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mariacallous · 3 days ago

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On Sunday afternoon, Michael Meyer, the founder of anti-government extremist group Veterans on Patrol, posted a warning on his Telegram channel.

“Due to the recent weather weapon deployed against Texas, which resulted in a high number of child murders, efforts to eliminate this military treason are being escalated,” Meyer, who is commonly known as Lewis Arthur, wrote.

Hours later, a man broke into an enclosure containing the NextGen Live Radar system operated by News 9 in Oklahoma City, damaging its power supply and briefly knocking it offline. The man also damaged CCTV cameras monitoring the site, but footage shared by News 9 shows the cameras captured a clear image of his face before they were destroyed.

Captain Valerie Littlejohn of the Oklahoma City Police Department tells WIRED that no arrests have been made but that the department is “aware of the Veterans on Patrol group.”

Meyer, who declined to tell WIRED whether he knew the identity of the perpetrator, says the attack was part of what he calls Operation Lone Wolf, adding that he’s in discussion online with over a dozen people who are willing to carry out similar attacks.

“Anyone that's going out to eliminate a Nexrad, if they haven't harmed life, and they're doing it according to the videos that we're providing, they are part of our group,” Meyer tells WIRED. “We're going to have to take out every single media's capabilities of lying to the American people. Mainstream media is the biggest threat right now.”

Nexrads refer to Next Generation Weather Radar systems used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to detect precipitation, wind, tornadoes, and thunderstorms. Meyer says that his group wants to disable these as well as satellite systems used by media outlets to broadcast weather updates.

The attack on the News 9 weather radar system comes amid a sustained disinformation campaign on social media platforms including everyone from extremist figures like Meyer to elected GOP lawmakers.

What united these disparate figures is that they were all promoting the debunked conspiracy theory that the devastating flooding in Texas last weekend was caused not by a month’s worth of rain falling in the space of just a few hours—the intensity of which, meteorologists say, was difficult to predict ahead of time—but by a targeted attack on American citizens using directed energy weapons or cloud seeding technology to manipulate the weather. The result has not only been possible damage to a radar system but death threats against those who are being wrongly blamed for causing the floods.

“I think that we've probably received in excess of 100 explicit death threats on either email or X, [with] probably about one order of magnitude more calls for my incarceration,” Augustus Doricko, the founder of cloud seeding company Rainmaker, tells WIRED.

“NOAA is aware of recent threats against NEXRAD weather radar sites and is working with local and other authorities in monitoring the situation closely,” NOAA spokesperson Erica Grow Cei tells WIRED.

Over 100 people have now been confirmed to have lost their lives in the flash flooding that hit homes and camps along the edge of the Guadalupe River in the early hours of Friday morning. Meteorologists who spoke to WIRED dismissed claims that the National Weather Service failed to accurately predict the risk of flooding in Texas. But within hours of the tragedy happening, conspiracy theorists, right-wing influencers, and lawmakers were pushing wild claims on social media that the floods were somehow geoengineered.

“Fake weather. Fake hurricanes. Fake flooding. Fake. Fake. Fake,” Kandiss Taylor, who intends to run as a GOP candidate to represent Georgia’s 1st congressional district in the House of Representatives, wrote in a post viewed 2.4 million times. “That doesn’t even seem natural,” Kylie Jane Kremer, executive director of Women for America First, wrote on X, in a post that has been viewed 9 million times.

As the emergency response to the floods was still taking place on Saturday, US representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, tweeted that she would be introducing a bill to “end the dangerous and deadly practice of weather modification and geoengineering.” Greene, who once blamed California wildfires on laser beams or light beams connected to an electric company with purported ties to an organization affiliated with a powerful Jewish family, said that the bill will be similar to Florida’s Senate Bill 56, which Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law in June. That bill makes weather modification a third-degree felony, punishable by up to $100,000. (Greene’s office did not respond to a request for comment on whether her announcement was specifically tied to the floods in Texas.)

On Instagram, right-wing influencer Gabrielle Yoder jumped on one of the biggest conspiracy theories, claiming that cloud seeding was responsible for causing the floods and calling out Doricko specifically.

Docicko’s company was also named by disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn on X. He wrote that “anyone who calls this out as a conspiracy theory can go F themselves.”

Doricko told WIRED that Rainmaker was working on a brief cloud seeding operation just days before the storms near the town of Runge, Texas, about 120 miles away from Kerr County, where the worst of the flooding was concentrated. But Doricko says his staff meteorologists noted some high moisture content in the region. The company, he says, called off its operations, per state regulations.

Cloud seeding—the practice of increasing precipitation in a cloud by introducing materials like silver iodide or dry ice—has been in use for decades. The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation maintains a page on current weather modification efforts from irrigation districts, counties, and other groups in the state. Doricko’s company, Rainmaker, is a buzzy startup that aims to “[synthesize] advanced technology with environmental stewardship.”

Multiple meteorologists told WIRED that there is no way that cloud seeding was responsible for the devastating storms that racked Texas last week.

