Linkage

Federal immigration officers have started using Renee Good’s death to threaten more U.S. citizens.

A video posted to Reddit showed a screaming ICE agent repeatedly threatening to kill a man who was sitting in his car, asking how he didn’t “learn from what just happened.”

In the two-minute clip, a masked agent wearing a Minnesota Timberwolves hat approached the vehicle already furious, while the driver rolled down his window. “Stop fucking following us, you are impeding operations, this is the United States federal government,” the officer shouted.

“I live over here, I got to get to my house,” the driver replied calmly.

“This is your warning, alright? Go home to your kids, go home to your kids. This is your last warning. I won’t arrest you,” the officer threatened, before stomping away. 

[…]

“You’re not gonna like the outcome of this, sir. I guarantee you that,” the first officer said, circling back. “I guarantee you’re not gonna like the outcome. Go home to your children. It’s Sunday. It is Sunday. You did not learn from what just happened?”

“Learn what?” the driver asked, but the officer did not elaborate, and the group of federal agents appeared to leave without arresting anyone.

It seems clear, however, that the agent was referring to Renee Good, the U.S. citizen who was shot multiple times by an ICE agent last week after federal officers surrounded her vehicle.

 

Well said, this fellow:

Supporters of Israel’s conduct in Gaza and elements of the media have steadfastly defended the indefensible – the atrocities against Palestinians – and this campaign has deliberately created a serious confusion in our national discussion about what antisemitism is.

Antisemitism is not criticism of Israel or Zionism, nor is it a timeless or mystical hatred. It is not something caused by migration. It’s a political and historical form of racism that takes different shapes in different contexts. Right now, it is real, escalating and sometimes lethal – but it is being tackled in exactly the wrong way.

We have heard calls not only to investigate how a massacre occurred, but to place universities, protest movements, migrants, cultural institutions and human rights bodies under suspicion. As though they are responsible for bloodshed.
Loading

I want antisemitism confronted. I want it named and addressed with urgency. But I do not want it treated as a political tool, a justification for silencing dissent or expanding state power in ways that will ultimately harm us all.

This is a really useful glossary of finance terms (and regulatory instruments) for the UK, as defined in the relevant legislation and other official documents. So much distilled bureaucracy! I can't find anything like it for Australia, sadly.

Who knew the IMF was capable of demanding a sensible reform?

Bitcoin was never used by most Salvadorans, its modern city was never built, and now it will cease to be legal tender in El Salvador, the first country in the world to adopt it in 2021: a complete failed economic bet by President Nayib Bukele. Congress, dominated by the ruling party, approved last Wednesday a confusing reform to the Bitcoin Law at the request of Bukele’s government, which had no other option to receive the $1.4 billion credit agreed in December with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

[…]

The use of bitcoin in El Salvador’s dollarized economy, according to the new rule, will be optional and will be at the discretion of the private sector to accept cryptocurrency payments for goods and services. Businesses are no longer required to convert dollar prices into this cryptocurrency. “Bitcoin no longer has that force of legal tender. That’s how it should have always remained, but the government wanted to force it and it didn’t work,” economist Rafael Lemus said.

The Bitcoin Law reform will take effect 90 days after it’s published in the Official Gazette, which could happen in the coming days. For Acevedo, former president of the former Central Bank, “it makes no sense” to have left in the reformed law that it is “legal tender.” “It’s a monstrosity that’s not understood and that should be corrected and made clear that bitcoin is no longer legal tender,” the economist argues.

Bayswater being invited to participate in the puberty blocker ban consultation so shortly after the extent of their abuse towards trans children was exposed in the press reveals two things.

First, it emphasises the reluctance of UK institutions to recognise trans and young people as victims of a climate of hate that has pervaded British society.

But it is also telling that Streeting refuses to meet with one of the only groups of trans kids organising on their own. Streeting has met with trans children, but only alongside their parents or adult campaigners. Their presence helps Streeting to maintain the belief that trans kids lack the agency and maturity to make consequential decisions.

Trans Kids Deserve Better’s slogan – ‘we are not pawns for your politics’ – challenges this directly. Bayswater’s access to power relies on rendering their children as political pawns. Its status as a parents’ group lends it authority, even though most members would never admit to their children that they are part of the group.

Not giving agency to, or legitimising the opinions of, the children whose rights are at stake suits Streeting’s agenda.

