Geometric Denazification

A federal lawsuit alleging that gas companies in California are colluding to keep prices high through their use of AI-powered software will test the state’s antitrust law at a time of growing concerns about the effects of technology on the high cost of living.

Filed on behalf of three drivers last month, the proposed class-action lawsuit accuses roughly a dozen companies and their subsidiaries — including Walmart and 7-Eleven — of using algorithmic software to fix prices. The company that provided the software, Kalibrate, is named as a defendant.

Kalibrate’s program, according to the lawsuit, encourages gas stations to upload private price data. The company’s AI-powered software, called Kalibrate Fuel Prices, then uses the data to recommend prices in real time, promising in its marketing materials to help gas companies “squeeze out profit.”

The lawsuit touches on a growing conversation over how companies are using technology, including AI, to push prices higher.

In a highly publicized case in 2024, the federal government sued a company whose algorithmic pricing software was used by large landlords to share private rental data, recommend prices and drive apartment rents up. Last year, reporters found that the grocery delivery company Instacart was running AI-enabled pricing experiments on customers, sometimes resulting in a nearly $3 difference in the price of individual products.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if (this kind of individualized pricing) exists in all different kinds” of industries, said Robert Zeithammer, a professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. “If you’re a car dealer, you could be doing it.”

Lawyers in the gas station lawsuit assert that technology is enabling antitrust violations. Even if companies didn’t communicate their pricing strategies to one another directly, the argument goes, the software is allowing them to share data and keep prices above a certain threshold.

“The quintessential image of price fixing is a secret deal made between competitors over cigars in a smoky back room,” attorneys wrote in the complaint. “But as technology has advanced, so too have the mechanisms available to competitors to fix prices without the cigars, the smoke, or even the room.”

The lawyers represent two firms that include staff members who worked at the Federal Trade Commission during an era of bolstered antitrust enforcement under President Joe Biden.

The Los Angeles Times reached out to the companies named in the lawsuit, but only Walmart responded, saying it would address the accusations in court.

In a statement, Kalibrate denied the claims.

“We disagree with the allegations in the lawsuit and intend to defend the company vigorously,” Matias Toye, legal director at Kalibrate Technologies, wrote in an email. “Kalibrate is committed to serving its customers with lawful, innovative fuel-pricing technology, and we remain focused on supporting our customers while respecting the litigation process.”

The lawsuit comes as consumers report struggling to afford basic necessities. Recent polling from Gallup found that Americans are concerned most about housing and energy prices, including gas.

In California, drivers pay some of the highest prices in the country. Taxes, environmental fees and the Iran war have pushed fuel prices up; according to AAA, regular gas sold at an average of $5.43 a gallon on Tuesday, which is more than $2 above states such as Texas and Oklahoma.

The lawsuit alleges that Kalibrate’s software drove prices at the pump even higher. It cited research on algorithmic pricing that found when a station adopted this kind of software, prices rose by an average of 6 cents a gallon.

Steven J. Demetriou, guest 92 of 93 as photographed by Backgrid

He is the executive chair of Amentum, a company that provides engineering and technology to the USA’s army and nuclear programs. They operate the most test and training ranges of any contractor if their site is to be believed.

It appears they run the East Montana concentration camp, the largest in the USA. While much of the abuse, including sexual and physical abuse, occurred under the camp’s previous contractor, Acquisition Logistics, the ACLU has confirmed Amentum was WORKING AS SUBCONTRACTORS at the East Montana camp during this time. Amentum's current role as sole contractor from March onwards proves no less deadly, with 2 overdoses with the intent to commit suicide from inhumane conditions. Representative Escobar confirmed nothing has changed since Amentum’s takeover. Lawyers representing prisoners report being unable to reach their clients.

The following conditions are BY DESIGN, as "Guards tell people detained at Camp East Montana who complain about conditions that if they do not like the conditions, they should self-deport." Civil Detention Centers are not supposed to be punitive. This is only a civil detention center on paper. It is a concentration camp.

The ACLU lists: I already linked this but I'm doing it again bc if you read one source, it should be this one.

Medical neglect, including for people with pregnancies, diabetes, cancer, and HIV.

