Elon’s comment to spin up Amazon competitor isn’t a fluke… Amazon has major problems…
Amazon has become a Chinese flea market operating inside an American distribution empire… 55.9% of its top 10,000 sellers are now China based, while American entrepreneurs invest in developing products, building brands, proving demand and creating the very markets that overseas competitors move in to capture…
The pattern is well documented… an American inventor develops something successful, Chinese knockoffs flood the marketplace, prices collapse, original listings get hijacked, and fraudulent intellectual property complaints can even force legitimate sellers offline…
Forearm Forklift watched revenue and American jobs disappear, Drop Stop fought Chinese made patent infringement, PopSockets took its counterfeit problems to Congress, and federal investigations have exposed fraudulent takedowns and insiders manipulating seller accounts…
All inside a marketplace where Amazon controls visibility, advertising, enforcement and access to the customer, collecting $172 billion in seller services and another $68 billion in advertising revenue annually…
Now Elon Musk suggests building an Amazon competitor after reports of Amazon blocking Grok purchasing bots… and suddenly this connects directly into the larger architecture I’ve been mapping around American manufacturing, tariffs, the elimination of de minimis exemptions, autonomous logistics, alternative financial rails and Super Intelligence (SI)…
Imagine verified American manufacturers connected directly to consumers through intelligent purchasing agents that authenticate product origins, protect intellectual property, compare actual value and bypass the machinery that allows innovators to be displaced inside their own marketplace…
With X potentially providing discovery, Grok providing intelligence and an entirely new commerce network connecting production, payments and delivery…
The implications reach far beyond Amazon… China has leveraged America’s retail infrastructure to reach American consumers at extraordinary scale, while American innovators have become increasingly dependent on the same platform that exposes them to imitation and marketplace abuse…
I’ve been mapping the rebuilding of America’s sovereign industrial stack from production through distribution… Musk’s comment opens another potential front, connecting that machinery directly to the American household…
America creates the product… the next battle is over who controls the marketplace, the purchasing decision and ultimately the economic value of American innovation…
President Trump announced on Truth Social that the Fort Hood terrorist will still be executed by firing squad as scheduled, but it will not be livestreamed:
Nidal Malik Hasan, a former U.S. Army Major turned traitor, is a very bad and evil man, who killed 13 people, including a pregnant soldier, who died, along with her unborn son, and injured, very seriously, 32 more innocent people. Barack Hussein Obama’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) intercepted electronic communications between Hasan and the radical Yemeni-American cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki. When reviewed by his FBI terrorism task force, investigators concluded that Hasan’s emails were not a threat. This assessment of the Obama Administration’s actions was later considered to be a key intelligence failure.
With all of that being said, I think streaming the execution for all to see might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan but, many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device. He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed. That said, the execution may be viewed in person by the immediate families of the victims, if they so choose. They deserve to witness JUSTICE! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP
This is breaking and will be updated if necessary.
Above the rain-soaked streets of Warsaw, the observation deck of the Varso tower overlooks Joseph Stalin’s gift to Poland that has divided opinion for decades.
For some, the Soviet-era Palace of Culture and Science is a drunk confectioner’s nightmare; standing as a relic of oppression that should have been demolished. For others, it is an icon on the skyline and a monumental warning from history.
For the managers of the Varso – completed four years ago, as the tallest building in the EU – with its 310m-high spire rising symbolically above its Stalinist neighbour, it is a waypoint on Poland’s rapid path to economic prosperity.
“We look down on it,” says Cezary Błaszczyk, the managing director of HB Reavis in Poland, which owns the tower, gesturing at the palace opposite. A few months ago a slackline walker traversed the 500m gap between the buildings. “It was a symbolic walk from the past to the future,” says his colleague Natalia Kasperska.
“Since we are higher and taller than the Palace of Culture, we treat it as: ‘We got over communism, and now we are a country with a strong economy,’” Błaszczyk says.
Over the four decades since regaining its independence from Soviet-dominated rule, Poland has been transformed. Excluding oil-exporting states and financial hubs, incomes have converged with western levels at the fastest rate in the world; from 40% of the EU average in the mid-1990s to 81% last year.
