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.

Humanoid Robots Perform Successful Gallbladder Surgery in Major Medical Breakthrough

Humanoid robots have successfully performed gallbladder removal surgeries in live pigs for the first time, marking a significant milestone in the development of robotic surgery and paving the way for future human trials.

The procedures were carried out by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, with the findings published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

The first operation involved a humanoid robot working alongside a surgeon. In the second, two humanoid robots completed the procedure together without direct human assistance.

Researchers say the successful surgeries represent an important proof of concept as the technology moves toward clinical testing in humans.

“As a proof of concept, it absolutely worked,” Dr. Ryan Broderick, interim director of the Center for the Future of Surgery at UC San Diego, told ABC News.

Unlike conventional robotic surgical platforms, the humanoid robots feature a head and two arms.

This allows them to work in operating rooms without the bulky equipment typically required for robot-assisted procedures.

“The space constraints didn’t exist like in traditional robotic surgery,” Broderick said.

“It was a human-type bedside assistant, so it just fit into the space that we’re traditionally used to being in for laparoscopic surgery.”

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Doll-Heads Apparently Fooling Tesla FSD. Is Facial-Recognition Update Next?

Chinese e-commerce platforms are selling miniature heads that, according to Fred Lambert at the EV blog Electrek, are being used to “trick Tesla’s cabin camera into thinking a driver is paying attention.”

Priced at $20 to $50 and marketed as dashboard decorations or “travel companions,” these miniature heads are mounted near the rearview mirror to mimic a human face while Autopilot or Full Self-Driving is engaged.

via Instagram user “decentmiss_” … 

While FSD is engaged, Tesla’s cabin camera monitors driver attentiveness, including whether the driver repeatedly looks away from the road, and issues warnings when attention appears to lapse. Tesla requires increased supervision when FSD is in “Mad Max” or “Hurry” mode.

Videos of the miniature heads recently went viral on social media, suggesting that some users in China are employing them to trick Tesla’s driver-attention safeguards.

Here is Lambert’s first take:

Let me be direct: anyone mounting a fake head to defeat their Tesla’s driver monitoring system is putting their life and the lives of everyone around them at risk. And the sellers profiting from these devices are enabling potentially fatal behavior for $30 a pop.

Over the years, drivers have used various defeat devices, such as counterweights attached to the steering wheel to trick the torque sensor into believing someone was holding it. Tesla countered that workaround with the cabin camera, but now must address the issue of miniature heads.

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Butler, PA: Two Years Without FBI Investigation on Alleged Shooter

July 13, 2026, marks the two-year anniversary of the attempted assassination of then candidate Donald Trump at Butler, PA and, after numerous official investigations and no transparency by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the public is none the wiser about who the shooter was.

The U.S. Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Office of the Inspector General of the DHS, the Pennsylvania State Police/Butler County officials including the coroner, the Senate Homeland Security and Judiciary Committees, the House of Representatives Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump and the lead investigative body, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), all investigated what happened in Butler, Pa on July 13th.

The problem with all those august institution’s conclusions is that none can, or will, provide basic information about the identity of the alleged shooter, making it extraordinarily difficult to conclude who did what, where and when. The FBI, as the lead investigative body of the alleged shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, has been the least cooperative or transparent.

The FBI began its decent into transparency hell during FBI Director, Christopher Wray’s, tenure when the Congressional Task Force Chairman, PA Representative, Mike Kelly, wrote “the FBI stonewalled” the investigation, refusing to share crucial files that was the result of either “deliberate” obstruction or pure “incompetence.”  Without the often-requested transparency from the Biden FBI, all the above investigations were completed, but the lack of transparency from the FBI on the Butler shooting continued into the Trump Administration with Kash Patel.

Remember it was FBI Director Kash Patel who said “I pledge full transparency with Congress. Hundreds of lawmakers’ questions to the FBI have gone unanswered. That will not happen if I am confirmed, and all appropriate requests for information will be responded to expeditiously and fully.”  Patel also said, “The American people deserve an FBI that is transparent, accountable, and committed to justice…” Apparently Patel’s promises don’t include any information dealing with the Butler shooting investigation.

