The Church League of America, a right wing anti-communist research and advocacy group, collected these research files from other creators with a similar political outlook and professional activities: American Business Consultants Inc., the Wackenhut Corporation, and Karl Baarslag. All of these creators had connections to the intelligence agencies of the United States government, kept detailed research files on individuals and organizations, and were part of a right-wing research and information network that monitored Communists and other perceived threats to their interpretation of the American way of life.

By the 1950s, the Wheaton, Illinois-based Church League of America had become a major force in right-wing anti-communist activity, and as other similar organizations faced difficulty, the Church League obtained their research files. American Business Consultants, Inc. was founded in 1947 and was a major force in McCarthy-era investigations into suspected Communist activity. Their for-profit weekly publication Counterattack and special report Red Channels provided readers with specific names and information on allegedly subversive individuals and organizations. As a result of the financial difficulties caused by ensuing libel suits, ABC transferred their research files to the Church League. Additional files came from the Wackenhut Corporation, which was founded in 1954 by George R. Wackenhut and other former FBI employees. The company, which provided private security to industry and government agencies, also kept extensive files on individuals, ostensibly to run background checks. The Wackenhut Corporation received many research files from Karl Baarslag who worked for such prominent anti-communists as Senator Joseph McCarthy, Church League of America, and the American Legion. Following the passage of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the Wackenhut Corporation transferred many of its research files to the Church League.

The research files contain newspaper and magazine clippings, reports, flyers, internal and external correspondence, pamphlets, brochures, circulars, and government publications. Counterattack's 1940s-1950s research activities are especially focused on entertainment, unions, suspected Communist Party fronts, foundations and individuals in public life suspected of subversive activities. Many of the Wackenhut documents and a series on student movements in California highlight the suspected connections between Communism, opposition to the Vietnam War, and the broader left counterculture of the 1960s, and document the right's evolving definition of "subversion." The meticulous and thorough collecting activities that led to the creation of these research files makes them a strong source of information on Communists and the left from the 1940s-1970s, and taken as a whole they illustrate the right's interpretation of the political and cultural environment of the mid-twentieth century United States.

The Central Intelligence Agency, directly violating its charter, conducted a massive, illegal domestic intelligence operation during the Nixon Administration against the antiwar movement and other dissident groups in the United States, according to well‐placed Government sources.

An extensive investigation by The New York Times has established that intelligence files on at least 10,000 American citizens were maintained by a special unit of the C.I.A. that was reporting directly to Richard Helms, then the Director of Central Intelligence and now the Ambassador to Iran.

In addition, the sources said, a check of the C.I.A.'s domestic files ordered last year by Mr. Helms's successor, James R. Schlesinger, produced evidence of dozens of other illegal activities by members of the C.I.A. inside the United States, beginning in the nineteen‐fifties, including break‐ins, wiretapping and the surreptitious inspection of mail.

What if, though, “selves” are present in those very cells, ahead of the point at which they merge to form a greater whole? It might sound outlandish, but biological simulations are indicating that those minuscule units of life, which we usually think about as passive machines – cogs blindly governed by the laws of physics – have their own goals and display agency. Surprisingly, even simple networks of biomolecules appear to display some degree of a self, a revelation that could lead to novel ways of treating health conditions with far fewer side effects.

What’s more, some biologists say this new grasp of selfhood can reveal what is special about life and how it began in the first place. “The origins of agency coincide with the origins of life,” says cognitive scientist Tom Froese at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan.

The longer I live, the more I notice with what fundamental imprecision emotions present themselves to us. The most profound grief can mingle with a sense of freedom, even relief; the greatest hope might be entangled with a sense of doom; and that dreaded thing coming to fruition might release us, however momentarily, from the burden of anticipating it. So, we might be tormented in one way and consoled in another through the process of grief, which is far more mysterious than we tend to give it credit for.

I also suspect that the longing for inexactitude or mystery—the hope that all knowledge is provisional and incomplete—is deeply human. Any time you define something utterly, you reduce it in some way; you exert a kind of force over it that, rather than expanding your sense of what it and your relation to it may be, parameterizes the possible.

...

As for the snail in “[Horns Within],” which is a stage direction from King Lear … I guess I don’t feel particularly at home among people or “in the deciphered world,” as Rilke called it. In many ways, I feel sort of alien or even subhuman much of the time, like I’m closer to the forms of life that people have historically claimed dominion or superiority over. Maybe I relate to the slug, the snail, because it’s a bit like this weird tongue dragging along the earth, tasting it, lowly without perceiving itself as such, moved along by forces it doesn’t understand. Leaving a brief residue of itself on all it passes over.

The salacious details of the Epstein Files have obscured the fact that they are also basically The Panama Papers II, revealing the sleazy economic machinations of the Epstein/Trump "unaccountable class".

