Blog
Interesting things made by human beings
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Antifa in court
Brandy Zadrozny for MS NOW:
Prosecutors characterize the events that night as an “antifa attack” on the federal government. The defense calls it a protest gone wrong. But the implications of this trial extend beyond the fate of one group of activists: For the first time, federal prosecutors are seeking to convict protesters — most of them American citizens — on charges related to domestic terrorism. The outcome will test whether President Donald Trump’s yearslong campaign to brand leftist activists as terrorists can succeed in the courts.
Read it all: Trump wants to prosecute anti-fascists as terrorists. This Texas trial will test his power.
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The Broomway
An Amazon driver makes an ancient mistake off the coast of south east England. CNN:
An Amazon delivery van had to be recovered after its driver followed a GPS route onto “extremely dangerous” mudflats.
English coastguards received a call on Sunday morning about the incident the previous evening, according to a Facebook post by HM Coastguard Southend.
They said the van had driven onto The Broomway, a six-mile path dating back 600 years that is not intended for vehicles.
The driver had been “following a GPS route” trying to reach Foulness Island, off the east coast of the county of Essex, according to the coastguard Facebook post.
Let's just say the driver, who got back to shore safely, was not the first to be bested by the hazardous track. The Broomway's origins are not clear -- it may have even been used by the Romans, in some form -- but it's death toll is notorious. For some time it was known as the road that took more lives than Mount Everest, though that's either outdated or was never actually true. More than 300 people are known to have perished on Everest; the Broomway has recorded about 100 deaths.
The road joins mainland Britain to Foulness Island, now home to a military base. How did the road get its name? From the Southend Echo, in 2006:
Local people knew these rules and respected them, but even they risked a third, wild-card danger. This was the sea-mist, which could, seemingly from nowhere, suddenly swirl across the path, blanking out all vision.
To guide travellers, local people resorted to a unique device. On either side of the Broomway, at 30 yard intervals, they drove stakes. To these stakes they tied bundles of twigs, giving the appearance of a witch's broom, or besom.
Unfortunately for the van driver, the brooms are long gone, washed away with history. Visitors to the island are advised to use the more modern route just north of where the driver lost his way. Amazon is said to have arranged a local farmer to help retrieve the vehicle.
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'Johnson is not a force'
Nia-Malika Henderson for Bloomberg Opinion on House Speaker Mike Johnson:
Although Johnson’s fundraising numbers are at a record high, with a haul of $82 million in 2025, Nancy Pelosi he is not. As speaker, Pelosi, who is retiring this year, let members vote their districts, even if it ran counter to her party’s position. She was a legislative tactician, helping muscle through landmark legislation in the Barack Obama and Joe Biden administrations, even with a small majority. And more than that, her charismatic personality, the memes and the quips, helped brand the party as a force.
Johnson is not a force. More follower than leader, he has spent much of this year standing back, watching as his power and the power of his chamber are eroded.
It’s no wonder so many Republicans want out.
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Blood in the machine
How's this for an irresistible lede? From gaming news site Aftermath:
Back in 2023, a (slightly) more innocent time before Microsoft ravaged its games studios with layoffs and made itself into a BDS priority target, Blizzard held a competition: To promote Diablo IV’s second season, it raffled off a PC "infused with real human blood in its liquid cooling" as part of a blood drive seeking 666 quarts of the red goop that keeps us all alive. I was desperate to know more. How much blood? Whose blood? Can blood reliably and sustainably cool a PC? And, again, whose blood?
Read it all: Diablo IV PC Cooled With Real Human Blood Is Still Going Strong Two Years Later, Says Guy Who Won It
(Also check out Brian Merchant's excellent book on the Luddites, from which I stole the title for this post.)
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AI job creation
An absolutely crackers story from 404 Media:
Waymo, Google’s autonomous vehicle company, and DoorDash, the delivery and gig work platform, have launched a pilot program that pays Dashers, at least in one case, around $10 to travel to a parked Waymo and close its door that the previous passenger left open, according to a joint statement from the company given to 404 Media.
Remarkable. Read it all: Waymo Is Getting DoorDashers to Close Doors on Self Driving Cars ($)
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Predictable
"Israeli Soldiers Accused of Using Polymarket to Bet on Strikes," reports the Wall Street Journal:
Last year, a user who went by the name ricosuave666 correctly predicted the timeline around the 12-day war between Israel and Iran. The bets drew attention from other traders who suspected the account holder had access to nonpublic information.
The account in question raked in more than $150,000 in winnings before going dormant for six months. It resumed trading last month, betting on when Israel would strike Iran, Polymarket data shows.
In a sane world, prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi would be outlawed. I can only hope we eventually get to that point sooner rather than later, or we risk an explosion of corruption.
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Manosphere report
AI can be both a threat to the news business, or it can be an incredible tool for streamlining some of the processes that go into everyday reporting. Here's Nieman Lab on the New York Times using AI to scrape the so-called "manosphere" for shifting reactions to the Jeffrey Epstein files:
Built in-house and known internally as the “Manosphere Report,” the tool uses large language models (LLMs) to transcribe and summarize new episodes of dozens of podcasts.
“The Manosphere Report gave us a really fast and clear signal that this was not going over well with that segment of the President’s base,” said Seward. “There was a direct link between seeing that and then diving in to actually cover it.”
Read it all: How The New York Times uses a custom AI tool to track the “manosphere”
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Secret stop
Incredible discovery of a stop on the Underground Railroad, the secretive network of smuggling routes to help free African-American slaves from the South.
A dresser inside a museum in New York City has been discovered as a secret stop on the Underground Railroad — the first of its kind discovered in Manhattan in over 100 years
— Phil Lewis (@phillewis.bsky.social) February 10, 2026 at 10:43 PM
[image or embed]Would strongly recommend watching Cheryl Wills' full report here.
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Russia's grinding war
A harrowing update from the D.C-based Center for Strategic and International Studies:
Despite claims of battlefield momentum in Ukraine, the data shows that Russia is paying an extraordinary price for minimal gains and is in decline as a major power. Since February 2022, Russian forces have suffered nearly 1.2 million casualties, more losses than any major power in any war since World War II. At current rates, combined Russian and Ukrainian casualties could reach 2 million by the spring of 2026. After seizing the initiative in 2024, Russian forces have advanced at an average rate of between 15 and 70 meters per day in their most prominent offensives, slower than almost any major offensive campaign in any war in the last century. Meanwhile, Russia’s war economy is under mounting strain, with manufacturing declining, slowing growth of 0.6 percent in 2025, and no globally competitive technology firms to help drive long-term productivity.
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You can call it the Super Bowl
From 2018, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's useful reminder that the NFL doesn't get to decide who uses the name Super Bowl:
Having a trademark means being able to make sure no one can slap the name of your product onto theirs and confuse buyers into thinking they’re getting the real thing. It also means stopping an instance where using the name might make someone think it’s an endorsement or sponsorship. If neither of those things happens, you can call the Super Bowl the Super Bowl. The ability to use something’s trademarked name to identify it—even in a commercial—is called “nominative fair use.” Because the trademark is its name.