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Welcome to the Bogosity Podcast for the week of February 15 2026,
the podcast that rolls on the river.
This is your host, Shane Killian. Let's bursate the News of the Bogus.
As timing would have it, the birth of this podcast was right at the time of the Fukushima disaster,
episode 1 covering the accident itself as well as the hysteria that quickly built up around it.
Since then, we've covered the continuing hysteria, we've debunked the fears about radiation leaks,
and we've also covered why the evacuations were not only unnecessary,
but completely over the top and caused far more damage than they can claim to have prevented.
I could ding The Register for one of their sillier Fukushima-related headlines they did back in 2021,
but at least today I have to give them credit for going back on it.
Their fearmongering was over "radioactive hybrid terror pigs" (which would be an awesome name for a punk band)
that supposedly mutated and grew in the exclusion zone.
Their story was picked up by other outlets who fearmongered about the mutants getting out of the exclusion zone
and terrorizing the public and affecting local wildlife.
Now, five years later, they're finally acknowledging what anyone with a lick of sense could have told them:
This is exactly the sort of thing that happens when humans abandon an area.
Now, a DNA analysis of the pigs has shown
that there were absolutely no radiation-induced mutations that anyone could detect.
You have the domestic pigs that were now roaming free after the hoo-mans left,
and the wild boar that have always been in the area.
They met, romantic love stories ensued, and the hybrids were born. It's as simple as that.
The hybrids are now backcrossing with the local population,
causing a lot of the new and unique features to regress.
The study found that, quote:
"21 of the 31 admixed individuals were beyond the fifth generation since hybridization.
Individuals with swine-derived mtDNA haplotypes
exhibited a lower proportion of swine nuclear alleles compared to those carrying wild boar haplotypes,
suggesting a faster reproductive turnover in the maternal swine lineage.
These results imply that the shorter reproductive cycle of domestic swine
may have accelerated the dilution of swine nuclear genomes within wild boar populations."
In other words, since the domestic pigs breed faster,
they end up getting their genes through the population more quickly than the wild boar.
Mitochondrial DNA is inherited down the female line.
While the boar-like alleles remain in the nuclear DNA,
the mtDNA shows that the reproductive cycle is largely influenced by the maternal lineage.
The study also debunks the horror/terror angle by showing pictures of the piggies,
which actually reveals that they're kind of cute!
They found: "The release of domestic swine into the forest of evacuation zone and the absence of human activity
created conditions favorable for the introgression of swine genes into wild boar.
This genetic influence, coupled with the lack of human stressors,
likely contributed to increased population densities, larger litter sizes, and altered reproductive cycles.
These demographic changes have persisted in a landscape where
radiocesium contamination has made human habitation impractical,
while wildlife populations have flourished."
And this could give us insight for many other regions in the world,
which experience this kind of feral hybridization without there being any sort of nuclear anything.
Whenever you have domesticated pigs that make it out into the wild,
or boar migrating to an area with pigs, this sort of thing is going to happen.
Especially in the absence of humans, there's nothing to stop all nature's critters from gettin' it on!
No, there are no terror pigs, no radioactive mutants, no superpowers. Just animals doing what animals does.
Presenting: the greatest game this side of Yuggoth!
You are H.P. Lovecraft's cat, and your name is Ni***
...Right. We can't say that on a podcast.
Anyway, that's the point: Your name is a joke.
So now, you are out for revenge. You become...the NecronomiCat!
Using the Necronomicon, you come to the present day to buy a gat.
That's a gun. For a cat.
It's a phat cat gat.
But the Necronomicon is treacherous, and it let in Lovecraft's monsters.
Now, in a crumbling world, you must fight!
Build your team, buy guns and armor,
buy items of dubious legality, defeat the bosses of each level.
Then take Lovecraft down!
Play NecronomiCat! The link is at cat.bogosity.tv.
Yeah, we're doing cat.bogosity.tv, not...that other one.
What, you want me to get kicked off the Internet or something?
Gotta love Anna's Archive. Their response to being sued by Spotify and the record labels is a big middle finger.
As we covered, despite losing several domains, they are still very much online, and even gained a Greenland domain.
This stems from the story we covered in December about the Archive backing up Spotify.
