How's this for an irresistible lede? From gaming news site Aftermath:

Back in 2023, a (slightly) more innocent time before Microsoft ravaged its games studios with layoffs and made itself into a BDS priority target, Blizzard held a competition: To promote Diablo IV’s second season, it raffled off a PC "infused with real human blood in its liquid cooling" as part of a blood drive seeking 666 quarts of the red goop that keeps us all alive. I was desperate to know more. How much blood? Whose blood? Can blood reliably and sustainably cool a PC? And, again, whose blood?

Read it all: Diablo IV PC Cooled With Real Human Blood Is Still Going Strong Two Years Later, Says Guy Who Won It

(Also check out Brian Merchant's excellent book on the Luddites, from which I stole the title for this post.)

An absolutely crackers story from 404 Media:

Waymo, Google’s autonomous vehicle company, and DoorDash, the delivery and gig work platform, have launched a pilot program that pays Dashers, at least in one case, around $10 to travel to a parked Waymo and close its door that the previous passenger left open, according to a joint statement from the company given to 404 Media.

Remarkable. Read it all: Waymo Is Getting DoorDashers to Close Doors on Self Driving Cars ($)

"Israeli Soldiers Accused of Using Polymarket to Bet on Strikes," reports the Wall Street Journal:

Last year, a user who went by the name ricosuave666 correctly predicted the timeline around the 12-day war between Israel and Iran. The bets drew attention from other traders who suspected the account holder had access to nonpublic information.

The account in question raked in more than $150,000 in winnings before going dormant for six months. It resumed trading last month, betting on when Israel would strike Iran, Polymarket data shows.

In a sane world, prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi would be outlawed. I can only hope we eventually get to that point sooner rather than later, or we risk an explosion of corruption.

AI can be both a threat to the news business, or it can be an incredible tool for streamlining some of the processes that go into everyday reporting. Here's Nieman Lab on the New York Times using AI to scrape the so-called "manosphere" for shifting reactions to the Jeffrey Epstein files:

Built in-house and known internally as the “Manosphere Report,” the tool uses large language models (LLMs) to transcribe and summarize new episodes of dozens of podcasts.

“The Manosphere Report gave us a really fast and clear signal that this was not going over well with that segment of the President’s base,” said Seward. “There was a direct link between seeing that and then diving in to actually cover it.”

Read it all: How The New York Times uses a custom AI tool to track the “manosphere”

Incredible discovery of a stop on the Underground Railroad, the secretive network of smuggling routes to help free African-American slaves from the South.

A dresser inside a museum in New York City has been discovered as a secret stop on the Underground Railroad — the first of its kind discovered in Manhattan in over 100 years

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— Phil Lewis (@phillewis.bsky.social) February 10, 2026 at 10:43 PM

Would strongly recommend watching Cheryl Wills' full report here.

A harrowing update from the D.C-based Center for Strategic and International Studies:

Despite claims of battlefield momentum in Ukraine, the data shows that Russia is paying an extraordinary price for minimal gains and is in decline as a major power. Since February 2022, Russian forces have suffered nearly 1.2 million casualties, more losses than any major power in any war since World War II. At current rates, combined Russian and Ukrainian casualties could reach 2 million by the spring of 2026. After seizing the initiative in 2024, Russian forces have advanced at an average rate of between 15 and 70 meters per day in their most prominent offensives, slower than almost any major offensive campaign in any war in the last century. Meanwhile, Russia’s war economy is under mounting strain, with manufacturing declining, slowing growth of 0.6 percent in 2025, and no globally competitive technology firms to help drive long-term productivity.

From 2018, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's useful reminder that the NFL doesn't get to decide who uses the name Super Bowl:

Having a trademark means being able to make sure no one can slap the name of your product onto theirs and confuse buyers into thinking they’re getting the real thing. It also means stopping an instance where using the name might make someone think it’s an endorsement or sponsorship. If neither of those things happens, you can call the Super Bowl the Super Bowl. The ability to use something’s trademarked name to identify it—even in a commercial—is called “nominative fair use.” Because the trademark is its name.

A local resident speaking at a council meeting in Surprise, Arizona, on the topic of a proposed ICE facility in the community:

Every American needs to watch this:

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— Mary L Trump (@maryltrump.bsky.social) Feb 5, 2026 at 3:41 PM

Zohran Mamdani, unveiling his childcare plan for New York City:

Child at the podium: “A woo woo woo.” Mamdani: That’s how I felt when we came up with this plan. Together, we will expand the idea of what is possible in our city—and what sounds and noises we can make at a press conference.

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— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) Feb 5, 2026 at 11:11 PM

When will someone stop this man? From Bloomberg:

After years of hype and promises to wipe out the scourge of traffic — but with only a Las Vegas tourist attraction to show for it — Elon Musk’s tunneling startup says it’s set to begin digging its first full-fledged transit corridor underneath Nashville.

There’s just one catch: City officials, as well as people with more experience building tunnels, think it’s a very bad idea.

“If it happens,” Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell said in an interview, “the ideal scenario would be: mostly harmless, no one dies.”

Read it all: Musk’s Boring Tunnel in Nashville Has Mayor Hoping No One Dies

Gothamist on what's being done about all that snow:

The sanitation department on Wednesday showed off part of its elaborate snow-melting operation on Broad Street on Manhattan's southern tip, where a steady stream of dump trucks hauls snow from collection sites throughout the borough. The powder is then lifted and dumped into the massive hot tubs — which can melt up to 120 tons of snow per hour — and spewed into the sewers as water.

Read it all: NYC sanitation races to get snow into giant hot tubs, thaw the city

Bellingcat's forensic analysis of the second deadly shooting in Minneapolis:

A video taken shortly after the shooting shows two agents searching Pretti’s body with one appearing to be heard asking: “Where’s the gun?”.

Henry Mance in the Financial Times:

Say what you like about Donald Trump, but the man has devoted much of his career to world peace. Between 1996 and 2015, he was a co-owner of the Miss Universe pageant.

On Thursday, the US president took his passion to a new level. On stage at Davos, he inaugurated a new “Board of Peace”, an organisation which, although it may lack Miss Universe’s credibility, compensates through sheer chutzpah.

Read it all: From bored of peace to the board of peace

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to delegates at the World Economic Forum:

Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: ‘Workers of the world unite’. He doesn't believe it, no-one does, but he places a sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persist – not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.

Havel called this “living within a lie”.

The system's power comes not from its truth, but from everyone's willingness to perform as if it were true, and its fragility comes from the same source. When even one person stops performing, when the greengrocer removes his sign, the illusion begins to crack. Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.

Read (or watch) his full remarks.

This fascinating tour of New York's Central Park, presented with great enthusiasm by architect Michael Wyetzner, is well worth your time: