*FBI's opposition to releasing Leonard Peltier driven by vendetta, says ex-agent.*

The UK's new online identification requirement will effectively require all discussion platforms and search engines to verify the age of each user. The obvious way to do that is a repressive and tyrannical way: by making each user show government photo ID.

I reject commercial communications platforms, because they already deny users' freedom in various ways — instance, by demanding to identify the user and/or running their code in the user's computer. However, there are commercial search engines that currently do nothing wrong to the user. Will this law make them all engage in repression? Does the age verification requirement apply to search engines?

GNU Taler can be used to give people a way to verify their ages to a web site without giving the site any way to identify them. But this is not entirely finished yet.

The goals of this bill mostly seem valid to me; indeed, they may not go far enough. For instance, TikTok's practices seem to reduce teenagers' attention spans; should those practices be banned? I am not sure. However, the internet is a threat to democracy if tracks what people do and where they go.

US citizens: thank the Attorneys General who are defending the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the Supreme Court.

Everyone: call on Whole Foods to eliminate plastic packaging.

Everyone: call on Bayer-Monsanto to stop manufacturing neonicotinoid pesticides.