Someone in Colorado smoked a lot of weed when they came up with a political payphone concept. Boulder residents designing interventions for places that they imagine, rather than understand, is a pretty good microcosm of how a lot of heavily funded “depolarization” work operates.
What strikes me is the actual interesting finding, that political geography doesn’t hold, gets treated as a quirky anecdote in The Guardian rather than evidence that the entire project’s premise is flawed.
A “call a Republican” phone in the Bay Area connected someone to a Green Party voter. What are they smoking?
Seriously, one of the first documented calls connects the Bay Area to the supposedly Republican stronghold of Abilene, Texas. A Green Party member answers and says they may be switching to Socialism (Peace and Freedom).
That’s the real story.
Meanwhile, the fact that this cannabis-laced Colorado biotech marketing campaign bought phones off Facebook Marketplace, for recording conversations to share online “around the end of January”, suggests tone-deaf content generation always was the point. Matter Neuroscience really wants to matter. But what matters most from the story so far is that geography is not ideology.
SF Gate offers far better analysis, exposing that $26 million has been raised to tell people talking feels good. The stunt claims 3.8 million views while generating roughly 2 phone users per hour. The official spokesperson? A Marketing VP. No science intended or achieved.
Musk tried pumping his stocks with fake FSD timelines at Davos. Chinese state media and Tesla China both harshly contradicted the renowned liar, and within hours.
No hedging. No diplomatic softening. No “we cannot confirm yet”.
Just: Elon Musk lied.
First, let’s all admit FSD is far, far behind other technology. It’s been the worst contender for a decade now, called out by experts repeatedly and lately losing in court. Intel and NVidia both clearly left Tesla in the dust, long before China would, and yet somehow Elon Musk didn’t go to jail yet. They arrested Bernie Madoff for less.
Testing by China showed even the latest FSD still has high-frequency deadly problems like crossing solid lines (34 times per test), running red lights, and failing at asymmetric intersections. Subscription rates remain under 10%, with low user trust, because Elon Musk is an obvious liar and no real engineers last long with such fraud.
Second, the Chinese have no reason to allow Tesla corruption into the market. None. Huawei/XPeng and others have already covered 99% of China’s urban roads with their NOA systems, and BYD has pushed intelligent driving into even their 70,000 yuan vehicles. What does Tesla bring to any market really, other than public disaster response burden for burning wreckage and support costs for grieving survivors?
It would be like when Ford announced to investors that Latin America would be gladly approving Bronco imports, which soon after meant dealing with rollover death lawsuits.
Third, there’s a structural barrier to FSD. It’s called FSD. It’s always been a lie. Unlike the swiss cheese of American safety regulations, the Chinese don’t want pathological liars selling infrastructure. The Ministry of Public Security hasn’t changed liability attribution rules, meaning FSD legally cannot operate under “autonomous driving” claims regardless of approval status. That’s not a “soon” thing.
To put it another way, if approval were anywhere close, even later this year, we should see some alternative timeline discussion to maintain market interest. A complete and total absence of any counter-timeline suggests the entire Elon Musk premise is stock-pumping bullshit, not just the date.
Fourth, Xiaopeng publicly bet that if XPeng’s system doesn’t beat FSD V14.2’s claimed performance in Silicon Valley by August this year, his autonomous driving chief will “裸跑金门大桥” (run naked across the Golden Gate Bridge). Of course, that could just be an excuse to run naked in the fog, but something tells me they don’t expect to be getting wet.
Already we see Tesla 23% error rates on commuter lanes and bus-only lanes compared with a 7% for XPeng’s XNGP. That’s a massive difference in safety. Above 90% accuracy is defensible, an A grade, whereas Tesla clearly is still unworthy. Nobody should want (or allow) 77% on a shared road! And XPeng is pushing monthly updates, widening that quality gap, as Tesla struggles to stay inside six month cycles.
