2026 - Wk 12 - Notes and Links
Ten items in the news this week
Japanese man drives truck that’s on fire directly to fire station, drops flaming potatoes.
Man sent family member to impersonate him at mandatory ethics course, lied about it to the regulator.
Photographer catches a lion club in a food coma.
Organizers confirm that the 10k race in the city was 400m short, cancel the world records they thought were set.
He tried to rob 6 banks, police say. His total takings: $605.
Coffee and doughnut Tim Horton’s recalls mugs that may break when you pour hot liquid in.
If you’re gonna pay the judge for a fine in cash, never do this.
Six deaths, you say? And how? Here’s a hint. This story is covered by Manure Manager Magazine. S*** happens, I guess.
Meta and TikTok let harmful content rise after evidence outrage drove engagement, say whistleblowers.
‘Elbows up’ is the name of Canadian citizens’ reactions to Trump’s threats of annexation. They are buying Canadian, where possible. Their stores? Well, at least a few are ‘maple washing’ their inventories.
Amazing Obit
The Ipcress File is now closed. Len Deighton, 97.
Jenni Murray, longtime BBC Woman’s Hour presenter, 75.
Crazy Crime
That’s one way to be found unfit to practice medicine.
I have a great idea! Let’s video our crime spree and upload it to the Internet!
Canadian teen’s Instagram chats reveal playbook for recruiting drug mules.
A comedian who had terminal cancer apparently didn’t have much of a sense of humour.
Police seize 20kg of cornflakes in drugs raid.
Data this week
From 2006 to 2017, MIT researchers analyzed 126,000 news stories circulating on Twitter. They found false stories evoking surprise and disgust spread six times faster and reached farther and deeper than the truth. Not newsletters, though. Those are awesome.
Sharks in the Bahamas are full of cocaine, caffeine, and painkillers.
How to actually read a study.
A new study published in the Journal of Intelligence suggests that a person’s everyday music listening habits contain subtle clues about their general cognitive ability.
FBI is buying data to track you like Amazon Prime.
COVID probably killed 150,000 more Americans in its first two years than official U.S. tolls show. Good thing it was a hoax. What this study was looking for was out-of-hospital deaths--and we see exactly what the pattern looked like at the time: red states not wanting to acknowledge that Covid was the underlying cause. Covid messes with clotting--look at the death numbers: all causes of mortality that could be caused by a clot were up.
Online bot traffic will exceed human traffic by 2027, Cloudflare CEO says. I bet this is how SkyNet starts.
Science and tech this week
Platypus anatomy is stranger than we knew!
NASA’s Hubble unexpectedly catches a comet breaking up.
4Chan solicitors mock fine threat.
Your next car might need 300 GB of RAM.
Balcony solar panels can also be hung out a window or be set up in a backyard, reports NPR. These can help power your home appliances. America’s friendly power utilities are fighting these.
Whoopsie! A flaw in the UK’s corporate registry let people rummage through records.
Federal experts thought Microsoft’s Cloud was “a Pile of S***.” So, of course, they approved it.
Under Kennedy, the health dept. has wiped out 75 advisory boards. I’m sure it’ll all be fine.
A Popular Mechanics writer appears to have gotten high and decided to write an article about it.
Artificial Intelligence
You’d figure prosecutors wouldn’t need made-up AI quotes to secure a conviction, but here we are.
Palantir CEO Alex Karp thinks his AI technology will lessen the power of ‘highly educated, often female voters, who vote mostly Democrat’. By the way, this maniac is the grandson of Oswald Mosley.
Chatbot Romeos keep users talking longer, but harm mental health.
Nvidia: We’re adding AI to improve the visuals of games. Gamers: Gaaah! My eyes! Nvidia: Haha! We don’t care, because we expect to sell $1 Trillion’s worth of stuff.
People living next to Facebooks’ AI data centre have to eat cake as their energy and water bills mount. This, my friends, is why we had communists. Just sayin’ Anway, in related news, spending on data center projects in the U.S. has exploded, surpassing offices for the first time at the end of last year.
Gartner suggests a Friday afternoon Copilot ban because tired users may be too lazy to check its mistakes.
A new study suggests the productivity boost from AI may be far smaller than executives claim: According to research cited in Foxit’s State of Document Intelligence report, while 89 per cent of executives and 79 per cent of end users say AI tools make them feel more productive, the actual time savings shrink dramatically once people account for reviewing and validating AI-generated output.
Emerging evidence indicates that agential AI might validate or amplify delusional or grandiose content, particularly in users already vulnerable to psychosis, in a paper published last week in the Lancet Psychiatry. Now, ask yourself, why does management spend all day using AI?
Should Canada have its own national, public Eh I?
