First Amendment something something

Nearly Half of Americans Believed Top False Claims in 2025 Across seven months of surveys measuring NewsGuard’s Reality Gap, viral hoaxes duped an average of 46 percent of Americans.

From from June to December 2025, NewsGuard found that an average of nearly half of Americans believed at least one false claim in social media or the news media.

news."open.substack.com/pub/newsguardtech/p/near...

I've clung to grim belief that 1968 would be darkest year I'd see in US. Horrific assassinations. Real (not show) military occupation in DC. Tet and MyLai. 'Police Riot' in Chicago. Nixon/Agnew.

Not so certain any more. Back then 2 parties still functioned. A prez could resign for "good of nation"

Why so few Americans read for pleasure The decline in Americans’ leisure reading comes as attention spans are shrinking and print book sales are in decline.

Just under half of us didn’t read a book for fun in 2023.

The Em Dash Responds to the AI Allegations “In recent months, a curious fixation has emerged in corners of academia: the em dash. More specifically, the apparent moral panic around how it is...

The Em Dash Responds to the AI Allegations www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the...

Barry Blitt’s cover for this week’s issue, “The First Hundred Days.” #NewYorkerCovers nyer.cm/ysrCZ47

Most of us who know are working hard to forget her anyway. You didn’t miss anything.

Do tell.

Your implacable sense of right and wrong is admirable, but I'm afraid it's rather out of fashion at the moment. The truth is, there is no right and wrong any longer. There is only power and money. And more often than not, one begets the other."

Very sorry! I understand the sense of loss as a similar event struck me 10 years ago. Major project lost, sole backup corrupted. May want to consider what I do now: on site backup on Time Machine, documents saved in secure cloud, encrypted off-site backup online. Not cheap, but worth every penny.

A whistleblower's disclosure details how DOGE may have taken sensitive labor data A whistleblower tells Congress and NPR that DOGE may have taken sensitive labor data and hid its tracks. "None of that ... information should ever leave the agency," said a former NLRB official.

What are these tech Bro’s up to? A must read.

“When our leaders abandon character… It accelerates decay. It tells people that principles are optional, that decency is weakness, that rules are for fools. It fosters a culture of fear...”

Waltz and staff used Gmail for government communications, officials say Trump’s national security adviser is trying to manage his way out of a crisis. But new revelations about his team’s operational security are piling up in the inbox.

What about her emails?

Listen everyone. I’ve see classified stuff before. This in the Atlantic is the kind of stuff that gets the highest classification.

I had to have TS clearance to hear the names of the people we targeted in Iraq when i was with TF16 and 17. And still some names were withheld until op was over….

They are also cutting the office that coordinates funding and research for Long Covid. Millions, including myself are still suffering from this.

David: Are you concerned about retaliation from the Trump administration because of this story? Jeffrey: It’s not my role to care about the possibility of threats or retaliation. We just have to come to work and do our jobs to the best of our ability. Unfortunately, in our society today—we see this across corporate journalism and law firms and other industries—there’s too much preemptive obeying for my taste. All we can do is just go do our jobs.

A fantastically important postscript to this piece: David Graham asks Jeffrey Goldberg about possible retaliation, and Goldberg gives a perfect answer — with perfect swipes. www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

“Several Defense Dept officials expressed shock that Mr. Hegseth had put American war plans into a commercial chat group. They said that having this type of conversation in a Signal chat group itself could be a violation of the Espionage Act, a law covering the handling of sensitive information.”

Is Sinatra Elon Musk??

“They are lying to you”

#paradise #huluparadise

If you’ve ever taken the oath to uphold the Constitution, this is the time to live up to it.

This could be true.

Vance and Musk Attack German Consensus on Nazis and Speech Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk have challenged decades-long approaches to political extremism that were designed to prevent another Hitler.

Trump Officials Attack German Consensus on Nazis
Eighty years after American soldiers liberated Dachau, top German officials this weekend all-but accused Mr. Vance — and by extension, President Trump — of boosting a political party that many Germans consider to be dangerously descended from Nazism.

Opinion | Don’t Believe Him Look closely at the first two weeks of Donald Trump’s second term and you’ll see something very different than what he wants you to see.

The most important 15 minutes you could spend this week. Why flooding the zone could backfire.

Over a Dozen Prosecutors at U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. Are Dismissed Those informed of their dismissals had been hired to investigate the Jan. 6 riot as the office struggled to manage what became the largest prosecution in the department’s history.

www.nytimes.com/2025/01/31/u...

If your Christianity causes you to be offended by someone asking the most powerful person in the country to be merciful towards the powerless, then you have profoundly misunderstood the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Advice from Gary Panter

social media is the last greyhound bus of the night from Las Vegas back to Los Angeles