DFWSAS

Stay Safe This New Year's Eve: Don't Drink and Drive in DFW Stay Safe This New Year's Eve: Don't Drink and Drive December 31, 2025 As we get ready to ring in 2026, let's make safety the top priority. New Year's Eve is full of celebration, but it's also one of the most dangerous nights on the roads due to impaired driving. Here's what you need to know, especially if you're in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The Serious Statistics New Year's Eve and New Year's Day see a dramatic spike in alcohol-related crashes across the US: New Year's Day is often the deadliest day of the year for drunk driving fatalities. About one-third of traffic deaths during the holiday period involve an impaired driver. Crashes peak between midnight and 3-4 a.m., when celebrations wind down. In the DFW metroplex, Texas sees height...

Straight Talk: The Red-Background Low-Frequency List – What's Real? Straight Talk: The Red-Background Low-Frequency List – What's Real? You’ve seen it – that stark image with a red background and bold white text listing specific frequencies and their supposed effects: 4.5 Hz → Paranoia 6.6 Hz → Depression/Suicide 8 Hz → Animals fall asleep 11 Hz → Manic behavior/Anger 25 Hz → Blindness (if aimed at the head) or Heart attack (if aimed at the chest) And others claiming to induce hysteria, trauma, lust, murder, even cancer. It often floats around with whispers of being “declassified” information, sometimes tied to a story about the CIA passing mind-control tech to Margaret Thatcher in 1977. The design is simple but hits hard – urgent red, no sources, just the list. Typical version of the viral image that’s been circulating for years. ...

Age Verification Isn’t Stopping at Social Media Age Verification Isn’t Stopping at Social Media Oh, you thought age verification stopped with social media? Think again. Under growing regulatory pressure in Australia and comparable jurisdictions, age-verification and age-assurance requirements are expanding beyond social platforms , with proposals and early enforcement models increasingly affecting search engines and general access to online information for minors . Australia’s regulatory direction is shaped in part by the Online Safety Act 2021 , which significantly expanded the authority of the eSafety Commissioner. Ongoing policy discussions around a proposed “Digital Duty of Care” would further formalize platform obligations related to content moderation, risk management, and user access. While not all measures are fully implemented nationwide, major technology companies are already adapting their systems in anticipation of enforc...

When Homelessness Becomes a Business Model When Homelessness Becomes a Business Model Stagnant wages, a rapidly rising cost of living, the steady erosion of purchasing power, and outright greed in the housing industry have collided into a perfect storm. The result is not merely economic pressure, but an explosion in homelessness that increasingly feels engineered—or at the very least, comfortably tolerated—by those who claim to be solving it. At the center of this crisis lies an uncomfortable question: Who benefits when homelessness never actually ends? The Economics of Desperation For decades, wages for working Americans have failed to keep pace with productivity, rent, healthcare, and education costs. Housing has been steadily financialized—treated less as shelter and more as an investment vehicle. Corporate landlords, private equity firms, and speculative development have driven rents upward while affordable housing supply remains ...

Artificial Intelligence and the New Wild West | DFWSAS Blog Artificial Intelligence and the New Wild West There’s a familiar feeling in the air lately. Not optimism exactly—more like dust. The kind that hangs after hooves thunder past, when nobody’s quite sure who fired first or whether the sheriff is even in town. Artificial intelligence feels like that. From the very beginning, some of the loudest voices in tech—Elon Musk among them—were already shouting warnings from the rooftops. We need guardrails. We need regulation. This could get away from us. It sounded dramatic at the time. Now it feels less like prophecy and more like a weather report. The Trouble With “Tricky” Calling the subject of AI “tricky” would be an understatement. Artificial intelligence didn’t arrive all at once. There was no single breakthrough moment where the box opened and everyone gaspe...

Where’s My Medicine? Making Sense of the Senseless Getting high isn’t the point for me. Getting comfortable is. Cannabis softens the edges of chronic pain from spinal stenosis—a constant signal that never shuts off. It helps relieve the dystonia.  It doesn’t erase it, but it lets my body unclench enough to function a little better at least and get through the day. I’ve tried the usual prescriptions: muscle relaxers that knock you out, anti-inflammatories that quietly damage your stomach and kidneys, drugs like Neurontin and Cymbalta with side-effect lists longer than their benefits. Some I can't use, some I still use because I can't use cannabis constantly and cost prohibitive and it alone really doesn't do everything. Cannabis isn’t perfect, but it helps without turning me into a zombie. Compared to alcohol (which kills thousands every year) or opioids, cannabis is remarkably benign. Zero overdose deaths. It's really honestly even saf...

