Maybe It's Because You Are Evil Assholes?

People cannot wait to to put a boot in Comcast's ass.

It has abused their customers so badly for so long that they have no reservoir of good will to fall back on in the face of the cord cutting trend.

This is a company who made their brand so toxic that their consumer branch had to be changed to Xfinity.

In April 2025, Comcast President Mike Cavanagh bemoaned that the company’s cable broadband division was “not winning in the marketplace” amid increased competition from fiber and fixed wireless Internet service providers.

Cavanagh identified some problems that had been obvious to Comcast customers for many years: Its prices aren’t transparent enough and rise too frequently, and dealing with the company is too difficult. Comcast sought to fix the problems with a five-year price guarantee, one year of free Xfinity Mobile service for home Internet customers, and plans with unlimited data instead of punitive data caps. But the company is still losing broadband customers at a higher-than-expected rate.

In Q4 2025 earnings announced today, Comcast reported a net loss of 181,000 residential and business broadband customers in the US. The loss consists of 178,000 residential Internet customers and 3,000 business customers.

………

Armstrong said that average revenue per user grew 1.1 percent, “consistent with the deceleration that we had previewed reflecting our new go-to-market pricing, including lower everyday pricing and strong adoption of free wireless lines.” Armstrong expects average revenue per user to continue growing slowly “for the next couple of quarters, driven by the absence of a rate increase, the impact from free wireless lines, and the ongoing migration of our base to simplified pricing.”

The only thing that Comcast has is the fact that Charter is just as widely loathed.

I hope that the markets burn both of them to the ground. 

Headline of the Day

The Legal Academy’s Leading Originalists Remain Breathtakingly Full of Shit

—Balls and Strikes, commenting on what has been obvious since the Powell Memo, that Origanalism is just an excuse to put a stamp of approval on bigotry and greed.

It should be noted that the above is the title on the web page. The one in the metadata is, "The Originalists Are Getting the Birthright Citizenship Case Spectacularly Wrong."

In this case, we see their venal hypocrisy in the birthright citizenship case, which requires that one ignore the text of the 14th Amendment, as well as every bit of speech and debate in Congress and the various state legislatures in the process of its approval. 

Last month, the Supreme Court agreed to hear oral argument in Trump v. Barbara, a case that challenges the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s executive order purporting to redefine birthright citizenship. Although the Court has not yet put the case on the calendar, it will likely do so during this term, and issue an opinion before the justices adjourn for the summer.

The Fourteenth Amendment, which Congress adopted in the years following the Civil War, extended citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Yet Trump declared last January that going forward, persons born in the United States would not be citizens unless at least one parent is a citizen or a lawful permanent resident. If the Court allows the executive order to take effect, it would deny citizenship to hundreds of thousands of newborn babies every year, and recreate an antebellum caste system in which social disadvantage is passed down by law from parent to child.

So far, every federal court to assess the order’s legality has recognized it as flagrantly unconstitutional. A federal district court in Maryland, for instance, concluded that the order “flouts the plain language” of the Fourteenth Amendment and “runs counter to our nation’s 250-year history of citizenship by birth.” A federal district court in New Hampshire found that the order “contradicts the text of the Fourteenth Amendment and the century-old untouched precedent that interprets it.” A federal district court in Washington called the Trump administration’s view of the Fourteenth Amendment “untenable,” and criticized the government for rehashing “losing arguments from over a century ago.” 

………

Nevertheless, several Trump allies recently filed amicus briefs in Trump v. Barbara arguing that the order actually restores the original understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment. Former Attorney General Edwin Meese III, for example, characterizes over 150 years of settled constitutional understanding as “longstanding and mistaken assumptions.” The conservative law professor Ilan Wurman contends that the historical rule of birthright citizenship “almost certainly excluded the children born to unlawfully present aliens,” and is “at best unsettled” with respect to the children of “temporary visitors.”

The Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank, submitted an amicus brief that positions its work at “the forefront of the scholarly research” which demonstrates that birthright citizenship was not originally understood to include children whose parents “owed allegiance to a foreign power,” and were in the United States “only temporarily or illegally.” Claremont’s brief is authored by John Eastman, who is most famous for orchestrating Trump’s plot to overturn the 2020 election. The State Bar of California recommended that Eastman be disbarred and banned him from practicing law in the state, but apparently he’s still welcome to file briefs at the Supreme Court.

What these authors have in common is their professed adherence to some form of originalism, the idea that the Constitution’s meaning was set in stone when its provisions were enacted. Meese, for example, made it the policy of President Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department to “resurrect the original meaning of constitutional provisions and statutes as the only reliable guide for judgment.” In a speech before the American Bar Association in 1985, Meese gave away the game a little, presenting originalism as a principled way to ensure that the Court did not “drift back toward the radical egalitarianism and expansive civil libertarianism” of the Civil Rights Movement.

Yeah, that's Ed Meese, saying, "We want to keep the n*****s down, and originalism can help with this.

Fuck them all with Cheney's dead dick. 

I Like Bruce Springsteen, and I Like Bob Dylan

But I am profoundly unimpressed by Springsteen's latest, a protest song about ICE, where he seems to trying to sound as much like Bob Dylan as possible. 

I appreciate the sentiment, but Bruce Springsteen can do a protest song in his own voice and absolutely kill it.

Hell, Bruce Springsteen could do a song from his shopping list in his own voice and absolutely kill it.

Another Promise Kept

New York Mayor Zorhan Mamdani has promised to disband the NYPD's notorious Strategic Response Group (SCG), which has been repeatedly called out, and successfully sued, for its outrageous behavior and brutality directed toward peaceful protestors.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Wednesday he’s committed to disbanding an NYPD unit that responds to protests in the city – a day after officers from the unit arrested anti-ICE demonstrators for occupying a Manhattan hotel lobby.

In a statement, a Mamdani spokesperson said the mayor was pleased with the NYPD’s response to the protest. Nevertheless, on Wednesday, he renewed a campaign promise to disband the department's Strategic Response Group.

The SRG, which was established in 2015, responds to a number of emergency calls across the city, including protests. Their response to demonstrations has been widely criticized for years, including by elected officials, who have accused officers in the unit of racial bias and violence against protesters. When the city settled claims brought by Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020, the NYPD agreed to limit how the officers could respond to demonstrations.

“We don't believe that there should be a unit that has both counterterrorism responsibilities and responsibilities to responding to protests,” Mamdani said of the SRG at an unrelated press conference on Wednesday.

Mamdani’s statement comes as demonstrators have repeatedly taken to the streets in the city in recent weeks to protest President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. On Wednesday, he said he’s had conversations with Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch on how best to disband the unit.

This is a very good thing. 

 

54°40' or Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Seriously, the fact that senior members of the Trump administration are having secret conversations with representatives of radical Albertan separatist organizations, with the quite obvious goal of creating civil disorder in Canada is a complete mind-fuck.

I guess that Trump was serious about wanting Canada, or at least the oil rich parts of it. 

The Trump administration has held covert meetings with fringe separatists from Canada’s oil-rich province of Alberta as a rift deepens between Washington and Ottawa.

