Reading archive 2026-10-18

Why Men Are Risking Their Vision for ‘Hunter Eyes’: A narrow, angled eye shape (think Robert Pattinson) has become a gold standard in some online communities. Some plastic surgeons are charging up to $40,000 for the “very dangerous” procedure.

How Amazon pushes up prices all across the Internet

I’m going viral again in Brazil. It must be election season.: I received free emergency medical care in Brazil. Brazilian President Lula and the influencers won’t let it go.

Ukraine Finds a New Set of Targets: As Donald Trump intervenes to protect Russia’s oil refineries, Ukraine plays the few cards it has left.

Watching for a Blue Wave in South Carolina: Nancy Lacore was sacked by Pete Hegseth. She wants to go back to Washington.

Reading archive 2026-10-16

Is it a lie if you believe it? This Elizabeth Holmes film is a mind-bender.: Nathan Fielder’s “You Can See Everything” is a journey into the nature of truth.

Painted turbines can save millions of birds

An FBI arrest revives fears that U.S. tech companies are hiring spies: Silicon Valley relies on foreign talent to compete in the global AI race. Some tech leaders say that’s a national security risk.

U.S. to drop charges against ex-CIA analyst accused of working for South Korea: Sue Mi Terry was due to go on trial this month over accusations that she worked as an agent for South Korea’s intelligence services. [ed. note: Max Boot's wife, and she did it]

Scientists may have the key to treating arthritis: Regrowing the knee: Cutting-edge approaches could one day help arthritic knees regenerate themselves.

JLG Comes Out Against Autonomous Vehicle Bill: The Ward 4 councilmember had been relatively quiet about robotaxis. - "Jordan Weissmann, editorial director at the Progressive Policy Institute and close follower of local politics, reposted Lewis George’s comment, adding his own: 'I do not think that we should accept more crashes, pedestrian injuries, and passenger assaults in order to protect largely part-time gig work, while also sending a signal that DC isn't friendly to new tech.'"

Amtrak is making some big changes. Here’s what passengers can expect.: Airo trains are coming east, and a new lounge is being built at Washington’s Union Station.

A rumpled Democrat may ride Ohio anti-Trumpism back to the Senate: Sherrod Brown, economic populist and cultural liberal, aims for a Washington return. - "Elderly Americans have more time than most others to pay attention to politics. And more reason to. Medicare and Social Security are 36 percent of spending by the federal government, which is increasingly an elder care institution with a military."

Takeaways from the Alaska Senate debate between Mary Peltola and Dan Sullivan: The battleground Senate race is key to deciding which party controls the chamber.

Trump officials scrutinized Omar in 2019. They didn’t find citizenship issues.: The earlier review of Omar’s immigration records looked at many of the same issues being investigated now.

Israeli settlers attack Palestinians and Washington Post photographer in West Bank: The settlers attacked Palestinians harvesting olives and beat Heidi Levine, a veteran photojournalist. Witnesses said Israeli soldiers did nothing to halt the violence.

The Elizabeth Holmes documentary has broken my brain: “You Can See Everything” will have you questioning everything.

Reading archive 2026-10-14

118 Washington Post employees to be laid off: Washington Post announces printing press plant closure, resulting in a mass layoff for current employees.

Rare bee rediscovered in Virginia after more than a century

These common infections can cause cancer. Here’s what can lower your risk.: Recent research indicates that infectious diseases cause about 12 percent of new cancer cases.

Reading archive 2026-10-13

In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?: A decade ago, I made a decision about my daughter’s education that I hoped would challenge New York City’s separate and unequal school system. Now 16, she thinks I made the wrong choice.

Why Is Kash Patel Planning to Visit Russia?: Democrats in Congress are asking the FBI director to cancel the reported trip.

‘I don’t care about going to jail,’ 6-year-old said after 2023 Va. shooting: Body-camera footage published by the Virginian-Pilot shows aftermath of an incident that injured a teacher.

What I Saw at New York’s Anti-Israel October 7 Rallies: Some protesters observed the attack’s anniversary by implicitly saluting Hamas. A fringe of that fringe took aim at the mayor.

Why FBI Officials Are Worried About the Midterms: People inside the bureau believe that Kash Patel is “desperate” to deliver indictments—and generate headlines—that would please the president.

‘Make the problem and the solution bigger’: The plan to end the Ukraine war: Trump’s diesel-deal feud with Zelensky obscures a more important effort.

The Death and Afterlife of an American Con Man: Jim Bakker’s vision of the future came to pass. Just not in the way the disgraced televangelist imagined.

