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.

Erin Brockovich’s crusade against data centers is going crowd-sourced

Erin Brockovich is getting Americans to report data centers in their backyards.

The renowned environmental activist, whose work inspired the Julia Roberts film “Erin Brockovich,” launched a registry of US data centers in April, inviting nearby residents to report how the projects are affecting their communities.

Speaking in an interview with podcaster Theo Von, released on Sunday, Brockovich talked about how she woke up one day to find 30 emails from people talking about the issues living around data centers.

“So I created what’s called brockovichdatacenter.com, where people, if they were having issues with data centers in their backyard, could self-report,” she said.

“This is a place where people who I believe are living, breathing, and experiencing these issues are the best source of information,” Brockovich added.

According to her May Substack post, she launched the registry on April 27. She said on the podcast that within 72 hours of launching the registry, the website crashed twice because of the volume of reports.

Brockovich said the reports shared a common thread: Residents had not been informed about the data center projects by their city councils and often woke up to find construction underway.

Keep reading

Federal Ban on Home Whiskey Distilleries Now Heading to Supreme Court

When I was a young man, roaming around the woods and hills of northeast Iowa, two old guys had a still tucked away somewhere in the woods near Highlandville. I know that moonshining is something generally associated with the South, but nobody seems to have told these two old fellows, and from them you could buy a Mason jar of what they called “corn squeezings” for $10. It wasn’t bad, although if you had any left after a night’s revelry, you could always use it to strip paint and blast stumps.

Now, selling homemade hooch is one thing, I admit. But honestly, this is a free country; one should be able to set up a small still and make your own booze for personal use. And now, a case with that as a possible result, is headed to the Supreme Court.

The U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to legalize home whiskey distilleries in the United States by a conservative-leaning think tank in Ohio.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled recently that the federal ban against home whiskey distilleries is unconstitutional. However, the 6th Circuit upheld the federal ban.

The federal government said the law is constitutional because it was enacted to prevent tax evasion and that it would be easier for a distiller working out of their home to conceal the business and therefore avoid paying taxes.

That last bit seems a bit of a trite argument; it’s certainly possible now for a person to do this, just as it would be if home use were legalized, as it is now for wine and beer. And, if anyone can point out to us in the Constitution where the government is authorized to regulate booze, I’d love to see it. 

As evidence of the ambiguity of all this, we might note that two different courts of appeals issued conflicting rulings in this matter, which is why the case is going to the Supreme Court.

On Monday, the Buckeye Institute filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to decide between the two conflicting appeals-court rulings.

“Two courts of appeals considered the same provisions, against the same constitutional challenge, on materially identical facts, within 11 days of each other, and issued opposite judgments,” Buckeye’s Monday petition to the Supreme Court states.

That seems a pretty clear-cut argument for the escalation.

Keep reading

Pelosi Dodges Questions About Her Husband’s Latest Hit-and-Run Crash 

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dodged a Fox News reporter who asked her questions about her husband’s latest hit-and-run crash.

Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, 86, was charged with a misdemeanor hit-and-run after his car crash in Napa County in California.

The crash happened on July 3 on Yountville Cross Road.

Pelosi was not charged with a DUI in his latest hit-and-run.

Paul Pelosi damaged a parked Tesla and fled the scene, according to the criminal complaint.

This is the second time Paul Pelosi has been involved in a car crash in the last few years.

Recall that in May 2022 Paul Pelosi was hit with 3 years probation after drunkenly crashing into a Jeep.

According to court documents, Paul Pelosi slurred his speech and had a ‘drug’ in his system during his drunk driving arrest on May 28, 2022.

Pelosi had red, watery eyes, was “unsteady on his feet” and “he had a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage emanating from his breath.”

Fox News confronted Pelosi on Tuesday about her husband latest crash.

“Can you tell us if you think the misdemeanor charge against Paul was fair?” a Fox News reporter asked Nancy Pelosi.

Fox News continued to press Pelosi: “Any reaction to the charge that he’s facing?”

Pelosi ignored the questions as she got into a vehicle and took off.

