2026-02-04

Horseshit

• The New Mexico cave expanding our search for alien life

• Fastest drone hits 408 MPH

• The overlooked evolution of the humble car door handle

• Generous child care policies cut 80% of 'motherhood penalty' for working mothers

• Transparent Toilets Take Tokyo's Culture of Hygiene to the Next Level

• Figure skater forced to scrap Olympic routine after Minions copyright dispute

• Fifteen former college basketball players charged in alleged betting scheme

• Where did all the starships go?

  The data tells a clear story: classic sci-fi keywords peaked in the 1950s–60s and have steadily declined since. "Space" saw the sharpest drop, from over 2.5% of titles in the 1950s to under 0.5% today. Meanwhile, fantasy keywords show an opposite trend. "Dragon/s" barely registered before 1980 but now appears in nearly 2% of titles. "Magic(al)" and "Witch/es" follow similar trends, accelerating sharply after 2000 — the timing aligns with the commercial success of Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings movies. Twilight and Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, seem to have revived the vampire genre.

  • Mass market editors have been suspiciously homogeneous in their tastes since the 1960s

• 221 Cannon is Not For Sale

  This type of scam targets a very specific vulnerability: vacant land has no occupants to notice a for-sale sign, no neighbors who’d immediately recognize something is wrong, and closings often happen remotely.

• Tastes just like chicken tenders! Baby Sauropods Were the Potato Chips of the Jurassic Era

• Have we tried asking women about the 'birth rate crisis' yet?

Epstein

• Why Did John Brennan Deliver a Secret CIA Award to Obama's White House Counsel and Very Good Friend of Jeffrey Epstein Kathryn Ruemmler?

• Duke professor Dan Ariely had longstanding friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, newly released files show.

• I would really hate to think that the coordinated, almost symphonic response of the Powers that Be to the COVID pandemic was made possible somehow by the discipline enforced through membership in the so-called Epstein Network.

• What's up with all those equals signs anyway?

• Melinda French Gates reacts to new details about Bill Gates in the Epstein files

  "For me, it's personally hard whenever those details come up, right? Because it brings back memories of some very, very painful times in my marriage," French Gates said in an interview on NPR's Wild Card podcast. "Whatever questions remain there of what — I can't even begin to know all of it — those questions are for those people and for even my ex-husband," she said. "They need to answer to those things, not me."

• Epstein Backed Coinbase in Crypto Exchange's Early Years

• Goldman Defense of Lawyer's Epstein Ties Provokes Unease at Bank

• Epstein's sex empire was 'KGB honeytrap': Paedophile financier had multiple talks with Putin after conviction - with Russian girls flown in to harvest 'kompromat' on world-famous figures | Daily Mail Online

celebrity gossip

• The Ozzy Tape I Never Played: A Little Piece of Rock History Found in an Attic

  In the small recording studio in Suffolk where it's about to be played for the first time in decades, the air is heavy with expectation as the tape is slowly placed in the deck. There are four of us in the room and we're hoping to hear the voice of Ozzy Osbourne, on a recording left in an attic for decades, remembered and dusted down after his death.

• Lurie working with Laurene Powell Jobs, Jony Ive on secretive SF branding effort

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Women Are More Likely Than Men to Endorse Political Violence

• Data Brokers Can Fuel Violence Against Public Servants

• Black and Latino teens show strong digital literacy

  Black and Latino teens report having significantly more digital literacy skills such as detecting online disinformation than their white peers—particularly content related to race and ethnicity. These youth are not only quicker to identify false claims and racist propaganda, but also more likely to verify posts with credible sources and respond with corrective, fact-based content, the study found. According to the researchers, these skills are not being taught.

Musk

• Musk firms SpaceX and xAI merge to make most valuable private company

  • SpaceX acquires xAI, plans to launch a satellite constellation to power it

  • SpaceX has merged with xAI in an all-stock deal that values the combined company at $1.25 trillion.

