#but it also erodes trust in government

[narse-tantalus]

Since I just saw a post on the same blog about countering the spread of misinformation using the SIFT method I'm going to apply it here.

Stop

Is this post provoking an emotional response? Yes

Is it trying to? Also yes.

What do I already know about the source? Twitter screenshots on Tumblr are unreliable. I know nothing about the linked pmc19.com but it doesn't look like a government or university website url.

Investigate (The Source)

What can you find about the author/website creators?

the link to pmc19.com/data resolves, and that website does seem to be the source of these claims, although the current numbers are slightly off those reported in the tweets, likely because we're a week later.

pmc19.com links to a PDF with "Background on Dr. Hoerger and the PMC". There they discuss how Dr. Hoerger (who claims copyright of the webpage at the bottom) is trained in clinical psychology, has taught and was doing an MBA in 2019 on strategic management. It claims he's "an expert in personality, emotions, and affective decision science..." and mentions he did a masters degree wich involved a lot of stuff... And also epidemiology.

The PMC is apparently "The Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative" with unnamed members who have " led many projects to keep people safer during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic." and "The PMC dashboard is cited in grant applications, including at least two grants already funded. It has been cited by trusted organizations like the People’s CDC, news outlets, and scientific journals, including several papers published in JAMA journals."

Which really sounds like they think I should trust them at least as much as I trust people who write grants, and/or "The People's CDC" -- this makes me think they are unlikely to be an accurate source.

Here's Dr. Hoerger's bio at Louisiana Cancer research center:

https://www.louisianacancercenter.org/people/michael-hoerger-phd

It says "Dr. Hoerger conducts psychosocial research to reduce the emotional and physical burden of serious illnesses. Dr. Hoerger is an international expert in psychosocial oncology as well as pandemic mitigation." And the lists a bunch of psychology stuff. Literally never mentions pandemics again. If he's an "international expert in pandemic mitigation" a) I'd expect him to work somewhere other than a Cancer center b) I'd expect his bio to mention his pandemic mitigation work. Maybe he's new to all this pandemic stuff? He certainly doesn't claim to be an epidemiologist on the pmc website, just to have worked on a project that involves it.

When I google "The Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative" the second result is this webpage which questions their methodology and suggests that their model is incapable of making accurate predictions -- claiming it's always going to be biased towards whatever happened on the same dates last year -- both low and high. (I'm summarizing and interpreting a huge amount here,so read it yourself, and the source is just a blog post so not intrinsically more credible...) But it is note worthy that the main 3rd party discussion of this organization is someone questioning the utility of their predictions.

https://buttondown.com/abbycartus/archive/we-need-to-talk-about-the-pandemic-mitigation/

What is their mission? Do they have vested interests? Would their assessment be biased?

Their mission seems to be to "track" or predict cases of covid -- but like better than the real CDC and epidemiologists. Presumably this is born out of concern for immunocompromised individuals, or boredom, or needing a project for a Strategic Management MBA, or distrust of Official Sources.

They appear to have a vested interest in pandemic mitigation, and therefore alarmism and possibly in not agreeing with official sources. Their assessment may well be biased!

Do they have authority in the Area?

No. They mention precisely 0 epidemiologists working for or with them. I don't see a reason to trust their models more than my physics grad student friends who made pandemic models on a lark in 2020.

Find Better Coverage

The official CDC (Centers for Disease Control) webpage on Covid data is here:

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-home

It indicates lower numbers than last year for everything they track, numbers that are kind of ticking up in recent weeks, but numbers that are forecast (if I'm reading that right) to reach a smaller peak than in prior years.

Notably the CDC is not making any directly comparable claims about number of people infected or infectious. Or how many might be infected next month. I believe this is because these are fundamentally unknowable from the data they have, and that speculating on them would be irresponsible for public communicators of science. Sure, one could create models that predict those numbers, but publishing the results to the public without context on the uncertainties of the models would be irresponsible since people might make life or death decisions like wearing a mask or getting a vaccine based on those bad predictions. Or they might just rage at people online who disagree with them. Idk, I'm not a science communicator.

Don't trust the CDC? Tough. The New York Times ended their own covid tracking in 2023 saying:

After more than three years of daily reporting of coronavirus data in the United States, The New York Times is ending its Covid-19 data-gathering operation. The Times will continue to publish virus data from the federal government weekly on a new set of tracking pages, but this page will no longer be updated.

This change was spurred by the declining availability of virus data from state and local health officials. Since few states report more than once a week (and some no longer report data to the public at all), the weekly data reports from the C.D.C. have become the most reliable source of information on the virus’s spread.

There new webpage is here and it was last updated in March 2024, it says:

These Covid tracking pages are no longer being updated. Get the latest information from the Centers for Disease Control, or find archived data from The Times’s three year reporting effort here.

John's Hopkins University has this to say:

On March 10, 2023, the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center ceased collecting and reporting of global COVID-19 data. For updated cases, deaths, and vaccine data please visit the following sources: Global: World Health Organization (WHO) U.S.: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

So yeah, reputable sources have stopped caring and link you to the CDC as the place to get your info.

Trace Claims, Quotes, and Media to their Original Context

The pmc19.com website does appear to be the original context for these claims. Thank you OP for linking that.

My Verdict:

These claims are misinformation. Specifically they claim numbers that are based on a model that was not created by subject matter experts, that disagrees with the trends reported by the CDC and it's epidemiologists. Either government employed epidemiologists are wrong and no university epidemiologists want to call them out on it... Or the PMC is wrong. Since they aren't epidemiologists... They're probably wrong. Moreover: If you don't trust the CDC you shouldn't The PMC because in their technical apendix they claim to use CDC data to make their projections. The only way the PMC could be right is if all other epidemiologists are wrong about the COVID pandemic and how to interpret wastewater and hospitalization data.

