The MAGA representative is continuing her break with the Republican Party—and the president himself.

MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is still one of the few GOP members to rebuke Trump and his lies in any meaningful way.

Taylor Greene spoke freely in an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Thursday night. “The president says there’s virtually no inflation, and that grocery prices are going down,” Collins asked the Georgia representative. “Do you agree with him on that?”

“No, I go to the grocery store myself. Grocery prices remain high. Energy prices are high. My electricity bills are higher here in Washington, D.C., at my apartment, and they’re also higher at my house in Rome, Georgia, higher than they were a year ago,” MTG said. “Affordability is a problem, and I’m a mom. My kids are 22, 26, and 28. That’s the generation I worry about the most, and they’re having a very hard time.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene Calls Out Trump’s Blatant Lie on Inflation

^{The New Republic}

These fraudulent ads purport to offer a product or service that isn't actually real, and may be intended to solicit payments from less savvy users.

Meta estimates that it earns 10% of its revenue from scams, report says | TechCrunch

^{Amanda Silberling (TechCrunch)}

Pwetty colours.

Photographer @smetterling@pixelfed.de

Angelino Desmet (@smetterling@pixelfed.de)

🍂

^Pixelfed

Wall Street Journal reports Kristi Noem arranged purchase to expand deportation flights and for personal travel

The secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Kristi Noem, reportedly authorized the purchase of Spirit Airlines jets before discovering the airline didn’t actually own the planes – and that the aircraft lacked engines.

The bizarre anecdote was contained in a Wall Street Journal report released on Friday, which recounted how Noem and Corey Lewandowski -- who managed Donald Trump's first winning presidential campaign -- had recently arranged to buy 10 Boeing 737 aircraft from Spirit Airlines. People familiar with the situation told the paper that the two intended to use the jets to expand deportation flights -- and for personal travel.

Those sources also claimed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials had cautioned them that buying planes would be far more expensive than simply expanding existing flight contracts.

DHS head reportedly authorized purchase of 10 engineless Spirit Airlines planes that airline didn’t own

^{Marina Dunbar (The Guardian)}

https://www.techspot.com/news/110139-new-data-shows-companies-rehiring-former-employees-ai.html

The modern smartphone, laden with the corporate ecosystem pulsing underneath its screen, robs us of this feeling, conspires to keep us from “true” fullness. The swiping, the news cycles, the screaming, the idiocy — if anything destroys a muse, it’s this. If anything keeps you locked into a fetid loop of looking, looking, and looking once more at the train wreck, it’s this. I find it impossible to feel fullness, even in the slightest, after having spent just a bit of a day in the thralls of the algorithms.

The smartphone eradicates “space” in the mind. With that psychic loss of space, grace becomes impossible. You see the knock-on effects of this rippling out across the world politically.

Which is why these long walks of mine are so inspiring (to me), and I feel so compelled to head out on them, again and again: They are nothing if not “space generation” machines for the mind. They’re full-bodied reminders of what fullness is and how it can manifest. How close we are to it (it’s right there!!), every day, and how elusive it has become because of our digital habits, our diets of, mostly, garbage.

Full Days and the Long Walk

The key is simply — full days out in the world over thin days with the algorithm

^{Craig Mod}

Falling in love with A.I. is no longer science fiction. A recent study found that one in five American adults has had an intimate encounter with a chatbot; on Reddit, r/MyBoyfriendisAI has more than 85,000 members championing human-A.I. connections, with many sharing giddy recollections of the day their chatbot proposed marriage.

How do you end up with an A.I. lover? Some turned to them during hard times in their real-world marriages, while others were working through past trauma. Though critics have sounded alarms about dangers like delusional thinking, research from M.I.T. has found that these relationships can be therapeutic, providing “always-available support” and significantly reducing loneliness.

We spoke with three people in their 40s and 50s about the wonders — and anxieties — of romance with a chatbot.

Inside Three Longterm Relationships With A.I. Chatbots

Three people on the joys and anxieties of A.I. romances.

^{Coralie Kraft (The New York Times)}

They were tricked. Do they deserve to die because they believed a lie? I don't think so.

Human suffering is human suffering. In my experienced opinion, whether or not they brought it upon themselves through their own stupidity/ignorance/obstinacy, it is still human suffering. That is still a toll in human life measurable in mass graves, and saying they deserve to suffer, struggle, and die is sick.

Coal miners in Virginia are dying of black lung faster than their grandfathers did. Farms that feed us are collapsing because of tariffs--meaning your food is going to disappear too. Water, power, and electricity are going to disappear overnight. They are killing themselves faster than they're killing us.

Yes, because of shitbags they voted for. Many of them, they were lied to for their entire lives. If you were raised in any dogmatic belief and had to face the struggle against coming to terms with reality like I have, maybe you'd have a heart and at least give a damn about their lives. Maybe because, even if they're fools and they got what they voted for, they're human too.

Dehumanization is the first step to a purge. The same mental glitch that they have fallen victim to exists in your brain too. You are not immune to propaganda. Take it from someone who knows.

Overtaxed and unpaid air traffic controllers are resigning “every day” due to stress from the government shutdown.

“Controllers are resigning every day now because of the prolonged nature of the shutdown,” Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, told CNN.

“We hadn’t seen that before. And we’re also 400 controllers short—shorter than we were in the 2019 shutdown.”

Air traffic controllers are federal workers, which means they are part of the approximately 730,000 federal employees working without pay since the shutdown began on Oct. 1.

Air Traffic Controllers Start Resigning as Shutdown Bites

Unpaid air traffic controllers are quitting their jobs altogether as the longest government shutdown in U.S. history continues.

^{Adam Downer (The Daily Beast)}