2026-02-17
Horseshit
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A prodigal L.A. pizza star returns to bake the city's best sourdough
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DNA Mutations Discovered in the Children of Chernobyl Workers
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Three Olympic Athletes Were Just Disqualified for a Novel Reason: PFAS
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The ‘cheating’ scandals, F-bombs and secret filming claims that rocked curling.
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You Are Not Defined by Your Phone Number. It's OK to Change It
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Humans Have a Third Set of Teeth. New Medicine May Help Them Grow. They could be ready by 2030.
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Minnesota Woman Allegedly Kills Boyfriend After He Denied Her Sex.
Epstein
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Unabomber victim, social media inventor Yale prof steps down after Epstein email
After outcry from students over e-mails showing David Gelernter’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the computer science professor is under review by the university.
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Chief Reiter told the FBI that in 2006, Trump was one of the first people to call his office after Epstein’s charge became public record. “Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this,” Trump told Reiter.
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Ro Khanna and the Impunity of “Wealthy, Powerful Men”
Politicians eager to capitalize on the scandal would likely show little concern for the underlying facts in “outing” names and repeating unproven allegations. That fear was realized this week with the chest-pounding speech of Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Cal.) on the House floor in which he took credit for outing six “wealthy, powerful men” who he suggested were actively shielded by the DOJ from public exposure. After the DOJ unredacted the names at his request, he read them on the floor. It turns out that four have nothing to do with Epstein. Had Khanna made these comments outside of the House floor, he would be looking at four defamation lawsuits. However, Khanna knew the men could not sue him because of the immunity afforded to him under the Constitution’s Speech and Debate Clause.
What is curious is that Khanna blamed the Justice Department for his going to the floor to out the men as suspected wealthy and powerful predators. However, Massie admitted that he previously raised the possibility that the men were just used randomly in a line up. Both seemed to put the onus on the Justice Department to protect them from their own folly.
celebrity gossip
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George R. R. Martin Is "Not in the Mood" to Finish the Winds of Winter
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Kim Dotcom says Palantir allegedly hacked
Palantir was allegedly hacked. An AI agent was used to gain super-user access and here”s what the hackers allegedly found:
Peter Thiel and Alex Karp commit mass surveillance of world leaders and titans of industry on a massive scale.
Obit
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'Tehran' producer Dana Eden dies during filming
Dana Eden, a producer working on the Apple TV espionage drama "Tehran," has been found dead while filming for the show in Greece. Filming of the fourth season of spy thriller Tehran was underway when Eden was discovered in an Athens hotel on Sunday. Discovered by her brother, Eden's death is being treated as a suicide initially, with an investigation underway to determine what happened to her.
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
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The Apolitical Library Is Just Fiction
You’ve been reading a variant of this story for some time: A tiny three-book library in the remote Idaho hamlet of Yorrick faced cutbacks in 2025, threatening service to the four people who live there. “It’s not the worst that could happen,” said one resident at the time, “since we’ve all read the books a few times over, but the library was a place where we could all meet up, or would, if it wasn’t just a box under Gertrude’s porch.”
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MacKenzie Scott's $26B Sugar Pile
MacKenzie Scott has given away $26 billion faster than anyone in history — with no oversight, and no accountability for the chaos that follows. Philanthropy without stewardship is negligence.
Musk
Electric / Self Driving cars
Robot uprising / Humanioid Helpers
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
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The Tide Goes Out on Youth Gender Medicine - The Atlantic
As the shaky evidence base for youth gender medicine has become better known, activists have retreated to an argument from authority. Never mind the Cass Report, whose findings resulted in the closure of Britain’s leading youth gender clinic. Never mind the study by a leading American practitioner showing that the treatments she championed did not improve minors’ mental health. Never mind reports that some adolescents were being put on a medical pathway after only a single clinic visit. For advocates, the important thing to remember was that “gender-affirming care” for minors—puberty blockers and hormones, plus surgery in rare cases—was endorsed by all of the major American medical associations.
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On Dogs And Those Who Hate Them
I expect there are some Muslims who don’t consider dogs haram and who are willing to treat dogs in the manner of civilized people. That doesn’t mean that’s not a tenet of faith for a significant portion of Muslims. A significant number of Muslims hate dogs. And, in fact, some Muslims who have come to the West have demanded that we accommodate their bigotry against these wonderful creatures.
So, no. I’m not going to accommodate anyone who dislikes dogs for any reason. My dogs are more important than people who hate or dislike dogs. If you think that makes me a bad person or a bigot, I am completely indifferent to your opinion.
This is not open to debate. We’re going to keep our dogs as we always have. If you come to our civilization, you’re going to respect our pets, or there’s going to be trouble. John Wick is the moderate position on this issue.
