404 Media

2025-12-18 20:53:49

The Government Added a Comments Section to the Epstein Photo Dump

Update: After publication of this piece, House Oversight Democrats disabled comments on the photos. The original article follows below.

Thursday afternoon House Democrats publicly released a new trove of photographs they’ve obtained from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein via Dropbox. They left the comments on so anyone who is signed into Dropbox and browsing the material can leave behind their thoughts.

Given that the investigation into Epstein is one of the most closely followed cases in the world and a subject of endless conspiracy theories, and that the committee released the trove of photographs with no context, it’s not surprising that people immediately began commenting on the photographs.
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…
“Really punchable face,” BedeScarlet—whose avatar is Cloud from Final Fantasy VII—said above a picture of New York Times columnist David Brooks. Brooks, who wrote a column about his boredom with the Epstein case in November, attended a dinner with Epstein in 2011 and appears in two photographs in this new document dump.

“Noam Chomsky,” Alya Colours (a frequent Epstein dropbox commenter) said below a photograph of the linguist talking to Epstein on a plane. Below this there is a little prompt from Dropbox asking me to “join the conversation” next to a smiley face.

In another picture, director Woody Allen is bundled up to his eyes in a heavy coat while Epstein side hugs him. “Yep, I’d know that face anywhere,” Susan Brown commented.

Among the pictures is a closeup of a prescription bottle labeled Phenazopyridine. “This is a medication used to treat pain from urinary tract infections,” Rebecca Stinton added, helpfully, in the comments.

“The fuck were they doing all that math for?” BedeScarlet said next to a picture of Epstein in front of a whiteboard covered in equations.

“Shit probably tastes like ass,” he added to a picture of Epstein cooking something in a kitchen.

There are darker and weird photographs in this collection of images that, as of this writing, do not yet have comments. There’s a pair of box springs in an unfinished room lit by the sun. There is a map of Little St James indicating where Epstein wants various buildings constructed. Bill Gates is shown in two photos standing next to women with their faces blocked out.

And then there are the Lolita pictures. A woman’s foot sits in the foreground, a worn annotated copy of Vladimir Nabokov novel Lolita in the background. “She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet teen in one sock,” is written on the foot, a quote from the novel.

These photos are followed by a series of pictures of passports with the information redacted. Some are from Ukraine. There’s one from South Africa and another from the Czech Republic.

The House Democrats allowing the public to comment on these photos is funny and it’s unclear if intentional or a mistake. It’s also a continuation of the just-get-out-there approach when they have published other material, with it sometimes being in unsorted caches that readers then have to dig through. The only grand revelation in the new material is that Brooks was present at a dinner with Epstein in 2011.

“As a journalist, David Brooks regularly attends events to speak with noted and important business leaders to inform his columns, which is exactly what happened at this 2011 event. Mr. Brooks had no contact with him before or after this single attendance at a widely-attended dinner,” a Times spokesperson told Semafor’s Max Tani.

House Oversight Democrats did not immediately return 404 Media’s request for comment.

12.18.25 Release

Shared with Dropbox

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404 Media

2025-12-18 17:19:25

ICE Contracts Company Making Bounty Hunter AI Agents

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to a company that makes “AI agents” to rapidly track down targets. The company claims the “skip tracing” AI agents help agencies find people of interest and map out their family and other associates more quickly. According to the procurement records, the company’s services were specifically for Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), the part of ICE that identifies, arrests, and deports people.

The contract comes as ICE is spending millions of dollars, and plans to spend tens of millions more, on skip tracing services more broadly. The practice involves ICE paying bounty hunters to use digital tools and physically stalk immigrants to verify their addresses, then report that information to ICE so the agency can act.

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ICE Contracts Company Making Bounty Hunter AI Agents

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il Post

2025-12-18 17:19:20

La Thailandia ha bombardato la Cambogia sostenendo di aver colpito un centro logistico per missili - Il Post
https://www.ilpost.it/2025/12/18/thailandia-bombardamento-centro-logistico-poipet-cambogia/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Pubblicato su News @news-ilPost

La Thailandia ha bombardato la Cambogia sostenendo di aver colpito un centro logistico per missili

^{Il Post}

404 Media

2025-12-18 14:42:58

Why Are We Obsessed With Aliens?

The past few years have been very exciting for those who want to believe. The U.S. government has released tantalizing videos and held several gripping hearings showing and discussing UFOs. People who always thought the government was hiding evidence of alien life from the general population saw it as proof that what they’ve said was happening all along. Skeptics have made compelling arguments for why all these revelations could be anything but aliens.

But this debate and humanity’s obsession with aliens goes as far back as recorded history. In her book, First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens, 404 Media’s science reporter and author of The Abstract newsletter Becky Ferreira delves deep into this history, what it teaches us about humans, and what the near and far future of the search for alien life looks like.
open.spotify.com/embed/episode…
I had a great time reading Becky’s book and an even better time discussing it with her on the podcast. It’s a great conversation that unpacks why these stories get so much attention, and a perspective on aliens in the news and pop culture that’s rooted in history and science.

Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.

Become a paid subscriber for early access to these interview episodes and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.
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First Contact

Now Available from Hachette ,  Amazon ,  Barnes & Noble , and  Powells .

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404 Media

2025-12-18 14:00:53

Scientists Discover Massive Underwater Ruins That May Be a Lost City of Legend

Scientists have discovered the underwater ruins of huge stone structures erected by humans at least 7,000 years ago in the coastal waters of France, according to a new study published in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology.

The submerged granite ruins near Sein Island, a Breton island in the Atlantic Ocean, are among the oldest large stone structures ever found in France, and may have inspired an ancient local legend about a city called Ys that vanished under the waves.

The structures vary in size from small stone dams, which were probably fish traps, to large monoliths and slabs that protrude six feet from the seafloor and extend 400 feet in length, which perhaps once served as a protective seawall.

Yves Fouquet, a geologist who works with the Society for Maritime Archaeology and Heritage (SAMM), first noticed hints of these long-lost megaliths in LiDAR data collected by the Litto3D program, a national initiative to create a precise 3D digital reconstruction of the entire French coastline. Fouquet and his colleagues confirmed the existence of the mysterious structures, and mapped out their locations, across dozens of dives carried out by ten SAMM divers between 2022 and 2024.

“The detailed analysis of these maps to redraw the underwater geological map of this area (faults, rock types) has made it possible to identify structures that did not appear natural to a geologist,” Fouquet said in an email to 404 Media.

Brittany, a peninsular region of northwest France, is home to the oldest megaliths in the nation and some of the earliest in Europe, which date back some 6,500 years. The team estimated that the submerged stone structures off Sein Island may predate these early megaliths in Brittany by about 500 years, based on their estimation of when the stones would have last been above sea level. But it will take more research to home in on the exact age of the megaliths.

“We plan to continue the exploration and carry out more detailed work to understand the architecture and precise the age of the structures,” Fouquet said.

The discovery of these stones opens a new window into the societies living in Brittany during the Mesolithic/Neolithic Transition, a period when hunter-gatherers began to shift toward settled lifestyles involving fishing, farming, and the construction of megaliths and other buildings.
Photos of the structures in Figure 7 of the study. Image: SAMM, 2023
The peoples who made these structures must have been both highly organized and relatively abundant in population in order to erect the stones. They were also sophisticated marine navigators, as the waters around Sein Island are notoriously dangerous—prone to swells and strong currents—which is one reason its underwater heritage has remained relatively poorly explored.

“Our results bear witness to the possible sedentary lifestyle of maritime hunter-gatherers on the coast of the extreme west of France from the 6th millennium onwards,” said Fouquet and his colleagues in the study. “The technical know-how to extract, transport, and erect monoliths and large slabs during the Mesolithic/Neolithic transition precedes by about 500 years the megalithic constructions in western France in the 5th millennium.”

The discovery raises new questions about the origins of these megalithics structures, which may have had a symbolic or religious resonance to these past peoples. the team added. “This discovery in a high hydrodynamic environment opens up new perspectives for searching for traces of human settlement in Brittany along the submerged coastline of the period 6000–5000 years cal. BCE.”

The researchers also speculate about a possible link between these structures, and the prehistoric people who made them, and local legends about sunken cities that may date back thousands of years.

“Legends about sunken cities, compared with recent data on rising sea levels, shows that the stories of ancient submergences, passed down by oral tradition, could date back as far as 5,000 to 15,000 years,” the team said, citing a 2022 study. “This suggests that oral traditions that may have preserved significant events in memory that could well be worthy of scientific examination. These settlements described in legend reveal the profound symbolic significance of maritime prehistory, which should not be overlooked.”

In particular, the people of Brittany have long told tales of the lost city of Ys, a sunken settlement thought to be located in the Bay of Douarnenez, about six miles east of Sein Island. The sunken megaliths off Sein Island “allow us to question the origin of the history of the city of Ys, not from the historical legends and their numerous additions, but from scientific findings that may be at the origin of this legend,” the team said.

It’s extremely tantalizing to imagine that the long-hidden ruins of these peoples, who appear to have been expert seafarers and builders, are the source of tales that date back for untold generations in the region. But while the researchers raise the possibility of a link between the stones and the story, they cannot conclusively confirm the connection.

“Legend is legend, enriched by all the additions of human imagination over the centuries,” Fouquet said in his email. “Our discoveries are based on what can be scientifically proven.”

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Accueil - Archéologie sous-marine, les Epaves et naufrages en Manche et Atlantique

Société d’Archéologie et de Mémoire Maritime Plongez dans l’histoire maritime. Vous recherchez sur le littoral Manche-Atlantique un navire, un naufrage, un ancêtre […]

^{Archéologie sous-marine, les Epaves et naufrages en Manche et Atlantique}