National income surpassed $1tn (£755bn) last year, ranking Poland among the world’s 20 largest economies. International Monetary Fund projections show income per capita will soon overtake Japan and Spain.
“Four decades ago, we were in – excuse my English – deep, deep shit,” says Marcin Bosacki, the Polish deputy foreign minister.
Stirring a cup of tea and lemon in his opulent Warsaw office, he recalls queueing after school in the 1980s for up to five hours to buy butter and meat as the communist government imposed martial law.
However, the Gdańsk shipworkers’ Solidarność movement and Pope John Paul II’s 1979 pilgrimage to his home country paved the way for Poland’s transition to democracy in 1990 and an “economic miracle”. Integration with western institutions, including Nato in 1999 and EU accession in 2004, also helped.
For years, many Poles chose to emigrate to earn more abroad, in a brain drain accelerated by EU membership. Polish plumbers became shorthand in Britain for foreign labour amid the political battles over EU freedom of movement before the Brexit vote.
Now Britons are increasingly likely to have their taps fixed by Romanians and Bulgarians, after a surge in the number of Polish nationals leaving. In each year since 2021, when Brexit was enacted after a year-long transition period, twice as many Poles left the UK than arrived.
Meanwhile, Germany recorded more non-Germans moving to Poland in 2024 than heading in the opposite direction for the first time on record.
On the Varso’s 44th floor, in the Warsaw practice of Foster + Partners, Jedrzej Kolesinski and Krzysztof Gornicki are among those returnees. Both moved to London in their 20s to work in the British architecture firm’s head office – where they led the design team behind the tower they now occupy.
Gornicki says Poland has changed dramatically in the years he was away. He always wanted to return to contribute to the country, and raising a family near his parents in a safe, green city that is more affordable than London also has its plus points. Now the pair are working to design Warsaw’s new airport – the biggest greenfield infrastructure project in Europe.
“You can work globally from one location. In London we worked on projects from North America to Asia … right now, we’re doing the same thing, just from Warsaw.”
On the streets below the Varso, the sights and sounds of progress are unmistakable. Modern electric trams glide past skyscrapers, there are cranes and construction work, giant advertising boards, and dockless e-scooters.
The traditional working-class bar mleczny(milk bars) still do a roaring trade serving beetroot soup and Polish dumplings. But at the oldest, Prasowy, orders are taken on a digital touchscreen.
Once an asphalt desert designed for columns of Soviet tanks, the old Parade Square surrounding the palace has had a green makeover. Further development is planned to bolster Warsaw’s bid for the 2040 summer Olympics.
There are also growing pains. Just as the facades of Warsaw’s medieval old town – rebuilt from the rubble of the second world war – conceal 20th-century concrete, Poland’s stellar growth obscures tensions. The influx of global capital has driven up living costs, squeezing out poor Varsovians. Income inequality is among the highest in Europe, while growing political divisions set the stage for a fractious general election next year.
Convergence with the west also presents a novel challenge for a country with a reputation as a low-cost hub within the EU.
For years Poland’s cheap, skilled workforce attracted companies such as Volkswagen to build cars, Cadbury to make chocolate and banks such as JP Morgan to open global support centres. At €19.10 (£16.10) an hour, average labour costs (wages, taxes and other costs) are still half the level of Germany and France, but the gap is closing.skip past newsletter promotion.
Since 2004, the average monthly wage has more than tripled in nominal terms to 8,904 złoty (£1,723) last year. The net monthly salary in Warsaw has risen by 120% since 2016, according to Deutsche Bank, lifting it above Rome and Lisbon. A meal for two in the capital now costs more than in Tokyo and the price of a cappuccino has doubled.
Rafał Brzoska, the billionaire founder of InPost, the pan-European parcel locker company started in Kraków, says Poles deserve their reputation as hard workers. But now the country must focus on working smarter, in higher-value-added manufacturing and knowledge-intensive services.
“The next phase will depend less on catching up, and more on productivity. We don’t have labour cost advantage at all. We need to focus on productivity, technology, cheaper energy and better regulation.”
