The National Federation of Federal Employees President Randy Erwin has a few points he would like to make with the president. “You better start following the constitution like you took an oath to do.”
I’m actually a child online safety expert and was one of the pioneers in this space with Club Penguin and so I feel uniquely positioned to critique this.
The groomer problem is real but it’s also vastly overstated. The far larger issue we saw at Penguin was suicidality or reports of sexual abuse in the home.
There is no solution for lazy/bad parenting. You can implement all the ID laws you want but if parents are going to just hand kids their phones unlocked, those kids will have access to all the same things the parents have unfettered.
What I found is that these draconian safety laws actually make it harder to be an honest operator of kids apps because on one hand it’s so much legal risk and so much user friction that it simply becomes uninvestible as a business.
Parents will just lie to let their kids use the unfettered internet. For example, I have a friend who works in mobile gaming who has two kids, one above and one below the age limit but separated by just 2 yrs, and the two wanted to play and chat together on Roblox - which is reasonable. To do this, he just verified that his younger kid is old enough for the chat feature when he’s not.
This happens all the time and will happen with these laws to. How far do we want to go with this? Scan the face of the user in real-time to make sure it’s not a kid using the device? We could do that but it feels like a massive unwanted intrusion of privacy.
That’s how you know this law isn’t about kids. COPPA and GDPR-K and so forth already make it illegal to allow chat and other grooming vectors to kids.
What’s really being done here is trying to eliminate online anonymity. And this is a far bigger issue that goes to core speech rights because if you cannot criticize the govt anonymously and if wrong speech is a crime then it becomes easy to identify all the detractors of the govt in power, and ban, fine or jail them for speech crimes.
Starmer has already been doing this and he wants to do it at a much bigger scale. Starmer won’t even acknowledge the problem of actual grooming gangs in Britain’s neighborhoods but he’s worried about online grooming?
No he’s not, and this hypocrisy gives away the game. What he wants is to kill online anonymity so he can enforce censorship of his unpopular policies. No politician should have this power.
Staggering that the NYT reports Trump/Miller are plotting to suspend habeas corpus (i.e. end the constitution) & by the end of the day it's treated as a non-story, not anywhere near top of major news' outlets websites.
We don’t talk enough about how autocrats view taxpayer dollars—not as public resources to serve the people, but as a pot of gold to enrich themselves and their allies. Their focus isn’t public welfare; it’s personal profit and power.
My 18 year old Facebook account - permanently disabled overnight. My pages 5 in all are gone too. Instagram account as well. Meta account is attached, so also gone. Meta VR and glasses no longer work without this, which makes the products itself unusable.
Yesterday I changed my password and created a passkey. Later I saw there was a login from singapore was emailed to me, a chinese account accepted a "friend request", then the account was disabled.
I'm sure it's AI that processes it all, and getting to a human agent probably implausible. But they should be able to tell that the account was compromised, but alas, no human agent will intervene. And I am locked out permanently.
This is the power these tech companies have. To permanently affect you and kill anything you have done, created, built, or posted on their platform. They can't be trusted. Not with your data, not with your personal information.
I guess it was time to #deletefacebook
Saying Clinton has a “rancid legacy” is honestly a sign that the way we talk about presidential legacies has become too abstract and story based.
The man oversaw one of the most prosperous periods of the post war era, through more than one bipartisan bill managed to bring the deficit down to 0, came closer than anyone else to Middle East peace, under his watch three countries joined NATO, was amazing on trade, and he greatly expanded the Dem coalition.
That’s an objectively successful legacy no matter what “story” his personal flaws tell. Wish his wife won in 2016.
Boarded my flight at DCA National airport. Come to find out, the president of the United States has paused ALL flights because of the UFC fight at the White House.
The air traffic controllers were not warned, nor were the airport staff or travelers.
JFK once invited to dinner 49 Nobel laureates, Robert Frost, William Styron, Ernest Hemingway, James Baldwin, Katherine Anne Porter, John Dos Passos, James Farrell and Lionel and Diana Trilling, and others. His line on the occasion became famous: “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House—with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."
Some of you were alive when that happened.
