Movies & TV Severance Heartbreak Station: Severance, “The After Hours” “Kier Pardons His Betrayers” By Molly Templeton | Published on March 14, 2025 Screenshot: Apple TV+ Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Apple TV+ It is time to gather up the threads (and the eggs), and begin the process of bringing things to a close. A temporary close, one most strongly hopes, though Severance has not yet been officially renewed for a third season. (It did become Apple TV Plus’s most-watched show, though, so I’m quite optimistic.) “The After Hours,” it turns out, shares its name with an episode of The Twilight Zone. It’s a funny name for an episode that covers what was supposed to be Lumon’s great success: the day Mark Scout completes Cold Harbor. Instead, it’s an episode of meaningful personal interaction while everything else is on pause. Meaningful, funny, powerful, unexpected personal interaction, like this show does best. Also, we have to spend a few minutes with Jame Eagan, the single creepiest person in this entire creepy world. Jame Eagan, who wants his daughter to take her eggs raw, like Kier. (Slicing a single hard-boiled egg into perfect segments and eating them on a plate with a creepy baby—with a knife and fork!—is not weird enough.) Jame Eagan, who moans a little when she eats. Jame Eagan, whose arrival on the severed floor, to creep over his daughter’s innie, is implied to be from the testing floor; whatever reason he was down there, it can’t be good. And Jame Eagan, who has sent other women—possibly some number of them—to the birthing cabins. This is apparently such a normal occurrence that the guard doesn’t even blink when Cobel refers to the fake-pregnant Devon as “one of Jame’s.”  In a different show, this would probably imply he’s a sexual predator. Here, it probably points to something very different, though I don’t exactly know what. I do think that things are leaning toward a question not outright asked: the fate of Lumon and the Eagans. Helly doesn’t have any kids; Helly has never taken a man home to daddy, as she creepily told Mark at the restaurant a few episodes back. The Kier baby in the opening titles has, in his way, loomed over this whole season.  Nothing this man does is even remotely normal. Michael Siberry does an incredible, slightly inhuman job in the role; his face never seems to make a normal human expression, his moan when Helena eats is beyond disturbing, even his posture seems slightly off. His entire empire is a fraud; his head is, as was so delightfully made clear in last week’s episode, empty; his creation belongs to Ms. Cobel. So what is his deal?  The only thing his head is useful for, it seems, is smashing things. Poor Miss Huang, having her fellowship cut short and getting sent to Svalbard. (Perhaps she will befriend Iorek Byrnison.) It is very cold in Svalbard, making me wonder if this is connected to Cold Harbor—but of course the immediate mystery here is in two parts. Who the heck is Gunnel Eagan, and since when does Lumon concern itself with empathy? (And also: What did Cobel have to offer as “material sacrifice” when her fellowship was over?) Using Jame’s head to smash a game that involves a figure of Kier is not not heavily symbolic. And I wonder how much of that was intentional on Milchick’s part. There’s not much else he could have made Miss Huang sacrifice—as far as we know. But Mister Milkshake is clearly in a position of doubt at the moment. He has never been a Lumon cultist the way Ms. Cobel is; he doesn’t seem to have grown up so embedded in Lumon. They have been treating him, as he rises in the ranks, increasingly insultingly, from the paintings to a regular insistence that he use smaller words. It has to be clear to him that he may have Cobel’s job, but he is not earning the same level of respect. Not from his superiors, and not from his subordinates. (The way Helly says, “Yeah, no shit” when he points out her insubordination… how did we ever think Helena was her?) And so when Drummond, that large and mysterious goon, demands that he repeatedly apologize for using a “needlessly complex” word, he snaps. In an episode full of brilliant lines, “Devour feculence” was possibly the most outstanding (it was the only one that made me shriek and clap at the same time). But every bit of this scene is written—and delivered—with wonderful precision. The way Tramell Tillman enunciates “monosyllabically” ought to be preserved in a museum.  There is, though, more tucked into this scene than just the enjoyable surface. (Severance creator Dan Erickson wrote this episode, and it shows.) Milchick’s assertion of exactly where the boundaries of his power lie is an elegant way to remind Drummond—and us—that to him this is a job, not his life. And the way he specifies that Drummond is responsible for what Mark Scout does when he’s not at work is fascinating and alarming. We have seen both of these men in the homes of their severed workers, but only one was there on normal business, and it sure wasn’t Drummond.  We’ve had to wait forever and not long at all (two episodes) for the fallout from Drummond’s visit to Irving’s home. This time, when someone unexpected is in Irving’s apartment, it’s Burt, here for a scene absolutely masterful in its implications and the things unsaid—even as Burt does a modest amount of revealing. He was not a goon. (“With Lumon it’s very specific language” is a great overlap to Drummond’s attempt to control Milchick’s language.) He didn’t hurt people. The implication, certainly, is that he allowed people to be hurt. He drove people places.  Screenshot: Apple TV+ “Is that what this is?” Irving asks, and you know, I would also like to know this. It is very clear that Burt—in both outie and innie form—has worked for Lumon. It is not clear if he is working for Lumon at this exact moment. Helena said they were “seeing to” Mr. Bailiff, so either that’s what this is, and Burt still works for Lumon in some capacity, or Burt does not work for Lumon yet has some connection on the inside who gave him the information necessary for him to spirit Burt away from whatever Lumon had planned for him. Would Helena be merciful enough to spare the man who tried to drown her? I don’t think so. I love the settings of the scenes with these two, moving from Irv’s small apartment to the winding roads to that hulking yet beautiful train station, in which they become just two more small figures against its towering stone bulk. Burt tries to stick to the facts of the situation—he can’t know where Irv goes, and Irv can never come back to Kier (interesting double meanings there). But Irv wants to talk about love, and can’t be deterred. It’s crushing and beautiful, and so much happens on John Turturro’s face. He is talking to Burt, but also to himself. “I’m ready,” he says, repeatedly, until Burt growls, “We can’t” in a way that directly recalls Milchick growling “Grow” at himself.  Screenshot: Apple TV+ I spent a lot of this scene worrying about whether Radar was going to get on that train too. I spent the rest of it thinking about the terrible tragedy of these two men knowing love with one another but also not knowing it at all. Some part of them knows, and some part of them doesn’t, which is entirely realistic, except that usually we’re hiding things from ourselves, not having them hidden by nefarious technology. Burt, though, has clearly taken something away from all of this even through the chip. There’s confidence in him, and grace, and the impression, as he sits on that train, that he has found something meaningful even as he loses Burt forever. We all love to say that all these actors deserve all the awards. This is true. But John Turturro expressing Irv’s epiphanies about love without saying anything is, like, god-tier work. Bravo. And of course this isn’t the only heartbreak this episode. Poor innie Dylan, making one desperate play for his outie’s wife, only to be rebuffed. And poor Gretchen, yearning for her husband like she used to know him, only to have to walk away from that man out of practical concerns. It is hard to feel a ton of sympathy for outie Dylan, except that he’s also innie Dylan, and both of them are caught in a tangle of misery about loneliness and self-worth. And innie Dylan, crushingly, proposes to Gretchen, saying he could give her a life. The impossibility is heartrending. Her rejection seems inevitable. This is the worst love triangle. The shared misery brings both Dylans into alignment: They both want to quit because of their feelings about Gretchen. (Poor Dylan, following in innie Irv’s footsteps.) I didn’t actually believe that Lumon would let innies quit; I thought that was as much bullshit as the paper Milchick showed to the MDR team when they returned post-OTC. Do they show the resignation form to the outies and make them confirm? Given what we’ve seen on the testing floor, couldn’t they just re-sever Dylan into yet another version of himself and send him back down? The last Dylan scene of the episode begins with an incredibly framed shot of him sitting in front of the Kier painting by the elevator, perfectly lined up so that Kier’s hand appears to be on Dylan’s head. The other hand, of course, is holding a sword.  Screenshot: Apple TV+ While lonely Dylan gives up, lonely Helly digs in. Her hopeful face when she gets off the elevator, excited to see Mark only to find the office empty, is yet another crushing moment in an episode full of them. But Helly has all the fierceness Helena Eagan has never been allowed to show: She faces off with Milchick, turns Dylan’s heartbreak into a brief screed about how they’re treated by outies, and picks up Irving’s quest after Dylan leaves.  The way Irving is present in Helly and Dylan’s entire conversation is positively gorgeous. Dylan tries to hurt her by reminding her that he and Mark didn’t know she was Helena, and her face lights up when she says, “Irving did.” Irving recognized Helly, and Dylan understood Irving, and Helly appeals to that to try to get Dylan to pick up Irv’s quest. When he won’t, she picks it up herself. Of course she does. And of course she’s too smart to just wander off down the hall holding Irving’s directions. I do not know what to make of Jame’s appearance behind her, other than to acknowledge how cleverly it was filmed, so that it could have been anyone, maybe Milchick even, before Jame came into focus. Is he still mad about the OTC? Did he find something out about the calamitous ORTBO, which his employees had kept from him? Can he please not loom like that? It creeps me out. While all of this has been happening, Cold Harbor has not been progressing, because Mark is busy meeting up with Cobel on a cliffside, for some illogical reason (Don’t let him stand so close to the edge!). His interactions with Devon provide some much, much needed levity before we wind up in this seemingly day-long, super awkward lakeside hang, while the three of them wait for night to fall. Screenshot: Apple TV+ Mark is doing, uh, great. “Oh my god, so good,” he replies, when Cobel asks how he is. He is not fully reintegrated, but not not reintegrated, and he is pissy and fried and generally not a ton of fun to be around (understandably). What brings him back to sense is Devon reminding him why they’re there: Gemma. (Her delivery of “Gem-ma” echoes Milchick’s careful syllables.) Who might be dead already, if he finished Cold Harbor. This is not a helpful thing for Cobel to tell him, and it is not a helpful thing for us to hear, either, because it leaves people like me yelling “WHY! WHAT DOES IT MEAN!” at the television.  Everyone in this little work/life triangle is tense and prickly, but somehow they make progress. In what might be the most meaningful conversation in an episode full of them, Mark calls in “sick,” and has an extremely rare moment with Milchik: he talks to him like a normal person. He’s not sick; he has life stuff. “Isn’t that what Lumon’s all about? Balance? I mean, work is just work, right? Do you know what I mean, Mr. Milchick?” Isn’t that what Lumon’s all about? Milchick, staring at his iceberg art, might just be having an epiphany. He’s still a Lumon man, and gets Mark to promise he’ll be in the next day. But he is most certainly rattled. This little moment of bringing everything back to the initial theme of this show—the concept of work/life balance, trying to break your life into manageable pieces, taking the hurt out of your workdays—is a necessary break from the weirdness and the theorizing, the hints and suggestions and references. Why are we here in this show? Because Mark wanted to spend eight hours of his days not consciously grieving Gemma. Why are we here, in this exact moment and place? Because maybe he doesn’t have to do that any more. The last words of this episode, like the last words of last season, are “She’s alive.” Those references, though. I am not fluent in Twilight Zone, having grown up without a TV and also being a big baby about anything scary, so all credit here to the many Redditors who made this connection. But the words Ms. Cobel says to the gate guard at the birthing cabins come directly from the 34th episode of The Twilight Zone, in which the narrator says, “Miss Marsha White on the ninth floor, specialties department, looking for a gold thimble.” His next words are maybe important, and maybe just a fun reference: “The odds are that she’ll find it—but there are even better odds that she’ll find something else, because this isn’t just a department store. This happens to be The Twilight Zone.” The ninth floor is the secret home to sentient mannequins. Maybe this is just a fun code phrase for getting in the gate. Do they have The Twilight Zone in Kier? Maybe it’s a tell, a phrase that alerts the gate guard to some trickery. Maybe it’s a terrible hint. Maybe we’ll find out next week, when we finally get to Cold Harbor. Shattered Bits of Ring Toss Game That’s an absolutely stunning shot revealing the way the Eagan house mirrors the Lumon office building, across the pond and past the water tower, implying they stay close, always watching. I keep thinking about how they get mad at Milchik for using big words, but when Natalie delivered the horrifying paintings to him, she called them “inclusively recanonicalized.” Did they pick complex words on purpose, for Milchick? Does that make the whole thing even worse? “This is so many dimensions of fuck” is a new classic from Dylan. Miss Huang apologizing to Dylan for not having facilitated better broke my heart a little bit. Why is Dr. Mauer the only person in the doppelganger office? What did they do with the creepy people??? Ms. Cobel is still in Hampton’s truck. Ms. Cobel is no longer the white Rabbit. Seems relevant. I don’t think this is the last we’ll see of Irving. We still don’t know who he was calling, or what his outie really knew, or why he thinks they were on to what his innie was doing, or anything. That last shot of Cobel in front of the fire! So good! We are not being subtle with her and the fire imagery! She saved her notebook from Sissy’s attempt to chuck it into the fire, though; what if her long game is destroying Lumon but saving her work, only to start anew? [end-mark] The post Heartbreak Station: <i>Severance</i>, “The After Hours” appeared first on Reactor.

LUNA COUNTY, N.M. – A Border Patrol helicopter flew overhead in a sight Russell Johnson said was a rarity over his ranch until President Donald Trump returned to the White House.  Johnson says he would like to see an even greater Border Patrol presence along New Mexico’s border with Mexico, but agents “have at least some presence on the border, [and] it’s just so reassuring that maybe this issue is actually going to get tackled,” Johnson told The Daily Signal as he drove his truck over the dirt roads on his ranch.   Just up the hill, a Border Patrol agent sat in his marked vehicle, stationed to overlook the last remaining gap in the border fence on Johnson’s ranch.   The gap in the border wall fence that leads onto the Russell Johnson’s New Mexico ranch. (Virginia Allen/The Daily Signal) Today, there is a gap of about three-quarters of a mile in the wall that leads onto Johnson’s ranch. The panels to fill the gap lay about 50 yards away.  “In the coming months, I’d love to see this gap finished, because our ranch takes up about eight and a half miles of border that we share with Mexico, and this is the only gap that we have left,” Johnson said as he faced the gap.   WATCH: I spoke with Russell Johnson on his ranch in New Mexico. The border wall on Johnson's ranch was almost completed under Trump's first term, but a gap remains. Johnson tells me he hopes to see it filled and additional security measure put in place in the coming months. pic.twitter.com/2kskYzaJDc— Virginia Allen (@Virginia_Allen5) March 13, 2025 With the wall unfinished, Johnson continued to deal with illegal immigration across his property under the Biden administration.   A game camera on Johnson’s ranch captures a group of illegal aliens walking through the property on June 13, 2021. (Russell Johnson) “The people crossing in our area are not the people that are coming in and wanting to go to court … and try to get asylum into the United States,” Johnson explained. “These are the people that are packing stuff in, that have criminal histories, that know that they’re not going to get granted access or entry into the United States through the legal system, so that’s why they’re sneaking through here.”  Johnson’s family has been ranching the same piece of property along the Mexican border in Luna County, 240 miles south of Albuquerque, for more than 100 years. They have dealt with the issues of illegal immigration through their property long before the border crisis was making major headlines.   Even in the early 2000s, the rancher says the Border Patrol estimated there were days when hundreds of illegal aliens crossed through the ranch. The flow of illegal immigration across the cattle ranch has created safety concerns and financial burden for the Johnson family.   Several year ago, a man crossed onto Johnson’s ranch on horseback attempting to steal some of his cattle. Fortunately, the illegal alien did not succeed before Border Patrol apprehended him, but not before the man cut 18 fences on the Johnson’s property.   “All this damage that he caused, we had to go back and repair it,” Johnson said, “but he was never held accountable for it, he was just deported for being here illegally.”  Illegal aliens discard backpacks, clothing, and other trash on the ranch, and while Johnson says he wants to clean it up, he does not touch it for fear the items could have come in contact with fentanyl. Even just two milligrams of fentanyl can be deadly to an adult.   Backpacks left behind by illegal aliens lay in a pile on Johnson’s ranch. (Russell Johnson) For a while, Johnson never left home without his gun. Due to limited cellphone service on the property, the family began carrying radios so they could communicate if there was a problem. Thankfully, the husband and father says he has never found a dead body on his ranch, but is always worried his children will discover a body while they are out riding.   For years, Johnson and his family maintained a barbed-wire fence along their property with Mexico, a fence that illegal aliens and smugglers constantly cut to cross the border. The Johnsons repaired the fence at their own expense to prevent their cattle from wandering into Mexico, or to prevent Mexican cattle, which can carry diseases, from commingling with their cattle. When Trump announced during his first administration that he would build a wall along the southern border, relief appeared to be in sight for Johnson and his family.   Panel after panel began going up, and building efforts continued until President Joe Biden took office in January 2021. Biden signed an executive order stopping all wall construction and the panels to fill the last gap in the border wall on Johnson’s ranch have been lying on the ground ever since.    At the border wall in New Mexico where a big gap is waiting to be filled. Trump started the construction of this wall during his first term. Hundreds of panels sat next to the wall for 4 years under Biden. Now, maybe this gap in Luna County will finally be closed. pic.twitter.com/ZIZZ2am6df— Virginia Allen (@Virginia_Allen5) March 12, 2025 When the wall construction originally began on his property under Trump’s first administration, there was talk of stadium lighting being installed along the wall and sensors that would alert Border Patrol if migrants were approaching, Johnson said, adding: “I’d love to see that technology put into place.”   Johnson said he has seen panels of unused wall being hauled to another section of open border to fill a gap in the wall further down the border, but says he remains optimistic the large hole on his own property will be filled.   Further down the border between New Mexico and Mexico, there are huge gaps in the wall, or only barbed-wire fencing, but Johnson says he thinks “once things get rolling … we’ll start seeing more wall construction and getting these gaps closed up.”   The post After Years of Dealing With Illegal Immigration, ‘Maybe This Issue Is Actually Going to Get Tackled,’ Border Rancher Says appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Adapted from a speech at The Heritage Foundation’s Texas Summit on March 7, 2025.  We are here at an extraordinary moment of renewal right now.  President Donald Trump has reversed four years of decline, four years where Joe Biden tried to destroy this country. But thanks to our president’s leadership right now, and alongside House Republicans, we’re getting our country back. We’re restoring our rightful place in the world.  We’re restoring energy dominance. We’re restoring our economy. We’re seeing the results everywhere. Our border is no longer an open invitation to chaos. It’s a secure border that is worthy of a sovereign nation. Our economy isn’t just recovering. It’s surging ahead.  American energy isn’t just making a comeback. We know something about this in Midland, Texas. It’s powering our future. And those who wish America harm now are going to think twice. They’re going to think twice because we’ve restored our deterrents in just a little over a month.  The president of the United States has given us something to have some dignity about. I deployed multiple times to keep this country safe and we certainly don’t appreciate what Joe Biden did to us. But securing all these victories takes more than just executive action.  As chairman of the Republican Study Committee, with our 186 members, we’re working to make these victories through executive action permanent. We are going to codify these actions that the president is taking that we so desperately needed in the law—making them permanent and getting our country back on track.  Now is the time to ensure every bill, every amendment, every policy fight we engage in is following a clear conservative road map.  As chairman of RSC, I want to tell you about five principles that I’m using to lead my colleagues in the House of Representatives.   No. 1: Strength with compassion. We don’t apologize for America’s power. We shouldn’t have to apologize, although people have. But true conservatives understand that strength without compassion becomes tyranny. And on the other hand, compassion without strength is weakness. And we stand firm in our principles while extending a hand to those who truly need it.  Think about the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan that we saw. The self-imposed signal that America was no longer willing to counter and deter its enemies. And there’s no bigger sign of failure than seeing Biden free the prisons at Bagram Air Base only to have one of those prisoners, an Islamic State operative, detonate a suicide vest at the Abbey Gate. President Trump has extradited this terrorist back to the United States, once again showing that those who wish to do Americans harm are not safe, that we will come after them. And I’m so proud of the president for doing this this way.  No. 2: Fiscal discipline that delivers. We’re ending the era of reckless spending that mortgaged our children’s future. Conservative governance that you all believe in, that you’re here for, means that we have to make tough choices so that America can continue to survive, can continue to thrive. And it’s especially important given what we’re seeing right now with the waste, the fraud, the abuse, the things that [the Department of Government Efficiency] is figuring out.  Joe Biden transformed [the United States Agency for International Development] into an “America last” organization, an “America last” slush fund that had nothing to do with our power, our security, and the citizens that so desperately need those resources: $2 million for an LGBTQ activism group in Guatemala, $4.5 million to combat disinformation in Kazakhstan, $8.3 million for USAID education on equity inclusion. We could go on and on and on, but I think we can all agree that this is complete and utter insanity. We deserve better. We deserve fiscal discipline that delivers for our country, that strengthens our economy, that helps our kids, and doesn’t go to that far-left extreme that has completely weakened us.  No more. President Trump’s DOGE and Republicans in Congress are going to solve this issue.  No. 3: Restoring law and order. How about restoring some dignity to our cities and our communities? A nation without safety is a nation in decline. We back that thin blue line who so bravely and loyally back up our communities and keep our communities safe. And we can and will have both safety and security as well as justice.  During the Biden era, we had hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens that entered our country. Right here in Texas, we bore the brunt of this madness. Not only they were breaking the law upon entry, but there are countless examples of what they did in the communities, the egregious crimes that they committed. Think about the story of Laken Riley. This beautiful young woman in Georgia that was brutally murdered by someone who not only committed the crime of being here illegally but also committed other crimes. And what happened to this person that came through El Paso, let into the interior?  I was proud in the first week of our Congress to vote on the Laken Riley Act. That bill is very simple. It says if you enter this country illegally and you commit another nonviolent crime, that you are going to be deported immediately.  And you would think that this would just be a Republican bill. We delivered a 48-vote bipartisan passage of the Laken Riley Act inside the House of Representatives. Forty-eight Democrats voted in favor of this Laken Riley Act. What a massive achievement.  No. 4: American competition has got to be unleashed. Our prosperity, our economy, the military, the F-22, the greatest machine in the history of the world. But that depended on a strong economy. It depended on competition. It depended on innovation. And what did Joe Biden try to do in the 11th hour? He tried to ban fracking. He put a pause on American [liquefied natural gas]. He tried to kill our American energy in the industry that literally powers everything and allows Main Street businesses and families to thrive. No more. We’re going to get this back thanks to House Republicans and President Trump. Drill, baby, drill. That’s exactly what we’re going to do.  No. 5: What does it mean to be a conservative? You have to have some battlefield awareness. It’s really important right now that we understand how to get that first down, that we understand getting a first down if it means that we can go on and win the football game and get into the end zone is worth it. You’ve heard that big, beautiful bill that President Trump is talking about. What does that mean? What is this bill? It’s called reconciliation. It’s a Senate thing, but instead of requiring 60 votes in the Senate, you only require 51. The Senate and the House have to agree on budgetary measures. And when we agree, then they unlock this magical 51-vote threshold.  Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to extend tax cuts. Every American family is going to benefit from those extensions. We’re going to secure the border and it’s going to cost us some money to do that. We’re going to buy the appropriate technology, the appropriate systems, hire the appropriate number of Border Patrol agents, and do much more to help solidify that. We’re going to make sure that we unleash American energy. We’re going to do things that you can only do when you have a Republican-controlled House or Republican-controlled Senate and a Republican in the White House.  Reconciliation is going to save us $2 trillion. It’s the largest cut in the 249-year history of this country—$2 trillion to start whittling away at that $35-plus trillion debt and deficit that we have.  I’m very thankful to [Heritage President] Kevin Roberts for taking a public stance to tell Congress to let’s go ahead and pass the [continuing resolution] to get us to April so that we can then pass that big, beautiful bill, that we can continue with President Trump’s agenda, and that we can make sure that we have a conservative lasting majority.  Thank you for what you do every day. We’re only as good as our team. Our team is sitting right here in this room. When you come to D.C. and you look at our staff, we have young, energetic people who want to do the right thing.  But Heritage, as a Ph.D. as president, has literally dozens of policy experts on any given subject. When we need help at the Republican Study Committee with taxes, with energy, with border security, with making sure that men don’t play women’s sports, Heritage has the experts. Heritage has the ability to provide the background to give us legislative text examples that can go through. And I want to tell you thank you for being a part of this team.   Thank you for helping us get the Republican trifecta. We’re not going to let you down. It’s time to be aggressive. It’s time to get our country back on track. I’m so proud to have been able to serve this country in uniform, but now to be a part of what I believe is the golden era of politics, to help Donald Trump get his agenda done, and to make sure that we as Americans have a country that we pass on to the next generation. Thank you and God bless. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post 5 Principles for Conservative Governance in America’s Golden Era  appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. While New York state otherwise appears to show little concern about driver’s privacy, New York Attorney General Letitia James has now decided to sue National General and Allstate insurers over two data breaches. Those incidents left some 165,000 New York residents’ driver’s license numbers exposed – but the overarching policy the state has been imposing these last years doesn’t give the impression that privacy is an actual priority. We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here. Not only are various surveillance techniques in place in the city itself, like drones and surveillance robots, but the state recently decided to sue the Trump administration in a bid to continue deploying congestion pricing (MTA) that relies on license plate scanning. Yet the said two data breaches is the hill the local administration appears to have chosen to die on, at least in terms of supposed privacy concerns. It’s a strange hill for a number of reasons, not least because New York continues to push digital ID, including mobile driver’s licenses – and when major security problems like data leaks, that opponents of these developments keep warning about – the “solution” seems to be to sue individual companies, rather than rethink the overall policy. It’s all the more striking that the advancement of digital ID has been promoted most intensely over the past couple of years – even if the security incidents the two insurance companies are sued over happened in 2020 and 2021. The lawsuits filed this week pin the blame on National General and Allstate as providing inadequate security protections – while acting within what is supposedly a sound system. Just last month, media outlets with ties to the previous administration highlighted New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s attempt to stave off the Trump White House move to end the attempt to introduce a congestion pricing toll. In the summer of 2024, Hochul (now hailed as the fearless one behind a lawsuit to overturn Trump’s decision to shut down MTA) happened to also be the one who paused the implementation of the controversial plan, as a failed campaign tactic (namely, “so New York House Democrats could win in November’s elections” – as one report put it). The MTA project has to date cost $507 million, awarded to TransCore, that was to design, build and operate the tolling cameras. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post New York’s Selective Privacy Crusade: Suing Over Data Breaches While Embracing Surveillance appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The biggest bank in the US, JPMorgan Chase, wouldn’t be what it is if it didn’t know when, and how to toe the line – to its own maximum benefit, at any time. And so, the financial giant that over the past four years seemed perfectly happy to stay in sync with the Biden administration regarding one of the most controversial and egregious policies a bank can engage in – namely, “debanking” on political/ideological grounds – understands which way the wind now blows. (But perhaps customers should remain wary of what the future may hold under some different political configuration in the US.) Right now, in any case, JPMorgan Chase has agreed to a policy change that protects customers from denial of banking services because of their political or religious views. This involves a change in the Code of Conduct that’s supposed to protect against instances of political or religious debanking. By the end of July, this new policy is expected to be explicitly spelled out in the Code, stating that customers, suppliers, contractors, and employees can no longer be discriminated against (the bank will “not tolerate” this) because of their political and religious affiliation, views, and related speech. The changes were pushed by Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys, and the group reports that during recent negotiations over a shareholder proposal by Bowyer Research – tabled earlier this year – “Chase accepted the proposed changes” – while in return, “the shareholder agreed to withdraw its proposal before the company’s annual meeting of stockholders in May.” “We regularly engage with our shareholders to address their feedback and educate them on our policies. We are glad we were able to come to an agreement. The amendment to language in our Code of Conduct is consistent with prior public statements,” a JPMorgan Chase spokesperson said. “As the nation’s largest bank, Chase sets the platinum standard for financial institutions throughout the country and the world. No American should ever fear losing access to their bank account because of their religious or political views, and we are glad to see Chase taking tangible steps to implement these critical protections,” said ADF Senior Counsel and Senior Vice President for Corporate Engagement Jeremy Tedesco. All this comes against the backdrop of both JPMorgan Chase consistently denying – including statements by CEO Jamie Damon – that such practices existed over the last years – and what ADF calls the amassing of its “troubling track record on debanking.” Some of the cases highlighted here include the 2021 example of JPMorgan Chase debanking conservative groups Defense of Liberty and Arkansas Family Council, and a year later, the canceling of former US Ambassador Sam Brownback’s National Committee for Religious Freedom – at the time, “without explanation.” If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post JPMorgan Sees the Writing on the Wall, Bans Political and Religious Debanking—For Now appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Trashing Teslas, Trump Tower Tantrums and a Swatting Swarm

One of Australia’s most iconic animals gets plenty of koala-ty sleep.

It’s the topic everyone seems to be talking about.

Asteroid Bennu has a strange chemical composition and unusual magnetic properties, a study has found. Near-Earth asteroid Bennu continues to puzzle scientists. A new study of space rock samples has shown that it has stranger properties than expected. For example, the asteroid has extremely high levels of nitrogen and incredible magnetic properties, writes New Scientist. Scientists have been analyzing samples of asteroid Bennu since they were returned to Earth by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in 2023. The asteroid has previously been found to contain chemical building blocks needed for life, including phosphorus-rich particles and nitrogen-containing carbon compounds. Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, took a closer look at some of these particles using an electron microscope and found incredibly large amounts of nitrogen, including a compound containing carbon, oxygen and nitrogen. The scientists were also surprised by the structures that some of these carbon compounds formed. Many asteroids contain tiny hollow blobs of carbon, or nanoglobules, that can contain other important molecules. But on Bennu, these nanoglobules appear to have stuck together to form huge structures hundreds of times larger, called macromolecules. Scientists have been analyzing samples from asteroid Bennu since they were returned to Earth by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in 2023. Credit: NASA When scientists analyzed these macromolecules, they found chemical clues that they formed in an extremely cold environment around the same time the Sun formed, 4.5 billion years ago or even earlier, and that they had remained stuck together ever since. These macromolecules could act as a protective bubble around the elements essential to life, shielding them from the harsh conditions of space. It is possible that other asteroids have similar protection, allowing them to deliver the components necessary for life to Earth. But the explanation for how exactly so many nanoglobules stuck together in the first place still remains a mystery. The oddities of the asteroid Bennu do not end there. Scientists analyzed how strongly the samples of the space rock react to the magnetic field. It turned out that the samples have incredible magnetic properties, because they are very magnetized, which scientists did not expect. Scientists are trying to figure out how the asteroid Bennu acquired its magnetic properties, but so far they don’t have a single working theory. The post Asteroid Bennu Even Weirder Than Thought appeared first on Anomalien.com.