On Jan. 7, a deadly combination of dry conditions and unusually strong winds caused a series of wildfires in Los Angeles. The fires then ignited a cultural wildfire of internet ignorance, conspiracy theories, and misinformation that has been burning out of control online. It's been over a week, and neither the fires nor the fake news have been contained. Much of the mythology around the LA fires revolves around who or what started the deadly conflagrations. It's an understandable question, but there are no useful answers more specific than "the weather" right now. People are not patient enough to wait for investigations to conclude and lawsuits to be resolvedthey can't even wait for the flames to die down so they're filling in the gaps by casting blame on the groups or things they hate the most. "The people I don't like set the fires"The list of culprits is long and peculiar. Here are only some of the people and things being erroneously or prematurely blamed for starting the LA fires.The Jews: Fan-favorite conspiracy theory "The Jews did it" made an early appearance after the fire. This was posted on Facebook on Jan. 8: "Just dew it" is a reference to "directed energy weapons," aka Jewish space lasers. But alas, this Facebook post contains a photo from a different fire from 2018, so it doesn't prove anything. That some trees didn't burn doesn't prove it was lasers either. The ancillary theory that homes with blue roofs and/or blue bins aren't targeted by Jewish space lasers isn't true either, but just in case, make sure you recycle.To be fair, it's not impossible to use "directed energy" to start a fireyou can do it yourself with a magnifying glassbut there's no evidence that this was the cause of the LA fires. A book of matches would be more efficient tool anyway. Woke people/Democrats: There are a lot of conspiracy theories that blame the fires on the general wokeness of California's government. That these are cheap attempts to politicize a tragedy seems obvious to me, but I'm not the target audience for claims like these. Anyway, California didn't turn away 40 firetrucks from Oregon for not meeting emissions standards. It's also not true that LA sent its firefighting equipment to Ukraine. Donald Trump claimed California governor Gavin Newsom failed to sign a "water restoration declaration," but that isn't actually a thing. James Woods, Elon Musk, and many others claim that the LAFD's diversity program is to blame for a less-than-adequate response to the fire, which is maybe a matter of opinion, but there's no evidence to back it up. I'm not discounting the possibility that governmental mismanagement or bad public policy affected the response to the firesnobody's perfect, right?but it's too early to tell what, if anything, went wrong, and who, if anyone, screwed the pooch. There will be years of lawsuits to straighten it all out, rest assured. MAGA Republicans: A post on Threads (archived here) from Jan. 8 claims that the LAPD are "looking for three 'persons of interest,' all tied to a MAGA website and who were spotted at the source of all three major LA fires." This is not true. Like it's fully made-up. Illegal immigrants: This one is at least plausible. In the days after the fire, LA police arrested a homeless citizen of Mexico who was carrying a blowtorch. But whether the blowtorch was used to set fires hasn't been determined. Could it have been understandably nervous local residents mistaking a drug-smoking blowtorch for a fire-starting blowtorch? Maybe. In any case, ICE is looking into it, and if this undocumented dude was really was starting fires, rest assured, we will never, ever stop hearing about it. Kids smoking weed: 24-year-old hiker Beni Oren posted a series of harrowing videos of himself and his friends running from the Palisades fire shortly after it began, leading to widespread comment section speculation that those kids were smoking weed up there, and that's what started the fire. Many helpful X users also pointed out that "Oren" is a Jewish name. There is no evidence that Oren or his friends were anything but hikers caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. That could change, of course, but for now, that's all we know. Unspecified people (who are probably the Jews): During a Fox News interview, actor Mel Gibson claimed that "there were people ready and willing and able to start fires and are they commissioned to do so." Because he's Mel Gibson, I assume he's talking about the Jews, but you never know. Global warming: Global climate change is definitely real, but whether this specific fire (or any fire) was "caused" by climate change is complex question. On one hand, there were wildfires in California before there were humans on earth, but on the other, wildfires are more destructive and more frequent now than they were even 30 years ago. Climate change probably amplified the weather conditions that made this fire so devastating, but does that mean global warming "caused" the fire? I guess it depends on what you mean by "caused."Enthusiastic urban planners: According to this poster on X, "by 2028, LA is poised to be a fully operational AI based 'Smart City,'" and the fire was set to drive away people so the AI could take over. Similar "concerns" were voiced by Fox News host Laura Ingram, who said, "There's already talkand we played a couple of sound bitesof reimagining the way rebuilding occurs, and obviously there's a great need for high-density housing in California and across the country, that's a big push by the climate folks, and you're already hearing rumblings of that in this case. Like, goodbye single-family homes, hello high-density housing."Ingram doesn't specify who "the climate folks" nor does she detail the "rumblings" she heard. She seems purposefully vague about the details so viewers can fill in the blanks themselves. No one can really say she's wrong exactly, but the insinuation is that some shadowy group purposefully set the fires to achieve their nefarious goal of available affordable housing.Diddy: According to this conspiracy theory, someone set the LA fires to cover up evidence of crimes connected to P. Diddy. Among the proponents of the "Diddy did it" theory is Catherine Austin Fitts, who served as the Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under George H.W. Bush. While this is possible, a huge fire seems like a wildly ineffective tool for evidence destruction. So what really caused the LA fires?In a broad sense, the LA fires were the result of unprecedented high winds and dry conditions. The Santa Ana winds are a semi-annual event, and high winds in California usually result in fires. Small blazes that would be quickly extinguished on a normal day become huge wildfires when it gets windy enough.To be fair to Nature, most of those small blazes are caused by people. Human activity is directly responsible for 85% of wildfires, whether it's electric lines being blown down or arson. As for the current fires: There's some evidence that the Palisades Fire was caused when the remnants of an older blaze reignited, and the Eaton Fire could have been set off by an electric company's equipment, but until The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives finishes its investigation and releases its findings, we have no solid evidence of who or what caused the fires.

