Apple engineers are working to support AI chatbot apps over the next few months.

Last year we bought a combination washer and heat pump dryer and have been pretty impressed. Not only does the machine offer significant convenience where you put a load of clothes in and literally two hours later it is both washed and dried, it also uses a small amount of ... [continued]

The post Our New Combo Washer/Heat Pump Dryer Uses Less Than 1 kWh of Electricity Per Load appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The European Legal Support Center (ELSC) has posted a peer-reviewed study which shows a 'dramatic escalation' in the Jewish Chronicle (JC) crying antisemitism. The JC is a right-wing British newspaper with a history of having to make public retractions. Now, the ELSC have shown that the JC alleges antisemitism more often today than it did in 1938 (i.e. during the era of Nazi Germany).

These findings confirm widespread views that the JC uses the very real trauma of antisemitism to shield Israel. Furthermore, the findings provide evidence of how the hostile state and its Zionist supporters operate. They're using false antisemitism accusations to shut down the global protests supporting Palestinian liberation.

This is hardly a surprise. Obviously the Zionists and their colonialist buddies would want to use the victim-card to deflect from Israel's genocide. And the more war crimes Israel commits, the more they have to double down on the smears.

Our upcoming Britain Index of Repression documents the resulting patterns of repression across all sectors of society, revealing the institutionalised criminalisation of Palestine solidarity.

The consequences are real: careers derailed, students investigated, people referred to… pic.twitter.com/zoATHq5DqR

— European Legal Support Center (ELSC) (@elsclegal) February 5, 2026

The ELSC will release the full report on 26 February.

Jewish Chronicle — 'Zionist notion of antisemitism'

The ELSC's analysis covered 100-years of the JC's output. The hate-rag is well known for churning out potentially career-ending allegations against activists, politicians, creatives, and other professionals. The ELSC concluded that the Jewish Chronicle deliberately uses a 'Zionist notion of antisemitism' to stir up a moral panic intent on diminishing solidarity with Palestinians. As a result, the ELSC have concluded that the pro-Israel paper plays an active role in the UK in working to repress support for Palestine liberation.

Below are just a couple of the pages showing findings of the peer-reviewed analysis by Professor Neve Gordon:

Michael Rosen, the beloved Jewish author and poet, has often spoken out against the alleged antisemitism crisis created by Zionists. Pointing to the Labour Party, Rosen recently stated:

At the height of the claim that the Labour Party was riven with antisemitism and/or institutionally antisemitic, I pursued a theory as follows: 'If people are combatting antisemitism only in the Labour Party and not in the Tory Party, they're not combatting antisemitism, they're combatting the Labour Party'.

To expand that slightly, I was in effect saying that it's hard to take such people's definition of antisemitism seriously if it's only directed at people in one organisation.

Rosen further added:

Could it be, I wonder, that my theory - as expressed above - could in any way be possibly slightly true? Could it be that some kind of double standard or two-tier policing of antisemitism had been and perhaps still is in place?

False victimisation: real abuse against Palestinians

The Zionist fury over the recent Fitton 6 acquittal underscores how Israel's protection drives these allegations. The defendants faced trial for their anti-genocide efforts as part of now-proscribed Palestine Action, a non-violent direct-action group. Nevertheless, the trial and subsequent acquittal by jury has led to yet more allegations of antisemitism. Seemingly, the intent now is to label the UK's criminal justice system as 'antisemitic'. Our own Skwawkbox wrote:

Of course we must never forget that Israel and its lobby are always the victim. Even when they're slaughtering innocent Palestinians and making up bollocks in court to imprison people trying to stop them.

We all know the story of the "boy who cried wolf". It's crucial that allegations of antisemitism come from genuine instances, or we risk exposing Jews to a backlash from people who equate Judaism with Zionism.

As we've reported, such a backlash is already happening within the American right. Over there, prominent figures like Nick Fuentes openly arguing that Israel has made a mockery of America, and that the correct response to this is antisemitism. We can't let such bigotry fester over here.

It's also crucial that Muslims and others are able to speak freely of their support for Palestine without fear of being harassed by the media.

Featured image via Facebook

By Maddison Wheeldon

The Israeli occupation sent a grisly delivery to what's left of the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza yesterday, 5 February. Bags were delivered containing dismembered bodies and body parts.

Speaking to al-Arabi, hospital director Dr Mohammed Abu Silmiya said that the occupation had delivered 66 bags of human body parts along with 55 Palestinian corpses to the hospital. On opening the bodies, shocked hospital staff found they contained skulls.

One of the dismembered bodies at al-Shifa hospital.

None of the bodies or body parts bore any identification. The bodies returned showed clear signs of severe mutilation consistent with systematic organ theft and medical experimentation. Many of the skulls also bore surgical incisions.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Mosab Abu Toha (@mosab_abutoha)

At least ten thousand Palestinians are detained indefinitely without charge in Israel, where many suffer starvation, rape and frequent torture. Thousands more are officially 'missing', many of them likely still buried under millions of tonnes of rubble. The occupation refuses to allow bulldozers and other clearance equipment into Gaza so that bodies can be recovered.

Abu Silmiya said that this latest horror is yet more evidence of Israel's serious and systematic violations of human dignity and international humanitarian law during the Gaza genocide.

No western 'mainstream' media have bothered to report it.

This is not the first such incident. Israel has routinely dumped large piles of its Palestinian victims' bodies on waste ground in Gaza. Many bear marks of torture, execution and organ theft.

Featured image via Aljazeera

By Skwawkbox

Israel has destroyed the graves of World War One and World War Two soldiers in Gaza. And as critics have highlighted, UK right-wingers would have had a very different response to this desecration if Palestinians had been responsible.

Nothing is safe from Israel's genocidal destruction

Although an October 2025 ceasefire slowed the pace of Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza, there have been almost daily attacks from the occupation forces. These have killed over 556 people and injured around 1,500. That's almost five murders for every day of the 'ceasefire' so far.

Israel, meanwhile, has accepted that it has killed over 70,000 people in Gaza since October 2023. Over 20,000 of these were children. Because of the extreme number of murders, and the colonial power's destruction of over a third of grave sites, mass graves have been necessary.

The graves of Israel's allies in the West have not been safe either. As the Guardian reported on 4 February 2026, Israeli occupation forces "bulldozed" largely British and Australian graves in 2025. These were in the previously pristine Gaza War Cemetery in the occupied Palestinian territory.

Military historian Peter Stanley called this a "deliberate" act from Israel, which hadn't informed its Western allies at the time:

Israeli occupation forces also destroyed or heavily damaged Canadian and Indian plots in the cemetery too.

According to the Guardian:

Essam Jarada, Gaza cemetery's former caretaker, whose home is also close by, said two bulldozing operations took place at the cemetery in April and May 2025.

A1 February Commonwealth War Graves Commission update on the cemetery had said:

the cemetery has suffered extensive damage to headstones, memorials, boundary walls, staff facilities and storage areas. Memorials with reported damage are the 54th (East Anglian) Division Memorial, the Hindu Section, Indian UN Memorial, the Turkish section and the Muslim section.

