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.

UCLA Student Government Passes Stipend To Compensate Undocumented Students

The student government at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) passed legislation that will provide council members who are undocumented immigrants a financial stipend. 

UCLA’s Student Association Council unanimously passed a $23,000 fund called the “UndocuCouncil Member Stipend” on March 2, according to The College Fix. The stipend allows undocumented students, who cannot obtain legal work, to be financially compensated for their work on the student council. 

“The University of California’s payroll system cannot hire students without work authorization, undocumented students without Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status cannot receive stipends as wage,” The Daily Bruin reported. 

The Daily Bruin claims that the $23,000 stipend is equivalent to two council members’ yearly pay. The money comes from the student council’s so-called “surplus fund,” which is taken from student tax dollars.  

The stipend legislation came after the council’s External Vice President lost her status as a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Johana Guerra Martinez was unable to receive financial compensation for seven weeks for her vice presidential role after she lost her DACA status and work permit. 

Keep reading

More than 50 new environmental chemicals detected in people

Researchers have detected more than 50 new environmental chemicals lurking in people’s bodies, the vast majority of which are little known or unknown compounds.

These chemicals — which have never been observed in people before — were discovered in a study of pregnant women and their newborns.

The findings are concerning given that very little is known about these chemicals and their potential health effects, researchers from the new study say. What’s more, pregnant women and their newborns are a particularly vulnerable population.

Keep reading

America’s Drinking Water Is Surprisingly Easy to Poison

On Feb. 16, less than two weeks after a mysterious attacker made headlines around the world by hacking a water treatment plant in Oldsmar, Florida, and nearly generating a mass poisoning, the city’s mayor declared victory.

“This is a success story,” Mayor Eric Seidel told the City Council in Oldsmar, a Tampa suburb of 15,000, after acknowledging “some deficiencies.” As he put it, “our protocols, monitoring protocols, worked. Our staff executed them to perfection. And as the city manager said, there were other backups. … We were breached, there’s no question. And we’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again. But it’s a success story.” Two council members congratulated the mayor, noting his turn at the press conference where the hack was disclosed. “Even on TV, you were fantastic,” said one.

Get Our Top Investigations

Subscribe to the Big Story newsletter.Email address:

“Success” is not the word that cybersecurity experts use to describe the Oldsmar episode. They view the breach as a case study in digital ineptitude, a frightening near-miss and an example of how the managers of water systems continue to downplay or ignore years of increasingly dire warnings.

The experts say the sorts of rudimentary vulnerabilities revealed in the breach — including the lack of an internet firewall and the use of shared passwords and outdated software — are common among America’s 151,000 public water systems.

“Frankly, they got very lucky,” said retired Adm. Mark Montgomery, executive director of the federal Cyberspace Solarium Commission, which Congress established in 2018 to upgrade the nation’s defenses against major cyberattacks. Montgomery likened the Oldsmar outcome to a pilot landing a plane after an engine caught fire during a flight. “They shouldn’t celebrate like Tom Brady winning the Super Bowl,” he said. “They didn’t win a game. They averted a disaster through a lot of good fortune.”

Keep reading

‘Shock and Awe’: Feds Admit They are Prosecuting Jan. 6 Capitol Protesters to Create Chilling Effect on 1st Amendment

Federal prosecutor Michael Sherwin appeared on CBS News’ 60 Minutes on Sunday where he admitted that he charged as many people as quickly as possible regardless of the evidence to put a chilling effect on the 1st Amendment rights of Trump supporters.

“After the 6th, we had an inauguration on the 20th. So I wanted to ensure, and our office wanted to ensure that there was shock and awe that we could charge as many people as possible before the 20th,” Sherwin told CBS News. 

He added: “And it worked because we saw through media posts that people were afraid to come back to D.C. because they’re like, “If we go there, we’re gonna get charged.”’

Sherwin made it clear that the feds went after people who had gone viral regardless of whether they perpetrated any violence or committed any actual crime.

“So the first people we went after, I’m gonna call the internet stars, right? The low-hanging fruit. The ‘zip-tie guy,’ the ‘rebel flag guy,’ the ‘Camp Auschwitz guy.’ We wanted to take out those individuals that essentially were thumbing their noses at the public for what they did,” Sherwin said.

Keep reading