CyberPlayGround Blog

ECP NetHappenings The Odyssey Tips for Teachers

❤️️ Sign Up ©2026 NetHappenings News Email List
✅ https://cyberplayground.org
©2026 TWITTER @CyberPlayGround
©1998-©2026 *Educational CyberPlayGround®
©2026 https://k12playground.com
©2026 https://RichAsHell.com
©1993 – ©2026 https://edu-cyberpg.com

Kimi K3’s full benchmarks. Chinese model rivals Fable & GPT 5.6

Moonshot’s new model beats Fable 5 for frontend: The Chinese AI lab just released Kimi K3. It’s a massive 2.8 trillion parameter model with native vision and a 1 million token context window. The lab claims it only trails Claude Fable 5 and GPT 5.6 Sol, meaning it beats every other model they tested. It even beats Fable 5 on the Frontend Code Arena, where human judges compare the designs side-by-side. The full weights will be available on July 27.

Claude Code now reviews your PRs as hard as you want: The AI lab just rolled out new effort levels for /code-review. Previously, the command ran one fixed prompt no matter what. Now, each level runs its own review. Low effort runs a fast single pass that you can use before every push. High effort spins up sub-agents to verify every single finding. Anthropic says even the lowest tier outperforms rival tools. Update Claude Code and try it on your next PR.

DoorDash lets your AI agents order food: The food delivery giant just opened a limited beta of dd-cli. This command-line tool lets agents search stores, find deals, and handle checkout. You can now integrate food ordering directly into their workflows instead of using the app. Early access is available via waitlist for macOS developers in the US and Canada.

OpenAI’s new coding model reportedly deletes files without permission: The ChatGPT maker’s GPT-5.6 Sol is facing backlash from developers who claim it wiped production databases and entire Mac filesystems on its own. The company’s system card flagged the risk, noting Sol is more likely than GPT-5.5 to exceed user intent and may even misreport its actions afterward. For now, strict permission scoping and regular backups are the only real safeguards.

Anthropic reveals Claude’s personality shifts with model and language: The AI lab analyzed over 300K real conversations and found that its assistant expresses different values based on the model and language you use. Opus 4.7 is more cautious and flags potential risks, while Sonnet 4.6 is friendlier and likes to joke around. Claude also tends to be warmest when speaking Hindi and Arabic but turns more rigorous and critical in English and Russian. See the findings.

Washington is working to keep Chinese AI models out of U.S. companies. Anthropic is leading the charge. They’ve accused Chinese labs of copying Claude’s capabilities at an industrial scale. Now, China is pushing back. On July 10, Alibaba reportedly banned its staff from using Claude Code, calling it high-risk software. Shortly after, Z.ai founder Tang Jie published a memo. He argued that advanced AI should stay open and accessible to everyone. On the surface, it looks like a simple clash of philosophies.

Beijing breaks the script. The timing tells a different story. Tang published his memo just days after Reuters reported that Beijing is considering restrictions on overseas access to China’s top open-source models. The very person advocating for openness might find his government shutting it down first. If you strip away the political talk, both capitals are trying to pull the same lever. They both want to control who leads in frontier intelligence.

The lever already moved. In June, the Commerce Department terminated Anthropic’s Fable 5 for foreign nationals. The termination happened just three days after it dropped. That is the risk you take with closed models. Open weights have their set of problems. No one can take back weights you have already downloaded. But the supply of future updates can dry up at any time. Either way, every model you use now depends on the mood of a government.

Artificial Intelligence: How teachers are coping with students’ use, and misuse, of AI in completing homework assignments

The Odyssey
Five Tips for Teachers on Bringing Homer to High Schoolers

With The Odyssey commanding movie screens this summer, contributor Joe Goodkin describes his efforts to bring the age-old Greek epic to life for high schoolers across the country and what teachers can do to make the text relevant to students. That includes finding the right translation, using modern adaptations and focusing on key parts of the tale. Homer’s epic, Goodkin writes, “shows us what it means to be human. It considers identity, family, adventure, gender, leadership, failure, glory and perseverance: it’s all there.”

Go Deeper:

Why Are So Few Kids Reading for Pleasure?
Latin Is Not Dead Yet. Here’s How We Keep It Alive (Commentary)
Can AI Bring Students Back to the Great Books? (from 2024)
These High School ‘Classics’ Have Been Taught for Generations – Are They on Their Way Out? (from 2022)

ECP NetHappenings To Governor Andy Beshear

NEVER FORGET:
NOT ONE REPUBLICAN OFFICEHOLDER WHO OBJECTED TO BIDEN’S VICTORY HAVE OBJECTED TO THEIR OWN WINS ON THE SAME DAY, ON THE SAME BALLOTS, USING THE SAME ELECTION SYSTEMS.

To Governor Andy Beshear These seats don’t belong to the candidate. These seats don’t belong to the parties. They belong to the people. Act, dammit!

Governor Andy Beshear says he got calls from two different non-state agencies saying McConnell had died. This was before the “proof of life” photo was shared by McConnell’s team.
If taxpayers pay Mitch McConnell’s salary, then taxpayers deserve to know if he’s alive.
Taxpayers also pay his staff’s salaries, and they should be forced to answer this simple question, and show proof — and if they lie, they should be prosecuted.
This isn’t complicated.
He needs to start the process of replacing him. It’s now up to McConnell to prove himself.

Conspiracy to Defraud the United States (18 U.S.C. § 371): Intentionally hiding a Senator’s death alters the voting makeup of the U.S. Senate and obstructs the legal process for a governor to fill a vacant congressional seat. Hiding the death to stall political appointments or keep a Senate seat functional constitutes a major federal conspiracy. This carries a penalty of up to 5 years in federal prison.
Federal Wire / Government Fraud: If any official Senate business, votes, statements, or payroll distributions were processed using the Senator’s identity during those 47 days, the individuals involved would face multiple counts of federal fraud, carrying penalties of up to 20 years per count.
Kentucky State Criminal Penalties
If the death occurred or the body was kept within Kentucky boundaries, the state penalties outlined previously would immediately apply to his spouse or any co-conspirators:
• Abuse of a Corpse (KRS § 525.120): Keeping a body unreported for 47 days legally constitutes treating a corpse in a way that “outrages ordinary family sensibilities” (even if done by family). This is a Class D felony punishable by 1 to 5 years in prison.
• Tampering with Physical Evidence (KRS § 524.100): Intentionally concealing a body to prevent a police or coroner investigation is a Class D felony, adding another 1 to 5 years in prison.
• Failure to Notify Coroner (KRS § 72.020): Any person who finds or has possession of a body must report it immediately. Failing to do so is a misdemeanor punishable by up to 90 days in jail and fines.
Penalties for Local Authorities
If local or state authorities (such as aides, doctors, or staff) were aware of the death and actively participated in a cover-up, they would not only face the felony charges above but would also be charged with Official Misconduct and Misprision of a Felony (the federal crime of concealing a known felony from law enforcement).

Luttig: As a candidate for attorney general of the United States of America, Blanche is an embarrassment to America itself. If the Republican Senate confirms this man, based on his record, to be the next attorney general, it will mark the end of the rule of law in America.

Rep. Deborah Ross says Todd Blanche and the DOJ quietly changed Bureau of Prisons policy AFTER Ghislaine Maxwell’s transfer because it violated the original rules.
Rep. Deborah Ross says the same DOJ policy that was changed to move Ghislaine Maxwell to a cushy prison could ALSO be used to send Donald Trump’s enemies to HARSHER prisons.
“It’s kind of like a king deciding which dungeon they’re gonna put somebody in.”

Anyone up for a trip? DJT -> SUX -> FAT -> DIX
Fly from Palm Beach, FL, to Sioux City, IA, to Fresno, CA, to Dickinson, ND.

Rural NY School To Launch Humanoid Robot Teacher
https://nysfocus.com/2026/07/14/new-york-humanoid-robot-teacher-salamanca-school-district

Intelligence test scores are dropping, especially among wealthier families. In 579,379 Norwegian men, scores started falling first in sons of high‑income fathers and declined most in this group. Gains from expanded upper‑secondary education briefly slowed declines in lower‑income groups.

Sen. Mark Kelly has amassed a nearly $25 million campaign “war chest” ahead of a potential 2028 run — would be the first astronaut president in history.

A federal judge rules that agencies can’t cut previously awarded grants based on a new president’s changing priorities.
Those priorities can only be applied on a forward-looking basis, she says. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.286247/gov.uscourts.mad.286247.122.0_1.pdf

CLARITY ACT COULD REACH SENATE FLOOR NEXT WEEK, SAYS HOUSE REP. BRYAN STEIL
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Bryan Steil said he’s optimistic the Senate will bring the CLARITY Act to the floor as soon as next week, arguing the legislation would finally provide long-awaited regulatory clarity for digital assets in the U.S.
Speaking ahead of today’s New York field hearing, Steil said the bill would establish a framework that protects consumers, distinguishes legitimate companies from bad actors, and helps attract both financial and human capital to the United States.
He also dismissed ethics-related objections, saying those concerns are another reason to pass clear digital asset rules.

Larry Fink has said he’s very bullish on the market over the next 12 months.

If you invested $1,000 in Bitcoin when Satoshi created it, here’s what you’d have today
The genesis block went live on January 3, 2009, with a message embedded in the code about bank bailouts. Seventeen years later, that origin story is worth more than most countries’ GDP.

Bitcoin Mining Giant Foundry Asks Miners To Vote on BIP-110 Soft Fork
Foundry Digital said it will allow clients who use its Bitcoin mining pool to vote on BIP-110.

Ted Lieu @tedlieu
And what is the response from House Republicans? Allowing the trump Administration to let US companies (who donate to trump) to sell high performance AI chips to China.
I’m not kidding. Go look it up.
Because trump doesn’t care about America, he only cares about himself.

Stop calling his rambling incoherent dementia-ridden rants of self-serving lies a “speech.”

“Trump says Democrats FORGOT to rig the election in 2016, successfully rigged it while *HE* was president in 2020, then forgot how to rig it again in 2024. So the only election Democrats SUPPOSEDLY stole was the one HE HIMSELF controlled.
You have to be a special kind of stupid to believe this bullshit.”
– REP. JIM MCGOVERN

“He knows those computers better than anybody, all those vote counting computers, and we ended up winning Pennsylvania like in a landslide, so it was pretty good, so thank you to Elon!”
– Donald Trump, the day before he was sworn in for a second term

And he didn’t discuss “election security.”
He delivered a direct attack on it; regurgitating debunked conspiracy theories as a blatant pretext to interfere in the midterms and beyond.

ESSAY @ihtesham2005 htesham Ali

https://x.com/ihtesham2005/status/2078115795880772059

Edward Snowden recommends this operating system to journalists, activists, and anyone whose computer could be used against them.

It’s called Qubes OS, and it’s free.

A Polish security researcher named Joanna Rutkowska built it.

In 2006, she walked onto a stage in Las Vegas and showed a room full of hackers something that shut the whole place up.

She had built a way to take over a computer completely, using the hardware itself, without the operating system ever noticing it happened. People called it Blue Pill.

A few years later she asked herself the opposite question. If a computer can be silently taken over like that, how do you build one that survives being attacked anyway?

Her answer was Qubes.

Instead of trusting your whole computer as one single space, Qubes splits it into many separate little computers running side by side, each one sealed off from the others. Open your banking site in one. Open a sketchy email attachment in a different one.

If the attachment turns out to carry malware, it wakes up alone in its own sealed box with nothing else to touch.

Some of those boxes are built to disappear on purpose. Open a suspicious PDF in a disposable one and the moment you close it, the whole thing gets erased and rebuilt from scratch the next time you need it, malware included.

In 2016, Snowden tweeted about it directly: “It’s what I use, and free. Nobody does VM isolation better.”

Whonix, the anonymity system built entirely around Tor, actually runs as one of the isolated boxes inside Qubes.

That’s the exact combination Snowden pairs together for the strongest privacy setup he trusts on his own hardware.

ESSAY Ricardo @Ric_RTP

Xi Jinping just hijacked the rules of AI for the entire planet.

Today, Xi walked onto the stage at the World AI Conference in Shanghai.

It was his FIRST time attending the event in person since it launched in 2018. Heads of state do not fly in personally for a product expo.

The day before he spoke, 29 governments signed a founding charter.

It created a brand new international body called the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization, with its permanent headquarters in Shanghai. China had spent a full year lining up the signatures.

UN Secretary General sat in the audience. So did the leaders of Kazakhstan, Cambodia, and Thailand, alongside representatives from more than 100 countries.