Israel has predictably sought to justify the destruction of graves by blaming Hamas. And the apartheid state's far-right cheerleaders in the West have been very quiet about the decimation of soldiers' graves.

This is something many online were fully conscious of:

Where is the outrage from Suella Braverman, Nigel Farage, Robert Jenrick, Robinson and the rest of the 'patriots' about this?

The National: 'Israeli military have bulldozed part of a Gaza cemetery containing the war graves of dozens of allied soldiers - including from the UK…

— Sangita Myska (@SangitaMyska) February 5, 2026

There would have been global outrage if Palestinians had desecrated Commonwealth war graves. But because Israelis did it - crickets. https://t.co/4kAsgJXiiT

— Frances 'Cassandra' Coppola (@Frances_Coppola) February 6, 2026

The Palestinians who did care for the graves

In January 2023, Commonwealth War Graves Commission noted that:

Throughout its 100 year existence the cemetery has been lovingly tended by the Jaradah family with each generation passing its passion and knowledge onto the next. Now in its fourth generation, Head Gardener Ibrahim Jaradrah regards himself as 'a son of the cemetery' and leads a team of six staff in Gaza territory ensuring our cemeteries remain oases of calm despite the missile strikes, power cuts and make do and mend machinery.

Just reached 10 years with @CWGC. Proud to represent the fourth generation of my family.

Away from #Gaza celebration feels difficult.

Our photos there aren't just memories, but our connection and hope

Rights issues have hovered around the killer's iconic mask for decades.

Back in August, we wrote about the Department of Justice's unprecedented decision to file a judicial misconduct complaint against D.C. Chief Judge James Boasberg. The complaint, which Attorney General Pam Bondi tweeted about in what was itself likely a violation of the law governing such complaints, accused Boasberg of violating judicial ethics by… privately expressing concerns to other judges that the Trump administration might not comply with court orders.

Concerns that, as we noted at the time, turned out to be entirely justified.

Let's back up and explain what happened. The DOJ's complaint centered on comments Boasberg allegedly made at a private Judicial Conference meeting on March 11, 2025, where he supposedly "push[ed] a wholly unsolicited discussion about 'concerns that the Administration would disregard rulings of federal courts, leading to a constitutional crisis.'" The complaint cited "Attachment A" as evidence of what Boasberg said.

There was just one small problem: the DOJ never actually provided Attachment A with the complaint. Actually, there were many, many problems, but we'll get to those.

The complaint has now been fully resolved, and it went about as well for the DOJ as you might expect. Sixth Circuit Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton, to whom Chief Justice Roberts transferred the complaint, dismissed it in a brusque seven-page ruling that reads like a judge who is deeply unimpressed with having his time wasted.

As court-watcher Steve Vladeck put it in his detailed breakdown of the ruling:

Chief Judge Sutton's ruling is not just a tour de force in how a judicial ruling can persuasively give the back of its hand to a claim; it is, or at least ought to be, a humiliating smackdown for the Department of Justice—which bungled every single aspect of its misconduct complaint, from publicly announcing it to making spurious arguments about what the alleged misconduct actually was (the distinction between "public" and "private" really shouldn't be hard, nor should the fact that March 11 is prior to March 15) to refusing to provide the very evidence on which the complaint purported to rest.

Vladeck also noted, in discussing how the DOJ never actually followed through on the steps it would obviously take if it were a legitimate complaint,that this proved how it was all political in the first place:

It turns out, it was never about adjudicating Boasberg's behavior; it was about making splashy headlines and fueling right-wing attacks on the judiciary without regard to whether DOJ's specious charges would withstand meaningful scrutiny.

Besmirching a long-time judge… for the memes.

The problems with the DOJ's complaint were numerous, but let's start with the most embarrassing one mentioned above: the DOJ never actually provided the evidence it claimed supported its accusations.

The Department identified one source of evidence, Attachment A, for the judge's statement and for the setting in which it occurred. The complaint, however, did not include the attachment. The D.C. Circuit contacted the Department about the missing attachment and explained that, if it failed to submit the attachment, the circuit would consider the complaint as submitted. The Department did not supply the attachment.

In the absence of the attachment, the complaint offers no source for what, if anything, the subject judge said during the Conference, when he said it, whether he said it in response to a question, whether he said it during the Conference or at another meeting, and whether he expressed these concerns as his own or as those of other judges. Later in the complaint, to be sure, the Department refers to a Fox News clip discussing the same allegation. But it does not identify any source, contain any specifics, or answer any of the above questions. A recycling of unadorned allegations with no reference to a source does not corroborate them. And a repetition of uncorroborated statements rarely supplies a basis for a valid misconduct complaint

So the DOJ filed an unprecedented misconduct complaint against a sitting federal judge, made a huge public spectacle of it, and then when asked to actually produce the evidence supposedly supporting its claims… just didn't. Vladeck's assessment is appropriately blunt:

DOJ's failure to produce Attachment A is, frankly, mind-boggling…

But even putting aside the DOJ's failure to provide any actual evidence, Sutton methodically demolished every other theory in the complaint.

On the claim that Boasberg's comments at the Judicial Conference were somehow improper, Sutton pointed out that this is literally what the Judicial Conference is for:

A key point of the Judicial Conference and the related meetings is to facilitate candid conversations about judicial administration among leaders of the federal judiciary about matters of common concern. In these settings, a judge's expression of anxiety about executive-branch compliance with judicial orders, whether rightly feared or not, is not so far afield from customary topics at these meetings—judicial independence, judicial security, and inter-branch relations—as to violate the Codes of Judicial Conduct. Confirming the point, the Chief Justice's 2024 year-end report raised general concerns about threats to judicial independence, security concerns for judges, and respect for court orders throughout American history

(For what it's worth, as someone who had the privilege a couple years back of being invited to a judicial conference to give a talk, I can confirm firsthand that there were many fascinating informal conversations that occurred over the course of a few days among judges comparing notes and thinking through larger issues that might impact the judiciary).

On the DOJ's claim that Boasberg's comments constituted an improper "public comment" on a pending case, Sutton noted two rather obvious problems: the comments were private, not public, and the case the DOJ was concerned about hadn't even been filed yet:

The alleged comment does not refer to a case, and the J.G.G. action was not filed until four days later: March 15, 2025. Because the judge did not refer to a case, that all but guarantees that his comments did not "violate[] Canon 3A(6), Canon 2A, or the Judicial-Conduct Rules." In re Charges of Jud. Misconduct, 769 F.3d 762, 788 (D.C. Cir. 2014). The comment at any rate was not a "public" one, as it was made in a closed-door meeting in which the communications are off the record and confidential. The complaint, notably, does not claim that the judge made public what was said in private at the Conference or its related meetings.

