Friday, 7 February 2025

*69 (12. 211)

During his recent visit to the White House, Israeli prime minister Netanyahu presented Trump with a crass and tacky (and absolutely appropriate for the giver and recipient) Lebanese cedar-mounted golden pager, in reference to the deadly operation that simultaneously detonated thousands of communication devices purportedly used by agents of Hezbollah, maiming thousands and killing scores. Netanyahu also presented Trump with a functioning beeper. A fugitive from justice, wanted by the International Criminal Court, there was little risk of the US extradition to the Hague. The gift exchange continued with America imposing sanctions (assets frozen and a travel ban) on officers of the ICC (previously) and any one deemed to have aided in the ongoing investigations.

synchronoptica

one year ago: eyes on exoplanets (with synchronoptica) plus laws against mass-mesmerism

seven years ago: a X-Files photo-shoot, animator Jiล™รญ Trnka, reusable rockets plus insects fashioned from leaves and sticks

eight years ago: forest management, a map to teach tolerance plus utopian advertising

nine years ago: custom LEGO plus French spelling reform

ten years ago: author Roald Dahl plus the Cambridge Five

Thursday, 6 February 2025

my father used to take me to watch the crusades (12. 209)

Whilst Musk is in “demon mode” along with his minions (someone said “traitor tots”) frenetically working to dismantle the administrative state—there have been less than convincing assurances that their access to government pay systems at the Treasury are limited to read only, and reporting suggests that at the Office for Personnel Management they have full editing privileges with the possibly to scrub for forgotten recriminations, delete, alter or insert documents into the permanent records (eOPF, electronic personnel files) of federal workers, harassing into quitting en masse, Trump for the National Prayer Breakfast (previously) hosted in the Capitol’s statuary hall reverted to his weird and off-putting “pious mode,” preaching unity to the gathered group. The conciliatory tone is in jarring, urging the shift away from partisan divides to a more collegial congress, returning to a time when members from across the aisle would socialise, and unsettling given the scorching rhetoric spewed just moments prior, rubbishing Democrats and the bureaucratic state as the enemy of the people, and what followed after this brief respite, calling for a task force, under the leadership of his newly appointed attorney general, Pam Bondi, to investigate and root out “anti-Christian bias” across the executive branch and establish a commission promoting religious liberty. This subversion of civil right and the principle of separation of church and state does not end with government policies or postures, but as with private sector businesses who uphold diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, they would be barred from funding or bidding for federal contracts.

Monday, 3 February 2025

understudy (12. 203)

Pending senate approval for Trump’s nominee Kash Patel as director of the FBI, two officials from the bureau were selected to run it on an acting basis. The White House however listed the wrong individual on their webpage and instead of correcting the mistake, hopeful that Patel would be confirmed soon—we learn from Super Punch, the two temporary appointees just swapped offices and titles. Career special agent Brian “the Drizz” Driscoll, originally tasked by the presidential transition team to be the deputy serving under the acting director exchanged roles with the intended individual, and against the backdrop of the purging of civil servants executed the order to dismiss senior executives and compile a dossier of thousands of others taking part in investigations linked to the January Sixth insurrection, including Driscoll himself and boss-cum-adjutant, though not without some laudable resistance. Though toning down the rhetoric during hearings and promising that there would be no political retribution, Patel has expressed enthusiasm bout weaponising the umbrella organisation of the Justice Department to pursue Trump’s opponents and to turn the Hoover Building headquarters in to a museum on the misdeeds of the Deep State.


synchronoptica

one year ago: renovating Hamburg’s air defence bunker (with synchronoptica), animator Jordan Belson plus assorted links worth revisiting

seven years ago: concentration camp chic

eight years ago: more links to enjoy 

nine years ago: tax-havens, gas prices at record lows plus persistence of vision

ten years ago: Beatles LoTR, TTIP and TAFTA plus even more links

 

Saturday, 1 February 2025

disposition of a government (12. 199)

