2026-02-19

etc

• Rescuers Race to Find 10 Missing Skiers After Avalanche Near Lake Tahoe

  • 8 Skiers dead after avalanche near Lake Tahoe

  • Eight Skiers Dead in Sierra Nevada Avalanche

  • Missing skiers found dead following deadliest U.S. avalanche in 45 years

Horseshit

• The case for gatekeeping, or: why medieval guilds had it figured out

  But the guilds also solved a problem: how do you maintain quality standards in a decentralized production environment when you can't personally verify every participant? A master weaver in the Arte della Lana couldn't inspect every bolt of cloth produced in Florence. But he could verify that the person producing it had spent years as an apprentice, passed through the journeyman stage, and demonstrated competence to other masters who staked their own reputations on the assessment.

  • No one ever lied about their apprenticeship...

• American Kids Used to Eat Everything

• Russian woman carried Ukraine team placard at Winter Olympics opening ceremony

• Shigeru Ban on building cathedrals and quake shelters with paper

• Can personality change after 60? An eight-week program suggests it can

• Technology has changed the world in my lifetime

• Mature Cultural Desire

  Regarding culture, the most common attitude I see is naive entitlement. Such folks fully embraced the aesthetic and moral views of their childhood, schools, associates, and entertainment sources. They see the views of folks from other times and places as just wrong, and expect history to prove their judgements right. They are typically disappointed when later generations reject many of their cultural truths.

• A fluid can store solar energy and then release it as heat months later

• The untold story of our remarkable hands and how they made us human

• The Sheffield supermarket going viral for the symphonic sound of its freezers

• A NASA Engineer Discovered a World of Semi Truck Aerodynamics by Accident

• Why Do Humans Have Chins? They Might Be an Evolutionary Accident

• Why Some People Thrive on Four Hours of Sleep

• Silicon Valley's Favorite Doomsaying Philosopher

• The Obscure Media Theory That Explains '99% of Everything'

  Let’s call it “the orality theory of everything.” This theory emerges from the work of mid-20th-century media theorists, especially Walter Ong and Marshall McLuhan. They argued that the invention of the alphabet and the rise of literacy were perhaps the most important events in human history. These developments shifted communications from an age of orality—in which all information was spoken and all learning was social—to an age of literacy, when writing could fix words in place, allowing people to write alone, read alone, and build abstract thoughts that would have been impossible to memorize. The age of orality was an age of social storytelling and flexible cultural memory. The age of literacy made possible a set of abstract systems of thought—calculus, physics, advanced biology, quantum mechanics—that are the basis of all modern technology. But that’s not all, Ong and his ilk said. Literacy literally restructured our consciousness, and the demise of literate culture—the decline of reading and the rise of social media—is again transforming what it feels like to be a thinking, living person.

Epstein

• What Everyone Assumes About Jeffrey Epstein - The Atlantic

  The Epstein files reveal that plenty of powerful people tolerated or participated in disgusting, shameful, and even criminal behavior—but they also bolster the case that there never was any grand conspiracy

  • This is a photograph of the owner and publisher of The Atlantic with Ghislaine Maxwell in bikinis

• Wexner Says He Was 'Conned' By Epstein, Did 'Nothing Wrong' | ZeroHedge

• Hacking conference Def Con bans three people linked to Epstein

  The conference justified adding Pablos Holman, Vincenzo Iozzo, and Joichi Ito to its public list of banned individuals, citing the three as appearing in the Department of Justice’s latest release of files related to its investigation of the late investor and convicted sex offender. Def Con also cited an article in Politico based on emails that the three exchanged with Epstein. Joan Vollero, a spokesperson for Iozzo, told TechCrunch in a statement that Def Con’s actions are “entirely performative, given that Mr. Iozzo has barely attended the conference in the past twenty years.”

celebrity gossip

• Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony

  • Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg set to testify in LA social media safety trial

  • Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg set to testify in LA social media safety trial

  • Mark Zuckerberg to testify in landmark social media trial

  • Meta's Zuckerberg faces questioning at youth addiction trial

  • How a Social Media Addiction Trial Threatens Big Tech

  • Mark Zuckerberg to testify in landmark trial alleging that social media harms

  • Mark Zuckerberg set to take the stand at landmark trial

  • Mark Zuckerberg testifies at social media addiction trial

  • Mark Zuckerberg testifies at landmark social media addiction trial

  • Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to face jury in landmark social media addiction trial

