I live in a small town in a small town region. A little over 6,000 in the city, somewhere around 50,000 in the county. We're in northwest Pennsylvania, about halfway between Pittsburgh and Erie, so not the kind of brutal isolation that a small town in Nebraska or Montana experiences.

We were fairly wealthy once upon a time 150 or so years ago, we were the heart of the oil industry, and our cities are still marked by some of the buildings that our local wealthy folk erected. But that was another time. We are not some sad and hollowed out disaster of a town. We have a functioning arts community, plenty of outdoor recreation, and some community festivals that light up the region. People move here because we are in many ways the picture of that idealized small town life that is part of how we Americans view ourselves.

We are, in short, probably better off than the average small town.

But there are too few of us, with too little money, to make us a very attractive market, and when you aren't a very attractive market, the invisible hand of the free marketplace just kind of waves at you on its way to some place a little more lucrative.

Much of what has happened here is a familiar story. A mall went up many decades back and kneecapped the downtown stores. Then Walmart came and kneecapped the mall. I would love to avoid giving the Waltons any of my money, but for many goods there are no alternatives here. Other than, of course, Amazon. 

If I want to "ethically source" some items, it becomes a chore. I don't know if you've shopped much at Walmart, but what I find remarkable is how little selection they actually offer. I needed a toaster-oven. They had only a couple of choices, all too similar to the one I bought from them the last time and which turned out to be largely useless. We have lots of nice little shops in the area that can sell some nice stuff, but not toasters, so I hopped on line to hunt down an acceptable toaster which I would have to select based on pictures and descriptions because I cannot see it or heft it. This is exponentially less annoying than trying to shop for shoes for my non-standard feet. After days of research, I find the item, and I even order it from someone other than the House of Bezos, though I can't be certain I didn't just give money to some different awful person. And I'm also aware that shopping for a more-ethical option is a privilege that not all my neighbors can afford.

The free market does not like places without a lot of money. You can shoot me messages about the latest thing proper lefties are supposed to boycott, but chances are there isn't such a place within fifty miles (Starbucks? Fat chance). 

We at least still have a hospital (through a bizarre fluke involving a lawsuit and a story too long to tell here). My niece lives a few towns over in a larger city that as of the new year has no hospital at all. We still have a large unit in the county, a wing of Pennsylvania's leading health care behemoth, but it is inadequately staffed with a group of folks who are trying their damnedest to compensate for their employer's neglect and disinterest.

For folks who are sure that the free market can do a better job than the United States Postal Service--well, UPS and FedEx have closed their customer facing offices here, so if you want to send something with them, you'll have to prepare and tag the package yourself before leaving it on a table at some pick-up spot (that you'll have to find by searching on line). As always, private carrier deliveries will only happen in town-- if you live out in the boonies, the delivery companies will hand your package to USPS to complete the delivery.

We have some nice local restaurants and for chains, just the basics of fast food. We have a small airport, but no commercial flights any more. We have may shops in town, many of which are "hobby shops" run by people who are more attached to the idea of running a business than making a living at it. 

When I think about the free market true believers and their approach to education, I wonder if they really understand how little the free market could accomplish here. Our local Catholic school system has shrunk to nothing but a single K-6 school. There is a private Christian school that controls costs by replacing teachers with computers. 

There are just over 5,500 students in the whole county. Cyber charters regularly bleed off a couple hundred of those (though that is often temporary). Like most small town areas, folks here consider the schools a big part of the community identity. And almost all of those schools are Title I schools, meaning that families aren't sitting on big piles of money they can spend for a quality private school (if such a school were available locally). 

I don't hate the free market, and it has done some mighty nice things for this community. But the free market likes marketplaces flush with cash and customers, and most small town and rural areas aren't. This is Dollar General territory, a store whose whole business model is "If we give folks with few alternatives the very bare minimum of service and product quality, maybe we can turn a profit."

That is not the business model we need for education. We already know that it's not working for health care--spotty-if-at-all, minimally capable service. Turning education into a free market, you're-on-your-own consumer good will not serve us well. If the goal is going to be providing the best possible education for every child in the country, the free market is uniquely unable to pursue that goal. 

