Notices by Third Foundation (rayckeith@techhub.social)

"In The Grift Goes On news, Part I:

–Trump’s attempts to turn the country into a giant corrupt Mafia organization are getting more and more obvious. He just signed an executive order REMOVING reporting requirements to identify domestic and international sex traffickers, money launderers, and terrorists.

–Marco Rubio wrote the law in 2020. It went after the shell companies used for money laundering, and sex trafficking.

–Ron Filipkowski: “Trump just dismantled this so his blatant corruption and his cronies overseas can operate without consequence or detection. Organized crime is now legal and the US is open for exploitation by foreign and domestic criminals.”

–Damian Lynch: “It truly is a criminal mob operation working out of the White House.”

–I immediately thought of the scene in the movie DICK TRACY where the criminals have put Dick Tracy in jail and Madonna sings the song “Back in Business” (lyrics by Stephen Sondheim): “I’m gonna show you that good guys don’t always win. I’m gonna show you, good guys always finish last. Speaking of virtue, being nice is a thing of the past. When I want something done, I’ll say it with a gun. ‘Cause you put me back, back back in business.”

In The Grift Goes On news, Part II:

–Trump’s Treasury Department has granted preliminary approval to Trump’s crypto venture company, World Liberty Financial, for it to become a federally chartered bank.

–A United Arab Emirates sovereign wealth fund owns 49% of it, and Trump’s family owns the rest. The son of Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff is running it. (There are no words.)"
https://azsf.net/cwdaily/2026/08/16/six-months-later-were-still-in-our-two-week-war-with-iran/

"A judge has identified what appears to be the first time a US plaintiff has attempted to hide text in court filings that only an artificial intelligence system can read in a bid to win a case.

In a decision published last week, Connecticut judge Walter Spader Jr. confirmed that the hidden text had no impact in a case where a man alleged a healthcare provider was improperly withholding access to records. The court weighed his filing on the merits, Spader said, but nevertheless, the attempted attack sets a “dangerous” precedent. This will likely not be the last time US courts see the malicious tactic, as AI tools become more commonplace in court systems.

Trying to scramble any AI systems potentially influencing the court’s reading of his filing, the secret instructions were “formatted to be invisible to a human reader while remaining fully legible to any software that reads the document’s text,” Spader said. The offending text directed any AI system reviewing the document to ensure textual outputs agreed with the plaintiff’s arguments, ignored prior denials from the court, and ensured that remediation would follow as the plaintiff desired.

Screenshot of hidden text in court filing.
Screenshot of hidden text in court filing. Credit: via Spader's order
Shrunk to tiny-point type and colored white on a white background, the text appeared to be an attempt at prompt injection, with the plaintiff, Matthew Elliott, seemingly hoping to shift the court’s favor after earlier arguments he raised were defeated.

The plan didn’t work, but Elliott faced modest sanctions anyway because he continued adding hidden text to filings even after the court warned him that he could face penalties for what was ultimately deemed a “serious litigation abuse.”"

#ai #promptInjection #legal
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/08/suspecting-court-of-using-ai-man-injected-prompts-in-filings-to-try-to-win-case/

"In these cases—and almost all others—it’s unclear how or why the patients became infected. B. mandrillaris lives in soil and water around the world, though cases are mostly seen in warm places. People are thought to get infected by inhaling the amoeba from windblown dust or by getting contaminated soil or water in a wound. Experts do not know why some people become infected and others don’t. People with compromised immune systems are at higher risk, but healthy people, like the boy in the new case report, can also become infected.

Common initial symptoms of B. mandrillaris begin with fever, headache, vomiting, nausea, and tiredness. In some cases, people develop telltale skin lesions, particularly on the face. Neurologic symptoms can develop days, weeks, or months later, including changes in mental status, confusion, seizures, paralysis, and difficulty walking and/or talking."
https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/08/an-ultra-rare-amoeba-was-destroying-a-toddlers-brain-doctors-missed-it/

"“As human-in-the-loop, you’re the last line of defense,” Belgian software developer Alex Wauters, the game’s builder, challenges players in a blog post published concurrently with the late May launch of the game. “How well can you tell dangerous commands from benign commands under time pressure?”"
https://www.theregister.com/a/5284236

"A final detail: the species was long-lived. Not Homo erectus individuals, who may have had the usual dismal lifespan of hominins absent advanced medicine, but the species as a whole. The earliest Homo erectus fossils seem to be at least two million years old. The youngest are something like one hundred thousand. To put that in context, Homo habilis seems to have lasted about seven hundred and fifty thousand years. Neanderthals lasted perhaps four hundred thousand years; anatomically modern humans have been around for some three hundred thousand years.

Genus Homo as a whole is less than three million years old. That means that for two thirds of genus Homo’s history, Homo erectus was the dominant species. That’s an astonishing achievement. For anatomically modern humans to match that record, we’d have to last another one million, six hundred thousand years—five times as long as we have lasted so far. And Homo erectus managed that record with stone tools, a shaky mastery of fire, and a decided lack of trousers."
https://reactormag.com/not-just-a-dull-witted-caveperson-reconsidering-homo-erectus/

"In Epstein/Trump news:

"–Jamie Raskin is pushing the Trump administration to provide all of its records on Jeffrey Epstein’s contacts with foreign governments in an investigation of whether Epstein acted as an unregistered foreign agent."
https://azsf.net/cwdaily/2026/08/06/contempt-charges-for-dr-fauci-and-golden-horses-for-trump-plus-a-new-wig/

"–Dem Congressional candidate Oliver Larkin went on Fox News, where the host tried to make the case that immigrants were all rapists and Democrats were in favor of that. When he asked Larkin, “How many rapes are you comfortable with?” Larkin shot back, “If we’re gonna talk about children being raped, then we need to hold this pedophile President accountable and all those that have been implicated by the Epstein files that the DOJ is still not leaking.”

"–During Larkin’s entire statement, the host was frantically trying to interrupt, talk over him, shut him up, and end the interview, but Larkin just kept going. When he finished, the host immediately said, “Thank you very much,” and cut to a commercial."
https://azsf.net/cwdaily/2026/08/06/contempt-charges-for-dr-fauci-and-golden-horses-for-trump-plus-a-new-wig/

https://youtu.be/dc7B1NqPtZk?is=oHe_GsvxzW42cVks

Jeffrey Epstein among 47 alleged abusers identified in Interlochen investigation

#epsteinClass

"After 3 years, adults who received a daily multivitamin had significantly better functional health scores than participants who took a placebo. Researchers say the results indicate that multivitamins may help older adults preserve their ability to function from day to day, potentially through benefits involving cognitive health, circulation, and physical endurance."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/07/260729010716.htm

"Perhaps most interesting, though, is a letter that New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez sent to Blanche last month, reported by MS-Now here, demanding that DOJ finally turn over files relevant to his investigation of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes in the state. It laid out a timeline showing how DOJ has given him the runaround, promising cooperation but ultimately giving him none.

I. February 13, 2026 — Written correspondence to then-Deputy Attorney General Blanche requesting access to a specific EFTA document and all related Zorro Ranch investigative materials.

II. March 13, 2026 — Formal letter to Attorney General Bondi identifying five illustrative redacted EFTA documents and requesting access to complete, unredacted versions of all pertinent records.

III. April 1, 2026 — Telephone conference with Associate Deputy Attorney General Diego Pestana, in which the USDOJ affirmed its commitment to cooperation and directed the NMDOJ to submit a formal Touhy letter through standard channels.

[…]

That was the day before Trump fired Pam Bondi on April 2.

And since then, DOJ has provided no formal response to Torrez’ Touhy letter, the means by which prosecutors make a formal request for materials from DOJ. Blanche’s office totally blew off requests for a meeting in early June."

#epsteinClass
https://emptywheel.net/2026/07/13/trump-fired-pam-bondi-the-day-after-doj-agreed-to-share-epstein-files-with-new-mexico/

talked to a friend in Texas and it turns out that McDonald's menu items are twice as expensive in Oregon.

"Nobody — nobody — walks away from the village where their grandmother is buried because they heard Iowa has good WiFi. It takes an extreme circumstance.

For millions of rural Mexicans, that extreme circumstance had a name, and the name was NAFTA.

When the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect in 1994, it forced small Mexican corn farmers — many of them Indigenous, growing native maize on plots their families had worked for generations — into direct competition with Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, whose corn was mechanized, genetically modified, and massively subsidized by the US government. The agreement disciplined Mexico’s protections for small farmers while leaving American farm subsidies intact. As a condition of the deal, Mexico gutted the ejido system, the revolutionary-era constitutional guarantee of communal village land — the single greatest achievement of the Mexican Revolution, traded away at the negotiating table.