Good news, Android fans: You've got just a few days left before the unveiling of 2025's latest (and presumably greatest) new Samsung phones. The company's first Galaxy Unpacked event of the year is slated for Wednesday, January 22 and as in past years, you'll be able to watch along from home.Between credible leaks and historical precedent, we can reasonably assume that the event will include a new lineup of Galaxy S25 phones (including Ultra, Plus and regular models) at the very least. The new phones are more or less guaranteed to use Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, and sport some amount of design tweaks, and new colors. And Samsung's recent blog post effectively confirmed that its new One UI 7 announced at a Samsung developer event in 2024 will be part of the Wednesday reveal, so expect more details on how the operating system revamp will actually impact using the company's new devices.Beyond that, Galaxy AI will be featured prominently, based on Samsung's original announcement of the event, and it seems possible the company could include an update on its wearables and more information about Project Moohan, the headset it's developing for Google's Android XR platform.The event begins at 1PM ET / 10AM PT in-person in San Jose and online everywhere else. If you plan on watching, you can find a stream on Samsung.com, in Samsung's Newsroom, or watch along right here in the YouTube video below. Engadget will also be liveblogging the event (we'll add the link here once it's live).This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/samsung-unpacked-how-to-watch-the-galaxy-s25-event-on-wednesday-211629772.html?src=rss

The editor of a tech site took some revealing snaps of the inside of El Capitan, the world's fastest supercomputer.

TSMC has been promised $6.6 billion under the Biden-administration's CHIPS and Science ACT to help build three cutting-edge chip fabrication plants in Arizona.

These days it feels like were stuck in still water, our minds submerged in toxic muck, flailing our arms in inauthentic looping conversations. Self-talk is like a silent scream of the hateful social media comments (now with even less moderation and more algorithmic manipulation) we are bombarded with day after day, believing information only to realize almost too late, that it was all a complete lie.We just cannot pull ourselves away from social media. It calls to us deep from the wild, before we dream, when we wake up, while we are on the toilet, in the garden, on the train. We look for entertainment, recipes, morbid curiosities, checking up on our friends, and traveling. And then, just when we finally put our phones away, and stop scrolling, we get pulled back to the abyss by the inescapable and dreaded bleep of endless notifications. If you are like me running a business from your phone, you are stopped dead in your tracks by two-factor authentication.I needed to clear my mind and test the social media self-discipline Im always nagging my three sons to have. I couldnt afford to cleanse myself using that trendy total silent vipassana experience Ive been reading about lately.My experiment asked an urgent question: Could I run Birk Creative, my advertising agency, continue to build my professional brand, and find and earn new business, without my iPhone and Pixel, with littleif any social media engagementall from a rudimentary flip phone?There was a time when interpersonal relationships and real-time conversations were standard operating procedures. You could share stories with a stranger on the bus, and discuss the headlines in the newspaper written by real journalists and investigative reporters. At the bookstore or record store, the worker behind the checkout counter loved to read or discover new music, so you would share your love of a new book or album coming out by your favorite author or band, and it felt good to share a smile, a laugh and find a common connection with another person. And then there was the golden age of sales. When you could find a new customer or reach the CEO of some amazing company profiled in the business section of the newspaper, just by picking up the phone and cold calling. Half the time youd call, youd get a receptionist or a VP, andthey would be excited to ask how you found them, excited for the attention, and they would hear your pitch and take your meeting.I can see the before-and-after impact of social media on my creative life. My agencys work was mostly print designand it was colorful and vibrant, everything was created by a human (or art directed) by me, from the hand lettering to the illustrations, the photography, and the photo retouching all the way to the production layout on my annual reports. Even the music I made with my band Utah Carol was analog, with sounds from a vintage Hammond organ recorded on a cheap microphone.Before the term creator economy had been coined, my productivity as a creative was off the charts without social media. My ingenuity and prowess as a business person were tested daily, I had incredible new business wins, all because I created real-life experiences with real people. I discovered and interpreted real-world data that my mind trapped and poured into my imagination.So, one morning, I abruptly disengaged my smart phone and replaced it with a basic flip phone. I figured it would force me to relearn how to get back to real-life human-centered experiences. It took a week for me to unwind my smartphone from cellular service. (For anyone who wants details about the process, send me a DM on LinkedIn, because the process was ridiculous and I would rather be covered in honey, left to die in the wilderness somewhere attacked by red fire ants than go through that process again).Along the way, I discovered many strategies I can implement to grow my brand and business that dont require social media. It does require old-school tactics that some may find confusing. It might even sound awkward to use the words go back because, in a recent U.S. election, we swore we are not going back. Here are powerful strategies you could redeploy to build your professional brand and still bring relationships, networks, and eventually customers to your business, that keep you off creativity-snatching social media.Carry your laptop not your phoneLaptops do not engender an immersive experience. You are still in the world around you, not dissimilar from a television. The screen is larger and more inviting to explore worlds beyond Instagram and TikTok. There are also more ways to research and learn things with a keyboard, monitor, and notepad right next to you. While on your laptop, place your phone in a lock box or the glove compartment of your car. Avoid anything that requires 2-factor authentication. Otherwise, youll find yourself back with your phone in your hand.Go outside Walk around, look up without a phone, and strike up conversations. Not just anyone, of course, but find opportunities to engage. At the airport or on an airplane, there are certain cues that you can pick up from the body language of someone that lets you know they may be open for conversation. In that conversation, quickly pivot to talk about your business, talk about your ideas, and be very clear about what youre looking to build or to do. Dont start talking and not tell people what you want to build, share, or what impact youre looking to have on people with your business. A retiree once told me he built his company by never being afraid to ask for business. Its hard to ask for things on social media. Social media lies, and you are more compelled to lie when you use it.Look for volunteer opportunitiesOr apply to board positions. Develop relationships on those boards and network like your business depends on it. When you investigate board positions, ensure that the work that theyre doing aligns closely with your deep passion. Are the people affiliated with the board the kind you want to hang out with? Make sure the current board members have demonstrated leadership qualities and are connected to brands, organizations, people, or companies that are also well-known, powerful, brands (or adjacent to ones) that are doing things that you care about that actually will help your reputation professionally while you contribute to the greater good.This is not necessarily the time to challenge yourself and get uncomfortable. Coaches always tell people that being uncomfortable is where the growth is. Not right now when you are trying to unwind from social media and enter the real world. Find (and pay) a graphic designer A designer can help you take your words, ideas, and thoughts (record your voice from your laptopon Zoom or Riverside.fm and transcribe your words using Temi.com), put them in a white paper, or better yet, a book. Get your designer to create a cover and get that book published. Or publish it yourself and set up your own little publishing company like what I describe in my video How To Launch Your Own Publishing Company on Apple Books.You ask: But how can I promote my book or white paper if I dont use social media? Have you ever heard of direct mail by the US Postal Service? They have tremendous solutions using ZIP Code targeting to send out postcards to people in areas that youve decided are the people you want to reach. For example, if your book of advice is about finance, find out where the wealthiest zip codes are in any state, and with some other demographic research, send out postcards that your new book designer you just hired will create. The designer will work very closely with you to create the right message to ensure the desired outcome is represented on those postcards. Youre also going to use these postcards as a tool to promote your professional brand. None of this requires social media. This is good old-fashioned, knocking on doors, face-to-face, traditional marketing tactics. Heres another great resource for traditional custom direct mail solutions (and the company is woman-owned too https://www.dlh-direct.com/index.php/services). If you are still unable to unwind completely from social media entirely to build your reputation and brand, you can look to programmatic direct mail as a solution. Pebble Post is doing interesting things with digital media. It will cost you a pretty penny, but maybe at least, you can leave all the digital dirty social media work to them.Keep your websiteIt presents your brand, face, message, voice, who you are, what you believe, what you want to accomplish, and what outcomes youre looking for with the content and brand that youre creating. Include:Your own blog with your thoughts written in essay, poetry, or prose, with images or video.An interview you did on a podcast.Photos and artwork you made.Clients youve worked with and case studiesAffiliate marketing too if you have it. Just place the links in a blog post, so it feels natural to the reader.Email marketing A must-have, especially when building away from toxic environments like social media platforms. Emails coming from you and your brand are representative of your voice, your message, and your reputation. There is no two-way conversation. No feedback loops. The only hate message youll get is an unsubscribe. You can try Beehiiv and Fodesk. Constant Contact and Mailchimp are less personalized and more generic platforms, but they have lower rates of spam reports than all of them for several reasons I wont discuss here. You can also look at a blog platform like Substack to have a direct conversation with your audience, but I have yet to figure out how to effectively use this tool.Guerrilla marketingStand on the street corner, and practice your public speaking. Print out flyers with your logo and hand them out like the street musicians or companies that pass out free product samples to visitors on major streets.Conferences, church, and supper clubs Another way to be social without media. Unlike social media, where you can hide and pretend you are big stuff even when you are small, conferences require you to be bold, stand out, and talk to people in real life. If you need to find something to attend that you care about where you can be an expert (which makes it easier to have a conversation), log in to Eventbrite, input keywords or zip codes, and find events taking place in person, wherever you live. Sure, bring your phone to get contact info. But dont take your phone to record things and post on social media. That is an act of ego, not business.Turn off music and podcasts in public Remove the earbuds. You will be amazed, shocked, and maybe even delighted by the conversations youll hear and the things youll notice because you are present. Run and workout to your thoughts, but also watch and listen to the people around you. Like a baby, you can learn so much by observation. My favorite thing to do is do what Apple does with their privacy settings on their phones: I eavesdrop on other people having loud conversations on their phones. I find this entertaining when Im at the gym or in transit, but it also gives me creative ideas.Say hello to older people and strike up a conversation Older generations have remarkable insights on all kinds of topics. They were born way before cell phones and computers. The old saying, The more things change, the more they stay the same.Delete your social media profiles from your mobile phoneOnly keep social on your desktop computer, which is hard to carry around. As a business owner and entrepreneur trying to grow your brand and your business, invest in talent to manage your brand online. Place the phone in your interns or your assistants hand. You can build your brand without social media. It requires more intentional action online. It requires a significant reduction of consumption and a significant increase in creation, collaboration, and tried and true human-centered networking. It also requires extraordinary resistance to the addictive and powerful features built into social media platforms. And if you just cant let social media go from fear that you will lose everything, deploy what Mark Zuckerberg created for you on Meta: Create your very own AI replicant, release it on social media, and let it run your brand for you.Back To Life is JinJa Birkenbeuels curated playlist on YouTube Music created for Fast Company.

