JAYVEE UPDATE: ISIS amputate the hands of two boys aged ten and 12 who refused to execute two civilians in front of their families in Mosul.

FAKE NEWS: Hilarious: NYT CEO Tells CNBC That Paper’s News Coverage Does Not Have a Liberal Bias.

Flashback to its then-ombudsman in 2004: “Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper? Of course it is.”

AN ORNITHOPTER BY ANOTHER NAME… A ‘Bat Bot’ takes flight.

“Bats are ridiculously stupid in terms of how complex they are,” said Dan Riskin, a biologist at University of Toronto Mississauga who wasn’t involved in the study. “They have a shoulder that can move in similar ways that an insect can, but then they have an elbow, and a wrist, and fingers and a thumb that controls the leading edge of the wing membrane.”

Earlier attempts at a bat-like flying machine failed because inventors tried to replicate the entire skeletal and muscular structure. The final devices were too heavy to fly.

So researchers at CalTech and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign simplified matters by focusing on the motions of a bat wing’s base components: the shoulder, the elbow, the wrist and the tail. Their device’s wings are formed from a single super-thin membrane made of silicone. Its bones are made of carbon fibre, and its joints are 3D-printed plastic.

All of which lightens the load. Bat Bot weighs 3.3 ounces, roughly the same as a large lemon or one and a half tennis balls. The flexible wings aid aerodynamics too.

It’s certainly something to see in action, as you’ll see in the video.

THIS IS CNN: CNN Panel Goes Nuts When Someone Says Trump Cares About Black People.

CHANGE: Daimler Will Make Self-Driving Mercedes—And Operate Them Within Uber’s Network.

THE WAGES OF SOCIALISM: Venezuela Is So Broke It Can’t Even Export Oil.

A fleet of rundown Venezuelan oil tankers carrying some 4 million barrels of oil and other fuels is wallowing in the Caribbean Sea. Not because of bad weather, or mechanical problems, but because Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela SA, doesn’t have the cash to get them to their final destinations.

Beyond the obvious environmental risks, it’s doubly bad news for Venezuela, a country in dire economic straits and full-fledged crisis, with a political impasse, looting, dangerous food and health supply shortages, and massive protests. Venezuela is massively reliant on oil exports to bankroll government services. But the cash-strapped country can’t even find the money to service the vessels that carry its exports. And Venezuela needs the exports to get the cash to service the vessels. It’s a vicious circle.

It’s a vicious circle made possible by the Venezuelan government, and nothing free markets and private ownership couldn’t fix practically overnight.

But better that Venezuelans go cold, hungry, and sick than to reduce the power of the State.

WHY IS THE IRS SUCH A CESSPIT OF CRIMINALITY? Attorney In IRS Office Of Professional Responsibility (Columbia J.D., NYU Tax LL.M., Georgetown Adjunct Tax Prof) Busted For Dealing Crystal Meth.

NOTHING GOOD: What’s Happening with Subprime Auto Loans?

After the financial crisis, banks tightened credit standards until performance improved. Monoline and dealer finance companies, on the other hand, continued to lend to high-risk borrowers – and it is these companies that are seeing non-performance rates shifting higher.

That might sound a lot like 2007-08, but at least this time around GM isn’t stuffing the channels with thousands and thousands of unsold vehicles.

Oh, wait…

SCIENCE: Research pushes concept of entropy out of kilter.

“IS IT ME, OR IS ANTIFA KINDA FASCISTIC?” Brandon Morse shares disturbing AntiFA sign WARNING people not to date whites (seriously).

“I like that they warned against spreading racism. Nice touch.”

TWEEPOTUS: Trump Responds to ‘Allahu Akbar’ Louvre Terror Attack: ‘GET SMART U.S.’

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Facebook AI Lumos Can Find Your Photos Even Those You Are Not Tagged In.

If you type your name, for example, to trigger a Facebook photo search, results will start pulling images that you are not tagged in but contain your face. The same is true for searched things such as food and even actions.

Facebook is now able to do this by weaning itself away from text-driven technology. This means that the company is no longer relying solely on tags, labels, and descriptions that users enter into the system. The downside of this old method is that those photos that are not sufficiently tagged and captioned will not surface when searched.

“That’s changing because we’ve pushed computer vision to the next stage with the goal of understanding images at the pixel level,” Facebook said in an official statement. “This helps our systems do things like recognize what’s in an image, what type of scene it is, if it’s a well-known landmark, and so on.”

At the heart of this initiative is Facebook’s proprietary AI called Lumos. The company’s engineers are developing and training it so it can better answer questions involving the elements and objects found in an image.

The AI technology draws from its deep-learning engine so it can attach more meaning to each photo in the Facebook system. The analogy is that Facebook’s new technology can “see” the images as opposed to merely crawl their descriptions so that users can quickly find images even if they forgot their details.

Lumos’s power can be demonstrated in the way it can process billions of photos to predict a set of concepts and recognize semantic meaning. As the tool rolls out, users can expect its impact on the way search image results are ranked.

Even desktop-based photo software is good enough at this stuff to save me hours and hours each year in time I don’t have to spend doing the dreary work of keeping everything organized. It isn’t perfect, but it’s probably cut my workload by 85-90%.

Facebook promises to do an even better job — but you have to be willing to trust Facebook with your photos and your data.