Come visit us here. It's a beautiful place to live and work and even be a tourist. I'll give you a tour and show you the sights. But don't ask us to depend on the free market to get us top quality education for our children. 

Chief Justice John Roberts’s year-end report on the federal judiciary might as well have been titled “How Dare You.” His primary concern? That public officials have the audacity to criticize the judiciary, accusing judges of political bias. Roberts didn’t offer much defense for the Court’s actions—just a thinly veiled demand for silence under the guise of preserving institutional respect. But let’s not pretend his plea for civility was anything more than a smokescreen.

Let’s not mince words: the Supreme Court has earned every bit of scrutiny it’s getting. This isn’t a Court of judicial restraint or consistent philosophy—it’s a Court that deploys ideology and power grabs in equal measure, consolidating authority while dismantling every other branch and institution that might dare challenge it.

For all its talk of judicial principles, this Court has no coherent philosophy. Textualism, originalism, stare decisis—they’re deployed selectively to justify outcomes the majority has already decided it wants. In West Virginia v. EPA, the Court ignored the Clean Air Act’s clear text to hobble the EPA’s ability to regulate emissions, inventing the “major questions doctrine” to impose its will. This wasn’t about interpreting statutory language—it was about ensuring that federal agencies couldn’t act effectively, especially when their actions conflict with the Court’s ideological preferences.

But ideology isn’t the whole story. The Court’s rulings reveal a broader, more insidious agenda: centralizing power in the Supreme Court itself. Every institution—Congress, the executive branch, the states, and even lower courts—has been systematically stripped of authority, with power flowing upward to the Justices. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Court handed abortion regulation to states, but that wasn’t about federalism—it was about dismantling established rights. Meanwhile, in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, the Court invalidated New York’s gun safety regulations, overriding state authority in favor of a newly invented constitutional right. States are empowered only when their actions align with the Court’s worldview; otherwise, they’re overruled.

The Court’s disdain for Congress is even more transparent. By limiting legislative authority to create new rights to those resembling 18th-century grievances, as it did in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, the Court has effectively frozen Congress in time. Data privacy, environmental protection, voting rights—if the Founders didn’t legislate on it, the Court doesn’t think Congress can either. And when Congress tries to delegate regulatory authority to federal agencies, as it did with the EPA, the Court steps in to demand explicit, granular instructions, knowing full well that such specificity is impossible in a legislative body as dysfunctional as ours.

Federal agencies fare no better. In West Virginia v. EPA, the Court didn’t just limit the EPA—it redefined the rules for every regulatory body. The “major questions doctrine” ensures that agencies can’t take significant actions without explicit congressional approval, rendering them toothless. It’s a doctrine designed not to interpret the Constitution but to obstruct governance, ensuring that agencies tasked with addressing modern challenges like climate change and workplace safety are paralyzed by the Court’s demands.

Lower courts have been reduced to spectators in this power grab. Through its reliance on the shadow docket, the Supreme Court has bypassed traditional procedures to issue sweeping rulings without full arguments or transparency. Vaccine mandates? Gone. Gerrymandered electoral maps? Approved. This isn’t judicial oversight—it’s micromanagement, with the Supreme Court asserting itself as the final word on everything, regardless of whether lower courts have been allowed to do their jobs.

Even the states, often a supposed bastion of conservative deference, aren’t safe. The Court’s rulings have systematically undercut state authority when it suits its agenda. Dobbs handed abortion rights to state legislatures, but when states like California tried to enforce neutral pandemic restrictions or New York sought to regulate firearms, the Court intervened to impose its own preferences. And let’s not forget Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, where the Court forced public schools to allow employee-led prayer, rewriting facts and precedent alike to align with its ideological goals. The message is clear: states can have power, but only when the Supreme Court agrees with how they’re using it.

What ties all of this together isn’t just ideology but a deliberate effort to consolidate power in the Supreme Court. By neutering Congress, paralyzing agencies, sidelining lower courts, and cherry-picking when states get to exercise authority, the Court has positioned itself as the ultimate arbiter of all contentious issues. This isn’t a judiciary acting as one branch among equals—it’s a judiciary that views itself as the only branch that matters.