The PMC and Dr. Hoerger are engaging in academic sounding BS. They have incentives to be alarmist and fear monger, and don't seem to care or understand that they're using a model that probably doesn't have predictive value.

Data source: https://pmc19.com/data/

[messy-does-cosmology]

I'm gonna say something: I think that if you are seriously distressed by losing access to TikTok, and you weren't making money from it, then it's probably a good thing it's being taken away from you

[gatheringbones]

[“It’s a vision of unpatriotic masculinity soothed into submission by uniformed womanhood—at least, womanhood with a badge. The colonial vision of social work it conjures is armed, yet sensitive.

Our culture is saturated with these social workers: weary, gun-toting heroines of carceral gender progress, glamorous avatars of the thin blue line. From Charlie’s Angels to Cagney & Lacey, from Decoy to The Silence of the Lambs, not to mention Prime Suspect, Top of the Lake, Killing Eve, Jessica Jones, The Fall, Mare of Easttown, and literally hundreds more dramas and procedurals featuring various kinds of armed female civil servants, we are conscripted in our millions every day to pay our respects to the lady cop. She is allowed to be “imperfect.” (Sociologists have found that, in real life, policewomen often employ emotionally flat, macho, dehumanizing speech patterns in their dealings with civilian women.) Feminism means cutting the lady cop some slack. Even if she’s “an imperfect protagonist,” the trail of women’s empowerment she’s on is blazed by weapons with state-backed legitimacy. Her feminism is a disciplinary saviorism, a fantasy of a benevolently undemocratic route to sisterhood. Feminist progress, for the cop feminist, is something she can impose from above, compassionately, but also, if need be, coercively. What is she here for? To rescue all of society, and sometimes (especially) to use her womanly instincts to rescue other women—even from themselves.

In the past, as we shall see, feminist Freikorps were often a bit of a laughingstock and became something of a nuisance to the government. Nowadays, in contrast, the cop feminist typically treads the hallways of Harvard, the International Criminal Court, NYU, Columbia, Yale, Stanford, or the American Philosophical Society. Her arguments come in new and sophisticated flavors of self-described radicalism. And yet, cop feminism is sometimes part of a self-described revolutionary politics. A cop feminist may even understand on some level that the prison-industrial complex is a vast support system for white capitalist patriarchy, and yet nevertheless believe that female police officers don’t serve the interests of class power in quite the same way male cops do. For her, the sheer feminist force of the woman with a gun is not fatally diminished by the gun in question’s tie to the armed wing of the state. She feels pretty confident that women cops don’t murder unarmed Black people; that women cops don’t harass sexually active women on the street, nor post vile comments on police union message boards; that they have a positive effect on the community; that they serve as little girls’ best defense against sex traffickers and other predators; that they’re just what the police needs in these trying times, what with public trust in the institution being so eroded; that they simply care more; or that they look good in a uniform.”]

sophie lewis, from enemy feminisms: terfs, policewomen, and girlbosses against liberation, 2025

[furiousalpacaduck]

The Aftermath of 9/11: The Collapse of Public Trust and the Call for Government Transparency

The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, not only left deep scars in history but also profoundly changed the American public's trust in the government and its intelligence agencies, particularly the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In the wake of the attacks, the government quickly presented a mainstream narrative that blamed the CIA for its failure to effectively monitor and prevent these terrorist acts. This narrative sparked widespread public questioning: was the CIA truly pursuing national security, or was it concealing important information?

The subsequent implementation of the USA PATRIOT Act further deepened this sense of distrust. While the government claimed it was necessary to enhance national security, the Act granted excessive surveillance powers that led many citizens to feel their privacy was under serious threat. The tension between safety and freedom became increasingly apparent, as many Americans realized that their daily lives were being monitored and controlled in the name of security.

In such a tense atmosphere, social trust eroded significantly. Relationships between neighbors grew strained, with mutual suspicion and surveillance becoming the norm. People were encouraged to report any "suspicious" behavior around them, fostering an environment that not only strained interpersonal relationships but also undermined the fundamental trust necessary in a democratic society.

To restore this trust, citizens need to actively engage in political and social activities, advocating for government transparency and accountability. Raising civic awareness and promoting criticism and oversight of government actions are crucial for rebuilding social trust. The lessons of 9/11 remind us that vigilance should not come at the expense of personal freedoms. Only by ensuring transparency can we construct a safer and more just society.

[contemplatingoutlander]

How Trump is reshaping reality by hiding data

Curating reality is an old political game, but Trump’s sweeping statistical purges are part of a broader attempt to reinvent ��truth.”

Trump appears to be turning the federal government into its own 1984-style Ministry of Truth.

This is a gift 🎁 link so there is no paywall to read it. Below are some excerpts/highlights.

By Amanda Shendruk and Catherine Rampell | March 11, 2025 The Trump administration is deleting taxpayer-funded data — information that Americans use to make sense of the world. In its absence, the president can paint the world as he pleases. We don’t know the full universe of statistics that has gone missing, but the U.S. DOGE Service’s wrecking ball has already left behind a wasteland of 404 pages. All sorts of useful information has disappeared, including data on:

[...]

[See more under the cut.]

Three cases of legerdemath and other tricks up Trump’s sleeve

Deleting data isn’t the only way to manipulate official statistics. Trump and his allies have also misrepresented or altered data. Here are a few examples: 1. Incorrect data

Witness DOGE’s bogus statistics on its supposed government savings. The administration counts as “savings” some canceled contracts that had already been paid in full. Some canceled expenses were created out of whole cloth, such as $50 million supposedly spent on sending condoms to Gaza. 2. Misrepresented data

One of Trump’s favorite charts on immigration is riddled with errors. For one, it does not show the number of immigrants entering the United States illegally, as he claims, but the number of people stopped at the U.S. border. Similarly, when Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was recently asked how much DOGE funding cuts might reduce economic growth, he suggested that the agency might decide to change how economic growth is calculated so that the usual GDP report strips out government spending altogether. This would be an abrupt change to the standard GDP methodology that has been used around the world for nearly a century, but it would certainly make the DOGE cuts look less painful. 3. Altered data

When data doesn’t tell the story Trump wants, he fabricates it. In what became known as “Sharpiegate,” Trump notoriously altered a map of Hurricane Dorian’s path in 2019.

