WHOA: signs an @FBI wiretapping & surveillance network got hacked.

Extremely concerning. These systems have huge potential access to every citizens sensitive data.

Making them an incredibly juicy target for foreign hacking.

By @PaulaReidCNN @snlyngaas @evanperez & @kpolantz

2/America has a bad history with surveillance systems getting hacked by #China & other foreign operations.

When you build a #backdoor, or a mechanism for accessing communications outside the usual controls, hackers will come for it.
cnn.com/2026/03/05/pol…

3/ Insecure surveillance systems create secondary violations of your rights.

Even when used lawfully to the law.. if they aren't properly secured, people can still get harmed.

Poland having a reckoning over this lately with Pegasus spyware.👇

https://x.com/jsrailton/status/2026822354500989297

Soviet Russia was the first country to legalize abortion, tho lawmakers did not argue from bodily autonomy. Instead, they recognized abortion as a social fact, regardless of legality, the criminalization of which only made it more dangerous, especially for working women.

Women were already having abortions in great numbers in pre-revolutionary Russia, although bourgeois women were able to afford safer methods, while workers and peasant women used methods that often caused injuries or were even deadly.

So legalization was in large part driven by health concerns. Soviet lawmakers also argued that abortions are inevitable in capitalist social conditions, and that the improvement of living standards and education will make having children something more joyful.

My gaming philosophy.

In the last years of his life, Roger Ebert famously claimed that games were "not art" (he was referring to computer games, but I'm sure he'd apply it elsewhere). He gave three reasons to back up his opinion.

1) he had never played a game

2) you can win a game

3) Art must consist of a single visionary. (This objection seems odd for a film reviewer, since films are famously collective projects.)

Penny Arcade skewered Ebert with a single comment; "if a hundred artists create art for two years, how is the end product NOT ART?"
1/3

I recently saw "Sinners". It had its moments, but I doubt I'll ever watch it again. I liked "Weapons" more, and will probably watch it at least one more time. Between the two of them, they probably used up 4-5 hours of my interest.

But I played the board game Eclipse for 20-30 hours. I played the computer game Stardew Valley for hundreds of hours. I played Age of Empires for thousands of hours.

In terms of interest level, I'm getting a LOT more value out of games than films, and I think this is true for everyone who plays games.
2/3

Why are games so much more interesting than films? I think it's because games are about interesting decisions that matter and films are purely passive entertainment. You don't make ANY decisions in a movie, beyond when to sneak your arm around the shoulder of the girl you're with and what kind of overpriced soda you buy.

And if you play against a human opponent in a game, you are faced with a foe far more treacherous and ruthless than any scriptwriter could invent. Plus he talks smack about your mom and does a Fortnite dance when you get killed.

Every single decision you make in Puerto Rico or Cthulhu Wars makes a difference. I come away from every game of Halo Wars with a tale of betrayal or a clever ploy to regret or gloat over. This is not true when I watch a movie - even a really good movie.

That's my design philosophy. I try to craft a game I want to play and to fill it with interesting decisions that matter. Do I always succeed? Well that's not for me to say. But the goal is clearly before me.

As a neurologist, I’ve dealt with Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) patients for years

I often pondered how diabolical it would be if a world leader suffered the same fate

Now I’m seeing it play out in real time

Without impeachment, this will get darker than you could ever imagine

https://twitter.com/maryltrump/status/2029405235941183707

Frontotemporal dementia attacks the frontal lobes. The brain’s command center for judgment, empathy, impulse control, moral reasoning and long-term planning.

Imagine a world leader whose frontal lobes progressively fail, but no one intervenes.

Or worse, they cheer it on.

As FTD progresses, disinhibition dominates.

The leader may issue impulsive orders, make erratic public statements or flout norms & laws.

Even in those who were previously unmalicious, there would be a genuine neurological inability to foresee consequences.

Back in 2018, the Singletrack blog published a widely read article explaining the lethal trigonometry of a UK intersection where drivers kept hitting cyclists:



1/ singletrackworld.com/2018/01/collis…

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2026/03/05/exe…

2/

There are lots of intersections that are dangerous for cyclists, of course, but what made Ipsley Cross so lethal was a kind of eldritch geometry.

3/

Not long ago, Trump said Ukraine “has no cards” and Zelenskyy “has no trumps.”

Today, the U.S. is asking Ukraine to save their skies from Shahed drones.