Leaders of the Alberta Prosperity Project, a group of far-right separatists who want the western province to become independent, met US state department officials in Washington three times since April last year, according to people familiar with the talks.

They are seeking another meeting next month with state and Treasury officials to ask for a $500bn credit facility to help bankroll the province if an independence referendum — yet to be called — is passed.

“The US is extremely enthusiastic about a free and independent Alberta,” Jeff Rath, APP legal counsel, who attended the meetings, told the FT.

He claimed he had a “much stronger relationship” with the Trump administration than Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

………

British Columbia premier David Eby described the FT’s report of the meeting as alarming because Trump is “not particularly respectful to Canada’s sovereignty”.

“To go to a foreign country and to ask for assistance in breaking up Canada, there’s an old-fashioned word for that. And that word is treason,” he told reporters in Ottawa on Thursday.

Seriously, these jamokes make the Bay of Pigs invasion look like an episode of Mission Impossible.

Today in Weird

A man claiming to be an FBI agent and wielding a barbecue fork and a pizza cutter attempted to bust Luigi Mangione out of jail.

To refresh your memory, Mr. Mangione is accused of  

As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know." 

A man claiming to be an FBI agent showed up at a Brooklyn jail with a barbecue fork and pizza cutter and tried to free Luigi Mangione on Wednesday night, according to a law enforcement official and a federal criminal complaint.

Prosecutors said Mark Anderson, 36, told employees at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center that he worked for the FBI and said he had a court order to release a detainee. A law enforcement source who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to share the information publicly said that the detainee was Luigi Mangione.

When jail staff asked Anderson to provide his credentials, prosecutors said, he gave them a Minnesota driver’s license.

He threw several documents at them related to filing claims against the U.S. Department of Justice, the criminal complaint said. He also told officials that he had weapons in his bag, and a search turned up the barbecue fork and a circular steel blade, according to the complaint.

………

In Brooklyn federal court on Thursday, defense attorney Michael Weil asked Magistrate Judge Taryn Merkl to release Anderson to a hospital for an evaluation instead of holding him in jail. He said claiming to be an FBI agent without a badge was “not a serious attempt to spring a federal inmate.”

“It seems like a case representing something else going on,” Weil said.

Gee, ya think? 

 

 

Too Toxic for Other Republicans

A candidate for the Republican nomination for Minnesota Governor has dropped out of the race, basically saying that the party has become too toxic for him to even bother.

A top Republican candidate for Minnesota governor has dropped out of the race, sharply criticizing what he called a “federal retribution on the citizens of our state” amid the Trump administration’s intensified immigration enforcement operations – which sparked public outrage after US agents’ killings ofAlex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis.

On Monday, the Minneapolis-based attorney Chris Madel made his announcement, saying in a video online: “I cannot support the … stated retribution on the citizens of our state, nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so.”

………

Madel had launched his gubernatorial bid in December and provided legal counsel to the ICE agent Jonathan Ross after he shot Good to death on 7 January while she drove away from an encounter with him.

His withdrawal comes as some Republicans in Minnesota and Washington have begun to distance themselves from the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

Madel said ICE’s Operation Metro Surge would hurt Republicans statewide after large street protests met the killings of Pretti and Good, along with widespread criticism beyond Minneapolis.

“National Republicans have made it nearly impossible for a Republican to win a statewide election in Minnesota,” he said.

Note what he is saying here.  Heis main point is not that it's wrong, it is complaining that it makes getting a Republican elected in Minnesota almost impossible. 

Another Right Wing Terrorist Attack

Some mook sprayed Representative Ilhan Omar with an unknown substance at her town hall last night. 

It is now believed to be apple cider vinegar.  I am surprised.  I would thought that he would have used Brawndo. (It's got what plants crave)

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar was sprayed with an unidentified substance by a man with a syringe on Tuesday as she gave her first in-person town hall of the year in Minneapolis, during which she called for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to be abolished “for good” and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary, Kristi Noem, to resign.

Omar had only been speaking for a few minutes when a man in the audience got up and began to shout while spraying her with the liquid. People at the meeting said the liquid had an acidic smell.

Omar walked toward the man after the alleged assault, but he was then swiftly tackled to the ground by a security guard. People inside the north Minneapolis community center gasped as the scene unfolded.

Some, such as the Minneapolis council member LaTrisha Vetaw, pleaded with Omar to end the town hall early to get examined, due to concerns for her safety because of the unidentified liquid. Omar refused to stop. “Ten minutes, I beg you … please don’t let them have the show,” she told the security team.

After the alleged attacker was subdued, there was applause from the room as he was escorted out. “Here is the reality that people like this ugly man don’t understand, is that we are Minnesota strong,” the congresswoman said.

“I learned at a young age that you don’t give in to threats.”

Pretty epic response from Omar. 

BTW, the guy's social media postings show him to be a major MAGAt. 

Snark of the Day

Finally, someone has an ICE reeducation program that might work.

As my reader(s) are aware, I'm generally not in favor of training to change organizational culture, but this suggestion seems to be to be eminently reasonable while also having a good chance of success.

………

I propose a sort of long-term residential program for everyone who remains with ICE and CBP after this week, along with more or less everyone hired since the start of the second Trump administration. This would have to be a mandatory program, reflecting the seriousness with which we ought to take proper law enforcement training in this country.

Obviously, ICE agents will not be able to continue working while they are undergoing this rigorous new training program. And in order for retraining to be effective, it will take a long time—perhaps even years. Because we can’t accept one-size-fits-all solutions, we should expect this mandatory residential retraining program to be somewhat open-ended. I would recommend we place these agents on an indefinite leave of absence from their jobs while they are retraining, and have their essential duties taken over by other agencies, preferably outside the Department of Homeland Security (which will have a lot of its agents undergoing this long-term residential training).

This will not be a cheap program, admittedly. Fortunately the immigration enforcement agencies are currently funded at extremely high levels, and Democrats have already shown a reluctance to clawing back that money, out of fear of being labeled soft on crime. But what could be more pro-law enforcement than additional training? And as the Trump administration has decisively shown, using appropriated money for its official purpose is more of a “suggestion” than a requirement of our constitutional system, so a future administration can repurpose that funding for this new mandatory long-term residential training program.

(emphasis mine)

I think that this recommendation is is worthy of comparison to the proposals of Jonathan Swift back in the day.

H/t Atrios 

Busy Day in Economics for a Wednesday

First, we had the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee holding their benchmark interest rate, which is not a surprise. for a couple of reasons, first, the numbers that they care about, and GDP both remain relatively strong, and second, they HAD to do this to show their independence from Donald Trump.

The Federal Reserve has kept interest rates on hold for the first time since July, as chair Jay Powell said the US central bank was in no rush to cut them despite Donald Trump’s relentless campaign to drastically lower borrowing costs.

The Fed on Wednesday left its main interest rate at a range of 3.5 to 3.75 per cent, following three straight quarter-point reductions. The decision matched Wall Street’s expectations.

Powell said after the meeting that with the economy growing at a robust rate, and the jobs market steadying in recent months, rates did not appear to be in “significantly restrictive” territory.

………

Official statistics released last week showed annualised GDP growth of 4.4 per cent in the third quarter of 2025. The Atlanta Fed has said that could jump as high as 5.4 per cent in the fourth quarter.

