Are we trending toward an “I’ll believe anything” world?

https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/31/uk/amelia-meme-ai-far-right-intl-scli

This cute AI-generated schoolgirl is a growing far-right meme

At first glance, Amelia, with her purple bob and pixie-girl looks, seems an unlikely candidate for the far right to adopt as an increasingly popular meme.

Yet, for the past few weeks, memes and AI-generated videos featuring this fictional British teenager have proliferated across social media, especially on X. In them, Amelia parrots right-wing, often racist, talking points, connecting her celebration of stereotypical British culture with anti-migrant and Islamophobic tropes.

She sips pints in pubs, reads “Harry Potter” and goes back in time to fight in some of Britain’s most famous battles. But she also dons an ICE uniform to violently deport migrants and embraces such extreme rhetoric that even British far-right activist Tommy Robinson has posted videos of her. It’s an unlikely life for a schoolgirl.

Worry when the AI fakes aren’t so obvious…

https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/donald-trump-ai-youtube-21323144.php

Trump pushes obviously fake videos bashing California

The Trump administration has used artificial intelligence to create a fake image of a protester crying and to splash ads across the internet for months. Now, the president is using videos that seem clearly to be created with the new tech to fan his base’s anti-California sentiment.

During a wave of posts and reposts to Truth Social on Wednesday, President Donald Trump’s account twice shared an apparently AI-generated, news-style video claiming Walmart is shutting down 250 stores across California due to the state’s policy choices. One of Trump’s posts included a screenshot of a commentator calling it, “More bad news for Gavin Newson,” aka Newsom, California governor and the president’s most prominent Democratic foil.

A Walmart spokesperson told CNN that the company is not shutting down a wave of stores in California, and actually just opened a new location in the Inland Empire. Newsom’s Press Office bashed Trump for the posts, saying another posted video was AI-generated and had accused the governor of running a drug-money laundering scheme. “We cannot believe this is real life,” the governor’s post said, “And we truly cannot believe this man has the nuclear codes.”

(Related)

https://www.bespacific.com/dhs-is-using-google-and-adobe-ai-to-make-videos/

DHS is using Google and Adobe AI to make videos

MIT Technology Review: “Immigration agencies have been flooding social media with bizarre, seemingly AI-generated content. We now know more about what might be making it.”

I have a little list. They surely won’t be missed.

https://www.bespacific.com/government-unconstitutionally-labels-ice-observers-as-domestic-terrorists/

• ICE Making List of Anyone Who Films Them. “We have a nice little database and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.” Ken Klippenstein

• ICE’s Secret Watchlists of Americans Sparta, Reaper and Grapevine track protesters, their friends (+ others) – Ken Klippenstein

• Wired [no paywall] – Meta Is Blocking Links to ICE List on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads – Users of Meta’s social platforms can no longer share links to ICE List, a website listing what it claims are the names of thousands of DHS employees.

• Washington Post – The powerful tools in ICE’s arsenal to track suspects — and protesters. Biometric trackers, cellphone location databases and drones are among the surveillance technologies that federal agents are tapping in their deportation campaign.

Cato Institute Report – “On December 4, the Department of Justice (DOJ) disseminated a memorandum to all federal prosecutors creating a strategy for arresting and charging individuals supposedly aligned with “Antifa.” The memo requires DOJ to investigate and identify the “most serious, most readily provable” crimes committed by potential targets, including those with “extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders.” Specifically, the document defines domestic terrorism broadly to include “doxing” and “impeding” immigration and other law enforcement. Doxing is not specifically defined, but the memo references calls to require Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to give their names and operate unmasked. Individuals who donate to organizations that “impede” or “dox” will be investigated and deemed to have supported “domestic terrorism.” Therefore, it is crucial to understand that ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) consider people who follow DHS and ICE agents to observe, record, or protest their operations as engaging in “impeding.” DHS has a systematic policy of threatening people who follow ICE or DHS agents to record their activities with detentions, arrests, and violence, and agents have already chased, detained, arrested, charged, struck, and shot at people who follow them. The purpose of this post is to establish that these incidents are not isolated overreach by individual agents, but rather, an official, nationwide policy of intimidating and threatening people who attempt to observe and record DHS operations. This matters legally because courts are more likely to enjoin an official policy rather than impose some new requirements to stop sporadic, uncoordinated actions by individual agents…

• People have a right to record law enforcement during their operations, as my colleague Walter Olson describes in more depth.

