Weather Report #9: A Dystopian Novel about the US Prison System and an Underrated Techno-Horror Cyberpunk Gem
Consuming 04/27/2025
On Monday, I published this piece about the largest counterintelligence training exercise in the Army Reserve's history. It was a piece about two years in the making because that's when I put out the FOIA that led to getting the documents cited in the article. Even though I got an article out of it, the response to my request was bittersweet because there were a lot of records that would have revealed a lot more about the exercise that are allegedly inaccessible to the agency. And while I'm not an expert by any means, that seems very strange because the government has a legal mandate to hold onto records like those. So, I'm filling another FOIA about my FOIA to see what the internal discussion was like about my records.
I learned a few things from writing that post, primarily that articles published on Monday have the lowest open rates out of my whole backlog. That date is going to be off limits while I figure out what days work best. The other thing I learned (and keep learning) is that it's very hard to get eyes on the stuff you self-publish, even when you're the only guy doing this type of work about Puerto Rico. With that said, if you like this newsletter and find it useful, please share it with your friends, family, or anybody you think could find it interesting because word-of-mouth is the best way to grow this type of newsletter.
Anyway, here's the roundup for this week:
- A scoop about how migrants are being arrested while trying to leave the US for their home country, seemingly against the Trump administration's push for self-deportation
- The lawyer in San Juan's climate lawsuit responds to plagiarism allegations
- A dystopian novel about the prison-industrial complex and a not-too-distant future where inmates in the U.S. prison system are forced to compete in gladiatorial battles to the death to earn their freedom.
- An underrated techno-horror cyberpunk film about a "memory dealer" in turn-of-the-millenium Los Angeles who gets a snuff film dumped in his lap and has to find the killer while being pursued by killer cops
- Essays and articles about Puerto Rico's tax breaks and blackouts, the apocalyptic vision guiding the American Right, how Trump's tax cuts keep affecting NOAA, who the "green transition" helps and who it leaves behind, how the state is building on the Stop Cop City terrorism charges as the new standard of state repression, and how the Trump administration decided to leave Kilmar Abrego García in CECOT.
- Three alt/indie tracks I'm bumping this week
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What I Did This Week
I've previously talked about how I'm going to be doing a series of stories about Trump's immigration policy and its effects on Puerto Rico for The Latino Newsletter. Well, the first article in that series dropped on Tuesday and it's a scoop about how – even though the administration is pushing for self-deportation and floating a plan to pay for migrants' airfare – federal immigration authorities are arresting migrants trying to leaves the United States for their home country.
Getting people to read stories about Puerto Rico is always hard. When you mix that with stories about immigration, it's even harder to get people to read them. So, I'm really happy that it's getting a pretty good reception on social media.
I have no idea why the link isn't showing up like other article links do, but you can find the story here: https://thelatinonewsletter.org/p/several-migrants-puerto-rico-arrested-leave-the-us
Weekly Updates
San Juan Climate Lawsuit Attorney Responds to Plagiarism Allegations
A couple weeks back, I talked about how the Municipality of San Juan's attorney was accused of plagiarism and being uncommunicative by the judge in their case against the fossil fuel industry. David Efron, the lawyer, filed his response to the allegations.
Efron alleges that he "collaborates" with the lawyers in the 37 municipalities (the Bayamón case), which is why the lawsuits are basically identical. He also writes that they did not join the other lawsuit because it was too far along and they did not want to delay proceedings.
"It was so obvious to all that we were using plaintiff's motions in the other case to respond to identical motions by the defendants in both cases that we did not attribute the original motions to plaintiffs' attorney in the other," he said about why his motions were basically carbon copies of the Bayamón case. They will start attributing them from now on, he explained. The two cases are "identical and practically forces" the parties in both cases to file similar motions, he wrote. Then, he throws the plagiarism allegations back at the corporations, who have also used incredibly similar motions in both cases (true).
Meanwhile, when it comes to not communicating efficiently, their defense is pretty simple. Efron says they did communicate efficiently, answering every communication within one or two business days. When they didn't, it was just a simple misunderstanding, he writes.
One thing that stood out to me was that he mentions it's okay to copy without attribution in the legal field because lawyers already "copy and/or paste the work" of associates and law clerks "without repercussion or recrimination... None dare call that plagiarism." He then goes on to say that form books, Westlaw, etc... exist so plagiarism can't be an ethics violation, "even more so in this new world of Artificial Intelligence in the law."
That's an incredibly bad look. Maybe those associates and clerks should get the attribution they deserve, especially because they do a lot of the labour that upholds the courts. Also, yeesh, maybe the mention of AI will bring him trouble because judges are really mad at lawyers who use it.
You can find the response on Courtlistener and below:
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