Three weeks from today, federal student loan repayment changes under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act take effect. Here is what is actually changing.
For any borrower with loans disbursed on or after July 1, 2026: Income-Based Repayment, Pay As You Earn, and SAVE are gone. The only income-driven option available will be the new Repayment Assistance Program. The Education Department published guidance updates this week in preparation - though the department has lost roughly half its total workforce since the administration began, and the $1.7 trillion loan portfolio begins transferring to Treasury in July, starting with 500,000 defaulted accounts.
Treasury has never administered student loans. The department receiving the portfolio cut nearly a quarter of its own staff. The SDCC president said the transfer will "deepen the confusion and chaos for millions who are still waiting for clear, reliable guidance."
For borrowers already in SAVE - the 7 million people thrown out of the plan by the Eighth Circuit earlier this year with 90 days to find a new option - the clock is running. The guidance changes this week do not resolve the question of what their path forward is.
The administration says borrowers don't need to do anything. Advocates say the system is being transferred in a reckless and disorganized manner to an agency unequipped to run it. The guidance is updating. The clarity is not.
If you have federal student loans, July 1 is not an abstraction. Find out now which repayment plan you are in and whether it survives the transition.
There’s a lot about this UFC White House event that should not sit well with you.
At the top of the list should be that you can’t watch it unless you subscribe to Paramount+.
It’s not public.
Americans cannot see this event happening at The People’s House without paying a private corporation.
The White House is for sale.
And tonight for the whole world to see.
Nobody wants a city on Mars. Nobody wants AI in every app. Nobody wants a robot butler. Nobody wants data centers everywhere. Nobody wants flying cars or humanoid robots. We want clean water, we want bees to survive, and we want a habitable planet.
Funny how leftists now all of a sudden understand the concept of not attacking the nominee relentlessly the entire election. We could’ve used some of that in 2016 and 2024.
Michael Ian Black's piece has one observation that cuts through everything else written about the Epstein files this week.
The senior officials who gathered in the Situation Room last July - Vance, Wiles, Blanche, Leavitt, Cheung, Patel - spent hours strategizing about how to protect Trump from the political fallout. They workshopped options. They debated whether to call Tucker Carlson or use DOJ lawyers instead. They reportedly discussed nipples in the White House Situation Room. One official described it as "surreal."
What none of them apparently did: ask whether the allegations against their boss had merit. Not once. Not raised. Not even Bongino, who is Black's unlikely near-hero for the piece - Bongino's objection was to the botched rollout, not to the underlying situation that made a rollout necessary.
The documentable facts now in the record: Trump flew on Epstein's plane at least eight times after claiming he hadn't. Trump denied writing the birthday letter, then the Wall Street Journal obtained it. Epstein's personal secretary testified to Congress this week that she arranged calls between Trump and Epstein shortly before the 2016 inauguration - after Trump claimed he had cut off contact in 2004.
These are not allegations about what happened on Epstein's properties. These are documented lies about a documented relationship. The people in that Situation Room knew the relationship existed. They chose to manage the politics instead of asking the question that the people they serve - the American public - would want answered.
Black closes with the names of Epstein's accusers who went public. That's the right place to close.
🚨🗣️New: Thierry Henry reacts to the USA vs Paraguay stoppage for TV commercials:
“I’ve spent my entire life in this beautiful game — as a player at the highest level, as a fan, and now as someone who analyses it every week — and what unfolded during that USA versus Paraguay match left me deeply frustrated. The fourth official standing there on the touchline, arm raised high, instructing the referee to hold the restart… not for any injury, not for tactical reasons, and not even primarily for player hydration in that scorching heat. No. It was because the broadcast team hadn’t finished airing all their commercials. That’s not football. That’s a television show pretending to be a World Cup match.
The beautiful game is being strangled by greed. Players are out there in the heat, ready to restart, momentum building like a storm about to break — and we pause everything so the sponsors can cash in. It’s like stopping a symphony mid-crescendo because the advertisers want their jingle heard. Football didn’t conquer the world by turning into American sports with endless timeouts and ad breaks. We had rhythm, flow, emotion that flowed like a river. Now? It’s dammed up for dollars.