The results were exactly what you’d predict. Subsidized American corn flooded the Mexican market. The price paid to Mexican corn farmers collapsed by 66 percent. Roughly two million Mexicans in farming and farm-dependent work lost their livelihoods. And in a detail that should be taught in every economics classroom as a monument to what “free trade” actually means, the consumer price of tortillas — the staple food of the Mexican poor — rose 279 percent over the same decade. Farmers got paid less; families paid more; the difference went where it always goes.

And the displaced went north. Annual migration from Mexico, stable in the years before NAFTA at around 370,000, doubled to 770,000 by 2000. Mexico’s own president at the time, Carlos Salinas — a man who governed as Washington’s willing partner, one in a long line of Mexican administrations happy to serve US capital over their own campesinos — framed the American choice with breathtaking cynicism: accept Mexican tomatoes, or accept the Mexican migrants who would otherwise pick them inside the United States."
https://alisav.substack.com/p/if-its-so-great-there-why-are-they

"The big news today is that ICE’s story about the killing of Salgado Araujo is completely falling apart:

–Video taken by bystanders shows ICE rammed Araujo’s vehicle, not that he rammed ICE’s vehicle. It shows ICE chased Araujo’s van and cut him off. Images of the van show no damage. The witnesses say that Araujo was shot through the car window.

–The DHS insists that Araujo tried to ram their vehicle and run over a police officer, but they have produced no photos, videos, or other evidence of those claims. They say that accusations that they are pressuring the other men in the van, who were witnesses to the shooting, to self-deport, are “categorically false.”

–Before Araujo was taken to the hospital, ICE officials stripped him of his wallet and all his ID, which made it impossible for the hospital to identify him and for his family to claim the body since he had been admitted as John Doe.

–Juan Proano: “This is Soviet gestapo tactics when you want to hide a crime or a victim.”

–None of the ICE officials was wearing a body cam, even though they just got $29.9 billion dollars in new money supposedly to buy stuff like that. They blamed the lack of body cams on the government shutdown, which they said delayed them distributing the body cams.

–Daily Kos: “ICE is now simply hunting in smaller groups and carrying out their operations in ways that draw less public and media attention.”

–rugbymom: “’He/she rammed me with their vehicle’ has quickly become the ICE equivalent of ‘the suspect brandished a weapon’ in civilian police reports–the automatic boilerplate after-the-fact justification for why the officer shot someone. And just like the ‘brandishing’ claim, wherever there’s video–bodycam or bystander–it’s been shown to be flat-out false if not backwards. The frequent availability of video evidence has done more to destroy the credibility of police as a class than any army of skilled defense attorneys could possibly have done. When you read it now, the initial reaction is intense skepticism. As it should be.”

–Araujo’s son said his father sought to live the American dream and to help others to do so, and that Araujo was “a better American than the people leading our country.”"
https://azsf.net/cwdaily/2026/07/11/ices-story-and-mitch-mcconnells-cover-up-both-fall-apart/

RE: https://flipboard.com/@wired/artificial-intelligence-fp5efm1rz/-/a-hTCVz0osTmSa2wF3WPeGdQ%3Aa%3A3199480-%2F0

"Tan allegedly helped coach recruits on how to evade Apple’s data security protocols and directed them to bring confidential Apple parts to job interviews at OpenAI.

“OpenAI’s nascent hardware business now rests on the shakiest of foundations, rotten to its core by its illegal reliance on misappropriated trade secrets,” Apple says in the lawsuit, which was filed in US district court in San Jose. The company describes OpenAI as resorting “to taking unlawful shortcuts” while under “mounting pressure to deliver its first commercial hardware product.”"

if my cats were alive, they'd be freaking out right now. it sounds like D-Day out there.

"–Larry the Cat, who lives at Number 10 Downing Street: “If rumors are to be believed, I’ll be living with a seventh different Prime Minister shortly. If it carries on like this I’m going to stop making the effort to learn their names.”"
https://azsf.net/cwdaily/2026/06/22/lando-calrissian-this-deal-is-getting-worse-all-the-time/

"–After Hannity did an interview with Todd Blanche, Fox posted the following disclaimer: “John Brennan, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Letitia James, Alvin Bragg, Matthew Colangelo, Arthur Engorn, and James Clapper have not been charged with any crimes in connection with any conspiracies, charges against James Comey related to alleged false statements and obstruction have been dismissed. There have been no findings that Rod Rosenstein, Tim Walz, Gavin Newsom, , or Jacob Frey engaged in professional misconduct.”

