How a dog mistaken for a wolf ended up running alongside cross-country skiers at the 2026 Winter Olympics The Laughing Squid
Home is truly where the heart is Nautilus
Coastal elites are right, it’s actually Hickman’s hinterland
Climate/Environment
Macroeconomic impacts of climate change: Comparing global and regional temperatures The Quarterly Journal of Economy
Chronic ocean heating is driving ‘staggering’ loss of marine life, study finds The Guardian
Will your state bird disappear? Earth Island Journal
These data center developers asked President Trump for an exemption from pollution regulations.
pandemic
These 9 diseases threaten resurgence as average cases rise WaPo
Japan
Japan’s Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi yesterday reaffirmed plans to deploy a Type 03 medium SAM missile battery on Yonaguni Island, the westernmost island near Taiwan, by March 2031. The planned deployment is part of Japan’s broader efforts to expand its facilities in the Ryukyus. pic.twitter.com/9YWkwprlh9
— Taiwan Security Monitor (Taiwan Security Monitoring Station) (@TaiwanMonitor) February 25, 2026
China sanctions fierce opposition to Japan’s rearmament drive Asia Times
What lessons can we learn from Japan’s critical minerals strategy? Brookings
China?
China has not yet received Nvidia H200 chips, US official says Reuters
China’s DeepSeek trained AI models on NVIDIA’s best chips despite US ban, officials tell Taipei Times
DeepSeek withholds latest AI model V4 from US chipmakers including Nvidia Business Standard
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Xi-Merz meeting in China
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An Assessment of President Xi’s Unprecedented Chinese Military Purge: Key Developments and Potential Impact Center for Strategic and International Studies. Quite a story, but it provides a POV of DC think tank land.
Former US Air Force pilot arrested on suspicion of training Chinese military pilots Interesting Engineering
The Times of Israel reported that China is turning toward anti-Semitism due to geopolitics.
India
PM Modi shames India during Israel visit
India-Israel military partnership continues to grow and is shockingly opaque The Wire
antipode
Security threat prompting prime minister to evacuate, linked to threat to Chinese dancer ABC
Conflicts of autonomy in the South Pacific The Asia Cable
syrakistan
In 2025, 129 media workers were recorded as dead. Israel is responsible for two-thirds of deaths, Committee to Protect Journalists
With foreign help, Israel’s solar energy boom powers apartheid +972 Magazine
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Hybrid war against Iran and Lebanon comes under fire for resisting the Zionist coalition Vanessa Beeley
Limited US attack on Iran will not trigger Hezbollah intervention, Turkiye Today official says
Iran considers even a “limited attack” by the US an act of aggression – Ministry of Foreign Affairs Orinoco Tribune
The CIA posted a video in Farsi urging Iranian citizens to contact the CIA and providing instructions on using Tor and other encrypted/anonymized methods to do so. pic.twitter.com/7XorVTb90g
— Jeremy Scahill (@jeremyscahill) February 24, 2026
Africa
War in northern Ethiopia seems imminent.
As we outline in our latest article and new report, a war in Tigray will have profound implications for the spiraling violence across the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea.
Ethiopia will become increasingly entangled with the Sudanese civil war… https://t.co/4MiUugEeHj pic.twitter.com/TlsiaKylS7
— Liam Carr (@liam_karr) February 25, 2026
old blighty
“Do you need a monarch on your board?” LRB
discord in europe
“European Army”: Thought Experiment by Lutz Unterseeher
A new war that’s not so cold war
Think backwards. Aurelian
Richard Pendlebury: After four years of covering this horror, I go home and have bad dreams. And I fear that we are on the brink of a bigger disaster for which we are completely unprepared.