Walmart Denies Plans for Surveillance Pricing Despite Holding Patents for Surveillance Pricing: Who you gonna believe?

The biggest mistake that people with knee pain make: An orthopedic surgeon has built his practice around the idea that our joints can remain strong and functional throughout life, with some basic care and feeding.

U.S. and NATO commander vows to thwart Moscow, warns Kyiv over refinery strikes: The mixed signals expose a split in President Donald Trump’s approach to Russia, amid strain on energy markets.

Trump faces stiff bipartisan pushback to Russian diesel import deal: Moderate Republicans joined Democrats in criticizing the president’s agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin to release diesel to the global market amid a fuel price spike.

DMV school districts address declining enrollment as closures, staff cuts loom for some

Fill the government with barbarians, you get barbaric government: Pete Hegseth wants to morally instruct America with a public execution? The proper response is revulsion. - "Capital punishment’s clear effect is to cloak the death-dispensing state with dark majesty, and a claim to infallibility. Hence the sudden enthusiasm, in the early days of Germany’s Third Reich, for executions by handheld axes. This 'swift, direct action,' writes Peter Fritzsche in 'Hitler’s First Hundred Days,' quoting German prosecutors, emphasized the 'superiority of the state.' Nowadays, public firing squads could accomplish this."

No wonder the government can’t off-load this building. Look inside.

After string of crimes, e-bikes and scooters come under scrutiny in D.C.: Micromobility companies such as Lime are receiving heightened attention just as they’re looking to renew their permits.

How Ukraine uses precision drone strikes to hobble Russian oil refineries: Kyiv is targeting critical components that are hard to repair. The strikes have crippled Russia’s diesel production and are at the center of a new standoff between President Trump and Ukraine.

Arizona’s GOP keeps embracing election deniers who lose. It could happen again.: Alexander Kolodin made his political career by championing challenges to the 2020 results. Now he’s running to lead his state’s elections.

How Trump aide Natalie Harp’s family broke apart — and polarized: After a tragedy, Harp’s brother, Preston, split from the family and “radicalized,” moving to Nicaragua to dedicate himself to the Sandinista cause.

Reading archive 2026-10-09

Takeaways from Georgia Senate debate between Jon Ossoff, Mike Collins: The Democratic senator hit GOP Rep. Collins over accusations of ties to white nationalists. “You’ve hired half the Third Reich,” Ossoff said.

Takeaways from Michigan Senate debate between Abdul El-Sayed, Mike Rogers: Even mothers were not exempt in a fierce debate in the race for a critical U.S. Senate seat.

Tucker Carlson would have you forget the truth about Hitler. Don’t.: In a conversation with Jacob Rees-Mogg, the commentator played fast and loose with the historical record.

Darline Graham is no Lindsey. Voters are noticing.: The strength of the Graham name is being tested in South Carolina’s Senate race.

Reading archive 2026-10-08

What Is Zionism?: To understand what the word means today, you have to go back to the beginning of the story. - "No nation is without enmities and rivalries, yet somehow no Ukrainian has ever bombed a Russian Orthodox Church in the U.S., the way a Lebanese émigré drove a truck full of gasoline and explosives into a synagogue in Michigan in March. No sympathizer with Tibet or Taiwan has ever murdered people at a China-sponsored event in the U.S., the way an American killed two Israeli-embassy workers at a diplomatic reception at the Capital Jewish Museum in 2025. 

"To inspire this kind of hatred, the policies of a foreign government are insufficient. It requires an idea-an evil principle that must be eliminated for the good of humanity. The word anti-Semitism is now used to condemn prejudice against Jews, but it was invented in Germany, in the late 19th century, as the name of a proud political movement. Members of anti-Semitic parties wanted to distinguish themselves from old-fashioned Jew-haters; their target wasn't religion but 'Semitism,' which sounds like the name of an idea. If defeating 'Semitism' meant exiling or killing the millions of Jews who lived in Europe, so be it; the disease was so bad that any cure was justified. Today, anti-Zionism follows a similar logic. Opposition to an ism cloaks a desire to exile or kill the millions of Jews living in Israel, and to punish Jews in other countries who object to this prospect.

...

It's widely believed that Israel was created as reparations for the Holocaust. That's one reason the country's opponents have found it politically effective, since long before the war in Gaza, to characterize it as a genocidal state: If a country that exists as compensation for genocide is actually an agent of genocide, the rationale for its existence is negated. This is often paired with the charge that Israel is a product of colonialism-just another example of white Europeans stealing land from an Indigenous people. 