So what did China say exactly about Elon Musk spinning his usual stock pumps again?
China Daily immediately ran a direct contradiction. No need to wait: “需驾驶员监督的特斯拉FSD系统预计下个月在中国获批？知情人士：该消息不实” (Tesla’s driver-supervised FSD system expected to be approved in China next month? Informed source: This is not true).
Perhaps that last line in particular now should be the permanent footnote on anything Elon Musk says: “该消息不实”
Tesla China’s own spokesperson apparently wanted to set it straight too: “目前FSD在中国市场的推进工作，暂时没有新的进展可以公布” (there is currently no new progress to announce regarding FSD entering the Chinese market).
Hey kids, history is useful. For example, a lot of Nazis today love to say there is no true Nazi, and that they can’t ever be called one credibly, while they plainly do everything they think that a Nazi would.
The accusations against Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino have merit not least of all from the costume history perspective. This is what a Nazi would and did wear.
Undeniable Nazi cosplay by a U.S. official. DHS chose black-and-white for their propaganda, not by accident. They are promoting a 1930s newsreel look with Nazi-adjacent “WE WILL NOT BE STOPPED” overlay typography to complete the visual grammar.
While no single element exclusively says Nazi costume, the curated combination of elements is unmistakable visual quotation of the SS officer aesthetics. If it wears a kilt, it’s well on its way to being a Scotsman. When seeing a red bearded heavy man with a loud brogue tossing a caber, while in a kilt, if you can’t admit a true Scotsman at some point, you’ve failed 101 logic.
Bovino is displaying an obvious Nazi costume.
We aren’t talking accidental resemblance, because achieving this specific silhouette requires very deliberate tailoring choices that reference very particular historical moment. This is not a generic “military coat.” He even boasts how this unique costuming was less scrutinized under Biden, deploying a Nazi tactic to blame others for failing to stop a rise of Nazism sooner.
It’s actually worse than that, rhetorically, because Bovino went from quietly attending a ceremony in his costume, as if nervously dog whistling, to flaunting himself prominently. He came out of the closet, if you will, under Trump to widely spread awful DHS propaganda videos of this coat with “WE WILL NOT BE STOPPED” Nazi overlays, while leading masked stormtroopers through American cities. The false equivalence of obscure quiet hidden acts with his recent loud violent “Blackshirt” propaganda is actually more damning evidence against Bovino.
Let’s examine the costume uniqueness precisely, like how it might have appeared under 1940s sedition charges.
He flaunts a military-style greatcoat (Mantel) with the characteristic long length, wide shoulders, and dramatic cut associated with German officer coats of the 1930s-40s.
It features the out-of-style double-breasted closure with prominent metal buttons. It’s such a dated/dead design because Nazi SS officer greatcoats featured this exact configuration, typically with silver buttons against black wool.
The exaggerated lapel width is also out-of-style and an absurd-looking detail. It matches the theatrical styling of Nazi officer dress uniforms, designed by SS officer Karl Diebitsch to project absurdist authority and oversized intimidation. The coats literally were designed by the SS themselves, for Hugo Boss’ slaves to produce.
The black trench coat has been associated with mass shooters in America not by coincidence. The Nazi SS had specifically adopted black as their signature color (1932-1939), making black military-cut greatcoats particularly loaded as power projection garment by aspirational terrorists threatening democracy.
This coat’s overall gestalt is a high collar, cinched waist, flared skirt below, which conveys the exact SS officer profile.
Black and white isn’t the only reference. Here is what Bovino looks like in color.
Bovino in October 2025 threw this gesture, the kind of thing banned in many countries yet always called ambiguous in America. Source: Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via Getty Images
Bovino was the only person among over a dozen federal agents invading Minneapolis while wearing a boxy greatcoat and scarf. Everyone else appeared in standard paramilitary tactical gear, as if a scene from Reagan’s shock troops committing crimes against humanity in Guatemala, Chad, Indonesia or Somalia. The costume of evil isn’t needed. But Bovino chose to propagandize it as Nazi stormtrooper operations through American neighborhoods, after ICE agents executed a 37-year-old mother of three.
