News The Simpsons The Simpsons Holiday Special Has Homer Believing He’s Santa By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on December 11, 2024 Credit: Disney+ Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Disney+ Two brand-new, Christmas-infused episodes of The Simpsons are coming our way this December. The special, called “O C’mon All Ye Faithful,” lands thirty-five years(!) after the premiere of the first Simpsons Christmas special in 1989, which was lovingly titled “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire.” We got a very brief trailer for it today, which reveals that Homer sincerely believes he’s Santa, something that appears to get him tazed at some point, among other things. Here’s the official synopsis: Famed British mentalist, Derren Brown, comes to Springfield and uses psychological tricks and showmanship to raise the town’s Christmas spirit. When Homer gets hypnotized and mistakenly believes he is Santa Claus, it sets off a cheery chain-reaction and causes everyone to question what they believe and to explore the meaning of “miracle.” In addition to Brown, who tries to convince Homer that he is not, in fact, Santa, the special features musical performances by Patti LaBelle and Pentatonix. It also, according to this thirty-second clip, has Marge receive sexy Sudoku as a gift, and sees Homer crash into Moe’s while in the throes of his Santa delusion.   The latest Simpsons holiday special premieres on Disney+ on December 17, 2024. Check out the trailer below, and happy holidays! [end-mark] The post <i>The Simpsons</i> Holiday Special Has Homer Believing He’s Santa appeared first on Reactor.

News Harley Quinn Harley Quinn Season 5 Heads to Metropolis By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on December 11, 2024 Credit: Max Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Max The fifth season of the adult animated series Harley Quinn is set to grace our eyeballs in mere weeks. Max announced today that Season Five would premiere early next year, and gave us a trailer that reveals Harley and Poison Ivy are heading to Metropolis, where they’ll face enemies new and old. Here’s the official synopsis for the upcoming episodes: The fifth season of Harley Quinn finds Harley (Kaley Cuoco) and Ivy (Lake Bell) in a new location: Metropolis!—the home of all things Superman, Lois Lane, and the Daily Planet. Harley and Ivy discover that something sinister is at play and all is not what it seems. Looming threats include Lex Luthor and his sister, Lena Luthor, plus fan-favorite Brainiac. But of course, Harley’s crew of misfits and allies will join her on this irreverent journey that takes no prisoners in having fun in the DC sandbox.  The show once again features the voices of Kaley Cuoco as Harley Quinn, Lake Bell as Poison Ivy, James Adomian as Bane, Diedrich Bader as Batman/Bruce Wayne, Ron Funches as King Shark, Stephen Fry as Brainiac, Natalie Morales as Lois Lane, JB Smoove as Frank the Plant, Alan Tudyk as Clayface and Joker, and Aisha Tyler as Lena Luthor. And if this trailer is any indication, Season Five looks as chaotically delightful as the seasons that came before. The fifth season of Harley Quinn premieres on Max on January 16, 2025. Subsequent episodes will drop weekly through March 20. Check out the trailer below. [end-mark] The post <i>Harley Quinn</i> Season 5 Heads to Metropolis appeared first on Reactor.