This isn’t about hydration or player welfare anymore — it’s a slippery slope where the soul of the game is sold piece by piece. Fans deserve better. Players deserve better. The referee on that pitch looked like a puppet on strings controlled from some broadcast truck. Enough is enough. We need to protect what made this sport the greatest on Earth before it disappears completely.”
The World Cup should be football’s cathedral. Instead, we’re turning it into a shopping mall with a pitch in the middle.
And here’s the question nobody wants to answer: if the fourth official is waiting for commercials, then who is really running the game? FIFA? The referee? Or the broadcasters?
Because the moment football starts asking advertisers for permission before asking the players, you’ve crossed a line.
The World Cup is supposed to be the showcase of football. Not the showcase of who paid the most for airtime.”
Sure to impact animal and human reproduction...mark my words.
Poor guy saw his home's value drop to essentially zero.
Ain't no one buying a house to deal with that noise 24/7
This bombshell dropped yesterday in Washington D.C. And if you live near a data center — or near land where one might be built — this news affects you directly.
The head of America’s top environmental watchdog agency just walked up to a microphone and told the entire country that the federal government will not protect you from data center water pollution, air pollution, or any other environmental harm.
Not now. Not ever. As long as this administration is in power.
The decision that just left 330 million Americans without a federal safety net — and handed Big Tech a blank environmental check.
🎤 THE WORDS THAT SHOCKED ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOCATES NATIONWIDE
The Trump administration is not going to set nationwide environmental requirements or recommendations for the rapidly growing data center industry, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said Wednesday at the POLITICO Energy Summit in Washington D.C. 
No requirements. No recommendations. No national standards. Nothing.
Zeldin said: “Ten times out of 10, I’m not going to sit inside of an agency building in Washington D.C. and say that we know that local community in Georgia or Florida or Arizona or elsewhere better than everyone there locally.” 
Ten times out of ten. Zeldin was not vague. He was not ambiguous. He was categorical and absolute.
The EPA — the agency created specifically to protect Americans from environmental harm — just announced it will not protect Americans from one of the fastest-growing and most environmentally demanding industries in U.S. history.
🏛️ WHAT IS THE EPA SUPPOSED TO DO — AND WHY THIS DECISION IS SO ALARMING
For most Americans, the EPA is the government agency that makes sure the air you breathe and the water you drink are safe. It sets national standards — minimum floors of protection — that apply equally whether you live in Montana or Mississippi, whether your local politicians are aggressive environmental protectors or not.
That is the whole point. National standards exist precisely because not every community has the resources, the lawyers, the political will, or the technical expertise to fight billion-dollar corporations on their own.
Just 37% of Americans would support a data center being built in their area, according to a POLITICO poll earlier this year. The reasons cited by opponents are overwhelmingly environmental: water usage and air pollution are among the most common complaints. 
63% of Americans do not want a data center near them. The EPA just told those Americans: figure it out yourselves.
🤔 AND ZELDIN’S ANSWER ON WATER IN UTAH WAS EVEN MORE REVEALING
The EPA chief’s comments in Washington were not the only time this week he dodged accountability on data centers and the environment.
Just weeks ago, Zeldin appeared before hundreds of energy leaders at Utah’s Operation Gigawatt Summit in Deer Valley — where a reporter from 2News asked him directly whether data centers conflict with President Trump’s own pledge to save the Great Salt Lake, which is rapidly disappearing due to water overconsumption. Zeldin declined to give a direct answer. “I’m not coming here today to opine and place judgment like that,” he said. “I’ve had the opportunities to go across the country where they’re doing an awesome job of water reuse.” 
The Great Salt Lake is shrinking before America’s eyes. Data centers in Utah are consuming millions of gallons of water. A reporter asked the head of the EPA a direct, factual question about whether those two facts conflict with each other.
His answer: he would not say.
The man whose job is to protect America’s environment — refusing to say whether draining a disappearing lake to cool AI servers is a problem.
😤 BUT HERE IS THE PART THAT MAKES THIS DECISION EVEN MORE OUTRAGEOUS
Zeldin’s argument sounds reasonable on the surface. “Local communities know best.” “States’ rights.” “We trust people on the ground.”
