2026-02-16
Horseshit
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Underwear optional? The health pros and cons of going commando
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Every 10 years since the 1980's; prolly before that too. Farmers Are Aging. Their Kids Don't Want to Be in the Family Business
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How an Enslaved Gardener Transformed the Pecan Into a Cash Crop
Antoine’s trees were eventually felled after the plantation changed hands multiple times after the death of enslaver Roman. A new agricultural industry of sugarcane had emerged with the promise of greater profitability. Thus, the effort to establish these successful pecan trees that were the foundation for American commercial pecan production was literally cut down. However, Antoine’s achievement in developing a viable grafting method for pecan trees should not be undervalued.
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The Mega-Rich Are Turning Their Mansions into Impenetrable Fortresses
Epstein
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As the names keep dropping, it’s hard not to get a sense that absolutely anybody who had achieved fame, influence, power or renown was mixed up in an organized cabal of depravity and moral turpitude. It feels like every TED Talk you ever nodded in agreement to, every Grammy award-winning singer you vibed to, every politician you voted for, and every business leader whose companies you bought shares in, they were all laughing behind your back, because it was a Big Club and you ain’t in it.
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U. Arizona cancels major conference after speakers named in Epstein files.
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Jikipedia turns Epstein's emails into an encyclopedia of his powerful friends
celebrity gossip
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
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The Demise of Conflict Studies
An entire industry specializing in mediation, peacekeeping, disarmament, and transitional justice has become largely obsolete.
For three decades, its proponents generally assumed that Western governments were actors with the power to effect change for the better—at times misguided, but fundamentally well-intentioned. Brutal counterterrorism interventions, indifference to mass atrocities in Syria and Yemen, and hardening asylum policies gradually eroded this minimal consensus. Then came Gaza: an unprecedented shock to scholars’ widespread belief that policymakers shared their values. Worse, instead of speaking out as other disciplines did, the field morally collapsed from within, by remaining overwhelmingly silent in the face of Western-backed mass killing in Gaza. What, then, was conflict studies for?
- What was it for? Providing paychecks, travel, and fame for the nephews and ex lovers who weren't capable of real work and couldn't be told outright they were no different than the regular mass of humanity.
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Sarajevo sniper tourists 'killed children by day, then partied at night'
Musk
Electric / Self Driving cars
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
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The great computer science exodus (and where students are going instead)
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A Veteran Teacher Shadows Two Students and Learns a Sobering Lesson
I waited fourteen years to do something that I should have done my first year of teaching: shadow a student for a day. It was so eye-opening that I wish I could go back to every class of students I ever had right now and change a minimum of ten things – the layout, the lesson plan, the checks for understanding. Most of it!
- Students sit all day, and sitting is exhausting.
- High School students are sitting passively and listening during approximately 90% of their classes.
- You feel a little bit like a nuisance all day long.
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Study Says 88% of Students at Elite Schools Are Lying About What They Believe
- If 12% of the students are True Believers in the nihilistic shit they teach now, we should be terrified.
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America's Future Leaders Are Learning To Become Grifters
Many educated elites have long excused rule-breaking among people in more disadvantaged communities, arguing that the system is stacked against them — so why wouldn’t they try to level the playing field? Now, bizarrely, they are extending that same moral leniency to themselves. The irony is that students at America’s elite universities are among the most privileged people to have ever lived. Admission alone places them among the future leadership class. Yet once inside the gates their advantage-hunting continues, with many searching for new ways to climb higher. And today victimhood can function as a strategy. It can open doors, unlock resources and confer moral authority.
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Amazon, Google Unwittingly Reveal the Severity of the U.S. Surveillance State
Many people were not just surprised but quite shocked and alarmed to learn that what they thought was merely their own personal security system now has the ability to link with countless other Ring cameras to form a neighborhood-wide (or city-wide, or state-wide) surveillance dragnet. That Amazon emphasized that this feature is available (for now) only to those who “opt-in” did not assuage concerns.
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Ring Ends Deal to Link Neighborhood Cameras After Super Bowl Ad Backlash
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Guthrie video delayed by difficult data recovery, privacy advocates worry
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Discord Distances Itself from Peter Thiel's Palantir Age Verification Firm
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After 800 episodes, 'The Simpsons' creators look back – and ahead
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Western Digital sells out 2026 HDD capacity as AI demand pushes prices higher
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Journalism may be too slow to be credible as events are filtered by social media
TechSuck / Geek Bait
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
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Four new astronauts arrive via SpaceX rocket at International Space Station
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Obama says aliens are 'real, but I haven't seen them' in out-there new interview
Former President Barack Obama said that aliens are real but he has no idea where they are during a podcast appearance released Saturday. “They’re real, but I haven’t seen them,” Obama told YouTuber Brian Tyler Cowen after he asked him about extraterrestrials. The former president did not offer any further details on what he mean by “real” — and no follow-up questions on the topic were asked — but he used the appearance to cast doubt on several longtime theories as to where they might be. “They’re not being kept in Area 51, there’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States,” Obama said.
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
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'It's over for us': release of AI video generator Seedance 2.0 spooks Hollywood
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Hollywood studios take aim at 'ultra-realistic' AI video tool
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Disney Sends ByteDance an AI Trophy with a Cease and Desist over Seedance 2.0
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After Tim Cruise Fighting Brad Pitt Goes Viral, MPAA Denounces Seedance 2.0
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AI film school trains next generation of Hollywood moviemakers
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Pentagon threatens to cut off Anthropic in AI safeguards dispute
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An OpenClaw agent wrote a blog post about my site and misquoted me
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An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – More Things Have Happened – The Shamblog
My guess is that the authors asked ChatGPT or similar to either go grab quotes or write the article wholesale. When it couldn’t access the page it generated these plausible quotes instead, and no fact check was performed. I won’t name the authors here. Ars, please issue a correction and an explanation of what happened.
