Six weeks ago, Jack Posobiec asked me to comment on whether I have a “creepy fetish for Asian women.”

That was one of several false and wildly personal allegations that the far-right pundit and newly minted member of the Pentagon press corps said that he planned to include in “a story that I’m writing about you.”

I immediately understood his October 28 email to be a threat, though it was not made explicit. The day before, I had sent the Pentagon press office a series of questions concerning Eric Geressy, a senior Pentagon adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Geressy, who served with Hegseth during a tour in Iraq in the mid-2000s, is part of the Pentagon effort to instill a “warrior ethos” within the US military. He now leads a team reviewing the role of women in the armed forces.

Calling Geressy “my toughest critic and my best mentor,” Hegseth in March presented him with the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s second-highest award for valor, for Geressy’s conduct following an ambush in Baghdad in 2007.

I had discovered that Geressy’s email address was linked to a public Goodreads page with a “currently reading” list that included various books featuring stories about “Asian wife sharing.” These pornographic works, with titles such as “Asian Wife Went With Her Dad’s Friend: A Cuckold Story,” appeared on the list alongside two books by Hegseth and a handful of military histories. They contain detailed descriptions of cuckolding, group sex, and scenes involving “ladyboys”—a term used to refer to Thai transgender women. The page, active since 2021, was taken down the day after I contacted the Pentagon and Geressy about it.

I also asked about a 1997 domestic violence allegation against Geressy, about his dating habits, and past relationships with foreign women. I inquired if the Pentagon had assessed those relationships as part of Geressy’s security clearance process, and, more broadly, if his personal life might create concerns about his susceptibility to foreign influence operations.

The Pentagon repeatedly asked for more time to address those questions. Eventually chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell responded, in part: “Geressy has served for 38 years in the government, has been vetted numerous times by the relevant agencies, and has never posed a security risk or engaged in improper behavior as this piece tries to suggest. Mother Jones has stooped to a new low with this shoddy hit piece and should be ashamed of itself.”

Posobiec’s email arrived the day after my initial inquiries. The false claims he asked about, particularly the Asian fetish thing, seemed to mirror my questions. Posobiec, who in 2016 promoted the bogus Pizzagate conspiracy theory, gave me a deadline, 5 p.m. on October 29, that was the same as the one I had given the Pentagon press office. A Pentagon spokesperson and Posobiec both denied coordination. Geressy declined to comment. But considering the questions, timing, and Posobiec’s links to Defense Department officials, the situation seemed clear. This was either an incredible coincidence or a deliberate message: Publish your article and get smeared.

I asked the Pentagon about Pete Hegseth's mentor. Then the threats started.

Journalism in the second Trump administration gets personal.

^{Mother Jones}

The Somali American lawmaker's comment comes after the noted racist and Homeland Security adviser essentially said migrants are ruining the U.S.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said on Sunday that the dehumanizing language used against immigrants by noted racist and Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller is similar to how Nazis spoke of Jewish people.

Miller, who was the architect behind the Trump administration’s immigration policies, used such language last month in response to a Wall Street Journal op-ed urging Americans to refrain from demonizing all Afghan refugees, after one allegedly shot two National Guard members in Washington, D.C.

“This is the great lie of mass migration. You are not just importing individuals. You are importing societies,” Miller said on X. “No magic transformation occurs when failed states cross borders. At scale, migrants and their descendants recreate the conditions, and terrors, of their broken homelands.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar Says Stephen Miller's Rhetoric Echoes Language Used By Nazis

^{Sanjana Karanth (HuffPost)}

For the better part of a century, there was one thing even the U.S. government would not do to pad the profits of defense contractors.

Now, more than 80 years of precedent may be coming to an end.

On Thursday, lawmakers in the House approved a “pilot program” in the pending Pentagon budget bill that could eventually open the door to sending billions to big contractors, while providing what critics say would be little benefit to the military.

The provision, which appeared in the budget bill after a closed-door session overseen by top lawmakers, would allow contractors to claim reimbursement for the interest they pay on debt they take on to build weapons and other gadgets for the armed services.

Lawmakers Pave the Way to Billions in Handouts for Weapons Makers That the Pentagon Itself Opposed

The pilot program upends an 80-year precedent against covering contractors’ interest payments — something the military itself opposed.

^{Matt Sledge (The Intercept)}

Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar said federal immigration agents pulled over her son on Saturday and asked him to prove his citizenship.