Since 2004, the average monthly wage has more than tripled in nominal terms to 8,904 złoty (£1,723) last year. The net monthly salary in Warsaw has risen by 120% since 2016, according to Deutsche Bank, lifting it above Rome and Lisbon. A meal for two in the capital now costs more than in Tokyo and the price of a cappuccino has doubled.
Rafał Brzoska, the billionaire founder of InPost, the pan-European parcel locker company started in Kraków, says Poles deserve their reputation as hard workers. But now the country must focus on working smarter, in higher-value-added manufacturing and knowledge-intensive services.
“The next phase will depend less on catching up, and more on productivity. We don’t have labour cost advantage at all. We need to focus on productivity, technology, cheaper energy and better regulation.”
There are strong foundations for its ambition. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s annual programme for international student assessment (Pisa) scores ranks Poland equal to the UK among the top countries in Europe and globally for maths, while a greater share of adults have higher education qualifications than in Germany.
He is, however, concerned about the tensions in Polish politics. Divisions between the nationalist president, Karol Nawrocki, and Donald Tusk’s liberal government have grown increasingly acrimonious. Meanwhile, fringe far-right parties together hold a fifth of public support. Poland is also investing heavily in defence and energy security – aiming to boost economic growth in the process – amid Europe’s response to Russian aggression and US disengagement.
“People may put trust in someone else that has a magic remedy. [But] there is no magic remedy. We need to be super careful in terms of believing there is a secret sauce that will magically change things,” Brzoska says.
“In my opinion – unfortunately for all of us – we still need to work hard.”
As part of its growth plans, Poland is pushing to become a regional tech hub, bolstered by a $1bn investment fund backed by public and private capital to support tech startups and AI companies. The number of high-growth firms is rising, including ElevenLabs, an $11bn AI audio generation and voice cloning company named after 11 November – Poland’s national independence day.
On the eastern side of the Vistula River in the gritty and creative working-class district of Praga, the campus of the games company CD Projekt Red shows the progress being made.
He is, however, concerned about the tensions in Polish politics. Divisions between the nationalist president, Karol Nawrocki, and Donald Tusk’s liberal government have grown increasingly acrimonious. Meanwhile, fringe far-right parties together hold a fifth of public support. Poland is also investing heavily in defence and energy security – aiming to boost economic growth in the process – amid Europe’s response to Russian aggression and US disengagement.
“People may put trust in someone else that has a magic remedy. [But] there is no magic remedy. We need to be super careful in terms of believing there is a secret sauce that will magically change things,” Brzoska says.
“In my opinion – unfortunately for all of us – we still need to work hard.”
As part of its growth plans, Poland is pushing to become a regional tech hub, bolstered by a $1bn investment fund backed by public and private capital to support tech startups and AI companies. The number of high-growth firms is rising, including ElevenLabs, an $11bn AI audio generation and voice cloning company named after 11 November – Poland’s national independence day.
There are strong foundations for its ambition. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s annual programme for international student assessment (Pisa) scores ranks Poland equal to the UK among the top countries in Europe and globally for maths, while a greater share of adults have higher education qualifications than in Germany.
On the eastern side of the Vistula River in the gritty and creative working-class district of Praga, the campus of the games company CD Projekt Red shows the progress being made.
As the developer behind the smash hit games series The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077, the company started life in the 1990s as an importer of CD games made by US publishers.
Michał Nowakowski, its co-chief executive, says this was about the limit of Polish ambition in the early days. Now he competes globally to attract coders, games developers and graphic designers.
“In the late 90s and early 2000s I feel there was a massive inferiority complex. Among everybody who was young, you wanted to catch up with the west.”
Growing up in the 1980s, his family were expelled from Poland in the period of martial law. He recalls visiting London aged 15 and being “blown away” by the Virgin megastore and British culture. “I could never imagine Poland being like it.”
Within a generation, though, he says this attitude would be alien to his own children. “For young people now they have no inferiority complex. They don’t stop and think: ‘Can we be as good as Brits, French, Spanish?’ It’s not holding them back.
“We have really good universities and skills teaching people. I think that can take us to unprecedented heights as a country.
“We’re a proper-sized country. Not too small, not too big; no inferiority complex any more. There’s nothing holding us back.”
