News

Musk has posted about an impending civil war on his social media platform X at least eight times in the past 10 months. Some warn it’s dangerous rhetoric.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has repeatedly prophesied a future civil war related to immigration.

Musk has posted about the subject on his social media platform X at least eight times in the past 10 months, according to a review of his posts by NBC News. And his posts usually include a specific prediction: He thinks that Europe in particular is headed toward a “civil war” due to the arrival of refugees from other continents.

Musk’s interest in the subject of a civil war poked into public view earlier this month when he weighed in on anti-immigration street riots happening across Great Britain. “Civil war is inevitable,” he wrote on X.

...

Musk’s rhetoric is unheard-of for a corporate executive speaking in public, but the prediction of a civil war has become a frequent talking point among some far-right activists who view a civil war in Europe or the U.S. as not only unavoidable but also as something to be welcomed.

“What you’re seeing in these calls for civil war is a white supremacist clarion call. It is a dog whistle,” said Jon Lewis, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism.

A large bronze statue of the late civil rights icon leader and Georgia congressman John Lewis was installed Friday, at the very spot where a contentious monument to the confederacy stood for more than 110 years in the town square before it was dismantled in 2020.

…

Lewis was known for his role at the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement and urged others to get in "good trouble" for a cause he saw as vital and necessary. In DeKalb County where the Confederate monument stood for more than a century, protesters have invoked "good trouble" in calling for the swift removal of the obelisk.

Kayakers and snorkelers exploring the Southern California coast spotted an extremely rare oarfish, nicknamed a "doomsday fish" since they are seen in some parts of the world as harbingers of imminent disasters. It's one of less than two dozen confirmed sightings of an oarfish in the state in over 120 years, according to UC  San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography. 

The oarfish is a "strikingly large, odd-looking fish" with a long, silvery, ribbon-shaped body, according to the Ocean Conservatory. The fish can grow to more than 30 feet long, and have large eyes and "foreboding" red spines in a crown-like cluster. Typically, these fish are deep-sea dwellers and thrive in waters that are the least explored by scientists.

Investigation into Canada's New Brunswick brain syndrome is being blocked by the province, whose claims that the syndrome is various existing diseases have been debunked by federal experts, who suggest that the provincial government controlled by its forestry industry is blocking the investigation to retain tourism and industry.

Hi all!

As many of you have noticed, many Lemmy.World communities introduced a bot: @[email protected]. This bot was introduced because modding can be pretty tough work at times and we are all just volunteers with regular lives. It has been helpful and we would like to keep it around in one form or another.

The [email protected] mods want to give the community a chance to voice their thoughts on some potential changes to the MBFC bot. We have heard concerns that tend to fall into a few buckets. The most common concern we’ve heard is that the bot’s comment is too long. To address this, we’ve implemented a spoiler tag so that users need to click to see more information. We’ve also cut wording about donations that people argued made the bot feel like an ad.

Another common concern people have is with MBFC’s definition of “left” and “right,” which tend to be influenced by the American Overton window. Similarly, some have expressed that they feel MBFC’s process of rating reliability and credibility is opaque and/or subjective. To address this, we have discussed creating our own open source system of scoring news sources. We would essentially start with third-party ratings, including MBFC, and create an aggregate rating. We could also open a path for users to vote, so that any rating would reflect our instance’s opinions of a source. We would love to hear your thoughts on this, as well as suggestions for sources that rate news outlets’ bias, reliability, and/or credibility. Feel free to use this thread to share other constructive criticism about the bot too.

Musk’s repeated outbursts against advertisers have dried up the main source of revenue for the loss-making company formerly known as Twitter. A recent decision to sue them for heeding his own advice to not buy ads on the platform hasn’t helped. At some point, he will have to provide a fresh infusion of cash to salvage his $44 billion takeover.

Former GOP Rep. George Santos is expected to plead guilty on Monday to multiple charges related to campaign finance fraud, less than a month from when his trial was set to begin, two sources familiar with the matter tell NBC News.

