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.

This Hollywood-Backed Bill Would Give Government Power To Block Websites

Lawmakers in Washington are once again attempting to give the United States a legal pathway to block websites, a power the federal government has never officially held on a broad scale.

The latest push comes in the form of the Block Bad Electronic Art and Recording Distributors Act, better known as “Block BEARD,” introduced in the Senate by Thom Tillis, Chris Coons, Marsha Blackburn, and Adam Schiff.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

On its face, the bill targets foreign websites accused of piracy. But the mechanism it creates would establish something far more significant: a formal, court-approved process that could be used to make entire websites vanish from the American internet.

Under the proposal, copyright owners could go to federal court to have a site labeled a “foreign digital piracy site.” If successful, the court could then order US service providers to block access to that site.

The reach is broad. The term “service provider” here mirrors the broad definition in the DMCA, potentially covering everything from ISPs and search engines to social media platforms, and perhaps even VPNs.

Proponents say this is about protecting the entertainment industry. In reality, it’s about setting a precedent. Once the government has a tool to block certain sites, history shows the definition of “unacceptable” content can expand. Piracy today could easily become something else tomorrow.

The ramifications go beyond the music and movie business. If courts can order an ISP to make a site disappear from view, the same logic could eventually apply to other types of content deemed problematic.

And because the bill has no public transparency requirements, the public could be kept entirely in the dark about which sites are blocked, why they’re blocked, or how long the blocks remain in place.

Supporters in the entertainment industry, including the RIAA and Motion Picture Association, are openly cheering the bill, pointing to similar measures overseas they claim have worked without harming free speech.

But the US is not the same as other countries. The First Amendment’s protection of speech and access to information means this kind of censorship tool carries far more constitutional baggage here than it does elsewhere.

What Block BEARD really represents is a milestone. If passed, it would be the first time the US creates a standing legal process for cutting off access to entire websites at the network level.

Keep reading

The military’s squad of satellite trackers is now routinely going on alert

If it seems like there’s a satellite launch almost every day, the numbers will back you up.

The US Space Force’s Mission Delta 2 is a unit that reports to Space Operations Command, with the job of sorting out the nearly 50,000 trackable objects humans have launched into orbit.

Dozens of satellites are being launched each week, primarily by SpaceX to continue deploying the Starlink broadband network. The US military has advance notice of these launches—most of them originate from Space Force property—and knows exactly where they’re going and what they’re doing.

That’s usually not the case when China or Russia (and occasionally Iran or North Korea) launches something into orbit. With rare exceptions, like human spaceflight missions, Chinese and Russian officials don’t publish any specifics about what their rockets are carrying or what altitude they’re going to.

That creates a problem for military operators tasked with monitoring traffic in orbit and breeds anxiety among US forces responsible for making sure potential adversaries don’t gain an edge in space. Will this launch deploy something that can destroy or disable a US satellite? Will this new satellite have a new capability to surveil allied forces on the ground or at sea?

Of course, this is precisely the point of keeping launch details under wraps. The US government doesn’t publish orbital data on its most sensitive satellites, such as spy craft collecting intelligence on foreign governments.

But you can’t hide in low-Earth orbit, a region extending hundreds of miles into space. Col. Raj Agrawal, who commanded Mission Delta 2 until earlier this month, knows this all too well. Agrawal handed over command to Col. Barry Croker as planned after a two-year tour of duty at Mission Delta 2.

Keep reading

In search of riches, hackers plant 4G-enabled Raspberry Pi in bank network

Hackers planted a Raspberry Pi equipped with a 4G modem in the network of an unnamed bank in an attempt to siphon money out of the financial institution’s ATM system, researchers reported Wednesday.

The researchers with security firm Group-IB said the “unprecedented tactic allowed the attackers to bypass perimeter defenses entirely.” The hackers combined the physical intrusion with remote access malware that used another novel technique to conceal itself, even from sophisticated forensic tools. The technique, known as a Linux bind mount, is used in IT administration but had never been seen used by threat actors. The trick allowed the malware to operate similarly to a rootkit, which uses advanced techniques to hide itself from the operating system it runs on.

End goal: Backdooring the ATM switching network

The Raspberry Pi was connected to the same network switch used by the bank’s ATM system, a position that effectively put it inside the bank’s internal network. The goal was to compromise the ATM switching server and use that control to manipulate the bank’s hardware security module, a tamper-resistant physical device used to store secrets such as credentials and digital signatures and run encryption and decryption functions.

The group behind the attack is tracked in the industry under the name UNC2891. The financially motivated threat group has been active since at least 2017 in targeting the infrastructures of banks. It has earned a well-deserved reputation for proficiency in its use of custom malware in attacks targeting Linux, Unix, and Oracle Solaris systems.