Roberts’s plea for civility isn’t about protecting the judiciary’s integrity—it’s about shielding the Court from accountability. Criticism, he warns, undermines trust. But the real threat to trust in the judiciary isn’t public outrage; it’s a Court that has abandoned any pretense of restraint, consistency, or respect for democratic governance. This Supreme Court isn’t interpreting the Constitution—it’s rewriting it to suit its preferences while siphoning power away from every other institution. The criticism Roberts fears isn’t dangerous; it’s necessary. Because a Court that answers only to itself is the most dangerous entity of all.

In the latest episode of Seriously, Is This Real Life?, businessman and Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary has revealed that President-elect Donald Trump isn’t just fantasizing about turning Canada into America’s 51st state—he’s actually hosting discussions about it at Mar-a-Lago. Yes, while most people might spend their time planning sensible policies or staffing a competent cabinet, Trump is apparently doodling maple leaves on “Make Canada American, Eh?” baseball caps and strategizing annexation over shrimp cocktails.

Trump singing the praises for his idea (of course) on his puttering Twitter rip-off, Truth Social (of course again): “If Canada merged with the U.S., there would be no Tariffs, taxes would go way down, and they would be TOTALLY SECURE from the threat of the Russian and Chinese Ships that are constantly surrounding them.” Because clearly, Canadians are lying awake at night, trembling in fear of rogue fishing boats and theoretical invasions.

Let’s be clear: this isn’t diplomacy. It’s the political equivalent of showing up uninvited to your neighbor’s barbecue, demanding their beer fridge, and explaining it’s for their own good. Trump’s pitch is less about partnership and more about a hostile corporate takeover, with all the charm of a bad infomercial. And it’s safe to say Canadians, who already politely endure their proximity to the U.S., are not clamoring for an upgrade to full membership in Trump’s America.

Starting off - health care.

Canadians may grumble about wait times, but they’d take their universal system over America’s medical Hunger Games any day. A recent poll found that 86.2% of Canadians support strengthening public healthcare instead of expanding for-profit services. Trump’s version of “freedom” might involve a $10,000 ambulance ride, but Canadians prefer their version, which lets them hit the slopes without worrying about whether a broken leg will also break the bank. Sorry, Donald, but paying $300 for an Advil isn’t exactly what they’d call “great again.”

And let’s talk about social progress, a subject that would likely give Trump and his base a collective nosebleed. Canada legalized gay marriage way back in 2005, leaving the U.S. scrambling to catch up a full decade later. And in 2017, the Canadian Human Rights Act was updated to protect gender identity and gender expression, making Canada a global leader in LGBTQ+ rights. Canadians support protecting transgender people in housing, employment, and public spaces, while Trump’s crowd throws around the term “groomer” like it’s a national sport. The idea of merging these two wildly different value systems is as absurd as serving poutine with ketchup instead of gravy—an insult to both sides.

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Of course, don’t forget the gun thing. Trump’s America treats guns like a sacred birthright, while Canadians approach firearms with the kind of cautious distance usually reserved for overly friendly raccoons. The U.S. has more guns than people; Canada regulates them with a level of care that would make even Switzerland blush. Canadians aren’t about to give up their relatively low gun violence rates to adopt a system where a trip to Walmart can involve dodging an active shooter.

There’s also the cultural chasm that is Trump-style politics, which would leave Canadians feeling like they’ve stepped out of the library into a WWE wrestling match. Canadian politics may be dull by comparison, but that’s kind of the point. Canadians are happy to settle disputes over coffee and donuts, not angry tweet storms and “Stop the Steal” rallies. Watching Trump declare “CANADA IS A DISASTER, I’LL FIX IT!” would likely send Canadians scrambling for the border—just not in the direction he’s hoping for.And guns—oh, the guns. America has more firearms than people, and Trump seems to think that’s a feature, not a bug. Canadians, on the other hand, treat guns with the same wary respect they reserve for grizzly bears: necessary in some situations, but not something you invite into your home for fun. The idea of adopting the U.S.’s trigger-happy culture would likely send Canadians running—not walking—to the border.

