activescott's Notes

UN human rights group demands immediate release of Gaza doctor

A UN human ⁠rights ⁠body has called Israel’s detention of Gaza Dr ⁠Hussam Abu Safiya arbitrary and seeks his immediate release ⁠as rights groups and his lawyer warn his life is in imminent danger.

In its finding, ‌the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said Israel’s actions contravened multiple articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well ⁠as the International Covenant ⁠on Civil and Political Rights.

Over 90,000 houses damaged by Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon

Continued Israeli attacks have prevented more than 600,000 people from returning to southern Lebanon.

Israel is posting videos of its military blowing up neighbourhoods.

The soldiers have been doing this for months – wiping villages off the map – actions that rights groups say violate international law, reports Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr.

In the midst of a social crisis, Vance observed, Trump offered “an easy escape from the pain. To every complex problem, he promises a simple solution.” But, he argued, such promises were a cheap high. “He never offers details for how these plans will work, because he can’t. Trump’s promises are the needle in America’s collective vein.” Anne Applebaum: Trump’s anti-patriotic trap “Trump is cultural heroin,” Vance wrote. “He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it.” “One day” is today. The trump presidency, while still quite dangerous, is also collapsing, cracking under the weight of its own choices. The main driver is the economy, which he sold as his strong point. We’re seeing tariff-driven price increases, gas prices that spiked from less than $3 to more than $4 a gallon during a 100-day war against Iran that America lost, wages failing to keep pace with the cost of living, and inflation ticking back up. Manufacturing jobs, which Trump promised to bring roaring back, are still being lost. Health care has gotten much more expensive on his watch, and millions have lost coverage. At the top of the nation’s health agencies sits Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who in a single year moved to cut the list of recommended childhood vaccines nearly in half, fired the government’s vaccine advisers and replaced them with skeptics, and presided over the worst measles outbreak in 30 years. The National Institutes of Health, the crown jewel of American biomedical science, has seen billions in research cut, clinical trials canceled, and labs closed, resulting in a “brain drain” that rival nations are racing to exploit. And the dismantling of USAID, along with the gutting of PEPFAR—the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the bipartisan AIDS-relief program credited with saving more than 25 million lives—has, by credible estimates, already cost the lives of hundreds of thousands, most of them children, with projections of as ma

This is the context in which Americans are celebrating the nation’s 250th birthday. It’s not simply that things are going badly; it’s that their view of the United States is darkening. Pride in being an American has hit a new low. Nearly 80 percent of Americans believe the Founders would be disappointed with how the country has turned out.

Some of that sentiment reflects the fact that the president and those around him subvert the rule of law, decency, and democratic restraints. Many Americans believe the country is, in its current incarnation, betraying its ideals. They feel at odds with the nation they love.

Which brings me back to J. D. Vance. Ten summers ago he understood, better than most, the threat Trump posed to America. Vance, who described himself as a “Never Trump guy,” thought Trump was an “idiot.” He admitted to a friend at the time that he goes “back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler.” But then ambition made its offer, and Vance, who had seen the danger so clearly, discovered he could see his way around it. The first stop was the Senate; the next was the vice presidency.

The remedy, according to Lincoln, was a “political religion” based on reverence for the law and fidelity to America’s constitutional process. Lincoln was in turn relying on the wisdom of George Washington, and particularly Washington’s farewell address. America’s two greatest presidents shared an intense conviction: that a republic depends on some measure of virtue in its citizens and some measure of integrity in its leaders. Without them, the temple of liberty will fall. The past decade in America has been a lost decade. Far too many Americans have cheered on the men tearing at the temple. But Americans can now see, later than they should have, the cost of the damage. It is within our power to make it whole. What remains is to find the will. There is a name for those who do: renewers of ruined cities, repairers of the breach, restorers of streets in which to dwell.

Here’s what you need to know about the SAVE America Act: 

1. Citizenship is already a requirement to vote, and instances of noncitizen voting are rare.
2. Many eligible citizens don’t have access to documentary proof of citizenship.
3. There are better ways to verify citizenship that put the responsibility on government, not voters.
4. The SAVE America Act could have unintended consequences for election officials and election administration.
5. The SAVE America Act’s photo ID requirements are more restrictive than any state law currently in place.
6. The SAVE America Act needs more time and resources to be implemented well.

