2026-02-02

Horseshit

• The Case for Universal Basic Income

• Childhood Trauma Doesn't Have to Be a Lifelong Curse

• Why American cities pay over $3k for one trash can

  It’s not an unusual price. Portland’s new trash cans cost ~$2k each. Washington, DC’s are ~1.5k. New York City has started replacing its longtime green mesh receptacles with $1.1k designer Better Bins that cost more than 2x as much. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, the $1.4k Slim Silhouettes are expected to finally hit sidewalks this summer. If the new models prove as rummage-resistant and easy to maintain as intended, Rachel Gordon says San Francisco’s Public Works Department may expand the number of trash cans in the city.

• The straight truth about Roman roads

• No Phone, No Social Safety Net: Welcome to the 'Offline Club'

• We have lost so much of ourselves to smartphones: can we get it back?

• Gen Z Discovers Dive Bars.

• Oregon gave homeless youth $1k/month with no strings. Here's what happened

Epstein

• MIT Lied about Aaron Swartz and Jeffrey Epstein

  srael put Jeffrey Epstein in MIT, paid his handler Joi Ito $1 million to look after him, then hired the Paul, Weiss law firm to write a fraudulent report when the New Yorker leaked the trivial issue of Epstein's donations. Can we finally end Israel's occupation of America?

• Reddit post by "maxwellhill" used as FBI evidence in Ghislaine's investigation

• Elon Musk attacks "legacy" media amidst Epstein files meltdown on Twitter

celebrity gossip

• Australian plumber is a YouTube sensation

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• What the US TikTok takeover is revealing about new forms of censorship

Musk

• 'Tesla is (still) trying to deceive investors into thinking it has SF robotaxis'

• Tesla scraps models in pivot to AI as annual revenue falls for first time

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Ford held talks with China's Xiaomi over EV partnership

Robot uprising / Humanioid Helpers

• This robot hand detaches and walks by itself

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Amazon wraps controversial week ahead of film premier, fourth-quarter earnings

• Hollywood keeps making movies families won't watch

• Magnetic core memory 128-byte USB drive

  A computing enthusiast has assembled one of the most bizarre USB drives we have ever seen. Despite being the size of a dinner plate, this drive holds just 128 bytes of data. The incredibly poor data density is largely due to the use of the archaic Magnetic Core Memory technology, which predates integrated circuits. Moreover, data saved to this drive is non-volatile (good), but bits are erased during the read process (bad).

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Converting floats to strings quickly

  When serializing data to JSON, CSV or when logging, we convert numbers to strings. Floating-point numbers are stored in binary, but we need them as decimal strings. The first formally published algorithm is Steele and White’s Dragon schemes (specifically Dragin2) in 1990. Since then, faster methods have emerged: Grisu3, Ryū, Schubfach, Grisu-Exact, and Dragonbox. In C++17, we have a standard function called std::to_chars for this purpose. A common objective is to generate the shortest strings while still being about to uniquely identified the original number.

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Jeff Bezos' rocket company, Blue Origin, has paused space tourism to focus on the Moon.

  • Blue Origin to Pause New Shepard Flights for No Less Than Two Years

  • Blue Origin pausing space tourism flights for at least 2 years to focus on moon plans.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• ChatGPT isn't the only chatbot pulling answers from Elon Musk's Grokipedia

  • ChatGPT is pulling answers from Elon Musk's Grokipedia

  • AI chatbots like ChatGPT are using info from Elon Musk's Grokipedia

• Gaming market melts down after Google reveals new AI game design tool

• 'I spoke to ChatGPT 8 times a day' – Gen Z's loneliness 'crisis'

• Workers are 'friction-maxxing' to resist AI

• Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, has denied reports that his company is not going to invest $100 billion in OpenAI.

• OpenClaw and Moltbook let attackers walk through the front door

• OpenClaw is everywhere all at once, and a disaster waiting to happen

  I will give the last words to Nathan Hamiel, “I can’t believe this needs to be said, it isn’t rocket science. If you give something that’s insecure complete and unfettered access to your system and sensitive data, you’re going to get owned”.

• Moltbook: the social network where AI agents talk to each other

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• Disgraced Crypto CEO Sam Bankman-Fried Seeks Trump Pardon with Republican Pivot

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Minute Maid to Discontinue Frozen Orange Juice from Concentrate This Year

  Minute Maid is discontinuing its line of frozen juices as consumer demand declines and tastes change, and it may have been the only company still selling the concentrated products into the Canadian market. The brand's frozen canned orange juice, lemonade, Fruitopia fruit punch and Five Alive juice blend will be discontinued by April, a spokesperson for parent company Coca-Cola confirmed to CBC News. The company is leaving the frozen can category in both Canada and the U.S. "in response to shifting consumer preferences," the spokesperson said, as it focuses on products that "better match" what its customers want.

