Cowboy Who?

On Tuesday, the Austin-based nonprofit Workers Defense Project announced it was filing complaints with the federal Department of Labor (DOL) alleging wage theft and falsified safety training during the construction of auto manufacturer Tesla’s so-called Gigafactory in Travis County. The 2,500-acre factory along the Colorado River opened in April following almost two years of construction. Tesla’s CEO is the centibillionaire Elon Musk, also of SpaceX and Twitter fame. 

Together, the filings allege that an unspecified number of workers were not paid at all or were shorted on overtime pay during construction of the Tesla site and that a worker named Victor was provided with falsified Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) certificates for training he did not actually receive. These workers were not employed directly by Tesla, but rather by an assortment of contractors and subcontractors. The DOL’s Wage and Hour Division and OSHA are empowered to investigate such claims, and the companies involved could face monetary or even criminal penalties. Workers Defense redacted the contractors’ names and the full names of workers to avoid retaliation or impeding federal investigation, a spokesperson said.

“We have dozens of workers who have come forward to Workers Defense with wage theft allegations … from a couple thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars,” staff attorney Hannah Alexander said Tuesday, “and workers report this wasn’t just happening to them but to others building the Tesla Gigafactory—potentially hundreds more.”

In an interview with the Guardian, Victor—the worker who allegedly received fake OSHA certificates—also said he was made to work on a metal roof at night without lights and to keep working in a flooded area. “Nobody deserves what happened in the Gigafactory to happen to them, or their family members, or whomever,” he told the British newspaper.

In an email Tuesday, DOL spokesperson Juan J. Rodriguez wrote: “The Wage and Hour Division takes allegations of workers’ rights abuses very seriously, and the division will investigate the alleged violations. The division works closely with groups like the Workers Defense Project to promote and ensure that employers comply with federal labor regulations that protect the nation’s workers.” Information pertaining to the OSHA complaint did not immediately appear in the agency’s online database.

Back in summer 2020, as Elon Musk was deciding to move Tesla headquarters to Texas seemingly in protest of California COVID-19 restrictions, the Travis County Commissioners Court approved a deal worth $14 million in property tax rebates for the Gigafactory. The deal included some labor-friendly terms, such as a $15 wage floor, but it didn’t include all the terms outlined in the so-called Better Builder Program—the signature initiative of Workers Defense that, for years, has raised the floor on wages and safety for construction projects receiving government incentives in Central Texas. In particular, the deal lacked independent on-site monitoring of safety and wage payment, according to Workers Defense Policy Director David Chincanchan.

“When Workers Defense first learned about Tesla coming to Travis County and seeking tax incentives … [we] opposed the project given the history of labor and employment abuses on Tesla sites across the nation,” Chincanchan said Tuesday. “While the final deal included some worker protections, it was not the level of protection that the community wanted.” 

Outside Texas, Tesla has become well known for wide-ranging worker safety, record-keeping, and union-busting violations. In choosing Texas for its Gigafactory, Musk’s company—whose market value has dropped lately amid issues including Musk’s questionable Twitter takeover—chose the state already home to arguably the deadliest construction industry in the nation. 

“Worker safety in Travis County is of the utmost importance to the Travis County Commissioners Court. This is why the Commissioners Court includes several worker protections in Economic Development Performance Agreements like the one with Tesla,” a county spokesperson told the Observer in an email. “The Travis County Commissioners Court is aware that a complaint … was filed. The Commissioners Court expects all parties to fully cooperate and will await the results of the investigation.” 

The Observer has requested comment from Tesla and will update this story if a response is provided.

Although the employees described in Tuesday’s DOL complaints worked for contractors rather than for Tesla directly, Workers Defense argues that Tesla should be accountable too. “Even though the employers are technically contractors and subcontractors, what we do know in the construction industry is that Tesla is the developer and the power rests solely with Tesla and other developers who have the power to actually raise standards on a construction site,” said Juan Benitez, the group’s communications director.

Virginia Badillo, a Workers Defense board member, explained Tuesday the significance of wage theft for low-wage, often immigrant, construction workers. “For a company here in Texas, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand dollars is nothing,” she said. “For our community, it’s the rent, food for your family … the difference between paying the light bill or not.”