Culturally, the fit is laughable. Canadian politics may be a snoozefest compared to America’s daily political circus, but that’s exactly how they like it. Canadians prefer their leaders to apologize for minor missteps, not launch all-caps tirades on social media. The idea of being dragged into Trump’s reality-TV version of governance would likely have them clutching their maple leaf flags for dear life.

And don’t even get started on the metric system. Canadians have no interest in abandoning kilometers and Celsius just because America still thinks the imperial system is a good idea. Asking Canadians to measure their snow in inches is like asking Americans to care about hockey—it’s just not going to happen.

Of course, there’s also the environment. Canada, with its vast forests and pristine national parks, at least pretends to care about climate change. Trump’s track record? Let’s just say he probably considers clean air an optional feature. For a country that treasures its wilderness, the prospect of joining an administration that treats pipelines like holy relics is less than appealing.

At the end of the day, Trump’s dream of annexing Canada is as realistic as a moose becoming a Shark Tank judge. Canadians might be polite, but they’re not fools. If Trump thinks they’d willingly sign up for his version of America—complete with privatized healthcare, culture wars, and gun-toting chaos—then he’s delusional enough to start printing “Welcome to Trumpada” T-shirts.

So, sorry, Donald, but this one’s a hard no. Canadians will keep their universal healthcare, progressive policies, and snow-covered independence. And if you push the issue, expect a polite, yet firm, response: Thanks, but no thanks. Now, if you’ll excuse them, they have poutine to eat and a hockey game to watch. You know, priorities.

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Democracy did not die in November of 2024 but the assholes have their knives out and it's up to us to keep them from their bloody work. Stay strong. We beat the fascists once and we’ll fucking do it again.

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Florida is beginning to forcibly detransition trans women in prison. Not just by denying them the hormonal treatments they require, but literally shaving their heads and pushing them into drug and therapy regimes designed to “cure” them of their, and I am not making this up, “short-term delusion”:

In the final days of 2024, a federal judge in Florida’s Northern District issued a ruling rejecting a preliminary injunction against a new Florida Department of Corrections (FDC) policy targeting transgender inmates. This policy, introduced on September 30, 2024, frames gender dysphoria as a “short-term delusion,” restricting access to gender-affirming care, permitting hormones only in “rare instances” deemed constitutionally necessary. The FDC bulletin also suggests psychotropic medications and psychotherapy as sufficient alternatives to medical transition, ignoring widely accepted medical guidelines.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), representing plaintiff Reiyn Keohane, challenged the policy, arguing it strips transgender inmates of essential care and dignity. Under the policy, trans women in Florida prisons are denied access to gender-aligned clothing and grooming standards, with confiscation of canteen items and head shaving mandated for non-compliance. According to the ACLU’s October 2024 complaint, inmates face invasive examinations to assess breast size for bra eligibility, subjecting them to dehumanizing treatment under the guise of policy enforcement. The ACLU sought immediate relief, filing for a preliminary injunction to halt these measures.

But you probably don’t know any trans people. Since the trans community represents a whole whopping .6% of the population, the overwhelming majority of you reading this aren’t going to be trans yourself.

I certainly don’t have any trans people in my life and I’ve only met one, just one, that I’m aware of in the last decade.

So is this really that important? A few hundred or thousand people are being impacted. That’s not great but don’t we have bigger problems to deal with? Donald Trump is going to be president in two weeks! You probably feel bad but, jeez, you just don’t have the bandwidth for this!

OK, you need to have a seat and let your Uncle Ogre explain what’s happening here and why you better get that bandwidth right fucking now.

You’re being conditioned. Yes, you. Right now. You are being conditioned to accept atrocities. Republicans know exactly what they are doing and you are being manipulated in a meticulous way to accept the morally unacceptable.

They told you that trans people were sexual deviants and pedophiles.

They told you that having trans girls in locker rooms and bathrooms put “normal” girls at risk.

They told you that trans girls in sports was an attack on feminism.

They told you these and other lies (and they were all lies) over and over and over again and then passed hundreds of laws targeting the trans communities.

My personal favorite lie is how trans rights issues cost us the election even though Kamala Harris hardly mentioned it. The legacy press LOVED repeating that one.

Entire states now deny trans children the medical care they need because something something “protect the children!” Activists were loud and clear that it was never about the children and that Republicans would be banning treatment for trans adults. And that’s exactly what they did.

