Meet the Palestinian Teens Trying to Win Robotics Gold

Meet the Palestinian Teens Trying to Win Robotics Gold:

Next week, five teens from Palestine will head to Panama to compete in one of the world’s largest youth robotics competitions. The goal? To win—and then teach STEM to their peers displaced by the Israel-Hamas war.

App Meant To Out Kirk Critics Doxxed Its Own Users

App Meant To Out Kirk Critics Doxxed Its Own Users:

Straight Arrow News reports:

An app for anonymously reporting individuals accused of speaking ill against conservative activist Charlie Kirk leaked personal data about its users. The app, known as “Cancel the Hate,” was taken offline on Thursday amid an investigation into the data leak by Straight Arrow News.

Launched in the wake of Kirk’s assassination on Sept. 10, Cancel the Hate aims to “hold individuals accountable for their public words,” according to its website. It calls on users to “express concern” by submitting “intel” on alleged offenders, including their names, locations and employers.

Cancel the Hate was founded by conservative activist Jason Sheppard, who is best known for selling fentanyl testing kits with comedian Roseanne Barr, vaccine skeptic Dr. Robert Malone and right-wing journalist Lara Logan. The website says all reports must “include verifiable information about the submitter.”

Read the full article. According to the piece, the email addresses and phone numbers of cultists submitting to the app were exposed due to security flaws.

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When CBS Canceled The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour for Criticizing the American Establishment and the Vietnam War (1969)

When CBS Canceled The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour for Criticizing the American Establishment and the Vietnam War (1969):

Rigorously clean-cut, competent on the acoustic guitar and double bass, and seldom dressed in anything more daring than cherry-red blazers, Tom and Dick Smothers looked like the antithesis of nineteen-sixties rebellion. When they first gained national recognition with their variety show The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, they must have come off to many young viewers as the kind of act of which their mother — or even grandmother — would approve. But the brothers’ cultivatedly square, neo-vaudevillian appearance was deceiving, as CBS would soon find out when the two took every chance to turn their program into a satirical, relentlessly authority-challenging, yet somehow wholesome showcase of the counterculture.

The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour premiered in February of 1967, and its first season “featured minimal controversial content,” writes Sarah King at U.S. History Scene. Thereafter, “the show became increasingly political. The brothers invited activist celebrities onto their show, including folk singers Pete Seeger and Joan Baez and singer-actor Harry Belafonte.

The show also produced its own political material criticizing the Vietnam War and the politicians who supported it,” not least President Lyndon Johnson. Bringing on Seeger was a daring move, given that he’d been blacklisted from network television for the better part of two decades, though CBS’s censors made sure to cut out the most politically sensitive parts of his act.

Even more so was the brothers’ own performance, with George Segal, of Phil Ochs’s “Draft Dodger Rag,” which they ended by urging their audience to “make love, not war.” All this can look fairly tame by today’s standards, but it locked the show — which had become top-rated, holding its own in a time slot against the cultural phenomenon that was Bonanza — into a grudge match with its own network. Before the third season, CBS’ higher-ups demanded that each show be turned in ten days in advance, ostensibly in order to undergo review for sensitive material. In one instance, they claimed that the deadline hadn’t been met and aired a re-run instead, though it may not have been entirely irrelevant that the intended program contained a tribute by Baez to her then-husband, who was being sent to prison for refusing to serve in the military.

CBS did broadcast Baez’s performance on a later date, after clipping out the reference to the specific nature of her husband’s offense. A similar struggle took place around the “sermonettes” delivered by David Steinberg, one of which you can see in the video above. The irreverence toward U.S. foreign policy, religion, and much else besides in these and other segments eventually proved too much for the network, which fired the brothers after it had already given the green light to a fourth season of the Comedy Hour. Though they successfully sued CBS for breach of contract thereafter, they never did regain the same level of televisual prominence they’d once enjoyed, if enjoy be the word. At any rate, the fallout of all this controversy firmly installed the Smothers Brothers in the pantheon of twentieth-century free-speech warriors, and their experience reminds us still today that, without the freedom to give offense, there can be no comedy worthy of the name.

