tal

I don't have an Instagram account and have no intention of making one, but he does have a post that I can see a low-resolution image of on Instagram that he and some other Republicans in North Dakota signed objecting to anti-LGBT language in the party platform, so I'd say the opposite, at least on the sexual orientation front.

https://www.instagram.com/holmbergforsenate/p/CEFxUw8pdd0/?hl=en

Don't see anything doing date searches with Google either, though I'd guess that state senators probably aren't normally all that high-profile.

I just did a site search on apnews.com for "ex state senator". They do typically seem to say, so I don't think that they avoid listing party affiliation as some kind of practice for retired state senators:

https://apnews.com/article/tennessee-senator-prison-kelsey-0a4a226939ba039852129184e820b9e9

Former Tennessee state senator reports to federal prison for campaign finance scheme conviction

The Republican was ordered to arrive at the prison’s minimum security satellite camp Monday for a 21-month sentence.

https://apnews.com/article/massachusetts-government-and-politics-ca3093b18dafb986a0d39ac19b1db336

A former Massachusetts state senator and Republican candidate for Congress has been charged after allegedly stealing a gun from an elderly constituent and misleading investigators about what happened, Attorney General Maura Healey said Friday.

https://apnews.com/article/sam-mccann-illinois-senator-sentencing-fraud-f98497339277e0a091d85db2db7f3569

FILE - Republican Illinois State Sen. Sam McCann speaks at the State Capitol on March 5, 2018, in Springfield, Ill. McCann, a former state senator and 2018 candidate for governor, was sentenced Wednesday, July 10, 2024 to 3 1/2 years in federal prison and ordered to pay $684,000 in restitution after pleading guilty to wire fraud, money laundering and tax evasion in misusing campaign funds. (Erin Brown/Chicago Sun-Times via AP, File)

https://apnews.com/article/andy-sanborn-covid19-fraud-d3854b8f9225bf0372c4ec9d41ec0149

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A former New Hampshire state senator accused last year of fraudulently obtaining federal COVID-19 loans and spending the money on luxury cars was charged this week with stealing separate state pandemic relief funds.

Republican Andy Sanborn, of Bedford, was charged with theft by deception, a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison, the attorney general’s office said Wednesday.

https://apnews.com/general-news-45df9559ab7b5bcab968c8391c33951f

CHICAGO (AP) — A former Illinois state senator pleaded not guilty Tuesday to federal charges of lying on personal income tax reports and failing to file tax returns for her lobbying and consulting firm.

Collins, a Chicago Democrat who left the legislature in 2013, was one of several ex-lawmakers hired by Commonwealth Edison after retiring from public office.

https://apnews.com/article/dd1f440c59754588b2cfaeb633ca0530

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — An ex-California state senator pleaded guilty Wednesday to a racketeering charge in an organized crime and public corruption case centered in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

The FBI also alleged that Yee, a San Francisco Democrat who was running for secretary of state at the time, conspired to import weapons and ammunition into the U.S.

EDIT: Oh, as someone else pointed out, they indicated it in OP's article too, just in the caption. At least one of my above articles mentioned it in the caption too. So probably just a normal article.

supervised release.

That supervised release doesn't seem to be working out too well so far:

https://northdakotamonitor.com/briefs/former-state-senator-convicted-of-child-sex-crime-again-accused-of-violating-pretrial-release/

Holmberg was released from custody on Oct. 30, 2023, with certain stipulations — including location monitoring, internet restrictions, no drugs or alcohol and no contact with victims or witnesses. The terms were updated this spring to bar Holmberg from using electronic devices without permission, according to court records.

“Since the date of the last status report filed on August 2, 2023, the defendant has continued to access the internet for reasons not approved by pretrial services,” a pretrial services officer says in the document.

The document notes that Holmberg accessed social media sites like Facebook and Twitter seven times between Aug. 13 and Aug. 17, and once on Sept. 22, without authorization.

On Aug. 7, Holmberg also “frequented” a home in Fargo in violation of his location monitoring requirements.

“The defendant has been given verbal reprimands and has been reminded of his conditions of release on numerous occasions,” the document says.

Court documents indicate Holmberg has violated the terms of his release several other times this year. An August court filing describes additional instances when he used the internet for unauthorized purposes, as well as occasions when he frequented an adult novelty store. In May, he tested positive for alcohol, which is not allowed under the release conditions.

https://www.techtimes.com/articles/309317/20250208/elon-musks-19-year-old-doge-intern-fired-leaking-company-secrets-competitors.htm

In a June 2022 message, an executive of the firm in question, Path Network, said that Coristine had been terminated for leaking internal information to competitors. They added that this was unacceptable and noted that the company had zero tolerance for it.

