Iran’s no heaven: The theocratic dictatorship responded violently. Security forces fired live ammunition, killing at least 2,000 people and detaining upwards of ten thousand more.

Massive Spike in Users: News outlets report that BitChat downloads surged by over 400,000 in a matter of days following the blackout that began around January 8, 2026. Usage is estimated to have jumped more than three times its previous levels. The blackout was imposed to suppress nationwide protests that erupted in late December 2025 over economic conditions. With international internet traffic cut to nearly 1%, offline tools like BitChat and satellite options (like Starlink terminals) became the only means of coordination.

Original article, non-paywalled: https://archive.is/Ltgq8 View quoted note →

After Venezuela, Taiwan by China is all but justified. “Hey, all the big bullies are doing it…”

2025 in review by a funny sarcastic “asshole”. I would challenge you to say you haven’t learned a few important things from this video. I also laughed. It’s long. Can go month by month

This was surprisingly good news:

The Rage

Recapping The SEC's Financial Surveillance Roundtable

For once, the Government seemed to have a better understanding of what privacy entails than some of its event participants.

Top 15 Freedom Tech Projects of 2025 - Human Rights Foundation

Human Rights Foundation

Top 15 Freedom Tech Projects of 2025

Looking back on 2025, financial and digital repression under authoritarian regimes continued to grow. But so did the innovation pushing back agains...

Some cool shit in there

If the below is correct, sparrow could be behind on privacy 😳 Current State: Sparrow Wallet has excellent support for BIP 78 (Classic Payjoin), where you must share a specific endpoint and be online. • Async Plans: There is no public roadmap or active GitHub Pull Request indicating that BIP 77 support is imminent for Sparrow. • The Likely Obstacle: Sparrow is built in Java, while the reference implementation for BIP 77 is in Rust. • To support it, Sparrow would likely need to implement FFI (Foreign Function Interface) bindings to bridge the rust-payjoin library into their Java environment. This is a non-trivial engineering task compared to native Rust wallets.

Fascinating:

Visual Capitalist

12 NASA Satellite Images That Tell the Story of Earth in 2025

From California wildfires to Arctic phytoplankton blooms, explore 12 stunning NASA satellite images that captured the story of Earth in 2025.

Change my view: voluntary outlasts coerced every time, all the time.

In the new Cold War, the United States should once again stand for freedom. When china tracks 1.4 billion individuals, the US should let its people live free. Free to think, free to express themselves. Free to spend and save without tracking, be it commercially or legally-motivated. Lead for freedom in allied nations as well. The US should remain a beacon of hope for those who will not accept being indirectly controlled at every turn.

A millionblocks in May 2028?

Can we stop calling it ad tech and start calling it what it is? Spying.

Spotify

Invisible Enemy

August Burns Red · Phantom Anthem · Song · 2017

So epic

I loved reading this article by the rage. They’re doing really good work over there

The Rage

Foucault Would Have Loved Balenciaga

We are entering the era of panopticore: mass surveillance made sexy to hide the violence inherent to being watched. But the pressure to perform is ...

Panopticore :( #TheRage

2026 prediction: Apple wins big in AI. They have the high efficiency chips. It will run locally. They get to flex privacy again.

You’ll know the empire has taken a knee when most of the culture it consumes comes from outside

Arc raiders is the multiplayer fallout that should’ve been