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.

ICE is cracking down on people who follow them in their cars

Becky Ringstrom was heading home after following federal immigration officers in her gray Kia SUV in suburban Minneapolis when she was suddenly boxed in by unmarked vehicles. At least a half-dozen masked agents jumped out to arrest her, one knocking on her windshield with a metal object as if threatening to use it to break her window.

After the arrest, captured on bystander video verified by Reuters, the 42-year-old mother of seven later said she was transported to Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis where an officer gave her a citation charging her under a federal law that criminalizes impeding law enforcement. The official said her name and photo would be added to a government database.

The arrest of Ringstrom became the latest detention of one of thousands of local activists for violating Title 18, Section 111 of the U.S. Code, a catch-all charge for anyone who “forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates, or interferes” with a federal officer conducting official duties. The statute can be charged as a felony or misdemeanor. As a felony, it carries up to 20 years in prison, but penalties beyond eight years are reserved for people who use “a deadly or dangerous weapon” or cause an injury.

A Reuters review of federal court records found that the Trump administration has prosecuted at least 655 people under that charge across the U.S. since a series of city-focused immigration crackdowns began last summer. That’s more than double the prosecutions during the same period in 2024-2025, according to a review of publicly available criminal filings in Westlaw, a legal research database owned by Thomson Reuters.

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A Tiny Alabama Town Ran an Outrageous Speed Trap. Now It Will Pay $1.5 Million To Settle a Lawsuit.

The hamlet of Brookside, Alabama, has agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle a civil rights lawsuit three years after local news investigations revealed that it was running a predatory speed trap.

The Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm that sued Brookside in 2022 on behalf of motorists who said they were framed and swindled by the town, announced on Monday that it had reached a settlement agreement that would require substantial transparency and policing reforms, in addition to payments to the class members.

Brookside became a national news story in 2022 after the Birmingham News reported that the small town’s unusually large police force was bankrolling the city budget by fining people traveling through and towing their cars under what motorists claimed were fabricated charges.

It was one of the worst cases of profit-motivated policing in recent memory: The news investigation found that Brookside, a place with no traffic lights and one commercial property, a Dollar General store, “collected $487 in fines and forfeitures for every man, woman and child.” By 2020, two years after Brookside expanded its police force from one officer to nine and began aggressively pursuing traffic enforcement, income from fines and forfeitures comprised 49 percent of the town’s budget. Motorists alleged that they were getting pulled over for fake traffic violations, slapped with bogus charges, then forced to pay thousands in fines and towing fees after being convicted in Brookside’s municipal court.

The investigations led to the resignation of the Brookside police chief, a Pulitzer Prize for the reporters, and a class action lawsuit filed by the Institute for Justice.

“Police are supposed to protect and serve, not ticket and collect,” Chekeithia Grant, one of the named plaintiffs in the case, said in an Institute for Justice press release Monday. “When that gets flipped around, people suffer. We brought this case to remind Brookside of that, and to get the town on the right track. This settlement should do that. And it should be a warning to other towns.”

According to the lawsuit, Grant and her daughter were both arrested by Brookside police following a traffic stop and falsely charged with possession of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia, obstruction of government operations, and resisting arrest. Both were convicted in the Brookside Municipal Court, but town prosecutors agreed to dismiss all the charges after the two women appealed to a county court. But by then, they had already paid roughly $2,000 in fines and fees to Brookside.

Brookside’s racket was so outrageous that the Justice Department filed a “statement of interest” in support of the Institute for Justice’s lawsuit, noting the perverse profit incentives that such schemes create:

Judges should not profit from their decisions in cases. Nor should funding for prosecutors or police officers depend substantially on unnecessarily aggressive law enforcement aimed at generating income through fines and fees. Criminal justice systems tainted by these unreasonable incentives stand to punish the poor for their poverty and put law enforcement at odds with the communities they are meant to serve.

However, Brookside was just a particularly odious example of the classic American speed-trap town, a municipality that survives by latching onto a nearby highway and gorging itself, like a bloated tick, on traffic enforcement revenue.

States have often responded to negative publicity from speed-trap towns with legislative reforms, and Alabama was no different. A few months after Brookside’s practices were exposed, the Alabama state legislature passed a bill capping the revenue municipalities can keep from fines to just 10 percent of their general operating budgets.

