2026 - Wk 03 - Notes and Links
Andy's Newslather
So, about those Epstein files…?
Ten Things in the News This Week
Five themes that could shape waste and recycling in 2026.
These 99 award-winning portraits expertly capture the People of Britain.
I Know I’m Not Going to Win: Why people set out on Impossible Quests.
NYPD officer sacked for also having an OnlyFans account.
Square poop may deliver vital information.
The age of human achievement is not past!
Wikipedia may be the largest compendium of human knowledge ever created, but can it survive? As the website turns 25, it faces challenges from regulators, AI, the right and tech bros.
‘…We had a new structural engineer who those of us in the shop quickly identified as an idiot with a degree…’
Data this Week
The number of pizza restaurants in America is falling.
Record number of UK tech incorporations in 2025.
Treasure trove of data about aging is accessible.
Science says highly intelligent people tend to be more thoughtful, generous, kind and subscribe to newsletters.
Infographics
What is the best way of dicing an onion?
Explaining Bitcoin from 2013 to 2020.
Use this interactive map to see how the magnetic poles wander.
Science and Tech this Week
Thirty years in potato cyberspace.
The FDA made it easier for some digital devices to not be considered medical devices. Which means these aren’t regulated. Which means their accuracy may be so-so.
Ten breakthrough technologies that will define 2026. Or be forgotten about by April. Tough to say.
Researchers from the startup Overview Energy have successfully demonstrated beaming power from a moving airplane to the ground using near-infrared light. It marks the first step toward space-based solar power satellites that could someday transmit energy from orbit to existing solar farms on Earth.
A never-before-seen framework that infects Linux machines with a wide assortment of modules has been discovered.
Plastic pollution is not just in oceans and soil. Scientists have now found enormous amounts of microscopic plastic floating through urban air, far exceeding earlier estimates. Or not, as other scientists this week criticized an earlier paper about microplastics everywhere, saying the samples may have been contaminated.
Does anyone remember just how much the iPhone changed things? Here’s the then-head of MS struggling to understand how the world had changed when Jobs first demo’d the iPhone.
It’s an odd-numbered week, so coffee is good for you again, as it has molecules that are even more potent than a common anti-diabetic drug.
Artificial Intelligence
Summing up a lot of recent AI headlines.
Get ready for ads in ChatGPT.
The psychology behind the deceptive power of AI-generated images on Facebook. When users encounter content that feels safe, we lower our cognitive defenses. This makes us more susceptible to manipulation by content farms seeking to monetize our attention.
How to spot AI hallucinations like a reference librarian.
ChatGPT marriage vows ruled invalid in the Netherlands, court rules.
Wikipedia turned 25 on Thursday, and the online encyclopedia is celebrating that with an announcement that it has signed new licensing deals with a slate of major AI companies -- Amazon, Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Perplexity and Mistral AI. The deals allow these companies to access Wikipedia content “at a volume and speed designed specifically for their needs.”
America’s largest power-grid operator, PJM, which delivers electricity to 67 million people across a 13-state region from New Jersey to Kentucky, is approaching a supply crisis as AI data centers in Northern Virginia’s “Data Center Alley” consume electricity at an unprecedented rate.
Google removes some AI health summaries after an investigation finds “dangerous” flaws.
AI may not need massive training data after all.
Anthropic’s fourth installment of its Economic Index, drawing on an anonymized sample of two million Claude conversations from November 2025, finds that AI is changing how people work rather than whether they work at all.
The affordances of AI systems erode expertise, short-circuit decision-making, and isolate people from each other. These systems are anathema to the kind of evolution, transparency, cooperation, and accountability that give vital institutions their purpose and sustainability. In short, current AI systems are a death sentence for civic institutions, and the author of this paper says we should treat these as such.
Biologists who treat LLMs like alien life forms are making interesting observations.
Resources
Here’s a handy medical resource.
A website that makes Reddit look like mail.
Viewing Pleasure
This week’s comedy short is kind of dark, and about crime. And beans.
Some ‘improved’ scenes from the Lord of the Rings films.
A duck, for your amusement.
Two Australian mechanics have a small, cheap car, so they swap the engine oil with Nutella. And the simple motor still runs after this abuse.
Why do historical movie costumes look so cheap now?
Car companies collect your data, sell it to insurers, then claim independent repair shops are a privacy threat. Check out Privacy4Cars’ page for individuals to protect your driving data.
Listening Pleasure
Children’s stories for Scots.
In Our Time has a new host. Here’s his first episode: On Liberty.
How Galileo revolutionized science to make way for modernity.
Dilbert cartoonist Scot Adams died this week. Back in the 1990s, he really captured the pre-dot.com and early dot-com eras. Then, well, his material aged out of relevance. Also, he started to suffer from rich-guy-itis, thinking every idea he had was brilliant, and his racism and sexism began to emerge. What really did him in was a terrifying illness where he went mute for several years. This, he said, contributed to the breakup of his marriage and his downward spiral into hateful nonsense. The podcast Behind the Bastards has a look at how Scot Adams went off the rails. Here is Part One and Part Two.
