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.

DOGE Attacks on Social Security Have Left Millions in the Lurch

When Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) was running roughshod over the Social Security Administration (SSA) last year, experts warned it could spell disaster for disabled, ill, and aging Americans who depend on its programs. A March 2026 report by the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) and the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) offers insights into just how dire the situation has become.

“It seems that applications are taking longer and being denied more often and running into more errors in the process,” Matthew Borus, a professor at Binghamton University and one of the report’s authors, told Truthout.

The new report is based on interviews with more than 50 benefits specialists working at dozens of organizations nationwide that, together, assist about 8,000 claimants each year in obtaining and maintaining Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). Those programs provide financial assistance to about 13.5 million older Americans and those with disabilities.

The programs have long been criticized for their inadequacy and steep barriers to access. Now, things are getting worse. “It just feels like you’re banging your head against the wall,” Brenna, who is using a pseudonym for fear of retaliation against her organization or clients, told Truthout.

Brenna works as an attorney at a medical-legal partnership in Washington, D.C., an organization comparable to those interviewed for the DREDF and AAPD report. She helps vulnerable patients apply for SSI/SSDI.

“It becomes difficult to trust even what advice you can give patients because you hardly know what to expect [yourself] because sometimes what the Social Security Administration says is, in fact, what happens, and often, it’s not,” Brenna told Truthout.

Contradictions and a lack of accountability were among the common issues identified in the DREDF and AAPD report. Others include challenges with a new phone system, inconsistent and confusing field office policies, longer processing times, more denials and errors, and an increased number of overpayments and payment center issues.

These problems are likely the result of a series of changes to SSA’s customer service processes that began soon after Donald Trump returned to the White House on a mission to gut the federal workforce and slash spending on social services.

The Social Security Administration lost about 7,500 employees, or 13 percent of its workforce, from January 2025 to January 2026, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management. Customer service positions were hit especially hard, with a loss of over 3,000 staff tasked with assisting visitors to field offices and callers to the administration’s national 800 number, according to a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report. That same report found that leadership shifted thousands of the remaining workers into customer service positions to plug gaps, but this means that many now responsible for customer support have little to no experience in their roles.

Changes have also come to the phone system. Brenna told Truthout she now often waits upwards of an hour on hold before reaching an agent, and once connected, the call often drops after only a couple of minutes. Borus said in his interviews with benefits specialists that many reported their calls were often rerouted between field offices, making it difficult to resolve case-specific issues.

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FBI’s New Political Pre-Crime Center

President Trump’s budget request to Congress contains the largest counterterrorism spending increase in years — and buried inside it is a new FBI-led center dedicated to “proactively” hunting Americans the government classifies as so-called domestic terrorists.

The new center and funding boost represent the implementation of Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), the sweeping federal order I’ve been covering since it was signed last September.

Though public opposition to ICE succeeded at forcing the administration to back down in Minnesota — even firing both Kristi Noem and Gregory Bovino — the FBI is doubling down its domestic terrorism obsession.

Now, Trump’s budget request reveals, the FBI runs a dedicated “NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center”; with personnel from 10 federal agencies, it is busy “proactively” identifying domestic terrorists motivated by any of the following beliefs:

  • “anti-Americanism,”
  • “anti-capitalism,”
  • “anti-Christianity,”
  • “support for the overthrow of the U.S. Government,”
  • “extremism on migration,”
  • extremism on “race,”
  • extremism on “gender,”
  • “Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family,”
  • Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on “religion,” and
  • Hostility towards those who hold traditional views on “morality.”

In other words, if your political views are practically anything other than MAGA, you’re on notice, courtesy of the FBI.

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He didn’t want to cuff people in crisis. Anne Arundel police made him a mall cop.

Lt. Steven Thomas, who led the Anne Arundel County Police Department’s Crisis Intervention Team to international renown, has been reassigned to mall security after being disciplined for giving his officers the discretion not to handcuff people with mental illness or addiction.

His apparent ouster from the unit he’s helmed for a decade sent shock waves through the county’s criminal justice and substance abuse and mental health treatment circles.

Melissa Owens, a longtime Anne Arundel County Public Schools high school teacher who has bipolar disorder, credits Thomas’ unit with saving her life on several occasions when she was in crisis. She said Thomas’ reassignment, and the apparent reasoning, “raises questions.”

“Why have an entire program where you train first responders in how to use this discretion, all the tools they have in action, and then tell them you can’t use them?” said Owens, who now helps train officers on responding to people in mental crisis. “That’s pointless to me.”

