Martin Ruskov @mapto@qoto.org

Text messages between Jeffrey Epstein and former Trump official Steve Bannon “discussed strategies to undermine Pope Francis, revealing how the Vatican was viewed as a geopolitical pressure point by Epstein's network of political and financial leaders.” https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/epstein-files-reveal-ties-catholic-conservatives-anti-francis-campaign

@adfichter this might be the CCC video: https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-blackbox-palantir, but I've not watched it yet.

The war waged by the tech authoritarian oligarchy against the media has reached a new level:

#Palantir is suing us. Us, the Republik Magazin.

A small Swiss media company, funded by readers, founded in 2018 and free of advertising. I am not aware of any other media company globally that Palantir is currently targeting so aggressively.

What is this about? Together with my wonderful colleagues at the WAV research collective Jenny Steiner, Lorenz Naegeli, Marguerite Meyer, and Balz Oertli, we published a two-part series on Palantir's activities in Switzerland on December 8 and 9.

Using an extensive corpus of documents – which we obtained thanks to the Freedom of Information Act – we were able to trace a sales campaign over a period of seven years. Palantir tried to get in with many federal authorities – and was rejected everywhere.

And we also found out that the Swiss Army Staff evaluated the products and came to the conclusion that the army should refrain from using Palantir products.

Among other risks, they feared that data would be passed on to the US authorities.

Palantir is not just any company. ICE uses its products to hunt down migrants in the US. The Israeli army IDF uses the software in its Gaza offensive. The British health authority NHS has made itself dependent on the products for data analysis during the pandemic. And CEO #AlexKarp displays inhuman and aggressive rhetoric towards Europe, while the company itself advertises the “optimization of the kill chain.”

These are all facts, repeatedly verified and published by renowned media outlets. Our research relating to Switzerland and Zurich is based on this.

In addition to analyzing documents, we also spoke to various sources – including Palantir executives here in Zurich. The quotes used were presented to them and approved. Of course, we always adhered to the high standards of journalistic work. We conducted a thorough fact check before publication.

But the company doesn't want us to write the truth.

After the US company owned by right-wing tech billionaire #PeterThiel dedicated an absurd blog post to us, claiming some misinformation (such as that they had not participated in official tenders with the federal administration, a point we never claimed. On the contrary: we spoke from the outset of attempts to establish contact, sales talks, informal meetings, business as usual), after the Global Director of Privacy & Civil Liberties (PCL) Engineering and contact person for Swiss media Courtney Bowman launched personal attacks against us in LinkedIn comments between Christmas and New Year (“partisan fear-mongering”), Palantir's Swiss lawyers demanded a counterstatement on December 29.

We rejected this demand in its entirety.

In January, they demanded the same thing again. We rejected it again.

And now we see each other in court.

But why all this?

Our research on the Swiss army report caused a huge international media response. The Guardian and the Austrian newspaper Der Standard reported on the Swiss army's rejection. Numerous financial portals and stock market magazines picked up our news (which could have consequences for the overvalued stock market company Palantir).

And Chaos Computer Club spokesperson Constanze Kurz presented our research to a huge audience at the renowned IT conference Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg at the end of December.

All of this is making Palantir nervous.

We have now submitted a comprehensive defense brief. We can substantiate all of our findings with several documents and publicly available media reports.

We trust in the rule of law and freedom of the press in this country.

In keeping with yesterday's event “Zurich, little Big Tech City” at the Gessneralle, where we first announced this news exclusively to the audience on site:

World politics will soon be negotiated in Zurich: freedom of the press, the facts about ICE, Trump, Israel, Karp, tech authoritarianism.

The truth.

All this at the Zurich Commercial Court.

We will not be intimidated. And we will keep you informed.

