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Bait-and-switch? A whole lotta people aren't buying Flock's latest PR move Flock Safety, whose surveillance cameras blanket the United States, released a slate of new privacy and transparency "safeguards" Thursday amid reports of police officers abusing the system and spying on innocent people. But critics say the move is largely about optics, warning Americans not to miss the forest for the trees: that a surveillance state has been built right before their eyes. "As long as Flock continues to value profits over privacy and continues to treat legitimate privacy concerns as mere PR issues, we are going to continue to see more Flock efforts like today's that seek to create headlines about positive reforms when few if any impactful changes are actually made," Chad Marlow, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told the Daily Caller. 👍🏼 Read More @sotten | - X | Facebook | Donate

🇱🇧Israeli troops conducting 'deliberate' arson campaign in south Lebanon Lebanese civil defense teams battling the flames say the fires caused by Israel have burned 30 to 40 percent of the land in Nabatieh Large fires continued to burn and spread in south Lebanon on 13 August due to continuous strikes, artillery shelling, and deliberate arson operations carried out by Israeli occupation forces illegally positioned inside the country. The Israeli arson operations in particular are targeting forests and greenery. Israel has been damaging the environment in Lebanon for years, increasingly so over the past several months and specifically since the latest round of fighting began - including through the spraying of toxic chemicals. Firefighters said, as they put out the blazes caused by Israel's attacks and arson, that the fires were sparked "deliberately" by occupation forces. 👍🏼 Read More @sotten | - X | Facebook | Donate

🇺🇸Prediction: More than two-thirds of the power sought for US data centers will never materialize It was almost a year ago, in November 2025, when we first calculated that the AI supercycle was facing a huge problem: namely, a power shortfall of (at least) 44 nuclear power plants, or GW or energy, by 2028. Fast forward to last week when we made another stunning discovery: the reason why Texas Gov Abbott froze the rollout of new data centers in his state is because the number of interconnection requests facing ERCOT had risen to a mindblowing 474 GW (of which 90% were data centers), when the state's highest ever power demand just hit 91GW. Needless to say, this will never happen in (maybe) a hundred years, but it does prompt the question we have been asking for years: where will the energy come from. Well, as it turns out, the answer is nowhere. 👍🏼 Read More @sotten | - X | Facebook | Donate

The invisible geography of Israeli power Data sovereignty is the new oil - but West Asia is pumping raw material while foreign tech giants refine it. The map hidden by servers and the illusion of digital borders On June 10, 2025, two executives from Microsoft France appeared before a French Senate investigative committee tasked with examining public procurement and digital sovereignty. The hearing proceeded in the usual reassuring tone until a question that completely shifted the mood: Could the company guarantee that the data of French citizens - even if hosted on servers located in France - would never be transferred to a foreign authority without the consent of the French government? ❗️ Read More @sotten | - X | Facebook | Donate

🇺🇦"Unofficial" FBI group swept up journalists, politicians as Russian disinfo "conduits" for probing Biden-Ukraine dealing An FBI analytical group that reviewed confidential-source reporting about Biden family corruption in Ukraine was "unofficially formed" inside the bureau's Foreign Influence Task Force in late 2019 and did not corroborate the allegations it was assigned to assess before labeling the reporting as Russian disinformation, according to newly declassified records. The records [Direct download link] provide a more detailed picture of an effort known as Round River, a component of a broader intelligence project called DELTA, that operated in the run-up to and through the 2020 presidential election. ‼️ Read More @sotten | - X | Facebook | Donate

Total freedom vs total slavery and the race for AI supremacy The introduction of AI into popular consciousness and everyday usage has been rather disappointing, for the most part. And by that I mean, we're not seeing any spectacular benefits to the presence of AI while the negatives keep piling up. At best, AI represents an advancement for information structuring; a much faster way to sort, categorize and investigate the data landscape. I find it very useful for speeding up research, but it only works as long as you understand that AI tends to lie by omission. ❗️ Read More @sotten | - X | Facebook | Donate