• People generally have a right to protest, yell out, insult, swear at, and even “verbally interrupt” law enforcement during their operations.

• People generally have a right to post the names of law enforcement agents, including undercover agents, unless it is done with a provable intent to threaten them.

• People have a right to generally warn others about the presence of law enforcement, for example, by holding a sign, honking, flashing lights, or livestreaming.

• Honking can only be limited through a content-neutral, traffic-safety statute, which does not exist under federal law.

• People may not be arrested or detained, even for real technical traffic violations, if the officers are motivated by a desire to retaliate against their speech and the arrest or detention would not have otherwise been made…”

Useful in other areas?

https://www.bespacific.com/all-in-embedding-ai-in-the-law-school-classroom/

All In: Embedding AI in the Law School Classroom

Via LLRX – All In: Embedding AI in the Law School Classroom – What is the irreducibly human element in legal education when AI can pass the bar exam, generate effective lectures, and provide personalized learning and academic support? This article by law professor Gregory M. Duhl confronts that question head-on by documenting the planning and design of a comprehensive transformation of a required doctrinal law school course—first-year Contracts— with AI fully embedded throughout the course design. Instead of adding AI exercises to conventional pedagogy or creating a stand-alone AI course, this approach reimagines legal education for the AI era by integrating AI as a learning enhancer rather than a threat to be managed. The transformation serves Mitchell Hamline School of Law’s access-driven mission: AI helps create equity for diverse learners, prepares practice-ready professionals for legal practice transformed by AI, and shifts the institutional narrative from policing technology use to leveraging it pedagogically.

Tools & Techniques.

https://www.bespacific.com/ragecheck-a-tool-for-understanding-manipulative-framing-in-media/

RageCheck – A tool for understanding manipulative framing in media.

RageCheck is a free tool that analyzes online content for linguistic patterns commonly associated with manipulative framing—the kind of language designed to provoke emotional reactions rather than inform. Modern social platforms reward engagement, and outrage generates more engagement than nuance. This creates incentives for content creators to frame information in emotionally provocative ways, regardless of whether that framing is accurate or fair. RageCheck helps you see these patterns so you can make more informed decisions about what to believe, share, and engage with.

• What RageCheck Is Not – Not a Fact Checker – RageCheck does not verify claims or assess accuracy. A high score means content uses manipulative framing—it doesn’t mean the underlying claims are false. Conversely, a low score doesn’t mean content is true.

• Not a Political Bias Detector – Manipulative framing exists across the political spectrum. RageCheck analyzes linguistic patterns regardless of political orientation. Content from any viewpoint can score high or low depending on how it’s framed.

• Not an Arbiter of Truth – RageCheck is a tool, not an authority. Use it as one input among many when evaluating content. Your own judgment, multiple sources, and critical thinking remain essential.

When does simplifying become simple minded?

https://www.npr.org/2026/01/28/nx-s1-5677187/nuclear-safety-rules-rewritten-trump

The Trump administration has secretly rewritten nuclear safety rules

The Trump administration has overhauled a set of nuclear safety directives and shared them with the companies it is charged with regulating, without making the new rules available to the public, according to documents obtained exclusively by NPR.

The sweeping changes were made to accelerate development of a new generation of nuclear reactor designs. They occurred over the fall and winter at the Department of Energy, which is currently overseeing a program to build at least three new experimental commercial nuclear reactors by July 4 of this year.

… NPR obtained copies of over a dozen of the new orders, none of which are publicly available. The orders slash hundreds of pages of requirements for security at the reactors. They also loosen protections for ground water and the environment and eliminate at least one key safety role. The new orders cut back on requirements for keeping records, and they raise the amount of radiation a worker can be exposed to before an official accident investigation is triggered.