Step by step to atrocity. This is how it works.

Now, not just content to deny care to the trans community, Republicans are going to force the people they have in custody to transition back, subjecting them to drugs and hostile therapy telling them they are crazy. Do you think they’ll stop at shaving heads? I promise you, they will remove implants next because it’s “unnatural.”

But you don’t know any trans people and you’re far too busy resisting Trump to pay attention to this stuff, right? It’s just a few thousand trans people.

And you’ll say the same thing when they begin forced conversion therapy for homosexual men in prisons.

By then, they’ll have passed laws making it legal to forcibly detransition trans people who aren’t in prison. That went by unnoticed because, well, they were already doing it and nothing really changed for 99.4% of us, right?

Step by step to atrocity.

Once they devastate the LGB_Q community, Republicans will move on to mandatory sterilizations.

But that’s fucking crazy, right? That can’t happen here. We don’t do shit like that. Except, of course, when we do:

1981 is commonly listed as the year in which Oregon performed the last legal forced sterilization in U.S. history. However, forced sterilizations have continued in more recent years. For instance, according to a report by The Guardian, California has been forcibly sterilizing people (in this case, in prisons) as recently as 2010; the state approved a budget in 2021 for reparations to those who were sterilized without consent.

No one went to jail for this. No one is ever going to jail for this. I promise you, it’s happening, right now, in other states and it will get worse if fascism has its way while we’re “too busy” to take note.

Eventually, Republicans will brag about it because, hey, we’re already OK with forcing medical procedures onto people we don’t really care about. And didn’t we hear something about overpopulation and violent tendencies in some types of people? Immigrants, maybe? Black people? People with autism? The poor? It’s so hard to keep up with the news what with all the resisting we’re doing. Who has time to spend on people no one cares about?

Step by step to atrocity.

I know you want this to be hysterical exaggeration. I don’t do hysterical exaggeration. This is something that’s already happened. No, not the Nazis. That came later. This is what WE fucking did. The great and mighty United States of America pioneered forced sterilization of “undesirables.” We sterilized, at a minimum, 70,000 people. Immigrants. Blacks. The poor. People with mental illnesses. We literally invented Eugenics. The Nazis took it to its logical, genocidal conclusion.

Republicans very much want to do it again.

It’s really important to understand that Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller are obsessed with a book called “The Camp of the Saints.” Miller pushes everyone in the White House to read it. It informs his genocidal crusade against immigrants.

Never heard of “The Camp of the Saints?” It’s no big deal, just a foundational text of white nationalism that describes the fall of Western civilization:

The Camp of the Saints is a 1973 French novel by Jean Raspail that has become a key inspiration within white nationalist circles. It portrays a dystopia, or perhaps an apocalypse: a flotilla of South Asian people who invade France and effectively overthrow Western society.

"The key themes are actually white supremacy and the end of white civilization as the West knows it — infestation, invasion, hordes of nameless, faceless migrants who come to indeed invade the West and bring about its end," says Chelsea Stieber, professor of French and Francophone studies at Catholic University of America.

It’s not just racist. It’s off-the-charts racist. The far-right uses this book to justify their violence toward immigrants. It might as well be “Mein Kampf” and, frankly, people like Miller and Bannon do, in fact, use it in much the same way.

So when I tell you that we are watching the first steps towards atrocity and genocide, I am not engaging in hyperbole or trying to generate hysteria. I am not a trans activist with a deep investment in the community. I honestly don’t care about them because they’re not a part of my life any more than, say, Tasmanians or Norwegians.

But I know conditioning when I see it. I know what the building blocks for genocide look like. The jokes. The cruelty. The shift in language and public perception. The restrictive laws and increased state violence. By the time the jokes and cruelty and shift in language spread to the next targets, it will be too late. We will already have accepted atrocity and it gets easier with each new assault on what is acceptable. That’s how it works. Step by step.

Speak out now, even if you don’t give a flying fuck about the trans community. This is the canary in the coal mine and you ignore it at your peril.

First they came for the trans community
And I did not speak out
Because I was not trans

You know the rest. They’ll get to you, eventually, and if you don’t speak out now, who will be left to speak for you?