It falls apart completely when you look at what is actually happening on the ground.
Communities trying to fight data centers on their own are being outgunned at every turn. They face billion-dollar corporations with armies of lobbyists and lawyers. They watch their county commissioners vote in the middle of the night without public hearings. They discover secret water wells drilled without permits. They find out their electricity bills are being raised to subsidize facilities they never voted for.
And now the federal government — the last backstop — has officially stepped aside.
This is the same EPA that in January 2026 convened a roundtable with the Data Center Coalition — an industry lobbying group — to discuss how the rapid growth of data centers can make the U.S. the AI capital of the world. The meeting was led by senior Trump EPA officials. The agency’s stated goal was explicitly to advance data center expansion — not to protect communities from it. 
The EPA — meeting with data center industry lobbyists to help them build faster. Then standing at a podium to announce it will not regulate them environmentally.
That is not cooperative federalism. That is the government choosing a side. And it did not choose yours.
⚡ AND THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION HAS BEEN DISMANTLING ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTIONS FOR MONTHS
Yesterday’s announcement did not come out of nowhere. It is the latest in a series of moves that have systematically removed federal environmental guardrails around the data center industry.
In February 2026, the Trump administration repealed the 2009 Endangerment Finding — the central scientific finding that has allowed the EPA to regulate climate-warming emissions for over 15 years. The move strips the agency of its most powerful legal tool to control industrial pollution. 
Making the U.S. the AI capital of the world is described as a key pillar of Zeldin’s “Powering the Great American Comeback” initiative — alongside “unleashing energy dominance.” Environmental protection of communities is not listed as a pillar. 
AI capital of the world. Energy dominance. Those are the priorities. The community in Georgia watching their well go dry. The family in North Carolina whose water pressure dropped. The Nashville Zoo worried about its tigers. Not the priorities.
🗺️ SO WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR YOUR COMMUNITY?
Here is the direct, honest answer to what Zeldin’s announcement means for every American community with a data center near it — or coming to it:
You are the last line of defense. Your city council. Your county commissioners. Your state legislature. Your petition. Your vote.
The federal government has officially left the building.
While there are technologies and practices that reduce air pollution and water usage, Zeldin said states and communities know what works best for them — leaving all environmental oversight entirely to local and state authorities. 
Some states are rising to the challenge. New York passed a moratorium. Illinois suspended tax breaks. North Carolina is debating protections for its aquifers. Utah passed a first-in-the-nation water transparency law.
But many states — particularly in the South and Midwest where the most aggressive data center buildout is happening — have no protections in place. No standards. No transparency laws. No moratoriums. And now, no federal backstop either.
Those communities — often the poorest, the least politically connected, the most rural — are now completely exposed.
🔮 THE BOTTOM LINE
Lee Zeldin stood at a podium in Washington D.C. yesterday and made a decision that will affect every American community targeted by the data center industry for the next several years.
He decided that the federal government’s role is to help Big Tech build — not to protect the people living around what gets built.
He decided that trillion-dollar corporations deserve a streamlined path to construction — and that families worried about their water, their air, and their electricity bills can take their concerns to whatever city council or state legislature will listen.
He decided, in his own words, ten times out of ten — that Washington will not stand between a data center and your community.
Now the question is: will your community stand up for itself?
Because as of yesterday — nobody in Washington D.C. is going to do it for you!
🎩 The Stoic Way ✨
📰 Sources: E&E News / POLITICO Energy Summit — June 10, 2026 (Published Yesterday) | Newsmax — June 10, 2026 | ABC News 4 / The National News Desk — June 10, 2026 | KUTV Salt Lake City — May 2026 | U.S. EPA Official Website — January 2026 Roundtable | Harvard Environmental & Energy Law Program — December 2025
This is so so good and scary. “I can’t stand this place anymore,” he said. “These major tech giants will burn everything to the ground as long as they’re making a profit. They’re not interested in anything that’s going to slow them down.”
The World’s Leading Deepfake Expert No Longer Trusts His Own Eyes https://t.co/L8dil5znDy