2026 - Wk 04 - Notes and Links
Andy's Newslather
Does anyone need jumper cables? I have three sets.
Ten Things in the News This Week
Missing rock beloved by climbers turns up 1,700 miles from home.
Heavy metal music lovers are the most faithful. Jazz enthusiasts have trouble keeping their trousers zipped.
Archaeologists find a huge medieval shipwreck in Denmark.
‘No one said, ‘We should stop doing this.’ The question was how we could keep doing it without getting caught: PR firms write a lot of content on Wiki for governments and rich folk. Oh, and guess what the Russians are doing…
The 2025 DPG Masters Underwater Imaging Competition photo award winners.
Yep, that’ll do it. Teacher resigns after the smut he was viewing at work was projected.
Photo matches the headline.
The oldest cave painting of a red claw hand could rewrite the human creativity timeline.
The UK’s National Security Assessment regarding climate change makes for some grim reading.
The American monoculture -- the era when three television networks, seven movie studios, and a handful of record labels determined virtually everything the country watched and heard is collapsing under the weight of algorithmic recommendation engines and infinite streaming options. An estimated 200 million tickets were sold for Gone With the Wind in 1939, when the U.S. population was 130 million; more than 100 million people watched the M*A*S*H finale in 1983, and 140 million watched the Winds of War miniseries. Audiences that big are a thing of the past.
Data this Week
Medical journal: The panics over kids and social media don’t add up, according to one study and another study.
That refillable bottle for your water may have an issue.
Trump supporters and insecure men are more likely to value a large penis, according to new research.
A major US report contributed to sinking corn prices last week.
Science and Tech this Week
Space is super interesting. Here’s something scientists found in the sky.
More than half of all cryptocurrencies ever launched have failed.
Europe blocks Americans’ access to quantum AI trading platform.
Why most developer documentation is terrible.
Nearly 5 million social media accounts belonging to Australian teenagers have been deactivated or removed, a month after a landmark law barring those under 16 from using the services took effect.
A long-standing law of thermodynamics turns out to have a wee loophole at the smallest scales. Researchers have shown that quantum engines made of correlated particles can exceed the traditional efficiency limit set by Carnot nearly 200 years ago. By tapping into quantum correlations, these engines can produce extra work beyond what heat alone allows. This could reshape how scientists design future nanoscale machines.
Artificial Intelligence
Hundreds of artists, writers, actors, and musicians signed a new campaign against what they call theft at a grand scale by AI companies. Here’s an article and here’s the petition.
More than half of companies haven’t seen any financial benefit from their AI investments, according to PwC’s latest Global CEO Survey
Generative AI Use and Depressive Symptoms Among US Adults: Daily use is associated with depression.
Anthropic CEO says government should help ensure AI’s economic upside is shared.
AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage.
An expanded class-action lawsuit filed last Friday alleges that a member of Nvidia’s data strategy team directly contacted Anna’s Archive -- the sprawling shadow library hosting millions of pirated books -- to explore including Anna’s Archive in pre-training data for their LLMs.
Salesforce executives admit that they wildly overestimated what AI could do, and firing loads of people may have been an apallingly stupid thing to do.
Meet the group breaking people out of AI delusions. No, not the people in management, I’m afraid.
Microsoft’s AI deal promises Canada digital sovereignty, but is that a pledge it can keep?
AI’s not boosting productivity: analyst.
CEO says his customers hate AI content, and spends more on guess what?
Learning from AI summaries leads to shallower knowledge than web search.
Self-Help Gurus are raking it in, thanks to AI chatbots.
AI helped researchers publish more often and boosted their careers, but the papers were often less useful.
Infographics
A series of graphics reveals how the Trump administration has sought historic cuts to science and the research workforce. Sent in by one of you.
How have crime rates in the United States changed over 50 years?
The most (and least) physically active US states.
Visualized: U.S. Data Center Investment (2014–2025).
The most common PIN codes.
Resources
A tool for Americans to reveal healthcare costs.
This website visualizes how far you’ve traveled through the universe since youe birth.
Viewing Pleasure
This week’s comedy clip: An important message from You-Know-Who.
Practice can look a lot like magic. This helps if you are a magician.
Four very competitive women musicians.
Tragic consequences of medical misinformation.
How to drive a manual car for beginners.
Listening Pleasure
How social media algorithms decide who you are.
Here’s a funny take on this week’s news headlines.
