Thanks for your clarification, as I should have been more clear. Law enforcement is a “government agency”, and Flock technically obtains permissions from them. There’s not much sense in installing cameras before securing some kind of contract.

Flock tends to get contracts from law enforcement agencies, but then runs afoul of other regulatory agencies who are not notified before the equipment is installed. City councils, transportation authorities, public safety departments, constituents, and even State lawmakers are often not included in negotiations or even notified. This is the problem with Flock’s business practices that results in removal disputes.

Once the cameras are in, they become difficult to dislodge and it takes regulatory force (and more money) to remove their privately owned equipment. Flock is not incentivized to remove their cameras or seek the proper approvals, and they know their product is popular with police and unpopular with the populace. So, that’s who they target for sales and permissions. Once the equipment is installed, they fight any regulatory removal process. As they garner more negative attention, their excuses and ploys become more odious. For example:

In North Carolina in November 2023, a judge enjoined Flock staff from installing new cameras after a division of the state’s Department of Public Safety sought an injunction against it arguing the company had been operating without the required license. Flock disputed the complaint, claiming it did not need any sort of clearance from the North Carolina Alarm Systems Licensing Board because it “is not in the alarm system business”; the statute applies to any device used to detect illegal activity. Thomas said Flock has since been permitted to have a third party install its devices.

A company like Flock should be fully expected to know that this excuse is absurd and that this law applied to them, But Flock chose to litigate it anyways, and did so because they expected to be allowed to continue, which they were.

I reiterate my point that Flock is not in the public safety business because they don’t willingly work with public safety organizations. Flock is in the business of monetizing dragnet surveillance for law enforcement because that’s all they do.

I care. I care that gay men are getting hand jobs, oral sex, and anal, just like him.

I care so, so much.

Oh fuck, I’m caring so hard… hnnnng!

There are multiple documented instances of flock installing cameras without first notifying local governments. One example:

Previously, in 2021, Flock ran afoul of local government in Lake County, Florida after it installed 100 cameras without notifying officials.

(Sorry for the paywalled article. If you view it in reader mode the rest is visible.)

Their strategy (which has led to great success I might add) is to install cameras where they can, and then approach local PD with a showcase of the data. To their credit they do remove installations when required, but now that it’s being required more frequently they appear to be increasingly reticent to do so.

Any municipal location that Flock can install a camera represents the privatization of public tax-payer funded property by theft. Flock installs cameras without permission, gathers free data, then sells it back to municipalities for the tax dollars of the surveilled.

Flock owns the actual camera hardware and uses a completely internal field support service, meaning it costs them lost time and lost money every time a service call is put out to repair instead of install. They also charge police departments for vandalized cameras as part of their contract. So, there’s literally no reason for them to send out a unit to remove cameras unless forced to by law.

Flock is not a public safety company, because their products and practices are not meant to promote public safety. They promote private monetization of indiscriminate dragnet surveillance where mistakes and harassment are just the cost of doing business.

Cops get lied to about Flock’s capabilities and then people suffer when law enforcement acts on bad intelligence. Then, the government must dislodge itself from liability for Flock’s mistakes, E-waste hardware, and invasive tactics. It’s no wonder most municipalities want nothing to do with them.

DOGE cuts to federal food safety programs and organizations:

The changes to FoodNet did not occur in a vacuum. In February 2025, the administration eliminated the USDA’s National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods, which was working on best-practice guidelines to combat foodborne illnesses shortly before its dissolution. In April 2025, federal workforce cuts forced the suspension of the Food Emergency Response Network proficiency testing program, which ensured that the network’s 170 food-testing laboratories could produce quality results during an emergency. The Trump Administration also downsized the CDC’s parasite surveillance team from eleven to just three. Zooming out, important institutions have been hollowed out: the USDA has shed 24,000 workers (an almost 27 percent reduction), the CDC has lost nearly 3,000 (roughly a quarter of its workforce), and the FDA is down more than 4,000 (almost a fifth of its workforce).

In practice, they’re implementing austerity so they can funnel tax dollars to billionaires in tax breaks and subsidies. In effect, I’m convinced they’re trying to kill us.

No, she just stopped emptying the bucket for me!

Wow! What a load of buuuuullshit!

And it just so happens that the privatized company’s AI chose to attack the website hosting free local models. Huh, what a coincidence.

…he said, adjusting his gaming diaper.

I’m reminded of the guarded demeanor and professionalism of Gen. Schwarzkopf’s Famed News Conference during the first Iraq war. He seemed to know implicitly that instead of guaranteeing success, American military might precludes the excuses of failure - to win, the enemy needed only inflict casualties on coalition forces whose political sensibilities abhor war deaths and attrition.