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Amazon Wins $6M in Damages Against Pirated DVD Stores, Plus Domain Takeovers
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Apple's upcoming low-cost MacBook will come in 'fun colors,' launch next month
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Your pet's microchip may now be useless after chip company goes out of business
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Grab this gigantic, 1600W 80+ Platinum power supply for just 33 cents per watt
- The video cards its meant to power never really came available to the average punter.
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Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD
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Developers speak out about bigotry on Steam
According to developers who spoke with the Guardian, abuse – particularly directed towards transgender creators – is a fact of life on the platform. “Everyone is at one another’s throats all the time in reviews, discussions, forums, anywhere you can possibly find it on Steam,” says content creator and Steam curator Bri “BlondePizza” Moore. “It ensures no one is safe on the platform; developers and consumers alike.” Aside from the content of Steam’s forums, sources pointed to two main causes for concern: bigoted reviews posted on games’ Steam pages, which can hugely affect sales for their developers; and Steam curators (self-appointed taste-makers on the platform) directing campaigns against games they perceive to lean left or pursue inclusion.
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UK Discord users were part of a Peter Thiel-linked data collection experiment
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Flock and Ring Cancel Announced Community Requests Integration
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Cloudflare Reports Issues as X and Amazon Web Services Are Disrupted
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Unreal Tournament 2004 is now available for free thanks to its fan community
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Instagram boss says 16 hours of daily use is 'problematic' not addiction
TechSuck / Geek Bait
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No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
Then a popular science fiction author, Charlie Stross (who also couldn’t tell Adafruit was not Arduino) told his tens of thousands of Mastodon followers we’d “sold out to Qualcomm.” We did not, he got his dunk on “AI”, he didn’t read the article, didn’t check facts. And so the pile-on commenced with a Ladyada pile-on about her use of “AI”… It’s still going on now.
When a man uses an LLM to generate boilerplate code, he’s a savvy early adopter, a start up founder, a guy ahead of the curve. When Limor Fried uses one to generate a CAD library file – while nursing a newborn, while running an independent company, while openly documenting her process so others can evaluate the tool – a high profile science fiction author marshals his tens of thousands of followers to police her workflow. This is what it’s like to be a woman in tech, right now, it’s not science fiction – and those guys are going to tag and bother Limor. This is an MIT-trained engineer running an independent, VC-free, load-free, hardware company in New York while caring for a toddler and a chubby, hungry newborn baby. These Mastodon reply-guys maintain years-old folders of screenshots waiting for Limor, or “Adafruit” to use a tool that might use “AI”.
- I liked cstross, especially his earlier work; but I'm afraid he disappeared up his own ass years ago.
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
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Seedance 2's AI RipOffs to Be Halted After Legal Threats from Big Studios
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ByteDance to add safeguards to Seedance 2.0 following Hollywood backlash
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Lawsuit: AI used women's faces without consent for sexual content
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Friends Might Be Sharing Your Number with ChatGPT Contacts Sync
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An LLM’s words shape our beliefs, decisions, and actions, yet no speaker stands behind them. This dynamic is already familiar in everyday use. A chatbot gets something wrong. When corrected, it apologizes and changes its answer. When corrected again, it apologizes again—sometimes reversing its position entirely. What unsettles users is not just that the system lacks beliefs but that it keeps apologizing as if it had any.
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Anthropic improves free Claude tier as OpenAI prepares insert ads into ChatGPT
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Utilities May Be Wildly Overestimating the AI Boom–At Public Expense
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Alibaba Unveils Major AI Model Upgrade Ahead of DeepSeek Release
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Amazon's Andy Jassy bets on $200B AI spending drive to revive AWS
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CA ballot measures aimed at OpenAI filed by stepbrother of Anthropic employee
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Cognitive Scientist Writes a Startling Play About A.I. Authoritarianism
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Amodei suggests OpenAI doesn't "understand the risks they're taking"
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Semantic ablation renders AI writing generic, boring and dangerous
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Large language models provide unreliable answers about public services
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The execs/leadership have lost their minds when it comes to LLMs. They are pushing a mandate that 100% of our code must be AI generated. All our career rubrics have been updated to focus primarily on AI. If you are not using AI in some way/shape/form you will be considered a low performer, regardless of output. Your promotion will not pass the committee unless your AI usage is adequate.
If they lived up to the hype, no one would be forcing it down our throats.
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Fund Beating 99% of Peers Sees Few Software Firms Surviving AI
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AI is destroying Open Source, and it's not even good yet
Some believe the AI bubble isn't a bubble, but those people are misguided, just like the AI that hallucinated the quotes in that Ars Technica article. And they say "this time it's different", but it's not. The same signs are there from other crashes. The big question I have is, how many other things will AI companies destroy before they have to pay their dues.
