Mount Stupid

They named it Puppet Master. Unironically.

Court filings unsealed Aug 14 revealed a DHS Homeland Security Investigations program that put undercover officers into meetings in churches, schools, parks and a Minneapolis library. Named targets included the AFL-CIO, SEIU, the Communications Workers of America, the Sunrise Movement, and a bicycle repair collective. Agents logged license plates to identify who attended and pulled years of financial records. They also monitored a training session on constitutional rights. Fifteen people have been charged. DHS "doesn't comment on the existence or status of ongoing investigations." → CBS Minnesota

Somebody workshopped that acronym.

DHS plans to spend $10–20M by March 2027 outfitting ICE agents with the CT-G5 G.L.O.V.E. (Generate Low Output Voltage Emitter), which delivers up to 380 volts to, per the manual, inhibit "coordinated muscle movement." The manufacturer says it's humane. → Al Jazeera, Aug 12

A judge had to put this in writing.

"The executive branch has no authority to regulate elections." Judge Indira Talwani, Aug 11, blocking again the March order that would have had the Postal Service deliver ballots only to voters on a federally compiled list. She noted it is under 90 days to the Nov 3 midterms. → Washington Times

The Mouse bites back.

ABC, Disney and eight ABC affiliates sued the FCC on Aug 18 in D.C. federal court: the administration "has waged a retaliatory campaign against ABC for a single reason: it disapproves of what ABC broadcasts." The FCC has an open equal-time investigation into The View, and ordered those eight stations to file license renewals years early, something it had not done in over half a century. → NPR

Every one of those decisions was made by someone certain they were right.

The shirt says DUNNING KRUGER / MOUNT STUPID / –F47–. Two of those are borrowed.

"Dunning-Kruger" is a 1999 paper by Justin Kruger and David Dunning. Actual title: "Unskilled and Unaware of It." The finding is that being bad at something takes away the tool you'd need to notice you're bad at it. You can't grade your own test in a subject you never took.

"Mount Stupid" isn't theirs. That's from an SMBC comic by Zach Weinersmith, which drew the curve as a mountain range. Confidence spikes almost immediately. Then it falls off a cliff the second you learn enough to know what you don't know. Then it climbs back, slowly, over years.

The peak is where you know one fact and think you have the whole thing.

Fair warning, because precision matters here: psychologists have spent twenty years arguing about whether the effect is real or just a trick of how the data gets graphed. Still unsettled.

The mountain, though. Everyone's met someone up there. Some of them have launch authority.

Hit reply. I read them.

Peace. Love. Action.

— ViV