  • SpaceX generated about $8B in profit last year ahead of IPO, sources say

  • Elon Musk joins his rocket and AI businesses into a single company

  • Elon Musk merges SpaceX with xAI (and X)

  • Elon Musk's SpaceX Officially Acquires Elon Musk's xAI

  • SpaceX Acquires xAI in $1.25T All-Stock Deal

  • Elon Musk is taking SpaceX's minority shareholders for a ride

  • Four theories about the SpaceX – xAI merger

  I think the merger is really a kind of bailout, to give a lot of cash to a company that is otherwise in distress. Fact is, xAI ain’t doing all that great. It’s burning money fast, with no obvious business model or market niche, and has little to show for it. They have also faced a lot of backlash for being reckless and irresponsible; hardly a good brand name. Grok (their main product) doesn’t have the users that ChatGPT has, and it doesn’t have the prestige that Google’s Gemini seems to be racking up. It also doesn’t have the clear corporate focus that Anthropic has. Nor does it have any obvious secret sauce.

• Musk says steps to stop Russia from using Starlink seem to have worked.

• Paris prosecutors raid France offices of Elon Musk's X

  • French headquarters of Elon Musk's X raided by Paris cybercrime unit

  • Paris prosecutor's cybercrime unit raids X's French office

  • X marks the raid: French cops swoop on Musk's Paris ops

  • X offices raided French prosecutors investigate child abuse images and deepfakes

  • X's Paris Office Raided by Prosecutors, Musk Summoned for Interview

• Researchers sue X for access to Hungarian election data

• Despite new curbs, Elon Musk's Grok at times produces sexualized images

  • UK privacy watchdog opens inquiry into X over Grok AI sexual deepfakes

• Elon Musk donates hundreds of generators to Tennesseans still without power after winter storm: A historic winter storm knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of Tennessee residents.

  As of Monday morning, the governor has yet to release details on how the generators will be distributed.

  • As of Tuesday morning, Tennessee Power Outage Map shows under 20k still dark.

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Mainstream Media Breathlessly Covered an Alleged Hate Crime in Which White Kids Forced a Black Classmate To Drink Urine. It Was a Giant Hoax.

  It was a story that received blanket media coverage in March 2021. It alleged that white middle schoolers in Plano, Texas, viciously "tortured" SeMarion Humphrey, their black classmate, forcing him to drink their urine at a sleepover as they shot him with BB guns. A Black Lives Matter activist group charged the local public school district with doing "nothing" to stop "this racially motivated hate crime" as violent protests broke out outside the home of Asher Vann, the white child alleged to have organized the brutal attack. Racial activist groups added fuel to the fire. The NAACP dressed down the leaders of the Plano school district in a town hall that they described as the beginning of an "open partnership" spurred by the alleged hate crime. The Next Generation Action Network, a Black Lives Matter-tied group whose leader alleged Humphrey was "tortured for days" by his white assailants, organized public marches that drew hundreds of protesters. And then, a little under five years later, a racially diverse Texas jury—including four black members—ruled the whole thing was a hoax.

  On Jan. 22, Texas district court judge Benjamin Smith ordered Smith and Cole to pay $3.2 million in damages to Vann, now an adult attending his first year of college, for intentionally smearing him and tarnishing his future earning potential during their media tour in 2021. The ruling followed a civil trial in October 2025, where the jury determined that Cole and Smith cooked up the scheme to raise their public profiles during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement and to rake in money through GoFundMe.

