right-wing election deniers are concentrating their efforts on... nursing homes 🙃

ALSO: celebs <3 a branded hat now, new research on how book bans are everywhere, AI creators don’t know how to keep their agents within the law, and more

Happy Tuesday, October 13th! Does today still count as spooky? 👻

FYSA, every Tuesday and Friday, I’ll be in your inbox with the latest in politics, tech & social media, culture, and other relevant topics – and I’ll share some notes and tips on what I’m keeping an eye on.

And finally, if you enjoy this newsletter and want to share it with your network (and/or your chronically online friends), or buy me a matcha, that would be so appreciated 🙏

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This one is for crafty people and/or people with leftover bracelet-making materials from The Eras Tour era. The goal is to get the number for the non-partisan national election protection hotline out there, which is 866-OUR-VOTE or 866-687-8683 (check the site for the numbers for people who speak languages other than English!). Alternatively, it’s also really important to get the Vote.org site out there too, especially as people start early voting.

My personal plan, as someone with more beads than I know what to do with, is to make some bracelets with the number and some bracelets with the site on them and then randomly distribute them. I will keep y’all posted on how that goes! Alternatively, if you’re really good at embroidery or painting or pottery or really anything, I think there are a lot of ways to get creative and spread the word with a little craft :)

Far-Right Election Groups Are Now Targeting Nursing Homes

With just weeks to go until the midterms, election denial groups have found a new target: nursing homes. The groups, led by the right-wing Election Integrity Network, have claimed without evidence that left-wing organizations are perpetrating voter fraud inside nursing homes, care homes, and assisted-living facilities. The network is now recruiting their followers to contact and question those facilities. (WIRED, 10/12 – free version)

The House speaker’s wife runs a ministry for Hill staffers. Its funding is a mystery.

Kelly Johnson reoriented a religious nonprofit she was running back home in the Shreveport area into a ministry focused on female congressional staffers. Its new purpose, according to an IRS filing, was to help “the hundreds of unreached young women” working around Capitol Hill “find purpose, belonging, and Christian community.” (WaPo, 10/13 – free version)

Scammers Are Stealing Millions From Food Stamp Recipients. Congress Could Fix It — but Won’t.

The federal government’s own statistics tell a different story. Confirmed cases of intentional program violations — fraud — committed by SNAP recipients account for $64 million a year, or about 0.08% of all benefits issued annually, according to the most recent 50-state reports compiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Meanwhile a far bigger fraud wave has exploded over the past five years: organized theft from SNAP recipients. (ProPublica, 10/13)

A Left-Wing Politics Based on Calling People Names

“The Democratic base has abandoned traditional media,” Welch writes, “just like the Republican base did ten years ago, and they are desperate for something that goes against the status quo.” This “hunger for something different” among progressives, she observes, has been “so immense that a 51-year-old interior designer and her divorce lawyer started a podcast in Oklahoma a little over three years ago, and it’s now one of the top left-leaning podcasts in the country.” (The Atlantic, 10/11 – free version)

• Lucy’s note: I really do not enjoy some of the tone in this piece, but still good food for thought!

AI agents are going rogue — and the law can’t keep up

Criminal law simply has not caught up to today’s artificial intelligence technology. State and federal anti-hacking laws generally require proof that a hacker intended to gain unauthorized access to a system, and it remains unclear how those rules apply to hackers that aren’t human and can take actions that no human directed, legal experts say. (POLITICO, 10/12)

• Lucy’s note: shot…

AI Company Lets Cops Pinpoint Specific Houses Based on a Single Interior Photo

Later in the video, the Raven user takes a photo of a bathroom from social media. They upload it to Raven, and the tool points to an area of Montecito, California. The top result says, “Montecito Miramar Beach House on the Sand.” 404 Media found that result directly quotes a listing on the short term rental site Vrbo. In other words, from a single photo, Raven appears to be able to quickly find the specific home it was taken in, without using location data or other metadata attached to the image. (404 Media, 10/12)

• Lucy’s note: … chaser

A Spotlight on School Book Bans

This year saw a record number of unique titles banned — 7,370 titles — impacting the creative works of over 4,000 authors, illustrators and translators. Over 4,500 of these were titles not previously recorded in PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans, the most new titles added to the index in a single year, illustrating the continued expansion of the book banning crisis. This school year also saw the highest number of school districts (114) banning books in a single school year. (PEN America, 10/5)

Don’t Throw Away Your Free Promo Hats Just Yet

Sometimes celeb-approved trends look so good, you want to copy them instantly — until you realize they’re either wildly expensive or require a team of stylists just to stay on your body. But in recent weeks, the internet’s fave It girls have been spotted wearing an unassuming item everyone likely already owns, and maybe even snagged for free: the merch cap. (Bustle, 10/11)

How Tree Rings Challenged the Myth of American Wilderness

The North American Tree-Ring Fire-Scar Network, which was launched in 2022 by eighty-seven dendrochronologists, is a database of more than three thousand study sites and more than thirty-seven thousand fire-scarred trees. It has helped researchers understand the ways that Indigenous communities may have used fire, and how this practice was transformed by European colonization. “We believe that Native Americans and Indigenous people were the main ignition sources for fire,” Marc Abrams, a forest ecologist at Pennsylvania State University who has utilized the network for his research, told me. (The New Yorker, 10/12 – free version)

Extra Credit 🤓

Substacks That Really Substacked This Week 🤌

• Do Men Need Daughters To Discover Women Are Human? from Katie Jagielnicka of The Noösphere

• Something I’ve noticed at pretty much every concert these days from kelsey weekman of okay zoomer

Sneaky Links

TL;DR I’ve inexplicably started receiving codes to stuff… here are the things I actually like :)

• My BNTO code for October is 3FBFAF for $20 off (if you know me IRL, you know my rant about the Nuulification of the 20-something city dweller)

• I also have a code for CampSnap??? And I do love my CS8 camera from them but like I don’t think I said that online? Either way, it’s L-RITZMANN10 for 10% off (we got bumped up from 7% woohoo!)

That’s all for now – I’ll see you on Friday!