Thomas is now assigned to the Bureau of Community Services, Police Department spokesperson Justin Mulcahy said. He declined to answer other questions, including about what prompted the change. Mulcahy said an acting lieutenant was in charge of the crisis unit.

A 30-year police veteran, Thomas now works out of the department’s post at Arundel Mills Mall, said O’Brien Atkinson, president of the union that represents Anne Arundel police officers. Atkinson said he couldn’t discuss the reassignment but lauded Thomas’ leadership of the Crisis Intervention Team.

“Our CIT program has been recognized as one of the best in the nation and world, really,” Atkinson said. “I think he certainly was a big part of that.”

Under Thomas’ leadership, the police crisis team was declared the best in the world in 2020 by CIT International. His unit also received that organization’s first regional platinum certification in 2024. These accolades drew praise from elected officials and contributed to Anne Arundel County’s status as the gold standard for crisis response in Maryland.

Officers in Thomas’ unit wear light-blue collared shirts and complete specialized training on how to help people in crisis. They connect people with mental illness or addiction to treatment. They sometimes transport people deemed to be dangerous because of mental illness to hospitals for emergency evaluations. When there’s a terrible tragedy, like a homicide, CIT officers respond to the emotional needs of people affected by it.

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‘Transgender’ adolescents have worse mental health after ‘reassignment’, study shows

Adolescents who claim to be “transgender” have significantly worse mental health after being subjected to “medical gender reassignment”, a large Finnish study has found.

The study, published in medical journal Acta Paediatrica on April 4, found a “significantly higher” incidence of mental disorders after so-called medical gender reassignment, which includes the use of irreversible and dangerous genital surgery, hormones and puberty blockers.

The researchers noted that medical gender reassignment “is often suggested to be beneficial, even vital, for the mental health of adolescents suffering from gender dysphoria”, but that the evidence supporting the popular claim was “very limited”.

The study compared 2,083 individuals who were referred to gender identity clinics in Finland before the age of 23 between 1996 and 2019 to a matched control group, and found much higher psychiatric morbidity both before (47.9% vs. 15.3%) and more than two years after (61.3% vs. 14.2%) referral.

Among those who underwent medical gender reassignment, “psychiatric morbidity increased markedly during follow-up”, the study found, rising from 9.8% to 60.7% in males who underwent “feminising” reassignment, and 21.6% to 54.5% in females in “masculinising gender reassignment”.

“After adjusting for prior psychiatric treatment, all gender-referred adolescents had similarly elevated risks of psychiatric morbidity, with hazard ratios approximately three times higher than female controls and five times higher than male controls,” the researchers found.

“These adolescents had markedly higher psychiatric morbidity than controls before and after referral, with treatment needs often persisting and even intensifying after medical interventions – on some, they might even have a negative impact.”

The study also found that adolescents referred after 2010 “displayed noticeably more psychiatric morbidity than those referred earlier”, which the researchers said suggested increasing referrals of adolescents with severe mental health issues to gender identity services.

The researchers said the “considerable increases” in need for psychiatric treatment among those “seeking change towards female” could be due to the use of the hormone estrogen, which can cause depressive symptoms, but noted that similar increases were seen among those given testosterone.

“Masculinising hormones may temporarily improve mood, and testosterone-related bodily changes – typically emerging within a few month – could be expected to alleviate gender dysphoria and subsequently psychiatric treatment needs,” the researchers stated.

“However, psychiatric treatment needs were also markedly increased among those who obtained masculinising gender reassignment. Subsequent morbidity burden may also arise from treatments not meeting the expectations placed on them.”

The researchers concluded that the results showed a need for further studies into why medical gender reassignment appears linked to mental health deterioration, and called for more thorough psychiatric assessments before referral.

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New Genetic Study of the Famous ‘Shroud of Turin’ Reopens Debate Over the Controversial Relic’s Origins

The Shroud of Turin, purported by many to have been the burial cloth that once covered the body of Jesus at the time of his burial, remains one of the most controversial relics in all of history.

For centuries, the shroud was believed to preserve rare historical evidence of the seemingly miraculous events described in the New Testament. However, by the 20th century, a growing number of scholars had come to believe the shroud’s origins were likely to be far more recent: perhaps the result of a clever forgery produced sometime in the Middle Ages.

Now, according to the findings of a new genetic study, it seems the lingering questions over the shroud and its origins are far from being settled, revealing a wide range of encounters the Turin Shroud has had with humans, animals, and other objects, and offering new clues about the environments that it met over time.