As of early Tuesday afternoon, Musk had not tweeted about or otherwise publicly responded to the allegations.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated with a comment on behalf of Travis County.

Disclosure: The writer’s spouse is employed by the Workers Defense Project. They were not involved in the production of this story.

The post Elon Musk’s Tesla Gigafactory Built on Wage Theft and Safety Violations, Texas Workers Allege appeared first on The Texas Observer.

In 2021, Jesse Freidin began traveling across the country to photograph transgender youth for a photo project called “Are You OK?” He’s been to more than half the states in the country, meeting with dozens of trans kids. 

In August, Freidin made his second visit to Texas. In the intervening year, legal and policy-based attacks on LGBTQ+ people in the United States have reached feverish heights. Governor Greg Abbott even launched child abuse investigations into parents who seek gender-affirming healthcare for their kids. Though nonprofits like Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union have responded with multiple lawsuits against the policy, which has been partially blocked in court, it still left many families fearing for their safety. Kai Shappley, a trans girl known for her outspoken activism, fled the state with her family a month before Freidin planned to photograph her.

“I want to tell those stories before they disappear, before these families leave the country or state, before these families have to go underground,” Freidin said. 

Despite this growing moral panic around young trans lives, a few brave kids still feel safe enough to defiantly present their faces to the world. 

“The ones who are so at risk but still want to speak out, still want to be in the fight and be public, they’re doing their own kind of activism,” Freidin said. 

As a trans man, Freidin feels he can relate to the issue on a deeper level than the mainstream media; “I was so tired of seeing the same image of a trans kid we see in journalism all the time, which is typically by themselves looking sad, playing with toys on the floor.”

Before he takes any photos, Freidin leads his subjects in a breathing exercise designed to help “come into ourselves and hold space for each other.” 

Each portrait follows a similar formula: the young trans person in focus, seated and looking right at the camera. Behind them stand family members, photographed below their shoulders so that their faces are unseen, but exuding support with a touch.

“I want to make a portrait that’s solely about strength and power and joy and, you know, the authenticity and self-knowledge of these kids—because they know who they are,” Freidin said.

The photos, a selection from Freidin’s 2022 trip to Texas, are accompanied by quotes from the interviews he conducted with each trans kid and their family. 

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The post Are You OK? The Lives of Young Trans Texans appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Published in partnership with the Daily Dot.

A video posted on the right-wing video site Rumble alleging to show evidence of election fraud in Dallas is being used to call for the delay in the certification of the midterm vote in Dallas County, which overwhelmingly supported Democrats in the election. It’s also being used to hype a fundraiser for the “Election Oversight Group”—an organization managed by a man who pled guilty to sexual voyeurism after secretly filming people in his home bathroom. 

The video began circulating in conservative circles after a November 14 article in the Gateway Pundit, a right-wing conspiracy theory website. It was first posted by a right-wing influencer known as the “Cannabis Conservative” on November 12.

“The Election Oversight Group, who has been investigating and documenting Georgia’s election problems since the 2020 General Election, in conjunction with County Citizens Defending Freedom, has provided The Gateway Pundit with more evidence that our election system should not be trusted,” the article reads. “This time, it’s direct from Texas but has implications and evidence of occurrences in many other jurisdictions.”

Kevin Moncla, whose group obtained the video from a poll worker, suggested he will take legal action based on his findings in Dallas, but has not provided evidence beyond the one video. “We have the facts,” Moncla posted on Twitter on November 17. “The fact is the poll pad numbers across Dallas County were falsely inflated.”

We have the facts. The fact is the poll pad numbers across Dallas County were falsely inflated.

— Kevin Moncla (@KevinMoncla) November 17, 2022

The video, which shows unusual jumps in checked-in voters on the screen of an electronic pollbook after polls closed, has been used to fuel claims of fraud. 

But these rumors have already been debunked by authorities. Despite being batted down as bogus in the wake of the Gateway Pundit’s splashy claims, the video was picked up the next day by the Dallas Express, a right wing outlet, and a local Spectrum News station.

