This week, I speak with Richard Thaler and Alex Imas award winning economists and co-authors of “The Winner’s Curse: Behavioral Economics Anomalies“. We discuss the psychology of spending at auctions, and the effects of draft picks on NFL team spending. We also discuss the anomalies of human behavior and decision making that challenge classical economic theories.

Thaler, a Nobel laureate and professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, is widely known as one of the fathers of behavioral economcis. He explains how he popularized BeFi by “corrupting the youth” — the next generation of students who were more open-minded about the many anomalies and problems that the broad principles of Homo economicus failed to explain.

Alex Imas is also a professor at Booth; he wrote the paper ““Selling Fast and Buying Slow: Heuristics and Trading Performance of Institutional Investors.”  A critique of active management that tries to answer the question “why do the majority of active managers underperform?” (See my prior discussion here and a chapter in “How Not to Invest.“)

A transcript of our conversation is available here Tuesday. If you would like to hear even more of these gentlemen, we had a conversation Live at the Economic Club of New York late last year.

You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Bob Moser, CEO and founder of Prime Group Holdings, a private investor in unique real estate holdings. They created Prime Storage, one of the largest, privately-held self-storage brands in the world, with over 19 million rentable square feet of space and 255 locations across 28 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The firm has acquired over $10 billion in real estate assets.

 

 

 

Current Published Books

 

 

 

The post MiB: Richard Thaler and Alex Imas on The Winner’s Curse appeared first on The Big Picture.

How The EU Is Messing Up The AI Boom

Authored by Thomas Kolbe via American Thinker,

Economic prosperity is created in free markets by innovative companies. Over 50 percent of globally operating AI unicorns are located in the U.S., while Europe plays virtually no role. The race for the next future technology is already decided.

It seems that economic history is repeating itself. On the stock markets, companies in the artificial intelligence and data center sectors are being traded feverishly. Massive capital flows into this technology. Much of it resembles the dot-com boom 25 years ago.

Structurally and regionally, little has changed since then: The U.S. and China are fighting for pole position, while the European Union’s economy remains largely on the sidelines, pushed into a spectator role by EU regulators.

Unicorns as a Measure of Innovation

An interesting measure of the EU’s lag in artificial intelligence is the number of so-called unicorns -- private startups valued at at least one billion U.S. dollars before going public. This metric is considered a valid indicator of a region’s innovative capacity -- and for the EU, the comparison with the U.S. is catastrophic.

About 1,700 such innovative companies currently operate in the U.S., while the EU has only around 280. The U.S. dominates this market with over 50 percent share, whereas the European economy lags far behind with less than ten percent of the global market.

This economic gap is also reflected in investment volume. Hyperscalers such as Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta invested over $320 billion in AI and corresponding data center infrastructure this year alone. More than 550 new projects -- with a focus in Virginia, Texas, and Arizona—are forming the backbone of a new economy.

Data center capacity in the U.S. grew by around 160 percent this year, while Europe’s capacity increased by only about 75 percent, equaling an investment volume of just under €100 billion.

With investments of around $125 billion, China’s economy also lags far behind the U.S. An interesting context -- especially from the perspective of European, and particularly German, policymakers -- is that nuclear power is gaining noticeable momentum in these regions.

Even if green-minded Germany refuses to acknowledge it due to its ideological stance against nuclear energy, the enormous energy demand of new technologies will in the future be covered to a significant extent by the expansion of nuclear power.

Among the few major projects in the European Union are the Brookfield project in Sweden, with an investment volume of around $10 billion, and the Start Campus in Portugal, which could also activate nearly $10 billion in investments.

Crash of Ideologies

Especially in AI, the ideological clash between the U.S. and the EU can be observed in practice and in all its consequences. While the U.S. relies on deregulation and private solutions, removing barriers for intense competition, EU Europe still adheres to the mantra of political global control. Nothing may happen unless Brussels officials have schemed it at their green table in all their wisdom.

The Draghi motto still applies here: Only massive public investments -- credit-financed and centrally planned -- will, in the view of EU statist planners, help overcome the enormous gap between Europe and the U.S.

In the simulations of the EU Commission’s master plan, now stretched over seven years under Ursula von der Leyen, everything seems surprisingly simple, almost simplified. The EU’s Invest-AI plan intends to borrow around €50 billion in loans and invest them in selected projects in the coming years. This is supposed to trigger private investments of €150 billion, ultimately creating four AI gigafactories.

Welcome to the socialist textbook world of “Habeckonomics”: a system in which state projects like Northvolt repeatedly fail. Yet as long as public guarantees, subsidies, and state-guaranteed purchase prices are in prospect, the small flame of political hope continues flickering in Europe’s lukewarm wind.

As usual, we also observe the typical European jungle of funding programs, subsidies, and steering projects. These include “Horizon Europe,” which is meant to strengthen computing power in science, the RAISE pilot, and the Gen-AI-4-EU initiative, together investing another billion euros in the EU’s digital infrastructure.

The Power of Competition

The ideological clash between the two major economic blocks, the U.S. and the EU, is producing strange effects. While the open capital market in the U.S. lets startups sprout like mushrooms from fertile soil, EU regulation -- especially under the Digital Markets Act -- has fostered a predatory mentality. That this was likely the Eurocrats’ goal from the start comes as no surprise.

Brussels imposed more than €3.2 billion in competition fines this year, mainly targeting U.S. corporations. Brussels has degenerated into a bureaucratic leviathan -- a parasitic glutton absorbing economic energy and generating ossified structures and economic vacuum.

In EU Europe, the motto is: the regulatory framework matters most -- and the state takes its cut. That private industry prefers other locations and withdraws capital matters little to Brussels’ extraction experts.

Against the backdrop of Europe’s massive descent into a climate-socialist dystopia, it is surprising that the roots of libertarian economic thinking originate precisely on this continent. Consider the great economist Ludwig von Mises, who repeatedly pointed out that it is the entrepreneur who drives the engine of the market economy through profit-seeking, and that without exception, decentralized processes create prosperity -- while state interventions regularly derail it.

Civilization-superior models like the free market sink in the waves of ideological EU infantilism. Its repressive climate socialism promotes the growth of corporatist structures in which politics and subsidized parts of the economy carry out the extraction, eliminating competition.

The rigid adherence to centrally planned control of the new tech industry tragically mirrors the timeline of the dot-com era. What Europe fails to understand is that groundbreaking innovation inevitably triggers an investment boom, often resulting in overinvestment and a stock market crash -- but ultimately leaving economically profitable structures permanently woven into the existing economy.

As with companies like Amazon, Google, or Microsoft, Europeans will look back in a few years at these months and examine this intercontinental economic bifurcation through the examples of OpenAI, Gemini, or Perplexity. The energy needed will come from French nuclear reactors and soon also from Polish nuclear power.

Tyler Durden Sat, 01/17/2026 - 08:10

Biden-Appointed Minnesota Judge Limits Federal Immigration Enforcement Actions At Protests

A federal judge in Minnesota on Friday ruled that federal immigration agents can’t detain or use nonlethal munitions and crowd dispersal tools on peaceful protesters who aren’t obstructing authorities, including when these people are observing the agents.

The decision, handed down by U.S. District Judge Kate Menendez - appointed by President Biden in 2021, stems from a lawsuit brought last month by six local activists.

These individuals, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Minnesota, said that Homeland Security (DHS)  personnel were infringing on their First Amendment rights when they observed federal agents performing their duties.

As Joseph Lord reports for The Epoch Times, after the ruling, Tricia McLaughlin, DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, issued a statement saying her agency was taking “appropriate and constitutional measures to uphold the rule of law and protect our officers and the public from dangerous rioters.”

She said people have assaulted officers, vandalized their vehicles and federal property, and attempted to impede officers from doing their work.

“We remind the public that rioting is dangerous—obstructing law enforcement is a federal crime and assaulting law enforcement is a felony,” McLaughlin said.

Protestors and federal agents have clashed during enforcement operations in recent months but intensified after an Immigrations and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agent fatally shot Renee Nicole Good during an encounter on Jan. 7 that was captured on video from several angles.

The incident has met with clashing interpretations, with some defending the ICE agent’s shooting as self defense and others alleging that he used excessive force.

Video shows that in the moments before the shooting, four ICE agents stopped their vehicle in the middle of the street, exited, and approached Good’s vehicle which was blocking their path. The footage also shows Good’s female partner, Becca Good, heckling immigration law enforcement.

As one agent attempted to reach into Good’s car and open her door from the inside, Good turned the wheel to the right, away from Ross, and accelerated her car, allegedly striking the agent, who fired his weapon, according to video and audio. The footage also records Good’s wife, who was outside the vehicle, telling her to “drive, baby, drive.”

Protestors took to the streets of Minneapolis on Jan. 10 following the shooting.

Attorneys for the federal side argued that agents operate under established guidelines to uphold immigration statutes and ensure personal safety.

They said officers have been attacked, harassed, and doxxed nationwide and in Minnesota, and that their responses have been appropriate and justified.

Under the new mandate, agents are barred from detaining drivers or their passengers  unless they are obstructing or interfering with agents. The judge said that trailing vehicles at a safe distance does not inherently warrant a traffic stop.