Obscure Origins

The mysterious shroud, which has remained a curiosity to scholars for centuries, has been preserved in Turin, Italy, since the late 16th century. The relic depicts the ghostly image of what appears to be a male human body, as well as evidence of markings that indicate blood in the positions on the body that are traditionally consistent with New Testament accounts of the injuries Jesus bore at the time of his crucifixion.

Over the decades, studies have sought to help determine the true origins of the unusual relic, leading to a range of theories about its provenance. After centuries of debate among scholars, in 1978, scientific efforts to determine the shroud’s origins were undertaken, which included samples with remnants of DNA that its woven material has collected over time.

Ultimately, testing completed in 1988 suggested that the shroud most likely dated to no earlier than the 13th century, although the debate over its history has continued.

Reopening the Debate

Now, in a new international study effort led by Italian scientists, recent genetic studies involving the original samples collected in 1978 are helping to shed additional light on the complex nature of the interactions the shroud has had with its environment over the centuries.

The team, whose findings appear in a new preprint paper that appears on the bioRxiv website, reports that their analysis showcases the preservation conditions of the shroud over time, as well as interactions it has had with its environment that reveal “its biological complexity through rigorous DNA and metagenomic analyses.”

According to the study’s authors, “The possible existence of the Shroud prior to the first documented information places the long journey of this artifact into a Middle or Near East geographical context, with a potential historical age preceding the Sacking of Constantinople in

1204.” Sometime later, scholars believe the shroud was moved to a new location in Western Europe, before it resurfaced again near the French commune of Lirey in the early to mid 1350s.

Some of the questions about the shroud’s journey throughout the centuries is evidenced by the genetic material it carries, and through analysis, the study’s authors hoped to learn about the kinds of environments where it had been kept, dividing the chronological history of the relic into a “pre-1204” period that it was believed to have been kept in the ancient Near East, and what the team refers to as “a plausible ‘post-1353’ location in western Europe.”

“These two hypothetical temporal and spatial differentiations may be reflected in the variation of DNA data obtained from the Shroud,” the study’s authors say.

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Apple Removes Private VPN Apps From Russia App Store

Apple pulled several custom VPN clients from the Russian App Store last week, including Streisand, V2Box, v2RayTun, and Happ Proxy Utility.

These aren’t the big-name commercial VPN providers that Apple already removed in 2024 at Roskomnadzor’s request. These are tools that let users connect to their own private servers and configure manual proxies, the kind of apps that give technically savvy Russians the ability to route around state censorship without depending on any company’s infrastructure.

Russian tech outlet Kod Durova first reported the removals, noting that the same apps remain available through Google Play on Android.

Days before the removals surfaced, Digital Development Minister Maksut Shadayev announced the Kremlin’s most aggressive anti-VPN campaign yet. “We have an obligation to fulfill the tasks that have been set before us. In this case, the task is to reduce the use of VPNs,” Shadayev said on the state-backed messenger Max.

He linked the push to what he called “long, difficult and ultimately unsuccessful” talks with foreign tech companies over compliance with Russian law.

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New York’s Governor Seems Indifferent to the Health Consequences of a Steep Tax on Nicotine Pouches

By pushing a 75 percent wholesale tax on nicotine pouches, New York State Budget Director Blake Washington says, Gov. Kathy Hochul is trying to address “a public health concern.” That rationale is absurd on its face, since this tax would sharply raise the cost of a nicotine product that is far less hazardous than cigarettes, perversely discouraging smokers from making a switch that could save their lives.

Hochul, who seems determined to portray a money grab as a benevolent intervention, is either oblivious or indifferent to the health consequences of taxing nicotine patches at the same rate as cigarettes. “We see it as a distinction without a difference,” Washington told reporters in January.

That position ignores the huge difference between inhaling tobacco smoke, which contains myriad toxins and carcinogens, and orally absorbing nicotine from a pouch placed between the lip and gums. Hochul’s framing also contradicts what the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said four days before the end of the Biden administration, when it authorized the marketing of Zyn nicotine pouches in two doses and 10 flavors.

That decision was based on the FDA’s determination that “the new products offer greater benefits to population health than risks.” The data, said Matthew Farrelly, director of the Office of Science at the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, “show that these nicotine pouch products meet that bar by benefiting adults who use cigarettes and/or smokeless tobacco products and completely switch to these products.”

Nicotine pouches contain “substantially lower amounts of harmful constituents than cigarettes,” the FDA noted. They therefore offer “a lower-risk alternative for adults who smoke cigarettes.”

How much lower? To give you a sense of the difference, the Royal College of Physicians estimates that “the hazard to health” from e-cigarettes, which likewise do not contain tobacco or burn anything but do require inhalation, “is unlikely to exceed 5% of the harm from smoking tobacco.”

