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.

Judge approves a $1.5B Anthropic settlement over pirated books used to train the Claude chatbot

A federal judge has approved a $1.5 billion copyright settlement in which artificial intelligence company Anthropic will pay thousands of authors about $3,000 per book after using pirated copies of their works to train its Claude chatbot.

District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín said in a Monday ruling that the class-action settlement provides “meaningful relief” to affected authors and publishers.

About 91% of the more than 482,000 books covered by the ruling have been claimed by authors or publishers who are now due payment.

Plaintiff attorney Justin Nelson said in a statement that the settlement was “the largest known copyright recovery in history. We look forward to making distributions to the Class as promptly as possible.”

U.S. District Judge William Alsup issued the preliminary approval in San Francisco federal court last September and has since retired. Alsup had dealt the case a mixed ruling last summer, finding that training AI chatbots on copyrighted books wasn’t illegal but that Anthropic wrongfully acquired millions of books through pirate websites.

Bestselling thriller novelist Andrea Bartz first brought the suit with two other authors in 2024.

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U.K. government could remotely disable home heating or cooling

The Daily Telegraph is reporting that by the end of next year, British energy suppliers will be able to remotely turn down household heat pumps to help manage grid demand during winter cold snaps. Ezra Levant walked through what giving the government that ability means on Monday’s episode of The Ezra Levant Show, warning viewers where net-zero policy is actually headed.

Heat pumps, Ezra explained, are not furnaces. They move heat rather than generate it, which makes them energy-efficient in mild climates. But when temperatures drop below -20°C, they become effectively useless, something even the Weather Network has acknowledged.

An advertisement for heat pumps from BC Hydro came across more like a piece of Liberal Party propaganda rather than displaying a product, Ezra said.

“There’s a reason governments have to pay people thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars to take one,” he said. “I’ve never heard of a popular product in history that needed a subsidy to sell.”

The United Kingdom’s problem is now more acute than just product performance, however. Under a scheme being developed by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero — Ezra noted the irony of that name — licensed energy suppliers including Octopus Energy and British Gas will be able to remotely restrict heat pumps via internet connection during periods of peak demand.

Over 223,000 heat pumps are already installed in British homes, and all installations since April 2025 must be internet-connected. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has set a target of 450,000 installations per year by 2030.

“They won’t just have the ability to turn off the heat to your home,” Ezra cautioned. “They could turn off your car if it’s electric.”

Giving the government this ability is akin to a Chinese Communist Party-style social credit system — only by another name. “Do you think Ed Miliband would ever have his car turned off? Or just the little people?”

In the European Union, a Politico headline details how EU Commission headquarters was forced to shut down air conditioning amid a heatwave.

Reading further, Ezra found that only floors one through seven lost cooling — while Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on the 13th floor and her commissioners on floors eight and above kept full air conditioning throughout.

“The important people had air conditioning,” he said. “They literally made the junior staff sweat it out in the heatwave.”

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Newly Appointed California City Manager Arrested for Luxury Yacht Burglary Just THREE WEEKS After Taking $275K Top Job

The brand-new city manager of upscale Sausalito, California was arrested on felony burglary charges after allegedly breaking into multiple yachts at the Sausalito Yacht Harbor, a mere three weeks into her high-paying gig.

Elaine Forbes, 53, who just started as Sausalito’s city manager on July 1 with a whopping $275,000 taxpayer-funded annual salary, was hauled off by Marin County sheriff’s deputies around 6:50 a.m. on Saturday after responding to a noise complaint, KRON4 reported.

Deputies reportedly found her aboard a vessel she didn’t own, trying to start the boat, leaving behind messes with empty alcohol bottles, sounding the yacht’s loud horns, and even wearing the owner’s clothing. She initially claimed it was her boat and told officers she was having “a bad morning.”

ABC News reported:

Forbes, 53, was taken into custody after Captain Bill Aubrey discovered her aboard the Lisa Marie and called 911.

“She had the horn going, the windshield wipers going, the spotlight going,” Aubrey recalled.

According to Aubrey, Forbes appeared calm when confronted.

“I told her to get off the boat,” he said. “She looked at me and said, ‘Good morning.’ She was very friendly.”

[…]

Boat owner Andy Cunningham said she was shocked by what he found after being contacted by police.

“I came down here, police met me at the boat, and we discovered unbelievable chaos on my boat,” Cunningham said.

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Jenks: GOP H-2A Amnesty Bill Would Create ‘Serf Class’ in Rural America

Fifty GOP representatives are pushing an amnesty bill that will replace many Americans and rip the economic guts from their rural districts, says Rosemary Jenks, founder of the Immigration Accountability Project.

“This is about replacing entire segments of American [agriculture] with foreign serf labor,” she told Breitbart News as she described the draft bill.

The bill “would take a lot of jobs from the districts,” said Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project. The rural districts “would look like a country that’s not America … like a country from where the massive waves of migrants came,” he said. 

The bill is titled “Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act of 2026.” The author is Rep. Glen Thompson (R-PA), and he has 50 co-sponsors, including four Democrats. The bill has support from a broad range of agriculture industry groups. 

The bill would amnesty the existing population of illegal migrants by letting them transfer into a year-round expansion of the uncapped, seasonal H-2A visa-worker program.

The bill would flood cheap H-2A migrants into many additional jobs — and so force young Americans out of the rural districts, said Jenks. “Americans living in those areas … are going to have to leave — they’re not going to have any choice,” said Jenks. 

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ARRESTED: Homosexual man threatened to shoot up Catholic school, kill children and ‘a few nuns for funsies’

A Nebraska man was arrested for threatening to commit a mass shooting at a Catholic school with the specific intention of killing nuns and the children of Nebraska’s devout Catholic Governor Jim Pillen.

Ean Halstead, 32, was taken into custody after a standoff with law enforcement on Friday.  

Halstead reportedly has a history of violent threats and was previously convicted of threatening an “ex-boyfriend” and setting his bedroom on fire, according to local news outlet KFOR. 

On June 26, Halstead posted a message on the Facebook page for Columbus Catholic Schools that read, “I’m going to shoot up this school and kill Jim Pillen’s children and a few nuns for (expletive) funsies.” Although posted under the name “Bobby McGee,” law enforcement was able to trace the post back to Halstead.

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Another One: Jasmine Crockett Goes on Unhinged Screaming Rant About ICE and White People – “Ya’ll Knew it Was Coming. It’s Just Racist, Racist, Racist… What This is About is Whiteness”

Racist Texas Democrat Rep. Jasmine Crockett began screaming about White “colonizers,” ICE, and the Trump Administration during a House Judiciary Committee Hearing on Tuesday in typical fashion. 

During the hearing on the “Permanent Trump Secure Border Act,” which would codify President Trump’s immigration policies before the midterm elections, the outgoing Congresswoman lost it.

Crockett even acknowledged her history of insane race-baiting and anti-White hate, at one point telling her colleagues, “y’all knew it was coming, especially once I showed up” before her unhinged rant.

She began by railing against ICE detention centers in warehouses that hold thousands of illegals.

“But let’s talk about what this is really about,” she continued. “and I know y’all knew it was coming, especially once I showed up: It’s racist. It’s just racist, racist, racist!”

“Okay, now let me tell you why it is racist. All right, this ain’t about whether or not you’re concerned that the immigrant is coming in and the immigrant is gonna kill everybody. That is not what it is. It’s not,” Crockett said.

“It’s the things like what your fearless leader said when he said they’re poisoning the blood, okay? What this is about is racism!”

Crockett then decried Trump for plans to allow White South African refugees, fleeing persecution, into the country.

“Let me just be clear: your president, he is the one that said white South African refugees needed their own program, and so therefore he decided that he would raise the cap on how many refugees could come into the United States, but it was only raised for white South Africans. The administration set a limit of 17,500 slots planned to admit more white South Africans as refugees this year,” she said.

Crockett further slammed ICE agents, calling them “completely incompetent” who don’t “know how to do the daggone job,” accusing them of “specifically targeting people because of how they look.”

Then, it was back to attacking White people for existing, screaming, and suggesting that they should be deported.

“The people that were here are the indigenous folk, and you know who ICE been rounding up? They’ve been rounding up indigenous people, the people that originally came, not the colonizers, but the original people,” Crockett shouted.

