2026 - Wk 11 - Notes and Links
Andy's Newslather
Ten Things in the News This Week
John Stephenson, 50, dragged a two-tonne Seat Leon 50 meters to raise awareness of men’s mental health issues. With his testicles.
Police: A nun had nothing to do with our raid on a pot shop. Now there’s an oddly-specific denial.
A couple tried claiming the neighbour’s land with a gnome.
‘What do you want to do with this old waterfall we own?’ ‘Dunno. What about eBay?’
The world’s premier scientific parody event, the Ignobles, is moving. Why? Guess.
Let me guess: He’s unmarried.
Scientists and law enforcement officials are pointing to the role moss can play to help solve crimes.
Chinese national arrested when attempting to smuggle 2,000 queen ants from Kenya.
The UK hit the brakes and did a U-Turn: it reversed its recommendation for countervailing duties on U.S. renewable diesel imports this week, just months after proposing them to protect domestic green biofuels.
Data this Week
A landmark sustainability study was wrong. Correcting it took two years.
Women with breast cancer who rely on ‘complementary medicine’ are four times more likely to perish. So we should probably call it ‘complementary idiocy’.
Science says constant yelling and hostile homes literally rewire kids’ brains like soldier PTSD. Amygdala goes on permanent high alert.
Facebook removes more fake accounts annually than it has active users.
Humanity is heating the planet faster than ever before, a study has found. Climate breakdown is occurring more rapidly with the heating rate almost doubling, according to research that excludes the effect of natural factors behind the latest scorching temperatures.
After reviewing data from more than 500,000 running sessions, researchers found that injuries were most likely to occur after runners increased their mileage by more than 10 per cent in a single run compared to their longest run in the previous 30 days. Increasing mileage weekly didn’t seem to be linked to injuries. They didn’t need to do this study, honestly. All they had to do was ask me.
Science and Tech this Week
A majority in the European Parliament voted today to end the untargeted mass scanning of private communications.
The EU proposed a binding science-diplomacy framework this month to leverage research as soft power, but experts flag risks of gridlock from veto-prone states. No names were mentioned, but one of these states probably rhymes with Schmungary.
Stem cell trials are underway to reduce hearing loss. I SAID STEM CELL TRIALS ARE UNDERWAY TO REDUCE HEARING LOSS!
Grammarly disabled its Expert Review feature after backlash from writers whose names were used to present AI-generated feedback without their permission. CEO Shishir Mehrotra wrote in a LinkedIn post that the company will disable Expert Review while the firm ‘reimagines’ the feature: The agent’s writing suggestions are inspired by the published work of influential voices and, one presumes, a lot of airport thrillers and Fanny Hurst novels.
Japan has approved groundbreaking stem-cell treatments for Parkinson’s and severe heart failure, marking two world firsts.
Surgeon’s operation on patient 2,400 KM away, a UK first.
Bilingualism comes naturally to the brain.
Seagate released a 44-Terabyte hard drive.
Why are vertebrate eyes so different from those of other animals? A new hypothesis proposes that our ancestors lost their eyes, then rebuilt them.
Fungi are getting their due.
Artificial Intelligence
YouTube is expanding its AI deepfake detection tools to a pilot group of politicians, government officials, and journalists, allowing them to identify and request the removal of unauthorized AI-generated videos impersonating them. EU in a bind as deepfakes flood the Hungarian election campaign.
Photographer creates a visually interesting campaign. Everyone assumes it’s AI.
Report: Creating a 5-second AI video is like running a microwave for an hour
Great news, everyone! Atlassian’s about to get worse!
ChatGPT, Gemini, and other chatbots helped teens plan shootings, bombings, and political violence, study shows.
37,000 fake AI comments mysteriously oppose Washington state’s effort to tax the rich. You have to ask about the value of a technology whose primary use case is laundering the popularity of horrendously unpopular ideas.
Junior and mid-level engineers will now require more senior engineers to sign off on any AI-assisted changes at Amazon. Guess why? C’mon. Guess.
Sent in by one of you: Is Spotify enabling ‘mimics’ of famous jazz artists?
A Harvard Business Review study of 1,006 global executives found that 60 per cent of organisations have already reduced headcount in anticipation of AI’s future capabilities. Not in response to demonstrated performance. In anticipation.
Palantir’s lethal AI weaponry deployed to find office chairs for US government staff.
AI assistants are rapidly shifting the security priorities for organizations, while blurring the lines between data and code, trusted co-worker and insider threat.
When Klarna’s CEO replaced customer service staff with AI, he celebrated the cost savings. Then the quality dropped. Then they had a recruitment drive for human employees.
If there’s one thing this man has proved beyond all reasonable doubt, it’s that you can be comprehensively, thoroughly, and repeatedly wrong at every level of the American legal system and still keep going.
Infographics
An interactive website explaining how Bitcoin works.
Where are the world’s most endangered languages?
Resources
Need some free PDF tools?
Forensic OSINT published a browser-based tool that decodes creation timestamps from Twitter post IDs.
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Viewing Pleasure
This week’s comedy clip: A song about bears.
How spy catchers identified an agent by how he held flowers.
The history of the world’s stinkiest delicacy.
How to electroplate at home. Silver electroplating is a bit different, but just as easy.
Men should iron their shirts.
Listening Pleasure
What if your favourite food became extinct?
When four people disappeared from a blue farmhouse on the outskirts of the Western Australian town of Nannup in 2007, they left behind the scatterings of a life, a note pinned to their door and a question: was the disappearance a choice?
Tales of the Unexpected
Unintended consequences and correlations
Pastor dies of heart trouble after his wife catches him with another woman.
A Hungarian general who helped seize Ukrainian cash was found dead that very evening.
Da Vinci may have stumbled across a universal principle while drawing the Vitruvian Man. You know, that drawing of the gent with his pecker out.
Europe has been experiencing this since 2022 and the Russian invasion: GPS is a tool of conflict, and anyone depending on it in Iran is in trouble, including airlines.
Fishing crews in the Atlantic keep accidentally dredging up Cold War-era chemical weapons.
Why you can remember every word of a song from 25 years ago but not why you walked into the room.
1 billion identity records exposed in ID verification data leak.
AI has made it vastly easier for malicious hackers to identify anonymous social media accounts: AI systems successfully matched anonymous online users with their actual identities on other platforms.
Crazy Crime
AI error jails innocent grandmother for months in North Dakota fraud case.
A police chief should have known better.
The school hired a coach, police say, who moonlighted as a pimp.
What is it with police and drunk driving?
Strange Headlines
Why? Did he leave out ‘stealing tools’?
Humanoid robot ‘detained’ by cops after terrorizing an elderly woman on the street.
Pig has 1+ million social media followers, and now a Guinness Book of World Records entry.
Weirdo stands by hypnosis breast enlargement claim.
Bear penis to remain on Swiss regional coat of arms
An app to help men stop…doing you-know-what with themselves … leaked member information. I mean, user information.
A rogue worker bought a $285,000 ambulance without approval.
Some want US students to take ‘anti-communism’ classes? In 2026.
Stuff
Linguistic Goof of the Week: Not dumb area. Do not dumb here.
Weird Ebay: Oooh. Act now! You wanna get these before someone else!
Weird Wiki: People who thought they were Jesus.
From the A-List Archives in 2024: Had a bad day at work? Not as bad as this!
Tepid Dystopia
US: Do away with childhood vaccines until these are proven effective. As a side note, the first medical vaccine was in 1796. Get ready for negative population growth in America.
Open-plan offices increase the risk of workplace bullying.
DOJ Attorney used fabricated quotes in a court filing.
Man wrongfully arrested over a license plate frame on his rental car.
DOGE employee stole Social Security data and put it on a thumb drive, audit says.
Canadian Forces members found on a racist dating site. No worries, however, as Canada’s military procurement lurches forward with astonishing efficiency. Also, bigots show up at the home of a reporter who is covering right-wing racists in Canada, and try to intimidate her. Guess what? Now they have even more coverage.
A man built a database of 400,000 Chinese state media articles. Here’s what he found about the disappearance of his ethnic group.
EU leaders are shifting research funding toward competitiveness goals in Horizon Europe post-2027, sidelining researcher autonomy in favour of top-down industrial priorities in the wake of America losing its marbles.
EU buys 100 per cent of Russia’s natural gas nine months before a ban is to go into place.
Conflict Studies
Canada is looking to choose Korean subs, but in exchange, they want an auto-plant for Trump to complain about.
Last year, the USA rejected Ukraine’s proposal to provide technology to combat Iranian Shahed drones.
A US think tank calculated Putin’s personal financial losses from the war at about $700 billion.
Training interceptor drone operators is complex and time-consuming. A beginner with no drone experience requires 1.5-2 months of training. Experienced drone pilots can transition to interceptors in 3-4 weeks.
Ukraine’s battlefield churn showed the West how much its weapons-making needed an overhaul.
Iranian uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) appear to have struck several times as Iran retaliates against the US-Israeli attack.
A Russian propaganda game about Hostomel has appeared on the Steam gaming platform.
