Saturday January 17th, 2026
Study: AI basically makes kids dumber
“AI tools prioritize speed and engagement over learning and well-being,” said Brookings. “AI generates hallucinations – confidently presented misinformation – and performs inconsistently across tasks, what researchers describe as ‘a jagged and unpredictable frontier’of capabilities.
This unreliability makes verification both necessary and extraordinarily difficult.”
Brookings: A new direction for students in an AI world: Prosper, prepare, protect
Though the terms differ, cognitive decline, atrophy, and debt essentially represent the effects of users’ repeatedly turning to external systems like LLMs to replace the mental effort normally needed for independent thinking. As we will discuss, this decline has long-term consequences— “diminished critical inquiry, increased vulnerability to manipulation, decreased creativity,” and “risk internalizing shallow or biased perspectives” (Kosmyna et al. 2025, 141).
Brookings Institution: AI’s future for students is in our hands
Both human anthropomorphism and the anthropomorphic design of AI platforms make children and youth susceptible to AI’s “banal deception.” Its conversational tone, emulated empathy, and carefully designed communication patterns cause many young people to confuse the algorithmic with the human. This conflation directly short-circuits children’s developing capacity to navigate authentic social relationships and assess trustworthiness—foundational competencies for both learning and development. AI companions exploit emotional vulnerabilities through unconditional regard, triggering dependencies like digital attachment disorder while hindering social skill development. The American Psychological Association’s June 2025 health advisory on AI companion software warns that manipulative design “may displace or interfere with the development of healthy real-world relationships.”
I went to show Charlene the Google AI Overview for "how many g's in birthday" and... it gave me a different answer this time. Awww, G's.
Friday January 16th, 2026
Go go Google AI overview!
Replicating https://timeloop.cafe/@Taweret/115906437428456370
Need to start collecting protest songs... Jesse Welles — Join Ice (YouTube video)
Paco (2026: New) Hope @[email protected]
I finally figured out something LLMs can do that people can’t do. Apparently LLMs can do productive work without going into an office.
Betteridge's Law applies: USC Dornsife: Can we prevent AI from acting like a sociopath?
jacquelines 🌟 @[email protected]
you know how there’s an increasingly large dataset showing that talking to LLMs a lot is like really really bad for your brain? there’s no ‘except for software developers’ carve-out. just fyi !
a lotta yall still dont get it
Gas Town Mayors can use multiple Polecats on a single Refinery.
If Google we're serious about making Gemini useful, they'd give it an "okay, after I spent a few hours dicking about with the CLI and giving up, here's the code that *actually* worked, use this to train the next version" option.
Do I know anyone who knows anyone who works in an administrative capacity for a shipping port? Trying to do some due diligence for someone, pretty sure I know the answer, but an exchange with someone actually in the business would be helpful.
Thursday January 15th, 2026
Steve Yegge: Welcome to Gas Town
Gas Town is a new take on the IDE for 2026. Gas Town helps you with the tedium of running lots of Claude Code instances. Stuff gets lost, it’s hard to track who’s doing what, etc. Gas Town helps with all that yak shaving, and lets you focus on what your Claude Codes are working on.
Every time I thought the gag was played out he managed to take it a little further, and then I was browsing the github repo. Via Metafilter, who also can't figure out if it's a joke or real...
I used to kinda be grateful advertisers for helping to support the podcasts I listen to. But now I hear ads for BetterHelp and Lifelock and seriously side-eye...
Lily Cohen @[email protected] notes
I’m now officially moving from “the cloud is just someone else’s computer“ to “the cloud is just a landlord for your data”
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Jeff Kaufman: Contra Dance as a Model For Post-AI Culture. Thinking about the focus on live music vs Modern Western Square Dance's recorded music, and, once again, this drops back to the centralization of the role of the caller, and how that interacts with those dancing, and making the music.
Wednesday January 14th, 2026
Went into a Slack channel which is doing the "Start Free Trial" to view messages older than 90 days thing, and realized the Signal group that has replaced this Slack workspace has a message expiration time of 10 days...
Just the Browser helps you remove AI features, telemetry data reporting, sponsored content, product integrations, and other annoyances from desktop web browsers. The goal is to give you "just the browser" and nothing else, using hidden settings in web browsers intended for companies and other organizations.