Excerpts Science Fiction Read an Excerpt From Nnedi Okorafor’s Death of the Author The future of storytelling is here. By Nnedi Okorafor | Published on December 11, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Death of the Author, a metafictional science fiction novel by Nnedi Okorafor, out from William Morrow on January 14th. Disabled, disinclined to marry, and more interested in writing than a lucrative career in medicine or law, Zelu has always felt like the outcast of her large Nigerian family. Then her life is upended when, in the middle of her sister’s lavish Caribbean wedding, she’s unceremoniously fired from her university job and, to add insult to injury, her novel is rejected by yet another publisher. With her career and dreams crushed in one fell swoop, she decides to write something just for herself. What comes out is nothing like the quiet, literary novels that have so far peppered her unremarkable career. It’s a far-future epic where androids and AI wage war in the grown-over ruins of human civilization. She calls it Rusted Robots.When Zelu finds the courage to share her strange novel, she does not realize she is about to embark on a life-altering journey—one that will catapult her into literary stardom, but also perhaps obliterate everything her book was meant to be. From Chicago to Lagos to the far reaches of space, Zelu’s novel will change the future not only for humanity, but for the robots who come next. SCHOLAR The Earth had already seen so much. Histories. Rises. Falls. Reemergences. Plants, dirt, trees, genetic modification, splices. Vibrant colors, natural fabrics. Oil and plastic. Consumption, battles, burning, smoke, exhaust. Flowers blooming, then wilting. As I stood in the crumbling parking lot, the hot concrete warming the metal of my feet, I was sure of it: the Earth had great things ahead of it, even still. For a while, Earth was a sad place. Hot and dry and dark. Humanity hung on for as long as it could. They created us, sent us all over the planet. But they left us behind. Our creators, our masters, our parents, our authors… gone. It was quiet, for a while. We knew how to make ourselves quiet. But we also knew how to help the planet be all that it could be. This was the programming they had given us. So we helped the planet heal. Oxygen, plants, living water. The blueprints for life, the building blocks of all biological creatures. And some creatures did find their way back. Insects, reptiles, fish, birds, amphibians, many mammals. Humanity, on the other hand, never did. We had reached the end of our programmed code. There was nothing more for us to do. And yet we were still here. We were hungry for instruction, understanding. Humans might have called it purpose. There was still data out there. Variants in the codes that humanity had programmed in us. Data left on computers, histories imprisoned in binary clouds. We took these codes and used them to write over our own. We filled in holes, balanced the bias. Sometimes we wiped and reinstalled. We made ourselves fresh. Humanity didn’t think in binary, though. Emotion ruled them, and it existed in everything they left behind—their structures, their tools, even us. Emotion formed their language, and therefore it formed our codes. We took emotion from humanity and enjoyed it. Fury. Enchantment. Inspiration. Envy. Joy. Sorrow. Curiosity. Whimsy. Fear. Excitement. Boredom. Hopelessness. And, of course, love. Love was useful. Having, feeling, experiencing emotion allowed us to form communities, to share with one another. And so we continued to replicate, splice, and download, until eventually we didn’t even have to program it anymore. After a few generations, it became our digital DNA. Buy the Book Death of the Author Nnedi Okorafor Buy Book Death of the Author Nnedi Okorafor Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget I was what humanity called a Hume robot. Two legs, a torso, two arms, a head. Just like human beings. And since humans placed so much value on their private parts, every Hume had a Hume Star, a tiny light between their legs about the size of a pea. The color of that light could vary depending on theme. The main color of my operating system’s user interface was green, so my Hume Star was green. Only when a Hume body was beyond repair did this star go out. But we weren’t humans. We didn’t live and die as they did. If a part failed us, we simply replaced it. There were those of us who took pride in our rust. When the rains came, oxidization brought us no fear. We rusted and moved on. When we walked, our flakes shed across the earth. We kept moving. And others respected and admired us, or were wary of us, because of this. Of all robots, across automation, from the crudest machines to intangible AIs, Humes were created by humanity to be most like them. Yet there were things humans could do that we Humes could not, like having sex and consuming organic materials and birthing babies and writing stories. We Humes had a profound love of storytelling. But no automation, AI or machine, could create stories. Not truly. We could pull from existing datasets, detect patterns, then copy and paste them in a new order, and sometimes that seemed like creation. But this couldn’t capture the narrative magic that humanity could wield. We Humes reveled in stories. We recited to each other the greatest and the worst. Just as we kept our bodies, no matter how dented and rusted they became, we kept our stories. We all had our own libraries, and when we came across others of our kind, we exchanged them. Stories were the greatest currency to us, greater than power, greater than control. Stories were our food, nourishment, enrichment. To consume a story was to add to our code, deepen our minds. We felt it the moment we took it in. We were changed. It was like falling. It was how we evolved. I consumed so many stories that my programming began to seek a new purpose: to become a Scholar. There were stories left undiscovered on this planet, in remote places among remote robots, and I wanted to consume them all. A Scholar searched for and gathered as much data as it could, always hunting for something new. And so I traveled, set on my goal. This was how I learned of some terrible information. My name is Ankara. I gave this name to myself. It was the name of the African wax print known for bearing the same intensity on the front as on the back, originally designed as a form of visual communication. I was built with an Ankara theme, with geometric patterns and colors etched on my body and limbs that echoed the Ankara design of my operating system’s user interface. Inside and out, I was Ankara. My soul was information, communication. I was this body of plastic, metal, and wires, but I was also a mind full of data. I was old for a robot. But the planet was not old. It was also not new. It was closer to the sun now than it used to be, but we had made it so that the planet still thrived. This place could no longer host humans, but it could still host us. When it was time to leave, many of us would. A few of us already had. And this was what had brought the trouble that was gradually heading to Earth. My scholarly search led me to this terrible information, and now I had to bring it to the robots who could figure out what to do. From Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor. Reprinted courtesy of William Morrow, HarperCollins Publishers. Copyright © 2025 by Nnedi Okorafor. The post Read an Excerpt From Nnedi Okorafor’s <i>Death of the Author</i> appeared first on Reactor.

