Wednesday, September 23, 2026
Reading archive 2026-09-22
The AI Apocalypse Bracket: Just How Doomed Are We, Really? Is AI really likely to wipe out humanity within the next decade? We used the most scientific tool in existence to get an answer. - "'If they really believe this, why do they keep working on it?' you’re probably asking. Great question! The answer from people in the industry generally comes down to trust: The people at Anthropic don’t trust the people at OpenAI not to screw up superintelligence, and the people at both companies distrust China; therefore, they’re all racing to get there first, since only they can be trusted to use their power wisely, while coincidentally they’re all driving very expensive cars."
As local economy weakens, D.C. will consider tax increases
Monday, September 21, 2026
Reading archive 2026-09-21
Hill investigates after F-35 parts diverted to Hong Kong: The incident raises the possibility that top secret weapons technology may have been exposed to a foreign adversary — including China. - "A Government Accountability Office report from 2023 found that more than 1 million F-35 spare parts have gone missing in the past five years. The watchdog agency concluded the department hasn’t been able to review spare part losses worth tens of millions of dollars because Lockheed controls the information."
City Rats Are Going on Birth Control: Contraceptives are kinder than poison.
Reading archive 2026-09-18
Fight intensifies over the fate of homes falling into the sea: California homeowners are building a costly rock wall to hold back the ocean, escalating a battle over private property and what to do about years-long beach erosion amid storm damage and higher tides. - "The residents of Beach Road know that not everyone sympathizes with wealthy families losing their second homes with ocean views. Driessen sees comments on social media that suggest they deserve the misfortune. Some say they should have seen it coming in the risky business of beachfront real estate.
"Driessen says she worked hard for her dream beach house, purchased two years ago. She took out loans and put herself through school." [ed. note: two! years! ago!!]
...
"Like other homeowners in the area, he said, he only has $250,000 in flood insurance — not enough to cover the loss. His lot is empty. His daughter has urged him to give up on his second home there. 'I’m telling you — water is rising, you need to sell the property,' he recalled her saying."
The open houses at the edge of disaster: What are buyers being told about climate risk in Miami? I posed as one to find out. - "The luxury house helped me put what I’d seen all weekend into context. At the very top of the market, climate risk could be acknowledged because the buyer presumably had enough money to insure against it, adapt to it, or simply lose the bet.
"Everywhere else, the risk kept getting moved just out of frame. Hill suggested one reason why: 'It’s the people who are scraping money together to buy a condo who are at risk and don’t have the resources for either maintenance or insurance.'
"For those buyers, climate risk is not another expense to price into the deal. It could make the entire purchase untenable. And when acknowledging a problem might kill a sale, everyone involved has an incentive not to look too closely at it."
Thursday, September 17, 2026
Wednesday, September 16, 2026
Tuesday, September 15, 2026
Reading archive 2026-09-15
Trump’s planned sale of controversial bombs to Israel is largest in years: The pending transfer of the 2,000-pound munition, involved in scores of incidents resulting in civilian casualties, sets up a potential litmus test for Democrats. - "Though described as a sale, the transaction is financed through a mechanism known as Foreign Military Financing, in which the United States provides the money that Israel uses to buy the weapons."
Sarah Longwell’s Playbook for Defeating MAGA: The Bulwark publisher and author of How to Eat an Elephant on what voters want to hear - "A longtime Republican, Longwell now says, 'The Republican Party has to be defeated, and I think MAGA specifically, I want to defeat it and then salt the Earth with its ashes.'"
What Trump Doesn’t Understand About Xi: The Chinese leader cares very little about personal rapport. - "This expectation has no observable foundation in Xi's 14-year rule. Even by the standards of authoritarian rulers, such as Russia's Vladimir Putin, Xi has shown himself to be unsentimental about personal relationships-including those with members of his own inner circle, to say nothing of the leader of China's principal geopolitical rival. Xi is very different from Putin in this regard. Whereas Putin takes extravagant risks on the international stage but is loath to hold his associates accountable for incompetence, Xi is just the opposite. He is calculating and measured in international politics but pitiless in jettisoning even longtime associates for perceived malfeasance.
..
"Trump's desire to parlay personal charisma into deals may be one of his least idiosyncratic qualities. In fact, there is something about the impulse that is quintessentially American. Even-perhaps especially-for a Beltway outsider, ascending the American political ladder requires a tremendous amount of glad-handing and personal magnetism, if not charm. Those who reach its pinnacle often assume that the same qualities will serve them on the international stage. Joe Biden rose through the Senate, which required cordiality and the ability to strike deals with rivals. George W. Bush and Bill Clinton were known for their affability. Overbearing friendliness might even be described as our national affect.
