Welcome to the Bogosity Podcast for the week of February 22 2026,
the podcast that fears the reaper.
This is your host, Shane Killian. Let's peptize the News of the Bogus.
In the rush of so many people to blame AI for basically everything,
we have a new iteration of one of the most heartbreaking aspects of humanity.
I mean the decision made by some people to end their existence.
It's completely illogical, a final and permanent reaction to conditions that are temporary,
and yet, it often happens to people when no one they knew saw it coming.
When that happens, there's a desperate grab for an easy answer,
generally in the form of finding someone or something to blame:
a song, a video game, cyberbullying, social media, even Amazon!
Now, as we've covered, there are a rash of lawsuits against companies such as OpenAI and Character.AI,
alleging that these mere computer functions are responsible for the sudden demise of their loved ones.
It's impossible not to sympathize with these loved ones,
and unless you've been through it, you can never know how you're going to react,
what or whom you're going to lash out at.
But as we've said on this podcast a few times, there are limits;
the Sandy Hook plaintiffs in their cases against Remington and Alex Jones, for an extreme example.
The people who don't deserve such sympathy and understanding are the rest of us:
those of us who didn't know the victim, should be detached and impartial,
and still push a narrative blaming something we don't like.
And here, the narrative has become that the AI is the cause of the suicide—
that it takes someone from a normal, well-adjusted person and drives them to the ultimate self-harm.
And that makes no sense whatsoever.
We actually know very little about what drives someone to their own death,
but we do know that it isn't a single, simple cause.
That's why clinicians are arguing that the way we assess such risk needs to be radically altered.
And as suicide rates continue to rise—it's now the third leading cause of death of those age 15 to 29—
we see more and more that relying on people to self-report that they aren't suicidal isn't enough.
We need to start understanding the symptoms that lead to such a state of mind,
which they call Suicide Crisis Syndrome, or SCS.
Going at least as far back as 2017, scientists have attempted to list and weigh the risk factors for SCS
to arrive at a number accurately reflecting the risk in an individual patient.
And even professional psychiatrists who treat their patients
have trouble knowing if a patient is going to self-exit, even from one weekly session to another.
A 2021 study in General Hospital Psychiatry said that half of the decedents they studied
denied having SI in the week or month before their suicide. They concluded:
"The denial of SI among ideators, attempters, and suicide decedents is an alarmingly common occurrence.
Findings support the clinical wisdom that denial of SI is, by itself, an inadequate indicator of suicide risk."
Not only are there stories of psychiatrists not seeing it coming,
there are stories of spouses watching their loved one go from non-suicidal to making an attempt in mere hours—
giving them nothing to do but stop them, and wait for things to get better.
A 2022 study in the Journal of Psychiatric Research concluded:
"There is an urgent need for research on and implementation of a reliable risk assessment protocol
that does not rely on SI disclosure."
The problem is, to do that, we need a lot more information than we have.
And that's where these AI chats can actually help!
If we can study enough of these chats that people make during those last hours when they spiral downhill,
we can get better insight into their thought processes
and use them to understand SI and how to treat and even prevent it.
It makes no sense to blame the AI.
But one thing the AI chat does for us:
it gives us insight into the person's mental progression (or regression, as it may be)
in the moments leading up to their suicide.
Much better than we could get from a spouse or a psychiatrist!
It may be the key to learning about it!
It's ridiculous to blame the AI,
and doing so is a narcissistic assumption that you know more than the experts.
And suing AI companies doesn't help anyone except ambulance-chasing lawyers.
In fact, trying to stop it will take that very data away from us,
the innermost thoughts of people leading up to that final moment.
They should be sharing their loved one's chats with professional clinicians,
who can properly anonymize and study the data,
perhaps gaining what we need to turn this trend around.
No one who tries to put a stop to that should be able to claim the moral high ground.
Time for yet another "we were right" segment.
As much as I think the trade deficit is a non-issue— since what it really is is "Net Foreign Investment"—
it's also clear that those who fearmonger about it have no idea what it is or what'll bring it down.
One of the reasons for Trump's tariffs is to increase the cost of imports,
thereby reducing imports, thereby reducing the trade deficit.
That will never work, because that's not why the trade deficit exists!
Again, if there's no investment either way, or an equal amount of investment,
then no matter how much is being imported and exported between two countries,
the exchange rates will balance it out.
If it doesn't balance, if, say, the Chinese are investing in the US more than Americans are investing in China,
that's a positive Net Foreign Investment, which will show up to dumbos as a trade deficit.
If that doesn't change, then neither will the trade deficit.
Trump called trade deficits, quote: "a national emergency that threatens our security and our very way of life."