“It is not physically possible or possible within the laws of atmospheric chemistry to cloud seed at a scale that would cause an event like [the Texas flooding] to occur,” says Matt Lanza, a digital meteorologist based in Houston. Lanza compares cloud seeding to adding “icing to a cake”: It’s able to juice up precipitation from clouds in drier areas, not create storms wholesale out of thin air.

The National Weather Service was already warning as early as last Tuesday about potential nighttime downpours in parts of Texas, thanks to moisture coming northward from Tropical Storm Barry, which made landfall last weekend in Mexico.

“The meteorological ingredients [for the storm] were already there, and cloud seeding could not have played a role,” Lanza says.

Doricko is no stranger to anti-weather modification factions. He spent much of the early half of this year testifying against a swath of state-level anti-geoengineering bills, including the one that eventually passed in Florida.

Doricko’s personal profile—he was once photographed with Bill Clinton and was chosen as a Thiel fellow—seems to have made the attacks on his company easier for those looking for a conspiracy on which to pin the devastating storms in Texas.

“I am trying to be as transparent as possible, because this is an incredibly controversial subject but isn't actually as regulated and discussed transparently as it ought to be by the federal government,” Doricko says. “Just for the record, I'm not a deep state plant from either Bill Gates or Palantir, Peter Thiel or Bill Clinton.”

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rallamajoop · 2 years ago

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The Baker Incident Report and the Resident Evil 7 Guidebook

While I’m talking obscure sources of RE7 lore, there's a couple more I’ve been poking through lately: the Baker Incident Report file (only available with the RE8 Trauma Pack DLC), and the BIOHAZARD 7 resident evil kaitaishinsho or RE7 guidebook (only available in Japanese, though some translations have made their way online).

I’m not the biggest fan of these kinds of ‘canon’ – fans shouldn’t have to go pouring through pages of DLC-exclusive-text-dumps or untranslated supplements to find out WTF was supposed to be going on – and both of these have other problems I’ll get into below. All that said, here's some of the more interesting new info they give us.

From the BIR, the Winters were moved to ‘Eastern Europe’, as witness protection from the Connections. That's still frustratingly unspecific, but more than we’re ever explicitly told in the game.

The lab that created Eveline is in Munich, Germany, per the BIR. This one does add up: close enough to Eastern Europe for Miranda to be involved, but not so close that it would necessarily ring alarm bells for Mia when the BSAA wanted to move them right to Miranda’s doorstep. Mia’s obviously been to the Munich lab, but presumably didn’t know exactly where the mould comes from (something redacted out even in their own reports). The guidebook also places the lab in Europe, but doesn't give a city. The BIR adds that the Connections are active in Eastern Europe, and we know they have facilities in Central America. Presumably there are offices in Texas too ‒ Mia can't be commuting cross continents to get to work every day.

Eveline was shipped to Central America due to an attempted raid by the BSAA, which is far more we learn from the "Orders" file from the game. The BIR goes so far as to imply that this botched operation was indirectly responsible for the whole Baker Incident, with Chris and his team leaving due to their frustration with the BSAA's attempts to cover the incident up. The guidebook, however, tells us Chris Redfield was actually the guy leading the team behind the failed raid. I assume we’re meant to take it that the mission failed because of an info leak, but I’m still amused by just how ineffectual this franchise keeps making Chris out to be.

Post RE7, Zoe is working as a reporter for a small paper in New Orleans. We don't know if she too went through witness protection but her name was listed among the dead at the Baker mansion.

Ethan is called a systems engineer in both the guide book and the BIR (this one does seem to have been spread around fandom more widely).

Eveline was created in the early 2000s, according to the guidebook. This one really doesn't add up for me: if the project started in 2000 and had already advanced through the A-E series by the early 2000s, why did it stagnate there for the next 10 years without further progress? Did Miranda leaving the project set it back so far? They can't have been waiting for Eveline to grow up, she can age 25x faster than usual, and is being deliberately maintained at the age of a 10yo girl. IDEK, I'd be inclined to ignore this one.

The guidebook states that Mia told people she worked for a "trading company," and was often away from home for work, something which had already strained the Winters’ marriage. I'd guess she told people she spent a lot of time accompanying shipments of goods when she was really smuggling materials or taking part in covert operations for the Connections.

The guidebook gives 2010 as the year she started working for the Connections (a year before her marriage to Ethan in 2011, though it doesn’t mention when they met, which may well have been 2010 or earlier). Mind you, this is also the one bit that randomly calls her "a researcher", so take it as you will (more on this below).

Of Mia's involvement with the project that created Eveline, it says only that the Connections' Special Agents Alan and Mia were assigned to transport Eveline to America. No real indication Mia was ever involved before then.

Of Mia's relationship to Eveline, it says that Mia "found Eveline creepy, but felt sympathy for her lonely situation." You and the rest of us, Mia.

Eveline forced Mia to lure Ethan to the Bakers' property in hope that adding Ethan to their family would make Mia more compliant, according to the guidebook. Eveline was especially fixated on Mia, having known her longer than the Bakers, and was frustrated with Mia's continued resistance to her control. Mia seems to have tried to keep Ethan's existence secret from Eveline to protect him, but somehow let it slip. All this is already implied in-game, of course, but it's nice to have it spelt out.

