2026-01-26

etc

• Power plant outages surge in Eastern US amid restricted gas supplies

  • 'Life-threatening' storm forecast in US as states declare emergency

• By almost every measure, life is better than ever.

  The internet, newspapers, and TV are full of bad news that are fueling our fears and dooms. Even here in Switzerland, one of the world’s most privileged and stable countries, many of my friends are deeply pessimistic about the future. But if we zoom out, we’re realizing that we’re living in the best time in human history. You just can’t tell from the headlines.

• LED lighting undermines visual performance unless supplemented by wider spectra

Horseshit

• Nearly half of Detroit seniors spend 30% or more of income on housing costs

• Bill Gates-backed startup aims to revive Moore's Law with optical transistors

• Alex Honnold free solos Taipei 101 skyscraper in live Netflix climb

  • Climber Alex Honnold scales 101-floor skyscraper without safety gear

• Less than half of parents say swearing is never OK for kids

• New York Startup Builds Fridge-Sized Machine That Can Turn Air into Gasoline

• How to Cut an Infinitely Large Pancake into as Many Pieces as Possible

• Did Edison accidentally make graphene in 1879?

• Gen Z is Nostalgic for the Photo Aesthetic of 2016

• Billionaire Sports Mogul Has Become America's Largest Private Landowner

Obit

• Sir Mark Tully, the BBC's 'voice of India', dies aged 90

  • Sir Mark Tully has died

Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering

• 'Amelia': the AI-generated British schoolgirl, a far-right social media star

Electric / Self Driving cars

• The coming war on car ownership?

  So no, they won’t make it illegal it own cars. They will just raise the price through insurance. Who is going to insure a human driver? The car insurance companies will one by one switch to only insuring robotaxis that are owned by large corporations (you can’t own it, you might do the maintenance wrong and we can’t trust you to do that). But it’s really just a thinly veiled excuse, the capital markets backing insurance companies implicitly know the best way to squeeze the remaining dollars out of you is robotaxis.

• The 2027 Chevy Bolt Will Stay in Production for Just 18 Months.

Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation

• Genetic data from over 20k U.S. children misused for 'race science'

Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising

• Welcome to the Quake Brutalist Game Jam

• Meta's Reality Labs cuts sparked fears of a 'VR winter'

• Lawsuit Claims Meta Can See WhatsApp Chats in Breach of Privacy

• UK judge rules that RuneScape gold is fair game when suing for theft

• Microsoft gave customers' BitLocker encryption keys to the FBI

• World’s most powerful literary critic is on TikTok

• Bluesky CEO Jay Graber: Banning under-16s won't fix social media

• Apple Mac turns 42 and we still are still using the same user paradigm

• Khaby Lame, world’s biggest TikToker from Senegal sells company in $900m deal

TechSuck / Geek Bait

• In Defense of 'Mantissa'

AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World

• A new test for AI labs: Are you even trying to make money?

• AI luminaries at Davos clash over how close human-level intelligence really is.

• New study disrupts the narrative that ChatGPT's launch triggered a job decline

• Oracles AI datacenters buildout needs $500B Wall Street is flinching

• Sam Altman's make-or-break year: can OpenAI CEO cash in his bet on the future?

• "Hello, Computer." Vocal computing seems primed to take off, for real this time

• The new forensic science of proving what's real

• What happens when you train an LLM only on limited historical data

• More than a quarter of Britons say they fear losing jobs to AI in next 5 years

• Inside Apple's AI Shake-Up and Its Plans for Two New Versions of Siri

• Bandcamp becomes the first major music platform to ban AI content

• Like digging 'your own grave': The translators grappling with losing work to AI

• Google's AI Detection Tool Can't Decide If Its Own AI Doctored Photo of Activist

• OpenAI's GPT-5.2 model cites Grokipedia

• The AI-Powered Web Is Eating Itself

• ChatGPT's porn rollout raises concerns over safety and ethics

• Science Is Drowning in AI Slop

Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO

• Rocket Lab’s new Neutron rocket suffers fuel tank rupture during test.

• Thirty Years of the Square Kilometre Array

• Satellites encased in wood are in the works

Economicon / Business / Finance

• Bending Spoons, the little-known firm behind Vimeo's layoffs

• Wall Street Grapples with New Risk: A European Buyers' Strike

• Wall Street braced for a private credit meltdown. The risk of one is rising

Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making

• Pam Bondi Offers to Pull ICE Out of Minneapolis if Voter Files Handed Over - Newsweek

  U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to Minnesota Democratic Governor Tim Walz demanding the state take three specific actions before federal immigration agents would consider reducing their presence in Minneapolis, including handing over voter rolls. In the letter, Bondi blamed both state and local leaders for the unrest that has come in response to the Trump administration's immigration enforcement operations. She said that Walz could "restore the rule of law."