Safely following agents “at an appropriate distance does not, by itself, create reasonable suspicion to justify a vehicle stop,” the ruling said.

Menendez added that agents must have reasonable suspicion supported by solid evidence of a crime or active disruption to officers duties.

Peaceful assembly and oversight, without direct meddling, fall outside permissible reasons for intervention.

The Epoch Times reached out to DHS and the ACLU but did not hear back before publication.

Tyler Durden Sat, 01/17/2026 - 07:35

If Britain Bans X, How Far Will It Go To Block Free Speech?

Authored by Ted Newson via RealClearPolitics,

In what appears to be a rolling back on free speech and citizen journalism, Britain is fast-tracking a law that will ban non-consensual intimate deepfake images. This is likely aimed at the social media site X.com after its AI assistant Grok allegedly generated inappropriate images. In the scope of the global news cycle and a further ban potentially on the table, the move couldn’t be more poorly timed. It coincides with social media bans in socialist Tanzania and a sweeping Internet blackout by the Ayatollah of Iran. While Britain is not Iran, the direction of travel – using information control to manage dissent – bears uncomfortable similarities. Brits are justifiably worried: Is this the nail in the coffin of Britain’s free speech?

Keir Starmer, UK prime minister, has already come under an avalanche of scrutiny for his hand in other undemocratic activities. For example, many of the local elections in Britain will not go ahead this year, having also been canceled last year under the pretext of local government reorganization. Additionally, arrests over speech and social media posts have increased in recent years, with the arrests of over 10,000 people per year under various Orwellian laws.

To make matters worse, Starmer’s online censorship has gone even further under the new Online Safety Act. This new law is intended to protect young people from “harmful” speech but gives regulators sweeping powers to silence lawful but unpopular speech in the name of safety. An example of the British government’s new stance on what is acceptable to discuss is a new taxpayer-funded online game. This game vilifies concerns over mass migration by giving the player a red extremism score, branding them as likely to be referred to the Prevent program, the UK anti-terror watchdog.

The fact that victims of a foreign grooming gang investigation can be dismissed as “white trash” is a disgrace – made all the more striking as senior ministers simultaneously talk about banning the most pro-free-speech social media platform, where stories like this gain greater public consciousness.

Just as the UK government has brought in these speech laws, the people have become aware that they are less free. Self-censorship and caution when speaking one’s mind are common, as individuals do not know the potential consequences of expressing their opinions. An opinion expressed by the Conservative Party or Reform Party could potentially create trouble or unnecessary harm if voiced by a civilian. Examples of this are easy to find, from Graham Linehan, who was arrested by armed police upon arriving in the UK from Arizona, to Deborah Anderson, an American cancer patient harassed by police in her own home in Britain over a post on X.

Though we aren’t locked in the jaws of state tyranny yet, Britain’s parallels with the current situation in Iran are unmistakable. Just as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps crack down on protest and switch off the Internet, Starmer is doing something similar for comparable reasons. It is a bad look to be constantly plagued by protest, which, as a fundamental right in a liberal society, serves to hold the government to account. While protests for a ban on X swirl online only so far, if the government were to do it, we would see freedom of speech advocates take to the streets too.

Although Britain’s governing Labour Party swept to victory in 2024 with confident rhetoric, it is keenly aware that the result reflected voter fatigue with the previous Conservative government rather than a wholehearted endorsement of its own agenda. Platforms like X have since become essential democratic pressure valves – spaces where peaceful protest is organized, government failures are documented, and information ignored by legacy media circulates freely. That very openness makes X unsettling to any administration instinctively drawn to control. When a government seeks to tax what it can and regulate what it cannot direct, attempts to constrain such platforms should be read not as benign governance, but as an early warning sign. Efforts to suppress open digital discourse, whether in Britain or elsewhere, signal a deeper discomfort with accountability itself.

A former human rights lawyer, the prime minister constantly points to international law as a beacon of what must prevail around the world. Meanwhile, at home, he simply cannot resist infringing on individual rights, replacing autonomy with bureaucracy. His demeanor now highlights the growing liberal class in Britain, which believes that the views of most hardworking British people are contemptible and that they know better. Just like Hillary Clinton and her infamous “basket of deplorables” comment, Starmer and the intolerant left he represents no longer believe in the democratic principles that built Britain.

What Britain needs is total, not selective freedoms. America is far from perfect, but it has a public consciousness aware of its citizens’ right to liberty. Many in Britain remain unaware of the country’s sleepwalk toward authoritarianism, and voices across the West must resist the mainstreaming of government tyranny.

Tyler Durden Sat, 01/17/2026 - 07:00

The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Danish Blend coffee, grab a seat outside, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:

• Prisoners of Fortune: When your money owns you. What is the point of being rich? Most people’s answers would be some version of: To be able to do what you want. Money, at its essence, is a thing that gives you the ability to enact your will upon the world. It liberates you from life’s constraints. The more money you have, the more free you should be. So it is odd to observe the ways that this is plainly not true… (How Things Work)

• Rules Matter More Than Insight: How Discipline Beats Brilliance: A Rulebook Organized by Failure Severity for Long-Term Survival. (The Financial Pen)

• Dan Wang 2025 letter: One way that Silicon Valley and the Communist Party resemble each other is that both are serious, self-serious, and indeed, completely humorless. Which of the tech titans are funny? Sam Altman at a tech conference said: “I think that AI will probably, most likely, sort of lead to the end of the world. But in the meantime, there will be great companies created with serious machine learning.” Actually, that was pretty funny. (Dan Wang)

• Study: 5 People Dominate Retirement Advice on TikTok (Ugh): A new research report examines nearly 30,000 social media posts about retirement savings and investing. The authors find “traditional news outlets” contributed just 23% of retirement-related content. Investors can be intimidated by the prospect of seeking professional advice, and the industry needs to do better at meeting them where they are, a marketing expert says. (ThinkAdvisor)

• Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Big Breakup: The congresswoman split with the President over the Epstein files, then she quit. Where will she go from here? (New Yorker)

• Darwin the Witness In His Own Words: Darwin immortalized a fast-transforming world—customs, political situations, and ways of life that were both new and just about to vanish into mostly-unwritten history. (Aether Mug)

• What I Saw When I Peeked Over the Edge of Consciousness. You could tell who were survivors not just by their calm demeanor when describing the most traumatic day of their lives or because they danced with a notably blissed-out confidence. They also had bright green ribbons affixed to their conference badges that read, “Experiencer.” (New York Times)

• 90 Minutes to Give Baby Luna a New Heart: After eight years of training, Dr. Maureen McKiernan made her debut as the lead surgeon on an infant heart transplant — an operation on the edge of what’s possible. (New York Times)

• How Marco Rubio Went from “Little Marco” to Trump’s Foreign-Policy Enabler: As Secretary of State, the President’s onetime foe now offers him lavish displays of public praise—and will execute his agenda in Venezuela and around the globe. (New Yorker)

• Why This $170,000 F.P. Journe Is the Watch of the Century: Chronomètre à Résonance is an exquisite timepiece that stacks up there with the best conceptual art. (Bloomberg)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Nobel laureate Richard Thaler and his University of Chicago Booth School colleague Alex Imas on the update and reissue of his classic book The Winner’s Curse.

 

Six Banks Seen Reaping $157 Billion

Source: Bloomberg

 

