Author: sauer@technologists.com

curated news excerpts & citations

Brian Allen: Federal Judges Blow the Whistle on DOJ Deception: 35+ Cases of Lies and “Sham” Evidence

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The cleanest way to understand this is through the Goodman-led tracking work (published via Just Security) that compiles cases where judges themselves explicitly questioned the government’s truthfulness, accuracy, or good faith.

This matters because it is not punditry. It is not Twitter. It is not “some guy says.”

It is judges putting it in orders and on transcripts.

And the allegations are not all one flavor. They cluster into repeatable misconduct categories:

• False sworn declarations used to win emergency rulings
• Evidence problems judges call “sham,” “misleading,” or “unsupported”
• Noncompliance with court orders followed by legal gymnastics to justify it
• Agency narratives that fall apart under basic cross-checking

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Techno-Science: ⚠️ A robot, missing for 9 months, resurfaces with an alarming message

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The discovery is more alarming for the Denman Glacier. The profiler clearly identified the presence of a layer of warmer water circulating beneath its floating part. This water is already causing melting at the base. Scientists believe the configuration is precarious: a slight increase in the thickness of this warm water layer could significantly accelerate the disintegration process, committing the glacier to a potentially irreversible retreat.

The stakes are high. The Denman Glacier alone contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by about 5 feet (1.5 meters) if it were to melt completely. Combined with the Totten Glacier, whose potential is estimated at 11.5 feet (3.5 meters), these two giants of East Antarctica represent a major long-term threat. Their confirmed vulnerability to warm ocean water requires integrating these new parameters into sea level rise forecast models.
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Joyce Vance: Inherent Contempt

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Whether Bondi would respond is uncertain, perhaps even unlikely, but inherent contempt would be a modest first step toward getting the administration to comply with the law and release the files. If it failed, it would be easier to justify a more serious step like impeaching Bondi, particularly if the public is determined to see the files released. At the end of the day, Bondi has a law license to worry about. The cautionary tale of state bars that disbarred lawyers like Rudy Giuliani who strayed too far from their ethical obligations as lawyers in service of Trump during his first term should weigh heavily on anyone who hopes to have a future, post-Trump.
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Central News: From Classroom to Community: Ugandan Youth Create Portable Solar Shelters for the Homeless

A group of innovative students in Uganda has turned a simple idea into a life-changing solution for people without stable homes, designing solar-powered tents that fold neatly into backpacks. This clever invention, born from classroom creativity, offers safe, portable shelter to the homeless, displaced persons, and communities hit by disasters, blending technology with compassion to tackle real-world problems. For families in Uganda and across Africa facing hardship, these tents mean more than just a place to sleep – they bring light, power, and hope in dark times. As the world looks for sustainable ways to help the vulnerable, this youth-led project shines as an example of African ingenuity, showing how young minds can drive change with limited resources. In a continent where millions lack proper housing due to conflicts, poverty, or natural disasters, inventions like this could transform lives, one backpack at a time. With solar panels providing renewable energy for basics like lighting and charging phones, the tents address not just shelter but also safety and connectivity. As 2025 ends, this story inspires hope for 2026, reminding us that solutions to big challenges often start small, in the hands of determined students.
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Dean Obeidallah: We must support the musician Trump is targeting for refusing to play the “Trump Kennedy Center”

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As a lawyer myself, I can only assume Grennell didn’t speak to any lawyers before releasing this letter because dubbing Redd’s boycott “political” speech just made it just about impossible for them to win given the US Supreme Court decision cited above. And Grennell just undermined a breach of contract claim by saying in essence that no one was buying tickets to the show. That begs the question: What are the damages to the Kennedy Center if no one was buying tickets?!

But let’s put aside if the lawsuit will be successful or not. Trump’s lawsuits are not about winning or losing: They are about sending a message designed to intimidate others into submission and silence. Same goes for his Executive Orders targeting everything from Act Blue to universities.

This potential lawsuit is intended to scare other artists into not boycotting the Kennedy Center out of fear Trump will sue them—or use the power of the government to target them from IRS audits (like Richard Nixon did) to trumped up BS investigations.

Controlling the arts and artists is right from the far-right playbook. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin made control of the arts one of his priorities–utilizing the arts to further Stalin’s “cult of personality” as well as by creating an idealized version of the Soviet Union. And those artists who refused to submit to Stalin were dubbed an “enemy of the people” and then punished —including interrogation, torture, humiliating public trials, and execution. Trump now threatening to destroy this musician for defying him is right from the Stalin playbook.
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BBC: Attack on Kyiv shows ‘Russia doesn’t want peace’, Zelensky says

An intense Russian attack on Kyiv overnight shows Moscow “doesn’t want peace”, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday as he prepared for a fresh round of peace talks.

Zelensky made the comments en route to Florida, where he will meet US President Donald Trump on Sunday to discuss a new 20-point peace plan agreed by American and Ukrainian envoys.

The 10-hour missile and drone barrage directed at Ukraine’s capital killed two people and left 32 injured, local authorities said.

Damage to energy infrastructure left 40 percent of residential buildings in Kyiv and nearby districts without heating, according to Ukraine’s minister for development Oleksiy Kuleba.
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Steward Beckham: Christmas Strikes in Nigeria

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But the narrative that Christians are uniquely or singularly targeted in Nigeria, while politically effective, is at best a half-truth. NPR’s Emmanuel Akinwotu reports from Benue State, which is a region often dubbed Nigeria’s breadbasket, and revealed that the violence afflicting farming communities is deeply tied to resource conflict. Herders, many of whom are Fulani and Muslim, need grazing land for their cattle. Farmers, predominantly Christian, need land for their crops. Climate change, population growth, and land degradation have turned what were once localized disputes into large-scale violent clashes. Terrorist groups like Boko Haram and the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) have exploited this chaos, piggybacking on grievances to pursue broader agendas. But to reduce this to a simple Christian-versus-Muslim genocide ignores the structural realities and intercommunal complexities driving the conflict.

To understand the gravity of this U.S. strike, it helps to step back and consider the historical arc of Nigeria–U.S. relations.
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Mary Geddry: Now I Have a Statute. Ho Ho Ho.

Christmas Eve with Trump, the courts, and an army of people who actually know what they are doing
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On Christmas Eve, just before midnight, the president of the United States was on Truth Social threatening to revoke the broadcast licenses of major television networks because their coverage and late-night programming were “almost 100% negative” toward him. He singled out the networks by name, obsessed over ratings, complained about salaries, and escalated into personal attacks, declaring Stephen Colbert a “dead man walking” who should be “put to sleep,” language that is grotesque even when generously interpreted as metaphor.

His Christmas Eve message to the nation was not peace, unity, or goodwill. It was a public fantasy about using state power to punish broadcasters for being insufficiently deferential. If taken seriously, it would amount to a Soviet-style assault on press freedom. The most charitable interpretation is not that he intends to follow through, but that a deeply unwell man with nuclear-era authority spent Christmas Eve hate-scrolling cable television and rage-posting into the void because he cannot log off. That is the best spin available.

Because no dystopian holiday special is complete without tonal whiplash, this same man then spent part of Christmas Eve taking calls from children via NORAD’s Santa tracker. In theory, this is supposed to be harmless whimsy. In practice, it played like performance art about impulse control. Trump narrated the process out loud, drifted into campaign bragging, …
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Politico: Trump’s ‘Golden Age’ has arrived for the top 10 percent

… the robust numbers mask the extent to which the wealthy are driving growth. And while business leaders from Manhattan to South Florida are bullish on the outlook — “It’s the Roaring ’20s here in Palm Beach County,” said Douglas Evans, the president of the Palm Beach Chamber of Commerce — that view is not shared by most voters.

In survey after survey, a majority of Americans say they’re straining under the pressure of rising living expenses and a softening job market. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston says low-income consumers have “substantially” higher levels of credit card debt than they did before the pandemic.

Even as growth and asset prices soar, Trump’s approval ratings are sagging. For some of his allies, that’s baffling.
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James Eagle: Hallucination is now the real AI bottleneck

This matters because the usefulness of AI now hinges less on how clever models sound and more on whether they can be trusted. As AI moves from demos into healthcare, law and finance, a single wrong answer is no longer a curiosity. It is a liability.

This chart compares leading AI models across two dimensions accuracy and hallucination. Lower hallucination is better. What stands out is how wide the gap has become. Some of the most capable models also hallucinate more often, while others sacrifice a bit of raw performance to stay grounded. Claude models cluster toward lower hallucination, which helps explain their traction in regulated industries. Several open weight models sit at the opposite extreme, offering flexibility and cost advantages but with far higher error risk.

The deeper point is that scale and fluency are no longer enough. Bigger models trained on more data do not automatically become more reliable. In fact, as systems grow more confident and articulate, their mistakes can become harder to spot. That creates a trust problem, not a technology problem. Until hallucination rates fall meaningfully, AI adoption in high stakes settings will remain cautious and uneven.
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