The current "cease-fire" in Gaza was sold to the world as the beginning of a long-term peace process that would stabilize the region, foster reconstruction, and provide a solution to generations of bloody fighting. Israel accepted the framework, but somehow, dead civilians after military strikes are still commonplace. — Read the rest

The post Israeli cease-fire still involves killing women and children appeared first on Boing Boing.

Republican hopes to maintain control of Congress have entered the Find Out phase.

Faced with losing control of the House over his unpopular policies, Donald Trump pressured Texas and other states into gerrymandering Democrats out of office. California reacted by voting to redistrict Republicans out of their jobs in response. — Read the rest

The post Supreme Court declines to save Republicans from their own redistricting arms race appeared first on Boing Boing.

Over the past week, two federal judges have issued rulings on immigration cases that aren't just legally significant—they're genuinely extraordinary documents. One includes a photo of a five-year-old in a Spiderman backpack, biblical citations, and closes with Ben Franklin's warning about keeping the republic. The other spends 83 pages methodically dismantling a cabinet secretary's decision, includes screenshots of her social media posts, and concludes that she "pounds X (f/k/a Twitter)" instead of following the law. Both judges reached back to the Founders to make their points. Both dropped any pretense of the typical judicial deference afforded to the executive branch. And both made crystal clear that they see what's happening for exactly what it is.

Let's start with the shorter one. Judge Fred Biery in the Western District of Texas issued a brief but devastating opinion granting habeas corpus to Adrian Conejo Arias and his five-year-old son, Liam—the child whose photo went viral wearing a blue hat with ears and a Spiderman backpack when he was kidnapped by federal agents in Minnesota and shipped to a detention center in Texas. Judge Biery didn't mince words:

The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children. This Court and others regularly send undocumented people to prison and orders them deported but do so by proper legal procedures.

He then offered what he called a "civics lesson to the government," including reminding them of some key parts that were in the Declaration we signed 250 years ago to be free from a monarch:

Apparent also is the government's ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence. Thirty-three-year-old ThomasJefferson enumerated grievances against a would-be authoritarian king over our nascent nation. Among others were:

1. "He has sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People."
2. "He has excited domestic Insurrection among us."
3. "For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us."
4. "He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our Legislatures."

"We the people" are hearing echos of that history.

And then there is that pesky inconvenience called the Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and persons or things to be seized.

U.S. CONST. amend. IV.

And the startling conclusion to the civics lesson the US federal government got from a judge.

Civics lesson to the government: Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster. That is called the fox guarding the henhouse. The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer.

And in case anyone missed the point, Biery closed with a reference you don't often see in federal court opinions: "Philadelphia, September 17, 1787: 'Well, Dr. Franklin, what do we have?' 'A republic, if you can keep it.'" Followed by: "With a judicial finger in the constitutional dike, It is so ORDERED."

The ruling includes the photo of the five-year-old child, and two biblical citations. The first to "Jesus said, 'Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.'" and the second to… "Jesus wept."

If Judge Biery's ruling was a shot across the bow—short, sharp, impossible to miss—then Judge Ana Reyes's 83-page ruling in the Haitian TPS (Temporary Protected Status) case is a full broadside. Where Biery reached for the Declaration and the Bible, Reyes brings receipts—83 pages of them—that lay bare just how far federal judges have moved from customary deference to open incredulity.

The ruling opens with a letter from George Washington in 1783 declaring that "America is open to receive not only the Opulent & respected Stranger, but the oppressed & persecuted of all Nations & Religions."

Then it gets to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem's position on immigration:

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem has a different take.

The ruling then includes a screenshot of Noem's X post declaring "WE DON'T WANT THEM. NOT ONE. THEY ARE ALL KILLERS, LEECHES, AND ENTITLEMENT JUNKIES. WE DONT WANT THEM HERE."

Judge Reyes notes dryly: "So says the official responsible for overseeing the TPS program."

The plaintiffs in the case are five Haitian TPS holders whom Judge Reyes takes pains to introduce:

They are not, it emerges, killers, leeches, or entitlement junkies. They are instead: Fritz Emmanuel Lesly Miot, a neuroscientist researching Alzheimer's disease; Rudolph Civil, a software engineer at a national bank; Marlene Gail Noble, a laboratory assistant in a toxicology department; Marica Merline Laguerre, a college economics major; and Vilbrun Dorsainvil, a full-time registered nurse.

The ruling systematically dismantles every single aspect of Secretary Noem's decision to terminate Haiti's TPS designation. But the section on DHS's supposed "consultation with appropriate agencies" is particularly brutal.

The TPS statute requires the Secretary to consult with appropriate agencies before making a termination decision. Here's what that "consultation" actually looked like:

On Friday, September 5, 2025—that is, the same day that the NTPSA court set aside the Partial Vacatur of Haiti's TPS designation—a DHS staffer emailed a State staffer at 4:55 p.m.: "Due to the litigation, we are re-reviewing country conditions in Haiti based on the original TPS deadline. Can you advise on State's views on the matter?" The State staffer responded within 53 minutes: "State believes that there would be no foreign policy concerns with respect to a change in the TPS statue of Haiti."

This was it. The full extent of the supposed consultation with appropriate agencies.

The judge notes that she believe she "must be missing something" and included a bit of the transcript from the hearing:

Court: So in the Federal Register notice, the Secretary wrote, "After reviewing country conditions and consulting with appropriate U.S. Government agencies, the Secretary determined that Haiti no longer meets the conditions for the designating as TPS"; right?

Government Counsel: Yes.

Court: What were the appropriate agencies that the Secretary consulted? . . .

Government Counsel: So, Your Honor, it's the Department of State email found at 409 and 410. That is what we have. . . .

Court: No other agency was consulted?

Government Counsel: No other agency was consulted. . . .

Court: And the extent of the Department of State consultation was the email exchange at 409 and 410.

Government Counsel: That is my understanding

The judge's response to this 53-minute email exchange being presented as statutory "consultation" is unsparing:

Congress did not vest the Secretary with Humpty Dumpty-like power to make the word "consultation" mean "just what [she] chooses it to mean—neither more nor less."

It gets worse. The court notes that the State Department's own Travel Advisory for Haiti—the document that literally says "Do not travel to Haiti for any reason"—was updated after Noem's first termination attempt. The updated version, warning of worsened conditions, doesn't even appear in the administrative record. The Secretary responsible for making this determination simply didn't look at her own government's assessment of the country's safety.

Then there's the pattern. As of this ruling, Secretary Noem has terminated TPS designations for every single country that has come up for review since taking office. Twelve countries. Twelve terminations. The ruling includes a handy chart:

Twelve for twelve. Judge Reyes notes this is "unprecedented in the thirty-five years since the establishment of the TPS program for a DHS Secretary to terminate every TPS designation that crosses her desk for review."

The ruling then gets into the substance of Noem's reasoning—or lack thereof. The Secretary claims there are parts of Haiti "suitable to return to" but never identifies a single safe location. Indeed, the Court gave the government a chance to explain exactly where these "parts" of Haiti that were safe were, and was not impressed by the answer:

According to Secretary Noem, "data surrounding internal relocation does indicate parts of the country are suitable to return to." But the Secretary cited no data to support this proposition and failed to identify a single safe location. In response to an inquiry from the Court, the Government cited an October 29, 2025, USCIS memo in the administrative record as the supporting analysis. "The memo," it noted, "reflects that individuals have been internally displaced, thereby indicating that Haitian residents found certain areas in Haiti that could be suitable for return." But the memo also fails to identify a single safe location by name or even geographic area. And the fact that, as the memo notes, 1.3 million Haitians—around twelve percent of the population—have been "internally displaced due to escalating violence" says nothing about whether they escaped to suitable areas. If anything, those areas are presumptively now less suitable for return, having been inundated with internal refugees.

Meanwhile, the administrative record is full of statements like these:

"Haiti's crisis has reached catastrophic levels" — Human Rights Watch, January 2025

"The violence has increased dramatically in 2024" — Doctors Without Borders, January 2025

"Haiti is paralyzed" — Crisis Group, February 2025

"Top United Nations Officials Urge Swift Global Action as Haiti Nears Collapse" — UN Security Council, July 2025

"The people of Haiti are in a perfect storm of suffering" — UN Secretary-General Guterres, August 2025

Against all of this, Secretary Noem concluded that "there are no extraordinary and temporary conditions in Haiti that prevent Haitian TPS holders from returning [to] safety." Judge Reyes is incredulous that the Secretary's analysis relies on "emerging signals of hope" rather than actual changed conditions:

Unable to identify present conditions supporting her conclusion, Secretary Noem turns instead to speculation about future improvement. Each source she cited speaks to how Haiti might improve in the future. She quoted a UN article referencing Secretary-General António Guterres's statement that despite ongoing violence in Haiti, "'there are emerging signals of hope.''' He cautioned that "these fragile gains" depend on "more decisive international support." Emerging signals of hope, of course, are not actual change. Secretary-General Guterres's full remarks to the UNSC underscore this point. They do not describe a nation on the brink of recovery. Rather, they describe a nation in crisis, whose future hinges on internal "unity" and "resolve from [the UNSC]."

The ruling also destroys the government's "national interest" analysis, which focuses on immigrants attempting to enter the US illegally and those who overstay visas. The problem? TPS holders are already here. Legally:

Secretary Noem's analysis also focused on those who "overstay their visas" and so remain in the country unlawfully. Id. She claimed that these overstayers "may be harder to locate and monitor," increasing vulnerabilities in immigration enforcement systems. See id. She also said they "place an added strain on local communities by increasing demand for public resources, contributing to housing and healthcare pressures, and competing in an already limited job market." Id. But Haitian TPS holders are not in this cohort either. They are in the U.S. lawfully. See Jan. 6 P.M. Hr'g Tr. at 85:15-87:12. Indeed, TPS holders are easy to locate because they regularly update their address information with DHS to maintain that status and their work authorization. See id. at 94:25-95:6. And Secretary Noem provides no data to support the overgeneralization that those who overstay their visas are a strain on their local communities. See Dkt. 122. They may well cause a strain, but terminating Haiti's TPS termination not alleviate it because, again, Haitian TPS holders do not fall into this cohort.

Regarding that confusion of TPS visitors being here legally, meaning they literally cannot overstay their visas, the judge notes in a footnote how absurd part of the government's argument is:

With respect, this borders on the absurd. The latter has zero relation to the former or reality.

When asked where in the record the Court could find data on TPS holders represented in "overstay" rates (based on those who maybe overstayed visas prior to getting TPS status), the government comes up empty. See if you sense where the judge loses patience:

The Government responds by speculating that maybe some Haitians overstayed their visas before obtaining TPS status. Maybe. Who knows? Not Secretary Noem. The Court asked the Government: "[w]here in the [CAR] can the Court find the percentage of TPS holders represented in the overstay rates?" The response: "The [CAR] does not contain data that is this finely dissected." Which is to say, not enough people to even bother counting.