Sign up for our reads-only mailing list here.

~~~

To learn how these reads are assembled each day, please see this.

 

The post 10 Weekend Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

CIA Releases New Video To Encourage Chinese To Divulge 'Truth About China'

Authored by Michael Zhung via The Epoch Times,

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has released a new video for Chinese citizens outlining nine step-by-step methods for establishing secure contact with the agency, according to a Jan. 16 post on X.

此视频提供安全联系中央情报局的全套步骤。以下有几个在进行安全联系之前及在过程中务必考量的事项。中情局想知道中国的真相，我们正在寻找知道并能告知真相的人。 pic.twitter.com/LlLLdfA2Q4

— CIA (@CIA) January 15, 2026

In the video, the CIA says it is seeking individuals inside China who have access to information about the country’s political system and are willing to share it safely.

“The CIA wants to know the truth about China,” the agency wrote in Chinese in the post.

“We are looking for people who know the truth and can share it.”

The latest post marks the CIA’s third video specifically targeting audiences in China.

It follows two Chinese-language videos released in May, which openly encouraged Chinese Communist Party officials to provide intelligence to the United States—an unprecedented move that drew widespread attention.

The new video focuses on operational security and offers nine practical steps for Chinese informants to minimize digital surveillance risks when contacting the agency.

According to the CIA, the first step is to purchase a new or secondhand communication device with cash or gift cards, without providing personal identification.

For used devices, the agency advises performing a full factory reset. All pre-installed software, applications, antivirus programs, browser extensions, and other programs should be removed.

The second step involves connecting to public Wi-Fi at a public location to maintain anonymity. The CIA cautions informants to ensure their screens are not visible to security cameras or passersby and suggests using privacy screen protectors.

The agency then advises downloading a web browser and a virtual private network (VPN) from an American or Western company and stresses that these tools should be used consistently throughout the process.

In the fourth step, informants are instructed to create a new anonymous email address using an email service from a Western company, without entering any information that could be traced back to them. The email should be used for this purpose only.

Once these steps are completed, the CIA advises users to directly enter the agency’s official website address rather than searching for it through a search engine. The video also provides instructions for contacting the CIA through its dark web portal using the Tor browser, offering both an onion address and a standard CIA website link.

After accessing the site, informants are told to navigate to the “contact” page and submit their anonymous email address and message. The CIA says messages may be written in any language but warns against using any applications, software, or artificial intelligence tools to write or translate the content. Individuals are encouraged to clearly describe the information they wish to share.

In the final steps, informants are instructed to delete all browser history and any traces of the CIA website after submitting their message. The agency advises against making repeated contact attempts and recommends storing the device in a secure location. The CIA says it will review all messages received.

After making contact, the agency advises informants to continue their normal daily routines while the information is being reviewed.

The agency concludes by advising that, if circumstances allow, individuals should consider traveling abroad before purchasing a device and initiating contact.

When submitting information, the CIA says users should provide their temporary location at the time and contact details. If leaving the country is not possible, some or all of the steps may be carried out by trusted relatives or close friends.

Tyler Durden Fri, 01/16/2026 - 23:25

Seattle Ranks Second As Most Stressed And Burned Out U.S. City For Workers

A new study ranks Seattle as the second most stressed and burned-out city in the U.S. for workers, behind only Atlanta, according to KIRO7.

In a city full of professional "activists", who could have guessed?

The report by Compare the Market analyzed online searches related to job stress, including terms such as “work burnout,” “work depression,” “work stress,” and “how to deal with work stress,” and converted the results into a point-based score.

“Seattle comes in at No. 2 for the USA, but despite having a much lower score than Atlanta, its higher population of 780,995 and 2,498 searches per 100,000 people around anxiety-related searches still make it a very anxious city, with a score of 76.06,” the study wrote.

The KIRO report says that over the past year, people in Seattle searched for “stress relief” more than 4,990 times.

Other U.S. cities in the top 10 include San Francisco, Denver, Boston, Las Vegas, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Kansas City and Portland. Three Canadian cities — Victoria, London, Ontario, and Ottawa — ranked higher than Seattle for work-related stress and anxiety.

Compare the Market General Manager Steven Spicer said, “Reducing work stress starts with creating a healthier work environment, where balance and support are prioritised. Simple steps like regular breaks, open communication, and mindfulness can go a long way in easing anxiety.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 01/16/2026 - 23:00

Human Evolution: 'Our Ultimate Fate Comes Down To... Three Possibilities'

Authored by Ross Pomeroy via RealClearScience,

Everything around us seems to be changing at breakneck speed. Twenty years ago, smartphones were niche products. Twenty years before that, computers were clunky behemoths. Forty years before that, far more Americans traveled by train than by plane. Forty years before that, cars were just starting to supplant horses.

Over the past couple millennia, a mere blip of Earth's history, humans have manifestly reshaped the planet – from the physical to the biological. The ground, the oceans, the air, the flora, the fauna – nothing is as it was. And yet, despite this radical transformation, it can seem like we ourselves haven't changed much at all... 

But that's an illusion.

"Humans are still evolving," Dr. Scott Solomon, an Associate Teaching Professor at Rice University specializing in ecology, evolutionary biology, and scientific communication, wrote in his forthcoming book Becoming Martian: How Living in Space Will Change Our Bodies and Minds.

Sure, over the last 10,000 or so years, our physical alterations have been relatively muted compared to the changes seen in society and on our planet. Essentially, we've shrunk a bit, and our jaws have weakened. But even a little change is still change, and it begs a question: "In the far-flung future, what will happen to us, evolutionarily speaking?"

It's a question that Solomon considered in his 2016 book, Future Humans: Inside the Science of Our Continuing Evolution. He surmised that our ultimate evolutionary fate could follow one of three basic trajectories.

The first is a standstill – our species will remain roughly as it currently is. But Solomon thinks this is unlikely.

"So far, in the 3.7-­billion-­year history of life on Earth this has not happened to a single species... All species change, some faster than others, but there is no species alive today that has not undergone changes throughout its existence."

Our second possible fate is extinction. Though the chances of this may seem remote to our brains biased to optimism, the odds are far higher than any of us would like to admit. Extinction, after all, is the norm on Earth – 99 percent of all the species that have ever lived ultimately died out.

"There are an uncomfortably high number of plausible ways this could happen," Solomon wrote, "including another giant asteroid impact, a super-volcano eruption, nuclear war, catastrophic climate change, the spread of a devastating pandemic, or our sun exploding in a supernova."

The third possible fate for humanity, which Solomon explored in depth in Becoming Martian, is that at least part of humanity will evolve into a different species. A decade ago, Solomon deemed this path improbable. Humans today are so interconnected that no population could be siloed enough to speciate.

But now, he thinks the chances have risen considerably. Why? Because the world's richest men are plowing their hefty fortunes into making humans interplanetary. What once seemed science fiction is growing closer to reality with the launch of every large rocket. If a group of humans could colonize another world – Mars, for example – and cease to breed with Earthlings altogether, it may take only ten generations before they grow genetically distinct enough to no longer be considered humans, but rather Martians.

"If we do manage to spread out and survive on planets scattered across our solar system and others, we should expect to evolve, adapt, and speciate everywhere we go," Solomon wrote.

Like the cornucopia of different creatures inhabiting Charles Darwin's beloved Galapagos Islands, humans dwelling on different bodies within the solar system could similarly evolve "endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful."

Tyler Durden Fri, 01/16/2026 - 22:35

FDA Removes Web Content Saying Cellphones Are Harmless - HHS Launches Study

Without fanfare, the Food and Drug Administration has deleted multiple web pages asserting that cellphones are not dangerous. First reported by the Wall Street Journal, the move comes as the Department of Health and Human Services has begun a new investigation into potential health effects of cellphone radiation.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr has previously declared that cellphones are causing harms that are not yet fully acknowledged. "There's cellphone tumors. I'm representing hundreds of people who have cellphone tumors behind the ear. It's always on the ear that you favor with your cellphone...We have the science," Kennedy said in a 2023 appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience. "You should never put one next to your head... I put it on speakerphone or use earphones." 

Marty Makary's FDA has deleted web content declaring that cellphones don't pose any health risks. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr (right) has previously suggested there are unknown dangers. (Saul Loeb AFP)

Responding to a Journal inquiry about the change to the FDA website, HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said, “The FDA removed webpages with old conclusions about cellphone radiation while HHS undertakes a study on electromagnetic radiation and health research to identify gaps in knowledge, including on new technologies, to ensure safety and efficacy." 

One of the deleted pages included a passage declaring that “the weight of scientific evidence has not linked exposure to radio frequency energy from cellphone use with any health problems.” There may be more scrubbing of the site to come: The Journal notes that the FDA's site still has summaries of the deleted pages, but the links redirect to other generalized content about the agency's regulatory mission. 

Kennedy, who had a career as an environmental litigator, has long engaged on this issue. Kennedy represented people suing phone companies for allegedly causing brain tumors, and won a 2020 case that compelled the Federal Communications Commission to reassess its wireless-radiation regulations. He was also chairman of Children's Health Defense, which has been involved in litigation over 5G technology, and a case blaming an Idaho man's cardiac issues on a cellphone tower. He has also pointed to radiation as a prime suspect in the mystery of widespread chronic illnesses among America's children, “Our children are swimming around in a toxic soup, the Wi-Fi radiation is a lot worse than people think it is...yeah, from your cellphone,” Kennedy told Rogan in 2023.  

