DoorDash Foreign Policy - Issue #17 of 2024
Newsletter for the week of May 20th, 2024
- Ghost Gunner G80 Jig
- Tokarev Beta now open
- New York cheaps out on gun buybacks
- 10-year sentence for ghost guns
- American foreign aid
- Daniel Perry's pardon
- AI writing police reports from body-worn cameras
...and much more.
Defense Distributed G80 Jig Set Now Available
Defense Distributed recently made its G80 jig set available for purchase. The unit retails for $149, allowing a builder to mill an 80% Glock-style fire control unit in either a bench vise or a Ghost Gunner 3-S machine.
The jig is designed to work with components like the Polymer 80 Spectre 2 80% FCU. Proceeds from this product go towards pro-gun legal efforts in VanDerStok v. Garland.
Tokarev Beta Now Open
Good news for Tokarev fans:
Rail kits are available from Riptide Rails [HERE].
New York Buybacks
New York hosted two gun buybacks this weekend. Assault rifles were netting $500 each, but 3D-printed and homemade guns are only worth $25, even if you turned in more than one. And here I was under the impression that 3D-printed firearms were a huge problem...
Brooklyn Resident Receives 10-Year Sentence for ‘Ghost Guns’ and 50 Rounds
In April, Judge Abena Darkeh made headlines after reportedly telling Dexter Taylor's defense attorney, "Do not bring the Second Amendment into this courtroom. It doesn’t exist here. So you can’t argue Second Amendment. This is New York."
Well, Dexter Taylor has now been sentenced to 10 years in prison for criminal possession of firearms.
Dexter Taylor, a 53-year-old from Bushwick, has received a 10-year prison sentence from Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Abena Darkeh for his involvement with ‘ghost guns.’
In a case that highlights New York City’s growing concern over ‘ghost guns,’ Taylor was convicted on multiple counts, including two charges of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon and three of third-degree criminal possession.
En Bloc Press
Daniel Perry Pardoned
Texas Governor Greg Abbott last week pardoned Daniel Perry for shooting and killing an armed BLM activist during a protest in 2020. Our take? It's the right move.
To be sure, I don't blame a man for taking a rifle into the street and attempting to impose his will on the world. When things get far enough out of hand, this behavior is to be expected. You can't stop it; it's a man's prerogative. But – when you do bring out the iron – you are voluntarily accepting the risk of getting sprayed down by an Uber driver in front of your horrified girlfriend.
Read the full opinion piece below:
En Bloc Press
Guns Out
Friends Lafayette Lee and Voodoo have a new article out at IM—1776. Give it a read.
The gun is foundational to American culture and identity, and without it, Americans would cease to be Americans. What is the minuteman without a musket, the buckskin without his long rifle, or the cowboy without his Colt? They become just another man, unable to stand upright before human cruelty and the vast indifference of the universe.
REC7 DI Redux: Popular Barrett Rifle Back in Production This Summer
Barrett is bringing back the popular REC7 rifle:
“We are thrilled to be able to offer the REC7 DI once again to our customers,” said Bryan James, president of Barrett. “This rifle embodies the legacy of quality and reliability that the Barrett name represents. We are confident that shooters will once again appreciate the exceptional performance and craftsmanship of the REC7 DI.”
Aid for Gaza will soon flow from pier project just finished by US military, Pentagon says
America's DoorDash foreign policy is marching along, as a floating pier built by the US military on the coast of Gaza is now completed. The pier will allow shipments of food and other aid to be offloaded and trucked into the strip for distribution to Hamas militants Palestinians in the war-torn region.
The U.S. military finished installing a floating pier off the Gaza Strip early Thursday, and officials were making final checks before trucks begin driving onto the shore to deliver pallets of aid.
The pier project, expected to cost $320 million, was ordered more than two months ago by U.S. President Joe Biden to help starving Palestinians as Israeli restrictions on border crossings and heavy fighting hinder food and other supplies from making it into Gaza.
We're calling this model DoorDash foreign policy because it involves spending too much money on something that's both unhealthy and non-essential, will take longer than expected, will end up being more complicated than it should be, and will ultimately result in an angry immigrant on your doorstep.
The cynical (and probably the most realistic) forecast for this project is that it will serve both as a way for American money to flow into Palestine and for Muslim refugees (most of whom are at least sympathetic, if not outright loyal, to Hamas) to be shipped out of the warzone and into American and European cities.
At this point in the war, America has perpetually sent money and goods to both sides of the conflict while simultaneously failing to project the force or influence necessary to re-open the Red Sea to Western interests.
To the untrained eye, spending billions of dollars to support both sides of a foreign holy war might seem like a bad thing (especially when the war has no fundamental impact on the lives of the average American taxpayer). But prominent commentators on both sides of the aisle have assured us that there's actually nothing more important.
The Israeli Party (er, the GOP) even went so far as to pass a House bill (titled the Israel Security Assistance Act) last week stipulating that the Department of Defense and the Department of State wouldn't be getting paid unless Israel gets paid, too.