Bovino then celebrated the execution by saying “Hats off to that ICE agent. I’m glad he made it out alive. I’m glad he’s with his family” invoking a Nazi hats off to Sippenhaft doctrine of family only for enforcers, orphans for anyone resisting.
The man wears Nazi shaped costume, throws a Nazi shaped salute, leads Nazi shaped paramilitary operations through American cities, celebrates Nazi shaped extrajudicial killing, for a Nazi shaped administration whose DHS account engages with self-identified Nazi sympathizers.
The huge Microsoft encryption mushroom cloud in the news isn’t a surprise, yet it still hurts to watch.
Microsoft just seized the dubious award for being the only major platform that enterprise customers can NOT trust.
Bikini Atoll, 1946: U.S. officials assured displaced residents the nuclear tests posed no long-term danger and they could return home soon. The atoll remains uninhabitable eight decades later—a testament to the gap between institutional safety claims and empirical reality.
The real moat of Microsoft, giving their main customers a safe island if you will, was that it represented enterprise values. The CEO has completely bombed this, within a decade, especially the past five years.
Every C-level who reads the news today about safety of their stored data has to answer to their board tomorrow: why are we still running Windows?
Get rid of it.
DO NOT delay.
The infamous Ireland encryption case, that we all spilled so much ink about five years ago, was a decision point.
…Microsoft was told by the US government to hand over data in Ireland. Had Microsoft built a private-key solution, linked to the national identity of users, they could have demonstrated an actual lack of access to that data. Instead you find Microsoft boasting to the public that state boundaries have been erased, your data moves with you wherever you go, while telling the US government that data in Ireland can’t be accessed.
Microsoft said back then they fought for privacy. The evidence however reveals Microsoft built a lock where they personally kept a copy of every key for them to use without transparency.
I warned about this back then, and unfortunately I’m right. They sold borderless access to users while claiming territorial limits to courts. The architecture was secretly designed to serve Microsoft’s interests, not corporate or anyone else’s privacy. Ireland was theater. Guam is the reveal.
Five years and the Brad Smith stage lipstick rubbed off, exposing a monster CEO that no corporation should be buying anything from anymore. As I asked three years ago:
Nadella’s hidden persona pushes a cut-throat culture of blood-curdling calls to jump into thoughtless action regardless of societal cost. A wolf in lamb’s clothing. So, will Microsoft’s Mister Hyde manifest in changes noticable to the public?
The investigators would have lacked what force of conviction in Guam without the keys? I suspect Brad Smith could have threaded this needle, maybe. He would have laid out some kind of ethical rules and order, maybe. Holding a key is dangerous. Immanuel Kant would have said you don’t give keys to the barbarians; you must lie. Instead, Microsoft did the exact opposite and went public with their data leaking Mister Hyde.
To be clear, I’m an old hat at encryption and digital forensics. I’m an advocate and practitioner of complex key management systems designed to serve lawful purposes. In 2019 I delivered field-level key management into one of the most popular databases, which I had initiated and championed in 2017. And I’ve also been known to defend Microsoft, despite hating them in almost every way for four decades. But this Guam news goes beyond the pale for me, and proves the Samaritan exceptions of Brad Smith were never the rule in Redmond.
The keys likely never were needed in Guam. The keys instead are a political statement about divisiveness and authority. Balance evaporated into propaganda, the kind that Microsoft probably thinks curries favor with the American dictator.
Being a long-time designer and practitioner of emergency exits for worker safety (e.g. avoiding horrible tragedy in Switzerland on New Year’s Eve), to me this is like reading how a construction company kept keys to give out on their authority, which coincides with their political corruption aims.
