2026-01-20

Cool

• Northern lights may be visible in 24 states tonight as a CME hits Earth

Horseshit

• Oxfam's wealth inequality report 2026: Resisting the Rule of the Rich

  • Oxfam Serves Up a Lot of Dodgy Statistics

• Revolutionary imaging of black hole to prove they're not 'evil vacuum cleaners'

• Leonardo da Vinci's DNA may be hiding in his artwork, researchers say

• Does Antimatter 'Fall Up'?

• Why young Danes are still having sex

  Gen Z, as is well known, is having significantly less sex than their parents. They also drink less, smoke less, and have fewer close friends. The rise of the internet is often blamed for this development – the anxious generation is having less sex because they are porn-addled and distracted. But a new report shows that, alone in the West, the Danes are bucking the trend. Young Danes between 15–25 are not having less sex than previous generations; in fact, the rate has remained more or less constant since the 1970s. Most people report satisfaction with their sex lives. In Denmark, the sexless Zoomer has been proven a myth.

• Fermenting revolution

  Importantly, ABC tea rooms were one of the first public places Victorian women could go alone or to socialise with other women. This was in large part because of their status as ‘temperance refreshment rooms’, with no alcohol being served. By creating a respectable public forum where women could gather, ABC tea rooms became crucial meeting places for both Suffragists and their violent counterparts, the Suffragettes.

• Back-scratching bovine leads scientists to reassess intelligence of cows

  • Cows Can Use Sophisticated Tools

  • Austrian cow shows first case of flexible, multi-purpose tool use in cattle

  • Wait 'til they discover how they masturbate

• Raccoons break into liquor stores, scale skyscrapers and pick locks

  • Anyone who has hunted them will tell you there are individuals smarter than most humans

• NorCal Fitness company allegedly sold cake batter as $75 per bag protein powder

• Dumbphone Owners Have Lost Their Minds

  I haven’t gone dumb, and the reason is simple: I’m terrified! Ditching my smartphone would be completely disorienting. It would significantly reduce my overall competence. It’s deeply embarassing—it really makes me feel like a giant baby—but I am certain that my smartphone is a part of me. I mean that literally: The panic I feel when I lose sight of it is visceral, existential, as if pieces of my physical body are missing.

• Cui bono? Poor Decisions Plague Many National Infrastructure Projects

• There Is No Comfortable Reading Position

  • one should move frequently. meat is meant to move.

• The Rise and Fall of the American Monoculture

• Autistic Barbie sparks debate over what representation should look like

  • Just the demographic you want to argue wardrobe choices with

celebrity gossip

• MacKenzie Scott may have sent millions to organisations under FBI investigation

Obit

• Liu Thai Ker, architect behind Singapore's public housing system, dies aged 87

• Dr. Gladys West, Mathematician Whose Work Made GPS Possible, Has Died at 95

• Italian fashion designer Valentino dies at 93

Musk

• Grok's biggest danger isn't what it says – it's where it lives

• Mother of Elon Musk's son sues his xAI over AI-deepfake images

• XAI Colossus datacentre is using illegal, cancer-causing generators

• I refused to invest in Tesla for years – but now's the time to bet on Elon Musk

• Tesla poised to be early winner as Canada opens door to Chinese-made EVs

• Tesla to restart work on Dojo Supercomputer

• Musk shocks with $10M donation in Ky. Senate race

  Elon Musk has cut a massive $10 million check to bolster Nate Morris, an outsider, pro-Trump candidate running to succeed retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Axios has learned. The stunning gift is the biggest sign yet that Musk plans to spend big in the 2026 midterms, giving Republicans a formidable weapon in the expensive battle to keep their congressional majorities. After a bitter falling out with President Trump last year and threatening to start a third party, Musk is now firmly back in the GOP camp.

• Elon Musk accused of making up math to squeeze $134B from OpenAI, Microsoft

Electric / Self Driving cars

• Electric Macan outsold gas in 2025, but Porsche commits to gas for some reason

Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts

• Science journals retract 500 papers a month

• College Football Teams Are Now Worth Billions–and Their Values Are Skyrocketing

• Nearly a third of social media research has undisclosed ties to industry

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• From Pixy, "author unknown" (sounds like Ed Zitron):

  The reason why RAM has become four times more expensive is that a huge amount of RAM that has not yet been produced was purchased with non-existent money to be installed in GPUs that also have not yet been produced, in order to place them in data centers that have not yet been built, powered by infrastructure that may never appear, to satisfy demand that does not actually exist and to obtain profit that is mathematically impossible.

• Developer patches Wine to make Photoshop 2021 and 2025 run on Linux

• Fire Shuts GTA 6 Developer Rockstar North, Following Report of Explosion

• Former AOL chief says 'big money' will dictate future of media

• The risky plan to take the "K" out of K-pop

• Windows 11 shutdown bug forces Microsoft into out-of-band damage control

• Netflix Wanted to Reinvent Live TV. It Hasn't Been Easy

• Netflix tells directors to repeat plot for people using phones, says Matt Damon

• There's a hidden Android setting that spots fake cell towers

• Threads edges out X in daily mobile users, new data shows

• Well, There Goes the Metaverse

• Asus Confirms It Won't Launch Phones in 2026, May Leave Android Altogether

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• PicoPCMCIA

• 100x slower; thus it will become the new standard: A new way to call C from Java: how fast is it?

