On Friday, though, some engineers began to receive requests from Musk’s intermediaries. He would like to see the most recent software code that they had written, the engineers were told. And he would like them to print the code out and show it to him. According to four current employees, engineers spent Friday afternoon at Twitter dutifully printing out their code in anticipation of meetings with Musk and some of his senior engineers from Tesla. Other engineers were told to prepare for “code pairing” with Musk, in which they would sit with him and review code together. Just after noon, an executive assistant asked engineers to begin preparing code to show to Musk. “Please print out 50 pages of code you’ve done in the last 30 days (if you haven’t submitted code in the past 30 days, then you can go back up to 60 days),” the assistant wrote in a Slack message obtained by Platformer. “Please be ready to show on your computer as well.” “Recency of code is important but also use a code that shows complexity of our code,” she added. By mid-afternoon, printouts were seen everywhere at Twitter headquarters, I’m told. In mid-afternoon, the instruction changed again. A notice went out to employees ordering them to cease printing out their code, for reasons that were not immediately clear. “UPDATE: Stop printing,” read another bolded notice obtained by Platformer. “Please be ready to show your recent code (within last 30-60 preferably) on your computer. If you have already printed, please shred in the bins on SF-Tenth. Thank you!”

Saifullah Paracha, 75, was accused of being a Qaeda sympathizer and was held for two decades. But he was never charged with a crime.

“I know Joss Whedon said some bad things about me,” says Jeunet. “I don’t care. I know if Joss Whedon had made the film himself, it probably would have been a big success. He’s very good at making films for American geeks – something for morons. Because he’s very good at making Marvel films. I hate this kind of movie. It’s so silly, so stupid.” About the changes he made to Whedon’s script, Jeunet jokes: “Too bad, Joss Whedon!”

Family members of children killed in the mass shooting at Robb Elementary on Thursday called for the resignation of the state’s top law enforcement officer, telling him to his face that he needs to live up to his pledge to step down if his troopers had “any culpability” in the shooting. They were standing feet from Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw at a Public Safety Commission hearing as they confronted him. “You, sir, have told lies, you’re not in control of your officers, nor are you the leader this great state deserves at the helm of what was once known as one of the best law enforcement agencies,” said Brett Cross, whose 10-year-old nephew was killed in the shooting. “If you’re a man of your word, you’ll resign,” Cross said, looking directly at McCraw. “We’re not waiting any longer.” McCraw last month told CNN that “I’ll be the first to resign, I’ll gladly resign, I’ll tender my resignation to the governor if I think there is any culpability in the Department of Public Safety. Period.” But on Thursday, McCraw resisted calls to do so during the heated exchanges at the hearing, which offered the first public update on the shooting since the summer.

After decades of being shut out at the ballot box, the state’s tribal populations now wield significant influence as a voting bloc.

Canada’s civilian spy service assessed whether First Nations land rights activists who disrupt trains should be classed as a “terrorist threat” to national security.

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's new Bluesky Social app is now accepting users for beta testing, and is set to launch "soon". The highly anticipated social media project has been described as a rival to Twitter (TWTR) and is set to challenge existing social media platforms like Facebook (META), Instagram and Snapchat (SNAP). On Tuesday, Bluesky announced the roadmap of its decentralised social network protocol, which will be the underlying code behind the app. Importantly, it says user data will be free from governmental influence and controlled by users rather than commercialised by a corporation, a move which could revolutionise the personal data economy. The app's code will allow user account data to be moved from platform to platform. Bluesky users will be able to use their account to log in to any social media account that adopts the new code. So a single account will give them access to all of their favourite social media.

