Nordstahl @Nordstahl@qoto.org

ICE plans to hire private contractors for round-the-clock social media surveillance to track immigrants and activists. Nearly 30 contractors sift through posts, photos, and messages—to be transformed into intelligence for deportation raids and arrests. The police state is here.

ICE Wants to Build Out a 24/7 ...

If Trump and Republicans get their way, they would have ICE arrest everyone they can, throw them into immigration court, where there are no 4th Amendment protections, and the judges are hired and paid by the Justice Department.

Conceivably, the right to a speedy trial isn't guaranteed in Immigration Court, so that they could hold citizens there indefinitely without recourse.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/i.n.s._v._lopez-mendoza

#law #uspol

The cat has discovered that the monstera and its moss pole are readily climbable...

#CatsOfMastodon

Fun Fact: The White House East Wing was reportedly built partly (if not mainly) to hide an underground bunker being built at the same time. There's a long tradition of construction in Washington D.C. where obvious construction is used to hide secret construction underground.

The fact that Republicans have not officially approved any of Trump’s illegal actions, murders, theft of taxpayer funds, corporate extortion and destruction of the White House, WILL NOT relieve them from responsibility come Nuremberg time.

Watching the NYC Mayoral debate & repeating for the MAGAs and the Centrists in the back.

"No cash bail" doesn't mean "criminals are released into the streets."

It means rich people who commit violent crimes don't get bail because they have money. No cash bail ensures low income people—like Kalief Browder who suffered 3 years at Rikers for allegedly stealing a backpack—aren't imprisoned on mere accusations of non-violent crimes because they can't post bail.

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.

Trump gave $40B of Americans' money to the fascist in Argentina, $1B on Trump’s Qatar jet, $250M+ on Trump’s ballroom, $150M and increasing everyday on Trump’s golf, $520M+ on Trump's National Guard deployments & $200M on Kristi Noem’s jets - but we can’t spend a penny on lowering our healthcare or funding our government.

#usa #news

As @gottalaff.bsky.social said, "He always makes his original atrocities even worse."
He doubles down on the destruction.

"Entire East Wing of WH will be demolished “within days” ...

"Yeah, but Michelle Obama tore up the White House lawn to force us all to eat vegetables!"
In 2010 Hannity said Michelle Obama was “taking the nanny state to a new level” by “tell[ing] us what to eat” & claimed that the government will be “fining us if we use salt.” https://www.mediamatters.org/sean-hannity/right-wing-media-attack-michelle-obama-fighting-childhood-obesity

#EastWing

Trump demolishes entire East Wing of the White House to put up his vanity project
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/10/trump-demolishes-entire-east-wing-of-the-white-house-to-put-up-his-vanity-project

#EastWing #TrumpDidThis #RepublicansDidThis #GOPKakistocracy #AmericanFascistParty #NoRepublicansEverAgain #USPol

@DemocracyMattersALot

They are probably not all nazis, but they all seem pretty ok with nazis.

I’m too jaded; surprises now only make my jaw droop.

If the U.S. government shutdown continues into next week, November SNAP benefits will not go out. These are food assistance payments, usually paid monthly, for poor people. Working people will go hungry, old people will go hungry, and kids will go hungry.
It's a good time to consider donating to your local food bank.

There is a lot of surplus food around, at grocery stores and restaurants. Food banks gather, package, and distribute it to people who need food.

With a $1 donation, they can typically get $5 worth of food to a hungry person. So it's a very efficient use of your charity money.

The Philadelphia food bank last year took in about $75 million in food donations, and $30 million in cash, and turned it into 38.6 million meals. They spent about $10m on management and fundraising, and $97m on actually delivering meals. Other food bank budgets I have looked at have been similar.

A web search will get you the name of your local food bank. In Philadelphia, it's https://www.philabundance.org/

It seems weird that the big AI-related companies have billions of dollars available and that they can't give at least some of that to Wikipedia: https://www.404media.co/wikipedia-says-ai-is-causing-a-dangerous-decline-in-human-visitors/

But instead, they just seem to slosh the money around among themselves -- I'm sure @pluralistic has a nice explainer on how OpenAI promises to spend N billion dollars on Oracle stuff, and Oracle promises to buy N billion dollars of Nvidia stuff, and Nvidia promises to buy N billion dollars of OpenAI stuff...where N is so large compared with revenue and things like "the actual economy of the world".

Indeed, it seems like those spending agreements can't possibly actually work except as some kind of new kind of art: collections of spreadsheets.

(If I can chisel away at some rocks and produce something expressing human nature, surely I can create some spreadsheets that reveal insight into human nature, right?)

Anyway. It seems like it would be fitting if just a tiny slice of those billions of dollars could be siphoned off to, say, Wikipedia and the Internet Archive.

#ai #art #money #wikipedia

I don't love "nothing matters and fascists don't make mistakes" doomerism from fellow US residents but it is DEEPLY grating when it comes from people with no direct experience with the subject at hand.

"When all is said and done, the White House hopes to provide $40 billion in rescue money for Argentina. …

Trump’s economic 'policy' has no real philosophy—it just involves throwing money at people he wants to help and tariffs at people he decides to punish. There’s no other rhyme or reason to it, and now even MAGA is starting to notice."

~ Andrew Egger

#Trump #Argentina #EconomicElites #taxpayers #economy #farmers #agriculture #beef
/5

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/dont-cry-for-me-argentina-heres-40b-trump-america-first-moo

A DHS warrant seeking ChatGPT user prompts “means it’s more important than ever for OpenAI and other AI companies to think about how to limit the amount of data they collect on their users,” EFF’s Jennifer Lynch told Forbes.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2025/10/20/openai-ordered-to-unmask-writer-of-prompts/

When I talk about ICE raids at Home Depot and reference "the people who do bulk purchases every day," I am talking specifically about Latinx crews. And yes, I think they fear being tortured and deported. Maybe check yourself before automatically assuming people don't understand their own country.

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:zuuwekbztnvaql7yrztvigv7/post/3m3slz7pzyp27