moar internetz

The Anonymous activists behind “OpKKK” – which infiltrated and unmasked Klan members, including many in US military and police departments – began by creating thin-but-plausible fake identities on Facebook that signalled support for “Blue Lives Matter.” By friending other accounts that indicated support for Blue Lives Matter, they found themselves being auto-suggested friendships with KKK members.

The more Klan accounts they friended, the more the Facebook algorithm located new ones for them to solicit for mutual friending, and the more plausible they seemed to anyone contemplating friending them.

They were greatly aided by the Klan’s primitive recognition loop: a Klansman asks “AYAK” (“Are you a Klansman”) and listens for the response “AKIA” (A Klansman I am) – the KKK has a long history of dopey, D&D-inflected wordplay.

As the Grugq points out, closeted gay people had better tradecraft than this with the whole, “friend of Dorothy” thing. The KKK, by contrast “aren’t really good at handling insider threats or figuring out how to keep threats outside.” That means “When you want to punch a Nazi in the face, they’ll be easier to find and hunt down.”

Priests Rip It Up and Start Again

The release of their Bodies EP and the following hectic tour changed how Priests saw their future as a working band. “After Bodies came out, I didn’t really see a path for us to make a living doing this, but I also didn’t see another path that was working,” Greer says. “Like, cool, working in this restaurant is crushing me spiritually, and I see ways that I could become a professionally creative person — but what that entails squeezes all the life out of what I want to do most times.”

I profiled Priests and talked to them about their new record, the struggle to stay creative in trying times, playing as a wedding band, etc. 

Please help us welcome the newest members of the Department of Phenomenal Photoshop: a collective of Russian artists who go by the name 2D Among Us and specialize in seamlessly adding 2D characters (sometimes 3D too) from cartoons, movies, and video games into photos of everyday real-life settings.

Follow 2d_here on Instagram to check out many photos of pop culture characters interacting with the real world.