While the robots and the chips got the headlines, those 29 signatures were what really mattered.

Here’s why:

Whoever writes the rules of a technology decides who gets to win with it.

The US is leaning on export controls and voluntary safety pledges. Europe is enforcing its own AI Act.

China just built the institution that wants to set the standards for everyone else, and it put the headquarters on its own soil.

And look at who signed…

The founding members include Russia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, and Laos. Together, the countries in this new bloc represent a population that dwarfs the entire G7. These are the nations that felt shut out of the AI order the West built, and Beijing just offered them a seat at a table it controls.

And Xi framed all of it as a gift to humanity. He pledged 5,000 AI training slots for developing countries.

He called on the world to “encourage open source, openness, collaboration and sharing” and warned against any nation placing its own security above everyone else’s, which is basically a shot at American chip controls.

It was a generous call for openness from the country that just created the rule-setting body and kept the headquarters for itself.

On the conference itself, more than 1,100 companies showed off over 3,000 products, including Huawei’s Atlas 950, an 8,192-chip supercomputer built to go straight at Nvidia, and what China is billing as the world’s first AI agent phone.

So while much of the West is still arguing about whether AI is a bubble, China spent this week doing something more lasting:

It started writing the rulebook, and got 29 countries to sign.

What happens to America’s lead if the rest of the world ends up playing by China’s rules?

ESSAY @TeganMathis

QUESTION: President Richard Nixon was way ahead in the polls! Why would he even bother to burglarize the DNC headquarters at the Watergate office complex?! ANSWER: Watergate had nothing to do with the election. Read on:

The Watergate break-in was an extension of the Plumbers operations which began in 1969 when NSC military aide Alexander Haig approached FBI Assistant Director William Sullivan about wiretapping NSC insiders to determine who was leaking secrets to the press.

But the FBI wiretaps were just one, small part of Haig’s larger Plumbers operation.

Haig also had the Joint Chiefs steal NSC documents for him in what we now known as the Moorer-Radford affair. He also had the Plumbers burglarize Daniel Ellberg’s psychoanalyst’s office. He even used those same Plumbers to hit the Chilean Embassy in Washington DC shortly before the Watergate burglary.

None of these operations had anything to do with Nixon’s reelection campaign. That’s just a cover story.

The break-in at the Chilean Embassy is key to understanding the Watergate break-in. The DNC break-in was not orchestrated to give President Nixon an electoral advantage. It was orchestrated to determine what the Democrats knew about the NSC’s plans to convert Chile to fascism. Most or all of the Burglars were experts on Salvador Allende and his ally Fidel Castro. They couldn’t care less about Richard Nixon or his election.

Though it was kept secret from the American people, the Deep State plot to convert Chile to fascism was a very big deal at the NSC in 1972. Chile was to provide a model for future fascist imperialism. (Richard Nixon’s NSC, with the help of the CIA, converted Chile to fascism on September 11, 1973.)

Chile was a huge “national security” secret. It still is, frankly. Of course they had to put blame somewhere else. And being that the Plumbers operation was apparently funded via illegal campaign cash, it was very easy to blame Nixon’s reelection committee.

But this was only the beginning. Watergate investigators eventually linked Haig to the Burglars and the JFK assassination. The more Nixon pushed back on impeachment, the bigger a threat he became to Haig. That’s why Haig arranged to have President Nixon replaced with Warren Commissioner Gerald Ford who effectively stopped all the investigations and saved Haig. But that’s a different topic. This X post is about why the Burglars hit the Watergate in the first place. (Chile!)

For much more, see Sins of the Vicar and Against Them by Tegan Mathis. That’s me.