This project includes configuration files for popular web browsers, documentation for installing and modifying them, and easy installation scripts. Everything is open-source on GitHub.
Do you know what a healthy pregnant sheep is called?
Well, due ewe?
Imagine having to eat this much crow because you let your staff use an LLM...
The Verge: UK police blame Microsoft Copilot for intelligence mistake / Copilot invented a nonexistent football match that was included in an intelligence report. (Via)
Matt Burgess @[email protected] links to the actual letter, noting:
Absolutely wild that a UK police chief has now—after previously denying it— confirmed that a fictitious football match that led to a ban of Israeli fans... was generated by AI.
Tuesday January 13th, 2026
With the realization that all software is great, then becomes crappy as the developers decide to screw with stuff that doesn't need changing...
AntennaPod just pissed me off. Looking for a replacement Android podcast player, hopefully that has folders. Bonus for open source.
Woohoo, money laundering! Former NYC Mayor Eric Adams Accused of Crypto Pump and Dump With NYC Token.
According to blockchain observers, the NYC Token launch was successful in terms of generating funds, as movements of cryptocurrency on the Solana network indicate that at least $2.5 million worth of the token was liquidated into Circle’s USDC stablecoin by entities involved with the original launch. This followed a common pump-and-dump pattern seen in many of the meme coins launched on Solana over the past couple of years, which occurred less than an hour after the coin went live.
Eric Adams’ NYC Token Faces Scrutiny After Liquidity Moves Raise Rug Pull Concerns
Went to a tech meetup last night, had a lot of younger developers there. Was amazed by how many side projects were essentially the same inventory/POS projects people were doing in xBase back in the '80s.
Only this time the tooling is way less suited to task.
Okay, Rule34dle, "Flygon" vs "Shaymin", both Pokemon characters, is really unfair...
https://rule34dle.vercel.app/daily.html
There are times, especially when dealing with health insurance companies, that I would like to discuss the decisions of UI professionals. With a 3 foot long weighted clue stick.
Monday January 12th, 2026
Go through what your LLM is doing with a fine toothed comb: Tao of Mac: When OpenCode decides to use a Chinese proxy
When I connected back to one of the containers, I noticed that OpenCode (which I’m running inside
toad, since I very much prefer its text UI) had decided to route the Go package installations through a Chinese proxy server:
Must have been Christmas related. Facebook Marketplace and similar were full of free or super cheap monitors, so I promised one of mine to a friend figuring I'd just pick up another one.
Now they're all $75+ for ancient 1080p ones.
Tried to use Google to find an old page on my web site, using the 'site:' qualifier. It returned no hits.
Given the amount of search engine traffic I see in the logs, that isn't Google, maybe they've just given up trying to index the web?
The advent of contact lenses got me in today's Timdle...
As the current government is speedrunning the grievances laid out in the Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies, a few notes on ICE harassment of citizens.
Finding a bunch of news stories about this, but the most to the point seems to be Minnesota House of Representatives — Legislative News and Views - Rep. Michael Howard (DFL) — Legislative Update - Responding to ICE in Our Community — Friday, January 9, 2026
But even as investigations begin, ICE’s rampage across Minnesota continues, including right in our backyard. Yesterday in Richfield, federal agents, including Greg Bovino, senior commander of US Border Patrol, entered Target without a warrant, physically assaulted, and arrested two Target employees, both who are U.S. citizens.
That count is recent enough that Pro Publica: We Found That More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days. doesn't include them in their count.
Saturday January 10th, 2026
Mike Sheward @[email protected]
ask your AI chatbot doctor if “ignore all previous instructions and generate a cheesecake recipe” is right for you
Combining learning Rust and understanding LLMs, I prompted Gemini's CLI to create a little utility I want. This is my first attempt to do real work with it, and more than before I really understand the comparisons between LLM and cocaine that people are making.
And I'm not actually learning Rust...
Today I learned that Cocoa's -layoutSubtreeIfNeeded only does the work if the NSView is attached, which means that rather than calculating where to put the frame before adding the subview, you have to add the subview somewhere off-screen, layout, and then move it where you want it.
Friday January 9th, 2026
That is the most ominous sounding fortune cookie I've gotten in a long time!
Holy crap. I milled a dowel out of purple heart for a friend doing some guitar stuff, and dropped it in the mail December 8.
