How did a 150-year-old Japanese workshop survive an era of laziness and distraction? Big Think
‘Walking for peace’: Buddhist monks arrive in Washington after 108-day journey Al Jazeera, YouTube (resilc)
Homeless people shivering on the streets of Milan, away from the Olympic glamor The New York Times (resilc) 🙁
Solved: Fermi’s silence is not a mystery. That’s arithmetic.
The Great Filter isn’t hiding in an asteroid crash, gray goo, or runaway nanobots.
It’s already here.
It’s always been here.
It’s encoded in the most unforgiving line of mathematics that civilization has ever seen… https://t.co/QLxSUPv921
— Brian Roemmele (@BrianRoemmele) February 9, 2026
Common sweeteners can damage critical brain barriers, putting you at risk of stroke Science alert (resilc)
Coffee and tea intake, dementia risk, and cognitive function JAMA. Validation for caffeine addicts. Consuming 2-3 cups a day can prevent dementia to some extent.
Doctors discover new virus can cause dementia… 20 million Americans already infected Daily Mail
FDA refuses to review Moderna’s mRNA influenza vaccine application, the company reports CNN (Kevin W)
#New Coronavirus Infection/Pandemic
Trust and uptake of COVID-19 vaccines: The role of media, interpersonal and organizational trust in large-scale population-based surveys The Lancet (Robin K)
Bird flu is the cause of mass deaths of skuas in Antarctica, scientists say CIDRAP
Climate/Environment
Is another El Niño phenomenon already occurring? What can we learn from it?Jim Hansen
Will the Pacific Decadal Oscillation be neutral (or positive 🫣) this year?
If a negative PDO is a natural variation and regional and global heat uptake is “relatively” limited, then the next positive (=bad) PDO will lead to further acceleration of global warming. https://t.co/2iTVEOxTSK pic.twitter.com/sF1R7bG4Om
— Leon Simmons 🌍 (@LeonSimons8) February 8, 2026
Historic Middle East Heatwave
Record for hottest February day in history shattered:
33.6C Sedom Israel
33.4C Goal El Safi Jordan
Also recorded in Jericho Palestine
The unusually hot weather is spreading across Asia and is expected to continue through February.
Hundreds of records expected pic.twitter.com/i60Fv9huXa
— Abnormal temperatures around the world (@extremetemps) February 8, 2026
Methane levels skyrocketed after 2020, and the cause was unexpected Science Daily (Kevin W)
Study finds electric cars make driving easier to breathe
‘Stern warning’: Pesticide damage to wildlife is on the rise worldwide, research reveals in Guardian
China?
China’s real estate sales forecast is revised downward by S&P as market slump deepens
China steps up dangerous aerial encounters near Taiwan Financial Times
Is China cooking Waymo? china talk
Japan
Please be careful of the “right-wing spiral” caused by interactions between Japanese politicians and the Internet right-wing Global Times. Remember, this is effectively an agency of the Chinese government.
China’s withdrawal from the US Treasury could limit Japan’s military spending Asia Times (Kevin W)
Africa
Endless heat: climate models reveal an unbearable future for parts of Africa Modern Ghana
Kenyans worry that ‘our children will be next’ as livestock wiped out due to drought Addis Standard
south of the border
Venezuela sends first crude oil cargo to Israel as oil exports resume after Maduro ouster Bloomberg (Kevin W)
🇺🇸The Department of Defense announced that it has seized the Panamanian-flagged tanker Aquila II in the Indian Ocean.
The United States justified the seizure by claiming the tanker violated the Caribbean oil blockade imposed by President Trump. pic.twitter.com/8rf76crebf
— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) February 9, 2026
Cuba’s capital airport declares jet fuel unavailable as energy crisis worsens Flight Global
El Salvador declares national emergency: More than 600 forest fires reported so far this year Environmental News
Chancay Port: A dramatic boost for extractivism in South America CADTM (Micael T)
discord in europe
Von der Leyen aims to break RT, an important pillar of the EU (Kevin W)
Various aspects of Jeffrey Epstein Mark Endeweld (Aurelian) between Paris and Geneva. Click here for machine translation.
How the Epstein scandal brought down Jack Lang: ‘Everyone knew he wasn’t paying anything’ Le Monde
Farmers report ‘catastrophic’ crop damage as Storm Malta hits Spain and Portugal France 24
old blighty
Gold yields soar again as No10 turmoil rattles markets… raising fears of a Liz Truss-style financial crisis This is Money
British think tank The Guardian says it will take 137 years for low-income households to double their standard of living.
🇬🇧 The Ministry of Justice has ordered the deletion of Britain’s largest court reporting archive.
Courtsdesk, a platform set up to improve media access to judges’ court data, has been ordered by David Lamy, the Ministry of Justice, to delete its archives.
According to… pic.twitter.com/PRVDWdhRbk
— Europa.com (@europa) February 9, 2026
Hundreds of flood warnings and warnings issued across the UK after days of rain LBC
israel vs resistance
Israel uses weapons in Gaza, vaporizes thousands of Palestinians from Al Jazeera (riots)
Baffler, it’s not over yet. important.
