Happy Friday, Dear Mutants! We're dancing into the weekend with Discofoot, the wild hybrid of dance and soccer. Kittens and canines are getting their paws in the limelight, with one kitty playing human while a dog takes on the role of a cat. We'll spin you around with a waltzing robot showcasing the future of lifelike machine mobility. Join us as we investigate the latest Trump and Musk Twitter tirade, targeting journalists from The Washington Post and WSJ. Plus, we've got a six-fingered ancient mystic, Rob Liefeld's Marvel denouncement, and a mysterious ice spear piercing a Florida roof.
Your curiosity fuels our mission to bring you these captivating tales. Thank you for being a fully-paid mutant!
Kitty pretends to be a human while dog pretends to be a cat in awesome playtime (video)
Carla Sinclair / 11:45 am PT Fri Feb 7, 2025
Image: Cat and Dog; Bachkova Natalia / shutterstock.com
While left alone to entertain themselves, a resourceful kitty grabbed his new toy-on-a-stick and pretended to be a human, dangling it in front of his canine pal.
In turn, the pup pretended to be a cat, trying to grab the moving toy with his mouth and paw as it teasingly swung by. Who needs a dog-sitter with a cat like this? (See video, posted by val_blair.)
The Lincoln Project says the Presidency is Elon Musk's
Jason Weisberger / 11:39 am PT Fri Feb 7, 2025
Judge slams Twitter's attempt to silence hate speech
Nazi-salute-giving oligarch Elon Musk seems to be a more active President than Convicted Felon #47.
It is a battle of who can be more out for themselves. While Donald Trump has been busy flooding California's Central Valley and mucking about in New York City traffic policy, Elon has been hijacking the entire Federal government.
Elon Musk has worn out his welcome in Washington, according to a new poll from The Economist/YouGov.
When The Economist/YouGov took a poll right after the 2024 election, 47% of Republicans said Musk should have "a lot" of influence in Trump's administration.
In the new poll, released Wednesday, those same Republicans have soured on Musk. Only 26% want him to have "a lot" of influence, a 21-percentage-point drop.
A robot waltzes with a human in demonstration of increasingly lifelike machine mobility (video)
Allan Rose Hill / 10:27 am PT Fri Feb 7, 2025
image: Xuxin Cheng/YouTube/screenshot
In the below video, researchers enjoy a delightful dance with ExBody2, a humanoid robot developed by UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, MIT, and Nvidia.
This demonstration isn't just a waltz in the park though. ExBody2 demonstrates an approach to improving robot mobility by enabling the robot to track the motion of people in great detail and mimic their movements.
This is all taught using reinforcement learning, a subset of machine learning in which the robot is fed large amounts of data to ensure it takes the optimal route in any given situation. Good outputs, simulated by researchers, are assigned positive or negative scores to "reward" the model for desirable outcomes, which here meant replicating motions precisely without compromising the bot's stability.
Trump and Musk call for reporters at The Washington Post and WSJ to "be fired immediately!!!"
Carla Sinclair / 10:26 am PT Fri Feb 7, 2025
Image: Hadrian / shutterstock.com
Who has ever heard of a fascist regime with a free press? Nobody, including President Elon Musk and sidekick Donald Trump, who in separate posts this morning called for reporters from The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post to be "fired immediately!"
A livid Trump tore into Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson for criticizing Musk's swift dismantling of USAID. "Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post is INCOMPETENT," he said, in part, about the Pulitzer Prize winner on Truth Social today, which was reported by Raw Story. "…He should be fired immediately!!!" (See full post here, reposted by Republicans Against Trumpism.)
Meanwhile, Musk demanded the exact same thing today for Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Long: "She should be fired immediately."
Apparently, Musk was enraged with Long, first calling her "disgusting and cruel" in response to a Xitter post that pointed to an article Long had written about the video game industry's lack of diversity. Musk then said Long should be fired in response to a MAGA influencer's post complaining that she had uncovered racist remarks posted by one of Musk's DOGE boys (who ended up resigning after her article came out). (See details at Mediaite.)
Musk and Trump's rage against journalists comes one day after Trump called for the FCC to "immediately terminate" 60 Minutes and shut down CBS. At this rate, the MAGA tag team should have their propaganda machine running with efficiency in no time at all.
From Raw Story:
Several hours after Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson interviewed the New Yorker's Susan Glasser about Elon Musk's "evisceration" of USAID, Donald Trump fired back on Truth Social.
Trump was harshly criticized on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Friday morning for letting Musk dismantle the venerable foreign aid agency, and with Glasser explaining to Robinson why she she wrote that Trump and Musk are trying to paralyze their critics with fear, the president couldn't hold it in any longer.
