Instagram to automatically censor “a predefined list of offensive terms”

Meta-owned Instagram plans to introduce new features that will censor “offensive” direct message (DM) requests and Story replies and warn users before replying to comments that “could be offensive.”

The feature that censors DM requests and Story replies that are deemed to be offensive is called “Hidden Words.” It was introduced last year but was only enabled when creators turned it on and only applied to DM requests. Instagram now plans to test automatically turning on Hidden Words for all creator accounts and expanding it to Story replies.

Hidden Words uses a “predefined list of offensive terms” and filters DM requests and Story replies that contain these terms into a separate hidden requests folder. Instagram says it worked with “leading anti-discrimination and anti-bullying organizations” to develop the list of terms.

Users of Hidden Words can also create their own list of custom words, phrases, or emojis that they want filtered from DM requests and Story replies. However, the predefined list of terms that was developed by Instagram and the anti-discrimination and anti-bullying organizations isn’t revealed to users.

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Virginia Teacher Reveals The Left’s Next Public School Quest: Convincing Autistic Kids They’re Trans

During a county school board meeting in Arlington, Virginia, on Oct. 13, Carly Hughes, a teacher in Long Branch Elementary School’s Multi-Intervention Program for Students with Autism (MIPA), spoke against Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s proposed public school policies for transgender-identifying students. Her reason? She believes her autistic students “may experience gender queerness more than other students.”

“I did my master’s study in queer inclusion in public schools,” Hughes told the school board. “My study told me that including trans students in all spaces is best practice. It also told me there are trans kids of every age — one I actually worked with in my student teaching. He was in the third grade.” 

Youngkin’s model policies specify that taxpayer-funded public schools cannot facilitate a child’s so-called “transition” without written consent from a parent. Additionally, the guidance prescribes that bathroom and locker room access and sports participation should be based strictly on a student’s sex. These policies are a reversal of previous guidance from former Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, which asked schools to hide a student’s “gender identity” from his or her parents. 

Hughes herself identifies as a “queer” special education teacher. “I found that autistic students, the population I work with, may experience gender queerness more than other students,” she said. “These students … have helped me learn so much about myself as well.” 

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Mystery as landscapers find car filled with bags of concrete BURIED in backyard of Facebook engineer’s $15m Silicon Valley mansion: Cadaver dogs ‘indicate possible human remains’ in decades-old vehicle as its registered owner is investigated

Police in Silicon Valley are working to unravel a potential murder mystery after a wealthy couple performing renovations on their yard unwittingly dug up a car filled with concrete that also may contain human remains. 

Paul Saab and Christal Condon Saab live in the $15million home with their three young kids. Paul is a software engineer at Facebook and Christal is an angel investor. Records show that they bought the property in 2020. 

Yesterday, while digging up the yard to perform renovations, the couple’s team of contractors discovered a car buried deep in the ground behind the house.  Cadaver dogs were brought in and detected a ‘slight’ possibility of human remains. 

The car was registered to a previous owner of the home and police believe it is from the 1990s. That owner has not yet been named, but police are working to track them down for an interview. 

DailyMail.com has viewed property records which indicate the Lew family lived in the home between 1990 and 2014.  

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95 Percent of Corpses Had Received COVID Vaccination Within 2 Weeks of Death: Funeral Director

A funeral director from New Zealand says that 95 percent of the corpses he has been seeing had received a COVID-19 vaccine within two weeks of their passing away.

“Ninety-five percent of the people who have passed away through the work that I’ve done have been vaccinated within two weeks,” Brenton Faithfull said.

Faithfull has been working as a funeral director for the last 41 years and has been running his own mortuary business for the last 26 years. He recently spoke out about the apparent relationship between the COVID-19 vaccines and the deaths he has been observing.

“It’s very obvious, they die within two weeks of receiving the vaccination, a lot of them … almost appear to have died from anaphylaxis, almost a reaction straight away to the booster.”

Anaphylaxis is an acute reaction of the body to an antigen, such as that of a bee sting, or an injection.

“They die the same day, the following day after receiving the COVID-19 vaccination. This isn’t a one-off case, this is the majority of cases that have come through our facility,” Faithfull said in an interview.

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Ohio Supreme Court Suspends Democrat Judge Over ‘Unprecedented’ Behavior

The Ohio Supreme Court has indefinitely suspended a local judge, citing “unprecedented misconduct” that includes falsifying court documents, issuing illegitimate arrest warrants, and donning inappropriate attire in court.

Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Pinkey Carr, a Democrat, was found to exhibit such misconduct that comprise more than 100 incidents over a period of about two years.

The misconduct “encompassed repeated acts of dishonesty; the blatant and systematic disregard of due process, the law, court orders, and local rules; the disrespectful treatment of court staff and litigants; and the abuse of capias warrants and the court’s contempt power,” stated the court’s per curium opinion (pdf). “That misconduct warrants an indefinite suspension from the practice of law.”

