QAnon

Photo: AP/Getty/Gizmodo (Getty Images)Late Thursday night, a giant, mysterious balloon floated over the United States, apparently by way of the Pacific Ocean all the way to sensitive air space in Montana.On Friday, the Chinese government said the floating thing was not a spy balloon—honestly, fair, because the Pentagon said such an aircraft would have little intelligence gathering value—but rather a “civilian airship” meant for meteorological research that had gone way, way, way, incredibly off course.“The Chinese side…

Photo: Joe Raedle (Getty Images)Donald Trump is coming back to Facebook and Instagram.Meta, Facebook’s parent company, made the announcement late Wednesday, a little more than two years after it banned the former president from its flagship platform for his role in instigating the January 6 attacks on the U.S. capitol. The notice of Trump’s reinstatement comes just one week after this campaign sent a letter to Meta demanding they let him back on the platform. When he’ll be back is uncertain. Facebook and Instagram didn’t…

Photo by Karwai Tang/WireImage Two-time Academy Award winner Tom Hanks exists on that rare pedestal of celebrities that can be deemed as universally beloved, which places him among a very small few that also includes the likes of Keanu Reeves, Brendan Fraser, Dolly Parton, and a small handful of others at most. And yet, because the internet is a scary place where the rules of logic frequently do not apply, America’s Dad has been roped into the ongoing and utterly nonsensical QAnon conspiracy theory. Quite how…

Twitter was unresponsive when the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority reached out for clarification on the suspension. Image: Ritu Manoj Jethani (Shutterstock), Rick Loomis (Getty Images)As Twitter CEO Elon Musk continues to ban and reinstate whoever the hell he wants, an unlikely victim has fallen into his crosshairs: The Washington DC Bus system. At the same time, the company reinstated Ron Watkins, the rumored leader of QAnon.Elon Musk has a bone to pick with transportation-related Twitter accounts. A report…

Tom King has brought back the Dingbats Of Danger Street, Warlord, the Creeper and The Green Team to DC Comics - but it is a QAnon plot? | Tom King does like to have fun with DC Comics' superheroes. Even if not everyone finds them fun. For the record, I do. Today, he does both with Human Target and Danger Street for DC Comics, with the Dingbats Of Danger Street, The Outsiders (including Travis Morgan, The Warlord)… …Doctor Fate's helmet, The Creeper's alter ego as a right-wing TV commentator… … and anyone else he can…

A conspiracy theorist urging Americans to burn voting machines, an anti-Muslim activist posting a photo with a gun, a retired general who called for a coup -- Elon Musk's Twitter has reinstated thousands of once-banned accounts. Twitter has turned into what campaigners call a cesspool of misinformation, hate-filled conspiracies and racial slurs amid what appears to be reduced content moderation in recent weeks following mass layoffs and an exodus of key staff focused on user safety. Musk, a self-proclaimed free speech…

Image: Carl Court (Getty Images)German authorities dismantled what’s being called a far-right terrorist group that was behind alleged plans to overthrow the government. Police arrested 25 suspected conspirators who had set up and communicated on several channels on the platform Telegram to plan the coup that authorities believe would have likely resulted in violence.Telegram has been a source of concern for authorities who found the app played an integral part in allowing hate speech to run rampant and promote QAnon…

The Twitter logo is seen on the awning of the building that houses the Twitter office in New York, Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2022. Photo: Mary Altaffer (AP)A hodgepodge of Twitter’s worst individuals were sporting shiny blue check marks on Friday, including notorious punching bag and literal neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, thanks to the ill-conceived money grab of the platform’s new owner, Elon Musk.In addition to Spencer, who’s argued on behalf of turning the U.S. into a white ethnostate, Musk’s new blue check marks are being donned…

Credit: Chart: The Conversation, CC-BY-ND Source: Wintemute, et al. There is much talk about political violence in America these days. Garen Wintemute, a University of California, Davis, scholar who researches firearm violence, has recently led a nationwide survey research project on political violence. The Conversation U.S. asked him for a portrait of what Americans think about political violence as the midterm elections…

The New York Times alleges that Ron Watkins began posting as Q in 2018—Watkins has denied these claims.Image: Rick Loomis (Getty Images)Ron Watkins, the alleged mastermind behind the QAnon conspiracy, has shut down his campaign for an Arizona congressionalseat. Watkins was running as a Republican and announced the termination of his campaign to the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday.QAnon is as much a part of Republican politics as logical fallacies are, but the conspiracy theory’s stranglehold on democracy appears…