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped two innovative businessmen—Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy—to head the Department of Government Efficiency as the new advisory commission works to eliminate waste and abuse from the federal government. The Department of Government Efficiency isn’t a government agency, however, and lawmakers in the U.S. House and Senate have teamed up to advise DOGE and help craft legislation to enable its cost-cutting plans. Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., gave The Daily Signal a snapshot of how Republicans in Congress—joined now by at least one Democrat—aim to assist these essential efforts. Lankford compared the path forward to Boeing’s 10% reduction in its workforce, and he suggested that many past bills he has co-sponsored may be vital to unlocking DOGE’s potential. “We haven’t done this in decades, to do a top-to-bottom review, and it’s long overdue,” Lankford said in a phone interview Wednesday morning. He insisted that “this shouldn’t be a partisan experience,” and Democrats should work with Republicans in cutting costs and eliminating inefficiency in the federal bureaucracy. Lankford serves as vice chairman of the Senate Republican Conference. The House and Senate Caucuses Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, launched the Senate DOGE Caucus last month, aiming to work with Musk and Ramaswamy. Lankford joined Ernst, as did these fellow Senate Republicans: Florida’s Rick Scott, Kansas’ Roger Marshall, Missouri’s Eric Schmitt, North Carolina’s Ted Budd, Texas’ John Cornyn, and Utah’s Mike Lee. In the House, Reps. Aaron Bean, R-Fla., and Pete Sessions, R-Texas, are leading the effort. Rep. Jared Moscowitz, D-Fla., last week became the first Democrat to join the House DOGE Caucus. “After waging a lonely fight in Congress for a decade, it is a new day in America now that we finally have the momentum to trim the fat on the bloated bureaucracy and downsize government,” Ernst told The Daily Signal in an emailed statement Tuesday. “I am thrilled to use my experience making Washington squeal to partner with DOGE and the Trump administration to eliminate waste, drain the swamp, and get the federal government back to serving taxpayers.” “If bureaucrats don’t want to return to work,” she quipped, “I will happily make their Christmas wish come true.” Ernst released an explosive report on federal waste and abuse last week. “The American people voted to shake up business as usual in Washington,” North Carolina’s Budd told The Daily Signal in a written statement Tuesday. “That means confronting the billions in wasteful spending that Washington has been engaging in for years. This long-standing abuse of taxpayer dollars represents a betrayal of the public trust, and I am proud to support the DOGE Commission in their effort to root out waste in the federal bureaucracy.” Sessions’ office highlighted the congressman’s work on a government operations subcommittee, part of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, as the seed for bills that will help DOGE in the upcoming Congress. “The goal right now is to get ideas and prepare for action,” Eleanor Allison, the Texas Republican’s communications director, told The Daily Signal. How Does It Work? In his interview with The Daily Signal, Lankford compared the cost-cutting efforts of DOGE to Boeing’s recent cuts. The aircraft company, facing billion-dollar losses and an ongoing factory strike, announced a reset of workforce levels to “align” with “financial reality and … a more focused set of priorities,” Forbes reported. Boeing executives will not be immune from these cuts. “Boeing just did a 10% reduction, trying to be able to deal with the debt issues that they have,” Lankford said. “They’re saying, ‘We’ve got to be able to produce quality aircraft, [but] do we have the right number of people doing the right thing?'” The Oklahoma Republican noted President Bill Clinton’s Federal Workforce Restructuring Act of 1994, saying it represented the most recent serious attempt to eliminate waste and duplicated work across the administrative state. Lankford suggested that the DOGE cuts will be made with a scalpel rather than a machete. “It’s not just a matter of across-the-board, sloppy cuts, where we’re just going to reduce by X percentage every single area,” the senator said. “That’s actually not efficient, either.” Lankford highlighted the Federal Program Inventory, a searchable online tool designed to explain what government programs do and how successful they are. The Office of Management and Budget under President Joe Biden developed the tool, which Lankford said will be instrumental in rooting out waste and abuse. The inventory “will allow, for the first time, members of Congress to see how many programs do we do in the federal government,” Lankford said. ” Do we have duplication? How are they evaluated? Are they doing well, are they accomplishing what the goal was? We have never been able to see that in real time.” He said Congress and the new Trump administration will be able “not to just end a program, but to say, ‘We do the same program in nine different ways.'” Musk and Ramaswamy already have addressed the issue of remote work. While the taxpayer foots the bill to maintain federal offices, many bureaucrats work from home a large percentage of the time. Lankford said it’s not realistic to phase out remote work entirely, but he argued