An investigation into Mississippi's solitary confinement system says that incarcerated people were held alone for weeks, months, or even years, with lights on nearly all day, little human contact, limited showers, and worsening mental health. At least 47 people under Mississippi's solitary torture program died by suicide in the past decade. A DOJ investigation in 2024 described "restrictive housing units" as "breeding grounds" for suicide, self-injury, fires, and assaults. Solitary confinement is obviously an uncivilized and brutal practice that doesn't help our country. Depriving humans of connection, dignity, and hope will never rehabilitate anyone. It's torture. There's no excuse why our criminal justice system should be multiplying violence and trauma with more violence and trauma.

Black Thought is better

What is a conspiracy theory you believe with your whole heart?

Trump’s Justice Department scrubs its website of news releases about Jan. 6 defendants dlvr.it/TShGK1

Maybe you wonder why I, a mere gun blog, makes a big deal about Flock and similar tech? OK here’s a real world situation that can easily happen and has likely happened. Unfortunately to drive on public roads without getting hassled by the cops, your car needs a license plate. That’s tied to you, the owner of the vehicle. Flock isn’t just a traffic camera, it’s an AI/ML enabled (wait for it) flock of cameras that transmit all their video and audio to the mothership. Not a government server somewhere but, to keep it simple, a big giant cloud computer instance owned and run by Flock, the company. Government users, as well as Flock employees here in the US and overseas, can log in and query the system based on license plate number or even vehicle description and get a full history of that vehicle’s movements throughout the Flock network over multiple jurisdictions. Someone in New York can track a car from Armonk all the way to Homestead FL if they feel like it from the comfort of their desk. On a daily level, someone can get a pretty accurate picture of someone’s life just by monitoring their movements via Flock. And I’m using this example to rattle the cage of the “back the blue unconditionally” crowd in 2A. OK - your car has license plate ABC 123 - and Flock knows this. Someone can enter your tag in Flock and see what you are doing on a daily basis. You leave your home where the neighborhood is under the Flock panopticon. Flock sees you drive to Dunkin’ on Main Street, then you drop your kid off at XYZ Daycare. Then you go to work at the local IT consulting firm in ZZZ industrial park. You go pick up a quick deli sandwich for lunch at Food Lion. You go back to work. On the way home you stop off at Bob’s Guns, and stay for 20 minutes while buying some ammo. Then you go home. Everywhere there’s a Flock camera. Now Flock knows the following about you: - You live at 123 Wisteria Lane - Your kid is in daycare (means he’s likely under 5) - You work at ZZZ - You go cheap on lunch - You own at least one gun Your license plate is tied to you so they now have your name and assumed-to-be-private details of your life, like that you are armed. On the reverse of that, the Flock camera outside of Bob’s Guns has been recording the plates of everyone going into the parking lot. No need for a firearms registry when Flock is doing the work. All of this is done without a warrant and the data is available to anyone with a certain level of access to the system, whether it’s a cop, or a Flock technician in the Philippines. FYI Flock uses overseas contractors for support and AI annotation. The 2018 Carpenter decision at SCOTUS ruled that pervasive surveillance where one can divine private details of someone’s life is a 4th Amendment violation in absence of a specific warrant. Flock is illegal, unconstitutional and immoral. And a danger to everyone, not just gun owners.

BREAKING: It's official. The Trump DOJ just confirmed the creation of a $1.776 billion slush fund that can be used to pay Trump allies who claim they've been wrongfully targeted by the Biden admin's ‘weaponization' — including, reportedly, Jan. 6 insurrectionists.

Do not buy Apple.

As family homelessness hits record highs, school districts are offering parking lots as safe sites for students and their families to sleep at night hechingerreport.org/school-p…

They removed children’s teeth so they couldn’t bite. We’re underreacting

The world has failed Congo 🙏🏿