Meet Ukraine’s trump cards — interceptor drones rewriting the rules of aerial warfare.
Fast, smart, deadly.
👇

🧵1/10

▪️ Sting-II 🇺🇦

An interceptor from @wilendhornets. One of the most widely used and cost-effective Ukrainian drones for countering Shahed drones. It can reach speeds of 250+ km/h and is equipped with computer vision.

🧵2/10

▪️ ODIN Win_Hit 🇺🇦

A missile-like, high-speed interceptor. Powered by a jet engine, it’s designed to take down fast-moving targets, including russian drones like the Geran-3.

🧵3/10

It's easier to remember the 65 names who are not corrupt and/or compromised than the 357 who are corrupt and/or compromised.
x.com/i/grok/share/c…

Barrett, James (Republican-MI)
Bean, Aaron (Republican-FL)
Bergman, Jack (Republican-MI)
Biggs, Andy (Republican-AZ)
Boebert, Lauren (Republican-CO)
Burchett, Tim (Republican-TN)
Burlison, Eric (Republican-MO)
Cammack, Kat (Republican-FL)
Comer, James (Republican-KY)

Correa, J. Luis (Democratic-CA)
Crane, Eric (Republican-AZ)
Crawford, Eric (Republican-AR)
Davis, Donald (Democratic-NC)
Donalds, Byron (Republican-FL)
Downing, Greg (Republican-MT)
Escobar, Veronica (Democratic-TX)
Fine, James (Republican-FL)
Fitzpatrick, Brian (Republican-PA)

@bunchonumb3rs @David_J_Bier So the 12-year-old girl was asking for it.

alphanews.org/islamic-center…

@bunchonumb3rs @David_J_Bier So statutory rape laws are optional, right?

startribune.com/mn-ice-deporta…

@bunchonumb3rs @David_J_Bier @threadreaderapp please unroll

Walter Scheidel's thesis in his new book, The
Great Leveller: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the 21st Century, is that only violent events have significantly lessened inequality.

"For thousands of years, civilisation did not lend itself to peaceful equalisation. Across a wide range of societies anddifferent levels of development, stability favoured economic inequality. This was as true of Pharaonic Egypt as itwas of Victorian England,

...as true of the Roman Empire as of the United States. Violent shocks were of paramount importance in disrupting the established order, in compressing the distribution of income and wealth, in narrowing the gap between rich and poor.

Very, Very, few people understand the implications of this Israeli hack combined with its deep penetration of Iran's Regime means for the US-Israeli campaign to exterminate the Mullah's Regime Security Forces.

Let's talk about Gorgon's Stare & Post GWOT smart bombs🧵
1/

https://twitter.com/shanaka86/status/2029156325528354975

Gorgon's Stare and its peer systems like ARGUS, Vigilant Stare, Constant Hawk and Agile Condor are Wide Area Aerial Surveillance (WAAS) systems, the all-seeing eye in the sky.

They are increasingly sophisticated mergers of multi-spectral cameras, computer data bases and more recently A.I.

2/

WAAS has had a rocky and politically charged history (See 2011 text below) but the data fusion technology has gotten to the point that more and more cameras can be networked together over larger areas with the data saved for later analysis.

Analysis which is improving via AI
3/

While the Whitehouse sends mixed signals about regime change in Iran and Hegseth & Rubio fight about deploying "boots on the ground,"

a much worse possibility is developing for the Iran:

Recent reports suggest multiple-front secession is now possible.

Short thread.

Two days ago, reports began to emerge that the Mossad & the CIA were arming Kurdish militias in western Iran.

This probably wasn't really news to those in the know, but explicit talks with the Iraqi Kurdish KRG to ship weapons in were leaked to the press.
1/

Then, Israel bombs Iran/Iraq border, providing cover for Kurdish forces and munitions to move from the Kurdish region of Iraq into Kurdish Iran.
2/

BBC Verify has pieced together verified videos, satellite imagery and expert views after a deadly attack near a primary school in Minab, souther Iran, which suggest the area was hit more than once "by multiple simultaneous or near-simultaneous strikes".

bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

Satellite imagery by @planet shows at least five buildings with visible craters and black scorch marks in the area.

"[It] seems it was intentional to hit the area," a satellite analyst said, adding: "But we don't know what they intended to strike."

@planet Two videos filmed in the immediate aftermath of the attack show multiple plumes of smoke within an IRGC base and medical clinic near the school, as well as the school's top floor.

The location of smoke plumes in videos correspond to visible damage in satellite imagery.