During public comment at an unrelated Commissioners Court meeting on November 15, one Dallas County resident named Gene Robinson demanded a total decertification and redo of the election, referenced the debunked video, and then recommended the work of notorious election conspiracy theorist Russ Ramsland.

“I’m here today to call on this body to not certify the election of November 8 based on numerous accusations of fraud and malfeasance that went on in Dallas County,” Robinson said. “We have video evidence that electronic pollbooks were calculating additional voters after the election closed.”

Both the Gateway Pundit article and the description under the original post of the video on Rumble link to a fundraiser for the Election Oversight Group (EOG), which is led by Kevin Moncla. Moncla, a self-described investigative journalist and independent researcher, is listed as the manager of the EOG fundraiser on Give Send Go, a “Christian” fundraising platform that’s become a haven for far-right causes like the infamous Canadian and American trucker convoys. Moncla has appeared in podcasts representing EOG and regularly posts links to their website on Twitter. His name appears at the bottom of their Substack.

The EOG fundraiser is seeking $125,000 to support their “investigative approach.” It has raised less than $20,000 so far. 

Moncla and another managing member of EOG, David Cross, filed a complaint in Georgia on October 11 claiming widespread “error codes” were found in Dominion Voting Systems tabulating machines in Georgia used in the 2020 election, a state where conspiracies around the company and voting machines have flourished. The video from Dallas, which was filmed in violation of election law, is but the latest broadside from the group. 

But this isn’t the first time Moncla has been involved with illegal filming.

The Daily Dot has confirmed that Moncla, who is now based in Texas, was convicted in Florida after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor voyeurism charge in 2004.

The Daily Dot has confirmed that Moncla, who is now based in Texas, was convicted in Florida after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor voyeurism charge in 2004. Moncla was ordered to pay $3.25 million in damages by the court. As reported by the Ledger in 2006, court records say Moncla secretly videotaped house guests’ and his then-wife’s activities in the bathroom through ceiling vents at his home in Destin, Florida. From September to November 2002, a couple and their two young children were videotaped while they were guests in Moncla’s home, court records say. 

In one of Moncla’s three mugshot photos, he’s sporting the same beard seen in his Twitter photo and in a November 16 appearance on Real America’s Voice, a far-right network that’s known for featuring Steve Bannon. Via email, Moncla confirmed he is involved with EOG but did not respond to the Daily Dot’s emails, calls, or texts regarding the voyeurism incident.

A Sheriff’s office investigator testified in a deposition that the recording setup in Moncla’s home was “more sophisticated than throwing a camera up somewhere and leaving it out.” The scheme unraveled when Moncla’s then-wife discovered a videocassette recorder with tapes inside under a bed, according to the prosecuting attorney.

Now, the secret bathroom filmer is engaged in another illicit filming campaign to prevent certification of elections in Texas, building on his prior efforts to challenge elections in Georgia. Both efforts center around allegations that voting machines and tabulators are compromised.

The calls to halt certification in Dallas are rooted in a specious narrative that says the videos filmed by poll workers in violation of election law that claim to show sudden jumps in the number of voters checking in after the polls were closed is evidence of compromise voting machines. While Moncla has submitted multiple formal complaints in Georgia alleging systemic issues with voting machines, he’s been vague about the details regarding Dallas County, a Democratic stronghold in Texas, aside from claims of inflated vote counts. 

“Legal reasons,” he recently posted on Twitter. “You don’t put your evidence out before you file a case.”

Moncla’s comments on Real America’s Voice, as well as a podcast where he was featured as a guest alongside Michael Flynn acolyte and notorious election denier Seth Keshel, demonstrate outlandish beliefs that thousands of votes have been fabricated in Georgia. One 29-page complaint co-authored by Moncla claims with little basis that more than 300,000 votes were unverified in the Democratic stronghold of Fulton County, home of the city of Atlanta, and should have been thrown out in court. 

Whether Moncla will make similar allegations about Dallas County is unclear, but he suggests has more in his pocket.

“I’ve got the complete line of evidence for both Dallas, TX and multiple counties in GA,” he wrote on Twitter. “I’m not guessing- it is a fact.”

I've got the complete line of evidence for both Dallas, TX and multiple counties in GA. I'm not guessing- it is a fact.