And from Mediaite:
In a story published on Thursday, the Journal's Katherine Long revealed that a "key DOGE staff member who gained access to the Treasury Department's central-payments system resigned Thursday after he was linked to a deleted social-media account that advocated racism and eugenics."
Now that Elez has been removed from his post at DOGE, Musk appears to be on a mission to punish Long for discovering his foul views.
Archaeologists discover remains of ancient mystic with six fingers
Allan Rose Hill / 10:12 am PT Fri Feb 7, 2025
image: Stocksnapper/Shutterstock
Archaeologists excavating a Neolithic tomb in Jeruslaem found the remains of an ancient shaman who lived 9,000 years ago. This particular mystic may have been granted her position as a spiritual leader because she had six fingers on her left hand.
Funerary objects found alongside the woman, including green stone necklaces and mother-of-pearl jewelry, reinforce the hypothesis of her importance within Neolithic society. Most individuals were buried with decorations such as stone bracelets, pendants, and beads made from exotic materials like alabaster and green stones. According to researchers, the stone bracelets found in some graves are associated with transition rituals between life and death.
"The discovery of the ancient shaman's tomb in Motza opens a window into the spiritual world of communities that lived approximately 10,000 years ago," said Eli Eskosido, director of the Israel Antiquities Authority. "These remains show how complex and rich the cultural beliefs of ancient humanity were."
Rob Liefeld denounces Marvel: "treatment of creators has never been their strength"
Thom Dunn / 10:05 am PT Fri Feb 7, 2025
A classic 1990s Cap. (Rob Liefeld, detail)
Infamous comic book artist Rob Liefeld is over Marvel — for real this time, not like that time he split from the company in the 90s to help launch Image Comics. In a recent episode of his podcast Robservations, Liefeld opened up about the apparent mistreatment he felt at the hands of Marvel Studios at the Deadpool & Wolverine film premiere last summer.
Liefeld claimed he was not invited to the after party, and that the step-and-repeat photos in which he took part were immediately discarded, suggesting that his participation in the red carpet ritual was only done as courtesy, instead of rightful worship he deserved for co-creating the "Merc with a Mouth." He added that he was also frustrated by Marvel's decision to retroactively alter the creator credits for the character of Wolverine.
Marvel's treatment of creators has never been their strength. Without the worlds, the characters and the concepts that we create — and in this specific case, the world of Deadpool — there are no films to shoot. No blockbusters to distribute. … I am not the easy button at Staples. I am the human imagination behind it all. Comic book creators cannot continue to be relegated as afterthoughts. This is easy to address.
There are annoying things about Rob Liefeld's work, such as his inability to draw feet and refusal to evolve his bro-tastic (and weirdly homoerotic?) style. He may claim more credit for the creation of Deadpool than he's due—Liefeld designed a lot of repetitive characters that were generically badass with no actual interesting qualities until other creators fleshed them out. And he is one of the few comic book artists in history who developed his art into financial success—despite the lack of feet.
But here, he's right. The comic book industry is ripe with stories of heartbreaking exploitation; even with the multi-billion-dollar successes of Marvel Studios, the company has tried to wash the blood from its hands by offering one-time payments of $5000 to creators whose characters get featured in films. While this may seem generous in that it is not contractually required—when you create a character for Marvel under a work-for-hire-agreement, the company doesn't technically owe you any residuals—it is still a pittance compared to the amount of money the company makes off of those characters.
In that regard, Liefeld's treatment at the Deadpool & Wolverine premiere was sadly par for the course. While his primary complaint does seem to be that he was not treated as special enough (Liefeld points out that he never asked for additional money), the overall issue is a valid one.
After leaving Marvel Comics to help found Image Comics, Liefeld has occasionally returned to the company, mostly to do weird one-off miniseries featuring his pet characters. Next week sees the publication of his latest project in this vein, Deadpool Team-Up: Blood of the Dragon. But after this book, Liefeld says, he's done with Marvel. For good. For real this time.
Mysterious six-foot ice spear falls from sky and pierces metal roof of Florida home
Allan Rose Hill / 9:53 am PT Fri Feb 7, 2025
image: Palm Coast Fire Department
A six-foot chunk of ice fell from the sky and tore through the metal roof of a home in Palm Coast, Florida on Monday.
"A chunk of ice that is size of a person could cause tremendous injury be fatal," Palm Coast fire chief Kyle Berryhill told WFTV.
While blue ice—frozen sewage from an airplane's toilet system—can occasionally leak from a flying airplane, this particular hunk of ice had no unusual color. The source of the ice remains unknown but the Federal Aviation Administration has launched an investigation.