Sounds like a coup in the making:

The SAVE America Act was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in February 2026. Congress is now weighing a scaled-back version through the budget reconciliation process. Instead of a blanket mandate, this version takes an incentive-based approach: No state would be required to adopt documentary proof of citizenship or photo voter ID, but states that meet the requirements would qualify for federal funding. The House set aside $10 billion for this purpose in its July 15, 2026, budget resolution. Because the resolution specifies only the total dollar amount, the details of the framework are still undetermined. For perspective, that $10 billion is nearly double everything Congress has allocated for election administration since 2002 combined.1

Although instances of noncitizen registration and voting are rare, the SAVE America Act’s goal of ensuring that only citizens can register to vote is important. But there are easier, more cost-effective ways to improve citizenship verification that don’t create new barriers for eligible voters.

Registration and voting attempts by noncitizens are routinely investigated and prosecuted by the appropriate authorities, and there is no evidence that attempts at voting by noncitizens have ever been significant enough to impact any election’s outcome. In fact, there is ample evidence to indicate that registration and voting by noncitizens is few and far between.

Utah, for example, performed a citizenship review of its entire voter registration list from April 2025 through January 2026. After a time-intensive, multi-step review of more than 2 million registered voters, they identified only one confirmed instance of noncitizen registration and zero instances of noncitizen voting.

Additionally, many state election offices began using U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program in 2025 to verify voter citizenship. Records from this program show that just 0.04% of voter verification cases are returned as noncitizens.

Many eligible citizens don’t have documentary proof of citizenship

According to the U.S. Department of State, examples of primary citizenship evidence include a birth certificate, a U.S. passport, a Consular Report of Birth Abroad, a Certificate of Citizenship, or a Naturalization Certificate. (While Real IDs are often assumed to be a reliable proxy for citizenship, they do not definitively establish citizenship.) 

Although at least one of these documents are in theory available to most citizens, not all voters have them readily available. According to recent studies:

9% of all eligible voters do not have, or do not have easy access to, documentary proof of citizenship. 52% of registered voters do not have an unexpired passport with their current legal name. 11% of registered voters do not have access to their birth certificate. Additionally, birth certificates often lack information that matches a person’s current identity. For instance, someone who has changed their name through marriage or court order may need to present a third document (such as a marriage certificate) to join their proof of citizenship (e.g., birth certificate) with their proof of identity (e.g., driver’s license), further decreasing the likelihood that a voter will have the appropriate documentation on hand to successfully register.

Even if voters were to provide documentary proof of citizenship, verifying the authenticity of those documents is an inherently complex task, one that election officials and motor vehicle departments often do not have the resources or training to perform.

Kansas offers a case study of how a documentary proof requirement would likely play out in practice. Before the law took effect, noncitizen registration in Kansas was exceedingly rare, accounting for about 0.002% of registered voters. After adoption, the documentary proof of citizenship requirement prevented roughly 31,000 eligible citizens, or 12% of all applicants, from registering to vote. In short, the law prevented far more citizens from registering to vote than noncitizens.

He said that although a prohibition on mail-in voting with exceptions and other requests made by Trump could be included, the “bigger reach” is to hone the bill to focus on providing proof of citizenship when registering to vote and the presentation of photo ID before casting a ballot — the core components of the bill. “That eliminates the problem, all the fraud and everything that everybody’s concerned about in our elections, particularly, frankly, in these blue states,” Johnson said.

The most common objection I hear to evals is “our product is hard to eval”.

This objection is a product smell. Artifacts that are hard for you to verify are often hard for users too. In the worst case, users have to redo the work from scratch to verify the output. More importantly, designing your product for ease of verification should come before building evals.

The shuttering of local news outlets and proliferation of AI-generated content has led to a rise in “pink slime” websites, which the Poynter Institute describes as outlets producing “poor quality reports that appear to be local news,” and are “frequently produced via automation and templates.” Often these sites are, according to Poynter, “funded by outside companies with a partisan source of financing.”  For example, a sprawling network of 450 websites — including 189 that “were set up as local news networks across 10 states” — was discovered ahead of the 2020 election cycle by the Columbia Journalism Review. CJR linked the network to a conservative businessman’s company “known for its low-cost automated story generation,” as well as for “faking bylines and quotes, and for plagiarism.” In Knox County, Ohio, a proposed wind farm became the subject of critical coverage in a local outlet after it was purchased by Metric Media, “part of a ‘pink slime’ network,” ProPublica reported at the time.