Flooding the zone was intentional, and there are too many uncontrolled blazes to keep track of and there’s but as a reminder of the ongoing events of the coup d’รฉtat, Trump announced the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency, to be co-chaired by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy (who left before the project began to further his political career) as an outside consulting firm to make recommendations on spending-cuts and restructuring. Contradicting the original scope of the commission, Trump instead took an obscure technology unit within the executive established in 2014 by Barack Obama to improve digital services and federal websites (also to sign up for health insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act) and renamed it US DOGE Service (DOGE itself is a temporary organisation and not an executive department as that requires the approval of congress and cannot be accomplished by diktat) and embedded and with a veneer of authority (however challenged and lawless), Musk and his team infiltrated the Treasury Department, the Office of Personnel Management and the General Services Administration, which manages government office space, laptops and connectivity—VPN included. Senior officials are being dismissed, relieved of duty or otherwise sidelined over access to sensitive and comprehensive information on civil servants (previously) and remittance systems which is being migrated to outside servers—ostensibly to process the data with artificial intelligence for guidance on which funding and employees to cull, as earlier attempts at a blanket bans for duly appropriated monies for programmes were halted by judges and workers weren’t taking a phoney, leveraged “buy-out” with the promise of an eight-month farewell that runs counter to the Anti-Deficiency Act.

Friday, 31 January 2025

outward facing media (12. 197)

In order to comply with an executive order purportedly with the goal of “defending women from gender ideology extremism” not only are public websites and resources off-line to scrub and shunt down an Orwellian memory-hole language pertaining to sexual orientation and gender identity (CTRL-F), overhaul prompts that ask for preferred pronouns, cancel training or policies promoting such topics, and “ensure that intimate spaces designated for women, girls or females (or for men, boys or males) are designated by biological sex and not gender identity,” this erasure (under the harmful trope—perverted by conservatives just like their version of “critical race theory” that elides over America’s apartheid—that identity is a belief and choice, rather than a right, and propagandised) is also extending to archival material and large data sets maintained by the US census bureau on household composition and the Centres for Disease Control longitudinal studies to remove reference to that demographic, compromising their use in research and understanding public health. The same assault is occurring for programmes that address accessibility for handicapped workers and promote equity, diversity and inclusion. These are not white flags.

Wednesday, 29 January 2025

fork in the road (12. 192)

Trump, through the Office of Personnel Management, extended an invitation to the two-million strong US federal workforce for a deferred resignation with retention of pay and benefits, by hitting reply (or reply-all) to the email with the text “resign,” through the end of September, the fiscal year, by next Thursday. The offer for essentially seven months of paid administrative leave is in align with the DOGE agenda to reduce the number of government employees (one virtually unchanged since the 1980s but supplemented through contracted jobs) and push out those disloyal to Trump’s politics. The email goes on to detail the pillars of reform, as outlined in the flurry of executive orders issued on day one of the administration as promoting a return to one’s physical office and ending telework—though many remote workers have no office to return to and there’s an economic argument to be made for home-office since utilities are borne by the employee and not the government—a culture of performance, a more streamlined and flexible manpower—which seems to run counter to the first pillar—and enhanced standards of conduct. For those who wish to remain, OPM extended its gratitude for renewed focused on serving the American people but could not give full assurance regarding the future of their positions or agency, with plans of restructuring, realignment and relocation as well as the reclassification of civil servants to strip some labour protections. The mass-email shares the same subject line as the ultimatum that Musk gave to Twitter staff after buying the social media platform, hoping force out those who didn’t share his mission, vision and goals, and offered a parachute of three months of severance pay—numerous workers quitting in droves and never receiving the promised pay package. Many federal workers, congressional opposition and unions were sceptical of this offer—noting the real estate developer’s penchant to stiff contractors and renege on deals after work was completed and questioning the legality of such a proposition, coming hours after Trump wrested the power of the purse away from congress by ordering the impoundment of grant and loan programmes, domestically and abroad (see above), pending a compliance review. Such a coerced purging of the “deep state” (see below) would potentially gut many agencies which the public depends on for safety and services—“national security” positions are exempt but not well defined.

  synchronoptica

one year ago: Desert Island Discs (with synchronoptica) plus Plato’s Gorgias

seven years ago: reforesting Iceland, artist Alexandra Dillon, illustrator Gary Taxali plus IKEA founder passes away

eight years ago: a US government hiring freeze, ransomware plus purges at the US state department

nine years ago: assorted links to revisit, forty things turning forty plus the human chin

ten years ago: EU disunity plus early photoshopping

Monday, 27 January 2025

senate select committee (12. 188)

