ChunkMcHorkle

Last year I started maintaining a MAC address whitelist on the router: if I haven’t added it, it doesn’t get in or go out. No way in hell I’m putting any household appliance on the allowed list. While an appliance could technically still try to access via an allowed device, they’re all phones and tablets and computers with slightly more robust security than the trust me bro levels of an IoT appliance.

https://archive.is/ki4vM

The report, produced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)

Just one more reason why Bill Pulte has been pushed into this position as “acting” DNI by Trump past unusually strong bipartisan opposition, to the point of canceling the nomination hearing for the real candidate.

This office is really what people should be paying attention to in the coming months, because it’s all about the midterms.

For those who are unaware, Bill Pulte is a MAGA loyalist that goes after Trump opponents, and has ZERO knowledge of or experience in national security. As the head of Federal Housing Finance Agency, he is the guy who has been accusing those legitimately investigating Trump (Letitia James, Adam Schiff, etc) of unsubstantiated mortgage fraud.

Expect him to do the same with the ODNI.

When Tulsi Gabbard resigned (or was fired, who knows) another candidate to replace her as DNI was put forward, the Rs and the Ds agreed on him for the most part, and that confirmation hearing was supposed to have happened on Wednesday. It did not. It was canceled at the last second by Trump, allowing Pulte to become “acting” DNI.

While an “acting” DNI has time limits on how long they can “act” without confirmation, that legal end to the “acting” role of DNI comes after the midterms, so this essentially puts Trump’s personal bully in the office for the duration of the election season.

Even the Republicans don’t want Pulte, and with the Dems they also refused to renew a part of FISA in objection, because the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has access to all the surveillance tools and output this country ever got its hands on.

The consensus is that Bill Pulte is being chosen as DNI for the sole reason of being able to leverage that surveillance against non-favored candidates in the midterms.

Think about that for a hot second. All the surveillance powers of the Five Eyes leveraged against US political candidates that the orange administration doesn’t like.

And now we see there’s actually a second reason for Pulte’s installation: to suppress facts gathered about our voting machines.

EDITED for clarity

Yeah, the Tates, among others, are now in the business of selling training videos on how to become “OnlyFans managers” and trick women into producing content for them. In other words, they’re digital pimps. The Guardian just did a big article on it.

That’s why the Tates have women on their property to beat up the other women they have there, some imprisoned apparently, who refuse to continue producing content for them. They are literal pimps, but for OF content.

That’s possible, but does not seem likely. First, it wasn’t just the two towns, and hits came back from Buncombe County as well.

Also, the results exclude Madison County altogether, though there are cameras in the county, and presumably queries were made in regard to Madison County residents and plates, which is the supposed reason Madison County has Flock to begin with.

The way I read the HaveIbeenFlocked site was that the query itself was answered from that specific town or group of towns linked to the response, which would not be possible if the query itself had NO response from the HaveIbeenFlocked database.

Also, those two towns were just the most frequently listed, but others across the country have come up as I noted, as well as Buncombe County, which is where you’d think the vast majority of responses should be coming from, but they’re not.

Buncombe County (Asheville) is the source for multiple queries, but not anywhere near a majority. And someone involved in the HaveIbeenFlocked flow of information is very aware of the Buncombe County responses, because on all the Buncombe County hits I saw, the reason for the query was redacted: that didn’t just happen, someone chose to do that.

But if all this is legit, you know what source I never saw linked to a query? Madison County itself.

Now how is it possible, when cameras are in Madison County – iow, Madison County is itself a valid source on HaveIbeenFlocked – and the law enforcement requests are coming from Madison County, presumably pursuant to a valid Madison County law enforcement need for information, but the cameras in the county are not the source of any information requested? (Or very little, and I just missed them time after time.)

But don’t take my word for it: the links are in my post. Look for yourself. Click on anything you find, as randomly as you like, and see what you see.

Funny thing about American voting: for all the ways that people insist voting doesn’t matter, the one place in America where one vote travels the absolute farthest is in a small town election, and right next to that are county elections, for positions like these.