As for the DOJ's argument that Boasberg's subsequent handling of the J.G.G. case (involving the shipping of Venezuelans to a Salvadoran concentration camp) somehow proved bias, Sutton wasn't having that either. The complaint, he noted, "does not explain how a Supreme Court ruling about a prior action by the judge necessarily shows willful indifference when the judge addresses a distinct set of circumstances in a later ruling."

Furthermore, Sutton points out that if the DOJ doesn't like Boasberg's rulings in a particular case, its remedy is… to appeal. Not claim misconduct:

When the executive branch's deep convictions about the law meet the judicial branch's deep convictions about the law in a trial court, the answer is to invoke the appellate process, not the misconduct process, to resolve the dispute.

And then, almost as an afterthought, Sutton reminded the DOJ that even if it had prevailed, the judicial misconduct process can't do what the DOJ apparently wanted it to do:

To the extent the complaint asks that the underlying case be reassigned to another judge, that is not a form of relief available through the complaint process.

In other words:

1. the DOJ filed a complaint
2. that was based on misleading evidence
3. which it never produced
4. alleging misconduct that (even if true) wasn't actually misconduct
5. propped up with claims of bias based on actions that occurred later
6. which could not be signs of bias, and finally
7. sought relief that wasn't even available.

If the DOJ were capable of embarrassment, this would be the time for it.

In his initial post on the complaint last year when it was filed, Vladeck had noted that the entire complaint was supposed to be a warning to other judges to shut up about any concerns about the Trump admin. One hopes that this ruling by Judge Sutton will reverse that and embolden more judges to do what's right.

But wait, there's more.

Because we now have even more evidence of just how absurd this whole episode was, thanks to a FOIA lawsuit seeking the mysterious Attachment A that the DOJ never produced. And thanks to that lawsuit, we've learned something remarkable: neither the DOJ nor the judiciary can actually explain how the DOJ came to possess this document in the first place.

In a declaration filed in that case, DOJ Senior Counsel Vanessa Brinkmann reveals some truly remarkable details about this document that was supposedly central to the DOJ's case against Boasberg. First, the DOJ confirms the document exists and describes what it is:

Upon initial review of the document identified in this action as "Attachment A," OIP observed that the document is a memorandum that bears the markings of a United States Court, is authored by a Federal Judge, and discusses matters internal to the Judicial Conference of the United States.

So it's a document created by the judiciary, for the judiciary, about internal judiciary matters. And what does the judiciary think about the DOJ having this document? They're not happy:

AOUSC Counsel conveyed to OIP, in no uncertain terms, the Federal Judiciary's strenuous objection to the Department's release of "Attachment A." AOUSC Counsel further articulated that "Attachment A" was created to be an internal Judiciary document, for a specific Judiciary audience, concerning confidential Judiciary matters and is not now, nor was it ever an Executive Branch document. In sum, AOUSC Counsel advised OIP that it is the position of the AOUSC that "Attachment A" remains under the control of the Judicial Branch, is confidential, and is not subject to disclosure pursuant to the FOIA.

But here's where it gets really interesting. How did the DOJ get this internal judiciary document in the first place? Apparently, nobody knows:

AOUSC Counsel further stated that the Judiciary made efforts to identify how "Attachment A" ended up in the possession of the Department and has not been able to identify a source of transmission of "Attachment A" from within the Judiciary to the Department. AOUSC Counsel additionally articulated that the Judiciary did not officially transmit or authorize the transmission of "Attachment A" to the Department or any external recipient. Specifically, AOUSC Counsel explained that, given the privileged nature of the document, the Judicial Conference at large would be the only entity that could approve its official release, and that it is the view of the AOUSC that the document is not an Executive Branch record subject to FOIA disclosure, but rather, a judicial record that remains under the control of the Judicial Branch.

And the DOJ's own investigation into how it acquired this document?

Searches conducted of DOJ leadership office officials' Departmental email accounts using e-discovery software revealed no electronic trail indicating transmission of "Attachment A" into the Department, nor has OIP's point of contact within OAG been able to identify how "Attachment A" was received by the Department.

So let's recap again:

1. the DOJ filed an unprecedented judicial misconduct complaint against a sitting federal judge based on a document that
2. it never actually provided as evidence
3. was created by the judiciary for internal purposes
4. the judiciary never authorized to be shared with the DOJ, and
5. neither the DOJ nor the judiciary can explain how the DOJ obtained in the first place.

This is the same DOJ that Attorney General Bondi claimed was acting to protect "the integrity of the judiciary."

All of this suggests that perhaps one of Vladeck's theories for why the DOJ refused to hand over Attachment A may have some weight behind it. He theorized that either Attachment A doesn't actually say what the DOJ claims or that they got it "through means that it's unwilling to have to identify—even confidentially as part of the judicial misconduct process." The declaration in the FOIA case would seem to bolster that last point.

As Vladeck notes, Sutton's dismissal should be the final word on this matter:

The outcome here should be seen for what it is: how a sober-minded jurist actually views these charges, versus how they're manipulated and broadcast by the Department of Justice and right-wing mouthpieces to serve partisan political ends.

As for the less sober-minded among the commentariat:

Anyone who continues to claim at this point that Chief Judge Boasberg has done anything worthy of further investigation and/or impeachment is telling on themselves.

But of course, that would require the people pushing this narrative to care about things like facts, evidence, and the rule of law. Based on the DOJ's conduct in this case, that seems like a lot to ask.

TL;DR: Buy a refurbished Apple MacBook Air (2017) 13" for 80% off at just $199.97 (Reg. $999).

With livestream shopping, limited drops, and over-the-top activations, ecommerce brands are doing everything to get you to buy their products. However, novelty doesn't speak to quality. — Read the rest

The post Never pay full price for Apple products again with this hack appeared first on Boing Boing.

From the first AI-generated Big Game ad courtesy of Svedka to Anthropic's beef with OpenAI, here are the biggest ads from Super Bowl LX.

WordPress users can now leverage Claude to analyze web traffic or find information about other internal site metrics.

Marketing stunt backfires with creators

The first rule of AI-generated job loss is you don't talk about AI-generated job loss ... if you're the company that caused it. Higgsfield.ai, a startup offering AI video creation tools, recently generated outrage when it claimed it had caused artists to hit the unemployment line.…

What happens if a Waymo runs into an elephant? The world model knows.

Is this what a frothy bubble looks like?

Even with the full rollout of Amazon's Alexa+ and Google's Gemini for Home, it feels like we're still shouting into the void.

An adult cast romance about a poison assassin seeking love loosely riffing on 'Naruto' is about as peak‑shonen a premise as you can get.

The noise-drone duo's co-founder is crowdfunding treatment

She sang a medley of the Italian standard "Nel Blu, Dipinto di Blu" and her own "Nothing Is Impossible"

submitted by /u/Monsur_Ausuhnom
[link] [comments]

Apple plans to allow third-party voice-controlled AI apps in CarPlay, Bloomberg reports. Siri is the default voice assistant for things like controlling music and looking up directions, but future AI apps in CarPlay could handle the complicated, open-ended requests Siri can't answer.