In 2022, Google’s Mandiant division said it had observed UNC2891 spending years inside a targeted network, during which time the intrusion went largely unnoticed. Mandiant researchers went on to identify CakeTap, a custom rootkit for Solaris systems. Among other things, CakeTap manipulated messages passing through an infected ATM switching network, most likely for use in unauthorized cash withdrawals using fraudulent bank cards. Mandiant documented two other custom pieces of malware, which the company named SlapStick and TinyShell.

Group-IB’s report on Wednesday shows that UNC2891 is still active and finding new and advanced ways to burrow into bank networks without detection.

“One of the most unusual elements of this case was the attacker’s use of physical access to install a Raspberry Pi device,” Group-IB Senior Digital Forensics and Incident Response Specialist Nam Le Phuong wrote. “This device was connected directly to the same network switch as the ATM, effectively placing it inside the bank’s internal network. The Raspberry Pi was equipped with a 4G modem, allowing remote access over mobile data.”

To maintain persistence, UNC2891 also compromised a mail server because it had constant Internet connectivity. The Raspberry Pi and the mail server backdoor would then communicate by using the bank’s monitoring server as an intermediary. The monitoring server was chosen because it had access to almost every server within the data center.

Keep reading

Germany Establishes EU’s First Psilocybin Compassionate Access Program

Germany has become the first country in the European Union to allow legal access to a psychedelic, under certain conditions, prior to regulatory approval.

Through a newly established compassionate use program—which has received the blessing of the country’s drug regulator, the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM)—two facilities are now able to offer psilocybin to adults with treatment-resistant depression (TRD).

Those two clinics, the Central Institute of Mental Health (CIMH, also known as ZI Mannheim) and the OVID Clinic Berlin, expect demand will far outpace capacity. There, psychiatrists will admit qualified patients to receive Filament Health’s botanical psilocybin candidate, PEX010, in the context of a broader psychiatric care protocol.

Psychedelic Alpha spoke with Gerhard Gründer, who submitted the successful application and will lead the roll-out of the compassionate use program, to learn more about this development.

Keep reading

State Gives a Deadly Gift to Fentanyl Makers, Big Pharma, and Drug Warriors — A Ban on Kratom

This Friday, August 1, 2025, Louisiana will criminalize a leaf. Not fentanyl. Not meth. Not synthetic opioids that kill over 100,000 Americans every year. No, lawmakers have decided to outlaw kratom — a safe, natural plant in the coffee family — and those caught with it could face six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

To understand the full weight of this insanity, you have to peel back the curtain on the drug war’s real purpose. It’s not about keeping people safe. It’s about criminalizing autonomy. It’s about corporate profits, institutional control, and punishing people for the crime of treating themselves outside of state-approved chemical dependency.

Kratom isn’t the threat. The threat is what it replaces.

The Lie That Keeps Killing

For years, scientists, doctors, and hundreds of thousands of kratom users have warned the federal government: ban this plant, and opioid deaths will rise.

In 2018, a group of scientists wrote to the DEA and White House, blasting the FDA’s push to classify kratom as a Schedule I drug. They made it clear: kratom, when used in its natural form, does not cause respiratory depression — the primary cause of death in opioid overdoses. More importantly, the plant has become a lifeline away from opioids for millions.

“Placing kratom into Schedule I will potentially increase the number of deaths of Americans caused by opioids,” the scientists warned, adding that the FDA’s data blaming kratom for dozens of deaths was riddled with inconsistencies, co-ingestions, and zero proof of causation.

In fact, many of those “kratom deaths” were linked to adulterated products, synthetic extracts, or pre-existing conditions — not the raw plant. One such alkaloid, 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH), has been artificially concentrated in some unregulated kratom extracts to mimic opioid-like effects, but this is not kratom. This is corporate bastardization — the same playbook used to demonize cannabis while pushing synthetic THC.

Keep reading

Mainstream Naysayers Gather As Hopes Rise For 4th Year Of Record Coral On The Great Barrier Reef

In the next few days, the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) will issue its annual report on the state of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). For alarmists promoting the Net Zero fantasy the news has been dire over the last three years, with record coral reported across the largest reef in the world.

Such is the obvious despair even daft excuses suggesting it is the wrong type of coral have been heard.

Faced with inconvenient facts, the usual groomed game plan in mainstream media has been to issue dire warnings of possible imminent collapse and then keep schtum when the sensational figures surface.

Recently the BBC gave us its “’underwater bushfire’ cooking Australia’s reefs”. Alas, the Australian Government’s Reef Authority is less cataclysmic in its reporting, noting indications in June this year that there were “no current heat stresses across the Reef”. Between April 14th and May 31st, 342 impact inspections were carried out which found coral bleaching on just three of the 34 reefs surveyed.

Keep reading

Leftists Lose Their Minds Over Dunkin’ Donuts Ad Featuring White Model

Remember when beautiful people were the standard in American marketing?  Remember when advertising focused on demographics according to their common interests and their percentage of the general population?  It wasn’t all that long ago, but the woke cult has been working hard over the years to “deconstruct” cultural norms, specifically by hijacking advertising and convincing corporations that DEI is the wave of the future.

Anyone born before Y2K is well aware of the dramatic changes to American media and the startling disappearance of attractive people and white people in ads.  TV shows, movies and even commercials have been carefully crafted with a perfect pie chart of diverse representation while removing the one group that is the actual majority (perhaps even more of a majority as deportations continue).  Most of America does not look like New York or Los Angeles, but if you were to study modern advertising without context you might assume white people in the US are a minority.

It’s not a secret that this is by design.  The religion of Multiculturalism requires that public perception be molded first to assume that demographic balancing is the norm and that “white colonists” are an enemy that must be suppressed for the good of the world.  The more victimhood and controversy leftists can elicit, the more political power they think they can harvest.

Keep reading

Military General Surgeons Are Not Adequately Prepared for Saving the Lives of Wounded Service Members in Large-Scale Combat Operations

The United States military may be ill-prepared to treat those wounded in a large-scale combat operation. As it stands, the Military Health System (MHS) would find itself caught off guard with limited manpower and proficiency to save lives.

On March 11, 2025, the Senate Committee on Armed Services (SASC) held a hearing “to receive testimony on stabilizing the Military Health System to prepare for large-scale combat operations.” Three retired Air Force senior officers, to include Lt. Gen. (Dr.) Douglas Robb, Maj. Gen. (Dr.)  Paul Friedrichs, and Col. (Dr.) Jeremy Cannon, provided witness testimony.

The Gateway Pundit spoke to retired Air Force Lt. Gen. (Dr.) Paul Carlton. The former Surgeon General of the Air Force and board advisor for Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services (STARRS) said he is gravely concerned that “military surgeons are not ready to go to war as a result of the criteria the Military Health System (MHS) has established and tried to abide by for the last 20 years.”

Carlton pointed to what he considers one of the most concerning statements of the one-and-a-half-hour committee hearing where Col. (Dr.) Cannon, Professor of Surgery at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, stated “only 10 percent of military general surgeons get the patient volume, acuity, and variety they need to remain combat ready.”

Keep reading

China Probes Nvidia Over Alleged H20 AI Chip’s “Backdoor” Security Risks

China’s Cyberspace Administration (CAC) summoned Nvidia officials to address alleged “backdoor” security vulnerabilities with the H20 AI chip, just weeks after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s diplomatic visit to Beijing, and days after US and Chinese officials met in Stockholm to extend their tariff truce. 

Nvidia was asked “to clarify and submit relevant supporting documentation regarding security risks, including potential vulnerabilities and backdoors, associated with its H20 computing chips sold to China,” according to a statement from CAC. 

China’s top internet watchdog claimed Nvidia’s AI chips pose major security threats due to security vulnerabilities…

“US lawmakers have previously called for advanced chips exported from the US to be equipped with location-tracking features,” the regulator pointed out. 

“The location-tracking and remote shutdown capabilities on Nvidia computing chips are ready, according to US AI experts,” CAC said. 

CAC’s concerns follow a legislative push in Washington, where Republican Senator Tom Cotton and a bipartisan group of eight Representatives recently introduced the U.S. Chip Security Act (H.R. 3447). This bill includes the requirement for companies like Nvidia to embed security mechanisms into advanced chips, such as location verification or tracking mechanisms. 

Nvidia reps were asked to provide technical documents about the H20 AI chip to ensure there are no “backdoors.” Huang has previously denied any security vulnerabilities with his chips. 

Keep reading

Kamala Harris Mocked for Writing ‘Word Salad’ Book About Failed 2024 Presidential Campaign

Former Vice President Kamala Harris announced on Thursday her memoir about her time on the campaign trail after former President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.

Harris said her forthcoming book will give readers a behind-the-scenes look at her experience “leading the shortest presidential campaign in modern history.”

The book, titled “107 Days,” is set for release on September 23.

Harris said she wrote it “with candor and reflection” and believes, “There is value in sharing what I saw, what I learned, and what I know it will take to move forward.”

Her video announcement drew widespread criticism from social media users. One person replied, “How are you not embarrassed to have run one of the worst presidential campaigns in history? You literally had rappers twerking at your events.”

Keep reading