Likewise, before Jan. 30, a National Institutes of Health website documenting years of spending data included a category called “Workforce Diversity and Outreach.” That line item is now gone — even though the money was, indeed, spent.

Taking cues from authoritarian illusionists

Such actions are straight out of authoritarian leaders’ playbooks. Research suggests that less democratic countries have been more likely to inflate their GDP growth rates and manipulate their covid-19 numbers. Statistical manipulation is also more common in countries that shun economic openness and democracy. [...] To be clear, efforts to rewrite reality via statistical manipulation often don’t work. If anything, China’s data deletions reduced public confidence in the country’s economic stability. (No one hides good news, after all.) The Trump team’s efforts to suppress nettlesome numbers have similarly eroded trust in U.S. data. Only about one-third of Americans trust that most or all of the statistics Trump cites are “reliable and accurate.”

Meanwhile, missing or untrustworthy data lead to worse decisions: Auto companies, for example, draw on dozens of federally administered datasets when devising new car models, how to price them, where to stock and market them and other key choices. Retailers need detailed information about local demographics, weather and modes of transit when deciding where to locate stores. Doctors require up-to-date statistics about disease spread when diagnosing or treating patients. Families look at school test scores and local crime rates when deciding where to move. Politicians use census data when determining funding levels for important government programs.

And of course, voters need good data of all kinds when weighing whether to throw the bums out. Many of us take the existence of economic or public health stats for granted, without even thinking about who maintains them or what happens if they go away. Fortunately, some outside institutions have been saving and archiving endangered federal data. The Internet Archives’ Wayback Machine, for instance, crawls sites around the internet and has become an invaluable resource for seeing what federal websites used to contain. Other organizations are archiving topic-specific data and research, such as on the environment or reproductive health. These are critical but ultimately insufficient efforts. At best, they can preserve data already published. But they cannot update series already halted or purged.... Some private companies may step in to offer their own substitutes (on prices, for example), but private companies still rely on government statistics to calibrate their own numbers. Much of the most critical information about the state of our union can be collected only by the state itself. Americans might be stuck with whatever Trump chooses to share with us, or not.

[germiyahu]

My fellow liberals, there are only a few courses of action that you can take in this political climate, in the wider context of Mahmoud Khalil's detainment. If you find Trump's and the Republican Party's rhetoric about combatting antisemitism to be hollow, and you find their targeting of pro-Palestinian agitators (who easily could be charged with federal crimes, just saying) unacceptable, then in my (admittedly limited) understanding, you can do one of three things:

Disengage from these universities and other predominantly non-Jewish, and especially vocally anti-Israel/anti-Hillel/anti-Jewish spaces. Whether that's evacuating from hostile universities, withdrawing from non-Jewish spaces in general, what have you. You could also arm yourselves. Or, the hail Mary, you can give up on America and move to Israel. Essentially, you can ignore the antisemities and leave them to their own devices, knowing that nothing will change.

Tacitly make peace with civil liberties being eroded by an illiberal government who at least pays lip service to fighting antisemitism. Do the conservatives have ulterior motives? Absolutely. Are they using the Jewish Community as a fall guy? Probably. Will they continue to do nothing to purge their own side of the aisle of their own antisemites? Don't make me laugh. But do their actions actually tackle a growing problem that is harassing and even assaulting Jews? That is attacking Jewish institutions and places of worship? Yes, they are.

Sit and twiddle your thumbs as your traditional "allies" do literally nothing, whether that's "Leftists," non-Jewish liberals, the Democratic Party, etc. Because they've been doing nothing. If you're not comfortable with options 1 or 2, this is the only realistic option left. Continue to put faith in institutions that are saying increasingly loudly that they simply do not care about you.

I personally don't like any of these options. Throwing up your hands and giving up on changing hearts and minds feels defeatist. Creating your own institutions to protect Jews will be seen as aggressive and will be punished by both sides of the aisle. Making Aliyah is difficult and will only weaken the Jewish Community in America. Leaning on fascists who claim to want to help is morally untenable and dangerous, as so many in Jumblr are pointing out. But the only other path forward is to sit idly by and continue to put your faith in the status quo, and in non-Jewish institutions that have proven they're not willing to lift a finger to help Jews.

The Islamists have no intention of changing their views. The Marxist-Leninists and Anarchists and Maoists and the broader Rose and Red Triangle emoji Left have no intention of changing their views. The Nazis and Christian Nationalists have no intention of changing their views. So what is the course of action? Either trust in institutions that are objectively failing the Jewish Community, look to literal fascists who will cause more harm to everyone as they pay lip service to safeguarding Jews, or give up on the system entirely.

I don't begrudge Jews who decide to (at least temporarily) place their trust in Donald Trump and his kakistocracy. Because we as liberals have to admit, liberal institutions are objectively doing nothing and will continue to do nothing. The Democratic Party and the university system has failed. They will continue to say "We are against antisemitism and islamophobia and all forms of hate," they will continue to frame violent Jew hating terrorist sympathizers as the real victims and absolve themselves of actually coming to terms with the antisemitism in their party and their boards. You can absolutely make a moral line in the sand. You can say "I don't want to empower ICE to disappear legal U.S. residents even if its supposedly to help Jews like me!" but you have to be aware that nobody else is doing anything to help Jews like you. And they're currently not likely to.