Created on this day fifty years ago by a vote of eighty-two to four in the US upper house of congress, sponsored and chaired by namesake, Democrat senator Frank Church of Idaho, the bipartisan group charged with investigating various allegations of abuse and overreach of the CIA, the NSA, the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service as the opening of a series of such inquiries earning the monicker for 1975 as the “Year of Intelligence,” whose findings resulted in the establishment of a permanent panel on espionage and reconnaissance. Among the more shocking revelations were of the existence of MKULTRA, involving unwitting citizens in mind control experiments, operations that infiltrated political, pacifist and civil-rights organisations, dragnet domestic spying abetted by telecommunication providers and Family Jewels, a covert programme that targeted foreign leaders for assassination, many of these projects uncovered by the press though the government agencies maintained plausible deniability and the the public was unaware of the full scope of them.

Published in six volumes the following April, the recom-mendations led to a presidential executive order banning the killing of foreign leaders (like with pictured dart gun loaded with shellfish toxin, as an untraceable and lethal weapon) issued by Ford and reaffirmed by Carter and Reagan (watch the numbering—they are sequential and skipping a few means it is classified, starting with EO 14147) and the publication of an NSA watch list that included activists, journalists, actor and Church himself. After briefing before congress (testimony was not unauthorised by the Ford administration’s advisors), Senator Church appeared on the news programme Meet the Press (previously)—discussing No Such Agency without mentioning it by name, warned:

In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air… Now, that is necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at enemies or potential enemies. We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left: such is the capability to monitor everything—telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.

If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government—no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology…

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.

Friday, 24 January 2025

12x12 (12. 179)

contraception begins at erection: Mississippi lawmaker has introduced a bill called ‘contraception begins at erection’ outlawing male masturbation, hoping to bring balance to the reproductive rights’ restriction that focus on women—via the New Shelton wet/dry  

obayashi world: Japan’s most Lynchian filmmaker  

so long and thanks for all the fish: Joan Ocean’s Dolphin Connection—via Web Curios  

crass competing abstrusities: official, sanctioned transcription of US secretary of state Marco Rubio (้ฒๆฏ”ๅฅฅ) changed—possibly as a way to get around the ban the Chinese government itself imposed plus other politicians’ names—see previously  

 
but if you don’t make your product in america—which is your prerogative—then very simply you will have to pay a tariff: though vacillating somewhat on his commitment and working from home, Trump delivers a message to the Davos WEF summit  

she was nasty in tone, not compelling or smart: Bishop Budde won’t apologise for her appeal for mercy and hospitality  

the birthright citizens’ brigade: a list of organisations pushing back against the slide to authoritarianism in the US  

dreiundfรผnfzig tage: how Hitler dismantled a constitution republic through constitutional means  

xanthelasma: Florida man on diet of beef, cheese and sticks of butter oozes cholesterol from his skin—see also—via Miss Cellania  

a catalyst for curiosity: Wikenigma documents the unexplained—via Kottke—those scientific and academic questions that evade a definitive answer, like the Collatz conjecture 

you remind me of the babe: Robert Eggers to make a sequel for Labyrinth  

unplanned pregnancy: as an encore to freeing all the January Sixth rioters, Trump pardons dozens of anti-abortion protesters, some jailed for violent tactics to block clinic access and intimidating doctors ahead of the Right to Life March

Thursday, 23 January 2025

you can basically just be gay and you are fine in thailand (12. 174)

Joining Taiwan as the only other country in the southern Asia to recognise marriage equality for same-sex unions, hundreds of couples in Bangkok and elsewhere held wedding ceremonies as the legislation passed by the National Assembly in June 2024 came into effect, written into law by King Maha Vajiralongkorn following a long campaign and petition decades in the making by the country’s community for rights and respect. Though many obstacles and ostracism remain domestically and regional, this moment sanctified of the movement marks historic progress.

