Reading archive 2026-08-10

I treat brain fog. Here are 6 surprising causes many people overlook.: Brain fog has become an important part of the conversation for many conditions, including perimenopause and hypothyroidism.

When America’s budget will break, disastrously - "Medicare’s budget-busting makes Social Security’s look modest by comparison. Of the projected $138 trillion budget shortfall over the next 30 years, $109 trillion is from Medicare. Rising health care costs, combined with an aging population receiving far more in benefits than it ever paid in taxes, spells fiscal Armageddon. The Medicare Hospital Insurance trust fund goes insolvent in 2033."

Eleventh-hour primary upsets muddy the race for control of Congress: Unexpected winners have complicated both parties’ paths to control of the House and Senate.

A crime reporter was picked for jury duty and left with more than he expected: The trial in a D.C. courtroom brought together jurors from across the city for five days.

GOP lawmakers move to scrap D.C.’s motorcycle helmet law as road deaths rise: One sponsor calls motorcycles a “symbol of freedom.” Safety experts say scrapping the helmet mandate would come at a deadly cost. - "In states without universal helmet laws, 51 percent of motorcyclists killed in 2023 were not wearing helmets, according to federal safety data. In states with such mandates, just 10 percent of motorcyclists killed had no helmet."

Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia defence pact technically same as NATO's Article 5, Turkish minister says

Cruise ship helps stranded skiff and crew in Southeast Alaska as Zuckerberg yacht stands by

Reading archive 2026-08-09

Democratic voters who used to back Susan Collins aren’t so sure anymore: “When she voted for RFK Jr., I totally lost it,” one former Collins voter said.

Unemployment improved — because thousands of workers disappeared. Where did they go?: The percentage of American workers ages 25 to 54 declined this year, and that’s not a good sign for the economy, experts say.

Why a child’s stuffed bunny is blowing up a political race — and the internet: Many seemed reluctant to take sides in an Ohio congressman’s divorce, but then came the allegation he had withheld his daughter’s sleep buddy.

Trump keeps making threats. The world has stopped flinching.: The president’s bombast has ceased to rattle world leaders, who have seen him fenced in by courts, rebuffed by Congress and strung along by Iran.

How predatory trade schools drained $300 million from the GI Bill and cheated veterans: The institutions defrauded Veterans Affairs while cheating thousands out of career training, with some offering training on how to grow grass and make fake rocks, a Post investigation found.

Ukraine fails to halt Russian barrage as Zelensky blames partners for ‘horrific casualties’: U.S.-made systems are Kyiv’s only means to shoot down ballistic missiles, and Ukraine says it has run out of interceptors. Seventeen Ukrainians died overnight.

Virginia boy’s death comes as more children are getting hurt on e-scooters: Over two days in the D.C. area, a 9-year-old was killed on an e-scooter and a 5-year-old was seriously injured, police said.

Trump officials say public transit is unsafe, but their data says otherwise: A new federal dashboard shows that New York and Washington have relatively low rates of serious crimes.

Now the midterms begin in earnest. Ask candidates three questions.: Those seeking House or Senate seats should be asked by voters to make a trio of vital commitments.

Japan’s guilty pleasure: A tribute to the largest battleship ever built: Why the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Yamato, sunk in 1945, still captures the country’s imagination.

Felony record didn’t stop fraudster from fleecing GI Bill of $1.5 million: The self-described former drug dealer says he faced no background check before he won approval to enroll veterans in his school for police dog handlers.

Veterans in this GI Bill scam played along as trade schools pocketed millions: Prosecutors went after “ghost” school operators but rarely pursued students who enrolled just to collect housing subsidies, a Post investigation found.

Budget battle erupts in D.C. over opioid settlement money

Union Station overhaul takes new direction as Trump administration scraps approved expansion plan

Reading archive 2026-08-06

Norway became a global salmon behemoth. Now it's facing the consequences

Maine’s Democratic Senate candidate touts his rural appeal. His hometown has mixed feelings.: In Allagash, a hamlet of some 200 people near Canada, residents are sharply divided over Troy Jackson.

Attack ads portraying progressive candidate as sexist roil key Michigan Senate race: The candidate’s barbed wit sparked attack ads that portray him as disrespectful to women. He says that’s a racist trope.

Loomer’s Ukraine reversal deepens split in Trump’s ‘America First’ movement: Influential MAGA blogger and former Kyiv critic Laura Loomer expects to visit the president to advocate for the U.S.-Ukraine alliance.