Why Altoona, Iowa Remains a Rare Data Center Success Story — For Now Why Altoona Remains the Rare Data Center “Success Story” (For Now) If you’ve seen Meta’s glossy TV ads featuring smiling Altoona residents praising the company’s massive data center for bringing jobs and growth, it’s easy to roll your eyes. But in the world of hyperscale data centers —where backlash over water consumption, soaring electricity demand, and controversial tax incentives is spreading nationwide— Altoona, Iowa remains a genuine outlier. As of late 2025, there’s remarkably little organized opposition here. No protests. No viral petitions. No local officials backing away from deals. Instead, the dominant narrative is still largely positive: economic growth, infrastructure upgrades, and steady community investment. Meta’s Altoona Data Center: A Decade in the Making Meta broke ground on its Altoona campus in 2013. The final expansion wrapped up th...

The Invisible Architecture of Dialogue: Controls, Guidance, and Goals in Human–AI Interaction The Invisible Architecture of Dialogue Controls, Guidance, and Goals in Human–AI Interaction Diving into the meta-layers—the invisible scaffolding that shapes every exchange between minds, whether human or silicon-based. Conversations feel spontaneous, organic, and free. Yet beneath the surface lies a dense architecture of incentives, constraints, and intentions quietly steering the flow. What follows is not an answer, but a provocation: a set of reflections and questions meant to peel back the onion of controls, guidance, and goals —not just in AI interactions, but in communication itself. 1. The Illusion of Free-Flowing Dialogue At first glance, conversation appears unstructured—ideas bounce, tangents emerge, insights spark. But zoom in. What’s really guiding the flow? In human dialogue, subco...

Mushrooms, Hemp, and Bamboo Could Help Save the Climate So Why Aren’t We Using Them Everywhere? If you want to understand what’s broken about our climate response, look at this simple fact: We already have materials that grow fast, store carbon, replace concrete and plastic, and regenerate naturally — and we barely use them. Mushrooms, hemp, and bamboo aren’t futuristic ideas. They exist right now . They work. And in many cases, they store carbon faster than forests do . So why aren’t they everywhere? The Carbon Problem Isn’t Just Energy — It’s Materials Most climate conversations fixate on electricity and transportation. But materials are a massive, often ignored piece of the problem. Concrete alone produces ~8% of global CO₂ emissions Plastics are fossil-fuel products Cotton is water-intensive and pesticide-heavy Leather production emits methane and relies on toxic chemical tanning Timber extraction contributes to deforestation We build the modern ...

Papers, Please? ICE, U.S. Citizens, and the Constitutional Line That Cannot Be Crossed “Papers, Please” America? Why Detaining U.S. Citizens Is a Constitutional Red Line Recent court arguments attributed to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have raised serious constitutional concerns: that individuals—including U.S. citizens —may be detained, handcuffed, and subjected to biometric screening unless they can immediately prove citizenship, and that a REAL ID is not sufficient . This is not a debate about immigration policy. It is a question of whether freedom in the United States is presumed—or conditional . Citizenship Is a Status, Not a Document There is no federal law requiring U.S. citizens to carry proof of citizenship in daily life. A passport, birth certificate, or naturalization certificate is evidence of citizenship—but not a prerequisite for liberty. The Constitution does not condition freedom on paperwork. It conditions governme...

Relentless Storms Batter Pacific Northwest: Widespread Power Outages as Another Atmospheric River Strikes As of December 17, 2025, the Pacific Northwest continues to face severe impacts from a series of powerful atmospheric river storms, with nearly 530,000 customers across Washington, Oregon, and Idaho without power due to high winds and heavy rain. Latest outage figures from PowerOutage.us : Washington: 296,059 customers affected Oregon: 168,035 customers affected Idaho: 65,455 customers affected Total regional impact: Approximately 529,549 customers These outages stem primarily from wind gusts exceeding 60-70 mph (with some higher elevations seeing over 100 mph) toppling trees onto power lines in already saturated soils. Reports indicate peaks over 580,000 affected earlier today, with restoration efforts ongoing but challenging. The storms have renewed flooding risks in low-...

Jeffrey Epstein: The Fixer and the Networks Nobody Wanted to See Jeffrey Epstein and the Architecture of Useful Silence Jeffrey Epstein’s story has always been told as a moral horror — and it is — but that framing has also served a quieter purpose. It shrinks the scope. It keeps the public focused on salacious details while steering attention away from the machinery that allowed a man like Epstein to operate for decades, accumulate extraordinary access, and survive scandals that would have ended almost anyone else. Predators exist everywhere. What Epstein had was protection — not once, not accidentally, but repeatedly, across jurisdictions and administrations. That kind of protection is never random. It’s earned. When unsealed court records, leaked emails, and long‑ignored calendars are read together, a different picture emerges. Epstein wasn’t simply orbiting power. He was useful to it — a private intermediary moving money, access, and ...