Everyone knew that attacking Iran was a bad idea, and I do mean everyone, except maybe Trump and those in his administration who stand to gain from their blatant and treasonous war profiteering. Netanyahu is intimately aware of the dangers of Iran’s capabilities, which is why he’s perfectly happy to let the US stick its dick in a blender so he can genocide the West Bank. Iran’s defense and tactics have been carefully constructed over the past 50 years, and they have also been studied for the same period with the same projected outcome that is now playing out - you cannot defeat an entrenched and determined enemy with air superiority alone. It’s the hard lesson we got from Vietnam and the reason we still rely on ground troops. It may be the lessons of insurgency we got in Iraq and Afghanistan still fresh in the American psyche that has somehow penetrated the Trump administration’s incompetency and prevented a disastrous ground invasion.

Bibi got Trump in a room at Mar a Lago, and with no one left willing to mitigate Trump’s delusions, stroked an incompetent, compulsive narcissist’s ego into finally attacking Iran for him. This is literally how it happened, with every check, balance, advisor, military strategist, and lawmaker completely bypassed. Now, the entire Republican Party hastily implements plans to subvert the election process to prevent the midterm blowout that will result from this unmitigated disaster to once again, fix Trump’s indescribably bad decisions just like Daddy used to; transfixed and subservient to the spell of a narcissist’s delusional alternate reality, but on a global scale.

These are TEXTBOOK lessons about the dangers of narcissists, Fascism, and war. A casual glance at history lays out what horrors lie ahead.

While there are still cheaper DDR5 options at lower speeds, the 32GB of DDR5 @ 8000MT I bought at $579 in February is now $700 on Amazon and even more elsewhere.

At the time I was convinced that the industry was moving towards a full-leasing only model, and so I decided to invest in some future proofing. It took less than 6 months for the price to start jumping again. Whether this is deliberate, or simply an emergent quality of supply/demand of the new AI economy probably doesn’t matter. The bar for private compute power is being shoved higher and higher by data centers and the PC industry’s response is to move towards a leasing model.

I foresee that eventually that when PC hardware becomes too expensive or completely unavailable in consumer markets, your PC will become like your phone - a locked-down, remotely managed, integrated hardware system that you lease as a unit, along with a cloud services subscription. Or, a thin client with the bare minimum specs to accommodate cloud computing. Extrapolating from this - a privatized Internet hostile to client computers unauthenticated by a major company or government entity running a recognized digital fiefdom where uncontrolled local compute will be viewed as highly suspicious.

If you still have the means and the interest, I suggest investing in consumer PC hardware to:

1. Demonstrate this market is still viable.

2. Buy hardware before it jumps in price again.

3. Claw back some of the local compute power being engineered away from consumers.

Of course, the AI economic bubble is due for collapse and cheap hardware may suddenly flood the market in a few years. However, I’m betting there is enough runway and monetization left to fund the pathway to the end of common PC ownership.

This is a convenient Trumpism with double meaning. They get to say, “no he means the left is endangering federal agents with their violent rhetoric!” and then we say, “Homan is holding us hostage by saying not to resist or they’ll kill us.”

Remember that it is immigrants and protesters who are actually being murdered, and that Homan is the one making the threats.

Electing a useful stooge to usher in a new age of American fascism is probably something this nation will never fully be able to come to terms with, and may not survive. It’s incredibly disappointing and disheartening that we have to depend on the shock value of outrageous sex crimes just to get the attention of voters.

In addition to the normalization of rape culture, here are some other horrible things that are already happening, and continue to get worse as we continue down this path:

• Techno-fascist police state
• Concentration camps
• Domestic military operations
• Open kleptocracy
• Federalized “elections”
• Illegal and continuous wars at executive whim
• Out-of-control, self-sustaining, irreversible global climate change
• Increased risk of nuclear conflict

I think I prefer, “You enthusiastically voted for an obviously fascist lunatic.” But hey, whatever gets butts in the booths while we still can.

Google deleting reviews of ICE concentration camps is just about the clearest example of a techno-fascist dystopia I can imagine, right up there with live streams of school shootings plastered with sad emojis.

“1/5 stars, disappeared with no trial, guards beat me, bad food, no AC. Then they deported me to a country I’ve never been to. :(“

This review had been removed for violation of Google’s TOS. If you are still alive and you think this is in error, please contact Google Support.

Oh hey, just like that other grifter Salt Bae. The US President is on the same level as Salt Bae.

Sounds like the election interference is coming… FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE! Ahhhhhh!

It would be so awesome if it turned out they taxidermy’d his body, sat him up in a hospital bed, and forced his wife to take a picture with his dead body and today’s newspaper stuffed under his hand lol

One video posted on social media showed a man yelling and crying on the ground in Terminal 3 at Harry Reid International Airport on Monday when a man and a masked woman, both in plainclothes, tried to control, handcuff and detain him. When the pair realized they were being filmed, they walked away, leaving the man with a handcuff attached to one arm.

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police found no outstanding warrants for the man, removed his handcuffs and notified ICE.

They know what they’re doing is illegal, and accountability terrifies them.

I’m cringe, and that’s based…

They’re coming to replace us with robots, and to kill those who resist.