wepon | Link Roundup November 2022

America’s Throwaway Spies

As his mind raced, Hosseini even wondered whether the CIA itself had sold him out. Rather than betrayal, Hosseini was the victim of CIA negligence, a year-long Reuters investigation into the agency’s handling of its informants found. A faulty CIA covert communications system made it easy for Iranian intelligence to identify and capture him. Jailed for nearly a decade and speaking out for the first time, Hosseini said he never heard from the agency again, even after he was released in 2019. The CIA declined to comment on Hosseini’s account.

How to Disable Ad ID Tracking on iOS and Android, and Why You Should Do It Now

The ad identifier - aka “IDFA” on iOS, or “AAID” on Android - is the key that enables most third-party tracking on mobile devices. Disabling it will make it substantially harder for advertisers and data brokers to track and profile you, and will limit the amount of your personal information up for sale.

Humans were drinking milk before they could digest it

That makes this the earliest known direct evidence for dairy consumption in Africa, and perhaps the world. The research also shows dairying in Africa goes back just as far as it does in Europe—perhaps longer. That undercuts a myth, propagated by white supremacists, that lactase persistence and milk drinking are somehow associated with white Europeans.

Twitter asks some laid off workers to come back, Bloomberg reports

Some of those who are being asked to return were laid off by mistake. Others were let go before management realized that their work and experience may be necessary to build the new features Musk envisions, the report said citing people familiar with the moves.

Homeland Security Admits It Tried to Manufacture Fake Terrorists for Trump

The report describes attempts by top officials to link protesters to an imaginary terrorist plot in an apparent effort to boost Trump’s reelection odds, raising concerns now about the ability of a sitting president to co-opt billions of dollars’ worth of domestic intelligence assets for their own political gain. DHS analysts recounted orders to generate evidence of financial ties between protesters in custody; an effort that, had they not failed, would have seemingly served to legitimize President Trump’s false claims about “Antifa,” an “organization” that even his most loyal intelligence officers failed to drum up proof ever existed.

Elon Musk has discussed putting all of Twitter behind a paywall

Some employees are nervous that if Twitter can’t get them to return voluntarily, the company will formally rescind the notice they received Friday laying them off. Under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, businesses with more than 100 full-time employees are required to give 60 days notice if they lay off 33 percent or more of the staff. At Twitter, that notice included a promise to pay people for the next 60 days and give them a month of severance. Now workers fear that if they refuse to return voluntarily, Twitter will fire them for abandoning their jobs, depriving them of what otherwise would have been three months’ pay.

‘Slavery by any name is wrong’: the push to end forced labor in prisons

A report published by the American Civil Liberties Union in June 2022 found about 800,000 prisoners out of the 1.2 million in state and federal prisons are forced to work, generating a conservative estimate of $11bn annually in goods and services while average wages range from 13 cents to 52 cents per hour. Five states – Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas – force prisoners to work without pay. The report concluded that the labor conditions of US prisoners violate fundamental human rights to life and dignity.

Why Are In-Custody Deaths Surging at Houston’s Harris County Jail?

Still, 22 people are already officially reported to have died while in Harris County Jail custody so far this year––a devastating figure. The last time death numbers at the jail reached this level was in 2006, when 22 people died over the course of a full calendar year. Most of the individuals who have died this year were jailed because they couldn’t afford to pay cash bail, including some who remain officially uncounted because they were only released on personal bonds when their deaths became imminent. This is a commonly used tactic––in Texas and elsewhere—by which law enforcement agencies evade requirements for reporting deaths for which they may be responsible.

Graduate workers across University of California system to strike for better pay

Graduate workers including teaching assistants and student researchers, academic researchers and postdoctoral scholars in the University of California system have voted to authorize a strike which could be the largest in higher education history in the US.

How an urban myth about litter boxes in schools became a GOP talking point

The Jefferson County school district disputed Ganahl’s claims and said its dress code prohibits costumes at school. The district — where Columbine High School is located — has been stocking classrooms with small amounts of cat litter since 2017, but as part of “go buckets” that contain emergency supplies in case students are locked in a classroom during a shooting. The buckets also contain candy for diabetic students, a map of the school, flashlights, wet wipes and first aid items.

Colorado Schools Issuing Buckets, Kitty Litter For Students to Go to the Bathroom During Lockdowns, School Shootings

A few years ago, emergency management director John McDonald, a lockdown at a high school went on for nearly five hours. Students and teachers resorted to using closets and wastebaskets as toilets.