• Ethics? What ethics? On the decision to allow puberty blockers for children

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Broadcom to significantly tightening VMware partner program to invite-only

• Apple keeps winning today by betting on tomorrow

• Streaming service Crunchyroll raises prices weeks after killing its free tier

• "VR fitness" The Tragedy of Supernatural

• KDE Binds Itself Tightly To Systemd, Drops Support For Non-Systemd Systems

• Disney names parks boss Josh D'Amaro as its next CEO to succeed Bob Iger

• Google court filings suggest ChromeOS has an expiration date

• Intel CEO says company will make GPUs, popularized by Nvidia

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• NASA delays launch of Artemis II until March

  • Artemis II Wet Dress Rehearsal: Test Terminated at T-5:15

  • Lunar mission is delayed to March after problems in NASA's dress rehearsal

• Low earth orbit LEO is not crowded

  The vast majority of satellites are in low earth orbit (LEO), which extends from 160 to 2000 km above the earth’s surface. The radius of the earth is about 6400 km, so the volume of the LEO region is 1.3 x 10^12 km^3

  There are about 12,500 satellites in LEO, so the average volume of LEO per satellite is about 100,000,000 km³.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Nvidia insists it isn't Enron, but its AI deals are testing investor faith

• Firefox makes AI optional, like it probably should have been all along

• DIY AI bot farm OpenClaw is a security 'dumpster fire'

• Does AI have human-level intelligence? The evidence is clear

• Malicious MoltBot skills used to push password-stealing malware

• How Vibe Coding Is Killing Open Source

• Data Centers Are Not "Campuses"

• Private Equity's Giant Software Bet Has Been Upended by AI

• OpenAI's ChatGPT push triggers senior staff exits

  • Senior staff departing OpenAI as firm prioritizes ChatGPT development

• Majority of books in Amazon's 'Success' self-help genre likely written by AI

• Billions wiped off media and financial data groups after Anthropic AI launch

• "What is a woman?" Most AI assistants are feminine, and it's fuelling harmful stereotypes and abuse

• The Problem with Using AI in Your Personal Life

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• The stablecoin war: Wall Street vs. crypto over the future of money

• Austrian Supreme Court rules that FIFA loot boxes are not gambling

• Bitcoin is coming off a brutal week. Here's what's happening

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Palantir CEO defends surveillance tech as US Government contracts boost sales

• PepsiCo will cut prices on Lay's, Cheetos by as much as 15%

• Walmart hits $1T market cap

• Wall Street ends sharply down as traders fret about AI disruption

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Los Angeles hospice fraud a $3.5 billion scam epidemic, Dr. Oz says

• Minnesota DHS Employee on Welfare Fraud: “This Is Real”

• Lawsuit Challenges National Park Service Ban on Cash Payments

• SBA cuts off non-US citizens from primary loan program

Trump

• The Trump administration plans to spend $12 billion to establish a national stockpile of critical minerals.

• Trump: Republicans 'should take over the voting' and 'nationalise' US elections

Democrats

• 16 Dead in NYC From Warmth of Collectivism

• Democrats unveil WA income tax on people earning over $1M

Left Angst

• U.S. Federal Data Is Disappearing

  Since retaking office, the Trump administration has transformed how the government collects data, cut access to previously-public data and stopped collecting some data altogether. This overhaul has left significant holes in data on everything from substance use to maternal mortality.

• Classified Whistleblower Complaint About Tulsi Gabbard Stalls Within Her Agency

• The Grammys Were One Giant Anti-ICE Rally.

  • Roomful Of Pedophiles Protest ICE Deporting Pedophiles | Babylon Bee

  A room full of pedophiles in attendance at Sunday night's Grammys ceremony defiantly protested Trump's deportation of pedophiles. "We can't deport these people. They're just like us!" said one prominent celebrity pedophile. "One of us! One of us!" According to experts, pedophiles often oppose the arrest and deportation of pedophiles. Since ICE has chosen to focus on detaining murderers and sex criminals, Hollywood celebs have banded together to stop ICE at any cost. In response to the support of a roomful of pedophiles, a spokesperson for illegal aliens in Minneapolis called on Hollywood celebrities to please stop vouching for them. "Some of us are not pedophiles," said Juanita Gutierrez. "And the more you claim to speak for us, the more you make us all look like pedophiles."