"Never put one next to your head...you should not let your kids carry their cellphones on their breast," Kennedy told Joe Rogan in 2023

In 2025, Kennedy celebrated a large wave of cellphone restrictions that swept across the nation's schools. In addition to pointing to links between social media use and depression, Kennedy told Fox News that "[cellphones] produce electromagnetic radiation, which has been shown to do neurological damage to kids when it’s around them all day, and to cause cellular damage and even cancer.” 

Both the FDA and FCC have a hand in regulating cellphones, with the FDA providing scientific assessments to the FCC, which imposes caps on radio-frequency emissions. For now, the FCC website still has content declaring there's no evidence linking wireless electronics to cancer. 

The National Cancer Institute, a component of the National Institutes of Health, says, "evidence to date suggests that cellphone use does not cause brain or other kinds of cancer in humans." Johns Hopkins epidemiologist Elizabeth Platz told the Journal that cellphones don't emit the variety of radiation that is known to cause cancer. She also pointed to large studies failing to find any connection between cellphones and cancer.

However, scientific consensus about health has a long history of infamous fallibility. Confidently-wrong conclusions have caused incalculable harms, from creating a peanut-allergy epidemic to opening a Pandora's box of harms during the Covid-19 pandemic. Given that, we don't mind seeing RFK Jr's revamped HHS put a new set of skeptical eyes on the cellphone-radiation consensus. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 01/16/2026 - 22:10

How The 1917 Virgin Islands Deal Is A Blueprint For Buying Greenland

Authored by Dustin Bass via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

When Secretary of State Marco Rubio stood before reporters on Jan. 7 to discuss the military operation that took place in Venezuela four days prior, he added another element of intrigue. He planned to meet with Danish officials this week to discuss purchasing the world’s largest non-continental island: Greenland.

A fjord in western Greenland on Sept. 16, 2025. Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters

Such discussions will be new for Rubio, though it is not the first time the Trump administration has broached the subject. President Donald Trump’s brief statement to reporters on Jan. 4 aboard Air Force One was succinct: “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security.” It was a reiteration of his March 2025 congressional address.

Additionally, Trump first mentioned purchasing Greenland in August 2019, a suggestion rebuffed by Danish officials, which led to a brief kerfuffle between the two states.

When Rubio sits with Danish leaders for those first discussions, he will have entered upon diplomatic deliberations that stretch back to the Andrew Johnson administration. The first inquiry to purchase Greenland from the Danes came in 1868 from Secretary of State William Seward. America had recently purchased a tundra to its northwest: Alaska. That purchase in 1867 was initially mocked as “Seward’s Folly” by the press, but of course, after the discovery of gold and oil, Seward’s decision was more than justified. Nonetheless, Congress proved disinterested in the icy territory to its northwest.

Seeking the ‘Small Gibraltar’

While negotiating the Alaska purchase from Russia, Seward was negotiating the purchase of the Danish West Indies from Denmark. The small islands of ​​St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix—specifically the “small Gibraltar,” St. Thomas—were considered vital to national security. The Civil War had highlighted American vulnerabilities in the Caribbean, as the major European powers held possessions in the region, but the United States did not. And it was the European powers that concerned the United States.

“The West India Islands, in the possession of Denmark, are of not much danger to us,” wrote U.S. consul to Denmark, George P. Hansen, in 1864, “but it seems to me we cannot very well afford to let a powerful European nation get possession of them. If they ever change ownership, the ownership should be in the [United] States.”

The American and Danish officials had reached an agreement to purchase St. Thomas and St. John for $7.5 million in gold coins. A plebiscite on the islands overwhelmingly approved the sale. Danish King Christian IX announced the sale. But American politics ended the purchasing process. The Republican-led Senate, furious over President Johnson’s policies and Seward’s support of the president, refused to ratify the agreement. The United States’ Atlantic seaboard would remain vulnerable.

A Second Attempt

Early into the momentous year of 1898, Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge expressed his concerns about the islands in a report to the Foreign Relations Committee, stating, “So long as these islands are in the market there is always the danger that some European power may purchase, or try to purchase, them. This would be an infraction of the Monroe Doctrine, and would at once involve the United States in a very serious difficulty with the European power which sought possession of the islands. In the interest of peace, it is of great importance that these islands should pass into the hands of the United States and cease to be a possible source of foreign complications, which might easily lead to war. From a military point of view the value of these islands to the United States can hardly be overestimated.”

Three weeks later, the Spanish–American War began, during which the United States secured its Pacific seaboard by obtaining Guam and the Philippines from Spain (America also annexed Hawaii during this period). Additionally, America obtained Puerto Rico and kicked the Spanish out of Cuba, which became a quasi-protectorate.

Spain had fallen far as a European power, but Russia, France, Great Britain, and a surging Germany remained great powers. The ongoing construction of the Panama Canal by the French only increased concerns about America’s Atlantic vulnerabilities.

The State Department again began negotiations with the Danish for the West Indies. By the winter of 1902, an agreement between Secretary of State John Hay and Danish Chargé d’Affaires Constantin Brun had been reached. The Americans ratified the treaty, but this time it was the Danish who refused to ratify. The nations had signed two treaties with nothing to show for it.

Securing the Islands

In 1910, Maurice Egan, the U.S. ambassador to Denmark, believed he had come up with a plan to obtain both the Danish West Indies and Greenland. Egan wrote to the State Department with the “very audacious suggestion” of a multi-country land trade agreement. Perceiving the Danish government gave “very little attention” to Greenland—combined with what he viewed as the growing threat of a triple alliance in the Far East of Russia, Japan, and China—he believed that Germany could be utilized as a way of obtaining the islands and placing an ally in the Philippines.

He proposed swapping Mindanao, the second-largest Philippine island, for Greenland (and after further talks, the West Indies). This would allow Denmark to swap Mindanao for the Schleswig-Holstein territory it had lost to the Germans in 1864. “I assure you that it represents the desires and the opinion of some of the best minds in Denmark, and some of them most highly placed,” Egan added.

The proposal, though interesting and complex, came to nothing. Egan, however, may have been onto something.

A year into World War I, it was Germany that caused the Americans to inquire again about the West Indies. Instead of a potential ally as suggested by Egan, Germany was now a threat.

The initial inquiry about the islands by Secretary of State Robert Lansing was rebuffed by Brun, who indicated Denmark “had very large commercial interests which were vastly increasing with the construction of the Panama Canal.”

Lansing communicated that the Americans were not concerned about the Danes’ commercial interests, but about Germany’s interests. Germany’s expanding empire, militarism, and growing commercial interests led the Americans to believe they might annex Denmark or force the sale of the West Indies. If that were the case, Lansing made it clear that “the United States would be under the necessity of seizing and annexing [the islands].”

“This plain spoken threat of what might occur under certain conditions had the desired effect,” Lansing recalled. On Aug. 4, 1916, Lansing and Brun signed the treaty, which both sides ratified, and the purchase of the now-U.S. Virgin Islands was completed on March 31, 1917, for $25 million in gold coins. Part of this agreement, however, confirmed Denmark’s rights to Greenland.

The Post-World War II Attempt

The acquisition of Greenland arose almost immediately after World War II. In 1946, the State Department took a page out of Egan’s book by suggesting a land trade. America would acquire portions of Greenland in exchange for land in Alaska’s Point Barrow district. Again, the land-swap idea was a no-go.

Interestingly, U.S. diplomat John D. Hickerson echoed Egan’s belief that ‘'Greenland is completely worthless to Denmark.” The State Department then offered $100 million for the “worthless” island that appeared “indispensable to the safety of the United States.”

Brief and unofficial discussions took place, but the matter was eventually dropped. Denmark and the United States, however, did sign a treaty in 1951 to establish a base in Thule, now known as Pituffik Space Force Base.

In 1953, Greenland was incorporated into Denmark, ending two centuries as a colony. It achieved Home Rule and then Self Rule in 1979 and 2009, respectively. It has the option to pursue independence, and despite its wealth of natural resources, which the Trump administration often mentions, it is considered a “welfare state,” requiring an annual $600 million Danish block grant.

Trump and Greenland

President Trump, in the spirit of Secretary Lansing, has made it rather clear he is not concerned about Danish or Greenlandic interests. His concerns are more immediate and widespread.

“We need Greenland from a standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” Trump stated. “The European Union needs us to have it, and they know that.”

The national security threat is no longer from European powers as it was in the 19th and first half of the 20th century. The threats now come from Russia and China, whose navies roam the Arctic Ocean with seeming impunity. Trump claimed, perhaps with a hint of sarcasm, that Denmark was not doing enough to protect American or international interests with Greenland.

“You know what Denmark did recently to boost up security on Greenland?” he rhetorically asked reporters. “They added one more dog sled.”

The world was alarmed when Trump suggested military force was an option. No doubt, as the administration has made clear, purchasing Greenland is preferable. But when Rubio sits down with Danish officials this week, he may need to pull a page out of Lansing’s book. It may again have “the desired effect.” Additionally, much like our purchase of the Danish West Indies, maybe the third attempt is the charm.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Fri, 01/16/2026 - 21:45

Nuclear Bunker Faces Final Days As Coastline Rapidly Erodes

A nuclear bunker on the East Yorkshire coast is close to falling into the sea after decades of coastal erosion, according to the BBC. The structure near Tunstall, built around 1959 as a Cold War lookout post, was once more than 100 yards from the shoreline but is now dangerously exposed on the cliff edge.

Local historian Davey Robinson, who has been filming the site, said: "We live on one of the most eroded coastlines in Europe and this bunker hasn't got long left, perhaps just a few days," and described the bunker as "just a few days" from collapse.