So what do you do? You can naively hope that Trump genuinely intends to help Jews and make peace with his continual eroding of norms and values and the Constitution itself. You can naively hope that the Democrats will suddenly and magically decide to help their heretofore extremely loyal base and make peace with their continual failure to do so. You can disengage with the system altogether and start creating and enforcing Jewish-centric or even Jewish-only spaces in all avenues of life (or above all, flee to Israel), and naively hope that you won't be smeared as a bigot or a threat for doing so.

There are no good or easy solutions here.

[dostoyevsky-official]

Trump administration disbands taskforce targeting Russian oligarchs

A memo from the attorney general, Pam Bondi, issued during a wave of orders on her first day in office but not previously reported, said the effort, known as Task Force KleptoCapture, will end as part of a shift in focus and funding to combating drug cartels and international gangs. The taskforce brought indictments against the aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska and TV tycoon Konstantin Malofeyev for alleged sanctions busting, and seized yachts belonging to the sanctioned oligarchs Suleiman Kerimov and Viktor Vekselberg. It also secured a guilty plea against a US lawyer who made $3.8m in payments to maintain properties owned by Vekselberg.

Trump Green-Lights Bribery and Corruption With New Executive Order

President Donald Trump has instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to pause prosecutions of companies that bribe foreign government officials to win business. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has been “stretched beyond proper bounds and abused in a manner that harms the interests of the United States,” hurting American competitiveness, Trump wrote in an executive order signed Monday. [...] The order’s legality was not immediately clear. Generally, the Constitution requires the president to “take care that the laws” passed by Congress “be faithfully executed.” Presidents do have some enforcement discretion, but they cannot override laws, according to the ACLU. Major companies such as Goldman Sachs, Glencore and Walmart have all come under FCPA scrutiny, according to Reuters.

///

"It's going to mean a lot more business for America," Trump told reporters while signing the order in the Oval Office on Monday. Trump wanted to strike down FCPA during his first term in office. He has called it a "horrible law" and said "the world is laughing at us" for enforcing it. Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International said FCPA made the United States a leader in addressing global corruption. (x)

///

“It sounds good on paper, but in practicality, it's a disaster,” Trump said. “It means that if an American goes over to a foreign country and starts doing business over there, legally, legitimately or otherwise, it's almost a guaranteed investigation indictment, and nobody wants to do business with the Americans because of it.” [...] Gary Kalman, executive director of Transparency International U.S., said Trump’s order “diminishes—and could pave the way for completely eliminating—the crown jewel in the U.S.’s fight against global corruption.” [...] In one of its most significant victories, the Justice Department announced Oct. 16, three weeks before Trump’s election victory, that mega-defense contractor Raytheon Company of Virginia would pay over $950 million to settle foreign bribery and related charges in a scheme to help foreign governments purchase PATRIOT missile systems and operate and maintain a radar system. In one of the schemes, Raytheon engaged in a campaign from 2012 and 2016 “to bribe a high-level official” within the Qatar government’s military “in order to assist Raytheon in obtaining and retaining business” from it, the DOJ said, citing admissions and court documents filed in the Eastern District of New York. [...] Raytheon’s “criminal schemes to defraud the U.S. government in connection with” the contracts “erodes public trust and harms the DOD, businesses that play by the rules, and American taxpayers,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Kevin Driscoll of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division also said at the time. (x)

this is the most relentlessly pro-corruption administration in american history. the guiding animus seems to be how much corruption can we do, how can we help others get away with corruption, how can we halt justice, etc

[oldandcrusty]

Religious imperialism: the RPG

This is the third installment in my series on institutional change in the Dragon Age series. If you'd like, feel free to read my Origins and DA2 posts.

When it comes to institutional change, there are a lot of angles I could tackle in Dragon Age: Inquisition. A frequent theme I see discussed is the way the inquisition absorbs the inquisitor. I already have given my two cents on that, and I don't think it fits what this series is about - the institutional change narrative the games weave.

For this post, I'm focusing on the institutional power the Inquisition rapidly garners. I might make more posts focusing on other elements - like the Red Jennies and Iron Bull's arc with the Qun. I might even do some Cullen Hating Hours, who knows!

Corypheus: the Uniter

The first Inquisition had a massive impact on religious and governmental institutions, because gave rise to the Seekers and Templars. The Divine thus became the head of a theocratic institution with an abundance of resources and a large military.

After the mage rebellion, Divine Justina wanted to revive an Inquisition in the event that the Conclave went awry. This would give her the ability to raise an army separate from existing religious and government forces, which she no longer had absolute control over.

We will never know what an Inquisition without Corypheus' presence would have yielded. Its purpose would have been to unite people, but I suspect its unifying would have looked more like subjugation through violence, coercion, and political intrigue.

In truth, it was Corypheus who united people. He, the Big Bad, made people from all races, nations, religions, and backgrounds want to support the Inquisition, as the Inquisition held the one individual who could defeat Corypheus. And, with such a simple message (help us and we'll literally save the world), it made it relatively easy for the Inquisition to gain widespread support, claim resources, and gain power.

This echoes real world examples of the use of declarations of emergency. Such decrees give governments greater powers to make swift decisions, at the risk of eroding human rights and democracy. It is meant to be used in exceptional cases, such as in wartime or during deadly outbreaks. However, it is commonly abused by governments to centralise decision making. It is an effective way to create dictatorships, for example when the Nazi party used this exact tactic in 1933 to take away democratic processes.

Post-Corypheus

Although the Inquisition starts off with a goal to curtail a very real emergency, it remains long after this problem is solved. What also remains is its sweeping powers. All those flags you raised in the Inquisition's name are land, buildings, and resources the Inquisition still owns. Furthermore, the new Divine is a member of your inner Circle, and whoever is ruling Orlais is doing so because you allow them to. You have immense power over Orlais, Fereldan, and the Chantry.