Nicotine pouches “contain far, far fewer harmful constituents compared to traditional tobacco products,” notes Mary Hrywna, a tobacco control specialist at the Rutgers School of Public Health. The FDA’s Zyn decision implicitly acknowledged that nicotine pouches are “much safer than cigarettes,” says Ray Niaura, a professor at New York University’s School of Global Public Health.

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Truth, Fear, and the Collapse of Control

There are moments in history when systems of control begin to lose their effectiveness—not because they are dismantled, but because they are no longer believed.

We may be entering such a moment now.

The signals are contradictory. On the surface, the world appears increasingly unstable—conflicts escalate in the Middle East, economic pressures tighten, energy costs rise, political narratives shift rapidly, and digital systems expand their reach into everyday life. At the same time, something more subtle is occurring. More people are beginning to recognize that fear itself has become one of the primary instruments through which modern systems maintain influence.

This is not a conspiracy in the simplistic sense. It is structural.

Modern governance—whether expressed through media institutions, financial systems, technological platforms, or regulatory frameworks—depends less on direct coercion than on the management of perception. Control is exercised not only through laws or force, but through the shaping of attention, the framing of events, and the constant stimulation of emotional response.

Fear plays a central role in this arrangement.

A population that is uncertain, anxious, and reactive is easier to guide than one that is stable, reflective, and inwardly anchored. Under conditions of sustained pressure—economic, informational, or social—people become more likely to defer judgment, seek authority, and accept narratives they might otherwise question. In this way, fear does not merely accompany modern systems of power; it sustains them.

Yet this mechanism has limits.

When fear becomes constant, it begins to lose its effect. When every development is presented as urgent, every disagreement as existential, and every event as a crisis, fatigue sets in. People may not fully understand what is happening, but they begin to sense that something is off—that the intensity of the messaging no longer matches their direct experience of reality.

This is where a shift begins.

It does not start with large-scale political change. It begins at the level of perception. Individuals start to withdraw their automatic emotional investment from the stream of narratives presented to them. They still observe events, but with greater distance. They become less willing to be pulled into cycles of alarm and reaction, and begin—however tentatively—to rely more on their own judgment.

This is a quiet development, but a significant one.

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Backlash After NYC Mayor Mamdani Blames Death of 7-Month Old Baby on Guns Instead of the Violent Criminals Who Killed Her

Radical socialist Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, is facing backlash for politicizing the death of a 7-month-old baby and blaming ‘guns’ instead of the violent criminals responsible for the tragedy.

On Wednesday, the baby, Kaori Patterson-Moore, was shot and killed as her mother pushed her in a stroller down a Brooklyn Street. Two men drove past on a moped, with one of the men firing two shots at passersby.

Per The New York Post:

Sources said the tot’s mom heard the shots and rushed her daughter into a nearby bodega for shelter — then looked down at the stroller and saw the blood.

The suspects fled but crashed the moped two blocks away, sending one of them to the hospital where he was identified as a person of interest and the second goon still on the run.

Meanwhile, the tragic youngster was rushed by ambulance to Woodhull Hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 1:46 p.m.

Rather than addressing NYC’s soft-on-crime policies and blaming the actual violent perpetrators, Mamdani instead blamed guns.

Mamdani said during a press conference, “Earlier today, a 7-month-old baby was shot and killed on the corner of Moore Street and Humboldt Street here in Brooklyn. A life that had barely begun was taken in an instant.”

“This is not the first family in our city to know this pain. Too many children have never grown up into becoming adults. Too many parents have had to bury those that they love the most. We cannot accept this as normal. In our city.”

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Illegal immigrants charged in 75% of this year’s murders in Fairfax County, VA: DHS

The Department of Homeland Security revealed on Friday that of the four defendants in Fairfax County, Virginia currently facing murder trials so far this year, three of them are illegal immigrants.

“Of the four defendants in Fairfax County murder trials this year, THREE are ILLEGAL ALIENS,” the DHS wrote. “Governor Spanberger must end her sanctuary policies that allow these illegal aliens onto our streets and work with DHS to protect the citizens of the commonwealth.”

In one of the most recent cases, Misael Lopez Gomez was arrested on Tuesday and charged second-degree murder and a felony child abuse for allegedly killing his 3-month-old daughter. Preliminary results from the autopsy conducted by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner determined that the cause of death was blunt force trauma.

The DHS said that it had issued an arrest detainer. He allegedly admitted to entering the US illegally through the southern border near Albuquerque, New Mexico in July 2023.

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