Keep reading

Five tech giants are hiding $1.65tn in AI debt, using the trick that toppled Enron

Look at what Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle officially owe, and the numbers seem large but manageable. Look off the books, and a second, bigger pile of debt appears.

A Nikkei study put that hidden figure at $1.65 trillion, up roughly eightfold in four years. It is more than the $1.35 trillion the five report outright.

The Enron echo

The money is tied up in off-balance-sheet vehicles, the same kind of structure Enron used to hide debt before it collapsed 25 years ago. Back then it was fraud. Now, tightened rules and fuller disclosures make it legal.

The tools are still there, though. “Enron’s crime wasn’t having special purpose vehicles,” analyst Gil Luria told Bloomberg Law. “Enron’s crime was hiding them.”

The mechanics are simple. A company packages the debt for chips, servers, and power into a separate legal entity, often a joint venture, so the cost never flows through its own accounts.

Take Meta’s Hyperion data centre in Louisiana. Meta and Blue Owl Capital both put equity into a separate structure that took on $27 billion in debt. Meta is the sole tenant, yet argues it does not have to record that debt, because it is not the one who must find replacement tenants.

Oracle has $260 billion of future lease commitments that will eventually land on its books. Nvidia carries $119 billion in purchase obligations. Alphabet and Microsoft keep their vehicles off-book too.

The numbers behind the boom

The scale is the story. Meta’s off-balance-sheet debt alone is about $420 billion, nearly triple its reported debt. Oracle’s has grown roughly thirtyfold in four years.

It is all in service of the same race. The industry is expected to spend more than $3 trillion through 2028 building and equipping AI data centres, much of it financed against the chips inside them.

Why it matters now

The timing is awkward. Four of the five report earnings in the next two weeks, and the reported debt will look tidy. The $1.65 trillion sitting in the footnotes will not make the headlines.

The catch is what happens later. When a data centre goes live, its lease rolls onto the balance sheet at once. If AI demand falls short, the facility is marked down, and the loss lands on the lenders and insurers who funded it.

Some already see the risk. S&P has cut Oracle’s credit rating over stretched leverage, and both Morgan Stanley and Moody’s have flagged the wider issue. “What if one of these companies was a house of cards,” asked accounting consultant Tom Selling, “and was propping itself up with this accounting treatment?”

Keep reading

Musk’s Unrealistic Future View is a New World Communist Vision

Elon Musk’s reasoning that AI and robots will make work optional is based on a core economic absurd argument: AI and robotics will create such an abundance of goods and services that the very concepts of work and money become largely obsolete. However, this vision also faces significant challenges and raises complex questions about the human desire for purpose. I was doing research in the Firestone Library at Princeton University. I became friends with one professor who had known Einstein.

He asked me what I was so intensely researching. I explained that I was trying to ascertain why all governments rise and then crash and burn throughout the centuries. He then said to me that I reminded him of Einstein. I was taken back. I said I was no Einstein. He then explained to me to me that the subject matter did not matter. It was curiosity that was the mother of all discovery. Without someone being curious, human society would stagnate.

During the late 1970s, I went through Check-Point-Charlie into East Germany. I wanted to see what Communism was all about and why they needed a wall to prevent people from fleeing. Those words from that professor suddenly rang true. The government feared individualism and curiosity. Because of that, the Russian economy could never compete with Capitalism because it suppressed the very essence of how human society advances. It requires that curiosity to make innovations that expands the economy and raises the standard of living.

Musk’s argument is rooted in what he sees as the logic of productivity and deflation. His reasoning can be broken down as follows.

  1. The core idea is that AI and robots will be capable of performing nearly all physical and cognitive labor at near-zero marginal cost . This would lead to a massive surge in the production of goods and services. However, it would be like Communism lacking that curiosity and this would suppress any advancement.
  2. The resulting supply would vastly outpace the available money supply, causing the prices of everything from food and housing to healthcare and education to plummet towards zero . For example, current productivity might see one worker produce 100 units per day, while one AI could produce 10,000, fundamentally breaking the link between work and survival.