In Trespasser, Teagan points out that this is similar to what the Wardens did to Ferelden. Some fans have said that Teagan would never say this because of the fifth Blight. But he is a pragmatic person who saw the Warden and Alistair as allies and not puppets of Orlais. Of course he would be friendly with and trust them, and be wary of the Inquisition.

That being said, more so than in previous games, you can have a real impact on the injustices the world faces. For example, if you make Leliana the Divine, she will allow all races to have positions of power in Chantry and give mages freedom. Yay! Right?

These protections are top-down in implementation and ordered by a theocratic military force with highly centralised power. Regardless of who you pick to be Divine, your Inquisition would have made the Chantry stronger and more authoritarian.

There is some dialogue discussing this concept of top-down versus bottom-up - examples include Solas lambasting Sera for not formalising the Red Jennies, and Vivienne telling Blackwall that his attempts to help people are meaningless and change can only occur from the top. However, when looking at the entire narrative of the game, it frequently portrays change as having to be top-down.

The Inquisition turns Southern Thedas into a place where diversity wins (if you're Andrastian), and people can live in peace (on land owned by the Inquisition). Your inquisitor's choices, background, and beliefs do not alter this. If you disband the Inquisition, at least that weakens it, but it morphs into a more shadowy force. It is still plucking the strings of nations and the Chantry.

I personally wish that the game did not frame the Inquisition as positively as it did. There are not many opportunities to reckon with the impact of a religious imperialist force occupying land, taking resources, and choosing who gets to sit on thrones. Perhaps this is my perspective as a person in from Global South coming out, but that is why the game is actually quite disturbing to me, in an eerie cult-like way. Like is no one else seeing what's happening? Why is no one screaming with me? (Note that I have hundreds of hours on it, I do really enjoy it!)

Anyway, by the end of the game, the institutions of Southern Thedas are in an interesting position. I am excited to see what happens next! There is real potential to explore the other side of institutional change - the bottom-up, grassroots, radical incrementalist way. Surely they won't burn all that potential down in Veilguard just to factory reset the franchise! :D

Oh.

[darkeagleruins]

Presenting the King and Queen of the criminal illegal invasion, Samantha Power (born in the UK) and her husband Cass Sunstein.

GPS—they met together and separately at Barack Hussein Obama II’s war room/mansion in Washington, DC hundreds of times during the Biden/Harris Regime, 19 times since the election and 4 times since President Trump took office.

The circumstances surrounding the controversial financial and political of Samantha Power, a former USAID administrator, and her significant increase in net worth during her tenure in public office. Power’s wealth reportedly surged from $6.7 million in 2021 to $30 million by 2024, raises questions about how such a dramatic increase occurred despite her official annual salary of $180,000.

This financial growth has led to public scrutiny and allegations of financial misconduct within USAID under Power's leadership.

USAID, an organization tasked with managing billions in global funding, under audit for alleged misuse of funds, including spending on contentious programs like transgender initiatives and cultural projects abroad.

These programs served as conduits for financial kickbacks to lawmakers and officials, enriching them at the expense of American taxpayers. Powers funneled billions into NGOs financing the criminal illegal invasion of America.

Power’s husband, Cass Sunstein, also plays a key role in this narrative. Sunstein, a senior adviser on immigration policy at DHS during the Biden administration, allegedly shaped policies that created the “open-border” system.

This was seen as complementary to Power’s role at USAID, with Power funding programs to facilitate immigration while Sunstein ensured these policies were implemented. This was a coordinated “one-two punch,” enabling illegal immigration while circumventing any accountability or transparency.

Sunstein’s academic and professional background, citing his 2008 white paper, Conspiracy Theories, which advocated for government infiltration of online movements to neutralize narratives that could undermine U.S. military and diplomatic efforts.

This idea extended to behavioral influence strategies outlined in his book, Nudge, which became a foundational text for professionals working in counter-disinformation and media literacy.

The book emphasized shaping public behavior without overt coercion, using techniques like algorithmic manipulation, social media deplatforming, and other indirect methods to discourage dissent.

USAID’s role in psychological (gaslighting) operations was engaged in misinformation campaigns both domestically and abroad. Coupled with Sunstein’s advocacy for “raising the cost” of dissenting behavior, contributed to an erosion of free speech protections. Examples included penalties for questioning COVID-19 policies, such as job loss, social media bans, and reputational damage, all designed to discourage opposition without resorting to legal consequences.

There are even broader concerns about the interplay between government roles and private-sector enrichment, with a pattern of officials transitioning from public service to lucrative positions in finance or industry.

This “blob-to-banker pipeline” allows individuals to leverage insider knowledge for personal gain. For instance, Jared Cohen, a former State Department official, having transitioned to roles at Google Jigsaw and later Goldman Sachs, where his government connections reportedly informed investment strategies.

The current system has zero transparency, accountability, and erodes public trust.

USAID’s misuse of funds, coupled with Power’s rapid wealth accumulation, exemplifies the broader issue of financial exploitation within government institutions.

Word needs to get out. Share this post, do your own research, engage in discourse, and hold public officials accountable.

[mariacallous]

Americans need to log off. Unplug. Shoot the TV. It seems impossible. Less than five days from Election Day in the US, most people can’t help but check the news—or TikTok or X—at least once a day. Swipe, refresh, repeat. By Tuesday, the connectedness will be constant. Mentally, political stress takes a huge toll. Given that anxiety can be exacerbated by uncertainty, the 2024 election feels worse than it has ever before. There’s a reason for that.

I don’t just mean the general sky-is-falling stuff—the militias on Facebook organizing ballot-box stakeouts, the conspiracy theory spreaders, the cybercriminals potentially waiting in the wings. Some version of those nerve-janglers has been around for years. Now, though, there’s a new factor upping users’ blood pressure as they doomscroll: AI misinformation.