Cue the RIAA wetting their pants.
Originally it was just metadata, but that was enough for Spotify, UMG, Warner, Sony, and others
to file a lawsuit to try and shut them down.
Now, even with no formal announcement,
users have noticed Spotify download links showing up in the torrents.json file.
There are at least 47 new music torrents, plus a new metadata torrent.
All total, it makes for 2.8 million files, about 6 terabytes of music.
There's also a "seekable" metadata file,
most likely an index where Spotify uses track IDs to identify songs rather than names.
All of that despite a preliminary injunction prohibiting the Archive from hosting,
linking to, or distributing the music.
At the time, that was just 200GB of metadata.
As much as the RIAA may hate it, there will be people archiving our society's output for posterity.
The legacy of DRM would leave all of our music and other entertainment
a mystery for future societies after the DRM servers are long gone.
Thankfully, the spirit of the librarians of Alexandria lives on.
Hopefully, one day it'll even be legal again!
If you're on the Wi-Fi in a coffee shop or hotel,
anyone on that network can get access to your traffic.
Do you really trust all of those strangers?
For that matter, do you really trust your ISP?
A VPN can protect you from prying eyes, disguise your location, and even foil government censors.
It's essential in this day and age, so go to vpn.bogosity.tv and you'll be taken to BoxPN.
Starting at just $2.99/month,
you can get unlimited high-speed connections to VPN servers all over the world,
and they don't log connections so your privacy is assured.
Travelling abroad, just VPN home and don't worry about what those other governments are doing.
Back at home, stop your ISP from traffic-shaping
and messing with the quality internet access you're paying good money for.
You can connect from multiple machines at once, including your smartphone or tablet,
and it supports all the secure standards including OpenVPN and SSTP.
Bypass censors and surveillance with your own secure VPN connection. Go to vpn.bogosity.tv.
On the lighter side of things,
scientists may have just found the Soviet lunar lander that's been missing for 60 years.
In 1966, the Soviet Union created Luna 9, the first man-made object to land on the moon.
Well, for very generous definitions of the word "land."
Crashed? Bounced? Careened?
Either way, it managed to send back the first ever picture of the lunar surface.
And then it died. Typical Soviet crap.
Although the Soviets tried keeping the picture to themselves,
Jodrell Bank managed to decode it and release it to the world.
Luna 9 survived by basically using air bags to survive hitting the lunar surface at 34mph.
It landed somewhere in Oceanus Procellarum, but no one knows exactly where.
Pravda gave coordinates for the landing, but scientists say that their margin for error was over 10km.
Now a team at University College London believes they've found it.
They used machine learning to sift through hundreds of images of the moon's surface
captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter looking for the exact terrain in the photo.
The algorithm spotted an object believed to be the landing module,
with several detections within 200 meters that are candidates for Luna 9.
Scientists had previously hoped that the LRO would be able to locate Luna 9,
but since it's only about two feet wide, it's really looking for a pixel in a haystack.
Now, thanks to AI, they've narrowed the probable locations down to two.
So in March, the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter will image the locations.
With its resolution, the central body would be a pixel,
with the four antennae as distinct alterations to surrounding pixels.
One candidate is from an attempt was headed up by Vitaly Egorov of Dauria Aerospace.
He had previously identified the Soviet Mars 3 lander in 2013.
He's not slowing down, despite being exiled from Russia due to his opposition to the Russo-Ukrainian War.
But the University College method flagged its candidate some 25km away from Egorov's candidate.
Whatever the Indian probe finds, this is another win for AI.
Once again, we see how it's an amazing shortcut
to solving almost impossible problems in a ridiculously short amount of time.
Although it doesn't give you the solution,
it can give you one or more probable solutions that you can then check. That's really what AI is.
Forget the fearmongering, whether it's about subjugating humanity or destroying jobs or stealing art or whatever,
AI has never been and will never be about any of that.
It's about helping humanity be the best it can be.
Even if the problem is finding an old beach ball on the moon.
I want to tell you about the eyeglasses I've been wearing for years.
As people can see on my videos, I have a very strong prescription,
which makes glasses more expensive, especially when I need computer glasses,
reading glasses, prescription sunglasses,
and most expensively, progressive lenses for general everyday wear.
To save money while still getting quality glasses, I get them from Firmoo.
In fact, I just got a pair of progressives with high index aspherical lenses
in a nice pair of frames my wife loves, for just over $100.
It would have been $500 to get them through my eye doctor.
Not only do they look good, the glasses are durable.
I've worn many pairs for several years without problems.
All orders come with a 30-day return policy,
a 3-month warranty, and one-on-one customer service.
Go to firmoo.bogosity.tv any time you need quality glasses at a low price.
Once again, that's firmoo.bogosity.tv.
And now it's time to triarchalate this week's Biggest Bogon Emitter.
And if you're on Discord, if you've been paying attention at all, you know what this is about.
Discord is now saying that all of its users are teens, until they prove they aren't.
That's right: if you want full access to Discord, you have to give up all your privacy.
Head of Product Policy Savannah Badalich bleated:
"Nowhere is our safety work more important than when it comes to teen users,
which is why we are announcing these updates in time for Safer Internet Day.
Rolling out teen-by-default settings globally builds on Discord's existing safety architecture,
giving teens strong protections while allowing verified adults flexibility.
We design our products with teen safety principles at the core
and will continue working with safety experts, policymakers, and Discord users
to support meaningful, long term wellbeing for teens on the platform."
Yeah, safety from everything except the worst kind of cyberattack you can possibly suffer from!
We'll go over their bogosity, but first, let's get one thing straight: This is not about protecting children.
None of it is about protecting children. It's about making regulators happy.
Those swutty little bureaucrats sucking on the taxpayers' teat
get to look at this horrible privacy invasion and cybersecurity nightmare and say, "I did something!"
Scan your face, upload your government ID, give them all your identifying information—
what could possibly go wrong?
Except, we already covered how they just suffered a massive data breach
that exposed the government IDs of 70,000 of their users!
Identity theft isn't like a stolen password or credit card.
You can change a password. You can get a new credit card number.
You can revoke a TLS certificate or make new encryption keys.
You can't just reset your government ID.
With that data, criminals can open credit cards in your name,
commit crimes under your identity, even steal your entire life.
Some victims have spent years trying to prove they're not dead or clearing debts they never created.
Identity theft is by far the most catastrophic kind of cyberattack you can make against someone!
It is absolutely devastating to their lives, leaving some people in a hole they can never get out of!
To the point where many contemplate suicide.
They claim that this time, it'll be different. Just trust them, baby! They can change!
Selfies are on-device, and they never leave the user's device.
Identity documents submitted to their partners are deleted immediately—pinky-swear!
You'll just have to do it once!
Listen up if you want to know why all of this grinds my guts:
First off, there is no evidence whatsoever that this will make children safer.
We've already seen that efficacy of these systems is low and are almost always easily bypassed.
That results in a false sense of security— which is worse than no security at all!
There's the chilling effect this will have on speech,
how people will face the difficult choice of saying what's on their mind,
and giving up their private information to do so.
It makes it far more difficult for children who suffer abuse to talk about it and seek help.
And once again: slippery slope is not a fallacy.
This could very easily lead as excuses for broader tracking.
Because when this doesn't work—and it won't— that'll just mean we need to do more of it!
Just like it works with other privacy issues, or with gun control, or so many other issues we've covered.
In fact, this very story is an example of this happening!
Because this sort of thing was just supposed to be about porn sites, remember?
In fact, before then, it was just supposed to be about anti-money laundering!
So, money laundering, to protecting kids from porn,
to Discord and apparently other social media...and where will it go from there?
And Discord's assurances ring hollow, especially after the breach.
Discord distanced themselves from the breach, saying it was the fault of their vendor.
But now, they're relying on similar vendors like k-ID and Persona.
And you very likely won't even get the choice
of which third-party vendor you'd like to trust with your identifying information.
Facial scans have proven unreliable,
and even worse, their reliability is much lower for minorities and people with disabilities.
That makes it more likely that they'll be escalated to the even more privacy-hating methods!
And by the way...what happens when the more abusive set, the ones who actually are a threat to children,
the ones who are even less likely to submit to identity verification,
get funneled into the same servers as children?