In this state of “post-scarcity,” money, which Musk describes as an “information system for labor allocation,” would lose its purpose. If you can have anything you want without needing to direct someone else’s labor, he assumes that the currency system collapses. He has stated, “I think money will stop being relevant at some point in the future.”

To manage this transition, Musk proposes a “universal high income” (UHI), which goes beyond a basic safety net to ensure a comfortable life for everyone, funded by the massive surplus generated by AI and robots.

Keep reading

State University of New York System Implements Mandatory Tutoring Program Because ‘Record Number’ of First Year Students Are Failing Math and Writing

The State University of New York (SUNY) is implementing a mandatory tutoring system because a record number of first year students are failing reading and math. This problem is widespread and not isolated to New York.

Part of this problem is due to what happened during Covid-19, when school systems across the country shut down for months and conducted classes via Zoom. Students everywhere fell behind and never caught up.

It is also due to the fact that so many schools have abandoned basic elements of education in favor of pushing woke garbage about social justice, race, and gender.

The College Fix reports:

SUNY institutes mandatory tutoring, extra class time due to ‘record’ number of first-years failing math, writing

Due to a “record” number of first-year failures in freshman writing and math courses, the State University of New York system now will require students to have weekly meetings with a one-on-one tutor, and will add additional time to classes in the latter category.

According to the Times Union, SUNY reported that a quarter of its freshmen failed the introductory math course, and 22 percent flunked English.

This fall at SUNY Albany, selected first-years will have to get tutored in writing for an hour each week, and for 90 minutes in math/science. “Hundreds” of high-performing students have been tapped to help with the effort.

Dean for Undergraduate Education JoAnne Malatesta said that the assisting students, who “did well” in the writing class, will “direct freshmen to the tutoring center and encourage them to go to the professor’s office hours.”

Some 375 student tutors also will hold “90-minute ‘supplemental instruction’ sessions” each week in math and science that freshmen are “expected” to attend.

Malatesta said similar sessions in the past have led to “significant gains” in academic performance.

Keep reading

‘VPNs are lawful technical tools,’ says EU Court in landmark Anne Frank copyright ruling

In a major victory for digital rights and common sense, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has officially categorized Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) as “lawful technical tools” while establishing new boundaries for online copyright disputes.

The landmark judgment — handed down in July 2026 — stems from a complex legal battle over the online publication of Anne Frank’s historical manuscripts. At its core, the case forced Europe’s top judges to answer a highly technical question: if a publisher actively tries to block visitors from a specific country, are they still breaking the law if a user sneaks past the digital border using circumvention software?

According to the CJEU, the answer is no. As long as a website employs “state-of-the-art” geo-blocking technology, the publisher cannot be held liable for copyright infringement simply because a determined reader decides to fire up the best VPN to bypass the restrictions.

The ruling sets a massive precedent. It confirms that copyright holders cannot point to the mere existence of VPNs to claim a website’s security measures are completely ineffective.

More importantly for privacy advocates, the court firmly pushed back against the demonization of privacy software, cementing the legitimate status of VPN providers across the European Union.

Keep reading

Rep. Brandon Gill Completely Humiliates Smithsonian Director with This Brilliant Line of Questioning While Catching Her Pushing Insane Anti-White Agenda

One of the Republican Party’s rising stars left the director of the Smithsonian stumbling by utilizing a brilliant line of questioning that exposed her organization’s anti-white agenda.

During Tuesday’s House Oversight hearing, Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) tangled with Dr. Anthea Hartig, Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, over a mass toolkit her organization had been promoting that characterizes so many cultural manners and icons as white supremacy.

These include politeness, objectivity, and even Mickey Mouse.

Hartig stumbled, froze, and stammered at various points during her confrontation with Gill when confronted with this toolkit. Making it even worse, Gill used important yet easy-to-answer questions that an honest person could nail.

But not Hartig. What follows is nearly four minutes of complete destruction.

