Issues You May Know, 20 June 2025.
A list of things you might want to know about - or write your reps about.
I’m going to have to delete my iNaturalist account because it’s apparently planning to become like every other junk social media on The Internet of Fakes by taking Google AI money
Google bribes iNaturalist to use generative AI — volunteers quit in outrage Pivot to AI Jun 19, 2025 That is, the volunteers would work for free to improve Google’s bot. This plan didn’t go down so well. It turns out people do free work for knowledge because they hold principles and stuff. Many deleted their accounts — which also deletes their observations from iNaturalist — because they didn’t volunteer to feed a lying slop machine that’s an environmental disaster.
I can’t even complain about this on the iNaturalist forum, I’m having my posts hidden:
This is the post they hid:
RFKJr's culture war political stunts will have real world consequences on financial access to life-saving vaccines.
CIDRAP - Groups call for continued insurance coverage for COVID vaccines in pregnancy - Chris Dall, MA June 12, 2025 Dozens of medical and public health organizations have signed a letter urging insurers to continue covering COVID-19 vaccination in pregnant patients.
My letter to reps:
Continue coverage for covid vaccines in pregnancy. This is a matter of life and death and serious known risks to the pregnant and babies when moms to be are unvaccinated. The far fringe departure from modern medicine coming from the HHS isn't right.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
Tech magnates are writing emergency executive orders for Trump so corporations can seize public utilities and create privatized territories (company towns).
The Nerd Reich - Startup seeks Trump AI emergency for California tech city The Network State comes to Alameda County. Why is an unknown tech company drafting an executive order to declare a national security emergency? Gil Duran 15 Jun 2025 What makes Frontier Valley particularly shocking is not just its scale or ambition, but its timing and tactics. By publishing a ready-made executive order during Trump's early months in office — at a moment when the administration is already abusing emergency powers in California — the company is betting that the current political moment offers a unique opportunity to fundamentally alter how the U.S. governs itself. Frontier Valley would establish a precedent that any corporation with sufficient resources and political connections can write its own laws, seize public resources, and create quasi-sovereign territories. The draft executive order even includes provisions for replicating the model elsewhere. It envisions “technology-specific zones” across the country that could operate outside normal democratic oversight.
My letter to reps:
I’m against “technology specific zones” dictated to Trump by corporate entities. They intend to put these “network states” outside of normal governance, which runs counter to democracy, and is thoroughly unAmerican. Like the old coal patch towns like Peek-A-Boo in Duryea Pennsylvania, all company towns should’ve gone permanently into the dustbin of history. It’s backwards and against true American values.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
People’s personal facebook chatbot chats are being published publicly.
What could possibly go wrong?
Meta AI posts your personal chats to a public feed Pivot to AI Jun 14, 2025
My letter to reps:
META and other platforms running chatbots should have to at least inform people that their chatbot chat messages are being put in a public feed complete with stuff that’s probably personally identifiable information and who knows what. Why are you letting these corporations just play fast and loose with people’s personal data? Stop this.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll serves the interests of private industry profits over that of the American people.
The New Republic - Edith Olmsted / June 15, 2025 Buyer’s Market The AI Industry Is Ready to Get Rich off Trump’s Defense Department This year’s annual AI Expo for National Competitiveness was a hidden race to turn the military into “Ender’s Game.” “We have been bad to partner with, we have been a bad customer. We are—we have created many of the bad habits in our industry partners that we don’t like today,” Driscoll said, grinning through his apology on behalf of the Army. He later emphasized that the Army would need to “earn the right” to do business with for-profit companies by creating “clear demand signals” and “pathways to profitability.” Beside him on the stage was General Randy George, the Army’s chief of staff, who had his own parting message. George explained that he wanted help from companies to formulate a pitch on the government’s embrace of “agile funding” for autonomous technology.
My letter to reps:
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll needs to be investigated. He made public comments that his first interest was using Army procurement to satisfy the needs of vendor profitability. That's not how government is supposed to work, the taxpayers are not just some asset to be handed over to some business to make money, and the Army should exist solely for the protection of the American people, not making some business owner rich.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
There are 2 separate issues, so I split them up into 2 different letters, because of the way that representatives offices classify letters from constituents.
