2026-02-13

Horseshit

• Cleaning chimneys sucks and yet you must do it occasionally: Why the Traditional Wood-Burning Fireplace Is Facing Extinction

• 'Price of dignity' says Ukrainian athlete banned over helmet

• Sock Rugs and Pants Curtains: When Clothes Become Décor

• Humans are not the only animals that treat each other's injuries

• Here’s what your sexual fantasies say about your personality, study claims.

  Researchers surveyed more than 5,000 US adults about their sexual fantasies and personality traits. They found that more neurotic adults were likely to say they fantasised about sex more often than less neurotic adults. In contrast, individuals who scored more highly for conscientiousness and agreeableness were likely to fantasise less frequently.

  • totally non specific. They don't say anything about pickles and the myriad sensual possibilities they offer, nor the psychological implications of such tastes.

• The exorbitant privilege of the US brain gain is fading

Epstein

• Full 2001 VH1 segment, glorifying Jeffrey Epstein while showing Epstein's allegiance with Bill Clinton and Kevin Spacey

  They also point out he has his own chemistry lab in the basement and world class scientists which he pays "20 Million dollars a year to perform WHATEVER experiments they want with Harvard professor!"

  • John McAfee was foolish enough to try the lifestyle without the backing of a major intelligence agency.

• Epstein's Network

  • The true fun will come from comparing what's left out of all the various summarizing efforts; and cross correlating that to who paid for the projects.

• Peter Attia's Ties to Epstein Spark a Backlash from Doctors

• Norway's former PM charged with gross corruption over Epstein links

• Jeffrey Epstein might not have created /pol/, but helped carry out its mission

• Noam Chomsky, Apologist for Pol Pot, Called Jeffrey Epstein His ‘Best Friend.’

  Prospect magazine listed Chomsky as the world’s top public intellectual, according to its poll, in 2005. Based on a record of scholarly sources from 1980 through 1992, Chomsky ranked as the most cited living intellectual and the eighth most cited source of all time, ahead of Cicero and Hegel but not, his acolytes lamented, Shakespeare, Aristotle, and the Bible.

  A shocked, shocked Left reacts to Chomsky’s cozying up to such a questionable character as though it were out of character for him. It’s not. Because of that, what stands trial here is not Chomsky’s long-discredited judgment but the judgment of his many fawning admirers. For many decades, Chomsky did not “seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest.” Instead, he approached events and people the same way he approached the Jeffrey Epstein controversy: depicting his rooting interest as on the side of righteousness and truth.

• Bondi Spying on Congressional Epstein Searches Should Be a Major Scandal

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• Inside the Secret Smear Machine That's Targeting Hollywood

  The sites, which have gone offline since the Jones litigation linked them, shared a signature. Their design was unpolished, even primitive, seemingly to convey a sense of slapdash amateurishness. Likewise, their tone was over-the-top, with the inferred suggestion that the incognito individuals behind these projects were wronged intimates of the targets — desperately and finally speaking their truths to power. The material itself often was a mix of factual assertions, for example about specific professional setbacks or personal troubles, buttressed by legal documents as well as news articles, along with outlandish, unsubstantiated conspiracies and defamatory accusations of illegal or unethical behavior. This piggybacking of false claims atop true ones is a stock disinformation tactic. Legal and PR players operating at the highest echelons of the entertainment industry tell THR that while all sorts of online tactics — often involving hired guns and some once considered disreputable — have become normalized, the weaponizing of smear sites as professional practice is still out of bounds. They also insist that it’s exceptionally rare to encounter. Even more unusual is for this dark-arts activity to end up exposed in court filings.

• UpScrolled social network struggles to moderate hate speech after fast growth

Musk

• SpaceX takes down Dragon crew arm, giving Starship a leg up in Florida

• Elon Musk posted about race almost every day in January

  • When has there been a day that the Guardian did not post racist agitprop?

