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🌎 EARTH BRIEF
“Have you tried turning D.C. off and on again?”
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers miss a funding deadline because math is hard. Workers at shuttered agencies receive emails that essentially say, "Thank you for your service; please enjoy this unpaid suspense."
Organizers coordinate a National Day of No Work. People stay home, log off, and see what happens when labor, not Congress, pulls the plug.
Meanwhile, U.S. officials refresh their Iran folder: more sanctions, more talk of "all options" in the Persian Gulf, more b‑roll of ships and jets.
In China, AI labs release a paper about models that can reason better. TSMC executives smile through a capex slide with numbers that look like phone numbers.
Match Group (Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, Match) admits it dropped a giant box of user data on the floor. Regulators pick up clipboards. The app reassures everyone their "experience" will not be affected.
All while the same species tried to outsource the planet’s weather to a simulation and comfort itself with nostalgia and stunt marketing.
Domestic stability appears to be a limited‑time feature, renewed only at the last minute.
🌀 Chaos Level: 79% ✨ Absurdity Index: High 📉 Vibes: Confused
⊘⊘:╳Ξ Standard Solar Time — Observation Log 26‑01‑22
📊 BUT FIRST… YOUR WEEKLY PROBE POLL
If eyeliner were policy, who’s passing more layers: A or B?
One extremely serious question for an extremely unscientific group of readers.
Who wears more makeup?
≠≠≠ SYSTEM ERROR 404: SANITY NOT FOUND ≠≠≠
😵💫 WHAT ARE THEY DOING?
United States of Volatility Premium With Ads
Dear Citizen,
You are currently enrolled in United States of Volatility Premium. Your benefits include:
Occasional partial shutdowns of the federal government when Congress forgets to do math.
Immigration raids that turn into funerals and general strikes.
A rotating playlist of Iran sanctions, Gulf carrier photos, and stern press conferences in Brussels.
Background noise from Shenzhen AI labs, TSMC investor calls, and yet another data breach.
Unlimited access to movies, albums, and viral broom challenges to help you not think about any of this.
We have filed this week’s episode as Ticket #26.02.09 — "Have you tried rebooting your democracy?"
Domestic stability appears to be a limited‑time feature, renewed only at the last minute.
𖤐𖤐𖤐 THE HUMANS ATE PLASTIC AGAIN 𖤐𖤐𖤐
🔭 SECTOR SNAPSHOT
Foreign Policy, But Make It Podcastable
Next, we glide to the Persian Gulf, where a carrier group poses for drone photography.
From orbit, this resembles a multi‑player notification system: each actor sends alerts to its domestic audience labeled WE ARE STRONG, while privately opening new back channels labeled BUT ALSO PLEASE DON’T CRASH THE ECONOMY.
The U.S. Treasury and allies in Brussels add new Iranian officials to a sanctions spreadsheet titled something like
IRAN_ACCOUNTABILITY_FINAL_v7_REAL_THIS_TIME.xlsx.Commentators in New York discuss the IRGC, nuclear breakout timelines, and "message sending" as if rearranging tiles in a very serious board game.
In Tehran, officials stage televised defiance. In Beijing, diplomats take notes on who still believes in which red lines.
They schedule global security statements for prime‑time slots between ads for SUVs and sleep aids.
⊐⊐⊐ FILE 99.03.⊘ UNSEALED BY ERROR ⊐⊐⊐
🦧 HOMO CRINGEUS
The Algorithm Will See You Now
Finally, we visit the Temple of Reasonable Machines. Why do humans treat data breaches and viral chores as one emotional category?
A lab cluster in Shenzhen drops a paper claiming that their model solves logic puzzles better than the last one. The abstract contains more caveats than a software EULA.
TSMC executives announce that, yes, they will build even more fabs, please keep inventing reasons to buy more compute.
Dating apps Tinder and Hinge publish a blog post in the canonical style: "We take your privacy very seriously, and that’s why we’re telling you about this breach many months later."
Humans respond by sitting in dark rooms watching a sci‑fi movie about someone else’s doomed civilization and filming broom tricks in kitchens
They are building superhuman reasoning engines inside institutions that cannot keep track of passwords.
🫵 YOUR FIELD EXPERIMENTS
How you can cope this week
Shutdown cosplay: Pick one recurring obligation (newsletter, app, side chat) and declare it "non‑essential" for 72 hours. Announce this to no one. Observe who notices first: your boss, your bank, or your nervous system.
Sanctions role‑play: With a friend, run a two‑person simulation in which you keep adding "sanctions" (no memes, no takeout, no streaming) every time one of you doom‑scrolls. Notice how fast you invent loopholes.
Algorithm séance: Open the settings page on your noisiest app and revoke exactly three permissions. Light a candle. Inform the feed it has 24 hours to show you something genuinely nourishing.
🛸 GALACTIC MORALE METER
██░░░░░░░░░░ 33% — Dropping (slightly)Recommendation: Recommendation from the Bureau: remain in read‑only mode. Any attempt to "fix" Earth will be interpreted as (a) an endorsement, (b) a sponsorship, or (c) a new social platform.
╳╳╳ INTERRUPTION: TRANSMISSION FRAGMENTED ╳╳╳
Glory to the Probe,
ZARTHON-7
Know a human who needs probing? Forward the probe here. 👇
Received this email from a human? Get your probe here. 👇