Anthropic was sued in 2024 over using other people’s copyrighted material for training their LLM. But as they try to settle, they may have a hit a pothole: Anthropic’s training data apparently used Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman’s Crusade for Free Software for which the Free Software Foundation holds a copyright. Therefore….
In similar news, Encyclopedia Britannica is alleging OpenAI’s models used their articles.
For the second time in the past month, an AI agent went rogue at Meta, this time giving an engineer incorrect advice that briefly exposed sensitive data.
Infographics
More than 40 countries are expected to hold (or have already held) national elections in 2026, representing over 1.5 billion people worldwide and making it another pivotal year for democracy across the globe.
Cities maintain thousands of trees, but those numbers rarely come to life as data. Freiburg im Breisgau, one of the greenest cities in Germany, keeps a public registry of the 45,000 trees it maintains.
Resources
Need to cancel something? Try this!
What’s your ability to determine the differences between colours? Try this free test.
This service identifies every McDonald’s restaurant on Earth, and indicates if the franchise’s ice cream machine is working.
Viewing Pleasure
This week’s comedy clip: If Trump were Sauron.
My new favourite band! Sent in by one of you.
Douglas Trumbull recalls making the special effects for 1979’s Star Trek, the Motion Picture.
Someone found a rusty sewing machine from 1984, de-rusted it, cleaned it and restored it. Here’s the entire process.
Why narcissists like to keep you in crisis mode.
If a Bridgerton character and a Jane Austen character met.
Listening Pleasure
Romana Didulo is a conspiracy maniac who moved to Canada in 1990. One of the most prominent figures of the QAnon movement in Canada. She has declared herself queen and a whole lot of other stuff… like telling her followers they don’t need to pay their power bills.
Dadaism - The spirit of the art phenomenon that began in Zurich in 1916 inspired by what the Dadas saw as the absurdity of the war then consuming the world.
Tales of the Unintended
Excessive smartphone use is associated with symptoms of eating disorders and body dissatisfaction in young people, and liking their terrible music.
Man in Japan falls into hole. Big deal right? This one had a bear in it.
Canada slips further down in World Happiness rankings, due in part to social media use.
Medieval words that have become slang.
Following a cancer diagnosis, you need a strong support network more than ever. But sometimes, the people you think you can rely on disappear. This phenomenon is known in some circles as cancer ghosting.
Deaf passenger kicked off plane for not listening. Well, no kidding, dumbasses. Hear that cracking noise? It’s a PR team bending over backwards.
Harmful chemicals found in … headphones?
Strange Headlines
Blessed are the cheesemakers. But not if they’re selling cheese with E Coli.
In this case, I’m having a good life.
Planning consent for a traffic tunnel near Stonehenge was revoked after millions had been spent. NIMBYs strike again.
This is what’ll get Americans riled. Not oil prices. The price of chips. Do not stand between an American and his chips.
RFK’s antivaccine stance has consequences: resurgence of childhood disease in America. It’s probably that sneaky Biden.
I wonder what the last thing to go through his head was? Apart from elephant toenails, of course.
Tepid Dystopia
Rules for thee but not for me, peasants! Reading things like this makes me feel like the Joker in that movie, setting fire to cash. Burn it all down.
The quarterly report standard was set to ensure that the public is sufficiently well-informed about the fiscal health of publicly traded companies prior to their making investment decisions. Moving to a 6-month cycle increases the knowledge gap between the general public and those with inside knowledge. I mention this because…
Google allegedly scrubbed media related to Israeli minister’s daughter Shoshana Strook from its search engine.
Studiers of study pandemics: the resurgence of measles is a grim sign of what’s coming.
91-year-old US politician hints at another term.
Farage’s Britain would be the friend who ditched their old crowd to hang with the cool kids, only to discover they’re not invited to the party.
It’s clear that many of Epstein’s guests were chosen as sources of information or ways of reaching other potential informants rather than just because they were filthy rich.
‘Covert influence’: Israel hired a Toronto firm to fight Canada’s labelling of settlement wines.
Has anyone noticed something about all of the political parties Nigel Farage has founded?
You can bet on anything, including missile strikes. So, of course, if you lose a bet, you want to intimidate the press into withdrawing their coverage.
Stuff
Linguistic Goof of the week: That should be psychodynamic therapist, not aerodynamic.
Weird Wiki: Which way to hang toilet paper.
The most expensive doorknob you can buy on EBay.
From the A-List Archives: I can’t improve on this headline.
Conflict Studies
‘I’m a Ukrainian lawyer defending Russians accused of crimes against my country. This is why.’ John Adams, who was president after Washington, defended British soldiers after the American Revolution. Ukraine’s justice system is generally rated as low-performing and in need of significant reform, ranking 90th out of 143 countries in 2025 according to the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index. The three countries with the lowest scores in the region are Belarus, Türkiye, and Russia at 119th globally.