Europe resents its dependence on American military power while criticizing Washington’s foreign policy, exposing the hypocrisy, insecurity, and economic decline undermining its global influence.
Nearly every week, another psychodrama arises between the United States and its NATO partners.
Europeans blame the Trump administration for the usual things—a lack of cordiality and bombastic threats.
But two truths, rarely spoken, characterize all these spats.
One is hypocrisy; the other is insecurity.
Take Trump’s recent demand that Ukraine cease attacks on Russian diesel refineries.
Given the midterms and the critical issue of fuel prices, it was understandable that Trump might request an energy “ceasefire.”
So both Russia and Ukraine were asked to stop their attacks on refineries to calm jittery global diesel markets and help stabilize sky-high prices.
But the American Left, the Ukrainians, and the Europeans went ballistic—given that the aggressor, Russia, is blanketing Ukrainian skies with missiles and drones, while Russia’s critical refining industry remains vulnerable to retaliatory Ukrainian drone attacks.
But the largest purchaser of Russian gas remains Europe. It has been since the start of the war.
For years, Europe literally laughed at Trump’s earlier appeals to close European pipelines to Russia and quit fueling Putin’s war machine.
Are we to assume that Europeans buying most of Russia’s natural gas is acceptable, but Americans asking both Putin and Zelensky not to attack fuel facilities, given the world oil crisis, is somehow a betrayal?
Some like-minded European ministers are still blasting the Trump administration’s supposed efforts to revamp NATO.
They damn the United States for pulling 11 B-1 strategic bombers out of a shared RAF–U.S. base in the United Kingdom.
The cause is usually omitted: the discovery of a dry-run terrorist operation to hit the base and destroy more than $3 billion worth of American bombers.
But in Orwellian fashion, the British government conceded that (1) the arrested terrorist team was Iranian-sponsored and (2) Britain had released all the arrested terrorists on bail!
Perhaps Prime Minister Andy Burnham fears his own unassimilated, pro-Iranian Islamic immigrant voters far more than he feels the need to ensure that Americans are safe while protecting NATO interests.
Europeans are also angry that the United States will likely pull 5,000 troops out of Germany and deploy about the same number to frontline Poland, which is rapidly developing the largest and best-equipped military in Europe.
But again, why the American change of heart?
During the ongoing, eight-month-long Iran war, some NATO partners—France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom—either banned U.S. planes from their airspace or refused them landing rights at joint NATO–U.S. bases—or both.
Apparently, they opposed American efforts to denuclearize Iran and end the 50-year terrorist threat posed by that nation, fearing that it might activate terrorist operations inside Europe.
But do we remember when the French and the British—in what they called a NATO “coalition of the willing”—pleaded with the United States not merely to join them in bombing Serbia in 1999 and Libya in 2011 but also to conduct most of the combat missions?
And America did just that.
Yet Serbia was outside NATO’s purview. The United States certainly was not threatened by unrest in Serbia or Libya—at least not to the extent that nearby Europe, in theory, may have been.
Europe is understandably touchy about any American drawdown of NATO assets in Europe—despite most members’ systematic refusal, until recently, to meet their NATO commitments to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense for some 15 years.
If one were to apply prior European NATO logic consistently to the Russian-Ukrainian war, then the Trump administration might argue that Russia is less of a geostrategic threat to the American homeland than Iran’s nuclear and terrorist agendas are.
Note the further difference: the United States is not asking European NATO members to participate in combat against Iran, as Europe asked America to do against Serbia and Libya.
The United States had requested only occasional overflight rights and some landing accommodations. Both were again refused by some of the largest NATO members.
What causes this constant friction among allies and friends?
The once-promising European Union is becoming anemic. Despite having some 100 million more people, Europe’s GDP is $10 trillion smaller than America’s.
Europe’s borders are wide open. Its often hostile immigrant population is growing.
Its own native population is shrinking because of a fertility rate of about 1.34.
Many European NATO members shut down fossil-fuel and nuclear plants, preferring impractical and unreliable wind and solar energy.
Consider today’s critical technologies: AI, digital media, software, satellite launches, space exploration, and genetic engineering. European companies rarely rank among the global top 10 in these fields, which are overwhelmingly dominated by American corporations.