This is it. This is Germany in the 1930s and what you do will be recorded in the history books. Your children and grandchildren will look back and ask what you did. Will you be able to look them in the face?

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🖕FUCK YOU, LEGACY PRESS!🖕

Well, fuck. Just six whole days into 2025 and the legacy press is telling us exactly what the next four years are going to be like. Honestly, I don’t know why I’m even the tiniest bit surprised. This is what they’ve been doing for the last…what? Twenty fucking years? LOL! Just kidding. Try longer than I’ve been alive.

Oh, wait! You don’t know what I’m bitching about yet! Let me remedy that so you, too, can foam at the mouth.

Remember the stupid MAGA shithead I mentioned in this morning’s article? The one who killed himself and then blew up a rented Tonka Truck Cybertruck because he wanted to kick off the mass murder of libtards and Democrats and, I dunno, the deep state or something? Turns out the press doesn’t really want to talk about that part:

Over the last four days, the bizarre Cybertruck fire outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas has run from comical interlude to possible terrorist incident to tragic suicide of another veteran of America’s forever wars. Each of these descriptions still captures an important part of the story. As I noted yesterday, while Matthew Livelsberger appears to have had a series of combustible and likely abusive relationships going back many years he also appears to have suffered from PTSD and possibly a traumatic brain injury since returning from a tour of duty in 2019. (I’m tentative on the spousal abuse front only because for now the direct evidence for that that I’m aware of comes only from the friend of his ex-wife.) But at least for the moment there is a pretty striking lack of attention to the political motives he expressed in at least two documents or what I guess we might call minifestos that investigators found on his iPhone.

Meanwhile, the press has been all over the other piece of shit terrorist who killed people in New Orleans and his fealty to ISIS. Republicans have been screaming about how this terrible attack means we have to seal the border because something something “terrorism” and “immigrants.” Don’t you fucking talk about the fact that this guy was born and raised in the United States. Texas, actually. CLOSE THE BORDER AND PUT A DRUNKEN RAPIST IN CHARGE OF THE MILITARY!

It’s true that the schmuck in the Cybertruck didn’t kill anyone important1 while Mr. ISIS killed 14 people. But let’s be perfectly clear: If their ideologies had been reversed and the Cybertruck doofus had been ISIS and the New Orleans killer had been full-on MAGA, the result would have been exactly the same. We would still be seeing a lot of frantic headlines about Islamic radicalization and little to nothing about yet another far-right terrorist.

This is what the legacy press does. This is what they always do. This is what they’ve been doing for quite literally the entire history of the United States. Violence from angry racist white men on the right is treated as normal. Nothing to get upset about. Move along. Pay it no mind. Don’t talk about it.

This is why so many millions of white people were appalled in 2019 when they googled “Tulsa Race Riot” for the first time after watching HBO’s Watchmen. That wasn’t a real thing was it…OH MY FUCKING GOD THAT REALLY HAPPENED?! Yes. Yes, it fucking did. I can’t say for sure but I’ll bet cold, hard cash most Black people knew about it. And if not Tulsa, specifically, one of the other numerous Black communities burned to the ground by racist mobs of white people.2

This literal whitewashing of history is not ancient history. The press is still doing it right now. This is how January 6th has been erased from the larger public awareness. The press took something we all saw happening and whittled it away until it became a liberal talking point.

When racist militias exploded under Obama, the press pretended it wasn’t happening. When Nazis took to the streets under Trump, the New York fucking Times did everything in its power to make them seem sympathetic. They’re just like you and me, after all. Except, of course, for the part where they want to ethnically cleanse the country.

Why wouldn’t they carry on their mission of normalizing and obscuring right-wing violence and depravity? I’ve talked about this more than once. When the right commits acts of violence, it maintains and enforces the status quo. It’s only when the left lashes out that the press panics because we threaten The Way Things Are and that shit cannot be allowed.

The mere suggestion that CEOs can be killed for the inhumane crimes they commit against us sent the legacy press into fits of hysteria and finger-wagging for weeks.

But when the right commits mass murder in a Black church or a synagogue? Well, that’s a tragedy but can we really hold anyone accountable? Let’s move on as quickly as possible, thank you very much. Thoughts and Prayers,™ people. Thoughts and Prayers.

