complete profile."

It is an extraordinary statement, which warrants careful reading and rereading. In essence, Cerna is contending that a person would be removed if there is information against them, and if there is no information against them, that is just as bad, and that person would still be removed. 

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And the overall transaction—the forcible taking of individuals from one country and sending them under an agreement with a third country to perform forced labour—is indistinguishable in its essence from slavery. That the flow of cash is from the provider of the individuals to the recipients, rather than the other way round, is an incidental detail in this ghastly arrangement. 

In the early morning hours of January 28, as dozens of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrived in New York to round up undocumented immigrants, a shimmering Kristi Noem appeared in the Bronx. She wore a bulletproof vest and a baseball cap, but also dramatic makeup and hair coiled to show off a set of pearl earrings. “We are getting the dirtbags off these streets,” the new Homeland Security secretary said in a three-second clip she posted to social media.

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Noem’s anti-immigrant politics might have been familiar to South Dakotans. But did they recognize their former governor? Noem is one of several figures—a few men, but mostly women—in President Donald Trump’s orbit to undergo striking physical transformations as the boundaries that once delineated celebrity and political power fully disintegrate. The resulting look has since sparked satirical backlash online, with critics mocking “conservative girl makeup.”

But the most jarring aesthetic in this burgeoning MAGA stagecraft is the unbridled embrace of face-altering procedures: plastic surgery, veneers, and injectables like Botox and fillers. (As one Daily Mail headline declared, “Plastic surgery was [the] star of [the] show” at the Republican National Convention in 2024.) The overall look has since been disparagingly referred to as “Mar-a-Lago face.”

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The lack of discretion within the current GOP might feel strange today when many—even Kim Kardashian—appear to prize confidentiality. But for the MAGA-verse, today’s tweaks seem intended to signal membership with Trump, a man notoriously obsessed with the literal pageantry of beauty, and his broader efforts to force strict gender norms onto the electorate. The aesthetic is, like Trump’s politics, ridiculously blunt.

“I read it as a sign of physical submission to Donald Trump, a statement of fealty to him and the idea that the surface of a policy is the only thing that matters,” says Anne Higonnet, a professor of art history at Barnard College. “In a way, these women are performing a key part of Donald Trump’s whole political persona.”

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At a time when the GOP is viciously exploiting transgender Americans as a cultural scapegoat, Schreiber notes, hyper-femininity also helps reinforce the “norms and differences between femininity and masculinity.” In this way, women in Republican politics show their male counterparts that they are committed to the same conservative goals, but are not threatening. “It reaffirms the femininity of women,” she adds, “even if they have power.” Here is the gender-affirming care the right can celebrate.

 A new executive order from President Donald Trump aims to expand information-sharing across federal agencies as well as between federal and state governments, but civil libertarians and other experts are warning that the main purpose is to help normalize how the Department of Government Efficiency is handling government data.

The order, issued Thursday, directs all federal agency heads to modify or rescind any regulations preventing the sharing of unclassified data and records between federal agencies.

Agency heads also must ensure that the U.S. government has “unfettered access” to comprehensive data from all state programs that receive federal funding. The order extends to all such data even when stored in third-party databases. 

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 While the new EO asserts that the removal of data “silos” is designed to eliminate fraud, waste and abuse, disturbing mission creep is very possible, said Elizabeth Laird, director of equity and civic technology at the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology.

There are no assurances that the data won’t be used for “targeting people who the administration has separately said are a priority for them,” Laird said. “That can include immigrants, it can include people who are transgender, it can include people that speak up” against the administration.

During his first presidency, Trump issued an EO attempting to compel state government agencies to share administrative data with the federal government for purposes of immigration enforcement. At least four states shared immigration data, Laird said.

“You’re laying the foundation for this data to be weaponized in ways never seen before in the country.” 

Anti-LGBTQ+ narratives are deployed by extremist groups with contrasting ideologies, from Jihadis to right-wing extremists and QAnon to Incels (involuntary celibates). Using these different movements as case studies, this article highlights the convergence of ideologically conflicting extremist organizations around antiqueer sentiment. Given the enhanced vulnerability of LGBTQ+ populations, fueled by politically charged rhetoric, this article makes an appeal for more research to explore and analyze narratives through a scholarly lens and link queer issues to current debates in the study of terrorism and political violence. Research should focus on the experiences of queer populations within conflicts abroad and experiences of domestic extremism in the United States. Without adequate attention given to the experiences of LGBTQ+ victims, it is impossible to develop protocols for trauma-informed care for vulnerable populations.

This fits with my understanding of what's happened to the Drupal community since D8:

Over my years working in the Drupal ecosystem, I've come to visualize its sustainability as a four-level pyramid structure. This isn't an official model, but rather a mental framework I've developed to understand the dynamics at play.

At the base of this pyramid, we find hobbyists, personal sites, and small businesses that would otherwise use platforms like Wix. Moving up a level, we encounter growing small business implementations and more complex small projects. The third level encompasses medium-sized projects and agencies, while the top tier consists of enterprise implementations with complex requirements and larger budgets.

This structure isn't just theoretical—it's vital for sustained growth. The broad base creates entry points for new developers and users while generating widespread adoption and brand recognition. It establishes natural growth pathways as projects evolve, cultivates innovation through diverse use cases, and provides a talent pipeline for the entire ecosystem.

When this pyramid is balanced, the ecosystem thrives. New users and developers enter at the base level, projects grow in complexity and move up through each level of the pyramid, and talent develops alongside these evolving needs. The entire structure becomes self-reinforcing, with each level feeding into the next.

The significant turning point in Drupal's evolution came with the shift from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8, which introduced more advanced code practices and architectural requirements. This modernization brought powerful capabilities to enterprise users but simultaneously raised barriers for newcomers. As we continued to evolve through versions 9 and 10, the pyramid shrank even more, with fewer newcomers entering the ecosystem and the base continuing to narrow.

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What we've experienced is a top-heavy pyramid—strong at the enterprise level but with an increasingly narrow base. This imbalance threatens long-term sustainability because it limits the influx of new talent, reduces community diversity, and creates fewer pathways for growth.

Three days ago, Drew DeVault - founder and CEO of SourceHut - published a blogpost called, "Please stop externalizing your costs directly into my face", where he complained that LLM companies were crawling data without respecting robosts.txt and causing severe outages to SourceHut.

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Then, yesterday morning, KDE GitLab infrastructure was overwhelmed by another AI crawler, with IPs from an Alibaba range; this caused GitLab to be temporarily inaccessible by KDE developers.

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By now, it should be pretty clear that this is no coincidence. AI scrapers are getting more and more aggressive, and - since FOSS software relies on public collaboration, whereas private companies don't have that requirement - this is putting some extra burden on Open Source communities.