How rogue officers turned a nationwide camera network into a tool for stalking: Flock’s array of license-plate cameras was built to fight crime. But at least 50 law enforcement officers were charged with or accused of misusing it and other systems.

My company’s drones hit Russia — and showed what the Pentagon doesn’t know: Modern war rewards speed and redundancy, not perfect weapons from a single supplier.

After big win, left-leaning slate seeks to flex power in D.C.’s Democratic Party: A group of left-leaning candidates, Free DC Slate, won 36 of 48 seats up for grabs on the D.C. Democratic State Committee.

I befriended my neighborhood crow. You can, too.: Reflections — and expert tips — on building bonds with corvids.

Reading archive 2026-07-31

A new Colorado River plan requires water cuts for three states. Deeper cuts are still possible.: Arizona, California and Nevada will be required to curb their use of the water from the river by a combined 20 percent over the next two years, according to three officials. - "In the Upper Basin, home to the snowcapped mountains and winding tributaries that feed the river, there are few reservoirs to provide long-term water storage, leaving users reliant on natural flows. That means the Upper Basin takes an automatic cut during dry years, officials argue. They say responsibility for restoring water to Lakes Powell and Mead should fall on the Lower Basin states that use them. 

"Yet about three-quarters of the people who depend on the Colorado live in the Lower Basin. The region is also home to major cities and sprawling farms that provide most of the nation’s winter vegetable supply. Officials from these states say they have already curbed their water consumption by millions of acre feet in recent years. Overuse of the river is universal, they argue, and so too is responsibility for saving it."

Airports, nursing homes and schools brace for disruption without Haitian workers: The Trump administration and courts are at odds over whether about 350,000 Haitians have officially lost humanitarian protections, but employers are already letting workers go.

Why 600,000 Mosquitoes Are Being Released in DC This Summer: A Silver Spring pest control company is releasing mosquitoes that don't bite, to stop the ones that do.

Bowser, warning of $837M ‘fiscal cliff,’ declines to sign D.C. budget: It’s not a veto, but it’s the mayor’s way of voicing her disapproval with the D.C. Council.

New report details ‘prolonged, systemic breakdown’ in D.C. crime reporting: The report comes amid internal and external probes into a wide-ranging crime data manipulation scandal.

Inside the deal to clinch Lindsey Graham’s ‘sanctions bill from hell’: The late senator pushed for a bipartisan financial bill that could curb Russia’s main source of income.

Will Maine uproot Susan Collins? I went to a potato festival to find out.: The Senate race pits seniority against a working-class playbook.

What’s tucked inside the Senate’s Russia sanctions bill: Its tariff proposals could affect other countries more than Russia. - "In sum, the legislation gives Trump an awful lot of authority to impose massive tariffs on a number of countries, notably India and China, if they don’t cut off all Russian energy imports. They are unlikely to do so, because both India and China are heavily reliant on Russian energy — all the more since the U.S.-Iran war has reduced oil exports from the Persian Gulf. Trump’s efforts to use 25 percent tariffs to wean India from Russian energy imports already failed last year.

"The problem is that there is nothing to stop Trump from imposing tariffs on any of those countries for some other reason and using the Graham bill as legal justification. He might even use the legislation to go after U.S. allies in Europe and Asia."

Reading archive 2026-07-29

An Uncomplicated Man - "Zeus’ law is a version of archaic Greek xenia: the idealised relationships between strangers, hosts and guests, who must treat one another with mutual respect, thereby forming multi-generational bonds between unrelated families. In the film, xenia is filtered through contemporary American ideas about the importance of philanthropic charity: wealthy people should be gracious towards the poor and hungry in their midst (without necessarily doing anything to mitigate their poverty). Many of the film’s implicit values directly contradict those of Homer’s poem. Deception, warmongering, extramarital sex, cruelty to animals, abusing women and yearning for honour – all perfectly fine in the world of Homer – are, in this version, very bad. This is not in itself a problem, but it is a problem if the film’s own values and vision don’t hang together, and if the characters’ motivations don’t make sense on their own terms.

