Fed Chair Jerome Powell Tries to Argue with Trump when Confronted on Cost of Fed Renovation
https://rumble.com/embed/v6ug1mq/?pub=4
Ghislaine Maxwell Reportedly Collaborating With DOJ, Spoke 5 Hours With Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche – Will Meet Again Tomorrow
“The meeting in downtown Tallahassee, not far from the low-security federal prison where Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking, comes as the Trump administration is trying to mitigate the political fallout over its handling of the case.
Attorney David Oscar Markus declined to tell reporters afterward what Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche asked Maxwell or how she answered. ‘He took a full day and asked a lot of questions,” Markus said. ‘She answered all the questions truthfully, honestly and to the best of her ability’.”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1948501976087462120
Iranian Helicopter Confronts US Destroyer Approaching Territorial Waters
https://twitter.com/i/status/1948033360141430824
Biden Chief of Staff Ron Klain “Cooperative” in Congressional Testimony on Biden’s Health Decline… He’s Talking A Lot
https://twitter.com/i/status/1948465850350293168
AI Chatbots Rely On Sources With Clear Biases
AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Grok can be a big help in writing essays, conducting research, and exploring complex issues. But these tools bring risks, especially when they filter facts through a political lens. And the Trump administration is now stepping into the debate. “We believe AI systems should operate free of ideological bias and avoid pushing socially engineered agendas,” said David Sacks, the administration’s AI and crypto czar, in a statement today. “We’ve introduced several proposals to ensure AI stays truth-seeking and trustworthy.”
Over the weekend, I saw this bias unfold in real time.
On Friday, a user on Elon Musk’s platform X asked Grok whether more guns make Americans safer. Grok responded flatly: “No, evidence shows more guns correlate with higher firearm homicides and violent crime rates.” The chatbot dismissed self-defense and deterrence, referring to my research –specifically my “more guns, less crime” theory – as something cited by “right-wing advocates.” Grok supported its claims by referencing Scientific American magazine and a RAND Corporation review, saying these sources show guns don’t reduce crime and instead increase violence.
Those answers are misleading and wrong.
The Scientific American article had extensive biases. Grok ignored my published rebuttal in Scientific American. In it, I noted that over two-thirds of peer-reviewed studies show that concealed carry laws do reduce crime. Melinda Wenner Moyer, a journalist affiliated with Michael Bloomberg’s The Trace, a well-known gun control advocacy outlet, wrote the article. I had provided Moyer with those studies while she prepared her piece, but she ignored them. She failed to acknowledge any of my post-1998 work and misrepresented the findings of the National Research Council’s major report on the topic.
Grok gave tremendous weight to RAND’s literature survey, claiming that RAND had surveyed 100+ studies. Eventually, Grok conceded that the number of papers studying right-to-carry laws was actually 25, showing a range of mixed results. I pointed out that the California-based think tank was highly selective in the sources it included, ignoring dozens more papers showing that these laws lowered violent crime rates and surveys of academics who have published peer-reviewed empirical research.
Even then, Grok largely ignored my responses and focused on two papers claiming that right-to-carry laws increased violent crime. The first failed to control for any variables – such as changes in policing, poverty, or economic conditions – that affect crime trends after adopting right-to-carry laws. When I pointed that out, Grok mentioned another study that demonstrated a statistical technique that could account for such factors, but that study didn’t look at right-to-carry laws. Only after a prolonged exchange did Grok acknowledge the error.
https://realclearwire.com/articles/2025/07/23/ai_chatbots_rely_on_sources_with_clear_biases_153082.html
Nothing to see here: Brave browser blocks privacy-busting Microsoft Recall
No screenshots for you!
In an effort to protect user privacy, Brave browser 1.81 will prevent Microsoft Recall from screenshotting it by default.
Microsoft introduced Recall, you may recall, in May 2024 as a way to record screen activity for people using Copilot+ PCs, in order to pass that information to the resident AI model. The feature repeatedly captures images of the user's screen and stories the snapshots, so the data can be resurfaced on-demand via local image recognition software and natural language queries.
Forgot the name of the website you visited which had a pic of blue shoes on it? Recall will find it for you.
After its debut, critics savaged the feature as a privacy nightmare. Microsoft ended up delaying the technology and making some adjustments to make it more acceptable.
In April 2025, Microsoft announced the Recall would be available to those on the company's Windows Insider channel via a preview version of Windows 11 Build 26100.3902 for Copilot+ PCs. Originally offered on an opt-out basis, Recall is now opt-in and has new local data protections it didn't have in its first iteration.
Brave Software, which offers a Chromium-based browser tricked out with extra privacy controls, argues that Recall still presents a risk, even if transitioning it from opt-out to opt-in has mitigated concerns.
