Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Stockholm Politicians Call For Review Of SLAUGHTER TO PREVAIL Concert Over Propaganda Concerns

Stockholm politicians have raised concerns over an upcoming concert by hard rock band Slaughter To Prevail, following accusations that the group has spread Russian propaganda.

According to the Nordic Ukraine Forum, the band has engaged in messaging aligned with Russian propaganda narratives. In response, representatives from both the Moderate Party (M) and the Social Democrats (S) have reacted ahead of the band’s scheduled performance in Stockholm on Friday, January 30.

Opposition city councilor Christofer Fjellner (M) said he believes it would be inappropriate for the band to perform under the current circumstances. “I think it’s quite inappropriate. I don’t think a band that lends itself to Russian propaganda should be playing in Stockholm right now,” Fjellner told SVT Kulturnyheterna.

Stockholm’s Finance City Councilor Karin Wanngård (S) also commented on the situation, stating in a written response that the City of Stockholm is currently in dialogue with the concert organizer. According to Wanngård, the aim is to ensure that anti-democratic messages are not conveyed during the event.

Slaughter To Prevail previously performed in Gothenburg on Tuesday. Concert promoter Live Nation, which is organizing the Stockholm show, has declined to comment on SVT’s inquiries regarding the allegations. At the time of publication, the concert remains scheduled to proceed as planned.

Keep reading

Pentagon Expands Base Commanders’ Authority to Counter Rising Drone Threats Following Inspector General Warning

Small drones have transformed modern conflict overseas, but their rapid spread is now forcing a rethink much closer to home. From suspicious drones observed near military bases to the growing availability of inexpensive, easily modified unmanned aircraft, U.S. defense officials have begun to acknowledge that drones operating in domestic airspace pose a serious and growing security threat.

This week, the Pentagon issued updated guidance granting base commanders greater authority and flexibility to respond to unauthorized drone incursions across the United States, marking one of the most significant shifts in domestic military counter-drone policy in years.

The move comes amid rising concern over repeated drone sightings near sensitive facilities and follows a new Department of Defense Inspector General warning that gaps in policy and inconsistent implementation have left U.S. military installations vulnerable.

The updated guidance builds upon a restructuring effort already underway since last summer, when the Department stood up Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF-401) to centralize counter-drone efforts across the military.

The latest policy changes now push operational authority closer to the commanders responsible for defending installations day to day. Taken together, the developments represent a shift from a fragmented, slow-moving approach to one designed for speed and adaptability in the face of rapidly evolving drone threats.

“The operational landscape has fundamentally and irrevocably changed,” a statement issued by the DoD reads. “The proliferation of inexpensive, capable, and weaponizable unmanned aerial systems (UAS) by both peer competitors and non-state actors presents a direct and growing threat to our installations, our personnel, and our mission, both at home and abroad.”

It’s undeniable that small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) have transformed modern warfare. Cheap, commercially available drones can now carry cameras, sensors, or even explosives, and the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine has demonstrated just how profoundly these systems can shape and disrupt military operations.

At the same time, unauthorized drone flights near U.S. military installations, energy infrastructure, testing ranges, and training facilities have surged in recent years. While defense officials have often publicly downplayed the national security implications of many of these incidents, they have slowly begun to acknowledge that the threat posed by drones is no longer confined to distant battlefields or foreign conflicts.

The Pentagon’s new guidance expands authorities available to installation commanders to detect, track, and defeat drones threatening military assets, reducing delays previously caused by layered approval processes.

The updated policy also removes a previous “fence-line” limitation, allowing commanders to respond to drone threats beyond the physical perimeter of military installations. It additionally clarifies that “unauthorized surveillance” of facilities now explicitly constitutes a threat.

“This, combined with the authority for commanders to make threat determinations based on the ‘totality of circumstances,’ grants greater operational flexibility,” the DoD says.

The move is tied to the Department of War’s Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF-401), which was established in August 2025 when the Secretary of Defense disbanded the Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office and created a new organization intended to streamline the acquisition, testing, and deployment of counter-drone technologies.