My letter to reps:
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll needs to be investigated. A lot of this AI stuff is shoddy and doesn't work as advertised, yet Driscoll is talking about buying this tech simply to make the Army a better "partner" and "customer" to private industries selling this stuff so they could be more profitable. Taxpayer money shouldn't be used to prop up the failing profitability of some business, and that's sure what it sounds like. It sounds like more and more people, especially the people in the biz, know this AI stuff is a faulty product and comes with huge price tags for little benefit, and the industry players are just casting about for someone to bail them out. It shouldn't be the taxpayers. And even more seriously lives are in danger if the implementation of shoddy tech will put Americans, and especially Army soldiers, at risk.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
AI hype is driving the mining industry to dig up more uranium in the US.
Image is a USGS government map of the united states with areas where uranium is found in red, mostly in the area of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico. https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/figure-uranium-resources-united-states
How AI’s Need For Nuclear Energy Is Fueling A Rise In U.S. Uranium Mining - CNBC Jun 12, 2025 (VIDEO) Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft are all betting on nuclear energy to power their AI data centers. The industry is also getting a boost from the Trump administration. Uranium stocks lighting up as President Trump signs a suite of executive orders aimed at expanding the nation's nuclear power infrastructure. Trump's executive orders ease the regulatory process around, and accelerate the construction of new nuclear power plants in the US. The administration wants to quadruple the nation's nuclear energy capacity from 100GW in 2024 to 400GW by 2050. US uranium requirements are expected to increase from 47 million pounds to approximately 190 million pounds per year, according to one uranium miner.
Even if you think nuclear is a good idea, you have to worry about how this is going to get started new mining that isn't actually needed, build these data centers instead of housing, and then abandon it abruptly when the AI hype financial bubble pops and they all crash and burn and then of course the taxpayers are on the hook to bail out the rich people again.
CNBC - Why uranium mining is having a resurgence in the United States - Published Thu, Jun 12 2025 Magdalena Petrova That’s changing as electricity demand skyrockets thanks to power-hungry AI models being developed by tech giants including Microsoft, Google, Meta and Amazon , as well as a global push for cleaner energy. This emphasis on nuclear power is also driving demand for uranium. A recently released report by the Nuclear Energy Agency and the International Atomic Energy Agency estimates that if demand for nuclear energy continues to grow, known uranium deposits will run out by 2080. “Right now the uranium miners globally are not keeping up with demand,” said John Cash, president and CEO of uranium mining company Ur-Energy. “It takes years from discovery to the time you produce. So it’s going to take years for that gap to be closed between those two, and all the while, we see tremendous growing demand for nuclear power.” The domestic uranium industry has received bipartisan support from the U.S. government.
Minnesota assassin's background is in international private security work.
MPR NEWS Peter Cox and Tom Scheck June 14, 2025 3:14 PM Updated: June 14, 2025 3:29 PM Suspect in Hortman’s assassination visited international hotspots, has ties to private security firms According to Boelter’s LinkedIn page, he is listed as the CEO of Red Lion Group, which is based in Congo, and he’s listed as a part of the leadership team at Praetorian Guard Security, which provides armed home security in the Twin Cities area. It appears in the past, he’d worked in food production for several companies, including Del Monte and Nestle. According to his bio on Praetorian Guard Security Boelter worked security situations in Eastern Europe, Africa, North America and the Middle East “including the West Bank, southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.”
The Democratic Republic of Congo is a hotspot of geopolitical industry interest and domestic conflicts that appear to be fueled by the geopolitical interests.
Uranium Security in the DRC January 2, 2024 Daniel Allen James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies The Shinkolobwe mine is located in the southeastern province of Haut-Katanga in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It was a former uranium mine used by the Americans to procure fissile material for the Manhattan Project, with 2/3 of the fissile material in the Manhattan Project originating from Shinkolobwe. Before the Manhattan Project, the Germans had attempted to use an intercepted shipment of uranium for their (failed) nuclear program. Eventually, the Americans abandoned the mine during the 1960s when domestic uranium production made imports unnecessary; the Belgian company Union Minière subsequently sealed the mine with concrete. Even though the mine had been sealed following the DRC’s independence in 1960, artisanal mining continued throughout the region due to abundant alternative ores including cobalt, silver, and copper. Lack of access to materials, coupled with few means for alternative sources of income, meant that the mining at Shinkolobwe occurred under increasingly hazardous conditions. In 2004, an old section of the mining shaft collapsed killing eight people and injuring a further thirteen. Even though the Shinkolobwe had officially been closed off by presidential decree some months earlier, illegal mining continued in the area. In 2006, a DRC sanctions committee report found that the “smuggling of radioactive materials […] are far more frequent than previously assumed.” These included the confiscation of over 50 containers containing uranium or cesium in or around Kinshasa, as well as the securement of 100 kilograms of uranium ore.
