Issues You May Know, 25 July 2025.
A list of things you might want to know about - or write your reps about.
📍 If you care about our quality of life, please stop promoting the use of AI by using it needlessly.
Human Rights Watch reports depraved conditions in Florida immigration concentration jails.
Human Rights Watch - July 21, 2025 12:00AM EDT | News Release US: Immigrants Abused in Florida Detention Sites Pervasive Overcrowding, Medical Neglect, Degrading Treatment In one particularly degrading incident, detainees at FDC were forced to eat while shackled with their hands behind their backs. “We had to bend over and eat off the chairs with our mouths, like dogs,” said Harpinder Chauhan, a British entrepreneur who had been detained by ICE at a regular immigration appointment. Chauhan, who suffers from diabetes and heart disease, said he was denied insulin at various points during his detention at Krome, FDC, and BTC, including at BTC for nearly a week, after which he collapsed and was taken to a hospital.
My letter to reps:
The government needs to stop incarcerating people in inhumane concentration immigration facilities where required access to medical care for emergency and chronic conditions is being denied. Holding anyone for any reason in these conditions is depraved and immoral. What are you doing to investigate and stop the immorality?
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
It's good if the Jeffrey Epstein files debacle leads to more people learning about inauthentic persuasion on social media.
The split in MAGA over the Jeffrey Epstein Files issue has led to chatbot programmed troll farm accounts in a social media botnet to start putting out confusing and conflicting posts. I'm glad this is getting mainstream and independent media attention, that's a good thing. Hundreds of maga botnet accounts on the app formerly known as twitter is the tip of a huge iceberg and not an isolated thing, it's representative of a great deal of social media unfortunately.
I've spent years trying to tell people I know and have interacted with about the inauthentic stuff on social media. People are surprisingly resistant to believe their faves are fake, or that they're being manipulated by paid influencers. Sometimes they've lashed out angrily at me when I've tried to inform people about inauthentic accounts, paid influencers, and various big accounts on social media. In my experience, even after there's plenty of evidence an account is behaving inauthentically, even prominent people will continue following favourite sketch accounts.
This of course leads to people being hesitant to even bother trying to warn people about this stuff, when you can expect that most people will not welcome the information at all, in fact they'll attack the messenger.
We are always being targeted with oppositional propaganda to bring us over to the dark side.
Slow down, engage critical thinking, also consider your own experience and your own moral compass, before listening to what may turn out to be specious arguments or sabotage from enemies.
theSGLF: State Government Leadership Foundation (SGLF) Feb 9, 2022 Our latest ad is making an impact and liberals are now agreeing with what conservatives have been saying all along: mask mandates do more harm than good.
Sometimes it's people who are mistaken for liberals who spread right-wing propaganda to the people who mistake them for liberal.
Mark Cuban @mcuban.bsky.social · 2d Any current or former Medicaid Navigators out there that could uses AI agents to create an app that sources the newly needed information and can fill out the Medicaid forms with that data ? Effectively automating the entire process and making what could be a difficult process, easy Gray Wolf @gray-wolf27.bsky.social · 1d You know... you get a lot of crap, Mark, but you really are trying to make a positive impact. I see you. This is hopefully something that will come to fruition. But they're going to have to get feet on the ground to spread the assistance. That's the biggest problem still. Chloe @wat3rm370n.bsky.social · 1d bsky.app/profile/wat3... Chloe @wat3rm370n.bsky.social · 1d Exactly the rules are made deliberately hard that's where the 'cost savings' come from! The gatekeeping tripping people up! And they already tried to automate some of the processes and it led to the book Automating Inequality by Virginia Eubanks which came out back in 2018. bsky.app/profile/wat3... Mark Cuban @mcuban.bsky.social · 9h The rules are made hard. But agents are improving their ability to solve these types of problems. And they will only get better Sandy B. @nebulousmenace.bsky.social · 7h That third sentence is where you're trusting the salesmen. Chloe @wat3rm370n.bsky.social It's what I think I've heard David Gerard @pivot-to-ai.com.web.brid.gy call it "promotional mouth noises" July 24, 2025 at 5:50 PM
I really don't want cringe direct contact with tycoons on social media, but I hate to see propaganda go uncontested, and I just couldn't help doubling down and promoting David Gerard. A pal in a group chat joked to me that if billionaire Mark Cuban replies to me again I should tell him that any further consultancy would have to be at an astronomical hourly rate fee. And I said yes, and I'll tell him I'm using analog surveillance pricing. I’m told that Mark Cuban really doesn’t like Lina Khan. I just have to wonder why is this guy on social media dragging on random working class people? He’d be better off spending his time giving away his money to charity that probably has a better grasp of what’s needed in the world than he does.
Why is the US government still betraying people who helped the US military?
WBUR - Former Afghan interpreter for U.S. military detained by ICE after routine immigration appointment July 22, 2025 Jesús Marrero Suárez Massachusetts Rep. Bill Keating called Zia’s detention “inexcusable.” “ If we don't speak up, if we don't act, if we don't let the laws of this country and the word of the United States government mean anything, that'll be the message going forward: It doesn't matter if you play by the rules. It doesn't matter that you risk your lives. It doesn't matter whether you trusted the military people that you were working with. None of that matters,” Keating said.
My letter to reps (who are Republicans and John Fetterman whatever you want to call him):
Why is the US government still penalizing people who helped the US military in Afghanistan? It's unacceptable that Afghan interpreters are being detained by ICE. They should have full legal status no questions asked after the sacrifices these people made, no matter what's happened before or since, or what they're accused of. And if they are accused of something, it should be handled in the US legal system, not by some immigration agency. These people aren't immigrants, they're Americans by any moral definition, and should've all been given citizenship by default after serving the US military in such a way. I don't even know anyone from Afghanistan, nor anyone personally who served in the US military operation in Afghanistan, but this stuff really pisses me off because the way these Afghan interpreters have been treated, and keep being treated year after year, is just a clownish epitome of unfair treatment and betrayal. Not just mistreatment and betrayal of the Afghan interpreters themselves, but to the US military veterans who have to live with the experiences and injuries of their service, and then on top of that live with how interpreters who helped them have been treated by the government who employed them. Elected representatives should be doing something to correct this.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
They skipped right over the communists.
ARS TECHNICA - RFK Jr. barred registered Democrats from being vaccine advisors, lawsuit says - The health department said Kennedy stands by his CDC reforms. Beth Mole – Jul 8, 2025 5:53 PM Under Kennedy, to qualify to be on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's nationally influential and historically apolitical ACIP, candidates had to be registered as a Republican or independent and could not have any history of publicly criticizing President Trump or Kennedy, the lawsuit claims. Just two days after dismissing all 17 ACIP members—who had all gone through an extensive vetting process that lasted up to two years—Kennedy announced eight new members. One later dropped out during last-minute financial vetting the day before an ACIP meeting. Of the remaining seven, only one has the scientific and medical qualifications described under ACIP's charter.
Avoid scams targeting people looking for remote work.
FTC How to avoid work-from-home job scams By BCP Staff June 24, 2025 Don't pay for the promise of a job. Honest employers will never ask you to pay to get a job. Anyone who does is a scammer.
Getting your money seems to be a common goal of sketchy job offers, so it's the top red flag for not getting derailed into something bogus, but there are others that the FTC lists. And sometimes the goal is to get people's personal information. Scams can also happen on well known job websites with scammers impersonating well known companies.
Frog.
American Bullfrog at Promised Land State Park in Pennsylvania, July 19, 2022. Photo by Chloe Kaczenski Humbert.