Chicken Little was not available for comment.
Google's AI-generated Super Bowl ad is no gouda, and gets a secret re-edit
Thom Dunn / 9:52 am PT Fri Feb 7, 2025
Image via YouTube
BBC reports that Google had to scramble to fix its big Super Bowl advertising campaign for the company's Gemini AI tool. To show off the capabilities of the tool, Google used the Gemini AI to produce hyper-localized commercials highlighting each of the 50 US states.
The only problem, as one X user pointed out, was the AI generated some wildly hallucinatory claims in the Wisconsin-centric ad for cheese:
In Google's Wisconsin local Super Bowl ad, an AI hallucination is shown on screen:
It says Gouda accounts for "50 to 60 percent of the world's cheese consumption."
Gemini provides no source, but that is just unequivocally false
Jerry Dischler, the President of Cloud Applications for Google, replied to Hake, insisting that the Gouda factoid was not actual a hallucination, but one based on actual Google search results.
This is not true. It is so false, in fact, that Google re-edited the video and re-uploaded it to remove the reference to the overwhelming popularity of Gouda cheese. You can see that version above (because Google conveniently owns YouTube and thus controls the flow of their own information). As Ars Technica notes:
Oddly enough, the edited version of the ad resides at the same URL as the previous version, with no indication it has been updated since being uploaded on January 30. This kind of wholesale replacement of a YouTube video at the same URL is impossible for normal YouTube users, suggesting some special privileges for Google itself were used here.
Google did cannily comment on the change in a statement to The Guardian:
In a statement, Google said it remade the ad to remove the error after speaking to the cheesemonger featured in the clip and asking him what he would have done.
"Following his suggestion to have Gemini rewrite the product description without the stat, we updated the user interface to reflect what the business would do," the statement added.
When reached for comment by The Verge, however, Google pointed the reporter back to Dischler's comment that the mistake was not technically a hallucination.
To be fair, the 50-60% factoid was previously included on a cheese.com article about Gouda, without any actual source attached to it. So if we're being pedantic, then sure, perhaps it wasn't a hallucination, and the Gemini AI is just an idiot program regurgitating random unsourced factoids off the internet that aren't repeated anywhere else and presenting them as facts.
40 years ago Austria wineries got caught sweetening wine with antifreeze, nearly killing the industry (and their customers)
Ellsworth Toohey / 8:36 am PT Fri Feb 7, 2025
Image by Peter Rollos from Le Centre de l'amour: decouvert soubs divers emblesmes galans et facetieux, (ca. 1687) (Public Domain)
In 1985, Austrian winemakers faced a problem: Their wines weren't sweet enough for the German market's taste. Rather than adding corn syrup like normal criminals, they mixed in diethylene glycol, aka antifreeze. The chemical made wines taste sweeter and fuller-bodied while adding that special je ne sais quoi of potential organ failure.
A 1985 New York Times article said the tainted wine was initially a hit with critics:
Apparently, the trick fooled even the experts. At last year's wine fair in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, a leading industry event, a Beerenauslese by Hans Sautner of Gols, spiked with glycol, took a gold medal. Adolf Schwaab, a wine judge from Krems, another wine-making town, told a Viennese newspaper he "wondered where some of the growers' wines got that much body."
I imagine the review went something like this:
This audacious Beerenauslese presents with remarkable viscosity and an unexpected mechanical sweetness. Notes of radiator fluid give way to hints of engine block, with a surprisingly finish — you're in the emergency room. The mouthfeel is exceptionally smooth, particularly as it strips away your kidney function. Pairs well with dialysis.
The scheme worked brilliantly until those meddling German wine labs next door started testing the products. One bottle from Burgenland packed enough diethylene glycol to kill someone in a single sitting.
As The New York Times reported at the time, the discovery sent Austria's wine industry into a death spiral. Exports crashed 90%, and dozens of winemakers were sent to prison. One convicted winemaker took his own life after being sentenced.
The mastermind behind the deadly adulteration scheme was a 58-year-old chemist named Otto Nadrasky, who supplied the toxic recipe to desperate winemakers who needed to fulfill contracts for sweet wines after bad harvests.
The scandal devastated Austria's wine industry – 27 million liters (36 million bottles) had to be destroyed. In Germany, they ended up pouring the tainted wine into cement factory ovens as a cooling agent because sewage treatment plants couldn't handle the diethylene glycol. In Austria, they used it as road antifreeze during a particularly harsh winter.
Austrian wine exports collapsed to one-tenth of their previous level and took a decade to recover. Today, Austrian winemakers have abandoned their sweet wine tradition, focusing on crisp, dry whites instead.
