2026-02-22

Horseshit

• Relooted, a game where you take back stolen African artifacts from museums

• Baby chick study challenges a theory of how humans evolved language

  • From chickens to humans, animals think "bouba" sounds round

• When satnavs go wrong: Why drivers end up following GPS into danger

• Toyota may ban drivers from switching off safety tech

• What Pressure Does to an Athlete's Body

• The "Enshittification" of Consumer Products

  In this paper published by the National Institute of Health, the number of additives in packaged foods increased by +10% from 2001 to 2019, from 49.5% to 59.6%. A food additive in this case is defined as any substance that is added to food — for example, coloring agents, flavoring agents, preservatives and sweeteners. According to Journey Foods, breakfast cereals have 35% more ingredients today, while frozen meals can have up to 40% more ingredients. Perhaps most shocking to me as a parent is the change in baby food over time. 50% of baby food in 2001 contained zero additives, which has dropped down to just 30% as of 2019.

  • Grandson of Reese's PB Cup inventor accuses Hershey of replacing ingredients

• Do You Back into a Parking Spot or Back Out?

Epstein

• Epstein files reveal how the rich fuel climate denialism

  Epstein’s views, those conversations reveal, included peddling climate denialism and ecofascism—and illustrate how the ultra-wealthy undermine meaningful climate action.

  • Kiddie fiddling and blackmail, thats no big deal. "climate denialism" omg he shoulda been burned!

Musk

• Tesla slashes Cybertruck prices as it tries to move (unpainted) metal

• Half of Jury Pool in Musk Trial Tossed After 'So Many' Said They 'Hate' Him

• Thermal drone footage shows Musk's AI power plant flouting clean air regs

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Toyota Mirai Hydrogen Car Depreciation: 65% Value Loss in a Year

  The story of hydrogen propulsion in the automotive world has always been a convoluted one. Infrastructure difficulties and the rise of competitors – most notably battery-electric power – have made it extremely difficult for hydrogen to ever properly take hold. Despite these struggles, some hydrogen-powered models are still circulating on both the new and used car market. One such model is the Toyota Mirai, the first and perhaps the most famous hydrogen-powered production car in existence. The Mirai is still being built today, but has faced several struggles which meant that even very recent used examples are catastrophically depreciating.

  The 2021 model year, which ushered in the second generation, had a starting price of $49,500; all subsequent model years sat just above the $50,000 mark. Even if we limit our search to examples from the model’s current generation, we can still find several cars being offered for less than $10,000 (while still keeping within a five-figure mileage). The most expensive used second-gen cars hover around the $22,000 mark.

• Mercedes-Benz Issues Recall for EQB Electric SUV over Fire Risk.

Robot uprising / Humanioid Helpers

• China is running the EV playbook on humanoid robots – and it's working

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• LDS Church undertakes a record selling spree of U.S. stocks

  The huge investment fund of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been on an unprecedented selling spree. New filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission indicate Ensign Peak Advisors — with a portfolio now worth just over $56 billion — sold nearly $5.6 billion in stocks and other equities in the final quarter of 2025, representing about 9% of its overall value. That unloading followed the quarter before in which the Salt Lake City-based investment-management arm of the global faith liquidated $2.1 billion of its holdings, for a total of $7.7 billion sold within six months.

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• California tried to protect students' data. Tech companies found loopholes

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Across the US, people are dismantling and destroying Flock surveillance cameras

• LibreOffice blasts OnlyOffice for working with Microsoft to lock users in

• Hard drives sold out for this year – AI to blame

• Why are there "ties" to break? National Parent Teacher Association Breaks Ties with Meta

• Pinterest Is Drowning in a Sea of AI Slop and Auto-Moderation

• West Virginia sues Apple over child sex abuse material stored on iCloud

• Colorado Lawmakers Push for Age Verification at the Operating System Level

• People are buying old iPods again

• Meta and Apple face serious questions about child safety and privacy

• Valve breaks silence on Steam Deck OLED scarcity – yes, it's because of the RAM