Monday, 20 January 2025

american carnage 2 (12. 166)

Don’t visit the official White House website. It’s been thoroughly trumpified already…

Sunday, 19 January 2025

stablecoin (12. 195)

Whilst throughout history, one official currency has worked to solidify trust and confidence during periods of relative peace and a strong central authority, emperors would often mint their own coinage during times of upheaval and civil unrest with fortune and the passage of time being the ultimate arbiter of valuation and propagation. Hours before his inauguration for inexplicably a second term, the family crime syndicate launched $TRUMP, a memecoin that quickly rose to a market cap of some seven billion dollars fuelled by speculative investment. Despite a rudimentary, dodgy landing-page offering the crypto-currency for sale and lack of clarity as to the purpose of the token which almost definitely forebodes the bait-and-switch tactic of most of these operations once the purported value evaporates. A former critic of cryptocurrencies, calling Bitcoin an outright “scam,” Trump has come to embrace them as the tech sector broligarchs embraced his campaign. This pre-market development comes on the eve of the term of the Biden administration, having passed and enacted progressive policies that many millions have hung their hopes and fears to over a chance that we might globally advance the urgent fight to halt the climate catastrophe or that America could model ideals of equity and project democratic respect for national sovereignty but all those positions will be clawed back, with only some vapid and hollow magic beans as a consolation.

Friday, 17 January 2025

9x9 (12. 188)

:): :an emoticon generator to create custom expressions—unless your interface automatically turns them into emoji—via Web Curios 

amicus brief: US supreme court upholds TikTok ban—whose enforcement is punted to Trump—in violation of right to free speech but fact-checking is now censorship 

optics: Trump inaugural to be held inside the capitol rotunda, citing the weather—see Monday’s post  

my dear, clawsette, i love you very much: the 2018 SNL sketch ‘Diner Lobster’ garnered numerous accolades including an award from the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals and inspired many sequels  

artist in residence: the rotating helm of a digital creator’s demesne 

hall of fame: though a bit premature, Bob’s Big Boy’s (a favourite haunt of his) obituary for David Lynch is superlative in detail, a believer in reincarnation, Lynch “life is a short trip. We’ll all meet up again”—via Super Punch  

boosterism: EU orders X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, to surrender it recommendation algorithm with a retention directive for purview on future changes  

lol’d into submission: general reaction to the recent shooting death of the pizzagate theorist suggest that there has been a paradigm shift regarding conspiracy 

the war of iron swords: Israeli security council ratifies Gaza ceasefire agreement after a dicey delay with Trump taking credit but not responsibility if the multi-part deal crumbles, like the agreement to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, which cursed his successor 

.---- ----. ----- ....- ..--- —..: a Morse Code clock—with optional sound—via ibฤซdem

little red book (12. 186)

The expected consequence of the looming TikTok ban in the United States was for users to find alternative outlets, but an unexpected one is happening with the influx of Americans, some seven hundred thousand, flocking to a similar social media and e-commerce app called RedNote (ๅฐ็ด…ๆ›ธ, literally translated as the above, as in Chairman Mao’s collected sayings). Despite the US wanting to ban the former because of national security concerns and worries that the personal data of its citizens could be harvested and shared with the Chinese government, many, out of spite and feeling the charges to be trumped-up and parochial at best, are turning to this networking platform, not subject to the usual firewall placed on the outside world, and interacting and communicating with three hundred million native users and with the surprising outcome of forging new friendships, cultural exchanges and even some language learning. The trend may not last and the platform could become subject to the same suspicions that it could become a tool for espionage and indoctrination by the Chinese government.

synchronoptica

one year ago: a classic from Joni Mitchell (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links worth the revisit

seven years ago: more links to enjoy, a false alarm in Hawaii, the Matt Drudge breaks the Clinton-Lewinski scandal (1998) plus museum doppelgรคngers 

eight years ago: gas for Europe and Russian aggression in Ukraine plus global net worth

nine years ago: Medieval Death Trip, boreal rings, degrees of temperature plus microscopic detail

ten years ago: artist Aubrey Beardsley, long receipts plus the magic of the Google Translate app