So one reason Europe seems schizophrenic and hypocritical is that, while it takes for granted its past global influence, military power, and political stature, its current socialist economy cannot support either its staggering welfare costs or its military obligations.
Europe both yearns for and resents U.S. help, hating its dependence as much as it needs that help. Yet so far, the medicine of economic and military reform is seen as worse than the disease.
Hold onto your smartphones, folks, because Aaron Sorkin has done it again! The Social Reckoning is not merely a movie. It is a cinematic detonation! An absolute tour de force!
From the dynamic opening scene to the breathless climax, this pulse-pounding masterpiece delivers non-stop excitement, razor-sharp edge, and heart-stopping thrills that will keep you glued to the very edge of your seat. It is, quite simply, one helluva thrill ride! A powerful, provocative, pulse-pounding look at the world we live in — and the world we helped create.
There are films you watch, films you enjoy, and then there are films that grab you by the collar, shake you senseless, and announce, “Ladies and gentlemen, THIS is why we go to the movies.” The Social Reckoning belongs emphatically in that third category.
The Social Reckoning is a full-on David-and-Goliath barnburner about whistleblower Frances Haugen taking on the biggest social network on Earth. And let me tell you: it knocks it out of the park!
Bold, fearless, and absolutely unforgettable, The Social Reckoning grabs hold of today’s most urgent questions and transforms them into a powerful, emotionally charged experience.
Every scene crackles with intelligence, every character feels larger than life, and every moment drives relentlessly toward a conclusion that leaves a lasting impact. There are sequences here that had me thinking, “There is absolutely no way they’re going to top this.” Then the movie looks directly into the camera and effectively says, “Hold my popcorn.”
It’s a movie about Facebook, but it’s really a movie about all of us. And it’s terrific.
The performances? Fantastic. The direction? Electric. The pacing? Like somebody injected an espresso machine directly into the editing bay.
Mikey Madison is sensational as Frances Haugen, bringing intelligence, courage and humanity to a woman who discovers that sometimes doing the right thing means doing something very, very difficult. Madison gives the performance of a lifetime with the kind of on-screen fire that had me cheering in my seat. She’s a revelation. A knockout.
Jeremy Allen White is equally terrific as journalist Jeff Horwitz, proving once again that great journalism can still make a difference.
And then there’s Jeremy Strong. Strong delivers an uncannily perfect Mark Zuckerberg — the hoodie, the cadence, the dead-eyed intensity. You’ll swear he was cloned in a Palo Alto lab. He’s chilling. He’s funny. He’s mysterious. He’s unforgettable. Two thumbs up!
But the real star here is Aaron Sorkin. Sorkin’s dialogue crackles like popcorn in a hot pan. The boardroom showdowns sizzle. The deposition scene? A showstopper! Sorkin doesn’t just tell a story. He makes you think. He makes you laugh. He makes you angry. And sometimes, he makes you want to put down your phone and talk to another human being. That’s a pretty remarkable achievement.
The Social Reckoning takes us behind the scenes of one of the most powerful companies in the world and asks some very uncomfortable questions. What happens when connecting people becomes more important than protecting them? What happens when the algorithm knows what we want before we know it ourselves? And what happens when somebody finally says, Enough? That’s what Frances Haugen does. And that’s what this movie does. It tells the truth.
This razor-sharp thriller is one hell of a ride: crackling dialogue, pulse-pounding revelations, and a story that hits like a freight train. A must-see triumph that’ll leave you cheering!
The Social Network was about the birth of Facebook. The Social Reckoning is about growing up. And sometimes growing up means looking in the mirror.
Sorkin’s screenplay crackles with sharp dialogue, terrific observations and enough memorable lines to fill your news feed for a week. The movie moves like a thriller, plays like a courtroom drama and hits like a wake-up call. It’s also surprisingly funny. Because sometimes the only way to deal with something this serious is to laugh.
And then think about why you’re laughing. That’s Sorkin’s genius. That’s filmmaking. That’s The Social Reckoning.
An instant classic. A powerful, timely, unforgettable masterpiece. A glorious, excessive, wildly entertaining blast of cinema that doesn’t merely reach for the stars, it grabs them, sets them on fire, and throws them through the screen.
