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The ‘Black Insurrectionist’ was actually white. The deception did not stop there

The ‘Black Insurrectionist’ was actually white. The deception did not stop there

The Associated Press reports: “Black Insurrectionist,” the anonymous social media persona behind some of the most widely circulated conspiracy theories about the 2024 election, can be traced to a man from upstate New York. He’s also white. With a profile photo of a Black soldier and the tagline “I FOLLOW BACK TRUE PATRIOTS,” the account on the platform X amassed more than 300,000 followers while posting dubious claims about Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim…

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Iran mocks Israel’s ‘weak’ attacks as hardliners call for reprisal

Iran mocks Israel’s ‘weak’ attacks as hardliners call for reprisal

Patrick Wintour writes: The Iranian government has belittled the scale and effectiveness of the Israeli attack on its military sites, but hardliners in the parliament insisted the strikes breached Iranian red lines and required a swift response, preferably at a time when Israel is already enmeshed in Lebanon and Gaza. The internal Iranian debate on how to respond to the long-awaited Israeli attack turns on whether to treat Israel’s breach of Iranian national sovereignty as too grave to be ignored,…

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Polar bears are getting horrific injuries because of climate change, researchers say

Polar bears are getting horrific injuries because of climate change, researchers say

Live Science reports: Polar bears are developing horrific wounds on their paws due to changing ice conditions in the Arctic, a new study reports. In the most severe cases, researchers describe two bears with crippling, dinner plate-size balls of ice stuck to their feet. Beneath the ice balls, the bears’ paw pads were covered in deep, bleeding cuts. “I’d never seen that before,” study lead author Kristin Laidre, a marine ecologist and associate professor at the University of Washington, said…

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Regular secret contacts between Elon Musk and Vladimir Putin since 2022 raise security concerns

Regular secret contacts between Elon Musk and Vladimir Putin since 2022 raise security concerns

The Wall Street Journal reports: Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a linchpin of U.S. space efforts, has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022. The discussions, confirmed by several current and former U.S., European and Russian officials, touch on personal topics, business and geopolitical tensions. At one point, Putin asked the billionaire to avoid activating his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, said two people…

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Satellite images show major expansion at Russian site with secret bioweapons past

Satellite images show major expansion at Russian site with secret bioweapons past

The Washington Post reports: A few months after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, satellite imagery captured unusual activity at a restricted military research facility nestled among the birch forests northeast of Moscow. The Russian site, called Sergiev Posad-6, had been quiet for decades, but it had a notorious Cold War past: It had once been a major research center for biological weapons, with a history of experiments with the viruses that cause smallpox, Ebola and hemorrhagic…

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Trump is gaining ‘anticipatory obedience’ from media owners who bow to tyranny

Trump is gaining ‘anticipatory obedience’ from media owners who bow to tyranny

Parker Molloy writes: I woke up this morning thinking about authoritarianism. In his 2017 book On Tyranny, historian Timothy Snyder introduced the concept of “anticipatory obedience,” warning that “most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given.” He argued that in uncertain times, individuals and institutions might preemptively adjust their actions to align with what they believe a more repressive regime would want—often without being asked. Forward to the final weeks of the 2024 presidential campaign, and Snyder’s warning feels…

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Washington Post won’t endorse in White House race for first time since 1980s, Jeff Bezos decides

Washington Post won’t endorse in White House race for first time since 1980s, Jeff Bezos decides

NPR reports: Even though the presidential race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris is neck and neck, The Washington Post has decided not to make a presidential endorsement for the first time in 36 years, the publisher and CEO announced Friday. “We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates,” Will Lewis wrote in an opinion piece published on the paper’s website. He referenced the paper’s policy in the decades prior to 1976, when,…

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Trump signals to Netanyahu he supports the war his campaign claims he opposes

Trump signals to Netanyahu he supports the war his campaign claims he opposes

The Washington Post reports: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump expressed support for Israel’s offensives against Hamas and Hezbollah in a recent call with the country’s prime minister — a position that could complicate his campaign’s outreach to Arab Americans claiming he opposes the war. Trump told Benjamin Netanyahu in one call this month, “Do what you have to do,” according to six people familiar with the conversation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive and confidential information….

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What happened in Whitewater, Wisconsin

What happened in Whitewater, Wisconsin

ProPublica reports: Dan Meyer, the police chief in Whitewater, Wisconsin, had been worried for months about the seemingly sudden arrival of hundreds of Nicaraguan immigrants to this quiet university town. But he rarely got to hear from any of them directly; most of what he knew, he had learned from his officers. Then one afternoon in November 2022, a man named Ariel walked into the police station. Meyer, 35 at the time, had been trying to get a handle on…

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Can computers think? No, they can’t actually do anything

Can computers think? No, they can’t actually do anything

Alva Noë writes: Computers don’t actually do anything. They don’t write, or play; they don’t even compute. Which doesn’t mean we can’t play with computers, or use them to invent, or make, or problem-solve. The new AI is unexpectedly reshaping ways of working and making, in the arts and sciences, in industry, and in warfare. We need to come to terms with the transformative promise and dangers of this new tech. But it ought to be possible to do so without…

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If Trump wins, blame the billionaires

If Trump wins, blame the billionaires

Steven Greenhouse writes: As Elon Musk’s rabid pro-Trump mania makes clear, billionaires are wielding their financial might in this year’s presidential election far more than in any previous campaign—and far more openly, too. More than 60 billionaires have opened their wallets to help elect Donald Trump, with some giving $10 million, $20 million, or more, indicating that many plutocrats are far more worried about the prospect of Democrats increasing their taxes than about the threat that Trump poses to our democracy. There’s…

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Los Angeles Times editorials editor resigns after its billionaire owner blocks presidential endorsement

Los Angeles Times editorials editor resigns after its billionaire owner blocks presidential endorsement

Columbia Journalism Review reports: Mariel Garza, the editorials editor of the Los Angeles Times, resigned on Wednesday after the newspaper’s owner blocked the editorial board’s plans to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president. “I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent,” Garza told me in a phone conversation. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.” On October 11, Patrick Soon-Shiong,…

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Group with GOP ties backs Green Party’s Jill Stein with ads, mail

Group with GOP ties backs Green Party’s Jill Stein with ads, mail

The Washington Post reports: A super PAC with Republican Party ties has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent days to support the Green Party presidential candidacy of Jill Stein in Wisconsin, in another sign that the supporters of the major parties believe her campaign could affect the election result. Badger Values PAC, a new federal PAC founded by a longtime Republican operative with ties to Senate GOP leadership, has reported in recent days matched expenditures opposing Vice President…

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American creating deepfakes targeting Harris works with Russian intel, documents show

American creating deepfakes targeting Harris works with Russian intel, documents show

The Washington Post reports: A former deputy Palm Beach County sheriff who fled to Moscow and became one of the Kremlin’s most prolific propagandists is working directly with Russian military intelligence to pump out deepfakes and circulate misinformation that targets Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, according to Russian documents obtained by a European intelligence service and reviewed by The Washington Post. The documents show that John Mark Dougan, who also served in the U.S. Marines and has long claimed to…

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