nycfugee

[Spencer Hakimian @SpencerHakimian]

8D Chess

[nycfugee @nycfugee]

@LeylaKuni Art Institute not getting enough love here. One of the best museums (from a new yorker) and you can do your ferris bueller thing.

[AI Panda @AIPandaX]

A guy was ready to drop $1,500 on a new OLED TV because his 3-year-old Smart TV was freezing up and took 5 seconds just to respond to the remote.

He unplugged it. Deleted old apps. Cleared the cache. The lag kept coming back.

He went to Best Buy to get a replacement.

The home theater installer in the blue shirt stopped him: "Before you spend a grand, let me show you something."

He grabbed a remote and shook his head.

"There are 8 hidden tracking settings throttling your TV's processor right now. Manufacturers turn them all on by default. Nobody tells you they exist. Let's fix this."

Here's what he showed him in the next 8 minutes. 🧵

[Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski]

Incredible. Scotland puts a wind turbine near Trump’s golf course in Aberdeen 20 years ago. He sues and loses. Then his resulting hatred of wind turbines now ends up with the US Secretaries of Defense & Interior fabricating absurd lies to justify killing wind energy in the US.

[Shakti Arunachalam @shaktivail]

This morning I was struck from behind by an illegal motorbike while running on the pedestrian path of the Williamsburg Bridge. The rider crashed into me, looked right at me, got back on, and fled.

I'll recover. The next person might not.

I looked for police for 30 minutes, then called 911 at 8:34am. NYPD arrived 76 minutes later and said they couldn't file a report because the bridge "wasn't their precinct." Then they left.

Two weeks ago, two people were killed almost exactly this way on the Queensboro Bridge - an illegal high-speed scooter on a path never built for motor vehicles. Every rush hour, thousands of us walk and run these bridges assuming we're safe from motorbikes. We're not, and no one will own the problem.

It's fixable: regular bridge enforcement, dedicated patrols, and automated camera enforcement.

@ZohranKMamdani @NYC_DOT @NYPDnews - will your administration act before someone doesn't get to walk away?

@StreetsblogNYC @TransAlt @Gothamist

[Occupy Democrats @OccupyDemocrats]

BREAKING: Rep. Ted Lieu DESTROYS Trump's Agriculture Secretary over her insane lie that Joe Biden is to blame for the screwworm outbreak — which is a direct result of DOGE cuts!

Democrats are done playing nice with these liars...

"Dear@SecRollins: You keep getting fact checked for your lies," the congressman wrote on X. "It’s your Administration that cut the Screwworm programs. Also, the life cycle of a Screwworm is 14 to 54 days. The trump Administration has been in office over 500 days. If you can’t stop lying, you need to resign."

Lieu was reacting to a video of Rollins insisting that this new screwworm problem traces "back to the last administration" and Biden's nonexistent "open border policy."

This is yet another blatant example of the Trump administration coming into power, breaking something that they don't understand, and then blaming Biden for the consequences. They are pathologically incapable of taking responsibility for any of their blunders.

"Dear @SecRollins: Did the Screwworm come from the trump Administration’s beef import plan with Argentina?" Lieu wrote in a followup post, boosting a report that Trump signed a trade deal with Argentina that permitted "unrestricted beef imports" from that country despite its screwworm problem.

Screwworms, which devour tissue and can kill cattle, have been detected in a growing number of calves in Texas. One case has been discovered in a dog. The pest had been considered eradicated in the United States for decades, but under Elon Musk's tenure at DOGE, the government slashed preventive measures and funding aimed at hampering the spread of the creature.

Before those cuts, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), spent tax dollars on monitoring and containing the spread of screwworm in Central America. It was one of the most worthwhile government investments on the books, because it helped stop destructive outbreaks like the one we're currently witnessing.

"Trump GUTTED funding for screwworm detection and fired 25 percent of workers whose job it was to monitor the disease," Congressman Shri Thanedar wrote on X.

We know who's to blame here and it's not Joe Biden. It's Donald Trump and Elon Musk, ignorant oligarchs who were so hellbent on slashing spending to pay for more tax cuts for the obscenely rich, that they didn't care what they destroyed in the process.

Please ❤️ and share to demand a full investigation into DOGE!

[Anthony Scaramucci @Scaramucci]

Trump said something outside a press gaggle that I don’t think enough people caught.

A reporter called him out on the corruption. He gave three responses.

1. I have the right to do it.
2. He’s not stealing that much. A billion or two billion dollars. Not that much money. Classic Trump.
3. People don’t care.

That’s the permission structure. Our collective apathy is what they’re using to justify everything happening in Washington right now.

Please stand up and prove him wrong.

[Lukas Ekwueme @ekwufinance]

The world is hitting tank‑bottom oil inventories by September.