• X accused of violating sanctions by selling Premium accounts to Iranian leaders

• What is the best selling car CA? Tesla Model Y most sold in state

• Elon Musk wants to build a giant catapult on the moon

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• The media needs to stop gaslighting us about the reality of trans mass shooters

  Another mass shooting, and another devastated community. And once again, elites in the media class and public officials are so terrified of offending that they don’t dare ask the obvious question: Why are so many of the most horrifying attacks carried out by people who identify as “trans”? After Canada suffered one of its deadliest school massacres Tuesday, police identified the biologically male shooter as 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar — noting that he began to transition six years ago. That’s right: another deadly attack by someone who is transgender. Yet the elites go to lengths to avoid any suggestion of a linkage. Heck, many news outlets won’t even admit Rootselaar is biologically male, referring to him only as a woman.

• What I Suffered Being 'Transgender'

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Teachers email parents demanding they don’t homeschool kids – as San Francisco strike grinds into a third day.

• S.F. teachers strike: Schools to close for 4th day, negotiations slow

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• US Justice Dept. casts wide net on Netflix's business practices in merger probe

• AMD surpasses 40% server CPU revenue share for the first time

• Instagram chief likens social media addiction to being hooked on a Netflix show

• Google played key role in recovering video from Nancy Guthrie's nest camera

  • How the FBI might have gotten inaccessible camera footage from house

• Ex-Meta exec says Instagram exposed teen daughter to 'predators' in bombshell

• Dwarf Fortress players solve mysterious case of spontaneous combustion

• Apple Takes Full Control of 'Severance' in Surprise Deal

• Apple patches decade-old iOS zero-day, possibly exploited by commercial spyware

• Apple says 'random or anonymous chat' apps no longer welcome on the App Store

• Someone's attacking SolarWinds WHD to steal high privilege credentials

• Palo Alto chose not to tie China to hacking campaign for fear of retaliation

• Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• The Death Of Baseload And Similar Grid Tropes | Hackaday

  As both the sun and wind are generally more prevalent during the day, and these generators are not generally curtailed, this means that suddenly everything else, from thermal power plants to hydroelectric plants, has to throttle back. Obviously, doing so ruins the economics of these dispatchable power sources, but is a big part of why the distorted claim of ‘baseload is dead’ is being made. Suffice it to say that having the entire grid adapt to PV solar and wind farms – whose output can and will fluctuate strongly over the course of the day – is not an incredibly great plan if the goal is to keep grid costs low. Not only can these forms of variable renewable energy (VRE) only be curtailed, and not ramped up, they also add thousands of kilometers of transmission lines and substations to the grid due to the often remote areas where they are installed, adding to the headache of grid management.

• Sparc and Alpha CPU Ports Still Seeing Activity in 2026 with Linux 7.0

• Welcome to the Eternal September of open source

  Today, a pull request can be generated in seconds. Generative AI makes it easy for people to produce code, issues, or security reports at scale. The cost to create has dropped but the cost to review has not.

  At GitHub, we aren’t just watching this happen. Maintainer sustainability is foundational to open source, and foundational to us. As the home of open source, we have a responsibility to help you manage what comes through the door. We are approaching this from multiple angles: shipping immediate relief now, while building toward longer-term, systemic improvements. Some of this is about tooling. Some is about creating clearer signals so maintainers can decide where to spend their limited time.

  • "The home of open source" bah.

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Sparks seen from rocket as ULA Vulcan launches from Florida Thursday

  • Vulcan suffers solid rocket booster problem during USSF-87 launch

  “We had an observation early during flight on one of the four solid rocket motors, the team is currently reviewing the data,” ULA said in a statement roughly an hour after liftoff. “The booster, upper stage, and spacecraft continued to perform on a nominal trajectory.”

  • Pretty fireworks, and nothing blew up. win/win.

• Amazon gets FCC approval to launch 4,500 Leo internet satellites

• Why the economics of orbital AI datacenters are so brutal.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Mistral's revenues soar over $400M as Europe seeks AI independence

• Tool Shaped Objects

  What makes this particularly difficult to see is that LLMs are also, genuinely, tools. They do real work. The line between the tool and the tool-shaped object is not a line at all but a gradient, and the gradient shifts with every use case, every user, every prompt. You can only fail to notice when you have crossed from one side to the other.