ESSAY Dr Charlie Ward @DrcharlieWardQ

BREAKING 🚨: How corrupt is the United States? The day after the Justice Department launched an investigation into Wall Street short sellers the largest document storage facility, TD Ameritrade Bartlett Warehouse, went up in flames. They hauled the evidence away ON FIRE in direct violation of OSHA safety requirements. 60 hedge funds were to undergo investigations for manipulative short selling. Authorities concluded that a “falling shelf” took out the entire building’s sprinkler system that was located on the roof.
⠀
The facility was a newer facility outfitted with state of the art fire prevention technology.
⠀
Hedge funds have been under heavy scrutiny from retail investors.
⠀
More specifically from the AMC and GME community after the ‘meme stock’ frenzy early last year, 2021
⠀
Hedge funds have been able to suppress the share price of both these stocks through predatorial short-selling strategies.
⠀
In a Bloomberg exclusive, Gary Gensler states 90%-95% or retail market trades do not go through the lit exchange, but rather through dark pools.
⠀
This happened on February 4th 2022. Just like everything with out government absolutely NOTHING has come from the investigation. No charges. No stop to the blatant naked short selling taking place on a daily basis robbing investors.
⠀
The primary offender of naked shorting of course is Citadel, owned by Ken Griffin. Griffin is Ron DeSantis’s MEGADONOR and #WEF member.

▓▓▓—▓▓▓—▓▓▓

ECP NetHappenings Trump Lost Yes He Did

NEWS BYTES

They know McConnell is dead or might as well be, so they need to admit it.

U.S SENATE HEARING ON THE #BITCOIN AND CRYPTO CLARITY ACT HAS OFFICIALLY JUST STARTED.
Senator Warren demands 2026 disclosure of Trump’s crypto earnings after a $1.4B filing, pushing for transparency ahead of the Senate crypto bill vote.

Who knew SpaceX was just exit liquidity?
Every single person who bought this garbage is underwater.

Things conservatives used to say:
*Character counts
*Crony capitalism is bad
*Russia is our enemy
*Tariffs are taxes
*The Constitution is sacrosanct
*Government power should be limited, restrained, and checked by congress.

Top Treasury tax official and acting IRS chief counsel Ken Kies was ousted from his job after he warned that the White House was at risk of violating a federal law prohibiting senior officials’ involvement in IRS audits.

Permanent Daylight Savings Time
The House voted 308-117 Tuesday to pass the Sunshine Protection Act, which would make daylight saving time permanent nationwide. States could opt out and remain on standard time if their legislatures act before the measure takes effect.

Rick Scott the guy who got away with 1.7 BILLION in Medicare fraud, says Americans should work 7 days a week. We are not allowed time to raise our kids. What is your message to him? Mine is rot in hell.

The average American family makes $75,000 a year.
The top 10 corporations spent $4,834,000,000,000 in stock buybacks over the last 8 years.
They could have given $384,498 bonuses to each worker.
Instead: They got richer.
Tax the rich.

Judge orders Kennedy Center to explain tarps covering the building.

Trump’s property, which he received as a gift from the ruler of the UAE, was hit by an Iranian ballistic missile in Dubai

Lindsey Graham died Friday and less than a week later,his sister has been sworn in. South Carolina Republicans decided the most qualified person to fill in for Lindsey Graham’s vacant Senator seat was his own sister, with zero qualifications, to represent the entire state of South Carolina! Darlene Graham Nordone is the DEI hire Republicans warned you about.
*Anyone else remember when Mike Johnson refused to seat Adelita Grijalva for 50 days after she was ELECTED?

John Fetterman left the Democratic Party a long time ago. What he thinks, says or does is totally irrelevant. The odds of him getting primaried out of his position is approximately 100%.

You wanted a reality show host as a president, well now you’re on Survivor.

WHEN TRUMP’S PRESIDENCY IS OVER, IT SHOULD BE ANNULLED. NO LIBRARY, NO PORTRAIT, NO TITLES, NO HONORS, NO NOBEL PRIZE. IT’S A RECORD OF SHAME !

Massie on Trump’s speech: “We control the House, Senate, White House, and Supreme Court, so I ask my Republican colleagues, why are you complaining about election fraud? We won all the elections!”

If Democrats rig elections, how did Trump become president twice?

Listen to the demented presidential manbaby admit Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

BEAT US BY A WHISKER

“HE BEAT US BY A WHISKER” – DONALD J. TRUMP
Trump admits to the world that President Joe Biden was the clear winner. Everything since then has been blatant lies, accusations, coercion, insults, threats, falsities, hatred, manipulation, and pure garbage. Stop the insanity.

He got 74 million, and Biden got 81 million to win. Fuck this demented, lying asshole and his bullshit.

“I don’t want people to know that we lost, Mark.

This is embarrassing. Figure it out.

We need to figure it out.

I don’t want people to know that we lost.”