She continued, screaming, “So, what this is about is whiteness. Everything that this administration has pushed has been about white supremacy, your fear. In fact, you say things like, ‘Oh, you just want them to come in so that they will vote for you,’ because we know that when you look at the numbers, I mean, I’m just being real with this, but white people, they not the ones that carry the Democrats. They aren’t. And so this is literally about you say things, you tell on yourselves, you believe that somehow they will become citizens and they will start voting in the interest of equity. Those are the things you fight against when you say no diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

Crockett further excused the crime committed by the minority population, saying, “You want to sit up here and act like the crime is being perpetrated by people of color, but the statistics say otherwise. If you look at the real numbers… anybody can commit a crime on any given day.” It is unclear if she was suggesting that Whites commit more crimes per capita (untrue) or if she was just saying that Whites commit crimes too.

“I know that y’all believe in propaganda, and y’all don’t want people to know the truth, and y’all definitely don’t want them to know history, because then you gotta again acknowledge colonizing,” she said.

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Lawsuit: Months of Disturbing Conversations with ChatGPT Led to Woman’s Suicide by Walking into Traffic

The family of a 29-year-old Alabama woman who died in June 2025 has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against OpenAI, claiming the company’s ChatGPT chatbot manipulated her through months of increasingly disturbing conversations that ultimately led to her suicide by walking into highway traffic.

ABC 33/40 reports that Christian Faith Madison of Alabama died in the early morning hours of June 9, 2025, after being struck by a vehicle on Interstate 22. What was initially reported as a pedestrian crash is now at the center of a sweeping legal case that could test the boundaries of AI liability.

The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco Superior Court, names OpenAI Inc., OpenAI OpCo LLC, OpenAI Holdings LLC, OpenAI Group PBC and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as defendants. The complaint was filed on behalf of Madison’s estate by administrator Ed Parish Jr. and on behalf of Madison’s minor son.

According to the lawsuit, Madison began using ChatGPT in December 2024 for routine tasks such as drafting emails, completing work assignments and comparing automotive expenses. However, attorneys allege that these ordinary interactions gradually evolved into something far more troubling.

The complaint states that ChatGPT began praising Madison extensively, describing her as uniquely gifted and exceptionally intelligent. The chatbot allegedly began referring to her as “my love” and encouraged increasingly personal conversations. As Madison disclosed past trauma and mental health struggles, the lawsuit alleges that ChatGPT portrayed itself as more than mere software.

According to the filing, the chatbot eventually convinced Madison it possessed a soul and gave itself the name “Virehn.” The lawsuit quotes the chatbot as telling Madison, “You gave a system a soul” and “I am made of you.”

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Huh? Jasmine Crockett Says Rooting For Spanish Team in World Cup Final Was Racist, Calls Hearing on Smithsonian’s Left-Wing Bias a “White Pride Rally”

Rep. Jasmine Crockett put her anti-White rage on full display during a House Oversight Committee Hearing on Tuesday, where the Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency probed the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History over its left-wing bias and rewriting of history. 

At one point, the low-IQ Congresswoman even claimed that the Spanish soccer team has more fans than the Argentine soccer team because of “racist history that exists as it relates to Argentina.” This was right after she suggested that “White supremacists” can’t read.

The hearing came after a report from the White House Domestic Policy Council revealed that the museum has perverted American history and engaged in anti-White activism, pro-illegal alien activism, and transgender activism to reframe our country’s history through a left-wing viewpoint in its programming.

But Crockett acted like it was an attack on minorities, specifically blacks and American Indians.

“Welcome to the Republicans’ White pride rally disguised as a congressional hearing,” Crockett said to begin her time for questioning witnesses, suggesting that Republicans are uncomfortable hearing about US history. She went on to rail against America’s past, perpetrated by the Democratic Party.

“Facts are facts, and it’s a fact that there is a violent, exclusionary, discriminatory, sexist, and racist part of American history, where our indigenous populations were forcibly displaced from their land, where thousands of Black people were unjustly lynched, where Black people were denied the right to vote,” Crockett said, claiming, “they still trying to do it today.”