County sheriffs are often elected, as are county commissioners; who gets elected and who gets appointed depends entirely on applicable state and local law. But even if both of these positions are appointed in Madison County, North Carolina, where this debacle took place, the appointer will almost always be an elected official, like a mayor.

In other words, there is in fact a place where the buck stops in local politics, whether it’s with the mayor or the commissioner or the sheriff or all of the above, and everyone who lives there already knows exactly where it does, especially in a back wood county in the hills like this one.

Add the fact that the meeting was already full of angry people, people who cared enough about the whole thing to make the drive into the county seat and attend, only to be shut up once they arrived.

So while they were silenced at this meeting, it’s not over. None of them want Flock cameras, and nobody wants to take the time and trouble to come to a goddamn podunk county commission meeting only to be told to shut up and sit down.

Come election season, any neighbors with short memories will absolutely be reminded of this, in the kind of local election where often every single vote counts.

The article quotes a Madison County privacy org directly:

“The Sheriff Office claims they are only using this technology for serious crimes, yet published audit logs tell a different story,” a website called Madison for Privacy says. “Madison County has searched the nationwide database over 1,200 times over just a 60 day period. In a county over only 20,000 residents, its hard to understand what could warrant this many searches.”

Holy shit, they’re not wrong. Follow that haveibeenflocked.com link to the Madison County sheriff’s office Flock searches, and the accompanying note:

These are some of the searches performed by Madison County NC SO. We have seen a total of 1,216 searches for this agency, performed by 1 person over 62 days between 3/11/2026 and 5/11/2026 (1 user was active in the most recent six months) The most recent import of records for this agency happened on 5/17/2026.

Madison County is southwest of Asheville on the state line between NC and TN, comprised mostly of unincorporated communities, which is a polite way of saying most residents live in the hills, not in the towns. The entire county has a population of roughly 21,000, and the largest town, Mars Hill, has only 2,000 residents. It doesn’t get much more rural than this on the East Coast.

So given the population and its distribution, and the fact that the sheriff’s office only serves the unincorporated communities because the three towns have their own municipal police, where the fuck does the sheriff’s office get cause or even time for what averages out to 600 Flock searches in a month?

But it gets even stranger. I clicked on a few searches, just to see what I could see, and every single one I clicked on with an unredacted reason* was associated with the same two or three other non-local police departments as the source of the information retrieved, two of which were the exact same ones every time: Forest Park Ohio PD, Tifton Georgia PD, and occasionally the Douglas County Nevada SO. There were a couple others, but always at least one of those three. (If you go to the little i next to the other PDs, it tells you, “This audit record appears in [n] different public record files.”)

This is true whether I clicked on a homicide, a non-DUI alcohol inquiry, a burglary, a car theft, or a sex offense. No matter what reason I chose, no matter how disparate the crime or the date, one if not all of those three law enforcement agencies came up as the source of the Flock information that inquiry pulled from. And this is the same of every search I clicked on, over and over and over again.

(*The sole exceptions to all this were where the crime itself was redacted, and then the associated source of information was Buncombe County, NC, which neighbors Madison County and could potentially be a valid law enforcement reason to search Flock data.)

And when I selected the Repeat Searches checkbox at the top, defined as “Display filter that hides likely duplicate searches (identical searches within 5 minutes). Does not affect server-side counts or downloads,” an even 800 of those 1,216 searches get loaded. So fully two thirds of those searches across two months qualify as duplicates executed within five minutes of each other, to Flock parameters at least. (Or maybe one third, if I’m understanding it wrong; I’m sure someone will be along to correct me shortly.) But that’s still a fuckton of duplicates executed within five minutes of each other.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t understand how it all works on the Flock side, but it almost seems like someone in the Madison County, NC sheriff’s office is just sitting on their ass keeping serious tabs on a short list of people living in other places.

Bernadette Banner also has many videos on doing this with simple hand sewing

I was looking for historical costume project information once on YT and saw her channel. Very interesting. It’s worth noting that the hand-sewn historical garments she was copying, hundreds of years old already, are often worn, even well worn, and where there are defects it’s because the material itself failed before the seams did.

