Like Hotcakes

Concentration Camp Merch: FLORIDA - Alligator Alcatraz merchandise is "selling like hotcakes," the Chairman of the Republican Party of Florida said Tuesday, after a pair of online shops began selling t-shirts, hats, Koozies and other items.

Over the next several years, Amazon plans to build around 30 data centers at the site, packed with hundreds of thousands of specialized computer chips. With hundreds of thousands of miles of fiber connecting every chip and computer together, the entire complex will form one giant machine intended just for artificial intelligence. - NYT

Simply put, countless malware strains will check for the presence of one of these languages on the system, and if they’re detected the malware will exit and fail to install. - Krebs

According to minutes seen by The Guardian, representatives from over two dozen technology firms met with Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Prisons Minister James Timpson in London last month. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is seeking “innovative” ways to address the crisis of overcrowded prisons and stretched probation services. One radical idea raised was the use of subcutaneous implants to track offenders in real time. Other suggestions included using robots to manage prisoners, AI-powered rehabilitation assistants, and autonomous vehicles to transport inmates. Ministers framed the discussion as exploring what a “digital, data and technology-enabled justice system” might look like by 2050…Tech firms also floated the use of high-powered quantum computers to predict future criminal behaviour and automate sentencing calculations within the strained probation service. However, some at the meeting warned of “dystopian outcomes” if such tools were misapplied. - Business Matters Magazine

The UN report warns that without systemic investment in water infrastructure, enhanced agricultural resilience, and deeper regional cooperation, Central Asia will confront severe socio-economic disruption. It stresses that urgent action is needed at both national and international levels to address the looming water crisis… Kazakhstan’s Minister of Labor and Social Protection, Svetlana Zhakupova, has announced that the government plans to raise the minimum wage starting January 1, 2026. While the exact amount was not disclosed, Finance Minister Madi Takiev suggested the minimum wage could increase to just over 90,000 KZT ($189) per month. - Times of Central Asia

Hey D.J.! (Don’t Play That Song). Some couples create wedding “do not play” lists, for reasons ranging from the personal to the political.- NYT

UN report, From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide

The Pentagon has halted shipments of some air defense missiles and other precision munitions to Ukraine due to worries that U.S. weapons stockpiles have fallen too low. - Politico

Q: "A 75 year old Cuban national died in ICE custody. He had lived in the U.S. for 60 years...Is there anything you can tell us about that?" Border Czar Tom Homan: "People die in ICE custody. People die in county jails. People die in state prisons." - Salon

Bank of New York Mellon said it now employs dozens of artificial intelligence-powered ‘digital employees’ that have company logins and work alongside its human staff. - WSJ

We are, we believe, living through a similar reordering — this time into what might be called a digital modernity. And as before, some of the most profound changes don’t have to do with the figureheads of the age or the rise and fall of empires, but with subtler matters: the shifts in language we use to describe our social world. These shifts do more than reflect change; they enact it. Our aim, then, is to examine the epistemological foundations of digital modernity: the ways of knowing, speaking and imagining that define this new era… Power always needs abstraction. To be controlled, reality’s unwieldy complexity needs to be slotted in models, categories and measures that allow for standardization and manipulation. Nature and social life are bureaucratically indigestible in their raw form and must be pre-processed to be seen and shaped. Power, in other words, requires maps. And maps are only useful because they are specific and leave things out.- Noema

AlligatorAuschwitz: Trump opens concentration camp in the Everglades ( definition: a place where large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labor or to await mass execution.)

“EU gets ‘tough’ on Trump Tariff deal: The EU appears to be approaching this like a trade negotiation, which would be a colossal mistake. From the US perspective, this appears to be about negotiating the terms of surrender,” said Ted Murphy, a trade lawyer at Sidley in Washington. - FT

Two weeks ago today, Donald Trump’s ICE agents arrested me. Now, he’s threatening to put @zohrankmamdani in a prison camp that he’s building in a Florida swamp – for thousands of our immigrant neighbors being disappeared from our courts & communities w/o due process. It’s frightening. It’s essential to fight back. It makes me proud of how New Yorkers voted last week – and how we’ll vote again in November. - Brad Lander ( Ran for Mayor of New York )

"The United Nations has collapsed, and there is no known precedent for this daily massacre in Palestine. The governments of Berlin, Paris, London, and Washington are complicit in the Israeli slaughter of the Palestinian people." - Brazilian President Maduro

The automation of Amazon.com facilities is approaching a new milestone: There will soon be as many robots as humans. - WSJ