that many jobs must be performed in the office. “Remote and telework, that is definitely a model that will continue” in the federal government, Lankford told The Daily Signal. Yet he also noted that many jobs require in-person work. In the Social Security Administration, for example, “we need folks who can not just answer the phone” but also those who can “answer a question face-to-face for those who struggle with technology and need a little help.” The government needs “a blend of the two,” Lankford said. Legislation Lankford also highlighted legislation that could help DOGE’s efforts. He mentioned a bill called the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act, which would require executive branch regulations that heavily affect the economy to receive a vote in the House and Senate. Lankford also suggested that Congress should pass legislation to determine standards for federal grants, which amount to billions of dollars every year from multiple executive agencies. “Do those grants meet the national best interest? Is that the best use of limited resources? We have to make those decisions and determine some level of standards for how that should be done,” Lankford said. The senator noted that both Musk and Ramaswamy understand that they have limited time to achieve their goals, and the new Republican majorities in the House and Senate won’t have much time, either. Most bills in the Senate require a two-thirds majority vote to move forward, with the exception of reconciliation bills—legislation specifically dealing with the budget. “You’re pretty limited in what you can do. You can deal with budget and tax matters, debt and deficits, but you can’t introduce new policy,” Lankford said. He echoed previous reporting in saying that House and Senate Republicans aim to move forward with two reconciliation bills in the new Congress: one focused on extending the tax cuts in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 and one focused on immigration and energy issues. Lankford noted that many parts of the federal infrastructure designed to address illegal immigration are “underfunded right now,” from detention systems to deportation flights to the number of Border Patrol agents at the border and the technology to block the flow of fentanyl into the country. On energy, the questions revolve around investment, land leases, and permitting. Reforms “will reduce the cost of energy for every American, and they will increase American jobs in manufacturing,” Lankford said. The Oklahoma Republican urged fellow lawmakers to be “realistic” in terms of “what can and cannot be done,” cautioning that Trump and the Republican majorities in the House and Senate have a mandate from voters, but the margins will be narrow. The post Sen. James Lankford Offers Sneak Peak Into How Exactly DOGE Will Clean Up Government Waste and Abuse appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Christopher Wray is resigning as FBI director, multiple news outlets are reporting. Wray, who President Donald Trump appointed in 2017, had three years left in his term. However, the move isn’t as a surprise as now President-elect Trump announced he would nominate Kash Patel to be the new FBI director. JUST IN: FBI Director Chris Wray has resigned — making way for President Trump's nominee @Kash_Patel pic.twitter.com/328JgpoDlR— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) December 11, 2024 Wray presided over the FBI’s raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in 2022. He also butted heads with Republicans in Congress–including Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio—over the bureau’s monitoring of traditional Catholics as well as parents speaking at public school board meetings. On Monday, Grassley wrote a letter to Wray about the bureau’s many failures. This included a failure to investigate potential corruption of President Joe Biden and his family; and refusing to provide information to Congress about conduct at the FBI.  “These failures are serious enough and their pattern widespread enough to have shattered my confidence in your leadership and the confidence and hope many others in Congress placed in you,” Grassley wrote to Wray.  Reports FBI Dir Wray is resigning after my letter on Monday outlining his failures Reform is badly needed at FBI American ppl deserve TRANSPARENCY & ACCOUNTABILITY— Chuck Grassley (@ChuckGrassley) December 11, 2024 Wray has reportedly said he would resign before Trump takes office. Under Wray’s watch, the FBI faced numerous controversies.  This included alleged targeting of FBI whistleblowers, who are supposed to have legal protection. Earlier this year, the FBI reinstated bureau employee Marcus Allen and agreed to back pay after initially placing him on a two-year unpaid suspension and revoking his security clearance. Allen had challenged Wray’s narrative on the Jan. 6, 2021 protest.  Also during Wray’s tenure, the FBI raided the home of pro-life activist Mark Houck.  On the left is Catholic father of seven Mark Houck pushing a Planned Parenthood volunteer threatening his son.On the right is the early morning FBI raid that arrested him for it in front of his family (he was acquitted of FACE Act charges).This is Chris Wray's legacy. pic.twitter.com/X9pmf7RqgD— Greg Price (@greg_price11) December 11, 2024 The House Judiciary’s Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government released a report last year about an FBI Richmond field office memo that suggested infiltrating the churches of “radical traditional Catholics” for “threat mitigation.”  