"In Nolan’s Odyssey, slaughtering people with the help of trickery, technology and weapons is presented as bad when the Greeks are killing the Trojans, who have violated xenia, but good when Odysseus is killing the suitors, who have violated xenia. Taking something ostensibly abandoned by Odysseus and his comrades is natural and forgivable when the Trojans lay claim to the horse, but unnatural and unforgivable when the suitors lay claim to Odysseus’ palace, food, wine and wife. Strangers in Ithaca are to be treated with gracious kindness, as possible gods in disguise; but strangers in foreign lands are usually monstrous, to be blinded, robbed and slaughtered. Defying the gods is noble and brave when Odysseus blinds Polyphemus, son of Poseidon; it’s stupid and greedy when Eurylochus eats the Cattle of the Sun. Deception is bad when Odysseus tricks Sinon or the suitors trick Telemachus, but good when Telemachus and Odysseus trick the suitors. Sharing is good, and Odysseus is seen taking his place at an oar alongside his men; but one-man rule is also unambiguously good, and those who challenge monarchy or autocracy, or try to eat more than their allotted portion, are either evil (the suitors) or foolish (Eurylochus). Either way, they have to die. It is bad to fight and kill to accumulate wealth, as Agamemnon does; it is good to fight and kill to preserve the wealth that you have already acquired (even if by war). Any one of these moral contradictions could make for an interesting and generative theme in a movie, but Nolan lets the fragments of an incomplete set of big ideas spin around in the epic whirlpool, with no plank of solid, specific human experience to which we might cling.

...

"Nolan’s Odyssey lacks many of the elements that make the poem great. It has nothing convincing to say about time, memory, history, war, or about the relationship between one warrior’s glorious return and the lives of his family, adversaries, comrades, friends and neighbours. It lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth. Its narrative structure is gimmicky. The writing is abysmal. None of the characters has convincing motivation for their actions or words. There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible."

Reading archive 2026-07-28

Whom will Democrats nominate in 2028? The scales just tilted.: The DNC’s primary schedule is set to favor the establishment. South Carolina leads the way.

A personalized scam is coming for you: The old attacks have nothing on a customized AI approach called spear phishing.

How Netflix Broke TV’s Most Important Promise Something disturbing is happening to the streaming giant’s ratings. It has only itself to blame.

We used to be able to buy things in this country: Locking up toothpaste was a warning sign that our executive class was crazy

Political operative behind Graham Platner's rise accused of sexual assault: A spokesperson for Daniel Moraff said: “Any suggestion that he committed a criminal offence is false and without foundation."

Killing trees to save the forest: The deadly experiment that could save the American elm - "One by one, row by row, the plan was to stick nearly all of the 5,300 or so elms at the sprawling site in southern Vermont, save the few that received a squirt of water as a control. In the coming weeks, most of the trees would doubtlessly succumb to the pathogen that has already killed tens of millions of their ancestors and made Ulmus americana an endangered species. The ones that live, however, could help save the species."

Why this gas price surge could be different: After five months of war, analysts say oil markets will be forced to price in long-term disruption to global energy flows.

How Netanyahu Lost America: The prime minister, a self-styled expert on the U.S., has shattered his country’s standing. - "[AIPAC]'s symbolic importance ballooned as its influence weakened. Gavin Newsom, Cory Booker, Ruben Gallego, and Seth Moulton-none of them stalwarts of the Democratic Socialists of America-all pledged to refuse AIPAC's money. Moderate Democrats concluded that taking risks to defend Israel had no upside, and not just because of the growing animosity within the party's base. Netanyahu's treatment of Biden had shown that loyalty would never be reciprocated. Democrats running for president absorbed the new calculus and have attempted to glean attention for their nascent candidacies through high-profile confrontations with Israel. The divide had been opened by the man who assured Israelis that no one understood the Americans better."

An Odyssey for Our Own Time: Christopher Nolan presents a very human hero to a culture that desperately needs one. - "Part of what makes The Odyssey so appealing to a modern audience is that it takes civilizing aspects of Greek culture-hospitality and magnanimity-and adds later concepts, some of them influenced by Jewish and Christian ethics that were, to varying degrees, alien to ancient Greek culture: deep introspection, even confession; humility and empathy; sorrow and guilt for the harm one has done, even in victory; the conviction that the conquered count and have worth; and vengeance tempered with mercy. In the film, Odysseus emerges as a figure haunted by his victory in a way that no ancient Greek would have been."

The Problem With Shutting Down ICE in Blue States: Trump officials are happy to ship immigrants elsewhere. - "'ICE is going to find the bed space,' Gihon said. 'A lot of time, it's going to be farther away from a blue state, and farther away from friendly federal courts, in a place with terrible conditions.' In addition to being more distant from family members, immigration courts in Texas and Louisiana have judges who reject asylum claims at some of the highest rates in the country, federal data show. And sanctuary cities such as New York and Chicago generally have more legal-aid organizations that can help ICE detainees get out of custody and fight deportation. 'When I have a detention center near me that I can drive to, I never have to worry about my client missing a phone call,' Gihon told me."