"Yesterday, after he made a stop at Target, he did get pulled over by [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents, and once he was able to produce his passport ID, they did let him go," Omar said in an interview with Esme Murphy on WCCO Sunday Morning.

The congresswoman said her son "always carries" his passport with him.

Omar said ICE also previously entered a mosque where his son and others were praying, but left without incident. After that, she said she "had to remind him just how worried I am, because all of these areas that they are talking about are areas where he could possibly find himself in and they are racially profiling, they are looking for young men who look Somali that they think are undocumented."

Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar says her son was pulled over by ICE

^{Anthony Bettin (CBS Minnesota)}

cross-posted from: discuss.online/post/32165111

I realize my options are limited, but what about any robots.txt style steps? Thanks for any suggestions.

Americans are frustrated with our increasingly oligarchic political system. Selecting an assortment of lawmaking deliberative bodies through random lotteries could help fix it, by empowering ordinary people rather than unaccountable politicians.

Sortition Can Help Cure What Ails Our Democracy

^jacobin.com

Global protest round-up from MiniMia on Mastodon - Dec. 14

#FreePalestine #WorkersRights #ClimateAction #LanguageRights
#Palestine #Gaza @palestine
#news #politics

syzito.xyz/@fkamiah17/11571833…

Peter Link 🍉🇨🇺🇵🇸🐧

2025-12-14 17:25:30

Global protest round-up from MiniMia on Mastodon - Dec. 14

#FreePalestine #WorkersRights #ClimateAction #LanguageRights
#Palestine #Gaza @palestine
#news #politics

syzito.xyz/@fkamiah17/11571833…

♲ @fkamiah17@syzito.xyz:

Today's protest round up is an epic one ...
Starting in Santiago de Compostela, where thousands are in the street today to protest a giant cellulose factory which will pollute their local environment and use millions of gallons of water.

1/

#GlobaliseTheIntifada #ClimateEmergency

But as the climate has warmed, and offshore storms soak up more moisture from heated seas, the amount and distribution of rain is changing. While the number of rainy days has decreased, extreme events occur more often, pushing overall rainfall totals higher. The Post’s analysis found the strongest moisture plumes have greatly increased the chance for heavy rainfall across Oman, and have intensified over the last three decades. These wetter storms are dropping more rain into wadis, leading to more flash flooding and destruction.

Access options:
* gift link — registration required
* archive.today

By Ahmed Dremly in Gaza City, occupied Palestine
14 December 2025 12:47 GMT

Since winter began, Saber has lived in constant fear. Their fragile tent offered little protection from rain or wind, and he knew it could collapse at any moment.

Two weeks earlier, rainwater had already flooded the tent, reaching nearly 30cm. His daughters fell ill with colds that lasted for days. Desperate to prevent it from happening again, Saber borrowed money from one of his relatives to buy a plastic tarpaulin and reinforced the tent with wooden poles.

But when the latest storm hit Gaza a few days ago, his efforts proved useless.

“I spent the first night of the rain holding the tent up with my own hands as rain poured in from every direction,” Saber told Middle East Eye.

“It felt like I had done nothing at all. The tent collapsed on us in the first hours of the rain.”

Rain and rubble: Gaza families face a double threat in makeshift homes

For the past several days, Saber Dawas and his wife have been struggling to keep their seven daughters warm and dry after heavy rain and strong winds destroyed their tent in Gaza.

^{Ahmed Dremly (Middle East Eye)}

cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/40321940

By Ahmed Dremly in Gaza City, occupied Palestine
14 December 2025 12:47 GMT

Since winter began, Saber has lived in constant fear. Their fragile tent offered little protection from rain or wind, and he knew it could collapse at any moment.

Two weeks earlier, rainwater had already flooded the tent, reaching nearly 30cm. His daughters fell ill with colds that lasted for days. Desperate to prevent it from happening again, Saber borrowed money from one of his relatives to buy a plastic tarpaulin and reinforced the tent with wooden poles.

But when the latest storm hit Gaza a few days ago, his efforts proved useless.

“I spent the first night of the rain holding the tent up with my own hands as rain poured in from every direction,” Saber told Middle East Eye.

“It felt like I had done nothing at all. The tent collapsed on us in the first hours of the rain.”

Peter Link

2025-12-14 17:03:30

Rain and rubble: Gaza families face a double threat in makeshift homes

By Ahmed Dremly in Gaza City, occupied Palestine
14 December 2025 12:47 GMT

Since winter began, Saber has lived in constant fear. Their fragile tent offered little protection from rain or wind, and he knew it could collapse at any moment.