The world’s silliest megaproject - Saudi Arabia’s Linear City.
Want to dive deep into the mists of Scottish history. Tune into the BBC Radio Scotland Time Travel podcast.
Tales of the Unexpected
Unintended consequences and correlations
Bus driver: I have a new idea about where we should go.
A burglary alarm at a bank was triggered by an intruding deer.
Iranians are increasingly reliant on cryptocurrencies as their government wobbles.
1 in 4 Canadians say they avoided travel to the United States because of feelings towards President Trump. Many think less of friends or family who do.
If you put the Apple icons in reverse it looks like the portfolio of someone getting really really good at icon design.
Chinese E-vehicles freeze shut in Russia with many comparing them to ‘portable coffins’.
A Canadian television series about a romance between two rival professional hockey players has become a surprise hit with Russian viewers despite Moscow’s sweeping repression of gays, and sanctions.
‘Make America Go Away’: The red hat that’s all the rage in Greenland.
When employees feel slighted, they work less.
Weird time-of-day diets linked to cardiac stress.
Crazy Crime
This is the sort of intellectual content you come here for: Man sentenced for farting on police.
Florida man arrested for using ketchup packet as weapon, faces five years in prison.
A mayor and off-duty cops were allegedly in a bar fight.
Stolen $30K harp found after man jumped naked in Pittsburgh River.
I guess this person is a flight risk.
Obligatory ‘Where’s the Beef’ headline here.
Albemarle man convicted of bestiality after attempting to … what the Hell?
Nobody does romance like a man from Florida.
Teen defends family after a fake ICE agent breaks in. To steal their game console.
Who are cloud busters? People who think waving copper pipes at the sky to control the weather.
Strange Headlines
Bank of England must plan for a financial crisis triggered by aliens, says former policy expert.
It costs £680 to apply to become bankrupt in the UK.
James Bond creator Ian Fleming coined the phrase ‘A quantum of solace’ to mean that irreducible understanding that a couple is in it together. Once that necessary mutual respect is gone, it’s a fatal wound to the relationship. This is an extraordinary headline, given that it’s coming from a ‘big grey’ business newspaper. If you’ve ever wanted proof that the temperature of our era has changed, here you go as Canada’s military considers what might happen if the US invades.
Stuff
Linguistic goof of the Week: The Beatles were part of the British Incision.
Weird Wiki: Don’t be like this guy and combine your hobbies.
Tepid Dystopia
The United States has left the World Health Organization. RFK will now head its replacement: the World Infection Organization, which will operate under the new Office of Preventable Outcomes. In related news, California became the first U.S. state to join the World Health Organization's Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network.
In related news, measles surges in America and the US doctor in charge or vaccines says polio and other shots should be optional.
It was not the first time a Nobel laureate has given away the medal. In 1943, Nobel literature laureate Knut Hamsun gave his to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
ICE agents ate a meal at a Minnesota Mexican restaurant – then arrested the staff.
A North Carolina man won the lottery, but he fought to get his money after it was kept to pay a debt he didn’t owe.
In 2024, US a US politician put forward a bill to make it illegal for federal government employees to ask internet companies to remove any speech. O, how times change. a NY Post op-ed, he tells how he spoke to Google executives to demand they remove a video he didn’t like.
Conflict Studies
Germany to supply Kyiv with two mini combined heat and power plants.
Russia sells gold to finance the government. Next up, they’ll start an Only Fans channel. Also, do you need to buy any old statues of Lenin? We have plenty!
Torture, false arrests: Ukrainian women in Russian prisons.
The famous Oreshnik missile may not have a guidance system to speak of.
Ukraine halts orders from a major European defence contacter, because these don’t work in the battlefield
Russia’s civil aviation sector is turning to stored aircraft from previous decades to maintain passenger capacity amid a continued shortfall in new domestically produced airliners.
What Ukraine increasingly does looks less like a wall and more like a finely tuned machine that runs on Russian bodies. Russia feeds the machine.
Russia alarmed by the US posting its Typhoon missile in Japan.
Ukraine deploying fuel-cell-powered drones that are hard to detect with thermal sensors.
Russia fines cruiser officer $29 Million.
Twilight Struggle
Russian intelligence officers circle the wagons to shoot inward snitching on each other.
Belarusian nuns accused of spying for Russia in the EU.