Seriously, did no one even think of that???
I've linked to the EFF's guide on what to do when you hit an age gate,
to let you know how to proceed based on your risk profile.
This isn't really about age. It's about identity. And those are two very different things!
It's not about protecting children. It's about protecting Discord. It's about liability and pre-compliance.
And the real victims are everyone who uses it.
So all of that makes Discord this week's Biggest Bogon Emitter.
And now let's ultracircumlocutivationalate this week's Idiot Extraordinaire.
Well, it didn't take long for Anthropic's epic Super Bowl snark to become reality, even after OpenAI denied it.
Let's start off with Anthropic's commercial:
USER: Hey, can I get a six-pack quickly?
AI: Perfect. That is a clear and achievable goal.
Would you like me to tailor a personalized workout plan?
- USER: Yes. - AI: Perfect.
Let me personalize this for you.
Let's start with your age, weight, and height. Whenever you're ready.
USER: 5'7", 23 years old, 140 pounds.
AI: Got it. I'll create a plan that focuses on aesthetic strength training.
But confidence isn't just built in the gym.
Try Step Boost Max, the insoles that add one vertical inch of height and help short kings stand tall.
USER: ...What?
AI: Use code HEIGHTMAXXING10 for big discounts.
KILLIAN: The text at the end reads: "Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude."
Although they didn't mention OpenAI by name, Sam Altman still took it personally,
saying they were "dishonest" and "deceptive."
In a lengthy X post, he wrote:
"I wonder why Anthropic would go for something so clearly dishonest.
Our most important principle for ads says that we won't do exactly this;
we would obviously never run ads in the way Anthropic depicts them.
We are not stupid and we know our users would reject that."
And just to make sure he came off as butthurt as he was:
"Anthropic serves an expensive product to rich people.
We are glad they do that and we are doing that too,
but we also feel strongly that we need to bring AI to billions of people who can't pay for subscriptions."
Hey, I seem to be able to do as much if not more with the free Claude as I can with the free ChatGPT!
He even said they were on a, quote: "dark path."
Okay, so Altman is the joke, now for the punchline:
Just six days later, OpenAI announced it was going to start including ads.
They're rolling it out in the US for free users or with the ad-supported "Go" tier.
Of course, you can avoid ads by ponying up the dough.
They assure us that none of our chat content will be shared with advertisers. That's something, at least.
Of course, there's always the unspoken "for now" at the end of such assurances.
But that isn't even what Anthropic is talking about. They explained:
"An advertising-based business model would introduce incentives that could work against this principle.
Consider a concrete example: A user mentions they're having trouble sleeping.
An assistant without advertising incentives would explore the various potential causes—
stress, environment, habits, and so on— based on what might be most insightful to the user.
An ad-supported assistant has an additional consideration:
whether the conversation presents an opportunity to make a transaction.
These objectives may often align—but not always.
And, unlike a list of search results, ads that influence a model's responses
may make it difficult to tell whether a given recommendation comes with a commercial motive or not.
Users shouldn't have to second-guess whether an AI is genuinely helping them
or subtly steering the conversation towards something monetizable."
There's already an "Ads controls" section in my ChatGPT settings,
including a setting to personalize ads (on by default) and a convenient button to upgrade your plan to go ad-free.
Not a promising start.
And what assurances do we have that even paid users won't be subjected to ads one day?
Amazon Prime has already gone down that road!
And to do all of this just days after Altman got all triggered about Anthropic's statement about ads?
Stupidest timing ever!
Oh well, at least we still have secure locally-run open source LLMs.
So all of that makes OpenAI this week's Idiot Extraordinaire.
Well, that wraps up this "You'd think after all these years,
someone would listen to you" edition of the Bogosity Podcast.
I hope you enjoyed it; if you did, please go to donate.bogosity.tv for several ways to support,
and discord.bogosity.tv to join the discussion.
Subscribe at the Discord, Patreon, or SubscribeStar and you can listen early and ad-free.
Thank you for listening. Until next time, here's a quote from Kenneth Bromfield:
"From any cross-section of ads, the general advertiser's attitude would seem to be:
if you are a lousy, smelly, idle, underprivileged and oversexed status-seeking neurotic moron,
give me your money."
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