Rather unsurprisingly, the Trump toadies dissented, despite inflation being higher than what the Fed Targets.

However, governor Christopher Waller, one of four candidates left in the race to replace Powell as chair when his term ends in May, dissented, calling for a quarter-point cut. Stephen Miran, a staunch Trump ally who was appointed a governor last year, also called for a quarter-point cut.

The objections came as central bankers attempt to balance their dual mandate of price stability and full employment. The Fed’s preferred personal consumption expenditures inflation gauge registered 2.8 per cent in November, well above its 2 per cent target.

I'll not go into the Fed Kremlinology any more deeply here, you can find that from a variety of public sources, but I do want to note that US consumer confidence fell to its lowest level since May 2014, which ain't good.

US consumer confidence has collapsed to its weakest level in more than a decade, outstripping its pandemic lows and fuelling concerns about the health of the world’s biggest economy.

The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index fell to 84.5 in January, well below market expectations and the lowest since May 2014.

“Confidence collapsed in January, as consumer concerns about both the present situation and expectations for the future deepened,” said Dana Peterson, chief economist at the Conference Board, a think-tank.

The bleak consumer mood despite recent bumper GDP growth and strong spending data will stoke concerns that the spoils of America’s economic gains are not being evenly distributed.

Rather unsurprisingly, the obscenely wealthy have a better view of the economy than the rest of us. 

Now there's a shock. 

Linkage

• Florida deregulated nursing schools. Scam colleges and failing students followed (Orlando Sentinel) Self regulation is to regulation as self importance is to importance.
• Prisoners of Fortune (How Things Work) In interesting meditation on how wealth owns the billionaires rather than the other way around.
• AI insiders seek to poison the data that feeds them (The Register) They are fragging their superior officers, as enlisted men did in Vietnam.
• Developer writes script to throw AI out of Windows • The Register If you cannot read and understand this script, or do not know someone who can, I recommend that you do not run it.   Still, it's sweet.
• Microsoft CEO Laments Criticism Of “AI Slop,” Causing The Whole Internet To Double Down On Criticism Of “Microslop” (Techdirt) Sucks to be him.
• Love dark chocolate? 6 tips for choosing the healthiest type. (Washington Post) Theobromine is good for you according to a new study.  Expect a study debunking this in 2 weeks.
• Manual Transmission Thwarts Thieves' Attempt To Steal A Woman's (Kia) Soul (Jalopnik) I'm very disappointed in you.  I haven't driven a standard shift in decades, but I I know how to do this.
• Cybertruck Sales Show Stomach-Churning Drop (Fufurism) It appears that if you design a fragile vehicle that does not do what you promised it would do, people will not buy it.

What I do all day:

History Rhyming

While the market collapse of 2008-2009 came as a surprise to me, in retrospect, the signs were there.

They weren't big things, but an increasing number of little things.

Over the past few weeks, we have: 

• A stealth bailout of Wall Street by the Federal Reserve: Basically, they are shoveling money out the door using the Fed's repo (repurchase agreement) facility.  Basically selling assets overnight and buying them back in the morning for quick cash.
• Private Repo is skyrocketing as well: Meaning that there is a multi-Trillion game of musical chairs without any chairs.  Waiting for the music to stop.
• Home sellers are yanking their homes off of the market at an unprecedented rate, with listings falling to a 30 year low.
• Home buyers are walking away from signed deals at an unprecedented rate. ⅙ of all signed contracts were walked away from in December.

I cannot predict when, but we are careening toward a Lehman moment. 

It will appear that nothing is happening, and then it will happen all at once. 

Investment Advice

It appears that there is a way to make money on the Polymarket "Futures Market" (Casino) by monetizing stupidity.

If when Elon Musk makes a pronouncement you bet against it, you always find a pathetic Musk fanboi willing to take the other side of the bet.

It's kind of like Jim Kramer.  If you bet against him, you win.

Tesla CEO and billionaire Elon Musk has long garnered a reputation for being massively wrong in his promises and predictions about the future.

In 2024, for instance, he said that AI would become “smarter than the smartest human” by 2025. He said his company’s SpaceX Starship rocket, which is still exploding during test flights, will land on Mars this year. Like clockwork, he’s predicted that self-driving cars will become a reality “next year” every year for well over a decade now. He promised robotaxis without human safety monitors by mid-2025, which the company still has yet to accomplish.

We could go on and on. In short, it’d be far easier to count the occasions on which he’s been right than when he’s been wrong.

Now, as NBC News reports, users on online prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket are making big bucks off of Musk’s astonishing track record for being wrong about the future. Case in point, Polymarket user David Bensoussan made a ten percent return after betting $10,000 that Musk wouldn’t follow through on his threat of forming a new political party following his falling out with president Donald Trump.

He also successfully bet against Musk’s prediction that Tesla would launch an “unsupervised” version of its erroneously-named “Full Self-Driving” software by the end of 2025.

To Bensoussan, it’s a matter of principle.

“He does have a solid fan base, and so if I can help separate them from some of their money, I’m always happy to do that,” he told NBC. “He has a habit of exaggerating timelines, and of saying he’s going to do these amazing things and attaching more immediacy than what his intent may necessarily be.”

I don't do these sort of markets, but betting that the lying liar will lie does seem to me to be a winning strategy. 

 

A Bad Day at the Office

It appears that one of NASA's WB-57 high altitude Camberra research aircraft had a spot of trouble with its landing gear.

There were no injuries, but the plane might be a write off. (It's more than 50 years old)

I'll Take 8 Inches

No, not that.

I'm referring to the snowfall, which was about 8 inches in my area over the weekend.

Given that the predictions were for as much as 16 inches. I'd say that we dodged a bullet. 

Love working from home right now. 

Snark of the Day

The pogroms are starting. https://t.co/XZx17qwu8V

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) January 25, 2026

Stoller is, of course, making a joke here.

Helping someone dig their car out of the snow does not qualify as a pogrom, regardless of the religion of the car driver or the shovel wielder. 

If you value your sanity, you may not want to look at the comments, where a number of truly dense people or organizations missed the humor entirely. 

Well, That was Quick

Less than a week after Oracle Executive Chariman (and serial workplace sexual predator)  Larry Ellison took over TikTok, it looks like he is already suppressing anti-Trump views.

Now there is a surprise.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday said he is launching an investigation into whether TikTok has censored videos critical of President Donald Trump, and whether its actions constitute a violation of California law.

Newsom weighed in late Monday after a growing swarm of users — including two San Francisco candidates for Congress — reported that their videos regarding the administration and were being suppressed or kept from viewers entirely.

“It’s time to investigate,” Newsom posted X, alongside screenshot from a user who claimed TikTok would not allow them to mention the word “Epstein.”

Over the last year, Newsom has utilized various social media channels to aggressively criticize Trump and his policies.

………

Influencers and celebrities with large followings have logged similar complaints, following posts they made about the shooting death of Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents in Minnesota over the weekend. A Border Patrol agent shot and killed Pretti, an ICU nurse, on Saturday. It was Minneapolis’ second fatal shooting death by a federal agent this month as President Donald Trump’s ongoing immigration crackdown in the city continues. 