Tuesday, 14 January 2025

7x7 (12. 177)

alexiomia: from the Greek for no words for appellation, a study of the social anxiety of name-avoidance—via the new Shelton wet/dry  

white knight: Bytedance entertaining contingency plans to allow Elon Musk to purchase TikTok’s US operations ahead of the expected judgment against the platform 

out-of-office reply: a business card whose information only appears in sunlight  

screamboat willie: Disney begins to deal with its loss of IP—apparently a Popeye horror film is in the works too 

tl;dr: AI input and output  

open and shut case: the US Department of Justice election interference report suggest Trump would have been convicted if not re-elected 

 ๐Ÿ’Œ: the face of collective grief and the demands of acceptance that are far from passive

synchronoptica

one year ago: AI plagiarism and The Stepford Wives (with synchronoptica), a hands-free rosary plus Queen Margrethe II of Denmark abdicates

seven years ago: the Continental Congress (1784) plus Celtic burial mounds

eight years ago: authoritarians and the press, the former trolley line that ran between the US and Mexico, assorted links worth the revisit, Bart the Genius (1990) plus a secret WWII commando school

nine years ago: the dancing doctor plus genre blindness

ten years ago: more on the refugee situation in Germany plus an animated homage to Davie Bowie’s personae

Monday, 13 January 2025

8x8 (12. 176)

cryptobiosis: a nematode was reanimated when pulled out of the Siberia permafrost after forty-six thousand years 

fresh air, town square: Mastodon is becoming a non-profit organisation—via Waxy  

wrack and ruin: a superlative gallery of abandoned places  

a sprained ankle on a country walk is allowable but you must not go very far beyond this: in praise of Jane Austin 

hollywood hills: architects reckon with the scale of destruction from the Los Angles fires—more here 

luthersadt eisleben: a horde of coins found hidden in a statue’s leg in the reformer’s home church 

the joe rogan experience: Elizabeth Lopatto summarises the three-hour interview with Zuckerberg 

 : Sweden’s attempt to copyright Sweden thwarted plus other assorted legal stupidity

Sunday, 12 January 2025

happy ending (12. 168)

The US supreme court having rejected petitions from the president-elect to stop or delay the sentencing until after the inauguration (the justices not accepting the argument of broad immunity from prosecution when discharging duties as the executive), Trump was granted an unconditional discharge to respect the jury’s verdict of guilty on thirty four felony counts of misusing campaign funds for hush-money payments to a porn star and to not interfere with his ability to govern. While serving no jail time or liable to fine, this judgement delivered by a New York state judge is not subject to presidential, federal purview and could only be pardoned by the governor (not likely to happen) and the conviction, symbolic as it is, will remain on Trump’s record. And while he would probably prefer it not be on his Wikipedia page, if capable of the needed level of shame, critical thought or interiority, the sentence does have some potential impacts, by dint of his registration in Florida, he will be able to continue to vote in that state due to reciprocity with New York (see above), under federal law, Trump is not allowed to own a gun, must surrender a DNA sample to a New York database of convicts, possibly jeopardise the liquor licenses for his branded properties and similarly is barred from operating casinos under laws regarding moral turpitude, and while heads of state are allowed to travel without a passport, some countries, including Canada, Mexico, Israel, China, Ukraine, Turkey, India, Japan, Taiwan, South Africa and the UK reserve the right to prohibit visits by felons. The travel restrictions are unlikely of course to be enforced in Trump’s case and he could always ignore regulation or pressure states to change their laws. This does not affect his ability to hold federal office, however.

synchronoptica

one year ago: an epic tattoo homage to Abe Simpson (with sychronoptica), enjunkification and aging out of the internet plus the Phantom Time Theory and the fabricated Middle Ages

seven years ago: a look back at 1968, Trump’s new London embassy plus French terms against creeping Anglicisms

eight years ago: heatmaps of the world’s most popular photo spots plus kompromat on Trump

nine years ago: fans remember the life and times of David BowieBorg ideal beauty plus assorted links worth revisiting

ten years ago: the democratic reforms of 1848, your hit-parade, a motion-detector in search of alien life plus separatist and secession movements in Europe

Friday, 10 January 2025

vinegar tom (12. 164)

Having encountered the topic of animals on trial beforehand, we found intriguing this court docket, via ibฤซdem, on how canine familiars (obviously falsely accused, they were all good boys and girls) were implicated in the Salem Witch Trials. In superstitions predating the tribunal dogs had garnered associations with the sinister and while there are no records of dogs standing trial, those folklore traditions echo in testimony with dogs being bewitched and in league with the devil, evinced by the power of prayer to encourage obedience. Historical sources suggest that their implication was a shaggy dog story read into the record after the fact and sadly led, as with their feline and feminine cohort, to abuse and injustice.