Judicial Watch, a conservative investigative group, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in July of 2025, requesting comprehensive investigative files relating to the alleged shooter, Crooks. Judicial Watch was successful in its FOIA request, and the FBI has been supplying the organization with heavily redacted documents for a few months. With an admitted 75 thousand documents on the case, at the rate of current release most people alive today won’t be alive by the time the FBI completes the document dump to Judicial Watch. Worse though is that the few documents being released are so heavily redacted that little information is gained from their release. So, what information has been withheld and what is needed to provide the truth to the American people?

While there are too many questions that need to be answered in this limited space, there are a few that stand out, like, for instance, what physical evidence (DNA, dental or blood-based test) were conducted to identify the alleged shooter? Currently, no information has been provided by any of the released investigations about how the recovered body, lying on the AGR Building roof, was identified and by whom. Oddly, enough, none of the official investigations mention that the alleged shooter’s body lay on the AGR Building roof all night, until 6a.m. the morning after the shooting. How does a thorough investigation miss such an important piece of information, especially when it comes to chain of custody issues?

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New York Times Countersues Trump DOJ After EEOC Accuses Newspaper of Discriminating Against White Male Employee

The New York Times has filed a countersuit against the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) after the agency accused the newspaper of discriminating against a white male employee in a promotion decision.

The EEOC sued the Times in May, alleging the newspaper used Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) hiring practices that favored women and minority candidates in violation of federal civil rights law.

The agency is seeking to block the company from continuing these policies and is also seeking damages on the employee’s behalf.

According to the EEOC’s complaint, veteran editor Bryant Rousseau was denied a promotion to deputy real estate editor in favor of a multiracial woman who lacked his experience covering real estate.

The agency also alleges that none of the four finalists for the position were white men.

In a countersuit filed Friday in federal court in New York, the Times accused the EEOC of targeting the newspaper in retaliation for its reporting on the agency.

“The Commission markedly deviated from its ordinary practices in almost every respect to file the flimsiest of lawsuits against The Times, a frequent target of the administration, on the heels of investigative reporting that brought to light scathing bipartisan criticism of the EEOC, its leadership, and its priorities from both inside and outside the Commission,” the complaint states.

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New Mexico says US Justice Dept hindering probe of former Epstein ranch

New Mexico’s top law enforcement official on Thursday accused the U.S. Department of Justice of hindering the state’s investigation into ​Jeffrey Epstein by withholding unredacted files on the late sex ‌offender.

The Democratic-run state re-opened an investigation in February into activities at Epstein’s former ranch south of state capital Santa Fe, where he is accused of abusing women and ​girls for nearly three decades.

Nearly five months into the investigation, New ​Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez has yet to announce any ⁠results.

Political pressure to release U.S. Department of Justice files on Epstein has dogged ​President Donald Trump during his second term. He has suggested the country move on ​from investigating the late financier’s crimes.

In a June 30 letter, opens new tab to Acting U.S. Attorney Todd Blanche, Torrez said the Justice Department had failed to respond to a state request ​in February for unredacted files containing names of Epstein survivors, witnesses, co-conspirators, ​and other individuals essential to the New Mexico probe.

In a statement on Thursday, Torrez said ‌the ⁠delay, which has now lasted 130 days, was “unreasonable under any rule of reason.”

In response, a U.S. Justice Department spokesperson said the agency responded to the New Mexico request in June.

“The DOJ reiterates that it welcomes New ​Mexico undertaking additional ​investigation of the ⁠Zorro Ranch and stands ready to provide necessary assistance with New Mexico’s investigation,” the spokesperson said, adding that ​the agency was ready to investigate and possibly prosecute ​any federal ⁠crimes the New Mexico investigation uncovered.

In March, Torrez said investigators faced significant obstacles in the Zorro Ranch probe. He cited the years that had passed ⁠since ​Epstein’s alleged crimes, possible deterioration or disappearance ​of evidence at the ranch which was sold in 2023, and possible jurisdictional issues surrounding any ​potential prosecutions.

