Now We Know What All Those People Got From Epstein; The New York Times, February 7, 2026

 Molly Jong-Fast, The New York Times ; Now We Know What All Those People Got From Epstein

"Many of the people revealed as knowing him well had previously claimed they hardly knew him, and all of them are now claiming they certainly didn’t know him well enough to witness the pedophilia. Now they are disgraced by their connection, and often, out of a job.

Many people stuck with him even after he had gone to jail in 2008 in Florida for sex crimes, and in some cases even after he landed in jail again in 2019 on sex-trafficking charges. Back then, the plight of the victims often seemed to be an afterthought. That’s most likely because whatever they received from him in the past — access to career-enhancing people, access to young girls and an endless supply of freebies — might still be on offer. This is the nature of the Epstein files: It’s the record of what a global class of very privileged, accomplished and self-important people want to get gifted.

Sometimes it was a Prada bag. Other times it was a flight on Mr. Epstein’s jet, or a weekend at his island. Sometimes it was a donation to a charity or school. Or a job for their kid working on a Woody Allen film, or a shortcut for Mr. Allen’s own kid to get intoBard. Sometimes it was a “tall, Swedish blonde.” Other times it was a young woman who might be a “a little freaked by the age difference.”...

There are many terrible secrets buried in the Epstein files, which mix the mundane and the horrific, the thirsty and the criminal, and perhaps that’s the most upsetting part of all of this. Casually wrapped up together with a bow are canceled men and sex trafficking and media advice from Michael Wolff. Being a convicted sex offender did not make Mr. Epstein an outcast, not when he seemed to have something to offer. His transactional amorality actually seemed to add to his appeal to people who were convinced that the rules didn’t apply to them."

The Trump Administration Is Lying About Gun Rights and the Death of Alex Pretti; Reason, January 25, 2026

 ROBBY SOAVE, Reason; The Trump Administration Is Lying About Gun Rights and the Death of Alex Pretti

"As with the killing of Renee Good two weeks ago, the legal threshold at which lethal force can be justified is whether the officer who killed Pretti reasonably feared for his own safety. Only a careful, impartial investigation can determine that. The Justice Department has declined to conduct such an investigation into Good's death, instead seeking to investigate the victim's family.

Video footage of Pretti's death shows federal agents using pepper spray on protesters. Pretti appears to be recording the altercation with his cell phone. After an agent shoves one of the protesters to the ground, Pretti moves to assist her. Several CBP agents then decide to bring Pretti down.

It's conceivable that the agent who shot Pretti had the impression that he was reaching for his weapon—though the first shot clearly went off after another agent disarmed the protester. It's also possible that the killer didn't have even that much justification. Yet federal authorities have all but ruled out that possibility, and are making abjectly false statements in support of their mendacious posture.

Noem has repeatedly claimed it as a fact that Pretti intended to harm officers. "This individual showed up to a law enforcement operation with a weapon and dozens of rounds of ammunition," she told reporters. "He wasn't there to peacefully protest. He was there to perpetuate violence." Miller flatly asserted that Pretti was a "domestic terrorist" who "tried to assassinate federal law enforcement."

These are lies. They have no evidence that Pretti wanted to kill anyone. Even if evidence were unexpectedly to come out tomorrow that he was secretly a would-be assassin, it would still be wrong for officials to state as fact that Pretti intended to kill. There are no known facts that establish murder as his motivation. This is a man who was watching officers interact with protesters and recording it on his phone. Contrary to what the Department of Homeland Security wrote on X, he did not approach law enforcement, let alone with a gun drawn."

White House posts digitally altered image of woman arrested after ICE protest; The Guardian, January 22, 2026

 Sam Levine, The Guardian; White House posts digitally altered image of woman arrested after ICE protest

"The White House posted a digitally altered image of a woman who was arrested on Thursday in a case touted by the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, to make it seem as if she was dramatically crying, a Guardian analysis of the image has found.

The woman, Nekima Levy Armstrong, also appears to have darker skin in the altered image. Armstrong was one of three people arrested on Thursday in connection to a demonstration that disrupted church services in St Paul, Minnesota, on Sunday. Demonstrators alleged that one of the pastors, David Easterwood, was the acting field director of the St Paul Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office. Bondi announced the arrests on social media on Thursday morning.

The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, posted an image of Armstrong’s arrest at 10.21am on Thursday, less than an hour after Bondi’s announcement. The image shows a law enforcement agent, face blurred out, escorting Armstrong, who appears to be handcuffed. Armstrong, dressed in all black, appears to be composed in the picture.

A little more than 30 minutes later, the White House posted another image of Armstrong’s arrest in which she is crying. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, reposted the image. The image posted by the White House is altered, a Guardian analysis found."

‘The Worst Internet-Research Ethics Violation I Have Ever Seen’; The Atlantic, May 2, 2025

 Tom Bartlett, The Atlantic; ‘The Worst Internet-Research Ethics Violation I Have Ever Seen’

[Kip Currier: The indifference and nonchalance of the University of Zurich researchers in this AI study -- who blatantly manipulated the Reddit human subjects without informed consent -- is deeply unsettling.

In the wake of outcries about this research study, the responses of the University of Zurich ethics board are perhaps even more troubling. That board's stated purpose:

"is to “support members of the University in their perception of ethical responsibility in research and teaching“, to “promote ethical awareness within the University” and to “represent ethical issues to the public at large"." 

https://www.ethik.uzh.ch/en/ethikkommission.html 

The words "perception [italics added] of ethical responsibility" should give every researcher and Internet user pause in light of the Zurich ethics commission's providing a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card to virtually any of Zurich's researchers with its lack of substantive guardrails and accountability.]

[Excerpt]

"The researchers had a tougher time convincing Redditors that their covert study was justified. After they had finished the experiment, they contacted the subreddit’s moderators, revealed their identity, and requested to “debrief” the subreddit—that is, to announce to members that for months, they had been unwitting subjects in a scientific experiment. “They were rather surprised that we had such a negative reaction to the experiment,” says one moderator, who asked to be identified by his username, LucidLeviathan, to protect his privacy. According to LucidLeviathan, the moderators requested that the researchers not publish such tainted work, and that they issue an apology. The researchers refused. After more than a month of back-and-forth, the moderators revealed what they had learned about the experiment (minus the researchers’ names) to the rest of the subreddit, making clear their disapproval.

When the moderators sent a complaint to the University of Zurich, the university noted in its response that the “project yields important insights, and the risks (e.g. trauma etc.) are minimal,” according to an excerpt posted by moderators. In a statement to me, a university spokesperson said that the ethics board had received notice of the study last month, advised the researchers to comply with the subreddit’s rules, and “intends to adopt a stricter review process in the future.” Meanwhile, the researchers defended their approach in a Reddit comment, arguing that “none of the comments advocate for harmful positions” and that each AI-generated comment was reviewed by a human team member before being posted. (I sent an email to an anonymized address for the researchers, posted by Reddit moderators, and received a reply that directed my inquiries to the university.)

Perhaps the most telling aspect of the Zurich researchers’ defense was that, as they saw it, deception was integral to the study. The University of Zurich’s ethics board—which can offer researchers advice but, according to the university, lacks the power to reject studies that fall short of its standards—told the researchers before they began posting that “the participants should be informed as much as possible,” according to the university statement I received. But the researchers seem to believe that doing so would have ruined the experiment. “To ethically test LLMs’ persuasive power in realistic scenarios, an unaware setting was necessary,” because it more realistically mimics how people would respond to unidentified bad actors in real-world settings, the researchers wrote in one of their Reddit comments."