The Bakers feed people infected food because “oral and mucosal infections” are supposedly better for mould-powered mind-control. Ethan is obviously already infected AF well before their attempts to feed him 'dinner' (there's no way his severed hand would be usable otherwise), but IDK, maybe ingesting some extra mould would have made it easier for Eveline to control him? I'm sure a 10yo girl and a family of hillbillies do not have this down to an exact science, and I wouldn't even be surprised if feeding people mould was counter-productive somehow, given their success rate.

So why did none of those infected prisoners join Eveline's "family" alongside the Bakers? The guide book tells us simply that all were "deemed unfit" as family members, and were thus killed, and converted into molded instead.

We get official names for all the molded types we meet in the game (Moulded, Blade Moulded, Quick Moulded and Fat Moulded – pretty self-explanatory).

As a side-note, Ethan himself gets referred to as a ‘molded’ around this fandom a lot, which really isn’t correct. Ethan’s infected by the mold in the same manner as the Baker family, whereas ‘molded’ is a term coined to describe what amounts to mutamycete zombies (see above): the unintelligent, inhuman monsters that made up the generic enemy types of RE7, whose whole bodies are simply “superorganisms formed of countless mycelia.”

The guide book also implies that Jack’s final, mutated form reflects that he’s starting to become a moulded himself, which is a very interesting little detail.

Notes attached to concept art suggest that most moulded are created from dead bodies, covered by mould in bathtubs to convert them. Eveline is also seen spontaneously converting people to shapeless mould though, and clearly converted much of the ship’s crew into moulded-creatures in a very short time after her escape. It’s not super-consistent, but it is all horror-logic at its best (read: the rules are whatever will make this scene scarier).

There’s a bunch of additional stuff in the BIR naming the Connections’ founder as Brandon Bailey, someone who naturally has ties to Umbrella, blah, blah, blah ‒ I’m sure it all means more to fans of some of the older games. I can't pretend to have much interest in this part myself.

So with all that interesting info, what's my big problem with these sources? Well, for one thing, you don’t have to look far into the guidebook to find info that contradicts what we already know – and sometimes even itself. One page clearly describes Mia as a special agent working for the Connections ‒ a description that matches the wording used in the Orders document, and everything we see Mia doing in the game. But then another page randomly tells us Mia was hired as "a researcher" ‒ a description that matches nothing else we know about her (though it's an irritatingly common misconception, and this book may be the reason why). No-one's checking any of this stuff for consistency.

The guidebook also features such other gems as telling us Ethan currently lives and works in Los Angeles, when both Mia’s driver’s license and all geographical logic tell us they’re from Texas. Then there's that weird bit about Eveline being created in the early 2000s... and realistically, I can only assume a lot of what made it into the book may have come from earlier concept notes that were never updated as the story developed ‒ and if you read anything else on the production of this game, you'd know that concepts changed massively as development went on.

But more frustrating is everything the book doesn’t tell us. There isn’t a word said about the oh-so-mysterious "imprinting protocol" that Mia references in the game. How does it work? Is it, as the ending text spiel seems to imply, merely something that can be implemented in a hurry when Eveline needs to be transported across the globe? Can she be imprinted on more than one person at once? Has she ever been imprinted on anyone else? That seems likely, given that the lab’s in Munich while Mia lives in Texas (and if she's really been around since the early 2000s and Mia joined the company only in 2010, she logically must have been), but we don’t find out. Does Eveline get similarly obsessed with everyone she’s imprinted on, or is Mia special? Not a clue.

Since the guidebook was released in March 2017, long before the Not a Hero and End of Zoe DLCs, neither expansion is mentioned in the text. And since we don’t even learn the name ‘The Connections’ until the Not A Hero DLC, the group that created Eveline is referred to simply as the “mysterious organisation” (with quotes) whenever it comes up.

Nothing is said in the guidebook about the new incarnation of Umbrella which was so prominently involved at the end of RE7 either. Possibly, this too was to avoid spoilers for Not A Hero, which does at least give us some info on them – but then, the Baker Incident Report doesn’t mention the new Umbrella at all either, and it doesn’t have that excuse. That omission is all the stranger, considering that Zoe’s whole purpose in writing it is supposedly to expose the cover-up after the Baker Incident – doesn’t Umbrella factor into that at all? It’s like their whole role in RE7 has just wiped clean.

It's also obvious there was so much more lore written for this game that the guide book doesn’t share. Early versions of collectable documents that can still be found in the game files give the D-series head and arm some fascinating backstory, but there’s nothing about them in the guide book, which is a real shame.

Mia especially stands out as a character who must have so much backstory we never hear anything about. How did she get involved with a company as evil as the Connections? How did she justify it to herself for so long – what excuses did she make to herself? Did she genuinely believe they were finding ways to win wars without losing soldiers? Was she gathering evidence against them, was she scared they’d kill her if she left? Not one single word in either the guidebook or the BIR to explain.