Related content:

Watch Steve Martin Make His First TV Appearance: The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (1968)

When The Who (Literally) Blew Up The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1967

Watch 3000 Years of Art, a 1968 Experimental Film That Takes You on a Visual Journey Through 3,000 Years of Fine Art

Revisit Turn-On, the Innovative TV Show That Got Canceled Right in the Middle of Its First Episode (1969)

Pink Lady and Jeff: Japan’s Biggest Pop Musicians Star in One of America’s Worst-Reviewed TV Shows (1980)

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.

The Situation: Committing Impeachable Offenses in a Hurry

The Situation: Committing Impeachable Offenses in a Hurry: Why is the president in such a rush to prosecute his political opponents?

DOJ Deletes Study Showing Domestic Terrorists Are Most Often Right Wing

DOJ Deletes Study Showing Domestic Terrorists Are Most Often Right Wing:

The Department of Justice has removed a study showing that white supremacist and far-right violence “continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism” in the United States. 

The study, which was conducted by the National Institute of Justice and hosted on a DOJ website was available there at least until September 12, 2025, according to an archive of the page saved by the Wayback Machine. Daniel Malmer, a PhD student studying online extremism at UNC-Chapel Hill, first noticed the paper was deleted.

“The Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs is currently reviewing its websites and materials in accordance with recent Executive Orders and related guidance,” reads a message on the page where the study was formerly hosted. “During this review, some pages and publications will be unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.”

TX Officials Rush To Stem Growing Measles Outbreak

TX Officials Rush To Stem Growing Measles Outbreak:

Spectrum News reports:

DSHS reported eight of the cases are school-aged children and two are children under the age of 5. Health officials say seven of the patients have been hospitalized.

According to data from the state, Gaines County has one of the highest percentages of vaccine exempt students from kindergarten through 12th grade. The South Plains Public Health District (SPPHD) says these cases are the first in Gaines County in over 20 years.

In a Facebook post, Seminole Emergency Medical Services shared the SPPHD is offering measles screenings and shots this week. Health officials warn more cases are likely in Gaines County with measles being highly contagious.

Read the full article.

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How The End Of Banking Oversight Benefits Musk’s X

How The End Of Banking Oversight Benefits Musk’s X:

Bloomberg News reports:

In another weekend takeover of a federal agency’s operations, staffers from an efficiency initiative led by billionaire Elon Musk helped to effectively shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — as they gained access to an array of the bureau’s protected information.

The actions began last Thursday, when four young staffers working under Musk for DOGE, showed up at CFPB’s Washington headquarters.

At first, they had what was described as read-only access to a limited array of documents, including the agency’s internal personnel files, procurement records and budgeting and financial data, according to an email shared among CFPB officials.

Musk Watch reports:

With Elon Musk’s social media platform X poised to launch a digital wallet and peer-to-peer payment services, Musk’s associates have been granted access to confidential information about X’s competitors, an official at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) told Musk Watch. Staffers at DOGE, a White House body led by Musk, embedded themselves at the CFPB late last week.

Last year, the CFPB said it would begin treating digital payment apps “just like large banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions already supervised by the CFPB.” The CFPB also filed a lawsuit accusing banks of failing to properly mitigate fraud on the digital payment app Zelle. Musk has celebrated Vought’s hostile takeover of the agency. “CFPB RIP,” he wrote in a Friday post alongside a tombstone emoji.

There’s much more at the second link.

DOGE-Backed Halt at CFPB Comes Amid Musk’s Plans for ‘X’ Digital Wallet DOGE-Backed Halt at CFPB Comes Amid Musk’s Plans for ‘X’ Digital Wallet www.bloomberg.com/news/feature…

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— John Lothian News (@johnlothiannews.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 7:23 AM

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