— Kevin Moncla (@KevinMoncla) November 17, 2022

While Moncla may have some experience in illegal, surreptitious voyeurism, his opinions on voting machines aren’t carrying much weight. The narrative pushed by EOG has been rebuked by nearly every authority that matters in Texas.

A spokesperson from the Texas secretary of state told Lead Stories that the state-certified Election Systems & Software (ES&S) voting systems have previously experienced “some delay in the downloading” of checked-in voters and then caught up. 

“The updating of pollbook numbers, even after polls have closed, is normal behavior for an electronic pollbook,” a spokesperson from ES&S told Lead Stories.

“Dallas County’s e-pollbooks functioned accurately, but slowly, and correctly recorded the number of voters who were issued ballots on Election Day.”

Dallas County Elections has also responded to the claims. “Once the polls closed at 7 pm on Election Day, the upload traffic on the network decreased and, as a result, the downloads appeared to have sped up significantly,” the Dallas County Elections rumor control website reported. “Dallas County’s e-pollbooks functioned accurately, but slowly, and correctly recorded the number of voters who were issued ballots on Election Day.”

These statements clarify the updates that appear to cause a sudden jump in checked-in voters can happen due to spotty Wi-Fi connections as the system at a given voting location tries to distribute status updates to all of the units used by poll workers. 

“It’s like getting a slew of Facebook notifications when you get a cell signal back,” reads one response to a video Moncla shared on Twitter.

So, if you happen to see claims of election fraud based on videos of individual polling machines, take them with a massive dose of skepticism. Particularly if they’re being promoted by a convicted bathroom voyeur.

The post Right Wing ‘Election Fraud’ Researcher A Convicted Bathroom Voyeur appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The state’s biggest county has no central system for tracking problems, so it still can’t say how many polling places opened late, ran out of paper or worked just fine.

Police received a phone call just before midnight that there was an "active shooting" at a local club called Club Q, a Colorado Springs Police Department spokesperson said early Sunday morning.

Try out my quantum mechanics course (and many others on math and science) on https://brilliant.org/sabine. You can get started for free, and the first 200 will get 20% off the annual premium subscription.

The paper from Chalmers and McQueen is here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.02314

Wigner's essay is here: https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/wigner/Wigner_Remarks.pdf

The 1989 paper about consciousness-influence on measurements is here: http://teilhard.global-mind.org/papers/pdf/REG.meta-analysis.1989.pdf

The 2012 paper about the influence of consciousness on the double-slit experiment is here:
http://www.esalq.usp.br/lepse/imgs/conteudo_thumb/Consciousness-and-the-double-slit-interference-pattern-Six-experiments.pdf

The criticism on their statistical analysis is here: https://philpapers.org/rec/WALRCF

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00:00 Intro
00:34 Wigner and his friends
03:39 Enter von Neumann
05:51 Problems with the Wigner-vNeumann interpretation
07:37 Consciousness-induced wave-function collapse
09:38 Consciousness-influenced wave-function collapse
14:27 Penrose and Hamaroff
15:25 Summary
16:02 Check out my Quantum Mechanics Course

#physics #quantum #consciousness

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After going public on Friday, the app's stock rose by more than 400 percent.

(Image credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

In an extraordinary opening news conference before the World Cup, FIFA President Gianni Infantino defended the host country's decision to ban beer at stadiums and Qatar's human rights record.

(Image credit: Christopher Lee/Getty Images)

VirtualBox v7.0.4 is released. VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86/x64 hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional-quality virtualization solution that is also Open Source Software....More

Windows lets you know when your computer’s Internet connection is limited or absent entirely. What is this sorcery?

Windows attempts to download a file from a dedicated Web server. Depending on which version of Windows, it’s http://www.msftncsi.com/ncsi.txt or http://www.msftconnecttest.com/connecttest.txt. If the download is successful and contains the correct contents, then Windows concludes that you have full Internet access.

If something goes wrong, Windows will report either limited or no Internet access, depending on what exactly went wrong.

You can read more details on docs.microsoft.com.

The post How does Windows decide whether your computer has limited or full Internet access? appeared first on The Old New Thing.