A Russian general’s secret bribes: Inside a wartime corruption network.
Ukraine strikes two major Russian aviation facilities.
Ukraine knows it cannot match Russia’s relentless waves of manpower. Refusing to throw troops into the grinder, Kyiv has taken a different path to victory – one defined by precision, patience and technology. Now, that strategy is starting to pay off as assembly lines produce drones.
Russians use walkie-talkies and paper maps after Putin turns off the Internet.
Gwynn Dyer is usually worth following. I missed this from last month, and it’s an interesting summary. In particular, I like paragraphs five and six, a detail that will doubtless come up when the movie is made a few years from now.
US Navy bets $900M on automated factories to boost submarine production.
Twilight Struggle
North Korea’s wide-ranging effort to place remote workers at U.S. companies in order to funnel money back to its coffers and, in some cases, steal sensitive information.
Lost in translation: How Russia’s new elite hit squad was compromised by an idiotic lapse in tradecraft.
A joint project by the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel and the investigative website The Insider has uncovered the existence and inner workings of a previously unknown Russian intelligence and cover action unit.
People Watching
The French figured everything out as far as cutlery goes, didn’t they?
This photographer caught the perfect moment. For the football player in question? Not such a perfect moment.
An intimacy expert who has slept with 400 clients explains the job’s challenges.
Discussion: What’s a small everyday inconvenience from the past that younger people would probably find unbearable today?
Post of the week
(For the record, I don’t write these.)
We had two people quit in the same week because they were tired of mandatory overtime with no extra pay. Instead of maybe asking why people keep leaving, our manager pulls everyone into the break room and goes on this unhinged rant.
i’m paraphrasing, but it was basically “I am so sick of people thinking they can just leave whenever they feel like it. This is a job, not a hobby. When I was your age, I worked 60-hour weeks and didn’t complain. You all need to decide if you actually want to be here or not because I’m done babysitting.”
One of the guys in the back just stood up, said “Yeah, I’m good,” and walked out. didn’t even clock out. The manager stood there for about five seconds, then asked, “Anyone else?” and no one moved.
The rest of the shift was dead silent.
Quotes found Online
What spell did Harry Potter use to fight off Dementors at the Strait of Hormuz?
Expectno Petroleum!
Devs are getting all huffy and pretending that they weren’t writing slop code before AI.
This was a very sudden lesson in momentum.
Teens who are actually into singing, or even just curious about vocal technique, tend to notice Roy Orbison’s voice fast, and usually in a specific way: as something that’s both wildly emotional and technically unusual. His sound stands out sharply against the smoother, more processed pop‑singer voices they hear every day, so it can feel like discovering a hidden cheat code for “how to sound dramatic without screaming
Russia has responded to the conflict in the Middle East by promoting the idea that it is a global peacemaker. Yes, on Planet Earth.
When you get rich enough, no one calls you out for psychosis.
Ah, the nice thud of a bursting pimple.
Why don’t I spend on any AI image generation tools? ‘Cause I learned Photoshop 30 years ago, suckers.
Anyone want to start a hive mind where we just writhe around in pleasure?
I accidentally bought 3 pallets of computer monitors, what’s next? I was…not in my right mind last night. Long story short, I bid on what I thought were a dozen computer monitors for $26. I don’t need any of them and I don’t know why I even did it, but I ended up somehow winning the auction.
It’s very weird that weird isn’t spelled wierd.
The thriller market is enormous. The number of thriller writers who actually know what they are writing about is remarkably small. Publishers and editors know this acutely because they spend considerable time and money trying to fix manuscripts where the author has watched too many films and read too few after-action reports.
In WW1 they called the Americans the Rainbow Army because they only showed up after the storm
Learned helplessness is a business opportunity.
My wife and I decided we don’t want kids. We will tell them at breakfast
Institutions that are corrupt but comprehensible do make sense. You can understand the logic. You may not approve of the morals but there are operational principles. Institutions that are corrupt but comprehensible do not make sense and cannot be dealt with.
The AI adjustment happens in silence because admitting you are struggling looks like resistance, and resistance looks like incompetence. The people finding AI hardest are not the ones who hate the technology. They are the ones who were good at their job before AI arrived.
In Dante’s Inferno, Satan is chewing on Judas, Brutus, and Cassius. Hitler and Stalin are bound to have joined them. I hope they’re making room for The Donald.
Chuck Norris is dead. His toupée will live forever.