This is not a surprise.  Given that Oracle needs government subsidies, specifically IP protections and extensive government contracts, to survive, and given his history of sucking up to Trump, this is a feature, not a bug.

TACO Once Again

Song by Scared Ketchup

We have a report from The Atlantic that Greg Bovino has been removed from his post as "Commander at Large" for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  (Update: This has been confirmed by other sources)

Trump's spokes-Barbie Karoline Leavitt appears to be throwing both Noem and her boyfriend assistant Corey Lewandowski under the bus as well.

We are profoundly lucky that the bad guys are so stupid and so arrogant.

With a little bit more competence, we would be on our way to the next Reichstag fire.

Gregory Bovino has been removed from his role as Border Patrol “commander at large” and will return to his former job in El Centro, California, where he is expected to retire soon, according to a DHS official and two people with knowledge of the change.

Bovino’s sudden demotion is the clearest sign yet that the Trump administration is reconsidering its most aggressive tactics after the killing Saturday of 37-year-old Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents under Bovino’s command.

Earlier today, President Trump appeared to signal in a series of social-media posts a tactical shift in the administration’s mass-deportation campaign. Trump wrote that he spoke with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz—whom the White House has blamed for inciting violence—and the two men are now on “a similar wavelength.” Tom Homan, the former ICE chief whom Trump has designated “border czar,” will head to Minnesota to assume command of the federal mobilization there, Trump said.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her close adviser Corey Lewandowski, who were Bovino’s biggest backers at DHS, are also at risk of losing their jobs, two of the people told me.



Bovino’s fall comes two days after Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis fatally shot Pretti, an intensive-care nurse who worked with veterans. Hours after the shooting, Bovino appeared at a press conference and echoed statements by the Department of Homeland Security alleging Pretti sought to “massacre” the federal agents. Bovino repeatedly claimed that Border Patrol agents, not Pretti, were the victims.

Videos of the encounter showed no evidence for his claims. Pretti, who was licensed to carry a concealed weapon, did not draw a firearm or attack the agents. The videos show one agent disarming Pretti in the moments just before another agent shot him in the back.

 Trump Always Chickens Out. (TACO)

 

Lies the Media Tells Us

Notwithstanding the media reports, the 2025 murder rate fell significantly.

The headlines of 2025 painted a portrait of America in chaos, driven by the financial logic of America’s media ecosystem. It’s number one product isn’t news, but fear.

“NYC youth crime doubled since controversial state Raise the Age Law kicked in,” exclaims one hysterical New York Post headline from September. “Business owners express frustration over crime surge in Federal Hill,” reads a banner from FOX45 News, a local outlet in Baltimore. “Office shooter’s rampage shows terrifying rise of motive-free violence, experts warn,” goes a Fox News heading from August.

The scary headlines were all underscored by inflammatory rhetoric from the Trump administration, which continued to insist that America’s cities are crime-ridden hell holes well into the new year.

Selective media coverage of crime certainly isn’t a new phenomenon, though it’s worth revisiting — especially because new data suggests 2025 was actually one of the least violent years for the US in over a century.

According to fresh Council on Criminal Justice crime statistics, Axios reports, murder rates fell 21 percent last year across the 35 largest cities in the US. It’s the single largest one-year-drop ever, the publication reports, and possibly the lowest homicide rates we’ve seen as a nation since the year 1900 — when the last generation of frontier outlaws were still robbing train cars.

Homicide wasn’t the only crime that fell in 2025. Out of 13 crimes tracked by the Council on Criminal Justice, 11 of them were lower last year than in 2024. Aggravated assaults, for example, fell by 9 percent across the 35 cities, while gun assaults and robberies dropped off by 22 and 23 percent, respectively. (The only category that increased was drug crimes, up 7 percent — and which are nonviolent.)

This a toxic combination of the, "If it bleeds, it leads," ethos of local news and the oligopolistic nature of news, particularly broadcast news/

They are selling a lie. 

Of Course He Is

Have you heard the one about the conservative influencer who got impregnated by Elon Musk, who largely ignored the kid?

Well, she had a change of heart and apologized for her previous anti-trans statements, so the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ is trying to take her child away from her.

He really is a vile and petty man.

Ashley St. Clair is having a very bad month.

The conservative influencer built her brand on anti-trans rhetoric and owning the libs. Now she’s locked in a custody battle with Elon Musk, the father of her one-year-old son Romulus. Musk, who according to St. Clair’s court filings has seen the child just a handful of times since his birth, announced on X Monday that he would be “filing for full custody today, given her statements implying she might transition a one-year-old boy.”

St. Clair said no such thing. What she actually said, in response to a user asking her to address her past transphobia, was this: “I feel immense guilt for my role. And even more guilt that things I have said in the past may have caused my son’s sister more pain.”

………

Elon Musk is seeking full custody of a child he’s allegedly seen three times, based on the false claim that the child’s mother wants to “transition” a one-year-old.

This is the same Elon Musk who refused to publicly acknowledge he was Romulus’s father after the child was born in September 2024. St. Clair kept the pregnancy and birth secret for five months, only going public in February 2025 because tabloids were about to break the story anyway. According to the Wall Street Journal, Musk offered her $15 million plus $100,000 per month in child support if she would sign an NDA and never reveal his paternity. She turned it down, telling Musk’s fixer Jared Birchall, “I don’t want my son to feel like he’s a secret.”

Musk responded by slashing her support. When St. Clair’s attorney accused him of “financially retaliating against his own child,” Musk posted on X that he’d given her $2.5 million and was sending $500,000 a year, adding that he didn’t “know for sure” if the child was even his. St. Clair fired back that Musk had “refused” to take a paternity test, writing, “Elon, we asked you to confirm paternity through a test before our child (who you named) was even born.”

So to recap: Musk named the kid, wouldn’t acknowledge him publicly, tried to buy St. Clair’s silence, cut her support when she wouldn’t comply, pretended he wasn’t sure the baby was his, and is now seeking full custody because she apologized to trans people.

He runs a platform that generated child sexual abuse material using the mother’s image, then punished her for complaining about it. He’s the world’s richest man, and he’s using his wealth and his platform to destroy a woman whose crime is expressing empathy for his estranged daughter.

This is the guy who thinks he should be making decisions about a toddler’s welfare.

This asshole should have been drowned at birth.

I'll Believe it When I See It

Chuck Schumer, the chief Democratic Party spelunker in the Senate has announced that the Democratic Party Senate Caucus will block any funding bill that includes funding for ICE.

They won't.  They will cave somehow, because they ALWAYS find some way to cave.

In the wake of another fatal shooting of a US citizen in Minnesota by a federal officer, the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, said his party would block a funding package next week if it includes money for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The announcement, which dramatically escalates the potential for another partial government shutdown, comes as anger towards homeland security, which oversees ICE, intensifies among the party after a group of federal agents violently restrained and then fatally shot 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

“What’s happening in Minnesota is appalling – and unacceptable in any American city,” Schumer, a New York senator, said in a statement. “Democrats sought common sense reforms in the Department of Homeland Security spending bill, but because of Republicans’ refusal to stand up to President Trump, the DHS bill is woefully inadequate to rein in the abuses of ICE. I will vote no.”

“Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included,” he added.

The craven gerontocracy that is the Democratic Party leadership in the Senate must be broken. 

State Sponsored Terrorism

 

ICE murdered someone else in Minneapolis, 39 year old ICU nurse Alex Pretti. 

There are multiple videos out there, but I will not be posting them here.  I am writing opinions, and not news, and as such, I don't want to post this sort of media.- 

He was attempting to help someone up who had been knocked to the ground by ICE agents.

He was then tackled, and his (legally carried and never removed from his holster) gun was removed, and while on the ground he was shot 10 times.

Two witnesses to the killing of Alex Pretti have said in sworn testimony that the 37-year-old intensive care nurse was not brandishing a weapon when he approached federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday, contradicting a claim made by Trump administration officials as they sought to cast the shooting of a prone man as an act of self-defense.

Their accounts came in sworn affidavits that were filed in federal court in Minnesota late Saturday, just hours after Pretti’s killing, as part of a lawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of Minneapolis protesters against Kristi Noem and other homeland security officials directing the immigration crackdown in the city.

One witness is a woman who filmed the clearest video of the fatal shooting; the other is a physician who lives nearby and said they were initially prevented by federal officers from rendering medical aid to the gunshot victim.

Not allowing medical aid to arrive seems to be a theme for these thugs.

DHS and the Trump administration have stated that the mere fact that he was carrying a weapon, even if it never left its holster, justified his killing.  Various ammosexual groups have taken profound exception to these statements.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has joined other gun lobbying and advocacy groups that are typically aligned with Donald Trump in calling for the Republican president’s administration to conduct a “full investigation” into the killing of Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old nurse who was shot dead by federal immigration officials in Minneapolis on Saturday.

Pretti was reportedly legally permitted to carry a gun and is a citizen of the US, where it is a constitutional right to bear arms. Widely circulated video of his shooting death does not depict him ever holding a gun. It does show an officer reaching to Pretti’s lower back and stepping away with what appeared to be a pistol – and Pretti being subsequently shot to death.

The NRA waded into the national dialogue over Pretti’s killing after Bill Essayli – who was appointed by Trump to temporarily serve as a US attorney in California in 2025 – posted on social media: “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.”

In response, the NRA posted: “This sentiment … is dangerous and wrong. Responsible public voices should be awaiting a full investigation, not making generalizations and demonizing law-abiding citizens.”

Gun Owners of America, a non-profit lobbying organization, also criticized that claim from Essayli – who is now an acting first assistant US attorney for California’s central federal district court.

“Federal agents are not ‘highly likely’ to be ‘legally justified’ in ‘shooting’ concealed carry licensees who approach while lawfully carrying a firearm,” the group posted. It added that the US constitution’s second amendment “protects Americans’ right to bear arms while protesting – a right the federal government must not infringe upon.”

California governor Gavin Newsom’s press office responded to the NRA’s criticism of Essayli, saying on social media, “Wow. Even the NRA thinks Trump’s [justice department] stooge in California has gone too far for claiming federal agents were ‘legally justified’ to kill Alex Pretti.”

Newsom’s press office added: “Your position is truly horrible when even the NRA calls you out.”

Not only is the White House lying about what is going on, but Attorney General Pam Bondi is saying that she will pull ICE out of Minnesota if the state turns over their voter rolls in their entirety, so that the Trump administration can use this data to suppress votes from areas that they think will go Democratic Party.

Just hours after federal immigration officers shot and killed a man in Minneapolis, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi seized upon the incident to demand access to Minnesota’s voter rolls, directly tying the Trump administration’s quest for voters’ unredacted personal data to its aggressive immigration raids across the state.

In a letter to Gov. Tim Walz (D) Saturday, Bondi blamed state and local leaders for the unrest ignited by the Trump administration’s expansive immigration enforcement operations. She claimed that Walz could “restore the rule of law” by complying with a list of demands, including giving the Department of Justice (DOJ) the state’s voter registration records.

“Allow the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice to access voter rolls to confirm that Minnesota’s voter registration practices comply with federal law as authorized by the Civil Rights Act of 1960,” Bondi said in the letter, which was first obtained by Fox News.

The letter adds the state’s unwillingness to share voting data to a litany of grievances the Trump administration has leveled against Minnesota, which range from the local Democratic leaders’ rejection of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) actions to a longstanding welfare fraud scandal.

Bondi’s other demands included sharing Minnesota’s data on Medicaid and supplementary food assistance with the federal government, ending “sanctuary policies” and supporting and collaborating with ICE. This would allow the government to investigate fraud and curb “crime and violence” in the state, the attorney general claimed.

In sum, Bondi’s letter represents a major assault on Minnesota’s sovereignty, demanding that it forfeit its ability to make and enforce its own laws and maintain its voter rolls without oversight from the executive branch, which does not have authority over elections. 

This is blackmail, pure and simple.

Meanwhile, in an update to the Renee Good murder, at least 10 lawyers for the DoJ, 6 in Minnesota and 4 in Washington, DC, resigned over the government's refusal to investigate the shooting, as did the an FBI supervisor in Minneapolis.

Finally, and this may be the most important bit, is that extensive files on ICE incidents and personnel have been leaked.

Sensitive details of around 4,500 ICE and Border Patrol employees—including almost 2,000 agents working in frontline enforcement—have allegedly been released by a Department of Homeland Security whistleblower following last week’s fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good.

The Jan. 7 killing of the mother by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has sparked nationwide protests and worldwide outrage, including among some DHS employees.

The alleged leak to ICE List, a self-styled “accountability initiative,” is believed to be the largest ever breach of DHS staff data. It appears to include names, work emails, telephone numbers, roles, and some resumé data, including previous jobs of federal immigration staff. 

I have not found a full downloadable version of this database.   ICE List is a Wikipedia style database, so the entire 

If any of my reader(s) know how to download the full database, do so, and post in the comments how to do so.

Elon Lie? Say it Ain't So!

Elon said that it had removed safety monitors from its, "Robotaxis."

What he did not say was that these monitors were simply moved to a chase car that closely followed the "autonomous" taxis.

Earlier today, [ed: 2 days ago] Elon Musk announced on X that Tesla had “just started Tesla Robotaxi drives in Austin with no safety monitor in the car.” Tesla’s stock immediately jumped over 4% on the news. Headlines across the financial press celebrated the milestone.

There’s just one problem: it appears to be another game of smoke and mirrors. The Robotaxi cars spotted without “safety monitor” were all being followed by a trailing black Tesla supervising the “driverless” Robotaxi.

It means Tesla didn’t “remove the safety monitor”, it just moved them to a vehicle behind them.

………

When Musk says there’s “no safety monitor in the car,” he’s technically telling the truth, the monitor is in a different car, following right behind. But the implication that Tesla has achieved true unsupervised autonomy is misleading at best.

True unsupervised autonomy means the vehicle can operate safely without any human backup ready to intervene. That’s what Waymo does, their vehicles operate genuinely alone, without chase cars, across multiple cities. They’ve accumulated over 100 million fully driverless miles.