The equal protection analysis is where things get really pointed. Judge Reyes catalogs President Trump's statements about Haitians and other nonwhite immigrants:

President Trump has made—freely, at times even boastfully—several derogatory statements about Haitians and other nonwhite foreigners. To start, he has repeatedly invoked racist tropes of national purity, declaring that "illegal immigrants"—a category he wrongly assigns to Haitian TPS holders—are "poisoning the blood" of America. He has, Plaintiffs allege, complained that recently admitted nonwhite Africans would "never 'go back to their huts' in Africa." He has complained further that nonwhite immigration is an "invasion," creating a "dumping ground" that is "destroying our country." He has described immigrants as "not people," "snakes," and "garbage," who have "bad genes." He has also stated that he prefers immigrants from "nice"—predominantly white—countries like Norway, Sweden, and Denmark over immigrants from "shithole countries"

President Trump has referred to Haiti as a "shithole country," suggested Haitians "probably have AIDS," and complained that Haitian immigration is "like a death wish for our country." He has also promoted the false conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants were "eating the pets of the people" in Springfield, Ohio. Even after that (ridiculous) claim was debunked, he claimed they were eating "other things too that they're not supposed to be." About two weeks after the Termination, he again described Haiti as a "filthy, dirty, [and] disgusting" "shithole country." He stated: "I have also announced a permanent pause on Third World migration, including from hellholes like Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia and many other countries." Then continued, "Why is it we only take people from shithole countries, right? Why cannot we have some people from Norway, Sweden, just a few, let us have a few, from Denmark." It is not a coincidence that Haiti's population is ninety-five percent black while Norway's is over ninety percent white.

The ruling notes that Trump's statements came close in time to Noem's decisions, and that Noem herself has made her own views clear, as noted in the screenshot, calling Haitians "leeches, entitlement junkies, and foreign invaders" just three days after making the Termination decision.

And then we get to the conclusion. It's worth quoting at length because you really don't see this kind of language from the bench:

There is an old adage among lawyers. If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither, pound the table. Secretary Noem, the record to-date shows, does not have the facts on her side—or at least has ignored them. Does not have the law on her side—or at least has ignored it. Having neither and bringing the adage into the 21st century, she pounds X (f/k/a Twitter).

And then the kicker:

Kristi Noem has a First Amendment right to call immigrants killers, leeches, entitlement junkies, and any other inapt name she wants. Secretary Noem, however, is constrained by both our Constitution and the APA to apply faithfully the facts to the law in implementing the TPS program. The record to-date shows she has yet to do that.

These rulings represent something we've been watching develop for months now: federal judges completely abandoning the traditional deference typically afforded to government positions, because the government has made clear it doesn't deserve it. The DOJ's credibility has been in freefall, and judges are no longer pretending otherwise. They're reaching back to Franklin and Washington as genuine warnings about what happens when executive power operates unchecked by law or facts.

Some people will dismiss this as "activist judges." But what we're seeing is something different: judges trying to do their actual jobs—reviewing whether the government followed the law—and finding that the government isn't even pretending to follow it anymore.

The administration is ignoring statutory requirements entirely, fabricating rationales after the fact, and treating judicial review as an inconvenience to be steamrolled rather than a constitutional check to be respected. We're not talking about simple judicial disagreements of interpretation of the law. These opinions read more like desperate signals from the bench that something has gone very, very wrong.

I've seen some complaints—in particular about the first short ruling—that it doesn't read in a very judicial manner. The lack of citations is a bit startling, and probably bodes ill if the government appeals. But that's almost the point. When a judge includes a photo of a child in a Spiderman backpack, cites "Jesus wept," and closes with Ben Franklin's warning about keeping the republic—or when another judge spends 83 pages documenting that the Secretary of DHS ignored her own agencies, ignored the evidence, ignored the law, and instead "pounds X"—they're writing for more than an appeals court. They're writing for history. They're writing for the public. They're sick of the lies and the gaslighting, and the simple fascism of it all in a supposed constitutional democracy. And they want to make damn sure that someone, somewhere, is paying attention.

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The two murders by immigration officers during Trump's vengeful "surge" in Minneapolis, Minnesota have grabbed most of the headlines recently. And deservedly so. The violent rhetoric used by nearly every administration official — combined with a lack of training and the explicit understanding no one will be punished by Trump for whatever's done in Trump's name — has delivered a day-to-day purge of minorities that this government and its supporters continue to pretend is nothing more than good, solid (immigration) law enforcement.

But before those shootings turned the nation's attention to Minnesota, hundreds of federal officers had been turned loose in other "Democrat" states. Because officers were encouraged — by arrest quotas and the administration's portrayal of anyone from other countries as inherently dangerous — to succeed by any means necessary, they did… even if it meant filling people with bullet holes for being on the wrong side of Trump's version of history.

In January, two Venezuelans were shot by ICE officers. The DHS immediately claimed this was a good shoot, considering how potentially violent these recipients of bullets were.

Yesterday, two suspected Tren de Aragua gang associates—let loose on American streets by Joe Biden—weaponized their vehicle against Border Patrol in Portland. The agent took immediate action to defend himself and others, shooting them. 

After fleeing, the suspects drove nearly five miles to an apartment complex and called emergency medical services. They were transported to separate hospitals. Luis David Nino-Moncada sustained an injury to the arm while Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras was hit in the chest. Nino-Moncada is now in FBI custody. These individuals are not married.  

I've highlighted two things from this January DHS press release. Sure, it's all bullshit but these two sentences need to be called out.

First, just because someone managed to cross the border doesn't mean they were "let loose on American streets" by a presidential administration.

Second, what the fuck even is this? "These individuals are not married." Who gives a shit? What bearing does this have on anything? Or are we so far down the white Christian nationalist rabbit hole that simply co-habitating a moving vehicle is justification enough for being shot by federal officers?

Any normal administration would never have included those two sentences, even if it wanted to push the narrative that the people who were shot were dangerous enough to justify the violent reaction. Throwing this shit into the mix is just how the Trump administration does business: like two kids piggy-backed in a trenchcoat, pretending to be a full-grown adult.

And that's enough to let everyone know very little of what is being said is true. It's a dog whistle for racism, sexism, and making-a-bunch-of-shit-upism that is meant to appease the Bigot in Chief and make MAGA's collective panties so wet they should be asking FEMA for flood relief grants. (I'm paraphrasing Shoresy here.)

While that may look good on the permanent DHS press release record, it doesn't look nearly as bully-smart (I'm coining that) as the people spewing it thinks it does when it runs up against the part of the government that isn't so easily swayed by bigoted gibberish that's interspersed with partisan attacks and non sequiturs.

Now that these shootings are being handled in court, the narrative (and I'm being extremely gracious here in treating this froth as the equivalent of an actual narrative) is disintegrating. It turns out prosecutors and investigators can't actually back up these wild-ass DHS claims. Forced to rely on facts, the DOJ is finding out it doesn't have many to work with.

During the border patrol stop, the driver, Luis Niño-Moncada, "weaponized their vehicle against" officers, DHS said, prompting an agent "to defend himself and others" by shooting the occupants. Zambrano-Contreras was hit in the chest, Niño-Moncada was hit in the arm and both were hospitalized, then taken into federal custody, DHS noted. The agents were uninjured.

But court records obtained by the Guardian reveal a Department of Justice prosecutor later directly contradicted DHS's Tren de Aragua statements in court, telling a judge: "We're not suggesting … [Niño-Moncada] is a gang member." An FBI affidavit issued following the incident also suggests that in the previous shooting cited by DHS, Zambrano-Contreras was not a suspect, but rather a reported victim of a sexual assault and robbery. Neither Niño-Moncada or Zambrano-Contreras have prior criminal convictions, their lawyers have said.

This is just as sloppy as the quasi-gang database the DHS has been using as an excuse to send Venezuelans to El Salvador's CECOT hell hole. There's no investigation going on here. There's just the DHS claiming that any Venezuelan it shoots or otherwise brutalizes is probably a Tren de Aragua gang member.

No doubt some prosecutors are going to get shit-canned for daring to oppose the DHS's self-serving narrative in their sworn statements to judges. Given that the DOJ really can't afford to lose many more of these, one wonders why this administration can't simply provide a "no comment," rather than immediately push narratives that it has to know will be contradicted once the facts arrive at the scene.

I mean, just stating what happened in whatever exonerative form you want to use ("officer-involved shooting"), followed by the assertion that the shooting is currently under investigation would be far better than what this administration chooses to do EVERY CHANCE IT GETS.

Whatever dubious charm these statements might have held during Trump's blustery return to office has long worn off. I suspect even many of the MAGA faithful are getting a little tired of every incident being greeted by government statements that are long on hyperbole but short on facts. Sure, there are still a number of people so fully-cooked that they can't achieve an erection without being lied to for paragraphs at a time, but given this constant onslaught of pure garbage in response to government violence, I have to believe some of the people who very definitely voted for this are rolling their eyes every time DHS front-mouth Tricia McLaughlin opens her mouth.

Yesterday, 3 February, the Scottish parliament voted against moving forward with a bill that would have criminalised sex work.

The Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill was introduced by independent MSP Ash Regan. However, it was defeated at the very first hurdle, at which MSPs agree on the general points of a bill. It lost by 64 votes to 54.

The proposed laws would have closely followed the 'Nordic model' of criminalisation. The problem, however, is that the Nordic model is incredibly dangerous for sex workers themselves.

As the law stands in Scotland, both soliciting in public and keeping a brothel are illegal. However, it is currently legal to arrange to sell sex online, and to pay for sex.

The bill would have made it an offence to pay for sex in any way. Meanwhile, it would have decriminalised the act of selling sex, along with repealing historic convictions for solicitation. In this, it mirrors the Nordic model of sex work criminalisation, which specifically targets the buyers — not the sellers — of sex.

The SNP, Green and Lib Dems opposed the bill, whilst Labour and the Conservatives backed it. However, a small faction of SNP ministers rebelled to vote in support of the proposals.

Minister for Victims and Community Safety Siobhian Brown stated that there were "very significant" issues with the proposals that the Scottish parliament wouldn't have time to correct.

In particular, she highlighted that the online nature of the proposed offences would make it extremely difficult to enforce. She also pointed out that the bill could reduce sex workers' ability to gauge the risk that individual buyers pose, thereby increasing the threat of violence against them.

In this, Brown has echoed the sentiments of Scottish sex workers themselves — always a good thing, given that the bill affects them most directly. Grassroots campaign group Sex Workers for Decrim opposed the bill from its inception, stating on social media that:

This will increase violence against us. It will increase our likelihood of being evicted, and it will further isolate us and drive us underground.

As the Canary's Rachel Charlton-Dailey explained, in areas where the Nordic Model has been adopted, violence against sex workers has increased at a horrific rate. In Northern Ireland, it increased by 225% from 2016 to 2018, according to the Irish Ministry for Justice.

During the Holyrood debate, Regan stated that:

This 'Unbuyable Bill' recognises prostitution for what it is - a system of exploitation and violence sustained by demand. It decriminalises those who are sold, recognising them as people constrained by vulnerability and not offenders.

And it places criminality where it has never properly sat in Scots law, with those who buy sexual access and those who profit from the sale of sexual access to human beings.

Now, don't get us wrong, we're completely here for the decriminalisation of sex work. However, if we're coming out swinging for people who are forced into an exploitative system, we have bad news for you about our entire economic system.

Now, this isn't to say that sex workers don't face risk and violence in their line of work. However, criminalisation — of buying or selling — forces that work underground, making it more difficult to report harm or organise for better conditions.

After the defeat of her bill, MSP Regan said:

Today, Parliament chose cowardice over action - despite overwhelming evidence, survivor testimony, and support from police, prosecutors and international experts.

Inaction is not neutral. It is a decision, and it has consequences.

Of course, that overwhelming evidence doesn't include Amnesty International, the World Health Organisation, or the sex workers themselves who have clearly stated that the Nordic model harms the workers.

SNP MSP Michelle Thomson, who joined the rebellion in support of the bill, spoke to BBC Scotcast on the topic. She argued that her party members should have been allowed to choose which way to vote. Likewise, she also added that women should not be "traded as commodities", and asked SNPs to reject:

the entitlement of some men to demand the purchase of women.

This framing is itself deceptive. The opponents of sex workers frame the profession as solely female because it allows them to frame the issue as protecting 'helpless' women from violent men. Not only is this deeply paternalistic, it also ignores the fact that somewhere between 6 and 20% of sex workers are men.

And again, there's the fact that most of us trade our bodies as commodities.

Across the aisle, Lib Dem party leader Alex Cole-Hamilton took a pragmatic approach in opposing the bill:

We can't wish prostitution away and as it will forever exist we need to make sure it happens in the safest possible way.

Green MSP Maggie Chapman also spoke out against the bill, in favour of letting people decide what they do with their own bodies:

Where sex work happens between consenting adults, I believe the state should support people not penalise them for how they choose to live.

This, for us, gets to the heart of the matter. We're not interested in whether you think buying or selling sex is a moral failing — we're not bloody philosophers.

The debate around sex work foregrounds the fact that it is frequently coercive and exploitative. However, all work involves a degree of exploitation and coercion — you need food, clothes, somewhere to live, and you don't get a choice in the matter.

What's true is that most sex work, currently, carries some unique risks of both harm and exploitation. However, criminalisation only exacerbates these problems. Sex work is happening, it's not going away, and efforts to make it go away harm the workers — so the problem in front of us is making it as safe as humanly possible.

Making sex work as safe as possible for the workers themselves means the same as it does for all workers. It means unionisation and worker's rights, but those cannot happen without decriminalisation and destigmatisation. Any other option is sophistry.

Featured image via Red Umbrella Fund

By Alex/Rose Cocker

On World Cancer Day, patients in Gaza face a double and merciless threat: cancer itself and a devastated healthcare system.

Thousands now face an uncertain future after hospitals were damaged and the only specialised cancer centre stopped operating. Border crossings remain closed, preventing patients from travelling for treatment.

Gaza's health situation is no longer a temporary crisis. It has become a daily tragedy.

Patients are trapped between severe physical pain and the absence of essential medicines. Hospitals lack early-diagnosis tools and proper monitoring, turning treatable cancers into life-threatening cases.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health, in a statement seen by Kanari, says around 11,000 cancer patients in Gaza are now deprived of specialised treatment and proper diagnosis. Conditions worsened after specialised hospitals were rendered inoperable and the Gaza Cancer Center was destroyed, pushing the health system close to total collapse.

More than 4,000 patients with referrals for treatment abroad have been waiting over two years for crossings to open. Their health continues to deteriorate while they wait.

A 64% shortage of cancer medicines, alongside the absence of MRI and mammography machines, has sharply increased delayed diagnoses and mortality risks.

The cancer crisis in Gaza extends far beyond physical suffering.

Patients and families live under immense psychological pressure, caught between fear of death and the inability to access or afford treatment. Harsh living conditions intensify that burden. The wider community also suffers. Cancers easily treatable elsewhere become prolonged battles in Gaza, draining families emotionally and financially.

International silence deepens patients' sense of abandonment, worsening an already profound humanitarian trauma.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health has called for immediate international action to allow patients to travel for treatment, ensure the entry of vital medicines, and rebuild cancer care facilities.

The ministry warned that continued inaction amounts to a slow death sentence for thousands, cautioning that Gaza faces an unprecedented health and humanitarian catastrophe unless urgent intervention occurs.

Featured image via Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

By Alaa Shamali

Israel is always the victim — in its own eyes. That applies to the groups that support it too, like the avowedly Zionist 'Board of Deputies' (BOD). So, naturally, as far as the BOD is concerned today's exoneration by a jury of six anti-genocide Palestine Action activists is not justice. It's a slight to the BOD and other Israel supporters.

It's 'antisemitism', in other words.

In a statement, the BOD described the verdicts as "troubling". It then said that "respect [for] the judicial process" is "important". And it then made clear that it has no respect for the judicial process by implying the acquittals don't mean, under British law, that the accused are innocent of the serious charges against them. Therefore they are still guilty and deserving of punishment they should not be "able to evade".

Evade by means of being found not guilty. The fiends.

This was the BOD's nonsense in full:

04.02.2026 ​

We are concerned by the troubling verdicts acquitting members of Palestine Action, an organisation that has been proscribed as a terrorist group, and whose activities have included targeting businesses linked to the Jewish community in London and Manchester. ​

While it is important to respect the integrity of the judicial process, there is a serious danger of perverse justifications being used as a shield for criminality. ​ It cannot be the case that those who commit serious criminal acts, including violent assaults, are able to evade the consequences of their actions. ​

We look to the Government to provide clear direction in tackling hate crime and extremist violence. ​ This incident underlines the urgency of the Home Office's current review into public order and hate crime legislation. ​

We are grateful to the officers who attended the scene and the CPS for prosecuting this case. ​ We urge the prosecution to proceed with a retrial in respect of those charges where the jury was unable to reach a verdict, particularly given the severity of the injury suffered by Police Sergeant Evans.

To be clear: none of the defendants has been found to have injured police sergeant Evans.

And, since it's certain neither the BOD nor the UK corporate media are ever going to refer to it, video evidence proved that police and security guards lied about pretty much everything that happened. And the accusers were not even able to come up with convincing lies even though the police left the Israeli arms-maker in charge of the video evidence for a whole year.

Scandalously, despite the verdicts, the CPS has demanded that the humanitarian defendants — after a year and a half as political prisoners — must not simply walk free. Five of them have been put back on bail — and one, Sam Corner, has been denied bail and put back in prison.

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.

Featured image via FiltonActionists

By Skwawkbox

Making a good digital picture frame should be easy. All you need is a good screen and an uncomplicated way to get your favorite photos onto the device. Combine that with an inoffensive, frame-like design and you're good to go.

Despite that, I can tell you that many digital photo frames are awful. Amazon is positively littered with scads of digital frames and it's basically the 2020s version of what we saw with knock-off iPods back in the 2000s. There are loads of options that draw you in with a low price but deliver a totally subpar experience that will prompt you to shove the thing in a drawer and forget about it.

The good news is that you only need to find one smart photo frame that works. From there, you can have a pretty delightful experience. If you're anything like me, you have thousands of photos on your phone of friends, family photos, pets, vacation spots, perhaps some lattes or plates of pasta and much more. Too often, those photos stay siloed on our phones, not shared with others or enjoyed on a larger scale. And sure, I can look at my photos on my laptop or an iPad, but there's something enjoyable about having a dedicated place for these things. After all, there's a reason photo frames exist in the first place, right? A great frame can help you send photos to loved ones and share cherished memories with friends and family effortlessly. I tested out seven smart photo frames to weed through the junk and find the top picks for the best digital frames worth buying.

While a digital photo frame feels like a simple piece of tech, there are a number of things I considered when trying to find one worth displaying in my home. First and foremost was screen resolution and size. I was surprised to learn that most digital photo frames have a resolution around 1,200 x 800, which feels positively pixelated. (That's for frames with screen sizes in the nine- to ten-inch range, which is primarily what I considered for this guide.)

But after trying a bunch of frames, I realized that screen resolution is not the most important factor; my favorite photos looked best on frames that excelled in reflectivity, brightness, viewing angles and color temperature. A lot of these digital photo frames were lacking in one or more of these factors; they often didn't deal with reflections well or had poor viewing angles.

A lot of frames I tested felt cheap and looked ugly as well, which isn't something you want in a smart device that sits openly in your home. That includes lousy stands, overly glossy plastic parts and design decisions I can only describe as strange, particularly for items that are meant to just blend into your home. The best digital photo frames don't call attention to themselves and look like an actual "dumb" frame, so much so that those that aren't so tech-savvy might mistake them for one.

Perhaps the most important thing outside of the display, though, is the software. Let me be blunt: a number of frames I tested had absolutely atrocious companion apps and software experiences that I would not wish on anyone. One that I tried did not have a touchscreen, but did have an IR remote (yes, like the one you controlled your TV with 30 years ago). Trying to use that with a Wi-Fi connection was painful, and when I tried instead to use a QR code, I was linked to a Google search for random numbers instead of an actual app or website. I gave up on that frame, the $140 PixStar, on the spot.

Other things were more forgivable. A lot of the frames out there are basically Android tablets with a bit of custom software slapped on the top, which worked fine but wasn't terribly elegant. And having to interact with the photo frame via touch wasn't great because you end up with fingerprints all over the display. The best frames I tried were smart about what features you could control on the frame itself vs. through an app, the latter of which is my preferred method.

Another important software note: many frames I tried require subscriptions for features that absolutely should be included out of the box. For example, one frame would only let me upload 10 photos at a time without a subscription. Others would let you link a Google Photos account, but you could only sync a single album without paying up. Yet another option didn't let you create albums to organize the photos that were on the frame — it was just a giant scroll of photos with no way to give them order.

While some premium frames offer perks like unlimited photos or cloud storage, they often come at a cost. I can understand why certain things might go under a subscription, like if you're getting a large amount of cloud storage, for example. But these subscriptions feel like ways for companies to make recurring revenue from a product made so cheaply they can't make any money on the frame itself. I'd urge you to make sure your chosen frame doesn't require a subscription (neither of the frames I recommend in this guide need a subscription for any of their features), especially if you plan on giving this device as a gift to loved ones.

For a frame with a nine- or ten-inch display, expect to spend at least $100. Our budget recommendation is $99, and all of the options I tried that were cheaper were not nearly good enough to recommend. Spending $150 to $180 will get you a significantly nicer experience in all facets, from functionality to design to screen quality.

Yes, as long as you know what to expect. A digital picture frame makes it easy to enjoy your favorite shots without printing them. They're especially nice for families who want to display new photos quickly. The key is understanding the limitations. Some frames have lower resolution displays or need a constant Wi-Fi connection to work properly, so they're not a perfect replacement for a high-quality print on the wall. But if you want a simple way to keep memories on display and up to date, they're a solid choice.