"By contrast, Xi grew up in a system that punished openness and personal dynamism. His father's boss and mentor, the reformer Hu Yaobang, whose death in 1989 sparked the protests in Tiananmen Square, was known for his outspokenness, which played a crucial role in his political demise. Hu's ouster extinguished freewheeling politicking from the ranks of China's leadership ever after."
Monday, September 14, 2026
Reading archive 2026-09-14
GOP secretaries of state ask Supreme Court to block Trump mail-in ballot rule: The proposed change would significantly increase the likelihood of midterm election issues, they warned. - "The officials in Kentucky, North Dakota, South Dakota, Georgia, New Hampshire and Kansas warned in an amicus curiae letter to the Supreme Court on Wednesday that late implementation of the rule could disrupt the midterms."
Discovery of a new OpenAI agent message board
Retail Vacancies Downtown Are Still High, and Some Landlords Are to Blame: A quarter of downtown retail space sits empty, and some landlords are keeping it that way to forgo paying for upgrades or to avoid lowering property value. - "Leinberger believes the biggest obstacle for downtown D.C. is that it has too much office space, and not enough other offerings. About 85% of real estate downtown is office space, with only 7.5% for apartments or condos and 7.5% for entertainment, such as theaters, museums and music venues, according to a report he did with commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield. He said the optimal environment for economic development is having a healthy blend of 'work, play and live.'
...
"For some landlords, an empty storefront isn't neglect, but a symptom of a loan condition, Price said. Many building owners are locked into agreements with their lenders that bar them from signing a lease below a certain rent, or from letting a building's income fall under a set threshold. Renting the space out at a discount, in other words, could put them in violation of their own loan or impact its overall market value."
Wednesday, September 9, 2026
Reading archive 2026-09-09
In cod we trust As Northern cod stocks rebound, Newfoundlanders are expressing cautious optimism over a fish they nearly lost - "This year, inshore harvesters were allocated 70 per cent of the quota, while offshore harvesters were allocated 20 per cent — up 10 per cent from the 2025 quota. Indigenous groups were allocated 10 per cent.
"Offshore harvesters use much larger vessels than inshore boats, enabling them to navigate rough winter waters far from the coast. They also use a trawl system that has been heavily criticized by scientists and environmentalists, due to its indiscriminate catching of unintended species and destruction of the ocean floor."
Tuesday, September 8, 2026
Reading archive 2026-09-08
Citing ‘ethnic cleansing,’ U.K. bars imports from Israeli West Bank settlements: Numerous other European countries immediately pledged support for the effort, which prompted warnings from the United States. - "In a joint statement Tuesday, the foreign ministers of Britain, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden framed the trade ban and sanctions as a bid to salvage hopes for a two-state solution, with Israel and a Palestinian state as autonomous neighbors. While acknowledging Israel’s right to defend itself after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas fighters from Gaza, they called for immediate action by Israeli officials to control settler violence in the West Bank."
The War for the Rio Grande - "Before the river makes it even twenty miles from its headwaters, it’s pooled behind an earthen dam, into the Rio Grande Reservoir. This reservoir, like all the others along the river, was built for agriculture; in this case, it allowed growers in Colorado to plant thousands of hectares of alfalfa, hay, and potatoes. Much of the alfalfa harvested in the U.S. is shipped overseas to support massive cattle herds in countries including Japan and Saudi Arabia.
...
"Hydrologists say rivers have memory—when they’re full, they stay full; once they’re dry, they stay dry. The same is true of reservoirs. When bodies of water diminish, the lack of cool depths accelerates rates of evaporation, and salts and sediment build up.
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"The consensus among growers in Texas was that Mexico was the true villain. Over the past three decades, agricultural water use has decreased in every American state that the Rio Grande touches. There’s one place where it has gone up.
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"Yet he also knew there was plenty of blame to go around. In 2024 he and other lobbyists pushed the federal government to complete a study of tributary health on the American side of the border, where Texas rivers like the Pecos and Devils empty into the Rio Grande. Preliminary data from the study found that the amount of water flowing into Amistad and Falcon from U.S. sources had collapsed by a stunning 33 percent."
Mexico says US agents killed in crash weren't permitted to operate there [ed. note: from April]
Oil executives just accidentally exposed the industry’s greatest weakness: To keep drilling, Big Oil needs permission to dump treated fracking wastewater into rivers and onto cropland. We don’t have to give it to them. - "Republican state Senator Tan Parker was even more blunt. If they didn’t approve permits to dump treated fracking wastewater onto crops and into rivers, he said, 'we’re going to find ourselves in two or three years with a gun to our head.'