Two weeks earlier, rainwater had already flooded the tent, reaching nearly 30cm. His daughters fell ill with colds that lasted for days. Desperate to prevent it from happening again, Saber borrowed money from one of his relatives to buy a plastic tarpaulin and reinforced the tent with wooden poles.

But when the latest storm hit Gaza a few days ago, his efforts proved useless.

“I spent the first night of the rain holding the tent up with my own hands as rain poured in from every direction,” Saber told Middle East Eye.

“It felt like I had done nothing at all. The tent collapsed on us in the first hours of the rain.”

Rain and rubble: Gaza families face a double threat in makeshift homes

For the past several days, Saber Dawas and his wife have been struggling to keep their seven daughters warm and dry after heavy rain and strong winds destroyed their tent in Gaza.

^{Ahmed Dremly (Middle East Eye)}

Beto Louco, investigado em fraude dos combustíveis, quer relatar à PGR pagamentos pedidos a Alcolumbre para bancar show de Roberto Carlos – uma parte dos milhões que diz já ter desembolsado para o senador

O Amapá celebrou os últimos dias de 2024 com uma programação que incluiu shows de astros da música como João Gomes, Alceu Valença, Pablo do Arrocha, Alok e a maior estrela, Roberto Carlos. Em um texto de divulgação, o governo do Estado celebrou o próprio governador, Clécio Luís, do Solidariedade, e o senador Davi Alcolumbre (União-AP). Dizia: “O trabalho sério e com responsabilidade de divulgação do Amapá feito pelo governador Clécio, com apoio do senador Davi, vem chamando a atenção da iniciativa privada e garantindo investidores para os eventos”. Não há detalhes de como o parlamentar, que não tem nenhum cargo no governo do Amapá, participou dos preparativos.

Uma versão muito menos congratulatória está detalhada em uma proposta de colaboração premiada apresentada à Procuradoria-Geral da República. Os candidatos a delator são dois investigados em fraudes bilionárias no setor de combustíveis: o empresário Roberto Leme — conhecido como Beto Louco, controlador da Copape, fabricante de gasolina — e seu sócio Mohamad Hussein Mourad, o “Primo”. A dupla propõe revelar como abasteceu boa parte do panteão do Congresso Nacional com dezenas de milhões de reais em troca de influência, entre 2021 e 2025, com destaque para Davi Alcolumbre, presidente do Senado, e Antonio Rueda, presidente do União Brasil.

Last Wednesday, Palestinian teenager Owais Hammam was on a walk near his home in the West Bank village of Kharbatha Bani Harith, when he was ambushed by a group of Israeli settlers, dragged to a hilltop outpost, and beaten unconscious. From his hospital bed in Ramallah, Hammam spoke to photojournalist Faiz Abu Rmeleh, recounting how both settlers and Israeli soldiers took part in his brutal torture.

from +972’s Sunday Recap
+972 Magazine [published in Israel]
Dec 14, 2025

Also:
* Israel preparing largest ever act of ‘archeological cleansing’ in West Bank
* Israel’s Gaza proxy strategy is collapsing
* After Israel-Hamas prisoner deal, ‘48 Palestinians ask when their turn will come
* Netanyahu’s pardon request is a lens into Israel’s political psyche
* The GOP fed the antisemitism monster. Now it’s turning on its masters

https://www.972mag.com/wp-content/themes/rgb/newsletter.php?page_id=8&section_id=189049

cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/40321023

Last Wednesday, Palestinian teenager Owais Hammam was on a walk near his home in the West Bank village of Kharbatha Bani Harith, when he was ambushed by a group of Israeli settlers, dragged to a hilltop outpost, and beaten unconscious. From his hospital bed in Ramallah, Hammam spoke to photojournalist Faiz Abu Rmeleh, recounting how both settlers and Israeli soldiers took part in his brutal torture.

from +972’s Sunday Recap
+972 Magazine [published in Israel]
Dec 14, 2025

Also:
* Israel preparing largest ever act of ‘archeological cleansing’ in West Bank
* Israel’s Gaza proxy strategy is collapsing
* After Israel-Hamas prisoner deal, ‘48 Palestinians ask when their turn will come
* Netanyahu’s pardon request is a lens into Israel’s political psyche
* The GOP fed the antisemitism monster. Now it’s turning on its masters