Elon Musk gives ultimatum to Twitter employees: Do ‘extremely hardcore’ work or get out

During testimony in a Delaware trial over his Tesla pay package on Wednesday, Musk said that he expects the “fundamental organizational restructuring” at Twitter to be finished by the end of this week. He added that while he has spent the “lion’s share” of his time at Twitter rather than his other companies in the past few weeks, he doesn’t expect that to be the case forever.

‘This ain’t Thunder Road’: N.J.’s highway safety messages were too sassy for the feds

As of Wednesday afternoon, messages such as “Get your head out of your apps” and “mash potatoes — not your head” are no longer visible on the New Jersey Department of Transportation’s network of 215 permanent digital alert signs throughout the state. Similar messages have been used in other states, including Utah, Pennsylvania, Delaware, California, and Tennessee.

John Henry and the Divinity of Labor

That shoemaker song always gutted me, probably because it reminded me of the way my dad bounced from factory-to-factory as they shuttered in the mass extinction of the 1990s. Now, I wonder why the shoemaker losing his livelihood cut as deep as John Henry losing his life? One keeps his dignity but dies, the other loses his but lives. The message is clear: Losing your job is a tragedy; dying for it is “service to others.”

Fear of a Black Hobbit

Prominent genre brands like Star Wars, or Marvel, or Lord of the Rings also have the difficult task of creating content for children while still satisfying their middle-aged stalwarts, whose nostalgia is ultimately insatiable because they cannot look upon novel material with the same emotional intensity they felt as children. Many older fans are convinced they can’t recapture that intensity only because the producers themselves have failed to create stories of the same fundamental quality, when in reality they have simply outgrown the sentiment they are chasing. These campaigns seek to convince this audience that the feeling they are pursuing can be recaptured, if only those making popular art would reject modern progressive dogma—thus creating a well of cultural resentment they can manipulate for political purposes.

Thousands were released from prison during covid. The results are shocking.

The federal Cares Act home confinement program should inspire similar programs across the country. Virtually all states have programs available to release elderly or very sick people from prison, but they are hardly used and should be expanded. States should also give people serving the longest sentences a chance to go back to court after 10 or 15 years and prove that they have changed and can be safely released.

Released during COVID, some people are sent back to prison with little or no warning

This week, the Bureau of Prisons told NPR that 442 people who were released during the pandemic have now returned to prison. Only 17 people out of more than 11,000 who were released committed new crimes, mostly drug related ones, while they were out. More than half, some 230 people including Eva Cardoza, got sent back for alleged alcohol or drug use. Other cases involved technical violations.

University quietly removes meal voucher program for FGLI students staying on campus for Thanksgiving

The Yale College Dean’s Office offered Thanksgiving break meal vouchers for students who meet 100 percent demonstrated need for the first time in 2021. These vouchers, which were redeemed in-person, could then be applied toward meals obtained from certain food delivery services outside of Yale. Yale did not release a formal statement informing students that the policy would be changed this year. Instead, students found out about the University not offering vouchers by word of mouth, from Twitter, from their FGLI Community Initiative ambassadors and from Jorge Anaya ’19, the Assistant Director of the Student Engagement Initiative at the Yale College Dean’s Office.

Billionaires like Elon Musk want to save civilization by having tons of genetically superior kids. Inside the movement to take 'control of human evolution.'

While pronatalism is often associated with religious extremism, the version now trending in this community has more in common with dystopian sci-fi. The Collinses, who identify as secular Calvinists, are particularly drawn to the tenet of predestination, which suggests that certain people are chosen to be superior on earth and that free will is an illusion. They believe pronatalism is a natural extension of the philosophical movements sweeping tech hubs like the Silicon Hills of Austin, Texas. Our conversations frequently return to transhumanism (efforts to merge human and machine capabilities to create superior beings), longtermism (a philosophy that argues the true cost of human extinction wouldn't be the death of billions today but the preemptive loss of trillions, or more, unborn future people), and effective altruism (or EA, a philanthropic system currently focused on preventing artificial intelligence from wiping out the human population).

Girls Do What They Have To Do To Survive: Illuminating Methods used by Girls in the Sex Trade and Street Economy to Fight Back and Heal

We were surprised by the number of girls who are being denied help from various institutions who claimed to be for, and to help, girls in the sex trade. Some examples of institutions denying girls help are police, hospitals, and especially social service agencies.

Biden Extends Student Loan Payment Pause To No Later Than June 2023

The Biden administration on Tuesday extended the student loan payment pause until no later than June 30, 2023. Interest rates on federal students will also remain set at 0% during this time.