Levito redefines expectations for furniture design, presenting itself as much more than a chair, its a bold statement piece that bridges art and functionality. Designed for installations and exhibitions, Levito challenges perceptions, inviting viewers to engage with its dual-sensory experience. This innovative creation transforms a simple act, like sitting, into an exploration of balance and contrast.At first glance, Levitos design may seem unstable, even precarious. Its structure consists of two separate components connected by wires, giving the impression of fragility. This visual uncertainty is an intentional artistic choice, crafted to spark curiosity and encourage deeper engagement. Despite appearances, Levito is structurally sound, providing tactile comfort and stability. This intentional contrast, visual instability versus physical reliability, forms the heart of Levitos identity.Designer:Choi Pil-jae andkmuid graduateLevito offers a two-stage experience that separates perception from interaction. Initially, viewers are drawn to its striking aesthetic, questioning its usability and marveling at its unconventional construction. This stage engages the mind, encouraging curiosity about its functionality. The second stage begins when one sits on Levito. Here, its true ingenuity shines: the interconnected parts allow for a subtle, fluid sway along its axis, evoking the sensation of floating on a cloud. This gentle motion surprises and delights, transforming skepticism into trust.By emphasizing this interplay between appearance and experience, Levito elevates itself from furniture to an experiential design piece. It challenges users to reconsider traditional notions of function and aesthetics, offering a sensory journey that blurs the boundaries between art and utility. Levitos unique form and functionality make it ideal for galleries, exhibitions, or modern living spaces, where it seamlessly integrates bold artistic expression with everyday practicality.For those who value innovative design, Levito is more than an object; its an invitation to explore the relationship between comfort and curiosity. It embodies the idea that furniture can be more than utilitarianit can provoke thought, inspire wonder, and deliver delight. By merging visual intrigue with tactile pleasure, Levito sets a new standard in furniture design, offering an experience that is as engaging as it is functional. Whether admired for its artistry or appreciated for its comfort, Levito transforms the way we interact with the objects in our lives.The post Levito Chair Keeps You Wondering And Provides You With A Multisensory Experience first appeared on Yanko Design.