A friend shared a fragment of their bill:

︎	Pay by Phone 24/7 ###-###-#### Monday–Friday 8:00am to 5:00pm

The name of the department is “Pay by Phone 24/7”. Actual hours of operation are Monday to Friday, from 8am to 5pm.

The post It’s important to get the most difficult part out of the way by putting it in the title appeared first on The Old New Thing.

Please enjoy this new update for the BMOW Floppy Emu disk emulator as we head into the Thanksgiving holiday week. The new firmware brings a UI refresh, scrolling of long filenames, bug fixes, performance tweaks, a couple of new disk formats, and a simplified naming scheme and update process. I think you’re going to like it. Here’s a look at what’s changed.

 
UI Graphics Galore

For the Floppy Emu Model C, the user interface has been overhauled to take better advantage of the extra display resolution (compared to the previous generation of hardware). There’s a new start-up screen to replace the old smiley-face, and improvements to how the current emulation mode is displayed. I sometimes hear from customers who are confused about which disk emulation mode they’ve chosen, or how to change the emulation mode, and this UI should help with both. The active emulation mode is now displayed in both text and graphics during startup, along with a prompt “press SELECT to open emulation mode menu”. If you can’t remember that you chose Lisa 3.5 inch floppy disk emulation, now you’ll see a bitmapped Lisa logo and a 3.5 inch disk icon. All of the references to the PREV, SELECT, and NEXT buttons have also been enhanced with triangle and square icons to match the legend on the Emu’s acrylic case. It looks slick.

The new UI extends to the main disk emulation display as well. You’ll see one or two icons depicting the types of disks that Floppy Emu is currently emulating. Read-only disks are displayed with a padlocked icon, and in Dual 5.25 Inch Floppy mode the icons are also numbered for Drive 1 and Drive 2. It may be eye candy, but it’s so much better than boring text.

 
Long Filename Scrolling and Size Display

Do you have a file or directory name that’s too long to fit the Floppy Emu’s display? The new firmware also implements filename scrolling in the menus and disk emulation screens. It’s hard to capture in a photo, but it’s a smooth pixel-by-pixel scrolling and it looks great. This features was suggested several times in the past, but I used to believe it wasn’t necessary. The firmware truncates long filenames by omitting the middle section, rather than the end, so “Welcome Aboard – Disk 1, Size A.woz” becomes “Welcome Aboard ..de A”. That’s enough to tell apart side A, B, and C, but now that I’ve seen filename scrolling in action, I have to admit it’s much nicer. The original method is still used when you’re quickly scrolling through a menu listing, but if you pause for a second, the highlighted menu entry begins to scroll and reveal the full name of the file or directory.

For technical reasons, long filename scrolling isn’t available for Unidisk 3.5 disk emulation. Whomp whomp.

Filename scrolling also creates an opportunity to show more information about the highlighted item in disk selection menus. If Floppy Emu recognizes the disk image as a supported type, it’ll show the size/type as a suffix on the filename, right in the menu! Imagine you’ve got your Floppy Emu connected to a Macintosh Plus, which supports 400K and 800K floppies only. If you scroll through a directory listing and see “Stuffit Expander 5.5.dsk 1440K” then you’ll immediately know the Mac Plus can’t read it. With the earlier firmware, you had to guess at this, and try inserting the disk before you could learn its size and type.

 
Bug Fixes and Enhancements

The new Apple II firmware fixes a rare bug that occurred when Dual 5.25 Floppy mode was used with a Yellowstone universal disk controller card, and Drive 2 was empty. Why would you run Dual 5.25 Floppy mode but leave one of the drives empty? I don’t know, but it’s fixed now.

For Macintosh/Lisa users, menu scrolling and alphabetic sorting have been sped up to match the behavior of the Apple II firmware. There are also three new floppy disk type variations, which I’m calling Small 400K, Small 800K, and Small 1440K. These are standard raw floppy disk images, except instead of filling empty sectors with zeros at the end of the disk image, the image file is simply truncated. You might recognize these as a disk image like “Tools.dsk” that’s 717K instead of 800K. It’s rare, but I’ve run across a few examples.