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Prohibitionists Just Argued Themselves Into a Corner: To Stop Weed Reform, They Told a Court How Much Money They’d Lose

One of the loudest arguments against cannabis reform has always been about money. Legalizers are in it for the cash, prohibitionists have argued, and the science is just the wrapping paper. On July 2, in a filing before the D.C. Circuit, the Justice Department argued that the challengers’ alleged harms were commercial interests the CSA was never written to protect. Two of the groups trying to freeze marijuana rescheduling asked the court to hit pause on the reform, and the government told the judges that those two were guarding their own revenue.

The two groups behind the request are a drug-testing trade association and a pharmaceutical company that has never brought a product to market. The DOJ told the court that both of them “invoke pocketbook interests served by keeping all marijuana in Schedule I.” Their own sworn declarations, the government argued, undercut their request for a stay.

Here is the shape of it. In April, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche moved FDA-approved cannabis medicines and state-licensed medical marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III. A coalition of prohibition and drug-testing groups, two state attorneys general and a pharmaceutical developer is suing to undo that order, Kevin Sabet’s Smart Approaches to Marijuana and the attorneys general of Nebraska and Indiana among them. But the request to freeze the order while the case plays out came from just two of those parties, the National Drug and Alcohol Screening Association, or NDASA, and MMJ International Holdings. The government’s answer was blunt. The petitioners, it wrote, “come nowhere near satisfying the demanding standard for that extraordinary relief.”

The Accusation, Turned Around

For over a year, the case against reform has run on a single accusation. Sabet has made it repeatedly, including in a video posted as the DEA hearing opened: the government moved on marijuana because of industry money and campaign donations from cannabis executives, not because the science changed. The July 2 brief never answers Sabet directly. But read against that year of messaging, it lands as an inversion. If this is about money, it is worth asking whose.

Their Own Declarations

The answer is in the challengers’ own paperwork. NDASA told the court that its members would lose money if employers stopped screening for marijuana. In a sworn declaration, the group’s executive director estimated that marijuana-positive results are the largest source of revenue at the medical review offices that read drug tests, and projected a revenue decline of “at least 35%” over the next 6 to 12 months if the order stands. NDASA also attached a number to what compliance would cost its members: about $700,000, spread across 700 employers. Do the arithmetic and it comes to a thousand dollars each. That is the figure the group called irreparable harm, the kind of injury that is supposed to justify a court freezing federal drug policy. A thousand dollars per employer. One cannabis attorney who reviewed the motion did the same math and called the argument “ridiculous.”

MMJ’s claim is stranger. The company says it spent eight years and $10 million developing cannabinoid drugs the proper way, through the FDA, and that rescheduling rewards state-licensed competitors who skipped that path. The problem, as the DOJ pointed out, is that MMJ has no product on the market. It has applications pending, not medicine on shelves. You cannot lose your share of a market you have not entered. Its complaint, the government argued, describes a policy it dislikes, not an injury a court can fix.

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GOP Chair Says More Indictments Possible in Florida Fake Voter Guide Case

The chairman of the St. Johns County Republican Party in Florida said more people could face criminal charges as prosecutors pursue a case involving an alleged fake voter guide scheme tied to the 2024 Republican primary.

Speaking with host Matthew Boyle on Breitbart News Saturday, St. John’s County GOP Chairman Denver Cook said he believes the investigation may not be over, noting that additional evidence could emerge as the criminal case moves through the courts.

“I expect that this will go on. I presume there will be civil suits related to this as well. And just because indictments are filed one way, if further evidence is uncovered in the process of these people being brought in and being forced to testify,” Cook said, “I assume that should something further be uncovered, that further charges or further people could be indicted in the future. There’s no guarantee of that. But right now, this is a live criminal prosecution.”

Cook also said that investigators uncovered what he described as a coordinated effort to mislead Republican voters by distributing counterfeit voter guides bearing the local GOP’s branding.