More than 100 Britons suspected of spying for hostile states. Some don’t know it. Farage, for instance.
In December 2024, the Google Threat Intelligence Group published research on the code of the commercial spyware “Predator”. But there’s now been new research showing Predator is more dangerous and sophisticated than first realized.
Nature loss is a national food security risk, UK intelligence report warns.
French press coverage of Ukraine apparently leaking fake information to the US, which then appeared in Russia.
Major security breach at top secret spy base as thieves break in and steal 55 tons of copper cable.
From the A List Archives
A bungling burglar ends up falling in a bin, sent in by one of you.
Qualified immunity does not apply to road rage constable.
Okay, that’s an unusual murder weapon.
People Watching
The day Napoleon was attacked by rabbits.
Um. Er. It’s an idea, I guess.
The Black and Decker Workmate was the quintessential folding work table. There are many copies, but the originals are the best.
Man, whose house was mistakenly demolished in 2018, finally reaches a settlement.
Someone imagined Harry Flashman lego sets. For those not in the know, the Flashman Papers are an amazing set of novels and short stories.
Post of the Week
For the record, I don’t write these.
I had a guy call into mobile tech support the other day, furious because his mobile data had just stopped working for 20 minutes.
Within about 30 seconds of troubleshooting I figure it out: he’d toggled mobile data off in his phone settings. Super common, and normally people just laugh it off with a oh wow, can’t believe I did that.
Not this dude.
He immediately starts insisting he should be compensated for the time he was without service, and he’s being properly rude about it. I explain politely that nothing was wrong on our end, it was a setting he’d turned off himself, but he refuses to accept that as an answer and keeps demanding money back.
After a couple of minutes of this, I get an idea and tell him I’m going to speak to my manager.
I head over, explain the whole situation, and my manager just shakes his head and says the guy’s being ridiculous. I say,
Okay, I’ve got an idea for him, are you cool with it
Then I lay out my plan.
Are you serious? Hang on, let me join the call listening. I need to hear this.
He gets set up, gives me a thumbs up, and I go back to the customer.
Right, sir, I’ve just spoken with my manager and I’ve managed to arrange something for you. Let’s break down your bill: you pay £39.99 a month for three services, calls, texts, and data. If we divide that by three, that’s £13.33 for data. Now, divide that by 30 days, and your daily cost for data is 44p. You had your data off for 20 minutes, but I’ll be generous and round that up to a full hour. So we take that 44p and divide by 24 hours, which comes out to about 1.8 pence, so let’s just call it 2p compensation.
While I’m talking, I glance at my manager and he’s half turned away, hand over his mouth, trying not to completely lose it. For context, 2p is the kind of amount I’d usually forget about until it quietly turns into a few quid from playing mobile games on Mistplay and cashing the points out for a small gift card.
The customer goes: Are you having a f***king laugh?
No, sir, the maths is right there.
There’s a pause.
…………Go on then, I’ll take it.
Quotes found On-Line
If we [America] invade Canada, we could make Carney our president.
I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down - I just didn’t expect them to be such losers.
If I think I’m going to lose an argument with him, I switch to a tank top with no bra beforehand.
Does the prostate have anything to do with diabetes?
Hang on. The belly rub mafia is here. I need to fork over some scratches.
Why do people ask “who farted?!” When they smell a fart? What are you? The fart investigator? The sh*t Gestapo?
I mean, when it comes down to it, there will be days when your feet smell like Fritos corn chips, and there will be days when they don’t.
All countries have their myths. One of America’s is that they’re the good guys because of WW2.
My wife told me to stop acting stupid, but the joke’s on her, it’s not an act.
Greenland may be our Poland, the line where self-respect kicked in.
I’d really like a word with my fellow citizens who were above it all, and too busy to vote.
Rip Taylor would have been an amazing Star Trek captain.
Add America to something else Trump has run into the ground.
Never wonder again why Russia spent so much getting Trump into power. The UK still doesn’t get it after Brexit, and foreign money is flowing to that saboteur Farage.
As the Batman films became more serious, the ears atop the mask got shorter.
Most people not married to a woman named Ruth, are ruthless.
I’ve killed some versions of myself to be this calm.
No-one needs a plan B, because I am always plan A. I’m the one who gets things done. The reliable one, the closer, the person who absorbs risk so others don’t have to. I am the contingency plan. However, one day, because I am mortal, I’ll have a health event of some kind. I’ll face it alone.