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• Why India's plan to make AI companies pay for training data should go global

• Ed Zitron on big tech, backlash, boom and bust

• Sequoia to invest in Anthropic, breaking VC taboo on backing rivals: FT

• All is not well between Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Meta's AI

• Hiring at India's Big Four outsourcers stalls, as AI seemingly makes an impact

• The AI Talent War Is for Plumbers and Electricians

• Why the Best AI Systems Are Still So Bad at Pokémon

• The Myth of the AI Race

• West Midlands police chief quits over AI hallucination

• IMF warns global economic resilience at risk if AI falters

• AI evangelist Mikey Shulman says he's making pop, not slop

• The Problem with AI Flattering Us

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Mysterious ‘Dorito-Shaped’ Aircraft Spotted at Night Near Area 51

• Astronomers now say the moon is eating up molecules from Earth's atmosphere

  • I have said it for years: We Must Destroy The Moon

• Bank of England 'must plan for a financial crisis triggered by aliens'

Crypto con games

• Led by Texas, New Hampshire, U.S. states put Bitcoin on public balance sheet

• How crypto criminals stole $700M from people – often using age-old tricks

• Disclosure of Aliens Could Cause Bitcoin Rush – Former Bank of England Analyst

• Trump's Crypto Gamble

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Why Walmart still doesn't support Apple Pay

• Amazon is ending all inventory commingling as of March 31, 2026

• Worse Technologies Spread – The parable of the supermarket self-checkout

• A16Z hires acquitted former Marine Daniel Penny as an investor

• Stellantis stock off 43% as Jeep maker turns five, executes turnaround.

• The average 50-something American is now worth $1.4M

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• The War on Drugs Is Why Your Bus Never Showed Up

  Here’s the problem: Under federal law (49 CFR Part 382), anyone with a commercial driver’s license must pass DOT drug tests that include marijuana. No exceptions. This applies to every transit bus operator in America, regardless of what state law says about marijuana. Notably, these mandates do not apply to Uber or Lyft drivers. The tests don’t measure impairment–they detect THC metabolites that linger for weeks after use.

  • They piss test prisoners and rehab inmates too: The filter is "will you bribe the test supervisor". Honest people need not apply for these jobs.

• Washington State Bill Seeks To Add Firearms Detection To 3D Printers

  • WA proposes 3D-printed gun controls with blocking features, blueprint detection

• US Supreme Court to Decide If the Pesticide Roundup Is Shielded from Lawsuits

Trump

• Trump's Trade Negotiator Says Response to Court Loss Would Be Immediate

Democrats

• Josh Shapiro Writes That Harris Team Asked If He Had Ever Been an Israeli Agent

  Mr. Shapiro, who is Jewish, details a contentious vetting process in which Ms. Harris’s team focused intensely on his views on Israel — so much so that at one point, he wrote, he was asked if he had ever been an agent of the Israeli government. “Had I been a double agent for Israel?” wrote Mr. Shapiro, describing his incredulous response to a last-minute question from the vetting team. He responded that the question was offensive, he wrote, and was told, “Well, we have to ask.” “Have you ever communicated with an undercover agent of Israel?” the questioner, Dana Remus, a former White House counsel, continued, according to Mr. Shapiro, who recounted, “If they were undercover, I responded, how the hell would I know?”

Left Angst

• In Minneapolis, a Pattern of Misconduct Toward Protesters

• Minnesota wants to win a war of attrition

• US believes its power matters more than international law, UN chief

• Trump Is Obsessed with Yesterday's Energy. China Is Focused on the Future

• An Inauspicious Start for Bari Weiss at CBS News

• The Education of the Broligarchy

  First posited by Stripe CEO Patrick Collison in dialogue with China-watcher Tanner Greer, and enriched in an ongoing dialogue that included Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, Marc Andreessen, Tyler Cowen, and several others, the idea that there is a “Silicon Valley Canon” read by current and would-be leaders of the tech sector was either powerfully accurate, or had the force of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

• How tech billionaires spurred an exodus from California

• The Last Election

  Donald Trump’s threat to cancel the midterm elections is not a feign. He attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election and said he would not accept the outcome of the 2024 election if he lost. He ruminates about defying the Constitution to serve a third term. He is determined to retain absolute control — buttressed by an obsequious Republican majority — in Congress. He fears, if he loses control of Congress, impeachment. He fears impediments to the rapid reconfiguration of America as an authoritarian state. He fears losing the monuments he is building to himself — his name emblazoned on federal buildings, including the Kennedy Center, his scrapping of free entry to National Parks on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and replacing it with his own birthday, his seizure of Greenland and who knows, maybe Canada, his ability to put cities, such as Minneapolis, under siege and snatch legal residents off the streets. Dictators love elections as long as they are fixed. The dictatorships I covered in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans staged highly choreographed election spectacles. These spectacles were a cynical prop whose outcome was preordained. They were used to legitimize iron control over a captive population, mask the enrichment of the dictator, his family and his inner circle, criminalize all dissent and ban opposition political parties in the name of “the will of the people.”