One time I had to sew up the entire side seam of a dress shirt with needle and thread, there was no one around with a sewing machine to do it for me and I needed that shirt, so I did it myself. I drew a line and used a backstitch with the smallest spacing I could manage. It took a couple hours maybe. When I got done with it, it looked and felt indestructible. Couldn’t even tell it had been resewn from the outside.

But I can’t take credit for just knowing how. Long, long ago when I was a kid, everyone had to take Home Ec at some point in their schooling; for me it was junior high iirc. It was a required subject. Everyone I went to school with knew how to turn on a stove, follow a recipe, use an iron, sew a simple project like a potholder, that kind of thing. All of it was useful, but hand sewing especially is an incredibly handy skill to have. I honestly thought it was stupid at the time – “For what purpose could I possibly need a potholder?” – but I can’t count the number of times I have used that skill since.

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Didn’t read the article and don’t know how state government works?

Pritzker called on state lawmakers this year to suspend incentives for two years while they hammer out a comprehensive review of the impact centers are having on communities.

Pritzker is making the move after lawmakers did not act. The governor cannot unilaterally halt the program, but the executive branch does wield some control over processing applications, according to his office.

He recently did an interview with Heather Cox Richardson that lays his ideas out pretty clearly. He’s an interesting guy, and they talk a lot about what he’s already done and how and why, not about what he’s going to do. Which is to say it’s not the usual load of jam tomorrow political bullshit because he’s already done what he talked about doing. Listen (or read the transcript) for yourself.

For myself, I don’t want another fucking billionaire in power. But if it’s Pritzker I would make an exception, because while he’s not perfect he’s demonstrably worked (and is still working) very hard for his state and its people in the ways that matter right now. I am sure there are things he could do better or more of, but he’s doing a lot of things right, especially when it comes to building Illinois’ economy and protecting individual rights.

He’s also trying to make it as difficult as possible for the orange hitler to fuck with Illinois, and right now that’s a huge plus in my eyes, as it speaks to character: does a politician actually see all citizens as equal, and immigrants deserving of all their rights under the law in this country? Pritzker does, which is admittedly a low bar in itself but jesus fuck do some people currently in power manage to limbo under it these days. Or I could just say, “He’s not a fascist,” but it’s the same thing. Ten years ago I’d have laughed; today it’s at the top of my list of necessary qualifications for public office.

Or to put it another way, we regular Americans have never been so hated by those in power as we are right now, especially in the midwest and southeast: take a look at some of those governors and senators and appointees and tell me they don’t fucking loathe their own voter base. Pritzker is genuinely not among those that hate their own constituents: he seems to love Illinois and its people and it’s been working out well for Illinois.

Yeah, that’s off. Especially taken in conjunction with this:

The tickets were “allocated at no charge [0 USD] due to a prior payment issue during the checkout process,” Fifa said

So a tranche of impossible tickets shows up for sale on the World Cup site a full three months after the head of FIFA announced the games were sold out, the one guy who would know for sure but somehow did not, and are then very quietly made available much later on a single day in such a way that the buyers are making what looks like a standard purchase of tickets, except the system is also just as bizarrely set to charge them $0.

Do people actually keep checking on the official site instead of resellers for available tickets long after they’re supposed to have been sold out?

Huh. I don’t know enough about how FIFA ticket sales work to know with any certainty, but at first glance it looks almost like a plan that worked exactly as it was supposed to, except that some people who were not the intended recipients lucked into it as well.

It could also be something FIFA did not set up directly, but an insider or group of insiders who figured out a way to set aside some tickets, and now FIFA’s collecting after the fact.

Or it could all just be a magically lucky series of coincidences. I really don’t know but it’s hinky as hell.

Thank you for this context. I had actually suspected as much, especially in regard to how people use the Talmud for prooftexting (selectively pulling bits out of a text with which to authoritatively settle disputes) because that’s exactly how the Christian bible is used by the same sort of people, But as I said above I’m not overly familiar with the Talmud, so this tracks. And yeah, it is really dry reading! I did try a few times, lol.

But it’s depressing how similar some people are in their tactics to suppress real questions and debate, even across faiths.

It’s great when people bring the receipts and take the time to source a comment. Seriously, thank you.