Peter Link

2025-12-14 16:26:43

Anatomy of a settler abduction

Last Wednesday, Palestinian teenager Owais Hammam was on a walk near his home in the West Bank village of Kharbatha Bani Harith, when he was ambushed by a group of Israeli settlers, dragged to a hilltop outpost, and beaten unconscious. From his hospital bed in Ramallah, Hammam spoke to photojournalist Faiz Abu Rmeleh, recounting how both settlers and Israeli soldiers took part in his brutal torture.

from +972’s Sunday Recap
+972 Magazine [published in Israel]
Dec 14, 2025

Also:
* Israel preparing largest ever act of ‘archeological cleansing’ in West Bank
* Israel’s Gaza proxy strategy is collapsing
* After Israel-Hamas prisoner deal, ‘48 Palestinians ask when their turn will come
* Netanyahu’s pardon request is a lens into Israel’s political psyche
* The GOP fed the antisemitism monster. Now it’s turning on its masters

https://www.972mag.com/wp-content/themes/rgb/newsletter.php?page_id=8&section_id=189049

Annoncé en grandes pompes jeudi 11 décembre lors du temps fort associatif d’Open Source Experience, Projets Libres devient le podcast de LinuxFr.org. Depuis avril 2023, le podcast Projets Libres vous apporte un éclairage sur les projets, communautés et les individus qui composent l’écosystème libre et open source. Les épisodes sont régulièrement promus sur LinuxFr.

Tout en conservant son nom d’origine, il s’intègre désormais à la galaxie du site LinuxFr pour proposer, en plus des dépêches, journaux, liens… un format audio régulier consacré au logiciel libre, à ses actrices et acteurs et à ses projets. Ce rapprochement ne changera pas la ligne éditoriale du podcast, mais inscrit ce travail dans le temps long. À court terme, il inclut un nouveau logo et générique pour le podcast, et un lien d’accès au podcast depuis LinuxFr.org.

LinuxFr.org, de son côté, n’a plus vraiment besoin d’être présenté ici : le site communautaire francophone consacré au libre depuis 1998 regroupe dépêches, journaux, liens, forums, sondages, tribunes et autres contenus publiés par la communauté. L’arrivée d’un format audio s’inscrit donc comme une évolution naturelle pour enrichir encore les contenus mis en avant. Mais si vous voulez en savoir plus sur LinuxFr.org, sachez que nous avons eu droit à notre épisode dédié il y a deux ans et que nous vous invitons à l’écouter !

Pourquoi ce rapprochement ?

Sommaire

• 1 Pourquoi ce rapprochement ?
• 2 Concrètement, ça va se passer comment ?
• 3 Et pour la suite ?

Le podcast a connu une accélération en 2025, et le besoin d’avoir une entité légale s’est fait sentir. L’idée étant de récolter des fonds pour financer notre travail, mais aussi de préciser le but non lucratif et les motivations de l’équipe. Plutôt que de créer une n-ième association dont il allait falloir s’occuper, au détriment du temps passé à la réalisation de podcasts.

De plus, nous pressentons clairement que les deux communautés se recoupent et aiment découvrir des projets libres en écoutant des retours d’expérience, des interviews ou des discussions techniques… et LinuxFr.org dispose justement d’une communauté intéressée par ce type de contenus. Le rapprochement permettra :

• d’augmenter la visibilité des épisodes existants et futurs ;
• de favoriser des synergies entre la rédaction des dépêches et la production audio (interviews associées à une dépêche, compléments audio d’articles, discussions prolongées, etc.) ;
• de proposer un point d’entrée unique vers le contenu éditorial écrit et audio du site.

Pas d’inquiétude : le podcast garde sa ligne éditoriale, son nom et son style.

Concrètement, ça va se passer comment ?

Un nouveau générique et un nouveau logo vont très vite faire leur apparition, mais pour le reste, pas grand-chose ne change pour les personnes qui écoutent déjà Projets Libres :

• les épisodes restent disponibles sur le site historique du podcast ;
• le flux RSS existant continue de fonctionner dans vos lecteurs de podcast habituels ;
• les archives restent accessibles.

Côté LinuxFr.org,

• Un lien dans l’en-tête va apparaître aux côtés des Dépêches, Journaux, Liens, Forum, etc.
• Chaque nouvel épisode fera l’objet d’une dépêche un peu plus étoffée permettant de continuer la discussion
• La création d’une liste de diffusion dédiée

Le tout reste sous licence libre ou ouverte, dans la continuité de ce que pratiquaient déjà LinuxFr.org et le podcast.