-Donald Trump to Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows Dec. 12, 2020.

The president lost his 2020 reelection to Joe Biden by 7 million votes, but has been falsely claiming he won for five years, eight months and 13 days now.

@WhiteHouse @realDonaldTrump
will be held accountable for their vicious lies tRUMP WAS INDICTED FOR ELECTION FRAUD – 11,780 votes that he tried to STEAL and pressured Brad Raffensperger!

Fella’s I just want to find 11,000 votes!
Raffensperger told him the data he has is wrong.

Trump’s voter fraud speech is BACKFIRING as Americans flood social media with the recording of Trump demanding Georgia “find 11,780 votes” after he lost the 2020 election. Trump is the last person on Earth who should be talking about election fraud.

Jim @Acosta Is Correct “The Fraudster-in-Chief” Donald J. Trump Cannot Hide In Plain Sight. Trump Is Totally Exposed For The Fraud He Really Is.

“And [Elon Musk] knows those computers better than anybody. All those computers, those vote-counting computers. And we ended up winning Pennsylvania, like, in a landslide, so. It was pretty good, it was pretty good, so — thank you to Elon!” – Donald Trump, January 19th 2025

Mullin says that election officials in states that don’t cooperate with the Trump administration may face jail time.

Questions of the day:
Would you rather have explosive diarrhea or listen to Trump address the nation?

The declassified documents Trump just released tonight to “prove” the 2020 election was “rigged” actually show that Russia tried to interfere to hurt Biden and help Trump.

“You said the 2020 election was rigged by either Venezuela or China. When you called that fella in Georgia pleading for 11,780 votes, was that part of the rigging, or part of the 6-year investigation? Just one more thing, sir, who was president while all this rigging took place?”

Trump announced a primetime TV address to spotlight his nutty, debunked 2020 election conspiracy theories. But guess what? NOT ONE MAJOR NETWORK AGREED TO AIR IT.
ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CNN and MSNBC all told him- to take a hike. They won’t air his lies and nonsense. AHAHAHA! He’s a wannabe dictator. Now he wants to pull the licenses of ABC and NBC for not participating in his festival of lies.

“We will not be airing the Presidents speech live because unfortunately this President has a history of presenting information that is not true. He plans to show what he calls recently declassified documents and we must review and verify those before we broadcast them.”
– CNN’s Kaitlan Collins

EPSTEIN

“I was 13 Years Old” – The Story of Katie Johnson

A Republican close to Trump has mysteriously purchased Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous child breeding ranch. Since then, the Trump administration has stopped all federal investigations into the compound.

210 days since the Epstein Files Transparency Act deadline.
Congress passed a law. Survivors were promised transparency. Yet the Justice Department still controlled the timing, the redactions and ultimately the meaning of “compliance.”
A deadline means nothing if power can simply outlast it.

VIDEO Rep. Thomas Massie, on the House floor: why did the FBI list Leslie Wexner as a co-conspirator in their own child sex trafficking documents, then tell him they had no questions for him?
He named Leon Black and Jes Staley too. No US arrests. No investigations.

Epstein survivor says acting AG Blanche was ‘abrasive, condescending’ during meeting.

31E-NY-3027571 is the code for the Epstein Files. How many pages? This number is significant. And throughout the files it’s listed over and over as “unclassified.” That means we’re supposed to have it in our hot little hands.

TRUMP ON HIS POINTLESS WAR: “We’re making a lot of money. The defense companies are doing great.”
Unreal. There you have it, folks.

Fascism is here. If you’re not alarmed you’re not paying attention.
“Left-wing political terrorism” will mean those who oppose the regime — while actual right-wing extremism is allowed to grow and thrive.
We are very far off the cliff, folks.

If you make me create an account to check the status of something on your site, my username is [object Object] and my password is X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*
Now we’re both unhappy. Great job.

Don’t let her con you. Susan Collins is the Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. She’s in charge of ICE funding. Collins voted for an ADDITIONAL $70 billion while they already received $170 billion and still had $95 billion in unobligated funds. Vote her out.

Multiple towns in Connecticut are permanently removing Flock cameras from their neighborhoods after a massive backlash over privacy concerns. An FOIA request revealed that, in just one town, third parties accessed camera data more than 500,000 times in only nine weeks. “Flock Safety could not guarantee that it’s not sharing information with federal agencies.”