P.S. This may also contribute. It’s something by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn I read probably forty years ago, and it put into words what I had been suspecting anyway, that organizations are NOT inscrutable entities made of their own special something but merely groups of individual humans.

Thus, when an organization does something shitty, it’s because some shitty individuals inside it think it’s a grand idea and the head shit signs off on it and then at that point, all the individuals inside that organization are then faced with a choice to either ride along or get off altogether, because there are rarely any choices in between those two poles. But there’s always a subset who would gladly throw a wrench in the works if they thought it would make any difference, because they think it’s ass and they resent it all, never having wanted it to begin with.

So I don’t believe in organizations anymore, only the individuals within it. And the line between good and evil crosses not between people, but across the heart of every person. That’s what I got from Solzhenitsyn.

From The Gulag Archipelago, Part 4, Chapter 1, “The Ascent”:

"It was granted me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good…

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains… an unuprooted small corner of evil. "

Lol, I need to self-correct here just a hair.

No, it doesn’t, it absolutely does not advance my well-being or improve my life in any way. Actually the opposite. But it just doesn’t matter, perhaps we should stop focusing and acting solely on the base of what benefits ourselves, this is a delusional egocentric system. We learned that, regardless of what it is true or false, right or wrong, if it benefits us we should do it and if it harms us we should refuse it. Nothing else really matter.

I don’t agree.

No, you’re right, and it’s a failure on my part to frame the concept better. For myself, I believe that actions follow thoughts. So if I want to make or be part of positive change, first I have to lift my own thoughts. And how can I truly see someone else in their reality, as they really are, if I won’t even see myself as I really am?

What I found for myself was that I can’t wallow in thoughts that involve huge, vast conspiracies of evil because 1) it’s factually not true that every person in any given org supports everything that org does, especially if that org is doing evil shit because evil always involves coercion; and 2) it’s a thought structure that is overwhelming to the point of personal paralysis.

So when I wrote that, I was speaking solely of the inner world, of examining and even changing the way you hold your beliefs about evil if that current belief system doesn’t lift you up in a way that makes you a better person, NOT tangible externals and looking away from them because hey, fuck you I got mine. You’re right, that’s shit. If we have a conscience, we’re either using it OR we are deluding ourselves about having one.

Shit is not going well at all and we are NOT doing anything about it.

That’s one of the things that changing my own inner world got me to see and understand differently. There are a LOT of people doing something about it, in every little way they know how. Look around: it’s chaos. If everyone were cooperating with the powers-that-be it would not now be chaotic. But chaos is the kitchen of change.

Or to put it another (very hypothetical) way, if all you can see are the vast hordes of wrongdoers marching in lockstep, you will never see the less-noticeable individuals like me (hypothetically) flattening their tires and (hypothetically) sugaring their gas tanks behind their backs while they march.

We can all do something. I genuinely believe that. Even if it’s only getting in the way. There’s only one guy that gets to be editor of the NY Times and it’s not me, so they’re never going to tell the truth about full-spectrum resistance or direct action: I should stop waiting for public acknowledgement.

But if I see my thing I can do, and I do it, that lifts me and it lifts my world. Gotta see it first, though, and that requires a belief system that allows for seeing it. And that’s why I asked you the question I did. Thank you as well for a bracing chat. You’re a good person. Don’t stop.

Ok, I think you know but I will play. The Jews of the New York incident above were hasidic jews, chabad-lubavich in particular.

No, I really did not know. Thank you for naming them. I will read more about them.

Can we say that all sects that think that their people are the “best” “chosen” “above” “special” is wrong

YES.

and we should NOT tolerate them?

Hmmm. For myself, I already avoid all religion, especially of the Abrahamic sort. But you’re talking about tolerating people, and that’s kind of a different story for me: I do not engage with the overly religious to begin with, for multiple reasons. (I quite like pagans, though.)

But if someone is of a particular creed and I don’t know about it, they are obviously well-behaved enough to keep that to themselves. I would say that such people, even as members of sects who think themselves above the rest of us – because remember, not all are there by choice or even because they actually believe – are fine by me.

