2026-01-11

Horseshit

• Its Your Job To Keep Your Secrets

  In the last month, many who want to kill Polymarket have agreed on a common strategy: claim that Polymarket allows illegal “insider trading”.

  In any case, trading on info that you promised to keep secret does not remotely “deceive” markets re your or their trades. Furthermore, I don’t think it makes sense to generally assign to all our social institutions the task of preventing anyone from revealing secrets that they instead promised to keep. If you come to my store to buy a dress for your wife, and reveal to me her dress size, I don’t think it should be my job to check that it was okay with your wife for you to tell me her dress size. The two of you should be in charge of figuring out how to enforce your info promises to each other.

• Maine's black market for baby eels is spawning a crime-thriller subgenre

• Gen Z, millennials more likely to cut down on screen time than older generations

• Parents Are Going Broke from Their Kids' Sushi Obsession

• The Permanent Emergency

  I was awake at the time, because the kids were up early and I was on shift. I opened the door. The cops seemed mollified by the fact that I was carrying twin toddlers and looked too frazzled to commit any difficult crimes. They said they’d gotten a 9-1-1 call from my house with plenty of screaming. Had there been any murders in the past hour or so? I never did figure out how the police got called. My first guess was that one of the twins had gotten their hands on a phone and dialed random things, but neither my nor my wife’s call history showed anything incriminating. My second guess was that they’d screamed at Alexa so hard that it called emergency services, but the documentation says Alexa doesn’t have that function. Maybe a neighbor called and the police got the location wrong, I don’t know.

  I do have a pretty good idea about the screaming, though. When Kai demanded “the sun song”, I had accidentally told Alexa to play Raffi’s version of Mister Golden Sun instead of SuperSimpleSongs’ version. Kai did not consider this a sufficiently faithful rendition, and made his displeasure clear to everyone in the neighborhood at six in the morning. Then Lyra didn’t like that Kai was screaming, and started screaming too. By the time I realized the song mishap, I couldn’t rectify my mistake, because they were screaming too loud for Alexa to hear my commands (and too loud for them to notice if the song changed anyway). Again, I don’t know if this was why the police got called - maybe in a few weeks I’ll learn one of our neighbors got murdered within the GPS margin-of-error of our house. But I like to think that it was. My toddlers jointly calling 911 because I played a slightly different version of their favorite song is too perfect a metaphor to lose. Everything about having toddlers feels like a permanent emergency.

• The backstory on Wemby's viral kick is more wild than the video of it

• The Intriguing Idea That Life on Earth Began on the Red Planet

• Monterey County bans short-term rentals in unincorporated areas

celebrity gossip

• Mangione, suspect in health insurance CEO murder, fights death penalty charge in court.

• Rare first Superman comic once stolen from Nicolas Cage sells for $15M

Obit

• Grateful Dead co-founder Bob Weir has died at age 78

Musk

• Indonesia suspends Grok AI over sexualized images

• Elon Musk says UK wants to suppress free speech as X faces possible ban

• Starmer's Looking for an Excuse to Ban X

• Starmer rallies international support to take on Musk

• X Sues Music Publishers over "Weaponized" DMCA Takedown Conspiracy

• Musk says X outcry is 'excuse for censorship'

• Elon Musk's Grok Has Friends in High Places: US Patent Office chief AI officer

• SpaceX has the green light from the FCC to launch another 7500 Starlink satellites.

  • SpaceX gets FCC approval to launch 7,500 more Starlink satellites

Electric / Self Driving cars

• The Robot Cars Have Come for the Kids

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• High RAM prices mean record-setting profits for Samsung and other memory makers - Ars Technica

  In revenue guidance released this week, Samsung Electronics predicts it will make between 19.9 and 20.1 trillion Korean won in operating profit (roughly $13.8 billion USD) in Q4 2025, compared to just 6.49 trillion won in Q4 of 2024. Less-diversified companies that primarily make memory are also raking in money lately. SK Hynix posted its “highest-ever quarterly performance” in Q3 of 2025 with 11.38 trillion Korean won (about $7.8 billion) in operating profit, up from 7.03 trillion in Q3 of 2024, and an operating margin that increased from 40 percent to 47 percent. SK Hynix credits “expanding investments in AI infrastructure” and “surging demand for AI servers” for its performance. Micron—which recently decided to exit the consumer RAM and storage markets but is still selling its products to other businesses—also reported a big boost to net income year over year, from $1.87 billion in Q1 2025 to $5.24 billion in Q1 2026. This has generated the company’s “highest ever free cash flow.”