• ICE Begins Buying 'Mega' Warehouse Detention Centers Across US

• Homeland Security is targeting Americans with this secretive legal weapon

• Donald Trump Has Built a Clicktatorship

• Builders Push 'Trump Homes' to Win Backing for a Million Houses

• Rice University students create map exposing ICE raids across the country

• StopICE hacked to send alarming text messages admins accuse CBP agent sabotage

• DHS is trying to force tech companies to hand over data about Trump critics

• Trump's UAE Chip Deal Is a National Security Risk

• Staggering evidence trove shows who put Trump in the WH – and controls him still

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Man, 83, Tricked by Scammers, Gets 21 Years to Life for Killing Uber Driver

• 1,000 samples sent for testing after possible biological lab found inside Las Vegas home: FBI

  The "potential biological and hazardous materials" were primarily located in a locked garage, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Kevin McMahill said during a press briefing on Monday. In the garage, investigators found multiple refrigerators with vials of unknown liquids, unknown liquids in gallon-size containers, a centrifuge and other laboratory equipment, authorities said. In an open refrigerator and freezer, investigators saw a "significant volume of material," including vials and storage containers "with liquids of different colors and compositions," McMahill said. "The scene presented a high level of complexity with materials that have not yet been identified and still require careful assessment," McMahill said.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Pentagon warns Scouts to restore 'core values' or lose military support

• US shoots down Iranian drone approaching aircraft carrier, official says

World

• U.K. physics community braces for deep funding cuts

• Spain to ban social media access for under-16s, PM Sanchez says

  • Spain moves to ban under-16s from social media

  • Spain becomes first country in Europe to ban social media for under-16s

• European pensions are in dire need of reform

• The Startup Rush for Europe's New War Chest

• Operation Sovereignty: Bundestag Plans a Breakthrough from Microsoft and Co

• Air India grounds Boeing jet after pilot flags fuel control switch defect

• Europe shrugs off tariffs, plots to end tech reliance on US

• Over 100 employees of Prudential Life Insurance behind ¥3.1B fraud

• Alphabet Plots Big Expansion in India as US Restricts Visas

• BBC joins Colombian commandos fighting 'never-ending battle' against drug gangs

• Pornhub shuts off access to new UK users, citing age verification constraints

Israel

• Israeli Military Found Gaza Health Ministry Death Toll Was Accurate

• Over 100 mortar shells found in UNRWA bags in Gaza.

China

• China eyes challenge to U.S. dollar dominance – but that's easier said than done

• Why people say they're using 'Are You Dead?'

• China to ban hidden car door handles on all EVs over crash safety concerns

  • China bans hidden car door handles over safety concerns

  • China to ban hidden car door handles made popular by Tesla in world first

  • China Bans Retractable Door Handles on Cars as Safety Concerns Grow

• China's Renewable Energy Revolution Is a Mess That Might Save the World

• China's teapots buy Iranian oil to replace Venezuelan supply, sources say | Reuters

• China proves skeptics right about export controls

• China unveils flying aircraft carrier

• China to See Solar Capacity Outstrip Coal Capacity This Year

• China warns Panama of 'heavy prices' to pay after CK Hutchison contract quashed

Health / Medicine

• Ultra-processed foods should be treated more like cigarettes than food – study

  • From Tobacco to Ultraprocessed Food: How Industry Fuels Preventable Disease

• An obsession with neurodivergence has sanitised how we think of mental illness

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Banning lead in gas worked. The proof is in our hair

  • A century of hair samples proves leaded gas ban worked

  • The 20-year campaign to rid the world of leaded fuel

• Even remote Pacific fish are full of microplastics

• Heatwaves are changing the way Australians live and spend their money, study

• National Park Service officials make difficult decision about Alcatraz coyote

• Enormous 'mega-blob' under Hawaii is solid rock and iron

• Giant 'blobs' of rock influence Earth's magnetic field