2026-01-28

Horseshit

• Is It Dangerous to Let Kids Be Free?

  The ministry, Crook argued, was asking him to increase his children’s risk exposure. And they were doing it in the name of safety. The conversations, he says, went nowhere. When Crook spoke statistics, the social workers spoke vibes. Didn’t he just know his kids were too young to be left alone? In desperation, Crook asked the query that weighed heaviest on his mind: Had he done anything illegal? A social worker explained that questions of legality weren’t the only issues at stake. The ministry was enforcing a guideline, not an actual law—but in practice, that distinction seemed to make little difference. To Crook, the message was clear: We don’t necessarily think you’re a criminal. But we still might think you’re a lousy dad.

• Anti-pop and an alien sigil: how Aphex Twin overtook Taylor Swift

• Sepp Blatter suggests fans should not travel to US for World Cup

• US to send ICE agents to Winter Olympics, prompting Italian anger

• No One Is Quite Sure Why Ice Is Slippery

• The daring idea that time is an illusion and how we could prove it

• Alex Honnold and Netflix Team Up for a Corporatized "Free Solo"

• Southwest's Open-Seating Era Comes to an End

• The Harry Potter Generation Needs to Grow Up

• Why the Pumpernickel Bagel Is Disappearing

• Six Psychological Flaws That Keep the Gifted from Living Up to Their Gift

• Gen Z is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents

Obit

• I have no mouth and I must scream at Black people: Scott Adams, 1957-2026

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• California probes TikTok over claims it censors anti-Trump content

  The Democratic governor of California, Gavin Newsom, has announced an investigation into claims TikTok has censored content which is critical of the Trump administration. A deal was concluded last Thursday to split off the US operation of the app - three days later thousands of American users began reporting problems including seeing "zero views" on new posts. Many also reported being unable to see political posts, such as content criticising the shooting by federal agents of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday.

  • TikTok investigating why some users can't write "Epstein" in messages

  • TikTok censorship claims spark probe of app's handling of anti-Trump content

  • Celebrities say they are being censored by TikTok after speaking out against ICE

  • US ownership of TikTok off to a rocky start as outage continues into second day

  • TikTok users can't upload anti-ICE videos. The company blames tech issues

  • TikTok Data Center Outage Triggers Trust Crisis for New US Owners

  • California's Newsom accuses TikTok of suppressing content critical of Trump

  • TikTok claimed bugs blocked anti-ICE videos, Epstein mentions; experts call BS

• At Davos, tech CEOs laid out their vision for AI's world domination

  • As opposed to the wellborn idle rich laying out their vision for world domination, as the venue was intended to host.

Musk

• Tesla brings Cybertruck to Middle East amid US demand collapse

• Musk's xAI datacenter generating extra electricity illegally, regulator rules

• Tesla brings Cybertruck to Middle East amid US demand collapse

• After switch from ULA, SpaceX set for speedy national security launch

• What it's like to get undressed by Grok

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Let the Chinese Cars In

• Electric car sales edge above petrol in EU for first time

Robot uprising / Humanioid Helpers

• Autonomous Aquatic Robot Is Smaller Than a Grain of Salt

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Subconscious Could Be in Tune with the Solar System

• Made to discriminate: UN's Gender Inequality Index always finds women worse off

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Should professors be forced to retire?

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Apple to Launch These 20 Products This Year

• Lawsuit Alleges That WhatsApp Has No End-to-End Encryption

  • Pavel Durov: "You'd have to be braindead to believe WhatsApp is secure in 2026"

• Surveillance companies track smartphone users through advertising data

• Meta to test premium subscriptions on Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp

• Windows Central Eliminates Most of Its Gaming Journalists

• TikTok alternative Skylight soars to 380K+ users after TikTok US deal finalized

• TikTokers are heading to UpScrolled following US takeover

• Reddit lawyers win trademark battle over 'WallStreetBets'

• Hasbro is being sued for printing too many Magic: The Gathering cards

• Samsung's TriFold phone will cost $2,899 in the US

• VR's problem isn't friction, it's a lack of meaning: Lessons from $70B in losses

  VR has been “five years away” for thirty years. In the 90s, virtual reality would revolutionize everything: gaming, communication, entertainment, work. In the 2010s, the Oculus Rift changed the game; for real this time. In the 2020s, the metaverse was coming because Zuckerberg bet the company on it, which made it inevitable. After billions invested, multiple hype cycles, and genuine technological breakthroughs, VR remains largely where it’s always been: a promising technology that most people don’t actually use. The headsets got better, the ecosystem grew, but mainstream adoption hasn’t materialized.