The next few months are expected to be rough, with different viruses becoming dominant at different times. Hospitals may continue to be stretched thin. The severity of any winter Covid-19 surge and the possibility of a second wave of flu later in the season are two X-factors that will dictate how bad the situation ultimately becomes.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul Pelosi reportedly underwent skull surgery after he was allegedly violently attacked with a hammer at the couple’s San Francisco home early Friday–indicating his injuries are much more serious than previously described. The accused attacker, 42-year-old David Depape, broke into the couple’s home in search of the speaker, according to reports that said he yelled “Where’s Nancy? Where’s Nancy?” before attempting to tie Paul Pelosi up while he waited for the speaker to come home. When police arrived, Paul Pelosi and Depape were struggling over a hammer before Depape ripped the weapon from Pelosi’s hands and began to attack him, San Francisco Police Chief William Scott said Friday. Depape was arrested and will be charged with attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse and other felonies, Scott said. While Depape’s alleged motive remains unclear, he filled his Facebook page with conspiracies about the 2020 presidential election being stolen from former President Trump, according to reports.

Collaging statistics, muzak, and Google Earth, Jon Bois's sports documentaries sketch alternative models of history—and moving-image art.

Owning Twitter means owning a host of impossible political problems. Is Elon ready?

On October 30, 2002, a cancer-stricken Warren Zevon returned to the ‘Late Show With David Letterman’ stage for one last performance. Twenty years later, Letterman and more remember the gravitas and emotion of that stunning night.

It’s very likely you don’t give a great deal of thought to where the digital colors you use originally came from. Nor, probably, have you wondered who might “own” a particular color, when you picked it when creating something in Photoshop. But a lot of people are about to give this a huge amount of their attention, as their collection of PSD files gets filled with unwanted black, due to a licensing change between Adobe and Pantone. As of now, widely used Adobe apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign will no longer support Pantone-owned colors for free, and those wishing for those colors to appear in their saved files will need to pay for a separate license. And this is real life.

“During birth, I surrendered my mind to my body,” she said.

Journalists have been declaring Twitter dead for nearly a decade. Observers see flagging user numbers or feel an amorphous, grim vibe shift and pounce, often prematurely. But this week, everyone is fretting and monitoring. Tonight, Elon Musk reportedly took control of Twitter, firing CEO Parag Agrawal and other executives, including Vijaya Gadde, the head of legal, policy, and trust. There is, both inside and outside the company, an apocalyptic feel to the ordeal. Earlier, Musk wandered around Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, carrying a porcelain sink (for content purposes) while simultaneously trying to convince employees that he will not, as previously reported, cut 75 percent of staff. One current Twitter staffer told me that “the bootlicking [was] next level” as anxious employees greeted Musk in the hallway, unsure of his plans for his new company and their place in it.

Volunteers in a rural Nevada county where voting machine conspiracy theories led to an unprecedented hand-count of mail-in ballots came face-to-face with one messy reality of their plan Wednesday: It’s more time-consuming than anticipated. After a full day in the Nye County office building in Pahrump, 60 miles (96 kilometers) west of Las Vegas, some 60 volunteers had counted about 900 of the 1,950 mail-in ballots that the county has received so far. It was the first day that counting could start under a state Supreme Court ruling that said officials must prevent the public release of early results. The court also blocked a plan to livestream the vote-counting, saying video could be released only after polls close on Nov. 8. The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada unsuccessfully sought to block the counting on the grounds that it could allow election results to be made public before many voters had even weighed in.

After pressure from Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, an internal Department of Homeland Security report released last year with significant redactions has been released again, almost in its entirety An internal Department of Homeland Security report assessing the agency’s intelligence collection on Portland racial justice protesters in 2020 has been released nearly in its entirety. A heavily redacted version of the report was released in 2021. The newly public portions show in more granular detail how Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf and Acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli led efforts to politicize intelligence operations in Portland, in many instances pushing constitutional boundaries. The now un-redacted portions of the report describe the two agency heads requesting so-called operational background reports, known as OBRs or “baseball cards,” on every person who attended protests, a request that would have entailed intelligence dossiers on potentially thousands of Portlanders. That was apparently motivated by a belief that a “U.S person” was funding the protests Since 2020, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden and other members of Oregon’s congressional delegation have pressed the Justice Department and DHS for more details about the Trump administration’s response to the 2020 racial justice protests. In a statement Thursday, Wyden said Oregonians have a right to a full accounting of the Trump administration’s “twisted efforts to provoke violence in Portland for his political gain.” “Now the public knows much more about how political DHS officials spied on Oregonians for exercising their First Amendment right to protest and justified it with baseless conspiracy theories,” Wyden said.