A spokesperson for the cybersecurity firm also said on Thursday that Coristine's brief contract with the company was terminated after an internal investigation concluded. This was to look into the leaking of proprietary company information during the teen's tenure at the Arizona-based hosting and data-security firm, according to Yahoo News.

Weeks after his termination, Coristine wrote in a Discord post in 2022 that he had retained access to the cybersecurity firm's computers. The teen said he had the opportunity to wipe Path Network's customer-supporting servers if he wanted to, but he did not, saying he never exploited his access.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/02/teen-on-musks-doge-team-graduated-from-the-com/

Wired reported this week that a 19-year-old working for Elon Musk‘s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was given access to sensitive US government systems even though his past association with cybercrime communities should have precluded him from gaining the necessary security clearances to do so. As today’s story explores, the DOGE teen is a former denizen of ‘The Com,’ an archipelago of Discord and Telegram chat channels that function as a kind of distributed cybercriminal social network for facilitating instant collaboration.

One does kind of get the feeling that perhaps Big Balls could have done with a bit more vetting.

EDIT:

Also, there's his grandfather:

https://www.jacobsilverman.com/p/prominent-doge-staffer-is-grandson

In 1980, KGB officer Valery Fedorovich Martynov was sent to the US to serve undercover at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, DC. He was a Line X officer, part of a technical espionage division. Martynov had a wife and two young children, and they enjoyed traveling to cities on the eastern seaboard and enjoying life in what was one of the KGB’s most desirable postings.

A point made by HP's SVP and Division President of Gaming Solutions Josephine Tan when talking to XDA Developers, Tan mentioned "If you look at Windows, I struggle with the experience myself. If I don't like it, I don't know how to do a product for it.". Tan continued "If I'm buying a handheld, I want a very simple setup. The minute I turn on my handheld, it will remember the last game I played. In the Windows environment, it doesn't".

Okay, I'm not saying that HP shouldn't do a SteamOS handheld, but...this seems like such a bad rationale. Surely, surely it is possible to write a relatively-trivial piece of software for Windows that simply remembers the last game played? Especially if we're just talking stuff running out of Steam?

Several Silicon Valley executives I spoke to — some of whom requested anonymity for fear of retribution — echoed this sense of disappointment, in particular at the havoc the Department of Government Efficiency has wreaked throughout the federal government. "We were all on board for a more business-friendly presidency, but in the end, the whole industry of crypto and AI got rug pulled," says the partner of a top-tier venture firm directly involved in the Trump administration. "The people surrounding Trump are all scamsters. They are getting rich off our votes, our dollars, and our time."

Well, there was an unforseeable outcome. Trump was so known for keeping salubrious company in the past.

Steve Witkoff, for instance, a longtime Trump associate who was appointed as the United States special envoy to the Middle East, has been cashing in on his proximity to Trump to secure private deals, this person says. Witkoff's son, Zach Witkoff, is the cofounder of World Liberty Financial, the crypto banking platform that launched Trump's memecoin. Early in March, Steve Witkoff sent cryptocurrency advocates to the Middle East to promote World Liberty Financial's latest stablecoin project, The Wall Street Journal reported. "Steve Witkoff is calling every sovereign government and saying, 'You need to support this coin if you want to be in good standing with Trump,'" the person says. Witkoff did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

That doesn't seem like a great office to have a holder who is soliciting bribes from foreign countries to affect national policy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Witkoff

In November 2024, then President-elect Donald Trump announced that he would appoint Witkoff to be the United States Special Envoy to the Middle East...In addition to his Middle East portfolio, he also became Trump's personal de facto envoy to Russian President Vladimir Putin.[5]

“How did a Trump-hating editor of The Atlantic end up on your Signal chat?” Laura Ingraham asked.

“You know, Laura, I’m not a conspiracy theorist,” Waltz replied. “But of all the people out there, somehow this guy who has lied about the president, who has lied to Gold Star families, lied to their attorneys, and gone to Russia hoax, gone to all kinds of lengths to lie and smear the president of the United States and he’s the one that somehow gets on somebody’s contact and then gets sucked into this group.”

Honestly, I really hope that the next administration, regardless of which party it is, dispenses with the constant and unending stream of bullshit. I really don't want this sort of thing to become established as the new normal.

It's not even over a significant issue here; it seems like an insane thing to use credibility on. Like, Waltz could say "I clicked on the wrong person", and I don't think that anyone is going to wig out about it. The fact that they were on Signal in the first place, not to mention using poor operational security while on it is the much more concerning issue, but he's not denying that.

remember when social media CEOs weren’t like… this?

I think that that's just Elon.

I don't follow.

I think that it might be a larger factor if levels were specifically designed around exploiting its strengths.

I remember that Fallout 4, which introduced godrays, had a mission, Call To Arms, that had the main character walking down a series of walkways made of gratings that really made the effect very noticeable.

I would assume that they are not government-funded.