Life is a trip. Bring cats

The Sameer Project desperately needs your support right now. They’ve had to scale back some of their operations due to dwindling funds. Please consider setting up a recurring donation to help sustain their important work!

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[Image description:

Three posters with text, made and signed by The Sameer Project and Translating Falasteen. They read:

What this means

Our kitchen closes: At least 3,000 meals a day, feeding up to 9,000 people, not being distributed.

Our water trucks stop: At least 350,000 liters of fresh water a day not being delivered.

Our medical clinics shut down: At least 400 patients not being treated.

Our team pauses: At least 200 ground staff on break without a way to support their families.

[Every 'not' is emphasized in capital letters]

No tents. No tarps. No transport. No medication. No baby formula. Everything people in Gaza rely on to survive is provided by aid organizations, and one by they are having to reduce or pause our operations - because of funding.

[transcriber note: we presume they meant 'one by one']

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What is our plan?

Our community has always shown up, but relying solely on crowdfunding going into our third year of operations is not sustainable. We need to create more reliable and predictable streams of funding.

We're working on an action kit to share with you this week, so you can be part of the solution.

We're encouraging people to support us on a monthly basis; sign up for this feature on Chuffed.

We are asking our community to recruit monthly donors so we know how much funding we can expect.

Be an active participant in sustainability - consistency is key.

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More to come.

Pausing for long, stopping distributions, ceasing operations, is not an option.

['is not an option' is emphasized in capital letters]

We need your support to create consistency and predictability in an otherwise unstable situation on the ground.

The genocide is not over - so we need to adapt. Consistency is solidarity.

We will be providing more information this week on how you can make a difference.

['You' is emphasized in capital letters]

For now, please give so we can restart our lifesaving work:

[There's a QR code for donations to the Sameer Project]

Before I could even process that, another officer dropped the big surprise: they’d actually been tracking me around town for days via Flock cameras. But they kept losing the trail, so when a camera alerted them that the Range Rover had been spotted turning into Kohl’s that morning, they quickly set up their ambush and waited for me and my wife to walk out of the store and get into the SUV.

[…]

One of the officers pulled out his phone, opened the Flock app, and showed me two photos: a wide shot of the Range Rover going through the intersection and a zoomed-in shot of the New Jersey license plate, which clearly reads 34 10 DTM and says VEHICLE MFR along the bottom. Critically, the number 10 is in a much smaller font than the rest of the tag, which is the non-standard structure New Jersey uses for manufacturer plates.

[…]

The New Jersey plates that were allegedly stolen from the LA dealer were 34 03 DTM, not 34 10 DTM. But when the police report was created and the plate was entered into Flock’s system, it was just recorded as 34 DTM. Just the five large characters, no little number in the middle. And Flock’s AI tech wasn’t registering that non-standard little number when it began picking up the Range Rover around town. It just saw 34 DTM in large type and started alerting the local police.

As we all stood there shaking our heads, including my wife, who was finally allowed to join me, I connected the final dot. A lot of vehicles in JLR’s media fleet have a New Jersey manufacturer plate with the same alphanumeric structure—34 ## DTM—and Officer Ganshyn observed that meant it was now a nationwide issue. Anywhere a police department has a partnership with Flock, any other JLR-owned car with the same plate structure is going to get flagged as stolen. In fact, four other 34 ## DTM cars were being tracked around Minnesota that week, according to Officer Ganshyn. I was just the first one to get nabbed. The only way to stop it would be for the LAPD to correct their initial report and update Flock’s system, which Jaguar Land Rover was now racing to make happen following the phone call.

Still, he warned me to drive straight home, park the Range Rover, and leave it there. If I were to cross into the neighboring town, I’d probably get flagged again and go through this entire ordeal again with a different set of officers. His parting words were ominous: “You’re lucky we’re in Plymouth. If you were in Minneapolis, they definitely would’ve come at you with guns drawn.”

(Tabz)

Israel is funding a $46.5 million campaign, led by former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, to influence how AI chatbots discuss Israel by publishing hundreds of pro-Israel articles across a network of websites designed largely for AI systems, not human readers, according to Drop Site News.

Astronaut readjusts to life back on Earth

IT’S NOT FUNNY IT’S VERY LOGICAL THAT HE WOULD HAVE ADJUSTED TO LIVING LIFE WHILE HE WAS IN SPACE BECAUSE IT’S DIFFERENT FROM EARTH BUT I CAN’T FUCKING BREATHE

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