‘The result is a pincer that is still moving, but no longer in the direction Russia advertised….’
More than 120 British units are training with drones.
Classified US intelligence report suggests the Iranian regime is unlikely to fall or change. Then again, they said that about the Shah.
I’m not complaining, but wasn’t Russia supposed to be having these in serial production by now?
New phase of war: The war in Ukraine is entering a new technological stage, in which the key factor for victory is accelerating production and deploying unmanned systems, states Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrskyi. Meanwhile, Russian propagandist Solovyov whines that Russian drone makers were told to slash production because of severe funding shortages.
Twilight Struggle
Chinese control of critical energy infrastructure in Chile.
In the wake of the Cold War, some Soviet bloc spies decided their fake American lives weren’t so bad.
Forbidden Stories and partners published an analysis of a 1,431-page leak that maps Russia’s foreign influence operations across Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. The material covers ten months of activity in 2024, details a budget of about $7.3 million, and lays out payment structures, country targeting, and influence tactics in unusual detail.
Key Russian propaganda satellite goes off line; replacement not expected for four years.
Debate over a foreign spy service for Canada influenced by allies, money says study.
Google Threat Intelligence Group’s shows how state-backed and aligned actors use AI mostly as an efficiency layer.
People Watching
Learn how to speak Canadian.
Downton Abbey and the Myth of the Good Aristocrat.
One of the most famous science photos is of a drop of milk splashing. What’s the story behind it.
Missing Dr Who episodes from 1965 found.
How bad did medieval lavatories smell?
Post of the Week
For the record, I don’t write these.
I have been working in various positions at Selfridges in London, mainly as a sales associate in the luxury sector interacting face-to-face with HNW and UHNW customers and I wanted to share some of the trends I’ve noticed throughout the years about the clientele:
The Loud Ones - These people usually aren’t worth the trouble - They’ll dress loudly and walk loudly, then spend £100 and brag loudly. Their net worth, I’d estimate to be low 5 figures - maybe 4. They’ll pay with a credit card because they need the points and they most likely need to borrow the money they spend.
The Asset Rich Ones - Their net worth is impressive, nothing to make jokes about, but it’s tied up in property or stocks. Their net worth (with liquidated assets) is probably 7 figures, maybe 8. They’re usually quite pleasant to interact with and will buy a couple hundred pounds worth of clothing, a thousand if you’re lucky. What they choose is always practical, always functional and they usually pick pieces that are shades instead of actual colors. They pay with gold, platinum and black credit cards for the value and convenience.
The Internationals - They’ll spend a lot, quickly. Complete mixed bag personality wise, some treat “staff” really well but others will act like we’re barely human. Usually made up of Americans, Chinese, Middle eastern. They pay with cash and debit cards. Their net worth will be in the high 8 figures.
Apex Predators - Few and far between. This is basically made up of the top individuals from the international group. They are able to and do regularly spend 6-7 figures in one transaction without blinking. Usually guarded by gatekeepers and rarely in public, preferring to do their shopping in private settings, with personal shoppers, stylists or having the new collections delivered directly to their houses to select. They’re particular and unpredictable and view money with a different lens than 99 per cent of the population has access to. They value time over money and atelier over ready-to-wear. Net worth in the 9-10 figures.
These are trends I have personally seen and reflected on while working in the luxury retail sector in London, this is not meant to stereotype/ offend/ judge anyone. These opinions are based on personal interpretations of my observations. Selfridges is basically my Universe 25.
Overheard Online
Did you know that male bees die after mating? That’s basically the story of their entire life. Honey. Nut. Cheerio!
It hurts me to say this, but I have a sore throat.
I know a guy that works in an ER. He says that those urban scooters are buying Porsches for orthopedic surgeons by the dozens.
For a few weeks now, in the break room, someone has been queuing up impacted earwax removal videos.
Winston Churchill helped defeat fascism in Europe. He deserves better than being replaced by a badger
I was never crazy about Hitler ... If you stand on a soapbox and trade rhetoric with a dictator you never win ... That’s what they do so well: they seduce people. But if you ridicule them, bring them down with laughter, they can’t win. You show how crazy they are. - Mel Brooks, 2001 interview.
We have all these supposed-genius billionaires, and all they’ve really managed to do with AI is steal everyone’s information and IP so they can advertise to us even more and fight harder against efforts to tax said billionaires appropriately. I used to want a wealth tax, now I want a wood chipper.
An occasional coat of mineral oil keeps the poltergeists away.
The reason there’s a dent in the gravy boat is that cousin Helen threw it at the colonel when they were arguing about the vase.
