Ho, Ho, Ho!

https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/santa-the-economic-terrorist/

Santa The Economic Terrorist

The bearded menace is sneakily importing $13 billion worth of gifts, exploiting elves, destroying jobs, and flouting borders, all to make us “merry.”

President Trump has accused virtually every country, including those inhabited only by penguins of ripping us off when it comes to trade. But there’s one region that the President has neglected to protect us from: the North Pole. By every metric that the Trump administration has used, Good Saint Nick should really be considered an economic terrorist. Consider the following:

Have they pointed out something Trump said?

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/24/business/europe-us-online-censorship-free-speech.html?unlocked_article_code=1._E8.yzBO.Xo1V767pxO9o&smid=url-share

They Seek to Curb Online Hate. The U.S. Accuses Them of Censorship.

The Trump administration said five regulators and researchers who work to tackle disinformation and abuse on the internet had been barred from entering the United States.

Texans like to talk?

https://ccianet.org/news/2025/12/judge-blocks-texass-app-store-accountability-act-as-unconstitutional-speech-restriction/

Judge Blocks Texas’s App Store Accountability Act as Unconstitutional Speech Restriction

A federal court has granted the Computer & Communication Industry Association’s request for a preliminary injunction blocking Texas SB2420, the App Store Accountability Act, from being enforced against any entity pending a final decision on the merits of the case. Judge Robert Pitman agreed with arguments that the law likely violates the First Amendment by being vague, overly broad, and a restraint of the protected speech of both app stores and app developers.

Tools & Techniques. (I thought we had solved this problem years ago…)

https://www.financialexpress.com/world-news/us-news/epstein-files-some-of-the-redacted-material-can-be-easily-recovered-heres-how/4087411/

Epstein Files: Some of the redacted material can be easily recovered. Here’s how

… Amid huge row over the recently released batch of documents from US Department of Justice’s extensive Jeffrey Epstein files, a new report by The New York Times has revealed that some of the redacted material in the documents can easily be recovered. More than 11,000 files, totalling nearly 30,000 pages of photos, court records, FBI and DOJ documents, emails, news clippings, videos and other records related to Epstein were released on Monday, in the latest batch of documents related to the investigation of late financier and convicted sex offender.

… According to NYT, much of the information was not properly redacted digitally and some censored information could easily revealed by copying and pasting blacked-out text into a separate file.

Someone may be interested…

https://www.bespacific.com/we-created-a-searchable-database-for-the-epstein-files/

Searchable database for the Epstein Files – Only Fraction of Files Released

Below the Belt – We created a searchable database for the Epstein Files, including everything the DOJ wants hidden. “The repository will continue to grow as the Trump administration releases hundreds of thousands more documents from the investigation into Epstein’s sex trafficking operation. The US Department of Justice on Friday [December 19, 2025] published a heavily redacted portion of the documents from its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s international sex trafficking operation, and then summarily began deleting portions that could implicate President Donald Trump. Prior to the DOJ’s attempt to walk back what little transparency was to be found, COURIER retrieved every item from the initial release and published it in a searchable database that is available to the public. Anyone interested can utilize the database here. Included in the database are court filings, images, video, audio, and two sets of transcriptions of conversations between US Deputy Attorney General Todd Balnche and Epstein accomplice Ghislane Maxwell.

A hint at Trump’s next cut?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/21/denmark-postnord-postal-delivery-letters-society

Danish postal service to stop delivering letters after 400 years

The Danish postal service will deliver its last letter on 30 December, ending a more than 400-year-old tradition.

… Describing Denmark as “one of the most digitalised countries in the world”, the company said the demand for letters had “fallen drastically” while online shopping continued to increase, prompting the decision to instead focus on parcels.

… Danes will still be able to send letters, using the delivery company Dao, which already delivers letters in Denmark but will expand its services from 1 January from about 30m letters in 2025 to 80m next year. But customers will instead have to go to a Dao shop to post their letters – or pay extra to have it collected from home – and pay for postage either online or via an app.

Tools & Techniques.

https://cardcatalogforlife.substack.com/p/how-to-spot-ai-hallucinations-like

How to Spot AI Hallucinations Like a Reference Librarian

… ChatGPT doesn’t lie, exactly. It patterns matches. When you ask for a “cited article about remote work productivity,” it knows what citations look like. Author name, year, compelling title, respectable journal. It assembles these patterns into something that feels right. Like a dream where everything makes sense until you wake up.

The tell isn’t that fake citations look wrong. It’s that they look too right. Too convenient. Too perfectly aligned with whatever point the AI is making.

… In library school, they taught us something called “citation chaining,” but I’ve adapted it for the age of AI hallucinations. Think of it as three increasingly paranoid levels of verification.