If he's right (he isn't), then he just made everything a hell of a lot worse.
In fact, America's trade deficit with China in 2025 hit a record high $3.44 trillion!
That's a $143 billion increase over 2024, despite the massive tariff hikes.
To make matters even more confusing for the economically illiterate, exports increased by $123.5 billion!
The fact is, none of it really matters.
We have the so-called trade deficit because we're a wealthy country
that can afford to buy lots of stuff from around the world,
and therefore have a lot of people from around the world investing in us.
And it's actually something that benefits everyone,
as we've known for the last 200 years thanks to David Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage,
one of the few things no school of economics anywhere denies.
As Groucho Marx didn't say, "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere,
diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy."
He could have not been talking about Trump!
If Trump wanted to know the effect of tariffs on the trade deficit,
all he would have had to do is look at his first term in office.
He hiked a bunch of tariffs, and still the trade deficit increased by $208 billion over those four years.
Regardless of how you feel about trade deficits, here's the bottom line:
Trump said that tariffs would lower them, and they didn't. Conclude from that what you will.
And now, the continuing story of the NSA wanting to spy on us
and interfering with post-quantum encryption to do it.
Currently, the gold standard for encryption is elliptic curve cryptography, or ECC.
But thanks to Shor's Algorithm, a quantum computer would go through those algorithms like tissue paper.
Specifically, we're talking about the algorithms used to create the secret keys
used every time you connect to a website or send a secure message to someone.
We don't want to wait to protect ourselves from quantum computers,
however far away we might be from the technology.
We need to do it now.
Especially since the NSA is recording all of our conversations,
salivating over the day they get to decrypt them.
So we want post-quantum, or PQ algorithms.
There are quite a few of them, but they're new, and that poses a problem.
If the PQ algos are subject to classical attacks,
then what does it matter if someone makes a quantum computer or not if the existing computers can crack it?
We're one of the few who's been covering the drama at the IETF over this.
They seem to be completely in bed with the NSA.
Normally, IETF working group chairs decide when to call votes based on consensus.
If a document receives a number of objections, they can wait and try again.
Now, we have yet another "last call" for objections to non-hybrid ML-KEM. I should explain.
Since PQ algos might be vulnerable to attacks from existing classical computers,
the solution is to use a hybrid PQ-ECC algorithm:
it has all the existing protections of ECC while adding on to it whatever
quantum protections the new protocol provides.
The NSA doesn't want that. And it's not for your own good!
Consider: about seven years ago Google and Cloudflare experimented with a PQ algorithm called SIKE.
They implemented a hybrid algorithm, where the key was derived by both SIKE and elliptic curve 25519.
And it was a good thing they did it that way, too—because SIKE got ripped to shreds.
The algo is so vulnerable to classical attacks it might as well not even exist!
But, their users were still safe, because of the protections of ECC.
The NSA doesn't want people to do things that way. They want PQ-only algorithms, not hybrids.
If they'd had their way, every connection through Google and Cloudflare
would have been completely open to the world!
The NSA has already been pressuring military contractors to support non-hybrids.
Then in 2024, the TLS working group chair posted a document specifying non-hybrid algos for TLS.
It was a short document with nothing but handwaving and circular arguments.
When people asked for the real reason, the author responded with more handwaving and circular arguments.
Back in April of last year, the chairs called for adoption,
but seven members raised a variety of objections.
The chairs then abused their power to declare consensus,
and in November issued "last call" for any objections prior to publication.
They then set about censoring objections to the topic.
They went back on it only after eminent cryptographer Daniel J. Bernstein blogged about it and raised the alarm.
Now we're in February, and there's another "last call"
where the chairs claim that the previous objections were resolved, when they weren't!
It was also done in a way where people who filed objections would have to refile them,
while it isn't obvious that they need to!
Bernstein is sounding the alarm again, saying, quote:
"The chairs should be explicitly recognizing the controversy
and actively soliciting broader participation
to ensure that IETF meets its promise of 'achieving broad consensus'.
Instead the chairs are concealing the controversy.
The document didn't provide any citations to justify these claims of virtues of non-hybrids,
and certainly didn't discuss the objections that had already been raised to these claims."
In particular, they're completely ignoring the claim that TLS already has hybrid ECC+PQ,
so people who need post-quantum protection already have options.
And despite their call for simplicity, adding on non-hybrid PQ would just make things more complicated!
Bernstein snarked: "Hey, here's an idea for actually improving the efficiency and simplicity of TLS:
mandate that every connection encrypt user data solely with the null cipher!
Yes, this sounds absurd; that's because efficiency and simplicity by themselves are not the TLS objective.
We pursue some forms of efficiency and simplicity for TLS to help security.