Tales of the Unexpected
Unintended consequences and correlations
An electric scooter battery bursts, burning down a family home.
An invasion of Taiwan, which houses many of the world’s computer chip factories, would cause a sudden contraction in the global economy.
Grifter Stephen Yaxley-Lennon complains about gay YouTube ads, and everyone points out, guess what…
How the Ukraine war is shaping global economics well beyond the battlefield.
After years of pushing digital payments to combat tax evasion and money laundering, European Union ministers decided in December to ban businesses from refusing to accept cash.
Bones that washed up on a Washington beach have been identified as those of a former Oregon mayor who vanished 20 years ago.
Crazy Crime
A Stanley Cup replica. Breast milk. Theft. All the makings of the Crime of the Century!
Prior Lake woman arrested with a bag of drugs labeled ‘Definitely not a bag full of drugs’.
Don’t flip off the cops when speeding through a school zone.
Everyone lighten up. He may have been reading an important text.
A government official is accused of ordering and selling hundreds of phones. Having these shipped to his home address is probably hard to explain.
When you have to go, you have to go.
Strange Headlines
This trial ended in a cake walk.
Okay, but I can understand why there are some hard feelings.
What a year of reflection revealed about potatoes and people.
This is a headline that doesn’t hold back.
Stuff
Linguistic goof of the Week: This cannot not unbe.
Weird Wiki: Jenaro Gajardo Vera was a Chilean lawyer who claimed to own the Moon.
This week’s nincompoop is John Wahl.
Tepid Dystopia
I’m arresting you for being a porch pirate. No, I’m not gonna look at videos proving your innocence.
Indecent exposure. Smoking. Fights. It was a busy year for flight attendants in Canada.
Let the consequences fit the crime.
Jeff Bezos: Why buy a computer when you can rent one? From me? Forever.
Introducing Poland’s most overworked doctor.
Who’s behind the far right in Canada?
Conflict Studies
Gen.Ukrainian is an organization for helping traumatized children in that country.
The UK’s military signs a deal with the grandson of British fascist leader Oswald Mosley.
The Russian military is using African mercenaries as kamikazes.
Controlling Venezuela will mean boots on the ground. That hasn’t happened, which means the US doesn’t control it.
The UK is developing a 500 KM missile for Ukraine.
Russian officers from the 291st Regiment and Vostok-Akhmat claim to have established a weapons smuggling channel through Crimea into Africa.
Inflation in Ukraine has been declining since June 2025.
New Satellite Images Reveal Russia’s ‘Helicopter Graveyard’ filling up.
US anti-drone system seems to be active in Ukraine.
Twilight Struggle
China’s new embassy may have a basement that’s really, really, really close to underground telecommunications cables.
Inexpensive £70 a night hotel, ideal for business travellers or NATO officials on the go, don’t mind the Russians staking the place out. Cold breakfasts are okay. Three stars.
A network of foreign social media accounts posing as Scottish independence supporters has fallen silent once again as Iran’s internal struggles grow huge.
Another Russian Official Dies Mysteriously—This Time Inside the Russian Embassy in Cyprus
Beijing tells Chinese firms to stop using US and Israeli cybersecurity software, sources say.
People Watching
I can’t imagine why this newsletter struggled.
Furniture to keep an eye out for in thrift shops.
Remembering Alan Rickman.
Why didn’t ancient Greeks climb Olympus and see that there were no gods camped out there?
Post of the Week
For the record, I don’t write these.
Today I married the love of my life, and for the first time ever, after being together for three years.
We are having a biggish celebration later in the year, but for insurance reasons, we did a small civil ceremony. I cried tears of joy for the first time ever in my life. We had a normal lunch with some family at a nice place.
We went to have spicy sleep after the best day ever. She started screaming, "Why the f*** does it burn?" when I went to finger her. I ran to get a wet washcloth and had to let her recover. I forgot I chopped peppers when I cooked earlier. Though I since washed my hands multiple times, I didn’t know the pepper residue stays on under your fingernails even after washing. We eventually got it on again after laughing about it.
Quotes found On-Line
Cloudflare offered me a job checking boxes. Without pay.
I have this fantasy that Dolly Parton meets Trump and she kicks him down a flight of stairs.
You’re always responsible for what you say. But you’ll be blamed for what they accuse you have having said.
Vomit lacks a formalized sector like manure or funerals, so no equivalent trade newsletters appear in searches.
All these YouTubers and Podcasters do is blather and amplify each other’s hysterics, and this is why these Useful Idiots are perfect targets for Russian and Chinese manipulation and money.
What happened to those packs of feral children?
The longer I live, the more convinced I that this planet is used by other planets as a lunatic asylum - George Bernard Shaw
Trump will be what our AI overlords point it in 50 years to say ‘This is why we had to take over’.
Don’t ask me what masochism means, because it beats me.
I’m almost entirely against adults tickling children in any context, because, in my experience, most kids seem to dislike it, and the power differential is awful. Don’t make children feel more helpless than necessary, people.
Once the US is out of this mess, I never want to hear from any Second Amendment person ever again that they need guns to rise up against tyranny.