• Google says attackers used 100k prompts to try to clone AI chatbot Gemini

• AI researchers are sounding the alarm on their way out the door

  • 'The world is in peril': AI researchers quit with public warnings

  • OpenAI Researcher Quits Warns Unprecedented Archive of Human Candor Is Dangerous

  • AI safety leader says 'world is in peril' and quits to study poetry

• OpenAI's Jony Ive-Designed Device Delayed to 2027

• Google offers buyouts to staff in its business unit who aren't 'all in'

• Anthropic Puts $20M into a Super PAC to Counter OpenAI

• Private equity's big bet on software was derailed by AI

• AI can predict your future salary based on your photo, boffins claim

• The Great Em Dash Panic of 2024 Was Wrong

• The Discourse has been Automated

  Our social patterns of open source: the drama, the callouts, the apology blogposts that look like they were written by a crisis communications team, all if it is now happening at dozens of tokens per second and one tool call at a time. Things that would have taken days or weeks can now fizzle out of control in hours.

• ByteDance's AI model can generate clips based on text, images, audio, and video

• 'Something Will Go Wrong': Anthropic's Chief on the Coming A.I. Disruption

• Can medical "AI" lie? Large study maps how LLMs handle health misinformation

• QuitGPT Is Going Viral

• IBM triples US entry-level hiring for roles AI was predicted to replace

• Anthropic closes $30B funding round as cash keeps flowing into AI

  • Anthropic valued at $380B in latest funding round

• Spotify says its best developers haven't written a line of code since December

Neo Gambling / Crypto con games

• IDF reservist and civilian accused of insider Polymarket betting

• 'Another way to gamble money': prediction markets prompt confusion and concern

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Healthcare Jobs Have Become the Engine of America's Labor Market

  • Wait until the fraud and do nothing jobs get trimmed from there; it'll be like ending WW2.

• Why the dollar may have much further to fall

• Bay Area tech CEO given $3.5M severance payment as company lays off hundreds

• US businesses and consumers pay 90% of tariff costs, New York Fed says

• The $100M bet that Columbus can become America's startup capital

• Cisco stock has worst day since 2022 as memory prices pressure margins

• Cargill Closes Beef Plant, Joining Peers as Herd Woes Deepen

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• House Ways and Means committee hearing on foreign influence in nonprofits

  n a press release, the committee said the hearing will focus on the "ways foreign actors have funneled millions of dollars through networks of tax-exempt organizations to create, support, and fuel disruption and illegal activity across the country."

• State Department identifies Code Pink and other far-left groups as vectors of Chinese influence operations

  “Partisan hacks spent years peddling the phony Russia collusion hoax while turning a blind eye to the sprawling web of far-left activist organizations who push the agendas of the Chinese Communist Party,” Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers said in a statement provided to The Post. “Organizations like Code Pink and the People’s Forum denigrate the United States, whitewash the violence of Marxist regimes, and run cover for China while enjoying an influx of cash from a donor network with connections to the Chinese Communist Party,” Rogers added. “The State Department will pursue complete transparency for the donor and NGO networks that lobby for our adversaries and seek to weaken the resolve of the United States.”

  • State Department finds Code Pink, People’s Forum linked to Chinese influence operations.

• House passes Save America Act, Trump-backed bill to impose new voting rules

• Republicans vote to end Trump's Canada tariffs

Democrats

• What Mamdani Doesn't Know About Tenants

• Democrats are cashing in after DOJ failure to indict them

  The six Democrats who urged military servicemembers in a video not to comply with illegal orders notched a significant legal win when federal prosecutors failed to criminally indict them. Now they’re looking to gain political momentum and build their campaign war chests. In addition to a flurry of social media posts and two afternoon press conferences, several have been making the cable news rounds and scheduled appearances on high-profile late night TV shows — signs that they see political opportunity in Trump’s attacks and are hoping to bottle that clout. “Democrats have limited power at the federal level right now and need to leverage every opportunity to capitalize on Trump’s overreach and lawlessness to raise the necessary funds to ensure we have a balance of power at the end of the midterms,” said Democratic strategist Adrienne Elrod.

  • The trimming of the NGO graft must be hurting them. Surely no one has lost faith in them after Kamala's record fundraising in such an amazingly short time.