Russia’s overseas setbacks are not the fault of special operations Andrew Korybko
“I’m pro-Russian because I think President Putin is a neoliberal europhile technocrat forced by the hand of fate into a Eurasianist autarchist third-party doom destined to destroy NATO.” https://t.co/4sO9HdYMWv
— America Nets 📉 (@ripplebrain) February 25, 2026
Putin invites BRICS to be a ‘new phenomenon’ in global growth RT
south of the border
Cuban border patrol attacked by Florida speedboat
Cuba identifies participants detained in terrorist incursion into Teresul national waters
Lafaire Epstein
Times of Israel openly boasts about controlling Trump with Epstein file pic.twitter.com/rXeuukIkO
—Chris Brunet (@chrisbrunet) February 25, 2026
Jeffrey Epstein’s tissue samples caused an uproar in George Church’s lab at Harvard University STAT
spook country
Trump administration moves to give intelligence agencies easier access to law enforcement files ProPublica
Department of Defense UFO psychologist Ross Garber
This document is a complete unmasking moment that literally proves that the CIA was treating democracy like a scripted stage play. By 1964, government agencies were not only inducing foreign elections, they were even going so far as to completely falsify elections and provide funding to “opposition parties” just to make the elections happen. pic.twitter.com/o2GqvybD3w
— Asan Xantis (@TheRealCurly5) February 25, 2026
The big secret hidden in the “Designated Survivor” apocalypse scenario
Trump 2.0
President Trump cheers on Ken Klippenstein’s deadly revelations
Trump administration suspends $250 million in Medicaid funding to Minnesota over fraud concerns NOTUS
Farmers were promised $400 million in drought aid. Trump’s USDA ghosted them. mother jones
Democrats are the worst
Funded by Anthropic, Super PAC launches ad campaign to support Rep. Valerie Fouchie-Durham
Crypto Chokehold Boston Review
unity party
It’s pretty creepy that tens of millions of Americans just had their health insurance premiums more than double last month, and yet it’s completely ignored by the elites: Trump, the Democrats, and the legacy media. Trump smugly boasts about pumping millions of dollars into branches of his bloated military.
— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) February 25, 2026
police state surveillance
We’re hooked’: Arrests at US military base raise concerns about military collaboration with ICE The Guardian
ICE took my documents and won’t give them back Mother Jones
Nearly blind refugee abandoned by US Border Patrol found dead in Buffalo
our famous free news agency
To those who foolishly claim that the prosecution of WikiLeaks will never affect “real” journalists:
The Justice Department cited the WikiLeaks case in court to argue why it should have been allowed to raid the Washington Post reporter’s home without telling the judge about privacy laws. pic.twitter.com/6CAleygOg6
— Trevor Timm (@trevortimm) February 24, 2026
academy glove
FBI raids LAUSD aide Alberto Carvalho’s home and office appear to be connected to AI chatbot research firm Los Angeles Times. AI fraud and corruption in the nation’s second-largest school system.
imperial collapse watch
The Noble Lie of Empire: Turning Thermodynamic Collapse into Geopolitical War: The Ultimate Incarnation of Balance
Kingdoms were lost because they didn’t want to fight Julian MacFarlane
Americans leave the US in record numbers WSJ
US directs diplomats to lobby against foreign data sovereignty laws TechCrunch
accelerationist
Abuse as a Business Model: Citizen Reunion
Official: Cybertruck has more explosive power than Ford Pinto Fuel Arc
Maha
Is “MAHA” revenge against Theranos? Pandemic Accountability Index
A.I.
New Scientist AI can’t stop recommending nuclear attack in wargame simulation. Full paper “AI Weapons and Influence: Frontier Model Demonstrates Sophisticated Reasoning in Simulated Nuclear Crisis.”
2026 World Information Crisis Citadel Securities. Market makers are scrambling to refute Monday’s Substack post by Citorini Research, “The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis,” which must have struck a nerve.
The Chinese Intelligence Crisis of 2028 East is being read. Poisonous Chinese version.
class war
Delivery robot has his old job, and now a new one is being created for him Los Angeles Times
Canary storytellers of the coal mining class
Antidote (via):
Click here for yesterday’s link and Antidote du Jour.