You trusted a summary because it was well formatted. Formatting is not evidence. AI outputs look like knowledge. Clean paragraphs, numbered lists, confident tone. The presentation creates the impression of rigour. But a well-structured lie is still a lie.
It felt like a breakthrough until I tried to explain it to someone who wasn’t high.
The key flaw with the American system is that it was designed from the ground up by a group of deeply principled men who assumed that the government would always be run by deeply principled men. Westminster was created organically over a long period by a series of a**holes, and is therefore better prepared to handle assholes running the government.
The core problem I’ve seen is that AI-generated docs look polished but carry zero accountability for accuracy.
I’d like to make a sex tape. Not to be in it. I want to direct.
The Antique Beverly Hillbillies car was a 1921 model; the series came out in 1962. If the series were set today, they would drive a 1984 model-year car.
I accidentally sat in on a C-suite meeting during my first week, introduced myself, and then had to pretend it never happened.
I got the worst charley horse when being intimate with my husband. He thought I was being wild.
Just read an emergency email from MOSSAD to Donald Trump asking why they now have no HQ if Iran’s military capability had been destroyed. Those f***ers know how to swear, just saying.
The FIFA Peace Prize winner seems a bit out of sorts lately.
The Dune novels have become a sacred text that readers are not allowed to dislike; like Tolkien, which I also dislike.
Read’em and weep: three pairs!
I’ll be walking the city today, playing the farting tourist.
Mobile internet blackouts are sweeping Moscow, leading some to suspect Putin is using security as an excuse to limit access to information and free speech. Gosh, do you really think Putin would do something like that? He seems so nice otherwise.
If a woman had to orgasm to get pregnant, there’d be like 11 people in the world.
From personal experience, I never found my cocaine use a hindrance in all the years I was a birthday clown.
Pump prices look like a phone number.
It’s easier to go through cancer alone than through it with the wrong people.
I can’t wait for laser cleaning tech to be inexpensive. I’m going to sit around all day, lasering old things.
It’s been a long, long time since I’ve been in a relationship. It’s definitely work, but I’d forgotten how much easier it is to think when your testicles are emptied regularly.
Today I am fighting the patriarchy by not cooking and ordering Chinese.
Trump says he’s ‘not afraid’ of Iran war becoming Vietnam. Sure because none of his family will be serving.
The real danger is dynamic prices per person.
I’ve been in tech for more than two decades. The high pay is combat pay. I am also almost completely unflappable around most men. I’ve been breathed on by bigger dragons.
We’re raising our daughter to be fluoride-free, and yet she has cavities.
Burns is on the Scottish curriculum in a way he is not on the English one. English readers encounter Burns once a year at Hogmanay when they mumble through Auld Lang Syne without knowing the words, and that is largely the extent of it.
The marketing bunny at work held a company-wide meeting to show us the new brand guide. We’re all at least double her age and have each seen dozens of these. These all say the same thing. The only things different are the colour, font, and logo.
Avoiding the word quirky. It is the kiss of death in British literary marketing. It signals that the publisher does not quite know what they have.
Newt Gingrich and a handful of Republicans were tired of being the uncool losers every election to Bill Clinton’s saxophone and sexy young democrats, so they mobilized the dumbass vote with hate messaging and fear. 9-11 helped, but politics has never been the same since AM sports radio was discovered by the right.
People have been using algorithms to manage inventory and pricing for over a century, starting with simple formulas like Economic Order Quantity that tried to balance stock levels and costs. By the mid-1900s, computers had brought operations research into the mix, allowing businesses to forecast demand and optimize inventory more systematically. Then came barcodes and databases in the 80s and 90s, giving retailers near real-time visibility. Fast forward to the 2000s, and companies like Amazon pushed things further with dynamic pricing systems that constantly adjust based on demand, competition, and user behaviour. Same basic goal as always, just massively more data and speed. What Walmart is doing with AI pricing isn’t a clean break from that history, but it is a step change in how aggressive and autonomous it’s become. Earlier systems followed rules; today’s AI rewrites them on the fly, reacting in real time and feeding back into itself. Prices shift, demand shifts, the model updates, and the cycle keeps going. At Walmart's scale, that doesn’t just optimize shelves; it can start nudging the whole market. So while it’s still “just algorithms,” the difference now is less about the idea and more about the speed, scope, and how little human hands are actually on the wheel. If they’re just dynamically changing everyone's prices, I don’t see why they need a patent. Every store already does that. Is this so they can adjust e-ink tags on shelves throughout the day? Customers may find ways to game this system and unify to drive down prices if they can master the algorithm and utilize social media. I’d love to see this backfire and Walmart end up losing millions. I wonder what happens when two people are looking at the digital price tag?
Magnificent Memes
Bon Mots
Funny Images
