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.

Senator Mark Kelly inquired about social media censorship to curb bank runs

On Sunday, while discussing the Silicon Valley Bank collapse in an emergency conference call led by Senate President Chuck Schumer, Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) reportedly inquired about the possibility of censoring social media posts to avoid a bank run.

This information was reported by Republican House members who were also present on the call and heard by representatives of the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, and the Federal Deposit and Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

“Just got off of a zoom meeting with Fed, Treasury, FDIC, House, and Senate,” Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie tweeted. “A Democrat Senator essentially asked whether there was a program in place to censor information on social media that could lead to a run on the banks.”

Rep. Lauren Boebert also tweeted, “On a briefing with Biden Under Secretary of the Treasury Nellie Liang regarding the SVB [Silicon Valley Bank] BAILOUT they are working towards and a member asked if they were reaching out to Facebook and Twitter to monitor misinformation and ‘bad actors.’”

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Eric Schmidt testifies that there should be no “true anonymity” when accessing generative AI platforms

Eric Schmidt, a former Google CEO who previously said, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place,” recently testified that people shouldn’t be able to have “true anonymity” when using generative AI products — a predictive form of AI that can produce various types of content.

Schmidt made the comments on generative AI when testifying at a House Oversight Committee hearing titled: “Advances in AI: Are We Ready For a Tech Revolution?”

During the hearing, the former Google CEO offered three principles for how people should interact with generative AI platforms, one of which related to stripping true anonymity from users.

“You need to know who the users are, even if you don’t tell the end user who they are, there needs to be some notion of who they are and where they came from,” Schmidt said. “True anonymity hidden behind a paywall would allow nation-state attacks.”

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Proposed Illinois Bill Seeks To Criminalize Parental Discipline As ‘Parental Bullying’

As if things were not out of hand enough with California’s latest proposed bill implying that the suspension of disruptive students is somehow racist, Democrats in Illinois have introduced a bill that would criminalize parents who “knowingly, with intent to discipline or alter the behavior of a child, says or messages anything that would coerce the child.” In other words, the proposed legislation would classify the appropriate disciplining of children by parents as ‘parental bullying’ and would criminalize the act. And to think California’s legislation seemed outrageous.

The bill was introduced by State Representative La Shawn Ford (D-Chicago) and states the following:

Amends the Criminal Code of 2012. Creates the offense of parental bullying. Provides that a parent or legal guardian of a minor commits parental bullying when he or she knowingly and with the intent to discipline, embarrass, or alter the behavior of the minor, transmits any verbal or visual message that the parent or legal guardian reasonably believes would coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to the minor. Provides that parental bullying is a petty offense. Provides that if a person is convicted of parental bullying, the court shall order that person to pay for the costs of prosecution and that a portion of any fine imposed, as determined by the court, be placed in escrow for the purchase of a certificate of deposit for use by the victim when he or she attains 18 years of age.

The bill was introduced back in December but, not surprisingly, does not have any additional sponsors.

The measure would, in effect, make being a successful parent a crime. As written above, a parent would be subjected to a petty offense and required to pay court costs and a fine if found guilty of yelling at their child for fighting with a sibling, throwing food at the table, or not doing their homework. It would be the end of the angry mom glare across the room when she catches her child doing something inappropriate. The list is endless and blurs so many lines that parents would live in constant fear of being arrested for being, well, parents.

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The Drums Of War With China Are Beating Much Louder Now

Comments from both Washington and Beijing have suddenly become much more pointed and aggressive in recent days, with talk about hot war now being discussed as not just a real possibility but in many cases as a probability. Let’s have a look at some of the most significant recent developments.

Beijing comments on US encirclement

The Chinese government has finally broken from its usual restrained commentary on the way the empire has been aggressively encircling the PRC with war machinery in ways that Washington would never permit itself to be encircled and waging economic warfare that it itself would never tolerate.

“Western countries—led by the U.S.—have implemented all-round containment, encirclement and suppression against us, bringing unprecedentedly severe challenges to our country’s development,” President Xi Jinping said in a speech last week.

China’s new Foreign Minister Qin Gang followed up on Xi’s comments the next day with a warning of “conflict and confrontation” should US aggressions and encirclement continue.

“If the United States does not hit the brake, but continues to speed down the wrong path, no amount of guardrails can prevent derailing, and there surely will be conflict and confrontation,” he said, adding, “Who will bear the catastrophic consequences? Such competition is a reckless gamble with the stakes being the fundamental interests of the two peoples and even the future of humanity.”

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NPR puff piece on Atlanta leftist gunman revealed to be written by Antifa supporter

NPR on Saturday published a “misleading” piece on the circumstances surrounding the Atlanta police shooting of Antifa extremist Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, where Antifa-supporting journalist Kaity Radde claimed the accused cop-shooter had his hands up when he was killed, and promoted the debunked conspiracy theory that the officer shot by the gunman was supposedly hit by friendly fire.

“The Georgia Bureau of Investigation says officers killed [Terán] in self-defense after they shot a state trooper, but the City of Atlanta released videos in which an officer suggests the trooper may have been injured by friendly fire,” Radde wrote of the January 18 incident, referring to a claim made by Antifa sympathizers that investigators maintain is false.