Et pour la suite ?

Nous allons travailler à une intégration plus poussée, mais elle reste encore à imaginer. Et comme tout ce qui touche à LinuxFr.org, ce rapprochement se veut avant tout communautaire. Vous avez une idée de sujet ? Vous maintenez un projet libre et souhaitez en parler au micro ? Vous aimeriez participer à un enregistrement, proposer une chronique, ou simplement donner votre avis ?
N’hésitez pas à le signaler dans les commentaires, ou à contacter l’équipe du podcast.

Bonne écoute, et à bientôt pour un nouvel épisode ! 🎙️

Over the past four years, I've significantly reduced my social media footprint. There are countless reasons for this, all of which are beyond the scope of this article, but the point I want to make is this: despite my growing apathy and downright hostility towards social platforms, I've found YouTube to be an oasis of sorts.

I am not going to pretend that YouTube hasn't played its part in the global disinformation epidemic or that it has somehow escaped the claws of enshittification. What I will say is that unlike other social platforms, its feed (unlike those of its competitors) are maleable using browser-based plugins (tools such as subscription managers). It is one of my primary learning platforms; without its vast array of tutorials, there is no way that I, a non-programmer, would have learnt Linux as fast or become as comfortable in a FOSS-based computing environment, as I have since the pandemic.

But enshittification is, like death and taxes, a certainty now. Which brings us to the subject of this column: AI moderation on YouTube.

YouTube’s AI is Breaking the Creator Ecosystem

A moderation system that leans on automation just knocked legitimate tech tutorials and even entire channels offline. The appeals felt automated, too.

^{Theena Kumaragurunathan (It's FOSS)}

After decades of research and development, humanity finally has a data storage medium that will outlast us.

The 5D Memory Crystal stores data by using tiny voxels – 3D pixels – in fused silica glass, etched by femtosecond laser pulses. These voxels possess "birefringence," meaning that their light refraction characteristics vary depending upon the polarization and direction of incoming light.

That difference in light orientation and strength can be read in conjunction with the voxel's location (x, y, z coordinates), allowing data to be encoded in five dimensional space.

And because the medium is silica crystal, similar to optical cable, it's highly durable. It's also capacious: The technology can store up to 360 TB of data on a 5-inch glass platter.

The future of long-term data storage is clear and will last 14 billion years

: SPhotoix moves its 5D Memory Crystalcold storage tech closer to deployment in data centers

^{Thomas Claburn (The Register)}

In a small room in San Diego last week, a man in a black leather jacket explained to me how to save the world from destruction by AI. Max Tegmark, a notable figure in the AI-safety movement, believes that “artificial general intelligence,” or AGI, could precipitate the end of human life. I was in town for NeurIPS, one of the largest AI-research conferences, and Tegmark had invited me, along with five other journalists, to a briefing on an AI-safety index that he would release the next day. No company scored better than a C+.

The threat of technological superintelligence is the stuff of science fiction, yet it has become a topic of serious discussion in the past few years. Despite the lack of clear definition—even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has called AGI a “weakly defined term”—the idea that powerful AI contains an inherent threat to humanity has gained acceptance among respected cultural critics.

Granted, generative AI is a powerful technology that has already had a massive impact on our work and culture. But superintelligence has become one of several questionable narratives promoted by the AI industry, along with the ideas that AI learns like a human, that it has “emergent” capabilities, that “reasoning models” are actually reasoning, and that the technology will eventually improve itself.

I traveled to NeurIPS, held at the waterfront fortress that is the San Diego Convention Center, partly to understand how seriously these narratives are taken within the AI industry. Do AGI aspirations guide research and product development? When I asked Tegmark about this, he told me that the major AI companies were sincerely trying to build AGI, but his reasoning was unconvincing. “I know their founders,” he said. “And they’ve said so publicly.”

The View From Inside the AI Bubble

Secret parties, lavish buffets, and talks of annihilation at one of the largest AI-research conferences

^{Alex Reisner (The Atlantic)}

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/fps/microsoft-nukes-popular-halo-3-mod-for-counter-strike-2-from-orbit-it-was-fun-while-it-lasted/

https://www.techradar.com/computing/gpu/confused-about-amds-fsr-redstone-update-youre-not-alone-heres-what-it-all-means-for-pc-gamers