CULT OF JAMES

The headline is good news. California’s AB 1856, which passed the Assembly 68-1 on May 28, amends the Digital Age Assurance Act to exempt open-source operating systems from age-collection mandates. Debian doesn’t have to build an age-verification interface into its installer. Ubuntu is off the hook. FreeBSD, Fedora, Arch — all exempt. EFF called it “a meaningful improvement and a…

In 1975, Congress passed Title VI of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. It directed the Secretary of Health and Human Services to study the need for — and feasibility of — establishing a school of medicine to train Indigenous people. That was 51 years ago. In May 2026, the news is this: Dr. Donald Warne, Oglala Lakota, Stanford MD,…

Fifty members of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa chartered a bus to Madison on May 29. Three hours of testimony in the Western District of Wisconsin. Both governments presented their case. Federal Judge William Conley — chief judge — did not rule. He recommended the two governments work together. The temporary restraining order from May 1…

On January 20, 2025 — his last day in office, minutes before the inauguration of his successor — President Joe Biden commuted the sentence of Leonard Peltier. Not pardoned. Commuted. The distinction matters more than anyone in power will admit. A pardon says: we were wrong. A commutation says: you can go home. One is justice. The other is mercy…

In the late 1980s, thousands of people lined the boat landings of northern Wisconsin to scream at Ojibwe fishermen. The Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa had won the right to spearfish walleye during spawning season — a practice their ancestors had carried out for centuries, reaffirmed by the treaties of 1837 and 1842, upheld by U.S. District…

Google announced fake call detection on June 2, 2026. Industry first. When someone calls you, their phone sends a silent RCS verification signal — end-to-end encrypted — to confirm the call is legitimate. If the signal is missing, your phone pings their actual device. If their device says I’m not making a call right now, you get a warning to…

On April 29, the Supreme Court gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Callais v. Louisiana, 6-3. The effects test that Congress wrote into the law in 1982 — gone. To challenge a voting map now, you have to prove the mapmaker intended to discriminate. Not that the map discriminates. That the person holding the pen meant it. Jim…

In February 2025, Google quietly updated its AI principles page. The section titled “Applications we will not pursue” — which since 2018 had explicitly listed weapons and surveillance as off-limits — disappeared. No announcement. No press conference. The Washington Post noticed. Google said the principles had been “updated to reflect our current approach.” Sixteen months later, at Google I/O 2026,…

On May 20, SpaceX filed an amended S-1 with the SEC. Buried in the risk factors section, new language: data center buildouts are now constrained by “availability of power and water at economically feasible prices.” Water. The previous filing mentioned power. Construction timelines. Material shortages. The amendment adds water as a co-equal constraint. The company states that “water scarcity, drought…

South Dakota announced a 44 percent increase in licensed Native American foster homes. The number went from 93 to 134 between July 2025 and February 2026. The state calls this progress. Here is the other number: 69 percent of South Dakota’s 1,719 foster children are Native American. Native people are 9 percent of the state’s population. That ratio — 9…