Even more annoying to me, though, is just what a wasted opportunity the Baker Incident Report is to add more to Zoe’s story, when she’s one of my favourite RE characters. Included in the text is a letter she received from Mia, giving what should have been the perfect opportunity to flesh out the relationship Zoe and Mia must have built in the three years they spent trapped in the Baker property, the only two (semi-)sane people present – and what does the letter do? Imply they hardly knew each other at all. It’s the most boring possible answer, it contradicts hints from the actual game (Marguerite outright tells us they've been working together, even!), and GDI, you do not get to tell me that my girls didn’t know each other! ;_;

Ethan and Mia similarly get the short shrift. Throughout RE7 their every interaction is building to a big scene that never actually happens where Ethan finds out the truth – Ethan knows Mia’s been keeping secrets, he never stops asking questions about it, and Mia says outright that she wants to come clean. So what does the BIR tell us? Well, post RE7, Mia mentions in an interview that she doesn’t want anyone telling Ethan. Not a word about what changed her mind. Not a word about why Ethan would just stop asking. Total cop-out.

And there’s so much more it could have covered too. There's nothing about Ethan’s ‘military training’. Nothing about the Winters' relationship with Chris. Mia’s conversation with him in RE8 suggests he was personally involved in relocating them to Eastern Europe, but the BIR doesn’t mention that either. The BIR at large is basically just an extended lore dump, and it doesn’t even sound like Zoe’s voice.

So this is about where I finish up with both of these sources: frustrating, inaccessible, inconsistent, and more missed opportunities than real material. There’s a lot in both I’ll happily go on ignoring. But I’ll still pour through them for every last interesting detail, because I am that obsessed with this canon right now, and they’re what we’ve got.

#Resident Evil 7 #Resident Evil Village #Eveline #Mia Winters #Zoe Baker #Ethan Winters #The Connections #The Bakers #RE lore #meta

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beardedmrbean · 4 months ago

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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a Biden administration effort to regulate “ghost gun” kits that allow people to easily obtain parts needed to assemble firearms from online sellers.

The decision by a court that often backs gun rights resolves the legal dispute over whether the kits can be regulated the same way as other firearms.

The ruling was 7-2, with Justice Neil Gorsuch writing the majority opinion.

The regulation has been in effect since August 2022 as litigation has made its way through the court system, with the Supreme Court in August 2023 refusing to put it on hold. Manufacturers and sellers have to obtain licenses, mark products with serial numbers, require background checks and maintain records.

The Trump administration could seek to rescind the rule if it wishes to.

Issued by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the regulation includes ghost guns within the definition of “firearm” as described in the Gun Control Act, a long-standing federal law that regulates guns.

The Gun Control Act says the regulations apply to “any weapon ... which will or is designed to or may be readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive.” It also covers the “frame or receiver of any such weapon.” The frame or receiver is the part of a firearm that houses other components, including the firing mechanism.

The legal challenge was brought by Jennifer VanDerStok and Michael Andren, who own components they want to use to build guns. The plaintiffs also include gun rights groups and the makers and sellers of ghost guns.

Texas-based U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in 2023, with the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals mostly upholding his ruling.

The challengers argued that the ATF did not have the authority to unilaterally apply the Gun Control Act to the kits.

Although the case concerns gun regulation, it did not involve legal questions relating to the right to bear arms under the Constitution’s Second Amendment.

The court has regularly backed gun rights in other cases, including a recent ruling striking down a federal ban on accessories called bump stocks that allow semiautomatic rifles to fire more rapidly.

The court has also expanded the individual right to bear arms, including in a major 2022 ruling, although in a more recent ruling it backtracked somewhat in upholding a federal law that bars people subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms.

#nunyas news #weak

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justinspoliticalcorner · 8 months ago

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Eleanor Klibanoff at The Texas Tribune:

A Louisiana law that reclassified abortion-inducing drugs as controlled substances has made it more difficult for doctors to treat a wide range of gynecological conditions, doctors say. Now, a similar proposal has been filed in Texas. Texas Rep. Pat Curry, a freshman Republican from Waco, said the intent of House Bill 1339 is to make it harder for people, especially teenagers, to order mifepristone and misoprostol online to terminate their pregnancies. Doctors in Louisiana say the measure has done little to strengthen the state’s near-total abortion ban, but has increased fear and confusion among doctors, pharmacists and patients.

“There’s no sense in it,” said Dr. Nicole Freehill, an OB/GYN in New Orleans. “Even though we kept trying to tell them how often [these medications] are used for other things and how safe they are, it didn’t matter. It’s just a backdoor way of restricting abortion more.” These medications are often used to empty the uterus after a patient has a miscarriage, and are commonly prescribed ahead of inserting an intrauterine device. Misoprostol is also often the best treatment for obstetric hemorrhages, a potentially life-threatening condition in which women can bleed to death in minutes. Since the Louisiana law went into effect, hospitals have taken the medication off their obstetrics carts and put them in locked, password-protected central storage.

One hospital has been running drills to practice getting the medications to patients in time, and reported, on average, a two minute delay from before the law went into effect, the Louisiana Illuminator reported. “In obstetrics and gynecology, minutes or even seconds can be the difference between life and death,” Dr. Stella Dantas, president of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists, said in a statement after the Louisiana law passed. “Forcing a clinician to jump through administrative hurdles in order to access a safe, effective medicine is not medically justified and is, quite simply, dangerous.” Curry said these restrictions won’t stop doctors from prescribing these medications when necessary, but will stop the “wide misuse” of the drugs to circumvent the state’s near-total abortion ban.

