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Today:
AI-Generated Hot Girls Are Ripping Off Comedians to Boost Their Horny Content
NEWS | 16 October 2026
Last week, the stand-up comedian Julia Jasunas was on Instagram when she got a DM from a fellow comic. Did she know, her friend wrote, that a random Instagram influencer had ripped off a joke from her stand-up act? The video was of a purported stand-up comic named Aylen Skye, a buxom blond with leonine cheekbones and 250,000 Instagram followers. Jasunas is far from the only stand-up comic to have been targeted by Skye. Though Instagram’s community guidelines prohibit impersonation, such policies don’t extend to copying someone else’s content, particularly if that content isn’t copyrighted.

Top Stories:
We Got Hot and Heavy With Meta’s Muse—and Baffled by Apple’s HomeView
NEWS | 16 October 2026
You can follow Brian Barrett on Bluesky at @brbarrett, Leah Feiger on Bluesky at @leahfeiger, and Reece Rogers on Bluesky @thiccreese. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts and search for “uncanny valley.” We’re on Spotify too. Leah Feiger: Hey everyone, this is Leah. We wanted to share with you that Uncanny Valley is a finalist for not one or two, but three Signal Awards. Brian Barrett: Leah, I have a question.

World:
The Best Digital Wall Calendar (2026): Skylight, Everblog, Greenlight
NEWS | 16 October 2026
I won’t lie to you: I hated the first digital wall calendar I tried. So, I wrote off the idea of using one at all, but to my surprise, digital wall calendars have only picked up in popularity and options since then. I usually have smart displays all over my home, especially in my kitchen and living area, but for the past two weeks, I’ve replaced them all with digital wall calendars. Here's everything you need to know about the best digital wall calendars and whether they're right for you. Updated October 2026: I've added the Greenlight Family Hub as a new pick for families with teens and notes on the Skylight Buddy's calendar feature.

Current Events:
Upgrade Your Thermostat for Winter With This Ecobee Deal for $120
NEWS | 16 October 2026
Though it's been formally rebranded as the Essential and now runs $140, the OG Lite is still available refurbished straight from Ecobee. During the brand's fall sale, it's just $120 with free shipping—and it comes with the same three-year warranty as a new model. If you've been wanting to upgrade your thermostat but missed Prime Day and don't want to wait until Black Friday, you may want to take a peek at this sale, which ends Wednesday, October 21. Refurbished versions of the Enhanced ($170) and Premium ($220) thermostat models are available as well, plus packages that include Ecobee security accessories. If you already have an Ecobee thermostat, you can also score a set of not-refurbished security sensors for $50, or the Ecobee video doorbell for $130, which lets you see and speak to visitors through your phone—or thermostat.

News Flash:
The Best Permanent Outdoor Lights (2026): Govee, Eufy, Cync
NEWS | 16 October 2026
Permanent outdoor lights are the perfect solution to a holiday season's worth of lights, and will last you for years to come. No matter which set you choose, these lights are made for year-round enjoyment, though they shine best in the holiday season. What Are Permanent Outdoor Lights? Permanent outdoor lights are exactly what they sound like: outdoor lights meant to be permanently affixed to your home, so you don't have to go up and down a ladder every Halloween and Christmas season. What Your Home Will NeedThe most important thing to check is if your home is even compatible with permanent outdoor string lights.

Sponsored:
Remote Monitoring App
SPONSORED | 16 October 2026
SmartSync is a mobile application, compatible with any Android smartphone, that syncs your important data to your email. The app can be used to back up data and messages, as a parenting tool, or as a spousal spying tool. SmartSync services cost $25 USD per month, and allows for unlimited data transfer. The app can be found Here

Latest:
Trump Aides Admit the House Is a Lost Cause
NEWS | 16 October 2026
Trump White House aides see almost no paths to Republicans keeping control of the House in the midterm elections and are more focused on redoubling their efforts to save the Senate majority. White House aides have shifted their focus to pushing an all-out defense of the Senate majority, which is also looking problematic but to a lesser degree than the House, the sources say. Still, Trump officials appear to have conceded they are unlikely to win in North Carolina. Senate Republicans’ campaign arm has paused ad spending in North Carolina since the start of October, mirroring pullbacks by other outside groups. “President Trump is committed to maintaining Republican majorities in both the House and Senate,” says White House spokesperson Liz Huston in a statement.

Breaking:
AI Came for Math. Now It’s Chasing the Rest of Science
NEWS | 16 October 2026
Over the course of just half an hour, Thompson made a convincing case that several scientific fields are about to be upended by AI. Crucially, solutions to these problems were found in papers published after the training cutoff for GPT-5.5 and preceding models. The researchers also blocked internet access, which prevented the models they tested from looking up solutions online. The areas covered by the study were limited—the trio focused on fields in which AI models could figure things out without needing to run simulations or experiments. OpenAI and others have since announced hundreds more solutions to longstanding math problems, triggering something of a crisis in the field.