SpaceX, Tesla plan massive Texas chip complex with 100 million square feet of manufacturing space Elon Musk's SpaceX and Tesla are planning a 100-million-square-foot semiconductor complex in Grimes County, Texas, with more than $16.8 billion committed to its first phase and ambitions to produce AI chips at terawatt scale. Elon Musk's SpaceX and Tesla are preparing to build a semiconductor manufacturing complex in Texas that would span roughly 100 million square feet, more than five times the size of the building currently recognized as the world's largest. The project, called Terafab, is planned for Grimes County and would combine multiple stages of semiconductor production within one enormous vertically integrated facility, according to Fortune. Musk has described the planned complex in sweeping terms. 👍🏼 Read More @sotten | - X | Facebook | Donate

Proposed rule would require companies to notify FDA of new food additives The U.S. Food and Drug Administration plans to increase federal oversight of the food supply by requiring manufacturers to notify the agency when claiming a new chemical additive is safe for human or animal consumption. For nearly 70 years, the FDA has relied on a voluntary disclosure system where manufacturers are allowed to self-certify their own chemical products as "Generally Recognized as Safe," or GRAS. As a result, thousands of chemical additives are present in the American food supply that have not undergone rigorous safety testing nor received FDA approval. The FDA's proposed rule, which is open to public comment for the next 120 days, stops short of closing the GRAS loophole entirely but marks a "significant step towards" increased food transparency, Acting FDA Commissioner Kyle Diamantas said. ➡️ Read More @sotten | - X | Facebook | Donate

Mamdani's socialist utopia collides with reality: Manhattan rents hit new high Socialist NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani built his political campaign by relentlessly attacking America and, most importantly, portraying capitalism as the root cause of nearly every social problem, from affordability pressures to soaring rents. Voters were sold the idea that his administration could deliver an instant utopian transformation built on free bus rides, government-run grocery stores, and cheap housing. However, like every Marxist before him, Mamdani's vision of utopia is not grounded in economic reality. The dream pitched to millions across the metropolitan area is now colliding with market reality: a continuing nightmare for renters. 🙌 Read More @sotten | - X | Facebook | Donate

Patriot math: Zelensky's missile mistakes and why his numbers fall far short The Ukrainian leader's latest request to Washington falls apart when measured against Moscow's current rate of ballistic attacks Vladimir Zelensky has made an unusually specific claim about what Ukraine needs to defend itself against Russian ballistic missiles. In an interview with CNN, Zelensky said Ukraine currently has enough Patriot interceptors to amount to roughly 1% of America's existing stockpile - itself reportedly depleted by the war with Iran and a source of some acrimony between US President Donald Trump and his secretary of war, Pete Hegseth. Nevertheless, Zelensky used the CNN interview to call on Washington to sell Ukraine 5% of its remaining Patriot missile stockpile, which he claimed would be enough to get Kiev through the winter. 👀 Read More @sotten | - X | Facebook | Donate

🇺🇸🇮🇷WaPo reports US lost a quarter of its Reaper drone inventory in Iran war The US military lost 45 MQ-9 Reaper drones, or a quarter of its entire supply of the reconnaissance craft, during its war on Iran, the Washington Post has reported. The loss cost the US taxpayer an estimated $1.3 billion. The loss figures were revealed by the Washington Post on Thursday, citing three unnamed US officials. A fourth US official told the newspaper that not all the lost drones were shot down. 📍 Read More @sotten | - X | Facebook | Donate

BEST OF THE WEB: Anthony Fauci and the Collapse of Scientific Authority Academics celebrated a dishonest science administrator, exposing the decay of the biomedical enterprise Anthony Fauci is now facing intense scrutiny. His diaries, emails, and testimony have raised fundamental questions about what he knew, what he then told the public, and how he exercised authority during the pandemic. Many outside of academia read these documents and view this moment as his fall from grace, while universities and medical institutions seem willing to ignore this new evidence and continue to celebrate Fauci as a heroic public servant with unmatched scientific authority. Academics' unconventional viewpoint cannot be ignored. 👍🏼 Read More @sotten | - X | Facebook | Donate

3,500-year-old linear a prayer may reveal Minoan roots of Dionysos and Demeter A tiny stone offering table from a Minoan mountaintop sanctuary may preserve something far larger than its size suggests: possible evidence that Dionysos and Demeter had religious predecessors on Crete centuries before they became familiar gods of the Greek world. The object, known as IO Za 2, carries one of the longest surviving examples of the mysterious Linear A script. In a new study, researcher Michael Schümann proposes that its damaged inscription can be reconstructed as a structured ritual prayer naming divine figures he identifies as early forms of Dionysos and Demeter. If that interpretation withstands scrutiny, the implications would extend well beyond the decipherment of a single Bronze Age inscription. ✍️ Read More @sotten | - X | Facebook | Donate