[...]

Texas roots for a Louisiana law

In March 2022, Mason Herring, a Houston attorney, spiked his wife’s water with misoprostol to force her to have an abortion. Catherine Herring was pregnant with the couple’s third child, a daughter who was born 10 weeks premature. She survived, but has significant developmental delays, according to the Associated Press. Mason Herring was charged with felony assault to induce abortion, and pled guilty to injury to a child and assault to a pregnant person. He was sentenced to 180 days in jail and 10 years of probation. Catherine Herring’s experience led her brother, Louisiana state Rep. Thomas Pressly, to file a bill that would have made it a crime to coerce someone into having an abortion.

But at the last minute, the bill was amended to also reclassify abortion-inducing drugs as controlled substances, according to the Louisiana Illuminator, leaving hospitals and doctors scrambling to comply with the new restrictions. The state health department advised storing the medication in a locked area on the crash cart, which at least some hospitals have said is not feasible. “We had to rework how we utilize misoprostol across our hospital systems,” Freehill said. “Labor and delivery, pharmacy, nursing staff, you name it, they were all involved with figuring out how to stay within the law but still use these medications that we need access to.”

It’s rare for a state to decide on its own to classify a drug as a controlled substance. Most commonly, the federal government decides which medications should be “scheduled,” based on their medical usefulness and the potential for abuse. Schedule I drugs, like heroin, have no medical use and are often used recreationally; Schedule IV and V are medications that are useful but have a potential for abuse, like Xanax or Valium. There are enhanced penalties for having a controlled substance without a prescription, and increased restrictions on how doctors can dispense them. Pharmacists must report any prescriptions for controlled substances to the state Prescription Monitoring Program, and doctors are required to check the database before prescribing certain controlled substances. Law enforcement also has access to that database.

Prescription monitoring has been key to combating the opioid epidemic by identifying doctors who were overprescribing and patients who were getting prescriptions from multiple providers. But with so much political attention on mifepristone and misoprostol as abortion-inducing drugs, doctors are worried about scrutiny for frequently prescribing these common medications.

[...]

Restrictions on medication

Curry, who recently won a special election to fill the seat long held by Republican Rep. Doc Anderson, said Pressly and Herring have offered to come testify in support of his bill this session. He anticipates it getting wide support from his fellow lawmakers. Since the overturn of Roe v. Wade, conservative groups have turned their attention to restricting access to abortion-inducing medications. A group of anti-abortion doctors filed a lawsuit to revoke the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, which the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately rejected.

Curry said there are reasons to keep these medications on the market beyond abortion, but they need tighter restrictions. “You can lie about your age, you can lie about your name, you can lie about your address, there's no verification whatsoever,” he said, referring to online prescribers. “And it gets shipped to a 15-year-old girl, a 13-year-old girl.” It is already a crime to mail abortion-inducing medications in Texas, and many of the online pharmacies operate in a legal gray area outside U.S jurisdiction.

Texas seeks to copy Louisiana’s nanny state abortion medication ban law that classifies such drugs as “controlled substances”.

#Texas #Abortion #Texas HB1339 #Abortion Bans #Misoprostol #Abortion Medication #Pat Curry

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king-sassy08 · 1 year ago

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Did you hear? Texas just banned porn.

Did you hear the "offensive to minors" content bill that stipulated an age verification to access adult content or content deemed harmful or offensive to minors was passed??? Now you have to verify your age to view such content, which can be used to restrict minor access to LGBT resources, sexual health information, and anything else the government deems "offensive or harmful."

And also in a SHOCKING turn of events, Pornhub made itself and its two subsidiary companies unavailable in Texas, calling the bill haphazard and ineffective in protecting minors and actually harmful because it forces minors to interact with potentially harmful sites and denies access to other potentially useful sites. They also said it's an invasion of privacy and a violation of 1st amendment rights.

In order to access adult content in Texas now, it would need to be done by inputting your government ID numbers to prove you're an adult (and allowing the government to know what sites you're accessing, further watchdog activity) OR verify using 3rd party systems (by verifying your debts, student loans, education, job status, tax information, mortgage information to verify you're an adult), which opens the door for information to be sold to other third parties and can potentially expose all of your private life to outsiders.

Putting aside the porn thing, not out of a sense of moral righteousness, but because that is a whole different can of worms to dissect the way banning porn is awful for everyone. Putting that aside, how is this going to affect teens, children, closeted people?

To have zero access to LGBT resources that will be deemed offensive to minors? Goodbye Trevor Project. Goodbye resources on sexual health, what STDs are, and everything of the like. STDs and STIs will increase, health complications from such issues and from potential pregnancy complications (how do you have safe sex if you're not even sure what that means?).

Banning information will not guarantee people stop looking for it or needing it! Instead, they will get WRONG information from friends and other potentially misleading sources, and feel helpless when they have no way to figure out what is going on in their lives. People don't stop needing information because they can't find it. They just suffer because they can't find it.