And so it is with another story highlighted by Jay Kuo. A story that ProPublica broke over the weekend:

In 2023, I received an envelope with no return address. Inside was a flash drive containing tens of 1000s of secret files.

It came from a vigilante with a tumultuous past, who’d done a years-long undercover operation. He didn’t tell the FBI or his family. He only told me

Outraged by Jan 6, he spent two years getting inside the top ranks of militias like the Oath Keepers. He was stunningly successful. He penetrated a new generation of militia leaders, which included doctors, cops & government attorneys.

This is his story.

I’m still reading through the ProPublica piece. As with most of their reporting, it’s thorough and long. Here’s a key takeaway, though. This fucking hero, John Williams, infiltrated several militias and found a massive network of dangerous terrorists with deep connections to law enforcement and the United States government.

Oh, that’s not the interesting part. We all pretty much knew that was happening because of how loudly Republicans scream whenever the FBI investigates far-right terrorism. Here’s the real fucking scandal:

Williams tried for years to get someone in the media to pay attention to the work he had done, but it took an independent journalist at ProPublica to bite.

You know Williams tried to get this story to the New York fucking Times. The Washington Post. Politico. The Hill. Any number of “reputable” news outlets and they all refused to take the story. Why? Because reporting on white nationalist terrorism just isn’t news. We don’t like to upset Republicans and their base of violent monsters. That’s bad for business. Why, Trump might fire a mean tweet at them!

That’s the state of journalism in America. Our vaunted legacy press not only downplays the violence of the right, they actively work to bury it whenever they can. That’s how you sell the “both sides” lie to the public. That’s how a felon gets re-elected after leading a deadly insurrection.

That’s how the coming crimes against humanity will be swept under the rug by a complicit media.

But just because the press looks the other way doesn’t mean we have to. Watch what they do. Ignore the shiny objects and distractions. Record what happens when it happens so they cannot rewrite history later. Never stop speaking the truth and when this is over, name the names who need to pay for what they’ve done.

That’s how we move forward and if the legacy press won’t get on board with defending the rule of law and democracy, burn them to the ground and start over.

There are 301 days until the first Blue Wave and it starts in Virginia, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

The legacy media has abandoned us in favor of sucking up to oligarchs and fascism. Find voices you trust (other than me) and subscribe where you can. Independent voices (like the Opinionated Ogre) will be needed in the coming days and we will require your support. This newsletter is free but for $5 a month or just $50 a year, you can keep the lights on.

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You'll see these stories popping up all over, and if the story isn't about your district, chances are it will be stoking some administrators Fear Of Missing Out. But the FOMO seems sadly misplaced.

Greenwich Time ran its story by Jessica Simms about the Greenwich School District's new chatbot under the headline, "Meet Greenwich Public Schools new chatbot who won't say why the district got rid of tacos at lunch," and that's the closest it comes to taking a critical look at this Connecticut school district's addition of a cutesy chatbot. 

Does a story about a chatty LLM website mascot have to take a critical look? Yes, it does, because every story about "AI" should be reckoning with the question. "Is this worth the power, ecological and financial cost?" (Also, will it fail disastrously and compromise student data in the process?) "Does it have a cute avatar attached" probably shouldn't be near the top of the list.

The GPS website has a cute chat invite in the bottom corner, not unlike the standard help-chat box on many sites (all of which trigger, for persons of a Certain Age, Clippy-related trauma). It greets you-

My name is G.P. Sleuthhound and I am relentless and stubborn on a scent. I serve as the Greenwich Public Schools chatbot.
As my name tells you, I can do one thing better than any creature on earth: track down the answer to your question on our website.
How can I help?

The district's director of communications says the department is loaded with dog lovers, and bloodhound is on point, so there we are. G.P. even has a little deerstalker hat. According to the district, the chatbot is "a more advanced search bar," except that LLMs don't make particularly good search engines. Also, this product is confined to the school's website, which means the job doesn't require a particularly clever search engine any way.