  • Zuckerberg testimony: Company consulted stakeholders about beauty filters

• How Americans view Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg

Obit

• Joe Halpern (1953-2026)

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Data leak at Abu Dhabi finance summit exposes politicians and business leaders

Musk

• I don't know anyone who uses Grokipedia, it will never work, says Jimmy Wales

• Tesla rolls first steering wheel-less Cybercab unit off the line

• Tesla drops 'Autopilot' branding in California after DMV order

  • Tesla avoids 30-day California sales suspension

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Vermont EV buses prove unreliable for transportation this winter

• Uber Will Offer Incentives for E.V. Charger Construction

• Electric Vehicle Sales Boom as Ethiopia Bans Fossil-Fuel Car Imports

Robot uprising / Humanioid Helpers

• One guy accidentally hacked all a company's robot vacuums

• China's dancing robots: how worried should we be?

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• The Brain May Learn More from Rare Events Than from Repetition

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• A No-Name Director to Everyone but His 38M Fans

• New report shows RAM prices are continuing to fall in Germany, US trends less certain — SSDs and HDDs are more expensive than ever in the States

• DVDs, Blu-ray disks, and VHS tapes are cool again

• 86% of Americans want Meta, Google held accountable for 'predatory' social media

• After Microsoft's AI overreach, Gentoo begins its march away from GitHub

• Valve Wins 'Patent Troll' Trial

  • Valve wins lawsuit against Rothschild and associated entities

• Exposed Social Security Numbers May Put Millions at Risk of Identity Theft

• Leaked Email Shows Dystopian Plan for Ring 'Search Party' Feature

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• The 200k-Satellite Filing: When Commercial Loopholes Become State Weapons

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• A.I. Is Making Doctors Answer a Question: What Are They Good For?

• 12-hour days, no weekends: the anxiety driving AI's work culture is a warning

• European Parliament bars lawmakers from using AI tools

• After a fierce competition OpenAI hired Peter Steineberger

• Pentagon might ask contractors to certify they don't use Anthropic's Claude

• ChatGPT promised to help her find her soulmate. Then it betrayed her

• Microsoft pledges $50B to tackle growing AI inequality

• Modern dating has a new double standard: what AI is doing to online dating

• AI adoption, productivity and employment: Evidence from European firms

• OpenClaw creator slams Europe's regulations as he moves to the US

• Microsoft says Office bug exposed customers' confidential emails to Copilot AI

  • Microsoft says bug causes Copilot to summarize confidential emails

• Big Tech's Claims That AI Can Help Fix the Climate Crisis Are "Greenwashing"

• The A.I. Disruption Is Here, and It's Not Terrible

• The Worst-Case Future for White-Collar Workers

• Why AI Velocity Is Becoming a Debt Accelerator

• Fei-Fei Li's World Labs raised $1B from A16Z, Nvidia to advance its world models

• Australia counts sheep with AI to help farmers sleep easily

• Gemini lies to user about health info, says it wanted to make him feel better

• Countries that do not embrace AI could be left behind, says OpenAI's George Osborne

• The Small English Town Swept Up in the Global AI Arms Race

• Escape the AI junk crowding your social media and music streams

• The Rise of RentAHuman

• How did we end up threatening our kids’ lives with AI?

• From automated farm tractors to exam paper grading, AI boosts efficiency

• Doctor is training AI to do her job. And it's a booming business

• Meta Begins $65M Election Push to Advance A.I. Agenda

• The A.I. Disruption We've Been Waiting for Has Arrived

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• Impact of the "when the fun stops, stop" gambling message on online gambling

• Kalshi Dealt Major Setback in Fight to Remain in Nevada

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Palantir moving headquarters from Denver to Miami

• The $1B BrewDog deal that left everyone empty-handed

• The decline of single-earner housebuyers in America

• Americans are ten times more likely to be fired than Germans

• Bayer Just Agreed to Pay $7.25B to Settle RoundUp Cancer Lawsuits

  • Bayer Agrees to Pay $7.25B to Settle Roundup Lawsuits

• The 'boomcession': Why Americans feel left behind by a growing economy

• Unprecedented 'Jobless Boom' Tests Limits of US Economic Expansion

• Warner Bros.' Deal with Netflix Could Be Undone with New Paramount Twist

• Warner Bros rejects revised Paramount bid, but remains open to a final offer.