Left Angst

• CBS's Attempt to Attack President Trump's Deportation Project Gets Harsh Response from Homeland Security – RedState

  Even at this, CBS makes this admission, so perhaps Weiss has had an impact: "Nearly 60% of ICE arrestees over the past year had criminal charges or convictions, the document indicates. But among that population, the majority of the criminal charges or convictions are not for violent crimes." Even by CBS's own numbers, the data show conclusively that ICE is primarily targeting charged and convicted criminals. Somehow, they've decided that "non-violent" felons violate President Trump's policy statement, but that is a bizarre reading of his words.

• Trump orders the military to make agreements with coal power plants

• Trump's Ruinous, Failed Attempt to Indict Congressional Democrats

  The Justice Department’s outrageous indulgence of President Trump’s demand that it prosecute Democratic members of Congress -- in blatant violation of separation-of-powers principles and his oath to execute the laws faithfully -- assures what was already highly likely: The president will be impeached promptly if Democrats retake control of the House after the November midterms, an outcome his abuses of power have also made highly likely. That will be the legacy of yesterday’s reported failed attempt by the Trump Justice Department to criminally charge the “Seditious Six,” as the Democrats in question were labeled by Trump supporters.

• America's Cyber Defense Agency Is Burning Down and Nobody's Coming to Put It Out

  • These are the people who recommended CrowdStrike and SolarWinds as alternatives to actual information security.

• American Optimism Slumps to Record Low

• Habeas and squatter’s rights

  If you, a noncitizen, are in the United States without authorization, you are committing a federal crime. There is no exception in the law for successfully evading the law for decades (or years or months) and/or for having an otherwise clean criminal record in America. You are a criminal. I’m otherwise a big fan of “liberty,” but these judges have manufactured a squatter’s right to remain in America without permission. Keep in mind that detainees have already received all of the process to which they are due, that is, they have been ordered removed by an Immigration Court.

• I Regret to Inform You That the FDA Is FDAing Again

  I had high hopes and low expectations that the FDA under the new administration would be less paternalistic and more open to medical freedom. Instead, what we are getting is paternalism with different preferences. In particular, the FDA now appears to have a bizarre anti-vaccine fixation, particularly of the mRNA variety (disappointing but not surprising given the leadership of RFK Jr.).

  this looks like the regulatory rules of the game are being changed retroactively—a textbook example of regulatory uncertainty destroying option value. STAT News reports that Vinay Prasad personally handled the letter and overrode staff who were prepared to proceed with review. Moderna took the unusual step of publicly releasing Prasad’s letter—companies almost never do this, suggesting they’ve calculated the reputational risk of publicly fighting the FDA is lower than the cost of acquiescing. Moreover, the comparator issue was discussed—and seemingly settled—beforehand. Moderna says the FDA agreed with the trial design in April 2024, and as recently as August 2025 suggested it would file the application and address comparator issues during the review process.

  • Unasked: Why does "mRNA" == "good"?

  • U.S. Health Officials Defend Rejection of Moderna's Flu Vaccine

  • Trump official overruled FDA scientists to reject Moderna's flu shot

  • FDA's rejection of Moderna threatens to stifle broader vaccine industry

• FTC chairman warns that political bias in Apple News app may violate consumer protection laws

  • FTC Chairman Issues Warning Letter to Apple CEO

  The letter follows reports that Apple News systematically boosts left-wing sources and suppresses right-wing sources. The letter points out that if Apple misrepresents Apple News or violates its terms of service, it could be violating the FTC Act.

• ICE is pushing Minneapolis underground

• EPA reverses climate change finding, stripping own ability to regulate emissions

  • Trump to Repeal Landmark Climate Finding in Regulatory Rollback

  • Trump administration set to revoke basis of US climate regulation

  • Trump revokes landmark ruling that greenhouse gases endanger public health

  • Trump Administration Erases the Government's Power to Fight Climate Change

  • In one swoop, Trump kills US greenhouse gas regulations

  • EPA finalizes illegal dirty air plan to hike fuel costs 76c/gal

  • just as with abortion; we'll see immediate, grassroots efforts to get Congress to reinstate all these well thought out regulations via the power of law, not easily repealed executive actions... right? surely? since it's such a big issue for so many of the Important People who write the news?