The non-hybrid document complicates TLS,
allows only minor efficiency improvements that will do nothing to expand TLS deployment,
and incurs completely unnecessary risks of security disasters."
Bernstein had filed an objection before last call, saying:
"This document doesn't serve any of the official goals in the TLS WG charter.
Most importantly, this document is directly contrary to the 'improve security' goal,
so it would violate the charter even if it contributed to another goal."
And he wasn't the only one. Thomas Bellebaum wrote:
"I strongly oppose publication of this document as is."
Others include Stephen Farrell: "I'd prefer this not be published at all for a few years at least."
Simon Josefsson: "At this time, I believe that non-hybrid PQ KEMs are a security risk."
Benjamin Kaduk: "I do not support publication of this document at this time;
see the 'discuss' points for specific items that IMO should be blocking."
Watson Ladd: "I think there is no real reason to publish this document,
and publishing sends the wrong signal about hybrid vs not. We should not publish it."
Kurt Roeckx: "I'm also opposing this. There is no reason for this workgroup to get involved.
We should only publish it if we think it's actually a good idea, and I've not seen anybody arguing that."
And Muhammad Usama Sardar: "I do not support publication in its current state.
Introduction and motivation is too small: literally two sentences. That's clearly insufficient.
Has any formal analysis been done for this draft?"
No, it hasn't...and clearly, there's no consensus.
So, the chairs finally acknowledged that, citing the input of a "small but vocal number of participants"
...and then scheduled yet another "last call"! Bernstein wrote:
"What would you do as an attacker trying to ram this
controversial non-hybrid document through the IETF process?
You'd do whatever you can to reduce the visibility of the common-sense
public-interest position of requiring hybrids.
Maybe you can use side issues as a distraction.
Maybe you can peel off some of the opponents by offering them something in exchange.
Maybe you can silence some of them with peer-pressure games,
such as claiming that they're a 'small, but vocal' minority.
Maybe you can simply wear them down with the burden of having to raise their objections again and again and again.
Meanwhile you'd work behind the scenes to have more people show up and cast positive votes."
Make no mistake: this is of vital importance to you and me, but sadly there's not anything we can do about it!
The encryption that secures our banking and e-commerce is entrusted to a working group
the chairs of which apparently have been compromised by the NSA.
Here's hoping there are more like Bernstein, Bellebaum, and the others ready to join in to protect you and me.
And now it's time to decarbonylate this week's Biggest Bogon Emitter.
An update to a story we covered over a month ago gives this one to California.
And brickbats have to be thrown at a lot of people online, both fans and haters of Tesla and Elon Musk.
As we covered a few weeks ago,
Tesla has stopped offering Autopilot and Full Self Driving for sale in its new vehicles,
and now offers FSD only by subscription.
Cue the Twitterati and the... Blueskyatti? Whatever you call them...
Anyway, they're all screeching about how Tesla is greedy and evil
and they stopped offering these because something something profit.
We covered reasons why that doesn't make any sense,
and the biggest reason—the one we said was most likely—is now finally being recognized.
The official word from the California DMV is that this is "corrective action"
to their bullshit lawsuit claiming that Autopilot and FSD were sold using deceptive marketing.
After hearing complaints from precisely zero customers.
Tesla had until February 14 to appeal, and there doesn't seem to be anything filed in the case since then.
Apparently, they figured the cost of compliance was cheaper than the cost of fighting it.
That's what most of these lawsuits are about, by the way: not about who's right or wrong,
but who can bully the other into settling for reasons that have nothing to do with the merits.
So three days later on the 17th, the California DMV posted a press release bragging about it. Quote:
"In December 2025, the California DMV found Tesla Motors in violation of state law
for misleadingly using the terms 'Autopilot' and 'Full Self-Driving' in the marketing of its electric vehicles.
By taking this prescribed action,
Tesla will avoid having its dealer and manufacturer licenses suspended in the state for 30 days by the DMV."
DMV Director Steve Gordon bleated:
"The DMV is committed to safety throughout all California's roadways and communities.
The department is pleased that Tesla took the required action to remain in compliance
with the State of California's consumer protections."
The DMV posted: "California has zero tolerance for misleading advertising that puts safety at risk.
When companies make false claims about vehicle capabilities,
they endanger lives and the state will hold them accountable."
Yeah...where's your data to back that up?
Oh, you don't have any? In fact, Teslas are the safest car, and Teslas running FSD are the safest by far?
Right, so you're just a bunch of lying smegheads, aren't you?
Well, at least one online source has finally figured it out.
InsideEVs posted a story with the headline: "Now We Know Why Tesla Killed Autopilot."
