Reluctantly, Nick and Ciarán talk about the latest Esptein files

Move over Dr. Google, Dr. ChatGPT is here, and it's even worse as a medical intervention! Alex and Emily scrub in to slice up some harmful new nonsense in the world of "AI" for medicine. What's the cure for an expensive and inaccessible health care system? One thing's for sure — it's not AI hype.

References:

• "Stop Worrying, and Let A.I. Help Save Your Life"
• "Introducing ChatGPT Health"

Also referenced:

• "No, I don't want an AI scribe to write my pulmonologist’s note"
• "The Danger of Intimate Algorithms"
• MAIHT3k Episode 62: The Robo-Therapist Will See You Now (with Maggie Harrison Dupré)

Fresh AI Hell:

• Waymo files vague NHTSA report on crash that killed KitKat (See also: NHTSA Standing General Order on Crash Reporting)
• "Medical Schools Use AI Patients to Help With Clinical Training"
• "What If Your Coffee Mug Knew Your Next Move? AI Researchers Made It Happen"
• "Monkeys are on the loose in St. Louis and AI is complicating efforts to capture them"
• Using LLMs to "infer race, ethnicity"
• Tech CEOs hate ridicule as praxis!

Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see.

Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here.

Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown.

Follow us!

Emily

• Bluesky: emilymbender.bsky.social
• Mastodon: dair-community.social/@EmilyMBender

Alex

• Bluesky: alexhanna.bsky.social
• Mastodon: dair-community.social/@alex
• Twitter: @alexhanna

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park. 
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

The standard advice people get when they complain about some bug or difficulty with Emacs is to restart it with -q or -Q to see if the problem persists. The problem with that advice is that the difficulty may be with a package. In that case you want to load at least the offending package and its configuration. That used to involve moving or renaming your init.el so that you could install the minimal init.el that produced the problem. As of Emacs 29 that got easier with the introduction of the --init-directory parameter that tells Emacs to load it’s configuration from a different directory.

Protesilaos Stavrou (Prot) has a nice post that explains how to use this feature when you experience a problem and want to file a bug report. The main problem, of course, is what to put in your new init.el. Prot recommends using use-package with :ensure t (and whatever configuration you’re using) to load the package.

Sometimes you might have to build the package from source rather than simply loading it from one of the ELPA repositories. Prot discusses how to do this using package-vc-install to grab the source directly from its git repository. He has some sample code showing how to do this.

Finally, he has some general recommendations that you can use to make the developer’s life a bit easier. On the other hand, if you are the package developer, the --init-directory trick can save a lot of time in locating bugs. In either case, take a look at Prot’s post. There’s a lot of good information in it.

Heating accounts for nearly half of the global energy demand, and two-thirds of that is met by burning fossil fuels like natural gas, oil, and coal. Solar energy is a possible alternative, but while we have become reasonably good at storing solar electricity in lithium-ion batteries, we’re not nearly as good at storing heat.

To store heat for days, weeks, or months, you need to trap the energy in the bonds of a molecule that can later release heat on demand. The approach to this particular chemistry problem is called molecular solar thermal (MOST) energy storage. While it has been the next big thing for decades, it never really took off.

In a recent Science paper, a team of researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and UCLA demonstrate a breakthrough that might finally make MOST energy storage effective.

Read full article

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Is there a way out for Keir Starmer after the Peter Mandelson scandal? Who fled ‘under the cover of darkness’ from their royal lodgings? What exactly is a humble address? And why are iguanas falling out of trees? Helping Andy answer some of the big questions of the week are Desiree Burch, Pierre Novellie, Daniel Finkelstein and Catherine Bohart.

Written by Andy Zaltzman.

With additional material by: Cody Dahler, Eve Delaney and Sarah Mills Producer: Georgia Keating Executive Producers: Richard Morris and James Robinson Production Coordinator: Giulia Lopes Mazzu Sound Editor: Marc Willcox

A BBC Studios Production for Radio 4.

Democracy Now! 2026-02-12 Thursday

• Headlines for February 12, 2026
• "Massive Cover-Up": Rep. Jayapal Slams AG Pam Bondi over Epstein Files & Spying on Lawmakers
• Netanyahu Seeks to Kill U.S.-Iran Talks to Start Another War: Mouin Rabbani
• Oscar-Nominated Filmmaker Jafar Panahi Speaks Out on Jailing of Screenwriter Mehdi Mahmoudian in Iran
• "I Was Just So Disgusted": Jewish Rep. Balint Walks Out of Hearing After Bondi Calls Her Antisemitic

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In episode 94 of Soberanía, hosts José Luis Granados Ceja and Kurt Hackbarth dive into the Mexico connections in the Jeffrey Epstein files, focusing on serious allegations against a former U.S. ambassador and the impunity that protects powerful figures. Next, they provide an urgent update on U.S. efforts to strangle Cuba with an oil blockade, examining Mexico's diplomatic response and the looming humanitarian crisis. Finally, the hosts celebrate a major domestic achievement: the full inauguration of the "El Insurgente" commuter train, a symbol of infrastructure progress and national priorities.The episode concludes with a special segment of "Can I Borrow You For A Minute?" featuring an insightful interview with the hosts of the Blowback podcast on U.S. imperialism and global resistance.

