2026-01-13

Horseshit

• IVF has led to a record number of single moms in their 40s

• The beauty queen who caught Scotland's most prolific catfish

• A new approach to living a good life comes from a most unlikely place

  So when I heard that a founder of Twitter and a founder of Pinterest were launching a social networking platform initially dubbed “social media for people who hate social media,” I was intrigued. When I heard that this platform would harness AI to help us live more meaningful lives, I wanted to know more. When I heard they had hired the former head of the Unitarian Universalist church in New England to guide product development, I booked a flight to San Francisco to see what it was all about.

• Researchers Beam Power from a Moving Airplane

• The brief rise and retreat of Generation Z in Mexico

• Althouse: "For people who make and sell beef tallow, a golden age has dawned. Consumers spent $9.9 million on food-grade beef tallow in 2025...."

  And I like the NYT's correction at the bottom: "An earlier version of this article misstated how much consumers spent on beef tallow in 2025. It was $9.9 million, not $900 million." That's kind of a never mind correction. They wrote this whole article about the hot new business that is beef tallow and then it turned out to be on 1.1% of what they thought it was!

• I Was Kidnapped by Idiots

• Did Mondrian owe his success to a cross-dressing lesbian artist?

• The world is one bad decision away from a silicon Ice Age

• Nigerian musical artists in Canada are rewriting the rules of the industry

• How to Kill a Commune in 8 Easy Steps

  There’s a strong aesthetic bias in how communal living gets depicted: rural, pastoral, ideologically aligned, and vaguely pre-industrial. It’s mostly fiction. Most real communities are urban, ideologically mixed, and relentlessly practical. They exist to make modern life work better — not to escape it. They optimize for transit, jobs, schools, and human relationships, not goats and overalls.

• You can now reserve a hotel room on the Moon for $250k

• 35 Theses on the WASPs

  the engineering elite of Silicon Valley, especially those associated with the “tech-right.” My message to this group is simple: You live below your privileges. No matter your background or upbringing, you stand today as members of a distinct leadership class. You should think about what this means for your children and grandchildren. You have both the opportunity and the responsibility to shape American life for decades to come. Technological progress over that span is not automatic. No revolution in technology will persist without like change in culture and law. Such change is not automatic. You must build the foundations of the world you want your children to inherit. You have the means and the minds to do this. Your problem is that you are not properly ambitious.

• There Are 29,000 People on a Waitlist for Beans—and It’s Not for the Fiber

• Why the mad artistic genius trope doesn't stand up to scientific scrutiny

celebrity gossip

• Time to rehab the image: Will Smith helped discover new species of anaconda

Obit

• Ai, Japanese chimpanzee who counted and painted dies at 49

Musk

• UK's Ofcom investigates Elon Musk's X over Grok AI sexual deepfakes

  • Ofcom launches investigation into X over Grok sexualised imagery

  • UK's Ofcom investigating X after outcry over sexualised AI images

  • UK threatens action against X over sexualised AI images of women and children

  • UK Prime Minister Starmer seeks support for international X ban

  • UK to bring into force law this week to tackle Grok AI deepfakes

  • UK regulator Ofcom opens a formal investigation into X over CSAM scandal

• Malaysia and Indonesia block X over failure to curb deepfake smut

  • Malaysia and Indonesia Block Elon Musk's Grok

  • Malaysia and Indonesia become the first to block Grok over sexualized AI images

• X Didn't Fix Grok's 'Undressing' Problem. It Just Makes People Pay for It

• Apps like Grok are banned under Google rules–why is it still in the Play Store?

• Twitter is planning to make its algorithm open source, with releases every month.

  • Musk's X to Open-Source Its New Algorithm

  • Musk: We will make the new X algorithm open source in 7 days

  • Musk's X to open source new algorithm in seven days

• Elon Musk Just Endorsed Blatant White Nationalism and the Silence Is Deafening

  As many predicted, Musk has turned X into the new Stormfront, an enormous radicalization engine for himself and for the broader GOP. The MAGA movement, of course, has radicalized with him. A few years ago, the cautious flirtation of commentators like Tucker Carlson with Great Replacement ideas caused minor political crises. Today, again, nobody bats an eye.

Electric / Self Driving cars

• California governor proposes $200M in new state EV tax rebates

• Waymo passenger flees after car drives on Phoenix light rail tracks

Robot uprising / Humanioid Helpers

• New York begins cargo drone trial between Manhattan and Brooklyn

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Gen Z are arriving to college unable to even read a sentence

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• The Disappointing Truth About Wi-Fi 7

  Multi-Link Operation is not a minor add-on to Wi-Fi 7. Rather, it's the architectural shift that the entire updated standard is built around. The concept is deceptively simple: instead of treating 2.4, 5, and 6GHz as separate, mutually exclusive pipes, MLO is supposed to let a client device use multiple bands simultaneously. The 802.11be specification actually defines two very different modes of Multi-Link Operation: Simultaneous MLO and Alternating MLO. Simultaneous MLO is the model implied by much of today's Wi-Fi 7 marketing. What today's routers implement instead is Alternating MLO, a far more limited fallback mode in which devices can switch between bands but cannot use them simultaneously

• Cloudflare CEO threatens the Winter Olympics after Italy slugs it with a fine

  • Cloudflare threatens Italy exit over €14M fine

• BreachForums hacking forum database leaked, exposing 324,000 accounts

• 2025 marked a record-breaking year for Apple services

• Meta taps Dina Powell McCormick as president and vice chairman

• Instagram breaks silence on mysterious password reset emails

• Big Tech 'DRAM Beggars' Scramble for Scarce Inventory

• iPhone 4 is having a TikTok revival

• Verizon to stop automatic unlocking of phones as FCC ends 60-day unlock rule

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• The new biologists treating LLMs like aliens

• Nvidia CEO: AI doomerism has done a lot of damage and is not helpful to society

• Silicon, not oil: Why the U.S. needs the Gulf for AI

• AI industry insiders launch site to poison the data that feeds them

• Most US Gen Zers and millennials listen to about three hours of AI music a week

• Shopify and Google Announce Universal Commerce Protocol

• AI can now 'see' optical illusions. What does it tell us about our own brains?

• Apple picks Google's Gemini AI for its big Siri upgrade

  • Apple teams up with Google Gemini for AI-powered Siri

• Let's be honest, Generative AI isn't going all that well

• Google removes AI health summaries after investigation finds dangerous flaws

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• ESA considers righting wrongs of Ariane 6 by turning it into a Franken-rocket

• Is Orion's heat shield safe? New NASA chief conducts final review

• Chilean Telescope Array Gets 145 New Powerful Amplifiers

• NASA launches new mission to get the most out of the James Webb Space Telescope

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Amazon insists I return a phone it says 'may be lost'

• Economists are facing a recession as a hiring crunch hits

• CEO laid off 80% of staff 2 years ago. He would do it again

• Paramount Threatens Board Fight over Warner Bros. Discovery

  • Paramount Wants Warner to Show Its Work

• Walmart Drone Delivery Stores Set to Double to Cover over 10% of Americans

• Calculated Risk ends daily posting after 21 years

• Meta Plans to Cut Around 10% of Employees in Reality Labs Business

• Ackman Pitches Prepayment Penalties as Way to Cut Mortgage Rates

• Who Companies Call When They Want to Become a Bank

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• U.S. Prosecutors Are Investigating Fed Chair Jerome Powell

  • "we dint do nuffin!" Video Message from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell

  • US prosecutors launch criminal investigation into Federal Reserve chair

  • DOJ has subpoenaed central bank, threatens criminal indictment

  • DOJ opens probe of Fed over Powell's statements on headquarters

  • Former Fed chairs and Treasury secretaries: Statement on the Federal Reserve

  The reported criminal inquiry into Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell is an unprecedented attempt to use prosecutorial attacks to undermine that independence. This is how monetary policy is made in emerging markets with weak institutions, with highly negative consequences for inflation and the functioning of their economies more broadly. It has no place in the United States whose greatest strength is the rule of law, which is at the foundation of our economic success.

  • Is lovely how none of the defenders seem to mention the actual allegations being investigated.