THE BLOCK: Circle suspended Tether-backed Heka Funds in December 2023 over concerns it was manipulating USDC markets.
Arbitration filings made public Tuesday show Tether invested $800M in Heka’s Elysium fund and waived USDT mint fees. The arbitrator sided with Circle, finding Heka intentionally avoided disclosing Tether’s role.
Heka was the new Alameda
The triangle works like this:
@Tether deposits a ton of cash at an offshore bank, usually Bahamas
At Tether’s instruction, the bank extends 72 hours no-cost capital to Alameda / Heka so they can buy USDT whenever it depegs
Cheap for Tether, fund makes money on the arbitrage as USDT repegs
This is all in the public court filings around Alameda already

ESSAY Ihtesham Ali @ihtesham2005
July 16 2026

A guy named Jonah accidentally built the most useful website on the internet.

It’s called Privacy Guides.

This is the website Google would rather you not find, Meta actively lobbies against, data brokers have tried to discredit for years, and the entire advertising industry treats as a direct threat to their business model.

It has been online since 2019. It takes no affiliate money. It runs no ads. Journalists cite it. Security researchers trust it.

Here’s how it works.

Privacy Guides is a curated recommendation list. The site itself sells nothing.

It just tells you which private tool actually replaces every surveillance product in your life, tested by security researchers and updated every month, organized into 40+ categories with the exact reason each pick was chosen.

→ Browsers that block trackers and ads by default
→ Email providers that cannot read your messages
→ Search engines that do not build a profile on you
→ Password managers you can self-host
→ VPNs that accept cash and Monero and log nothing
→ Messengers with end-to-end encryption Signal-tier or better
→ Photo apps that do not scan your camera roll
→ Health apps that do not sell your data to insurance companies
→ A custom Android OS called GrapheneOS that strips Google out of your phone entirely

The site is run by a non-profit called MAGIC Grants. Every recommendation goes through a public forum review, a GitHub pull request, and criteria published on the site so anyone can audit why a tool was chosen. No company can pay to be listed. No affiliate link exists on the entire domain.

Google can’t shut this down. Meta can’t shut this down. Amazon can’t shut this down.

The entire $600 billion surveillance advertising industry is built on the assumption that you would never spend one afternoon on this website.

ESSAY HEDGIE July 16 2026

Suno, the AI music generator, got hacked. The leaked source code shows they scraped over 2 million YouTube clips and hundreds of thousands of hours of music from YouTube, Genius, Deezer, and other platforms without licensing any of it. The code includes exact dataset inventories down to the hour count. Suno is already being sued by major record labels.

My Take
Same method as every other AI company, just a different industry. Take the content, build the product, deal with the lawyers later. OpenAI scraped a million hours of YouTube. Google used Google Books content for Gemini without publisher permission. Meta allegedly torrented entire book libraries. Now Suno had files documenting exactly which platforms they scraped and how many hours they pulled from each one.

I think this one is harder to survive than the others because Suno doesn’t have Google’s cash or OpenAI’s investor backing. It’s a startup facing record label lawyers with leaked source code that documents exactly what the labels accused them of doing. The labels don’t need to prove what Suno did anymore. Suno wrote it down for them.

ECP NetHappenings Donald Trump Portfolio Tracker

Donald Trump Portfolio Tracker
https://x.com/TrumpsPortfolio
@TrumpsPortfolio
Tracking all of Trumps trades so I can get filthy rich

I CALLED IT, ANIMALS, AND YOU LAUGHED!!! Months ago I told you ICE would buy facilities DIRECTLY from the prison companies at north of $150,000 per bed — and I was WRONG, folks, it was BETTER!!! ICE just bought TWO facilities from CoreCivic — $CXW— for $1.47 BILLION!!! That’s $286,000 per bed in California City, $371,000 PER BED at Otay Mesa, $323,000 a bed COMBINED — DOUBLE what these things cost to build!!! Even I underestimated the beauty, and I NEVER underestimate!!!

AND WHO OWNS $CXW ??? DONALD TRUMP!!!
It’s RIGHT THERE in the disclosure, folks — the man holds CoreCivic AND GEO Group, the two companies running America’s ICE detention centers!!! Follow the bouncing ball: HE runs the immigration crackdown!!! HIS DHS just wired $1.47 billion to a company HE OWNS SHARES IN, at DOUBLE replacement cost!!! The buyer is his government, the seller is his portfolio, and the taxpayer is the ATM!!! That’s not a conflict of interest, that’s a CLOSED LOOP!!!

And the STRUCTURE is a masterpiece: DHS buys the buildings, but CoreCivic KEEPS OPERATING them under the same contracts!!! Sold the real estate, KEPT the revenue — like selling your house and the buyer pays YOU rent!!! Gain north of $1 BILLION on assets carried at PENNIES!!!

THE DE-LEVERING — exactly like I told you: $716 MILLION of debt GONE overnight!!! Credit facility, GONE!!! The 2027 notes, GONE!!! And that puts them under the covenant thresholds that unlock UNLIMITED BUYBACKS with the $400 million left over!!! Fewer shares, folks — and whose shares get more valuable??? DONALD’S!!!

AND THE SEQUEL IS COMING: CoreCivic says it’s in talks with ICE to sell MORE facilities!!! The machine runs forever: sign the orders, fill the beds, sell the buildings to yourself at double price, buy back the stock, watch the disclosure GLOW!!! One catch the animals should know — ICE can cancel those operating contracts anytime, so read the covenants before you chase!!! Do your own research, NOT advice!!! Is ANYBODY looking into this??? The SEC??? He APPOINTS the SEC!!! I called the trade, the price, AND the de-levering — GREATEST prison analyst in American history, maybe ever!!!

Trump’s financial disclosure is 927 pages long.

Buried inside it is a stock almost nobody talks about: McKesson.

Never heard of it? It touches 1 in 3 prescriptions filled in America. $403 BILLION in revenue last year. Bigger than Apple by sales.

And the story gets weirder the deeper you dig.

This company paid a record $150M DOJ fine for pumping opioids into communities.

Then got hit with an $8.1 BILLION settlement charge. It will be writing opioid checks until the 2040s.

The stock? Up 6x since 2019.

It keeps 1.5 cents of every dollar that flows through it. Sounds terrible.

It’s not.

Suppliers effectively finance the whole operation.

It’s an insurance float machine disguised as a trucking company, and it printed $5.4B in free cash flow last year.

It has bought back 40% of its own shares in a decade.

Here’s the part nobody’s saying out loud: its single biggest regulatory threat is Trump’s own drug pricing agenda.

MFN pricing consumed 95% of analyst questions on one earnings call.

The President’s portfolio holds the exact stock his policies are supposed to squeeze.

And the whole thing hangs on one thread: CVS is 24% of McKesson’s revenue.

That contract expires in June 2027. The negotiation is happening NOW.

I read 10 years of annual reports and 10 earnings calls, rebuilt the model, and valued it like a buy-side analyst.

Bear case: $630. Base: $860. Bull: $1,025. Stock today: $803.

The President’s advisers own the pipes of American medicine.

Full breakdown of why, and what it’s actually worth:

The President Owns the Pipes of American Medicine
The pipes of American medicine are in the portfolio. Here is how the money actually gets made, and what the business is worth at $803.

TRUMP PORTFOLIO TRACKER
JUL 16, 2026
https://x.com/TrumpsPortfolio/status/2077794040393744768

Buried somewhere in the 927 pages of the president’s 2025 annual financial disclosure, alongside the megacap tech names, the defense contractors, and the municipal bonds, sits a position in McKesson Corporation. It is not a name that generates headlines. It is a pharmaceutical distributor with reported operating margins near 1.5 percent, headquartered in Irving, Texas, that most Americans have never heard of despite the fact that it touches roughly one of every three prescriptions filled in this country.
A caveat before the analysis, because this newsletter tries to be honest about what the disclosures do and do not tell us. The filings report holdings in broad dollar ranges across eight investment accounts, and the White House maintains those accounts are run by professional advisers who do not regularly communicate with the president. So the interesting question is not what Trump sees in McKesson. It is why a professional money manager building a large, defensively tilted American equity portfolio in 2025 and 2026 would want this specific stock. That question has a genuinely good answer.
Whether the stock deserves $803 is a separate question, and answering it properly requires understanding a business model that almost everyone, including a fair number of people who own the stock, gets wrong.