Does that mean you have an iPhone? I'm using Android and afaik it is not possible to delete Google Maps there (not that I actually use it on my phone).

Of course you'd support non "W" in the WNBA. But only the non "W" from your team.

What is this s***?
Do you know how many non-W players there have been in the WNBA? Want to take a guess?
Here's a clue, the number is an integer less than one.

no end to the Iran war in sight

Oh come on, the Iran war is going to end soon, it will be followed by some negotiations which will break down, at that point the counter will reset and there will be a new Iran war (totally unrelated to the previous two).
The Iran wars will end when Benji Netanyahu says so, and that is not about to happen.

I looked it up in wikipedia, so in English it is the same as in my native tongue. There is this strange nature phenonemon of the rat king, mutliple rats with intertwined tails.

So in my view these relations and circular businesses of the AI companies, and particularly this article about the chinese model, very much remind me of a rat king. A sure way in the prospect of an AI financial market crash that they will all die together.

One of the Related Links I saw here was https://slashdot.org/story/26/01/13/2026229/jpeg-xl-image-support-returns-to-latest-chromechromium-code - Chrome has been offering this since mid January. If it works on Chrome - and is a positive feature - then it is time for Firefox to offer it.

That I very much doubt, these were probably prepared for export. I can think of a few questions here:
- some Slovakian political parties are pro Russian, what was their role in this debacle?
- what is the background for the Cypriot "shell company" involved?
- what numbers are they using for the SMS messages? Specifically, the country code.
- the SMS-activated Russian backdoors depend on which network? G2, G3, G4 or even G5?

There was always the case of Nicolae Ceauescu. Some (cherry picked) quotes from that link:

He soon won popular support for his independent, nationalistic political course

Ceauescu adhered ever more closely to the communist orthodoxy of centralized administration at home. His secret police maintained rigid controls over free speech and the media and tolerated no internal dissent or opposition.
Hoping to boost Romania’s population, in 1966 Ceauescu issued Decree 770, a measure that effectively outlawed contraception and abortion.

Ceauescu also instituted an extensive personality cult and appointed his wife, Elena, and many members of his extended family to high posts in the government and party

There's nothing in that article about his tendency to micromanage or his indifference to the misery caused by his policies.
In Trump's case, his version of Decree 770 is more something his fellow-travellers want than he himself, but he appointed them.

If they want to convince you to buy something, they have to have numbers where they can be reached. If I get a call from a (domestic) number which could be genuine, I ring back from a number which is configured as a fax and see what happens. A telemarketeer and then it's "is Birgit there? Sorry, wrong number."

You're aware that numbers can be faked? Or suppressed altogether (neither is legal for telemarkers where I live)?
I've had callers from non-existent dialling codes (I'm not in the US) and also from fake numbers within well known dialling codes. Once I had such a call from a real number and called back (from my fax's number) to see if it was a real person, they were getting a lot of such callbacks and were not happy.
My VOIP modem allows me to block a small number of ranges of numbers and I use that to block all country codes starting with 3 (which includes France). It really helps.

Well, when I saw

an optional zero-data-retention feature for enterprise users

I interpreted it as "deleting everything".

Do the police have access to those betting patterns?
With any wildfire which was initiated deliberately, I'd want to look at anyone who "predicted" it - and their associates.

Somehow read an 8.5 mile hike that was actually 14 miles

8.5 miles is close to 14km. I can't see how that could have been a factor but the correlation feels too close to be coincidental.

The signs I've seen photographed in Google Maps (I'm several timezones away and am not about to just go there and check) do not say how long you can expect to take, so maybe nobody felt the need to upload a snapshot of one of those signs. Pretty much every such sign in Austria has that information, I find their estimates a bit pessimistic but that is not a bad thing.
18 miles is just under 29km. I'd feel safe in assuming I could do 20km on a well signposted trail with not too much vertical, although I'd need to do some hikes locally in order to build my endurance up in order to make sure beforehand, and I'd want a "get out of here" option if something went wrong. A 17-year-old has the potential to go further than me at my age, but they do not appear to have prepared this at all. I wonder where they were from, locals should have known better so maybe Vancouver.
I'm more a cyclist than a hiker and have come to the conclusion that Google Maps estimates are mostly for cyclists who are stronger / fitter than me (or have e-bikes) unless there's a following wind. Their estimates do make allowances for hills - take one of their estimates and swap the start and end points, there can be a massive difference if their elevations vary by much.