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.

Bill Maher Says Racism in America Is Exaggerated

On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher suggested racism in America is exaggerated by “radicals,” such as members of the Marxist political organization Black Lives Matter.

“Is the picture of America that’s presented by the radicals, I would say — Black Lives Matter, some of them, the anti-racists — of America 2021, is it an accurate picture? Because sometimes I’m like, ‘Are they talking about 2021?’” asked Maher on his show, according to a report by Daily Beast.

“Am I wrong to not want to see race all the time?” added Maher. “Because that’s how I was brought up. Like, that’s what a good liberal does, is you don’t see race. And now, they switched it all around, and I’m bad because I don’t see it all the time. Is ubiquity even effective? To make people aware of this issue at every turn?”

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Telegram feature exposes your precise address to hackers

If you’re using an Android device—or in some cases an iPhone—the Telegram messenger app makes it easy for hackers to find your precise location when you enable a feature that allows users who are geographically close to you to connect. The researcher who discovered the disclosure vulnerability and privately reported it to Telegram developers said they have no plans to fix it.

The problem stems from a feature called People Nearby. By default, it’s turned off. When users enable it, their geographic distance is shown to other people who have it turned on and are in (or are spoofing) the same geographic region. When People Nearby is used as designed, it’s a useful feature with few if any privacy concerns. After all, a notification that someone is 1 kilometer or 600 meters away still leaves stalkers guessing where, precisely, you are.

Stalking made simple

Independent researcher Ahmed Hassan, however, has shown how the feature can be abused to divulge exactly where you are. Using readily available software and a rooted Android device, he’s able to spoof the location his device reports to Telegram servers. By using just three different locations and measuring the corresponding distance reported by People Nearby, he is able to pinpoint a user’s precise location.

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Tulsi Gabbard: Domestic-Terrorism Bill Is “A Targeting Of Almost Half Of The Country”

Gabbard’s comments came during an appearance on Fox News Primetime when host Brian Kilmeade asked her if she was “surprised they’re pushing forward with this extra surveillance on would-be domestic terror.”

“It’s so dangerous as you guys have been talking about, this is an issue that all Democrats, Republicans, independents, Libertarians should be extremely concerned about, especially because we don’t have to guess about where this goes or how this ends,” Gabbard said.

She continued:

“When you have people like former CIA Director John Brennan openly talking about how he’s spoken with or heard from appointees and nominees in the Biden administration who are already starting to look across our country for these types of movements similar to the insurgencies they’ve seen overseas, that in his words, he says make up this unholy alliance of religious extremists, racists, bigots, he lists a few others and at the end, even libertarians.”

She said her concern lies in how officials will define the characteristics they are searching for in potential threats.

“What characteristics are we looking for as we are building this profile of a potential extremist, what are we talking about? Religious extremists, are we talking about Christians, evangelical Christians, what is a religious extremist? Is it somebody who is pro-life? Where do you take this?” Gabbard said.

She said the proposed legislation could create “a very dangerous undermining of our civil liberties, our freedoms in our Constitution, and a targeting of almost half of the country.”

“You start looking at obviously, have to be a white person, obviously likely male, libertarians, anyone who loves freedom, liberty, maybe has an American flag outside their house, or people who, you know, attended a Trump rally,” Gabbard said.

The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2021 was introduced in the House earlier this week in the aftermath of rioting at the U.S. Capitol earlier this month that left five dead.

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World’s First ‘Living Robot’ Invites New Opportunities And Risks

A team of researchers from the University of Vermont and Tufts University has succeeded in developing robots composed exclusively of living biological cells. Dubbed “xenobots,” these living robots can perform a range of basic functions, from locomotion and object manipulation to collective behavior. Their creation promises to deliver significant advances in biology and in medicine, in particular. However, it also potentially carries serious risks, insofar as the researchers themselves admit that experimenting with living cells creates the scope for unforeseen consequences.

Putting such risks aside for one moment, the team’s development of “xenobots” is impressive. First, the scientists at Vermont simulated possible configurations of individual biological cells on a supercomputer. They used what’s called an evolutionary algorithm to test thousands of possibilities and find the best candidates, ‘best’ in terms of the known biophysics of biological cells, which in this case were frog cells.