  • (Jul 2025) Why the Federal Reserve's building renovations are attracting the White House's ire

  The cost of the building project has soared from $1.9 billion to $2.5 billion in recent years. That's become a new line of attack for the Trump administration, which is already unhappy with the Fed for not moving more aggressively to lower interest rates.

  Fed chairman Jerome Powell was also grilled about the project by Republican members of the Senate Banking Committee during a hearing last month. "It sends the wrong message to spend public money on luxury upgrades that feel more like they belong in the Palace of Versailles than a public institution," said committee chairman Tim Scott, R-S.C. Powell told the committee some of the most sensational claims about the renovation are exaggerated, while other features have been scaled back. "There's no new marble," Powell said. "We took down the old marble. We're putting it back up. We'll have to use new marble where some of the old marble broke. But there's no special elevators. They're old elevators that have been there. There are no new water features. There's no beehives and there's no roof garden terraces."

  • Powell says Trump administration has threatened him with a criminal indictment

• DOT strips California of $160M over foreign truckers

  A showdown between the U.S. Department of Transportation and the State of California reached a breaking point on Wednesday after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration will withhold approximately $160 million in safety program money from the state. The move follows California’s failure to meet a January 5 deadline to cancel more than 17,000 commercial truck driver’s licenses that Duffy asserts were unlawfully issued by the state to foreign truckers.

• Influencers and OnlyFans models are dominating O-1 visa requests

• Minnesota sues Trump administration to block surge of federal immigration agents

• Trump Officials Are Sending 1k More Immigration Officers to Minnesota

• Man who carried Pelosi’s lectern during Capitol riot runs for office.

Trump

• Republican introduces bill seeking to make Greenland 51st state

• Trump announces 25% tariff on countries 'doing business' with Iran

Left Angst

• Anti-alcohol academics smoked out

  The US Dietary Guidelines have traditionally included recommendations on safe drinking limits and have become a battleground for the neo-temperance lobby. An attempt to halve them (from 2 drinks a day for men to 1 drink a day) failed in 2020. In preparation for the 2025-30 edition, Congress authorised the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) to carry out a review of the evidence on alcohol and health. However, the Biden administration also commissioned the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking (ICCPUD) to carry out essentially the same review.

• Peter Thiel's New Model Army

  I’m an investigative journalist who’s spent a decade reporting on the collision of technology and democracy including exposing the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal for the Guardian and the New York Times. Two years ago, I coined a word to describe the alliance of Trump, Silicon Valley and a global axis of autocracy: Broligarchy.

• Under Trump, U.S. Adds Fuel to a Heating Planet

• Liberals Think Antifa Isn’t Real. But It Is and It Knows How to Win

  Despite these constant distortions, the truth about antifa—what it actually is, where it comes from, what it’s accomplished—is still spectacular. “Antifa,” a shortening of the word “antifascist,” refers to a decentralized, underground network of radical leftists dedicated to destroying the far right. Its activists are mostly anarchists, communists, and socialists, and, though they might differ in ideology, they all subscribe to a specific militant tradition of antifascism holding that fascists need to be fought “by any means necessary.”

  Although antifa groups are very real, and often collaborate, there is not an overarching organization. There are no leaders. No hierarchies. No org chart or headquarters. Decisions are arrived at locally and collectively, with no rich donors to appease. What little money antifa needs is taken from the shallow pockets of its practitioners, mostly working- and middle-class Americans who keep their activism a secret to prevent reprisals from the fascists they fight. The antifa activists I talked to were a mix of veterans of older militant groups like Anti-Racist Action, formed in the 1980s and ’90s to kick Nazis out of the punk scene, and newer arrivals to the radical left: everyday Americans who suddenly felt their communities were under siege and who had lost faith in the ability and will of their institutions—including the Democratic Party—to protect them.

• EPA to Stop Considering Lives Saved When Setting Rules on Air Pollution

• Orsted Wins Ruling to Resume US Wind Project Halted by Trump

• Court says Trump admin illegally blocked billions in clean energy grants

• Trump administration's vision of US tech dominance is colliding with Europe

• Bill Ackman Funds ICE Agent GoFundMe Run by Nazi Imagery Poster

• Whatever happened to Trump Mobile's promise of a golden phone?