The East Riding of Yorkshire Council has warned the public to stay away from the area because of unstable cliffs, while the Environment Agency confirms the region has some of the fastest-eroding coastline in the UK.

Robinson and his partner Tracy Charlton have returned to the site daily and shared footage online. "We are posting the footage on our YouTube channel and it's getting interest from around the world," Robinson said.

The BBC writes that the bunker, known as the Tunstall ROC Post, was part of a network of nuclear monitoring stations. It included sleeping space and basic living facilities. Robinson explained: "It was designed so that people could live inside it and just wait for a nuclear explosion to register and they could tell other people in other bunkers around the country," adding: "It never got used thank goodness."

The Holderness coast is losing around 6.5ft (2m) of land each year, and more than 3 miles have disappeared since Roman times. Robinson said the bunker "adds a lot of meaning" to the situation, calling it "a symbol of erosion in this area," and adding, "This whole area is eroding at a rapid rate and to see an actual physical thing moving it just shows what's happening really."

Charlton said they would continue filming because the bunker "only had days left" before collapse: "We're invested in this and I guess we're obliged to keep visiting for the sake of the thousands of people who are now watching our videos on the YouTube channel."

Tyler Durden Fri, 01/16/2026 - 21:20

Rian Howlett , Karen Friar and Ines Ferréof Yahoo Finance report the Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq slip, chip stocks rise as Wall Street ends volatile week lower:

US stocks were little changed on Friday despite growing uncertainty over the next Fed chair, while strong bank earnings and ongoing geopolitical tensions capped a volatile week.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) fell below the flat line, while the S&P 500 (^GSPC) was little changed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) declined slightly, with all three major averages losing less than 1% for the week.

The Russell 2000 (^RUT) closed at a record high as the small-cap index extended year-to-date gains to 8%.

Stocks gave up earlier gains on Friday after President Trump expressed fresh reluctance to name Kevin Hassett as the next Fed chair, fueling speculation that the central bank may not be as dovish as the market expected once Jerome Powell steps down in May.

"I actually want to keep you where you are, if you want to know the truth," he told Hassett at a White House event.

Wall Street is regrouping after a switchback week, marked by escalating Iran tensions, a dispute over Greenland, and a criminal probe risking the Federal Reserve’s independence — all with Trump behind them. Investors have a long weekend to digest those events, as stock and bond markets are closed on Monday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

TSMC (TSM) and Nvidia (NVDA) rose, thanks in part to a US-Taiwan trade deal that promises a $250 billion boost to American chip and tech manufacturing. On Thursday, shares in TSMC popped following a strong quarterly report that revived AI enthusiasm to buoy related stocks more widely.

Shares of regional banks such as PNC (PNC) and Regions Financial (RF) rose on the heels of quarterly results following strong performance from Wall Street majors. Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS) shares rose Thursday after posting profit gains, giving a lift to financial stocks.

Meanwhile, silver (SI=F) fell as the threat of US tariffs eased, but prices were still up more than 15% for the week after a long-lived blistering rally for precious metals. 

The New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, and bond markets will be closed on Monday, Jan. 19, in observance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Sean Conlon and Pia Singh of CNBC also report S&P 500 closes little changed Friday, posts weekly loss amid raft of Trump comments:

The S&P 500 ended Friday just below the flatline and posted a losing week as traders weighed the latest comments made by President Donald Trump related to the Federal Reserve and geopolitics.

The broad market index slipped 0.06% and closed at 6,940.01. The Nasdaq Composite inched down 0.06% to settle at 23,515.39. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 83.11 points, or 0.17%, to end at 49,359.33.

The three major averages hit their session lows after Trump delivered remarks in the White House Friday, in which the president said he’d rather have National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett stay in his current role and that he might not be chosen to become the next Fed chair.

“I actually want to keep you where you are, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said.

Hassett had been seen as a frontrunner to replace Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whose term expires in May, but prediction markets showed former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh moved ahead in the race following the president’s remarks. Traders see Hassett as the more market-friendly option to replace Powell, with Wall Street expecting him to be more willing than Warsh to keep rates low.

“Whether it’s Hassett or someone else, I think the assumption that we — at least most of us — have is that whoever it’s going to be, this person is going to certainly have a political motive and not the more traditional, trying-to-be-fully-objective mindset in regards to leading the Fed,” said David Krakauer, vice president of portfolio management at Mercer Advisors. “That threat to the independence of the Fed is certainly, you know, a concern for us and everyone.”

The major averages are coming off a winning session thanks to gains in chip stocks. Taiwan Semiconductor led the advance after a blowout fourth-quarter report. Further, the U.S. and Taiwan reached a trade agreement in which Taiwanese chip and tech companies will invest at least $250 billion in production capacity in America.

Taiwan Semi and other chip stocks like Broadcom and Advanced Micro Devices were higher Friday.

Bank stocks were weak in the weekly period despite strong earnings as concerns around Trump’s call for a cap on on credit card interest rates persisted. JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America were among the laggards, falling 5% each on the week.

It was a hectic week for investors. They’ve been grappling with a slate of headlines out of Washington, running the gamut from worries over threats to the Fed’s independence to heightened geopolitical risk in Iran and Greenland. Geopolitical risk was exacerbated Friday after Trump said he might impose tariffs on countries “if they don’t go along with Greenland.”

For the week, the S&P 500 posted a 0.4% fall, while the 30-stock Dow dropped 0.3%. The Nasdaq was down 0.7% on the week.

Alright, going to be brief tonight.

Earnings started this week with the big US banks kicking things off and it was mixed as JPMorgan (JPM), Bank of America (BAC) and Wells Fargo (WFC) got hit while Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS) did relatively well following their earnings.

Not surprisingly, for the week, the S&P Financials sector was the worst performer, down 2.3%:

Still, when I look at the State Street SPDR S&P Bank ETF (KBE), the 5-year weekly chart remains bullish for now:

What else caught my attention this week? The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) made a new record high on great news from Taiwan Semiconductors:

It's fair to say Super Semis (Nvidia, Broadcom, Taiwan Semi, Micron, AMD, etc) have displaced the Mag-7 as the AI theme dominates early in 2026 but they are way overbought here and will definitely pull back before resuming a new uptrend.

What else? The obesity drug makers took off this week led by Novo Nordisk which had a terrible 2025 but seems to be coming back here:

Still early to call a major shift in trend but I like what I'm seeing and need to see a pullback followed by another surge higher.

Eli Lilly had a flat week but has a had a great year so far:

Structure Therapeutics was one of the best-performing large cap stocks this week as investors are excited about phase 2 data from their oral pill and are maybe betting on a takeover:

And Viking Therapeutics also caught a bid this week as investors await phase 3 data on its oral pill touted to be one of the best in the industry:

 Lots of volatility in these names, all I know is Fidelity has cornered this market and is in all of them.

Alright, that's pretty much it from me, Monday is Martin Luther King Day, enjoy the long weekend.

Here are this week's top-performing large cap stocks (full list here): 

Below, Warren Pies, 3Fourteen Research, joins 'Closing Bell' to discuss how Pies would characterize the macroeconomic backdrop, where the market may stumble and much more.

Also, the CNBC Investment Committee debate the road ahead for the rally and how to position your portfolio.

Third, New York Times columnist David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart of MS NOW join Geoff Bennett to discuss the week in politics, including President Trump threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act against protests in Minnesota, Trump's meeting with Venezuelan opposition leader Marina Corina Machado and his continued threats to take over Greenland.

Lastly, Senator Bernie Sanders addresses the nation warning about Trump's authoritarianism. Have a listen, scary that he's not far off in his remarks.

Rashida Tlaib Melts Down Over America 

Democratic Socialist Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) was triggered this week by a Homeland Security post on X featuring a B-2 stealth bomber overhead and a cowboy below, accompanied by the text in the center of the image that read: "We'll Have Our Home Again."

"What does it evoke in you when you see this? Literally, when I see it, as a Muslim, as a Palestinian, as a child of immigrants, I see it as something that evokes the feeling that I'm not welcome here," Tlaib said.

Rashida Tlaib is crying on live TV over a DHS post saying "we'll have our home again" pic.twitter.com/wz9NlT0A7c

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) January 16, 2026

Listen for yourself. Tlaib appears to be triggered, but more or less it comes across as a performative show, as X user Saggezza Eterna noted:

Tlaib performs this grief to manipulate the emotional weaklings in her base. She mourns because the restoration of our borders signifies the end of her power to dilute our sovereignty. The Department of Homeland Security finally serves the homeland. Her tears confirm the effectiveness of the policy. We watch a subversive realizing the host nation has activated its immune system against the infection she champions. Let her weep while we ruthlessly secure the perimeter.

Tlaib's reaction is very revealing. She called herself "a Muslim, a Palestinian, a child of immigrants" and doesn't even bother to call herself an American.

Remember it's all theatrics... 

Meanwhile, Democrats were given the memo from party higher-ups in recent weeks to pivot away from pro-Islam and anti-Jewish rhetoric, likely because that messaging does not resonate with the majority of Americans.

Tyler Durden Fri, 01/16/2026 - 19:40

US Foreclosures Up 14% In 2025; Florida Tops States

Authored by  Mary Prenon via The Epoch Times,

Home foreclosures across America were on the rise in 2025, increasing by 14 percent from 2024, with Florida experiencing the highest numbers in the nation.

In its Jan. 15 report, property data and analytics provider ATTOM, said that 367,460 U.S. properties were involved with default notices, scheduled auctions, or bank repossessions last year.

Those properties represented 0.26 percent of all housing units, a slight uptick from 0.23 percent in 2024, but down from 0.36 percent in 2019.

