January 18, 2025

The Stuttering Lede, Jan 18th, 2025

It's always about the crowd sizes, is not it?

The incoming Trump administration is planning a large-scale immigration raid in Chicago on Tuesday while The Washington Post announced a new mission statement: “Riveting Storytelling for All of America.”

New data reveals a stark failure to pass on the memory and lessons of the Holocaust to younger generations — the very future of our world. We’ve reached a critical tipping point, and it’s time to sound every alarm.

Nearly half the world’s population holds antisemitic beliefs.

We have failed to pass on the memory and lessons of the Holocaust to younger generations — the very future of our world.

Remembering the late Françoise Hardy, who was born on this day in 1944.

US

• The capitulation is stunning. Our fourth estate is clearly in the hands of independent media. PS: it’s a public bribe!

• Trump would have been convicted if he hadn’t been re-elected.

• "One of the questions I get asked a lot is “How bad will it all get?” But the real answer, given the resources and freedoms available to most American citizens is, “How bad are we willing to let it get?” It’s really up to us as a country."

• Turns out the Laken Riley Act gives Steve Bannon a big weapon against Elon Musk. He'll use it to get MAGA AGs to sue to block H1B visas.

• The University of Alabama did not have a single Black faculty member until 1970. Apartheid in America was not that long ago, but the country still has trouble recognizing it.

• Republicans Keep Insisting Civil Rights Laws Are Unconstitutional Because Racism Is Over. This is going to be the actual legacy of the Roberts Court, dismantling civil rights laws that frustrate their Jim Crow ideology.

• Oklahoma Rep. Jonathan Wilk introduced a bill to create the "Donald J. Trump Mass Deportation Revolving Fund," which would not be "subject to fiscal year limitations" and "distributed to deport illegal immigrants."

• Philadelphia locks up kids at a higher rate than other big cities, and about four times the national average.

• "The New Segregationists" is a more accurate headline.

• An actual Nazi to attend Trump’s inauguration.

• Diversity programs have shortcomings and aren't the kind of sweeping changes that America really needs to become more equal and just. But the rapid elimination of them is another sign of resurgent Trumpism.

• Vivek Ramaswamy is planning to run for Gov. of Ohio.

• CATO has an important report showing that Biden did not cause the immigration crisis.

• The CFPB is suing Capital One for lying to its customers and cheating them out of billions in interest payments on their savings accounts.

• READ THIS. THEN READ IT AGAIN.

• You Blamed DEI for Hurting Your Career. Now What?

• Pete Hegseth attends a church that belongs to the CREC, the evangelical denomination founded by Doug Wilson.

• Bloomberg is reporting that drugmakers will be asking the Trump administration to "pause" drug price negotiations.

World

• Netanyahu says “Israel reserves the right to continue the war if necessary”. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir admitted in a post on X/Twitter on Tuesday that his party had prevented a hostage deal from being achieved on numerous occasions."

• Gaza death toll from October 2023 to June 2024 was 40% higher than official number, per the Lancet: • 64,260 deaths due to traumatic injury • 59.1% were women, children, and elders.

• Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has revealed intelligence which shows Russia has been planning major terrorist attacks against airlines around the world.

• Two top European Union officials warned the US government over its move to limit exports of microchips used in artificial intelligence, including to certain European countries.

• Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK is now just a point behind Britain’s incumbent Labour Party.

• Met police investigating alleged spiking at bar in parliamentary estate.

• Italian police accused of making female activists remove underwear and do squats.

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• Forty years after leaving the EU, Greenland wants back in.

  Heaven forbid it takes the UK that long to come to its senses.

• The government of Albania has given preliminary approval to a plan proposed by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, to build a $1.4 billion luxury hotel complex on a small abandoned military base off the coast of Albania.

• Russian disinfo campaigns eluded Meta’s efforts to block them. Shocker!

• For The First Time Since 2022, Ukraine May Have A Tank Advantage Over Russia. Russia’s tank arsenal is disintegrating faster than it can be rebuilt. Ukraine has managed to cripple Moscow’s armored forces with industry that, just three years ago, barely existed.

• Russian megacorp Gazprom is in dire straits as a result of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine - it’s now being forced to bring in mass layoffs. The Russian economy is creaking.

• A 15 year old Palestinian boy said he was raped in Israeli custody. When a nonprofit tried to expose it, Israel raided their offices, labeled them a terrorist organization, and shut them down.

• What joy! What damn joy!’: vanilla boom transforms fortunes of Colombia’s farmers.

• Today I learned the Cybertruck is illegal in Europe.