The grotesque vision of accusation in a mirror propaganda.
MAGA Push INSANE LIES As MN Shooter Revealed To Be Trump Supporter The Bulwark Jun 15, 2025 Tim Miller: "I was reluctant to come back on to do this uh to talk about what is happening in the dialogue in the far right fever swamps talking about these assassination attempts but it has bubbled up to such prominent accounts uh that I I feel like it must be addressed and that is that we are seeing from MAGA Republicans from influential um right-wing uh accounts and the advancement of a notion that this assassin the suspect uh was a Democrat of some kind and was unhappy with his fellow Democrats"
This is not an unusual cognitive warfare tactic unfortunately.
Confronting Evil: Genocide in Rwanda - Human Rights Watch Mar 28, 2014 Corinne Dufka: “When I was interviewing these these militia men from this one checkpoint I asked them and I said you know there are a lot of accounts of a lot of killing going on and of massacres going on I didn't use the word genocide but I used the word massacres – of massacres of Tutsi going on now is this true and how can you explain it and so on and so forth and you know one I got the predictable answer of you know of denial as well as explaining that in fact it was the Tutsis who were actually planning to massacre the Hutu.”
There's a name for this spin, and it's called Accusation in a Mirror, and it's actually quite common. You will hear this most often referred to in the US as "every accusation is a confession" especially in regards to Donald Trump. It's a legal concept, and well understood by genocide scholars.
Kenneth L. Marcus, Accusation in a Mirror, 43 Loy. U. Chi. L. J. 357 (2012). Loyola University Chicago Law Journal Volume 43 Issue 2 Winter 2012 Article 5 But why, out of all of the serious allegations that one might level at one's enemy, should one accuse the adversary of precisely the wrongs that one's own party intends to commit? After all, the risks are apparent. By revealing the propagandist's own intentions, AiM deprives the propagandist's party of the advantages of speed and surprise and gives the adversary an opportunity to anticipate and prepare. At the same time, this method provides independent observers and subsequent judicial tribunals with evidence of intent. Moreover, AiM is not based on any evaluation of what misdeeds are most plausibly ascribed to the enemy, such as those that are based on traditional stereotypes, defamations, or actual culpability, since it relies instead on the plans of the propagandist's party. Despite its counter-intuitive nature, AiM has proven to be one of the central mechanisms by which genocidaires publicly and directly incite genocide, in part because it turns out to be quite effective. Once AiM's structure and functions are understood, its pervasive and efficacious presence can be discerned not only in mass-murder but also in a host of lesser persecutions. These qualities can make AiM an indispensable tool for identifying and prosecuting incitement.
Average National Park visitors have a lot more sense than the Trump administration.
Government Executive - ‘Censorship:’ See the National Park visitor responses after Trump requested help deleting ‘negative’ signage The administration asked for help erasing language on park displays that failed to emphasize American grandeur, but visitors have not identified any examples. June 18, 2025 05:01 PM ET So far, NPS is not getting the help it was hoping for from those scanning the QR codes now posted around park sites soliciting assistance in identifying language in violation of Trump and Burgum’s orders. Instead, visitors accused the Trump administration of seeking to erase the nation’s history. “There shouldn't be signs about history that whitewash and erase the centuries of discrimination against the people who have cared for this land for generations,” a visitor to Indian Dunes National Park said. A visitor to Independence Hall in Philadelphia called the new signs “censorship dressed up as customer service.” “What upset me the most about the museum—more than anything in the actual exhibits—were the signs telling people to report anything they thought was negative about Americans,” the visitor said.