Apparently, nothing kills a country's enthusiasm for sweet wines quite like an antifreeze scandal.
Book of Monsters (1914): Early macro photography of creepy crawlies by Marian and David Fairchild
Popkin / 7:30 am PT Fri Feb 7, 2025
In 1914, Marian and David Fairchild published Book of Monsters. This fabulous book features early macro photographs of creepy crawlies. The couple found innovative ways to photograph dead bugs from their backyard, transforming these everyday creatures into close up "monsters".
The spiders, pill bugs, grasshoppers, and other critters in this book are both ethereal and frightening. The book places the viewer at eye level with all the bugs, making you feel like prey. I love the smokey, black and white look of these dreamy images.
How the Fairchilds took their photos, from the PDR: "Inspired by the macro photographs of the American nematologist Dr N. A. Cobb, the Fairchilds devised a novel photographic setup. They created cameras with inordinately long extension tubes to magnify the images and create a dramatic, narrow depth of field. Larger specimens could be photographed with tubes five or eight feet long, smaller ones needed up to twenty feet! These tubes were created from cardboard and were supported on a long table, with a lens at one end and a photographic plate at the other. The specimen was placed in front of the lens by one person, and shifted carefully until someone at the other end could see it was in focus. Then, the lens was covered up and an orthochromatic double-coated photographic plate was slotted in, ready for exposure, which would last fifty to eighty seconds. A magnesium flash prevented unwanted shadows and the specimen was shaded from bright sun by a sheet of glass covered in tissue."
People selling mirrors online try and fail to hide from view
Popkin / 7:28 am PT Fri Feb 7, 2025
My new favorite thing to look for at online markeplaces is photos of people trying to sell their mirrors. Many people find hilariously awkward ways to hide their own reflection while taking a photo of the mirror. Other people simply accept the fact that they're going to be in the photo, too.
This video compilation shows some of the funniest mirror photos from online second hand sellers. My favorite photo is one where the seller has completely covered themselves in a giant blanket like a ghost. Only their hand is sticking out to take the photo.
In another great one, a man decides to band over with his butt facing the mirror to obscure his face, and takes a photo through his legs. One of the photos near the very end shows someone fully hiding behind a door in front of a mirror, with only their arm and camera phone peeking out through the door crack to take the photo. There doesn't seem to be one perfect way to obscure one's identity in a mirror-selling photo, but all these people gave it their best shot.
The Public and Private Life of Animals satirized the late Victorian world
Popkin / 6:42 am PT Fri Feb 7, 2025
(public domain)
The Public and Private Life of Animals (1877) by J. Thomas is a satirical book about animal life from the 19th century. My favorite thing about this book are the incredible illustrations. I can't get over how beautifully drawn and compelling they are.
These drawings are by caricaturist J. J. Grandville, and show animals in human clothing, engaged in conversation, political acts, and dream-like scenes that feature Hieronymus Bosch-like creatures. I hadn't heard of Grandville before coming across this book. He's now at the top of my list of artists to research more about.
On the Public Domain Review, you can read the book in its entirety. You can also simply browse through the stunning illustrations, the book. I'd love to have a physical copy of this!
This musician looks uncannily like the Statue of Liberty
Jennifer Sandlin / 6:38 am PT Fri Feb 7, 2025
Krikken
I've never seen a person who looks more like the Statue of Liberty than London-based musician Su Krikken. It's truly uncanny—Su looks like she could have been the actual model that ol' Lady Liberty is based on. Krikken shared a funny video on her Instagram explaining doing a side-by-side comparison, and, honestly, to quote Pam's iconic line from The Office, they're the same picture.
Funny doppelgangers aside, it seems like a perfect time to re-read the poem that's inscribed on the 1903 bronze plaque located in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. The sonnet was written by Jewish-American poet Emma Lazarus in 1883, and was inspired by Lazarus' work as an aide to Jewish immigrants who were fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe and Russia and who had been detained by immigration officials. NPS explains that Lazarus was "deeply moved by the plight of the Russian Jews she met. . . these experiences influenced her writing."
The poem, "The New Colossus," positions Lady Liberty as a beacon for and patroness of immigrants, welcoming the "huddled masses" and "those yearning to be free." She's the "Mother of Exiles," a symbol of peace who offers "world-wide welcome" to all. Here's the poem in full:
The New Colossus, by Emma Lazarus (November 2, 1883)
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Sadly, if you want to go see Lady Liberty, symbol of hope and opportunity, and beacon for the downtrodden, you might want to do it soon before she gets proclaimed "too woke" by the Trump/Musk regime.