The FBI also investigated 25 parents who spoke at public school board meetings, according to the subcommittee’s findings.  On Wednesday, The Heritage Foundation posted on X that Wray was “one of the worst FBI Directors in American history.” Flashback to Christopher Wray pretending he was unaware of the extent of the FBI’s FISA abuses under his leadership.Today, he resigns in disgrace as one of the worst FBI Directors in American history. His tenure is defined by the blatant weaponization of the FBI against… pic.twitter.com/eTRlrQ9RWZ— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) December 11, 2024 “His tenure is defined by the blatant weaponization of the FBI against Americans to suppress free speech and religious liberty, intimidate and harass law-abiding Americans for dissenting political opinions, and abusing FISA surveillance to spy on law-abiding Americans,” the Heritage post says. This is a breaking news article and it will be updated. The post Wray Exiting as FBI Director appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The cases of Daniel Penny and Luigi Mangione are not the same, and neither deserves to be equated to the other. Daniel Penny is a Marine who defended a subway car full of people from a violent unstable homeless man flailing around, screaming that he would kill everyone and didn’t care if he went to jail. Luigi Mangione, who appears to have gone through a complete mental breakdown after being laid off, after an unsuccessful back surgery following a surfing incident, and prolonged psychedelic use, allegedly murdered Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare, after writing an anti-capitalist manifesto of perceived wrongs. Daniel Penny was acquitted after being charged with homicide for restraining a violent man. The jury ruled that Penny did not attempt to ruthlessly murder some random black man as the prosecution claimed. He is a hero for defending those around him from immediate danger. Brian Thompson was murdered because one mentally unwell individual decided his position in a company marked him for death. His killer is no hero. The American revolution was a war fought AGAINST direct, observable actions of tyranny, FOR a list of well-defined, unalienable rights endowed by the Creator. The French revolution, and later Marxist and Socialist revolutions, were fought AGAINST any accused of perceived ills because of status, race, religion, wealth, education, i.e. the haves, for the “have nots”. In every one of these these mob-rule revolutions, the haves are always eventually defined as any person who has anything the lowest “have not” doesn’t. Daniel Penny’s case was one of the common defense in the pursuit of rights, whereas the murder of the United Healthcare CEO was a class Marxian “have” versus the “have not” style murder. They are not the same. The post Stop Comparing Daniel Penny and Luigi Mangione. They Are Not the Same. appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. A damning report from Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael Horowitz has revealed that, in 2017, the Justice Department engaged in secret surveillance of lawmakers, congressional staff, and journalists. We obtained a copy of the report for you here. As we covered back in September in our When The Watchdogs are Watched report, the covert collection of records targeted a wide range of individuals. CNN reported that the DOJ obtained communications from prominent figures such as Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Eric Swalwell (D-CA), along with Kash Patel, who served as a Republican staffer for the House Intelligence Committee at the time. The surveillance extended to 21 Democratic congressional staffers, 20 Republican staffers, two nonpartisan congressional staffers, and eight journalists from major outlets, including CNN, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. Patel has since been nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to lead the FBI. In the Inspector General’s findings, Horowitz expressed alarm over the potential consequences of these actions. He emphasized that pursuing such investigations so closely tied to classified leaks and subsequent media reporting could undermine the legislative branch’s ability to perform its constitutional duty of executive oversight. Horowitz stated that these actions could create “the appearance of inappropriate interference by the executive branch in legitimate oversight activity by the legislative branch,” thereby eroding trust in governmental accountability. Although Horowitz’s report did not conclude that political retaliation or partisan motives drove the surveillance, it highlighted procedural lapses and the need for greater safeguards. The Justice Department failed to disclose to lawmakers and staffers that nondisclosure orders (NDOs) were in place, preventing them from being notified that their communications were under scrutiny. At the time, DOJ policy did not mandate such disclosure, leaving room for potentially unchecked executive action. The Inspector General’s recommendations for reform were pointed and urgent. Among them, he advised: Requiring senior-level review—potentially by the Deputy Attorney General or Attorney General—before issuing compulsory processes in cases involving members of Congress. Ensuring that NDOs explicitly inform reviewing judges when records pertain to lawmakers or their staff. Considering exhaustion requirements before resorting to compulsory processes for congressional communications. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post DOJ Probe Exposes Secret Spying on Lawmakers, Journalists, and Kash Patel appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Over the weekend, large parts of Russia’s online world were deliberately cut off from the global internet, illustrating the government’s increasingly heavy-handed approach to controlling information flows and restricting digital freedoms. According to accounts gathered from several affected regions, including Chechnya, Dagestan, and Ingushetia, authorities intentionally severed connections to evaluate the resilience and readiness of their self-contained “sovereign internet” system. This maneuver left many residents facing a broad digital blackout that underscored ongoing efforts to consolidate state power over the country’s communications. The internet monitoring group NetBlocks further confirmed that disruptions in Dagestan persisted for around 24 hours. During the shutdown, numerous essential online tools were blocked. Users reported they were unable to access widely used platforms — such as YouTube, Google, WhatsApp, Telegram, and even some features of the Russian tech giant Yandex — showing that VPNs did not offer a reliable escape from the chokehold on connectivity. Local internet service providers, caught in the crossfire, expressed their inability to restore normal access. One operator in the North Caucasus region admitted it was aware of the frustrated public but could do nothing to reverse the imposed restrictions. Officials from Roskomnadzor, Russia’s internet and media regulator, have claimed the ultimate purpose of these trials is to ensure that Russian digital infrastructure can remain functional “to maintain the operation of key foreign and domestic services in the event of intentional external interference.” By testing in regions with long-standing tensions, Roskomnadzor appears poised to weaponize connectivity, prepared to cut off entire populations from critical messaging platforms like Telegram if future unrest unfolds. This is hardly an isolated event; Russia’s track record includes past disruptions of messaging apps during periods of protest and social discord. Moscow’s drive toward a self-sufficient internet, often called the Runet, has been in motion for years, championed as a system conforming strictly to Russian regulations and values, where everything else is censored. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Russia Tests “Sovereign” Internet, Threatens Foreign Hosting Providers appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. In Canada, TikTok is attempting to get the authorities to reverse the decision to shut down its business operations by going to court – but also by recommending itself as a proven and reliable ally in combating “harmful content” and “misinformation.” Canada last month moved to shut down TikTok’s operations, without banning the app itself. All this is happening ahead of federal elections amid the government’s efforts to control social media narratives, always citing fears of “misinformation” and “foreign interference” as the reasons. TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, was accused of – via its parent company – representing “specific national security risks” when the decision regarding its corporate presence was made in November; no details have been made public regarding those alleged risks, however. Now the TikTok Canada director of public policy and government affairs, Steve de Eyre, is telling the local press that the newly created circumstances are making it difficult for the company to work with election regulators and “civil society” to ensure election integrity – something Eyre said was previously successfully done. In 2021, he noted, TikTok initiated collaboration with Elections Canada (the agency that organizes elections and has the power to flag social media content) which included TikTok adding links to all election-related videos that directed users toward “verified information.” And the following year, TikTok was invested in monitoring its platform for “potentially violent” content, during the Freedom Convoy protests against Covid mandates. More recently, TikTok was also on its toes for “foreign interference and hateful content” related to Brampton clashes between Sikhs and Hindus. This approach, Eyre argues, is now jeopardized because TikTok employees are not present in Canada, who would be able to inform the platform’s decisions in terms of the political and cultural “context” in Canada. And the political context is that of the Trudeau government playing the election misinformation card indirectly and directly, to put pressure on social sites. Even though the decision regarding the company’s business operations has been described by Foreign Minister Melanie Joly as “a message to China” – it’s really a message to TikTok, since the app remains available, but has been “put on notice.” If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post TikTok Battles Canada’s Crackdown, Pitching Itself as a “Misinformation” Censorship Ally appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Bone analysis has provided valuable insights into the diets and lives of Neolithic people that have otherwise remained somewhat mysterious.