You may not like Texas, but PLEASE, for the love of God, there are children here. They need your help. Don't turn your back on us. Don't forget the way you learned about sexual health online when your school wouldn't talk about it, or the way you watched that first porn and said, "fuck, I think I'm gay." Cast your gaze towards Texas! I'm begging you to have a little heart.

#texas #age verification law #texas legislation #legislation #jay jabbers #united states legislation #united states #i hardly ever make my own posts that aren't silly little guy posts but. i mean come on #i live here. how can i not #and how can i exist knowing my cousin who has not even considered the fact that he is gay despite being very obviously gay #how can i exist knowing he wont look something up and do a spit take and say FUCK . especially considering his conservative christian elder

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 4 months ago

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So what the other whistleblower in Texas had begun to expose is doctors using potentially fraudulent billing codes as a way to bypass scrutiny from state and federal authorities. So what I mean by that is there were a few lawsuits that were filed by Ken Paxton over the past year, three of them, and in one against Dr. Cooper… It was for the violation of SB 14.

When you read the lawsuit, it describes the alleged scheme, and what they would do is they would have a patient who would come in, maybe a 16-year-old girl. And because of SB 14 being passed in Texas, it was now illegal. But how could they continue quote-unquote, gender-affirming care? How could they get these hormones prescribed but still get paid for it, or the blockers prescribed and still get paid?

So what they would do, a 16-year-old girl comes into the clinic, right? Believes she's a boy. They would change the sex on the medical chart, which is really easy, because Epic, which is a big healthcare medical system, has instituted this thing called the gender and sexual identity smart form [sic, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) SmartForm] where anyone can change the sex of the patient. So on the chart, it says male. And then for the diagnosis, they write testosterone deficiency. There may not be any kind of diagnostic evidence of testosterone deficiency, but that's what they list on the code.

So when those two things go to the insurance companies—the diagnosis, testosterone deficiency, and then the treatment, the CPT code, which is testosterone supplements—the 16-year-old girl gets the testosterone paid for, right from the pharmacy. The doctor gets paid. Insurance companies or Medicaid or Medicare don't know they're getting scammed, and we all don't know we're getting scammed. We're taxpayers.

So that's what I believe is going on at all these hospitals, because if you Google on your phone, right, gender-affirming care diagnosis codes, the fourth thing you'll find is, like the Southern Equality Law Center, right? It's like some activist organization. They have all the diagnosis codes you can use to fraudulently bill insurance companies. It's like an online guide for how to commit felony medical fraud and get away with it. It's like an online guide for cooking meth or explosive devices—like a top Google search. So that is, I think, the new frontier. But because this information is identifiable with information we have at hand, because the Do No Harm database, the Stop the Harm database was using all of this insurance data, ICD codes, doctors, and CPT codes in order to link procedures, if you were to set a certain time, January 20, 2025, before and after, and look at certain doctors, if there's an increase in a certain number of diagnosis codes, then you can pretty much guarantee you've just identified a healthcare scam.

#Eithan Haim #medical fraud #trans healthcare #gender affirming care #gender affirming healthcare #gender affirmation #transgender healthcare #medical scandal #medical malpractice #medical corruption #insurance fraud #detrans #detransition #diagnosis codes #insurance coding #testosterone deficiency #whistleblower #religion is a mental illness

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touti21 · 10 months ago

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7 Eleven: A Symbol of Convenience Shopping

7 Eleven is one of the most well-known retail chains in the world, perfectly embodying the concept of "convenience shopping." Founded in 1927 in Dallas, Texas, the chain quickly expanded to become a symbol of fast service and accessibility. Today, 7 Eleven is a global brand, with locations in over 17 countries, making it one of the largest retail chains worldwide.

History and Evolution of 7 Eleven

The story began when an employee named Joe C. Thompson transformed his store into one that stayed open late into the night, allowing customers to shop at unconventional hours. The brand evolved to become "7 Eleven" in 1946, reflecting the long hours of operation from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., which were longer than traditional store hours at that time.

Products and Services

7 Eleven offers a wide range of products to meet customer needs. These include:

Beverages: A variety of sodas, juices, coffee, and energy drinks.

Snacks: Sweet treats, chocolates, chips, and other quick snacks.

Ready-to-Eat Meals: Options such as sandwiches, salads, and hot meals, making it an ideal choice for a quick lunch.

Essential Groceries: Basic household items like milk, bread, rice, and more.

Shopping Experience

7 Eleven stores are designed for practicality and ease of access. The stores are relatively small, making it easy for customers to navigate and find what they need quickly. Additionally, many locations operate 24 hours a day, providing great flexibility for shopping at any time.

Innovation and Technology

7 Eleven has embraced various modern technologies to enhance the shopping experience, including:

Mobile App: Allows customers to order products online, use promotional offers, and track points for rewards.

Smart Payment Systems: Offers various payment options, including mobile payments.

Community Impact

7 Eleven is an integral part of many people's lives, catering to their daily needs at their convenience. The stores also contribute to the local economy by providing job opportunities and supporting community initiatives.

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Conclusion

7 Eleven exemplifies how to adapt to market changes and meet customer needs. With its ongoing innovation and expansion, 7 Eleven remains one of the most important destinations for convenience shopping worldwide, solidifying its place as a symbol of comfort and ease in everyday life. Get your gift card today and be part of an extraordinary shopping experience!