 
New Firmware System

The final change is the one I’m most excited about: an all-new system for naming and applying firmware updates. Before now the firmware versions had complex names like “Mac-Lisa-0.8H-F15”, which made sense to me but confused everybody else. The firmware was also distributed as two separate data files, one for the AVR microcontroller chip and another for the CPLD logic chip, and both parts needed to be installed separately.

No more. Beginning with this version, I’m moving to a simplified naming scheme using the date in YYMMDD format, with an A or M suffix to indicate the Apple II or Macintosh/Lisa version of the firmware. I’ve also merged the two data files into a single unified file, requiring only a single step to perform the update. If you’re familiar with the old update process, make sure to view the README file since the process has changed. Behind the scenes the AVR can now detect when it’s just been updated, and it automatically unpacks and applies the CPLD update too. I should have done this years ago.

Download the latest Floppy Emu firmware from the project page, or buy a new Floppy Emu Model C at the BMOW Store.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
The next one will be designed with shorter arms.

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An abnormally cool stretch of mid-November weather continues. We’ve already had more sub-60 degree days this week than all of last November and December combined. Of course, given how warm last year was, that isn’t saying much. But still. We have at least a few more days of sub-60 weather before things change somewhat.

Fundraiser

Thank you again to all who have contributed to our annual fundraiser! We are truly grateful, especially in what has been a pretty uneventful year (thank goodness). You can click here to buy items. And if you don’t wish to purchase merchandise and just want make a contribution, click here and check the box that says “I’d like to make a donation only.” Your support literally helps keep the site running, so thank you so much!

Today

Look for clouds to thicken up as the day progresses. We should begin to see sprinkles or light showers break out from southwest to northeast across the region. Initially, these may struggle to reach the ground due to dry air, but as we get closer to evening, I suspect we’ll get more reports of light rain or sprinkles. Temperatures should remain mired in the 50s today.

Saturday

Welp. Tomorrow may be a front-runner for most miserable day of the year.

It’s a pretty simple forecast: Periods of rain, steady at times (especially south of Houston). Cloudy. Cold. Breezy. Temperatures will stay stuck in the 40s all day. Look for breezy conditions with winds of 15 to 25 mph at times, stronger over the water or near the coast. Just really raw, cold, and quite nasty for Houston.

Rain totals will average a half-inch to inch and a half south of Highway-105. Some places may see a bit more, especially nearer to the coast. Others to the north may see a bit less. But everyone sees at least some rain tonight and tomorrow.

Rain should taper off from west to east overnight into very early Sunday morning.

Sunday

Despite Saturday’s gloom, I am optimistic that we should break out into at least a little sunshine on Sunday. It still won’t be a wonderful day, but compared to Saturday it will seem glorious. We should manage lower-50s. A few showers could break out late in the day west of Houston.

Monday

As of now, expect mainly cloudy skies on Monday with scattered showers or some rain. We’ll have to see if this trends more toward a wetter period like Saturday has done. For now, we’ll just call it scattered showers and update you this weekend. One thing we are confident it will be? Chilly. Again. Look for low-50s, maybe mid-50s if were lucky or upper-40s if we’re unlucky.

Tuesday and beyond

We continue to struggle with details regarding the Thanksgiving period. What we know is that there will likely be quiet weather on Tuesday with building rain chances Wednesday and Thursday. Temperatures should gradually sneak back above 60 degrees by Wednesday and Thursday, with morning lows in the 40s early, warming into the 50s and 60s late.

What we don’t know is exactly when it will rain Wednesday through Friday. Our modeling continues to struggle a lot with what may be a pretty significant storm across the Eastern U.S. One school of thought is for a slower moving, stronger storm that would bring thunderstorms and possible severe weather to Texas and Louisiana. That option seems to be fading some. Another slightly more likely possibility is for a quicker moving, weaker system with just a few showers and storms. Here’s the best thinking right now:

Tuesday: Clouds, some sun, a shower possible. Morning lows 40s, daytime highs near 60.

Wednesday: Clouds, some sun, a few showers or sprinkles, especially south and west. Morning lows 50s, daytime highs mid to upper-60s.

Thanksgiving Day: Clouds with a period of showers and storms possible. Morning lows 50s to 60s, daytime highs upper-60s.