The Biden administration is weighing a request by Somalia that the United States loosen restrictions on its military drone strikes targeting Shabab militants in the troubled Horn of Africa nation, according to several U.S. officials. The request comes as a new Somali administration has launched an offensive against Al Shabab, with several local clan militias joining the central government’s fight. President Biden also recently redeployed 450 U.S. troops to Somalia, reversing former President Donald J. Trump’s abrupt withdrawal in January 2021. But the Somali government wants U.S. military operators to be able to attack groups of Shabab militants who might pose a threat to Somali forces — even if they are not firing upon them at the moment, the officials said. Such a move would further escalate American involvement in the long-running counterterrorism war. In May, Somalia elected a new president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who also held the role from 2012 to 2017. Since returning to office, he has made pushing back Al Shabab a top priority. He has ordered Somalia’s fledgling national army to go on the offensive in the countryside, is planning for the delivery of services to stabilize areas that have been newly liberated and is trying to forge stronger partnerships with both clan leaders and international allies. At the same time, local clan militias in the Hiran region of Hirshabelle State, in central Somalia, are fighting Al Shabab ferociously after turning against them over their heavy-handed rule and taxation. The Somali government has been resupplying the militias with ammunition and other aid. The Somali request, described by officials on the condition of anonymity, is said to ask the United States to more broadly define what can count as a collective self-defense strike. It could also be interpreted as asking to deem certain parts of Somalia as a war zone, where it is permissible to target members of an enemy force based only on their status, even if they pose no imminent threat.

Less than two months after California Governor Gavin Newsom approved a landmark law to increase the minimum wage at fast food restaurants and give workers a role in setting industry standards, labor union SEIU charged that canvassers collecting signatures for a ballot measure to overturn the pro-worker law have been deliberately lying to voters. AB 257 — also known as the Fast Food Accountability and Standards (FAST) Recovery Act — creates a state-wide council of workers, franchisees, officials, and corporate representatives to determine state-wide standards for fast food workers, including a minimum wage increase up to $22 an hour by 2023. Newsom signed the bill into law in early September, despite relentless opposition from fast food corporations. But the bill’s opponents quickly jumped to a new tactic to thwart the progressive policy: a ballot initiative that would leave the fate of the law to voters in 2024. The effort is backed by a corporate front group known as “Save Local Restaurants” – a coalition ​​that has received millions of dollars in donations from Starbucks, Chipotle, McDonald’s, and more. (The coalition is co-chaired by the National Restaurant Association, the International Franchise Association, and the nation’s largest corporate lobbying group, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce). If the ballot measure opposing AB 257 can gather enough signatures to qualify for the 2024 ballot, enactment of the law will be suspended until voters have a chance to weigh in. Lyft and Uber used a similar tactic in 2020, pouring millions of dollars into an effort to exempt gig drivers from a California law designating gig workers as employees.

Back in September we called your attention to a 1972 conversation between Billy Graham and Richard Nixon that was, according to researcher Mike Hertenstein, “quietly posted on the Nixon Library website.” The conversation reveals Graham talking about Jews as part of the “Synagogue of Satan.” Learn more about that conversation here. On October 5, 2022, the National Archives released another once-redacted phone conversation between President Nixon and Graham. Hertenstein is once again all over it. Check out his coverage here. Graham calls Nixon on June 9, 1971. The previous night, Graham’s service in Chicago got a bit out of hand. Here is the Chicago Tribune from June 9, 1971.