The expanded support would let developers like OpenAI or Google offer versions of their ChatGPT and Gemini apps for CarPlay. Similar functionality is possible just by connecting a smartphone to a car over Bluetooth and using an AI app's voice mode, but CarPlay support would presumably make the process a little more seamless. 

Not so seamless that it replaces Siri, however. Bloomberg writes that these third-party apps won't be able to replace the Siri button in the CarPlay interface or use their own wake words ("Hey Google," etc.). Instead, anyone who wants to spend a long drive talking to Gemini will have to open the app first. That could cut down on the utility of using one of these apps, but Apple presumably wants to get Siri to a place where CarPlay users prefer it as their in-car assistant anyway.

Apple and Google recently announced that Gemini would power future versions of Siri and Apple Foundation Models, the AI models underpinning Apple Intelligence. The delayed, updated version of Siri Apple introduced alongside Apple Intelligence in 2024 is supposed to be able to take actions on user's behalf, work across apps and understand the context of what's on screen, all things Gemini can currently do. Reports suggest Apple wants to eventually use Google's Gemini models to transform Siri into a proper conversational chatbot, too. That future version of the voice assistant could be right at home in CarPlay.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/apple-will-reportedly-allow-third-party-ai-assistants-in-carplay-213432646.html?src=rss

Now that is a promotion.

The mysterious businessman pitched Jeffrey Epstein on numerous mobility startups in an era when the sector was white hot, according to TechCrunch's review of hundreds of documents released by the Department of Justice.

On the red carpet at the premiere of Wuthering Heights - Australian actress Margot Robbie, when asked about her stunning necklace made two glaringly inaccurate statements.

Firstly, Robbie legitimises the ownership of the jewel to Hollywood:

It's Elizabeth Taylor's necklace. It is the Taj Mahal diamond that Richard Burton gave it to her… there is something kind of Cathy and Heathcliff about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in my mind.

Then, reaching for an older origin, she called the history of the necklace "amazing," musing that it belonged to "the woman whose grave is the Taj Mahal" — pointing not toward the powerful Empress Nur Jahan (1577-1645) who actually owned it, but to her more romantically memorialised stepdaughter, Mumtaz Mahal, who is indeed buried there.

The film has been accused of whitewashing Heathcliff — erasing his possible Romani or Black identity from the book to fit a palatable Hollywood romance.

While the BBC is busy rescuing the film's image by explaining away the backlash as passionate fandom or bold reinterpretation; maybe it's time to stop watering down these criticisms.

Margot Robbie — whitewashing the Origin Story

Margot Robbie's reply about the necklace shows just how successful Operation Legacy was.

Declassified British files reveal that Operation Legacy was the systematic, state-ordered destruction of thousands of "dirty" colonial documents in the 1950s and 60s. Lorries carried files to incinerators; crates of secrets were sunk at sea. In the words of a 2013 report, officials were desperate to consign atrocities and their paper trails to history, leaving successors and subjects in the dark.

It is not a stretch to imply that the history of the imperial loot of the diamond was buried with Operation Legacy.

The exact path of how the necklace left colonial India and entered the vaults of Cartier remains unclear, a gap in the record that itself speaks to the opaque channels of colonial extraction.

After being acquitted by Cartier in 1972, the jewel entered the orbit of Elizabeth Taylor through her then husband. It was later sold at auction in 2011 for a record $8.8 million to an anonymous bidder.

Again, Christie's auction house narrative also conveniently omits the Western acquisition, whilst exoticising the Mughal past.

An academic study of 19th century British press notes that:

Throughout imperial rule, both textual and illustrated newspapers produced reports and cultural representations of India, and more specifically its rulers, that highlighted exoticism and promoted a sense of cultural difference from British readers, subsequently creating an overall image of India that was stereotyped.

Christie's and Robbie have done the same thing: Romanticising the Mughal past but staying silent about the colonial loot.

Let's de-exoticise Nur Jahan.

Nur Jahan was politically one of the most important figures of the Mughal Dynasty. Historical and art history research reveals a formidable co-ruler: a skilled hunter depicted loading a musket in androgynous attire. A political strategist who issued coins in her name, and an economic strategist who commanded trade fleets and negotiated with European merchants .

According to a paper:

Maharani Nur Jahan, wife of Emperor Jahangir, was famed for her political intelligence and military skill and played an unrivalled role in ruling the Mughal Era. The Mughals were ardent supporters of art and culture, as seen by their exquisite buildings and distinctive handwriting

Nur Jahan's stepson, Shah Jahan, would later become famous for building the Taj Mahal in Agra, India, in memory of his wife, Mumtaz Mahal.

But what's less well-known is that the beautiful white-marble tomb he created was actually inspired by an earlier gem in Agra: the mausoleum Nur Jahan commissioned for her own father, Itimad-ud-Daulah. Often called the "Baby Taj," her design pioneered the intricate marble inlay and graceful proportions that would define the Taj Mahal itself.

Nur Jahan died in 1645 and is buried in Lahore, a city she helped beautify, alongside her husband Jahangir.

Nur Jahan's legacy is still alive today across both India and Pakistan — in Lahore, where she's buried, and in Agra where she first set marble and gems into poetry.

That shared history deserves better than the watered-down, exotic story we've been handed. It's time for both countries to reclaim her — not as some romantic side character, but as the powerhouse she truly was a ruler, a hunter, and a builder.

Other Loot

It's the same story playing out on a larger scale in British establishments.

The Koh-i-Noor diamond — seized by the British East India Company from a 10-year-old Punjabi Maharaja in 1849 — still sits in the Imperial State Crown, glittering in the Tower of London.

The swords and jewels of Tipu Sultan, looted after he was killed defending his fortress of Srirangapatna in 1799, still lie behind glass at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

So, while the Indian government made diplomatic noise in 2023 about getting the loot back, the reality in London hasn't budged. This highlights the colonial dynamic that is still at play.

What Margot Robbie's comments reveal is a familiar colonial reflex — one Hollywood knows all too well — of laundering imperial theft through re-angling the narrative.

Until colonial extraction is called THEFT, and not just "amazing history," empire remains alive and well.

Featured image via the Canary

By Nandita Lal

This week's stellar episode of the new 'Star Trek' series looked back at the legacy left behind by the captain of 'Deep Space Nine' and found the best perspective it could.

There's no evidence that Epstein is alive and hiding in Israel.

Back in 2023 we noted how a company named Telly proclaimed it had come up with a new idea for a TV: a free TV, with a second small TV below it, that shows users ads pretty much all of the time. While the bottom TV could also be used for useful things (like weather or a stock tracker), the fact it was constantly bombarding you with ads was supposed to offset any need for a retail price.

But apparently there's been trouble in innovation paradise.

Shortly after launch, Telly proclaimed that it expected to ship more than half a million of the ad-laden sets. Within a few months it had announced it had already received 250,000 pre-orders. But a recent report by Lowpass indicates that only 35,000 of the sets had made it to peoples' homes.

