The Death of the Mind

It’s pretty much understood that filming police is protected by the First Amendment. Even in jurisdictions where the highest courts have yet to hand down a definitive decision, police departments have made it clear to officers that filming cops isn’t a crime. This has followed years of jurisprudence and laws being repealed/rewritten to reflect this position — something that has, years after it became necessary, prevented police from abusing wiretapping laws to arrest people for “nonconsensual” recordings of officers performing their public duties in public.
The Supreme Court has yet to issue a bright line ruling on an issue that has been the subject of tons of litigation since the advent of smartphones. Despite this, it’s been…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/03/25/arizona-legislators-want-to-make-it-illegal-for-people-to-record-cops-from-whatever-cops-decide-is-8-feet-away/

The smallest “tactical nuclear weapons” today are about the same power
as the Hiroshima bomb, which killed about 150,000 people soon and more
later.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://stallman.org/archives/2022-jan-apr.html#24_March_2022_(Tactical_nuclear_weapons)

Union of Concerned Scientists: if the EPA shuts its web archive, that will harm science and accountability.

Can anyone find a petition campaign to change the EPA’s decision?

External feed Read More at the Source: https://stallman.org/archives/2022-jan-apr.html#22_March_2022_(EPA_shutting_down_its_web_archive)

The branding of Vladimir Putin as a war criminal by Joe Biden, who lobbied for the Iraq war and staunchly supported the 20 years of carnage in the Middle East, is one more example of the hypocritical moral posturing sweeping across the United States. It is unclear how anyone would try Putin for war crimes More

The post The Lie of American Innocence appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/03/22/the-lie-of-american-innocence/

A completely paralyzed man has been able to communicate entire sentences using a device that records his brain activity. The man was able to train his mind to use the device, which was implanted in his brain, to ask for massages, soup, and beer, and to watch films with his son. It is the first time a completely locked-in person—someone who is conscious and cognitively able but completely paralyzed— has been able to communicate in this way, say the researchers behind the work. Brain-computer interfaces record the electrical signals inside a person’s brain and convert them to commands that control a device. In recent years, BCIs have enabled partially paralyzed people to control prosthetic limbs or…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/03/22/1047664/locked-in-patient-bci-communicate-in-sentences/

When The Onion’s editorial board convened to discuss the tumultuous events of the previous month, one conclusion became evident: The world stands at a crossroads. Two visions of our collective future stand before us: On one side is a free and enlightened society, dedicated to the principles of openness,…

Read more…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.theonion.com/in-defense-of-mass-censorship-1848673776

The best election law bill in Congress is HB 3863, which Virginia Congressman Donald Beyer introduced on June 11, 2021. It would convert most U.S. House elections to the Single Transferable Vote system, and would create much larger U.S. House districts. If enacted, it would substantially ease the gerrymandering problem. Unfortunately, it has not gained any co-sponsors other than the original seven co-sponsors.
Millions of dollars are being spent by wealthy individuals to promote state initiatives to abolish partisan primaries and create top-four or top-five systems. It is unfortunate that those same individuals aren’t instead promoting HR 3863.
The original co-sponsors are Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Jim Cooper of Tennessee, Ro Khanna of California, Jim McGovern of Massachusetts,…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://ballot-access.org/2022/03/18/congressional-bill-for-proportional-representation-has-gained-no-co-sponsors-since-june-14-2021/

It still amazes me how unwilling many copyright system supporters are to admit that copyright is regularly used for actual censorship, using the power of the law to suppress speech. The latest example is particularly galling. Over the weekend, a somewhat ridiculous video went viral of a Tesla doing a jump over a hill in Echo Park, and then losing control, smashing into garbage cans and, eventually, a parked car. YouTuber Alex Choi was there and had a whole video about the incident, which I’m not going to link to for reasons I’ll explain down below.
Now I should note that in his video, Choi emphasizes repeatedly that he didn’t know the people in the jumping Tesla,…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/03/21/copyright-as-censorship-youtuber-pulls-down-gofundme-video-to-help-victim-of-viral-youtube-jumping-tesla-stunt/

Fish 3.4 is out as the newest version of this popular shell particularly among enthusiasts/hobbyists…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Fish-3.4-Shell

Western media have reported that Russia’s military deliberately attacked the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama theater in Mariupol, Ukraine, claiming that it was filled with civilians and marked with signs reading “children” on its grounds.
The supposed bombing took place just as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appealed to US Congress for a no fly zone, fueling the chorus for direct military confrontation with Russia and apparently inspiring President Joseph Biden to brand Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, as a “war criminal.”
A closer look reveals that local residents in Mariupol had warned three days before the March 16 incident that the theater would be the site of a false flag attack launched by the openly neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://popularresistance.org/was-bombing-of-mariupol-theater-staged-by-ukrainian-azov-extremists-to-trigger-nato-intervention/