Most modern digital frames let you do this, but it depends on the model. Many connect to Wi-Fi and use apps, cloud storage or email uploads, so you can add photos from your phone no matter where you are. Some even let family members share directly, which is great for keeping grandparents updated with new pictures. That said, a few budget models only work with USB drives or memory cards, so check how the frame handles uploads before buying.

Georgie Peru contributed to this report.

Hot on the heels of AGDQ in January, Games Done Quick is hosting its second speedrunning event of the year, Back to Black 2026, starting tomorrow, February 5. The four-day event is organized by Black in a Flash and is raising money for Race Forward, a nonprofit that works across communities to address systemic racism.

Back to Black is timed to the start of Black History Month and highlights the deep bench of talent in the Black speedrunning community. A few runs, like ones for Hades II, Donkey Kong Country and Silent Hill 4, were teased when Back to Black 2026 was announced last year. The full schedule has plenty of other runs worth checking out, though, like a co-op run through Plants vs Zombies: Replanted on February 5 or an Any% run of The Barbie Diaries: High School Mystery on February 6.  

Back to Black 2026 will be live on Games Done Quick's Twitch and YouTube channels from Thursday, February 5 through Sunday February 8.

Steve Bannon wants ICE agents surrounding polling places this November. "We're going to have ICE surround the polls come November," Bannon said on his War Room podcast Tuesday. "We're not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again." — Read the rest

The post "We're going to have ICE surround the polls," Bannon says appeared first on Boing Boing.

Artemis II, the first crewed mission to orbit the moon since 1972, has been delayed again. The February 8 launch was scrubbed after hydrogen leaks were discovered during testing.

After an earlier launch was scrubbed due to extreme cold at the Florida launch site, NASA ran a "wet dress rehearsal" with the rocket's fuel tanks loaded with liquid hydrogen and oxygen. — Read the rest

The post Artemis moon mission delayed appeared first on Boing Boing.

Observations of "snow flowers" made by microscope in Edo-era Japan.

Taking dictation, revising manuscripts, typing copies, literary amanuenses often labour for little compensation and even less recognition. Christine Jacobson explores the neglected efforts of women like Theodora Bosanquet, Véra Nabokov, and Valerie Eliot, who — through their work as typists, editors, and champions — had a profound impact on modern literature.

Keir Starmer has admitted knowing all about his disgraced senior adviser Peter Mandelson's continuing close ties to serial child-rapist Jeffrey Epstein.

Before he appointed him to be ambassador to the US.

It was already a matter of record that Starmer knew when he told MPs last September that he had full confidence in Mandelson. Mandelson was removed as ambassador shortly afterward — but kept on the government payroll. That month's Epstein file release underscored Mandelson's infatuation with Epstein, but their ties had been on record long before.

And now Starmer has admitted that security vetters had warned him — before Mandelson's US appointment — about the Blairite (now) former peer's close relationship with the monstrous rapist and child trafficker.

Of course they did. That was never in doubt, but now is admitted. But the cover-up continues.

Starmer said he will 'release all material' relating to the vetting, but with the glaring exception of:

national security and "international relations" exemptions.

'National security and international relations exemptions' like Epstein's status as an Israeli spy.

'National security and international relations exemptions' like the 'who's who' of UK and other state officials who enjoyed 'recreation' on Epstein's island — no doubt while Mandelson was there.

'Exemptions' like Mandelson's equally close friendship with former Israeli PM — and alleged brutal rapist — Ehud Barak, whom the latest released files shows trained Epstein as a spy.

No doubt. But none of the 'mainstream' media seem to find this obvious issue worth pointing out.

The UK state's protection of the vilest will no doubt one day be the stuff of textbooks and histories — like Starmer's collaboration in Israel's genocide. That is too late.

Full disclosure now — and punishment to the full extent of UK and international law of all those involved whether before, during or after the fact.

Featured image via the Canary

By Skwawkbox

BBC News reported yesterday that the US Department of Justice has had to remove thousands of documents related to convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, as they have compromised the identities of women who have been victimised by the elite-run web of sexual violence, abuse, and exploitation.

The outlet further stated that the "flawed redactions" of the Epstein Files have made nearly 100 survivors vulnerable, with the women's lives "turned upside down." However, the mainstream media circus around the release of the files is conveniently diminishing both the horror and scrutiny of these atrocious crimes, as well as the accountability of the powerful figures responsible for them.

One thing is clear. The release of the Epstein files was certainly not to protect the victims and survivors of Epstein's depraved network. The women and girls who bore the brunt of these atrocities have been sidelined even in the official reveal of their experiences.

According to BBC News, on Friday 30th January two lawyers for Epstein's victims insisted that a New York federal judge order the DOJ to remove the website holding the files. They stated that the negligent release was:

the single most egregious violation of victim privacy in one day in United States history.

At the Canary, we agree wholeheartedly.

This US-led failure to redact identifying images and names of victims has made the complete removal of such content the only viable response. Once again, women around the world are left feeling exposed and vulnerable, while so-called efforts to 'protect women' operate instead to shied powerful perpetrators of abuse. Yet again, a manipulative and abusive system has retraumatised the very women it was ostensibly meant to serve.

Given US President Donald Trump's appearance in the files, photographed with Epstein's so-called "harem" of young girls, too little attention focuses on the fact that rich, powerful men once again seem able to deter and deflect true accountability. Anyone who has experienced abuse knows this all too well: men often act without recognizing - or admitting - the harm they cause.

Abolish the Monarchy. https://t.co/yyNBmVlN6z

— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) February 1, 2026

Unfortunately for those powerful patriarchal arseholes, many women see straight through it and are at the end of their tether. They remind us that unless we dismantle the structures and hierarchies of power, the abuse will never end. As a white woman, I believe it is essential that white Western women confront our complicity - whether intentional or not - and come together in solidarity against all abuse. This means rejecting the Western patriarchal scapegoating of 'brown men' and confront the reality that white men have inflicted - and continue to inflict - vast harm. Abuse is about power; not race.

We wrote recently on the practice of Nazi-like eugenics amongst Epstein and his ilk of superior, privileged rich boys. Discussing the characteristics of the men who have assumed powerful positions in politics and business, our own Robert Freeman wrote:

All this is ultimately the product of an economic and political system that practically guarantees the most poisonous humans imaginable rise to the top. Capitalism rewards the most ruthless and domineering among us, not the kindest and most compassionate.

Those attracted to being a CEO — with the ability to control potentially thousands of lives — are unlikely to be good people. Once there, wealth grants them the ability to evade the law and control the political realm. With greater power comes greater impunity, and an already degraded soul rots still further. It's a system that selects for, then refines, the worst traits of our species.

The Epstein documents have produced an outpouring of fury, and an increasing clarity to the realisation that an entire system needs to be dismantled and reconstructed into something less misanthropic. We've had enough warnings by now of "Nazi like" reprobates controlling our lives. An imminent return to something akin to Nazism looms unless an alternative course is pursued urgently.

There is a reassuring factor for women that yes, it is not 'all men'. Nevertheless, many women with platforms have demanded that we no longer center reassuring men that we aren't 'demonising all of them'. Instead, they insist that we finally center the very valid truth that whilst it might not be all men (thankfully), it is all women and girls.

All women and girls are likely to experience abuse or its consequences at some point in their lives. This truth is depressingly clear: the Epstein scandal proves that abuse does not occur in isolation - it spreads widely, thrives systemically, and men carry it out overwhelmingly. Even women and girls who never experience abuse firsthand live alongside its effects: they support survivors, navigate fear, and adapt their lives to avoid risk. The problem does not lie in individual morality alone; power structures actively enable abuse to continue and minimise its consequences, leaving no woman untouched by its impact.

It is time we empathise and choose to empower women and girls, not continue this toxic cycle of even the reveal of abuse not centring the abused.

The Canary's Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu put across this argument powerfully and poignantly in a post on Instagram:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu (@sholamos1)

Where are the white women? I'm looking, but I can't see. Let me put my glasses on. I still don't see them. You see, my shattered eye, we're just wondering where the white women are following the release of the Epstein files. Because I don't see white women protesting on the streets. I do not see white women collectively, undeniably being visible and vocal in exercising their white power, white fragility, and white tears to hold to account powerful white men that have subjected and deliberately targeted white women and white girls for rape, sexual molestation, sexual abuse, and sex trafficking. Where are the white women? How are white women so collectively silent and performatively powerless.

Let's break it down. Where are your bastions of white femininity? The protectors of the white female body? Where are your white female politicians and your white female media personalities? White female commentators? You know, those advocates of anti-Muslim, anti-Islam, anti-immigration because we have to protect the women and children where they are right now because everything seems quite crooked. We're the white women who take to the streets protesting and demanding that white women and children be protected from the asylum seekers and the refugees and the immigrants and they do not even give an iota of that same energy to powerful white men who pose a greater significant risk to their bodies than asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants.

Where are the white women whose white peers have unjustly sent black men to their deaths by state execution, either by the police or by the state because they have lied? Huh? Oh my God, I'm just as scared to say black man. Where are your white peers against a powerful white man that have targeted you for rape and sexual abuse? Where are the white women who exercise white power on a daily basis to say to black men, no, you don't work there. No, you don't live there. You don't belong here. Where's that white power now against a powerful white man? Now I'm not talking about the white women who've been doing the Lord's work, speaking out against these powerful white men and have endured all kinds of persecutions including character assassination, who've been actively anti-racist, who've been unequivocally against the patriarchal power structure. Now I stand with them in solidarity.

Now I'm talking to you multitudes of white women who excuse the inexcusable, defend the indefensible because you're telling us it was never about protecting white women and children. You see the stats don't lie. White men commit the most sexual crimes, rape, sexual abuse of children, and sex trafficking. That's the fact. The fact also is that the problem are men. Yes, not all men. But you see, if we work together collectively, white, black, and brown women, against a patriarchal power construct that protects the men who commit these crimes, we will shut this shit down.

As Dr Shola powerfully states, it is time for women and girls everywhere, regardless of ethnicities or religion, to come together.

We must find our humility and refuse to continue being the continual playthings of patriarchal men.

Featured image via the Canary

By Maddison Wheeldon

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is widely viewed as a strong contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, particularly by Gavin Newsom. But his record is a real problem, just not in the way pundits think it is. 

Take, for example, his determination to thwart the 2026 California Billionaire Tax Act, which would impose a one-time 5 percent levy on residents of the state worth $1 billion or more. This is hardly Bolshevism, as keen mathematicians will note that 5 percent still leaves 95 percent, meaning those affected would wake up the next morning in the same economic bracket that calls to mind a camel and the eye of a needle. Regardless, Newsom remains firmly in the plutocrats' corner.