Severe beatings. One man was beaten to death for requesting his asthma medication.

solitary confinement

unclean water

Tuberculosis and Measles outbreaks

Limited to no sunlight

no or limited hygiene products

rotten food, not enough food, no special diets for medical conditions

SEXUAL ASSAULT

No ventilation in a DESERT leading to lung damage

Not enough toilets, overflow often, whole tent smells of urine and feces

No privacy to use said toilet

Threats and beatings for those that refuse to sign deportation papers, sometimes to places they are NOT FROM

No activities, punished for attempting to make art from recycled items like cracker boxes, can only practice own religion at guards' discretion

no dental care. This is likely universal across US concentration camps. Note Emmanuel Damas, the Haitian immigrant that died from a dental infection due to lack of care

Unable to receive legal representation if not already represented

LOCATED ON FORMER JAPANESE DETENTION CAMP BECAUSE TIME IS A FUCKING CIRCLE

Taylor Swift's guest is directly responsible for these. This is the LARGEST CONCENTRATION CAMP IN THE US, made to hold 5000 people. He's not just any ICE contractor he is the biggest and baddest. At least this will get people talking about just HOW bad this camp is.

i have a few comments of my own regarding this, though i will largely leave this and let you all be a judge.

what i will say is: look at isff continuing to put the abuser's feelings first while not having the slightest consideration for the mental state or feelings of the victims in question.

what i will say is: look at the phrasing at the beginning. minimizing the actions by refering to abuse as simply "something bad". painting it as just some inconsequential thing.

and yes, sexually assaulting someone is a crime. putting out cigarettes on someone's arm is an act of abuse.

"as long as you lie and call sophie a liar" here she is, outright implying that sophie's victims are lying.

part of me wonders if the "you want her to be removed from her job?" is a memorized formula for her. though i would like to remind you all, this situation began with isff reblogging sophie's fundraiser for a birthday vacation trip and someone informing isff that sophie has sexually assaulted other trans women.

Donald Trump has blamed everything – from “national security” issues, the deaths of birds and whales, and cancer – in his decades-long campaign against windfarms. But as the Trump administration continues to undermine the industry, what worries workers most are their jobs

Since taking office for a second term, Trump has issued an executive order aiming to halt all wind-energy leases and permits, attempted to issue stop-work orders on wind projects under construction, and paid more than $2.6bn in settlements to buy out wind energy leases. And hundreds of workers have been affected.

Thomas Kilday, a furnace electrician with IBEW local 99 in Providence, Rhode Island, was in the midst of a four-week shift onboard a vessel off the Atlantic coast working on the Revolution Wind Project in August last year when the Trump administration issued a stop-work order on the project.

“No one really knew what was going on. We didn’t know what it meant for us. We just knew that everything was up in the air,” said Kilday. “You plan your whole life around being gone for 28 days, and to come out here and have it thrown up in the air, worrying what does this mean for me, for my pay for the next four weeks, what’s going to happen? There’s a lot of uncertainty.”

Construction on the project is done on shifts of 28 days on and 28 days off, with workers residing on a vessel on the ocean and taking helicopters to work on the turbines.

A federal court granted an injunction to block the stop-work order in September last year. In December, the Trump administration issued another 90-day stop-work order, citing national security, before a second judge issued an injunction in January.

When the second stop-work order was issued, Kilday was celebrating Christmas with his family and preparing for another four-week shift.

“That was really difficult,” he said. “I just spent a bunch of money on Christmas gifts for my family, and it was not what I wanted to be thinking about. Six months out of the year we’re away from home, and for what little time we do have at home, not to be able to just focus all of that time and energy on our families, it’s tough. It’s not a great feeling to be worried about your job when you’re supposed to be home.”

“We’re proud of the work that we do out here, and we want to be able to continue to do it. We think it’s important work,” added Kilday. “When I’m at home, and I drive down my street, I look up at those power lines. I helped create the power that’s running through those power lines, and I’m proud of that.”

Revolution Wind announced in March that it began delivering power to New England, citing the work of more than 1,000 local union workers, and is expected to power more than 350,000 homes and businesses. The project’s construction is over 90% complete.

In June, the Trump administration abandoned an effort to try to halt all wind projects and leases across the US, giving up a challenge in court to a judge tossing Trump’s executive order to freeze all permitting and leasing for wind projects.

Instead, the Trump administration has opted to buy out wind project leases.

Trump’s Department of Interior has completed four deals so far to cancel wind project leases, paying energy corporations a sum of more than $2.6bn, including paying $765m to Invenergy to abandon four wind projects in California, New York and Maine and nearly $900m to Bluepoint Wind and Garden State Wind to cancel offshore wind leases in New York and California.