Eoin Higgins'"Owned" is a harrowing history of the right-wing billionaire tech takeover
Thom Dunn / 6:30 am PT Fri Feb 7, 2025
Owned
If you're the kind of person who's ever wondered, "What the hell happened to Glenn Greenwald?" or "Damn, I liked Matt Taibbi during the Iraq War, but what happened?," then Eoin Higgins' new book, Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left is the book for you. In Owned, Higgins paints a harrowing portrait of the internet's dramatic rightward shift over the last decade, illustrating the ways that the once-fringe libertarian ideas of a few Silicon Valley billionaires blossomed into—well, all of this.
Most of the book focuses on the very clear and public political shifts of writer-pundits such as Greenwald and Taibbi. These are voices who were once beloved by a certain swath of leftists (or at least civil libertarians), who once spoke truth to power, and have since succumbed or been seduced by the power of capital. Specifically, those same libertarian Silicon Valley billionaires who believe themselves to be the most oppressed class in America, and will gleefully throw their money at any solution that allows them to not only broadcast this complaint to the rest of the world, but to force people to listen to them, too.
Another strength of Owned is that Higgins doesn't shy away from that faux-objectivity of much more journalism. He's a human, with a clear perspective on events. In fact, in many ways, he's a character in his own story. Higgins has written for The Intercept; he worked for a time for Callin, the live-call-in-podcasting app that was funded by right-wing billionaires and ultimately folded into the same right-wing-alternative-media-ecosystem as Rumble. He even has a relationship (to a degree) with Greenwald himself, to the point that Greenwald is willing to speak with Higgins about a book which is very clearly painting Greenwald in a negative light. (Taibbi was, erm, less willing to participate in Higgins' research.) Higgins does a phenomenal job chronicling how these civil libertarian, anti-authoritarian voices could both be gradually seduced by power; and also how such a heelturn was always inevitable, because it was always intrinsic to their belief systems, in a way that's made even more clear in hindsight.
Owned is by no means light reading; it's a real-life horror story, detailing a turn of events that felt both abrupt yet inevitable. And Higgins does a fantastic job of curating that story. There's also something strangely comforting (for lack of a better word) about reading the book at a time like this. It's an educational and enlightening alternative to the constant churn and "flooding the zone" of the news cycle—all of which results from the events that transpire in this very book. If anything, Owned left me feeling better prepared for the current state of the world. It might be a chronicle of recent events that I had already followed closely, but Higgins articulates those happenings with a distinct moral clarity that even I struggled to explain as it all unfolded.
If you're feeling overwhelmed and defeated by the flurry of awfulness coming out of the Trump/Musk Regime, here are two terrific resources that provide two things I'm desperately needing right now: (1) up-to-date, true news about what's actually happening in various agencies within the Federal Government, and (2) evidence of people banding together to resist what U.S. Congressman Jesús G. "Chuy" García (D-IL), current Whip of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, has recently called Elon Musk's "illegal power grab across our government."
First, you absolutely must go follow Alt National Park Service (who we've featured here in the past). They describe themselves as:
The official "Resistance" team of U.S. National Park Service. Our mission is to stand up for the National Park Service to help protect and preserve the environment for present and future generations.
They continue to do great work and have become a leading voice in the resistance, reporting on breaking news about what's happening not only at NPS, but across all federal agencies and beyond. They seem to be most active on Facebook and BlueSky although they also have an Instagram and a website.
Second, for an inside look at what's currently happening to and with federal employees—along with information about how folks are resisting the Trump/Musk Regime—go join the SubReddit "FedNews," which features "News, Information, & Discussion for Federal Employees." They further describe the group:
This platform provides a secure space for United States Federal Government employees to express their opinions, share experiences, and discuss news and information pertinent to their employment. Disclaimer: This subreddit is NOT affiliated with or endorsed by the United States government.
It's great to see both of these groups sharing information and leading coalitions of federal workers and other concerned, alarmed, and distressed Americans (and folks across the globe) who are looking for education and action. If you're looking for a place to start getting involved, check out both groups. And please stay alert and safe, friends, and take care of each other.
Watch adorable baby otters playing in the snow
Jennifer Sandlin / 6:14 am PT Fri Feb 7, 2025
Baby Otters
I love baby animals, and there's almost no lil' critter cuter than a sea otter pup. And they're even more ridiculously delightful when they're frolicking in the snow—which they otter-ly adore!
The Vancouver Aquarium recently posted footage of sea otter pups Luna and Tofino—who came to the aquarium as orphaned babies last summer—as they explored snow for the very first time! In the video, you can hear them squealing with delight as they have the best time jumping around in and rolling through the snow. The playful pair even knock over the snowman that senior marine mammal trainer Nadine Trottier built for them!
