Roger Stone did a very stupid thing. Judge Amy Berman Jackson wasn’t amused. Ruling that Stone “fully understands the power of words, and the power of symbols. And there’s nothing ambiguous about crosshairs,” the federal judge modified the indicted Stone’s gag order to ban him from any public statement about his case outside of “fundraising and proclaiming his innocence.”

Judge ABJ makes it clear that this is his second chance. "This is not baseball. There will not be a third chance," she says. ABJ is clear that she will detain Stone ahead of trial if he violates the new gag order. And that's a wrap folks.

— Britain Eakin (@BritainEakin) February 21, 2019

WaPo reminds us how we got here:

In an appearance Monday on Infowars, the conspiracy-minded website, Stone described the image in the photo he posted as an “occult symbol.” But he did not explain what that supposed symbol might mean. “The fake news continues to make me a favorite target. This latest tempest is a perfect example about it,” he said.

“I took it down because it was open to misinterpretation and there’s a thousand stories now from the usual suspects saying Roger Stone posted a photo of Judge Jackson with a crosshairs on it,” he said. “That is false. That was not my intention, and I apologize if anyone got that impression. That was not the intent of my posting.”

He said he did not intend to threaten or disrespect the judge.

Jackson imposed the gag order Friday, telling Stone that he could not make statements to the media about his case near the federal courthouse in Washington, but imposing no other restrictions on his ability to make public comments.

The judge put greater constraints on attorneys and potential witnesses, telling them not to make statements that could prejudice jurors.
In the text accompanying the first post, Stone referred to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who brought the case against him.

“Through legal trickery Deep State hit man Robert S. Mueller III has guaranteed that my upcoming show trial is before Judge Amy Berman Jackson,” Stone wrote, adding that Jackson is “an Obama appointed judge” and the “#fixisin.”

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Feel the Bern, Part Deux? Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) announced he will once again seek the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in 2020.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, whose idiosyncratic 2016 presidential campaign earned him a national following and made him a leading figure in the modern progressive movement, announced Tuesday morning that he will seek the White House again in 2020.

“I am writing to let you know I have decided to run for president of the United States,” Sanders wrote in an e-mail blast to supporters officially announcing his candidacy, “I am asking you to join me today as part of an unprecedented and historic grassroots campaign that will begin with at least a million people from across the country.”

Sanders enters a growing Democratic primary field, which now includes five of his colleagues in the U.S. Senate, with a substantial advantage over his competitors in both name recognition and grassroots organizing strength, but will likely face difficulties in winning over some in the party following an at-times tense 2016 race against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Sanders also made the announcement on Vermont Public Radio Tuesday morning, saying he wanted to give his constituents a heads up about his plans.

“I wanted to let the people of the state of Vermont know about this first,” Sanders said. “And what I promise to do is, as I go around the country, is to take the values that all of us in Vermont are proud of — a belief in justice, in community, in grassroots politics, in town meetings — that’s what I’m going to carry all over this country.”

A self-described Democratic socialist and a political Independent, Sanders’ campaign brings with it a vast organizing network built during his 2016 campaign that saw him notch wins in key primary states like New Hampshire, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Unlike 2016, where Bernie Sanders became the de facto rallying point for anyone not satisfied with the carefully coordinated coronation of Hillary Rodham Clinton, he enters a wide-opened race with no clear frontrunner. With much of his “Democratic socialist” message having been co-opted to one degree or another by much of the party, including many of his fellow candidates, recapturing the ‘magic’ of a distant second place finish in 2016 might be a tall order, let alone winning the nomination.

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Who you going to believe, that fresh face or your lyin’ eyes?

“ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com uses AI to generate endless fake faces,” By James Vincent over at The Verge shows how that question is only going to get more complicated.

The ability of AI to generate fake visuals is not yet mainstream knowledge, but a new website — ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com — offers a quick and persuasive education.

The site is the creation of Philip Wang, a software engineer at Uber, and uses research released last year by chip designer Nvidia to create an endless stream of fake portraits. The algorithm behind it is trained on a huge dataset of real images, then uses a type of neural network known as a generative adversarial network (or GAN) to fabricate new examples.

“Each time you refresh the site, the network will generate a new facial image from scratch,” wrote Wang in a Facebook post. He added in a statement to Motherboard: “Most people do not understand how good AIs will be at synthesizing images in the future.”

The underlying AI framework powering the site was originally invented by a researcher named Ian Goodfellow. Nvidia’s take on the algorithm, named StyleGAN, was made open source recently and has proven to be incredibly flexible. Although this version of the model is trained to generate human faces, it can, in theory, mimic any source. Researchers are already experimenting with other targets. including anime characters, fonts, and graffiti.

The key is all in the algorithms, and opens up almost endless creative possibilities. It also opens Pandora’s Box for folks with nefarious intentions:

Then there are the downsides. As we’ve seen in discussions about deepfakes (which use GANs to paste people’s faces onto target videos, often in order to create non-consensual pornography), the ability to manipulate and generate realistic imagery at scale is going to have a huge effect on how modern societies think about evidence and trust. Such software could also be extremely useful for creating political propaganda and influence campaigns.

In other words, ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com is just the polite introduction to this new technology. The rude awakening comes later.

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There were some wondering if President Trump would sign the newly passed spending bill designed to avert government shutdown, or declare a national emergency for border funding. Apparently he will do both.

CNN:

Speaking on the Senate floor Thursday, McConnell sought to reassure lawmakers unsure of the President’s position before taking a vote on the plan, which falls short of providing the $5 billion in border wall funding the President had demanded.

“He has indicated he is prepared to sign the bill. He will also be issuing a national emergency declaration at the same time,” McConnell said. “I’ve indicated to him that I’m going to support the national emergency declaration. So for all of my colleagues, the President will sign the bill, we will be voting on it shortly.”

It provided reassurance amid questions about the President’s support for the deal, which was struck by a bipartisan panel of negotiators. Aides had said earlier Thursday they were concerned Trump would reject the spending compromise — a major shift from earlier this week when officials indicated privately that he would.

Advisers said Trump had grown increasingly concerned about what is contained in the 1,100-page legislation that was released late Wednesday evening.

The National Emergency declaration will almost certainly bring both Congressional and legal action against it. Stay tuned.

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