“I think it’s a foolish policy that the Trump administration is engaging in trying to buy out these leases,” Pat Crowley, president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, told the Guardian. “These projects are not only helping to reduce our carbon emissions, they’re providing good-paying union jobs for thousands.”

Crowley said that workers would have had long-term job stability from working on these projects. He noted the Trump administration had lost in court in its attempts to issue stop-work orders on five wind projects in the Rhode Island area.

“We’re five for five taking on the Trump administration,” he said. “What the Trump administration is doing is just throwing money away for the sake of their ideology.”

Will Gonzalez, a construction laborer with the Laborers’ local 385 in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, worked on the Vinyard Wind 1 project off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, a project the Trump administration attempted to halt in January. The project is now completed and fully operational.

He criticized the Trump administration’s efforts to halt wind turbine projects, claiming the opposition from Trump stems from his experiences trying to stop a wind turbine project near his golf course in Scotland, losing an appeal in December 2015.

“It’s a personal vendetta,” said Gonzalez. “Good union jobs – we shouldn’t be trying to take those off the table. That just doesn’t make any kind of sense. Families obviously need good jobs … why take those jobs away?”

Gonzalez said he and his co-workers were leaving training and certifications unused because of the halting of wind power projects.

“All of us that worked on that Vinyard Wind 1, obviously, we would have loved to segue right into another project,” he said. “We’re fully trained, ready to go, willing and able, so it directly affected us. But you move on. You [have] got to move on. You can’t sit and dwell on that, because that’s not going to pay the bills.”

The White House directed comment to the Department of Interior.

A spokesperson for the department denied the cancellation and stop-work orders of projects had had any impact on jobs, even on projects under construction when halted. The spokesperson did not respond to a question asking for clarification and did not comment on Trump’s prior animus toward wind turbine projects involving his golf courses.

“No jobs were eliminated because none of these leases were operational or supporting employment,” the spokesperson said.

“Rather than waiting years for the projects to materialize, the Trump administration is prioritizing investments in existing infrastructure and functioning supply chains that can create jobs now and deliver economic benefits faster.

Every day I wake up hoping my mother will feel better. Every day I see the same pain, the same exhaustion, and the same struggle to breathe.

Her illness does not wait. Time does not wait. But we are still waiting for the help she desperately needs.

7 days have passed without a single donation, and we are still only €1,260 away from our goal.

Please, do not let our story disappear. If you can donate, even a small amount helps. If you cannot, please reblog and share. One person seeing this post could change my mother’s .

The Nazis didn’t attack artists for being artists. They primarily targeted gay and Jewish artists for “degenerating” the culture through their avant garde ideas.

Fascism, especially Nazi fascism, divided artists into “traditional” and “contemporary” and attacked anything that looked a little too contemporary for their traditional ideals. I consider “art” to include the freedom of making new things and pushing at boundaries, both technical and ideological; if you are deplatforming, firing, killing, and destroying the art of artists who step outside that narrow box, including for crimes like “using modern techniques and styles”, yeah, you’re attacking artists for being artists. even if some artists producing specific approved works are allowed under your fascist regime.

The Nazis didn’t attack artists for being artists. They primarily targeted gay and Jewish artists for “degenerating” the culture through their avant garde ideas.

Fascism, especially Nazi fascism, divided artists into “traditional” and “contemporary” and attacked anything that looked a little too contemporary for their traditional ideals. I consider “art” to include the freedom of making new things and pushing at boundaries, both technical and ideological; if you are deplatforming, firing, killing, and destroying the art of artists who step outside that narrow box, including for crimes like “using modern techniques and styles”, yeah, you’re attacking artists for being artists. even if some artists producing specific approved works are allowed under your fascist regime.

The Nazis didn’t attack artists for being artists. They primarily targeted gay and Jewish artists for “degenerating” the culture through their avant garde ideas.

Is it liberation for that woman’s migrant nanny being paid under the table that her employer is a CEO? Funny how “girlboss” feminism’s grand dream is to export their reproductive labor to women of a heavily exploited ethnic underclass and to be a head of a company that statistically pays her women employees less. What a farce!

That’s why a truly feminist politic would be socialist and revolutionary. Let’s face it, there are women who act as near equal partners in the financial exploitation of women including through the imperialist world economy.