Scott Boehmer

Author: Scott Boehmer

  • How the State Department Let Israel Get Away With Horrors in Gaza

    Authorities in and outside government said the acquiescence to Israel as it prosecuted a brutal war will likely be regarded as one of the most consequential foreign policy decisions of the Biden presidency. They say it undermines America’s ability to influence events in the Middle East while “destroying the entire edifice of international law that was put into place after WWII,” as Omer Bartov, a renowned Israeli-American scholar of genocide, put it. Jeffrey Feltman, the former assistant secretary of the State Department’s Middle East bureau, told me he fears much of the Muslim world now sees the U.S. as “ineffective at best or complicit at worst in the large-scale civilian destruction and death.”

    Brett Murphy

    A Year of Empty Threats and a “Smokescreen” Policy: How the State Department Let Israel Get Away With Horrors in Gaza (ProPublica)

  • OpenAI Furious DeepSeek Might Have Stolen All the Data OpenAI Stole From Us

    It is, as many have already pointed out, incredibly ironic that OpenAI, a company that has been obtaining large amounts of data from all of humankind largely in an “unauthorized manner,” and, in some cases, in violation of the terms of service of those from whom they have been taking from, is now complaining about the very practices by which it has built its company.

    Jason Koebler

    OpenAI Furious DeepSeek Might Have Stolen All the Data OpenAI Stole From Us (404 Media)

  • Pardoning 1500 Insurrectionists Is An Insult To America

    It was, without hyperbole, an insurrection against this country. An attempted coup, a bona fide attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. And it was the most violent attack on the Capitol since 1814. And yet, now re-elected President Trump has made a mockery of the attack on our country and our democracy by pardoning 1500 traitors involved and commuting the sentence of 14 others, including violent felons who attacked law enforcement officers on their way to invading the Capitol. President Trump is not a member of a party of law and order.

    Devin Stone, LegalEagle

    Pardoning 1500 Insurrectionists Is An Insult To America (LegalEagle)

  • A Radical Test of the Presidency’s Power

    Much about the initial memo from Matthew Vaeth, the acting director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, which has since been rescinded, was unclear — including the scope or duration of the “temporary” pause on “all federal financial assistance programs and supporting activities.” Most importantly, the memo identified no source of constitutional or legislative authority for the president to pause any, let alone all, domestic grant programs.

    But it is animated, at least implicitly, by a striking claim: Not only can the president freeze all funding amid a review, but he must also then be permitted to permanently eliminate items from appropriations statutes at a whim. It’s a move that threatens not only a radical curtailment of Congress’ authority but imperils the separation of American civil society from the partisan tides of the White House.

    And it goes far beyond what previous presidents have done during contentious displays of executive authority.

    Aziz Huq

    All Presidents Test the Limits of Their Authority. Trump Is Doing Something Far More Radical. (Politico)

  • The South Bank of the Rubicon

    The thing about points of no return, the reason we worry over them so much, is it’s rare to know where they are until they are some ways behind you.

    Ian Danskin

    The Alt-Right Playbook: The South Bank of the Rubicon (Innuendo Studios)

  • How Decentralized is Bluesky?

    The physical world equivalent for a fully decentralized fediverse then is that every user sends mail to every other user’s house, as needed, similar to how sending letters works in the physical world. This is decidedly not the case with a fully decentralized ATProto. The physical world equivalent would be that every user had their own house at which they stored a copy of every piece of mail delivered to every other user at their house.

    If this sounds infeasible to do in our metaphorical domestic environment, that’s because it is. A world of full self-hosting is not possible with Bluesky. In fact, it is worse than the storage requirements, because the message delivery requirements become quadratic at the scale of full decentralization: to send a message to one user is to send a message to all. Rather than writing one letter, a copy of that letter must be made and delivered to every person on earth.

    Christine Lemmer-Webber

    How decentralized is Bluesky really? (Dusty Cloud)

  • Have Mercy

    Let me make one final plea, Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you and, as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families, some who fear for their lives. The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They…may not be citizens or have the proper documentation. But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurudwaras and temples. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. And that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land. May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people. Good of all people in this nation and the world. Amen.

    Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde

    I didn’t think it was a good service.

    President Donald Trump

    Trump demands apology after bishop asked him to ‘have mercy’ on LGBTQ+ people and migrants (PBS)

  • The New Colossus

    Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
    With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
    Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
    A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
    Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
    Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
    Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
    The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

    “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
    With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
    Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
    The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
    Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
    I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

    “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus

    The New Colossus (Wikipedia)

  • The Search for Manatees

    During the cold months of winter, manatees in Florida swim up rivers towards warm springs in order to stay warm. Stefanie has wanted to take a trip to see them at the springs for a few years now, and last weekend, we made that trip.

    We visited three state parks: De Leon Springs, Blue Springs, and Wekiwa Springs. We saw manatees at the first two while at the third we saw fish and soaked our feet in the warm water. It was a great trip made possible by public parks and environmental protections.

  • Meta’s Policy Changes Pave the Way for Mass Deportations

    Multiple speech and content moderation experts 404 Media spoke to drew some parallels between these recent changes and when Facebook contributed to a genocide in Myanmar in 2017, in which Facebook was used to spread anti-Rohingya hate and the country’s military ultimately led a campaign of murder, torture, and rape against the Muslim minority population. Although there are some key differences, Meta’s changes in the U.S. will also likely lead to the spread of more hate speech across Meta’s sites, with the real world consequences that can bring.

    Joseph Cox

    Meta Is Laying the Narrative Groundwork for Trump’s Mass Deportations (404 Media)