Twelve Tribes followers take pains to present an innocuous front to outsiders. They attract new members with a folksy peace-and-love, all-are-welcome message, but underneath that hollow promise of …

Since its existence was revealed by the New York Times in 2017, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which was funded by the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, has been the subject of fervent curiosity from UFO disclosure advocates, government transparency activists, and journalists alike. The now formally defunct program was studying UFO-related phenomena, according to a landmark 2020 investigation by Popular Mechanics; the DIA’s public explanations on just what that involved have ranged over the years from unsatisfying to obfuscatory. Namely, the agency has insisted in recent years that AATIP was not looking at UFO-related phenomena, which former employees working on the program say is simply not true. Now, a new tranche of documents released by the DIA to Motherboard based on a FOIA request filed four years ago shows, in detail, the exotic and occasionally downright weird research priorities of the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Application Program (AAWSAP), an at-times overlapping program whose existence has been known about for several years. Some of these documents were also released several weeks ago to John Greenewald at the Black Vault; others have been circulating on Reddit for the past several weeks, indicating that the DIA has recently released a backlog of very old FOIA requests. The Sun also published some details about some of the documents, which it also obtained via FOIA, earlier this month. (AATIP and AAWSAP appear to have been, in practice, almost interchangeable; a DIA spokesperson previously told Greenewald, “[AATIP] was the name of the overall program. [AAWSAP] was the name of the contract that DIA awarded for the production of technical reports under AATIP.”) The nearly 1,600 pages of documents released to Motherboard are a mix of scientific research, contracts, presentations, briefings, and memos related to the program; there are also many documents written for or by former Senator Harry Reid, who was responsible for the creation of the program, that detail meetings about AATIP or AAWSAP, argue for or against certain research or contracts, and the like. In many cases, documents prepared for the DIA about the theoretical applications of certain technologies were prepared by a person or entity whose name is redacted. Motherboard is publishing the full scope of what we received for transparency and to aid researchers and other journalists. Those documents are available here.

In November 2021 the U.S. Attorney in Georgia filed a case against 24 growers and labor contractors for abusing workers in the H-2A temporary contract labor program. The complaint included two deaths, rape, kidnapping, threatening workers with guns, and growers selling workers to each other as though they were property/slaves. While shocking, these abuses are just the latest, and commonplace. For decades the H-2A [guestworker –Eds] program has abused workers recruited from other countries and pitted them against workers in the U.S. in a vicious system to keep worker wages low and grower profits high. A pioneering report by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2013 called the program “Close to Slavery.” The Georgia case shows plainly that this was no exaggeration. In 2007, when Santiago Rafael Cruz was sent by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee to fight corruption in the H-2A recruitment system in Mexico, he was tortured and murdered in his office, undoubtedly by the recruiters. His murderers were never caught. In 2018 Honesto Silva, an H-2A worker, died in a Washington State field as he labored in extreme temperatures and forest fire smoke. When his co-workers protested, they were deported—a fate that awaits all H-2A workers who assert their rights. In a nationwide rash of Covid deaths among “guest” workers, two workers died at the Gebbers Farm in eastern Washington last year.

Dean Baquet’s departure as executive editor of the New York Times has been one of the worst-kept secrets in media. Baquet turned sixty-five in September—“the traditional age when executive editors at the Times step down,” the paper notes in its own coverage—and, ever since, he has been notably open about his impending exit. He’s joked with colleagues about his advancing age, and sat down in February for an interview with The New Yorker, which described him, menacingly, as being “at the twilight of his career.” The only drama around Baquet’s departure has centered on who will replace him, in arguably the most important job in the American press, and what that says about how the newspaper and its leadership view the state journalism in the US. Recent decisions by the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post to fill their own open executive-editor positions with people from outside their organizations (and outside a succession of white men) stirred the notion that the Times, too, might opt for a new approach. While the anointment of a new Times editor is always approached with high ceremony by media reporters, this time the move has been watched even more widely. The residue of the Trump years, and fears that the former president will return for another campaign, have put the Times in the bull’s-eye of the journalistic debates over objectivity and both-sides coverage, which have led many legacy news operations to wonder whether traditional approaches to journalism apply at a time of high concern for the fate of American democracy. In picking Joe Kahn, the Times’ managing editor, to replace Baquet, the newspaper is signaling that it has no plans to rethink its approach. Baquet and A.G. Sulzberger, the Times’ publisher, have consistently dismissed the idea that journalistic norms of objectivity should be tossed out. The view of the Times leadership is that journalism is more threatened by a lack of trust, which only deepens when readers sense that the paper has its thumb on the partisan scale.