Neo Gambling / Crypto con games
Economicon / Business / Finance
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Lloyds to investigate its use of staff banking data in pay talks
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WA small businesses struggle to keep up with health insurance hikes
= A Stock Market Doom Loop Is Hitting Everything That Touches AI
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The boomers were told houses are appreciating assets, and now we must bend reality to make that true. Until you solve this problem, you will never solve the housing affordability crisis. It has nothing to do with zoning, building costs, or environmental reviews. It has to do with people holding bags they need to dump on you.
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The Federal Express Decline and Fall of Collierville, TN
The story of Collierville’s transformation is inextricably linked to the upheaval within its largest employer. Since founder Fred Smith, a local legend, handed the reins to new CEO Raj Subramaniam, a seismic shift has rattled FedEx to its core. This article investigates the charge, leveled by current and former employees, that a new corporate strategy, one that funnels exclusive contracts to a network of Indian-run consulting firms, is dismantling the company’s celebrated “People First” culture and systematically reshaping its hometown, leaving long-time residents feeling like strangers in their own land.
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Goldman Traders Launch AI-Proof Software Basket Amid Sector Rout
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Three Major Brands You've Probably Bought Brakes from Are Shutting Down
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Big tech stocks lose billions as AI spending fears hit valuations
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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Duffy cracks down on trucking carriers and 'sham school' linked to crash
Duffy outlined the Department of Transportation’s response to a recent crash featuring an illegal Kyrgyz immigrant, who killed four Amish people in a van with his truck. Duffy announced that the trucker’s employer, AJ Partners; two “SHADY” carriers connected to AJ Partners, Tutash Express and Sam Express; and the “Sham school” Aydana that had certified and helped him get a license, had all been shut down or had their certification revoked.
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State Department orders nonprofit libraries stop passport applications
Democrats
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Gasoline Starved California Is Turning to Fuel from the Bahamas
US supplies of gasoline are being shipped out of the country to travel thousands of miles via the Bahamas before finally ending up in California, a state battling shrinking fuelmaking capacity and high pump prices. Shipments on the circuitous route are increasing. California imported more gasoline in November than ever before, with more than 40% coming from the Bahamas.
Left Angst
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Obama responds to Trump sharing racist AI video depicting him as an ape
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Trump Administration Announces That We Don't Know Where the Sun Goes at Night
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DHS has reportedly sent out subpoenas to identify ICE critics online
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Trapped in the hell of social comparison
Interest rates have begun to come down. Inflation has mostly subsided, and the real economy is still doing decently well despite Trump’s tariffs. So why are American consumers more pessimistic than they were during the depths of the Great Recession or the inflation of the late 1970s? It’s possible to spin all sorts of ad hoc hypotheses about why consumer sentiment has diverged from its traditional determinants. Perhaps Americans are upset about social issues and politics, and expressing this as dissatisfaction about the economy. Perhaps they’re mad that Trump seems to be trying to hurt the economy. Perhaps they’re scared that AI will take their jobs. And so on. Here’s another hypothesis: Maybe Americans are down in the dumps because their perception of the “good life” is being warped by TikTok and Instagram.
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Trump Justice Department moves to dismiss Steve Bannon criminal case
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With Latest Rollback, the U.S. Essentially Has No Clean-Car Rules
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Trump Admin to Spend $40B to Turn Warehouses into Immigration Jails
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White House uses USAID funds for budget director Vought's security
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
World
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A fallen Indian tech star and the hunt for its missing millionsA fallen Indian tech star and the hunt for its missing millions
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Singapore says China-backed hackers targeted its four largest phone companies
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India orders social media firms to remove unlawful content within three hours
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"Giving children the space to grow"
We will be going to Parliament for new government powers, enabling us to act on the findings of the social media consultation where the evidence suggests we need to.
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Japan's economy avoids technical recession, but Q4 rebound misses expectations
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Border social media searches and English: Australian conservative migration plan
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UK eyes rapid ban on social media for under 16s, curbs to AI chatbots
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Ministry of Justice orders deletion of the UK's largest court reporting database
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The spectacular multimillion-euro heist nobody noticed
On a quiet weekend just after Christmas, a group of thieves broke into a High Street bank in the western town of Gelsenkirchen, by boring through a wall with an industrial drill. They looted more than 3,000 safe deposit boxes and made off with millions of euros. Over a month later, police have yet to make an arrest.
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Canadians Say They'll Buy Cheaper Chinese EVs as Tariffs Drop
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A small German state's revolt against Microsoft and what it means for Europe
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EU Parliament blocks AI features on tablets over cyber, privacy fears
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Google warns EU against 'erecting walls' in tech sovereignty push
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German Social Democrat paper adds to calls for social media curbs for children
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UK bank bosses plan to set up Visa and Mastercard alternative amid Trump fears