Forget your doomscrolling, folks. THIS is the movie the whole family should be talking about at Thanksgiving dinner!
Powerful, provocative, and impossible to ignore. The Social Reckoning is the event of the year! Don’t walk – RUN!
Let’s unpack the latest dystopian tech news—and German cops’ dystopian response.
We’ve reached the point in techno-dystopia where autonomous humanoid robots are out assaulting girls in the street—or so some coverage of a recent incident in Cologne, Germany, might have you believe. But dig into what really happened, and it’s human actions that appear more worrying.
For dystopian police-state flavor, we’ve got Cologne cops warning that simply commenting about this on Facebook in an unapproved way could be criminal. Without specifying exactly what kinds of comments are off limits or what law might be broken, the North Rhine-Westphalia Police of Cologne (Polizei NRW Köln in German) warned that social media comments about what happened could cross the line and potentially be a criminal offense.
Then there are the humans who were operating the robot that made lewd gestures at passersby and stands accused of grabbing the butt of a 16-year-old girl on a city street in Cologne around midnight. From the looks of things, the humans—not some artificial intelligence system—were in control.
This doesn’t appear to be a case of an AI humanoid robot going rogue and getting pervy, but some teenagers engaging in a performance or prank that may have gone too far.
I say may here because it’s not entirely clear what happened. There is video footage showing the robot—dressed in gold chains and a fake mustache like some sort of 1980s sleazeball—thrusting in a sexual manner and making jerking-off gestures in front of people gathered on city sidewalks. (Some of them appear annoyed or alarmed; some laugh.) But none of the videos that I could find clearly show any groping. We do see the robot bumping into people, but it’s not entirely apparent what was touched or how purposeful these collisions were.
Maybe the alleged “sexual assault”—which is technically the correct term for a nonconsensual butt grab, I guess, but still seems a bit too strong—was totally intentional. Or maybe this is a case of clumsily controlled technology brushing against someone in a way that felt violating but was nonetheless an accident.
What appears to be beyond a doubt is that the robot was being made to engage in lewd gestures, which were played for laughs by teenagers (one 16 and one 19, according to police) who were filming these encounters and posting them to social media.
Is it a crime to make your mustachioed robot thrust its pelvis at passersby?
I don’t know enough about German sexual harassment law to say whether this qualifies. In any event, Cologne police have not announced any charges yet; they’ve only stated that they’re investigating on suspicion of sexual harassment and that they have confiscated the robot and the phones of the two boys suspected of operating it.
We probably don’t want sleazebots just going around making obscene gestures in public, whether of their own volition or controlled by humans. But, in the U.S. at least, sexual harassment requires some things beyond just making a crude gesture. Laws vary by state, and by the context in which the alleged harassment takes place, but it generally has to be pervasive, severe, or carried out with a specific intent. I don’t think this robot’s actions would qualify (though there are perhaps other charges that could be brought, involving disturbing the peace or something like that).
But I wish people would chill out with the breathless coverage that attempts to make this into some sort of super grave and alarming incident. If it turns out these two teens did deliberately instruct their robot to touch a girl’s butt, that’s certainly not OK, and should be dealt with in whatever manner we might deem just if a teen did so directly. But we’re not looking at rogue robots attacking girls on the street, or at teenagers cruelly directing their tech toy to seriously sexually assault someone while they filmed it. At worst, we’re looking at a livestreamer stunt that was in poor taste, not the imminent coming of robot rape squads.
And setting aside the alleged violation of bodily autonomy—which may or may not have been intentional—the other antics of this robot are kind of funny? Can I say that? I don’t think we want to create norms where it’s OK to take a robot dressed like a movie pimp out on the streets and have him make sexual gestures at people, but…I laughed. Don’t tell the German police.
In The News
A woman named Carli Heller was arrested for telling Anthropic’s Claude that she was going to shoot up the sheriff’s office in Lee County, Florida. Anthropic notified the FBI, which notified local authorities, and she was arrested for making a threat of mass shooting or terrorism, a felony.