Clearly US voters worry about how misinformation might impact who wins the election, but Sander van der Linden, author of Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity, notes that the anxiety around AI might be more existential. “If you look at the problem from a more indirect perspective, such as sowing doubt and chaos, confusion, undermining democratic discourse, lowering trust in the electoral process, and confusing swing voters,” he says. “I think we’re looking at a bigger risk”—one that fuels polarization and erodes the quality of debate.

According to an American Psychological Association survey released last week, 77 percent of US adults feel some level of stress over the future of the country. It gets worse. Sixty-nine percent of adults surveyed said the race between Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump was a cause of “significant stress”—a figure that’s up from 52 percent in 2016, when Trump beat Hillary Clinton. Nearly three-quarters of respondents thought the election could spur violence; more than half worried it could be “the end of democracy in the US.”

Christ.

On top of all of this sits the threat of AI-generated falsehoods. For more than a year researchers have warned of election misinformation from artificial intelligence. Beyond the polls, such misinformation has played a role in the Israel-Hamas war and the war in Ukraine. 404 Media called the aftermath of Hurricane Helene “the ‘fuck it’ era of AI-generated slop.” (Actually) fake news lurks around every corner. Earlier this year, the World Economic Forum released a report claiming AI misinformation is one of the biggest short-term threats the world faces. Bad election information and fake images can also bring in serious money for X users, according to a BBC report this week.

This was the first year the APA asked about AI and election anxiety and one of the things the organization found was that seven in 10 people experienced stress over the fact that fake information can seem so believable. One-third of social media users said they don’t know what to believe on those platforms. “It extends beyond just information and social media,” says Vaile Wright, APA’s senior director of health care innovation. “A majority of Americans said they don't trust the US government. So there's sort of this whole lack of trust in what used to be very trusted institutions—the media, government—and that, I'm sure, is not helping with people's stress as it relates to this election this year.”

When the US election season ramped up there were AI-generated robocalls (the Federal Communications Commission outlawed them) and now election officials are preparing staff to deal with any number of deepfakes they may encounter. X’s AI model Grok is reportedly boosting conspiracy theories. (It’s also, according to Musk, working on its MRI-reading skills.)

After months of fretting about AI taking jobs, now everyone has to worry about it taking faith in the democratic process?

For nearly two decades, one social media platform or another has ended up dominating a US election. Back in 2008, it was a still-young Twitter. During most of the twenty-teens, it was Facebook (and a bit of Instagram) and Twitter. More recently, TikTok has become a news-spreading tool. In each election cycle, people have swiped to keep up—and also confronted new levels of toxicity. Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, who got out of prison this week, once told reporter Michael Lewis Democrats didn’t matter, “the real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.” That shit went online.

Now, that shit doesn’t even have to come from political operatives. Machines can make it. When people scroll around on their smartphones for a flicker of hope about whether or not their candidate will win, whatever discouragement or reassurance they find may not even be real.

The APA’s survey found that 82 percent of US adults were worried people may base their values on inaccurate information, and more than one-fifth said they’d believed something they read online or on social media when it wasn’t true. Another poll conducted in early September found that only about a quarter of voters feel confident that they can tell the difference between real AI-generated visuals, like the fake images Trump shared claiming Taylor Swift fans are supporting him. “That’s not a good sign,” van der Linden says.

If your fears about the election seem even worse than they did in 2020, this may be why. Misinformation takes a mental toll. “Political anxiety” exists, and research indicates it can impact those who aren’t anxious otherwise. Couple that with a media landscape where newspapers are coming under fire for not endorsing a political candidate and the picture of a nervous electorate becomes very clear. Trust no one; just wait to see what happens—then decide if you believe it.

[marta-bee]

News of the Day 5/26/25: Soft Power

Paywall free.

When we talk about Trump's cutting of science research, we often focus on the lost inventions and vaccines and all, the waste of research cut off mid-study, the fired people and how that ripples out through towns where the big university is a huge employer.

Or with Trump targeting foreign students, we talk about the racism of it, challenges to free speech and rule of law, or, in the case of Harvard losing its right to enroll foreign students, weaponizing normal government administration to punish those he perceives of as political enemies.

All that's true, but I'd throw on another cause for concern: it's good for America to have powerful people around the world who studied here, made friends here, had good experiences here. It's a kind of soft power, and it humanizes how they see us. It makes them want to give us a little more benefit of the doubt, trust us a little more. And, at least in saner times when our president wasn' making it impossible to work with us, I'm convinced that made us all better off in ways most Americans just didn't appreciae.

This isn't just tied to elite universities, and it's not just some touchy-feely things. It affects our economic prospects and just general place in the world, and not in a good way.

Attacks on Universities

Funding Cuts Are a ‘Gut Punch’ for STEM Education Researchers (X)

Trump is forcing Harvard’s 6,800 foreign students to transfer right now or lose their legal status, dealing a potentially irreversible hit to U.S. attractiveness as a higher education destination (X)

How Trump’s ban on international students could affect American companies (X)

Paul Krugman: The Economic Consequences of Destroying Harvard (X)

In Attacks on Harvard, Chinese See Yet Another Reason to Write Off the U.S. (X)

The courts put Trump’s move to ban Harvard foreign students on hold, at least temporarily. (X)

Larry Summers, on the Harvard attacks: “It’s hard to imagine a greater strategic gift to China than for the United States to sacrifice its role as a beacon to the world.” (X)

Trump is also trying to strip Harvard’s tax-exempt status. (X) Arguably they can afford it, but taxing your political enemies differently is really autocracy 101.

& in happier news: Someone up there apparently is a Crimson fan. (X) :-) 

Tariffs and the Sale America Move

Because America was traditionally seen as a strong, stable investment, countries were willing to buy American debt, keeping interest on our national debt relatively low. That’s changing, and all that debt is becoming more expensive.

