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Quakertown PA police held 5 children, for 4 days, and 2 of them even longer (maybe still in custody), because old white men attacked them on the street. In blue Bucks County, where they just voted out a sheriff over ICE, in blue PA, a state with a Dem Governor, the police can act with impunity. Since the old white men just happened to be carrying badges and guns, so of course, they are the real victims here.

Even if the kids did throw snowballs, break something, or block traffic, (and to be clear until the police produce evidence of those acts, give zero credibility to these claims) the idea that you should tackle children and put them in chokeholds and then hold them for multiple days in response is just bullshit.

We must ensure that unlike the Epstein fallout in England linked below, these cops are held accountable for what they did, an unprovoked violent assault of girls (mostly or entirely of color), not because they find that they filled out a reimbursement form wrong or got a friend out of a ticket.

I’m not sure why this is getting under my skin so much. Maybe it’s because I have a daughter this age. Maybe it’s because I’ve supported High School walkouts in the recent past. Maybe it’s because this perfectly encapsulates our deadly and intentionally flawed system of policing where the professionals we invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in are free to act however they want, and the people they supposedly serve and protect have to make split second decisions and act just the right way to avoid arrest, brutality, or death.

White men with power, be it economic, legal, cultural, or all of the above are the problem. As are the white woman who facilitate their abuses. That is the throughline of MAGA, ICE, Epstein, the genocide in Gaza, AI, all of it. That is what we must tear down completely before we can move forward.

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Reading

3 students released from custody after confrontation with police in Quakertown by Johnny Archer, Brendan Brightman, Miguel Martinez-Valle

Three of the five students who were taken into custody after a confrontation with Quakertown police during an anti-ICE protest on Friday, Feb. 20, were released on Tuesday, Feb. 24.

The two other students remain in custody, according to community organizers who are helping the families involved.

Residents call for suspension of Quakertown police chief – NBC10 Philadelphia

Three of the five students who were taken into custody after an altercation with Quakertown police during an anti-ICE protest on Friday were released.

Police Chief Scott McElree Under Fire at Quakertown Council Meeting Following ICE Protest by Aidan Tyksinski

Widely circulated videos of Quakertown Police Chief and Borough Manager Scott McElree show him restraining a student in a chokehold. According to police, some students began throwing snowballs and damaging property. They also accused students of blocking traffic. Don’t print copaganda, there’s video of the cops attacking people, don’t let the cops tell a story unless they provide evidence too.

Witnesses disputed this story, with one telling ABC News “The situation was completely escalated by the police, and it was extremely jarring to watch.” In total, five students were arrested and are still being held in custody.

Police Chief Scott McElree Under Fire at Quakertown Council Meeting Following ICE Protest - Bucks County Beacon

“We are calling for the immediate suspension of the chief of police.” Community outrage was palpable Monday night as Quakertown citizens packed a council meeting to protest the treatment of high school students by local law enforcement.

Tensions flare at Quakertown school meeting after anti-ICE protest clash by David Chang, Emily Rose Grassi, Kelsey Kushner

We attempted to silence the students. This was in now way an attempt to silence the students. Orwell is throwing up his hands and screaming “you can’t make it that obvious dude, where’s the subtlety?”

"We issued a notice before the start of school on Friday that due to safety concerns, students should not continue with the protest. This was in no way an attempt to silence students," David O'Donnell, of the Quakertown Community School Board, said.

Tensions flare at Quakertown school meeting after ICE protest – NBC10 Philadelphia

It was a heated Quakertown school board meeting Thursday as parents demanded answers after a recent clash between police and student protesters.

A guy being arrested by Matt Pearce

Yet in recent weeks, here was Andrew reappearing, fully disclosed, in the Epstein files pried open by a bipartisan intervention of the U.S. Congress, seen forwarding apparently confidential economic reports to Epstein in Andrew’s official capacity as a British trade envoy. Like Al Capone going down for tax evasion, “It was that, not allegations of sexual misconduct linked to his friendship with Epstein, that appear to be behind Andrew’s arrest this week on suspicion of misconduct in public office,” the Wall Street Journal  reported, noting that Andrew had not commented on the allegations.

A guy being arrested - Matt Pearce

Prince Andrew after Jeffrey Epstein.

Surge Signs Mount as Federal Contracts Reveal Major Expansion of ICE Detentions in Baltimore Region by Michael Wriston, Em Knepp

A second teacher, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, described similar anxiety among her high school students. Where there should be talk of graduation, she said, students are instead preoccupied with more urgent questions: whether their parents will be home when they arrive after school, or whether they themselves could be stopped on the street. At least one of her students has not returned to school since her parents were taken by ICE.

Schools have begun responding where they can. Informational packets are going home with students, including know-your-rights cards intended to ensure families understand their legal protections. Amid the fear, the teacher said, she has also witnessed something else.

“In the middle of all this fear and heartbreak, I’ve watched students and staff wrap themselves around one another in support,” she said. “I’ve seen kindness, courage, and compassion. And that, more than anything, is what gives me hope.”

Surge Signs Mount as Federal Contracts Reveal Major Expansion of ICE Detentions in Baltimore Region

Procurement records, staged vehicles, and firsthand accounts from inside the agency's field office suggest a surge in detention operations is imminent.

AI

The problem with the idea that AI will help us do good things too, is that good things, historically, do not throw off the exponential returns that venture capitalists and private equity requires extracting from every new idea. There’s no universe where a random humanities researcher can afford the actual cost of running the suicide coach. There’s no way that researcher can manage to run the compute locally when their electric bill (that was used to subsidize the CSAM robot prior to it crashing and burning) approaches the monthly GDP of small Global South countries.

The idea that folks will vibe code, well, everything, is completely incompatible with the actual cost of operating this technology. You can’t rely on something that costs you $500/month, much less $1000. You can’t do “fun stuff” or “take your idea to reality” when the tool to do so costs more than your food for the month. The difference from Uber is they held prices down while destroying public transportation and traditional taxi companies, mostly by breaking the law. When they jacked prices up, users had no alternative but to pay the higher prices. But with AI, everyone is an alternative. Need someone to write something for you, pay a writer. Need someone to write some code, pay a coder. Why feed Sam Altman or Elon Musk your hard earned cash when the woman who lives a floor below you, or your nephew can do that thing for you too, and for the same or less money?

Lots of good could have come from AI, if it was in the hands of universities, governments, or other entities that could have been forced to act in furtherance of the public good. In the hands of a corporation, even a fake non-profit like OpenAI, capitalism’s death cult first principle kicks in and ensures we get all of the pain, with none of the benefit. Or maybe nothing can be forced to act that way and AI was always going to destroy us as soon as the idiots driving the grift decided to build the torment nexus.

Can We Please Stop it with the AI Woo-Woo? by John Warner

This principle was nicely illustrated by an email exchange I had this week with someone who had read More Than Words (or said they had) and was not impressed.

This person wanted to convince me that I really was missing the boat by not using large language models for my writing. Their main argument was “They (LLMs) know more than you ever could.”

I replied that this was not true because LLMs do not have access to the material that goes into my writing, my mind, my experiences, my thoughts, my feelings. It’s not clear to me how someone who had claimed to have read my book had missed these important distinctions, but they were not convinced. This person wanted me to appreciate that I could write “hundreds” of books if I tapped into the power of generative AI. I replied, asking who was going to read these hundreds of books. I haven’t heard back yet.

Can We Please Stop it with the AI Woo-Woo? - by John Warner

If we're going to deal with this technology we have to cut through the fake mystery.

Actually, the left is winning the AI debate by Brian Merchant

The left could even, as Benanav and Weatherby intimate, make a significantly stronger case that AI should be entirely publicly held and administered and—why not?—used to replace the executive class altogether. Position this on the terms AI firms and their founders themselves have laid out. If AI is truly the revolutionary force they claim, and it stands to remake the world from the ground up, if it promises to eliminate skill difference and advantage, then forget pittances like a basic income. Forget leaving Sam Altman in charge. Why should any reasonable person settle for anything less than full equality, and full co-ownership of this AI-run state? Control over our AI should be placed entirely in public hands—it was built to “benefit all of humanity”, after all—and granted to the humans it stands to impact. Why not automate Altman and the Anthropic c-suite and Elon Musk, and redistribute any gains to the people, however meager?

https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/actually-the-left-is-winning-the

About that Matt Shumer post that has nearly 50 million views by Gary Marcus

Quoting another friend, “Why did [Shumer] need these guys to review the drafts, why didn’t he have the AI do it? Heck, why didn’t he have the AI write his little missive to begin with?” Hmm…

The bottom line is this: LLMs are certainly coding more, but it’s not clear that the code they are creating is secure or trustworthy. Shumer’s presentation is completely one-sided, omitting lots of concerns that have been widely expressed here and elsewhere.

A lot of people may have taken his post seriously, but they shouldn’t have.

About that Matt Shumer post that has nearly 50 million views

Something big is allegedly happening