Now, there’s still some remote teleoperation when the vehicle gets into trouble, but it’s clear that Tesla is not even there yet.

This is fraud, period, full stop.

Of Course They Did

It has been revealed that Elon Musk's DOGE was illegally transferring personal data from the Social Security (SSA) database to right wing vote suppression groups. 

After months of denials, the Trump administration has admitted that staffers affiliated with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) misused Social Security Administration (SSA) data. In an extraordinary court filing, “NOTICE OF CORRECTIONS TO THE RECORD,” government lawyers representing the SSA revealed that in March 2025, a DOGE staffer signed an agreement to share the private data of Americans with a “political advocacy group” seeking to “overturn election results in certain States.”

SSA determined in its recent review that in March 2025, a political advocacy group contacted two members of SSA’s DOGE Team with a request to analyze state voter rolls that the advocacy group had acquired. The advocacy group’s stated aim was to find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain States. In connection with these communications, one of the DOGE team members signed a “Voter Data Agreement,” in his capacity as an SSA employee, with the advocacy group. He sent the executed agreement to the advocacy group on March 24, 2025.

The filing says that emails “suggest that DOGE Team members could have been asked to assist the advocacy group by accessing SSA data to match to the voter rolls.”

The use of government data for political purposes is unlawful. The Hatch Act prohibits a federal employee from using “his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.” In the filing, government lawyers say the DOGE employees involved were referred to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel for possible Hatch Act violations.

………

While the court filing does not name the “political advocacy group” coordinating with DOGE, there is evidence pointing to True the Vote, a right-wing group with a history of pushing false claims of election fraud. True the Vote published “An Appeal to DOGE” in March 2025, the same month that the DOGE staffer signed an agreement with the political group. In the open letter, published on the group’s website on March 5, True the Vote encouraged DOGE to investigate the country’s voter registration system. At the top of the letter, Democracy Docket notes, True the Vote Founder Catherine Engelbrecht wrote, “We’ve received word that this message is being carried forward.”

At the earliest opportunity, Elon and his DOGE thugs need to be arrested put in the dock.

Elon Musk's Lawyer is a Fucking Clown

No, literally, not metaphorically. 

One of Musk;s IP lawyers, Jaymie Parkkinen, has a side gig as a clown.

If Elon Musk’s antics over the past few years have felt like a three-ring circus, there just might be a reason for that.

As it turns out, one of the billionaire’s key legal strategists isn’t just an attorney but a professionally trained — and currently practicing — clown.

We wish we were kidding. But new reporting by Business Insider tells the tale of Jaymie Parkkinen, an intellectual property lawyer representing Musk by day while working as an actual clown by night. Amidst a massive courtroom drama playing out between Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Parkkinen has stood out, occasionally going it alone against esteemed counsel for OpenAI and Microsoft on the multibillionaire’s behalf.

“All of my comedy friends — none of them can believe I’m a lawyer,” Parkkinen told BI. “And none of my lawyer friends can believe I do clown.”

“Clown” is his preferred term for the act of performing onstage in the slapstick tradition, an intransitive verb similar to “improv” or “vogue” dance. For Parkkinsen, clown is less about dressing up in big goofy shoes and throwing pies, and more of an artistic craft, similar to the way silent artists mime as a comedic technique.

A clown representing a clown. 

Sign of the Apocalypse

I did not expect to see this, but the New York Times OP/ED page actually has a worthwhile article, "State Terror Has Arrived," by M. Gessen.

They aren't saying anything that you aren't hear everywhere, but the for what Atrios calls, "That Fucking Paper," it is a departure. 

I would also note that given Gessen's experience in Russia, they are in a position to draw parallels.

After the past three weeks of brutality in Minneapolis, it should no longer be possible to say that the Trump administration seeks merely to govern this nation. It seeks to reduce us all to a state of constant fear — a fear of violence from which some people may at a given moment be spared, but from which no one will ever be truly safe. That is our new national reality. State terror has arrived.

………

……… We don’t focus on these details in order to justify the federal agents’ actions, which are plainly brutal and unjustifiable; we do it to force the world to make sense, and to calm our nerves. If we don’t talk back, if we alter our routes to avoid protests, if we are lucky enough to be white, straight, natural-born Americans — or, if we are not, but we lie low, stay quiet — we will be safe. Conversely, we can choose to speak up, to go to protests, to take a risk. Either way, we tell ourselves, if we can predict the consequences, we have agency.

But that’s not how state terror works.

In the 1990s, when I talked to people in the former Soviet Union about their families’ experiences of Stalinist terror, I was repeatedly struck by how much people seemed to know about their circumstances. Time and time again, people would tell me exactly what had led to their family members’ arrests or executions. Jealous neighbors had reported them to the authorities, or colleagues who had been arrested named them under duress. These stories had been passed on from generation to generation. How could they come to know so much, I wondered. They couldn’t. People crafted narratives out of suspicions, rumors and hints, to fill a desperate need for an explanation.

………

For this was the secret about the secret police that became clear when the K.G.B. archives were opened (briefly) in the 1990s: They were ruled by quotas. Local squadrons had to arrest a certain number of citizens so they could be designated enemies of the people. That the officers often swept up groups of colleagues, friends and family members was probably a matter of convenience more than anything else. Fundamentally, the terror was random. That is, in fact, how state terror works.

………

The toolbox isn’t particularly varied. President Trump is using all the instruments: the reported quotas for ICE arrests; the paramilitary force made up of thugs drunk on their own brutality; the spectacle of random violence, particularly in city streets; the postmortem vilification of the victims. It’s only natural that our brains struggle to find logic in what we are seeing. There is a logic, and this logic has a name. It’s called state terror.

To true. 

 

I am Legitimately Surprised

I just came across a study which shows that metal heads are among the most faithful partners among music fans, which surprises me, though the news that jazz fans are the biggest hounds does not.

Jazz fans may want to keep whatever's in their pants in check — according to a recent survey by affair website Victoria Milan, lovers of jazz are almost 10 times more likely to cheat than heavy metal fans.

The study (published by The Sun), which queried more than 6,500 people who admitted to affairs, also found that three-quarters of unfaithful men and women say they can't stop thinking about their lover when hearing their favorite music.

Jazz topped the list of "seductive" genres, followed by salsa and pop, which were most likely to send respondents into sexual fantasy mode. All I'm hearing is "nobody wants to fuck to metal," which is simply not true. Other genres ranked as follows in order of cheaters' preference: 

1. Jazz: 19%
2. Salsa: 14%
3. Pop: 13%
4. Country: 12%
5. Rap: 9%
6. Classical: 8%
7. Blues: 6%
8. Reggae: 5%
9. Rock and Roll: 5%
10. Electronica: 4%
11. Indie: 3%
12. Heavy Metal: 2%

I wish that I had known this when I was single.

Another Loss in Court

Prosecutors in Chicago took a case of shit-posting on Snapchat and made a federal out of it.

It took a jury three hours to call bullshit on this.

Federal authorities slapped all kinds of sinister labels on Chicago’s Juan Espinoza Martinez when they arrested him last fall, and they did it for all the world to hear.

They called him a “high-ranking member of the Latin Kings.” They called him “depraved.” They even called him a “thug” as they accused him of offering $10,000 for the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino.