Why the bond market is barfing (X)

How Does the National Debt Affect You? A Budget Expert Explains. (VIDEO) (X)

America's Credit Is Falling—and the Government Is Still Digging Deeper Into Debt (X)

Investors shrug off Moody's downgrade as stocks, U.S. borrowing costs stay largely flat (X)

When interest rates outpace growth, very bad things can happen. (X)

The 'Buy America' strategy has stopped working in the tariff era. What investors should do next (X)

By alienating our historical allies, Trump made it much harder to deal with China in the trade war. (X) He’s struggling to make trade deals with any of them, too. (X)

Reason.com: “The Trade War Is Eroding America's Soft Power” (X)

The American Brand Abroad

USAID Bears the American Identity (X) And cancelling it has an impact.

Changes to Voice of America aren’t helping either. (X)

Trump’s War With The Media: 600 Voice Of America Staffers Fired (X)

LA Times: Voice of America made the US a Superpower. Now Trump has surrendered. (X)

Here and abroad, fewer see Americans as decent people (X)

Trump Cuts Are Killing a Tiny Office That Keeps Measurements of the World Accurate (X)

Pandemic preparedness: WHO adopts landmark agreement (X) Several countries are banding together to design and produce future vaccines, without US involvement.

Contra: “Brand America Never Goes Out of Style.” (X)

Contra: “American Medical Innovation: Allies Should Help Pay Costs” (X)

Foreign Relations

A Canadian Technocrat’s New Mission: A Radical Breakup With Trump’s U.S. (X)

NY Times: “In the Future, China Will Be Dominant. The U.S. Will Be Irrelevant.” (X)

While most of the world looked away, a new nuclear arms race has broken out between the US, Russia, and China, raising the risk of nuclear confrontation to the highest in decades. (X)

We’re not undoing Brexit through sheer force of anti-USA repulsion, but we’re also not not doing that. (X) More details on the recent deal. (X) 

Time.com on the history behind MAGA’s dislike of Europe. (X)

How the Iran-Contra Scandal Impacts American Politics Today (X)

The US closed the Office of Palestinian Affairs, “in effect eliminating the Palestinians’ dedicated diplomatic channel to Washington.”

African islands under threat: what to do about Trump’s withdrawal from climate change agreement 

With Ukraine, I can’t muster anything more than a silent apology. But we’re increasingly disengaging there, and yes, it’s hurting our reputation on top of the obvious.

Diplomacy and the Department of State

Trump announced a massive restructuring and downsizing of the State Department, eliminating programs dedicated to peace and democracy-promoting. (X) Which makes since, given how Trump sees himself as the dealmaker-in-chief. But it means the hard work to work toward deals that takes longer than his personal focus just won’t be happening nearly as much.

Specifically, they’re cutting 15% of the domestic staff and closing 132 offices (X), including a climate change envoy and war crimes office. (X)

More on the Trump loyalists taking over the State Department. (X)

By Slashing U.S. Funding for the United Nations, Trump Is Empowering China (X)

He’s specifically lowering funding for UN peacekeepers. (X)

He also threatened to decrease our NATO funding, too. (X)

Domestically, he’s also doing a major overhaul of the National Security Council. (X)

[trumpamerica]

America’s Future Depends on DOGE

Wall Street Journal

If Trump and Musk don’t succeed in showing the bureaucracy who’s boss, it’s likely no one ever will.

Critics view the Department of Government Efficiency’s emails asking federal employees for evidence of productivity as chaotic, arbitrary and even cruel measures to impose on a devoted civil service. But Elon Musk is simply bringing normal private-sector standards to a government that desperately needs them. Since the Pendleton Act of 1883 introduced merit-based selection and civil-service job protections for federal workers, the administrative state has proliferated without sufficient checks and balances from the president or Congress.

The federal bureaucracy has ballooned from a few agencies to more than 400, many of which are “independent” of the president. Americans often view the president as responsible for the actions those agencies take. The system nudges new presidents to give up and go along. And that’s exactly what they’ve done. No president—not Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan—has cracked this nut. Most reforms have made the administrative state larger, not smaller.

As we’re seeing now, substantial opposition awaits anyone who challenges the bureaucracy. Unions are powerful. Intimidation from those with institutional knowledge can be overwhelming. Fear of the media has also been a deterrent to action. Every president has been at least somewhat fearful of the intelligence agencies. Industry leaders who have captured the agencies, including many campaign donors, have been too powerful to unseat or control.

Countless cabinet secretaries come and go with the intention of changing the system. They get big offices, a nice portrait and social status, but the bureaucrats know that the political appointees are temporary and easily can be ignored. Frustrated by institutional inertia, the appointees often leave outwitted, outgunned and demoralized.

Meanwhile, the American people feel increasingly oppressed, taxed, regulated, spied on, browbeaten, hectored and harassed. Voting never made a difference because the politicians no longer controlled the system. The bureaucracies rule all. We’ve come to know this in our gut, which is why voters’ trust in the system has eroded as agencies’ power has built up.

The Biden years underscored this point. We didn’t even need a conscious or active president, only a figurehead. Behind the scenes, institutions ran everything.

How can the U.S. deal with this problem? President Trump alone figured it out in his last term: He simply took charge of agencies in a limited way with selective firings, which he believed he had the legal authority to do. This unleashed howls of horror and whispers of plots from his critics, including in the media. Entrenched administrators hatched clever schemes to thwart his plans and show him who was boss—not the democratically elected president but the bureaucracy.

The message from today’s civic elites is that the president’s job is to pretend to be in charge while doing nothing meaningful. Shut up. Don’t disturb the administrative state. Let it keep doing its thing without oversight or disruption, and you’ll get your library and bestselling memoir.