As described in a memorandum for senior Pentagon leadership, the task force was formed to “better align authorities and resources to rapidly deliver Joint C-sUAS capabilities to America’s warfighters, defeat adversary threats, and promote sovereignty over national airspace.”

The goal of the task force was to eliminate duplication and speed delivery of counter-drone capabilities, especially as the number of organizations involved in drone defense efforts has grown, often operating without tight coordination.

Keep reading

MILLIONS of explosive new Epstein files dumped by DoJ in shock release

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced on Friday morning that the Department of Justice had released at least three million new Epstein files to the public.

Hundreds of thousands of Epstein-related documents had already been made public by the House Committee on Oversight in late 2025, including sickening images showing Epstein surrounded by young-looking women.

The files, released following Epstein’s death in 2019, contain disturbing photographs of women’s bodies, harrowing notes, and references to famous figures including former President Bill Clinton and Michael Jackson.

Previous document dumps have sparked fierce backlash after large swathes of material were heavily redacted by the Justice Department. Officials said the caveats were necessary to protect victims’ privacy, national security, and other sensitive interests.

Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell has since claimed that 29 of Epstein’s associates were shielded through ‘secret settlements’ with the Justice Department. The allegation was made in a habeas corpus petition she filed on December 17 seeking to overturn her conviction.

Key Epstein files dates:

Keep reading

A dream-like psychedelic might help traumatized veterans reset their brains

A new study suggests that the intensity of spiritual or “mystical” moments felt during psychedelic treatment may predict how well veterans recover from trauma symptoms. Researchers found that soldiers who reported profound feelings of unity and sacredness while taking ibogaine experienced lasting relief from post-traumatic stress disorder. These findings were published in the Journal of Affective Disorders.

For decades, medical professionals have sought better ways to assist military personnel returning from combat. Many veterans suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, as well as traumatic brain injuries caused by repeated exposure to blasts. These conditions often occur together and can be resistant to standard pharmaceutical treatments. The lack of effective options has led some researchers to investigate alternative therapies derived from natural sources.

One such substance is ibogaine. This psychoactive compound comes from the root bark of the Tabernanthe iboga shrub, which is native to Central Africa. Cultures in that region have used the plant for centuries in healing and spiritual ceremonies. In recent years, it has gained attention in the West for its potential to treat addiction and psychiatric distress. Unlike some other psychedelics, ibogaine often induces a dream-like state where users review their memories.

Despite anecdotal reports of success, the scientific community still has a limited understanding of how ibogaine works in the human brain. Most prior research focused on classic psychedelics like psilocybin or MDMA. The specific psychological mechanisms that might allow ibogaine to alleviate trauma symptoms remain largely unexplored.

Randi E. Brown, a researcher at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the VA Palo Alto Health Care System, led a team to investigate this question. They worked in collaboration with the late Nolan R. Williams and other specialists in psychiatry and behavioral sciences. The team sought to determine if the subjective quality of the drug experience mattered for recovery. They hypothesized that a “mystical experience” might be a key driver of therapeutic change.

The concept of a mystical experience in psychology is specific and measurable. It refers to a sensation of unity with the universe, a transcendence of time and space, and deeply felt peace or joy. It also includes a quality known as ineffability, meaning the experience is too profound to be described in words. The researchers wanted to know if veterans who felt these sensations more strongly would see better clinical results.

The study analyzed data from thirty male Special Operations Veterans. All participants had a history of traumatic brain injury and combat exposure. Because ibogaine is not approved for medical use in the United States, the veterans traveled to a clinic in Mexico for the treatment. This setup allowed the researchers to observe the effects of the drug in a clinical setting outside the U.S.

The treatment protocol involved a single administration of the drug. The medical staff combined ibogaine with magnesium sulfate. This addition is intended to protect the heart, as ibogaine can sometimes disrupt cardiac rhythms. The veterans received the medication orally after a period of fasting. They spent the session lying down with eyeshades, generally experiencing the effects internally rather than interacting with others.

To measure the psychological impact of the session, the researchers administered the Mystical Experiences Questionnaire. This survey asks participants to rate the intensity of various feelings, such as awe or a sense of sacredness. The researchers collected these scores immediately after the treatment concluded.