On Friday afternoon, Ars Technica published an article containing fabricated quotations generated by an AI tool and attributed to a source who did not say them. That is a serious failure of our standards. Direct quotations must always reflect what a source actually said. That this happened at Ars is especially distressing. We have covered the risks of overreliance on AI tools for years, and our written policy reflects those concerns. In this case, fabricated quotations were published in a manner inconsistent with that policy. We have reviewed recent work and have not identified additional issues. At this time, this appears to be an isolated incident. Ars Technica does not permit the publication of AI-generated material unless it is clearly labeled and presented for demonstration purposes. That rule is not optional, and it was not followed here. We regret this failure and apologize to our readers. We have also apologized to Mr. Scott Shambaugh, who was falsely quoted.
Sorry all this is my fault; and speculation has grown worse because I have been sick in bed with a high fever and unable to reliably address it (still am sick)
- No note from Mom?
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Wankers: I'm Offering Scott Alexander a Wager About AI's Effects over the Next 3 Years
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Scenario C: We recognize that AI’s current trajectory is destructive to the social fabric. We slow it down, change how it’s used, possibly reject aspects of it entirely. This would be the Amish approach — where observation and discussion about how a technology benefits the community determines its acceptance, use, and integration.
Despite common understanding, the Amish aren’t technophobes. They do use technology, just not everything that comes along. They carefully evaluate tools communally, based on whether they strengthen or weaken their social fabric. They observe. They choose. They have agency. A telephone might help, but only if placed in a shared building rather than individual homes, so it doesn’t fragment family time. The Amish demonstrate that discernment does not mean rejection. It seems we’ve lost the ability to do the same. More accurately, though, I believe we’ve been convinced we’ve lost it.
- "We" don't have to accept the choice of others. If you doubt AI, or love it, act accordingly. Don't worry about what the rest of the world is doing, don't worry that you may not fit in.
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" Tech debt is gone. Not that we solved it, but that AI made it irrelevant."
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AI safety staff departures raise worries about pursuit of profit at all costs
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Following Discord's suit, OpenAI will scan your usage and ask to confirm your ID
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Makers of AI chatbots that put children at risk face big fines or UK ban
Neo Gambling / Crypto con games
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On Tilt – America's new gambling epidemic
An astonishing 15 percent of Nevadans meet the threshold for problem gambling—nearly double the national average. And while the state enjoys more than $15 billion in gambling revenue—the highest annual gross of any state in the country—it allocates a measly $2 million to addiction treatment. Some assistance comes from sportsbooks and casinos themselves, though this complicates certain priorities. Advocates are blunt about the crisis they see coming. Kobie West, the clinical director of the Dr. Robert Hunter International Problem Gambling Center, in Las Vegas, compares the present moment in gambling addiction to the days of blissful ignorance that allowed America’s opioid epidemic to spiral out of control. Both public-health crises, West argues, were fueled by rampant advertising and ease of access. He estimates that we will look back in several years’ time in horror.
- The people currently pointing at the problem and screaming in horror are, of course, regressive conspiracy theorists who are only bent on spoiling everyone's fun. They will not be remembered when future historians bemoan the idiocy that allowed such transparently corrosive habits to dominate society.
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Binance fires investigators found evidence of Iranian sanctions violations
Economicon / Business / Finance
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Peloton Revenue Falls on Declining Subscriptions and CFO Leaves
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TSMC's US investment plans at heart of $250B puzzle for chip sector
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Speed Can Reindustrialize America
Reviving manufacturing doesn't require a planned economy, just a better business model.
The US has a relative surplus of low-paid hourly workers and a shortage of high-skill workers, making a skilled-for-hourly replacement a poor trade in many cases. Our bottom 10% of workers earn roughly as much as those in other developed countries, even though US workers in the upper deciles perform much better than their international peers. Many less productive US manufacturing firms could buy a robot, but couldn’t attract the talent to program it.
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Wall Street could seize your retirement savings in the next financial crash
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Popular Fast-Food Chain Removing Microwaves From All Its Restaurants
Fast-food chain Steak 'n Shake has announced plans to remove all microwaves from its 390 U.S. restaurants by April 15, 2026, as part of its ongoing effort to improve food quality.
Left Angst
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U.S. Deports Nine Migrants in Secret, Ignoring Legal Protections
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Welcome to the Internet's Nihilism Crisis
the culprit has often been the federal government. The Department of Homeland Security is putting out white-nationalist dog whistles on X. President Trump posted a video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. The subtext of every egregious shitpost from the administration is the same: These people are in charge now, and the old rules don’t matter.
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Palantir Gets Millions of Dollars from New York City's Public Hospitals
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
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In a dramatic Friday night development in a case that's garnered enormous public interest, three people were detained as a SWAT team executed search warrants connected to the abduction of the mother of NBC "Today" co-host Savannah Guthrie -- and a neighbor claims another person shot himself in the head. Action unfolded at two locations -- both of them only about two miles from Nancy Guthrie's Tucson residence. As this is written, police have yet to reveal details.
As the search for Guthrie entered its third week, a large police presence responded to a road near the missing woman’s home in the Tucson, Arizona area on the night of Feb. 13, which included a series of sheriff’s and FBI vehicles as well as SWAT and forensics teams.
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The allegations against a San Francisco social climber accused of sex crimes
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
World
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Former teen superstar James Van Der Beek needed help to pay his medical bills
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India doubles down on state-backed venture capital, approving $1.1B fund
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EU bans the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear
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Palantir vs. the "Republik": US analytics firm takes magazine to court
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Dutch Defence Secretary Boldly Claims F-35 Software Could Be 'Jailbroken'