Sunday, February 1, 2026
AI-generated 'rabbi' draws thousands of followers online, raising transparency concerns
https://www.jpost.com/omg/article-884045
An AI-generated Hasidic ‘rabbi’ gained thousands of followers online before being exposed, sparking debate in Israel over trust, ethics, and transparency in religious digital content.
An online figure presented as a hassidic rabbi built a following of tens of thousands on Instagram and TikTok in recent weeks before being exposed as an artificial intelligence-generated persona.
The accounts, operating under the name “Rabbi Menachem Goldberg,” featured a bearded, hassidic-looking character delivering short daily messages about faith, abundance, and personal success. The videos followed a consistent format and often ended with calls to purchase paid digital content, including e-books and guides marketed as spiritual and life-improvement tools, the report said.
A Maariv journalist reported that viewers began raising doubts as the content grew more familiar, describing the language as broad and inspirational, with few identifiable Jewish sources or traditional references. Additional suspicions were fueled by visual inconsistencies in the videos’ synagogue-style backdrops, including Hebrew text that appeared nonsensical and design details that did not match recognizable Jewish settings.
In response to the case, the Tzohar Center for Jewish Ethics called the episode a warning sign and urged clear standards for transparency. The center said presenting AI as a human voice of moral or rabbinic authority can mislead audiences, because viewers tend to associate a “rabbinic” persona with personal responsibility and accountability.
The US is headed for mass unemployment, and no one is prepared
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/5713876-ai-displacement-and-ubi/
The most sobering warning comes from Geoffrey Hinton, one of the architects of modern AI. Hinton hasn’t joined the hype merchants. Instead, he has joined the alarmists. His claim is troubling: AI capability is effectively doubling every seven months. Not every decade. Not every few years. Every seven months.
At that pace, change doesn’t arrive gradually but in overwhelming waves. First, it replaces what we dismiss as “menial” cognitive work — call centers, customer service, scheduling, transcription. That phase is already underway. Then it moves into clerical roles, basic accounting, paralegal research, routine journalism, marketing copy, and compliance work. Those jobs are next. After that, no profession is spared, not even software engineering itself.
Lay out the timeline honestly, and it becomes terrifying. In 2026, AI replaces support roles. In 2027, it consumes administrative and clerical work. By 2028, it’s performing serious professional tasks at scale. By the early 2030s, much of white-collar America may no longer be necessary to the current economic structure.
Just say ‘Jew’: JD Vance’s Holocaust post shows why naming Jews and Nazis still matters -editorial
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-885138
Vice President JD Vance marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27 with a message honoring “millions of lives lost,” yet he did not mention Jews or Nazis.
At a time when global antisemitism is at an all-time high, omitting these two simple words is more than just a small oversight. It weakens the very purpose of the day, and given the current split and rise of antisemitism within the Right in America, it is worrying that the omission came from the vice president.
What happened is simple. The vice president posted a solemn remembrance, invoked “never again,” and paired it with commemorative imagery. But he avoided naming the Jews as the targeted victims and the Nazis as the perpetrators. Other senior officials, in contrast, referenced Jews and antisemitism directly. The omission sparked backlash online from X/Twitter users, senior Jewish figures, and even op-eds in this very paper
32 Gazans said killed in wave of strikes as IDF responds to truce violation
At least 32 Palestinians, including women, children and Hamas police officers, were reported killed in a wave of airstrikes across the Gaza Strip overnight and into Saturday morning — one of the highest death tolls since the October ceasefire — as the Israeli military confirmed it targeted terror commanders and infrastructure in response to what it called a “violation of the ceasefire agreement.”
The Israel Defense Forces said its strikes targeted four commanders in the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror groups, as well as a weapons depot, an arms manufacturing site and two rocket launching positions.