Keep reading

Landmark Brazilian UFO Case Reaches Capitol Hill as Varginha Incident Turns 30

OVER A LARGE BOX of untouched donuts in Washington’s Longworth House Office Building, Congressional representatives sat rapt as a visiting Brazilian neurosurgeon described what it was like to stare back at the large lilac-colored eyes of a highly intelligent, nonhuman being.

So, not your usual Capitol Hill meeting.

The closed-door session on Jan. 15 brought together three members of Congress seeking greater government transparency on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, long called UFOs, and a group of Brazilians who say they witnessed the crash of an otherworldly spacecraft and later encountered its nonhuman occupants.

Coming thirty years after the striking events, the private Washington meeting (to which we alone had media access), followed by a public press conference five days later, raised the prospect of unprecedented Brazilian-American cooperation in unraveling the mysteries of one of the best researched—and shocking—UFO cases on record.

The witnesses included the highly respected neurosurgeon, a forensic pathologist, and a geography teacher. They were brought to the United States by filmmaker James Fox, who interviewed more than two dozen witnesses for a new feature documentary that expands on a 2022 version of his film Moment of Contact. Fox has been investigating the case, with his Brazilian counterpart Marco Aurelio Leal, for over two decades.

“This could settle the debate once and for all that we’re not alone,” Fox told the packed news conference, which he organized at the National Press Club on Jan. 20.

Keep reading

Why Mamdani’s ‘Free Childcare’ Won’t Work

“While families with young children comprise about 14 percent of the city’s population, they comprise about 30 percent of the set of New Yorkers who are leaving the city,” said Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani at a visit to a day care center in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, where he hyped his plans for those families.

Mamdani ran on the most ambitious universal child care proposal in the country: free day care for all kids ages 6 weeks and above. Apparently, this pitch was compelling to the city’s beleaguered parents: The self-styled socialist won by a hefty margin.

New York City already has universal child care guaranteed to 3- and 4-year-olds. When Bill de Blasio ran for mayor in 2013, he aimed to distinguish himself from then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who had created 4,000 new free pre-K seats but allocated them only to poor kids. De Blasio universalized the system in 2014.

Mamdani wants to expand to an even younger age group, which would cost an extra $6 billion a year. Those funds aren’t available in city coffers, so Mamdani would need cooperation from the state government to raise the money, likely by taking another leaf from the de Blasio playbook and trying to hike taxes on the very rich.

Mamdani’s political intuition is sound: The affordability issue is salient. The number of New York City families with three kids or more has dropped by nearly 17 percent over the last decade. Families with young children have been self-exiling in droves since the pandemic. The under-20 population has dropped by almost 200,000 over the last few years. The city’s public school system has 915,000 students enrolled, down from 1.1 million a decade ago. New York’s comptroller reports that the average cost of private child care for babies and toddlers now sits at $18,200 annually for family-based care and $26,000 annually for center-based care, shooting up in recent years. It’s no wonder so many parents are clamoring to turn over their kids to the warm embrace of the state. They feel left out in the cold.

But universal 3-K (for 3-year-olds) hasn’t served families as well as its supporters promised it would. It distorted the private market, driving day cares out of business. Rich families have used nifty hacks to get their kids into the best centers, while the poor are left with the rest. The universal nature of it might be politically valuable when you’re currying favor with the tony Park Slope crowd, but it means that child care for rich people is subsidized by the slightly richer, and that day cares serving the poorest neighborhoods don’t get what they need. Parents who choose to stay home with their kids or employ nannies get shafted, and costs for all forms of child care are driven up the more the government intervenes in the market. More government involvement won’t make that better.

Keep reading

Palantir’s ELITE: Not All Maps Are Meant To Guide Us

Many memorable journeys start with a map. Maps have been around for ages, guiding humanity on its way in grand style. Maps have helped sailors cross oceans, caravans traverse deserts, and armies march into the pages of history. Maps have been staple tools of exploration, survival, and sovereignty. And today? Today, they’re on our devices, and we use them to find literally everything, including the nearest taco truck, coffee shop, and gas station. Yet, today’s maps don’t just show us where we are and where we are going. Increasingly, they also tell someone else the gist of who we are. What does that mean exactly? It means not all maps are made for us. Some maps are made about us. Case in point—the objective of Palantir’s ELITE demands our immediate attention. ELITE is a digital map used by ICE to identify neighborhoods, households, and individuals for targeted enforcement, drawing on data that was never meant to become ammunition.