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Saturn's Rings Came from a Two-Moon Collision About 100M Years Ago

• they want to kill some folks and get back in the news: After fueling test, optimism grows for March launch of Artemis II to the Moon

  • NASA moon rocket suffers setback likely to delay March launch: officials

  The space agency revealed the latest problem just one day after targeting March 6 for the Artemis II mission, humanity's first flight to the moon in more than half a century. Overnight, the flow of helium to the rocket's upper stage was interrupted, officials said. Solid helium flow is essential for purging the engines and pressurizing the fuel tanks.

  • NASA astronauts' moon mission delayed due to rocket issue

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• OpenAI considered alerting Canadian police about school shooting suspect

  • OpenAI Employees Raised Alarms About Canada Shooting Suspect Months Ago

  • OpenAI had banned account of Tumbler Ridge, B.C., shooter; reached out to RCMP

  • Canadian trans shooter's disturbing ChatGPT messages alarmed employees

• They Do Mean the Effect on Jobs

  Most important was the unfortunate dispute between the Pentagon and Anthropic. The Pentagon’s official position is they want sign-off from Anthropic and other AI companies on ‘all legal uses’ of AI, but without any ability to ask questions or know what those uses are, so effectively any uses at all by all of government. Anthropic is willing to compromise and is okay with military use including kinetic weapons, but wants to say no to fully autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance. I believe that a lot of this is a misunderstanding, especially those at the Pentagon not understanding how LLMs work and equating them to more advanced spreadsheets. Or at least I definitely want to believe that, since the alternatives seem way worse. The reason the situation is dangerous is that the Pentagon is threatening not only to cancel Anthropic’s contract, which would be no big deal, but to label them as a ‘supply chain risk’ on the level of Huawei, which would be an expensive logistical nightmare that would substantially damage American military power and readiness.

• Anthropic's safety-first ethos collided with The Pentagon

• The Hater's Guide to Anthropic

  It’s time we had an honest conversation about Anthropic. Despite its positioning as the trustworthy, “nice” AI lab, Anthropic is as big, ugly and wasteful as OpenAI, and Dario Amodei is an even bigger bullshit artist than Sam Altman. It burns just as much of its revenue on inference (59%, or $2.79 billion on $4.5 billion of revenue, versus OpenAI’s 62%, or $2.5 billion on $4.3 billion of revenue in the first half of 2025, if you use The Information’s numbers), and shows no sign of any “efficiency” or “cost-cutting.” Worse still, Anthropic continually abuses its users through varying rate limits to juice revenues and user numbers — along with Amodei’s gas-leak-esque proclamations — to mislead the media, the general public, and investors about the financial condition of the company. Based on an analysis of many users’ actual token burn on Claude Code, I believe Anthropic is burning anywhere from $3 to $20 to make $1, and that the product that users are using (and the media is raving about) is not one that Anthropic can actually support long-term.

• OpenAI had banned account of Tumbler Ridge, B.C., shooter; reached out to RCMP

• Sanders warns US has no clue about speed and scale of coming AI revolution

• Meta and other tech firms are banning OpenClaw, formerly Moltbot, formerly Clawdbot, because it is hopelessly insecure in every possible way.

• With Nvidia's GB10 Superchip, I'm Running Serious AI Models in My Living Room

• People Loved the Dot-Com Boom. The A.I. Boom, Not So Much

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Google Is Exploring Ways to Use Its Financial Might to Take on Nvidia

• Hedge fund Saba offers to buy stakes in Blue Owl funds at steep discount

• The Rolling Layoffs at Jack Dorsey's Block

• US economy slowed sharply in the fourth quarter, expanding at rate of just 1.4%

• US farmers are rejecting multimillion-dollar datacenter bids for their land

• A 'Doom Loop' at the Heart of the Global Economy

• CoreWeave's stock drops. Why a $4B Blue Owl funding snag has investors on edge

• Amazon dethrones Walmart as the world's biggest company by sales

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Trump’s Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy Moves to Shut Down Hundreds of CDL Mills Violating Federal Regulations

  U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy today announced that more than 550 sham CDL training schools found in violation of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA)’s standards of safety received notices of proposed removal from FMCSA’s national training provider registry. FMCSA mobilized more than 300 investigators across 50 states to conduct over 1,400 sting operations. Noncompliant schools lacked qualified instructors, used fake addresses, and failed to properly train drivers on the transportation of hazardous materials, among other violations.