The disgraced former lawmaker faces a 23-count superseding indictment in the Eastern District of New York, including charges of wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and making materially false statements to the Federal Election Commission.

The superseding indictment is an addition to a 13-count federal indictment on charges of wire fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds that Santos was hit with in May 2023.

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/15832268

The New College of Florida is under fire after what appears to be hundreds of books that have been wiped from its collection and discarded on the street.

The right-wing war on knowledge continues to be a five-alarm fire for American (and world) Democracy and getting worse by the day...

Last February, some 20 men and their wives gathered for dinner at an upscale restaurant in Spokane, Washington, for their annual Valentine’s Day celebration. The men weren’t just friends; they did community service work together. They had been featured on local television, in khakis and baseball caps, delivering 1,200 pounds of food to an area veterans’ center; they were gearing up for their next food drive, which they called Operation Hunger Smash. A few days after the holiday, the men went camping in the snow-speckled mountains outside Spokane, where they grilled rib-eyes and bacon-wrapped asparagus over a bonfire.

They also engaged in more menacing activities. They assembled regularly — sometimes wearing night-vision goggles in the dark — to practice storming buildings together with semiautomatic rifles. Their drills included using sniper rifles to shoot targets from distances of half a mile. And they belonged to a shadowy organization whose members were debating, with ever more intensity, whether they should engage in mass-scale political violence.

They were among the thousands of members of American Patriots Three Percent, a militia that has long been one of the largest in the United States and has mostly managed to avoid scrutiny. Its ranks included cops and convicted criminals, active-duty U.S. soldiers and small-business owners, truck drivers and health care professionals. Like other militias, AP3 has a vague but militant right-wing ideology, a pronounced sense of grievance and a commitment to armed action. It has already sought to shape American life through vigilante operations: AP3 members have “rounded up” immigrants at the Texas border, assaulted Black Lives Matter protesters and attempted to crack down on people casting absentee ballots.

Now with the presidential election less than 100 days away, AP3 members see the fate of their country turning on a turbulent, charged campaign. They’re certain that Democrats will try to steal — not for the first time, in their view — the White House from Donald Trump. “The next election won’t be decided at a Ballot Box,” an AP3 leader wrote several months ago in a private Telegram chat. “It’ll be decided at the ammo box.” He has said he is ready to force his way into voting centers if need be, or “whatever it takes.”

The Wisconsin English teacher, Jordan Cernek, argues in the suit that the district violated his freedom of religion and free speech in mandating the use of the students' preferred names and pronouns.

A high school English teacher is suing a Wisconsin school district, alleging it did not renew his contract last year because he refused to use the preferred names of two transgender students.

Jordan Cernek's federal lawsuit alleges the Argyle School District violated his constitutional and civil rights to be free of religious discrimination and to be able to express himself according to his religious beliefs when it did not renew his contract because he refused to abide by a requirement that teachers use the names or pronouns requested by students.

Online dating industry in crisis as shares fall and nearly half of all users report negative experiences on the apps

Ford Motor is recalling about 85,000 Explorer SUVs equipped with the Police Interceptor Utility package over concerns of an engine fire, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on Friday.

In the event of a motor failure, oil and fuel may be released into the engine compartment and accumulate near ignition sources, possibly resulting in a fire, the regulator said.

The recall affects SUVs from model years 2020-2022 equipped with 3.3L hybrid and gas engines.

Joe Biden has said he is "optimistic" that a Gaza ceasefire deal can be reached.

"We are closer than we’ve ever been," the US president said following the latest round of talks, adding he was sending his secretary of state to Israel to continue the "intensive efforts to conclude this agreement".

Amid concerns that Iran may launch an attack on Israel for the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Mr Biden said "no-one in the region should take actions to undermine this process".

Hamas has expressed scepticism about the chances of a deal. And without mentioning the possibility of a ceasefire, Israel said it "appreciates the efforts of the US and the mediators to dissuade Hamas from its refusal to a hostage release deal".