Linkage

• US – Europe Productivity Gap Is Mostly a Statistical Illusion (CEPR) Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
• The DJI Romo robovac had security so poor, this man remotely accessed thousands of them (The Verge) The internet of sh%$.
• Hackers Expose The Massive Surveillance Stack Hiding Inside Your “Age Verification” Check (Techdirt) Hoocoocanode that, "Could I have your date of birth, mother's maiden name, and last 4 of your social security number," could be insecure?
• Crypto Bros Nauseated After Realizing Bitcoin Itself Was Funded by Jeffrey Epstein (Futurism) Much Schadenfreude
• Bill Gates Admits to Multiple Affairs in Epstein Fallout (Futurism) We already knew this.  It's not that Gates or the other Epstein fellow travelers were pedophiles, they were just people who wanted to demonstrate their wealth and power through transgressing.
• Is "MAHA" Revenge for Theranos? (Pandemic Accountability Index) Yeah, Elizabeth Holmes is a martyr to the antivaxx crowd.
• China has planted so many trees around the Taklamakan Desert that it's turned this 'biological void' into a carbon sink (Live Science) But in the US, we have the lead in obscure financial instruments.
• Tesla’s Wile E. Coyote Moment Is Here (American Prospect) How can I not share a Warner Brothers animation reference?
• Kentucky man covered in fur arrested after allegedly being caught having sex with deer (Local 12 News) I have never partied that hard.
• ‘A beaver blind date’: animals given freedom to repopulate Cornish rivers (The Guardian) It's about the reintroduction of the dam building rodents into the UK.  Whoever wrote the hed just has a dirty mind.

This is tin-foil hat stuff, but at least it's not AI:

Today in Fascism

Florida Republicans wants to establish a state level intelligence agency.

Let me be clear, I am not talking about a law enforcement agency, I am talking about a domestic spy agency. 

“Florida man seeks to create a state counterintelligence unit and claim sweeping surveillance powers over people whose ‘views’ or ‘opinions’ he dislikes.” It’s not nearly as amusing as the usual “Florida man” headline, and it may lead to a blueprint for lawmakers far beyond Florida.

If Florida enacts House Bill 945, it will create a national first – CIA-style structure at the state level that blurs the traditional line between state law enforcement and intelligence work. It likely wouldn’t remain a local experiment. Red states often borrow aggressively from one another’s policy playbooks, on everything from gerrymandering to anti-abortion laws to transporting immigrants to Democratic-led states. A state-level intelligence office empowered to scrutinize residents based on ideology is precisely the kind of proposal likely to spread once normalized.

The bill would create an operational intelligence office charged with identifying and disrupting threats to Florida and the United States. That alone should raise questions. The federal government already spends enormous sums (by some accounts, trillions of dollars since 11 September 2001) on national security and counterterrorism. Why should states duplicate those functions without demonstrating a clear need, specialized expertise, or meaningful oversight?

………

The bill’s language allows scrutiny based on “views” and “opinions”, a standard that echoes some of the darkest chapters of American surveillance history. In the 1960s and 70s, the FBI’s Cointelpro program infiltrated protest movements, monitored journalists, and targeted civil rights leaders – not for crimes, but beliefs.

I have no doubt that this would be used as a rat-f%$#ing squad.  It's purpose would be to disrupt the activities of the political opposition.