  • Minneapolis shooting: AG Pam Bondi gives Gov. Walz conditions for ICE to leave

• FAA institutes nationwide drone no-fly zones around ICE operations

• WA state is turning your 3D printer into a cop

Left Angst

• Another horrifying shooting by federal agents in Minneapolis

  • National Guard activated in Minneapolis after Border Patrol agent kills man

  • "Those rights don't count": Bovino says Pretti forfeited 2nd Amendment rights

  Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old Veterans Affairs nurse, was killed by Border Patrol agents on Saturday. In videos of the deadly altercation between Pretti and several agents, he can be seen placing himself between an agent and several women that he was shoving. Pretti is sprayed with a chemical irritant and then wrestled to the ground, where one agent repeatedly hit him in the head with the irritant’s metal canister. Pretti, who was legally carrying a firearm, was fatally shot by agents while on the ground.

  • The Left Doesn’t Want You to Know This About Alex Pretti, the Man the Border Patrol Shot – PJ Media

• 100 clergy arrested at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport during ICE protest.

• Open letter from more than 60 CEOs of Minnesota-based companies

  With yesterday’s tragic news, we are calling for an immediate deescalation of tensions and for state, local and federal officials to work together to find real solutions.

• Yes, It's Fascism

• We Should Talk About the Morality of Political Violence

  for the benefit of people easily offended by implication over bluntness, I think there is a plausible argument that it is morally permissible, and even morally necessary, to use political violence against the Trump Administration and its agents and supporters under the current circumstances in America. The arguments in favor are likely to grow.

  • Will you lash out at agents of the administration, or at neighbors whom you can call "Trumpist"?

• Monsters - Paul Krugman

  It has been clear for a long time, to anyone willing to see, that the people running the federal government — Trump, Miller, Noem, Bovino and more — are monsters. It has been equally obvious that ICE and the Border Patrol are now filled with sadistic thugs. Yet many people — almost the entire GOP, everyone serving in the Trump administration, some Democrats, a significant part of the media — were too cowardly to admit the obvious. At this point, however, there are no more excuses. In a way the cowards and opportunists enabling Trump are more to blame for where we are than Trump and company themselves: monsters are monsters and can’t help themselves, but the enablers have a choice. And they have chosen, again and again, to accommodate and facilitate evil.

• ICE using Palantir tool that feeds on Medicaid data

• White House alters arrest photo of ICE protester, says "the memes will continue"

• Trump Pushes A.I. Data Centers, but the GOP Is Cool to One in Alabama

• 'Fundamental reset': Scott Bessent has a plan to free the nation's banks

• Trump Family's $6.8B Fortune Is Increasingly Tied to Crypto

• ICE Says Evidence in Abuse Case Was Lost in 'System Crash' After Being Sued

External Security / Militaria / Diplomania

• Secret 'discombobulator' weapon was crucial to Venezuelan raid on Maduro

• US SEC: India refused to serve summons to Adani Group under Hague Convention

World

• The Podcaster Poking at France's Biggest Secrets

• The Guardian view on Europe's payments problem: sovereignty starts at the till

• Spanish track was fractured before high-speed train disaster, report finds

• Taiwan unveils plan for disaster-proof satellite communication devices

• Adviser of Highest EU Court Backs VPN Neutrality in Anne Frank Copyright Battle

• German economists push for gold repatriation from U.S. vaults

• Palantir has no place in UK public services

• House of Lords votes for under-16s social media ban

• Almost a quarter of UK GPs are seeing obese children aged four and under

Iran / Houthi

• Iran Limits Traders to 20 Minutes of Supervised Internet Access per Day

• Iran Protest Death Toll Could Top 30k, According to Local Health Officials

• Iran’s supreme leader retreats underground, warned of likelihood of US airstrikes: report

• Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal

China

• Why Zhang Youxia Matters? Xi's Regime Is Collapsing

• China's Top General Accused of Giving Nuclear Secrets to U.S.

• Chinese Programmer Dies from Overwork at 32; Added to Work Chat While in Hospital

• China's condom tax will prove no barrier to country's declining fertility rate

Health / Medicine

• Cholesterol levels cut in half with one-time gene editing drug in trial

• The FDA Listened on Estrogen. Will They Now Fix Testosterone's Outdated Label?

• Heart rhythm problems detected four times more often with smartwatches

Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda

• Shrews Can Shrink Their Brains by 30%. Here’s How They Grow It Back.

• Forty years of forest data reveal a changing Amazon

• How bad is your stove for your health?

• Cleaner air is (inadvertently) harming the Great Barrier Reef

• White whale spotted off Crescent Head coast in 'unusual' summer sighting