GREAT MOMENTS IN PRUSSIAN PROJECTION: While Germany deals with knife-wielding terrorists shouting Allahu Akbar, this is what Der Spiegel chooses to run on their cover this week:

You stay classy, Germany.

UPDATE: “The New Yorker is beside itself with envy,” Byron York tweets. “The New Yorker’s Next Cover Features Lady Liberty with Her Light Snuffed Out,” their fellow lefties at Mother Jones note.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Can’t sleep? A weekend of camping could reset your circadian rhythm, study suggests.

THE KREMLIN WAY: Putin Opponent’s Possible Poisoning a ‘Test for the Trump Administration,’ Says Senator.

See also, Putin’s recent actions against Ukraine.

NO, THIS DID NOT HAPPEN IN COLORADO: Man, 74, Gave Out Hash Cookies At Mass.

As detailed in a police report, seven individuals fell ill shortly after consuming Jones’s homemade cookies, which he handed out at the conclusion of a 9:15 AM Sunday service. All of the victims, cops noted, sought treatment in the emergency room of a Bloomington hospital, where their symptoms included nausea, lethargy, anxiety, elevated blood pressure, and paranoia.

One parishioner who ate an entire cookie told police that he felt as if he was “having a stroke” and described feeling “like he was dying.” The man told cops that he recently had a triple bypass procedure and worried if “whatever happened today was going to adversely affect his heart.”

There’s nothing funny about dosing people with anything.

READER BOOK PLUG: From reader Cal Wilson, E.M.P.: The End Of The Grid As We Know It.

UNREGULATED EMISSIONS: Audi Outed for Promoting Fake Equal Pay Nonsense.

I’M SURE PRESIDENT TRUMP’S NEW FTC CHAIR, ALEX JONES, WILL DO A FINE JOB: Bad Idea Or The Worst Idea? Having The FTC Regulate ‘Fake News.’

NOT EVEN WITH THE EXPRESS, WRITTEN CONSENT OF THE NFL: No Drone Zone For Those Attending the Super Bowl.

Temporary Flight Restrictions will prohibit certain aircraft operations, including unmanned aircraft operations, or drones, within a 34.5-mile radius of NRG Stadium in downtown Houston, Texas on game day. The restrictions will be in effect from 4 p.m. to 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 5.

The FAA produced a 20-second video that tells people to bring their lucky jerseys, face paint and team spirit to the game – but to leave their drones at home – because the stadium and the area around it is a No Drone Zone. The agency is promoting the video on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the FAA website.

“Drones are becoming much more popular, but they also pose certain safety risks,” said FAA Administrator Michael Huerta. “We’re working closely with our safety and security partners to spread the No Drone Zone message as widely as possible.”

Thomas Harris wrote something on this 40 years ago.

FROG, MEET SCORPION: Why Is the New York Times Lying about Trump?

Scott McConnell’s piece is too long to fairly excerpt, but well worth your time.

REPORTERS UNEARTH ANCIENT DOCUMENT: With Trump, Media Strike a Pose as Sticklers for the Constitution. Tom Kuntz at Real Clear Investigations:

When Barack Obama was president, most members of the media apparently believed in a fluid interpretation of the Constitution. Constitutional sticklers were dismissed as dinosaurs or worse—especially if they identified themselves with the Tea Party movement. Except for Glenn Greenwald and the occasional lonely voice or two, the ladies and gentlemen of the press raised barely a peep about the administration’s drone killings, even of U.S. citizens. Executive-branch rewrites of health, immigration and environmental law were met with a collective yawn in the Fourth Estate.

That attitude certainly changed quickly. Donald Trump has turned the mainstream media into strict constructionists, or so they would have us believe. The Constitution they sternly invoke against the new president’s moves is now one carved in granite with words bearing unimpeachably plain meaning in their favor.

This is happening even as Trump – whom they routinely cast as a Constitution-destroying authoritarian – puts forth a Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, who is notably skeptical of expanding presidential power and by most accounts really thinks the document ought to mean what it says.

The media’s new enthusiasm does not require a lot of close reading.  Khizr Khan, the Gold Star father who lost a son in the Iraq War, waved the Constitution at the Democratic convention last summer and invited Trump to read the text, evidently hoping that the mogul would find immigration wisdom within.

I don’t know if Trump ever took him up on the offer, but I did. I didn’t see the words “foreigner” or “non-citizen” or “immigrant” or “refugee” anywhere in the document, nor mention of any right to enter the country.

It may be that policy or legislation or court precedents have created or divined such rights, but those are not what Khan waved at the podium. And, more to my point, that’s not something the media have bothered to explain in their copious sympathetic coverage of Khan – whose law practice includes securing visas for immigrants — and others who pummel Trump as a constitutional transgressor.

If it weren’t for double standards . . . .

SPACE: Report: Congressional analysts worry SpaceX engines are prone to cracks; SpaceX says it is addressing the problem in its final variant of the Falcon 9.

FRIENDS IN LOW PLACES: Dutch Populist Geert Wilders Praises Trump’s Immigration Ban.

It isn’t that Trump has no friends overseas; it’s that the friends he has aren’t approved of by the establishment.

USA TODAY HEADLINE: “Machete-wielding ‘terrorist’ shot during attack near Louvre.”

“Terrorist” probably doesn’t need scare quotes when it follows “machete-wielding.”