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According to Grok:

The relevant law is **Assembly Bill 1043** (the Digital Age Assurance Act), signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in October 2025. It takes effect on January 1, 2027.

Here’s what the law actually requires, based on its text and reliable reports:

- **Operating system providers** (e.g., those for Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Linux distributions if distributed/sold in California, etc.) must provide an **accessible interface during account setup** that prompts the account holder to indicate the **birth date, age, or both** of the device’s primary user.
- This is **self-reported** information (no mandatory ID checks, scans, or strong verification required—the OS doesn’t have to confirm accuracy).
- The OS then provides a **digital “signal”** (age bracket: under 13, 13–under 16, 16–under 18, or 18+) via an API to **app developers** (upon request) when apps are downloaded/launched from covered app stores.
- The purpose is to help apps comply with age-appropriate rules, reduce risks to minors online, and shift age signals to the device level (instead of every app/site doing its own checks).
- It applies to general-purpose computing devices and focuses on apps in covered stores.

- It does **not** require anything “in their kernel.” This is handled at the user/account setup level (UI/prompt), not deep in the kernel.
- It is **not** a question “on the age of the person in front of the keyboard” in an ongoing or pervasive way—it’s a one-time prompt during account/device setup (with some provisions for existing accounts by mid-2027).
- Phones (iOS/Android) will likely need to comply if sold/used in California, as major providers fall under the definition.
- There is **no connection to ESG** (Environmental, Social, and Governance). The law is about children’s online safety and privacy (age signals for app compliance), not ESG frameworks, corporate sustainability, or anything related to environmental/social governance metrics.

Recent discussions (including in tech communities like Hacker News, Reddit, and outlets like PC Gamer/Lunduke Journal) about the bill’s broad scope—including Linux and open-source OSes—confirm it’s self-reported age at setup for app signals, not kernel-level mandates or ESG enforcement.

In short: It’s a law about device-level age prompts for better minor protections in apps, but some claims exaggerate it into something far more invasive and misattribute its purpose.

***

So when doing the initial installation and set-up, the user could enter anything, say, April 15, 1913 as a birth date. Matter closed.

Trump’s Obama's rise, Siegel writes, “meant that politics had become war, as it is in many parts of the world, and tens of millions of Americans were the enemy.”

How about we assist Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan with leaving, not to mention ...

Vive Quebec libre!

Adolescent cannabis use linked to doubling risk of psychotic and bipolar disorders

Most liberal ideas are unnatural. They are not rooted in basic economic and time tested concepts. They are hypocritical and those advocating these ideas generally don’t want what they preach applied to them.

Democrats: Homosexuality in innate and immutable, inborn and unchangeable. Therefore, it is immoral to condemn homosexuality.

Also Democrats: Whether a person is male or female is a social construct that can be changed whenever desired.

Democrats: We support democracy.

Also Democrats: We refuse to obey or support laws that have been enacted through the democratic process, i.e., immigration laws. We also refuse to use the democratic process of debate and reasoning to engage the electorate and change laws that we don’t like. Instead, we will use violence to resist law enforcement and to overthrow the government.

let’s pass the SAVE act first

Yes.

Good points.

The Democrat propaganda machine is working a full blast to defeat the SAVE Act. This Heritage Action post refutes some of the Democrats' talking points.

Posted in remembrance of President Abraham Lincoln's birthday, tomorrow, February 12.

The movie is Lincoln (2012), PG-13, 2h 30m.

When people invest in mutual funds, they give their shareholder vote away to some woke 30-something at the mutual fund company. Vanguard is one of the worst.

“We are in an unprecedented oil crisis,” oil expert Mike Ariza told the publication.

It's not an oil crisis, it's a government crisis.

If we can poach a couple of governors offices in states with geezer senators ready to croak just think what a GOP appointee could do in the short term.

According to Grok, the states with 2026 gubernatorial elections and at least one U.S. Senator over age 70 are Iowa, Vermont, Maine, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.

The Human Rights Campaign website provides a "corporate partners" page. It is a good checklist of companies to avoid doing business with. The "platinum partners" are:

Amazon
American Airlines
Apple
JPMorganChase
Lyft
Macy's
Marriott
Microsoft
Morgan Stanly
Pfizer
and of course: The Walt Disney Co.

What I do not understand about fracking is the apparent ability of landowner A to run a horizontal bore for several miles and take the resources that are below the surface of other landowners. How does that work?

I posed the question to Grok and got this answer:

The apparent ability of a landowner (or more precisely, an oil and gas operator leasing rights from him) to drill a horizontal well extending several miles and extract resources from beneath neighboring properties stems from a combination of geological realities, technological capabilities, and long-established legal principles in the United States, particularly in states with significant fracking activity such as Texas, Pennsylvania, and others.