Justices agreed with the court’s three-panel Board of Professional Conduct’s assessment that Carr “ruled her courtroom in a reckless and cavalier manner, unrestrained by the law or the court’s rules, without any measure of probity or even common courtesy,” and that she “conducted business in a manner befitting a game show host rather than a judge of the Cleveland Municipal Court.”

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Ohio Voters to Decide If Non-US Citizens Can Vote in Local Elections

Ohio voters are heading to the polls to decide if non-U.S. citizens can vote in state or local elections.

If passed, Issue 2 would change the Ohio Constitution. It proposes that only adult U.S. citizens who legally reside and are registered to vote in Ohio for at least 30 days can cast a ballot in future state and local elections.

The current Ohio Constitution states that “every citizen of the United States, of the age of eighteen years and has been registered to vote for thirty days is entitled to vote at all elections.”

The state constitution does not say that noncitizens cannot vote.

Federal law prohibits noncitizens from casting ballots in federal elections.

A 1917 ruling by the Ohio Supreme Court determined that the state constitution’s home rule, which gives cities control over their local issues, provided municipalities permission to expand voting rights in city elections.

Issue 2 would ensure that a city’s home rule does not circumvent the law that only adult U.S. citizens can cast ballots.

Supporters of Issue 2 believe the amendment will uphold the integrity of citizenship if it becomes law, while opponents claim it is an effort to “restrict voting access.”

At the forefront of Issue 2 is the village of Yellow Springs, which is located east of Dayton in southwest Ohio.

In 2019, village officials passed a referendum allowing residents who were not U.S. citizens to vote in local elections. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose ordered the Greene County Board of Elections not to accept voter registration forms from noncitizens.

The referendum violated the U.S. and Ohio Constitutions, LaRose said. In a press release, he added, “Just when you thought 2020 couldn’t get any weirder, the village of Yellow Springs forces me, as Ohio’s chief elections officer, to restate the obvious – only U.S. citizens may vote.”

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Judge Agrees to FBI Request to Delay Production of Seth Rich Records

A U.S. judge has agreed to allow the FBI to delay production of records on late Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer Seth Rich.

U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant, an Obama appointee, granted on Oct. 18 the government’s request, which U.S. lawyers said was unopposed.

Mazzant had ordered in September the FBI to produce information from Rich’s laptop computer to Texas resident Brian Huddleston, who sued the bureau after he said it failed to respond properly to Freedom of Information Act requests.

The FBI previously claimed it didn’t have records regarding Rich, but during the case acknowledged it had taken possession of Rich’s laptop.

FBI officials argued that Rich’s family has a privacy interest that outweighs the public interest in the information from Rich’s computer but Mazzant rejected the arguments, noting that the FBI cited no case law.

He ordered the FBI to produce the information within 14 days.

But the FBI through Department of Justice lawyers asked for a two-week stay, saying it was preparing a motion for reconsideration/clarification “because the FBI is uncertain how to comply with the Court’s order as written, and the FBI is seeking input from a pending appellate consultation regarding the order to properly address this issue.”

The stay would allow the FBI sufficient time to complete its legal consultations and prepare and file the motion, according to Brit Featherston, a U.S. attorney who filed the motion. “This motion for stay is not made for purposes of delay, but so that justice may be served,” Featherston said.

Ty Clevenger, representing Huddleston, did not oppose the motion, according to the government.

Clevenger did not return a request for comment.

Mazzant granted the motion.

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Star news producer vanishes after FBI raids his Arlington home

Documentary producer and investigative journalist James Gordon Meek hasn’t been seen since the FBI raided his apartment in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington DC, on 27 April of this year.

The 52-year-old’s neighbour John Antonelli told Rolling Stone magazine that he witnessed the raid from the street as he was heading out on a walk. He said he spotted 10 heavily armed people among the group of law enforcement officers, a green armoured tactical vehicle, a black utility vehicle with tinted windows and several Arlington police cars, among other vehicles.

Only the police cruisers were marked, Mr Antonelli noted. The heavily armed individuals had no markings revealing what agency they were working for. The raid took around 10 minutes.

“They didn’t stick around. They took off pretty quickly and headed west on Columbia Pike towards Fairfax County,” Mr Antonelli told Rolling Stone. “Most people seeing that green vehicle would think it’s some kind of tank. But I knew it was the Lenco BearCat. That vehicle is designed to be jumped out of so they can do a raid in that kind of time. It can return fire if they’re being fired upon.”

The magazine reported that Mr Meek was targeted by the FBI at his home at the Siena Park apartments, where he had lived for more than 10 years.

The FBI told Rolling Stone that agents went to the home on 27 April “at the 2300 block of Columbia Pike, Arlington, Virginia, conducting court-authorized law-enforcement activity. The FBI cannot comment further due to an ongoing investigation”.

While Mr Meek hasn’t been charged, observers think that this could be among the initial raids, if not the first, to be conducted on a reporter by the Biden administration.

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