Beet L. Jooz

The former FBI boss says he searched YouTube extensively but could only find one video of Trump laughing

White House physician Ronny Jackson announced that he would withdraw from consideration for the Secretary of Veterans Affairs.

13-year-old student arrested at William Pitcher Jr. High School

Bill would allow voters to decide whether Louisiana should have unanimous jury verdicts.

Christian leaders believe it could weaken existing 'crimes against nature' law.

U.S. marshals on Tuesday found an 18-year-old wanted on attempted murder and other charges in Alexandria in Texas.

He never stood a chance

And wait -- is Kanye West now a champion for free speech?

This video was immediately tampered with by Facebook.

The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow said on Wednesday that former secretary of state Hillary Clinton canceled an interview with him over his reporting on Harvey Weinstein. WATCH: Farrow first broke the story that Weinstein was accused of sexually harassing and assaulting dozens of Hollywood females and paying off his accusers. Weinstein was deeply connected to […]

The Trump administration proposed tariffs in March on imported Chinese goods, which led to counter-tariffs from China, a major trade partner with the U.S. Headlines on the exchange criticized the policy, calling it a “trade war,” despite the media’s bent on government-run and government-subsidized economic policies. NBC News published an article about Nebraskan farmers and […]

(Washington Times) The Calexit campaign has won approval to collect signatures again for a ballot initiative aimed at separating California from the union, marking the third such attempt for state secessionists.

The group Yes California kicked off its petition campaign Monday after California Secretary of State Alex Padilla gave orgnaizers the go-ahead to collect signatures for a 2020 ballot measure “to ask voters whether California should become an independent country, in the form of a republic.”

If approved, the initiative would require a special election in May 2021 to affirm the vote.

(Daily Mail) A New Jersey police department has released a video showing a former Port Authority commissioner and ex-Hillary Clinton aide trying to use her position to threaten officers who pulled over her daughter’s friend during a traffic stop on Easter weekend.

The remarkable video released by the Tenafly Police Department shows Caren Z. Turner, 60, a Democratic Party lobbyist, flash her badge and boast of her connections to the chief of police and the local mayor while berating two officers who pulled over a car whose Nevada registration had expired.

The car was driven by a male friend of her daughter, who was a passenger in the back seat.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) has signed on to co-sponsor bipartisan legislation to simplify the medical marijuana research process.Goodlatte's spokeswoman, Kathryn Rexrode, ...

New Orleans police are asking for the public's help in locating a woman who has been reported missing since early March. 

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Devon Allaire-Bell was playing soccer with his friend at Frank Hurt Secondary in Newton on Easter Sunday when he was attacked by five men.

Pompeo apparently believes the Iraq war was a mistake

Arizona Rep. Martha McSally (R) said that she was sexually abused by a coach while in high school, ...

Facebook has activated its Safety Check feature in Toronto after a van plowed into a dozen pedestrians Monday afternoon, leaving nine people dead and 16 others injured.

Authored by Mustapha Itani via Medium.com,

Several months ago, one of the early pioneers of Facebook and its first President Sean Parker, voiced his regret regarding helping create social media in the form we know it today, saying:

“I don’t know if I really understood the consequences of what I was saying, because of the unintended consequences of a network when it grows to a billion or 2 billion people and it literally changes your relationship with society, with each other,”…

”God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.”

Parker says the social networking site exploits human psychological vulnerabilities through a validation feedback loop that gets people to constantly post to get even more likes and comments.

“It’s exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology,” he said.

“The inventors, creators — it’s me, it’s Mark [Zuckerberg], it’s Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it’s all of these people — understood this consciously. And we did it anyway.”

Later on, another former Facebook executive opened up about the same concerns.

Chamath Palihapitiya, former vice president of user growth at Facebook stated at a recent public discussion at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, “I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.”

”The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works,” Palihapitiya said.

“No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth. And it’s not an American problem  -  this is not about Russians ads. This is a global problem.”

Palihapitiya then expressed the feeling of guilt, “I feel tremendous guilt. I think we all knew in the back of our minds — even though we feigned this whole line of, like, there probably aren’t any bad unintended consequences. I think in the back, deep, deep recesses of, we kind of knew something bad could happen. But I think the way we defined it was not like this.”

“So we are in a really bad state of affairs right now, in my opinion. It is eroding the core foundation of how people behave by and between each other. And I don’t have a good solution. My solution is I just don’t use these tools anymore. I haven’t for years.“

Concerning the issue of social media as a whole, Palihapitiya stated that he doesn’t use it anymore since he “innately didn’t want to get programmed.” And as for his kids, “they’re not allowed to use this shit.”

Then he goes on to express some really strong sentiments:

“Bad actors can now manipulate large swaths of people to do anything you want. It’s a bad, bad state of affairs. And we compound the problem. We curate our lives around this perceived sense of perfection, because we get rewarded in these short term signals: Hearts, likes, thumbs up. And we conflate that with value and we conflate it with truth, and instead what it really is is fake, brittle popularity that’s short term and that leaves you even more, and admit it, vacant and empty before you did it. Because it forces you into this vicious cycle about what’s the next thing I need to do, because I need it back. And think about that compounded by two billion people.”

“Everybody else has to soul-search a little bit more about what you’re willing to do,” he said.

“Because your behaviors, you don’t realize it, but you are being programmed. It was unintentional, but now you gotta decide how much you’re willing to give up, how much of your intellectual independence.”

He finishes this up by warning the audience not to think they’re too smart to fall for the implications of social media, and stated that those who are best-and-brightest are the most likely to fall for it, “because you are fucking check-boxing your whole Goddamn life.”

Now this is some really strong stuff, especially coming straightforward from Frankenstein’s mouth

Workplace drama: Nearly half of U.S. workers have sought revenge on a co-worker The other half is not trying to get you, they're just trying to do their damn jobs and be left alone. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/careers/work-relat... https://gab.ai/BeEtLjOoZ/posts/24386212

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There were also an additional six carjackings reported in the same amount of time, as well as seven separate shootings that left 10 people injured.

The mayoral candidate, who is also known for paying for sky written messages over New Orleans, will serve a year of probation.

Gina West was booked with 39 counts of theft and 17 counts of forgery and bank fraud.

The Taiwan-based Formosa Petrochemical Corp. wants to build a complex near the SunShine Bridge.