Deputy Director of Advocacy @freedom.press + 🤓 Fellow at Starling Lab (Stanford+USC) 🗞️ Board of Directors @lapressclub.bsky.social 🆕 Anchor on Medlines
Before you try to spike my cortisol, just know that I’m having a Jack Johnson summer.
Stressed? Overwhelmed? Have You Tried Being Jack Johnson Instead?His frozen-in-time anthems, odes to going with the flow, are the soundtrack to a summer of “hopecore.”www.nytimes.comAre we better than our past? "If the federal government insists on mass confinement for millions of people who have committed no crimes, it should at least do so with the dignity of a baseball diamond." OMG. Most brutally sarcastic thing I've read in ages. Bravo @californiajoe.bsky.social. 10/10.
Feds should give their migrant atrocities a common address: ManzanarOPINION: Instead of spending massive amounts to build new detention centers, the federal government should just reopen Manzanar, contributing columnist Joe Mathews writes.www.sfchronicle.comThe U.S. State Department only had to label six countries on the map of Africa and still managed to get every single one of them wrong. 🫠
State Dept. apologizes for mislabeling countries on Africa mapThe map, part of a presentation Sunday at the AIDS 2026 summit in Rio de Janeiro, purports to show six African countries that are receiving U.S. health funding. It gets each of them wrong.www.washingtonpost.comI can't speak to the legality of how it was used in this case, but I do think stories like this make GrapheneOS (which works on Google Pixel phones) even more attractive to journalists and anyone who cares about civil liberties ...
Protester targeted by DOJ over phone-wiping ‘duress’ passcodeA security-focused mobile operating system, GrapheneOS, allows users to wipe their device with a “duress” passcodefreedom.pressAny doctors or medical pros here? Catch this week's episode of Medlines! I anchored this week with Dr. Alok Patel covering: 🚑 Lawsuit over use of ChatGPT in an emergency ❤️ New statin rules 💊 Oral GLP1 news 🐽 Smell loss + depression 🏥 MRIs and ... Legos?!? Wherever you get podcasts, inc. YouTube:
The ChatGPT Medical Lawsuit & Why Statin Rules Just ChangedYouTube video by Medlineswww.youtube.com"One expert said no longer posting files that were previously made available 'may not be technically illegal, but it’s certainly not a best practice.'" In addition, about 40% of the requests open as of April had gone beyond the two-week window by which the records should typically be produced.
The LAPD has quietly stopped putting many public records onlineAccording to a UCLA professor, public records related to the police department began disappearing from a Los Angeles city website last April, turning the LAPD into a “black hole of information.”www.latimes.comIn @arstechnica.com, @rwhitwam.bsky.social looks at latest efforts by Google and others to combat deepfakes / AI disinformation: arstechnica.com/ai/2026/07/t... Includes some Starling Lab perspective on why labeling fakes isn't enough, and why we must authenticate what's real. My take in nutshell:
Exhibit A in why it's so hard to come up with a list of weapons to prohibit the police from using on press and protesters ... ... there's always another new weapon! 🫠
Schools are adding pepper-spraying drones to help combat active shootersThe plastic, nonlethal aircraft, which can smash windows and ram attackers, will be at the ready in a handful of schools in Florida, Georgia and Colorado.www.washingtonpost.com4,878 bias allegations against LAPD officers in 10 years. Only 3 (!) were "sustained," meaning LAPD acknowledged as valid. In a deposition, LAPD was asked a hypothetical: If an officer pulls over 2,000 people in a year and ALL are black, would it indicate bias? LAPD's official response: "No."
Thousands of complaints, few punished: How LAPD handles claims of racial biasStudies have repeatedly shown that Black and Latino people in L.A. are subjected to police stops at significantly higher rates than white people. The rare case of an officer recently fired for alleged...www.latimes.comGreat work here by BBC and my colleagues at Starling Lab (where I'm still a fellow but not involved in this project). As a bulwark against AI deepfakes, you may have heard about "content credentials" for photo/video. This looks at proving source of written text, which is an underexplored challenge.
Did they really say that? Proving the source behind a claim in the age of AIWith trust under pressure from AI-generated content and misinformation, a proof of concept shows how claims can be linked to verified sources, so readers can check what was said and who said it.www.bbc.co.ukCrazy enough on a quiet/bougie street in an upscale part of Los Angeles ... ... but I regularly see it on a stretch of Washington Blvd (near Lincoln) where cars blast by up to 50mph. Clearly delivery drivers risking not just a ticket by parking there, but life and limb. For an order of pasta.
L.A. MaterialWhy is everyone parking on the Larchmont Boulevard median? L.A. Material’s Tomo Chien investigated the strange custom, speaking with locals and reviewing parking ticket data. What keeps drivers coming back to the median? Read the full story:
At least courts offering SOME backstop. Justice Dept normally has a 90% success rate. Now, about half of these 400 cases have unraveled. NYT article describes recent record as "abysmal." Still, all too often damage is already done. As cops say, you can beat the rap but you can't beat the ride.
They Were Charged With Assaulting ICE Agents. The Cases Are Crumbling.The Trump administration has lost or abandoned hundreds of criminal cases against protesters and immigrants, a Times investigation found.www.nytimes.com18 states people mistakenly think are "sanctuary" actually have "extensive cooperation and coordination with federal immigration agencies when it comes to people convicted of serious crimes." Post-Biden, all but one increased rate of handing immigrants to feds. 12 of 18 more than DOUBLED that rate.
Trump Blasts ‘Sanctuary’ States, but Many Still Aid DeportationsA New York Times review of 18 states targeted by the Trump administration for their “sanctuary” policies found that all cooperate significantly with immigration authorities in cases involving violent ...www.nytimes.com