  VR’s biggest limitation isn’t technical; it’s imaginative. Most VR development is informed by experience from game development or film, bringing assumptions from those mediums. We need people from disparate fields who understand human experience from different angles. Look at what worked: Beat Saber succeeds because someone understood kinesiology and rhythm entrainment. VRChat succeeds because someone understood identity, creative expression, and community formation. VR therapy succeeds because someone understood psychology and embodiment. The developers who’ll define VR’s next decade won’t just know Unity or Unreal. They’ll be informed about human psychology, kinesiology, sociology, and spatial design. They’ll look to immersive theater for presence and participation, LARP for embodied roleplay, escape rooms for collaborative problem-solving, and theme park rides for visceral experience.

• Meta, TikTok and YouTube face landmark trial over youth addiction claims

• Nudify apps found on Google and Apple's app stores

  • surely we'll see the prompt world wide attention and regulatory action that prompted?

• LG's new subscription program charges up to £277 per month to rent a TV

• Washington Post may cut sports section amid layoffs

• CBS News Hires New Contributors As Part Of Bari Weiss’ New Strategy For News Division

• Zotac warns component shortages threaten the 'survival' of GPU manufacturers

• Supreme Court to decide how 1988 videotape privacy law applies to online video

• "IG is a drug": Internal messages may doom Meta at social media addiction trial

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• The Importance of Diversity

  No matter what we do, the coming wars will be horrific. Billions will die. But that’s what is beautiful; diversity is messy. On a cosmic scale, this period is just a blip, it isn’t what matters. What matters is that diversity survives, that life survives. That there’s entities that are different, all competing for different goals. All dancing between cooperate and defect. This is probably how it has to be anyway, I don’t think our actions can influence this one way or another. But lets not be so foolish as to cheer for the bad outcome.

• Anthropic’s secret plan to ‘destructively scan every book in the world’

  • Can't they just use Google Books data?

• Anthropic launches interactive Claude apps, including Slack, other tools

• Sam Altman said OpenAI planning to 'dramatically slow down' its pace of hiring

• Gamers suspicious of AI content have forced developers to cancel titles

• OpenAI spills technical details about how its AI coding agent works

• Yann LeCun: Current AI Is Dead End

• Vibe coding may be hazardous to open source

• Estonia bets on artificial intelligence to offset demographic decline

• Yahoo launches AI answer engine

• Microsoft Pledged to Save Water. In the A.I. Era, It Expects Water Use to Soar

• Zuckerberg blocked curbs on sex-talking chatbots for minors court filing alleges

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• NASA Demolishes Historic Test Stands That Built the Space Age

• NASA plane makes belly landing at Ellington Airport

Crypto con games

• Why altcoin season may not happen in 2026 as Bitcoin keeps control

• Thief of $90M in seized U.S.-controlled crypto is gov't contractor's son

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Goldman's Solomon Sees 'Slower' Trajectory for Talent Growth

• Pizza Hut Staff Assaults Zomato Delivery Boy Over Low Ratings

• Cartels that pretended to make the market have broken? What is driving gold's relentless rally

• Newegg stock price falls 17.7% after Chinese owner is detained by authorities

• Pinterest laying off 15% of workforce in push toward AI roles and teams

  • Pinterest to lay off 15% of staff to redirect resources to AI

• Amazon will pay customers $309M to settle 'no hassle returns' lawsuit

  • Amazon to pay $309M to U.S. shoppers in settlement over returns

• Amazon to Shut Down All Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh Stores

  • Amazon is closing its physical Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores

  • Amazon to shut down Go and Fresh stores

• UPS to cut additional 30,000 jobs in Amazon unwind, turnaround plan

• Hedge funds are tapping prediction markets and their data for an edge

• UnitedHealth forecasts first revenue drop in nearly four decades; shares plunge

• US consumer confidence plunges to 12-year low

• GM Beats Earnings Expectations, Boosts Dividend by 20%.

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• White House investing $1.6B in a US critical minerals firm $USAR. Up >100%

Trump

• Greg Bovino Loses His Job - The Atlantic

  Gregory Bovino has been removed from his role as Border Patrol “commander at large” and will return to his former job in El Centro, California, where he is expected to retire soon, according to a DHS official and two people with knowledge of the change. Bovino’s sudden demotion is the clearest sign yet that the Trump administration is reconsidering its most aggressive tactics after the killing Saturday of 37-year-old Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents under Bovino’s command. Earlier today, President Trump appeared to signal in a series of social-media posts a tactical shift in the administration’s mass-deportation campaign. Trump wrote that he spoke with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz—whom the White House has blamed for inciting violence—and the two men are now on “a similar wavelength.” Tom Homan, the former ICE chief whom Trump has designated “border czar,” will head to Minnesota to assume command of the federal mobilization there, Trump said.

  • You Can Run, But You Can't HIDE: DataRepublican NUKES Every Alleged Donor to MN Anti-ICE Signal Group – Twitchy

  • Patel: Funders of Minneapolis Protests Identified by FBI

  • Kash Patel says FBI is investigating Signal chats of Minnesotans tracking ICE

  • Ice Drives Unmarked Cars. This Public Database Tracks Their License Plates

• Seems Kind of Funny How All the 'Organic' Cockroaches Scatter When the Signal Light Comes On

  Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan (suspected as “Flan”) deleted her Facebook account amid speculation she’s directly linked. If true, this ties straight to state government involvement in what looks like organized insurrection. This wasn’t just leaks—it was a live operation disrupting a Minneapolis agitator network funded by shadowy orgs and possibly foreigners.

• Trump signs executive order for feds to take over LA’s ‘nightmare’ wildfire rebuild in huge boost for victims

• Trump Says He's Not Concerned with Decline of US Dollar

  • Dollar falls after Trump comments

Left Angst

• From World Police to Local Fortress: The End of American Internationalism

  The US appear to take a step back, with the National Security Strategy explicitly mentioning the undoing of previous overextension and the necessity to dedicate a higher focus to internal subversion. The America First policy increasingly seems like preparation to defend against something. Whether that is a propaganda strategy to justify the current internal chaos or a real international threat, I do not think us laymen can know right now. What is increasingly clear, and very concerning, is that the current narrative in the US walks and quacks like an authoritarian duck.

  • America steps back from enforcing its rules over the rest of the world; and it is interpreted as an expansion of authoritarianism. Because someone told these people it was, and to contradict what they've been told would make them as much an enemy of their tribe as the Trumpist Americans.

• As Tech Chiefs Woo Trump, Silicon Valley Seethes over Minneapolis Shootings

• Fire Kristi Noem into the Sun

  • Kristi Noem demanded hours-long meeting with Trump after she’s sidelined amid backlash over ICE shooting

• The Case for Upending World Trade

• Scott Galloway Explains How You Can Stop Government Overreach

• Trump's return-to-office mandate backfired

• Not one penny - by Scott Sumner

  As I got older, I studied economics and learned that big cold places are a fiscal drag with little military value, manned space flight is mostly a waste of time and money, and the minerals in asteroids are of little value.

• Bill Clinton issues statement following latest immigration-related shooting | Fox News

• AI videos of fake NYPD–ICE clashes spread in a 'perfect storm' for propaganda

• Redditors Are Mounting a Resistance Against ICE

• Introducing the Actual Grassroots Lefty Group Helping Organize the Insurrection

  found no evidence that CrimethInc receives grant money from any of the usual foundations, no corporate sponsors, no investment income (so presumably no large sums tucked away), and no government or NGO funding. CrimethInc appears to be genuinely grassroots. It also appears to be small and mostly informal. There's a small publishing nucleus — materials like their To Change Everything anarchist's guide — surrounded by a larger, loose, decentralized ecosystem of contributors and adopters. Their conferences, according to GPT, sometimes attract between 200 and 300 attendees. What's maybe most interesting to readers is that while CrimethInc is genuinely grassroots, they don't exactly indulge in any transparency.

• 'ICE Is Going Too Far': OpenAI's Altman Weighs in on Minnesota

• DHS: Critical ICE Surveillance Footage from Abuse Case Was Never Recorded

• ICE watchers in Maine say they were threatened by federal agents

• U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

• The tech powering ICE's deportation crackdown

• Trump's use of AI images pushes new boundaries, further eroding public trust

• New US defense strategy downgrades Europe, elevates Greenland

• Minnesota Proved MAGA Wrong

• Trump aides declared 16 DHS shootings justified before probes completed

• Trump's cyber chief uploaded sensitive files into a public version of ChatGPT

• Meta Is Blocking Links to ICE List on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads

  • Meta blocks posts sharing database of ICE agents

• The sad and self-inflicted decline of the Washington Post, in one chart

  There’s nothing wrong with personal liberties and free markets; I’m a fan of these things myself. Perhaps an explicitly centrist or center-right outlet could be a good business if it were starting from scratch; this is arguably something of a blind-spot even as the center-right has been hollowed out, either joining Team MAGA or Team Democrat. But it’s understandable that many subscribers felt betrayed. The Post rebuilt its brand from subscribers who wanted unflinching coverage of Trump, and then it pulled the rug out. And it doesn’t provide as much coverage in areas ranging from culture to real estate to Wordle that have long been profit centers for the Times. And now it’s paying the price for that.