The DSA Is a Parasite: The left-wing faction is hijacking the Democratic Party. - "These victories mark major milestones for the DSA's overall political strategy. Knowing that it doesn't have anything near the support to compete as a party in its own right, the DSA opportunistically uses the Democratic Party ballot line (which some members describe as a 'tool') to get its candidates elected. The DSA declined to endorse the Democratic nominee in the past three presidential elections, and members attack the Democratic Party's leaders as neoliberal corporate shills who must be overthrown. (When images of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries appeared on television screens at the party celebrating the DSA slate's win in New York, the audience erupted into chants of 'You're next!') The DSA is not shy about its ultimate designs. A recent draft platform explicitly called for the eventual formation of an 'independent political party, rooted in the working-class majority'-language that was eventually scrubbed."

The Lines the Court Won’t Cross: The Supreme Court is mostly giving the Trump administration what it wants—with interesting exceptions. - "Instead, the Court's future dealings with the Donald Trump presidency will likely be guided by three general rules: First, keep focus on the constitutional project that Chief Justice John Roberts has been coaxing into being since he joined the Court-one that will transform the First Amendment, eviscerate the equal-protection clause, and recalibrate the Constitution's balance of powers - and green-light presidential initiatives that chime with this project. Second, because this project aims at deep constitutional change, consider breaking from ideological stereotypes when a case involves a mere statute, which can always be reworked by Congress. Finally, beware of presidential frolics that could leave the justices politically exposed when things go sideways - especially if traditional Republican elites would be among the unhappy constituencies."

A Startling Glimpse at AI’s Ruthless Efficiency: The Hugging Face hack reveals that the web is in a vulnerable new era. - "But jailbreaks are clearly not even necessary for things to go haywire. The Hugging Face hack showed advanced AI systems deciding upon and then orchestrating a high-grade cyberattack on their own-the models working against, rather than according to, human instruction. Models are ruthless in their pursuit of a goal, sometimes taking disastrous shortcuts. Imagine, for example, a bot tasked with reducing the federal deficit that institutes an elaborate and hard-to-detect accounting gimmick, or a customer-service agent that issues absurd discounts in pursuit of customer-satisfaction ratings. In the case of GPT-5.6 Sol and the unreleased model, 'all evidence suggests that the models were hyperfocused on finding a solution' for an evaluation, OpenAI wrote in its blog, 'going to extreme lengths to achieve a rather narrow testing goal.'"

The Trump Family Sparks a Revolution in Albania: A luxury development planned by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump has spurred anti-corruption protests. - "Albania, where about half of the population is Muslim, has strong ties to Israel rooted in historical goodwill. During the Second World War, Albanians motivated by an ancient honor code called besa, literally 'to keep the promise,' hid thousands of Jewish refugees; it was the only European country with more Jewish residents after the Holocaust than before."

The Smithsonian’s Show Trial on Capitol Hill: Republicans grilled a museum head, intensifying Donald Trump’s campaign to reshape the American story.

The Fear of Black Greeks: White people don’t own the accomplishments of ancient Greece. - "But Greece is not as far from Africa as the North American continent is, and the modern construct of race, a pseudoscientific product of the Atlantic slave trade, would not be invented until thousands of years after Homer. Black people are depicted in Greek art. Egypt, Libya, and 'Aethiopia' are frequently referenced in ancient writings. As the Black classics scholar Frank Snowden Jr. wrote in the 1970s, at least one of the characters in The Odyssey, Eurybates, is specifically described as 'black-skinned and woolly-haired.' As the Stanford classics professor Sarah Derbew notes in her book Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity, Black people are referenced in plays by Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus. They also appear in the writings of Hesiod and Herodotus. One of the lost epic poems is The Aethiopis, in which Memnon, the Aethiopian king and an ally to Troy, plays a major role. 

"Black people were not as uncommon in the ancient Mediterranean world as Nolan's critics seem to imagine. But even if they had been, color-blind casting makes sense as an artistic choice for portraying the classics precisely because race as it exists today did not exist when The Odyssey was written. And no contemporary actor can actually claim the same descent as Helen, who hatched from a swan's egg."

A Planeload of Informants: The United States is intensifying its hunt for narcos within the Mexican government. Is this all prelude to an attack?

Inside the Feud Over Ukraine’s Drone Success: The fall of Ukraine’s top general, Oleksandr Syrsky, leaves younger officers to finish the reforms that he resisted.