Oil and gas resources, especially in shale formations targeted by fracking, reside in porous rock where the hydrocarbons can migrate toward areas of lower pressure. In conventional vertical drilling, this migratory ("fugacious") nature led to the development of the **rule of capture**. This common-law doctrine holds that whoever first reduces oil or gas to possession—by producing it through a well on his property—owns it outright, even if some of the resource originally lay beneath an adjacent property and migrated across subsurface boundaries. Courts have treated oil and gas analogously to wild animals or percolating groundwater: ownership is not fixed until capture occurs, and no liability arises for drainage alone if the well is lawfully drilled on the operator's leased land. The only remedy for an affected neighbor is typically to drill his own offset well to compete for the resource.

Horizontal drilling, combined with hydraulic fracturing (fracking), extends this principle dramatically. A well begins vertically on the leased property, then turns horizontally (often 1–2 miles or more) within the target formation. Fracking injects high-pressure fluid to create fractures in the rock, releasing trapped gas or oil that flows back to the wellbore. Because the resource is liberated and migrates toward the low-pressure wellbore, production can draw from a wide area—potentially including subsurface volumes beneath unleased neighboring lands—without physical invasion of the neighbor's property by the wellbore itself.

In most jurisdictions, courts have applied the rule of capture to such operations, provided the wellbore remains within the leased boundaries and does not physically deviate into another's subsurface estate (a "deviated" or "bottomed-out" well, which would constitute subsurface trespass). Key rulings, such as those from Texas courts, affirm that fracking-induced drainage does not create liability under the rule of capture, as the process creates artificial flow paths analogous to natural migration in conventional reservoirs. Pennsylvania's Supreme Court has similarly upheld the rule's application to hydraulic fracturing in conventional and unconventional contexts, though lower courts have occasionally allowed trespass claims where fractures physically extend fluids or proppant across boundaries (a question that remains debated and varies by state).

However, the rule of capture is not absolute protection. Several mechanisms limit or address the issue:

- **Forced pooling or compulsory unitization** statutes in many states allow regulators to combine mineral interests into a drilling unit (often 40–640 acres or more, depending on the formation and regulations). If an operator secures leases or rights to a majority percentage of the unit (e.g., 60–75%), state agencies may compel non-consenting owners into the unit. The operator can then legally produce from the entire unit, including beneath holdouts, while paying royalties or compensatory shares to non-consenting owners. This prevents wasteful "race to drill" and protects correlative rights (each owner's fair opportunity to develop the shared reservoir).

- **Trespass liability** arises if the horizontal wellbore crosses into unleased subsurface property or if fracking causes physical invasion (e.g., fractures extending proppant or fluid across lines in ways deemed unreasonable). Some courts distinguish fracking from mere drainage, but the majority view in major producing states favors the rule of capture absent clear physical intrusion or damage.

In practice, operators prefer voluntary leasing and pooling agreements to avoid litigation, but the legal framework incentivizes development by allowing efficient horizontal wells to access broad reservoir areas from a single pad. This explains why one operator can extract resources from beneath multiple properties: the law prioritizes maximizing recovery and preventing waste over strict subsurface boundary enforcement for migratory resources.

These rules vary by state—Texas and Oklahoma lean heavily on the rule of capture, while some eastern states have seen more challenges—and mineral rights ownership (often severed from surface rights) further complicates the picture. If your question relates to a specific jurisdiction or property, consulting local oil and gas law or a specialist attorney would provide precise guidance.

Can this ONLY be appealed to the supremes?

The petitioners can ask for reargument en banc, that is, before all of the Circuit Court judges, or they can appeal to the Supreme Court.

This decision is massively important - one of the most important of the year. It means that if you are an illegal alien who never presented themselves at a port of entry, and ICE finds you, you can and must be detained without bail.

The knock on effects from this will be enormous. Prior to this - if you were caught as an illegal alien and put in removal proceedings, you were entitled to bail while your lawyers string things along. You could stay out of jail for months - even years - and keep doing what you were doing in our country. No more.

Now - if you crossed illegally and ICE finds you, you’re done. You’re not walking American streets freely again unless you prevail in your removal proceeding (which is supremely unlikely). You won’t be able to go to your apartment and grab your things. You are simply done. You can either accept deportation or sit in immigration detention while your lawyer wastes their time on futile filings, and then get deported when you lose. This will lead to a lot more illegal aliens simply giving up on their frivolous court fights and accepting deportation, which will help relieve the court backlogs. This will also lead to many more illegal aliens self-deporting. Would you rather pack up your things, settle your affairs, and get a free flight and $2500? Or would you rather try and hide from ICE, knowing that the moment they find you, you will never breathe free air in America again?

It’s a much easier choice.

Congratulations to Pam Bondi, Todd Blanche, and everyone at DOJ responsible for this victory. It’s a milestone win.

— Will Chamberlain (@willchamberlain) February 7, 2026

Senior Counsel @Article3Project