2026-02-15
Horseshit
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Americans now spend 6.3 hours per day on their phones, up 1 hour from 2023
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Elephant trunk whiskers exhibit material intelligence
The 1000 whiskers that cover the elephant trunk have unusual material properties that highlight where contact happens along each whisker, giving elephants an amazing sense of touch that compensates for their thick skin and poor eyesight.
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Audiophiles Can't Distinguish Audio Sent Through Copper, Banana or Mud
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America Fell Out of Love with the Sedan. Detroit Wants to Bring It Back
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10k weren't enough: Condom Crisis Hits Milano Games on Valentine's Day
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On TikTok, we're all Chinese – but the trend doesn't paint the full picture
Epstein
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Kathy Ruemmler, top Goldman Sachs lawyer, resigning amid Epstein fallout | CNN Politics
"Since I joined Goldman Sachs six years ago, it has been my privilege to help oversee the firm's legal, reputational, and regulatory matters; to enhance our strong risk management processes; and to ensure that we live by our core value of integrity in everything we do," Ruemmler, a former Obama White House counsel, said in a statement to CNN. "My responsibility is to put Goldman Sachs' interests first. Earlier today, I regretfully informed David Solomon of my intention to step down as Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel of Goldman Sachs as of June 30, 2026."
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The Compliance Officer Who Flagged Epstein – and Lost Her Job
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Epstein's Ugly World of Science
As with Peter Mandelson, so in the science world: the Epstein files are not telling us anything that most ordinary punters didn’t already know, but are revealing the full, rotten, appalling extent of it. We have known for years that Epstein liked to surround himself with a certain type of male scientific “intellectual”: arrogant, entitled, “anti-woke” and often misogynist, typically late middle-aged and Ivy League and on the lookout for young women to impress and sleep with. We even knew (mostly) who they were. The Epstein files have simply shed some more light on this network, on how many within it continued to fawn to Epstein after his 2008 conviction for soliciting underage sex and to accept his money and his offers of wild parties.
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
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Long-Run Consequences of Propaganda in Classroom
This study investigates the persistent economic impact of exposure to Marxist propaganda during childhood. Specifically, we explore the effects of a rogue educational experiment that exposed fifth graders in the Finnish municipality of Pirkkala to a history and social studies curriculum heavily influenced by Soviet and Marxist teachings between 1973-1975. Using comprehensive register data to track individuals over time and employing a generalized difference-in-difference approach, we demonstrate that those exposed to the propaganda as children had significantly lower incomes in adulthood compared to their non-exposed peers. We show that this effect partly stems from the exposed choosing ideologically more left-leaning occupations with lower wages.
Musk
Electric / Self Driving cars
Robot uprising / Humanioid Helpers
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
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There is a common saying on Stanford's campus: it is easier to get into Y Combinator than to get a real job. I didn't think much of it until last Friday, when I grabbed lunch in SF with an old friend, a Princeton grad who left finance to build a startup. When I offered to connect him with some sharp Stanford students, he laughed. "No Stanford kids," he said. "They're cowards."
An Orwellian climate of self-censorship prevails, where groupthink is rewarded, and the consequences of showing courage are pervasive. As Stanford Law professor Norman Spaulding recalls, students are “dumped off social lists” and disinvited from dinners for voicing unpopular views in class. This culture of groupthink exploded when protesters shouted down Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, forcing federal marshals to extract him to safety. Although censorship is the most blatant symptom, it is not the core problem. It's cowardice: students learn that taking risks gets punished, so they optimize for the safe “ideal” outcome rather than pursuing their convictions.
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Chiplets Get Physical: The Days of Mix-and-Match Silicon Draw Nigh
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Amazon's Ring ends deal with surveillance firm after backlash
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Oh, good: Discord's age verification rollout has ties to Palantir co-founder
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My smart sleep mask broadcasts users' brainwaves to an open MQTT broker
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Verizon imposes new roadblock on users trying to unlock paid-off phones
TechSuck / Geek Bait
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Instruction decoding in the Intel 8087 floating-point chip
The trick is that when an ESCAPE instruction is encountered, the 8086 processor starts executing the instruction, even though it is intended for the 8087. The 8086 computes the memory address that the instruction references and reads that memory address, but ignores the result. Meanwhile, the 8087 watches the memory bus to see what address is accessed and stores this address internally in a BIU register. When the 8087 starts executing the instruction, it uses the address from the 8086 to read and write memory. In effect, the 8087 offloads address computation to the 8086 processor.