No, Palantir’s ELITE is not strictly limited to use by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but its primary and reported use is specifically for immigration enforcement. ELITE, which stands for Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement, is a software tool/app developed by Palantir for ICE to find, classify, and prioritize presumably illegal immigrants for deportation. It was rolled out in late 2025, with reports of use starting in September 2025. Essentially, ELITE is a map that pulls data from across federal systems—including agencies like Medicaid and Health Department information—and uses it to compile dossiers on people, complete with address confidence scores and patterns of residence density. It tells ICE agents where individuals live and how likely they are to be there so that ICE can prioritize “target-rich environments” for raids.

In other words, data that was once siloed for entirely different purposes—health records, public assistance, demographic lists—is now being fused into a single dashboard designed to help federal agents decide where to show up and who to detain. While no one wants criminal illegal aliens freely roaming the streets of our nation, the result of the operation is not “analytics”—it is anticipatory policing dressed as operational efficiency. One might think the scenario sounds like something only seen in dystopian fiction, and others agree. Advocates for freedom have pointed out that ELITE’s model resembles (in unsettling ways) systems designed to anticipate behavior rather than respond to actual wrongdoing. Beyond that, what else could it be used for, and when will that next step begin?

Keep reading

Tampon Tim Walz Says He Will ‘Never Again’ Seek Elected Office — Months After Floating a Presidential Run 

Just over a year after his unsuccessful run for vice-president of the United States, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has said he will “never again” seek elected office.

Walz, who served as Kamala Harris’s running mate in the 2024 presidential election, made the remark during an interview with MS Now.

“I will never run for an elected office again,” he said. “Never again.”

“Look, I recognize that I’m a lightning rod,” he continued.

“I know they hate me personally, and they take it out on my constituents.”

Walz recently announced that he would not seek re-election as governor after it emerged he had overseen billions of childcare fraud at the hands of the state’s large Somali community.

Keep reading

Former CNN Anchor Don Lemon Arrested

Former CNN anchor Don Lemon has been arrested, Newsmax’s James Rosen and a Justice Department official familiar with the matter confirmed Friday.

CBS News also reported the arrest, citing sources.

Lemon livestreamed a demonstration that interrupted a church service in St. Paul, Minnesota, earlier this month that protested President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in the area.

Lemon’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, called his arrest an “unprecedented attack on the First Amendment.”

Lemon said he was at the demonstration as a journalist. He said he was tipped off ahead of time but did not know the activists would disrupt the service.

He can be seen arguing with a parishioner about immigration enforcement. Trump administration officials quickly condemned the demonstration and accused protesters of intimidating Christian worshippers.

It was not immediately clear what charge or charges Lemon was facing in the Jan. 18 protest. The arrest came after a magistrate judge last week rejected prosecutors’ initial bid to charge the journalist.

Keep reading

CO Councilman’s DUI Bodycam Shows Panic Over Public Records

Newly released body camera footage is providing additional detail about the DUI arrest of Aurora City Councilman Robert Andrews, who police say was driving with a blood alcohol level more than three times the legal limit.

According to Aurora police, Andrews was stopped just after 9:30 p.m. Saturday near the intersection of South Chambers Road and East Florida Avenue.

Officers said they initiated the traffic stop after observing Andrews make an improper left turn, nearly strike a curb, and weave between lanes while driving his truck.

When officers approached the vehicle, the police report states that Andrews initially handed over his Aurora City Council identification card instead of his driver’s license.

Officers also reported detecting the smell of alcohol coming from Andrews and described his eyes as pink and watery.

The body camera video shows an officer addressing Andrews shortly after the stop and asking about alcohol consumption.

“My concern is that I can smell alcohol coming from your person, have you had anything to drink tonight?” an officer says in the video.

Keep reading