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California keeps key virus data out of public sight

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has from the start said his coronavirus policy decisions would be driven by data shared with the public to provide maximum transparency.

But with the state starting to emerge from its worst surge, his administration won’t disclose key information that will help determine when his latest stay-at-home order is lifted.

State health officials said they rely on a very complex set of measurements that would confuse and potentially mislead the public if they were made public.

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‘On the Table’ – Pete Buttigieg Says Gasoline Tax Hike Possible

A hike in the tax on gasoline is one possible revenue burden facing American motorists, President Joe Biden’s secretary of transportation nominee Pete Buttigieg told a Senate panel on Thursday.

The revelation came after former South Bend (Indiana) Mayor Pete Buttigieg was asked by Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida during his confirmation hearing about possible tax hikes.

“I think all options need to be on the table,” Buttigieg said, according to Roll Call.

“As you know, the gas tax has not been increased since 1993, and it’s never been pegged to inflation, and that is one of the reasons why the current state of the Highway Trust Fund is that there’s more going out than coming in.”

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Rights Advocates Alarmed by US Spy Agency’s Purchase of Warrantless Phone Location Data

Digital rights advocates reacted with alarm to a report published Friday detailing how Defense Intelligence Agency analysts in recent years bought databases of U.S. smartphone location data without first obtaining warrants.

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is part of the Department of Defense and is tasked with informing military and civilian policymakers about the activities and intentions of foreign governments and nonstate actors.

The new revelation, first reported by the New York Times, initially came in the form of DIA responses to questions from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) regarding the agency’s warrantless purchase of commercial location data generated by phones both inside and outside of the United States.

Wyden asked the DIA to clarify its interpretation of Carpenter v. United States, a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision barring law enforcement agencies from requesting personal location information from a cellphone company without first obtaining a search warrant from a judge.

“DIA does not construe the Carpenter decision to require a judicial warrant endorsing purchase or use of commercially-available data for intelligence purposes,” the agency replied, implicitly acknowledging its exploitation of an apparent loophole in the case that DIA believes permits its warrantless acquisition of location data from third-party brokers.

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Here Are 18 Ways Trump Did the Opposite of Drain the Swamp During His Presidency

On Tuesday, Donald Trump said farewell to America as he acknowledged “this week, we inaugurate a new administration.” Trump is yet to officially concede – a point which his most hardcore followers still believe indicates he will remain president – however, he finally spoke about handing over the reins of power to the Biden administration. “Now, as I prepare to hand power over to a new administration at noon on Wednesday, I want you to know that the movement we started is only just beginning,” Trump stated during his farewell address.

While he might not have mentioned Biden or Harris by name, it is clear that Joe Biden is going to be sworn in as the next President of the United States. Before America races to forget the Trump years we owe it to ourselves to pause and reflect on the facts of the Trump era. First, Donald Trump did not drain the swamp. As I illustrate below, Trump used his position of power to continue to empower the same industries and figures which have benefitted from every Democratic and Republican president before him. Indeed, I stand by my assessment of Trump made in November 2016: Donald Trump’s role was to be The Great Divider. He used his position to stoke the flames of division and chaos, all the while playing the role of the “anti-establishment” President (an oxymoron if there ever was one).

In 2018 I asked, “When Will Trump Supporters in The Freedom Movement Realize They Were Duped?”. I didn’t have much faith at the time, stating, “Now, of course, there are the diehards who will inevitably stick with Trump through his entire presidential career no matter what policy he takes, even when in contradiction with not only his own words, but with the principles previously espoused by these die hard followers.” Now, as Biden is about to wield the Presidential powers, Trump’s most diehard followers still claim Trump is going to stop Biden from being president.

My concern is that folks who previously supported many of the actions taken by Trump will not recover the principles they once held, and instead, further entrench themselves in the false left/right paradigm, convincing themselves that Trump represented the fight against the “Deep State” and Biden is the Swamp incarnate. The problem with this belief is that it reinforces the idea that one party is actually better than the other, when in reality they both play for the same masters. Most importantly, this belief that Trump was fighting the Deep State is not backed up by the facts. Allow me to present a partial list of the evidence showing Trump’s relationship with the swamp.

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