“I had said that we were filing formal complaints. This led to them trying to cover up their illegal activity. And I spent two years working with investigators as much as I could and pressing to get the indictments finally forwarded,” Cook told Boyle. “I’ve sent you and others the indictment details, a sworn affidavit, and it just shows a shocking calculated criminal conspiracy that was done to subvert the voice of the St. John’s County Republican Party.”

Cook said the operation involved thousands of mailers and significant financial backing, calling it a deliberate attempt to influence the outcome of local Republican races.

“It was a mass-scale deception involving tens of thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of mailers, and a deliberate attempt to override the votes of the party itself, who voted to support these people. And to weaponize our official party logo and our name to the super voters in our community,” Cook revealed. “They were planning on sending those to the, you know, in our elections in St. John’s County, there’s about 25,000 super voters. Those are the ones that determine what happens in a primary.”

Although the defendants are Republicans, Cook said party affiliation should not shield anyone from prosecution — “anyone who violates the law or commits fraud, regardless of party.”

“And I’ve stressed, and we’ve talked privately in the past, what I think our citizens demand when it comes to election integrity and the way our government functions is accountability, oversight — and we’re not seeing that. And finally with this, after two years of pushing, we are seeing accountability and transparency.”

Breitbart News reported on Tuesday that five people, including two St. Johns County commissioners and a St. Augustine Beach commissioner, were charged over an alleged scheme to distribute counterfeit Republican voter guides during the 2024 primary election.

Prosecutors accused the group of creating unauthorized voter guides designed to resemble official Republican Party endorsements, and one political consultant also faces a felony charge for allegedly destroying or concealing evidence during the investigation.

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Texas Man Gets 40 Years for Leading Violent Online Child Exploitation Ring

A federal judge sentenced the online leader of a Nihilistic Violent Extremist (NVE) group to 40 years in prison. In addition, he will spend the rest of his life on court-ordered supervision for charges related to child sexual exploitation and racketeering. 19-year-old Alexis Aldair Chavez of San Antonio was also ordered to pay $10,000 in restitution.

According to court documents, Chavez, who used the online profile names Zack and Zack8884, was an administrator and online leader of the “8884” network. The online network is related to a larger violent extremist group that shares common goals, including the promotion of social unrest and the downfall of the current world order, including the United States Government.

Members of the group led by Chavez hope to destroy civilized society through the corruption and exploitation of vulnerable populations, including young children. Chavez’s guilty plea comes after his arrest for actions within the group that extorted and coerced victims to engage in a variety of violent behavior, including self-mutilation, online and in-person sexual acts, harm to animals, sexual exploitation of siblings and others, acts of violence, threats of violence, suicide, and murder.

According to a federal criminal complaint, sometime around October 2023, Chavez and a co-conspirator made efforts to encourage an underage female to commit suicide during a video chat by overdosing on pills. The pair of conspirators recorded the suicide attempt and used the video content to maintain and increase their status within the violent extremist group.

Later, Chavez and the same underage female worked jointly to coerce a female outside the United States to disrobe on camera, mutilate herself, and engage in sexual acts. They also forced another victim to self-mutilate by cutting the name “Zack” onto her body.

According to court records, in December 2023, Chavez and a co-conspirator coerced another underage girl to cut her tongue during a live video call during which the victim was also ordered by the pair to kill a cat. During the same month, Chavez, along with another co-conspirator, groomed several young females, coercing one to light her arm on fire until it burned through her skin and deeper into her body while on a video call. Another victim, according to court documents, was forced to drink her own urine and attempt to overdose on unknown pills.

Chavez was arrested in October 2024 and was found to be in possession of Child Sexual Abuse Material. After his arrest, in December 2025, Chavez pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering, one count of distribution of child pornography, and one count of possession of child pornography, leading to the stiff sentence handed down during his sentencing hearing.

Acting Assistant Director Coult Markovsky of the FBI Counterterrorism Division commented on the case, saying, “Nothing is more abhorrent than those who prey on children and other vulnerable members of our society, and this defendant will pay a steep price for doing just that.”