There was also his appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, late last month — always a popular destination for those angling for high office — amid President Donald Trump's lunge toward Greenland. Just as European leaders were discovering that, having tolerated U.S. imperialism in Venezuela, it was now threatening their own backyard, Newsom kindly offered some unsolicited advice, scolding them that "Trump is a T. rex — you mate with him or he devours you, one way or the other, and you need to stand up to it." (The revelation that T. rexes can be defeated by standing up to them will come as a surprise to anyone who's seen "Jurassic Park.") Trump, for his part, merely shrugged in response: "I used to get along so great with Gavin."

Last week and with much publicity, Newsom launched a review of TikTok's moderation practices, accusing the platform of suppressing Trump-critical content after a deal was finalized to transfer Chinese ownership of the app to a consortium of pro-Israel, Trump-loving billionaires, including Larry Ellison and Michael Dell. It is unsurprising that social media is an issue of concern for Newsom, as he is apparently the last person on Earth under the impression the Trump administration can be tweeted into submission, a strategy which will surely pay dividends any day now.

Finally, students of shameless self-promotion may already be familiar with "This Is Gavin Newsom," the podcast launched in early 2025 in which the governor has sought to bridge the political divide by sitting down for chummy dialogue with far-right celebrities like Ben Shapiro and the late Charlie Kirk. What this looks like in practice is Shapiro goading Newsom into denying Israel's genocidal conduct in Gaza, while Kirk earned Newsom's fulsome agreement about the nefarious menace of trans women playing sports. 

Yet there are those in the political media unbothered by all this — if anything, it is the kind of thing they would like to see more of. Instead, their concern comes from a different direction, if not an alternate universe, altogether.

Writing in The Atlantic late last month, Marc Novicoff and Jonathan Chait argued "Gavin Newsom's Record Is a Problem." While acknowledging he has "sensed what Democrats want … and is delivering it with a roguish charisma" (your mileage may vary), they nevertheless worry he may be perceived as too progressive. This will, one assumes, be followed by essays on why Chuck Schumer is too courageous and JD Vance is too likable.

Novicoff and Chait posit that Newsom's tenure as governor has seen California "fall hard for faddish progressive policies on immigration, education, and crime that either didn't work, violated the intuitions of most Americans, or both." As proof, they offer the state providing Medicaid to undocumented immigrants and gender-affirming health care for prisoners, both of which they present as catastrophic missteps that will come back to haunt him in 2028.

Such is the modern centrist credo: to overcome a perception rooted in fantasy, it may be necessary to make the reality of people's lives worse.

Such is the modern centrist credo: to overcome a perception rooted in fantasy, it may be necessary to make the reality of people's lives worse. In fact, it would seem their preferred litmus test for a candidate is that they not only refuse to recognize the rights and basic humanity of immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, and the incarcerated, but that they also must never offer even the most superficial indication to the contrary.

This is all par for the course from Chait, who maintains Kamala Harris's 2024 defeat had little to do with her support for Israel during a genocide, her proud past as California's "top cop," or her unwillingness to distance herself from Joe Biden's legacy. Instead, Chait blames those few instances during her Hindenburg-like 2019 stab at the Democratic nomination where she briefly and unconvincingly pivoted left before returning to the comfort of political moderation.

Related Jon Chait Thinks Kamala Harris Went Too Far Left. He's Just Falling for Trump's Demagoguery.

In the real world however, the arch-centrist Chait got everything he could hope for in Harris, who promptly blew it; now, with Newsom as the alleged front-runner for 2028, the fact that Chait is already preemptively recycling the same excuses for failure does not inspire confidence.

"Just about everything people don't like about the Democratic Party has come true in Newsom's California," Chait and Novicoff write, inadvertently stumbling onto a point. Many Americans despise the Democrats for their craven coddling of billionaires and corporate interests, their fealty to zombified Third Way snake oil, and their twitchy, terrified suspicion of any mass movement too radical for their own beige, milquetoast taste — and sure enough, in the California governor's mansion sits a man who personifies all these grim qualities.

If Newsom — who treats billionaires as a treasured natural resource, who mobilized thousands of National Guard troops to quash Black Lives Matter protests, who made a photo op of breaking down a homeless encampment with his own hands — is not impeccably centrist enough for the likes of Chait, who the hell is? A John Fetterman who's on the ball and not acting like a Republican? A Kyrsten Sinema whose personal life isn't straight out of a daytime soap opera? A reanimated WelcomeFest speaker stitched together in Matt Yglesias's laboratory?

It does ring true that Newsom will be painted as a deranged radical out of some Californian hippie dystopia, because under Trump, what was once McCarthyism is now standard practice. So why would anyone still believe the forces he represents can be met halfway, given they will inevitably smear as commies anyone to the left of "The Turner Diaries"?

Watching Newsom's refusal to accept this reality has not been edifying. Following the murder of Renee Good by ICE last month, Newsom's press office released a post on X which simply read "STATE. SPONSORED. TERRORISM," a position which held for a little over a week until Ben Shapiro badgered him into walking it back. For all his tough-guy posturing, one wonders how tough a politician can really be if Ben goddamn Shapiro — whose greatest enemies are socialism, wokeness, and things on high shelves — can get you to fold like a cheap lawn chair. But this is Newsom's style: blustering proclamations that might, to the casual observer, be mistaken for principle or policy, closely followed by the reticence and cowardice that defines mainstream Democratic politics.

Related It's Time for Concrete Action on ICE. Sadly, We Have the Democrats.

It should go without saying that Newsom's palling around with right-wing pseudo-intellectuals like Kirk and Shapiro — along with his assurances that he does not favor abolishing the death squads currently occupying Minnesota — do not appear to have won him any converts, respect, or sympathy from the American right. And why should it? In Trump, they have found a president that will indulge their darkest desires, liberate their deepest prejudices and deliver the violence they yearn to see inflicted on all those they judge as deserving — in short, everything they could ever want. Meanwhile, there are still those who believe the key to defeating American fascism is making sure the left gets none of what it wants. Go figure.

Unsurprisingly, there has been little indication the American progressive left perceives Newsom as deserving anything but disdain. Recent weeks have only bolstered the sense that committing to the abolition of ICE is a prerequisite for any remotely moral candidate in 2028. If Newsom fails to become that candidate, it will not be because he appeared too left-wing, but because he lacked the guts or the inclination to be anything except what he manifestly is: a preening political operator, beholden to a status quo that no longer exists.

The post Gavin Newsom's Biggest Problem Is Gavin Newsom appeared first on The Intercept.

Roblox launched an open-source AI model that generates 3D objects on the fly early last year and now that toolset is getting a massive boost. The platform has introduced a model that whips up "4D" objects. I put 4D in quotes because it doesn't actually allow access to the fourth dimension, but rather lets users make interactive 3D objects via prompts.

As suggested, these aren't static 3D models. They are fully functional and interactive objects that move and react to players. The beta toolset can't be used to make anything, as it's rather limited for now. There are just two templates for users to choose from. Folks can make cars and solid 3D objects, like a box or a sculpture.

The cars are fully driveable, however, and are made from five separate parts. The parts work independently of one another, allowing for spinning wheels and opening doors. The company says the physics should be accurate, so prepare for a whole lot of user-generated racing games.

There's already a game on the platform that uses the 4D tools called Wish Master. It lets players generate cars, planes and all kinds of other stuff.

As for those limited templates, Roblox says it plans to eventually let creators make their own but didn't release a timetable for this. It also says it is developing technology that will generate 3D models based on a reference image.

Today's open beta comes after Roblox found itself at the center of lawsuits and investigations related to child safety. This led the company to implement mandatory facial verification to access chat, which has reportedly not been going very well. Some countries have actually banned the platform in an effort to protect children.

Spain proposed a basic online child safety law. Elon Musk freaked out as if someone had stolen his toys and grounded him for life. Rather than address the substance of very necessary legislation, Musk lashed out at Spain's prime minister as if protecting children was an assault on Elon and every freedom he finds important. — Read the rest

The post For some reason Elon Musk confuses child safety laws with personal persecution appeared first on Boing Boing.

Ask a Canadian about their taxpayer-funded healthcare system. No matter which province they hail from, they'll likely tell you it's nice not to have to sell your home to have your gallbladder removed, but the quality of care has sucked for a while now. — Read the rest

The post Teaching immigrant doctors to use their skills in Canada is as Canadian as it gets appeared first on Boing Boing.

Michael Beitz's Lies Bench plays with the idea of lies as something we rest upon. Made from dark maple and upholstered in soft salmon-colored chenille, the benches connect to spell "Lies" in loose, cursive lettering. Their simple, elegant design makes them feel comfortable and familiar, like furniture meant to be used. — Read the rest

The post Michael Beitz' Lies Bench plays with the idea of lies as something we rest upon appeared first on Boing Boing.

If you love Westerns, you probably think every cowboy was a gunslinger who carried a low-slung, hair-trigger revolver rig. Turns out that's nonsense invented for dramatic movie scenes.

This excellent video breaks down how folks really carried their guns in the 19th-century American West. — Read the rest

The post Hollywood lied to us about Old West pistoleers appeared first on Boing Boing.

On 1 February, India's finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman unveiled the government's budget for 2026, which included a new $2.2bn funding push for carbon capture technologies. 

In the absence of its new international climate pledge under the Paris Agreement, the budget offers a glimpse into the key climate and energy security priorities of the world's third-largest emitter, amid increasing geopolitical tensions and trade challenges.

While Sitharaman's budget speech did not mention climate change directly, she said: "Today, we face an external environment in which trade and multilateralism are imperilled and access to resources and supply chains are disrupted." 

Sitharaman emphasised that "new technologies are transforming production systems while sharply increasing demands on water, energy and critical minerals". 

The budget sets out: support for the mining and processing of critical minerals and rare earths; import duty exemptions for nuclear power equipment; and support for renewables, particularly rooftop solar. 

However, unlike in some previous years, the 2026 budget does not include specific climate adaptation measures.

Below, Carbon Brief runs through five key climate- and energy-focused announcements from the budget.

• Carbon capture, utilisation and storage
• Critical minerals and rare earth 'corridors'
• Nuclear energy
• Renewables
• Adaptation

The biggest climate-related budget announcement was $2.2bn to support carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) technologies in India over the next 5 years. 

These are technologies that capture carbon dioxide (CO2) as it is released, then use or store it underground or under the sea.

This funding is aimed at decarbonising five of India's high-emitting industrial sectors - power, steel, cement, refineries and chemicals. These sectors are "staring at the risk" of coming under the EU's carbon adjustment mechanism (CBAM), even after a recent EU-India trade deal, according to Sitharaman.

The funding is meant to align with a roadmap released last year that sees CCUS as a "core technological pillar" of India's 2070 net-zero strategy, particularly for "decarbonising sectors where viable alternatives are limited", notes the government's roadmap.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sixth assessment report, however, the need for CCUS to mitigate industrial emissions "may be overestimated", compared to measures such as energy and material efficiency and electrification.

Speaking to Carbon Brief, Dr Vikram Vishal, a professor of earth sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B),, describes the budget move as a "big welcome step for industrial decarbonisation and India's net-zero ambitions as a whole". 

