thomas daniel

Fascism doesn’t sneak up on you. It boasts in your face about war, attacking "internal enemies" and the free press, taking total power, and tells you that you must embrace it, not fight it. Consolidating and purging media into loyal hands is Putin's playbook.

this has been an open secret in tech for years and if you’ve been following my threads you already know where I stand on this I genuinely believe Palantir was never just a government contractor it was always designed from day 1 to embed itself so deep inside the intelligence & defense apparatus that ripping it out would be like trying to remove the nervous system from a living body you need to understand how this works on a technical level to really grasp the scale of what I’m describing Gotham & foundry are data integration platforms that plug into every single information source an organization has, internal databases, intelligence feeds, comms, satellite data, financial transactions, social media…everything gets funneled into a single ontological knowledge graph and here’s the key, once you’ve connected 5y of an intelligence agency’s data or a defense ministry’s operations into Palantir’s architecture you’ve created a technological dependency that is virtually impossible to reverse bc migrating that graph to another system would mean rebuilding the ENTIRE institutional memory of the organization from scratch I’m telling you this is vendor lock-in at the scale of a nation state & I’m personally convinced it was designed to work exactly this way from the beginning by the way palantir is just the most visible case, you should know that the same exact playbook is running across the entire deftech ecosystem right now, companies building AI systems for surveillance targeting & predictive intelligence are quietly rotating former employees into regulatory agencies & defense departments the revolving door between silicon valley & the pentagon has literally become a conveyor belt at this point & I think the boundary between private tech infrastructure and state power is dissolving way faster than anyone wants to acknowledge and I’ll add something that I believe makes it even more concerning these systems are increasingly autonomous meaning the AI layer is making recommendations that humans inside gvt are rubber stamping without fully understanding the underlying logic I’m deeply convinced that the most important power shift of this decade is happening in complete silence and I think most people have absolutely no idea, this is the moment where the companies building the tools of governance become indistinguishable from governance itself & believe me by the time the general public figures out what happened the integration will be too deep too complex & too classified to ever be unwound

posted on substack by a person named Teri Leigh I’m writing this from Minnesota. These are just a few things that may not be making the national or international news. a beloved local donut shop Glam Doll Donuts across the street from where Alex Pretti died turned into a warming house and medic center for protestors building and maintaining the memorial site. a 70yo independent bookstore owner DreamHaven Books down the street expressed his pain on camera, walked through a tear gas cloud, and his website crashed less than 24 hours later from too much business and donations. the day after tear gas bombs destroyed a N-Mpls neighborhood sending a 6mo old baby to the hospital, at daybreak, a small church community cleaned up the mess of pepper balls, tear gas containers and trash so the neighbors didn’t have to wake up to the memories. a local independent journalist Mercado Media pounding the streets everyday reporting things from the ground had a testicle removed and showed up two days later to walk with 75,000+ community members to walk the streets in -20 degree weather. a local sex-positive adult-store The Smitten Kitten has completely transformed into a donation and distribution center. a local pizza place Wrecktangle Pizza raised over $83K in less than a few days to support families that are sheltering in place. tow-truck companies are donating their services to clean up the accidents and abandoned vehicles left by ICE and the city is waiving impound fees. local multi-faith spiritual leaders are spearheading sit-ins at corporate headquarters such as Target and USBank to have deeper conversations with CEOs and boards of directors about community relief. social workers are taking in children who came home from school with both their parents “disappeared.” animal shelters and pet-fostering agencies are rescuing pets left alone for days or weeks after their humans were detained. every restaurant, church, karate dojo, dance studio, school, barber shop, and other small business has created their own underground grassroots supportive network to protect their neighbors, get people to and from work, and raise funds to pay everyday bills. women who are moms and work full-time jobs are donning reflective vests in shifts to stand watch at bus stops, city parks, and grocery store parking lots ini sub-zero temps to bear witness before going home to tuck their babies in at night. the MN National Guard offered donuts, coffee, and hot cocoa to peaceful protesters the day after Alex Pretti died, reminding community that we are all in this together and they are here to keep the peace. These are just a few examples. Stories like this are happening in the hundreds here, every single day! Community is EVERYTHING! This Substack community and the MN-Strong resistance has saved my mental health these last weeks. Thank you for reading. Thank you for giving a shit. I love you.

Muslim American Society Islamic Center in Philadelphia: "We will chop off their heads, liberate Al-Aqsa Mosque, and lead the army of Allah, fulfilling His promise, and we will subject them to eternal torture. The blood of martyrs protects us."