A transaction is a two-way process, an exchange where a party agrees to do a thing in return for another party agreeing to do a thing.

To use old-style language, a transaction is a bargain, an exchange of promises.

And for the business people concerned in a commercial transaction, that contract has sanctity. So if a party does not comply or even breaches the contract there are remedies which are intended to place the injured party in the position they would have been had the agreement been properly performed. Often these are “money” remedies, but sometimes they can be injunctions or other court orders.

The court will enforce what the parties had agreed, for the agreement is the thing.

But for Trump, the agreement is not the thing.

An agreement is there to be opportunistically repudiated, and not to be performed.

An agreement offers an opportunity to gain leverage, for a new negotiation. for a new exertion of power.

I knew star forts were a thing. I never realised how big a thing they were. Fascinating.

Most of us take cities for granted. We stroll through winding streets and charming grids assuming they emerged naturally — shaped by markets, neighbours, architects, maybe a poet or two. But here’s the plot twist: for most of history, the people designing cities weren’t architects at all. They were military engineers.

I was surprised to learn the scale of their influence.

This film uncovers the unexpected, global story of how armies, empires, and state bureaucrats shaped the streets we walk on. From Hippodamus in ancient Greece to Roman marching camps; from star forts in Renaissance Italy to Vauban’s geometric super-fortresses; from Spanish colonial grids to British cantonments; from Haussmann’s anti-revolution boulevards to the Cold War suburban dispersal — military logic has been quietly directing urban life for thousands of years.

It’s the hidden operating system of global urbanism: streets as troop corridors, plazas as mustering grounds, boulevards as insurgency-prevention tools, grids as surveillance devices, suburbs as blast-radius management. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

Featuring historical maps, satellite images, global case studies, and a narrative that drags these military ghosts into the daylight, this film reframes everything you thought you knew about cities. If you care about design, history, power, and why your street looks the way it does… this one’s for you.

An internet search gives me nothing about RSS feeds from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. ABC News don’t link to them, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that they don’t have any. Nine months ago they pretended that they don’t have any which are updated.

But ABC News does have RSS feeds.

Here are some of them, and how to find more.

Anelise Feldman, a freshman at Yarmouth High School in southern Maine, finished second to Soren Stark-Chessa, a multisport standout at rival North Yarmouth Academy, at a May 2 intramural meet. 

“I ran the fastest 1,600-meter race I have ever run in middle school or high school track and earned varsity status by my school’s standards,” Feldman wrote in a letter to The Portland Press Herald published Wednesday. “I am extremely proud of the effort I put into the race and the time that I achieved. The fact that someone else finished in front of me didn’t diminish the happiness I felt after finishing that race.” 

Feldman’s letter was prompted by State Rep. Laurel Libby’s (R-90) comments during a Fox News interview earlier this month in which the lawmaker, while not naming Stark-Chessa, referred to her accomplishments and accused transgender athletes of “pushing many, many of our young women out of the way in their ascent to the podium.” 

 Feldman stressed: “I don’t feel like first place was taken from me. Instead, I feel like a happy day was turned ugly by a bully who is using children to make political points.”

“We are all just kids trying to make our way through high school,” she added. “Participating in sports is the highlight of high school for some kids. No one was harmed by Soren’s participation in the girls’ track meet, but we are all harmed by the hateful rhetoric of bullies, like Rep. Libby, who want to take sports away from some kids just because of who they are.” 

Not only is it scary to have all your data available to US spying, it is also a huge risk for your business/government continuity. From now on, all our business processes can be brought to a halt with the push of a button in the US. And not only will everything then stop, will we ever get our data back? Or are we being held hostage? This is not a theoretical scenario, something like this has already happened.

Here and there, some parts of at least the Dutch government are deciding not to migrate EVERYTHING to the US (kudos to the government workers who are fighting for this!).

But even here, the details of Dutch policy are that our data will only ‘for now’ stay on our own servers. Experts are also doubtful whether it’s actually possible with the current “partial cloud” plan to keep the data here exclusively.

And then we come to the apparent reason why we are putting our head on Trump’s chopping block: “American software is just so easy to use”.

Personally, I don’t know many fans of MS Teams, Office, and Outlook. We are, however, very used to these software products. We’ve become quite good at using them.

But this brings us to the unbearable conclusion that we are entrusting all our data and business processes to the new King of America… because we can’t be bothered to get used to a different word processor, or make an effort to support other software.