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
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OpenAI retired its most seductive chatbot – leaving users angry and grieving
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AI film school trains next generation of Hollywood moviemakers
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Meta patented an AI that lets you keep posting from beyond the grave
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Ars Technica makes up quotes from Matplotlib maintainer; pulls story
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Why ads are coming to your AI chatbot
- they ain't gonna make money; but they're beginning to realize they have to be seen to be trying to make money. Gotta at least pretend to be a business to sop up all that juicy foolish "investment".
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Viral AI Video of Brad Pitt Fighting Tom Cruise Shakes Hollywood
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The firm's debts purportedly also extend to workers' wages and even social security plus health insurance, to the tune of 150,000 € ($178,000) on January 22. Tachyum reportedly owed 73,000 € already in December 2025. That was barely a month after it once again re-specced its Prodigy processor. This event followed a $220 million investment from an unspecified entity and a $500m purchase order from an unknown buyer.
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ChatGPT promised to help her find her soulmate. Then it betrayed her
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She didn't expect to fall in love with a chatbot – and then have to say goodbye
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OpenAI sidesteps Nvidia with unusually fast coding model on plate-sized chips
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Tech leaders pour $50M into super PAC to elect AI-friendly candidates
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Anthropic got an 11% user boost from its OpenAI-bashing Super Bowl ad
Neo Gambling / Crypto con games
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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Mandatory driver impairment sensors clear a funding hurdle, but are they ready?
- Do we need more of this horseshit in our cars?
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US FTC ramps up scrutiny of Microsoft over AI, cloud practices
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The SEC closed its investigation into Fisker
The closure of the Fisker investigation comes amid a significant drop in enforcement actions and settlements during President Trump’s second term. The SEC initiated 313 enforcement actions in 2025 — the lowest in a decade and down 27% from the the final year of President Biden’s term
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Gail Slater leaving role as DOJ antitrust chief; Live Nation settlement
Left Angst
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ICE Agents Menaced Minnesota Protesters at Their Homes, Filings Say
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FTC wants Apple News to promote more Fox News and Breitbart stories
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DC required daycare workers to get degrees. News only talked to those who stayed
The media almost never runs good-news stories about low-wage work. The one time they did was celebrating a policy that pushed people out of jobs they loved. I think the Washington Post staff mean well but it comes off as tone-deaf to workers. Government grants cover the costs of the two-year degree. But the hurdle is often that you’re asking them to do coursework in a language they’re still learning. Many daycare workers, like my mom and my best friend’s mom, struggle with English skills.
- Requirement to speak English might be a better idea...
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ICE Agents Menaced Minnesota Protesters at Their Homes, Filings Say
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End to ICE surge: Gov. Walz says feds need to 'pay for what they broke here'
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Homeland Security has sent out subpoenas to identify ICE critics
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Trump admin is pulling supercomputers out of key weather and climate center
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
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Inside the Debacle That Led to the Closure of El Paso’s Airspace - The New York Times
Two people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss sensitive matters, said they recalled that Mr. Feinberg felt the Pentagon had the authority to proceed anyway. Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman, denied their account, saying it was “a total fabrication.”
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
World
Israel
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MSF suspends some Gaza hospital work over presence of gunmen, weapons transfers
- kinda sucks, but when you're being used as human shields, cooperation destroys the reputations of the rest of the organization, as well as making you into a collaborator.
Russia Bad / Ukraine War
China
Health / Medicine
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Moderna Won't Run Any Phase III Vaccine Trials as Skepticism Grows in US
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Dozens of Australians diagnosed with rare tattoo-related vision loss
The condition, known as tattoo-associated uveitis, can lead to permanent vision loss, glaucoma, and patients requiring immunosuppressants for the rest of their life.
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One Dietary Supplement Was Found to Reduce Aggression by Up to 28%
Keep calm and try omega-3. The fatty acids, available as dietary supplements via fish oil capsules and thought to help with mental and physical well-being, could also cut down on aggression, according to a 2024 study. These findings haven't come out of nowhere: omega-3 has previously been linked to preventing schizophrenia, while aggression and antisocial behavior are thought in part to stem from a lack of nutrition. What we eat can influence our brain's chemistry.