Keep reading

Thousands Of Noncitizens Registered To Vote In New Jersey, Governor Admits

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill said a software error in the state’s Motor Vehicle Commission system resulted in roughly 6,600 people who indicated they were not U.S. citizens being registered to vote between June 2023 and June 2024.

Sherrill said in a statement that the individuals answered “no” when asked on a keypad whether they were U.S. citizens while applying for driver’s licenses or identification cards, but were registered because of a software error.

According to the governor, a preliminary analysis found that fewer than 400 individuals who were newly registered because of the error voted. She said those voters were registered as Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliated voters and were located throughout the state.

The governor said the issue occurred under the previous administration. She said she has directed her chief counsel to investigate what happened and ordered election officials to remove any residents who were erroneously added to the voter rolls during that period.

In a press conference, the governor said the error was fixed in June 2024, but she learned about it recently.

Sherrill also said the Motor Vehicle Commission administrator she appointed has begun replacing the vendor responsible for administering the system.

Sherrill said she was “appalled” by what she described as failures that allowed the error to occur and said those responsible would be held accountable.

She also accused the Trump administration of attempting to “weaponize elections for political gain.”

The White House said in an email to The Epoch Times that the New Jersey error highlights the need to pass the SAVE America Act, which Republicans say is necessary to ensure election integrity.

“Democrats and their media allies have repeatedly said it is impossible for noncitizens to register to vote, let alone cast a ballot. Time and again, they have been proven wrong,” White House Spokeswoman Abigail Jackson stated.

“As President [Donald] Trump has said, there is nothing more important than the integrity of our elections. And this latest incident underscores the absolute necessity of the SAVE America Act. American voters deserve to have confidence that our elections are safe and secure – President Trump will never stop fighting to make that happen and all patriotic Americans should join in his effort.”

The governor said the state would continue taking steps to ensure that only eligible citizens vote and that lawful votes are counted.

Keep reading

Night Eleven Over Iran: 4th Us Soldier Dead, Ceasefire Collapses As Tehran Hits Jordan, Bahrain And Kuwait Bases

For the eleventh consecutive night, U.S. Central Command launched strikes on Iran. The Pentagon confirmed a fourth American service member killed in Iranian attacks in recent days, according to CBS News, with President Trump scheduled to receive the remains at Dover Air Force Base Wednesday morning in a dignified transfer.

CENTCOM said Tuesday night’s strikes, completed at approximately 8:15 p.m. ET, targeted aircraft hangars, drone storage facilities, and operations centers across Iran — all aimed at degrading Tehran’s ability to threaten commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Per CENTCOM’s own statement, Iran has now attacked more than 30 commercial vessels since the conflict escalated, threatening hundreds of mariners and disrupting one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas supply that once transited the strait.

Iran escalated in parallel. The Iranian military claimed in statements carried by state media early Wednesday that it had targeted U.S. military facilities in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan — the same Al-Azraq base in Jordan where three American soldiers were killed earlier this week. Jordan’s military said five Iranian drones and three missiles were all intercepted. Bahrain sounded missile alert sirens as Iranian projectiles targeted the island nation, home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet. The New York Times confirmed the claims were reflected in U.S. military tracking.

Against this backdrop, diplomacy quietly died in Islamabad. Iranian Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni visited Pakistan — a key mediator — in an attempt to resuscitate the collapsed 10-day ceasefire proposal, per Republic World. But Trump, speaking from the Oval Office on Tuesday, shut the door on talks: the U.S. had “no interest in meeting,” he said, and signaled that future strikes could target areas near Iran’s uranium enrichment sites.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking at the ASEAN foreign ministers’ meeting in Manila, warned that Iran’s demand to collect tolls in the Strait of Hormuz would set a precedent threatening freedom of navigation across the globe — explicitly mentioning the South China Sea. “If we create a precedent where a nation state can control an international waterway, charge a toll, and blow up ships if you don’t pay — that will repeat itself in other parts of the world,” Rubio said. Energy markets took note: Brent crude climbed above $91 a barrel Tuesday, with U.S. pump prices averaging $4 a gallon.

Keep reading