• The Trump Administration Is Killing Auto-Start/Stop

  The Trump EPA is stepping up once again—this time to save Americans from the inconvenience of buying less fuel. In response to feedback from “countless” Americans, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said the agency will announce action regarding auto-start/stop functions this week.

  • EPA Boss Lee Zeldin Suggests U.S. May Plan to Axe Start-Stop Systems This Week

  • make it an option instead of mandating it. It should be worth say $500 or whatever to have "a real-world annual fuel savings of between 7% and 24%" right? And those that passionately desire less latency may pay the cost for having it.

• Joseph Gordon-Levitt Goes to Washington DC, Gets Section 230 Backwards

• Voluntary departures hit record high as detained immigrants lose hope of getting released or winning in court - CBS News

  As pathways to freedom have narrowed in immigration courts across the United States, a record number of detainees are giving up their cases and voluntarily leaving the country. Last year, 28% of completed immigration removal cases among those in detention ended in voluntary departure, a higher share than in any year prior, a CBS News analysis of decades of court records found.

• Trump Has a Bridge He Wants to Sell You

• Free speech lawsuits mount after Charlie Kirk assassination

  Five months after the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, a wave of lawsuits reveals how Americans were investigated, fired, and in one case, arrested for their online reactions to his death.

• ICE, CBP Knew Facial Recognition App Couldn't Do What DHS Says It Could

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Pentagon-FAA Dispute over Lasers to Thwart Cartel Drones Led to Airspace Closure

  • Pentagon let CBP use anti-drone laser before FAA closed El Paso airspace

  • Border Officials Caused El Paso Closure by Firing Anti-Drone Laser

  • Laser weapon that shut down El Paso's skies was LOCUST system

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• How a Pencil-Purchasing U.S. Bureaucrat Ended Up Shaking Hands with Putin

World

• The UK Royal Mint is running a treasure hunt to find a gold bar

• UK Supreme Court Issues Milestone Judgment for AI and Software Patentability

• UK Fines US Platform Imgur £247,590 for Lack of Age Verification

• The UK's Internet censorship agency, Ofcom, is fining 4chan. Again.

• UK's Ofcom fines porn site £800,000 for not rolling out age checks

• Indian teacher who created hundreds of learning centers wins $1M Global Prize

• Merz calls on Germans to work more – and draws a withering backlash

• Kim Jong Un chooses teen daughter as heir

• Can we make Pi == 3.0, as well? Swiss to vote in referendum on proposal to limit population to 10M

Iran / Houthi

• U.S. Smuggled Thousands of Starlink Terminals into Iran After Protest Crackdown

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Russia blocks WhatsApp, talks up state-backed alternative

  • Russia bans WhatsApp, pushes state-backed alternative "MAX"

• Telegram CEO condemns new restrictions in Russia as citizens turn to VPNs

China

• China's CO2 emissions have now been 'flat or falling' for 21 months

• How China became fixated on cloud seeding

• China to punish universities that fail to sanction research misconduct

Health / Medicine

• Reading and writing can lower dementia risk by almost 40%, study finds

  • Read, Write, Repeat

• Great! the more eyes looking, the more chance they won't all be bought: AMA launches independent vaccine review after CDC criticism

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Scientists Figured Out the Problem with Johnson and Johnson's Covid Vaccine

  • After 5 years of assurances that there were no problems and that anyone not insisting on mandating this treatment for everyone was guilty of attempted murder of the entire human population... The "Science is Settled" (TM).

• Bill Maher Reveals Why He Got the COVID Vaccine...and He's Rather Annoyed About It

  “I had to conform… didn’t want the vaccine at all… But I had to have it. I couldn’t have continued my life. They wouldn’t have let me do the show, and I had to do it here. I did it in this room,” Maher said.

• In one of strongest endorsements from Trump admin, Dr. Oz says get measles vaccine.

• This is how A Child Dies of Measles

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Super-simulator of the global economy could address climate crisis

• Wildlife attacks and strange behavior – fake images spark conservation concerns

• New species of Ladybird beetle discovered on university campus in Japan

• New experiments suggest Earth's core contains up to 45 oceans' worth of hydrogen

• Hunter-gatherers took refuge in European 'water world' for millennia