Trump will try anything and everything.
Trump admin trying to end global discussion of climate change.
The oligarchs in the Trump admin know the world is warming due to CO2 emissions, but they figure the gains to America outweigh the harms to the rest of the world. Especially if America expands to control Canada, Greenland, and the arctic. Climate engineering will take care of the needs of the empire if America warms too much.
CO2 mitigation measures are an unwanted distraction that may reduce the value of American oil.
Starliner astronaut stranding was a failure comparable to Challenger (class A).
“inadequate testing, proceeding with the flight when engineers did not fully understand earlier thruster malfunctions and inadequate oversight of Boeing by NASA.”
They still don’t understand the thruster problem. The reiteration of NASA’s confidence in Boeing suggests they wish they had another option.
Test for micro-DNA siogns of cancer in blood fails to meet 20% reduction goal
“The study’s goal was to show a 20 percent reduction in advanced cancers among those who got the test. That did not happen.”
The brief NYT review doesn’t discuss false positives. It’s likely that after a certain age we have a lot of cancer more or less lurking around. There’s no way this should get covered by insurance or medicare but that depends on bribes to Trump.
USB-C iPhones with hubs, keyboared, monitors, etc.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/iphone-usb-c-port-uses-beyond-charging/
External monitor and keyboard on USB-C hub to USB-C iPhone is appealing. It’s the kind of thing we thought the iPhone would do 10y ago.
Many Americans need a working computer on special occasions, but don’t own one. A USB-C monitor/hub targeted at computer-less iPhone users seems possible. (I’m guessing Android already does this?)
Gemini 3.1 Pro: “ambitious agentic workflows before we make it generally available soon”
https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/gemini-models/gemini-3-1-pro/
Google Antigravity offers it.
Gemini 3.1 Pro: the pelican levels up.
https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/19/gemini-31-pro/#atom-everything
Qualitatively better SVG illustrations.
“my real inbox was too huge and triggered compaction. During the compaction, it lost my original instruction”
https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/23/summer-yue/#atom-everything
ai compacts memory, forgets instruction to don’t actually delete things.
Neat error condition. (Victim was an expert so presumably had backups or didn’t care too much)
Red/green TDD – Agentic Engineering Patterns
https://simonwillison.net/guides/agentic-engineering-patterns/red-green-tdd/#atom-everything
Changing process to adapt to ai dev. “…”use test driven development, write the tests first, confirm that the tests fail before you implement the change that gets them to pass”.
“Build a Python function to extract headers from a markdown string. Use red/green TDD.”
FindMy for wallets – Nomad and other options.
The world was disappointed when Apple did nothing. I have a wallet FindMy that’s useful but I’ll try the Nomad
School choice and charter schools: “here in the Twin Cities that market freedom has yielded schools that are siloed by race”
Charter schools have many ways to discourage high cost students.
Smart geek: “I fell for a phishing attack and lost access to my X account.“
“I was in the middle of the reset-your-password dance with verification across different devices when the phishing mail came in.”
They play the odds.
“A financial crisis worse than that of 2007-09 is now possible, because of the ways markets have developed, and because the Federal Reserve let this happen.”
https://www.twincities.com/2026/02/22/real-world-economics-the-fed-of-old-and-of-today/
“We have crawled out on a rotten limb from which it is difficult to get down.”
An old school conservative moderate economist who is fiercely anti-Trump.
The oligarchy: “number of U.S. billionaires rose 85 percent between 2010 and 2023 … share of political contributions rose by 1700 percent.”
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/billionaires-gone-wild
“we have experienced a fundamental change in the way our society works. Everything … is under extreme threat from the tidal wave of billionaire influence”
It’s time to tax.
Failure of a MN rail project.
https://www.minnpost.com/cityscape/2026/02/the-regrettable-failure-of-northstar-commuter-rail/
The would may be changing too quickly for this kind of project.