Vishal says that the funding could go towards getting "big demonstration plants to near-commercial plants" that could entail even bigger investments in the future.

He tells Carbon Brief:

"India is blessed with both onshore and offshore availability for carbon storage. But while utilisation exists, storage has not happened, per se, even at a decent scale.  We [would] need to build transportation infrastructure from the point source of capture at scale, on land and offshore. While offshore storage is very low risk, onshore presents a closer proximity to emission sources."

However, that could also mean closer proximity to densely populated or protected areas.

Vishal adds that India has a very large theoretical storage potential, even a quarter of which would allow for up to 150bn tonnes of CO2 to be stored. This could sustain CCUS for hundreds of years, Vishal says, adding: "And by that time, the energy transition would have happened, right?"

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Mining, sourcing and processing "critical minerals" and rare earths is another key area of India's 2026 budget.

It proposes establishing "dedicated rare-earth corridors" in the "mineral-rich" coastal states of Odisha, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu to "promote mining, processing, research and manufacturing". These corridors are intended to complement a $815m rare-earth permanent-magnet scheme announced in November.

In addition, the budget supports "incentivising prospecting and exploration" for rare-earth minerals, such as monazite, as well as others that the government wants to include in its list of "critical minerals". 

Last week, for instance, India classified coking coal - which is predominantly used in making steel - as a "critical and strategic mineral", removing regulatory measures such as the need to consult affected communities before developing new mines.  

Sehr Raheja, programme officer at New Delhi thinktank Centre for Science Environment, tells Carbon Brief that "moving up the critical-minerals value chain" is "increasingly essential" for the energy transition in developing countries. 

She adds that some of the measures announced in India's budget "point in that direction",  explaining: 

"Globally, developing countries often stay stuck in the extraction stages of value chains and capture the least value. While duty exemptions for critical mineral processing and battery manufacturing signal intent to build domestic manufacturing capacity, t​​he extent to which these new efforts deliver sustained value will only become apparent over time."

Rahul Basu, research director at the Goa Foundation, which advocates for "intergenerational equity" in mining, tells Carbon Brief:

"Rare earths are not particularly rare. What is difficult is separating and refining them. China imports ore from around the world, including [the] US. Their competitive advantage lies in processing, including the ability to tolerate high pollution levels. 

"India should perfect the processing technology with imported ores first. It is the critical piece. Not mining. We seem to want to mine the same beaches that are already seeing sea-level rise."

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The Indian government has also lifted customs duties on imports of nuclear power equipment within the 2026 budget.

Under the changes, equipment for all nuclear power plants will not be subject to customs duties until 2035, irrespective of capacity.

The announcement follows India enacting a landmark new nuclear act, dubbed the "Shanti" act, in December 2025. This seeks to privatise and invite foreign participation in the country's nuclear energy sector, which has been largely state-run for decades and has a long history of public protests over safety and land-acquisition concerns.

The Shanti act - which is an acronym for "sustainable harnessing and advancement of nuclear energy for transforming India" - aims to help India increase its nuclear capacity tenfold to 100 gigawatts (GW) by 2047.

This coincides with 100 years since India's independence and is "the year India aims to attain developed-nation status", according to prime minister Narendra Modi.

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Support for renewables in India's budget this year is significant, but "uneven", experts tell Carbon Brief.

Allocations to India's Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) grew by 24% to a "record high" in the 2026 budget, with the bulk going to the prime minister's flagship rooftop solar scheme. The government also cut import duties on lithium-ion cells for battery storage systems, as well as on inputs for solar-panel glass manufacturing. 

However, Vibhuti Garg, South Asia director for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, tells Carbon Brief that spending on wind energy and - "more critically" - on transmission and energy storage has either "stagnated or declined" this year. 

Garg says grid infrastructure is "fundamental" to renewable expansion. She explains: 

"Transmission infrastructure and storage are fundamental to integrating higher shares of renewable energy into the grid. As renewable penetration rises, these elements become not optional but indispensable, and the current level of support falls short of what is required."

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The budget does not announce any specific adaptation measures or schemes, although it does mention a plan to develop and rejuvenate reservoirs and water bodies and to "strengthen" fisheries value chains in coastal areas.

The budget does not mention or include measures related to heat stress or its impact on productivity and workers in sectors such as agriculture. 

According to India's national economic survey tabled ahead of the budget, adaptation and "resilience-related" domestic spending "surged" from 3.7% of the country's GDP in 2016-17 to 5.6% in 2022-23.

Yet, unlike earlier budgets, allocations to and expenditure from India's National Adaptation Fund for Climate Change are not separately visible in the 2026 document. 

Harjeet Singh, climate adaptation expert and founding director at the Satat Sampada Climate Foundation, tells Carbon Brief that this budget was a "missed opportunity" and a response "not commensurate to the needs [for adaptation] on [the] ground or investment at the scale of crisis that we are facing".

Singh adds that it fails to recognise the "huge" economic impacts already being felt in India. He says:

"If a budget doesn't recognise how climate change is already eroding India's development - causing huge economic losses - and is going to affect our GDP growth, it means that you aren't really acting, or nudging states to do more.

"It was a missed opportunity to tell the world that we do see adaptation as a problem and we are acting on it, but we also need international cooperation."

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The post Five key climate and energy announcements in India's budget for 2026 appeared first on Carbon Brief.

We wouldn't usually run Shadows & Reflections this far into the New Year, but due to last week's editorial gastrointestinal disaster, we're a bit behind! No complaints from us though about drawing out our most favourite season of submissions just a little bit longer.

In one of the last handful of 2025/6 pieces, artist and writer Sam Francis contemplates the Malvern hills — which hold her family history in their haunches.

But on a May morning on Malvern Hills
A wonder befell me, an enchantment I thought.
I was weary with wandering and went for a rest
Under a broad bank beside a stream
And as I lay and leaned down and looked on the waters
I fell into a sleep as it flowed so sweetly.

- The Vision of Piers Plowman by William Langland

I found this book on the shelves where my Grandma's poetry books live in the single spare room where I sleep when I visit. Like most of her books, it is deeply annotated in light pencil scrawls — always difficult to decipher, and more so as she got older. She was an English teacher, and an avid reader of poetry amongst other things. She loved Hardy the best. She liked that he told of ordinary lives, and that his words were grounded in everyday realism. My fierce Grandma, who while was encouraging of my writing, when I sent her something that had been published, said it was pretentious. Be more like Hardy, she meant. 

In May this year, my Grandma died in bed, at home, in Malvern. 

The Malvern hills have been omnipresent in my life. Those shapely rolling hills that dominate the otherwise flat lands of Worcestershire, or so it seems from the Worcestershire Beacon looking 360 degrees over to Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, and further beyond to Wales.  Having grown up there, at the foot of the North West hillside, they were my playground. As a teen I resented being dragged up their banks on family walks, yet gathered with friends for boozy rendezvous — they were our stomping ground. When I was young I couldn't wait to leave Malvern to escape the confinement of its beauty. I wanted more grittiness in my own realism back then. 

Malvern is somewhere I've regularly returned to throughout my life. I know the hills well. I've walked up and down and across their spine, their edges, and explored their high and low places, the lay of their land. I've slept on them, kissed on them, cried with them, dreamed with them, enchanted. As I turn off the M5 there they are, holding my family history in their haunches, all those tangled memories of lives played out there, the joys and the sadnesses. It always felt like going home. My Mum, who lived in Malvern since her own childhood, eventually moved from the hills to the coast, then five years ago my Grandfather died. This October, my Grandma's husband (my Step-Grandfather) of 45 years, died too. Their house is now slowly being dismantled, and emptied of them. The walls that housed their lives soon to be put up for sale.  

All this marks the loss of one tier of my family line, and the end of any familial ties to the place that connected me to my family history and my formative years. In a peculiar way that I don't really understand when I first notice it, it feels as if Malvern itself has been a part of the family itself. A sturdy, unmoveable member who is unfailingly there. I feel as if i'm also grieving the loss of a place. People talk about grief being layered. Though it feels to me more like folds turning in on themselves, or more like a wrapping - much like leaves do to a tree in spring. I find myself drawn into attempting to make sense of the strange feeling this brings about of a place as a person, being, or entity so stitched into the fabric of family, with all of its memories and traces and sense of belonging contained within it. 

Place attachment is the emotional bond people form with a location, serving as a way to describe the relationship between people and the places they inhabit. But what do you do when the people that occupied a place are no longer there? Is the place then stripped of its meaning? How does a place exist as an entity in its own right? Can we mourn the loss of a place as a person even though it still continues to exist? Might a place hold as much importance as a person? And I wonder if I have a tendency to anthropomorphise things even though I don't believe this is the only way of something non-human being itself for itself? Does this make the thing more alive or relatable to me somehow? And in this case, does it make the people that once lived here feel more alive?  Is it a subconscious plea to bring them back to life even? Or am I merely attempting to get a better sense of myself in the world, within grief in this way? These are the questions I'm asking. 

In November I went to Malvern and stayed in my Grandparents' house. I was the last to witness the Autumn flames of the Japanese acers in the garden that my Grandma loved as they continued their own cycle of life. I was back in part, as I had been invited to show some work in a phonebox-come-gallery at the Dingle on the foot of the West Malvern Hills. It was a reason, an excuse to go back. The work I was showing was about movement and cellular life-forms, reimagining a walk along familiar routes through the Malvern Hills. I attempted to see where in this movement I might find a sense of my feelings of loss as part of the slow course of mourning. 

Alone in the house I wondered what to do.  I've always been drawn to objects — personal stuff that once meant something to others. Objects that have become part of the fabric of a domestic landscape. The things that hold memories in some way representing parts of the person who they once belonged to. In some other way I have the feeling that such everyday objects are person containers. Going through my Grandma's extensive chronicled life archive of papers and folders of family insights, notes, lists, and photos of loves, sorrows, losses, passions — vignettes of a richly lived life. They were formidable Scrabble players, keeping detailed logbooks of their games dating back to the 1970s — every word and score documented, even an analysis of all the games played. One of her last games was with me (a rare win for me). A historical game played with my long-absent father — one of the only traces of him left. I included these logs in an exhibition about collections many years back. They still fascinate me. I have long felt drawn to do something with her archive and the social history it tells, and centring this around the Scrabble collection. Yet when I looked for these logs in the fabric bag where they have always lived, only the more recent ones were there. 

Who would have thought that Scrabble could be another wrapping of grief. I am lost for words. Oftentimes, the only way I can really make sense of what is going on is through engaging in a creative act that transforms my experience into something more tangible. I let this loss rearrange itself inside me, tile by tile. In a way, this is part of how I'm processing it here now by responding to the invitation to write my way into and through the year, as I tussle with the discomfort that these folds of loss have brought to it. 