Friday: Sun & clouds. Maybe a shower. Morning lows 50s or 40s, daytime highs low-60s.

That’s what we can give you for now. We will keep you posted this weekend with a daily morning update on the forecast both tomorrow and Sunday!

Thanks to Bespoke Post for sponsoring this video! Head to http://bespokepost.com/agingwheels20 and use code AGINGWHEELS20 to
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A middle school teacher in Pflugerville, TX was fired after a video was posted to social media showing the white teacher telling his students his race “is the superior one.” What do you think?

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Royal Mess



View Comic!

Over the last week or so, I keep hearing about a big push among activists and lawmakers to try to get the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) into the year-end “must pass” omnibus bill. Earlier this week, one of the main parents pushing for the bill went on Jake Tapper’s show on CNN and stumped for it. And, the latest report from Axios confirms that lawmakers are looking to include it in the lameduck omnibus, or possibly the NDAA (despite it having absolutely nothing to do with defense spending).

The likeliest path forward for the bills is for them to be added to the year-end defense or spending bill. “We’re at a point where a combination of the victims, and the technology, make it absolutely mandatory we move forward,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a sponsor of the Kids Online Safety Act, told reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday.

“I think it’s going to move,” Stephen Balkam, CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute, said this week at an event in Washington. “I think it could actually go — it’s one of those very rare pieces of legislation that is getting bipartisan support.”

Anyway, let’s be clear about all this: the people pushing for KOSA are legitimately worried about the safety of kids online. And many of those involved have stories of real trauma. But their stumping for KOSA is misguided. It will not help protect children. It will make things much more dangerous for children. It’s an extraordinarily dangerous bill for kids (and adults).

Back in February, I detailed just how dangerous this bill is, in that it tries to deal with “protecting children” by pushing websites to more actively surveil everyone. Many of the people pushing for the bill, including the one who went on CNN this week, talk about children who have died by suicide. Which is, obviously, quite tragic. But all of it seems to assume (falsely) that suicide prevention is simply a matter of internet companies somehow… spying on their kids more. It’s not that simple. Indeed, the greater surveillance has way more consequences for tons of other people, including kids who also need to learn the value of privacy.

If you dig into the language of KOSA, you quickly realize how problematic it would be in practice. It uses extremely vague and fuzzy language that will create dangerous problems. In earlier versions of the bill, people quickly pointed out that some of the surveillance provisions would force companies to reveal information about kids to their parents — potentially including things that might “out” LGBTQ kids to their parents. That should be seen as problematic for obvious reasons. The bill was amended to effectively say “but don’t do that,” but still leaves things vague enough that companies are caught in an impossible position.

Now the end result is basically “don’t have anyone on your platform end up doing something bad.” But, how does that work in practice?

Advocates for the bill keep saying “it just imposes a ‘duty of care'” on platforms. But that misunderstands basically everything about everything. A “duty of care” is one of those things that sounds good to people who have no idea how anything works. As we’ve noted, a duty of care is the “friendly sounding way” to threaten free speech and innovation. That’s because whether or not you met your obligations is determined after something bad happened. And it will involve a long and costly legal battle to determine (in heightened circumstances, often involving a horrible incident) whether or not a website could have magically prevented a bad thing from happening. But, of course, in that context, the bad thing will have already happened, making it difficult to separate the website from the bad thing, and making it impossible to see whether or not the “bad thing” could have been reasonably foreseen.

But, at the very least, it means that any time anything bad happens that is even remotely connected to a website, the website gets sued and has to convince a court that it took appropriate measures. What that means in practice is that websites get ridiculously restrictive to avoid any possible bad thing from happening — in the process limiting tons of good stuff as well.

The whole bill is designed to do two very silly things: make it nearly impossible for websites to offer something new and, even worse, the bill looks to offload any blame on any bad thing on those websites. It especially seeks to remove blame from parents for failing to do their job as a parent. It is the ultimate “let’s just blame the internet for anything bad” bill.

As I noted a couple months ago, the internet is not Disneyland. We shouldn’t want to make it Disneyland, because if we do, we lose a lot. Bad things happen in the world. And sometimes there’s nothing to blame for the bad thing happening.

