Instead of destroying the cameras outright, it would be interesting to see if you could add another camera to the pole (either wire into the existing power source, or add your own solar). Now you have full control of footage from the same angle, and can either publicly release it, calming to be from the flock camera, or use it to target FOIA requests at other useful people.

If you get enough people in an area together, you can start to coordinate your small FOIA requests around where city officials are and/or don't want to be seen, and build a good picture of their behavior. Once you have a starting point for the mayor, and know what direction they were going, you can find other people in the group in the area at the same time, and put in additional FOIA requests until you have the whole route covered. Then start publishing their every movement.

Catch a few city council members at/near strip clubs, etc., and watch the cameras disappear.

(Note: I'm against the profligate financial support the US is providing Israel, for a variety of reason)

The problem with the idea of "stop sending billions to Israel" is that it's not actually that we send, you know, truckloads of cash to Israel for it to spend wherever it wants. Most of our aid to Israel is in the form of arms and equipment that is specifically to be purchased from US companies -- so most of that money actually ends up staying in the US, and if you were to take that money off the table, then several large US contractors -- and thousands of employees -- would then feel that pinch.

(Not that that makes it a bad idea, mind you)

Y'know, it feels intuitive to assume that going through some sort of Massively Traumatic Event (e.g. WW2 or Great Depression) would have depressed survivability, but apparently that's -- again, totally counter-intuitively -- not necessarily supported by studies.

For example, this study comparing Holocaust Survivors lifespans to control group in Israel demonstrated that while Holocaust survivors had more chronic health conditions, "mean age at death was significantly higher in the survivor group compared with the control group."

I've seen some hypothesis that these sorts of massive events sadly cull the population, on average leaving a population that will actually be hardier than otherwise, which ... both makes sense and is a bummer.

My Facebook account was assassinated a few years back for posting "#NEVERAGAIN" and a link to the British Holocaust Memorial Day Trust on May 6. Reason eventually given: the link to a HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE PAGE was supposedly "glorifying violent individuals or organizations."

That's right. Nazi Trash Filth Zuckerberg decided that saying "#NEVERAGAIN" about the Holocaust was somehow "glorifying" violent individuals or organizations...

Numerous data breach notification laws just for starters, you dishonest Anonymous Meta-Employee Trash Troll Coward.

Meta as a company ought to have been shut down ages ago for so many violations of law. It's honestly amazing that they've managed to avoid it. Constant impersonation problems, constantly not just allowing but actually HELPING scam artists defraud people, constant security flaws that allowed for taken-over accounts, or that resulted in people losing their accounts through no fault of their own, irretrievably. The best advice I can offer someone is to NEVER use a Meta-owned system, ever.

Everyone does. Especially permanent anti-drone defenses.

The next war of aggression between physically adjacent countries will probably be drone blitzkrieg.

Imagine if Russia had already had a million cheap drones. Day one of the war would have seen 100,000+ launched all at once, targeting every piece of infrastructure in Ukraine, almost instantly rendering the country unlivable.

A patient enemy could pre-place thousands of Operation Spiderweb-esqe containers all over the US - using drones assembled in-country - and do the same thing here.

I've noted the comments here about how this is old news: that's true. But it will be novel to some people who didn't live through it, and even for those who did, it's a necessary reminder. Microsoft is ruthless, unscrupulous, and unethical: they will do anything. They're not the only ones, of course, but they're arguably the most dangerous because of their size, wealth, and longevity. They're the enemy of open standards. They're the enemy of open source. They're the enemy of open protocols. They're the enemy of Unix. They're the enemy of Linux. They're the enemy of security. They're the enemy of privacy. They've always been the enemy and they always will be, because it's in their DNA: it's impossible for them to change.

So any time -- ANY TIME -- there's some statement or initiative or announcement that they're going to support open standards/source/etc., any of the things I listed -- the first things that should come to mind are these wise words of Ash: "It's a trick -- get an axe."

We were still buying VAXes because we would put the VMS tapes aside, install a second CPU (the "PurDual" modification), install BSD (Berkeley Unix), and run them nearly 24x7 for years at a time. "We" included the (large) university I was at, but it also includes a LOT of other universities, because -- thanks to DEC's academic discounts on hardware -- this was one of the most cost-effective ways of deploying a lot of computing power. (For the time, of course,)

Still, they're the Monsanto of software: if something would be worth doing and lucrative, but is not evil, they're not doing.

This scorpion doesn't seem able to change its stripes.

Well that's what you get when the GOP are now the Retardican Senilefucking Klanbitchbags Party. Every member of the GOP are either lunatic insane depends-shitting Senile Fucking Klantrash like Trump, or Russian Owned Nazi Treason Cunt Shit like Miller.

Go gaslight somewhere else, Braindead Retardican Russian Funded KlanBitchbag.

So... you have nothing to say, just a grab-bag of preprogrammed phrases from Dumbfuck Retardican GOP Radio. End your existence you Fucking Retarded little Klan Bitch Treasonass.

Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Facebook, all these large companies have huge numbers of employees and contractors and subcontractors and sub-subcontractors. And with few exceptions -- at the top -- they treat them as disposable, as we see in their headlong rush to replace them with horribly broken AI systems. Many of these people are elsewhere in the world and are paid far less than their US counterparts.

All of this creates a rich ecosystems that's ripe for bribery; it's an inexpensive and effective way to get things done. It's not rare: it's commonplace and unremarkable. Of course these companies will claim otherwise because they don't want to admit that they're created a culture of corruption, and every once in a while they'll throw someone under the bus so that they can claim they promptly investigate all such activities, that's all bullshit. The systems they've built are functioning as designed and intended, and as long as massive amounts of money keep flowing to corporate executives, they have no reason to disturb them.

Everyone foolish enough to put their personal/company/organization data in clouds run by these companies should consider that all of their data is quite likely available to anyone who can put $5K or $20K or whatever in a manila envelope and slide it across a table.