But Thursday, a federal jury called Espinoza Martinez “not guilty.” In doing so, it put an end to one of the most contentious prosecutions to result from Operation Midway Blitz.

The panel of regular citizens, led by a teacher who served as the foreperson, answered a call from defense attorney Dena Singer. The lawyer urged them in closing arguments to “stand up to the overreaching government.”

………

After deliberating for about three hours, the jury acquitted Espinoza Martinez of one count of murder-for-hire, which carried a maximum of 10 years in prison. They did so after hearing how Bovino last fall became the face of immigration enforcement in Chicago.

 

Headline of the Day

Elon Musk Is So Unlikable That His Feud With Random Airline Is Doing Wonders for Sales, Says CEO

—Futurism, discussing the recent dustup between the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ and the CEO of Ryanair over the latter's choice not to put Starlink™ on its planes.

Ryanair is literally offering Musk discount fares. 

Elon Musk tried to pick a fight with a major airline CEO — who says thanks for all the additional business you’re bringing in with your public tantrum, sucker.

“We love these PR spats that drive bookings on Ryanair,” the budget airline’s chief Michael O’Leary said at a news conference in Dublin on Wednesday, as quoted by CNN. “And we want to thank him sincerely for the additional publicity.”

The trash talking began last week when the Irish airline, the largest in Europe, said it wouldn’t install its fleet with Starlink technology, a satellite-based internet service operated by Musk’s company SpaceX. O’Leary claimed that the Starlink antennas would add drag to the planes and drive up fuel costs.

Musk could barely hide the sting he felt from the snub. He initially responded by calling O’Leary “misinformed” and added that he doubted Ryanair “can even measure the difference in fuel use accurately.”

Smelling controversy, O’Leary went on a interview with the Irish radio station Newstalk to taunt the world’s richest man.

………

Musk even threatened to buy out the airliner and posted a poll asking his fans whether he should “restore Ryan as their rightful ruler” once he does. Clearly, Grok was not consulted before putting up the poll: the “Ryan” Musk is presumably referring to is the Irish billionaire Tony Ryan, who died in 2007.

Elon Musk is a fucking moron. 

 

Headline of the Day

Americans Aren’t Traumatized Enough by Gun Violence

—The Fair Observer online journal, stating the obvious.

If Americans had been sufficiently traumatized by gun violence, they would have done something about it.

QED. 

Yeah, It's a Scam

Get Out Now!Are you aware that 53% of all cryptocurrency offerings since 2021 have failed?

Are you aware that 45% of all cryptocurrency offerings since 2021 failed in just the past year?

Well, now you do.

More than half of all cryptocurrencies ever launched are now defunct, with most failures occurring in 2025, according to a new analysis by CoinGecko.

The study looked at token listings on GeckoTerminal between mid-2021 and the end of 2025. Of the nearly 20.2 million tokens that entered the market during that period, 53.2% are no longer actively traded. A staggering 11.6 million of those failures happened in 2025 alone — accounting for 86.3% of all token deaths over the past five years.

One key driver behind the surge in dead tokens was the rise of low-effort memecoins and experimental projects launched via crypto launchpads like pump.fun, CoinGecko analyst Shaun Paul Lee said. These platforms lowered the barrier to entry for token creation, leading to a wave of speculative assets with little or no development backing. Many of these tokens never made it past a handful of trades before disappearing. 

Bodies Do Not Lie

But ICE agents do.

Case in point, (It's not Renee Nicole Good) is Geraldo Lunas Campos, where what ICE claimed as suicide was definitively ruled homicide by the local medical examiner.

This is not law enforcement. This is not immigration enforcement.  This is terrorism. 

A Cuban immigrant’s death in an El Paso detention center this month was ruled a homicide, according to an autopsy report released Wednesday by the county medical examiner’s office.

The detainee, Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55, became unresponsive while he was physically restrained by law enforcement on Jan. 3 at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility called Camp East Montana, the report said. Emergency medical workers tried to resuscitate him, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

The autopsy listed the cause of death as “asphyxia due to neck and torso compression.” The report also described injuries Mr. Lunas Campos had sustained to his head and neck, including burst blood vessels in the front and side of the neck, as well as on his eyelids.

………

Mr. Lunas Campos’s death has brought renewed scrutiny to the detention center this month after The Washington Post reported the episode last week. His family has asserted that he was killed by the facility’s guards, citing a witness who said he saw guards choking Mr. Lunas Campos to death. The family is preparing a wrongful-death lawsuit, according to their lawyer, Will Horowitz.

“He was being abused and beaten and choked to death,” Jeanette Pagan Lopez, the mother of two of Mr. Lunas Campos’s children, told The New York Times last week. On Wednesday, Ms. Pagan Lopez said she had not yet seen the autopsy report.

Federal officials have offered a different account of how Mr. Lunas Campos died. In a Jan. 9 news release, they said he died on Jan. 3 after experiencing medical distress, but after the Washington Post article published, they described his death as a suicide.

 

Project Scoop

This is a reference to a Michael Crichton novel The Andromeda Strain, of course, involving a lethal pathogen brought back to earth by a satellite operated as a part of a government program called Project Scoop..

Project Scoop was a program to bring back potential candidates for germ warfare from the upper atmosphere.

Well, I just read an article about an experiment where viruses were sent into space, and while no one was harmed as a result, some profoundly weird shit happened.  (Take off the tinfoil hat.  The emergency evacuation of some crew from the ISS is entirely unrelated., the E. coli and the bacteria phage viruses used are completely harmless)

When scientists sent bacteria-infecting viruses to the International Space Station, the microbes did not behave the same way they do on Earth. In microgravity, infections still occurred, but both viruses and bacteria evolved differently over time. Genetic changes emerged that altered how viruses attach to bacteria and how bacteria defend themselves. The findings could help improve phage therapies against drug-resistant infections. 

It gave me a big of a literary flashback to the Crichton book. 

Walking the Talk

What follows is the full text of the new rules banning hotel junk fees, as Zohran Mamdani promised during his campaign for Mayor 

3 weeks from swearing in to a rule. Not too shabby 

FYI, DWCP = Department of Consumer and Worker Protection.

Mamdani Administration Bans Hotel Hidden Fees and Unexpected Credit Card Holds

What you should know 

• Mayor Zohran Mamdani joined Commissioner Sam Levine and business, consumer and labor leaders to announce DCWP’s final rule banning hidden junk fees and unexpected credit card holds on hotel stays, ensuring transparency for consumers and saving millions of dollars overall.
• In 2025, the City’s DCWP received hundreds of complaints from consumers related to hidden hotel fees or unexpected holds

NEW YORK, NY – TODAY, the Mamdani administration issued a final rule banning hotels across the city and country from charging consumers hidden junk fees—often mislabeled as “destination fees,” “resort fees,” or “hospitality service fees”—as well as unexpected credit card holds or deposits, that cheat consumers and hurt honest small businesses.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani joined Commissioner Sam Levine and business, consumer and labor leaders to announce DCWP’s final rule banning junk fees on hotel stays. This rule will protect both consumers coming to New York City, and New Yorkers traveling elsewhere around the country. Some economists estimate that banning hotel junk fees will save consumers more than $46 million in 2026. The junk fee prohibitions of the final rule go into effect in New York City on February 21, 2026.