The legislation urges the "expeditious delivery" of defense articles and services to Israel, and reaffirms Israel's right to self-defense. It would withhold funds for certain administration officials such as secretary of defense and secretary of state until such defense articles are delivered.
The bill is symbolic and will not advance in the Democrat-controlled Senate, but even putting pen to paper on something like this makes it clear that the interests of American citizens are the absolute lowest on the hierarchy of things elected officials care about.
Source: X/Twitter
Arkansas Supreme Court Supports Election Integrity
Last week, The Arkansas Supreme Court delivered a big win for election integrity, closing several avenues for 'election fortification.'
According to Thursday’s order, the League of Women Voters argued the acts violated various provisions of the state Constitution and would make it more difficult for eligible voters to cast a ballot. The state argued the laws were enacted to protect election integrity and promote public confidence in election security.
After the circuit court held the laws unconstitutional and permanently enjoined their enforcement, the defendants appealed to the state’s high court, which overturned the ruling Thursday.
The rules in question:
- Require voters who cast a provisional ballot to provide a photo ID by Monday after an election if their vote is to be counted.
- Stop non-voters (such as activists, journalists, etc.) from standing within 100 feet of a polling place.
- Require county clerks to match the signature on an absentee ballot with the voter's registration.
- Shorten the deadline for absentee ballot delivery.
In a sane world, rules like this would not be controversial.
Cops Using AI That Automatically Generates Police Reports From Body Cam Footage
Police supply company Axon has developed an AI product that generates police reports from body-worn audio/video.
"It’s kind of a nightmare," Electronic Frontier Foundation surveillance technologies investigations director Dave Maass told Forbes. "Police, who aren't specialists in AI, and aren’t going to be specialists in recognizing the problems with AI, are going to use these systems to generate language that could affect millions of people in their involvement with the criminal justice system."
This is an interesting conundrum. As the concept of trust erodes completely from society, it becomes necessary to capture indisputable evidence (audio/video footage) of all interactions between parties where a power disparity exists.
I think body-worn cameras are a net positive concept. But it's obviously a dumb idea to make someone wear a camera all day and then spend their free moments transcribing the footage captured by the camera into a written report.
Think about this for a moment – the entire reason cops wear body cameras is because police (and suspects) are known for lying in their written statements and testimonies. If a cop can't be trusted to do their job without a camera recording each of their interactions, why would you trust him to tell you what's on the camera?
I'm not saying AI is the right tool for the job, but the current way of doing things has some big flaws.
California Seeks to Limit Self-Checkout
A proposed state law in California would limit self-checkout at grocers and other retailers. The policy is nominally designed to curb rampant theft, but some are also suggesting that it's a way to force businesses to reverse layoffs that occurred after the state imposed a $20/hr minimum wage. Maybe it's a mix of both.
Soto DeBerry, founder and director of the Prosecutors Alliance of California, weighed in, offering the brilliant statement, "There's data on this that shows there is stuff that happens at self-checkouts." Powerful.
Post Millennial Pwned
If you're a Post Millennial reader, you should know that your account details are probably now an open secret. Over 26 million account credentials were stolen and posted to hacker forums and similar sites.
The hackers reportedly accessed and stole various sensitive data, including mailing lists, subscriber details, and personal information of the platform's writers and editors. This exposed data encompasses full names, email addresses, usernames, account passwords, IP addresses, phone numbers, physical addresses, and genders, posing serious privacy and security threats to those involved.
Read More:
Anthony Isaacs
OpenAI will use Reddit posts to train ChatGPT under new deal
You can expect ChatGPT outputs to become (even more) cringe in the near future, as the AI model will soon be mainlining some of the worst content on the internet: Reddit posts.
Stuff posted on Reddit is getting incorporated into ChatGPT, Reddit and OpenAI announced on Thursday. The new partnership grants OpenAI access to Reddit’s Data API, giving the generative AI firm real-time access to Reddit posts.
Reddit content will be incorporated into ChatGPT "and new products," Reddit's blog post said. The social media firm claims the partnership will "enable OpenAI’s AI tools to better understand and showcase Reddit content, especially on recent topics." OpenAI will also start advertising on Reddit.
McDonald’s adds sad option to replace Happy Meal smile
McDonald's restaurants in the UK have marked mental health awareness week by selling Happy Meals that are...not happy. The packaging for the iconic meal is a blank slate of red, and the box reads, "It's okay not to feel happy all the time."
Inside the container are a variety of stickers, each representing a different mood. The child may then apply the appropriate 'mood sticker' to the box to signal his emotional state.
McDonald’s distributed 2.5 million not-so-Happy Meals to over one thousand locations in the UK — and some locations also received a range of emotion stickers for kids to replace the iconic smile with another emotion of their choosing.
The correct move for any parent, of course, is to order this meal and remove all possible options but the smile before presenting it to your child. And when your child asks where the other options are, reply: “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
-Lee
