Issues You May Know, 13 June 2025.
A list of things you might want to know about - or write your reps about.
Billionaire lawfare to disingenuously mess with the little guy.
In Colorado real estate corporation claims price fixing is free speech, while in California tycoons sue citizens for price fixing when they try to organize to save their community.
Tech Billionaires’ Shocking Plot for Rural America More Perfect Union Sep 4, 2024
Meanwhile Democratic governor wants to let the real estate magnate collusion rip.
Internet tracking is more than creepy.
The Wild World of Surveillance Pricing with Lee Hepner David Dayen and Matt Stoller May 29, 2025 Ever wonder why the price of your rent or even a bag of frozen potatoes seems to jump for no clear reason? It could be the result of “surveillance pricing”—where companies use your personal data and powerful algorithms to set prices just for you, often squeezing consumers and renters alike.
My letter to reps:
Surveillance pricing based on using personal data from individuals or groups should not be legal and this should be obvious. Make the market fair.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
Almost all the AI boosters seem at least a tad delusional to me.
So how do the techno rapture believing moderators of the pro-AI subreddit tell a difference?
404 Media - Pro-AI Subreddit Bans 'Uptick' of Users Who Suffer from AI Delusions Emanuel Maiberg · Jun 2, 2025 at 9:39 AM “LLMs [Large language models] today are ego-reinforcing glazing-machines that reinforce unstable and narcissistic personalities,” one of the moderators of r/accelerate, wrote in an announcement. “There is a lot more crazy people than people realise. And AI is rizzing them up in a very unhealthy way at the moment.” The moderator said that it has banned “over 100” people for this reason already, and that they’ve seen an “uptick” in this type of user this month. The moderator explains that r/accelerate “was formed to basically be r/singularity without the decels.” r/singularity, which is named after the theoretical point in time when AI surpasses human intelligence and rapidly accelerates its own development, is another Reddit community dedicated to artificial intelligence, but that is sometimes critical or fearful of what the singularity will mean for humanity. “Decels” is short for the pejorative “decelerationists,” who pro-AI people think are needlessly slowing down or sabotaging AI’s development and the inevitable march towards AI utopia.
Hyping chemtrail conspiracy theories are a backhanded way to attack climate activism.
Many references to “climate engineering” are actually a part of climate denial & disinfo narratives. When media attempts to both-sides coverage of climate engineering disinfo, they walk right into the hands of controlled opposition, led up the garden path by tech hype decoys. Chloe Humbert Apr 19, 2024 It may appear superficially that “two sides” of an issue have been represented, but in reality it winds up meshing together things like cloud seeding, solar geoengineering, and conspiracy theories about chemtrails, and then calling all that “rooted in conspiracy theory and climate science” when what they’re really talking about is a right-wing crackpot insurrectionist who is pushing nonsense legislation, and fanciful and flawed climate engineering concepts rooted in tech hype. It seems poised to smear climate activists, experts, and officials, who call for regulation of reckless tech hype solutions as rooted in conspiracy theory the same as election deniers and crackpots.
There's likely money propelling the hype on chem trail legislation because it provides an excellent opportunity to get foolish journalists and reporters to put out both sides BS PR on climate change that benefits those who don't want climate action. And Republican politicians have already poised themselves to call "both sides" equally ridiculous in service to the fossil fuel industry.
Tampa Bay Times - DeSantis compares weather control theory to climate change affecting hurricanes - DeSantis dismissed both theories, saying, “It is hurricane season, you are going to have tropical weather.” By Romy Ellenbogen Times staff Published Oct. 10, 2024 | Updated Oct. 10, 2024 TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday wrote off suggestions that the government could control the weather — and likened it to theories that global warming can increase the intensity of hurricanes. “This is on both sides,” DeSantis said. “You kind of have some people think government can do this, and others think it’s all because of fossil fuels."
John Fetterman hangs out at known MAGA hangout and then says meeting with Steve Bannon wasn't intentional.
The Hill - Fetterman spotted with Bannon at DC MAGA hangout: Report by Miriam Waldvogel - 06/10/25 2:56 PM ET It’s unknown what the men discussed. After this story was posted, a spokesman for Fetterman told The Hill: “The run-in with Bannon was inadvertent and impromptu.” Bannon is a frequent customer at Butterworth’s, which has attracted increasing attention as a watering hole for supporters of President Trump. An inauguration weekend crowd included FBI Director Kash Patel, tech mogul Elon Musk, and the conservative blogger Curtis Yarvin.
RFKJr is replacing the vaccine committee with anti-vax pandemic denier cranks.
After sacking the entire vaccine committee, RFKJr announced with whom he intends to replace them, and they’re lots of anti-vax Great Barrington Declaration MAGA Qanon types.
Cody Meissner was pushing natural herd immunity anti-vax nonsense in FDA VRBPAC meetings a couple years ago, and signed the Great Barrington Declaration.
Martin Kulldorf was a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, and was hanging with Scott Atlas and them in 2020 as they were found to be plotting to make more Americans sick with covid.
Robert Malone is an anti-vax anti-science misinformation spreader.
Joseph R. Hibbeln has a history of studying the role of omega-3 in suicides among soldiers in the military.
Retsef Levi seems to be not a medical expert, he’s a MIT professor in the school of management. Retsef Levi was formerly a soldier in IDF Intelligence who called MIT student Gaza protesters “lost souls” who should be punished for calling for MIT to divest, and wrote a covid contrarian article that had to be unpublished, and was co-authored with Joe Ladapo, the notorious covid denier anti-vaxxer Florida man surgeon general that made up a study and called vaccines “the antichrist” of products.
Vicky Pebsworth is a anti-vax activist with the anti-vax organization NVIC.
I don't know James Pagano or Michael Ross, but I'm sure something will turn up that's bizarre, it seems inevitable.
RFKJr is also going after worker safety in the heat in a time of climate change.
Bloomberg - Heat Is Bad for Workers’ Health. RFK Jr. Doesn’t Care. Temperatures are soaring, so naturally Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is getting rid of all the experts who have been devising on-the-job protections. June 6, 2025 at 11:00 AM UTC By Mark Gongloff Soaring temperatures, which are deadlier than any other natural disaster, will endanger the health and productivity of millions of Americans this summer. Workers at construction sites, farms and factories, along with delivery workers and many others in heat-exposed jobs, are especially at risk. So naturally, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is somehow in charge of managing our nation’s health, has reportedly fired all of the people who have been helping the federal government write heat protections for workers. This will likely make extreme heat even riskier and the economic impact even heavier.
Image is a bloomberg graph that says: Extreme Heat Is the Deadliest Disaster High temperatures take more American lives each year than any other natural phenomenon Number of US fatalities in 2024 10-year average graph shows, in order from worst to least in fatalities in 2024 Heat, Flood, Hurricane, Rip currents, Wind, tornado, winter, cold, lightning. Source: National Weather Service Note: Heat fatality data will likely rise due to reporting delays. Hurricane-related deaths are attributed only to wind.