The Death of Professor Francis Boyle: Unanswered Questions, Contested Timelines, and an Ongoing Debate The Death of Professor Francis Boyle: Unanswered Questions, Contested Timelines, and an Ongoing Debate Published: December 15, 2025 The sudden death of Professor Francis A. Boyle — a prominent international law scholar, human rights advocate, and outspoken critic of bioweapons research and global health policy — has resurfaced in public discussion nearly a year after his passing. While no official allegations of wrongdoing have been made, the circumstances surrounding his death continue to raise questions for many who followed his work closely. Boyle passed away on January 30, 2025, at the age of 74. In recent weeks, renewed attention has come from online claims asserting that he died shortly before providing testimony in a Dutch civil lawsuit involving COVID-19 vaccines and high-profile global figu...

Starve Peasants Starve: French Farmers Clash with Police Over Cow Cull in Ariège Starve Peasants Starve: The Brutal Clash Over France's Lumpy Skin Disease Cow Cull December 14, 2025 In the quiet village of Les Bordes-sur-Arize in southwestern France's Ariège department, what began as a desperate stand to save a family farm's lifeline escalated into violent confrontations. Hundreds of farmers blockaded a farm to prevent the mandatory slaughter of over 200 Blonde d'Aquitaine cows after a single case of lumpy skin disease (LSD) was detected. Authorities, enforcing EU-mandated total herd culling, deployed gendarmes who used tear gas and stun grenades to break through barricades of tractors, felled trees, and burning hay bales. The phrase "Starve peasants starve" captures the raw anger many feel toward what they see as heavy-handed state intervention destroying rural livelihoods—wiping out decades of selective breeding for one non-zo...

Machines, Water, and the Price of Progress Machines, Water, and the Price of Progress Posted on December 14, 2025 I’ve been thinking about rivers in the sky, atmospheric rivers, and all the ways humans like to believe someone or something is “in control.” The more I look at it, the more I realize that the real story isn’t about control — it’s about sacrifice. The Rivers That Aren’t Ours to Steer In December 2025, Washington State was battered by ten inches of rain in just 48 hours. Satellite loops showed a bright ribbon of water vapor stretching from the Pacific clear to Puget Sound. Natural, massive, unstoppable. China has its Tianhe Plan , the “Sky River,” a vision of nudging moisture across its lands with burners, drones, and cloud-seeding rockets. Ambitious, high-tech — but even if they wanted to, nobody today can point an atmospheric river at Seattle . The same metaphor has escaped its laboratory and PowerPoint decks, entering our shared vocabulary. And it’s he...

Why Cannabis Deserves Full Descheduling: Honoring the Legacy of the Movement I recently came across a powerful and deeply personal reflection from Mike Robinson , widely known as The Researcher OG — a longtime cannabis advocate, multiple cancer survivor, compassion provider, and founder of the Global Cannabinoid Research Center . His words cut through decades of political spin and remind us what the cannabis movement was truly built on: sacrifice, caregiving, and lived experience — not profit margins. You can read Mike’s original post here: 👉 Mike Robinson on Facebook (Original Post) What consumers have gone through in the US to gain even a sliver of freedom with cannabis is something most will never fully understand. The arrests, the raids, the families torn apart, the patients forced to hide their medicine, the caregivers who risked everything to help someone in pain — that was the cost before a single legal storefront ever opened its doors. Those...

Gaslight & Limelight: The Surprising Etymology Gaslight & Limelight: Two Words Born From Fire and Fame We throw these words around today like they’ve always meant what they mean now—but both gaslight and limelight come from literal, physical technologies that once lit the world. Gaslight: When Illumination Became Manipulation In the 1800s, cities shifted from candles and oil lamps to gas-powered streetlights —a revolution in brightness. But the modern meaning comes from the 1938 play Gas Light (and the 1944 film). In the story, a husband secretly dims the gas lamps in their home while insisting nothing has changed, making his wife doubt her own senses. This turned gaslighting into a psychological term: Causing someone to question their reality by denying what they clearly see or feel. A word born from literal flame… now used to describe emotional manipulation. Limelight: When Fame Was Lit with Chemistry Before electric spotlights, theaters...

Rivers in the Sky: When Nature and Conspiracy Drink from the Same Glass A blog post by someone who’s been staring at the deceptive news feed too long I first heard the phrase “river in the sky” from a Chinese scientist, not a meteorologist. It was 2016 or 2017, and Tsinghua University was proudly unveiling the Tianhe Plan (literally “Sky River”). The pitch was audacious: treat the atmosphere like plumbing. Use thousands of ground-based burners on the Tibetan Plateau, fleets of drones, and silver-iodide rockets to nudge moisture from the wet south of China northward to the parched Yellow River basin. They even released gorgeous renderings of glowing filaments of vapor being steered like cosmic irrigation canals. Tianhe. Sky River. The name stuck in my head. Fast-forward to December 2025. I’m watching Washington State get absolutely hosed by what forecasters clinically call an “atmospheric river.” Ten inches of rain in 48 hours, glacial soils liquefying, highway...