When politics centers on concrete problems like fixing roads, running schools and working with neighbors you actually know, division isn’t inevitable, according to new data.

https://theconversation.com/local-governments-provide-proof-that-polarization-is-not-inevitable-273986

Many Americans say U.S. democracy needs major change. One solution: proportional representation, where more than one representative is elected for each district, and seats are distributed according to votes for a party.

Portland, Oregon, adopted it in 2025, and its new city council is already more diverse by gender, race and neighborhood representation.

https://theconversation.com/proportional-representation-could-reduce-polarization-in-congress-and-help-more-people-feel-like-their-voices-are-being-heard-270411
#USPolitics

What happens when a city inherits 6,000 headstones and virtually no records?

An environmental scientist teamed up with 50+ students to use drones, smartphones and GIS tech to digitally map a historic cemetery, cutting the work in half and giving a community new access to its past.

https://theconversation.com/mapping-cemeteries-for-class-how-students-used-phones-and-drones-to-help-a-city-count-its-headstones-273154

Parents don't need a special approach to help their kids develop empathy and creativity through bedtime stories.

A study of 6 to 8-year-olds found that simply reading aloud works, with or without stopping to ask reflection questions.

https://theconversation.com/reading-to-young-kids-improves-their-social-skills-and-a-new-study-shows-it-doesnt-matter-whether-parents-stop-to-ask-questions-274926

The Department of Homeland Security is issuing lawless subpoenas for online user data. Tech companies need to do more to fight back. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/02/open-letter-tech-companies-protect-your-users-lawless-dhs-subpoenas

Egyptian youth who participated in the 2011 Arab Spring expected freedom and democracy. Fifteen years later, many have abandoned the version of Islam promoted by Islamist politicians, viewing it as hypocritical and opportunistic. https://theconversation.com/fifteen-years-after-egypts-uprising-how-faith-and-politics-reshaped-a-generation-274430

Social media moves at the speed of events, while journalism moves more slowly, at the speed of verification. A Navy War College strategist argues the real problem in journalism’s credibility gap is this structural time gap. And it causes a serious erosion in trust.
https://buff.ly/lhhgFjj

@chpollin @ingridbmason I have found the persuasive technology triad to be quite relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persuasive_technology#Functional_triad . With some wishful thinking this could be translated to computer-aided/-assisted (as in CAD, CAM, CALL, etc), computer-supported (as in CSCW/CSCL) and computer-generated as in GenAI.

Sleepless Nights Could Drive Half a Million Cases of Dementia in The US Each Year
https://www.sciencealert.com/sleepless-nights-could-drive-half-a-million-cases-of-dementia-in-the-us-each-year?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into ScienceAlert @sciencealert-ScienceAlert

An extraordinary resource.

A seaside town on the Izu Peninsula is undergoing a quiet revival, thanks in part to non-Japanese residents creating new spaces for connection. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2026/02/09/issues/ito-revival-izu-peninsula-foreign-businesses/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #community #issues #izupeninsula #ito #tourism #expats #smallbusinesses #crafts #bubbleera

A wave of lawsuits in the Unites States is targeting tech firms for their product design decisions. Lawyer Carrie Goldberg has played a role in establishing the product liability theory that underlies them. As the founder of C.A. Goldberg, PLLC, in 2017, her firm brought a lawsuit that sought to apply product liability theory to a tech platform — Herrick v. Grindr — arguing that a dangerous app design, not just user behavior, was the source of harm. In 2022, Goldberg was appointed to the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee in the federal social media multidistrict litigation. She’s led cases against Amazon, Meta, and Omegle, has testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on child safety issues, and is the author of Nobody's Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs, and Trolls. Justin Hendrix spoke to her from her offices in Brooklyn about what she's learned over the last decade, and about some ongoing litigation that remains in dispute.

INTERVIEW: The race to agree global rules on deep-sea mining https://www.euractiv.com/news/interview-the-race-to-agree-global-rules-on-deep-sea-mining/?utm_source=eac&utm_medium=mastodon&utm_campaign=%40euractiv%40masto.ai