Minnesota AG’s evidence portal collects reports of Federal assaults (ICE, CBP, etc)
Details on US Concentration Camps
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/inside-trumps-ice-concentration-camps
The campus violate ICE’s own standards. And the world’s.
US blockade of Cuba heading to March end of fuel.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/world/americas/cuba-oil-blockade-trump.html
Cuban government likely to negotiate a surrender. They have no choice. Illegal blockade of course.
How to Organize Safely in the Age of Surveillance
https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-organize-safely-in-the-age-of-surveillance/
I go for complete transparency myself, but a useful primer
“Why get rid of Objective-C” — an explainer.
https://inessential.com/2026/02/18/why-not-objective-c.html
Fun read for a non-dev.
“in my next post I’m going to talk about how I wrote some new code in Objective-C and loved it”
“hearing that a feature or app that you depend on is receiving attention in an OS update may provoke more fear than excitement”
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2026/02/17/ios-27-rave-update-to-clean-up-code/
Several books could be written about how Apple lost the ability to code
iOS 26.4: Stolen Device Protection Enabled by Default
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2026/02/17/ios-26-4-stolen-device-protection-enabled-by-default/
Yikes! I would also prefer a passwords passphrase option. I will not touch this before 26.5 even though I will install 26 when .4 is out
Launching apps via Spotlight broken now?
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2026/02/18/searching-for-apps-with-spotlight/
I may skip Tahoe completely
“Restoring in DFU mode replaces the Mac’s firmware, erases the boot volume group, and installs the bundled version of macOS”
https://eclecticlight.co/2026/02/19/how-to-erase-your-apple-silicon-mac/
More ways to erase than I knew
AI coding: “It might fail a company’s quality test, but it would meet every deadline”
A valuable take on the shift ahead
“After watching colonial lawmakers under royal rule demand payoffs before they would approve popular measures, Washington rejected the idea of profiting from the presidency.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-16-2026
DJT is basically Washington’s nightmare.
“In September 2025 the IRS granted tax-exempt status to the Donald Trump Mount Rushmore Memorial Legacy, making it a charity that can accept tax-free donations.”
“BMW keeps pushing subscriptions even though charging customers monthly to use the heated seat function resulted in backlash”
https://www.jalopnik.com/2097868/automakers-love-in-car-subscriptions-drivers-dont/
My yearly cost of car ownership is down because vehicles last so long now. That’s a problem for manufacturers
How will historians frame Trump’s qualifications for worst American President in history?
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/the-worst-president-ever
“focus on three surpassing abuses: His violation of his oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution; his use of the power of the federal government to threaten and punish his critics; and his gobsmacking corruption.”
Survival is not guaranteed, but I think more likely than not.
“Deep Blue” Devs – distress of a profession facing an extinction threat.
https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/15/deep-blue/#atom-everything
It’s different from the post-Apollo aerospace crash. More like the abrupt end of the 1960s clerks who made up a transactional database of humans.
A skillset for which demand has plummeted.
Deep rural China: “A black man went to a nearby village, once, about fifteen years ago.”
https://toosimple.substack.com/p/rural-life
“The house has five floors. As do many in the village. It’s a mini-Manhattan, concrete and glass, rising up from rice paddies.”
Decoherence and quantum fundamentals – natural selection of the observable state.
“For a dust grain floating in the air, collisions with photons and surrounding gas molecules will produce decoherence in … a millionth of the time it takes for light to traverse a single proton”
“quantum Darwinism”
Time of day immunotherapy rx: “early-infusion group had a median progression-free survival (PFS) of 11.3 months, while the late-infusion group’s median PFS was 5.7 months”
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/get-early-start
Astonishing! Thought to be circadian T cell variation but absolutely nobody expected an effect this size. Lots of studies coming on this.
