iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Brant Houston @branthouston.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

New DOGE Social Security screw-up: DOGE made a change in the field (column) for bank accounts, which are nine digits. A change at the SSA home office limits field to eight digits, thus truncating the last number, and made direct deposit undeliverable. Changing your online profile will not help.

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Brant Houston @branthouston.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

The Trump administration attack on nonprofits continues: Nonprofit Quarterly reports on attacks on the nonprofit sector by the Trump administration, which just issued yet another memorandum seeking to “review,” and cut funding to, nonprofits that “undermine the national interest.”

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Reposted by Brant Houston

David Boardman @dboardman.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

Here’s some dished-up truth for your Sunday brunch. Bottom line: the White House is lying about USAID. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

washingtonpost.com

Analysis | The White House’s wildly inaccurate claims about USAID spending

Eleven out of 12 claims about the agency’s work are misleading, wrong or lack context.

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Brant Houston @branthouston.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

The impact of the destruction of USAID is now hitting Midwest universities. This was a $30 million project research.illinois.edu/news/feature...

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Reposted by Brant Houston

Phil Williams @philinvestigates.com · 08/02/2025

An internal email reviewed by WIRED calls DOGE staff’s access to federal payments systems “the single greatest insider threat risk the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has ever faced.” www.wired.com/story/treasu...

wired.com

A US Treasury Threat Intelligence Analysis Designates DOGE Staff as ‘Insider Threat’

An internal email reviewed by WIRED calls DOGE staff's access to federal payments systems “the single biggest insider threat risk the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has ever faced.”

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Reposted by Brant Houston

Phil Williams @philinvestigates.com · 07/02/2025

Sources tell WIRED that the ability of DOGE's Marko Elez to alter code controlling trillions in federal spending was rescinded days after US Treasury and White House officials said it didn't exist. www.wired.com/story/treasu...

wired.com

The US Treasury Claimed DOGE Technologist Didn’t Have ‘Write Access’ When He Actually Did

Sources tell WIRED that the ability of DOGE's Marko Elez to alter code controlling trillions in federal spending was rescinded days after US Treasury and White House officials said it didn't exist.

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Brant Houston @branthouston.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

The Global Investigative Journalism Network, an association of 250 nonprofit newsrooms spread across 90 countries and staffed by courageous investigative journalists issued this statement today. We also are helping our members find alternative sources of revenue. gijn.org/stories/gijn...

gijn.org

GIJN Urges Restoration of USAID Funds

GIJN calls upon elected officials in the US to reverse the catastrophic action of withholding USAID funds from independent investigative newsrooms around the world.

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Brant Houston @branthouston.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

The best review of how DeepSeek really works as opposed to standard business reporting www.digitaldigging.org/p/deepseek-t...

digitaldigging.org

DeepSeek: The Real Price of China's AI

When Cost Efficiency Meets State Control

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Brant Houston @branthouston.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

No country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law, and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more. Mark Twain, The Gilded Age

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Brant Houston @branthouston.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

One of the better "fact checking Mark Zuckerberg" articles. Time to subscribe to Mantzarlis’s newsletter, Faked Up "He should also probably be aware that as many as 90% of Community Notes never get displayed on X." www.niemanlab.org/2025/01/zuck...

niemanlab.org

Let’s fact-check Mark Zuckerberg’s fact-checking announcement

Zuckerberg didn’t mention that a big chunk of the content fact-checkers have been flagging is not political speech, but the low-quality spammy clickbait that Meta platforms have commodified.

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