Or to put it another way, if they are not shoving their personal elitist self-belief in my face via shows of entitlement or shitty behavior, I don’t care what faith they hold.

Why are we talking about christians now?

As an illustration that there is no difference whatsoever between belief systems when the real problem is evil behavior, perpetrated by humans. When you’re sprayed by a skunk, do you really give a shit how wide the stripe down its back?

Also, I left Christianity many years ago, but before that I was deep into it for decades and studied a lot, so it’s always where I start when I think about religions filled with self-righteous pricks who twist dogma and doctrine to justify evil.

in the year of our lord 2026

Not my lord. I’d rather have tertiary syphilis, thanks.

we are witnessing a total out of control ultra religious cult committing genocide with ZERO repercussions and managing an international blackmail paedophilic and human trafficking ring with the most powerful people in the world, including the current sitting US president.

All of that is 100% true, inasmuch as I myself know or would argue. But now that you’ve responded, I’m pretty sure our difference lies in your willingness (or my unwillingness, take your pick) to extrapolate outwards from the personal identity of the perpetrators of those great evils to tar vast swathes of humans with the same brush by simple virtue of membership. That’s not my thing. I see an asshole, I don’t go looking past their shit to see if other assholes match.

At the deepest level that is, at best, a self-protective behavior and outlook, and you’ll see it the most when people have personally been eviscerated by evil in the name of a god.

For myself I have focused more on getting the myth of Christianity out of my system, but I have no judgement for those who are seared by the ongoing abuses and control of organized religion, especially if they grew up in or around that.

Let me ask you a question then. Can you name another holy book used as a religious law that contains so much disgusting abhorrent behaviour as the Talmud?

That is an excellent question, and the truth is that I do not know, because my knowledge of the Talmud is superficial at best. Coming from Christianity, and such gems as the early fathers, such as Tertullian who thought women do not have souls, I’d say if you put them side by side they’d probably end up within spitting range of each other. I usually did not go into the source language for the repulsive bits, because that’s not what I was in it for, but they are certainly there. The Quran is also not a shining example of how to behave toward certain members of society, so we’re back to the whole Abrahamic thing.

what fucking religion has a book like this?!

That’s not religion, that’s self-delusion. My question for you would be whether that particular line, and those like it, are still being used to justify the foul and horrific sexual use of children, and by whom. If it is and they are, they should be lined up and shot, NOT for their religion but for their unholy use of the bodies of innocent children, AND their abhorrent use of religion to justify and self-excuse those vast evils. (If that’s the actual belief and practice of the sect you mentioned by name, then I genuinely did not know and I will stand corrected.)

You’ve clearly thought this through (which is more than I can say for the usual fare here, so thank you) and we’re not disagreeing on facts, as far as I can tell. It’s the context in which I personally hold those facts contrasted with the personal context in which you hold those facts, and I would not take my own position out further than I have. People do tremendous evil. For myself, I think all religions have some measure of repugnant shit, especially the Abrahamic variety.

Yet if someone holds a personal faith that lifts them up, lifts those around them up, that helps them to live in a hard and brutal world, then I personally won’t tar them with the same brush that I absolutely reserve in full force for the perpetrators of those evils you named. But you gotta do you, and that’s not just a blithe, easy statement. This is something I had to fight through to clarity for myself, it took years, and I expect anyone deeply fucked by religion has to do the same. Maybe that’s you as well.

So honestly, if I were to ask you one thing it would be this: look at your position, what you’ve written, and ask yourself what the end result is in terms of lifting yourself and your inner world up in such a way that you are no longer crushed by the evils you see around you, and which you may have even suffered yourself. Or to put it another way, “If I decide this is how I want my worldview to be, will the way in which I am viewing the vast evil around me advance my well-being or improve my life in any way?” When I left Christianity after decades, that was what I had to ask myself. It was quite possibly one of the most important questions I have ever been asked. So that’s what I am asking you as well: not for public discussion, but for you to consider privately, over time, along with the well-stated facts of your case.

I appreciate your thoughtful response, and if I have provided offense in any way, I apologize. That’s not my goal, and I hope that is self-apparent.