“Heller’s is at least the third case in the U.S. since August in which messages typed to an Anthropic chatbot ended up with the police, following incidents in San Antonio and San Francisco,” reports Devin Pavlou at Straight Arrow News:
The cases raise questions about how private chatbot conversations are, when companies can hand them to police without a warrant, and whether words typed to a machine can be a crime. Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, told Straight Arrow he doubts they can in this case.…
In the past, Florida courts have required proof that a person meant to threaten or knew the message would be viewed as a threat, according to Volokh, who has taught law for 30 years. He said a jury is unlikely to find that beyond a reasonable doubt.
“I doubt that this is a punishable threat, unless there is evidence that the woman subjectively realized at the time that the message would be communicated to a human being who would perceive it as a threat,” Volokh said.
Heller’s lawyer, Scott Moore, “said he plans to challenge whether a chatbot message can be a written threat under Florida law,” adds Pavlou.
On Substack
Tara Burns has a good/infuriating roundup of recent “sex trafficking” busts that involve no trafficking charges and in which police just charge people with prostitution and seize their cash. Here’s just one of multiple examples:
On October 6, Virginia Beach police announced the results of a months-long human trafficking investigation that culminated in September 24 raids on four massage businesses and a residence. Police said their surveillance showed several women living together and traveling between their home and massage businesses. Apparently, when Asian women work and live together it warrants the attention of the ICE led Hampton Roads Human Trafficking Task Force.
Three apparent sex workers (Xiaochung Peng, Xiaoqin Wu, and Ping Zhang) were arrested on charges involving maintaining a bawdy place, aiding prostitution, and using a vehicle in the commission of a crime. Police seized $55,085, four vehicles, phones, computers, and a security DVR.
No trafficking charges were announced, and police did not report identifying a trafficking victim.
Follow the Money: This investigation involved at least seven law enforcement entities, including two SWAT teams, federal investigators, and a federally funded, ICE led regional human trafficking task force.
Burns also points out that new anti-trafficking grant money from the Department of Justice’s Office for Victims of Crime gives priority treatment to programs that support immigration enforcement.
“To help meet its mission, OJP may give priority consideration to applications proposing … projects designed to advance” five particular goals, including “directly supporting law enforcement operations (including immigration law enforcement operations),” it says.
Archaeologists in Egypt have uncovered the remains of two colossal statues believed to depict Ramses II after a local landowner reported finding an inscribed stone block in the village of Behbeit El-Hagar.
The discoveries were made by an archaeological mission from Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA). According to Dr. Hisham El-Leithy, Secretary-General of the SCA, the first find was a stone head more than five-feet-high from a massive statue. It depicts a man wearing a double crown, a symbol of the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt worn by ancient Egyptian rulers.
Nearby, archaeologists found part of the statue’s back pillar. An inscription on the pillar gives one of Ramses II’s five royal titles, “Hor-Ka-Nakht-Mery-Maat” (The Strong Bull, Beloved of Ma’at), identifying him as the sculpture’s subject.
The second find consists of part of a statue of a royal personage along with its head, which was adorned with the striped cloth associated with ancient Egyptian rulers. Not including the head, the surviving section of the figure, which is missing its legs and base, measures almost eight feet high. Based on the similarity of this statue’s face to that of the first, researchers believe it may also represent Ramses II, though the identification has not been confirmed.
The archaeological mission also found a pink granite block about four feet long not far from the statues. It bears traces of hieroglyphic inscriptions that include two more titles of Ramses II: “Nesu-Bity” (King of Upper and Lower Egypt) and “Sa-Ra” (Son of Ra).
Ramses II, known to historians as Ramses the Great, was the third king of ancient Egypt’s 19th Dynasty (1292–1191 BCE). He presided over the final peak of Egypt’s imperial power and is remembered for his 66-year rule, military campaigns, extensive building programs, and monumental temples and statues. Because of his popularity, longevity, and talent for political propaganda, inscriptions and artworks bearing his name and image can be found throughout Egypt.
Excavations and archaeological work are continuing in the area.
Rarely does a day go by that people don’t talk to me about their jobs. I believe that the best motivation for work is happiness and fulfillment. It’s true that fulfillment might not happen all at once, but the activity should be productive, and your life should be better for having done the work. Motivation can range from doing what you like for a modest hourly wage all the way to a lucrative career. But no matter who signs your paycheck, always work in your own self-interest.