The district is using AlwaysOn, a company that promises turnkey chatbots for districts. The company was founded in 2021 and "sponsors" many states' Public Relations Associations (like California's version). Located in Newport Beach, CA, its name guarantees that it is hard to track on line. Its LinkedIn profile says it has 2-10 employees. 

AlwaysOn was founded by Teddy Daiber. Daiber graduated from Brown University with a degree in economics (and some history on the Lacrosse Field, including big time private high school play). Daiber was an analyst at Barclays, worked the commodities desk at Citi, the started founding things. In 2014 it was Poolit, an online content save-and-share outfit, then in 2016, Head of Customer Success for Informed K12, a workflow automation operation for schools. 

In 2021, he was launching his new business. The Oct/Nov 2021 issue of the Palm Springs Unified School District news letter announced a new chatbot for helping navigate the website, including some quotes from Daiber, listed there as the CEO of Otto Technologies. At that point, the product was Otto Chatbot, launched in the spring, with PSUSD as one of its first customers. Daiber and district admins are excited about how the product helps people find information on the website (which begs the question, "How much of this would be unnecessary is more school websites sucked less?")

An awful lot of the pitch does seem to be about being able to search the website for information. Here's what the AlwaysOn website says about the chatbot-search engine distinction: 

Website search is just a keyword search with no intelligence and limited data. Search doesn’t improve over time and is completely dependent on what words you use in your search. Search lacks conversational or discovery features that create a great customer experience, and all the work is on the stakeholder to sort through the results to find the best information.

Chatbots use Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing to interpret and understand what exactly a stakeholder wants when they ask a question. Chatbots organize and return the best answers and information. Chatbots also automatically improve from each interaction, work in multiple languages, and provide insightful analytics on the most popular questions and topics.

A chatbot can "interpret and understand exactly what a stakeholder wants when they ask a question"??! That is some powerful magic indeed. 

The company is clear on where the chatbot can search (just your school site) but not so clear on how and on what content the bot has been trained. It is clear that it does not save personal user info, but collects general info with an aim to analyze what people are trying to find out.

Attaching the AI label to this dedicated search program invites users to imagine capabilities that it doesn't have. Simms looked through questions that have been asked and found items like "why did they get rid of tacos" and "who does the most work at GPS." The chatbot couldn't answer those. 

I tried the chatbot out myself. "When were Greenwich schools founded?" I asked. "Various times," G.P. replied, then went on to provide the info about just one school, plus info about the founding of the town. I asked who the youngest staff member is. The chatbot replied with a bunch of excerpts from the website that included the word "youngest." I asked it "who teaches the highest level of English" and it replied "The highest level of English is taught by Certified English Language Learner (ELL) teachers in Greenwich Public Schools." All of its answers come with a link to the location on the website where it found its answer.

I asked it if Monday's lunch will be delicious. It told me that this month the cafeteria is featuring "delicious zucchini." I asked it to write me a limerick about kindergarten. It gave me a list of excerpts from the website that list the word "kindergarten."

Yeah, this "chatbot" turns out to be not very good at interpreting and understanding what the user really wants, and mostly functions like a mediocre search engine. But it does let the school district declare that it is right out there on the cutting edge with some of that AI stuff that is supposed to be so cool, even if the cutting edge looks a lot like search engines from five years ago. 

AlwaysOn and Greenwich schools just happen to be the ones that crossed my screen-- there are loads more of these things out there. School districts with a bad case of FOMO teaming up with vendors who have figured out that AI is a great marketing tool. You remember when Common Core was The Big Thing and every publisher slapped "Common Core" on their same old stuff because it helped with marketing? The AI revolution in education feels a lot like that.

It would all be kind of cute and amusing if AI weren't using up money and electricity and water and computing capacity that could be put to better use than creating an image of a bloodhound with Sherlock Holmes fashion style. Keep an eye open in your neighborhood. 

Special note to journalists. It took no special ton of time or effort for me to find the background for AlwaysOn or try out its capabilities, and only slightly more regular effort to be slightly informed about AI stuff. Please make those efforts, and the next time someone shows up with a Gee Whiz press release or pitch about some AI-in-education awesome sauce, please exercise a little critical examination and research. Because if all you're going to do is take in what they say and just push it back out again, I know a digital bloodhound that can do your job.