The adorable video was captured by Trottier, who explains that otters love anything cold, including snow, and that Luna and Tofino reacted to the snow with excitement and curiosity. I could watch these two play for hours!
And, luckily, if I or anyone else wants to do exactly that, the Vancouver Aquarium has installed a live sea otter cam where you can check in on the rowdy rascals all day, every day!
See more otters and other marine life on the Vancouver Aquarium's YouTube, Instagram, or website.
Polls reveal Republicans want Musk out of politics
Ellsworth Toohey / 5:12 am PT Fri Feb 7, 2025
Boing Boing/Stable Diffusion
Elon Musk has worn out his welcome in Washington, according to a new poll from The Economist/YouGov.
When The Economist/YouGov took a poll right after the 2024 election, 47% of Republicans said Musk should have "a lot" of influence in Trump's administration.
In the new poll, released Wednesday, those same Republicans have soured on Musk. Only 26% want him to have "a lot" of influence, a 21-percentage-point drop.
Why? The New Republic says, "It seems that the more people learn about Musk, the less they like him."
According to a new Hart Research survey published Wednesday by Groundwork Collective and Public Citizen. The poll asked respondents about how much influence they felt Musk should have in government, explaining aspects of his role in DOGE, his lack of oversight, and his far-reaching access.
By the end of the survey, 63 percent of voters reported having an unfavorable opinion of Musk, an increase of nine points from the beginning of the survey. Meanwhile, only 32 percent of respondents had a favorable opinion, which was down 7 percent from the start, and showed a major negative swing among non-MAGA Republicans.
But it doesn't matter how many voters wish Musk would go away. As long as the DOGE leader pays sufficient fealty to the only person that matters, he can keep up his charade of reducing the federal deficit.
First trailer for new Luigi Mangione propaganda documentary
Thom Dunn / 4:57 am PT Fri Feb 7, 2025
Image: Luigi Mangione mugshot / PA Department of Corrections
Just two months after Luigi Mangione allegedly assassinated United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, HBO's MAX is already prepared to launch a new one-hour documentary. The film (apparently called Who is Luigi Mangioni? despite the alleged shooter spelling his last name with an "e") "aims to unpack Mangione's background and track his trajectory to understand what led him to land behind bars."
The trailer (above) features appearances from everyone that Investigation Discovery could possible scramble to assemble for an interview in such a short period of time. Curiously, this includes indicted New York City mayor Eric Adams, who famously perp-walked Mangione for absolutely no apparent reason.
Perhaps the only thing more absurd than frantically assembling a documentary about such a massive case in under two months is the fact that this isn't even the first Mangione-related documentary to come out. ABC News already beat MAX to the punch with an hour-long special focused on the manhunt for Mangione—a finite event with at least enough factual information that one could logically produce a dramatic play-by-play. This new MAX documentary, however, looks like it really really wants you to think that it's a remarkable deep-dive into the mind of a killer, in the tradition of The Jinx from the network's HBO-branded days. Based on the two-minute clip above, though, Who is Luigi Mangioni? presents itself as little more than propaganda—a desperate play to establish a narrative about Mangione before a trial that hasn't even started yet. In fact, the documentary is slated to premiere on February 17, which is the same day the trial is currently scheduled to begin.
Maybe MAX and Investigation Discovery are banking on that Big Event curiosity to drive viewers to their documentary. But how much insight could it really offer with such little time and effort?
I think we all know the answer.
E-ink phone is like a Kindle and a Blackberry had a baby
Gail Sherman / 4:53 am PT Fri Feb 7, 2025
A new phone from the startup Minimal Company has an e-ink display and a physical keyboard. The idea behind the Minimal Phone is that you use it only for the things you need and no more. Phone calls, messaging, Kindle books, Spotify, Waze, and Android Auto work fine.
Doomscrolling and mindlessly watching Tiktok, while technically possible, as you can install any Android app, would be excruciatingly slow. For users who want to escape their smartphone but aren't quite ready or able to move to a flip phone, a device like this might help you get your life back.
The device has a 4.3" e-ink screen, a full QWERTY keyboard, front and rear cameras, and fingerprint unlock built into the power button. There are three different refresh speeds available for the screen, as well as a button to trigger a refresh manually.
Backers who crowdfunded the project on Indiegogo expressed concern online when the device failed to deliver as scheduled, but shipments began at the end of February. Early reviews are generally positive, with the usual bugs one would expect from a new device from a small team.
One important caveat for anyone in the US considering a purchase: as of today, the device does not have FCC approval, so voice calls may not work until approved. The company is now taking regular orders and claims the issue will be resolved when shipping begins in March.
