Category: District 5
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Let’s talk about beef.
It used to be a weeknight staple. This year it turned into a luxury. Ground beef hit record prices in 2026. Steaks did too. And here’s the part that should make you mad. The same four companies in the middle of all this get to decide what you pay AND what the rancher gets paid.…
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Automakers sold your driving data for pennies. You paid for it in your insurance bill.
So – I see people are actually starting to pay attention to who gets to see their private data! Awesome! Cause I can talk about this all day! I’ll start by restating my stance on private data: You should have to opt in to any use of it – and you should be paid if…
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The government won’t protect your data. The government is buying your data.
Your phone told somebody where you slept last night. Nobody hacked it. The apps on it are built to share your location, and a whole industry exists to buy it. Here’s the pipeline. You download a free app – a weather app, a game, a prayer app, a period tracker. The app grabs your location…
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A computer picked the wrong man. Police arrested him anyway. Memphis isn’t using this software – “at this time.”
Now that I have your attention on the Flock Camera issue – I think it is worth revisiting an issue I’ve been writing about that should be just as chilling – if not more. In January 2020, Detroit police arrested a man named Robert Williams on his front lawn, in front of his wife and…
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A camera photographed your car today. Nobody needed a warrant to search where you’ve been.
I’ve been doing some research on Flock cameras. Here’s what I found. A camera probably took a picture of your license plate today. It saved where you were, what you drive, what time you passed, and even the dents and bumper stickers on your car. You didn’t do anything wrong. It kept the picture anyway.…
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The world’s largest supercomputer is in our backyard. It’s time to ask what it’s doing for the people next door.
The world’s largest supercomputer sits in Memphis’ backyard. While 30,000 Memphians still don’t have internet access. I’ve written plenty about the baggage of the xAI data centers, and I’m not taking any of it back. The gas turbines went in without permits. The air got worse. The water and the power grid are carrying the…
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Congress’s own AI report told them how to protect you from AI. They did one thing on the list.
This morning I told you how the House built a bipartisan AI task force and then dissolved it the day the report dropped. I’ve been reading the report – this is what I found. A lot of the 85 items in the report are about helping the government and industry use more AI – adoption,…
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ICE’s own agents asked to leave ICE in 2018. Congress gave it $110 billion instead.
In 2018, nineteen of ICE’s own top agents wrote a letter to their boss asking to be split off from ICE. These weren’t protesters. They were the special agents in charge of Homeland Security Investigations – the part of ICE that chases child predators, drug cartels, and human traffickers. They told the Secretary of Homeland…
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Disaster mitigation is boring. It’s also why Dyersburg’s water plant survived – and my question for xAI.
Let’s talk about disaster mitigation, because that is an important part of a representative’s job. Disaster mitigation means doing the work before the disaster. You study what can go wrong, you plan for it, and you spend a little now so it costs a lot less later. One major national study found federal mitigation grants…