An independent autopsy by nationally known pathologists Werner Spitz and Michael Baden is expected to add gravity to any civil cases that might be filed following the shooting death of Patrick Lyoya. Spitz, a 95-year-old professor of pathology, and Baden, an 87-year-old physician, could play key roles in legal proceedings, while the Michigan State Police also investigate the death. The pathologists' findings were released Tuesday. The conclusion: Lyoya, a 26-year-old Black refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was shot in the back of the head with a large caliber bullet and died within seconds of the gunshot. The case is significant, because, like the George Floyd death in Minneapolis, the Lyoya's death was captured on video. It also is one of the latest deaths in which a Black person is killed by a white police officer. An initial autopsy was conducted by Kent County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Stephen Cohle, who announced his report would be completed as soon as the toxicology and tissue test results are in, but not publicly released until the Michigan State Police investigation was concluded.

Signs and symptoms to watch out for

An unnamed worker is alleging that Nintendo, and a firm it uses for hiring contractors, violated their legally protected right to unionize, according to a new filing with the National Labor Relations Board.

Last year, some neighbors started a petition calling for more police enforcement on the street. OPD Chief LeRonne Armstrong recently met with neighbors over Zoom about safety concerns. And following one recent shooting, someone took matters into their own hands by installing eight surveillance cameras on four city-owned streetlight poles. The cameras had prime views of the parking areas and sidewalks. But the surveillance system has been something of a mystery: the cameras weren’t installed by the city, and officials don’t know who put them there. 

While CEOs earn multimillion-dollar salaries, most workers make significantly less than a living wage Some of the largest, most profitable companies in retail and food services are still paying most of their workers less than $15 an hour, and many still make less than $10 an hour, according to a new company wage tracker developed by the Economic Policy Institute and the Shift Project. The tracker, which covers 66 large retail and food service corporations, found: Dollar General pays 92% of workers less than $15 an hour and 22% are paid less than $10 an hour. McDonald’s pays 89% of its workers less than $15 an hour and 23% are paid less than $10 an hour. Wendy’s pays 87% of workers less than $15 an hour and 17% are paid less than $10 an hour. At Sonic, 85% of workers are paid less than $15 an hour and 22% less than $10 an hour. Similarly high percentages were found at Arby’s, Burger King, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. The report was released as many of these firms have complained about being unable to find staff. Some fast-food firms, such as In and Out Burger, pay much more, with the majority of their workers paid at least $16 an hour and just 9% below $15 an hour.

The Democratic policy world produces bad ideas and then misleads everybody about them. Over at Slow Boring, Matt Yglesias has a piece in which he argues that the Democratic policymaking system focuses too much on cultivating team players and coalition-building and not enough on crafting technically sound policy ideas. Left-of-center policy advocates rarely make criticisms of the policies that come out of major liberal organizations and, even when they do, it is very difficult for those criticisms to get a fair hearing in the media or in the halls of Congress because journalists and staffers are naturally skeptical of anyone saying that the overwhelming consensus of dozens of policy analysts across multiple major organizations is simply wrong. I speak from a place of experience on this. As Yglesias notes in his piece, I spent a couple of months last year pointing out that the Democratic child care proposal would dramatically increase child care prices for middle class families right above the subsidy cliff. At the time, I was the only one publicly saying this (unless you also count the DC city government, which published a report saying the same thing). And I got a crazy amount of backlash for doing so. Email blasts went out across the Hill telling everyone I was wrong. The Center for American Progress (CAP) ran a social media campaign claiming, not only that I was wrong, but also that the child care proposal didn’t even have subsidy cliff (it did). Child care advocates got Politico’s Eleanor Mueller to write an attack on me that lined up quotes from Rasheed Malik of CAP, Melissa Boteach of the National Women’s Law Center (formerly at CAP), an anonymous “Democratic aide,” and even Senator Patty Murray, all saying in so many words that I was way off base. All of this was bullshit. One of Yglesias’s think tank sources told him that this was a known problem with the child care plan well before I pointed it out, but that the problem had nonetheless been suppressed for political reasons.