Yeah, InsideEVs, now you know. You could have known earlier if you'd just listened to this podcast!
They reported:
"California has been threatening (and preparing) to suspend Tesla's dealer license
after an administrative ruling found that the company's marketing
exaggerated what its driver-assistance systems were actually capable of.
In fact, that's the crux of this whole saga.
Both Autopilot and Full Self-Driving require human supervision and have never been fully autonomous systems.
Tesla has been arguing this point with the DMV directly since at least 2021."
And yes, Tesla didn't have to actually remove Autopilot; they could have just rebranded it.
But a couple of things to keep in mind:
Given how fucking stupid this was from the start,
there's no reason to think that California wouldn't have done the same with the new branding.
Second, government regulators have a way of letting you know on the back end what they really want.
There was never anything misleading about the branding.
Autopilots in planes were never fully autonomous and require constant pilot monitoring.
And since it came out of beta, FSD was always advertised as "Full Self Driving (Supervised)."
Combine that with the active monitoring Teslas require of their drivers—
more than any other car, even ones with comparable ADAS systems—
and you see that none of this had anything to do with deceptive advertising or consumer safety.
And what's especially horrible about this is that California is such a big market
that their horrible socialist elites can force these actions on the rest of the country.
Stop selling in California and you take such a big dent out of your sales
that the other car companies will have a massive advantage.
Which, make no mistake, is the whole idea.
So all of that makes California this week's Biggest Bogon Emitter.
And now let's alterpostindustrializationalify this week's Idiot Extraordinaire.
So apparently out of desperation going into the Midterms,
the Democrats are once again trying to buy votes with economic ignorance.
They're advocating what The Washington Post is calling a "once-taboo" idea: caps on grocery prices.
Price caps, like all forms of price fixing, should be taboo to anyone with even a smattering of knowledge of economics.
We gave this to Trump in May of 2025 for capping drug prices, so fair's fair.
Biden's chair of his Council of Economic Advisors, Jared Bernstein, led the group who wrote the proposal. He said:
"We're focused on an affordability policy where people's paychecks
have a chance to catch up to grocery prices that spiked in 2021 and 2022.
Even if grocery inflation has come down, which it has, the level of grocery prices is still causing sticker shock."
I mean, you could always just, you know, eliminate inflation entirely.
Isabella Weber, economist at the University of Massachusetts, said, quote:
"I think the interesting story here is how far we have come.
We are now at a point where the affordability agenda is really breaking through
into the mainstream of economic policy discussions."
To bad we're not at a point where reality is breaking through...
Hey, remember back when the Soviet Union did this with bread and bread lines became legendary?
Steven Kaimin, economist at the American Enterprise Institute, said in response:
"Price caps interfere with the very basics of a capitalist economy.
Maybe it's impossible to produce eggs at $3. Maybe the cost of producing them is $3.50.
In which case the eggs come off the market entirely,
or only the cheapest producers can sell at $3, and then the supermarket puts them out at $3,
and they sell an hour later, and everybody else goes and sees empty shelves."
Hey, here's something else you could do:
repeal the Agricultural Adjustment Act and allow small local farmers to compete with Big Ag
by selling their meat, eggs, and produce at grocery stores!
Hey, remember when Maduro tried this in Venezuela and all the store shelves were empty?
The Democrats added a very insane sort of roundabout to the plan:
Grocers cap prices, and in return they don't pay high credit card fees.
Which means the credit card companies will have to compensate
with fees and interest to the cardholders, negating any advantage.
Or, they could just legalize cryptocurrency
and allow us to do business in whatever form of money we want.
Senator Chuck Schumer bleated:
"Senate Democrats are advancing a clear affordability agenda: crack down on corporate abuse
that drives up food costs and deliver real relief for families, farmers, and small businesses."
I'll believe you when you support Thomas Massie's PRIME Act.
Hey, remember when Richard Nixon's price caps resulted in poultry and dairy farmers
slaughtering their animals en masse because they could no longer make money on the market?
By the way, if you're still wondering how dumb Weber is, she said, quote:
"Biden should have done some sort of shelf in supermarkets clearly branded:
'This price-stabilized shelf is from Biden stepping in on behalf of the American people.'
I still think doing that kind of thing could have saved us Trump."
Hey, remember when Biden...ah, forget it.
So all of that makes the Democrats this week's Idiot Extraordinaire.
Well, that wraps up this "Jive-ass dude don't got no brains, anyhow" edition of the Bogosity Podcast.
I hope you enjoyed it; if you did, please go to donate.bogosity.tv for several ways to support,
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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 Walter Williams:
"Despite the disastrous history of price controls, politicians never manage to resist tampering with prices—
that's not a flattering observation of their learning abilities."
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