Mr. Trump refuses this deal. In his second term, he’s determined to slay the bureaucratic beast he knows all too well from his first term and the Biden years. DOGE’s efforts are epic, breaking more than a century of acquiescence to the deep state. The Trump team is courageously confronting the problem head-on, come what may. Mr. Trump’s allies know that they must act quickly and with some degree of ferocity, even recklessness, lest we default back to the status quo of leaders who pretend to be in charge while the embedded “men of the system”—to adapt a phrase from Adam Smith—run things behind closed doors.

It’s critical that this bureaucracy-gutting effort succeeds. There might never be another chance.

[xcziel]

hadn't seen this on here yet

South Korea Is Fighting for Democracy Again—And the World Needs to Know

by Heesoo Jang

Assistant Professor of Media Law and Ethics, Journalism Department, University of Massachusetts Amherst 

South Korea is once again at a critical juncture in its democratic history. More than a hundred thousand protesters, joined by over 4,000 professors and 1,466 Catholic priests announcing their declarations of the state of affairs, are calling for President Yoon Suk Yeol’s resignation. This echoes the massive movement that led to the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye in 2017 for corruption and abuse of power, showcasing South Koreans’ enduring commitment to holding leaders accountable.

What’s unfolding in South Korea is not just a domestic issue—it’s a reminder that democracies everywhere require constant vigilance. Yet, international media, like the BBC and AP News, have largely missed the bigger picture, focusing on soundbites and foreign policy instead of the underlying democratic struggles. This oversight leaves out important context for the global audience to understand the deeper context of widespread domestic dissatisfaction of the state of democracy in South Korea.

At the heart of the protests are allegations of corruption and abuse of power. President Yoon has exercised his veto power 25 times since 2023, blocking investigations into allegations against his wife, including claims of stock manipulation in Deutsch Motors. This is the most frequent use of veto power South Korea has seen since South Korea’s first president, Syngman Rhee, who faced impeachment in 1952 and eventually resigned in 1960 amid widespread public outrage over his authoritarian rule and attempts to consolidate power. 

These vetoes, alongside scandals like the “Myung Tae-Kyun Gate,” have eroded public trust in the administration. The gate alleges that political broker Myung Tae-Kyun, a close ally of Yoon and First Lady Kim Keon Hee, manipulated public opinion during the 2022 presidential election. Through his Future Korea Research Institute, Myung reportedly conducted biased polls favoring Yoon to influence election narratives. A leaked phone recording released by the opposition Democratic Party has further implicated Yoon in discussions about candidate nominations, fueling allegations of election interference.

Beyond these vetoes, Yoon’s administration has faced widespread criticism for systemic failures in governance, public safety, and economic management. The Itaewon tragedy, where 159 people lost their lives during a crowd crush, starkly exposed grave inadequacies in public safety protocols and emergency response systems. A special investigation on this tragedy was also a bill the President has vetoed. Similarly, the death of Private Chae during military service revealed systemic abuses and negligence within the military. Instead of enabling accountability, President Yoon has repeatedly vetoed special prosecutor bills aimed at investigating these military abuses. Public frustration has only grown as investigations into these tragedies have failed to hold senior officials accountable. Meanwhile, Yoon’s administration has also faced allegations of undermining press freedom by targeting journalists and media outlets critical of the government. 

Adding to these failures is a healthcare system on the brink of collapse, where prolonged medical staff shortages, exacerbated by budget cuts, have caused long-term disruptions in patient care. Instead of addressing these structural issues, the government has opted for a hasty increase in medical school quotas—a move experts warn will only further destabilize the system. Yoon’s economic policies have similarly drawn heavy criticism for favoring the wealthy with tax cuts while reducing public welfare budgets, deepening inequality between South Korea’s elites and its struggling middle and working classes. Rising household debt and record-breaking small business closures have fueled calls for reform, yet the administration’s inaction has only alienated the public further. Compounding these grievances, a 15% cut to South Korea’s research and development (R&D) budget has alarmed academics and scientists, who warn that this decision jeopardizes the nation’s innovation-driven economy and long-term global competitiveness—a concern echoed by prominent universities like Yonsei and Ewha Womans University, which cite these cuts as emblematic of broader governance failures.

Despite the scale of unrest, international media have failed to convey the full significance of this crisis. Instead of contextualizing public discontent and the erosion of democratic norms, they have focused on peripheral issues, ignoring the protests’ broader implications for democracy. This has also allowed misinformation to muddy the narrative internationally, preventing the international public from gaining important contextual information about what’s happening in South Korea. For example, posts on Chinese social media have falsely portrayed the protests as anti-war rallies rather than demands for accountability and reform. 

South Korea’s struggle is a powerful reminder that democracy is not self-sustaining—it requires active vigilance. The protests and demands for reform exemplify how civil society can confront governance failures. The world deserves more context and a nuanced understanding from international journalism about what South Korean democracy is facing, as its fight for justice, transparency, and the rule of law holds lessons for all democracies.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

A large majority of Canadians have been exposed to Russian false narratives about the war in Ukraine — and people who support the Conservative Party are more susceptible to believing Kremlin disinformation, according to a new report. A survey from DisinfoWatch, part of the MacDonald-Laurier Institute think tank, found that 71 per cent of Canadians polled have heard at least one Russian false narrative and that a substantial portion “believe them to be true or are unsure of their falsehood.” It also found “Conservative supporters, who report the highest exposure levels to Kremlin narratives, are also more likely to believe in them compared to their Liberal and NDP counterparts.” The high percentage of Canadians being exposed to the narratives means “Russian disinformation is, in fact, reaching into Canadian homes,” DisinfoWatch director and co-author of the report Marcus Kolga told Global News. He said the primary purpose “is to erode Canadian support and trust in the government of Ukraine, to slow down the aid we’re sending to Ukraine and to stop the supply of weapons, whether it’s Canada or any of our NATO allies.”

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