• Corporate America demands refunds after tariffs are struck down

• Cantor Fitzgerald Slammed Over Tariff Trades Which Never Happened | ZeroHedge

  reading the mainstream media or various social network politicized echo chambers, one would have no idea that both PolyMarket and Kalshi, which have revolutionized online betting for ordinary Americans (and as of this week, for institutional clients of both PolyMarket and Kalshi), are letting their clients bet millions whether Trump's tariffs would be struck down in court. Instead, they would be bombarded by headline after headline that Cantor Fitzgerald - the investment bank overseen by the sons of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick - is doing just that.

  .... all Trump needs to do now is cite that exact same paper and send out $120 billion (or 90% of the $133BN in IEEPA refunds that was "borne by US consumers") in "2026 Trump Tariff Refund Checks" (i.e. stimmies) to US consumers some time before the midterms, boost the economy while blaming the treachery of the Supreme Court for "forcing" him to do this, and tip the midterms in Republicans' favor. We are confident that countless markets are already connecting buyers and sellers willing to bet on that exact outcome, even if Cantor isn't one of them.

• LA.'s mansion tax chokes new construction as permits plunge 40%

• Can the government 'steal' equity from seized homes?

Trump

• Trump raises tariffs to 15% day after Supreme Court ruling

  • Trump says he'll raise tariffs to 15 percent after Supreme Court ruling

• JPMorgan Admits It Shut Trump's Accounts After Jan. 6 Capitol Attack

Democrats

• Price caps on groceries suggested in new paper

  On Thursday, the Center for American Progress, a prominent left-leaning think tank that often cultivates policy ideas later adopted by the Democratic Party, proposed a two-year freeze on the prices of 24 food items, such as strawberries and ground beef. Grocers would voluntarily agree to capping the cost of food in exchange for paying lower fees on credit card transactions, according to the proposal, which was written by a group led by Jared Bernstein, who chaired the White House Council of Economic Advisers during Joe Biden’s presidency. That, in effect, would force credit card companies to absorb the cost of subsidizing food purchases, a highly unusual arrangement. A draft of the proposal said the Federal Reserve could force credit card companies to do so via its regulatory oversight,

• Susan Rice offers a taste of what’s coming should the left retake power

  promises Democrats will punish corporations and other institutions who have “taken a knee to Trump.” “It’s not going to end well for them." “If these corporations think that the Democrats, when they come back in power, are going to play by the old rules…they’ve got another thing coming." “There will be an accountability agenda." “This is not going to be an instance of forgive and forget."

  • But at least we've established that running over Feds who are attempting to enforce laws we disagree with is protected free expression.

Left Angst

• The UK tourist with a valid visa detained by ICE for six weeks

  The dream holiday ended abruptly on Friday 26 September, as Karen and Bill were trying to leave the US. When they crossed the border, Canadian officials told them they didn’t have the correct paperwork to bring the car with them. They were turned back to Montana on the American side – and to US border control officials. Bill’s US visa had expired; Karen’s had not. “I worried then,” she says. “I was worried for him. I thought, well, at least I am here to support him.”