As reported by FOX 5, the GBI said that law enforcement came across Terán camped out in a tent in the woods in the Antifa-controlled autonomous zone near “Cop City,” what rioters are calling the site of Atlanta’s future Public Safety Training Facility.

According to investigators, officers fired at the suspect in self-defense after he refused to follow verbal commands and shot a state trooper, who was injured and treated at an intensive care unit.

The GBI has said that no footage of the actual shooting exists, but video the Atlanta Police Department shared captured by one trooper who heard the shooting take place out of eyesight’s body camera has fueled conspiracy theories from supporters of the Antifa gunman, with the family’s lawyer saying it confirmed their “worst fears that Manuel was massacred in a hail of gunfire.”

In the footage, one of the officers heading towards the sound of several gunshots says to others in the group, “Did they shoot their own man?”

“We don’t know who he got shot by, if it was by a deputy,” another one responds.

In a statement regarding these comments, APD said these officers were simply speculating on what the multiple gunshots could’ve been.

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Study Suggests Bronze Age Ice Skates Discovered In China Were Imported From Europe

A 3,500-year-old pair of ice skates were discovered in a mountainous area of China, archaeologists claimed in late February.

Researchers investigating the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region discovered the oldest-known skates in a tomb in the Gaotai Ruins, according LiveScience. The skates are made out of the bones of oxen and horse, but it is unclear whether they were used for sport, hunting, or regular travel throughout the region.

The design is unique, made of a very flat blade that forms a cutting edge allowing users to glide over ice, LiveScience continued. Xinjiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archeology researcher Ruan Qiurong said the newly-discovered skates are almost exactly the same as some found in prehistoric Europe.

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Why These Popular Chocolate Easter Eggs Are Banned in the US, despite Being Legal Almost Everywhere Else

In January 2011, Manitoba resident Lind Bird was stopped at the US border in northern Minnesota and selected for a random search of her vehicle. During the search, US border officials found and seized a small piece of contraband. Bird was unaware that the item was illegal to bring into the US, but she was informed that she could face a $300 fine if she was caught with it in the country.

Bird was allowed to continue her trip, but a few days later she received a seven-page letter from the US government asking her to formally authorize the destruction of the item that was seized or pay $250 for them to store the item if she wished to contest the seizure.

The item in question was a small chocolate egg with a toy inside, called a Kinder Surprise.

Understandably, Bird found the entire ordeal quite bizarre.

“It’s just a chocolate egg,” Bird said. “And they were making a big deal…It’s ridiculous. It’s so ridiculous.”

When she got the letter, she had trouble taking it seriously. “I thought it was a joke,” she said. “I had to read it twice. But they are serious.”

A similar incident took place in June 2012, when two Seattle men were driving back into the US after a visit to Vancouver. After border officials discovered six Kinder Surprise eggs in their car, the men were detained for two hours and told by a border guard that they could be fined $2,500 per egg.

“I thought [the American border guard] had done his search and hadn’t found anything, and he was joking with us,” said Chris Sweeney, one of the men detained.

“He wasn’t joking.”

“We really didn’t know what was going to happen,” Sweeney continued. “I didn’t know if maybe this was some really important thing that I just wasn’t aware of and they were going to actually give us the fine of $15,000.”

After waiting for 2 hours, the men were allowed to carry on with their trip and take the eggs with them.

“If it was so important that we be stopped and scolded and threatened with thousands of dollars in fines, you’d think it would at least be important enough for them to take [the Kinder eggs], but they didn’t,” Sweeney said.

“Keeping the border secure is obviously important,” he continued, “but somebody needs to take a common sense look at this rule and probably just get rid of it.”

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NewsGuard denies being government funded after Matt Taibbi’s Twitter Files expose

Matt Taibbi appeared before the new congressional Weaponization of Government Committee on Thursday and said the for-profit organization NewsGuard, an organization aimed at “combating misinformation,” according to their website, was “US government funded.”

According to the Washington Examiner, “In a lengthy email to @mtaibbi on Friday morning, Newsguard’s CEO Gordon Crovitz refuted that the purported disinformation tracker is ‘U.S. government funded.’ In 2021, the Department of Defense awarded $749,387 to Newsguard.”

Taibbi also tweeted out another round of the Twitter files on Thursday, detailing what he dubbed a “Censorship-Industrial Complex” moving within Twitter, government agencies, establishment media, and mostly non-profit organizations all of whom ideologically align in censorship efforts and named NewsGuard as funded by the Department of Defense.

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YouTube CEO: Our monetization policies are oriented towards making advertisers feel “safe,” “comfortable”

New YouTube CEO Neal Mohan discussed how advertisers are the focus of its monetization policies during an interview with tech and travel creator iJustine and said the intention of monetization policy changes is to make advertisers feel “safe” and “more comfortable.”

Mohan discussed “putting yourself in the shoes of the advertisers” and said, “you have to make it so that it feels to the advertiser not just safe but relatively clear in terms of where their advertising is going to run.”

He continued: “They don’t want to inadvertently damage their brand in any particular way and so our policies are really oriented towards that when I say…one of the best ways to increase creator monetization is to make advertisers more comfortable with the content and that is the goal of our policy changes.”

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