• 'You can't have guns. You can't walk in with guns,' Trump says of Pretti killing

• CDC vaccination databases have been frozen under RFK Jr

• ICE knocks on ad tech's data door to see what it knows about you

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• California tech CEO and electric vehicle pioneer arrested, accused of murder

  After identifying the victim as 58-year-old Newport Beach resident Aryan Papoli, officials arrested a suspect — her estranged husband, 66-year-old Rolling Hills resident Gordon Abas Goodarzi. Authorities contacted Goodarzi at his home and arrested him on Jan. 23, the news release said. Goodarzi, a California tech executive with ties to BattleBots, is publicly listed as the president and CEO of Magmotor, which describes itself as a “proud” supporter of the combat robot community and claims to support several teams each year. According to his LinkedIn, Goodarzi also previously worked as a research affiliate at UCLA’s B. John Garrick Institute for the Risk Sciences since 2023.

• LA homeless services CEO arrested for defrauding taxpayers for luxury lifestyle

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Betting on War: Prediction Markets and the Corruption of National Security

• US carrier strike group is now in the Middle East region, sources say

World

• EU Tightens Grip on WhatsApp, Raising New Free Speech Concerns

• Ireland pays some artists a Basic Income

• India and EU announce landmark trade deal

  • EU and India clinch major trade deal in rebuff to Trump

  • 'Mother of all deals': EU and India sign free trade agreement

  • Trade Commissioner says 'mother of all deals' will open India market for EU

  • ‘Mother of all deals’: Details of the EU-India FTA

  • EU and India Reach Free-Trade Deal as World Responds to Trump Tariffs

• Peter Thiel comes to Paris to speak about the Antichrist

• Valve facing UK lawsuit over pricing, commissions

  • £656m legal action over 'unfair' Steam game store prices given go ahead

• Microsoft ordered to stop tracking school children

• France passes bill to ban social media use by under-15s

  • French lawmakers approve bill banning social media for children under 15

• Police chatbots in UK could free up equivalent of 3k police officers

• Heathrow drops the liquids rule

• Saudi Arabia suspends work on Mukaab megaproject

• He Leaked the Secrets of a Southeast Asian Scam Compound

• UK authorities help seize 'narco sub' and record cocaine haul in Atlantic Ocean

  British police have helped seize a record nine-tonne haul of cocaine from a "narco sub" in the Atlantic Ocean. The mammoth seizure weighed nearly as much as a school bus and the sub was 230 nautical miles from the Azores when it was intercepted. The semi-submersible eventually sank before authorities could take all its cargo, sending 35 of the 300 packages to the bottom of the Atlantic. The boat came from Latin America and had three Colombians and a Venezuelan on board, police said.

• Uber drivers are freelancers, not employees, Amsterdam Court of Appeal rules

• Why Germany is racing to rebuild its army

• EU now has its own 'secure and encrypted' satellite communication system

• African nations now send more money to China than they receive in new loans

• Spain approves decree to regularise half a million undocumented migrants

• TikTok settles just before social media addiction trial to begin

• France to ditch US platforms for 'sovereign platform' amid security concerns

  • France to ban officials from US video tools including Zoom, Teams

• Pornhub to restrict access for UK users

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia using Interpol's wanted list to target critics abroad, leak reveals

• Russian Sandworm Hackers Blamed for Cyberattack on Polish Power Grid

China

• The Inverted Panopticon: China Weaponized the West's Own Wiretap Infrastructure

• China hacked Downing Street phones for years

• Zhang Youxia: Purge of China's top general leaves military in crisis

  The senior ranks of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) are in tatters. The weekend purging of China's top general, Zhang Youxia, and another senior military officer, Gen Liu Zhenli, has left serious questions about what triggered the elite power struggles unfolding in the country - and what this means for China's warfighting capacity, whether it be any ambition to take Taiwan by force or engage in another major regional conflict. Zhang, 75, was vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) - the Communist Party group headed by the country's leader Xi Jinping, which controls the armed forces. The CMC, usually made up of around seven people, has now been whittled down to just two members - Xi and Gen Zhang Shengmin. All others have been taken down in the "anti-corruption" crackdown following previous waves of detention.

Health / Medicine

• Embracing sauna culture can lower dementia risk and boost brain health

• South Korea's Edenlux set for U.S. debut of eyestrain wellness device

• Strong vs. swole: the surprising truth about building muscle

• Brain bran: The protective effect that fibre has on cognition

• Ancient infection disabled gene in chimp brains that remains expressed in humans

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• What happens to the human body in 49C heat? Australians are finding out

• California wants to mix hydrogen with natural gas. Critics say that poses risks