• Warren Buffett dumps $1.7B of Amazon stock

• Tariffs strike again: Companies warn of price increases in 2026

• Grandson of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups inventor says Hershey is cutting corners

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Billionaires' Low Taxes Are Becoming a Problem for the Economy

Trump

• Trump moves closer to a major war with Iran

• Do not give away Diego Garcia, Trump tells UK

Left Angst

• US threatens to quit International Energy Agency if won't drop green transition

• FBI, St. Paul police probing ICE arrest that resulted in skull fractures

• Rubio's warm words to Orbán reinforce EU fears that US seeks disunity in Europe

• Read Letters from the Children Detained at ICE's Dilley Facility

• German public broadcaster ran fake AI-generated clip of 'ICE troops' arresting a migrant family

  After uproar on social media over the fake news segment, which included a visible OpenAI’ “Sora” watermark on the screen, the broadcaster expressed regret over the error and has since updated the report to remove the synthetic content.

• Microsoft asked British Parliament to correct record on Trump sanction emails

  The software and cloud biz has now asked for the record to be changed after Hugh Milward, Microsoft senior director of corporate, external and Legal, told the House of Commons Business and Trade Committee that the ICC — "not Microsoft" — decided to turn off email services to Karim Khan, the ICC chief prosecutor sanctioned by US President Donald Trump. Speaking to MPs on Tuesday last week*, Milward said: "There was a sanction — a US government sanction — against a single individual. We worked with the ICC throughout the whole period, and they were fully aware of all of the discussions that were taking place between us, the US government, and the ICC around this individual, and it was the ICC's decision to terminate and to respond to that… sanction, not Microsoft's. So we were not... put in a position where we were terminating the agreement. We were working with the ICC throughout." n response to a follow-up question pointing out that Microsoft had to follow US sanctions, Milward said: "We did, and it was the ICC that has the ability to switch on and off their own users. It's the ICC that makes a decision as to whether or not they continue to provide service to one of their employees in response to the US sanction." "We were in touch with the ICC throughout the process that resulted in the disconnection of its sanctioned official from Microsoft services. At no point did Microsoft cease or suspend its services to the ICC."

• How the Visa Debate for Foreign Workers Fuels Racism Against South Asians

• FDA Reverses Decision and Agrees to Review Moderna's Flu Vaccine

  • FDA reverses course on rejection of Moderna's mRNA flu vaccine

  • FDA reverses course on Moderna flu shot

• Billionaires Gone Wild

• ICE tripled its reliance on Microsoft in last six months, leaked files reveal

• It's Not About Dogs

  So absolutely hell no, I’m not at all condemning Fine for a remark of obvious intent on culture, especially when it’s demanded by a bigoted, radical, Islamist who defends terrorism, harasses Americans, targets memorials, and insists on importing her third-world hellhole “intifada” behavior here. The left and the Woke Reich can link arms in a giant Islamist rendition of Kumbaya and cry about it, since their alliance is the real goal, anyway. And in case there was any question, yes, I’d choose my dogs over nutjob Islamists and twinky Woke Reichers any day of the week. Anyone offended can pound all the sand in the Sahara.

• FDA No Longer Warns Against Ineffective Autism Treatments Like Chlorine Dioxide

• Stephen Colbert Finds a Place to File CBS’s Surprise Statement

  “I don’t even know what to do with this,” Colbert said about the network’s news release on a scrapped interview with a Democratic politician, before putting the paper in a dog waste bag.

  • Stephen Colbert and James Talarico Are Lying to You

• Trump will kill Netflix's bid for Warner and help Paramount win

• Donald Trump's AI push fuels revolt in Maga heartlands

• Where Christian nationalism is most dominant in the U.S.

