Read this sentence slowly: “Gov. Gavin Newsom, crypto executives and business leaders are ramping up efforts this week to stop the proposed wealth tax...” gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/u...

"Beware of dog." Gotta be careful of Denver. You might get licked.

My exact point right here.

“I don’t want to be in this place I want to go to my school.” - 7 year old imprisoned by ICE for 70 days in a concentration camp in Texas. Today, after @propublica.org published this story, the camp was raided to confiscate letters from the children. www.propublica.org/article/ice-...

So, you know the Mission: Impossible theme, with it's four note, "Baaam, Baaam, BompBomp" opening? You could write that, oh, I dunno, like this: -- .. Today I learned that "-- .." is Morse code from "Mi". Clever.

Electric vehicle batteries are slowly coming down in cost. But there's a quicker way automakers are trying to make their EVs more affordable. Here's @andrewmoseman.bsky.social on their latest obsession: heatmap.news/electric-veh...

It is 1996. The American president was born in 1946. It is 2006. The American president was born in 1946. It is 2016. The American president was born in 1946. It is 2026. The American president was born in 1946.

AI writing facilitates "semantic ablation:" the slow removal of the spiky, quirky, humane way of writing, of having a writer's voice and your own weird fleet of metaphors, favorite words and phrases, memorized movie quotes and lyrics, and replacing all that with the most boring, most average words.

You have to wonder if the guys who wrote Postgres back in 1986 ever expected a day when PostgreSQL and its protocols would form the backbone of the entire information economy: devnewsletter.com/p/state-of-d...

NVidia introduced "tiles," computational units that allow for different parts of your GPU to do different tasks simultaneously. Rust programmers can now take advantage of that and write asynchronous, cross-die code on the GPU: www.vectorware.com/blog/async-a...

The Russian economy has entered the "eating its own seed corn" phase, a downward spiral in which the reserves intended to buffer against disaster have themselves become the last reserves of a state that cannot collect enough to survive. There is no backup. www.economist.com/by-invitatio...

Only because he's going to end "Presidential History" if this goes on. www.peoplefor.org/rightwingwat...

Just a reminder that "porn addiction" doesn't exist. "Porn addiction" is a mask for being horny and being taught to be ashamed of being horny. That's all it is. quorumreport.com/quorum_repor...

"[April 21, 2024] Trailer debuts for first all-AI movie, Next Stop Paris, a romance for TLC television from producer of Sharknado movies." Wait, what? lareviewofbooks.org/article/as-h...

I have chronic shoulder pain after a rotator tear suffered during a fall while hiking. The criteria for what constitutes a "bad shoulder" is so broad almost everyone over 40 has one, but most people don't have pain: arstechnica.com/health/2026/...

Anthropic is deeply troubled that many Pentagon systems are using Claude AI, and has attempted to limit or constrain the use of its AI in military decisions. The Republican Administrations says that anyone who partners with them must be willing to do what they command. www.axios.com/2026/02/16/a...

The FBI has formally notified the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension that it will not cooperate with the state in the investigation of the shooting of Alex Pretti, and that any evidence it has collected will not be handed over. crooksandliars.com/2026/02/fbi-...

Good. New Mexico was barred from investigation a 1996 complaint of multiple sexual assaults by the feds, who were conducting their own investigation. The feds never actually moved forward, so New Mexico is going forward with its own investigation. www.nbcnews.com/politics/pol...

I was never a Grindr kind of queer, but this is sad: Grindr introduces GAI (pronounced "Gay-I") at $500 a month (WTF?) to help you hook up. This looks like enshittification run wild. Someone should start an alternative service. www.vox.com/culture/4791...

The mouseover text references "FOE." FOE is "51ERGS," 10⁵¹ ergs or 10⁴⁴ Joules, the typical energy released by an "average" supernova. 10⁻⁴⁰ FOE is the equivalent of being hit by a 2.5Mton car doing 90KPH. xkcd.com/3208/

PZ Meyers highlights the lyrics in what Lee Brice sang at the TPUSA "counter-halftime-show." You've got to admire the honesty: "I want to live in a country where trans people don't exist and I'm allowed to be pro-gun without having to defend myself." Tremble! freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2...

You will now crumble into dust. JWZ reminds us that "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" is 25 years old today: archive.org/details/flas...

The Republican Department of Homeland Security sends hundreds of "administrative warrants" to Google, Facebook, Reddit, and Discord, demanding the names and identities of people who have criticized the Republican Administration. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...

MAGA billionaire who said two years ago that Trump would "stop companies sending jobs to China" is shutting down his factory in Ohio and sending 150 union jobs to China. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Some things are just charming. For example, this 1997 classroom exercise in writing a Mandelbrot generator in Fortran 77, then re-writing in in Fortran 90, then outputting the final result to PNM greyscale: phys.uri.edu/~nigh/HTMLHP...

