Novalicious

Space is great

[Nico Perrino @NicoPerrino]

This has been a rough month for the free internet in America:

* Court losses in the Fifth and Sixth Circuits over age-verification laws
* A renewed push in Congress to restrict internet access
* Internet companies retreating from the fight, e.g., Meta on KOSA
* Growing public support for regulating the internet and AI

Much of this energy is ostensibly aimed at protecting kids. But the net effect will be to restrict and chill internet access for adults, too.

If lawmakers get their way, the internet could soon become a veritable fortress, where everyone has to verify their identity multiple times before accessing lawful content: first through their operating system, then when downloading apps, and then again when using those apps.

That would have profound consequences for privacy and free speech. I don’t think people appreciate how dramatically this could change their online experience, or the risks it poses to their civil liberties.

The internet’s early defenders — EFF, the Cypherpunks, and many others — fought to keep this medium from becoming a permissioned space controlled by governments and gatekeepers. Thirty years later, that fight is back with a vengeance.

[Justin Amash @justinamash]

Congress is scrambling right now to pass online identity checks to use the internet—just like we’re seeing in places like the UK—before anyone realizes what they’re doing.

They’re using “protecting kids” as their excuse, but it’s really about spying on and controlling Americans!

[I Dissent @DissentFu]

There is no clearer image that shows how much billionaires should not exist.

[alpha @omarsbigsister]

🚨🚨🚨
KOSA IS MOVING FORWARD IN THE HOUSE

It's part of a package called the KIDS Act, filled with digital ID and age verification and censorship.

MAKE THOSE PHONES RING!! CALL YOUR HOUSE REPRESENTATIVES ALL WEEK

202-224-3121

[Tamer Nahed @Tamer_Alnoaizy]

A very dangerous new nightmare we are living in Gaza City, and no one in the world is paying attention to it.

Days ago, the Israeli army installed huge military cranes, each about 30 meters tall, on the eastern areas it controls. These cranes are equipped with machine guns and cameras, and they fire randomly and almost continuously at tents, streets, and exposed neighborhoods.

Gaza City is extremely narrow, only 10 kilometers wide. A single crane at that height is enough to expose the entire city from east to west. Every street, every square, every tent, every house has become completely exposed. There is no place to hide, and not a single moment of safety.

In just the past two days, three people were killed by fire from these cranes. One of them was sitting quietly with his father in a small café, trying to breathe for a few minutes. Hours later, a 5year old girl was killed while playing near her home.

These cranes have turned the entire city into an open field. The latest military technologies are directed at civilians. We have become an open testing ground for their new weapons. The horror is not just in the sound… it is the constant feeling of being an exposed target at all times, where even children cannot run in the street without fear.

[Mary Maas @MaryMaa54092776]

You mean they changed 224 to 219 to sneak it through?!
Anyone involved should be charged with treason! It must be strikes. Ince again, thank you Thomas Massie!

[Israel Exposed @xIsraelExposedx]

New footage showing closeup of IDF soldier shooting a 7 month baby in the head, for fun.

This footage was obtained by B'Tselem Israeli human rights group.

[AIPAC Tracker @TrackAIPAC]

"Israeli officials and their allies in Congress and pro-Israel organizations are seeking to ensure that going forward, the Israeli prime minister and his/her officials will be functionally – and permanently – granted seats in the U.S. situation room."

[Anthony Avon .Art @AnthonyAvonArt]

So stop it maybe? Who are you warning? I can't do anything, YOU are the UN.

[Everything Price Sufferer (but especially eggs) @agraybee]

From 1966 to 2025 we dropped sterile flies over South America that ate screwworm and thus prevented them from spreading, but the le epic efficient cracked coders at DOGE thought this was a silly waste of the ~0 dollars it cost us.

[Kentucky Statesman @ky_statesman]

This is high treason.

[Tony Seruga @TonySeruga]

🎯 Deep Dive: The Quiet Coup Inside the NDAA

The Responsible Statecraft piece has put its finger on something genuinely significant — and the fact that this is happening inside a must-pass $1.15 trillion defense bill, buried at Section 224, tells you everything about how the permanent national security apparatus operates when it wants to avoid a public fight.

🏗️ What Section 224 Actually Does

This isn’t a tweak. Section 224 — titled the “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative” — is a structural rewiring of the U.S.-Israel military relationship.

The provision authorizes $150 million annually from FY2027 through FY2029, but the money is almost beside the point. What matters is the architecture it builds:

- Bilateral R&D across AI, quantum computing, autonomous systems, directed energy, cyber, biotech, counter-drone systems, and missile defense

- Co-production and joint ventures with Israeli defense firms on U.S. soil

- Licensing agreements that embed Israeli-origin intellectual property into Pentagon programs of record

- “Network integration” and “data fusion” — which means U.S. military data flowing into Israeli systems and vice versa

- Pathways from R&D straight into procurement, bypassing the normal foreign aid oversight channels

The key phrase in the legislative text: technologies are to be identified for “integration into United States systems and programs of record.” That’s not foreign aid. That’s making Israeli defense tech a backbone of the U.S. military.

🔄 The Strategic Shift: From Aid to Embedded Infrastructure

The Quincy Institute’s Steven Simon has been tracking this for months. His brief, The Disappearing Aid Check, lays out exactly what’s happening — and it’s more sophisticated than most people realize.

The current model: Israel receives Foreign Military Financing (FMF) through the State Department, voted on annually by Congress. It's visible. It's politically accountable. People can argue about it.

The new model: Phase out FMF grants and replace them with Pentagon procurement accounts, industrial partnerships, and sustainment pipelines. Same money, different door — one with vastly less transparency.

The logic, as Simon documents, is being sold under an “America First” framing: this isn’t a handout to Israel, it’s an investment in American military readiness, industrial capacity, and jobs. Israeli co-production facilities in Mississippi and Arkansas become political leverage — members of Congress protect the jobs in their districts, and the relationship becomes structurally impossible to unwind.

This is the same playbook the military-industrial complex always uses: distribute the subcontracts across as many congressional districts as possible so no one dares vote against the program. Now they’re doing it with a foreign country’s defense sector.

🕳️ The Transparency Problem

The shift from State Department-administered FMF to Pentagon procurement is the move that should alarm anyone who cares about accountability.

Under the FMF model:

- Congress votes on the aid package publicly
- The State Department provides human rights certifications
- There’s diplomatic oversight and policy conditionality
- Public debate is possible

Under the Pentagon procurement model:

- Funding moves through budget justification documents and program element descriptions
- Oversight is limited to “cost, readiness, and capability” — bureaucratic criteria
- The relationship gets evaluated like any other weapons program, not as a strategic political commitment
- No diplomatic strings attached

As the Responsible Statecraft piece notes, this would give Israel “a higher level of military-industrial integration than the U.S. has with any other country in the world” — including NATO allies. Not even the Five Eyes partners have this kind of embedded access to U.S. defense procurement.

🧬 The Legislative Genealogy

This didn’t come out of nowhere. H.R. 7540 (Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-TX) and S. 3855 (Sen. Ted Budd, R-NC) were introduced as standalone bills in February 2026 with nearly identical language. When a standalone passage looked difficult, the provisions got folded into the NDAA — the classic maneuver for legislation that can’t survive public scrutiny on its own.

The JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security of America) influence is unmistakable. Their “Partners in Production” report explicitly recommended deeper industrial integration and the addition of Israel to the U.S. National Technology and Industrial Base (NTIB). The FY2026 NDAA had already directed DoD to establish a working group to assess exactly that. Section 224 is the next logical step — and JINSA’s fingerprints are all over it.

⚠️ Why This Matters More Than the Dollar Figure

$150 million a year is a rounding error in a $1.15 trillion defense bill. But the institutional architecture this creates is permanent.

Once Israeli firms are embedded in U.S. supply chains, once Israeli-origin IP is inside Pentagon programs of record, once U.S. and Israeli military data networks are fused — disentanglement becomes economically and institutionally impossible. You can’t just stop the aid check. You’d have to rip apart procurement programs, break contracts, and rebuild supply chains.

That’s the point. This is designed to make the relationship irreversible — at precisely the moment when a growing number of Americans are questioning unconditional support for Israel’s actions in the region.

The traditional Israel lobby works through campaign contributions and media influence. This is more sophisticated: it works through the defense procurement bureaucracy itself, creating material interests that guarantee political support regardless of public opinion.

🗳️ What Happens Next

The House Armed Services Committee markup is scheduled for June 4, 2026. After that, the bill moves to the full House, then reconciliation with the Senate version.

Section 224 is currently in the base text — meaning it was put there by committee leadership before amendments or broader debate. That’s how the most consequential provisions get through: bury them in the chairman’s mark, count on the must-pass nature of the NDAA, and dare anyone to hold up the entire defense budget over one section.

Members who want to stop this have a narrow window: force a floor amendment to strike Section 224, or demand recorded votes that put colleagues on the record supporting the fusion of U.S. and Israeli militaries. The question is whether anyone has the stomach for that fight when the pro-Israel apparatus in both parties remains largely unchallenged.

The Responsible Statecraft piece is right to flag this. The quiet ones are always the ones that matter most.

[koa🩴 @Kokotuo__]

no AI, just airbrush for every individual strokes and love for the wonder of space 💙

[Echo1905 @justcallmeEcho0]

#oneshotgame

[sbarky @sbarky38]

she fall 🥺

[Numtuh (working on smth rn) @I_Hate_Calendar]

Niko from 3 to 26 years old, which one is your favorite ❓

[not_cyotee @NCyotee]

In the west there's a common tradition of the noble rogue.

Robin Hood, Guy Fawkes, Billy the Kid.

It's a hold over for dealing tyrannical monarchs in Europe. Continued into the US. Adapted to being a frontier hero.

That's why figures like The Monkey King translates well. Westerners understand a hero that arrogantly scoffs at the ruling power and lives by their own wits and resourcefulness.

[キタ @xaqwsx]

長い物が積める軽トラックのアイデア

[madi ☠︎ @ASTR0ZOMBIEZ]

this is def becoming a poster in my room