Before Zoom: Marian Croak built internet calling (200+ patents)

United States Patent and Trademark Office

Positively connected

Marian Croak is a pioneer in Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and the inventor of text-to-donate technology.

 When people say “Zoom changed communication,” they’re usually pointing at the app layer. The deeper shift happened earlier: voice moving from circuit-switched phone lines to internet packets. According to the U.S. Patent Office, Marian Rogers Croak pioneered Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies and holds **more than 200 patents**. That work helped make large-scale, reliable internet calling practical. **In 2022, she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for pioneering VoIP.** Modern platforms like Zoom Video Communications run on that foundation: voice converted to data, routed across IP networks, reconstructed in real time. She didn’t build Zoom. She helped build the infrastructure that made Zoom possible. Sometimes the most consequential innovation isn’t the interface. It's the plumbing.

Stacker News

Before Zoom: Marian Croak built internet calling (200+ patents) \ stacker news

When people say “Zoom changed communication,” they’re usually pointing at the app layer. The deeper shift happened earlier: voice moving from...

NPS Likely Acted Unlawfully Removing Slavery Exhibits from President's House https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.paed.648842/gov.uscourts.paed.648842.53.0.pdf They didn't "update" an exhibit. **They removed the subject.** *This memo opinion says the National Park Service likely acted unlawfully when it removed slavery-related materials from the President's House site at Independence National Historical Park without the City's required consultation/mutual agreement, and that the City is likely to succeed on the merits at the preliminary-injunction stage.* **Key points from the opinion itself:** • The opinion states that on Jan. 22, 2026, NPS removed **34 educational panels** and deactivated related videos at the President's House exhibit that referenced slavery and the people Washington enslaved. • The City sued under the APA; the court finds the City has standing tied to Congress-authorized cooperative agreements and the City's role/funding in the exhibit. • The court treats the removals as **final agency action** reviewable under the APA (not just "day-to-day operations"). • On the preliminary record, the court concludes the City is likely to show the removals were *arbitrary and capricious* because they disregarded governing constraints (including mutual-assent requirements and the site's agreed interpretive framework). **Question:** What would the administrative record need to show for this kind of exhibit removal to be lawful under the APA?

Stacker News

NPS Likely Acted Unlawfully Removing Slavery Exhibits from President's House \ stacker news

They didn't "update" an exhibit. They removed the subject. This memo opinion says the National Park Service likely acted unlawfully when it removed...

He Defined "White Culture" by Contrasting It With Black Church Music

Murphy Grills Unqualified Trump Nominee On His White Nationalist Views | U.S. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut

WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Europe and Regional Security,...

If you want the cleanest signal from Jeremy Carl's confirmation hearing, **don't start with tweets.** **Start with this exchange.** Pressed to define "white culture," Carl didn't cite constitutional principles, legal traditions, or philosophical heritage. He cited **church aesthetics**, saying *"the white church is very different than the Black church"* and that *"music could be different."* That's not policy analysis. **That's racialized worship framing.** When Sen. Murphy followed up, *"So our ability to access white churches or white music is being erased?"*, the claim visibly collapsed. No statute. No federal action. No measurable deprivation. **Just grievance language.** This matters because **the job in question isn't a podcast seat.** It's Assistant Secretary for International Organizations. The portfolio that interfaces with the UN system and multilateral institutions. If your definition of cultural harm centers on contrasting "white church" and "Black church" music styles, that's not just rhetoric. **It's worldview.** And worldview is exactly what confirmation hearings are meant to test. Carl's [nomination has faced GOP opposition](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-nomination-senior-diplomatic-post-doubt-over-insensitive-remarks-2026-02-12/) over his remarks, with the [official nomination](https://www.congress.gov/nomination/119th-congress/730/13/) still pending Senate action.

Stacker News

He Defined "White Culture" by Contrasting It With Black Church Music \ stacker news

If you want the cleanest signal from Jeremy Carl's confirmation hearing, don't start with tweets. Start with this exchange. Pressed to define "whit...

DOJ Slide Lists Trump Allegation: FBI 302 Confirms Minor-Victim Interview

Age Verification | United States Department of Justice

Most arguments about the Epstein files focus on spectacle. **The real signal is institutional handling.** I'm not claiming the DOJ proved a crime by a sitting president. **I'm claiming the FBI formally interviewed a minor-aged Epstein victim who accused Trump of assault, and the allegation was included in an internal DOJ investigative presentation.** That's a bureaucratic decision, not a tweet. Here's the machinery: • A hotline tip identified a South Carolina victim alleging abuse at ages 13–15 • **FBI agents conducted a July 24, 2019 interview memorialized in an FD-302** • DOJ later compiled a 21-page internal slideshow listing prominent-name allegations • **The Trump allegation appears on that slide deck alongside other vetted claims** The slide quotes the victim stating Epstein introduced her to Trump, who allegedly forced her head down and struck her when she resisted. **The victim would have been approximately 13–15 at the time.** A separate entry references a Mar-a-Lago encounter involving a 14-year-old, sourced to a Maxwell trial witness. Yes, allegations are not convictions. That's a courtroom standard. **The narrower question is institutional: *why was this allegation preserved, briefed, and attributed to a victim interview rather than dismissed as noise?*** If the public claim is "no credible accusations," *what threshold excludes an FBI 302 and inclusion in an internal DOJ investigative presentation?* *What evidence would move this from "lead" to "cleared," and where is that documentation?*

Stacker News

DOJ Slide Lists Trump Allegation: FBI 302 Confirms Minor-Victim Interview \ stacker news

Most arguments about the Epstein files focus on spectacle. The real signal is institutional handling. I'm not claiming the DOJ proved a crime by a ...

The claim here is narrow but important: Early Christian art suggests “what Jesus looked like” was never a fixed portrait, images were a network output (region + style conventions + patronage), not a preserved photo. Before we go further, let’s be clear about what this isn’t. I’m not claiming this painting is “the one true face of Jesus.” I’m saying it’s evidence that the modern default image is not inevitable or original. If the goal is historical honesty, the question worth asking isn’t “my Jesus vs your Jesus". it's how images propagate through institutions, copying, and canon-building in the first place. What most people miss when they see an early Jesus like this Look at the painting: tight curls, dark tones, a battered surface, and a very “Mediterranean” feel, nothing like the sanitized, Northern-European Sunday-school poster. The reaction most people have is to turn this into an identity argument, but that misses the deeper mechanism at work. To make a serious claim that “Jesus looks like X,” you’d need a stable, early visual tradition tied to eyewitness-era communities, consistent descriptors across regions, or evidence that later depictions preserved rather than rebranded an original image. What we actually see is something else entirely, a system where images emerged from local conditions and then calcified through institutional power. Local artists used local faces and local styles because you paint what you know. As Christianity gained scale, institutions standardized the “safe” image. Copying, through icons, manuscripts, and church art, locked in defaults via repetition. Power and patronage decided what became “normal,” not archaeology or preserved memory. Now, it’s true that pigments age and styles vary, so no single image proves skin tone or exact features. But the broader pattern is hard to miss: the “default Jesus” is downstream of transmission networks, not historical certainty. Which raises a question worth sitting with: If images are shaped by institutional copying rather than preservation of fact, what other “defaults”, in theology, politics, or identity, are we treating as original when they’re really just the winners of a distribution war?