Musk's DOGE boy reportedly screams at senior staffers trying to protect personal data: "Idiots!"
Elon Musk's inexperienced boys doing DOGE's dirty work are not just demanding access to highly restricted information on millions of federal workers, but they're reportedly also screaming at anyone who gets in their way.
"Idiots!" one of the youth shouted during a recent meeting with senior staffers in the Office of Personnel Management, which maintains sensitive data on federal employees, as told to The Washington Post by an OPM developer who wished to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation.
Musk's Department of Government Efficiency minions — including a 19-year-old "expert" known as "Big Balls" — who now have "sweeping authority" and have essentially taken over the OPM, were "given 'administrative' access to OPM computer systems within days of Trump's inauguration last month," according to the Washington Post.
"They could put a new file in someone's record; they could modify an existing record," said one OPM official. "They could delete that record out of the database. They could export all that data about people who are currently or formerly employed by the government, they could export it to some nongovernment server, or to their own PC, or to a Google Drive. Or to a foreign country."
"Screaming fits are just one of the tactics employed by Elon Musk's DOGE squad as they target government staffers," reported the Daily Beast. And needless to say, morale at the OPM has flatlined.
From The Washington Post:
The DOGE team's demand for access to OPM files and networks came as Musk deputies arrived at the agency promising to wipe out 70 percent of its staff, officials said.
Meanwhile, morale has plummeted, said three OPM officials, as DOGE agents have clashed with senior career personnel. One official recalled a recent meeting in which a young DOGE team member began screaming at senior developers and calling them "idiots."
The data that the DOGE team can access includes a massive trove of personal information for millions of federal employees , included in systems called Enterprise Human Resources Integration and Electronic Official Personnel Folder. It also includes personal information for anyone who applied to a federal job through the site USAJobs, the people said. Last year alone, the people said, there were 24.5 million such applicants.
The two OPM officials said the level of access granted to DOGE agents means they could copy the Social Security numbers, phone numbers and personnel files for millions of federal employees.
Musk's young assistants — between the ages of 19–25 — used to be a team of six. Now the number is unclear after 25-year-old Marko Elez, a former worker at Space X, resigned from DOGE after racist posts from last summer resurfaced (including one that bragged, "I was racist before it was cool"). The only surprise here is that his overt racism was reason enough to vacate his position at a MAGA agency.
Adorable baby tapir will melt your heart
Gail Sherman / 4:36 am PT Fri Feb 7, 2025
Tapir calf
The Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium has welcomed a new baby, a Malayan tapir, which the zoo describes as a "tiny, walking watermelon." The squeaky baby looks more like a tiny alien to me, but either way, it is unbelievably cute.
Malayan tapirs are native to Southeast Asia and are considered endangered, with only 2500 living in the wild. With their short, prehensile trunks and stout bodies, they look a bit like a cross between a pig and an elephant when, in fact, they are most closely related to horses, zebras, and rhinos.
The tiny baby is only the second tapir born at the zoo in its 10-year history. Weighing only about 20 pounds, the baby is dwarfed by its 900-pound mom and 800-pound dad. While adults are primarily black with a sizeable light-colored patch, newborns have a combination of stripes and spots to provide them with camouflage.
The zoo is holding off on naming the baby until they have determined its gender. The baby will remain out of view for now, behind the scenes with mom.
reCAPTCHA: 819 million hours of wasted human time and billions of dollars in Google profits
Mark Frauenfelder / 4:03 am PT Fri Feb 7, 2025
Top: Current version of reCAPTCHA. Bottom: reCAPTCHA in 2007
When you log into your bank's website, you might be presented with an image showing distorted numbers and letters and asked to enter them into a field to prove you're human. These tests, called CAPTCHAs (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart), are commonly used on websites to prevent bot attacks and spam.
In 2007 Luis von Ahn had a good idea: why not use CAPTCHAs to help digitize scanned text from books and newspapers that computers struggled to read. His creation, called reCAPTCHA, proved so effective that the New York Times used it to digitize its archive of 13 million articles dating back to 1851.
Google acquired reCAPTCHA in 2009 and used it to digitize Google Books and improve Google Street View by processing photos of street signs and house numbers.
By 2025, reCAPTCHA is easily defeated by bots. Yet Google continues to offer it because reCAPTCHA has evolved into a tracking tool that collects user data and generates billions in revenue for Google, according to Chuppl. "Re-captcha takes a pixel by pixel fingerprint of your browser, a realtime map of everything you do on the internet."
"The essentially get access to any user interaction on that web page," says Dr. Andrew Searles, a former computer security researcher at UC Irvine.