• Former USDS Leaders Launch Tech Reform Project to Fix What DOGE Broke

• The guy who discovered South Park's creators was shocked by the new season

  The response gave South Park its highest ratings in years and garnered attention from a variety of news outlets, but it also divided the fandom, with right-wing fans seeing it as a betrayal of the show's typical middle-ground approach to attacking extremism and hypocrisy on both sides. Meanwhile, many other fans felt this is exactly what South Park needed to be in an era where the White House is pressuring voices in the media to tow the line or pay the price with fines and/or cancellation.

• What it's like to be banned from the US for fighting online hate

• Americans Are the Ones Paying for Tariffs, Study Finds

Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security

• About 100 Minneapolis police officers apply for new paid leave program

  Multiple sources confided to both Alpha News senior reporter Liz Collin and to Crime Watch Minneapolis that 60 to 100 officers from the Minneapolis Police Department have applied or plan to apply for the state’s new paid leave program.

• DOJ says won't investigate ICE agent's fatal shooting of Renee Good

• Miami Beach resident posted online about the mayor. Police showed up

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Space Force ends 'Resilient GPS' satellite program

• Why the US is buying icebreakers from Finland

• US Places Arctic Airborne Troops on Standby as Greenland Dispute Escalates

• Macron to urge EU to use trade 'bazooka' in response to Trump's tariffs

• EU's 'nuclear option' of moves against Trump tariff threat

World

• Sweden deploys fighter jets to Iceland

• Oldest monastic brewery to be sold as German beer sales slide

• US pressure revives call for powerful EU tech regulator

Greenland

• It's helpful to have the globalist propaganda all in one place: Greenland Crisis

• Trump’s Letter to Norway Should Be the Last Straw - The Atlantic

  what matters isn’t the specific phrases, but the overall message: Donald Trump now genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him. Also, he really is maniacally, unhealthily obsessive about the Nobel Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, not the Norwegian government and certainly not the Danish government, determines the winner of that prize. Yet Trump now not only blames Norway for failing to give it to him, but is using it as a justification for an invasion of Greenland.

• Trump Links Greenland Threats to Nobel Peace Prize Snub

• Donald Trump links threats to seize Greenland to Nobel Prize snub in letter

• Trump links Greenland dispute to not getting Nobel Peace Prize

• Trump tells Norway's PM he has no obligation to 'think purely of peace'

• Stocks sell off globally as traders digest Trump message

• Russia Gloats over Greenland Tensions

• What are the 'anti-coercion' instruments EU capitals may use against Trump?

• Read the Texts Between Trump and Norway's Prime Minister About Greenland

Iran / Houthi

• Washington's Covert Strike at the Heart of Iran's Power Structure

• ‘New level of brutality’: Iran doctors put death toll in suppressed uprising at over 16,500.

• Iran plans ‘absolute digital isolation,’ will break permanently from global internet.

• Iran's partial internet shutdown may be a windfall for cybersecurity Intel

Russia Bad / Ukraine War

• Ukraine's kamikaze drones run AI vision/terminal guidance on Raspberry Pi

China

• 'Factory flaw' spurs toy horse to instant popularity

  A plush toy horse designed as a cheerful Chinese New Year mascot has galloped into unexpected popularity — with an ironic twist. Created for the upcoming Year of the Horse in the Chinese zodiac, it was originally meant to wear an upturned smile. Instead, due to a production error at a factory in Yiwu, Zhejiang province — widely known as the world's capital of small commodities — the toy left the assembly line with its mouth stitched into a distinct, down-turned pout.

• China's birth rate hits record low as population continues to shrink

Health / Medicine

• Weight-Loss Drugs Could Save U.S. Airlines $580M per Year

• Alzheimer's finger-prick test could help diagnosis

• Long-term study reveals physical ability peaks at age 35

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• San Francisco coyote swims to Alcatraz

• Nuclear elements detected in West Philippine Sea

  The University of the Philippines Marine Science Institute (UP MSI) has detected elevated levels of iodine-129 – an isotope commonly used as an indicator of nuclear activity – in seawater samples from the West Philippine Sea (WPS). UP MSI said the concentrations found in the WPS were higher than in any other part of the country, despite the Philippines having no active nuclear power plant or nuclear weapons program. Researchers found iodine-129 levels in the WPS to be about 1.5 to 1.7 times higher than those recorded in other sampling sites. UP MSI said the results were consistent with recent Chinese studies linking iodine-129 in the Yellow Sea to decades-old nuclear weapons tests and nuclear fuel reprocessing facilities in Europe, which released the isotope into soils and rivers in northeastern China.

• Icebreakers in the Arctic: An Overlooked Environmental Concern

• Mammals have evolved into ant eaters 12 times since the dinosaur age – study