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.

Deepfake Video of Trump Showing Off ‘Jesus Portrait’ Goes Viral as He Threatens to ‘Reign Hell’ on Iran in the Name of ‘God’

Donald Trump has said and done a number of notable things over the past week.

Here’s one thing he didn’t do: hang up a picture of Jesus Christ in the Oval Office.

A lot of people think he did, however, thanks to a fake/AI-manipulated video that went viral on social media over the holiday weekend. It shows Trump opening up a set of curtains off to the side of his desk at the White House to reveal a copy of Warner Sallman’s famous “Head of Christ” painting.

This type of widespread confusion is pretty much becoming a daily occurrence due to the proliferation of low cost, increasingly-powerful AI tools, so it’s impossible to keep up with more than a small fraction of it, but we feel it’s worth periodically looking at examples, studying how they spread, and learning how to better spot them.

The timing of this particular video’s appearance and virality is also notable, as Trump massacres civilians in Iran and bombs their infrastructure with his partners in Israel and incorporates religious rhetoric into his threats of further escalation.

‘Thank you, POTUS!’

The clip was posted on X by an account called “Gizmo Memes” on Friday afternoon with the caption: “Trump puts up a portrait of Christ for Good Friday. Christ is King!”

Within four hours, the post already had over 45,000 likes. As of this writing, it has over 106,000.

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The Media Just Can’t Help Turning Iran Fighter Jet Rescue Into “Black Hawk Down”

Neither Josh Hartnett nor Ewan McGregor were there, but the way the mainstream media is telling it, they might as well have been. The Sunday morning rescue of a U.S. airman shot down over Iran launched a thousand breathless tick-tock retellings from the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, CBS News, and many, many more — helpful water-carrying for an administration prosecuting a deeply unpopular war without a clear end in sight.

“The rescue had unfolded with near‑perfect precision. Under cover of darkness, U.S. commandos slipped deep into Iran, undetected, scaled a 7,000‑foot ridge and pulled a ​stranded American weapons specialist to safety, moving him toward a secret rendezvous point before dawn on Sunday,” Reuters’ report on the rescue opens. “Then everything stopped.”

The operation was a “harrowing race against time,” according to the Times. As Politico put it, citing an anonymous senior administration official, it was “the ultimate ‘needle in a haystack’” mission, made possible by a CIA “deception campaign” in the country disseminating the misinformation that the airman had already been located and was being extracted by ground to confuse the Iranians’ search.

The White House frequently hosts widely attended “background briefing” calls for large groups of reporters. Maybe that’s how Axios chimed in with the same evocative “needle in a haystack” line, which it also attributed to a senior administration official.

“This was the ultimate needle in a haystack but in this case it was a brave American soul inside a mountain crevice, invisible but for CIA’s capabilities,” the unnamed source told Axios.

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King’s College accused of ‘dumbing down’ after overlooking poor grammar to be more ‘inclusive’

A top university wants to scale back traditional exams and overlook grammar mistakes in a bid to be more ‘inclusive’.

King’s College London, part of the elite Russell Group, is overhauling assessment to ‘validate diverse knowledge systems and lived experiences’.

In addition, it has introduced new shorter word limits on essays, to prevent students being ‘overburdened’.

Lecturers have branded the overhaul ‘dumbing down’, while students have criticised the word caps in an open letter.

In a recent presentation of the changes, staff were told to give students a ‘choice in assessment formats’, such as coursework.

The new framework discourages ‘over-reliance’ on exams, with ‘more options’ added to how students can be assessed.

One of the slides shown to staff with the heading ‘equality, diversity and inclusion’ stated they should ‘focus on ideas, not grammar’.

It also said assessment should be ‘culturally responsive’ and ‘reward the use of culture, language and identity’.

Marking should be ‘inclusive’ and ’embrace linguistic diversity’, the slide said.

In a separate announcement, students were also told some of their essays will be capped at 1,300 words – down from 2,000 currently, to reduce academic stress.

However, this backfired when students slammed it in an open letter, saying it would stop them properly exploring their subjects.

One King’s College academic, who asked to be anonymous, said: ‘This whole framework, dreamt up by middle management to justify their existence, is about sending a message about which side of the culture war the university is on.

‘They seem to be claiming students are snowflakes and can’t cope, but students have set up a petition against it.

‘These young people are looking at the tough labour market and they haven’t got time for all this.

‘This is management trying to be ‘down-with-the-kids’ and classically getting it wrong’.

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Mexico Speeds Up Biometric ID Rollout

Mexico’s government wants you to believe that handing over your fingerprints, iris scans, and facial data is voluntary. President Claudia Sheinbaum has said so publicly.

But by July 2026, every one of the country’s roughly 130 million mobile phone lines must be linked to a biometric national ID, and unregistered numbers get suspended on July 1.

Refuse the biometric credential and lose your phone.

The CURP Biométrica upgrades Mexico’s existing population registry code, the Clave Única de Registro de Población, from an 18-character alphanumeric string into something far more personal. The updated system captures face, fingerprint, and iris biometrics, packages them with a QR code and digital signature, and produces what amounts to a mobile-readable identity document tied to your body.

Registration happens at RENAPO and Civil Registry offices, where staff scan all ten fingerprints, both irises, take a facial photograph, and record a digital signature. You’ll need a valid photo ID, a certified CURP, and an original or certified birth certificate just to walk in.

The government has framed this primarily as a tool for addressing Mexico’s crisis of forced disappearances. The biometric data feeds into a Unified Identity Platform connecting the National Population Registry with the National Forensic Data Bank and records held by prosecutors and intelligence agencies, enabling real-time identity searches. That’s the stated purpose.

The actual system being built does considerably more than locate missing people. The legislation gives broad access to biometric and personal information to law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and the National Guard, and the law doesn’t require authorities to notify citizens when their data gets accessed. You won’t know who’s looking at your biometrics, or why, or how often.

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US & EU Negotiate Biometric Data-Sharing Deal

Washington wants to run European fingerprints through American databases, and the EU is considering it. The Department of Homeland Security and the European Union are in formal negotiations over an arrangement that would give DHS direct query access to biometric records held by EU member states, a level of access that Brussels has never granted to a non-EU country for border security purposes.

The deal sits inside DHS’s Enhanced Border Security Partnership program, which effectively tells Visa Waiver Program countries to open their biometric databases or risk losing visa-free travel privileges. Washington has set a December 31, 2026, deadline for EBSP agreements to be operational. After that, DHS reviews each country’s compliance. Countries that fail to meet expectations risk suspension from the VWP, which would reimpose visa requirements on their citizens.

When DHS encounters a traveler, asylum seeker, visa applicant, or anyone flagged during immigration processing, it would query a participating country’s database using that person’s biometrics.

A match returns fingerprints and related identity data to DHS.

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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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