In addition to the $1.5 million payout to the lawsuit class, the proposed settlement will require Brookside to end many of the financial incentives tied to its traffic enforcement, such as repealing its fee to retrieve towed cars. The Brookside Police Department would also stay off the nearby interstate for the next 10 years, except for emergency response, and there would be 30 years of strict caps on how much revenue the town could keep from policing and code enforcement.

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Oregon Lawmakers Consider Banning Marijuana Edibles With More Than 10 Milligrams Of THC

Oregon lawmakers are considering a bill to prohibit the sale of individual edibles that have more than 10 milligrams of THC.

The proposal, Senate Bill 1548, comes as lawmakers grapple with responding to increasing reports of children seeking medical attention after consuming edibles resembling cookies, brownies and gummies. In 2023, children aged 0 to five made up one-third of all cannabis-related cases reported to the Oregon Poison Center.

And in May, experts recommended lawmakers implement a THC cap to cannabis products, similar to alcohol and tobacco, as data shows most Oregon youth believe there’s little to no risk in smoking marijuana once a month.

“We need to reckon with this a little bit,” said Sen. Lisa Reynolds, a Portland Democrat and pediatrician who chairs the Senate Early Childhood and Behavioral Health Committee. The committee met Tuesday morning for a public hearing on the bill.

Reynolds said the topic is of particular interest to her because she believes her brother’s habitual marijuana use in the ’70s contributed to his admission into psychiatric hospitals nearly 50 times throughout his life. He now lives in a nursing home with severe schizophrenia, she said.

Four doctors testified in favor of the bill, including Dr. Rob Hendrickson, the medical director of the Oregon Poison Center. Hendrickson shared an example of a toddler he cared for recently who consumed two muffins that contained 50 milligrams of THC each. Within an hour, the child turned blue and unconscious. She had a seizure and was put on life support for 36 hours.

There’s strong evidence that the policy would reduce child poisonings, according to Dr. Julia Dilley, a Multnomah County epidemiologist who has been leading research on the public health effects of cannabis legalization in Oregon and Washington.

Oregon’s bill is similar to a 2017 Washington law requiring that single servings of edibles don’t exceed 10 milligrams. That law was associated with 75 percent fewer hospitalizations and half as many poisonings reported to poison centers, Dilley told the committee.

Four people in the cannabis industry testified in opposition to the bill, including business owners and cannabis manufacturers who said many products already have child-resistant packaging, as well as meet marketing and advertising standards to make sure products aren’t attractive to children.

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Jesse Strang, 18, named as Canadian school shooter who murdered eight before dying by suicide

A gunman who murdered nine people in the second deadliest school shooting in Canadian history has been named as Jesse Strang, who is reported to be transgender. 

Strang, 18, opened fire in the library at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in British Columbia on Tuesday afternoon, a parent whose son attends the school told the Daily Mail. Six people were killed at the school and a seventh died en route to the hospital. 

Strang took his own life at the school. He killed his mother Jennifer and brother Emmett at their home beforehand, CTV News reported. 

Strang was named by police on Wednesday as Jesse Van Rootselaar. He is understood to have used his mother’s name, Strang, socially and at school. 

Royal Canadian Mounted Police said Strang killed a female teacher, three girls and two boys aged between 13 and 17. They added that a tenth victim reported to have died after being rushed to hospital actually survived their injuries.  

The parent, who requested to remain anonymous, said his son knew Strang’s family and played sports with one of his siblings. 

His son was at the academic institution Tuesday when Strang carried out the deadly massacre. He is now ‘afraid to go back to school’, his father added.

Juno News and Western Standard News were among the first publications to identify Strang and described the shooter as a biological male who identifies as a woman named Jess. 

Royal Canadian Mounted Police refused to confirm Strang’s identity and whether he was transgender after being contacted by the Daily Mail. Authorities have only identified the shooter as a ‘female in a dress’.

Six people were killed and 25 injured at the school and an additional victim died on the way to the hospital, police said. Two more people were found dead at a nearby home believed to be connected to the deadly attack. 

Sources told the Daily Mail that Strang lived at the home with three relatives. 

Strang’s uncle Russell, who told Juno News she was responsible for the shooting, said the suspected shooter was ‘transgender’. 