The United States is mobilizing for a new war on Iran — repositioning military forces, floating assassination threats, and insisting on negotiations at the same time.

As this military buildup intensifies, Western media is reviving a familiar propaganda narrative: that Iran is collapsing, its government has lost control, and foreign intervention might actually help.

To cut through the noise, Rania Khalek is joined by Navid Zarrinnal, an Iranian-American academic and host of The Colony Archive, speaking from inside Tehran. Navid breaks down what’s actually happening on the ground — from internal debates over negotiations, to Iran’s potential military retaliation, to why the myth of Iran’s imminent collapse keeps getting recycled.

They also discuss the end of Iran’s so-called “strategic patience,” the reality of U.S. hybrid warfare, the role of foreign intervention in recent protests, and the dangerous push to fracture Iran along ethnic and sectarian lines — a policy openly floated by Western elites.

Finally, Navid explains why the nuclear deal failed, why sanctions and regime-change politics won’t bring justice, and what the Western Left should actually be focusing on.

Read Navid’s Breakthrough News article here; https://breakthroughnews.org/irans-protests-explained-a-diary-from-tehran/ 

In this episode, we examine our political class' TikTok neurosis, how Gaza fueled its sell to US and Israeli military contractors, and the long history of elite panics around unsanctioned information flows. With guest Omar Zahzah.

In this Stand-up Special Finlay Christie makes his Radio 4 debut in front of a live audience at The Brunswick in Brighton.

He provides insight into how he and his generation have grown into the adults they’re now expected to be. Using new and existing material from his critically acclaimed Edinburgh shows he’ll cover topics like; the expectations of different generations; “pensioners complaining they can’t heat their house. That sounds like a boast – You’ve got a house?!’ ...”

- the differences between the generations; “People say young people are more sensitive, but every generation is sensitive, we’re just sensitive about different stuff. We’re sensitive about pronouns, old people are sensitive about Princess Diana.”

- how his generation feel about the world; "Gen Z are very nihilistic. World’s gonna end in our lifetimes and we don’t care. One girl in Sweden cared and that made the news.”

“TikTok has made me see people who watch films as intellectuals. Ooh, you have a penchant for cinéma?? Ohohoho.” And how it now feels to be a man; “ the difference between Man and Boy - "Landlord bad…. rent boy..nice….” " “It’s a boy” - “congratulations”. “It’s a man” - “allegations.”

At 19, Finlay became one of the youngest ever winners of the prestigious So You Think You’re Funny competition, following in the footsteps of Peter Kay, Lee Mack and Sarah Millican. 3 years later, his debut Edinburgh show “OK Zoomer” was nominated for NextUp’s “Best Show” award and was released as a special in October 2023. His material, based around his experience as a Gen Z, led Chortle to describe him as “the voice of his generation.”

Producer: Julian Mayers

The Reagan Doctrine puts Angola in the crosshairs as aid to UNITA is uncorked.

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Subscribe to Bad Faith on Patreon to instantly unlock our full premium episode library: http://patreon.com/badfaithpodcast

MintPress News journalist Alan MacLeod returns to Bad Faith to talk us through the latest Epstein file revelations: New links between Epstein & Mossad, race science & Jewish supremacy, celebrity sightings, media influence, right-wing pedophile apologia, & more.

Subscribe to Bad Faith on YouTube for video of this episode. Find Bad Faith on Twitter (@badfaithpod) and Instagram (@badfaithpod).

Produced by Armand Aviram.

Theme by Nick Thorburn (@nickfromislands).

Matt and Daniel are joined by California Green Party Gubernatorial Candidate Dr. Butch Ware to speed through Norm Finkelstein’s promise to bring a campfire’s worth of smoke to Dersh and Epstein, each of their individual honors in the field of supposed anti-semitism, and expressions of at least two of the pillars of hip hop.

Please donate to Gaza Great Minds: http://gazagreatminds.org/donate/

Butch Ware: https://www.butchware4gov.com/

Revolutionary Rally, Butch Ware for Cali: https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/revolutionary-rally-butch-ware-for-cali

New Bad Hasbara Merch: https://estoymerchandise.com/collections/bad-hasbara-podcast

Subscribe to the Patreon https://www.patreon.com/badhasbara

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Skad Skasbarska playlist: http://bit.ly/skadskasbarska

Subscribe/listen to Bad Hasbara wherever you get your podcasts.