A question I keep running into in U.S. politics isn’t “how much immigration,” but: What does “American” mean? Two definitions keep colliding: • Civic/legal: citizenship (birthright + naturalization), equal standing under law. • Inherited: ancestry/“stock”/a cultural baseline treated as the “real” nation. My hypothesis is a recurring pipeline: definition → orgs → policy templates → campaign messaging. A compressed throughline: • 1937: Pioneer Fund is chartered with “heredity/eugenics” + “race betterment” language (nation-as-bloodline stated explicitly). • 1980s–90s: records/reporting describe Pioneer Fund grants to FAIR (often summarized ≈ $1.2M). • 2023–25: Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership functions as a coalition transition blueprint; contributors include people tied to FAIR/IRLI/CIS. • 2017–present: Miller isn’t the origin—he’s an operational connector across the enforcement ecosystem (incl. AFL overlaps/distancing). Two Ohio snapshots of “who counts” politics: • “Replacement” framing in candidate messaging (“End the Replacement of Ohio Workers”). • Open boundary enforcement (Coulter: “I wouldn’t vote for you because you’re an Indian”; Fuentes urging a block on Vivek). Question: is this a traceable continuity—American = inherited membership—moving through institutions into everyday politics? Or am I linking separate arguments that only look connected from 30,000 feet?

We built civilization by outsourcing ourselves. Writing = memory. Money = value. Networks = communication. Bitcoin = verification. AI = cognitive labor. Every upgrade scales cooperation and control. So don’t act shocked when it works.

This piece argues that constitutional protections exist to safeguard the conditions people need to discover and become their true selves, but culture-war politics and certain systems—including monetary policy—have become machines that capture identity and interrupt human flourishing. View article →

Examining the documented history of Christian Right legal organizations founded by leaders who explicitly defended racial segregation in the 1950s-70s, and asking whether today’s dismantling of DEI programs and affirmative action, resulting in measurable declines in Black institutional access. represents coincidence or infrastructure working as designed with evolved messaging. View article →

BLS Reality Check: Unemployment by Race (Seasonally Adjusted: I pulled the official numbers from the BLS Employment Situation release (Table A-2) and charted the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate (%) for selected months. Selected months (SA): • White: 3.8 (Nov ’24) → 3.7 (Jul ’25) → 3.7 (Aug ’25) → 3.8 (Sep ’25) → 3.9 (Nov ’25) • Asian: 3.8 → 3.9 → 3.6 → 4.4 → 3.6 • Black: 6.4 → 7.2 → 7.5 → 7.5 → 8.3 Source (BLS):

Bureau of Labor Statistics

Table A-2. Employment status of the civilian population by race, sex, and age - 2026 M01 Results

TL;DR: This is what the official data shows for unemployment by race across those months.

When Mutants Marched: How X-Men Became America’s Superhero Civil Rights Movement Stan Lee’s X-Men debuted in 1963 as a direct allegory for the Civil Rights Movement, with Professor Xavier and Magneto embodying the contrasting philosophies of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Six decades later, the mutant metaphor still resonates, teaching new generations that fighting for justice when the world fears you is the most heroic thing anyone can do. Article :

Yakihonne

When Mutants Marched: How X-Men Became America’s Superhero Civil Rights Movement

Stan Lee’s X-Men debuted in 1963 as a direct allegory for the Civil Rights Movement, with Professor Xavier and Magneto embodying the contrasting ...

New Article : From the Prophet to the Police: How ‘Morality’ Corrupted Christianity

New Article : View article →

The biblical world was Afro-Asiatic, not European. Its central figures were almost certainly brown-skinned by modern standards. While Jewish identity evolved through migration and conversion, the idea of a white biblical past is historically indefensible.

Yeshua Was a Dark Brown-Skinned Semitic Refugee One of the earliest images of the Messiah, painted in the Roman catacombs centuries before Europe rewrote the visuals, showing Yeshua (YHWH Saves): a dark-brown skinned, dark curly short-haired Semitic refugee-immigrant from the Galilean ‘ghetto,’ remembered as his own people saw Him, not as later empires rebranded Him.

New op-ed: The Hidden Story Behind US-Israel Policy US backs Israel with billions based on Jewish historical claims—yet stayed silent as African Jews (the oldest populations) faced discrimination. Why does American policy support a racially selective version of Jewish identity? 👇

Yakihonne

The Hidden Story Behind US-Israel Policy: What African Jewish History Reveals

US policy has backed Israel with billions based on Jewish diaspora historical claims, yet remained silent as African Jews—representing some of th...