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• U-Haul plows into massive crowd at Iran protest in LA

  A U-Haul driver allegedly plowed into a massive crowd of protesters at an anti-Iran regime rally in Los Angeles on Sunday — injuring at least two people in a chaotic scene caught on video. Authorities responded to the scene after the U-Haul truck drove into a sea of an estimated 3,000 people at the large demonstration in Westwood around 3:40 p.m. local time, an LAPD spokesperson told The Post.

  • U-Haul drives into crowd during anti-Iranian regime rally in Westwood, LAPD says

• US Authoritarian Regime Executes Unarmed Civilian as Ruler Grows More Erratic

• They Want You to "Quit Demonstrating"

  • Protest all you like. Don't drive cars into police officers while doing so.

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Trump Administration Nears Trade Deal with Taiwan

• US will pour $115 million into counter-drone tech ahead of World Cup

• U.S. Attacked Boat With Aircraft That Looked Like a Civilian Plane

World

• Japan sets sail on rare earth hunt as China tightens supplies

• Germany Considers Broader Legal Authority for Internet Surveillance

• 20-year-olds walk up 60 floors of Osaka high-rise to celebrate adulthood

• Three NHS trusts still using fax machines

• Ireland fast tracks Bill to criminalise harmful voice or image misuse

• Experts Warn of Growing Parrot Crisis in Canada

Iran / Houthi

• ‘Massacre’ unfolding in Iran as protest death toll triples to over 500, rights group warns.

• UN chief 'shocked' by reports of excessive force against protesters in Iran

• The Night They Tried to Kill the Sky

  The most important number in geopolitics right now is not a death toll, a missile count, or a sanctions figure. It is 1.3 kilobits per second.

  That is the bandwidth required to transmit the message that brought eighty-five million Iranians to their windows at exactly 8:00 PM on January 8, 2026. The message was simple: chant together, death to the dictator, wherever you are. It occupied less storage than a single pixel of the videos Starlink was designed to stream. And when Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps activated the most sophisticated electronic warfare campaign ever deployed against a commercial satellite constellation, achieving packet loss rates between thirty and eighty percent across the country, that message got through anyway.

  The regime had spent three hundred million dollars acquiring Russian Krasukha-4 broadband jammers. They had deployed Murmansk-BN strategic interference systems capable of reaching targets five thousand kilometers distant. They had trained operators to wage electromagnetic war against Elon Musk’s satellites with the systematic intensity of a nation preparing for existential conflict. They succeeded beyond what any analyst predicted possible. They degraded Starlink service to levels that made video calls impossible, web browsing painful, and commercial applications useless. And yet when the clock struck eight, neighborhoods across Tehran erupted in synchronized protest.

• Non-Essential French Embassy Staff Have Left Iran

• Vengeful Ayatollah preparing first executions of seized Iranian demonstrators as protests gain momentum & deaths mount.

China

• China-Australia relationship in 2026? This is how experts in China see it

• China's Top Paid App Is a Tool to Help Grandma Check In

• The Chinese Company Taking on the Memory-Chip Giants

Health / Medicine

• Ozempic reduced grocery spending by an average of 5.3% in the US

• We still live in Fast Food Nation

• RNA steps outside the cell to help guide immune responses, study suggests

Pox / COVID / BioTerror AgitProp

• Measles continues raging in South Carolina; 99 new cases since Tuesday

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Miracle Recovery for Rarest and Strangest Deer – Just 39 Became 8,200

• Humans Have Accidentally Created a Barrier Around the Earth

• The liquid air alternative to fossil fuels

• Himalayas bare and rocky after reduced winter snowfall, scientists warn

• Earth's frozen regions are sending a clear warning about climate change

• 'A catastrophe': Greenpeace blocks planting of 'lifesaving' Golden Rice

• Queen bumblebees are poor foragers thanks to sparse tongue hair

• Climate misinformation is threatening Canada's national security

• A Hidden Blob of Water Has Abruptly Reappeared in the Atlantic

• The Next Dust Bowl Is Becoming More Likely