🇳🇵At least 5 dead as landslide during monsoon buries houses in western Nepal A landslide swept away houses in the remote Thawang village of Rolpa district in western Nepal, killing at least five people and leaving eight missing, a senior official told Anadolu on Thursday. "Locals have recovered the bodies of five of the 15 people who went missing in the landslide, while two were injured. The location of the missing people is still unknown," Rishi Keshav Budha Magar, chairperson of Thawang Rural Municipality, which includes the landslide-affected area, said. Around 8 pm Wednesday (1415GMT), a landslide swept away 11 houses and sheds for cows and buffalo on sloping mountain areas. 👍🏼 Read More @sotten | - X | Facebook | Donate

🇯🇵BEST OF THE WEB: 'Unprecedented' rain in Japan kills 6 people - 14 inches of rainfall in 24 hours At least six people have died and five others are wounded in eastern Japan as record rainfall pummelled the Chiba prefecture near the capital Tokyo. The rains, which authorities have described as "unprecedented", cut power to more than 20,000 households while 7,000 travellers were stranded overnight at Tokyo's Narita airport. Local authorities issued a level five emergency warning, its highest alert, on Thursday. This was downgraded to a level four by Friday morning, but they continue to warn of landslide and flooding risks. 🙌 Read More @sotten | - X | Facebook | Donate

🇩🇪☄️Meteor fireball over Germany on August 13 We received 5 reports about a fireball seen over Berlin, Hamburg and Sachsen-Anhalt on Thursday, August 13th 2026 around 01:46 UT. For this event, we received one video and one photo. 👉🏼 Read More @sotten | - X | Facebook | Donate

Infantilization of America's best and brightest: The University of Michigan is now hiding grades from fragile freshmen In 2017, Macalester College, a pricey Midwestern college, ran an article in its glossy "Macalester Today" magazine titled "The Dog Is In." Indeed, that was the cover story. In the article, Macalester boasted about having multiple therapy dogs roaming the campus to help students deal with homework stress — students who, as best as I could tell, had about 12 hours a week of class time, plus homework. I was not impressed. Little did I know, though, that worse was to come. 👍🏼 Read More @sotten | - X | Facebook | Donate

The Ceuta migration crisis and the emerging European divide Eleven years have passed since Angela Merkel opened the floodgates of migration to chaos. The European Union, already firmly in the grip of statists and numerous left-wing currents, has since become almost unrecognizable. The advance of Islamization and the dissolution of established urban milieus, traditions and cultures are progressing and contributing to the disintegration of European societies. What is particularly striking is the emergence of a kind of Islamo-Marxist movement, a fusion of radical socialist social ideals with a Sharia-based reinterpretation of society - as long as it is directed against the bourgeois West and the civilizational achievements of old Europe. ❗️ Read More @sotten | - X | Facebook | Donate

Families say multiple USS Abraham Lincoln sailors have tried to go overboard due to stress of extended deployment Annabelle Loma has spoken with her husband only a few times since he attempted to jump overboard from the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln during his current deployment. Communication has been difficult to come by, and he is now on medical hold. Loma, who lives in San Diego, said her husband had been repeatedly overextended before he tried to jump from the carrier. "He's scared," Loma said. 🙌 Read More @sotten | - X | Facebook | Donate

🛸100-foot triangular UFO over Colorado base captured in video Air Force won't release: sources A pair of classified videos allegedly showing a 100-foot black triangular UFO over a Colorado military base remain locked away despite President Trump's new order aimed at encouraging more UFO whistleblowers to come forward, sources familiar with the footage told The Post. Two videos, recorded on a service member's personal cellphone on consecutive nights in 2023, are among the pieces of evidence whistleblowers say still cannot be discussed or released publicly because they remain classified by the Air Force, sources said. Those videos — which captured the craft zooming over mountains and actively camouflaging in clouds — are stored with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations in Colorado, file numbers IRR1669S015524 and IRR1669S005024, according to those sources. 📍 Read More @sotten | - X | Facebook | Donate