Searle's paper, titled "Dazed & Confused: A Large-Scale Real-World User Study of reCAPTCHAv2," found that Google's widely-used CAPTCHA system is primarily a mechanism for tracking user behavior and collecting data while providing little actual security against bots. The study revealed that reCAPTCHA extensively monitors users' cookies, browsing history, and browser environment (including canvas rendering, screen resolution, mouse movements, and user-agent data) — all of which can be used for advertising and tracking purposes. Through analyzing over 3,600 users, the researchers found that solving image-based challenges takes 557% longer than checkbox challenges and concluded that reCAPTCHA has cost society an estimated 819 million hours of human time valued at $6.1 billion in wages while generating massive profits for Google through its tracking capabilities and data collection, with the value of tracking cookies alone estimated at $888 billion.
Unfortunately, if you want to use the Internet in a meaningful way, there's no way to opt out of reCAPTCHAs.
What it was like working with procrastinator Douglas Adams on "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" game
Mark Frauenfelder / 2:52 am PT Fri Feb 7, 2025
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text adventure from 1984
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams was a notorious procrastinator. When it became clear that he wasn't making progress on a text adventure game adaptation, Infocom sent game designer Steve Meretzky to England in 1984 to get the ball rolling.
In 2024, Spill Historie interviewed Meretzky about the experience. "I was sent over to England to basically camp out on his doorstep until we'd finished the game design," Meretzky said. "It was a strange trip. Douglas, procrastinator that he was, was already a year past his deadline for delivering the manuscript for So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish to his publisher… and he hadn't yet written a word. His agent basically exiled him from the distractions of London to a baronial mansion in the far west of England, which had been converted to a bed-and-breakfast."
"I was a little intimidated at first, but as we got to know each other, it became more of an equal footing. It helped that we were both 6'5"," Meretzky said. After a few days of work, Adams and Meretzky came up with all the puzzles, designing the final one while "sitting on a big piece of driftwood, surrounded by sheep." Meretzky returned to Boston and completed the game in time for the scheduled Fall 1984 release. The website with the interview includes photos of the sheep, the baronial mansion, and Adams napping face down at at Huntsham Court.
Meretzky also created some of the best text adventures for Infocom, including A Mind Forever Voyaging and Leather Goddesses of Phobos. In the interview, he shares some funny anecdotes about the origins of both games.
Bering Air flight disappears in Alaska 10 minutes before scheduled landing
Carla Sinclair / 2:26 am PT Fri Feb 7, 2025
Image: Bering Air plane; WR studio / shutterstock.com
A Bering Air plane carrying 10 people vanished less than an hour after it took off at 2:37 p.m. from Unalakleet in western Alaska yesterday.
Bering Air Flight 445 had 9 passengers aboard and one pilot, who contacted air traffic control in Anchorage about 10 minutes before he was supposed to land in the small city of Nome. But after announcing that he would enter a holding pattern to wait for a runway to clear, "the aircraft disappeared," according to The Independent.
"The plane's exact location is still unknown. We continue to expand search efforts to as many avenues as possible until the plane is located," the Nome Volunteer Fire Department said in a statement later on Thursday.
From The Independent:
Light snow and freezing drizzle were seen around Nome Airport on Thursday evening, at its worst leaving visibility down to only half a mile. Wind gusts up to 35 mph were forecast overnight.
The Coast Guard and U.S. Air Force stepped in with flights planned to scope out the area and attempt to locate the missing aircraft.
The C-130 Coast Guard plane is equipped with specialized search and rescue equipment enabling the location of objects and people in low-to-no visibility conditions, officials said. The aircraft is due to fly a grid pattern over the nearby shoreline and water.
It's been a horrible two weeks for small flights, with the recent Med Jets plane crash in Philadelphia that killed six, followed by the American Airlines—Black Hawk helicopter crash over the Potomac River that killed 67. Hopefully search and rescue teams will find this one intact, with 10 survivors on board.
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“NOME — Crews on Saturday recovered the remains of all 10 victims from the wreckage of a fatal commuter plane crash on the sea ice near Nome in Western Alaska.
There were no survivors aboard the Cessna Caravan, which was carrying nine passengers and one pilot when it crashed Thursday afternoon on Bering Air Flight 445 from Unalakleet to Nome, the U.S. Coast Guard said Friday.“
“NOME — Crews on Saturday recovered the remains of all 10 victims from the wreckage of a fatal commuter plane crash on the sea ice near Nome in Western Alaska.
There were no survivors aboard the Cessna Caravan, which was carrying nine passengers and one pilot when it crashed Thursday afternoon on Bering Air Flight 445 from Unalakleet to Nome, the U.S. Coast Guard said Friday.“
From adn.com