Spoken like someone who has tried American cheese before.
That would be making the gif transparent, and that creates the weird anger issue I mentioned.
Looking at his age, Putin will not live forever. This, too, dictates that he may commit the next stupidity to satisfy his ambitions in the near future.
This will be the era when historians say ‘America shot both of its feet off’.
So, the draft dodger says nobody helped America after 2001? The NATO countries invoked Article 5, so all of them were helping, but 130 countries overall.
People say, “You’ll find the one when you stop looking,” which is beautiful advice for a romantic, but a negligence suit waiting to happen for a lifeguard.
Watching a Gene Hackman film. My goodness, did that man radiate a sharp mind. Terrifying that a brain as good as his could be ground down by dementia.
Everyone knows that one dude who thinks he’s Jim Carrey, but suddenly turns into Ben Shapiro when he’s confronted.
You look like a testicle rolled in iron fillings.
He didn’t change his mind. He just revealed that he never had a principled position in the first place.
AI will “replace” humans in the same way plastic “replaced” metal.
If you’ve ever wondered what you would have done in the 1930s when Hitler was consolidating power, it’s what ever you did last week.
Old people will tell you that there’s no place like home, until you try to put them into one!
How could it get worse for Putin? Trump could die.
We were asked to make sprint retro reviews more interesting, so I moved these to the pub at 3 on Fridays.
Hello, America? I’d like to speak to your manager.
Timidity, incrementalism, and compromise are cancer in this environment. The enemy has jailbroken America, hacked its operating system, and turned it into an attack zombie against its own people and allies.
People need to be civil and helpful when masked thugs come for their friends and neighbours, and to just follow orders like good citizens. Don’t worry when they come for the communists, socialists, trade unionists and jews, there’ll be plenty of others on the list before you, honest.
He is unable to attend as he is busy being in jail.
All America had to do was keep a steady hand on the tiller, and everything would continue in its favour. How hard would that have been?
Can you imagine how sexy it’d be if I ate right and too care of my body? I won’t, but imagine if I did.
I have one Instagram photo, which is a chicken riding a skateboard.
Pretending to be Canadian has nothing to do with white male privilege.
His superpower appeared to be bad judgment.
If the Trump administration weren’t on the up-and-up, I’d swear this sounds exactly like a protection racket.
Logistics failure ends the operation more decisively than enemy fire.
Sandals make some feel invincible.
The only reason some people get lost in thought is that it’s unfamiliar territory.
I told my therapist I had suicidal tendencies, he said: Alright—but from now on, you gotta pay in advance. Rodney Dangerfield.
The Nobel Prize is an independent organization in Sweden, not Denmark. This is like China going to war with Canada because Mexico didn’t give Xi an Oscar.
My idea is for upper-case numbers. Where can I patent these so the keyboard makers have to use them?
I put my inner child up for adoption.
Can I just say how infuriating it is to see conservatives go from ‘Stupid libs, global warming isn’t real’ to ‘Stupid libs, if global warming was bad, God wouldn’t let us do it,’ to ‘Stupid libs, global warming is a vague, gradual problem a few centuries out, just sell your beachfront home if you are so worried,’ to ‘Stupid libs, we need Greenland because of the changing military dynamic caused by global warming?’
Trump at Davos in Switzerland: “Without us, right now you’d all be speaking German”. German is the main language of Switzerland.
Moved back in with my mother and now I remember exactly why I left
You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving. -Robert Louis Stevenson
I was forced to use LinkedIn, and now I need therapy.
Of course, being Welsh, I don’t have an accent. You do.
Why are Cougars ok but Old Men are just dirty?
Europe is not Venezuela it has some leverage over America. The question is whether it can be united enough to use it. History says no, but we’re in unprecedented times.
The reason I fear death is that I don’t want to find out Heaven is real and I’ll be stuck with my f***ing family again.
This aged so badly that it died, decomposed, and became a whole other organism.
I think this is a little unfair. Trump’s presidency has actually been the most transparent administration ever. Case in point, the Epstein files proved this when it was revealed that ███████ ████ █████ █████████ ██████ ██████ and ██████ █████████ █████████ █████ ██████ ███████. I mean, the ███████ alone should be all the ██████ evidence you need. Also, anyone who disagrees will be summarily ██████ ███ ██████ ██████.
This Week’s Magnificent Memes
Bon Mots
Funny Images