"A closer look at the events leading up to Israel's declaration of independence shows that neither of these interpretations fits the facts. The revelation of the Nazi death camps did not lead Britain to hand over Palestine, or any part of it, to the Jews. Hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors remained in displaced-persons camps in Europe for years after the end of World War II because the British continued to restrict immigration to Palestine, and no other country-including the United States-was willing to let them in. In a notorious episode in July 1947, a ship carrying 4,500 Holocaust survivors to Palestine was intercepted by the Royal Navy, and the passengers were sent back to an internment camp in Germany. 

"What finally convinced Britain to withdraw from Palestine was a Jewish national-liberation movement employing the same tactics that drove European empires out of Asia and Africa - including terrorism. After World War II, the Revisionists' military wing, known as the Irgun, embraced terrorism to pressure the British into withdrawal. In 1946, the Irgun bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, where the British had their administrative headquarters, killing 91 people. The head of the Irgun, Menachem Begin, became prime minister of Israel in 1977; the political party he founded, Likud, is now headed by Benjamin Netanyahu.

...

"Zionism was born as a reaction against European bigotry and violence, but unlike other peoples victimized by Europeans, the Jews mostly lived in Europe, so their self-emancipation required leaving to create a new country somewhere else. The place they fixed on was their indigenous homeland, from which the Jews had been largely expelled centuries earlier by a genocidal empire. But the land of Israel was now Palestine, and the Jews could make a home there only against the will of its Arab inhabitants. Zionism was able to take root with the support of the British, but that support lasted barely 20 years, and then the Jews had to fight both the British and the Arabs."

Waiting on Marco: Nine months ago, regime change in Cuba appeared imminent. Then reality set in.

One of America’s Last Chestnut Groves Is About to Be Destroyed for a Data Center: Developers and conservationists clash over 200 blight-surviving trees in Mason County, with site boundary records still undisclosed

Sens. Merkley and Daines: Our bipartisan plan would reform the U.S. Senate: For too long, both parties have been hamstrung by the Senate's tangled rules.

Number of teens who identify themselves as gay or bisexual is in ‘free fall’: Conservatives have trumpeted the data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but researchers say the reasons for the decline are unclear.

Reading archive 2026-10-07

Kamala Harris has a 2028 opening — and a 2024 problem: The former Democratic standard-bearer retains considerable respect in the party, but there’s an undercurrent of anxiety about her return to the political conversation.

3 science-backed ways to help your brain clear out waste: If the brain’s plumbing doesn’t work properly, research shows, cellular garbage accumulates, and a cleaner brain may be a healthier one.

Will Texas turn blue? Here’s what voters told me at a Buc-ee’s.: Talarico leads Paxton, while a Democrat has also made the governor’s race competitive.

D.C. Council approves $305M for Metro, bus upgrades near RFK Stadium site: The council also passed a bill that allows businesses and other organizations to pay for off-duty parking enforcement officers to target trouble spots. - "On Tuesday, the council also passed a bill that allows businesses, universities and other organizations to pay for off-duty parking enforcement officers to target spots around the District where illegal parking is a problem. It also allows university police to enforce parking on streets within and adjacent to their campuses.

...

Seven council members voted 'yes' on the bill. Council member Janeese Lewis-George (Ward 4), the Democratic nominee for mayor, voted 'present.' Council member Robert C. White Jr. (D-At Large) tried to pass an amendment that would have cut the fines for parking tickets in half, but that effort failed."

D.C. wants to build a 15-acre wellness resort on the Anacostia. Some are skeptical.

Maryland offers grants to struggling businesses as Purple Line nears completion

The Republican senator who’s fed up with presidential family sleaze: Sen. John Curtis urges hearings and subpoenas for Donald Trump Jr. and Hunter Biden. [ed. note: embarrassing false equivalence]

The border counties that swung to Trump are now short of workers. They may swing back.: Labor scarcity tied to ICE arrests could shake up a trio of battleground House races along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Tear the frat houses down: ‘I have grown tired of waiting for boys to grow up’: In the wake of the Cornell Chi Phi allegations, Malavika Kannan asks whether fraternity culture can really ever be reformed - "If people in power were actually committed to ending sexual violence – which I am not, truthfully convinced they are –- they would challenge the structures that enable it, especially when men are young. Ending fraternities is an obvious, overdue step: they are a place of concentrated male power and minimal accountability, where boys control access to alcohol and parties and can use that power to exclude, exploit, and sexually assault women."

D.C. Woman Sentenced in Kidnapping and Violent Armed Robbery of Two Women Lured for a Fake ‘Babysitting’ Job