“macOS 26 Tahoe brings a completely new and redesigned replacement for Apple Diagnostics in Apple silicon Macs”
https://eclecticlight.co/2026/02/15/last-week-on-my-mac-repair-assistant-has-replaced-diagnostics/
My theory on the docs is that different parts of apple dev don’t talk to one another
“Aggressive, probing and accountability-oriented journalism held up a mirror to American society — and many Americans didn’t like what they saw”
“another country’s interception of a conversation between two foreign nationals who were discussing Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-12-2026
Gabbard and Wiles were covering up something involving Jared around May 2025
“may or may not be related that in early April 2025, the administration abruptly fired National Security Agency director General Timothy Haugh and his deputy, hours after dismissing several staffers at the National Security Council”
Trump tells us he feels his power slipping away.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/13/politics/trump-racist-video-gop-blowback?cid=ios_app
“The White House argued that Trump remains “the unequivocal leader” of the GOP”
Trans: Trump sees powerful rivals overtaking him.
NYT review of narcissistic personality disorder
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/well/mind/narcissist-narcissism-myths-facts.html
A few things I didn’t know. It seems a prerequisite for working for Trump.
Authoritarian International: “Silicon Valley, U.S. hedge funds and lots of other parts of the economy are highly dependent on money from the Gulf state”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/more-thoughts-on-the-authoritarian-international
Wealth taxes a hot topic now.
“A couple of months ago, I was going back and forth with the AI, guiding it, making edits. Now I just describe the outcome and leave.”
https://shumer.dev/something-big-is-happening
A reason for people to live closer to family. Seriously.
Steve Yegge – AI Agents and the Future of Software Engineering: “employers shouldn’t reasonably expect more than three hours of AI-augmented work from engineers, per day.”
https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/steve-yegge-on-ai-agents-and-the
Humans can’t keep up. The LLMs do not tire.
Dissocciative Identity Disorder: a NYT review
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/magazine/dissociative-identity-disorder-mental-health.html
May be as common as schizophrenia but can respond to treatment.
I suspect “identity” in humans is much more variable than most imagine.
Ostarine builds muscle – and is widely used in sports without FDA approval.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/us/ostarine-olympics-doping.html
I’d love 3lbs of muscle! It may be bundled with GLP1 if approved.
The sports problem is that it’s TOO easy to detect and its widespread use makes accidental exposure a real possibility.
“There’s still a lot that’s redacted—even in what we’re seeing, we’re seeing redacted versions. I thought we were supposed to see the unredacted versions.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-10-2026
It is possible that the walls are crumbling.
“Brad Karp, senior partner for Paul Weiss … plotted with Epstein to get a woman they disliked charged with a crime and deported.”
America lost in a fog of lies and madness: “Trump was ordering Ms. Gabbard to help oversee an F.B.I. investigation of his baseless claims of irregularities in the vote”
https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/the-trouble-with-tulsi-gabbard-and
Only a few have credibility now. You cannot run a democracy like this.
China 2026 – a vibe check
https://toosimple.substack.com/p/china-return
Treading water, not too unhappy yet.
Ambitious Thwaites Glacier experiment fails.
Not every big reach grabs the brass ring. A sympathetic story of failure at the extremes of science.
Liability insurance will determine the future of adolescent gender surgery in America: “standard of practice”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/health/gender-surgery-malpractice-varian.html
Patient who had mastectomy as teenager wins lawsuit for surgery that did not meet “standard of practice”. If insurance companies stop coverage that will be the end of adolescent gender affirming surgery in America.
Deep analysis of ai spend: “America’s AI boom shows no signs of slowing down”
https://www.apricitas.io/p/americas-1t-ai-gamble
There is an incomprehensible amount of money in the world seeking investment opportunities.
HCR history: “the 1899 Treaty of Paris that ended the war transferred from the control of Spain to the control of the United States the islands of Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico, as well as a number of smaller islands including Guam”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-9-2026
Explainer on the curious status of America’s Puerto Rico colony.
Browser interoperability: “all four experimental browsers (Chrome Canary, Edge Dev, Firefox Nightly, and Safari Technology Preview) reached 99%”
https://webkit.org/blog/17808/interop-2025-review/
This is counter to the 2026 narrative and must be ignored.
Seriously – much better than expected