In that sense, all employment is self-employment. Though it might take a while to find the right job, the key to avoiding resentment is to take command of your life and make your job a means to an end – the “end” being something that makes you happy. If you feel like you’re going nowhere, you can make it a stepping stone to something better.
Finding rewarding work can be a challenge. You want (and probably need) the paycheck, and the work may be tolerable, but that’s about it. If that sounds familiar, now’s the time to start planning and building something more rewarding. Just as people sometimes take a second job for extra money, your “second job” can start as something that has the potential to be more fulfilling. And if it earns money, all the better! It could even lead to a career change.
Many people who find change difficult can often suffer the most in their occupations. Even if you’re a professional, and no matter how much time and money you put into training, if you hate your profession then you owe it to yourself to start assembling an exit strategy. If you don’t at least try to develop an alternative plan, then you’re sentencing yourself to a life of unhappiness. And it’s nobody’s fault but your own.
Change by itself is neither good nor bad. It all depends on the circumstances. If you avoid change simply because it is change, then you’re denying yourself the opportunity for growth. Like it or not, life is not static. Physical and emotional change happens every day, with or without your consent. So why not use it to your advantage?
You might be thinking, “Well, that might be good for some people, but I have to get my paycheck every week. I don’t have time for anything else. And what about my paid vacation and insurance?” Or, “I went to law school for three years! I hate it, but what about all that time and money?” These traps are easy to fall into, but you have to look at the big picture. There’s got to be more to life than those three years in school or the daily trudge to a job that makes you miserable.
If you feel trapped, start planning your exit strategy. Think about moving yourself toward where you’d really like to be. Demystify it by making the details concrete and real. Be sure to evaluate your emotions along the way, i.e., “What if my plan works and I get the job I want. How do I feel about it?” If you’ve been realistic, then the prospect of making the change will bring you a sense of happy anticipation. If you’re afraid that your plan won’t work, then what’s the worst that can happen? You stay where you are until you think of something better. Change can’t be wrong if it makes your life more fulfilling.
No matter what you do, work for your own benefit. Be at peace with the changes required to make it happen. An attitude of self-employment can help you embrace the modifications you might never have made otherwise. The saying, “Do what you love, and the money will follow” makes total sense, because you’re at your happiest when you’re doing what you love. There’s no better goal than that.
According to the media, Texas is about to elect a woke Governor and a U.S. Senator who claims Jesus was transgender; Florida is about to get a Democrat Governor pretending to be a moderate; and South Carolina is about to fill Lindsey Graham’s seat with an out-of-state Soros hack claiming to be a pediatrician who wants gender alteration for all children on demand (without parental consent). If true, then we all deserve to lose our freedom — those of us who actually vote for it, and those of us who won’t speak out against it while we still can. I am not prepared to believe we are finished yet, of course. Remember: The entire media is a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party.
President Trump made an error in judgment when he endorsed Darline Graham over Ralph Norman, an authentic Republican, to succeed the late Lindsey Graham.
However, the Democrat candidate for this seat, Annie Andrews, is a Communist freak show, as everyone running for office in her Party now is.
She claims to be a pediatrician in favor of coercing children into gender alteration surgery; and of course she’s a socialist, censor and medical fascist to boot.
It would be a much bigger error in judgment to let her take Lindsey Graham’s seat in the U.S. Senate this January. Please, South Carolina voters, DO NOT LET THAT HAPPEN.
People say you can’t accept the lesser of two evils, because either way it’s evil. This may be true, but Republicans, on the whole, are not evil. They’re cowardly, contradictory and confused. But Democrats — the ones running for office — are not confused. And they are not afraid, because they sense their opposition is afraid. They mean to destroy America, its heritage of liberty, and to eradicate individual rights (including private property) in the name of what they consider the common good. There is no common good without the rights of the individuals who compose the society.
Mayor Mamdani openly brags of collectivism. Collectivism means a government body — always a dictatorship — imposes its will on everyone in the name of “the common good.” Collectivism always ends in piles of bodies, because it’s the only way to achieve it. And America will fare just as badly as all the other places who tried it.