In 10 years’ time, we could be looking back on 2026 fondly!
Don’t be mad but I spilled my coffee on your Stoicism book.
Russian ‘security needs’ are actually status anxiety — the trauma of falling out of the top tier of history and refusing to accept it. Russia’s not been a great power since the mid-80s.
Ketchup should be tax-exempt.
When Michael J Fox was asked how he knew he made it, he answered that Mort Drucker of Mad Magazine drew him. Now that’s a frame of reference that’s fading with time.
Well, that was a crap orgasm. I mean, really. If this were a restaurant, I’d send it back.
Your problem isn’t penguins, it’s masochistic penguins.
That meeting between Trump and the oil company execs was astonishing. Two things happened. The moment the oil guys said ‘No’ and gave the reason why - it’s uninvestable. Also, minutes later, you can tell the exact moment Trump pooped himself.
Helping is one thing; becoming an unpaid assistant forever is another.
Work from home days mean amazing lunches and a mid-day wank while the wife and kids are out. You’re darn right I I consider these a job perk.
There’s still a Venezuelan government. Does Trump think the world works like chess, where all you need to do is grab the king?
I only find men attractive when they give me money.
A great many YouTube videos are nothing more than YouTubers angry about what some other YouTuber has said.
Are women aroused by men who are failures?
Where can I see a video about ICE operating in other countries?
Greenland is ten time zones away from China. How is China a threat to them?
This makes waaaaaaay too much sense to ever get implemented. Still, it’s the thought that counts.
Also, the irony of the idea of Congress enforcing its will on Greenland without representation. How did the American Revolution start again?
Masterpiece Theatre probably sold a ton of furniture for the old Bombay Company stores…
I had to explain to a 25-year-old what an encyclopedia was.
If Canada doesn’t stop the flow of Mexican drugs, it’ll be next after Venezuela.
I love how one can identify Dr. Who purely by the aliens’ low-budgetness.
I think the worst part of the aftermath of the death of Renee Good was the immediate pack of lies spouted by the American government.
Two things I never want to hear again from Americans: 1) Finger wagging about their wonderful checks and balances 2) How their guns will prevent tyranny.
VP JD Vance was so eager to lie about it that he almost forgot his eyeliner
My daytrading goal for 2026 is $100,000. As of this morning, I have $140,000 to go.
If you don’t go to people’s funerals, they won’t come to yours.
I yelled at him to ’Suck my d***’ which, I admit, is an odd thing for a woman to say, but I was steamed.
After proof of election theft, I suspect Trump’s next concern is hiding eugenics and cannibalism, maybe not his own but his buddies. I have no proof whatsoever; it just fits the narrative. The pee tape is absolutely nothing.
A great many police reports could be titled ‘Two ideas. One intersection.’
This is literally the biggest story of the past 20 years: Donald Trump’s misreading of the Mercator projection of Greenland’s size has caused him to end the Western Alliance that has kept Europe and the US safe since the end of World War II.
I just invented a new word! The word is plagiarism, which means using someone else’s work and presenting it as your own.
Our new marketing person has circulated a new brand guide. Three seconds on Google shows where it’s from. All she did was search and replace the company name and logo. I wonder how much she gets paid.
Ukraine’s certainly bloodied, as the attacks on energy and housing have shown, but they’re not likely to fold any time soon. A frozen conflict helps Ukraine, it’s not ideal, but it’ll allow a definite lurch west while they wait for Russia’s next revolution.
My only motivation for getting out of bed is my morning nap.
Why is it that all the commentators who announce that they’re centrists are actually really right-wing? Are they lying for clicks or just so inside their bubble they think they are centrists. If the later, who’s to their right? Atilla the Hun?
Well, white people didn’t do this and there’s nothing but Indians around there, so it must’ve been aliens”.
When ticking a box for marital status, I tick single, but there is never enough room for me to explain.
Another thing - Canada is between the US and Greenland. Sure, the US could conduct a purely marine operation against Greenland but the odds are that they want to travel through Canadian airspace. Canada will tell them no, and go on the s*** list for not enabling abuse.
The UK, France and Germany will clean up in the next few years as US arms exports fall.
The concept of literary vs genre fiction didn’t really come about until the 20th century with mass literacy and commercial fiction. Literary fiction wasn’t even a term until the 1980s. Shakespeare’s plays were funded and attended by nobility and also commoners. He existed in a time when the popular low entertainment was watching dogs maul bears.
I take drugs like a f***ing champion, which is why the last thing I need is someone like Jordan Peterson lecturing me about discipline.
When I was younger, I didn’t understand fully why my mother would cry when a famous musician or actor from her generation died. It’s not like she ever knew them, was it? I understand now. Middle age is the time of life when you begin watching the world you grew up in die. It’s not really about the individual’s death. It’s about the ever-increasing passage of time. It’s to learn how ephemeral everything and everyone really is. If one’s life is a house, it’s to watch each chair and table and photo album age, crack, and fall apart. Middle age brings many things that can’t be had in youth. Clarity, greater peace of mind, a measure of contentment. It also brings a deep mourning.
Magnificent Memes
Bon Mots
Funny Photos