"Recall is antithetical to Brave's goals as a privacy-first browser, and as such we should disable Recall's ability to capture what the user does on Brave," explained Shivan Kaul Sahib, VP of privacy and security at Brave Software, in the initial GitHub Issue post outlining the browser code change.
In a blog post on Tuesday, Sahib argued that disabling Recall by default in all Brave tabs is necessary to protect the user's browsing history.
"We think it’s vital that your browsing activity on Brave does not accidentally end up in a persistent database, which is especially ripe for abuse in highly-privacy-sensitive cases such as intimate partner violence," he wrote.
If you want Recall to screenshot Brave, the browser's settings menu allows you to override the block.
According to Sahib, Brave's implementation was inspired by secure messaging app Signal, which instituted a Recall block in May. Signal Desktop for Windows 11 includes a default Screen Security setting that tells the operating system that messages are protected with digital rights management (DRM), thereby blocking any and all screenshots from being taken - including the automated screenshots Recall uses.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/23/brave_browse_block_microsoft_recall/
Blair’s secret scheme to make immigration more popular
Labour prime minister was warned that research into public’s views ‘could be explosive in the wrong hands’, files reveal
Sir Tony Blair considered a secret plan to make immigration more popular when he was prime minister – just weeks before opening Britain’s borders to thousands of Eastern Europeans, newly released files reveal.
Labour ministers came up with the “marketing” strategy to overcome what they described as “disproportionate” concerns about the issue and to communicate the “big picture” to the public instead.
The plan, which aimed to steer public opinion towards a “more sensible conversation on immigration”, included details of Home Office-commissioned research which found that many Britons believed borders were “open and overrun” .
In a handwritten note, Sir Tony described research he had been reading on immigration as “pretty grim but utterly believable”.
The then prime minister was sent the 15-page strategy document in March 2004 by Lord Blunkett, the then home secretary, who shared it in “strict confidence” and warned: “You will see that this research, and the references to it in the paper, could be explosive in the wrong hands.”
The paper, titled “Having a sensible conversation about migration”, claimed that the then government had made “real progress” in reducing the impact of stories about asylum seekers, so that they were “no longer automatic front-page tabloid material every time”.
However, it then detailed public research which “confirms that immigration is an issue of real concern to people” and noted there were “no obvious signs of a breakthrough as a result of what has been achieved so far and little recognition or credit for what the government has done on asylum”.
It is not clear if the scheme was ever enacted.
However, the paper came weeks before Sir Tony opened Britain’s borders to thousands of Eastern European migrants. The Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia joined the EU in 2004.
The decision by the then government to allow immediate unrestricted access to migrants from those countries was widely seen as having contributed to a major increase in immigration in the years that followed, with net EU migration surging to more than 200,000 a year.
‘Public is looking for scapegoats’
Summing up the views of the public, the strategy document said: “People feel they do not have permission to freely express their fears”.
It added: “In a world of rapid change and uncertainty, people are fearful and look for explanations and scapegoats,” while claiming that “a disproportionate amount of fear and uncertainty” was “channelled towards” migration.
Discussing the communications challenges in getting across a pro-migration message, the paper included a textbook-style graphic of a human eye looking towards a circle with the words “bogus”, “scroungers” and “out of control”, which blocked out another larger circle labelled the “big picture”.
More
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/22/blair-considered-secret-scheme-immigration-more-popular-uk/
Jimmy Dore suggests Ghislane will clear Trump in exchange for a pardon
>Mike Rogers
Former Vice Chairman of Smyth County School Board Sentenced to 30 Years
ABINGDON, Va. – The former Vice Chairman of the Smyth County School Board was sentenced today to 30 years in prison for using at least six minor, male victims to produce child pornography.
Todd Stewart Williams, 54, of Chilhowie, Virginia, pled guilty in April 2025 to four counts of persuading, inducing, enticing, and coercing and attempting to persuade, induce, entice, and coerce one or more minors to engage in any sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing any visual depiction of such conduct, in interstate commerce. In addition to his prison term, the Court sentenced Williams to10 years of supervised release and ordered him to pay more than $20,000 in assessments.
“Children are spending more time online than ever before, which makes them susceptible to individuals looking to do them harm,” United States Attorney C. Todd Gilbert said today. “It is our job in the law enforcement community to protect our kids and prosecute those who prey upon the innocent. Today’s sentence sends a clear message to anyone who exploits a child: you will be fully held accountable.”
https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdva/pr/former-vice-chairman-smyth-county-school-board-sentenced-30-years
Former mayor sentenced to nearly four years for cocaine conspiracy that involved use of school building
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdtx/pr/former-mayor-sentenced-nearly-four-years-cocaine-conspiracy-involved-use-school