https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/08/grok-x-app-stores
Apple’s rules don’t apply to X or Grok. Because our democracy is out of order.
“the polycrisis of the 1600s gave birth to the Enlightenment”
ICE agents steal and sell victim’s phone
https://www.propublica.org/article/videos-ice-dhs-immigration-agents-using-chokeholds-citizens
“Arnoldo had filmed much of the incident, but agents had taken his phone. He used Find My to locate the phone — at a vending machine for used electronics miles away, close to an ICE detention center. ”
Agent got some cash for dumping phone in, probably spent on cheap booze.
30 Real Things You Can Do Right Now to Stop ICE and the Slide Into Authoritarianism
https://beingliberal.substack.com/p/30-things-you-can-do-to-stop-this?r=3j50y
Very concrete actions.
“When we asked Jerome Powell if he had ever been pegged by Taylor Swift on the roof of the Eccles Building, he said no. These images clearly prove he is a liar”
Journalist Laura Jedeed joins ICE – sort of.
Their hiring process is pretty much what you’d expect. (Laura did not accept their job offer; she suspects if she had they might have figured out that she’s not the veteran they were looking for.)
Face-name assignment in macOS Photos app is only local, not synchronized to iCloud
https://tech.kateva.org/2026/01/face-name-assignment-in-macos-photos.html
Apple’s enshittification is best demonstrated through the history of their photo management software.
Minneapolis heroic community patrols: “federal agents smashed in her car window, dragged her and her co-pilot out of the car, and held them for eight hours in the belly of the Whipple Federal Building”
https://minnesotareformer.com/2026/01/13/in-the-car-with-minneapolis-community-patrols/
Good description of active peaceful resistance.
“In group chats, neighbors using anonymous nicknames volunteer to assist with various aspects of the operation. No one assigns shifts or jobs; group members take on a needed role when they’re available, alert the group to their activities and let everyone know when they’re done.
The system is both highly organized and decentralized, with no clear leaders — just longer-time members of the network helping newcomers learn the communication style and security practices of the group.”
The murder of Ms Good: “Viola Liuzzo was 39 years old when she was murdered”
Hoover was a monster. Bovino is a monster.
Software library: “has no code at all, just a carefully written specification, an AGENTS.md and a collection of conformance tests in a YAML file.
https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/10/a-software-library-with-no-code/#atom-everything
I wondered when this would be tried.
HCR: “The news has seemed to move more and more quickly in the last week.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-11-2026
Signs that some in the GOP dislike Trumpistan.
What’s really happening with child care fraud in Minnesota
A real problem that was grossly amplified by the Nazi party.
“Homeland Security has added the words, “The peace of a nation no longer besieged by the third world.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/opinion/renee-good-minnesota-shooting-ice.html?smid=bs-share
Nazi America is no longer a potential future. It is our reality now. May all the world together be strong enough to stop us.
“Trump administration does not need an inciting incident. They can simply claim Minnesotans burned Minneapolis to the ground.”
https://www.firewalledmedia.com/p/the-law-of-the-gun
Works for Putin.
iOS 26 bypasses Instagram’s link deprecation
https://9to5mac.com/2026/01/09/ios-26-gave-screenshots-a-hidden-power-ive-started-using-a-lot/
This feature was created with META in mind. Zuck must hate it.
MPLS DFL senior caucus: “Did our members plan to spend their retirement days defending their fellow and sister Minnesotans?”
https://www.mplsdflseniors.org/index.php/events
Sounds like something I could do.
“deep sense of existential dread that many programmers are feeling right now”
https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/8/llm-predictions-for-2026/#atom-everything
LLMs are going to be better at coding than most humans.
“I gave Claude Code a description of the problem, it generated what we built last year in an hour.”
CBS collapse: “former Paramount chair Shari Redstone, engineered this debacle”
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/dont-forget-who-first-stole-cbss
“the truth contradicted her ideology and integrity hit her in the wallet”
A lot of weak people rose to power in the past few decades. Trump mowed them down.
1Password Browser Extension Code Injection: “I would hope that as little code as possible is injected and that it’s all been vetted by 1Password, not just pulled down as a dependency.”
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2026/01/07/1password-browser-extension-code-injection/
We all hope. (I don’t use the extension.)
Exporting Gazans to Somaliland: “… Somaliland’s president is stringing Netanyahu along”
The prospects for Iran seem bleak.
https://gwynnedyer.com/2026/what-if-khamenei-falls/
It is hard for people who know Iran to see a way out.
Trump and lying about a killing: “If this works, it would be a demonstration of totalitarian power, the ability to control how people think.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-7-2026
Authoritarian was not enough.
Poison tech 60kya: “… human ancestors 60,000 years ago — and even earlier — were cognitively on par with modern humans”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/science/poison-arrows-south-africa.html
We think something changed in the past 100ky. This helps narrow the change.
Leaves the big question as to why writing took so long to happen. It is biologically odd that we can read at all…
Venezuela and the Shadow Fleet – “Shadow fleets of the non-state type operate on thin capitalization, fast reflagging, and plausible deniability”
https://www.trfetzer.com/thoughts-on-venezuela-and-the-shadow-fleet/
Best discussion I have seen
Minnesota Welfare Fraud Scandal Explained.
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-real-story-behind-the-minnesota-welfare-fraud-scandal
A good overview with useful context.
Gruber: “I’ve decided not to upgrade to MacOS 26 Tahoe”
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/06/nielsen-icons-in-menus
“I can tolerate being angry about UI changes Apple makes to the Mac. But I can’t tolerate being heartbroken.”
Tim Cook owns this and more. I also now plan not to upgrade.