The space science community thinks the time is ripe to study Uranus in depth — and they’re being serious. A new report compiled by planetary scientists from across the United States says that sending an interplanetary probe to study the ice giant planet should be considered the top priority for planetary exploration over the next decade. Specifically, scientists are calling on NASA to create the Uranus Orbiter and Probe, or UOP. The mission concept would send a spacecraft into orbit around Uranus, along with a probe that would plunge into the planet’s atmosphere. Scientists envision such a mission launching sometime in the early 2030s as long as engineers get started on it as soon as next year. If it works, the UOP mission could provide the most intricate details yet about this mostly unexplored world. The only spacecraft to ever visit Uranus was NASA’s Voyager 2 mission, which flew by the planet in 1986, coming within 50,700 miles of the planet’s cloud tops. Voyager 2 unlocked some intriguing secrets about Uranus, discovering new moons and rings around the planet. But Voyager 2 didn’t stay for long; it zoomed by during its exploration of the outer Solar System and kept going, eventually heading off into interstellar space.

The utensils, developed by scientists at Meiji University, trick a diner’s taste buds into thinking their meal is salty

Two-and-a-half years after California Gov. Gavin Newsom upended the NCAA’s iron-fisted control over athlete compensation by signing the nation’s first intercollegiate name, image and likeness protections, the Golden State’s legislature will now consider passing a new pay-to-play bill designed to be the deathblow of amateurism. On Wednesday, the California State Senate’s education committee is set to vote on SB-1401, the College Athlete Race and Gender Equity Act, which would not only permit but mandate universities to compensate their revenue-sport athletes. SB-1401 was first introduced in February by state Sen. Steven Bradford, whose district includes the Los Angeles County communities of Compton, Watts and Inglewood, which have produced multitudes of Division I athletes over the years. As initially drafted, the legislation would require California universities to set aside a portion of funds from their team sports that generate more than twice as much money as they spend on athletic scholarships, which would then be distributed in equal share to the sports’ participating athletes. Most of the money would be assigned to an “Athlete Degree Completion Fund,” which could only be accessed upon graduation. The head-count sports that would currently qualify for revenue-sharing under the statute’s provisions are football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball. Based on 2018 financial figures schools provided to the U.S. Department of Education, the legislation would have worked out to FBS football players in California earning, on average, $132,000 per year in addition to the price of their grant-in-aid, while men’s basketball players would receive an extra $107,000 and women’s basketball players would get $15,000 more annually.

At least 18 pro-union employees have been fired since February, in what workers say is an attempt to stop an increasingly popular union campaign.

Biogas promises less pollution, more jobs, and a renewable energy source. Residents and farmers disagree. Sherri White-Williamson lives about three miles from a pork processing plant in Clinton, North Carolina. On a good day, the air smells fresh, tainted by a minor whiff of rotten egg and sewage. On a bad day, the odor from the plant is so strong, she has to keep her windows closed. The smell wafts into a local elementary school, nearby restaurants, churches, and the county history museum. Those who live and work in the area say they have to keep fans, candles, and air fresheners running at all hours to make the air tolerable. The problem is even worse for people living down the road in rural Sampson County, near large hog farms, where they must endure more potent odors and pollution coming from the lagoons filled with waste, and the systems that spray waste onto fields as fertilizer. North Carolina is the second largest producer of pork in the country, and Sampson, Duplin, and Bladen counties house more than 40 percent of the state's hog farms. According to census data, between a quarter to a third of the population in all three of these counties are Black; around a quarter of Duplin and Sampson residents are Latinx. About 42 percent of residents in neighboring Robeson County—the fourth largest hog producing county—are Native American.