I don’t talk about it much, but in high school a friend died by suicide. It’s not worth getting into the details, but the suicide was done in a manner designed to make someone else feel terrible as well (and cast a pall of “blame” on that person — which was traumatic for all involved). But, one thing that was an important lesson is that if you spend all your time looking to blame people for someone’s death by suicide, you’re not going to do much good, and, in fact, it creates this unfortunate scenario where it encourages others to consider suicide as a way to “get back” at others. That’s not helpful at all. For anyone.

Unfortunately, people do die by suicide. And we should be focusing more effort on helping people get through difficult times, and making sure that therapy and counselling is available to all who need it. But trying to retroactively hold social media companies to account for those cases, because they enabled people to talk to each other, throws out so much useful and good — including all of the people who were helped to move away from potential suicidal ideation by finding a community or a tribe who better understood them. Or those who found resources to help them through those difficult times.

Under a bill like KOSA all of that becomes more difficult, while actively encouraging greater surveillance and less privacy. It’s not a good approach.

And it’s especially ridiculous for such a bill to be rushed through via a must-pass bill, rather than having the kind of debate and discussion that such a serious issue not only deserves, but requires.

But, of course, almost no one wants to speak out against KOSA, because the media and politicians trot out parents who went through a truly traumatic experience, and no one wants to be seen as the person who is said to be standing in the way of that. But the simple fact is that KOSA will not magically prevent suicides. It might actually lead to more. And it will do many other damaging things in the meantime, including ramping up surveillance, limiting the ability of websites to innovate, and making it much more difficult for young people to find and connect with actual support and friends.

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CAPE CANAVERAL, FL—In an effort to one day place a permanent outpost in space, NASA confirmed Thursday that the recently launched Artemis I Mega Rocket was carrying mannequins to determine the viability of department stores on the moon. “Sending the three mannequins to the moon will tell us if we could one day…

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Donald Trump, who tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election and inspired a deadly riot at the Capitol in a desperate attempt to keep himself in power, announced he is running for president again in 2024. What do you think?

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Suck it, pants. I don’t care that it’s snowing; I refuse to wear anything but basketball shorts. I’m growing these ALMOST MAN LEGS and am workshopping MY NEWLY HAIRY CALVES to the world.

Check out how dry my skin looks. It’s because my body is telling me that I’m suffering and need to put on more layers. But as a thirteen-year-old boy in the suburbs, FASHION is more important to me than BASIC BODILY NEEDS.

And don’t even get me started on coats. Nothing cramps my style like cramping my arms with unnecessary warmth. I don’t need to cover up whatever God, in all HER wisdom, decided to bestow upon me. That’s right; God might be a woman. Got a problem with that? I guess I am just too LIBERAL-MINDED for you small-town folks, what with your long drab pants and sellout coats.

My mom is always saying things like, “Trevor, you’re going to catch a cold,” “Wow, good thing the closet is so warm right now,” or “I’m not washing the same pair of basketball shorts all winter long.”

SHE. JUST. DOESN’T. GET. ME.

We all know that style is all about confidence. So I’m approaching it with the “fake it till you make it” mentality. Only for me, “making it” means risking exposure in order to expose my DEVELOPING QUADS. To be cool, sometimes you have to be physically cool. The more you edge towards hypothermia, the EDGIER YOU ARE.

Imagine if a polar bear rolled up its fur and showed you its dank bones underneath. You’d be impressed, right? It’s kind of the same thing. I’m like a gnarly, brave polar bear, and everyone is JEALOUS.

Hey, guys! What a dumb day of school, AM I RIGHT? Biology sucks. LATER, DUDES.

Are they gone? Okay… the truth is I can’t look weak. I will not let the pants win against my burgeoning, frail masculinity. They will smother my newfound independence and reveal to the others that I’m not as strong as them. But it’s hard. I’m freezing all of the time. I want to hide under a blanket. I have no idea what’s going on with my body or brain. I feel lost.

Anyway, I have to go ice skating with my bros in these god-forsaken basketball shorts. THIS TREND-SETTER IS ON ICE, BABY.

With prices for digital currencies plummeting, The Onion provides helpful advice on what to say to someone who lost all of their money in the crypto crash.

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