The app has repeatedly name checked the president-elect in pop-up messages and statements, as it navigates a ban in the United States unless it is sold to a non-Chinese owner.

Even as the future of TikTok remains unclear, Meta has rushed out an alternative to CapCut while Apple continues to do nothing to promote Clips eight years after its debut.Apple's Clips app is a fun tool, but not quite a CapCut replacementThere's a lot of back and forth relating to whether TikTok will be banned or not, but competitors are taking note. Meta, Adobe, and even Apple have an opportunity to take advantage of the void left by TikTok, CapCut, and other apps owned by ByteDance if a ban is enforced.According to a Reels post from head of Instagram Adam Mosseri, a new video editing app called Edits would be released sometime in February. It's a similar move to when Meta pre-announced Threads as an alternative to the dying Twitter platform. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

Racial segregation in the United States included the legally or socially enforced separation of African Americans from White Americans, as well as the separation of other ethnic minorities from majority communities. Facilities and services such as housing, healthcare, education, employment and transportation in the United States have been systematically separated based on racial categorizations. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), so long as "separate but equal" facilities were provided, a requirement that was rarely met. The doctrine's applicability to public schools was unanimously overturned in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), and several landmark cases including Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States (1964) further ruled against racial segregation, helping to bring an end to the Jim Crow laws. During the civil rights movement, de jure segregation was formally outlawed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, while de facto segregation continues today in areas including residential segregation and school segregation, as part of ongoing racism and discrimination in the United States. This photograph, taken in 1939 by Russell Lee, shows an African-American man drinking at a water dispenser, with a sign reading "Colored", in a streetcar terminal in Oklahoma City.Photograph credit: Russell Lee; restored by Adam CuerdenRecently featured: Roadside hawkAucanquilchaBenjamin FranklinArchiveMore featured pictures

January 20: Day of Nationwide Sorrow in Azerbaijan (1990); Inauguration Day in the United States (2025); Martin Luther KingJr. Day in the United States (2025) Roller coasters1265 Simon de Montfort summoned local representatives to the Palace of Westminster to attend a parliament, now considered to be the forerunner of the House of Commons of England.1840 WilliamII became King of the Netherlands after his father WilliamI abdicated the throne.1885 LaMarcus Adna Thompson, sometimes called the "Father of Gravity", patented the roller coaster (pictured).1945 World WarII: In an operation that took nearly two months to complete, Germany began the evacuation of at least 1.8million people from East Prussia in anticipation of the advancing Soviet Red Army.2018 A group of Taliban gunmen attacked and took hostages at the Inter-Continental Hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan, sparking a 12-hour battle that left at least 21 people dead.Sebastian Mnster (b.1488)Agnes Mary Clerke (d.1907)Yolanda Gonzlez (b.1961)Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh (b.1965)More anniversaries: January 19January 20January 21ArchiveBy emailList of days of the yearAbout