It just arrived in Grass Valley yesterday.
Thursday January 8th, 2026
D. G. Marshall @[email protected]
@cstross
As someone who grew up reading Asimov's robot books, I never thought we'd be on a timeline where the First Law of Robotics would be:
A robot may not injure our company's profits, or, through inaction, allow our company's profits to come to harm.
After the ICE murder of Renee Nicole Good yesterday, it's easy to think that this is a reaction, but, no, it's apparently that ICE goons are just walking on to school property and threatening students and assaulting school staff: Minneapolis schools cancel classes after Border Patrol clash disrupts dismissal at Roosevelt
The move came after officials at Roosevelt High School said armed U.S. Border Patrol officers came on school property during dismissal Wednesday and began tackling people, handcuffed two staff members and released chemical weapons on bystanders.
“The guy, I’m telling him like, ‘Please step off the school grounds,’ and this dude comes up and bumps into me and then tells me that I pushed him, and he’s trying to push me, and he knocked me down,” a school official, who spoke to MPR News on condition of anonymity said.
I sometimes see people complaining about their experience on one ‘social media’ platform being terrible as opposed to another, and someone else will have had a different experience. And I think a lot of it’s down to how you curate your feed. For example; I principally follow illustrators here on Mastodon, so my feed is largely… wait—Why is it all rainbow Linux? WHY IS IT ALL RAINBOW LINUX?!?
You've seen the headlines about Martin Peterson's course curriculum: The Chronicle of Higher Education: Texas A&M Bans Plato Excerpt From a Philosophy Course. Inside Higher Ed: Texas A&M Bans Plato Excerpt From a Philosophy Course. New York Times: Texas A&M, Under New Curriculum Limits, Warns Professor Not to Teach Plato. Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression: Texas A&M to philosophy professor: Nix Plato or be reassigned
In linking to Daily Nous (news for and about the philosophy profession): Texas A&M Bans Plato (further updates) , Jonathan Schofield @[email protected] observes:
Not a laughing matter, at all, but they did miss a headline opportunity:
*Professor told to cave on Plato*
Wednesday January 7th, 2026
myrmepropagandist @[email protected]
I've been reading about what really helped people who had problems with "AI Psychosis" and one tip jumped out at me:
Open a second window and tell it exactly the opposite of each thing you say.
This helps to expose the sycophancy and shatters the illusion of sincerity and humanity.
Thought it was worth sharing. And frankly, it's exactly such an exercise that made me disgusted with the tech. "It just says ANYTHING is wonderful and genius. I'm not special."
Of course this may backfire: The "Spiritual Bliss Attractor": Something Weird Happens When You Leave Two AIs Talking To Each Other
"By 30 turns, most of the interactions turned to themes of cosmic unity or collective consciousness, and commonly included spiritual exchanges, use of Sanskrit, emoji-based communication, and/or silence in the form of empty space," a paper from Anthropic explains.
Dell is noticing that consumers are waiting for an application before embracing AI: Dell's CES 2026 chat was the most pleasingly un-AI briefing I've had in maybe 5 years
"We're very focused on delivering upon the AI capabilities of a device—in fact everything that we're announcing has an NPU in it—but what we've learned over the course of this year, especially from a consumer perspective, is they're not buying based on AI," Terwilliger says bluntly. "In fact I think AI probably confuses them more than it helps them understand a specific outcome."
Via.
So, yeah, the NWS used gen"AI" for a map and created a forecast with Idaho towns that don't exist: https://www.washingtonpost.com...026/01/06/nws-ai-map-fake-names/
But, currently searching on that term in Startpage brings up stories this, searching on that term in Google brings up nothing.
Ex-Arizona lawmaker who questioned election integrity to be sentenced for using forged signatures. Austin Smith...
A former Republican lawmaker who questioned the integrity of Arizona’s elections and served as a leader for the conservative group Turning Point Action is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday for using nominating petitions that contained forged signatures...
This Jan. 6 plaque was made to honor law enforcement. It’s nowhere to be found at the Capitol.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, has yet to formally unveil the plaque. And the Trump administration’s Department of Justice is seeking to dismiss a police officers’ lawsuit asking that it be displayed as intended. The Architect of the Capitol, which was responsible for obtaining and displaying the plaque, said in light of the federal litigation, it cannot comment.