https://www.theonion.info/

Birds missing, at risk after break-in at Northern California falcon center Someone vandalized and “intentionally released” all 11 birds from West Coast Falconry in a bizarre incident reported early Friday in a small city north of Sacramento.

Someone vandalized and “intentionally released” all 11 birds from West Coast Falconry in a bizarre incident reported early Friday in a small city north of Sacramento.

Anahita Jafary on Instagram: "Five birds are still missing after a break-in at the West Coast Falconry." 165 likes, 10 comments - anahitajafarytv on April 18, 2026: "Five birds are still missing after a break-in at the West Coast Falconry.".

Heartbroken - West Coast falconry broken into. www.instagram.com/reel/DXRAvvB...

You absolutely SHOULD NOT go around telling people that data centers are full of gold, silver, palladium, copper, and that the data centers are almost entirely unstaffed.

I don't know about you, but I refuse to live in the dystopian world that Palantir is not only ideating, but implementing.

It's time for companies to divest, lawyers to go to court, voters to demand that their reps refuse and return their contributions.

We can't just stand by.

The phrase goes, "When someone shows you who you are, believe them."

Palantir has done just that. It has shown us that it has no regard for the sanctity of human life, that it has no qualms separating families and terrorizing children, and that it believes we are not all equal.

All the Ways Palantir is Assisting Trump’s Abusive Removal Campaign | ACLU How culpable is the company for the constitutional and human rights violations of the deportation drive?

In the midst of Trump's harrowing campaign against immigrants, Palantir has been at the forefront, collaborating with ICE-- an entity complicit in killing, torture, and disappearance--to increase their number of targets.

The ACLU explains more here: www.aclu.org/news/privacy...

In the midst of a genocide, Palantir entered into a new strategic partnership with the Israeli Ministry of Defense and became complicit in Israel's illegal targeting of civilians and disproportionate use of force.

BHRC has more: www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-ne...

Today, a lot of people will be talking about the manifesto that Palantir released. In addition to pouring over what those words mean, I invite you to ground the conversation in what Palantir has already done.

Its work with Israel and ICE show us exactly what it stands for.

A diagram showing the VDA framework and the Arc of Democracy. At the top, three icons label the essential elements of democracy: Verification (tick), Deliberation (speech bubble), and Accountability (magnifying glass). Arrows descend from each through three horizontal bands representing the arc: Substantial (truth tested, voices included, power constrained), Performative (forms remain but substance is weak, rituals without consequence), and Simulated (appearance maintained but functions inverted: propaganda as verification, polarisation as deliberation, scapegoating as accountability). A vertical arrow on the left marks the arc's direction: improvements, decline, collapse. A column on the right maps counterpublics onto the same three states: functional counterpublics act in a substantial way, hollow counterpublics in a performative way, disordered counterpublics in a simulated way. The bands shift from grey through pink to red as democracy moves toward simulation.

A society that runs on this stack doesn't stop holding elections, or debating, or running investigations. The forms stay, but what goes is their capacity to constrain power. The arc bends toward simulation, carried out in the language of defending democracy.

For the kind of work I do, verification that applies the same standards to allies and adversaries, that scrutinises power on whichever side it sits, this worldview is structurally hostile. Symmetric verification becomes part of the cultural pathology the document wants reined in.

It's also worth being clear about who's doing the arguing. Palantir sells operational software to defence, intelligence, immigration & police agencies. These 22 points aren't philosophy floating in space, they're the public ideology of a company whose revenue depends on the politics it's advocating.

Neither configuration can coexist with functional VDA. Verification gets reduced to selective fact-display. Deliberation runs as theatre while the questions that matter are ruled out of order. Accountability gets pointed at critics while leadership is left untouched. This is VDA as simulation.

Using moral-epistemic stacks, what's happening here is a blend. Authoritarian features (national identity as moral authority, accountability that only flows outward) sit alongside technocratic ones (Silicon Valley expertise presented as natural authority over security).
bsky.app/profile/elio...

This is what verification looks like once national identity sits above method. Rigorous when it's pointed at adversaries, conveniently absent when it's pointed at us. Symmetric, evidence-led investigation of allied conduct, exactly what Bellingcat does, becomes the thing the worldview can't tolerate

21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful.

Point 21 is the giveaway, some cultures produce "wonders," others are "regressive and harmful." Once you accept that hierarchy, you've quietly been given permission to apply different standards of verification to different actors. The form of verification stays, but the democratic function doesn't.

Healthy accountability is triggered by evidence, points upward at power, and happens in public. Disordered accountability protects insiders and aims its punishment outward. What the document does is argue for the second while calling it the first.

A diagram showing the VDA framework and the Arc of Democracy. At the top, three icons label the essential elements of democracy: Verification (tick), Deliberation (speech bubble), and Accountability (magnifying glass). Arrows descend from each through three horizontal bands representing the arc: Substantial (truth tested, voices included, power constrained), Performative (forms remain but substance is weak, rituals without consequence), and Simulated (appearance maintained but functions inverted: propaganda as verification, polarisation as deliberation, scapegoating as accountability). A vertical arrow on the left marks the arc's direction: improvements, decline, collapse. A column on the right maps counterpublics onto the same three states: functional counterpublics act in a substantial way, hollow counterpublics in a performative way, disordered counterpublics in a simulated way. The bands shift from grey through pink to red as democracy moves toward simulation.

I've set out the framework I'm using here in an earlier thread, on VDA, the Arc of Democracy, and the moral-epistemic stacks idea, what follows applies that framework to the Palantir document directly. skywriter.blue/@eliothiggin...

5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed.

The headline argument is straightforward enough, democratic survival depends on hard power, hard power is now software, so Silicon Valley owes the West an AI weapons industry. Adversaries won't wait, so we can't either, which taken at face value sounds like a defence of democracy.

9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret. 18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within. 19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all.

Points 9, 18 and 19 go after accountability directly. Scrutiny of public figures gets reframed as a kind of cultural sickness driving talent away from public life. The problem becomes the people doing the scrutinising, not the people being scrutinised.

The 'adversaries won't wait' statement doesn't reject deliberation outright, it just makes serious deliberation always feel premature. You can debate this or that war, but the underlying question, whether to build the systems at all, is treated as settled, & that's deliberation as performance.

THREAD. 🧵

Palantir put out the most cartoonishly evil statement possible. They’re so arrogant and self-confident they don’t seem to believe their fascistic plans can be opposed.

We must get rid of Palantir altogether.

twitter-thread.com/t/2045574398...

circular sticker from lunchmeat's website that says "the C.I.A. can't S-E-E what's in your V.C.R." wrapped around the top and bottom with an eagle head atop a shield with a videotape inside it. text to the left and right of it reads "analog is anti-hack" the sticker price is $1 on their website

more relevant than ever,

A VCR never sold my private info to a nazi

Tim Curry in The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Tim Curry in Clue

Tim Curry in The Three Musketeers

Tim Curry in Muppet Treasure Island

Happy 80th birthday to Tim Curry who has always, *always* understood the assignment.

Raise your hand if you've been thinking this all along.

Congratulations on the Pyrrhic victory!

Also "so it can charge people for water" does this gm even know cyberpunk

A flatscreen display on a "smart" water fountain, demanding to be reconnected to the internet.

In 1999, I was playing a decker in Shadowrun, and tried to distract a guard by hacking a water fountain to overflow, and my GM said "why would a water fountain be on the network? That's fucking stupid. No you can't try."

Well it's 2026 and I just want you to know, Phil, that I FUCKING CALLED IT!