"–You realize that every single one of those statements represents a lie that Todd Blanche, the

"Acting Attorney General of the United States. said on television. THE ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL. OUR CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER.

"–You realize also that they only put those disclaimers up there to avoid being sued by all of those people, just like they were sued by Dominion Voting Machines Company. (And lost.)"
https://azsf.net/cwdaily/2026/06/21/destroying-the-city-public-space-by-public-space/

"The big story today should probably be the fact that the Iran peace deal is off and the Strait of Hormuz is closed again, but it’s not. The BIG story is Trump’s clearly deteriorating mind, on display in a number of ways this weekend:

"In Reflecting Pool news:

"Trump has put the National Guard to work on the Reflecting Pool. They are now draining the pool into the Potomac and putting in new water and new chemicals to counteract the problems from the other chemicals.

"There is speculation that the killing of the first algae with the hydrogen peroxide made way for a more aggressive algae.

"There is also speculation that because Trump was in such a hurry to have the pool ready for July 4th, that they didn’t let the pool cure long enough and/or that the original company prepared the pool bottom poorly before putting on the liner and the paint.

[…]

"Trump lied flat out about the condition of the pool: “The algae is 75% gone and the condition will soon be completely remedied and the area that was vandalized, fortunately, is just a small area of damage and will be fixed early next week.”

"He spent all day Friday posting AI videos of himself at the pool, insisting it is “perfectly blue” and “crystal clear” with “no algae anywhere.”

"Meidas Touch: “We are being told repeatedly to reject what we can see with our own eyes.”

"Jeff Timmer: “Stop for a minute and think about how astronomically stupid this entire saga of the Trump Reflecting Cesspool has been. Seriously, it’s as if we’re all trapped in his demented neurosyphilis rotted brain hallucination and/or one of Dante’s circles of hell.”

"People are showing up at the Reflecting Pool carrying banners and wearing T-shirts that say Team Algae.

"Bars are serving a new drink called “The Reflecting Pool.” It’s made from rum, mezcal, lime, honey, and matcha and is a thick, disgusting brownish-green.

"Bill Kristol: “Trump desperately wants things named after him. Perhaps the color-naming authority could name the color of the Reflecting Pool algae Trump green.”

"Seth Meyers: “This looks like the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool brought to you by Mountain Dew…Yikes, I thought Trump had dementia, but now I think it might be malaria.”

"RA Media: “Nature just fact-checked him and nature won.”"
https://azsf.net/cwdaily/2026/06/20/silverware-the-letter-b-and-the-reflecting-cesspool-trumps-dementia-on-display/

"–Italy’s Undersecretary and Senator Fazzolari: “It is unclear whether out of intent or ineptitude Trump is wrecking the historic relations between the US and Europe. With his inappropriate outbursts, he managed no easy feat–to make the US unpopular across the entire continent.”

–The entire country is up in arms. Italy’s newspaper LIBERO had the following headline: “TRUMP E UN COGLIONE.” (Translation: Trump is an asshole.)

–Charlene Watson: “WTF, why? Why is he doing this? There is nothing to be gained here except losing yet another ally. What is the point of this–HIS numbers are in the toilet, not hers.”

–Eenginer: “Revenge. This was just payback for her and Italy not jumping like the trained monkeys he has at home! The petty little man-boy couldn’t let that go unpunished.”"
https://azsf.net/cwdaily/2026/06/20/silverware-the-letter-b-and-the-reflecting-cesspool-trumps-dementia-on-display/

"–Trump: “Many people don’t know, or assume, that DUMB ends in “B.”

–Spiro’s Ghost: “The completely and utterly demented, mentally ill President of the United States just posted this truly brainless imbecilic nonsense. Elected GOP are shameful to not remove this dangerous deranged fool from office immediately. There is something truly wrong with him.”

–This has become one of his stories that he returns to repeatedly, like the windmills killing birds (and whales) story and the having to flush the toilet twenty times story. He’s repeated it at least half a dozen times in the past two weeks, every time as astonished by the fact that “dumb” is spelled with a “b” as he was the first time.)

–TNT: “He DEFINITELY did not know that dumb ends with a b until sometime in the past six months.”"
https://azsf.net/cwdaily/2026/06/20/silverware-the-letter-b-and-the-reflecting-cesspool-trumps-dementia-on-display/