In just one year, the Twitter account has helped steer the outrage machine at the center of right-wing messaging and legislation. On March 8, a Twitter account called Libs of TikTok posted a video of a woman teaching sex education to children in Kentucky, calling the woman in the video a “predator.” The next evening, the same clip was featured on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News program, prompting the host to ask, “When did our public schools, any schools, become what are essentially grooming centers for gender identity radicals?” Libs of TikTok reposts a steady stream of TikTok videos and social media posts, primarily from LGBTQ+ people, often including incendiary framing designed to generate outrage. Videos shared from the account quickly find their way to the most influential names in right-wing media. The account has emerged as a powerful force on the Internet, shaping right-wing media, impacting anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and influencing millions by posting viral videos aimed at inciting outrage among the right. The anonymous account’s impact is deep and far-reaching. Its content is amplified by high-profile media figures, politicians and right-wing influencers. Its tweets reach millions, with influence spreading far beyond its more than 648,000 Twitter followers. Libs of TikTok has become an agenda-setter in right-wing online discourse, and the content it surfaces shows a direct correlation with the recent push in legislation and rhetoric directly targeting the LGBTQ+ community. “Libs of TikTok is basically acting as a wire service for the broader right-wing media ecosystem,” said Ari Drennen, LGBTQ program director for Media Matters, the progressive media watchdog group. “It’s been shaping public policy in a real way, and affecting teachers’ ability to feel safe in their classrooms.” The account has been promoted by podcast host Joe Rogan, it’s been featured in the New York Post, the Federalist, the Post Millennial and a slew of other right-wing news sites. Meghan McCain has retweeted it. The online influencer Glenn Greenwald has amplified it to his 1.8 million Twitter followers while calling himself the account’s “Godfather.” Last Thursday, the woman behind the account appeared anonymously on Tucker Carlson’s show to complain about being temporarily suspended for violating Twitter’s community guidelines. Fox News often creates news packages around the content that Libs of TikTok has surfaced. “The role I’ve seen this account playing is finding new characters for right-wing propaganda,” said Gillian Branstetter, a media strategist for the ACLU. “It’s relying on the endless stream of content from TikTok and the Internet to cast any individual trans person as a new villain in their story.” Throughout its increasingly popular posts and despite numerous media appearances, the account has remained anonymous. But the identity of the operator of Libs of TikTok is traceable through a complex online history and reveals someone who has been plugged into right-wing discourse for two years and is now helping to drive it. An account in search of a voice — and a big break from Joe Rogan Chaya Raichik had been working as a real estate salesperson in Brooklyn when, in early November 2020, she created the account that would eventually become Libs of TikTok. Under her first handle @shaya69830552, she minimized covid, cast doubt on the election results and promoted a dubious story about a child sex trafficking ring. On Nov. 23, 2020, Raichik changed handles, this time going by @shaya_ray and identifying herself publicly as a real estate investor in Brooklyn. She began doubling down on election fraud conspiracies using QAnon-related language. Early that December, she joked about launching a clothing line titled “voter fraud is real.”

Despite right-wing outrage and backlash from the President, there is little evidence that cities are slashing police department budgets. A study of budgets in over 400 American cities over the last 5 years shows that, despite persistent claims by politicians, pundits, and police unions, there was no mass defunding of police. Police departments got the same average cut of the city budget in 2021 as they did in previous years. Defunding the police became a mainstream political topic in June of 2020, when nine members of the Minneapolis City Council announced their intentions to dismantle the city’s police department with cardboard signs saying “Defund Police.” George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis Police officers had set off a nationwide wave of protests which often called for cuts to law enforcement budgets as a way to curb police violence—and, briefly, it was floated as policy. The call to “defund” was less of a unified call for abolition, and more of a general sentiment that directing nearly a third of taxpayer money to the police seemed inconsistent with the regular high-profile incidents of police violence. Opponents worried that fewer police would lead to more crime, and these ideas could have been the start of a long-overdue conversation about policing in America.

These two non-scientist dudes are now advising men across America to tan their balls.

Bloomberg's report says this is what the 'Super Game' project was all about

LET'S GO BRANDON!