But countries hit earlier by the ketamine wave offer a grim warning about the drug’s dark side.  In the U.K., the number of people seeking treatment for ketamine addiction increased twelvefold between 2015 and 2025. Hospitals have reported growing numbers of chronic users suffering catastrophic bladder damage caused by the drug’s toxic metabolites. Some patients, including teenagers, have required bladder removal surgery. Heavy use can also cause debilitating abdominal pain known as “K-cramps,” which some users attempt to relieve by taking more ketamine.

only a small number of fatalities linked to sole ketamine use. Deaths more often involve misadventure, such as drowning, accidents or the combined effect of mixing multiple substances, rather than direct toxicity. For example, Missouri doctor Bolek Payan disappeared in December 2022 and was later found drowned in his pond after taking ketamine. The most high-profile death has been that of Matthew Perry, whose body was found in his hot tub after he knocked himself out with a large dose of ketamine. Even so, the resulting trial of the “Ketamine Queen,” the invented nickname prosecutors gave to an LA dealer called Jasveen Sangha who sold the drugs to Perry’s friend, ended with her being sentenced to 15 years.

Authorities are also increasingly concerned about “tusi,” or “pink cocaine,” a party drug that most often contains ketamine mixed with MDMA and caffeine. The Instagram-friendly drug was created by a new generation of young Colombian narcos in the early 2010s before spreading to Spain and its holiday hotspots such as Ibiza and the Canaries.

Medical examiners in Miami have reported a spike in deaths involving the drug. In one 2024 case, a 24-year-old woman crashed her car and killed two people after taking tusi, and told officers she was “from the future.”

Although at a lower level than other illicit drugs, ketamine poisonings, seizures and cases of pharmaceutical diversion are all rising nationally. Investigators say the U.S. market is increasingly being supplied by industrial-scale illicit production in Europe and India, with the drug being smuggled into the U.S. often from the U.K. by plane and boat.

US Ambassador Mike Huckabee said Washington "recognises Jerusalem as the eternal, indigenous, and forever capital of the Jewish people".

"I would say God made that decision 3,800 years ago, and we finally got around to acknowledging what had been determined long before the United States of America came along."

The agreement follows President Donald Trump's decision during his first term to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital in December 2017 and relocate the US embassy from Tel Aviv.

The US went ahead with the plan even though Palestinians continue to seek East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state. Because of these competing claims, most countries have kept their embassies in Tel Aviv, maintaining that Jerusalem's final status should be settled through peace negotiations in line with international law and relevant United Nations resolutions.

Burbank traded seeds with fellow collectors all around the world. In a package from India, he found seeds for a huge blackberry with an even bigger flavor.

Burbank named it the Himalaya Giant (even though it’s actually believed to be from Armenia).

Burbank found that the Himalaya Giant grew like nobody’s business – but only in temperate areas, like the Pacific Coast.

By the early 1900s, the Himalaya Giant – which would eventually be known as the Himalayan blackberry – was especially thriving in the Puget Sound region.

OpenFGA takes the best ideas from Google's Zanzibar paper for Relationship-Based Access Control, and also solves problems for Role-based Access Control and Attribute-Based Access Control use cases. The modeling language is powerful enough for engineers, but friendly enough for other stakeholders on your team as well.

The Agency is a growing collection of meticulously crafted AI agent personalities. Each agent is:

🎯 Specialized: Deep expertise in their domain (not generic prompt templates)
🧠 Personality-Driven: Unique voice, communication style, and approach
📋 Deliverable-Focused: Real code, processes, and measurable outcomes
✅ Production-Ready: Battle-tested workflows and success metrics

Think of it as: Assembling your dream team, except they're AI specialists who never sleep, never complain, and always deliver.

Trump reported another $635 million from the sale of his Trump meme coins. The news underlines how crypto has transformed the president's fortunes. In his disclosure a year ​ago, opens new tab, for example, the president reported $57.35 million from token sales at World Liberty, which then leaped nine-fold in this year’s filing. Reuters recently estimated the Trump family has made at least $2.3 ​billion from crypto-related projects since Trump returned to the White House in 2025. On taking office, Trump began to put in place policies and initiatives that ⁠the industry saw as beneficial, from implementing federal rules for stablecoins to dialing back policing of the industry by the U.S. Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission.