3+ week, 2+ day ago (832+ words) Palestinian students learned remotely, with flickering internet, through two years of Israel's genocide. Now universities need funding to rebuild. Taqwa Ahmed Al-Wawi is a 19-year-old writer and poet from Gaza. She is currently a second-year English literature student at the Islamic University of Gaza. In Gaza, where universities lie in rubble and classrooms have been replaced by screens, education has refused to die. Amid the constant hum of drones and power outages, students and educators have fought to keep learning " and to restore their campuses for the next generation." Studying was "an escape," amid the genocide, said Aseel, a student of English translation at the Islamic University of Gaza, "a small space of hope and achievement that gave me motivation to keep going." Samah, a 21-year-old translation student at the Islamic University, said studying online felt like "a desperate attempt…...

3+ day, 11+ hour ago (480+ words) The so-called ceasefire might seem like a good excuse to bury the hatchet and enjoy a quieter family dinner, but it's not. To be clear, if two years of livestreamed annihilation have failed to shift your loved ones' support away from the Israeli ethnostate, I doubt there is anything a dinner table argument could do to persuade them. There can be no reasoning with a worldview that forecloses seeing Palestinians as fully human. I navigate this with pro-Israel members of my own British Jewish family. It's painful, and I don't have any good advice. Whatever your approach with your family, there can be no pretense that the genocide in Gaza is over. I'll be thinking of another family this Thanksgiving: that of my student from Gaza. Families like mine, divided over Israel, are not the important ones here. For my…...

2+ week, 2+ day ago (939+ words) Living through genocide means inhabiting a "city of ghosts," surrounded by rubble and memories of all that's been lost. "I still see the war everywhere: in people's faces, in the children, in the echo of planes and drones." "My wish now is to have one normal day." "What I miss most is reassurance," she says. "The simple feeling of waking up and knowing where your day will go. My wish now is to have one normal day." This genocide shattered Hala into fragments: a girl who once dreamed and a woman who now struggles to survive. The people who lost their homes and have nowhere to go are what still haunts Anas after the ceasefire. "This genocide stole many friends and colleagues " and my home, the house I grew up in. Our lives have shattered. Gaza is no longer a…...

4+ day, 9+ hour ago (529+ words) The anti-woke Wikipedia alternative aims to create a parallel version of the truth for the right wing. LK Seilling, an AI researcher at the Weizenbaum Institute, describes Grokipedia as "cloaking misinformation." "Everyone knows Wikipedia. They're an epistemic authority, if you'd want to call them that. [Musk] wants to attach himself to exactly that epistemic authority to substantiate his political agenda," he says. It's worth paying attention to how Grok frames a few key issues. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution was established after World War II to ensure that no German leader tries to overturn the country's constitution again. But Grokipedia subtly casts doubt on the institution's legitimacy arguing that it is "downplaying" the AfD's achievements. According to Seiling, who is German, Grokipedia is attempting to undermine the authority of German institutions created to prevent another Hitler....

4+ week, 1+ day ago (460+ words) Officials acknowledged they don't know the identities of the people they're killing and can't meet the evidentiary burden to prosecute survivors. "We are not in an armed conflict with these cartels. And so this is just murder." Jacobs said the Pentagon officials who briefed her on Thursday admitted that the administration does not know the identities of all the individuals who were killed in the strikes. "They said that they do not need to positively identify individuals on the vessels to do the strikes," Jacobs told The Intercept. "They just need to show a connection to a DTO or affiliate." Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson did not reply to questions about why the Department of War is unwilling to positively identify the people it is killing and cannot satisfy the evidentiary burden necessary to hold or prosecute suspects. Brian Finucane,…...

3+ week, 4+ day ago (1009+ words) The tech giant deleted the accounts of three prominent Palestinian human rights groups " a capitulation to Trump sanctions. A documentary featuring mothers surviving Israel's genocide in Gaza. A video investigation uncovering Israel's role in the killing of a Palestinian American journalist. Another video revealing Israel's destruction of Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank. YouTube surreptitiously deleted all these videos in early October by wiping the accounts that posted them from its website, along with their channels' archives. The accounts belonged to three prominent Palestinian human rights groups: Al-Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. The move came in response to a U.S. government campaign to stifle accountability for alleged Israeli war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. The Palestinian groups' YouTube channels hosted hours of footage documenting and highlighting alleged…...

2+ day, 9+ hour ago (1504+ words) Members of Gaza's Civil Defense force describe pulling decomposing bodies from collapsed buildings, and digging in hopes that someone remains alive. The mission that haunts Nooh al-Shaghnobi most took place on September 17, near the al-Saha area of eastern Gaza City. Israeli forces had bombed a home, killing more than 30 members of one extended family. Most of their bodies were trapped under the rubble. Al-Shaghnobi's Gaza Civil Defense force team pulled two dead young girls from the bombed house and kept digging, crawling under collapsed floors. "We don't go under unless someone is alive," he told The Intercept. "Otherwise, we dig from above " ceiling by ceiling." What followed was a descent into something dreamlike and horrifying. "We walked 12 meters under the rubble," he said. "Every meter, the air grew less. I crawled past legs, arms, the body of a child hugging…...

1+ week, 4+ day ago (1827+ words) Years before the police killing of Breonna Taylor brought "no-knock" raids into the national spotlight, the NYPD mistakenly raided Alberta Spruill's home " and literally scared her to death. Despite repeated warnings that these reckless raids would end in tragedy, few listened. This episode of Collateral Damage, hosted by Radley Balko, explores how Spruill's death catalyzed the political rise of Eric Adams, a young Black NYPD officer who would later become mayor. It also examines how promises of reform quickly faded, and the NYPD returned to business as usual. Radley Balko: On an early spring morning in Harlem, 57-year-old Alberta Spruill was getting ready for work. She had worked for the City of New York for nearly three decades. And at the time, she worked in the personnel office of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services. Joel Berger: Alberta Spruill was…...

1+ week, 2+ day ago (484+ words) An FBI procurement document requests information about AI surveillance on drones, raising concerns about a crackdown on free speech. The FBI is looking for ways to incorporate artificial intelligence into drones, according to federal procurement documents. On Thursday, the FBI put out the call to potential vendors of AI and machine learning technology to be used in unmanned aerial systems in a so-called "request for information," where government agencies request companies submit initial information for a forthcoming contract opportunity. The FBI is in search of technology that could enable drones to conduct facial recognition, license plate recognition, and detection of weapons, among other uses, according to the document. The pitch from the FBI immediately raised concerns among civil libertarians, who warned that enabling FBI drones with artificial intelligence could exacerbate the chilling effect of surveillance of activities protected by the…...

2+ week, 3+ day ago (476+ words) Contact forms on Redfin real estate listings displayed past users" names, email addresses, and phone numbers. Because of a website security snafu, the online real estate platform Redfin made random users" names, email addresses, and phone numbers available to others who log onto listings. The vulnerability lasted less than a week, the company said. The personal identification information became visible to other users who were viewing real estate listings. The information would appear momentarily when a contact information form popped up on a listing; the form would be pre-filled with details from past users, which would quickly vanish. The contact information of past users, however, would remain visible when viewing the listing while disabling JavaScript, a programming language used to make interactive websites that can, in many browsers, be turned off in general or for specific sites. Past users" email…...