One reason Republicans are so laser targeted on trans kids existing, is that trans kids existing requires accepting the bodily autonomy and consent of children. Which is something republicans absolutely can't do, since they are pedophiles. Their transphobia and pedophilia is them being consistent

The Project 2025 author is using millions of dollars in USAID money for his own security detail. It is estimated that 762,000 people have *already died* as a result of Elon Musk and Russell Vought’s obscene murder of USAID, including more than 500,000 children. Vought is a mass murderer.

Has anyone in the Epstein Files who didn’t do anything wrong been punished? Maybe someone who was at a meeting Epstein was at. Never went to the island, didn’t get money from him, nor had a bunch of friendly emails. Anyone get arrested, fired, etc.? Because moral panics feature that sort of thing.

If I'm reading this correctly, the prosecution claims that right-wing people bring guns to protests because guns are part of their culture, which is fine, but left-wing people bring guns to protests to intimidate the police and the government, which is terrorism.

Defendants form a version of “antifa” that a prosecutor in the case described as an “anti-President Trump and anti-ICE movement,” but that experts warn tips dangerously toward an attempt to prosecute based on ideology. talkingpointsmemo.com/news/guilt-b...

Today I learned a computer store near me sells "pre-configured clawdbot mini-pcs." Clawdbot is a program you give access to an AI account (Despite the name it is not tied directly to Anthropic's "Claude" AI) and then you give it all your passwords, and it starts to run your life.

I'm sorry, nothing will help Lost In Space. Visually stunning, but William Hurt phoned in his performance, the story completely falls apart in Act 3, and the only characters worth talking about, the women, are consigned to dull support roles. www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/scifi/lo...

"NASA running out of non-biological explanations for some of the organic molecules found on Mars." www.sciencealert.com/mars-organic...

If you ever wonder why the Epstein emails and text messages contain such absurdly bad grammar, it's because "communicating clearly" is something those with privilege don't have to do. Either you understand what they want, or it's entirely your problem. tadaima.bearblog.dev/privilege-is...

Today I learned about "dark flow" and "junk flow," variations on the psychological state of "flow" that can cause loss or waste. Slot machines specialize in inducing this sense. www.fast.ai/posts/2026-0...

Okay, so, I'd never heard of this before, and since I refer to my inner voices with names like "The Stable," "The Council," and "The Spoilsport," and so on, I thought this would make sense to me. But... www.vox.com/future-perfe...

I'm somewhat surprised RFK Jr.'s artificial doppelganger didn't include coffee in the list of "best foods you can insert into your rectum." www.themirror.com/news/politic...

The thing that occurs to me is that, among the middle class, liberals are far more likely to have traveled outside the country that conservatives.

Omaha and I went to see the Broadway tour of Spamalot! It felt... stale. The bits that were good are not very new, and the bits that are new are not very good. If you grew up watching Monty Python, it's kinda dull.

Womp, womp. The FCC determined that Bad Bunny sang the radio-sanitized versions of his songs and did not use profanity during the NFL half-time show. Republicans' complaints have been dismissed. www.yahoo.com/entertainmen...

The only saving grace is that autocrats don't want competent people. They want loyal people. Pirro is where she is because she's incompetent. Her loyalty let her find an "alternative career advancement path." www.politico.com/news/magazin...

Measles outbreak in South Carolina reaches 950. Conservatives say this is the price of freedom. www.wyff4.com/article/meas...

Taking sildenafil (viagra) regularly may be good for your cardiovascular system. But taking it every day? That would be hard. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/02...

Wait, WHAT!? Erika Kirk, fucking Charlie Kirk's WIDOW, the woman arranging the "Traditional White Women in Leadership" conference, is being credibly accused of grooming a fifteen year-old girl with flirtatious and salacious messages and gifts. www.msn.com/en-us/lifest...

I have been saying this for 3 years now; it is evident from even a theorerical understanding of these systems' operations. But ppl keep claiming it's not true or not important, or could be patched over, & so I keep hoping each time an "AI" company CEO comes out & admits will be the one that sticks

At least she's not six times more likely to be shot by her husband with that gun than she is to ever use it in self-defense. That's the only hopeful aspect to this story.

It represents only 61% of American women?

One horrifying thought that occurs to me: so many men may be embracing AI because they understand this, that AIs reduce the demand for mid-tier knowledge work, which they hope will force women into more traditional roles and stances.

I find this a fascinating read. Xi Jinping has been purging China's military leadership. There is strong evidence that leadership was deeply corrupt: selling favors and rank, and siphoning state resources to private ends. The rot is apparently everywhere. breakingdefense.com/2026/02/chin...