• EPA Weakens Limits on Mercury from Coal Plants

• The Flawed Paper Behind Trump's $100k H-1B Fee

• FCC calls on broadcasters to air 'pro-America content' for 250th anniversary

• ‘Dictator vibes' as dear leader Trump puts name and face front and center

• With tariffs ruling, Supreme Court reasserts its power to check Trump

• Trump Demeans Himself as He Attacks the Supreme Court

• Trump Threatens Netflix with 'Consequences' over Rice Board Seat

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Power plant attack near Las Vegas echoes 2023 incident

  A man who drove from Albany to Las Vegas and crashed into a Boulder City power facility on Thursday was likely planning a much larger attack, according to police evidence that included explosive materials, firearms and flamethrowers in his possession. Dawson Maloney left a note for his mother before making the cross-country trip, saying he was "a dead terrorist's son" and felt "he had an obligation to carry out his act," police said. Maloney fatally shot himself after ramming his car through the facility's gate.

  During Friday's press conference, Sheriff Kevin McMahill shared images of multiple books found in Maloney's hotel room that were "related to extremist ideologies, including right- and left-wing extremism, environmental extremism, white supremacy, and anti-government ideology."

• Thief who swiped Oakland mayor’s $75K car was ‘squatting’ in City Hall for days: source

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Army warrant officers will 'bid' against each other for their next bonus

World

• Asos co-founder dies in fall from 18-storey building in Thailand

• A Bollywood Spy Thriller Crosses the India-Pakistan Divide

• UK: Over 80% of 16 to 24-year-olds would vote to rejoin the EU

• Palantir Captured the UK Ministry of Defence

• 'Psychological torture': Spanish tenants fight back against housing 'harassment'

• Revelations on the misuse of Interpol by the most repressive regimes

• Cubans fight blackouts with solar as US extends oil chokehold

• Fury over Discord's age checks explodes after shady Persona test in UK

Greenland

• Denmark Is Buying US Missiles to Defend Greenland from the United States

Iran / Houthi

• Imprisoned Iranian protesters are being tortured and raped, sources say

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• A war foretold:how the CIA and MI6 got hold of Putin's Ukraine plans and why

• The CIA and MI6 got hold of Putin's Ukraine plans but nobody believed them

Health / Medicine

• Height Surgery for Men Can Add Inches but Has Risks

• Hundreds tell BBC how medication triggered gambling and other addictions

  Emma is one of more than 250 people who have now contacted us about addictions - gambling, but also sex and shopping - caused by a family of drugs prescribed for movement disorders. Despite the drugs having recently been downgraded as a first-line treatment for Restless Legs Syndrome, there has been no impact on GP prescription levels in England.

• Huge study finds a link between cannabis use in teens and psychosis later

  • Adolescent cannabis use linked to doubling risk of psychotic and bipolar disorders.

• Women's pain lasts longer than men, new study has clues why

• Mississippi hospital system closes all clinics after ransomware attack.

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Rare Blood Clots After Certain COVID Vaccines, Explained | Office for Science and Society - McGill University

  some people were developing life-threatening blood clots after receiving either the Johnson & Johnson vaccine (made by one of its subsidiaries, Janssen Vaccines) or the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot. This serious complication was almost only seen with these two vaccines, although one person who received the Moderna vaccine and one who was vaccinated with the Pfizer shot also received the same diagnosis. The anti-vaccine movement took this real observation and stretched it out of proportion, accusing all COVID vaccines of killing large swaths of the population through deadly coagulation. The actual issue was very rare and quite narrow, though still distressing. Based on a survey of what was reported in the scientific literature, 137 people worldwide are known to have died from blood clots following COVID vaccine injection, six of whom died in Canada.

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Giant Gravity Anomaly Under Antarctica Is Getting Stronger, Scientists Reveal

  if you weighed yourself at a geoid low and a geoid high, the difference would be just a few grams.

• (2023) The Strange Case of South American Chickens

  We have South American chickens that are genetically unique- different genetically from both European and Polynesian chickens and also genetically implausible because of two sets of lethal genes. And many indicators point to them being in South America for a long, long time – long before the Spanish arrived. So, where did they come from and how did they get there?

• Greenland ice melt surges unprecedentedly amid warming

• Intense sunlight reduces plant diversity and biomass across global grasslands