What was the problem? Ars Technica, Lowpass and The Verge note that the problems began with a substandard shipping process that resulted in a lot of TVs showing up broken to folks who pre-ordered. Reddit is also full of complaints about general quality control issues, like color issues, ads being played too loudly, odd connectivity issues, remote controls randomly unpairing, and more.

Still, there's evidence that the idea might still have legs, as the premise itself appears profitable:

"The investor update reportedly said Telly made $22 million in annualized revenue in Q3 2025. This could equate to about $52 in advertising revenue per Telly in use per month ($22 million divided by 35,000 TVs divided by 12 months in a year is $52.38).

That's notably more than what other TV companies report, as Lowpass pointed out. As a comparison to other budget TV brands that rely heavily on ads and user tracking, Roku reported an average revenue per user (ARPU) of $41.49 for 2024. Vizio, meanwhile, reported an ARPU of $37.17 in 2024."

The TV industry had already realized that they can make more money tracking your viewing and shopping behavior (and selling that information to dodgy data brokers) long term than they do on the retail value of the set. This just appears to be an extension of that concept, and if companies like Telly can get out of their own way on quality control, it's likely you'll see more of it.

In one sense that's great if you can't afford the newest and greatest TV set. It's less great given that the United States is too corrupt to pass functional consumer privacy protections or keep its regulators staffed and functional, meaning there are increasingly fewer mechanisms preventing companies like this from exploiting all the microphone, input, and other data collected from users on a day-to-day basis.

I personally want the opposite experience; I'm willing to pay extra for a dumb television that's little more than a display panel and some HDMI inputs. A device that has no real "smart" internals or bloated, badly designed GUI made by companies more interested in selling ads than quality control. Some business class TVs can sometimes fit the bill, but by and large it's a segment the industry clearly isn't interested in, because there's much, much more money to be made spying on and monetizing your every decision.

The science here gets really dark.

Gulikit's TT Pro and TT Max have many more stick and button options than a Switch 2 Pro controller, and they have one feature no other gamepad does.

The DOJ's release of Epstein-related documents was supposed to be redacted, but whoever did the job left a backdoor wide open. Email attachments were stored as base64-encoded text — basically, the raw PDF data converted to a string of letters and numbers — and nobody thought to remove them. — Read the rest

The post How sleuths are recovering hidden Epstein documents appeared first on Boing Boing.

One of the most surprising things to come out of the war in Ukraine has been the rapid adoption of drones by both sides. Outnumbered and outgunned but certainly not outmatched, the Ukrainian military began using small, modified off-the-shelf drones to drop munitions, support reconnaissance, and conduct raids. — Read the rest

The post A terrifying weapon is being used to save lives in Ukraine appeared first on Boing Boing.

Season 2 of the Fallout TV show just wrapped up. I thought it was pretty good, even if it does often fall into the trap of too much setup and not enough payoff. While there was no sign of the rumored New Vegas remaster (as much of a slam dunk as that would have been on Bethesda's part), I've been warding off the Wasteland blues with these really damn cool Fallout-themed LEGO models. — Read the rest

The post These Fallout LEGO models are incredible appeared first on Boing Boing.

If you attend a protest and post about it on Instagram, federal agents may already have a way to find out who you are. The Department of Homeland Security has administrative subpoena power — meaning it can demand records from tech companies, schools, and individuals without a judge's approval, without proving probable cause, and without notifying the person being surveilled. — Read the rest

The post ICE can demand your data from Google without a warrant appeared first on Boing Boing.

The acquisition could mark the beginning of consolidation in the carbon removal market since removal costs remain higher than buyers would like to pay.

This week's release of Opus 4.6 shook up the Agentic leaderboards

Like are people genuinely delusional enough to think that we're going to somehow magically escape this planet and all the destruction our civilization has directly caused and just start from scratch elsewhere? It's hilarious. Comical even. Terraforming a place like Mars would take centuries. It isn't practical. The universe is too vast.

I'm all for going into space and developing new technology like reusable rockets and so forth. But it feels like so much of this hoo rah, go team! hype is just artificially created to distract people from the grim reality here on Earth: increasing environmental destruction, technofascism, erosion of basic civil liberties and rule of law. Like a bunch of sycophants endlessly obsessing over rockets like a dick measuring contest and the "good ol days" of the 60s and 70s Space Race which was the result of a unique geopolitical climate that will likely never be repeated.

It just seems pointless to me. We have at best 30-40 years (very generous estimate) before things get very bad and unbearable here with climate change. We're not going to do anything significant in space within that time period. Sure, we might send more advanced satellites out. But this whole idea that we're going to colonize other planets or moons I just don't think is realistic. Why not focus all this effort and endless media sensationalism towards solving all the real, dire problems here on Earth first?

Like is this just a situation where the psychopathic, neo-Nazi, tech billionaire CEO oligarchs are attempting to ultimately create some new subspecies or master race of elite, obedient worker drones to build and thus join the new colony, leaving everyone else behind to die from either nuclear war or climate catastrophe? It seems that way in my view. They clearly know this planet is cooked, hence them building bunkers in remote locations. Hence them investing all this money and time into anything relating to space travel. Hence them buying governments and creating an alternate reality using social media where everyone who serves their interests is allowed to afford a somewhat decent life, and everyone else is doomed to a life of poverty.

Even if we miraculously manage to do all this in that time, what's the point? What's the point in starting from scratch on another world if the way our society views energy consumption now is still stuck in the 18th century? If our entire society is still based on primitive ideology? We're literally just going to destroy that place too. Like a cancerous tumor. What do we do then? I highly doubt this new colony would have a sustainable civilization separated from capitalism (socialism, etc), since that'd in turn diminish the need for and power of the oligarchs entirely. They'd be incredibly stupid to not continue hyper unregulated capitalism/fascism on this new planet too.

Curious to hear what other people think about this. This kind of stuff truly keeps me up and night, and I can't really talk about it with most of my friends irl.

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Traffic has improved inside and out of Manhattan.

The director was not going to make the film without the Skeletor we know and love.

A low-slung and compact 1978 Harley-Davidson FLH with hot rod underpinnings, masterfully built by Fatech.Countless parallels can be drawn between hot rods and custom motorcycles, but no one celebrates them quite like Minoru Watanabe. Watanabe-san runs Fatech in Tokyo, Japan, where he builds nostalgi...

Disney+ subscribers in some European countries have lost access to advanced HDR features like Dolby Vision and HDR10+, TechRadar and FlatpanelsHD report. The issue was first spotted by German Disney+ subscribers on Reddit, but currently also impacts subscribers in Portugal, Poland, France and the Netherlands, according to FlatpanelsHD.

"Dolby Vision support for content on Disney+ is currently unavailable in several European countries due to technical challenges," Disney said in a statement. "We are actively working to restore access to Dolby Vision and will provide an update as soon as possible. 4K UHD and HDR support remain available on supported devices."

If the issue is in fact a technical one, it seems like it could be around for the long-term. Disney has removed any reference to Dolby Vision from its Disney+ video quality support page in Germany. As of now, the company lists HDR10 as its default HDR format, despite Dolby Vision support being a feature of Disney+ for several years now. 

FlatpanelsHD writes that the real issue might be legal, rather than technological. A company called InterDigital won an injunction in a German court against Disney in November 2025 because it violated at least one of the company's patents on streaming video technology. The injunction specifically requires Disney to stop violating InterDigital's patent on "a method for dynamically overlaying a first video stream with a second video stream comprising, for example, subtitles." It's not entirely clear how that plays into the company offering Dolby Vision and HDR10+ in Europe, but it would explain why subscribers in Germany were some of the first people to notice Dolby Vision's absence.

Engadget has contacted Disney for more information about Disney+'s missing HDR support and whether InterDigital's injunction played a role. We'll update this article if we hear back.

Mentions of Dolby Vision and HDR10+ were also stripped out of the US version of Disney+'s video quality support page. InterDigital hasn't won an injunction in the US, but the company is pursuing a patent case against Disney in the United States District Court for the Central District of California. That doesn't necessarily mean Dolby Vision support will be taken from US subscribers next, but it does suggest there's more happening here than just technical challenges.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/disney-loses-access-to-dolby-vision-and-hdr10-in-some-european-countries-193930091.html?src=rss

Your Party has allegedly blocked a member of Zarah Sultana's Grassroots Left slate from sitting on a committee responsible for making sure upcoming internal elections are conducted in a fair manner. This raises concerns because the person was blocked by a senior member of Jeremy Corbyn's opposing slate, The Many. It raises questions about just how real democracy is in the new party.

Your Party elections

Your Party is currently gearing up for its upcoming Central Executive Committee (CEC) elections on 26 February.

This marks a crucial step in establishing the new political party's structures. These elections are integral to enabling branches across the country to formally constitute, allowing them to organise effectively and campaign on local and national issues within their communities. However, recent revelations appear to confirm members' concerns that socialism and genuine democracy are inconvenient obstacles for those who currently hold the reins - and the party's resources.

Verified evidence seen by the Canary raises serious concerns that Jeremy Corbyn is allowing ally Karie Murphy to exert undue control over internal democratic processes. Far from uniting socialists as promised, these developments appear to confirm long-held fears that grassroots members are being frozen out unless they belong to 'Jeremy's team'.

Socialist? BLOCKED

Originally, members of Your Party made it clear that they wanted an elected oversight committee formed ahead of the CEC election. Supporters argued that this approach would make committee members more representative of the entire membership, bridging divides and differences of opinion.

However, figures on The Many slate allegedly objected, instead pushing for - and implementing - a sortition process that selected five members to carry out crucial oversight. Given the public bickering and clashes driven by strong views on both sides, members generally accepted this compromise as fair in principle.

However, it now appears that principle and process are not the priority for those gearing the party's democratic processes.

The Canary has been told that Karie Murphy exclude one sortition member from being involved in the Your Party committee, literally blocking her number and ignoring her very existence.

One Your Party member who wished to remain anonymous told the Canary:

This blatant and arrogant power-move by Murphy has now confirmed prior reports received that those with the reins are only happy with members having a say, if you are firmly loyal to their camp alone. Once again, actions by figures within the party suggest a failure to learn from past mistakes, calling into question whether they possess the principles and resolve needed to confront the far right and unite, rather than divide, and empower the communities they claim to represent.

Access denied in Your Party

The Your Party sortition member has requested to remain anonymous. Also worth noting sortition members are usually meant to be anonymous to ensure safeguarding of democratic processes and efficient electoral oversight. Her experience went as follows:

When I was called by Karie Murphy a few weeks ago I actually ignored the call the first time, I'd become accustomed to doing that trying to avoid debt collectors asking for payments I can't make.

But when I didn't recognise the number I decided to call back immediately. The woman on the phone explained to me that I had been sortitioned as part of the selection process for a Your Party Election oversight committee. The woman said I would be required to attend regular meetings with MPs supporting Jeremy Corbyn such as Adam Shockat.

I remained quiet during her brief pause which I only assume she expected I'd fill with some line about how I'm 'a big fan'. I was a big fan, but that's not true anymore, Corbyn's no socialist and he'd proven which class he really stands with time and again. Her mention of Adam Shockat the sexist and Jeremy Corbyn only reminded me of what I'd be up against, but I knew I couldn't let this opportunity pass. I told this woman, who I later learned was actually Karie Murphy, that I was in regular attendance at YP meetings and that this could be great because I could get the input of a wider part of the membership.

Similarly to my holding back at the mention of Corbyn and Shockat, Murphy remained quiet. Nonetheless, I knew she couldn't backtrack now that I had been offered the position, I thought.

I told her I was wanting to accept the offer and that this was really important to me. Immediately she responded with asking what I did for a living, when I mentioned my job role she said it may be difficult for me to get permission at work. I knew that my job would in no way be related to or jeopardised by a position on an election oversight committee and that any request made to my employer would just be a matter of procedure. This was so important to me that I would have risked my job to be given the opportunity to just mirror the voices of highly experienced and well qualified activists I've met since becoming involved within Your Party.

I asked to be sent the information and confirm my interest, the woman told me that she was waiting for someone else to send her the information first but would then be in contact with me the next day to send over the details and officially confirm my interest. I immediately spoke to my Trade union rep after the phone call, he confirmed with me that this would not conflict with my job but I would be required to make a formal request with the key details. The next day I waited but heard nothing back, no emails, no phone calls, no messages.

After two weeks someone told me that the elections oversight committee were set to meet. I had started to question whether the whole thing was still going ahead, I knew the majority of members initially had wanted the committee to be elected.

I was confused, I hadn't seen any emails but double checked all of my folders to be sure. I double checked my call log and messages but there was nothing that I'd been sent. Confused, as I was meant to have been sortitioned for this committee, I decided to ring the person who rang me two weeks earlier. User busy.

I then messaged the person asking for the details and received no response. Having gotten nowhere, I later asked a friend to try calling the phone number for me and somehow she was able to get through to this Scottish woman who we later realised was Karie Murphy. Karie Murphy who after learning I would lean far too left for the politics of Corbyn and 'The Many', blocked my number and banked on the left to be disorganised enough to be able to get away with it. Well we're not, and we won't let them get away with it.

This is why Democracy is important, these MPs ultimately want to dampen your impact in order to protect their own interests, shape their own policies and we are getting in the way.

The GL in YP are the only players on the board offering any real solution against rising wealth inequality, unemployment, rise of fascism, cuts to welfare at home. And that's because they are the only real players capable of delivering on their promises; decentralised power, MPs held accountable, no more going back on manifestos because it's not them who decide policies, it's us.

Ultimately people need to understand that this is again another story of class war, a group of MPs trying to hold onto their wealth , and therefore means of power, will ultimately never act in our interests and this time the cost is too high.

We should have expected it with Labour, we can expect it with Greens and we will do everything in our power to oppose it in 'The Many' by forming the party as in the vision of YP GL, Democratic, Grassroots and transformational, in short, a party truly shaped by the many, not just a small group of elite MPs claiming to speak for us.

The GL of YP are the only real players in British politics right now capable of stopping the loss of lives the Global South, and then eventually we, will face if we reach the point of no return in terms of the climate crisis. By exiting Britain out of NATO, ending its funding of imperialism and genocide as well as, crucially, ending its role in the exploitation of the Global south, Your Party could start a possible chain reaction that might lead to the spread of socialism in Europe. I don't think we can ignore that possibility especially given the current level of working class organisation we are seeing.

We know that the climate question can't be solved while the global capitalist system continues. The overconsumption is choking us.

I think it's important to keep an eye on the climate because I don't want my family in the global south to die right now but I also know that there is nowhere to run, I am aware of the eventual cost to life we will face here and worse with the threat of AI, under the current system, the working class risks being nothing more than an inconvenience to have around, and what power would the workers have then in the absence of work. We will be cattle in a slaughterhouse.

No smoke without fire

The Canary contacted Your Party for comment on the issues raised in this article. However, we did not receive a response at the time of publication.

Another Your Party insider close to the project has also spoken to the Canary and confirmed:

It became very personalised. If you didn't show total loyalty to Jeremy being the sole leader, he and the people around him basically, they won't work with you.

This raises urgent, unavoidable questions for Jeremy Corbyn and his team. Members say they have had enough of anti-democratic practices and the old tactics of Labour-right. After years of watching establishment parties impose top-down control, they surely did not come together to replicate the very model they set out to challenge. True democracy is the only cure to fascism.

Featured image via the Canary

By Maddison Wheeldon

Pep Guardiola's press conference was not a routine preview of a Manchester City match. Nor was it about tactics, results, or team selection. What happened was something else entirely.

The coach, known for teaching football with philosophical rigour, stepped off the pitch and asked a painful question about an entire profession: why is the press silent? Guardiola, synonymous with modern football and his historic partnership with Lionel Messi at Barcelona, did not shed his role as a coach. Instead, he expanded it.

Guardiola's press conference a place for reflection

In a moment that felt sincere and unplanned, the press conference turned into a space for reflection when a journalist asked him:

Why do these issues matter so much to you?

Guardiola smiled, then replied with frustration:

I appreciate this question, because in ten years — or even the last two — this is the first time a journalist has asked me that. It's as if talking about these issues isn't allowed in your work. I don't know.

This was not a throwaway comment. It exposed a deep failure in media practice, especially when compared to coverage of Russia's war on Ukraine.

Then, sports press conferences became political platforms overnight. Players and coaches were routinely asked for political positions. No one complained about "politicising sport". Neutrality vanished — but only in one direction.

Now, Guardiola speaks against that selective silence. He is not defending himself, but protesting the lack of scrutiny around Israel's war of extermination in Palestine, which has killed more than 70,000 civilians and destroyed the foundations of life. That silence extends beyond Gaza. It reaches Sudan, where war has displaced millions, and a global climate fuelled by racism and hate against migrants.

Guardiola's criticism was not aimed at one journalist. It was directed at an entire media system hiding behind the idea of "separating sport from politics".

That principle has been used to ignore crimes and violations — particularly those committed by Israel — while athletes who express solidarity with Palestine face smears, silencing, and symbolic punishment. This has happened to figures such as Anwar Ghazi, Noussair Mazraoui, and Ons Jabeur.

Sports journalism is not light entertainment or a harmless supplement. It is journalism. It carries responsibility, accountability, and a duty to side with humanity against systems of oppression. Yet many outlets choose safety. They rebrand silence as "sportsmanship" and neutrality as morality. The irony is that these institutions fully understand the power of sport. FIFA president Gianni Infantino once called football "global magic".

That magic becomes dangerous when it escapes the approved script.

Once again, Guardiola left the pitch — not to explain a game plan or an injury — but to offer a lesson:

Never before in human history has information been so visible. What's happening in Palestine, Ukraine, Russia, Sudan. When I see these images, I feel pain. That's why I will do everything I can to help build a better society.

This was not a political speech. It was a reminder of journalism's most basic duty: to see, to ask, and to refuse silence.

This time, the journalists found themselves back in training — while the football manager reminded them of their job.

Featured image via Youtube

By Alaa Shamali

It shouldn't shock anyone that an organisation whose founder and director publicly wrote, "Hinduism is the father of all religions. Islam is a bad copy. Islam is against humanity", is opposed to defining and addressing anti-Muslim hate. What might shock some is that this organisation, Hindu Council UK (HCUK), has the ear of mainstream media outlets like The Telegraph and has the audacity to "warn" the government about how to approach Islamophobia.

Hindutva is migrating across the globe from India

A recent academic investigation called 'Seeing the Sangh' has laid out a comprehensive map of the 'largest far-right network in history'.  This refers to the organisational complex that centres on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), India's dominant group promoting Hindutva ideology, otherwise known as Hindu supremacy or Hindu nationalism.

Hindu supremacy and accompanying anti-Muslim hatred have been exported across the world with devastating effects from cultural soft power to political lobbying to violence. I monitor this closely, and founded Hindus for Human Rights UK (HfHR UK) to help fight Hindutva, caste, and bigotry in the British diaspora.

Not only does Hindutva politics now exist in many countries — notably the UK, the USA, Canada, and Australia — it collaborates with other extremist movements in those countries, with Islamophobia forming the common ground between otherwise strange bedfellows.  The Hindutva movement was complicit in the UK's 2024 racist pogroms; its proponents engage positively with the likes of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Geert Wilders; neo-Nazi mass murderer Anders Breivik was an admirer of Hindutva.

Hindu Council UK and the bigotry of its leadership

'Seeing the Sangh' identifies 2,500 organisations that make up the global RSS network, or Sangh Parivar (RSS family), 26 of which are in the UK. Writer-activist Amrit Wilson explains in Byline Times that the "Hindu right has systematically set up, or taken over, a host of organisations in the UK." including the Hindu Council UK, founded in 1994 by one Anil Bhanot.

Bhanot has published op-eds in the Guardian, been covered widely in mainstream media, and held unique positions like Hindu Chaplain in the Royal Navy and Hindu Advisor to the Ministry of Defence. Yet, in 2024 Bhanot was stripped of his OBE for "bringing the honours system into disrepute" with his Islamophobia.

In 2021 Bhanot posted extreme anti-Muslim and Hindu supremacist tweets (now deleted), describing himself as "Hindutva" and asserting that "Islam is a religion of violence."  He went on, "Islam's dawah is an evil tenet and the sooner it's legislated against in parliament the better. It turns muslims into Shaitans, as in love Jihad too."  Love jihad is an Islamophobic conspiracy theory.  Bhanot summed up: "Hinduism is the father of all religions. Islam is a bad copy. Islam is against humanity" and an "invasion into minds".