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Mexican President Blames Biden-Era Policies for Rise in Cartel Violence

Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum is blaming Biden-era policies of the United States government for having helped set off the fierce turf war that followed. The turf war erupted after the split between the two main factions of the Sinaloa Cartel following the arrest of the fearsome cartel boss Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.

During her morning news conferences, Sheinbaum claimed that if the Biden administration had shared information with Mexican authorities and let them carry out the arrest, the cartel would not have split, and the violence spreading through Mexico would not have happened. The comments come at a time when tensions are high with the United States over Sheinbaum’s refusal to fight cartels. Her comments also come soon after the Mexican president announced that her government would be taking legal action against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in connection with the deaths of migrants in detention centers and during raids.

In regard to the violence in Sinaloa, Sheinbaum was referring to the 2024 kidnapping and arrest of Zambada at the hands of the Chapitos faction of the Sinaloa Cartel. The operation took place in the last year of the Biden administration. As Breitbart Texas reported at the time, the leaders of Los Chapitos, who are the sons of jailed Sinaloa Cartel kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and inherited his power, had called a meeting with El Mayo only to capture him and fly him to the United States. When the airplane landed, U.S. federal agents were waiting to arrest El Mayo, who pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges and is awaiting sentencing later this month. The kidnapping and arrest of El Mayo sparked a fierce turf war within the Sinaloa Cartel that has led to thousands of murders, kidnappings, and forced disappearances.

The issue of El Mayo’s arrest has gained relevance in recent days after a series of leaked photographs showed how U.S. agents had been waiting for El Mayo, pointing to some coordination between Los Chapitos and U.S. law enforcement. The issue comes at a time when the Trump administration has been pressuring Sheinbaum to eradicate drug cartels, leading to heightened tensions between the two governments.

Recently, the U.S. Department of Justice delivered a heavy blow to Sheinbaum’s credibility when it announced a criminal indictment against Sinaloa’s Governor Ruben Rocha Moya and nine of his closest officials, who were the heads of the state law enforcement apparatus. As Breitbart Texas has reported, rather than help with the arrests and extraditions, Sheinbaum has used the claim of national sovereignty to refuse U.S. help in fighting cartels and has publicly defended Rocha Moya, who is from the same political party, claiming that there is no proof of wrongdoing on his part. Federal prosecutors in the United States claim that Rocha Moya worked with Los Chapitos, providing them with protection in exchange for bribes and political support.

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DARPA’s Chilling Pre-COVID Blueprint: Predict, Manufacture, & Deploy Pandemics On Demand

A sprawling, multi-institution effort for “predicting” future pathogen characteristics, developing vaccines “in advance of need,” and building the very systems intended to validate those predictions.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) spent the early 2010s constructing what may have been the most ambitious predictive vaccine-development infrastructure ever attempted: a sprawling, multi-institution effort designed to determine the future characteristics of purported pathogens before they emerged and ultimately use those predictions to develop drugs and vaccines before they were needed.

The program, known as PROPHECY—short for Pathogen Defeat—was announced in 2010 under Broad Agency Announcement DARPA-BAA-10-93 and was managed by DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office.

DARPA itself described the vaccine-centric purpose of the program unambiguously.

According to the agency: “The Prophecy (Pathogen Defeat) program will explore the evolution of viruses in the hopes of predicting viral mutations and ultimately developing drugs and vaccines in advance of need.”

The effort was not limited to coronaviruses, influenza, or any other single disease category.

DARPA repeatedly stated that the goal was understanding: “the natural evolution of any virus.”

The result was a massive architecture that brought together machine learning researchers, statisticians, bioinformaticians, computational biologists, laboratory scientists, surveillance specialists, universities, contractors, and national laboratories into a single “predictive” framework.

Yesterday, this website reported that DARPA’s PROPHECY program expanded into the laboratory of coronavirus researcher Ralph Baric years before the COVID-19 pandemic and nearly a decade before the DARPA/DEFUSE proposal documented all three defining structural features of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein prior to the outbreak.

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