Thursday, 9 January 2025

room s-216 (12. 161)

Even in the era of modern travel, no United States presidential inauguration ceremony have been attended by foreign heads of state, an honour or onus accorded to the respective diplomatic corps of embassies by tradition. While RSPVs are still pending for this sixtieth event invitees include the Chinese president Xi, El Salvadorian president Nayib Bukele, Georgian president Salome Zourabichvilli, Argentine president Javier Milei as well as Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, Benjamin Netanyahu and AFD party co-chair Alice Weidel have been invited—the office of Olaf Scholz confirming the chancellor’s presence was not requested. Russian spokesmen acknowledge the same for Putin. While Trump says he also did not invite Zelenskyy, but would welcome him if the Ukrainian president showed up. After the public administering of the oath of office and address at noon on the steps of the Capitol, the president will withdraw to the Capitol’s President’s Room for a portrait and to sign transition documents. The ornate chamber was added in 1859 as a hot-desk in the senatorial wing as an office of convenience for the president to sign last minute legislation into law at the end of a congressional session and for the upper chamber to discharge its constitutional responsibilities when it comes to advising on treaties and nominations. Once executive terms became staggered with respect to congress in the 1930s, this formal function was rendered effectively obsolete and only has seen occasional use by the commander-in-chief, presently a venue for senate press-conferences and granted supreme court chief justices during the impeachment trials of Clinton and Trump. Before Trump’s 2017 waiving the waiting period for former military officers to serve in the cabinet that allowed retired Marine Corps General James Mattis’ nomination to be approved, the room was last used for its intended purpose in the Johnson administration for signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Monday, 6 January 2025

public law 49-90 (12. 150)

A joint-session of the US congress is set to convene for what had previously been the unceremonious administrative task of certifying the votes of the Electoral College in some ways will be like the proforma ritual of the past but there are still very present reminders of what occurred at the Capitol four years ago. With no dispute from the losing party, there will be no angry rioters descending on the hall of government, motivated by the unseated president who never conceded the other’s victory and no vandalism and violence to stop the process (unguarded threats and calls of widespread voter fraud hurled by the Republicans throughout the campaign immediately dissipated shortly after polls closed on election day), the grounds have still been put on high alert with temporary fencing and legislation was passed in the immediate aftermath to better codify a framework based on normative behaviour but full of attendant ambiguities and foster the peaceful transition of power. Rejecting an elector’s ballot would require a major vote in both chambers to sustain an objection and explicitly defines the role of the Vice President as President of the Senate as purely magisterial and does not and never did have the authority to overturn the counting, despite what Trump amplified to his supporters, sending a literal lynch mob after Mike Pence (and other public officials). As happened last in 2001 with Gore losing to Bush, Kamala Harris will oversee the certification of the presidential race in favour of her opponent.

Saturday, 4 January 2025

[citation needed] (12. 144)

Via tmn, we are directed to Molly White’s thoroughgoing examination on the intensifying campaign on the part of a chorus of conservative voices attacking Wikipedia’s right to exist as the pitched-battle against free and open access information. In a Christmas Eve directive issued on X—former known as Twitter—its owner, free speech absolutist and Kekius Maximus instructed his followers to stop donating to “Wokepedia.” Self-selecting and cherry-picked, these shallow and repackaged grievances against the volunteer-based authoritative reference source include mistaking and misrepresenting initiatives to counter misinformation and bolstering the site’s reliability as their latest bugbear of DEI, they characterise Wikipedia as liberal propaganda, infected by the “woke mind virus” as evinced by their treatment of patent conspiracy theories and resistance to recognising Fox News as reliable sources. Restricting availability only to their approved syllabus, this latest assault is just another way, like banning books and pornography in the name of child protection and promoting family values, is designed to keep the proles under control and not enjoy the liberties and prerogatives of the rich and powerful. Needless to say, if you have the means, contribute—especially when other outlets have demonstrated their willingness for obeying in advance.