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State Cannabis Legalization and Psychosis-Related Health Care Utilization

This study included 63 680 589 beneficiaries followed for 2 015 189 706 person-months. Women accounted for 51.8% of follow-up time with the majority of person-months recorded for those aged 65 years and older (77.3%) and among White beneficiaries (64.6%). Results from fully-adjusted models showed that, compared with no legalization policy, states with legalization policies experienced no statistically significant increase in rates of psychosis-related diagnoses (medical, no retail outlets: rate ratio [RR], 1.13; 95% CI, 0.97-1.36; medical, retail outlets: RR, 1.24; 95% CI, 0.96-1.61; recreational, no retail outlets: RR, 1.38; 95% CI, 0.93-2.04; recreational, retail outlets: RR, 1.39; 95% CI, 0.98-1.97) or prescribed antipsychotics (medical, no retail outlets RR, 1.00; 95% CI, 0.88-1.13; medical, retail outlets: RR, 1.01; 95% CI, 0.87-1.19; recreational, no retail outlets: RR, 1.13; 95% CI, 0.84-1.51; recreational, retail outlets: RR, 1.14; 95% CI, 0.89-1.45). In exploratory secondary analyses, rates of psychosis-related diagnoses increased significantly among men, people aged 55 to 64 years, and Asian beneficiaries in states with recreational policies compared with no policy.

Conclusions and Relevance  In this retrospective cohort study of commercial and Medicare Advantage claims data, state medical and recreational cannabis policies were not associated with a statistically significant increase in rates of psychosis-related health outcomes. As states continue to introduce new cannabis policies, continued evaluation of psychosis as a potential consequence of state cannabis legalization may be informative.

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The Heavy Pot Taxes Favored by The New York Times Would Undermine Legalization

The New York Times embraced legalization of recreational marijuana in 2014, two years after Colorado and Washington became the first states to take that step. By that point, most Americans opposed pot prohibition, and that majority has grown since then.

Although the Times does not regret endorsing legalization, its editorial board now says stricter regulation and heavier taxation are necessary to curtail the costs associated with marijuana abuse. Those recommendations elide two inconvenient facts: Cannabis is still federally prohibited, and states are still struggling to replace unauthorized pot peddlers with government-licensed marijuana merchants.

The Times emphasizes that “occasional marijuana use is no more a problem than drinking a glass of wine with dinner or smoking a celebratory cigar.” But while marijuana “is safer than alcohol and tobacco in some ways,” the Times says, “it is not harmless.”

Frequent cannabis consumption has increased substantially in recent years, the Times notes, and roughly one in 10 marijuana users “develops an addiction.” Even nonaddicted cannabis consumers “can still use it too much,” it says, since “people who are frequently stoned can struggle to hold a job or take care of their families.”

The Times also mentions cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, “marijuana-linked paranoia,” and the danger posed by stoned drivers. “Any product that brings both pleasures and problems requires a balancing act,” the Times says, which means “personal freedom” must be curtailed to protect “public health.”

That formulation is inherently paternalistic, since the “public health” burden to which the Times refers is borne mainly by cannabis consumers themselves. And the moral logic of the hefty marijuana taxes that the Times favors is questionable.

Those taxes would add to the difficulties that some heavy consumers face while punishing the occasional use that the paper says is no big deal. Although “adults should have the freedom to use” marijuana, the Times says, they must pay the government for that privilege.

A tax-based “balancing act” also raises practical difficulties. “The first step in a strategy to reduce marijuana abuse should be a federal tax on pot,” the Times says, gliding over the point that Congress cannot impose an excise tax on marijuana products unless it is prepared to legalize them.

The editorial does not explicitly acknowledge the need for that step. To the contrary, it implicitly criticizes President Donald Trump’s decision to reclassify marijuana under federal law, which falls far short of legalization.

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California Teacher Placed on Administrative Leave After Angry Mob Went After Her for Celebrating ICE on Facebook

A Northern California special education teacher has been placed on administrative leave after posting a comment endorsing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Facebook.

Sarai Jimenez, a teaching intern at MacQuiddy Elementary School in Watsonville, made the comment last month with her now-deleted Facebook account.

Responding to news of ICE presence in the area, she wrote simply, “Yay!!! We need ICE in Watsonville!! It’s been getting out of hand.”

The post quickly caught the attention of local activists, and the backlash intensified after recent ICE arrests in the town.

According to a report from the New York Post, Jimenez was threatened by multiple people, with one vowing to “pop her tires.”

Another outraged anti-ICE liberal labeled her a “shameful disgraceful disgusting woman” and suggested she might harm immigrant children in her care.

“Who knows what you’ll do behind closed doors to the kids of parents that are immigrants,” the person wrote.

Of course, liberal activists began rallying to make calls to the school and demand her termination.