Early December, after my Step-Grandfather's memorial, we gathered as a family in their home, probably for the last time, choosing objects to remind us of them, and sharing memories with new family secrets revealed. As the North Malvern clock tower that echoed through my childhood struck twelve, we went to see my Grandfather — his ashes buried beneath a sycamore tree on the hills opposite the house where many of us grew up. Signs of the first thin fingers of the daffodils we had planted were already beginning to emerge within the ring of stones gathered from the North quarry marking the site of his ground-up bones. My Uncle, passing the house on his way up, happened upon the current occupants in the driveway who invited him into the house. He said it was strange; so much the same and different. The house with the same conifer tree and bamboo shielding the front garden where my Grandfather sunbathed, and once people were rumoured to have danced naked at infamous old movie-themed family parties. The same wrought iron gate made by his hands, the outside garage where he made it now a room. 

Before I headed home, I went for a compulsory walk on the hills. Taking a familiar route up from the clock tower, over the stone bridge where we would hang out as kids making fires and such like, past the spooky shelter, through the wooded valley and up the steep incline to the top of North Hill. Tracing out a map of memories that have neither shape or form as individual moments, yet seem to exist together as a mass, a life-long amalgam of consciousness with roots in the past. Try as I might, I couldn't summon up a tangible sense of this as anything other than a vast awareness of an aura of place and people intertwined, their personal landscape, their wider terrain coupled together. There are moments whilst walking that feelings of grief can be evaded, as if through the motion of stepping I can shed it all off behind me. Yet of course you must stop at some point, and it catches up quick. The spaciousness of this landscape,  these hills holding traces of my own life, and those I have loved taking occupancy  in their contours, radiating out into the fresh air.   

In this way, walking can be understood as a method of processing and repair, during which it is possible to just be with loss as it is. Grief with all its shadows and flickers of light appearing through traces of memory. As I approach the half-century mark I feel a sense of loss of the falling away of my youth, a recent fledgling relationship that didn't make it, and the cat, nearly eighteen, who is going senile and isn't long for this world. And it occurs to me there are many kinds of loss and grief, each becoming part of me in these dark days. Yet in the end, it's all just a part of what makes up a life. And I wonder if I can re-define my relationship with Malvern for its own sake and transition into a different kind of relationship with it. I wonder if I will go back, and if so, what for besides nostalgia and a longing for the past.  I wonder about the particular aspects of Malvern and what defines it for me as being quite different to what draws people to visit it as a beautiful place.  And I wonder if I would feel this way about a less-than-beautiful place. I imagine I might, but I can't be sure. 

Epilogue

As the short day dwindled I carried on walking down into Green Valley, passing a broad bank beside a stream on the way to St Anne's Well to fill my water bottle from the spring. Up the path towards Summer Hill, and across to the Wyche where I was weary with wandering and went for a rest. The trees were all but unwrapped, naked save for the odd amber leaf still hanging on, the bracken golden and drooping. The winter taking hold, folding in for now preparing for a reawakening, and with it, I fell into a sleep.

*

Sam Francis is an artist who writes, based in North Somerset. You can follow her on Instagram here.

Despite proudly hailing from Madison, Wisconsin, Toby Cecchini likes to stress that The Long Island Bar, the Brooklyn bar he co-owns with Joel Tompkins, is decidedly not a Packers bar.

That being said, a few not-so-subtle nods to the storied Green Bay NFL team—like a vintage Jim Beam decanter shaped like a Packers player by the cash register, or the Tavern League of Wisconsin sticker in the window by the entrance—pop up throughout the bar like Easter eggs. And then there's the Lombardi Room, in the back of the bar, named after the Packers' legendary head coach Vince Lombardi. 

I have spent many hours in this room keeping Cecchini company while watching countless basketball, football, baseball games and tennis matches. It's where I'll likely watch Super Bowl LX (go Seahawks!) and where I've come to love the bar's low-key, off-menu cocktail, The Gridiron (aka The Football Drink). 

The predecessor to Cecchini's Gridiron, a low-ABV drink that makes a perfect gameday cooler, is The Erin. Cecchini made it up on the spot one winter night at the request of a customer wanting something with whiskey and amaro. He threw together a take on a Manhattan on the rocks made with whiskey, Bigallet China-China Amer, the bar's house sweet vermouth blend and Avèze (which he later changed to Suze). The drink is finished with five dashes of allspice dram and garnished with lemon and orange twists. "I'm very bad at drink names so I asked the woman to name it, and she dubbed it 'The Erin,'" Cecchini recalls. "Let me guess… your name is Erin?" 

The cocktail became an L.I.B. staple, so popular that it warranted batching the equal-parts bitter liqueurs and vermouth in a cheater bottle.

When structural engineers design a building, they aren't just stacking floors; they are calculating how to win a complex battle against nature. Every building is built to withstand a specific "budget" of environmental stress - the weight of record snowfalls, the push of powerful winds and the expansion caused by summer heat.

To do this, engineers use hazard maps and safety codes. These are essentially rulebooks based on decades of historical weather data. They include safety margins to ensure that even if a small part of a building fails, the entire structure won't come crashing down like a house of cards.

The problem is that these rulebooks are becoming obsolete. Most of our iconic high-rises were built in the 1970s and 80s - a world that was cooler, with more predictable tides and less violent storms. Today, that world no longer exists.

Climate change acts as a threat multiplier, making the consequences of environmental stress on buildings much worse. It rarely knocks a building down on its own. Instead, it finds the tiny cracks, rusting support beams and ageing foundations and pushes them toward a breaking point. It raises the intensity of every load and strain a building must weather.

To understand the challenge, I have been studying global hotspots where the environment is winning the battle against engineering.

The 2021 collapse of Champlain Towers South in Miami, Florida, killed 98 people. While the 12-storey building had original design issues, decades of rising sea levels and salty coastal air acted as a catalyst, allowing saltwater to seep into the basement and garage.

When salt reaches the steel rods inside concrete that provide structural strength (known as reinforcement), the metal rusts and expands. This creates massive internal pressure that cracks the concrete from the inside out — a process engineers call spalling. The lesson is clear: in a warming world, coastal basements are becoming corrosion chambers where minor maintenance gaps can escalate into catastrophic structural failure.

While the Miami case affected a single building, the historic coastal city of Alexandria, Egypt, is more widely at risk. Recent research shows that building collapses there have jumped from one per year to nearly 40 per year in the past few years.

Not only is the sea rising, the salt is liquefying the soft ground beneath the city foundations. As the water table rises, saltwater is pushed under the city, raising the groundwater level. This salty water doesn't just rust the foundations of buildings; it changes the chemical and physical structure of soil. As a result, there are currently 7,000 buildings in Alexandria at high risk of collapse.

In Hong Kong during Super Typhoon Mangkhut in 2018, wind speeds hit a terrifying 180 miles per hour. When strong winds hit a wall of skyscrapers, they squeeze between the buildings and speed up — like water sprayed through a narrow garden hose.

This pressure turned hundreds of offices into wind tunnels, causing glass windows to pop out of their frames and raining broken glass onto the streets below. With 82 deaths and 15,000 homes destroyed across the region, skyscrapers became "debris machines", even if they didn't fully collapse.

Supercomputer simulations of Japan's river systems show that in a world warmed by 2°C, floods of today's "once in a century" magnitude could recur about every 45 years. With 4°C of warming, they could be every 23 years. These surges in water volume will expand flood zones into areas previously considered safe, potentially overflowing sea walls and flood defences. In a critical region like Osaka Bay, storm surges could rise by nearly 30%.

In the US, a study of 370 million property records from 1945 to 2015 found over half of all structures are in hazard hotspots. Nearly half are facing multiple threats like earthquakes, floods, hurricanes and tornadoes. In the UK, climate-driven weather claims hit £573 million in 2023, a 36% rise from 2022. Annual flood damage to non-residential properties in the UK is also projected to nearly double from £2 billion today to £3.9 billion by the 2080s.

Much of the world's building stock is therefore entering its middle age under environmental conditions it was never designed to face. Instead of panicking or tearing everything down, the solution is to adapt and treat building maintenance as a form of climate resilience - not as an optional extra.

Mid-life building upgrades can help protect our skylines for the next 50 years. Our hazard maps must look at future climate models — not just historical weather — to set new safety standards. Regular structural health monitoring is essential - by using sensors to track invisible stresses in foundations and frames before they become fatal, dangerous situations can be foreseen.

Buildings can stay strong by focusing retrofits on the weakest and most vulnerable parts. This includes glass facades, the underground drainage, the foundation piles and corrosion protection.

Climate change isn't rewriting the laws of engineering, but it is rapidly eating away at our margins of safety. If we want our cities to remain standing, we must act now - before small, invisible stresses accumulate into irreversible failure.

Don't have time to read about climate change as much as you'd like?
Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation's environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 47,000+ readers who've subscribed so far.

Mohamed Shaheen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Blizzard is running a series of showcases for several of its major franchises and on Wednesday, it was time for Overwatch to step up to the plate. That's Overwatch, by the way, and not Overwatch 2. The studio is formally nixing the number from the game's name. 

"Overwatch is more than just a digit: it's a living universe that keeps growing, keeps surprising, and keeps bringing players together from around the world," the Overwatch team said in a statement. "This year marks a huge turning point in how the development team envisions the future of Overwatch, so we are officially dropping the '2' and moving forward as Overwatch."

Blizzard made a big hullabaloo about Overwatch 2 being a sequel to the original game when it went live in October 2022 as part of a shift to a free-to-play model. There were a ton of major changes, not least a format switch from 6v6 to 5v5, with one tank being dropped from each team — a contentious decision that has been walked back with the return of 6v6 modes. 

The grand vision Blizzard originally had for Overwatch 2 never quite came together. The studio canceled its planned hero missions, which were going to have RPG-like talent trees and long-term progression, but it carried some of that DNA over to the Stadium mode.

We only got one round of co-op story missions as well. That paid expansion reportedly sold poorly, leading Blizzard to scrap work on the player vs. environment elements of Overwatch to focus on the competitive player vs. player modes.

Over the last couple of years, though, Blizzard really seems to have steadied the ship. Overwatch is arguably in the best shape it's been in for a long time. 

This is shaping up to be a big year for Overwatch. May will mark its 10th anniversary (I have to imagine the team has something significant planned for that). Blizzard laid out much of the roadmap for 2026 during the Overwatch Spotlight showcase. We won't have to wait long at all to see significant changes to the game. 

When the next season goes live on February 10, it will be the biggest update to Overwatch at least since the Stadium mode and perks system went live last year, and arguably since the dawn of the Overwatch 2 era. That's partly because Blizzard is adding five new heroes to the mix all at once next week.

One of those is a character that the studio said in 2017 it had experimented with but ultimately, um, scratched. Jetpack Cat is alive after all, and is coming to Overwatch in a matter of days.

This is a support hero with a permanent flight ability who can "tow" an ally — providing a speed boost while healing them. Jetpack Cat's ultimate ability sees the kitty diving into the ground to knock down enemies and tether the closest one to them. It's called Catnapper, which is delightful. Also, the hero's primary weapon is called Biotic Pawjectiles, so I adore Jetpack Cat already. It's fun to see weird Wrecking Ball-type characters coming to Overwatch again. 