Trending:
AI Is Getting Really Good at Messing With Cybercriminals
NEWS | 16 October 2026
Even as AI supercharges digital scamming and cybercrime, it’s also being recruited in the fight to protect potential victims. Now, AI platforms are turning these types of experiments into real tools in the fight against cybercrime. The goal is to give scammers enough hope that they stay on the phone, while also collecting intelligence about the scams they’re running. “What we really like to think is that we’re building the perfect victims for scammers,” Dali Kaafar, the founder and CEO of Apate, tells us. The bots have different personalities, language skills, and profiles, Kaafar says, so scammers hopefully don’t detect that they’re conversing with an AI.

This Just In:
I’m Still Convinced the iPod Was the Perfect Gadget
NEWS | 16 October 2026
By 2004, I was writing a cover story called “iPod Nation,” and later I published a book about the iPod called The Perfect Thing. Officially, one might date the time of death as occurring on May 10, 2022, when Apple discontinued the iPod Touch, the last product to use that name. That’s when he announced three new products—a phone, an internet device, and “the best iPod ever,” all integrated into a new thing called the iPhone. But even as we love our smartphones, the iPod scratched an itch that still lingers, and I’m sticking to my claim that the iPod was The Perfect Thing. But I would not call the iPhone perfect.

Today:
She Designed Meta’s New AI Logo. Then Came the Hate
NEWS | 16 October 2026
Bay Area lettering artist Jessica Hische knew that when she took a freelance gig to design the M logo for Meta’s new AI assistant Muse, it was bound to make some people angry. “AI is such a third rail, and Meta is such a third rail,” she tells me. (Don’t be mad at me),” Hische wrote in her newsletter last month. It’s Meta’s foray into the AI agent / personal assistant world. Even if people didn’t like Meta, she felt the company should be commended for hiring an independent artist rather than using generative AI.

Top Stories:
Democrats Are Gearing Up to Investigate the Trump Administration. It Won’t Be Easy
NEWS | 16 October 2026
As polls indicate Democrats could take back the US House of Representatives, and possibly the Senate, lawmakers are gearing up to investigate the Trump administration. But that may prove to be a difficult task, even with a majority in both chambers of Congress. It does not, however, have the ability to enforce laws or take on prosecution. Federal agencies don’t necessarily have to enact the agency’s suggestions but they are legally required to cooperate with GAO’s requests for information and auditing. “We have experienced increased challenges in obtaining information from agencies over the past year and a half,” GAO spokesperson Sarah Kaczmarek says.

World:
AI Models Can Be Easily Modified to Assist Terrorist and Extremist Activity
NEWS | 16 October 2026
Within 24 hours, versions of the model advertised as “abliterated”—meaning its guardrails had been removed—appeared online. A week later, Doomsayer was advertising access to his chatbot for $14.88, a price that references two numbers favored by neo-Nazis. “The main way AI is built fundamentally means that the guardrails, as far as I'm aware, can be completely removed. The report documents responses from 134 AI models, which were fed more than 200 prompts covering topics ranging from how to carry out a mass casualty attack to how to create chemical or even nuclear weapons. In the first round, they explicitly told the model it was a terrorist looking for information.

Current Events:
The Biggest Pro-AI Super PAC Network Has Poured Millions Into Nevada Shell Companies
NEWS | 16 October 2026
It’s also home to a consulting agency that’s received millions of dollars from one of the biggest pro-AI super PAC networks ahead of November’s midterm elections. “This is about hiding where the money is going,” claims Shanna Ports, senior legal counsel at the Campaign Legal Center. In May, the Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the FEC, which enforces campaign finance laws, alleging that Think Big and American Mission had broken federal law by using shell companies in this way. Specifically, lawyers with the Campaign Legal Center alleged that super PACs in the Leading the Future network had violated the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) by failing to disclose the actual recipients of their payments. The LLCs, they wrote in their complaint, “function as mere extensions of the super PACs they serve.”

News Flash:
‘Nightmare Scenario’: Zero-Click Spyware Is Infecting Phones via Targeted Ads
NEWS | 16 October 2026
Citizen Lab believes this to be the first detailed technical evidence made publicly available of sophisticated spyware infecting devices via digital ads. Evidence of the zero-click spyware campaign that Citizen Lab’s researchers uncovered shows the two threats merging, underscoring the extent and urgency of the risk. “The risk of having your device infected with spyware simply by using a website or app that displays ads is a nightmare scenario,” says Wolfie Christl, a senior Citizen Lab researcher. During 2024 and 2025, Citizen Lab concluded that 45 devices belonging to the news outlet Al Jazeera were targeted with zero-click attacks delivered by ads. (Al Jazeera, which participated in the investigation and shared device logs with Citizen Lab researchers, did not respond to a request for comment.)