EDITED TO ADD that I looked up that sect, Chabad-Lubavitch, and beyond the mattress thing being discredited I honestly did not find any mention of pedophilia in regard to that sect. Trump and Putin both apparently love them, though, which is not in their favor. I will continue to look. If you want to toss me some links I will read them.

Yes, you should be honest with us. I note that you did not actually supply either the “branches of Judaism” nor the specific doctrine you claim supports this. So if it’s doctrinal, name it. That’s a simple enough ask.

Jewish people and Jewish doctrine are two different things, just as Christian people and Christian doctrine are two different things.

You’ve showed me an example of Jewish inhumanity, that’s great. Before I posted this comment, I posted another one all about that with linked examples on a grand scale.

All this is utterly meaningless in terms of describing doctrine, not just for Judaism but for every faith.

For every Jewish cruelty or inhumanity you show me, I can show you endless Christian and even atheist cruelty and inhumanity. The bounds of cruelty exceed doctrine and apply to the humans underneath; the doctrine is only relevant insofar as it directly supports the act or is twisted to serve as justification for obviously immoral and even amoral acts.

If what you posted were common only to Jews everywhere, you might have something. But they don’t. Organized pedophilia has been found everywhere, as have people who claim to be adherents of benevolent religion and then turn around and act in ways even that religion labels as abhorrent.

People take doctrine and twist it to their own ends. It doesn’t mean the doctrine is bad (or good); it just means people who do evil also lie to justify their evil deeds, and that happens everywhere, inside religion and outside of it.

When I first wrote the comment to which you are responding now, I thought the question was about the Israeli war atrocities being committed against Palestinians and I wrote my comment from that point of view; in that I was in error.

is there some kind of doctrinal root for this behavior? to have so many people involved from across the spectrum of Israeli society would suggest there is some small kernel here that can justify the behavior. anything?

EDIT: should have noted I am looking for responses that are NOT antisemitic.

You pose a valid question, but there’s no legitimate Jewish doctrine behind it, any more than there was legitimate Christian doctrine behind it eighty, ninety years ago when the Nazis were doing it to the Jews.

This is not so much a religious question as it is a problem of human nature. When your own national leader makes it clear that even the worst of human behavior is acceptable when you can plead patriotism in its defense, you will find that tacitly given permission magnified beyond your wildest imagination in short order as people with darkness inside them realize there really is nothing holding them back from having a go themselves.

If it were something doctrinal to the Jewish faith, you would also be seeing it outside Israel. If anything, it is a perversion of actual Judaism, just as white nationalism in the US is a total perversion of Christianity.

If you’ve never read it before, Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil is a great read.

Yup. Me neither. Wherever there is an excess of money/power and entitlement, some perverted shitheel is going to organize pedophilia (and/or other sexual extremes) with other perverted shitheels. The entitlement tells them they should have whatever they want, then the money/power gets it for them and keeps it protected from external interference, and the train rolls on.

Epstein himself made a career of trading influence and favors on exactly that: occasionally he made the mistake of offering sexual access to minors to the wrong person and then he’d back off immediately, saying, “No, that’s not what I meant, bad joke, but wouldn’t you like [some other elite thing, like meeting a celeb] instead,” and no one would even bat an eye.

Israel is already credibly accused of raping everyone but children – men, women, prisoners, detainees, settlers – when it comes to Palestinians, activists, and others, so who legitimately thinks they’re not ALSO raping the kids?

Israelis applauded the two soldiers accused of raping a Palestinian man in detention, and of course the charges were dropped, so when that policy comes from the top down and many are even applauding the rapists, what possible restriction of sexual violence then applies to the children?

When you strip away insane amounts of money and power, and the perks and exclusivity and protection that money and power buy, you will always find that evil is indeed banal, and the vices that consume the poorest also consume the richest.

See the following articles for graphic descriptions of how Israel is using sexual violence as an act of war:
The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians - NYT
Israeli soldiers using sexual assault to force Palestinians out of West Bank, report says - The Guardian
“More than a human can bear”: Israel’s systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence since October 2023 - UN Human Rights org (OHCHR)

And there are a lot more where that came from, unfortunately.