These are water tanks that the Israeli military detonated to exacerbate the thirst and mass death in Gaza. This is why Médecins Sans Frontières is banned from occupied Palestinian territory in violation of the Genocide Convention. https://t.co/o7rkTSkxlv
— Nicola Perugini (@PeraginiNic) February 10, 2026
Odds are 8-1, Trump won’t start Gulf War Indian Punchline. Disagree with Larry Johnson’s views and rumors Daniel Davis has heard.
Col. Larry Wilkerson: The United States has truly reached the point of no return. Dialogue Works, YouTube. Wilkerson confirms the scenario we’ve been warning about since 2:20. He has heard from reliable sources that Netanyahu is threatening to bring Epstein’s documents to meetings with Trump to force him to attack Iran. If Trump is ruthless enough, he could document Bibi’s threats and have him arrested and imprisoned. After all, blackmail is a crime. But Trump only bashes parties he considers weak.
War and “covert action” are not the way to deal with Iran: American conservatives (resilc)
syrakistan
Turkish military commander says there is no plan to withdraw from Syria’s Al-Monitor
A new war that’s not so cold war
Deaths from hypothermia increase in Ukraine due to Russian attack on energy system Al Jazeera
Is Russia still losing? julian macfarlane
Who or what is President Putin working for Olivier Boyd Barrett?
Expansion of dark fleet looms as EU seeks to reduce maritime lifeline for Russian oil Splash 247
Chinese companies continue to report on Ukraine issues in South China Morning Post as China and Russia tout ties
imperial collapse watch
The Presidential Murder Case Isn’t Over Yet Daniel Larison
Do you think “that won’t happen here”? Exposing Joint Chiefs of Staff espionage to White House Commissar Lucy
C. Thi Nguyen talks about why measuring everything ruins everything Yasha Mounk A long-standing complaint. Read admin’s review of Great Addiction Conference Board
Trump 2.0
US optimism dips to record low in Gallup (resilc)
President Trump to order Pentagon to buy coal-fired power generation for national security Oil price resilc: “Is Calvary the horse next?
ICE Rampage
ICE is expanding across the United States at breakneck speed. Next is here
Without explanation, the FAA closes the airspace in El Paso and New Mexico for 10 days due to the El Paso defense issue! Paul R: “I think there’s an ICE storm brewing.”
Lafaire Epstein
If true, this would support the idea that Trump and Epstein’s vast dealings, which have so far been hidden, mean that Israel is almost certainly conducting its own Epstein dealings with Trump.
🚨 BREAKING BREAKING: Lawmakers say Trump’s personal lawyers (Bondi, Blanche and Patel) withheld or redacted an estimated 95% of the references to Donald Trump in the Epstein file (about 950,000 out of more than 1 million references, according to staff calculations).
If accurate, this is one of the biggest…
— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) February 10, 2026
Commerce Secretary Lutnick admits to visiting Epstein Island during Senate session on The Hill
Trump cabinet members indicted in Epstein scandal
Democrats are the worst
What Democrats Can Really Learn from the 1992 Election G. Elliott Morris (Robin K.)
police state surveillance
Caitlin Johnston (Kevin W) beaten by police in Australia for speaking out against genocide
We shared what’s happening right now from Sydney. he had his hands up. pic.twitter.com/Ubdo00Y15j
— David Shoebridge (@DavidShoebridge) February 9, 2026
Our press is no longer free
TikTok payday report gets 21,000 likes in Brazil, but blocked by Trump administration in US Mike Elk
economy
Climate risks threaten credit ratings for dozens of countries Economic Times
A.I.
From President Trump to hyperscalers: Data centers, electricity costs The Register
Politics of AI NBER (resilc)
basil
Cryptocurrency rebellion exposes vulnerabilities in Trump administration’s Axios (resilc) coalition
Deepfake scams occur on an industrial scale, Guardian investigation reveals
Bitcoin remains in a narrow range below $70,000 ahead of Wednesday’s US jobs report Coindesk
class war
U.S. consumer crime surges to highest level in nearly 10 years Bloomberg
New York City private school passes $70,000 milestone in fall tuition Bloomberg
Is immigration good for health? The impact of immigration on mortality among older adults in the United States NBER (resilc)
This morning I realized I had crossed over.
It’s permanent. Don’t go back.
As I was getting ready for work, my wife asked me what I thought about the story of Savannah Gaffrey and her mother being kidnapped.
Without hesitation, I said, “It’s psychology.”
She stopped and…
— Maryland HODL (BitBonds = Structural Innovation) (@MarylandHODL21) February 10, 2026
Aging Antidote (Mark T):
bonus:
A koala at the zoo is approached by its favorite keeper to be petted and cuddled.
— Science Girl (@sciencegirl) February 11, 2026
Second bonus:
Ah..😊 pic.twitter.com/IPwO9Yx2d8
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) February 10, 2026
And third:
Sometimes the best things in life happen when we least expect it. pic.twitter.com/VSReOM5ks4
— Out of Context Humans (@NoContextHumans) February 11, 2026
Click here for yesterday’s link and Antidote du Jour.