• Microsoft may soon allow IT admins to uninstall Copilot

• CES 2026 Worst in Show

  From disposable electric candy to voice-activated refrigerators without physical handles, CES was crammed full of enshittified, intrusive, insecure, and wasteful technology this year – just like it is every year.

  Lollipop Stars are suckers with an integrated battery and tiny speaker that, when placed in one's mouth, transmit sound through jaw vibrations, delivering what the brand calls "music you can taste." The device is non-rechargeable, gets about 60 minutes of battery life, plays a single song, and once the sucker is gone, it's garbage.

  the new Samsung Smart Fridge doesn't actually have any physical handles, and is opened and closed entirely by voice command, quite possibly one of the stupidest things this vulture has ever heard of. Noisy kitchen? Good luck opening the fridge. Mechanism breaks? Good luck opening the fridge. Internet outage? You know the drill. As Wiens noted, Samsung has a poor track record when it comes to the quality of its fridges, with touchscreens (of course there's one on this one, too), compressors, and other components regularly failing.

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• Myths about Logitech Developer ID certificate expiration

  The blame here lies entirely with Logitech and not with macOS or Developer ID. The Logitech software performed some additional, custom validation, which failed after the Logitech Developer ID code signing certificate expired. That was an unforced error by Logitech, and the issue will not affect other Mac developers, regardless of when their Developer ID certificates expire.

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• AI Is Intensifying a 'Collapse' of Trust Online, Experts Say

• Chatbots put through psychotherapy report trauma and abuse

• AI PCs aren't selling, and Microsoft's PC partners are scrambling

• Microsoft revealed as company behind controversial data center proposal in MI

• AI Is Intensifying a 'Collapse' of Trust Online, Experts Say

• AI is upending the porn industry

• The AI frenzy is creating a big problem for consumer electronics

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• NASA Evacuating ISS Crew After Unprecedented Medical Situation

Crypto con games

• Maduro's Crypto-Backed Oil Deals Put Tether at Center of Venezuela Money Drama

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Slowest Labor Market in Years Leaves Job Seekers Stuck

  • The December Jobs Report Is Here

  The U.S. Labor Department released the December jobs report on Friday, which fell short of expectations, with employers adding about 50,000 jobs compared to the anticipated 60,000-70,000. However, the unemployment rate edged down to 4.4 percent, below the expected 4.5 percent rate.

  Friday’s report also revised October’s job losses lower, to a decline of 173,000, while November’s job gains were revised down as well, leaving employment 76,000 lower than previously reported across those two months.

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• USDA suspends federal financial awards to Minnesota and Minneapolis

Democrats

• Hochul and Mamdani Announce Plan to Make N.Y. Child Care Universal

Left Angst

• Doctorow: Trump may be the beginning of end of 'enshittification'

  It’s been 25 years since I started working for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an American nonprofit dedicated to preserving and promoting human rights on the internet. I’ve found myself in dozens of countries working with activists, politicians and civil servants to untangle the complex technical questions raised by the internet, and every one of our discussions ended in the same place. “OK,” they’d say, “you’ve definitely laid out the best way to regulate tech, but we can’t do it.” Why not? Because – inevitably – the US trade rep had beaten me to every one of those countries and made it eye-wateringly clear that if they regulated tech in a way that favoured their own people, industries and national interests, the US would bury them in tariffs.

  • Trump ruined his 25 year career?

• CDC staff 'blindsided' as child vaccine schedule unilaterally overhauled

• UN chief says US has 'legal obligation' to fund agencies after Trump withdrawal

• Checks and Balances Are Dead - Ted Rall's Rallblog

  At the root of assurances that checks and balances worked and will (eventually) work again is the question: who or what will save us? Not the press—it’s dead. Not a peaceful protest movement—there isn’t one, and if there were one there is little reason to believe it would be effective. And certainly not checks and balances.

  • I remember reading this person talking about Bush 1's fascism and how he'd killed democracy.