Over 750 pages were cut from the earlier versions of the same orders, according to NPR's analysis, leaving only about one third of the number of pages in the original documents.

At what point do we tip over to believing everything is fake?

https://apnews.com/article/ai-videos-trump-ice-artificial-intelligence-08d91fa44f3146ec1f8ee4d213cdad31

Trump’s use of AI images pushes new boundaries, further eroding public trust, experts say

The Trump administration has not shied away from sharing AI-generated imagery online, embracing cartoonlike visuals and memes and promoting them on official White House channels.

But an edited — and realistic — image of civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong in tears after being arrested is raising new alarms about how the administration is blurring the lines between what is real and what is fake.

An interesting question.

https://www.bespacific.com/the-trump-administration-is-lying-to-our-faces-congress-must-act/

The Trump Administration Is Lying to Our Faces. Congress Must Act

The New York Times Editorial Board (Gift Article): The Trump Administration Is Lying to Our Faces. Congress Must Act. “The administration is urging Americans to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears. Ms. Noem and Mr. Bovino are lying in defiance of obvious truths. They are lying in the manner of authoritarian regimes that require people to accept lies as a demonstration of power.” But in today’s media landscape, it doesn’t cut it to eventually get to the truth after giving credulous consideration (and headline space) to the lies. When people lie every time, like every single time, maybe it doesn’t make sense to give them the benefit of the doubt in the first rough draft of history. At this point, it’s not enough to call out the lies we can plainly see with our own eyes. We have to assume the lie as a starting point. As Vinson Cunningham asks in The New Yorker: “Their untroubled and automatic dishonesty, amid so much shared evidence, gives rise to a horrible question: If this is what they do when we can see, what’s going on in the places—planes and cars, detention centers—where we can’t?” We need to find out. We owe it to Alex Pretti’s parents, and we owe it to America…”

• The New York Times Magazine Gift Article – Watching America Unravel in Minneapolis: “Donald Trump’s most profound break with American democracy, evident in his words and actions alike, is his view that the state’s relationship with its citizens is defined not by ideals or rules but rather by expressions of power, at the personal direction of the president. That has been clear enough for years, but I had not truly seen what it looked like in person until I arrived in Minneapolis, my hometown, to witness what Trump’s Department of Homeland Security called Operation Metro Surge…”

• TIME: In Wake of Alex Pretti Shooting, Trump Is Betraying His Base on Gun Rights. They’re Not Happy. [Stephen Miller called Pretti “an assassin [who] tried to murder federal agents”]

• The Atlantic Gift Article – Believe Your Eyes. “People are risking their lives to document agents in Minneapolis…But Pretti’s last seconds were captured from multiple angles, in sickening footage widely distributed on social media and by news organizations. It is able to be seen and dissected online precisely because of the observers who were there to document it, who watched as federal agents piled atop Pretti and who did not drop their phones when the gunshots rang out…”

• The New Yorker – The Battle for Minneapolis [no paywall] “As Donald Trump brings his retribution to a liberal city, citizens, protesters, and civic leaders try to protect one another.”

A tech glitch or censorship? How would we know?

https://www.npr.org/2026/01/27/nx-s1-5689104/tiktok-epstein-direct-messages

TikTok is investigating why some users can't write 'Epstein' in messages

Officials at TikTok say they are looking into why many users have been unable to send the word "Epstein" in direct messages, an issue that garnered widespread attention on social media Monday and prompted California Gov. Gavin Newsom to announce an inquiry into the matter.

Interesting. I’m sure a spy or a terrorist would fully comply...

https://pogowasright.org/the-trump-administration-wants-your-dna-and-social-media/

The Trump Administration wants your DNA and social media

Privacy International sounds the alarm:

The U.S. Government intends to force visitors to submit their digital history and DNA as the price of entry. With this much data AI tools will likely be deployed to unlock details of your life for border and immigration agencies.

Yesterday the Trump Administration announced a proposed change in policy for travellers to the U.S. It applies to the powers of data collection by the Customs and Border Police (CBP).