The other new heroes joining the fray next week are Domina (a zone-control tank with "long-range precision"), damage dealer Emre (a "fast‑paced, mobile soldier archetype with conflicting identity due to cybernetic modification"), Mizuki (a support who can throw a hat to heal allies) and Anran (a high-mobility hero who deals fire damage and can self-resurrect with their ultimate).

As with Jetpack Cat, the latter of those is aligned with the Overwatch faction. You can try Anran out starting February 5 as part of a hero trial. The other three have ties to the villainous Talon organization. Expect another hero to join the fray every couple of months this year as each new season gets under way. That means more heroes will be added to Overwatch in 2026 than in any year since the game's debut.

The next season spells the beginning of what Blizzard is calling a "new story-driven era" for Overwatch, starting with a year-long narrative arc called The Reign of Talon. All of the lore, heroes, events and so on that emerge over the next 12 months will be tied to the rise of Talon.

The studio says this is the "the first fully connected annual storyline in Overwatch history." A new arc will begin next year with Season 1 of 2027 (Blizzard is resetting the season counter when The Reign of Talon begins).

Elsewhere, each role will be split into sub-roles, and the heroes in each will share a passive ability. For instance, "initiator" tanks heal more while they're in the air, several damage heroes can detect enemies that are below half health through walls after damaging them and some supports have excess ultimate charge that carries over after you use their most powerful ability.

Also on the way soon is a "meta event" called Conquest. This is billed as a faction war between Overwatch and Talon that will run for five weeks, with dozens of loot boxes and other rewards (such as some legendary Echo skins) up for grabs.

Blizzard has overhauled the Overwatch interface too, with updated menus, a new hero lobby, a notification hub and the promise of faster navigation. Stadium will have some updates, such as refreshed ability icons and recommended builds based on global data that will be updated between rounds. Vendetta is joining that mode's roster as well.

Along with all the new heroes and other updates, a Hello Kitty collaboration will run for two weeks starting on February 10 with themed cosmetics for several heroes. Lots of other cosmetics are in the pipeline, including Crimson Wolf weapon skins you can unlock using competitive points, and rainy day and Valentine's items. Shop items from the last six seasons are going into loot boxes, while mythic cosmetics for Mercy, Juno and Mei will be available in Season 1.

Looking further ahead, a Nintendo Switch 2 version of Overwatch will arrive alongside Season 2, which will start in April. Some heroes will be getting their second mythic skins, including Ana and Genji. Genji, Hanzo and Sojourn will have mythic weapon skins in the coming months. Two new maps, including a Japan Night one, for the main modes are coming, along with the return of post-match accolades.

There's so much on the way for my go-to game. I don't know how I'm going to be able to take a long-enough break from Overwatch to play cool indies ever again.

TL;DR: Mondly Premium is a language learning app using short lessons, everyday topics, and speech tools to help learners practice 41 different languages at their own pace for $79.97 ($299.99) until Feb. 15 at 11:59 p.m. PT.

Learning a new language is one of those things everyone swears they'll do … right after cleaning out the garage. — Read the rest

The post Mondly makes learning a new language feel way less intimidating, now $80 appeared first on Boing Boing.

Arthur Bus's collapse in Poland marks the end of a story that had been quietly unraveling for some time. A hydrogen bus startup backed by public funding, municipal orders, and a planned manufacturing footprint failed before delivering a single customer vehicle. Twenty buses ordered by the city of Lublin were ... [continued]

The post The Hidden Cost of Europe's Hydrogen Bus Experiment appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The Liverpool festival will host ØXN, Mohammad Syfkhan and more this May

Outer Waves has confirmed plans for its second edition, taking place across two days this May.

Following its inaugural edition last year, the Liverpool festival will return once again with programming taking place across Invisible Wind Factory and Make North Docks in the city. This year's lineup features the likes of ØXN, Mohammad Syfkhan, Dame Area, WaqWaq Kingdom, Lord Spikeheart, Sex Swing, Carmel Smickersgill, and Keeley Forsyth & Matthew Bourne, among others.

Beyond the music programming, the festival will also feature workshops, panel discussions and art installations, with full details on those set to be announced in the coming months.

Outer Waves will take place from 23 to 24 May 2026. Find...

The post Outer Waves Confirms 2026 Return for Second Edition appeared first on The Quietus.

When X's engineering team published the code that powers the platform's "for you" algorithm last month, Elon Musk said the move was a victory for transparency. "We know the algorithm is dumb and needs massive improvements, but at least you can see us struggle to make it better in real-time and with transparency," Musk wrote. "No other social media companies do this." 

While it's true that X is the only major social network to make elements of its recommendation algorithm open source, researchers say that what the company has published doesn't offer the kind of transparency that would actually be useful for anyone trying to understand how X works in 2026. 

The code, much like an earlier version published in 2023, is a "redacted" version of X's algorithm, according to John Thickstun, an assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University. "What troubles me about these releases is that they give you a pretense that they're being transparent for releasing code and the sense that someone might be able to use this release to do some kind of auditing work or oversight work," Thickstun told Engadget. "And the fact is that that's not really possible at all."

Predictably, as soon as the code was released, users on X began posting lengthy threads about what it means for creators hoping to boost their visibility on the platform. For example, one post that was viewed more than 350,000 times advises users that X "will reward people who conversate" and "raise the vibrations of X." Another post with more than 20,000 views claims that posting video is the answer. Another post says that users should stick to their "niche" because "topic switching hurts your reach." But Thickstun cautioned against reading too much into supposed strategies for going viral. "They can't possibly draw those conclusions from what was released," he says. 

While there are some small details that shed light on how X recommends posts — for example, it filters out content that's more than a day old — Thickstun says that much of it is "not actionable" for content creators. 

Structurally, one of the biggest differences between the current algorithm and the version released in 2023 is that the new system relies on a Grok-like large language model to rank posts. "In the previous version, this was hard coded: you took how many times something was liked, how many times something was shared, how many times something was replied … and then based on that you calculate a score, and then you rank the post based on the score," explains Ruggero Lazzaroni, a pHD researcher at the University of Graz. "Now the score is derived not by the real amounts of likes and shares, but by how likely Grok thinks that you would like and share a post."

That also makes the algorithm even more opaque than it was before, says Thickstun. "So much more of the decisionmaking … is happening within black box neural networks that they're training on their data," he says. "More and more of the decisionmaking power of these algorithms is shifting not just out of public view, but actually really out of view or understanding of even the internal engineers that are working on these systems, because they're being shifted into these neural networks."

The release has even less detail about some aspects of the algorithm that were made public in 2023. At the time, the company included information about how it weighted various interactions to determine which posts should rank higher. For example, a reply was "worth" 27 retweets and a reply that generated a response from the original author was worth 75 retweets. But X has now redacted information about how it's weighing these factors, saying that this information was excluded "for security reasons." 

The code also doesn't include any information about the data the algorithm was trained on, which could help researchers and others understand it or conduct audits. "One of the things I would really want to see is, what is the training data that they're using for this model," says Mohsen Foroughifar, an assistant professor of business technologies at Carnegie Mellon University. "if the data that is used for training this model is inherently biased, then the model might actually end up still being biased, regardless of what kind of things that you consider within the model." 

Being able to conduct research on the X recommendation algorithm would be extremely valuable, says Lazzaroni, who is working on an EU-funded project exploring alternative recommendation algorithms for social media platforms. Much of Lazzaroni's work involves simulating real-world social media platforms to test different approaches. But he says the code released by X doesn't have enough information to actually reproduce its recommendation algorithm. 

"We have the code to run the algorithm, but we don't have the model that you need to run the algorithm," he says.

If researchers were able to study the X algorithm, it could yield insights that could impact more than just social media platforms. Many of the same questions and concerns that have been raised about how social media algorithms behave are likely to re-emerge in the context of AI chatbots."A lot of these challenges that we're seeing on social media platforms and the recommendation [systems] appear in a very similar way with these generative systems as well," Thickstun said. "So you can kind of extrapolate forward the kinds of challenges that we've seen with social media platforms to the kind of challenges that we'll see with interaction with GenAI platforms."

Lazzaroni, who spends a lot of time simulating some of the most toxic behavior on social media, is even more blunt. "AI companies, to maximize profit, optimize the large language models for user engagement and not for telling the truth or caring about the mental health of the users. And this is the same exact problem: they make more profit, but the users get a worse society, or they get worse mental health out of it."

The Pixel 10a is official, though details are limited. On Wednesday, Google posted a teaser video showing the mid-range phone dancing around colorful backgrounds. You can pre-order the Pixel 10a on February 18.

Google hasn't yet revealed the phone's specs. In the short video, we can see a blue model that's virtually indistinguishable on the outside from the Pixel 9a. And alleged leaks point to a phone with few changes on the inside. That (unconfirmed) list includes a 6.285-inch display, dual rear cameras (48MP wide and 13MP ultra-wide) and a 5,100mAh battery.

The teaser's tagline appears to be an attempt to assure Pixel fans that there will, in fact, be meaningful upgrades. "A phone with more in store, in store soon," it reads. Hopefully, its pricing and specs will be "in store" for us soon as well.

In the meantime, you can visit the Google Pixel website to register for more info.

Attackers are exploiting a critical SolarWinds Web Help Desk bug - less than a week after the vendor disclosed and fixed the 9.8-rated flaw. That's according to America's lead cyber-defense agency, which set a Friday deadline for federal agencies to patch the security flaw.…

Software stocks have taken a beating over the last month as investors grow concerned that AI could put vertical SaaS vendors out of business.…

When There Is No Sun draws on the Arkestra's 2022 album Living Sky, as well as a 2023 release celebrating Sun Ra's poetry

Ricardo Villalobos has curated a new remix compilation of work by Sun Ra Arkestra.

The 12-track When There Is No Sun sees the likes of Underground Resistance, Calibre, Chez Damier, A Guy Called Gerald and Villalobos himself rework material from the Arkestra's 2022 album Living Sky. The compilation also makes use of 2023 release My Words Are Music: A Celebration Of Sun Ra's Poetry, which saw the likes of Saul Williams, Tara Middleton and Mahogany L. Browne deliver spoken word pieces inspired by the late musician's poetry.

Listen to Underground Resistance's Saul Williams-featuring take on 'When Angels Speak' below.

Omni Sound...

The post Ricardo Villalobos, Underground Resistance and More Rework Sun Ra Arkestra on New Compilation appeared first on The Quietus.

London-based sound studio Mastery has released Wata Igarashi's 'Mineral' as the lead single from their upcoming 'Quantum Sound' compilation, the project is also their first recorded music release, developed in partnership with fabric imprint Houndstooth. 'Mineral' features downtempo production with stripped-back elements, sustained strings, arpeggiating synth notes, and an ethereal soundscape. The full compilation arrives […]

Mastery & Houndstooth share Wata Igarashi's 'Mineral' ahead of full VA release