“The idea of reclaiming the country for white men by destroying the federal government grew, along with the idea that Democrats could win elections only by cheating.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-5-2026-monday
A fair description of the GOP.
“Kokotajlo and his co-authors revise their expectations for when AI might be able to code autonomously, putting this as likely to happen in the early 2030s, as opposed to 2027”
“The new forecast sets 2034 as the new horizon for “superintelligence”
2034 might as well be 2070. This is very encouraging. He is really talking about “singularity”, I guess superintelligence is the rebranding.
An undergraduate essay on the “anthropology” of 2025 memory-positive ai
https://notes.kateva.org/2026/01/an-undergraduate-essay-on-anthropology.html
“I chose to write about the echoes of ‘economic anthropology’ in the stirrings of what will likely become a non-human culture based in part on the legacy of human culture. A subtext is that in a post-ai world humans and ‘dynamic entities’ alike may need alternatives to the market system that has sustained us so far. My professors only request was that I give him some sense of what today’s ‘dynamic entities’ are.”
Key Roundup (glyphosate) safety review retracted – “paper had based its conclusions largely on unpublished studies by Monsanto”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/02/climate/glyphosate-roundup-retracted-study.html
Damn. Only 25y ago; this kind of thing was more common 60y ago. Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology is pretty obscure though.
Retracted 10y after WHO said it’s probably carcinogenic. Lots more went wrong than one bad article.
“The refusal of the Department of Justice to obey the clear direction of the Epstein Files Transparency Act seems to have been a test of Congress’s resolve, and so far, it is a gamble the administration appears to be winning.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-4-2026
If you can’t impeach then you got nothing.
“two-hour, bloodless capture of a sitting president inside a presumably at least somewhat fortified environment suggests some sort of internal fracture…”
https://michaeldsellers.substack.com/p/maduros-slow-motion-two-hour-bloodless?triedRedirect=true
I wonder if Maduro has a pardon ahead.
Flock AI-Enabled People tracking cameras.
The panopticon is the future. In SF stories surveillance-free zones emerge.
“Strix is a dissipative system that “lives on” interaction from me. It appears autonomous, but if you take me away, it’ll collapse.”
https://timkellogg.me/blog/2026/01/01/is-strix-alive
You are also a dissipative system.
2025: Willison‘s year in LLMs
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/31/the-year-in-llms/?ref=werd.io
It’s long. Impressive work.
eSIMs can transfer between phones on command.
https://techinch.com/blog/esim-is-less-scary-than-it-seems
Seems like a significant security risk. Necessary though; I’m surprised it seems to work.
Text, strings and Unicode: so very complex
https://eclecticlight.co/2026/01/03/text-strings-and-unicode/
It is amazing anything works.
“Karen Budd-Falen, the No. 3 at the Interior Department, didn’t disclose a $3.5 million water-rights contract between her husband and the developers of a Nevada mine”
Corruption is bipartisan, but utter shamelessness is MAGA
Neanderthal Discoveries 2025
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/03/science/archaeology-neanderthals-genetics.html
The kissing studies included modern primates – “There was quite a lot about bonobo tonguing going on, and that wasn’t even the worst of it.”
Vaccines, esp Zoster, lower dementia and cardiovascular risks: “many infections are associated with the onset of dementia, both Alzheimer’s and vascular”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/03/health/vaccines-dementia-heart-elderly.html
COVID really drove this home because of the scale of simultaneous infections, but many suspected before. Many vital infections damage vessels and can involve the brain.
OTOH – extremely hard to study as most vaccine avoiders are not terribly bright.
Did less than 30% of ICE detainees in 2025 have criminal records? (Yes)
“Traffic and immigration offenses are the most common convictions among detainees.”
London Review of Books – What is Finance for?
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n17/john-lanchester/for-every-winner-a-loser
“… total value of all the economic activity in the world is estimated at $105 trillion … value of the financial derivatives which arise from this activity … $667 trillion. … in terms of the things it produces, that business is useless. It does nothing and adds no value. It is just one speculator betting against another…”
“more than 75% of middle-class households in the Twin Cities are able to afford necessities such as housing, food, transportation, child care and health care”
“Economists typically define the middle class as the middle 60% of earners.”
Our definition of “middle class” is so dumb it makes me despair.
“For a lot of our history, you could afford basic necessities — at least in terms of food, housing, child care — within that distribution,”
Ok, so getting closer to understanding. Still so slow…
Ancient Rome: An empire of slavery
https://patrickwyman.substack.com/p/crixus-the-spartacus-rebellion-and
“gladiators were everywhere in Roman life”
Perhaps the greatest Roman skill was in controlling vast numbers of enslaved people. A culture of brutal cruelty was essential.
Year one of Trump – corruption, vengeance, cruelty, stupidity, incompetence, and greed.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-30-2025
Also the Mar-a-Lago to Epstein pipeline emerges.
The MAGA mob assault on an innocent student at Brown
https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/the-high-tech-lynching-of-mustapha
“the government of the United States of America is controlled by a mob led by the criminally insane and the pathologically unscrupulous”
Utter scum and all around bastards.
Gift cards are terrible: complex business, political, and corporate structures enable vast fraud
https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/gift-card-accountability-sink/
Of course the unbanked get hit the hardest. Do not use them. Crypto may be less bad. Cash is better.
Zach W (SMBC) has a new book esp for 8-12y
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/sawyer-lee-and-the-quest-to-just-stay-home
Great promo comic.
“In December 2023, a mountain lion roamed through Minneapolis’ Lowry Hill neighborhood. It also died after being hit by a car …”
Individual males roam from the west to the east. “there could be five or six mountain lions in the state at any one time … there is no evidence of any finding a mate and having kittens”