If the proposed changes are adopted after the 60-day consultation, then millions of travellers to the U.S. will be forced to use a U.S. government mobile phone app, submit their social media from the last five years and email addresses used in the last ten years, including of family members. They’re also proposing the collection of DNA.

Read the details of this dystopian proposal on Privacy International.

Read the Federal Register proposal and submit any comments by February 9, 2026.

A wish or a fact?

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-agents-incapable-math

AI Agents Are Mathematically Incapable of Doing Functional Work, Paper Finds

A months-old but until now overlooked study recently featured in Wired claims to mathematically prove that large language models “are incapable of carrying out computational and agentic tasks beyond a certain complexity” — that level of complexity being, crucially, pretty low.

… Ignore the rhetoric that tech CEOs spew onstage and pay attention to what the researchers that work for them are finding, and you’ll find that even the AI industry agrees that the tech has some fundamental limitations baked into its architecture. In September, for example, OpenAI scientists admitted that AI hallucinations, in which LLMs confidently make up facts, were still a pervasive problem even in increasingly advanced systems, and that model accuracy would “never” reach 100 percent.

Another lesson in basic economics.

https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/capping-card-interest-rates-wont-make-credit-cheaper/

Capping Card Interest Rates Won’t Make Credit Cheaper

… All price controls are based on the idea that the price is the problem to be solved. It is not. It is merely the symptom of some underlying issue in supply and demand for whatever good, service, or asset is under discussion. This is the same for minimum wages – which are price floors – or caps on credit card fees, which are price ceilings, just like rent controls.  

An interest rate is a price like any other. Specifically, it is the rental price of capital, and it is set by the supply of and demand for capital: where demand is high relative to supply, the price will be high, and where it is low, the price will be low, ceteris paribus.  

If a market interest rate is high, reflecting high demand for capital relative to the supply of it, setting a legal maximum rate below it will neither expand the supply of nor reduce the demand for credit. Quite the opposite. If demand was high relative to supply at a rate of, say, 10 percent, it is only likely to increase if a legal maximum of 5 percent is introduced. On the other side, those supplying credit at 10 percent are likely to supply less of it at 5 percent.

The “not ICE” version…

https://www.bespacific.com/cbp-murdered-alex-jeffrey-pretti-in-minneapolis-mn-on-january-24-2026/

CBP Murdered Alex Jeffrey Pretti in Minneapolis MN on January 24, 2026.

Has evidence in criminal cases been resolved?

https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=1387148

EVIDENCE IN THE MODERN CIVIL TRIAL: ADMISSION OF DIGITAL EVIDENCE, THE USE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, AND THE BURDEN OF PROOF IN CONSUMER-PROFESSIONAL DISPUTES

Rapid technological transformation has profoundly reshaped the rules and practices of civil procedure. This paper examines three major directions in the evolution of evidentiary mechanisms: the admissibility of digital evidence, such as emails, messages, and recordings; the use of artificial intelligence as an evidentiary tool and its implications for the fairness of proceedings; and the adjustments to the burden of proof in disputes between consumers and professionals, in the context of enhanced protection for the vulnerable party. The article evaluates the current legal framework, judicial practice, and future challenges, concluding that modernizing civil procedural law is necessary in order to respond effectively to the realities of the digital age.

Again, SciFi predicts reality…

https://scholarworks.uark.edu/arlnlaw/24/

Ethics Of Artificial Intelligence For Lawyers: I’m Sorry Dave, I’m Afraid I Can’t Do That: Competence, Confidentiality, And Communication

In Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, the spaceship’s onboard computer, HAL, calmly refuses to follow the astronaut’s command with the chilling words, “I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.” HAL’s response has become a cultural shorthand for what happens when human expectations collide with machine limitations. The line endures because it captures the chilling reality that machines may appear capable, but they cannot always be trusted to act in ways humans expect or need.

This installment explores three pillars of Formal Opinion 512: competence, confidentiality, and communication. These pillars focus on what lawyers need to understand about artificial intelligence, how they must safeguard client information when using these new tools, and when they are required to disclose its use to clients.