Oil inventories work like blood in the human body: you can donate a bit, but below a certain level your blood pressure tanks and organs start failing. You don’t die because blood hits zero, you die because circulation collapses

That’s where we are with oil. We began the year with more than 8 billion barrels in storage, yet only around 10% was actually usable without pushing the system into stress... that safety margin has now been drawn down.

The next stage is dropping to operational floor levels, where pipelines and refineries start failing – that’s the real tank bottom.

[Gigi @Gigi_chienergy]

The screwworm program wasn't charity, it was a $10 million fence that kept a billion-dollar problem from eating our own livestock alive. That's the thing with most USAID funding: it looks like "aid," but it's really cheap self-defense. Solve a problem there, and it never lands on our doorstep. But sure, let a bunch of guys who can't define DEI without Googling take a chainsaw to it. They didn't stop to ask, "Will this cut hurt us too?" Unless that's the point, burn it all down and call it efficiency.

As usual our inept agriculture secretary, blaming the Biden administration as usual, instead of offering a solution to the problem they created.

Texan here

A screwworm infestation is a nightmare for cattle, causing horrific wounds and economic devastation. For Texas, the situation has escalated dramatically in the last 24 hours with the first confirmed case of New World Screwworm (NWS) in over 60 years! This could have been avoided!

Infested animal can kill a cow in less than two weeks.

Treatment is extremely difficult and time-consuming, requiring the painful removal of every visible larva and deep disinfection of the wound. Ranchers no longer have much experience with this labor-intensive process, and there is currently no approved pharmaceutical treatment to make it easier.

This has triggered a massive economic threat. The USDA estimates that a widespread outbreak would drain an astonishing $1.8 billion from the Texas economy alone in livestock deaths, labor, and medication expenses.

How will this affect you? Tightening supplies will drive already high beef prices higher.

[TheFrenchie @ML3democrats]

Remember when they said Zelensky desecrated the sanctity of the White House by not wearing a suit

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

The Trump administration is sending ships to rip 900 ocean sensors out of the Atlantic and Pacific — and Congress already told them twice they couldn't do it.**
They're doing it anyway.

[Craft Gallery @5min__crafts]

These ancient knot - tying methods

[Alex Veremeyenko @alex_verem]

Let me trace the timeline here because nobody's connecting it.

Step 1: Scrape the entire internet. Every book, every article, every conversation, every piece of art, every forum post. Do it without asking. Do it without paying.

Step 2: Train a model on all of it. Call it "artificial intelligence."

Step 3: Go to BlackRock's Infrastructure Summit and announce: "We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter."

Step 3 is where you sell people's own knowledge back to them. On a meter.

They took the collective output of human thought, compressed it into a model, and now they want to charge you by the token to access a version of what you and everyone you know already created.

One Reddit user put it perfectly: "They stole all this data from us, the people, our life's work, creativity, art, by devouring the internet and blowing through all copyright laws. Now they want to sell it back to us in the form of a utility."

Imagine if someone photocopied every book in the public library, burned the library down, and then opened a subscription service for the copies.

That's the metered intelligence business model.

And they're pitching it to infrastructure investors as though they invented water.

[Middle Eastern Affairs @OpsHQs]

🚨Congressman Thomas Massie dropped the bombshell everyone was waiting for: He revealed Epstein's hidden list and exposed Kash Patel for lying to the American people. Massie says: 'The FBI has files with the names of 20 other men involved with Epstein in the sex trafficking network, including a high-ranking government official.'"

[Sammi🦋 @StoriesBySammi]

Over a million acres of pristine wilderness lakes in Minnesota.

The most visited canoe country in America.

Generations of families have paddled it, fished it, camped it.

The Senate just sold it out outright.

They called it "America First."

Then handed it to a Chilean billionaire — so his company can ship the copper to China.

The Senate voted 50-49 to gut 20 years of Boundary Waters mining protections.

Here's the deal they made.

A Chilean billionaire's company digs the mine.

America can't smelt the copper — we don't have the capacity.

So the ore ships to China.

China processes it.

Sells it on the world market.

Chile keeps the profits.

Minnesotans don't even get the jobs.

Minnesota keeps the pollution.

And Americans get to buy it back from China at full market price.

This same company has a documented history at their Chilean mines: pipeline spills, regulatory fines, and locals fighting back for years.

They paid a former Trump Interior Secretary $380K.

The protection died by one vote.

Here's exactly how it happened — and who made it happen.

Who do YOU think this mine actually serves?

#DemsUnited

[Rep. Mike Levin @RepMikeLevin]

Not enough people are talking about this.

A Florida airport was renamed after Donald Trump. He walked away with the trademark, the licensing rights, and a deal that lets him profit off every piece of merchandise sold there.

But the story of how he got it is even worse.

County staff told commissioners that rejecting the name change would put state transportation funding at risk. DeSantis has already removed state attorneys and school board members who dared to cross him. That is the reality the Democratic commissioner who cast the deciding vote was living in when she made her choice: hand Donald Trump control of a public airport or watch Florida Republicans strip funding from the very people she was elected to represent.

That is absolutely insane.

Florida Republicans handed Trump a money machine and called it a naming rights deal, and the people of Palm Beach County never got a say in any of it.
https://t.co/M2nm9qFXc8

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

This New York Times piece is worth your time. Here’s what is happening, as simply as I can put it.

Back in January, Trump sued the IRS, an agency he controls, demanding $10 billion over the leak of his tax returns a number of years ago.

IRS lawyers did their jobs. They wrote a memo laying out the defenses that could beat the suit, including the fact that Trump filed too late. His own lawyer was in court when the leaker pleaded guilty in October 2023, more than two years before Trump sued.

The Justice Department never showed up to court. Never argued back. Never used the defenses sitting on their desk.

The judge got suspicious and ordered both sides to explain whether they were actually opposing each other or just colluding. The day before that brief was due, Trump dropped the suit.

Same day, his Justice Department announced a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded “anti-weaponization fund.” 

Trump gets a formal apology. The IRS agrees to drop any audits of him and his family, even though a 2024 Times report found a loss in an ongoing audit could cost him over $100 million.

The acting Attorney General, Trump’s former criminal defense attorney, picks the five commissioners who decide who gets paid. Trump can fire any of them. Proud Boys and Oath Keepers are not ruled out.

This is the most corrupt thing I’ve ever seen from an American president.

Where in the hell are my Republican colleagues?

https://t.co/La0nlLuz1r

[billy eichner @billyeichner]

🚨 NEW BILLY ON THE STREET 🚨

My audio memoir BILLY ON BILLY is out now.

[Jed Shugerman @jedshug]

Any DOJ settlement that gives the President a dollar -- or a direct material benefit -- is a flagrant violation of the Presidential Emoluments Clause:

"The President shall not receive ... any other Emolument from the United States, or any of [the states]." Art II, S.1, cl. 7.

[regular guy @regularguyguns]

Maybe you wonder why I, a mere gun blog, makes a big deal about Flock and similar tech?

OK here’s a real world situation that can easily happen and has likely happened.

Unfortunately to drive on public roads without getting hassled by the cops, your car needs a license plate. That’s tied to you, the owner of the vehicle.

Flock isn’t just a traffic camera, it’s an AI/ML enabled (wait for it) flock of cameras that transmit all their video and audio to the mothership. Not a government server somewhere but, to keep it simple, a big giant cloud computer instance owned and run by Flock, the company.

Government users, as well as Flock employees here in the US and overseas, can log in and query the system based on license plate number or even vehicle description and get a full history of that vehicle’s movements throughout the Flock network over multiple jurisdictions. Someone in New York can track a car from Armonk all the way to Homestead FL if they feel like it from the comfort of their desk.

On a daily level, someone can get a pretty accurate picture of someone’s life just by monitoring their movements via Flock. And I’m using this example to rattle the cage of the “back the blue unconditionally” crowd in 2A.

OK - your car has license plate ABC 123 - and Flock knows this. Someone can enter your tag in Flock and see what you are doing on a daily basis. You leave your home where the neighborhood is under the Flock panopticon. Flock sees you drive to Dunkin’ on Main Street, then you drop your kid off at XYZ Daycare. Then you go to work at the local IT consulting firm in ZZZ industrial park. You go pick up a quick deli sandwich for lunch at Food Lion. You go back to work. On the way home you stop off at Bob’s Guns, and stay for 20 minutes while buying some ammo. Then you go home. Everywhere there’s a Flock camera.

Now Flock knows the following about you:

- You live at 123 Wisteria Lane
- Your kid is in daycare (means he’s likely under 5)
- You work at ZZZ
- You go cheap on lunch
- You own at least one gun

Your license plate is tied to you so they now have your name and assumed-to-be-private details of your life, like that you are armed.

On the reverse of that, the Flock camera outside of Bob’s Guns has been recording the plates of everyone going into the parking lot. No need for a firearms registry when Flock is doing the work.

All of this is done without a warrant and the data is available to anyone with a certain level of access to the system, whether it’s a cop, or a Flock technician in the Philippines. FYI Flock uses overseas contractors for support and AI annotation.

The 2018 Carpenter decision at SCOTUS ruled that pervasive surveillance where one can divine private details of someone’s life is a 4th Amendment violation in absence of a specific warrant.

Flock is illegal, unconstitutional and immoral.

And a danger to everyone, not just gun owners.