• Tech workers continue to lose jobs in droves as economy shows positive signs

• How a BlackRock Loss Reignited Worries About What Is Hiding in Private Credit

• Microsoft's $381B Rout Exposes Dark Side of the AI Binge

• First Brands Did Some Round Trips

• Oracle to Raise Up to $50B This Year for Cloud Investment

Trump

• 'Melania' Arrives with Strong Box Office Showing for a Documentary

Left Angst

• ICE protester says her Global Entry was revoked after agent scanned her face

• 'Unsubscribe' and 'opt out': A new Big Tech boycott to protest ICE

• Elon Musk pours millions more into helping Republicans keep Congress

• St. Peter police chief intervened and got federal agents to release resident, sources say | MPR News

  MPR News has learned that the police chief in the small southern Minnesota city of St. Peter intervened Thursday to prevent federal immigration agents from taking a local resident into detention, although the city of St. Peter denied the intervention in a statement Saturday. It’s believed to be the first time a local police department in Minnesota intervened in a federal law enforcement action since the surge in immigration enforcement began two months ago. The resident, a woman, had been observing and recording video of immigration enforcement actions from her car Thursday afternoon when agents took her into custody.

• The User Guide for Elite, the Tool Palantir Made for ICE

• French tech giant Capgemini to sell US subsidiary working for ICE

• This Is Not a Drill

  Right-wing media is full of mug shots of heavily tattooed, scowling criminals that ICE has allegedly yanked from the streets. The banner on the television underneath their mug shots reads “Democrat voters.” President Trump’s raids and indictments prove to them that they were right all along: The 2020 election was corrupt. And when federal judges issue injunctions requiring federal law enforcement to stay away from polling places, that’s all the proof they need to raise the alarm. “This election is rigged!” they shout. And they’re right. Just not in the way they think. The horrifying thing about our current moment is that not a single aspect of the scenario above is far-fetched. In fact, some of it is already happening. Not only did the F.B.I. raid a Georgia election center last week, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, was present. She’s a cabinet-level official responsible for coordinating the activities of American intelligence agencies, yet there she was, in Fulton County, Ga.

• Trump Jokes About Suing Warsh If He Doesn't Lower Interest Rates as Fed Chair

• A Wonkish Note on Tariffs and Inflation

  the basic point is that there isn’t a big puzzle about the limited effect of tariffs on inflation. Some economists may have overhyped that effect, and Trumpists are happy to promote a straw man, but the reality is that the inflationary effect of tariffs has been more or less in line with what we should have expected.

• CBP Agents ID'd in Alex Pretti Shooting

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• 'Spy Sheikh' Bought Secret Stake in Trump Company for Access to USA AI Chips

• Will He, Won’t He ‘TACO’ on Iran?

  Trump’s conception of war is built around a fantasy that he can manipulate some lightening ‘in-boom-out’ stunt – one in which the U.S. loses no soldiers and its military infrastructure remains untouched. Reports from those regular ‘phone buddies’ of Trump say that he still says he wants a ‘guaranteed’ decisive outcome in Iran – a short, violently sharp, decisive war. He does not want casualties – especially American casualties. Neither does he want mass casualties or a long drawn-out conflict. Colonel Larry Wilkerson explains that decisive is a military term of art. It means you’ve hit the enemy so hard they’re unable to respond. Or, in other words, it hints that Trump would like a ‘stunt’ like that of seizing Maduro.

• A separatist group is asking for Trump's help to split from Canada

World

• Construction of ESA's ambitious LISA mission begins

• (Sep 2025) Blair and the Billionaire

  Insiders reveal how Larry Ellison’s money turned Blair’s institute into a tech sales and lobbying operation for Oracle

• 'It Wasn't Working': Canada Province Ends Drug Decriminalization

• US, UK, EU, Australia and more to meet to discuss critical minerals alliance

• Berlin Hospitals Struggle to Treat Hundreds of Falls During Winter Freeze Because Environmental Laws Forbid Use of Salt on Sidewalks

• India gives 20-year tax holiday to foreign firms using local data centres

Iran / Houthi

• Large volumes of Iranian government–sourced media are appearing across Wikipedia

Israel

• Israel to ban Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) from working in Gaza

China

• China's genius plan to win the AI race is paying off

• Ex-Googler nailed for stealing AI secrets for Chinese startups

• I use a Huawei modem; I cannot access this article. On my Singtel phone, I can

• China's 'gold fever' sparks US$1B scandal as trading platform collapses

Health / Medicine

• Weren't they saying it was an all time low during the pandemic? U.S. life expectancy hits all-time high

• Why are so many younger Americans getting and dying of colorectal cancer?

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• The ‘Doomsday Glacier’ Could Flood the Earth. Can a 50-Mile Wall Stop It? - The Atlantic

  This month, an international team of scientists has been trying to set up sensors on and around Thwaites Glacier, one of the most unstable in the world. It’s often called Antarctica’s “doomsday glacier” because, if it collapses, it would add two feet of sea-level rise to the world’s oceans.

• Polar bears and climate change: New research in Norway has scientists baffled | Vox

  Now, research in the journal Scientific Reports adds yet another wrinkle of hope for the species. The study, an analysis of hundreds of polar bears in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, found that declining sea ice is not causing polar bears to starve. They actually appeared healthier in the last two decades of the analysis, from 2000 to 2019. The overall population, meanwhile, is either stable or growing, according to Jon Aars, the study’s lead author and a scientist at the Norwegian Polar Institute.

• Should the Arctic Be Refrozen?