The LAPD and Palantir

From Cory Doctorow's 9-8-17 Boing Boing post entitled "Case Study of LAPD and Palantir's Predictive Policing Tool:  Same Corruption; New, Empirical Respectability":

"UT Austin sociologist Sarah Brayne spent 2.5 years conducting field research with the LAPD as they rolled out PredPol, a software tool that is supposed to direct police to places where crime is likely to occur, but which has been shown to send cops out to overpolice brown and poor people at the expense of actual crimefighting.

"Brayne observed and interviewed more than 75 cops to get a picture of how the job of policing is changed by big data-based 'predictive' tools.  She found that the tools changed police from a law-enforcement agency to an intelligence agency, concerned more with surveilling people who had not committed a crime than to interdicting or solving crimes in the world."

To read Doctorow's entire post, click HERE.

UT Austin sociologist Sarah Brayne spent 2.5 years conducting field research with the LAPD as they rolled out Predpol, a software tool that is supposed to direct police to places where crime is likely to occur, but which has been shown to send cops out to overpolice brown and poor people at the expense of actual crimefighting.

UT Austin sociologist Sarah Brayne spent 2.5 years conducting field research with the LAPD as they rolled out Predpol, a software tool that is supposed to direct police to places where crime is likely to occur, but which has been shown to send cops out to overpolice brown and poor people at the expense of actual crimefighting.
Brayne observed and interviewed more than 75 cops to get a picture of how the job of policing is changed by big data-based "predictive" tools. She found that the tools changed police from a law-enforcement agency to an intelligence agency, concerned more with surveilling people who had not committed a crime than to interdicting or solving crimes in the world.

UT Austin sociologist Sarah Brayne spent 2.5 years conducting field research with the LAPD as they rolled out Predpol, a software tool that is supposed to direct police to places where crime is likely to occur, but which has been shown to send cops out to overpolice brown and poor people at the expense of actual crimefighting.
Brayne observed and interviewed more than 75 cops to get a picture of how the job of policing is changed by big data-based "predictive" tools. She found that the tools changed police from a law-enforcement agency to an intelligence agency, concerned more with surveilling people who had not committed a crime than to interdicting or solving crimes in the world.

UT Austin sociologist Sarah Brayne spent 2.5 years conducting field research with the LAPD as they rolled out Predpol, a software tool that is supposed to direct police to places where crime is likely to occur, but which has been shown to send cops out to overpolice brown and poor people at the expense of actual crimefighting.
Brayne observed and interviewed more than 75 cops to get a picture of how the job of policing is changed by big data-based "predictive" tools. She found that the tools changed police from a law-enforcement agency to an intelligence agency, concerned more with surveilling people who had not committed a crime than to interdicting or solving crimes in the world.

Case study of LAPD and Palantir's predictive policing tool: same corruption; new, empirical respectability

KEEL-O-RAMA!

It's time to hop into the Cryptoscatology Wayback Machine and rediscover the groundbreaking research of journalist John A. Keel, author of THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES, OPERATION TROJAN HORSE, OUR HAUNTED PLANET, and many other visionary books.  Keel was a major influence on many present day writers, including Yours Truly, a postmodern Mark Twain who was regularly producing the experiential reportage later made famous by such "New Journalists" as Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe years before either of those gentlemen began experimenting with the form in the 1960s.  (And one need only read Keel's first book, JADOO, to see the proof of that claim.)  Keel's true impact on twenty-first century literature and pop culture has yet to be fully explored.  

In the meantime, please avail yourself of the wonders of YouTube and get a front row seat for several live Keel presentations, ranging from the late 1960s all the way to the beginning of the twenty-first century.... 

Here's John A. Keel lecturing on March 16th, 1966 about his (then) ongoing Mothman investigation:

Keel's 1989 lecture on "The Men in Black":

Keel lecturing in Sheffield, England, in 1992:

Keel lecturing about his investigation into the UFO phenomenon:

Keel lecturing at FortFest in 1997 about the films he made in the Middle East while researching JADOO:

Various and sundry Keel lectures and TV appearances:

And to wrap it all up, here's Fortean writer Doug Skinner lecturing about Keel's life and career at FortFest in 2002:

A strange postscript: Here you can see John Keel assisting Doug Skinner in an attempt to perform a hypnotic regression on a ventriloquist dummy named Eddie Gray:

Citizens on Patrol

A frequent correspondent recently sent me the link to a YouTube video entitled "Proof of GangStalking & Citizens on Patrol Program."  I have no way of accurately gauging the legitimacy of the video, except to say that the en passant detail of the gangstalkers being paid (at the very beginning) in Target gift cards is almost too absurd not to be true.  What, this ain't America?

I post the video here for research purposes only.  You can decide for yourself whether or not this is legitimate....

Covert Sonic Weapons Deployed in Cuba (Update 2)

From a 9-14-17 Guardian article entitled "Mystery of Sonic Weapon Attacks at US Embassy in Cuba Deepens":

"The blaring, grinding noise jolted the American diplomat from his bed in a Havana hotel. He moved just a few feet, and there was silence. He climbed back into bed. Inexplicably, the agonizing sound hit him again. It was as if he’d walked through some invisible wall cutting straight through his room.

"Soon came the hearing loss, and the speech problems, symptoms both similar and altogether different from others among at least 21 US victims in an astonishing international mystery still unfolding in Cuba. The top US diplomat has called them 'health attacks'. 

"New details learned by the Associated Press indicate at least some of the incidents were confined to specific rooms or even parts of rooms with laser-like specificity, baffling US officials who say the facts and the physics don’t add up. 

