Horizon cutting-room links: Monday, 16 December 2024

DC weather: A chance of rain and patchy fog before 8am, then patchy fog and a slight chance of rain between 8am and 9am, then patchy drizzle and patchy fog between 9am and noon, then a chance of rain. Cloudy, with a high near 49. Southeast wind around 5 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40%. New rainfall amounts less than a tenth of an inch possible.

Federal agencies in the Washington, DC area are Open. Employees are expected to begin the workday on time. Normal operating procedures are in effect.

“The UnitedHealthcare shooter got exactly what he wanted,” the Verge

“There was a time, fairly recently, when it was felt that the best practice in a high-profile shooting was to avoid publicizing the accused killer’s identity and detailing the method by which it was accomplished. … I suppose you could say the mood has shifted.”

“This feels different, perhaps because the lionization of an accused murderer isn’t limited to the weirder corners of the internet. Immediately after Thompson was shot, the reaction was anger — at UnitedHealthcare.”

“So far, it appears Thompson’s assassination was ruthlessly effective: Mangione’s image and ideas were widely disseminated, to broad approval. This is a total failure of the best practices once suggested to make killing for publicity less attractive.”

“Did Christopher Wray Just Defy Donald Trump?” New York Times

“According to the Vacancies Reform Act, if a vacancy occurs in a Senate-confirmed position, the president can temporarily replace that appointee (such as the F.B.I. director) only with a person who has already received Senate confirmation or with a person who’s served in a senior capacity in the agency (at the GS-15 pay scale.)) for at least 90 days in the year before the resignation.

“Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s chosen successor at the F.B.I., meets neither of these criteria. He’s not in a Senate-confirmed position, and he’s not been a senior federal employee in the Department of Justice in the last year. That means he can’t walk into the job on Day 1. Trump will have to select someone else to lead the F.B.I. immediately, or the position will default to the ‘first assistant to the office.’”

“IC’s new OSINT standards cover open source data, AI services,” FedNewsNetwork

“The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is standardizing how intel agencies are required to cite open source data and commercial information, including services powered by artificial intelligence, in their reporting and analysis … In a new “Intelligence Community Standards” document signed out Dec. 2.”

“The C.E.O.s Are Tripping. Can Psychedelics Help the C-Suite?” New York Times

• It’s not hard to discern how the love affair between business and psychedelics came screeching to a halt. Psychedelics became associated with beatniks and hippies who quit their jobs, staged be-ins and followed the siren call of the Harvard psychologist and psychedelic researcher Timothy Leary to “turn on, tune in, drop out.”
• But business leaders never completely lost interest in the substances. Some continued using them for pleasure; others attested to their life-changing influence. Steve Jobs declared taking LSD a critical life event […]
• There is now a growing cottage industry of psychedelic retreats for business leaders.
• “Of the Silicon Valley founders I know who went on some of the psychedelic self-discovery trips, almost 100% quit their jobs as CEO.”

“NY Times Doesn’t Want You to See Shooter's Face,” Ken Klippenstein’s Substack

“On Tuesday, management said ‘the news value and public service of showing his face is diminishing,’ instructing staff to ‘dial back’ its use of such photos. It also directed that Luigi’s ‘manifesto’ not be published in the paper.”

“By donning the ‘public safety’ hat, the major media is in effect deputizing itself as a branch of the national security state. Beat reporters always find themselves in a bind, not wanting to imperil their access to the law enforcement and intelligence sources that furnish them with inside material. The government then plays favorites by leaking to news media reporters who act as compliant deputies, those who parrot whatever the government line is.”

“Rhode Island’s online benefits system shuts down after cyberattack,” the Verge

“Rhode Island took its RIBridges system for applying for public assistance programs like Medicaid offline Friday following a cyberattack that may have exposed the personal data of hundreds of thousands of people.”

“State Chief Digital Officer and Chief Information Officer Brian Tardiff, who also spoke at the briefing, said the attack is not ransomware, but ‘more of an extortion type activity by this cybercriminal group.’”