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On the agenda this week is Starmer vs Burnham in Labour's latest civil war, Suella Braverman’s defection to Reform, and working out how to save The Great British pub. To get to the bottom of all this, Andy is joined by Daliso Chaponda, Kiri Pritchard-McLean, Hugo Rifkind and Holly Walsh.

Written by Andy Zaltzman.

With additional material by: Christina Riggs, Cameron Loxdale and Sarah Mills Producer: Georgia Keating Executive Producer: Pete Strauss Production Coordinator: Jodie Charman Sound Editor: Marc Willcox

A BBC Studios Production for Radio 4.

Denote includes the option of adding different directories, so this now makes sense:

(setq denote-directory
      (if (eq system-type 'gnu/linux)          ; If I'm using Linux, include the private folder.
          (list (expand-file-name "~/Sync/Notes")
                (expand-file-name "~/Documents/private"))
        (list (expand-file-name "~/Sync/Notes")))) ; If I'm using anything else (macOS) just Notes.

(setq denote-excluded-directories-regexp "data") ; the data folder (with attachments) is excluded.

I have a private folder for Denote notes on Linux only. I used to only sync my Sync/Notes folder, which includes my informational notes and blog posts, but that means I’m missing out on Denote’s abilities in my private folder, which is slowly increasing in size. This solves this problem.

There’s no need to list the data folder (which includes my attachments, mostly in file formats that are not Denote’s format), so that’s why the exclusion is there.

Subscribe to Bad Faith on Patreon to instantly unlock our full premium episode library: http://patreon.com/badfaithpodcast

Journalist from The Grayzone and author of Corporate Coup: Venezuela and the End of US Empire Anya Parampil returns to Bad Faith to discuss the latest developments in Venezuela following the kidnapping of Maduro -- a story that somehow emerged this month but is already out of the headlines. But first, we tackle an insane news week, including the ICE shooting death of Alex Pretti, the Democratic Party's feeble response and willingness to compromise ahead of this week's government funding deadline, settler attacks in the West Bank on Holocaust memorial day, Israelis starting fires in Patagonia, the physical attack on Ilhan Omar, TikTok becoming part of the Ellison empire, & more.

Subscribe to Bad Faith on YouTube for video of this episode. Find Bad Faith on Twitter (@badfaithpod) and Instagram (@badfaithpod).

Produced by Armand Aviram.

Theme by Nick Thorburn (@nickfromislands).

Democracy Now! 2026-02-04 Wednesday

• Headlines for February 04, 2026
• "No Means No": AZ Secretary of State Calls for Resistance as Trump Pushes to "Nationalize" Voting
• Why Was Spy Chief Tulsi Gabbard at FBI Election Raid in Georgia? Ex-DOJ Attorney Speaks Out
• A New Nuclear Arms Race Could "Spiral" as Last U.S.-Russia Treaty Expires: Dr. Ira Helfand
• "Geopolitics of the Weak": Colombian Senator Urges "Collective Action" Against U.S. Aggression

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Democracy Now! 2026-02-05 Thursday

• Headlines for February 05, 2026
• Rep. Khanna Slams DOJ for Not Launching New Probes of Jeffrey Epstein's "Co-Conspirators"
• "Tear Down ICE" & Probe Trump-UAE $500M Crypto Deal: Rep. Ro Khanna
• Shot, Harassed & Threatened: U.S. Citizens Describe Surviving Violent Attacks by Immigration Agents
• Elon Musk Under Fire for Epstein Links, Grok's Sexualized AI Deepfakes & SpaceX-xAI Merger

Download this show

This is a special episode, and it’s not like our usual livestream recordings. Instead, our producer Ozzy dug through the Fresh AI Hell archives to create a supercut of Alex's improvised transitions. She's made up dozens of skits and songs about the demons of AI Hell, based on weekly prompts from Emily and listeners. Finally, hear all the lore together in one place!

Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see.

Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here.

Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown.

Follow us!

Emily

• Bluesky: emilymbender.bsky.social
• Mastodon: dair-community.social/@EmilyMBender

Alex

• Bluesky: alexhanna.bsky.social
• Mastodon: dair-community.social/@alex
• Twitter: @alexhanna

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park. 
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Ciarán, Uma and Nick discuss the post Davos fallout and revelations in what they're calling the most Brussels Bubble bullshit episode ever

Despite a complex childhood, and with her teenage years spent guiding the career of her controversial comedian mother Janey Godley whilst caring for her depressed autistic father, Ashley has just had the most surreal, dramatic, tragic… and successful year of her life.

Her dream job was always in the magical world of TV with all its escapism, justice and happy endings. But the universe has a twisted sense of humour, and just as Ashley finally gets her big break, Janey is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Yay.

In this episode, we jump inside the brilliant and unhinged autistic brain of our “adult perma-child” protagonist and attempt to unspool this tragicomedy with some hilarious digressions en route.

Produced by Julia Sutherland Sound Design by Sean Kerwin A Dabster production for BBC Radio 4