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Serial squatter’s lawyer says client used ‘squatter rights’ to take over $2.3 million Bethesda home—she’s back in the house after prison release

The lawyer of a convicted squatter said that his client was able to enter and “assume the property” of a $2.3 million home under so-called “squatters’ rights” in Maryland. The squatter, after being released from jail, was able to take over the home again.

Tamieka Goode as well as her partner Corey Pollard unlawfully took over a bank-owned mansion in Bethesda, Maryland, according to neighbors. Court records from last July show that Goode and Pollard were charged with trespassing and fourth-degree burglary. The charges were made in response to a filing from a 19-year-old who lives with his parents next door to the $2.3 million mansion, per Fox 5.

Videos that Goode has also posted online show her flaunting her lavish lifestyle in the home. “Less than two weeks of being incarcerated, Tamieka Goode is back in the house,” neighbor Ian Chen said, the same neighbor who reported Goode in the first place.

Goode spent 11 days in prison after she was convicted for squatting, posting a cash bail of $5,000. She also retained attorney Alex J. Webster, III, with Maronick Law to have him represent her in other court appearances.

After she was released, security footage showed she was back at the house squatting again. Goode’s lawyer, who thought he could ask reporters to “cut” the video when asked about her activities, said, “Well, Miss Goode did her research. She found out that a certain property was under the control of a certain group – there was a title issue.”

“Due to the title issue, she was able to assume the property under squatter’s rights,” he added.

After being asked about so-called “squatter rights” in Maryland, he said, “It’s not a particular squatter right, but there are rights known as squatter’s rights.”

He said that there are “loopholes” that “people do take advantage of, but loopholes are loopholes” and that Goode followed the “order of events” to exploit them and obtain residency in the property.

A neighbor in the area, who went by Mi, but did not share her full name, fears that the situation could “erupt into violence,” as others around Goode have been pushing her to get out of the home.

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“Kids Off Social Media Act” Opens the Door to Digital ID by Default

Congress is once again stepping into the role of digital caretaker, this time through the Kids Off Social Media Act, with a proposal from Rep. Anna Paulina Luna that seeks to impose federal rules on how young people interact with the world.

The house companion bill (to go along with the senate bill) attempts to set national limits on who can hold social media accounts, how platforms may structure their systems, and what kinds of data they are allowed to use when dealing with children and teenagers.

Framed as a response to growing parental concern, the legislation reflects a broader push to regulate online spaces through age-based access and design mandates rather than direct content rules.

The proposal promises restraint while quietly expanding Washington’s reach into the architecture of online speech. Backers of the bill will insist it targets corporate behavior rather than expression itself. The bill’s mechanics tell a more complicated story.

The bill is the result of a brief but telling legislative evolution. Early versions circulated in 2024 were framed as extensions of existing child privacy rules rather than participation bans. Those drafts focused on limiting data collection, restricting targeted advertising to minors, and discouraging algorithmic amplification, while avoiding hard access restrictions or explicit age enforcement mandates.

That posture shifted as the bill gained bipartisan backing. By late 2024, lawmakers increasingly treated social media as an inherently unsafe environment for children rather than a service in need of reform. When the bill was reintroduced in January 2025, it reflected that change. The new version imposed a categorical ban on accounts for users under 13, restricted recommendation systems for users under 17, and strengthened enforcement through the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general, with Senate sponsorship led by Ted Cruz and Brian Schatz.

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Washington Mother Brutally Attacked by High School Student Mob During Anti-ICE Walkout, Police Do Nothing to Stop it 

A mother was brutally assaulted by a mob of high school students during an anti-ICE protest at Issaquah High School in Washington state.

The incident was captured on video and widely shared on social media.

On Monday morning, hundreds of students from Issaquah High School poured out of classrooms to protest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The victim, who has chosen to remain anonymous due to fears of retaliation, described the ordeal as completely unprovoked.

The woman, who reportedly wishes to remain anonymous, said she was simply in the area when students suddenly surrounded her, bumping into her, cursing, and pulling her hair as the crowd closed in.

“I just got assaulted,” she can be heard saying in the footage.

Students, many holding signs with messages like “I HATE ICE,” swarm the woman in a frenzy of pushing and shoving. The mob’s aggression escalates quickly, with the woman struggling to break free amid cheers and chants from the crowd.

Journalist Jonathan Choe interviewed the mother in the video and reports it was “totally unprovoked and the cops just watched it all go down without intervening.”

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