With ICE and CBP roaming the streets, united community action is more important than ever right now – from local mutual aid groups to school safety patrols. Known for its privacy features and end-to-end encryption, the Signal messaging app has become a popular platform for organizing these community groups. Signal can be a great tool […]
The day after the second general strike in Minneapolis, the labor unions of Portland, Oregon, marched in solidarity. It was the warmest day that Portland had seen in a while, with sun peeking out from the clouds here and there. Many people had brought their entire families; not just older children, but toddlers in strollers […]
The new round, the biggest in the Alphabet unit’s history, values the company at $126 billion — with much of it coming from its parent.
The Department of Justice has released more of its records on self-described “science philanthropist” and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Other than Epstein, they’ve also brought an intense focus on the many powerful people who associated and corresponded with him, including Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Google cofounder Sergey Brin, and President Donald Trump. There’s also […]
After weeks of flooding the internet with nonconsensual sexual deepfakes, X has finally reined in Elon Musk’s rogue chatbot Grok. Musk claims Grok obeys local laws and refuses to produce anything illegal – except it hasn’t and it can. My testing shows Grok still readily undresses men and is still churning out intimate images on […]
This week’s Current Climate newsletter also looks at Indiana’s plan to get rare earths from coal waste and how batteries keep power flowing in Texas
After protests broke out in early January, the Iranian regime shut down the internet, starting the longest blackout in Iranian history. Despite this attempt to stop the protests from spreading, they did not stop. Still, the internet shutdown slowed down the spread of information both inside and outside Iran. Behind the heavily policed borders and […]
It was too cold to take off my mittens and check Google Maps so I put my faith in the trickle of bundled-up people ahead of me. All of them were carrying signs and wearing whistles around their necks on top of layers and layers of winter clothing. At first there were dozens of us […]
The Senate voted on Friday evening to pass the federal budget, funding everything except for one entity: the Department of Homeland Security, which was given a two-week funding extension in order to negotiate new guardrails around Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). If no agreement is reached, DHS funding will lapse and the department will face […]
Where’s the Trump phone? We’re going to keep talking about it every week. We’ve reached out, as usual, to ask about the Trump phone’s whereabouts. As usual, we’re still waiting for a response. In the meantime, I finally got a reply from a company exec. After months – months – of emailing various official Trump […]