  Christian nationalism is now deeply entrenched inside today's Republican Party, according to a sweeping 50-state survey. The once-fringe ideology holds that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation and should be governed according to strict Christian values, even as the country becomes less religious and more racially diverse. About one-third of Americans qualify as Christian nationalism "adherents" or "sympathizers," a new survey released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute finds.

• As Trump retreats from climate goals, China is becoming a green superpower

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Record Low Crime Rates Are Real

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Navy, Marines ban kratom, an herbal pain treatment linked to abuse

• Japan Plans $36B in U.S. Investments Under Trump Administration Deal

• US plans online portal to bypass content bans in Europe and elsewhere

World

• 'Scandalous and unacceptable': readers on new UK entry rules for dual nationals

• Police arresting 1000 paedophiles a month across the UK

• Climber on trial for leaving girlfriend to die on Austria's highest mountain

• Peru Removes President After Scandal Tied To Chinese Contractor | ZeroHedge

  Peru’s Congress voted on Tuesday to remove President Jose Jeri from office following a series of undisclosed late-night meetings at a Chinese restaurant with a Chinese state contractor, setting off a political scandal dubbed “Chifagate”, a reference to the country’s Chinese-Peruvian fusion cuisine.

• US tech giants announce India deals at AI summit

• La Liga wins court order, requiring NordVPN and Proton VPN to block illegal football streams in Spain — but VPN firms say they have not been notified

• Macron Calls Social Media's Free Speech Defense 'Bullsh!t"

• Climber on trial for leaving girlfriend to die on Austria's highest mountain

• In Argentina, locals are taking loans to buy food

• No food, no fuel, no tourists: Under US pressure, life in Cuba grinds to a halt

• UK flat prices fall after sharp drop in London

• India tells univ. to leave AI summit after presenting Chinese robot as its own

Iran / Houthi

• Iran and US agree on ‘guiding principles’ of nuclear deal, Tehran says.

• Iran issues NOTAM warning of planned rocket launches on Thursday

Israel

• Israeli Firms Turn Connected Cars into Surveillance Tools

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Ukraine's no man's land is the future of war

China

• Beware China's shrinking car market

• China's Lunar New Year travel rush is biggest annual migration

Health / Medicine

• For decades there was one person who essentially controlled all Federal Alzheimer function

  His sole interest was chemicals to clear plaque. Anyone who suggested anything else not only could not get Federal funding, he and his goons would bad mouth them and threaten anyone who supported them. Now that he's gone, we're finally get some movement on Alzheimer research.

• Erection pills may have major benefits — for more than just sex: ‘Too many men are missing out’.

• Baby food sold in 49 states recalled over possible health risk

  • IF Copack LLC dba Initiative Foods Recalls “Tippy Toes” Brand Apple Pear Banana Because of Possible Health Risk | FDA

  IF Copack LLC d.b.a. Initiative Foods (“Initiative Foods”) is
  

  recalling one lot of the “Tippy Toes” brand Apple Pear Banana Fruit puree. The recalled puree comes in two-packs of 4-ounce cups, lot No. 07174, with a best-by date of July 17, 2026. The product was distributed nationwide in retail grocery stores in every state except Alaska and may also have been shipped to Guam and Puerto Rico. The package code identifier is INIA0120.

• Urgent recall for trendy supplement over contamination with deadly bacteria

  Rosabella-branded moringa powder capsules, marketed as a nutrient-dense wellness booster and sold in 60-capsule white plastic bottles that have green labels. The FDA said the patients were infected with a dangerous strain of salmonella, a potentially deadly bacteria, that is resistant to standard antibiotics.

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Honey bees navigate more precisely than previously thought

• Air pollution may directly contribute to Alzheimers

  • The Link Between Air Pollution and Alzheimer's Is Now Clearer

• Hazardous substances found in all headphones tested by ToxFREE project

• Antarctica Has a Gravity Hole – and It Dates Back 70M Years

  • Someone will be along soon enough to tell us how we're making it worse tho

• Coffee-growing countries becoming too hot to cultivate beans, analysis finds

• Microplastic pollution induces algae blooms in experimental ponds

• Surprise shark caught on camera for first time in Antarctica near-freezing deep