While the amount of the annual foreclosures were also down by 25 percent from 2019, the fourth quarter alone saw a total of 111,692 properties with foreclosure filings—up by 10 percent from the previous quarter and 32 percent from the fourth quarter of 2024.

Nationwide, one in 1,274 properties was involved in a foreclosure filing in the fourth quarter of 2025.

Florida led in foreclosure filings last year (1 in 230 housing units), followed by Delaware (1 in 240), South Carolina (1 in 242), and Illinois and Nevada (1 in 284).

“Foreclosure activity increased in 2025, reflecting a continued normalization of the housing market following several years of historically low levels,” ATTOM CEO Rob Barber said in the report.

“While filings, starts, and repossessions all rose compared to 2024, foreclosure activity remains well below pre-pandemic norms and a fraction of what we saw during the last housing crisis.”

Barber added that the data indicates the recent surge in foreclosures is being driven more by “market recalibration” than homeowner distress.

Rounding out the top 10 states with the highest foreclosure rates in 2025 were New Jersey (1 in 273 units), Indiana (1 in 302), Ohio (1 in 307), Texas (1 in 319), and Maryland (1 in 326).

In December 2025 alone, 1 in 3,163 properties nationwide had a foreclosure filing, with New Jersey leading the pack for the highest foreclosure rates.

In total, 28,268 properties began the foreclosure process in the month—a 19 percent hike from the previous month and 47 percent higher than December 2024.

Among metro areas with a population above 1 million, Cleveland fared the worst in terms of 2025 foreclosures, followed by Jacksonville, Las Vegas, Chicago, and Orlando. Lakeland, Florida, took the lead for the most foreclosures in metro areas with populations of at least 200,000. Joining Lakeland were Columbia, South Carolina; Cleveland; Cape Coral, Florida; and Atlantic City, New Jersey.

The report shows that foreclosure starts also increased during 2025 in all regions of the country. In total, lenders started the foreclosure process on 289,441 properties, up by 14 percent from 2024. Texas led with 37,215 starts, followed by Florida (34,336), California (29,777), Illinois (15,010), and New York (13,664).

Described as the official beginning of the legal process in which a lender attempts to recover and sell a property due to non-payment, a foreclosure normally begins after 120 days of missed payments.

According to Rocket Mortgage, the process can vary from state to state.

In those metro areas with populations over 1 million, New York City placed first with the most foreclosure starts at 14,189 last year. Chicago recorded 13,312 starts, Houston, 13,009, Miami, 8,936, and Los Angeles, 8,503.

In terms of bank repossessions last year, lenders took over 46,439 properties, representing a 27 percent hike from 2024. Texas, California, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Illinois saw the largest numbers of repossessions during 2025.

The ATTOM report indicates that properties foreclosed during the fourth quarter of 2025 had been in the foreclosure process an average of 592 days, a 3 percent decrease from the previous quarter and a 22 percent decrease from December 2024.

Tyler Durden Fri, 01/16/2026 - 19:15

Biden-Appointed Federal Judge Blocks Trump Admin's Move To Withhold Minnesota Food Stamp Funds

A federal judge on Jan. 14 stopped the Trump administration from withholding $80 million in administrative costs for Minnesota’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), ruling that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s tight deadline for reviewing the eligibility of 100,000 households was likely illegal.

U.S. District Judge Laura Provinzino, appointed by President Biden in 2024, said during a hearing in Saint Paul that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) failed to justify why Minnesota needed to complete the review of recipient eligibility by Jan. 15, or face losing half its administrative costs. She noted the agency ignored laws limiting such reviews to once per year.

“USDA is asking the state to violate federal law, regulations, and the state’s own operational plan,” which had previously been approved by the agency, said Provinzino.

As Kimberley Hayek explains below via The Epoch Times, the injunction prevents the USDA from cutting the funds, including $20 million for the first quarter that was set to be withheld on Jan. 14, until the lawsuit is resolved.

The case focuses on administrative costs, not direct benefits to recipients.

Minnesota officials argued the USDA’s actions stem from political animosity by President Donald Trump toward the state and Gov. Tim Walz.

“This is part of an ongoing effort by the federal government to pummel our state,” Joseph Richie of the Minnesota Attorney General’s office said during the hearing.

Brian Mizoguchi of the U.S. Department of Justice argued that Minnesota’s issues with other federal programs justified the move, and the state could cover costs itself.

The move ties into broader allegations of fraud in Minnesota’s social programs. The USDA cited a scandal involving theft of federal welfare funds as a reason for the review.

The Trump administration has intensified scrutiny of SNAP nationwide, with around 118 arrests for fraud in one operation, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told Fox News in Nocember 2025.

Rollins has highlighted “massive fraud,” including thousands of dead people receiving benefits and duplicate payments.

She said in a Nov. 2, 2025, post on X that 21 states refused to send data for review to the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

The request was sent to all 50 states shortly after the Trump administration took over in January of that year, she said, and within the 29 states that cooperated, “massive fraud” was found in the form of thousands of cases of illegal immigrants and deceased individuals receiving benefits.

As a result of that audit alone, approximately 700,000 individuals have been removed from SNAP benefits, and more than 100 arrests have been made in connection with fraudulent SNAP benefits. 

Minnesota is among 21 states that have failed to share SNAP data.

SNAP serves Americans below 130 percent of the poverty line with maximum benefits of $298 monthly for one person and $546 for two. States handle daily operations.

Similar court actions have occurred, such as a California ruling blocking USDA access to SNAP data.

The USDA did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

Tyler Durden Fri, 01/16/2026 - 18:50

To Combat Academic Fraud, Scholars Confront Hallowed Tradition

Authored by Vince Bielski via RealClearInvestigations,

This is the fourth part of a series on the crisis in academic research and publishing. Read the first three parts here, here and here.

The driving ethos of academia, “publish or perish,” is fighting for its life. 

The requirement that scholars constantly publish or face academic ruin has been considered the primary engine of scientific discovery for decades. But a growing movement of universities and researchers is trying to banish the practice to the archives, saying it has perverted the pursuit of knowledge and eroded the public’s trust in science.

Reformers at top universities in Europe and the U.S., including Cambridge, Sorbonne, and UC Berkeley, say this traditional system of advancement has led to an explosion in the growth of low-quality research, with little meaningful impact on academic fields or society. It has also sparked the spread of fraudulent research, as “paper mills” churn out fake articles for sale to academics seeking to pad their CVs. 

To weaken the “publish or perish” stranglehold on universities, hundreds of research institutions are reforming the incentive system that shapes academic careers. It currently rewards scholars for frequently winning grants and publishing papers, with extra points for landing in the most esteemed, high-impact journals, even when the articles are not themselves influential. 

The new incentives vary at different universities and research centers, but tend to focus on the actual quality of the research rather than the quantity or the prestige of the journals. The research’s influence on academic fields and, when appropriate, on society and public policy, is also often rewarded. So is a commitment to share papers and data as widely and freely as possible with the public. The goal is to break science out of its self-serving and insular bubble and better connect the enterprise with the public that funds it. 

“The incentives dictate how people behave, and we have a long tradition of rewarding publications in high impact journals,” said Ginny Barbour, a Cambridge-trained physician, medical journal editor, and co-chair of the Declaration on Research Assessment, or DORA. “If we don’t get research assessment right, then the whole foundation of academic life is undermined.”

The growing movement to revamp the rewards that set the direction of science is spearheaded in the United States by DORA, which is also the name of its declaration of principles. The declaration has gathered 3,500 signatures of support from organizations, and 23,000 from individuals, since its founding in 2012 at a cell biology conference in San Francisco.

In Europe, the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) operates much like DORA. Some 700 organizations and 450 higher education institutions  – and 27% of all Ph.D. awarding universities in Europe – have committed to its principles since 2022, according to a study co-authored by Alex Rushforth at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

“In Europe we have made a lot of progress in a short period of time. CoARA has been a very impressive catalyst,” said Rushforth. “Of course, signing CoARA is one thing and implementing culture change is quite another thing.”

Overturning an Entrenched Culture

Despite these significant inroads, reformers of the deeply embedded “publish or perish” culture face a huge challenge. High-ranking university officials, from presidents on down who would have to approve a new reward system, have greatly benefited from the current one. “This system worked for me so why wouldn’t it work for anyone else?” said Professor Mike Dougherty, explaining the thinking of those who questioned the assessment reforms he eventually won at the University of Maryland. 

Defenders of the status quo, which is intended to bring out the best in scientists, can also point to notable progress as recently as the last decade, especially the dazzling breakthroughs in healthcare. A system that pushes researchers to aim high can get impressive results.

The iconic journal Nature is among the most influential drivers of this culture. The Nature family of journals is near the top of the publishing pyramid largely because of their “Journal Impact Factor,” or JIF, scores. JIF is a beauty contest based on the number of citations the articles in the journal receive. The more citations, the higher the JIF, and the greater the journal’s esteem. Publishing in journals with high JIF scores can make a career.

The Nature family is highly selective, attracting more than 50,000 scholarly submissions a year and publishing less than 10% of them. Nature’s tendency to report on major advances in many fields, famously illustrated by the Watson and Crick paper on DNA structure, has helped give the 157-year-old journal its magisterial reputation.

But the fact that prestigious journals publish important articles doesn’t mean everything they run is noteworthy. Studies show that a journal’s impact factor is often determined by a small number of influential articles that receive a lot of citations, reflecting glory on many less influential papers that are not cited much. In other words, many marginal papers make the cut. It’s as if Aaron Judge’s Yankees teammates got credit for his home runs. 