"'None of this has a reasonable explanation,' said Fulton Armstrong, a former CIA official who served in Havana long before America re-opened an embassy there. 'It’s just mystery after mystery after mystery.'"

To read the entire article, click HERE.

Covert Sonic Weapons Deployed in Cuba (Update)

From CBS News' 8-23-17 report entitled "Some U.S. Diplomats in Cuba Diagnosed with Serious Health Conditions, Medical Records Show":

"According to medical records reviewed exclusively by CBS News, a U.S. doctor who evaluated American and Canadian diplomats working in Havana diagnosed them with conditions as serious as mild traumatic brain injury, and with likely damage to the central nervous system.

"The diplomats complained about symptoms ranging from hearing loss and nausea to headaches and balance disorders after the State Department said 'incidents' began affecting them beginning in late 2016. A source familiar with these incidents says officials are investigating whether the diplomats were targets of a type of sonic attack directed at their homes, which were provided by the Cuban government. The source says reports of more attacks affecting U.S. embassy workers on the island continue.

"The doctor, one of several who reviewed their cases, included a warning in the medical records about the health risks of future exposures. The diplomats underwent comprehensive audiological evaluations and a battery of other tests [...].

"A number of diplomats have cut short their assignments in Cuba because of the attacks.

"The source says American diplomats have also been subjected [to] other types of harassment including vehicle vandalization, constant surveillance, and home break-ins."

To read the entire report, click HERE.

Jon Rappoport on Dick Gregory

I recommend reading Jon Rappoport's 9-10-17 article about the late Dick Gregory.  The article, entitled "The Dick Gregory I Knew," begins as follows:

"I could start a conversation with Dick Gregory, and before I knew it, it would be going in six directions at once. He wasn’t just riding one wave. He was swimming in all the oceans at the same time. He was moving on his own time clock. Sooner or later, the currents of realization would come through to me. He was looking at a far shore that was more real to him than any present moment. He was already in the future, and he saw it like a grand impresario would see his own carnival. Grand, ongoing, symphonic...."

Read the entirety of Rappoport's article right HERE.

Len Wein, R.I.P. (1948-2017)

Legendary comic book writer Len Wein has passed away at the age of 69.  Not only did Wein co-create Swamp Thing, one of the most important comic books of the 1970s, but he also co-created The New X-Men, which included such popular characters as Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Storm, and Colossus.  Wein was an influential editor as well, having overseen the creation of such trailblazing graphic novels as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen and Mike Barr and Brian Bolland's Camelot 3000.  Wein's most significant work, the Swamp Thing stories he created in collaboration with artist Bernie Wrightson (who passed away earlier this year), will soon be collected in a massive hardcover edition entitled Swamp Thing:  The Bronze Age Omnibus Vol. 1.  Personally, I've always been rather fond of Wein's long stint on The Incredible Hulk from 1974 to 1978 (the entirety of which can be found in The Essential Incredible Hulk Vol. 5 and Vol. 6).  

Below you'll find a fascinating interview with Wein conducted by Matt Langdon in 2015....

 

Project Chameleo and Skinwalker Ranch

On 9-2-17 HuntTheSkinwalker.com posted a relevant article entitled "Project Chameleo + Skinwalker Ranch" that examines the connections between my 2015 book CHAMELEO:  A STRANGE BUT TRUE STORY OF INVISIBLE SPIES, HEROIN ADDICTION AND HOMELAND SECURITY and Dr. Colm A. Kellher and George Knapp's 2005 book HUNT THE SKINWALKER:  SCIENCE CONFRONTS THE UNEXPLAINED AT A REMOTE RANCH IN UTAH.  The article begins as follows:

"From more than six hundred anomalous incidents on Skinwalker Ranch that have been investigated, documented and catalogued since 1994, a small number of events stand out for the brazen use of invisibility and 'cloaking' technology deployed during daylight hours.

"As Skinwalker Ranch scientists and researchers investigated these incidents and 'war gamed' how they may have been perpetrated, inevitably the 'us or them' question arose. Were humans (us) capable of pulling off this incident or was a non-human intelligence (them) responsible? This 'us or them' conundrum has existed at the heart of 'UFO-ology' since the 1950s and is a major contributor to the confusion and lack of progress in the field for decades.

"The following are a couple of incidents that happened on Skinwalker Ranch that exemplify this ambiguity between 'Us and Them'...."

The article ends on the following note:

"We at HuntTheSkinwalker.com are interested in receiving feedback from readers of this article regarding other possible incidents of a 'Chameleo' nature. Please email us your account if you have had interactive experiences with a camouflaged entity...."

If you would like to read the entire article, click right HERE.

Forthcoming Stories From The Guffey Fiction Factory

Heads-up!  Be on the lookout for these forthcoming stories from The Guffey Fiction Factory:

"The Sheet" (3,500 words) in PHANTOM DRIFT #7 (due out on October 1, 2017).  You can pre-order PHANTOM DRIFT #7 by clicking right HERE.

"The Faggot Police" (2,000 words) in THE MAILER REVIEW #11 (due out this Fall).

"My First Visit to The Trans-cultural Health Improvement Center" (1,400 words) in PANORAMA (due out this Fall).

"The Detective with the Glass Gun" (6,000 words) in BLACK DANDY (due out in early 2018).

"The Advertising Man" (7,500 words) in NAMELESS (due out in the fullness of time).

My first novel, UNTIL THE LAST DOG DIES, is still scheduled for publication on Nov. 21, 2017.  You can pre-order UNTIL THE LAST DOG DIES from Amazon by clicking right HERE.