When you book a room, the price you see is often not the price you pay. Many hotels utilize “junk fees,” advertising a base room rate and only later revealing additional mandatory charges that make it harder for consumers to understand the true overall cost. Many hotels also issue unexpected credit card holds or deposits with misleading terms. In 2025, DCWP received over 300 complaints from consumers related to hidden hotel fees or unexpected holds.

To address this problem, DCWP proposed a rule modeled on a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rule that makes it a deceptive trade practice under the City’s Consumer Protection Law to offer, display or advertise a price for a hotel without clearly and conspicuously disclosing the total price of the stay, including all mandatory fees. The new rule goes a step further than the FTC's rule requiring transparency on mandatory credit card holds or deposits taken as well.

Today’s announcement builds on the work the Mamdani Administration is doing to hold companies accountable and protect New Yorkers from deceptive practices, including issuing two Executive Orders that crack down on citywide junk fees and subscription traps, and creating a Citywide Junk Fee Task Force to target predatory companies.

Hotels in New York City are also required to comply with other key consumer and worker protections, including the Hotel Service Disruption Act, which requires that consumers be notified of changes to service during their stay, and the Safe Hotels Act, which prohibits illegal subcontracting at hotels. Together these laws ensure that the city’s hotel industry is transparent with its consumers and compliant with nation-leading workers’ rights requirements.

“Whether you’re visiting the five boroughs for the World Cup or leaving our city for a well-deserved vacation, you deserve to know how much a hotel costs up front. This new rule will ensure that New Yorkers and visitors alike are not stuck paying hidden hotel fees, and will instead save millions of dollars each year,” said Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani. “In just three weeks, our administration has made it clear that deceptive business practices do not have a home here—and that City Hall will always fight for New Yorkers to know exactly what they’re paying for.”

“This final rule delivers on affordability—for New Yorkers traveling across the country to see the World Cup, and visitors who want to experience our incredible city,” said DCWP Commissioner Sam Levine. “DCWP will use its full enforcement authority to ensure hotels comply with the laws and rules of our city and we will be vigilant to ensure consumers have transparency in their transactions and that workers’ rights are respected.”

###

Media Contact

pressoffice@cityhall.nyc.gov

(212) 788-2958

(emphasis original)

Quote of the Day

A Psychotherapist Who Uses AI to Transcribe Sessions So They Can Refresh Their Memory About an Exact Phrase While They’re Making Notes Is a Centaur. A Psychotherapist Who Monitors 20 Chat Sessions with LLM “Therapists” in Order to Intervene If the LLM Starts Telling Patients to Kill Themselves Is a “Reverse Centaur.” This Situation Makes It Impossible for Them to Truly Help “Their” Patients; They Are an “Accountability Sink,” Installed to Absorb the Blame When a Patient Is Harmed by the AI.

—Cory Doctorow describing how the real goal of AI is to eliminate the possibility of independence and professional standards among what should be professional employees.

As I have noted before, the way to deal with this is to suspend IP protections on AI data sets and models.

Once you eliminate the profit motive, the people remaining in the field will not spend their time figuring what sort of reckless shit that they can do to get their cut of the next funding funding round. 

Growing up, I assumed that being a "professional" meant that you were getting paid to do something. That's a perfectly valid definition (I still remember feeling like a "pro" the first time I got paid for my writing), but "professional" has another, far more important definition.

In this other sense of the word, a "professional" is someone bound to a code of conduct that supersedes both the demands of their employer and the demands of the state. Think of a doctor's Hippocratic Oath: having sworn to "first do no harm," a doctor is (literally) duty-bound to refuse orders to harm their patients. If a hospital administrator, a police officer or a judge orders a doctor to harm their patient, they are supposed to refuse. Indeed, depending on how you feel about oaths, they are required to refuse.

There are many "professions" bound to codes of conduct, policed to a greater or lesser extent by "colleges" or other professional associations, many of which have the power to bar a member from the profession for "professional misconduct." Think of lawyers, accountants, medical professionals, librarians, teachers, some engineers, etc.

While all of these fields are very different in terms of the work they do, they share one important trait: they are all fields that AI bros swear will be replaced by chatbots in the near future.

………

I hold a bedrock view that even though an AI can't do your job, an AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job:

But why are bosses such easy marks for these gabby AI hustlers? Partly, it's because an AI can probably do your boss's job – if 90% of your job is answering email and delegating tasks, and if you are richly rewarded for success but get to blame failure on your underlings, then, yeah, an AI can totally do that job. 

……… 

That certainly explains why bosses are so thrilled by the prospect of swapping professionals for chatbots. What a relief it would be to fire everyone who is professionally required to tell you to fuck off when you want them to do stupid and/or dangerous things; so you could replace them with servile, groveling LLMs that punctuate their sentences with hymns to your vision and brilliance! 

Headline of the Day

Wall Street And Crypto Are At War Over Who Gets To Rob You

—The Lever, describing how banks and crypto bros are are in a lobbying war over legislation regulating cryptocurrencies in Congress.

Both sides are contemptible ganefs, and this is a dispute over the spoils.

The short version is that banks lowball their customers interest rates, and particularly among the larger banks, this has gotten progressively worse.

The new legislation allows the crypto bros to have unregulated deposits that function in much the same way, eliminating a profit center.

Wall Street and Silicon Valley are embroiled in a legislative slugfest over which business interests will get to fleece more of their customers’ money.

A loophole under current law allows stablecoins — crypto tokens pegged to the U.S. dollar — to essentially pay interest on their investors’ holdings, similar to a bank account except without the same regulatory guardrails.

This carveout could lure depositors away from banks’ savings accounts — a move that would threaten a multitrillion-dollar scheme by the banking industry in recent years, in which they’ve paid minuscule interest on customers’ financial deposits while enjoying far higher interest rates from the country’s central bank and pocketing the difference.

Now, banks have launched a last-minute lobbying offensive to protect their margins and avoid competition by preventing crypto from copying their business model. They’re trying to insert new language related to the loophole into a piece of stablecoin legislation, known as the Clarity Act, which the crypto industry had been backing for months.

………

This difference between interest paid to depositors and interest collected from loans — called net interest income — has always been central to banks’ business model. But in a Senate letter sent to executives at Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and other major financial institutions last year, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote that banks’ refusal to pass down any of their mounting profits to consumers over the last three years has allowed this net interest income to reach historic levels, creating a massive upward transfer of wealth from account holders to banks.

If savers moved their money to higher-yielding accounts — or to smaller regional and local banks, which have historically passed down more money to depositors than megabanks when interest rates increase — they could recoup tens of billions of dollars, as the Wall Street Journal has reported. But the cartel-like grip that megabanks have on the economy has helped quell competition and kept savers collecting paltry interest rates on their nest eggs.

From this vantage point, stablecoins that pay interest to investors — which the crypto exchanges call “rewards” — could pose a competitive threat to banks’ interest-rate arrangements.

I cannot believe that I am saying this, but I am on the side do the banks, because they are regulated and slightly less likely to just steal folks' money.