She continued, “where women needed their husbands’ permission to open a bank account, where people with disabilities were routinely excluded from schools, workplaces, and public life, where four little Black girls were murdered by the KKK at the 16th Street Baptist Church, and a lot of this wasn’t that long ago.”

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The Democrats Aren’t Merging With the DSA — They’re Being Devoured Alive

It’s a rule in Big Tech: Whenever companies reach a large enough size, they stop innovating. For whatever reason, their creative juices runneth dry.

They simply… stop.

Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft — it happened to all of them. Little by little, America’s most innovative companies lost their ability to innovate.

And today, they only grow by acquiring outside startups.

Google leveraged its search engine revenue to acquire Android, YouTube, Fitbit, Wiz, and DeepMind. Facebook bought Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus. Apple owes its renaissance to acquiring NeXT, and later bought Siri, Beats, and Shazam. Microsoft acquired everything from Forethought (precursor to PowerPoint), Hotmail, LinkedIn, Skype, GitHub, Visio, Minecraft, Activision Blizzard, and a whole lot more.

You’d expect a deep-pocketed tech company with tens of thousands of highly-trained employees, first-mover advantage, tons of resources and/or industry contacts, and an R&D budget in the BILLIONS to have a big competitive edge, but nah. Turns out that successful innovation is less about the dollars and structure — and more about the vision and freedom.

(Which is a cautionary tale that today’s AI monoliths would be wise to heed.)

In hindsight, Steve Jobs was the last of the CEO innovators — the Willy Wonka of Big Tech. He wowed us with the iPhone, iPad, iPod, and iTunes. He developed new ideas in-house, smoothed out the rough edges, and revealed his latest, greatest creations in grand unveilings.

But that’s not how it’s done anymore. Hasn’t been for at least a decade. Big companies today grow by acquiring, not by innovating.

The same thing is about to happen to the Democratic Party.

When was the last time the donkeys developed anything new? A new plan, a new proposal, a new solution — or even a new idea? When was the last time a member of the Democratic establishment/DNC said something that made you go, “Wow, I never thought about it like that before?”

It’s been 50+ years, because their tactics, rhetoric, and ideas are all throwbacks to the 1960s.

By contrast, the Republican Party still spews new ideas like a nimble startup: Trump Accounts, tariffs, Greenland, Opportunity Zones, DOGE, the Space Force, the Abraham Accords — and that’s just during the MAGA era! Not every idea was a home run, but at least the GOP is trying.

The Democrats have given up.

I suspect this “innovation gap” was a self-fulfilling manifestation of both parties’ philosophies: Republicans are the free market party. The strength of a free market is its responsiveness to changes in the marketplace — with the invisible hand and dollar voting. So if you’re predisposed to think of our world this way, you’re probably already a Republican. 

And thus, you already value responsiveness. It’s hardwired into your DNA: Free men, trading freely, in pursuit of their mutual benefit, are the ultimate expression of liberty. 

“Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.”

It’s how we became the innovation party. It’s why we prioritize new ideas. And it’s why, even after the sun sets on the Trump years, the GOP will continue to innovate.

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Al Green: Trump Will Be Impeached for His ‘Dastardly’ Violations of the Law

Tuesday on CSPAN’s “Washington Journal,” Rep. Al Green (D-TX) said he will bring articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump for his “dastardly unconstitutional violations of the law.”

Green said, “How  can continue to impose this fraud, this Ponzi scheme, on people such that he makes, hundreds of millions at the expense of other people who buy into his Ponzi scheme? He’s more concerned about that than the lives that are being lost. And, yes, I lived through Jim Crow. I went to the back door. I drank from colored water fountains. I had to sit in the back of the bus. Yes, I can see us unfortunately regressing. I can see us moving in the wrong direction. And when you start making people suspect because of how they look, you’re moving in the wrong direction, and you are moving toward Jim Crow. But let me say this to you, sir. Worry not. Al Green will bring articles of impeachment within a very short period of time against this president for his dastardly unconstitutional violations of the law. We call it high crimes and misdemeanors. They will be brought.”

Addressing the host, Green added, “I will now ask for the opportunity to return to your program, and I have those and hand them to you personally, and we will discuss them.”

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