JIF is also easy to manipulate: Authors are sometimes encouraged to include citations to articles in the same journal that they are publishing in to raise the JIF score.  Even the publisher of Nature warns research institutions not to place too much emphasis on its own JIF, and DORA says the metric should be completely ignored.

As he was trying to convince his faculty in Maryland’s psychology department to support reforms that would sideline JIF, Dougherty examined 45,000 papers in a couple of hundred journals to determine if the journal metric and citation counts were indicators of research quality, based on factors like statistical errors and the strength of evidence. “What we found is that there is no evidence to support the claim that higher-impact journals publish higher quality research,” Dougherty said.

The need to be published in prestigious journals leads some scholars to shape their research to fit what they believe will be accepted. That means researchers take fewer experimental risks, jump on popular trends, and shelve negative findings that are very important to report, creating what DORA’s Barbour calls a “gap in the literature.” 

The quest for glamour publications also delays by years the dissemination of knowledge and the possibility of breakthroughs, said Professor Steve Russell, who led the implementation of assessment reforms at Cambridge. “Young researchers in particular start at the highest impact factor journal, go through peer-review, get rejected, and then work their way down to the next highest impact factor, and on and on,” said Russell, who has bylines in both Nature and Science. “It’s a complete and utter waste of time.”

When researchers can’t clear this high bar, the fallback option is to maximize the quantity of papers to list on their CVs. This is enabled by what Dougherty calls “salami slicing” the data. Rather than producing the most substantial paper possible, scholars divide their experimental data into several small slices, allowing them to generate more papers that contribute little to science but add to the flood of publications that’s making quality control and fraud detection through the peer-review process almost impossible. 

The publication of fraudulent articles full of fake data is growing at a faster rate than legitimate papers, according to a 2025 study, threatening the legitimacy of the scientific enterprise. “We know that the incentives for people to publish in high impact journals skews behavior,” said Barbour. “And at its worst, it skews behavior towards the fabrication and falsification of research, and that’s highly problematic.”

U.K. Funders Push Reform

Most universities in the U.K., which gave birth to the first academic journal in 1665, have embraced research reform, either in word or deed, along with many in the Netherlands, Norway, and Finland. Pressure from funders looking for more research with greater societal impact is one reason why. 

UK Research and Innovation, the largest government funder of research and a signatory to DORA in 2019, runs a program that annually assesses universities’ research contributions to academic disciplines and society. It then divides £2 billion in grants based on those scores. The Wellcome Trust, which is the other major source of grants, restricts them to researchers at institutions that have reformed assessment practices, aiming to produce a bigger impact on people’s health and well-being from the billions of pounds it provides. 

“Funding pressure was initially the driving factor. When the people giving money say this is what we expect, change happens very quickly,” said Cambridge’s Russell. “But there was also a group of academics who were very vocal that we needed to change the way that we assess researchers.”

At Imperial College London, a tragedy added to the impetus for reform. In 2014, Professor Stefan Grimm took his own life as he was struggling to win grants and publish papers needed to succeed in the faculty of medicine. It went as far as to list the high-impact journals that mattered most. 

“People were shocked but not necessarily surprised,” said Stephen Curry, an emeritus professor of biology at Imperial who helped push through reforms. 

The suicide catalyzed a review of assessment practices that, with the strong support of the vice provost of research, led Imperial to sign DORA in 2017 over the opposition of some engineering faculty. The changes discourage the consideration of metrics like JIF in hiring and promotion while placing greater emphasis on the quality of teaching and the impact of research. 

Curry said mandates from the top don’t quickly erase ingrained habits. But in 2023, Curry sat in on dozens of recruitment and promotion interviews in different faculty groups and was impressed with what he observed. 

“There has been a shift away from dwelling overmuch on numbers and journal impact factors,” he said. “These things haven’t gone away and people certainly still feel that heat of competition, but I think it is more evident now that the quality of one’s work, as well as one’s wider contributions to the university and to society, are more important than they were.”

U.S. Universities Slower to Change

While the U.K. is a success story for reformers, they have yet to deeply penetrate the biggest research system of all – the U.S. – where only a handful of major research institutions have joined the movement. Unlike in Europe, U.S. universities don’t face federal funding pressure from above to transform how they reward scientists. Under the Trump administration, federal agencies are mainly focused on ending what they deem, sometimes wrongly, as DEI-related research, and reducing overhead fees that add up to 70% to the cost of research grants.

Reformers in the U.S. also face resistance from below. University faculty wield much more power over academic affairs than their peers in Europe, where administrators are more likely to make the rules. Some U.S. scholars don’t see the case for abandoning long-standing reputational metrics, according to a survey by Leiden’s Rushforth. Even if JIF and the number of citations a paper receives aren’t perfect proxies for quality, survey respondents said, they offer a practical way for busy academics on hiring committees to efficiently evaluate a long list of candidates. 

Maryland’s Dougherty says university departments are also wary of being on the cutting edge of reform in case it doesn’t work out. “A lot of the resistance comes back to people saying ‘We won’t do it until other universities do it, or until other people within our discipline are doing it,’” he said.

Even academics like Mark Hanson, who is critical of the “publish or perish” culture and has published papers about the misconduct it breeds, see some downsides to assessment reform. The University of Exeter professor’s fundamental research has overturned assumptions about genes and disease resistance, opening the door to rethinking therapeutic designs. Hanson is concerned that the reform movement’s emphasis on research that’s tied to practical problems will further diminish fundamental research that generates the new ideas that science needs to advance.

“With increasing pushes to fund only directly-applicable or policy-impacting research, we’re stuck in our current state of knowledge and we just iterate and explore its crevices endlessly,” said Hanson.

Reform in the U.S. has been mostly left to lone scientists with a passion for the cause. After Sandra Schmid enacted assessment changes to focus on research quality rather than metrics like JIF at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, she became chief scientific officer in 2020 at Biohub, founded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. One year later, Biohub, which creates AI tools for biological research, signed DORA. 

Another research group, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, signed DORA in 2013. In its competitions among researchers for employment and grants, and in evaluations for continued support, journal names are removed from applications, turning the focus on the quality of scholarship, not whether it was published in a prestigious journal.

Nonprofits like the Pew Charitable Trusts are also joining the movement. Pew is working with a group of philanthropic and public funders who want their grants to produce a bigger impact in healthcare, education, and other areas. To engage researchers in the effort, Pew has convened a group of 18 university leaders, including those at Brown, Duke, and UC Berkeley, who are redesigning their reward systems to encourage the public interest research that the funders seek. 

At Maryland, Dougherty almost single-handedly championed the reforms. It took five years of meetings, his aforementioned study, and two rounds of assessment guideline revisions before Dougherty finally won the unanimous approval of his 27 faculty members. The new assessment practices, implemented in 2022, focus on measures of quality, such as the reproducibility of research, making papers and data widely accessible, and their impact on academic fields and, when applicable, on public policy. 

Dougherty says so far, so good. Some faculty are more motivated to pursue important questions and take risks they would have avoided earlier because high-impact journals may not be interested in their work.

But is the overall quality of research improving in departments that have established new incentives? It’s the ultimate goal. But so far, no one has tried to answer this important question of whether the hard work of changing the culture of academia is producing better research, leaving a gap in understanding that needs to be filled, said Leiden’s Rushforth. 

“We should be collecting data and testing our hypotheses and not taking for granted that if you change the incentives, you get a different type of academic research,” Rushforth said. “There should be some sort of accountability.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 01/16/2026 - 18:25

New York Scammers Plead Guilty In $68M Adult Day Care Fraud Scheme

Two scammers in Brooklyn pleaded guilty on Thursday to defrauding the state's controversial Medicaid home care program to the tune of $60 million. 

Google Maps

Manal Wasef and Elaine Antao, both 46, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud. Their scheme involved referring Medicaid recipients to two Brooklyn social adult day care centers and a home health company in exchange for illegal kickbacks and bribes, the DOJ announced on Thursday. 

Between approximately October 2017 and July 2024, in exchange for illegal kickbacks and bribes, Wasef and Antao referred Medicaid recipients to the social adult day cares and the home health company. The defendants also paid illegal kickbacks and bribes to Medicaid recipients for social adult day care services and home health care services that were billed to Medicaid but were not provided or that were induced by kickbacks and bribes. Wasef and Antao used multiple business entities to launder the fraud proceeds and generate the cash used to pay kickbacks and bribes. In connection with their guilty pleas, Wasef and Antao agreed to collectively forfeit approximately $1 million. Wasef and Antao are the sixth and seventh individuals, respectively, to plead guilty in this case. -DOJ

The pair were tapping into the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP), which allows people with minimal health care experience to care for their elderly disabled relatives and friends. According to the NY Post, hundreds of 'middleman' firms work as de-facto payroll agents between the caregivers and Medicaid - all with minimal oversight.

On top of their guilty plea, the pair agreed to pay back around $1 million.

Google Maps

"Today’s guilty pleas demonstrate the Department’s longstanding commitment to rooting out fraud in government health care programs by aggressively prosecuting those who steal from taxpayer-funded programs," said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.

The pair are scheduled to be sentenced in May, where they each face a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. 