That’s neither proper design or operation of emergency exits. It’s not invalidation of the exits, it’s condemnation of the builder. It’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and Facebook levels of immorality. Ugh.
Microsoft blew it.
Boom.
They took a dangerous design that had the power of undermining their entire value proposition, like a nuclear warhead never meant to be used, and they just punched a giant self-destruct button, presumably as their proof of loyalty to a dictator.
Matt Green, renowned expert of cryptography (different from social science of key management, but adjacent), told Forbes:
If Apple can do it, if Google can do it, then Microsoft can do it. Microsoft is the only company that’s not doing this.
An ICE forensic expert in early 2025 court documents said they need encryption vendors to hand over keys:
…does not possess the forensic tools to break into devices encrypted with Microsoft BitLocker, or any other style of encryption.
Let me explain the gap between “just do it” and “just do it”, given they are exact opposite expectations. It’s all about the long-known political economy of enterprise software, creating small authority within larger authority. I mean here’s why it’s not a surprise failure, just a huge disappointment.
Apple and Google were built and marketed under libertarian values for radical user authority. Individuals are expected to hold absolute sovereignty, tied to themselves and no one else. Your device, your data, your keys, answering to no one ever (Steve Jobs infamously refused to register a license plate for his cars, Larry Page would rather exile himself to a deserted island than pay a tax). That’s the extreme individualist consumer model, ideologically committed to the “übermensch” who uses tools in opposition and against any other hierarchy.
Enterprises were wisely reluctant to adopt such consumer-only flat hierarchy devices because of obvious misalignment. The whole point of the enterprise is how an organization has leadership that holds mutually respected authority over its individuals.
Microsoft monetized the business of non-state hierarchy. That was the product. Exchange, Domains, SharePoint, Active Directory, Group Policies were all proprietary implementations of standards built on the assumption that any organization of any size wants to pay for trusted group controls. Admins and “master keys” developed as the whole point, with all the baggage of that phrase, while “golden keys” were a clear danger. The exec team can see everything, while role-based staff get limited and revokable grants. The enterprise entity, not the subjects, was the primary Microsoft customer (direct consumer focused products fizzled and failed repeatably).
Enterprise customers wanted governance with a known “master”, a parental-like authority structure. They paid for it. Microsoft delivered it. And it made corporations more legal, more aligned with safety in group contexts, not less.
…a user quit and held onto a company owned Windows laptop for several months. Upon getting it back, that user had either swapped the SSD or reimaged the drive to be used for other purposes. While attempting to do forensics on the drive, I was running into Bitlocker being an issue. The underlying issue is that we have all the key IDs and recovery keys in Entra, but this one did not match…
Who owns the hardware and software? Who owns the data? Who owns the keys?
The betrayal isn’t that Microsoft built hierarchical key systems, which remain a foundation of ethics in business. The betrayal is that Microsoft violated the balance, pierced the boundary instead of honoring it for the enterprise. The keys that were supposed to serve organizational authority far too easily serve someone outside the organization. The enterprise naturally sits between the individual and the state. The NGO even more so. Does your Church run on Windows? Uh oh.
Did the CEO of Microsoft think he could curry political favor by blowing away the balance? What’s the real trigger for such a key release? Apple and Google, by never building balance for hierarchy in the first place, accidentally ended up being more trustworthy by being extremist and less caring. They didn’t betray any enterprise authority because they never claimed to serve it properly. Anti-group is still anti-group, but what now for groups that don’t want to be so far out and anti-group?
Microsoft failed harder than Apple or Google ever did, by advertising they could deliver balance while delivering the exact opposite.
Goodbye Windows.
If you aren’t migrating keys out of Microsoft’s surrendered hands and removing their OS within the next 60 days, scrubbing Windows out of everything, you’re about as cooked as the Bikini Islanders who were told the mushroom cloud wasn’t anything to worry about.
The Microsoft radiation danger in your systems isn’t compatible with market values.
a blog about the poetry of information security, since 1995