Bhanot brazenly defended his hate speech by saying:

I did not do anything wrong and I have not put the honours system into disrepute.  Free speech is a thing of the past now in England.  I am quite upset about it.

Grotesquely, his now-stripped OBE was awarded for "community cohesion".  National Secular Society writes:

HCUK has been highly vocal in its opposition to anti-caste discrimination law. In 2017 its then-director of interfaith relations Anil Bhanot claimed that attempts to outlaw caste discrimination via the Equality Act were a "vengeful" act of Dalits (the bottom tier of the Hindu caste system) stemming from animosity towards 'higher castes'.

To abuse one's senior position at a public-facing organisation to gaslight and block legislation that would protect Dalits is indefensible.

HCUK "warning" the government against Islamophobia definition

But Hindu Council UK is not dissuaded by the indefensible. Despite their director's far-right diatribe and unashamed Islamophobia, HCUK thought it appropriate to write a letter to the Communities Secretary about Islamophobia, "warning" against: creating a "chilling effect" on free speech; helping to reintroduce blasphemy laws, and; suppressing criticism of Islam.

Five organisations, including HfHR UK, responded.

The Hindu Council UK's letter to the government stated that:

Freedom of expression includes the right to offend, to challenge and to criticise ideas, indeed Hinduism encourages intellectual debates that has made it robust.

We therefore question why Hindu Council UK is trying, through the Hindu Manifesto for example, to make it illegal to:

accus[e] those who organise around anti-Hindu hate of being agents or pawns of violent, political agendas.

We believe that this "accusation", though it may be found offensive by some, belongs well within the realm of freedom of expression, the right to offend, and the right to criticise ideas.

No one should be surprised that HCUK is trying to control the discourse around a form of hate — Islamophobia — that its leadership espouses. But why would The Telegraph amplify this malicious lobbying and uncritically parrot the line that HCUK represents all British Hindus?

Demonopolising British Hindu representation

Just as Hindu Council UK attempts to position itself as the voice of all British Hindus, the Telegraph article in question is titled, "Hindus warn Labour against 'chilling' Islamophobia definition", reducing the diversity of the one million-plus Hindus in this country down to the views of a single, bigoted group. This is an insult to British Hindus of conscience.

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised by this either given The Telegraph's tendency, along with other right-wing entities, to produce anti-Muslim narratives.  My request to The Telegraph to publish a response to their coverage went unanswered, so HfHR UK and four other organisations co-published our response in FORSEA.

We face an uphill battle as the British Hindu voice has long been captured by supremacist, anti-Muslim bigots, and some mainstream publications are only too ready to amplify them.  HCUK is just one part of the UK's Hindutva lobby, accompanied by Hindu Forum of Britain, National Hindu Students' Forum, the VHP UK, and many more.

But there is an extensive network of resistance too — our joint response to the HCUK's "warning" demonstrates the resolve of our five organisations, a small section of the landscape. The monopolistic control over Hindu advocacy that Hindutva groups have enjoyed in this country for years is coming to a close as progressive alternatives like HfHR UK are drawing in British Hindus by the day.

Featured image via the Canary

By Rajiv Sinha

YouGov polling from February 2026 shows 78% of the UK public support rent controls. But why regulate a scam when you can get rid of it? That's what the Green Party is proposing.

The Green Party position

The Green Party has rent nailed in their "Abolish Landlords" policy, which was successfully voted on at their conference in 2025. The motion read:

The Private Rental Sector has failed, it is a vehicle for wealth extraction, funnelling money from Renters to the Landlord Class. This motion makes it clear Green Party policy is to seek the effective abolition of Private Landlordism.

The Green Party believes that secure, affordable Housing is a Human Right, and that a core goal for a Green Government and Green MPs is to create a fairer housing market.

The Green Party believes the existence of Private Landlords adds no positive value to the economy or society, that the relationship between Landlord and Tenant is inherently and intrinsically extractive and exploitative. That the Private Rented Sector exists to transfer wealth from the working classes to Landlords.

The Green Party believes that the Private Sector has fundamentally failed, and is continuing to fail to provide secure and affordable housing fit for working people.

The thing is, the Green Party wants to move towards social housing, which is essentially state landlordism. While it provides money for the government, people already pay council tax. Social rent is like an additional tax on housing.

Instead, home ownership should be provided through affordable monthly payments for the baseline cost of the resources and expertise that it took for the house to be built. 'Cost price' housing should be the aim, not just rent controls or social housing.

Housing bubble

Currently, there is a housing bubble propped up by the super rich buying properties as 'assets' while supply is starved off through a lack of building. The governing party is doing even worse than the Green Party's plans through pledging to provide 1.2% of their housebuilding programme as social or 'affordable'.

Plus, Common Wealth warned in February 2025 that Labour's housebuilding programme risks being dominated by private equity firms charging eye-watering rents in the Build to Rent sector.

The thinktank pointed out that Build to Rent properties in the UK have increased to 20% of all new builds in recent years.

As the Green Party rightly points out, the relationship between landlords and tenants is "inherently… exploitative". But we can do better than state landlordism and rent controls.

Featured image via the Canary

By James Wright

These 19th century Valentine's Day cards are like mini sculptures. The cards contain illustrations and paper cutouts that transform into 3D scenes when opened. Inside these gorgeous geometric shapes are love notes for the receiver.

From Gohar World on Instagram:

"A very Gohar Valentine: paper cobwebs from The Met's Department of Drawings and Prints.

— Read the rest

The post Victorian valentines hid love notes inside intricate paper sculptures appeared first on Boing Boing.

The City of Chicago Streets and Sanitation Department has announced that voting is now open for their fourth annual "You Name a Snowplow" contest. Past winners have included awesome and hilarious names such as Bozo the Plown, Lollaplowlooza, and My Kind of Plow (2025); Skilling It, CTRL-SALT-DELETE, and Mies van der Snow (2024); and Mrs. — Read the rest

The post Choose from "Abolish ICE," "Chance the Scraper," and more when you cast your vote in Chicago's 2026 "You Name a Snowplow" contest appeared first on Boing Boing.

This video by designer/illustrator Brandon Campbell is innovative and engaging. He elevates the art of making and using rubber stamps by developing his own custom stamping tool. Watch him carve the tool from a small rubber square and then make awesome art out of it. — Read the rest

The post Watch this artist carve an octagonal stamp that rolls out cartoon cars appeared first on Boing Boing.

This lovely animation comments on the idea that our screens are consuming us. Although it takes a screen to watch this animation, it's a good reminder that too much screen time can mess with us. There are three slides in this series, and in each one, a being becomes more and more morphed into a chaos-filled screen (until he is the screen). — Read the rest

The post This animation shows what doom-scrolling does to your brain appeared first on Boing Boing.

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