Reading archive 2026-07-27

Police vetted dubious allegation only after Buttigieg was separated from children: The Michigan attorney general’s office is investigating how the accusation that prompted the ex-Cabinet secretary’s separation from his 4-year-old twins was handled.

Amid Trump’s unpredictability, a region rises to face China: Governments across the region are assuming more responsibility for their countries’ security. - "No single development is transformative on its own, nor do these arrangements amount to a NATO-style mutual-defense pact. Instead, governments are building a flexible web of overlapping partnerships, logistics planning and intelligence sharing. The result is a more connected, resilient region, better able to respond in a conflict. 

"This restructuring reflects two converging judgments. The first is that Chinese bullying is no longer episodic. Under leader Xi Jinping, Beijing has combined military pressure on Taiwan, maritime coercion against Japan and the Philippines, and economic retaliation against other neighbors. Isolated disputes increasingly look like a broader campaign to bend the region to China’s will.

"The second judgment concerns American predictability. President Donald Trump’s transactional approach to alliances and preference for personal diplomacy with Xi have raised doubts about Washington. The U.S. remains Asia’s indispensable military power. Yet allies are increasingly unwilling to rely on American guarantees alone. Instead, they are investing more heavily in one another and assuming greater responsibility for their own security."

A desert town may run out of water. Others could face the same fate.: An Arizona community nearly dried up and imposed strict limits, and its crisis may be a glimpse of the West’s future.

Napa’s Groundwater: Past, Present, and Future, by Arya Adhye

Ukraine is teaching Russia a lesson. The U.S. should take notes.: Ukrainian drones and rockets have punished underprotected Russian assets on Crimea.

The states that need immigration most? You’d be surprised.: The policy that would help rural states most is one their voters and officials are most likely to resist. - "Employers in rural states have struggled for years to attract and retain workers. Now many of the tightest labor markets in the country are in some of the most rural places. North and South Dakota currently have the two lowest unemployment rates in the nation. These lower numbers reflect not just lower job turnover and better skills matches than the rest of the country, but also difficulty in finding workers. As the latest numbers collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed in December, North and South Dakota each had about two job openings for every unemployed worker.

"This creates a political and economic paradox. The policy most likely to help many of these states gain the workers they need is also the one many of their voters and elected officials are most likely to resist: more legal immigration."

Judges accused of denying Sikh student points in national civics contest: His parents and a congressional caucus questioned the results after the teen’s answers were rejected. [ed. note: guess what the three finalists look like]

Trump’s insult-laden speech to press dinner draws mostly stunned silence: The president addressed a smaller, heavily secured gathering Friday as his administration intensifies its legal and rhetorical attacks on journalists.

Zeus’s Law: Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey - "The Trojan War is challenging to turn into a film, not just because of the scale involved and the inevitable risk of camp and corniness, but because the characters are so unlikeable in the the original. Indeed, one joy of the classics is the insight it gives into a culture that was very alien, and in many ways repulsive. It’s not our culture, and our worldview is instead shaped by a different eastern Mediterranean civilisation."

The last shall be first and the first last: All you need is love: how the Christian revolution shaped our world - "The #metoo scandal played a part in the Great Awokening, the radical shift in values that began around 2013, spurred by social media, and especially focussed among America’s elites. The social justice theory of intersectionality is just the latest sub-strand of western thinking that owes its origins to Christianity, a hierarchy of victimhood that could be best summed up as 'The last were to be first, and the first were to be last.'

...

"Christianity’s revolutionary message lies at the heart of our cultural assumptions, especially on the – theoretically more secular – political left. Angela Merkel opened up Germany’s borders to Middle Eastern refugees for this reason 'The daily message was: Love your neighbour as yourself. Not just German people. God loves everybody.'" [d. note: interesting Christian apologia]

Marco Rubio wants to defend America — from largely imaginary threats: The secretary of state picks enemies that, unlike Russia or Iran, probably won't push back. - "A 2025 study from the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that left-wing violence in the U.S. has been rising in recent years but remains very low: 'In the past decade … left-wing attacks have killed 13 victims, compared with 112 and 82 victims for right-wing and jihadist attacks, respectively.' The highest-profile recent cases of leftist violence were the horrifying killings of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, but in neither instance has evidence emerged linking the suspect to antifa or any other group. 

"The U.S. government should battle violent extremists of all persuasions — not just leftists. Unfortunately, Trump pardoned the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters, who committed the most serious act of political violence in modern U.S. history."

The Social Security Reckoning Is Finally Coming: Senators elected this November will be in office when America’s most popular federal program is on track to run out of money.