• White House contacted Secret Service about MTG

  The relationship between President Trump and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene grew so poisonous that the White House told the Secret Service that Greene may have tipped off Code Pink protesters about his surprise visit last fall to a D.C. restaurant she recommended, two sources on Trump's team tell Axios. That episode — which involved a chaotic confrontation between anti-war activists and Trump — embarrassed the president and intensified concerns in the White House about his safety, a year after he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. Trump aides view the Joe's Seafood debacle as a point of no return in his relationship with Greene, a Trump ally-turned-critic who left office this week.

• 2026 looks ominous for media, from Hollywood to journalism

• Is Beef Tallow making a comeback?

• Oh. nevermind then i reckon. Trump's Steep Science Budget Cuts to Be Turned Back by Congress

• Vance Announces New Deputy AG Role to Root Out Supposed "Fraud"

• Anti-ICE Mob Storms Hotels in Minneapolis Looking for ICE, Even Chases and Attacks Police

• The NIH has lost its scientific integrity. So we left

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• Carjackers swipe biometric Merc, plus owner's finger

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• France taps out as G7 summit moved to avoid clash with White House UFC event

  France has delayed this year’s Group of 7 summit by one day to avoid a scheduling conflict with an Ultimate Fighting Championship fight card planned at the White House on 14 June, according to two officials with direct knowledge of the G7’s preparations.

• EU Parliament eyes freezing US trade deal over Trump's Greenland threats

• Trump says US to 'start now hitting land' in Mexico targeting drug cartels

World

• EU countries have approved the Mercosur trade deal after 25 years of talks

• Ireland recalls almost 13,000 passports

• UK government exempting itself from cyber law inspires little confidence

• Europe's executives need to skill up to solve our total US cloud dependency

• Circumcision classed as possible child abuse in draft CPS document

  A draft document by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) on “honour-based abuse, forced marriages, and harmful practices”, classes circumcision as a potential crime alongside breast flattening, virginity testing, hymenoplasty and exorcisms. The wording of the document, seen by the Guardian, has alarmed some religious groups, with Jewish and Muslim leaders defending the cultural importance of the practice. The draft CPS guidance states that, unlike female genital mutilation, “there is not a specific criminal offence of carrying out male circumcision”. “However, this can be a painful and harmful practice, if carried out incorrectly or in inappropriate circumstances. It may be a form of child abuse or an offence against the person,” it adds.

• UK to Create New Fast-Track Residency Path for High-Earners

Venezuela

• US oil giant ExxonMobil says Venezuela is 'uninvestable'

• The world has too much oil – Will companies want Venezuela's?

• Venezuela oil deal is up and running

• US used powerful mystery weapon that brought Venezuelan soldiers to their knees

Iran / Houthi

• Iran's internet shutdown is chillingly precise and may last some time

• Iran shuts down the internet amid protests, Starlink also affected

• 'More Than 200 Reported Dead' in Tehran as Regime Opens Fire on Protests

  • Over 200 dead in Tehran as regime forces open fire on protesters.

• The Iranian uprising: A crash course on opposition groups

• Iran protests rage for another night; Deaths mount; Trump warns of intervention

• Trump Is Briefed on Options for Striking Iran as Protests Continue

• Iran's Revolutionary Guards declare 'red line' on security as protests escalate

China

• It's not just China's total population that's falling

Health / Medicine

• A blinding parasitic eye disease affects contact lens wearers

• Scientists Messed Around with LSD and Invented a New Brain-Healing Drug

• What Having a Fake Disease Taught Me About Health Care

• Startup Wants to Bring Cancer Patients Care at Home

• Private equity firms acquired more than 500 autism centers in past decade: study

• Tests for Autism? Companies Are Selling Them, but Research Is Still Scant

  • Last year, this kind of tone would have met howls of "are you saying these people aren't sick?!? you monster!"

• Overdose deaths are falling in America because of a 'supply shock': study

  • Wait, wait; you're saying cutting the supply works? Like Nancy Reagan said? Does this mean running Tenderloins and giving out needles and instructions does not work? Can that be admitted now too?

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• SARS-CoV-2 is on the decline in animals

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• World's richest 1% have already used fair share of emissions for 2026

• Geoengineering the Ocean?