Good morning, and welcome. Today is Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. Yikes! What I woke up to this morning! Ideal for a little Vivaldi’s "Four Seasons," I think (Winter, of course). Zero degrees, with a thirty-degree-below-zero wind chill. Understand, for most areas of the country, that’s too cold to snow. Here, though, we have two huge bodies of water to contend with. The water vapor evaporating off Lakes Erie and Ontario becomes clouds, and as they move off the lake, they become snow. LOTS of snow. Where I am, we caught seven inches of the stuff last night, as a topping for the couple of inches that were already on the ground. Good thing I hadn’t planned on going anywhere today.
1587: Mary, Queen of Scots, is beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle.
1622: King James I disbands the English Parliament.
1693: William & Mary College is chartered in Williamsburg, in the Dominion and Colony of Virginia.
1879: Sandford Fleming first proposes dividing the world into 24 equal time zones and adopting a Universal Standard Time.
1910: The Boy Scouts of America is incorporated by William D. Boyce.
1918: Stars & Stripes, weekly U.S. armed forces newspaper, is first published.
1930: "Happy Days Are Here Again" by Benny Meroff hits #1.
1960: American "Stardust" composer and character actor Hoagy Carmichael receives a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
1960: U.S. Congress opens hearings looking into payola.
1965: Motown Records releases The Supremes' single "Stop! In the Name of Love."
1973: Senate names seven members to investigate the Watergate scandal.
1976: Taxi Driver debuts in New York City.
Birthdays today include: William Tecumseh Sherman, Jules Verne, WWI flying ace Billy Bishop, Lana Turner, Audrey Meadows, Jack Lemmon, James Dean, conductor John Williams, singer Larry Verne (“Mr. Custer”), Ted Koppel, Nick Nolte, Robert Klein, producer Terry Melcher, England Dan Seals, Mary Steenburgen, Ethan Phillips (Neelix – Star Trek: Voyager), John Grisham, Vince Neil, and Gary Coleman.
* * *
Here’s one for the scandal sheets. Here’s the bombshell of the day: at long last, I can prove to at least some of you that I was an intimate friend of Jeffrey Epstein.
Or rather — I could have.
There was a snapshot to observe here, but I’ve decided not to show the image I created with AI.
Before we get too far downrange, let me be clear about the evidence you’re not seeing: it was a fake. I created a photo of myself and Epstein posing for a selfie. It looked real. I assure you, dear reader, it was not. I have no interest in triggering a national scandal because some dimwit can’t be bothered to actually read what I write. I created the image this morning on my cell phone, with the help of an AI engine or two, along with a few other somewhat less convincing shots.
The purpose of this deep dive into a fake — one I chose not to publish — is to remind you just how easy it is for someone to manufacture a scandal, or to give you questionable advice, all while appearing to be a professional.
I have spent the last several days pouring over some very professional-looking YouTube presentations. The last one was a self-help video by someone who was supposedly a doctor of some sort. She sat perfectly still, advising all of us on the health-related uses of apple cider vinegar. The perfect stillness except for the mouth was the first clue that there was something amiss.
The next was a contextual mispronunciation. The text feeding the program was apparently “You may have read…” blah blah blah. Now there are two ways the word “read” can be pronounced: one is “Reed” and the other is “Red.” The computer-generated vid said, “You may have Reed.” It’s the little clues like that that alert you to an issue of trust. It amazes me how often stuff like this comes up, with nobody bothering to take the time to repair the obvious errors.
Now, there are a number of vids out there that are not obvious fakes and could be real; there's no way to tell. But the number of obvious fakes should be causing us to question the validity of just about ANYTHING we find online.
And yes, it's true that YouTube particularly has been trying to address the issue by tacking a line in the description of each affected video, to the effect that AI was used in the video's creation. Frankly, I'm unconvinced that everyone understands the implication of that warning.
Of larger concern, however, is the eventual use of faked video evidence in criminal proceedings. You KNOW it's gonna happen. And at the moment, I don't believe there's anything we can do to stop it from happening.
I am reminded of a Star Trek: TOS episode from Season One, “Court Martial.” The story is a close parallel to what I see happening in our future. It goes like this: While on a routine mission, the USS Enterprise jettisons a research pod during an emergency. Records show Lt. Commander Ben Finney was still inside—implying Captain Kirk caused his death by ejecting the pod too soon. Because the ship’s computer log appears airtight, Kirk is charged with negligence resulting in loss of life and faces a full Starfleet court-martial. The episode, more than anything else, is a trip through human judgment and blind trust in technology, which I see as problematic in so much of what we see online today.
As a matter of full disclosure, I am a user of AI, as I have discussed in recent articles I've posted here. I use Alexa to run my home, and I also find it invaluable as a research tool. But the more I see this kind of thing, the deeper my concern. What can we do about these issues? What is to be done? Frankly I'm at a loss to answer these questions.
Thought of the Day: Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably, they are both disappointed. - Albert Einstein
I'll see you tomorrow.
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