#luxury #earn money online

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 2 years ago

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Ann Telnaes, Washington Post :: [h/t Robert Scott Horton]

* * * *

Standing up to Trump's political terrorism.

August 18, 2023

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

Trump knows that a jury of his peers will convict him in a fair trial. He has therefore resorted to extra-judicial efforts to intimidate and prejudice the jury pool. His efforts are not only extra-judicial, they are undemocratic, thuggish, and illegal. Like a crime lord with feral instincts, Trump knows how to threaten without threatening and brutalize without leaving fingerprints at the scene of the crime. Instead, he grants permission to his followers to violate laws and norms, encouraging them to do the dirty work necessary to defend the indefensible.

Over the last several days, the breadth and viciousness of Trump’s assault on the legal system became manifest as MAGA extremists attacked the judge and jurors in Trump's various criminal proceedings. Before reviewing the latest insults to the rule of law, let’s skip to the end to discuss the solution: We must recognize that Trump is engaged in political terrorism designed to frighten good people who are the backbone of democracy. We cannot let that happen. The solution is not to shrink in fear, but to swell in numbers, strengthen our resolve, and dispel the exaggerated fears created by a skulk of cowards who hide in internet shadows.

In America, there is an ever-present risk of violence that cannot be entirely dismissed. Law enforcement and prosecutors should, therefore, vigorously pursue and prosecute the small, frightened, impotent cultists who threaten jurors, judges, and prosecutors. But we must recognize that the business model of political terrorism is for a few individuals to instill outsized and unwarranted fear in the masses. Recognizing that truth should allow us to keep in perspective the fact that a few thousand online pseudo-terrorists vanish to nothingness compared to 335 million Americans.

America is bigger than Trump and his minions. We should not cower in fear but should pursue justice with confidence and righteousness. We are protecting the Constitution and our system of laws. We cannot fail in that task—and there is nothing that cowards with keyboards can do to deter us.

Against that background, let’s look at the events on the ground.

Abigail Jo Shry of Alvin, Texas, threatened Judge Tanya Chutkan in a voicemail message that began with racial slurs and ended with threats of violence. Shry was quickly questioned, arrested, and charged in federal court. The magistrate ordered that she remain in pretrial detention for at least 30 days pending a determination of her danger to the community. That is type of federal response that will deter future threats.

At Shry’s detention hearing, her father provided background on Abigail Shry’s threats:

Her father, Mark Shry, testified at her detention hearing and said his daughter is a “non-violent alcoholic,” according to the court filing. [Her father] testified, “that she sits on her couch daily watching the news while drinking too many beers. She then becomes agitated by the news and starts calling people and threatening them.” Her father said, “his daughter never leaves her residence and therefore would not act upon her threats.”

There have also been threats against members of the Fulton County grand jury that indicted Trump and eighteen other defendants on RICO charges. See NYTimes, Officials Investigate Threats Against Trump Grand Jurors in Georgia (accessible to all). The Fulton County sheriff issued an anodyne statement acknowledging the threats and stating that the sheriff was investigating. (The statement said the sheriff was “aware of online threats against grand jurors and was working with other agencies to track down their origin.”)

A stronger statement from the sheriff and the quick arrest of several perpetrators would go some distance to damping the false bravado of other beer-fueled couch terrorists. A stronger reaction is necessary because the online threats are directed not only against the grand jurors, but future jurors who will preside over Trump’s criminal trials.

But there is more.

Trump released a video in which he attacked special prosecutor Jack Smith as a “deranged lowlife” for obtaining Trump's Twitter feed. See Forbes, Trump Attacks Jack Smith For Gaining Access To His Old Twitter Account. This is the type of statement that should cause Judge Tanya Chutkan to remand Trump into custody. At the very least, the statement should be added to the list of offenses that will finally cause Trump to be detained pending trial.

Detaining Trump before tria is not only inevitable but also necessary. Trump's continued attacks are having a corrosive effect that seeps into the nooks and crannies of the justice system everywhere. Many readers have commented on the raid on a Kansas newspaper because of efforts by the newspaper to report on the failure of local police to enforce DUI laws against a local businessman. Based on a questionable search warrant issued by a local magistrate, police seized computers, cell phones, and files—a gross violation of federal protections granted to members of the news media.

The public outcry and obvious illegality of the seizure forced the police to return the seized items and the local prosecutor to withdraw the questionable warrant due to 'insufficient evidence’. But the question remains, “How could this happen? How is it that local police and magistrate could ignore constitutional and statutory protections for the press?” Some of the sordid answers are detailed in this investigative piece by The Wichita Eagle, Judge Laura Viar, who approved newspaper raid, has DUI arrests.

Apart from the local magistrate’s questionable potential bias due to her own history of DUI troubles, another answer is that the police and magistrate are modeling themselves after a national GOP in which the rule of law is an impediment to power. In short, they thought they could get away with trampling the Constitution. Fortunately, they were wrong—and will likely be charged with crimes and serve time in jail. As should Trump.

