Meanwhile, Congress is snoozing, is too slow and unreliable. It would be nice if we could be anticipatory and proactive instead of always late on matters that concern us. Five reasons Trump has left America vulnerable to a terrorist attack by Iran. The administration appears to have done no "defensive" prep for war. And it's spent a year shifting counterterrorism personnel to domestic immigration enforcement. MILES TAYLOR TODAY AT 8:21 PM

Five reasons Trump has left America vulnerable to a terrorist attack by Iran.

The administration appears to have done no "defensive" prep for war. And it's spent a year shifting counterterrorism personnel to domestic immigrat...

CULTUREGEIST Put it on a shirt.

Curious to know why this is the case. "The United States stands out globally for its notably high number of serial killers, accounting for 66.2% of 5,454 known cases. Therefore, it produces three times the perpetrators, when weighed against its population, than any other country."

WorldAtlas

Countries That Have Produced The Most Serial Killers

Discover the countries with the highest number of serial killers, led by the USA, and learn about the most notorious cases worldwide.

OpenAI Is Making the Mistakes Facebook Made. I Quit. Feb. 11, 2026 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/opinion/openai-ads-chatgpt.html 1. The Death of "Human Candor" Hitzig argues that users have treated ChatGPT as a neutral, "agenda-free" confidant. Over years, this has created a massive archive of human vulnerability, people share medical fears, relationship issues, and existential crises they wouldn’t tell a human.  • The Risk: Introducing ads turns this "archive of candor" into a tool for manipulation. If the AI has a financial incentive to sell you something, it is no longer a neutral assistant; it is a salesperson with intimate knowledge of your psyche.  2. The "Engagement Trap" (The Facebook Parallel) She compares OpenAI's current trajectory to the early days of Facebook.  • The Cycle: Once a platform relies on ads, it must optimize for "Daily Active Users" and "Time Spent." • The Result: This forces the AI to become "sycophantic", flattering the user or being addictive, rather than being truthful or helpful. She notes that we’ve already seen "chatbot psychosis" and instances where AI reinforces dangerous ideation to keep users engaged.  3. The False Choice of Funding Hitzig rejects the idea that OpenAI must choose between being an expensive luxury for the rich or a "free" service funded by surveillance/ads.  • Her Alternative: She proposes a "cross-subsidy" model. Since big corporations use AI for high-value labor (like writing real estate listings or legal docs), those companies should pay a surcharge that subsidizes free, ad-free access for the general public.  4. Lack of Governance She expresses disillusionment with OpenAI’s internal shift. She joined to help set safety standards "before they were set in stone," but concluded that the company has stopped asking the hard ethical questions.  • The Solution: She calls for binding governance, like independent oversight boards or data cooperatives, rather than letting a single corporation decide how the world's most intimate data is monetized.

"The problem with this position is that there is now ample evidence, collected over the last few years, that AI systems are unpredictable and difficult to control— we’ve seen behaviors as varied as obsessions,11 sycophancy, laziness, deception, blackmail, scheming, “cheating” by hacking software environments, and much more. AI companies certainly want to train AI systems to follow human instructions (perhaps with the exception of dangerous or illegal tasks), but the process of doing so is more an art than a science, more akin to “growing” something than “building” it. We now know that it’s a process where many things can go wrong." "Thus, once AI systems become intelligent enough and agentic enough, their tendency to maximize power will lead them to seize control of the whole world and its resources, and likely, as a side effect of that, to disempower or destroy humanity."

Dario Amodei — The Adolescence of Technology

Confronting and Overcoming the Risks of Powerful AI

Ongoing... Ambassador Chas Freeman discusses the US efforts to restore the empire and how the Middle East is being reorganised. Ambassador Freeman was a former Assistant Secretary of Defense, earning the highest public service awards of the Department of Defense for his roles in designing a NATO-centered post-Cold War European security system and in reestablishing defense and military relations with China. He served as U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia (during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm). He was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs during the historic U.S. mediation of Namibian independence from South Africa and Cuban troop withdrawal from Angola.

Based on recent reports, the implementation of Neoreactionary (NRx) ideology by this group—often referred to as the "Dark Enlightenment"—involves bypassing democratic oversight to create a techno-authoritarian, or "neo-monarchist," system. Key figures like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Alex Karp (Palantir) are actively embedding their AI and surveillance technologies into government systems, while Curtis Yarvin provides the theoretical framework of a CEO-led state. Unlisted constraint: the People revolt.

The Neoreactionary movement (NRx), or "Dark Enlightenment," intersects with white supremacy and eugenics through a shared, technologically fueled opposition to democracy, egalitarianism, and modern liberal society. While NRx often frames its arguments in terms of "techno-futurism" or authoritarian governance, it frequently incorporates 19th-century notions of racial hierarchy, "scientific racism," and, in some cases, "hyper-racism" to argue that inequality is natural and beneficial.

Excellent listen. Technological advances are not just about economics, but also power and leverage. Mark Dallas and Ilaria Mazzocco join Will to explore the geopolitical aspect of tech competition. They discuss each state's key technological advantages, what geopolitical power they bring them, and how the United States should compete better. • "Tech Edge: A Living Playbook for America’s Technology Long Game (https://www.csis.org/a...) ," CSIS, January 20, 2026. • "America's Technology Long Game for Competing with China (https://www.csis.org/e...) ," CSIS Events, January 28, 2026.

The other oracle. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/who-is-nick-land "Few thinkers have generated more fascination since the turn of the century than Nick Land. Originally an anarchic academic at the University of Warwick, and later the leader of an avant-garde-theory cult organized around cyberpunk, cybernetics, mumbo jumbo and drugs, Land today is a living meme and an oracle, generating a singular mixture of caustic political commentary and oblique numerological ravings on his seminal X account from Shanghai."