• EU requires X to hand over documents on its algorithm. As one senior EU official said, the EU's regulatory instruments are there precisely to protect free speech, not hinder it, as Musk and Zuck claim. The EU's narrative pushback begins.

• On Moldova's gas crisis, Transnistria and a crisis for which Chisinau should have been better prepared. EU accession, energy policy and Transnistria are all interconnected, policy making needs to deal with all three.

Tech

• Tesla just started Cybertruck discounts in the US.

• Lawyer and Stanford professor Mark Lemley said he’s dropping Meta as a client over what he said was the company and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s “descent into toxic masculinity and Neo-Nazi madness.”

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• OpenAI quietly revises policy doc to remove reference to ‘politically unbiased’ AI.

• Meta is laying the narrative groundwork for Trump’s Mass Deportations.

• TikTok join the fascist propaganda campaign by claiming it must go dark on Sunday.

• Google is following Meta and saying it won’t do fact-checking on search results or YouTube vids. They’ve just told EU regulators, despite this being a requirement in the new EU law.

• Trump launches crypto meme coin.

• A boycott of Tesla vehicles is gaining momentum in Germany due to Elon Musk’s consistent meddling in the country’s politics and promotion of a fringe far-right party.

• Elon Musk Throws Tantrum After Being Exposed by Gamers, Leaks YouTuber's DMs and Seemingly Takes Away His Checkmark.

• Why This OnlyFans Model Posts Machine Learning Explainers to Pornhub.

• Pretty discouraging to hear so many justices turn away from basic free speech principles on the internet just because they hate online porn!

• Musk wants to revise the Outer Space Treaty 1967 to declare Mars a free planet outside Earth’s jurisdiction. SpaceX is drafting a Mars constitution for him.

• Opting out of Gmail's Gemini AI summaries is a mess.

  Here's how to do it.

• Europe orders Elon Musk’s X to submit documents on its recommendation algorithms.

• The crypto industry is such a scam. So it's fitting Trump will promote it.

• AGI is just around the corner but creating short blurbs to summarize news stories remains elusive.

• Not much to see here, just Mark Zuckerberg making sure that Stephen Miller, of all people, greenlights Facebook's new hiring policies.

Climate Change

• Biden admin’s final acts will be opening federal lands to accelerate the building of AI data centers, specifically 1GW facilities — which consume enough energy to power anywhere from 250,000 to 1mil households (depending on where the households are)

• ‪Florida residents asked by wildlife & science agencies to report invasive Asian swamp eel sightings.

• Over the past 2 years, Earth got hotter faster than ever before.

Women’s Rights

• This research suggests that wealth and lands were passed down the female line, and instead of women leaving to join their new husband's family, the exact opposite was true.

• Women’s claims of sexual abuse must be heard – unless they’re about master storyteller Neil Gaiman.

• Idaho teenager arrested for "failing to report a death" after hiding her pregnancy from her parents, giving birth alone in her room, and trying to feed and care for the baby.

• Something big is happening in the world of contraception. It’s going backwards.

LGBTQA+ Rights

• What the Supreme Court hearing about age verification could mean for you. “

  • This is literally page 5 of Project 2025. I come back to it a lot. It refers to trans "ideology" as pornographic and says people who produce/distribute it should be imprisoned and that teachers and librarians should have to register as sex offenders. Straight out of Libs of TikTok's playbook.”

• SCOTUS announces it will hear whether or not LGBTQ inclusive education is unconstitutional.

• Amazon removes section on LGBTQ+ rights from its policy page.

Education

• ProPublica just launched a new tool that lets you look up the demographics of private schools across the country and see how they compare to the public schools nearby.

• Texas Businesswoman Wants to Open AI-Driven, Teacherless Cyber Charter School in Pennsylvania.

• UAB students, UA professors sue Alabama over state law banning DEI programs.

• Texas A&M Pulls Out of Event Rufo Described as ‘Racial Segregation’

Misc.

• Djimon Hounsou Says He’s “Struggling Financially” to Make a Living After a 30-Year Career and Two Oscar Noms'

• We Don't Need More Cynics. We Need More Builders.

• A 90-year-old Florida man arrested after a real estate agent called 911 to report he was “sitting on her” and “squishing and hurting her” while in her automobile.

• Cyrus Vance Jr., former Manhattan district attorney who led a criminal probe into United States President-elect Donald Trump's business dealings, has joined the Paris branch of global law firm Baker McKenzie.

• With more Americans able to access legalized marijuana, fewer are picking up prescriptions for anti-anxiety medications.

Humor