If Americans see that Trump is punished for his attacks on the justice system pending trial, others will realize that they, too, must respect the justice system. We owe the Constitution nothing less.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

#political cartoon #Ann Telnaes #Washington Post #TFG #indicted #criminal law #Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter #witness intimidation #political terrorism #Robert B. Hubbell

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juveriente · 1 day ago

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derrickjones · 1 year ago

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#Online Ordering System Texas

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mariacallous · 19 days ago

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is meeting Friday to decide the final six cases of its term, including President Donald Trump’s bid to enforce his executive order denying birthright citizenship to U.S.-born children of parents who are in the country illegally.

The justices take the bench at 10 a.m. for their last public session until the start of their new term on Oct. 6.

The birthright citizenship order has been blocked nationwide by three lower courts. The Trump administration made an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court to narrow the court orders that have prevented the citizenship changes from taking effect anywhere in the U.S.

The issue before the justices is whether to limit the authority of judges to issue nationwide injunctions, which have plagued both Republican and Democratic administrations in the past 10 years.

These nationwide court orders have emerged as an important check on Trump’s efforts and a source of mounting frustration to the Republican president and his allies.

Decisions also are expected in several other important cases.

The court seemed likely during arguments in April to side with Maryland parents in a religious rights case over LGBTQ storybooks in public schools.

Parents in the Montgomery County school system, in suburban Washington, want to be able to pull their children out of lessons that use the storybooks, which the county added to the curriculum to better reflect the district’s diversity.

The school system at one point allowed parents to remove their children from those lessons, but then reversed course because it found the opt-out policy to be disruptive. Sex education is the only area of instruction with an opt-out provision in the county’s schools.

The justices also are weighing a three-year battle over congressional districts in Louisiana that is making its second trip to the Supreme Court.

Before the court now is a map that created a second Black majority congressional district among Louisiana’s six seats in the House of Representatives. The district elected a Black Democrat in 2024.

Lower courts have struck down two Louisiana congressional maps since 2022 and the justices are considering whether to send state lawmakers back to the map-drawing board for a third time.

The case involves the interplay between race and politics in drawing political boundaries in front of a conservative-led court that has been skeptical of considerations of race in public life.

At arguments in March, several of the court’s conservative justices suggested they could vote to throw out the map and make it harder, if not impossible, to bring redistricting lawsuits under the Voting Rights Act.

Free speech rights are at the center of a case over a Texas law aimed at blocking kids from seeing online pornography.

Texas is among more than a dozen states with age verification laws. The states argue the laws are necessary as smartphones have made access to online porn, including hardcore obscene material, almost instantaneous.

The question for the court is whether the measure infringes on the constitutional rights of adults as well. The Free Speech Coalition, an adult-entertainment industry trade group, agrees that children shouldn’t be seeing pornography. But it says the Texas law is written too broadly and wrongly affects adults by requiring them to submit personal identifying information online that is vulnerable to hacking or tracking.

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dspd · 7 days ago

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Am I chronically online over-nuance-ing or am I appropriately nuance-ing?

Context: meteorologists across the U.S. are despairing over Trump's administration gutting extreme weather prediction system funding. Texas flood happens. People die. Some people comment on news articles/clips, saying variations of "this is what happens when you cut weather warning system funding" and "you can thank Trump and the people who support him for this". Other people start writing scathing comments along the lines of "why are you politicizing this" "where are your heart and morals?" and "this is why blueMAGA is also the enemy"

My take: this sounds like OG comments saying "hey look, natural consequences, don't vote against yourself"

Further thoughts: ever since the Bernie v. Hilary race when Hilary became candidate and I watched a bunch of the hardcore Bernie bros jump to vote for Trump, I've become a believer in the political horseshoe theory - when some one goes so far or extreme left/right on the political spectrum that they jump to the other extreme. I feel like I've been seeing a large increase of far leftists sliding towards the jump and that they're younger (millennial & gen z) who engage in a lot of purity and performative politics with stark, no-nuance black and white, yes or no extreme views and ignoring the spectrum.

Even 5 years ago, I definitely had less of a nuanced outlook on things due to lack of knowledge but I was still thinking on a spectrum rather than the good/evil dichotomy stuff I'm seeing in the comments and videos lately.

In addition, I'm interpreting a lot of these concerning-to-me comments/rants as stuff I used to call Republican POV based on some research and articles in and before the 2010's that showed the fundamental difference between Democratic & Republican thinking. The takeaways I had were the Republicans usually think "what about me?" and jump to pain/punishment thoughts compared to Democrats who usually think "what about us/you/the community?" and jump to education/learning thoughts. Again, it's a spectrum and the stuff I was reading was talking about trends in the political parties, not stereotypes or claiming that every person in that party is required to think that way. It's an 'in general' statement that I keep thinking about when I see the purity politics stuff come forward in discourse, for lack of a better term. The people who are replying to the OG commenters give the vibe that they're more in the Republican brain set than the Democratic one.

Anyway, those are my thoughts and I would really appreciate if someone would confirm I'm properly nuance-ing or check me if I'm out of order.

#of course there the issue of other chronicslly online people but I'm not going there #politicizing or not politicizing #natural consequences in action #democrat #republican #us politics #current events

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