A job contains things that are visible from above and things that are not. The visible parts are tasks: answering emails, writing reports, summarising data. These are what AI demos replicate. The invisible parts are everything else: knowing which email needs a careful tone, knowing which report will be ignored and which will trigger a restructure, knowing that the data is misleading because you were in the room when it was collected.
Most people I know who do destination weddings have done them specifically so that certain people won’t turn up
People would be surprised how many 9mm rounds a person can absorb before falling.
Being a shy person with a stratospheric libido is exhausting.
This dude said something about Texas having “warm water ports” and that instantly gave him away as Russian. I’m from Texas. I’ve never seen a frozen lake/sea in my life. So any one describing Texas as having “warm water ports” ain’t from here.
Sand is called that because it’s between Sea and Land.
AI-generated similes are smoothly mediocre.
The reason right-wing UK newspapers are so pro-MAGA is that digital advertising revenue is much higher in the US than over here. So they’ve created digital operations that spew out MAGA clickbait to attract US readers, even despite it being loathed by the British public. Always follow the money!
If there’s one thing Thaler has proved beyond all reasonable doubt, it’s that you can be comprehensively, thoroughly, and repeatedly wrong at every level of the American legal system and still keep going.
Come on... who would comment on an article without reading it? Probably the same people who don’t read the Terms of Service and End User License Agreements!
Your right to free speech is only as absolute as the size of your bank account.
We’re not being governed, we’re being looted.
Know the story of the lion with the thorn in its paw. It was helped by a mouse. We teach this story to kids to explain why all your friends are important. We are a strong country because we have allies.
Know what?! I’m thrilled to read stuff like this. The world is finally getting to see what (too many) Americans truly think and believe - and it ain’t pretty.
The Microsoft CEO should make a video of himself using Copilot, like those fast-food CEOs eating a burger videos.
I’m getting older, so I decided to create a will. As part of my final wishes, I told my family that I wanted my remains scattered at DisneyWorld in Orlando. But, I also made it clear that I didn’t want to be cremated.
Rage Against the Machine was named after a Hewlett-Packard inkjet.
The acoustic properties of a bra as a voice-disguising medium are not established or intuitive.
The Trumpies dislike Canada in some of the same ways Putin despises Ukraine. Canada sounds similar, looks similar, and the societies look similar, but they’ve chosen different paths.
Most professional hedging has nothing to do with uncertainty. It’s a calculation — how much does it cost me to assert this, in front of these people, at this point in my career?
Hegseth is what we called a SMO, a stupid missions officer. SMOs are ineffective leaders that we don’t want in front of the troops. They were assigned the stupid missions because if they failed it had no real effect on the rest of the unit.
Christian women love MLM pyramid schemes. They are, of course, called by God to sell shitty essential oils to his people.
Let me get this straight, as Russia’s invasion goes on, they are increasingly reliant on North Korea, China and Iran. In the meantime, Ukraine has started selling home-built weapons to the US.
I guarantee you that Miller and Hegseth believe a latent majority out there is quietly rallying behind zero-sum malignant nationalism, the treatment of all undocumented immigrants as criminals, and a kill-first-think-later military posture.
So, I don’t buy asparagus ever. Not opposed, just it’s not a habit. I bought a pack and ate the whole thing yesterday. Guess what? Asparagus is 50 per cent fibre. I leaned this because…
My insurance plan doesn’t cover GLP-1 medication, so my doctor gave me an exercise regimen he guarantees will help me lose weight. I just have to move my head from left to right any time someone offers me food.
Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, when asked if success had changed him: “You know those pistachios that don’t have the little crack in them to get you started? I don’t bother with those anymore.”
Russia is invading Europe with China’s money, Iran’s weapons, and North Korea’s troops. Chinese ships captained by Russians are destroying undersea natural gas pipelines and telecom cables in the Baltic Sea. Russian weapons used in Ukraine are built with Chinese components. Russia is causing mayhem on the streets of the UK. Their mercenaries have been raping and plundering their way through Africa and using the proceeds to finance the war in Ukraine. Iran, supported by China, has encircled Israel with its proxies and set the better part of the Middle East—and key shipping lanes—alight. Putin regularly threatens us with nuclear weapons. What could this be if not a world war? If it’s not, what’s the rule—it’s not official until the Peruvians arrive?
You don’t need to go to the psychiatrist if you m*****bate to pictures of people whose eyes are two different sizes!
Writers whose similes point in all directions simultaneously usually produce novels that do the same.
My sister had a destination wedding (her second marriage), and I decided not to go. She was mostly understanding. I told her I’ll go to every other one.
Magnificent Memes
Bon Mots
Funny Photos