Overall, eight people were initially accused of participating in the yearslong scheme to defraud the state. Also charged were owners Zakia Khan and Ahsan Ijaz, as well as Oasmneah Hamdi, Ansir Abassi, and Amran Hashmi. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 01/16/2026 - 18:00

Clinton-Appointed Federal Judge Denies DOJ Bid To Access California Voter Registration Rolls

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

A federal judge on Jan. 15 dismissed the Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) bid to access California’s voter registration databases, ruling that the demand for voter data from California Secretary of State Shirley Weber was “unprecedented and illegal.”

In a 33-page decision, Clinton-appointed U.S. District Judge David O. Carter sided with California, saying the DOJ cannot use civil rights legislation “as a tool to forsake the privacy rights of millions of Americans,” noting that such authority rests solely with Congress.

The DOJ filed lawsuits in September against six states, including California, alleging they violated federal law by refusing to provide voting records the department said were necessary to prevent inclusion of ineligible voters. The lawsuits were filed separately in each state.

“The Department of Justice seeks to use civil rights legislation which was enacted for an entirely different purpose to amass and retain an unprecedented amount of confidential voter data,” Carter said.

“This effort goes far beyond what Congress intended when it passed the underlying legislation.”

The judge also said the federal government’s request could deter voters from registering due to concerns about how their personal information might be used, threatening the right to vote.

“The centralization of this information by the federal government would have a chilling effect on voter registration which would inevitably lead to decreasing voter turnout as voters fear that their information is being used for some inappropriate or unlawful purpose,” Carter said.

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber speaks in Los Angeles on April 15, 2024. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Weber welcomed the ruling and said she would continue to challenge what she described as the administration’s “disregard for the rule of law and our right to vote.”

“As California Secretary of State, I am entrusted with ensuring that California’s state election laws are enforced—including state laws that protect the privacy of Californians’ data,” Weber said in a Jan. 15 statement.

The Epoch Times reached out to the DOJ for comment, but did not receive a response by publication time.

In its complaint against California on Sept. 25, 2025, the DOJ said the state refused to cooperate with the federal government’s request for voter registration databases—including each voter’s full name, date of birth, address, state driver’s license number, and the last four digits of their Social Security number—citing concerns over privacy protections.

The DOJ had argued that its Civil Rights Division has been tasked by Congress with ensuring that states conduct voter registration list maintenance to prevent ineligible voters from being listed.

“Clean voter rolls are the foundation of free and fair elections,” U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement at the time.

“Every state has a responsibility to ensure that voter registration records are accurate, accessible, and secure—states that don’t fulfill that obligation will see this Department of Justice in court.”

Citing the lawsuits, the DOJ said at the time that Bondi is uniquely charged by Congress “with the enforcement of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which were designed by Congress to ensure that states have proper and effective voter registration and voter list maintenance programs.”

Tyler Durden Fri, 01/16/2026 - 17:00

Trump 'Convinced' Himself Not To Attack Iran, After Tehran Allegedly Canceled 800 Executions

Update(1658ET): President Trump issued another somewhat bizarre Iran statement on Truth Social on Friday. He repeated the White House line that 800 executions that were scheduled and supposed to take place yesterday were halted in Iran. He even 'thanked' the Iranians for not carry out the supposed mass execution plan:

"I greatly respect the fact that all scheduled hangings, which were to take place yesterday (Over 800 of them), have been cancelled by the leadership of Iran. Thank you!" he wrote earlier in the day.

He also told reporters "I convinced my myself" not to attack Iran, after painting himself in a corner by essentially setting red lines previously. Trump had said days ago if Iranian authorities kill protesters they would get hit hard by the US.

As for the "800 executions" - it's very unclear where this number came from. Certainly Iranian state media or officials haven't said any such thing, and there's a likelihood it's just propaganda. 

* * *

US Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz told the UN Security Council on Thursday that the "brave people of Iran" have risen up and that President Donald Trump "has made it clear all options are on the table to stop the slaughter" - this despite widespread reports that the protests and rioting are over at this point.

"President Trump is a man of action, not endless talk like we see at the United Nations. He has made it clear all options are on the table to stop the slaughter," Waltz told the Security Council meeting, held at the request of Washington.

The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, via US Navy

"Everyone in the world needs to know that the regime is weaker than ever before, and therefore is putting forward this lie because of the power of the Iranian people in the streets. They are afraid. They're afraid of their own people," Waltz claimed, but he did not address the huge pro-government rallies which engulfed Iranian streets from earlier this week, which largely supplanted the protests and riots.

But a near total internet outage has endured going all the way back to January 8. This suggests the crisis may not be completely finished, but Tehran is touting that security services and police are back in control of the streets.

The US is still rushing military assets to the area. "The Pentagon is moving a carrier strike group from the South China Sea to the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, which includes the Middle East, as tensions escalate between the Trump administration and Iran," according to NewsNation.

"Moving the carrier strike group - a naval formation centering around an aircraft carrier, with a variety of other vessels, including at least one attack submarine - is expected to take about a week, a source said," the report continues. "The USS Abraham Lincoln reportedly is the aircraft carrier that is on the move."

Meanwhile, Russian ​President Vladimir Putin is putting himself forward as potential mediator, ⁠which was conveyed in a fresh phone conversation with Iran's President Masoud ​Pezeshkian. Pezeshkian thanked his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin for Moscow's support at the United Nations in the wake of the crisis.

A readout indicated Pezeshkian thanked Putin for "Russia's position" and explained that "the role and direct involvement of the United States and the Zionist regime in recent events in Iran is evident" - in reference to Israel.

Previously at the UN emergency session, Russia's UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia charged the United States with convening the Security Council in a bid to "justify blatant aggression and interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state" and threats to "solve the Iranian problem in its favorite way: through strikes aimed at overthrowing an undesirable regime."

As tensions rise between U.S. and Iran, the Pentagon is moving a carrier strike group toward Middle East. The USS Abraham Lincoln, west of the Philippines, turned west yesterday, detected on @CopernicusEU satellite imagery by @oballinger’s computer program. 11.9892, 117.9423. pic.twitter.com/Zz8rokebZq

— Christiaan Triebert (@trbrtc) January 15, 2026

The swipe and reminder of Washington's addiction to regime change also comes on the heels of the Trump-ordered January 3rd overthrow of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Amb. Nebenzia said further: "We strongly urge the hot heads in Washington and other capitals… to come to their senses."

At the same time, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged "maximum restraint at this sensitive moment and calls on all actors to refrain from any actions that could lead to further loss of life or ignite a wider regional escalation."

Tyler Durden Fri, 01/16/2026 - 16:58

Qatar Hired UK PR Firm To Edit Wikipedia Page: Report

Amid ongoing US probes into Wikipedia over alleged bias and foreign manipulation, sometimes framed as "Wikilaundering," a new report has found that a PR company linked to Keir Starmer's communications chief has been accused of secretly manipulating Wikipedia pages to improve or neutralize clients' public images. The allegations add another thorn in the side for Wikipedia as migration to Elon Musk's Grokpedia continues.

The Guardian cites an investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) alleging that PR firm Portland Communications, founded by Tim Allan, commissioned secret page edits of Wikipedia pages for clients to restore or improve their image.

A former Portland employee told TBIJ that Wikipedia edits were contracted out: "No one said, 'We should stop doing this.' The question was how we could keep doing it without getting caught."

TBIJ's investigation focused on a network of 26 accounts that made edits, including those linked to Web3 Consulting, a firm operated by Radek Kotlarek.

Some of the high-profile clients allegedly included the Qatar government. The edits reportedly involved shifting unfavorable details into philanthropy sections or replacing critical sources with more positive ones, particularly ahead of the 2022 World Cup.

The Guardian noted that while Portland was founded by Allan, a former adviser to Tony Blair, in 2001, there is no indication that Allan personally made any of the edits. He sold most of his shares in 2012 and left the firm in 2019.

A spokesperson for Portland said, "Portland does not have a relationship with the firm mentioned and has a policy of strict adherence to the guidelines on all social media platforms." A Portland employee added, "If anyone who worked here in the past did this, they were foolish. For sure nobody does it today."

Portland denies any relationship with the contractor and says it adheres to platform rules. Former employees told TBIJ that Wikipedia edits were a frequent client request.

The Guardian reported that the network of accounts was eventually blocked by volunteer Wikipedia editors.

This report comes as no surprise, given the systemically biased nature against conservative, religious, and other points of view, according to the site's co-founder, Larry Sanger.

Elon Musk determined late last year that Wikipedia wasn't salvageable and created Grokipedia to counter the misinformation and disinformation on Wikipedia...

WATCH: Elon Musk and David Sacks brainstorm Grokipedia live

Elon:

“If you take, say Wikipedia as an example, but this really applies to books, PDFs, websites, every form of information.”

“Grok is using heavy amounts of inference compute to look at, as an example, a Wikipedia… https://t.co/wpGjpnjtr5 pic.twitter.com/cBXKdQORQe

— The All-In Podcast (@theallinpod) October 2, 2025

The shift to Grokipedia is underway.

Related:

• Musk Unveils Grokipedia Plans To Counter Wikipedia's Manipulation Of "Truth" Controlled By Leftists

• He Co-Founded Wikipedia, Now He Says The Site Needs A Radical Change

• House Republicans Probe Wikipedia Over Alleged Bias, Foreign Manipulation

Wikipedia was a great idea that lost its way. Now it's Grok's turn.

Tyler Durden Fri, 01/16/2026 - 16:40