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.

US: Disastrous Toll of Criminalizing Drug Use

The massive enforcement of laws criminalizing personal drug use and possession in the United States causes devastating harm, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said in a joint report released today. Enforcement ruins individual and family lives, discriminates against people of color, and undermines public health. The federal and state governments should decriminalize the personal use and possession of illicit drugs.

The 196-page report, “Every 25 Seconds: The Human Toll of Criminalizing Drug Use in the United States,” finds that enforcement of drug possession laws causes extensive and unjustifiable harm to individuals and communities across the country. The long-term consequences can separate families; exclude people from job opportunities, welfare assistance, public housing, and voting; and expose them to discrimination and stigma for a lifetime. While more people are arrested for simple drug possession in the US than for any other crime, mainstream discussions of criminal justice reform rarely question whether drug use should be criminalized at all.

“Every 25 seconds someone is funneled into the criminal justice system, accused of nothing more than possessing drugs for personal use,” said Tess Borden, Aryeh Neier Fellow at Human Rights Watch and the ACLU and the report’s author. “These wide-scale arrests have destroyed countless lives while doing nothing to help people who struggle with dependence.”

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New Mexico’s use of Dominion Voting Systems raises more questions than answers

Sidney Powell, a member of President Trump’s legal team, said in an interview, “We’re beginning to collect evidence on the financial interests of some of the governors and secretaries of state who actually bought into the Dominion Systems, surprisingly enough. Hunter Biden-type graft to line their own pockets by getting a voting machine in that would either make sure their election was successful or they got money from their family from it.” 

Powell said the Trump team had identified at least 450,000 blank ballots in the key states “‘miraculously’ have only have a mark for Joe Biden and no other candidate.”

“She listed the approximate numbers of ballots that were found primarily in the battleground states: 98,000 in Pennsylvania; 90,000 in Georgia; 42,000 in Arizona; 115,000 in Michigan and 62,000 in Wisconsin,” according to one report.

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Google Sued For Data Costs After Android Phones Found Transferring “Unapproved, Undisclosed” Data

A new lawsuit against Google filed on Thursday of last week raises interesting questions about whether or not the tech giant is “stealing Android users’ cellular data allowances though unapproved, undisclosed transmissions to the web giant’s servers”. 

The suit, filed in US federal district court in San Jose by 4 plaintiffs aims to be certified as a class action. It alleges that Google is using Android users’ limited cellular data allowances to transmit information about the users unrelated to the use of Google services. The case surrounds “data sent to Google’s servers that isn’t the result of deliberate interaction with a mobile device”, according to The Register. 

In other words, data transfers happening in the background, when the phone isn’t in use. The suit alleges that none of the four agreements accepted to participate in the Google ecosystem say anything about cell data transfers taking place in the background.

The suit states: “Google designed and implemented its Android operating system and apps to extract and transmit large volumes of information between Plaintiffs’ cellular devices and Google using Plaintiffs’ cellular data allowances.”

It continues: “Google’s misappropriation of Plaintiffs’ cellular data allowances through passive transfers occurs in the background, does not result from Plaintiffs’ direct engagement with Google’s apps and properties on their devices, and happens without Plaintiffs’ consent.”

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New Orleans bans Mardi Gras parades for 2021

New Orleans has banned parades for the 2021 Mardi Gras celebration as the city grapples with the coronavirus pandemic, officials have announced.

City officials on Tuesday tweeted out guidance for the upcoming Mardi Gras in February that included a photo with text stating that there would be “no parades in 2021.”

The photo said that the upcoming “Mardi Gras is different” but “not cancelled.”

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