According to the military, the strikes were launched after eight gunmen emerged from a tunnel in southern Gaza’s Rafah on Friday. The IDF said at the time that three of the gunmen were killed in strikes and a fourth, described as a key Hamas commander, was capture
Judge orders release of 5-year-old Minnesota boy, father detained by ICE
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5716881-texas-judge-orders-release-father-son/
A federal judge in Texas on Saturday ordered the release of the 5-year-old boy and father who were transported to a detention center in the state amid the Trump administration’s immigration operations in Minnesota.
The father and son were detained by federal officers last week when Conejo Ramos returned home from pre-school. A picture of the young boy wearing a bright blue hat and a Spider-Man backpack went viral on social media, prompting outrage in an already-tense climate over the immigration crackdown in the state.
In a Saturday opinion, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery admonished the administration’s removal of Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, saying the pair “seek nothing but the modicum of due process and the rule of law.”
“Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency,” Biery wrote. “And the rule of law be damned.”
Biery accused the government of ignoring constitutional rights, and suggested the administration needed a “civics lesson.”
“Civics lesson to the government: Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster,” Biery wrote. “That is called the fox guarding the henhouse. The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer.”
Saturday, January 31, 2026
השיטה הקדושה (שיטת ה"שוואנצונעס")
https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/מנחם_מנדל_הגר_(בני_ברק)#השיטה_הקדושה_(שיטת_ה"שוואנצונעס")
החצר בראשותו מחנכת לפולחן אישיות ומדגישה את חשיבות ההתבטלות המוחלטת כלפיו[11]. בעלונים שמתפרסמים בחצרו מרבים לעסוק בנושא ההתבטלות המוחלטת לצדיק[12], כך לדוגמה באחד המקורות שפורסמו נכתב: "שהרבי הקדוש אינו גוף ולא ישיגוהו משיגי הגוף, נערץ ונקדש מעל לכל דמות ודמיון […] לבדו ימלוך מלך ונשגב רבינו הקדוש לבדו, כי המלכות שלך הוא, ואנו קרוצי חומר זוכים בזכייה נשגבה ומתנת חינם ממש לעבדו בלבב שלם". עוד נכתב כי על הצעיר החסידי לשנן בכל עת "שיויתי הייליגער רבי לנגדי תמיד" (בתרגום לעברית: "שיויתי את הרבי הקדוש לנגדי תמיד"), משפט שבמקורו נאמר על אלוהים: שִׁוִּיתִי ה' לְנֶגְדִּי תָמִיד[13]. בשעת תפילת שמונה עשרה מתפללים לכיוונו ומביטים עליו, ואת ספריו יש להניח מעל שאר ספרי הקודש, ואף מעל החומש[14]. יש הטוענים כי החסיד מחונך שהאדמו"ר הוא מעל הכל, ואם יורה לאכול חזיר יש לעשות זאת.[15]
‘Melania’ promises to take us behind the scenes. There’s nothing to see.
‘Melania’ promises to take us behind the scenes. There’s nothing to see.
There is a controversial new Amazon documentary about Melania Trump released this weekend and every single review I’ve read has been terrible, but babe, if you suspect I have come here today to trash a movie about the wife of a notoriously thin-skinned, anti-journalist president, which was bankrolled by the company owned by the man who also pays my salary — NOT TODAY, SATAN. Do you think I’m a moron? (Don’t answer that). This house is clean.
What I ended up wondering throughout this documentary, while I kept waiting in vain for director Brett Ratner to peel back another layer on Melania, is if we were dealing with a situation that was not an onion but a potato. Yes, there’s a thin protective skin. But after you breach that, no matter how many times you go after it with a peeler, you’re dealing with pretty much the same pulp.
Her worldview seems based on optics more than reality: that what things look like is as important as what things are like. She carries on about redecorating the White House tennis pavilion not because she is dim but because, in her view, her highest calling is not to give the American public something they can identify with but rather something they can aspire to.
What is she thinking? It doesn’t really matter, honestly. The fact that she is disciplined enough to hide her true personality from the public is, in fact, her personality.