Anke Gowda, whose library is open to everyone, recently received an Indian government award.

cross-posted from: https://leminal.space/post/31736049

Files reveal a world of flattery and fratboy tones, where rich men are cultivated and women provide services

(Invidious link: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=BHdbsHFs2P0 )

Unexpected applications and a beautiful proof. [...] Home page: https://www.3blue1brown.com/

Credits:
Senia Sheydvasser: Co-writing and sphere deformation animations, made in Blender
Paul Dancstep: Those lovely fluffy sphere animations, made in Cinema4D
Vince Rubinetti: Music

Timestamps:
0:00 - To comb a hairy ball
1:24 - Applications
8:46 - The puzzle of one null point
12:12 - The proof outline
16:41 - Defining orientation
21:44 - Why inside-out is impossible
25:59 - 3b1b Talent
27:44 - Final food for thought

Video. American rock climber Alex Honnold took on Taiwan's tallest building on Sunday, without ropes or safety gear.

Sometimes science can be painfully slow.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/53727583

Came across this article a while back, and its a really interesting read. Since today is MLK day it seems like an appropriate day to share this. It's an especially important moment in history to remember and honor an American patriot who refused to be silent even when he became the target of a man who abused his powerful position in the federal government while hiding behind lies about protecting liberty and justice.

Acknowledging the ugly reality behind the myth of a man like J. Edgar Hoover also shouldn't be used to erase the truth about the good that was accomplished because a federal government used its powers to right injustices for all Americans, following the civil rights act. It should simply remind us that downplaying the difficult truths of our history only leaves us at risk of repeating our worst mistakes again in the future.

The legend is crumbling: the squat, bulldog features, set fiercely in tenacious pursuit of the TEN MOST WANTED CRIMINALS. The gangbuster nemesis of “Baby Face” Nelson, John Dillinger, Ma Barker. The scourge of would-be spies and saboteurs. The alert sentinel and fearless fighter holding back the tide of the Red Menace. The stubbornly independent guardian of evenhanded law enforcement, highmindedly fending off Congressmen and Presidents who sought to use his agency for political purposes.

J. Edgar Hoover deserved some of that billing, although it was overblown from the start. Now, just three years after his death, a sharply different portrait is emerging of the man who built the Federal Bureau of Investigation into the world’s most reputable police organization through 48 years as its famed Director. To be sure, there had always been a few blemishes—some from scattered revelations through the decades, some from his own reckless conduct as he grew older and fought to retain the power he felt slipping away. But now, under congressional and journalistic scrutiny, as well as in the writings of his once fearful agents, a darker picture is coming into view.

In these new shades Hoover is seen as a shrewd bureaucratic genius who cared less about crime than about perpetuating his crime-busting image. With his acute public relations sense, he managed to obscure his bureau’s failings while magnifying its sometime successes. Even his fervent anti-Communism has been cast into doubt; some former aides insist that he knew the party was never a genuine internal threat to the nation but a useful, popular target to ensure financial and public support for the FBI.

Even more serious flaws in the Hoover character and official performance have come to light:

Instead of insulating his bureau from politically sensitive Presidents, Hoover eagerly complied with improper requests from the men in the White House for information on potential opponents. If a President failed to ask for such information, the Director often volunteered it. He tapped the telephones of Government officials on request, perused files of politicians unasked, volunteered tidbits of gossip.

He was a petty man of towering personal hates. There was more than a tinge of racism in his vicious vendetta against Martin Luther King Jr. He had to be pushed into hiring black agents for the bureau.

His informers, infiltrators and wiretappers delved into the activities of even the most innocuous and nonviolent civil rights and antiwar groups, trampling on the rights of citizens to express grievances against their Government. His spies within potentially dangerous extremist groups sometimes provoked more violence than they prevented.

As an administrator, he was an erratic, unchallengeable czar, banishing agents to Siberian posts on whimsy, terrorizing them with torrents of implausible rules, insisting on conformity of thought as well as dress.

The fact that such a man could acquire and keep that kind of power raises disturbing questions not merely about the role of a national police in a democracy, but also about the political system that tolerated him for so long. The revelations show too that those political dissidents in years past who complained they were being harassed and spied upon were not so paranoid after all.

Meri-Tuuli Auer told her counsellor things about her life she didn't want her closest family to know.

The premier destination for Resume-Driven Development, Over-Engineering, and Resume-Padding. Why build simple solutions when you can build a distributed monolith?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/41241375

A treatment that blocks an age-related protein restored cartilage in aging and injured joints by reprogramming existing cells rather than using stem cells.

"The world needs better ways to understand what's actually happening on the ground."

This is a screen recording of a 60 Minutes segment about the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) prison in El Salvador, which was intended to be aired December 22, 2025 but was pulled last minute for unclear reasons. Despite being pulled, it aired on Global-TV in Canada anyway.