"Without meaning to, Parker had just told his opponents exactly where to apply pressure."
Why Doesn’t the US Tax Its Big Corporations More?: The Myth of “Global Tax Competitiveness” - "Corporate tax is not just a business cost to be minimized but a necessity for funding the essential public goods that are the prerequisite of an attractive investment climate."
The IRS slashed its staff. One result? More taxes going uncollected
The DSA’s Problem Isn’t ‘Media Training’: Authoritarian extremists are speaking for American socialists, and a lot of people don’t like what they say. - "The idea that the DSA's troubles on prime-time television are a technical matter solvable by the right training is surely comforting, but it is also wrong. The group has a bigger problem: It is led by unpractical extremists whose views are a far cry from those that its electorally successful figures, such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, espouse.
"This disconnect is partly explained by a sharp division within the DSA. One wing engages in mass politics and includes AOC, Mamdani, and other socialists committed to democratic principles. The other wing is sectarian and extremist: It evinces little commitment to democracy and includes open admirers of Hamas, the Iranian regime, and historical dictators such as Mao Zedong. If the interviews with the DSA's co-chairs were embarrassing, that's a result not of a lackluster media performance but of the actual positions the group has embraced.
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"This pro-left-authoritarian orientation explains why DSA electoral observers shamefully reported no fraud when they were dispatched to monitor the electoral sham organized by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in 2024. Those results were so bogus that even the left-wing governments of Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay couldn't accept them. Yet at a DSA session on the subject, a pro-Maduro organization's assessment that Venezuela's electoral system was 'one of the very best in the world' was presented as fact, as was the false claim that Venezuela's main opposition candidates were 'fascist.'"
Monday, September 7, 2026
Reading archive 2026-09-07
Orlando held a fight in its city-owned arena. Then came the Nazi salutes.: A kickboxer known to his online followers as “GypsyCrusader” served time in federal prison after prosecutors said he pushed a “race-based civil war.” Organizers booked him to fight a Jewish opponent. - "[the neo-Nazi] Miller’s opponent, Azoulay [who is Jewish], sells online courses about attaining 'limitless wealth' and has posted videos supporting the Tate brothers, who built a massive social media empire championing hyper-masculinity and now face sex-trafficking and rape charges."
The Growing Lawlessness in California’s Forests: Two frog biologists were kidnapped in the woods. More bizarre situations may come. - "A sense of lawlessness seems to be growing on the public lands in the region. People on Howe's staff have returned to find their cars stripped at trailheads-no wheels, no batteries, gas siphoned. They've encountered mountain roads blockaded by hostile civilians. Michael Kauffmann, an ecologist and the executive director of the Bigfoot Trail Alliance, told me that he's recently instituted more training for his researchers and trail crews on safety measures and defusing confrontations. More than anything, Kauffmann has noticed a greater disregard for the rules-more graffiti, a lot more garbage, and less appreciation for these lands as places to care for rather than to joyride over with guns and four-wheelers. One person who regularly hikes in the area around Gumboot Lake told me that he'd felt safer during 'close encounters with bears and lions' than with some of the armed and unfriendly people around."
The Netherlands Will Never Be Rid of Louisiana Crawfish: What will it take for the Dutch to eat them? - "The crayfish invasion started decades ago, but in recent years, the red swamp crayfish (also known as the Louisiana crawfish) has become a particular pest, Pim Lemmers, an ecologist at Radboud University who has dedicated his career to researching crayfish, told me. In the 1980s, it was brought to the Netherlands as food, and people naively released the animals into the environment. The waterways in the Netherlands are very interconnected and became a "crayfish highway" of sorts, Ivo Roessink, an aquatic ecotoxicologist at Wageningen University & Research, told me. But crayfish can walk and breathe on land, too, and have been spotted in parks, along bike lanes, and at Schiphol airport, where the birds use the runway to crush them."
The Hasan Piker Question: Many Democrats would like him to go away. - "But it was El-Sayed who first made Piker central to his campaign by bringing him out on the trail, partying poolside with him at an influencer event, and celebrating with him during his Election Night rally. In his thousands of hours of streaming, Piker has produced a dense catalog of comments spanning the spectrum from stupid to incredibly offensive, including several iterations of the phrase 'I hate America' and, perhaps most memorably, that 'America deserved 9/11.' (He quickly attempted to walk it back.) Piker also flaunts his authoritarian sympathies, calling Mao Zedong 'one of the great leaders of this world' and counting the collapse of the Soviet Union among the 'catastrophes' of the 20th century. Last week, he warned that 'eventually someone is going to come around and take action' against American Jews who are 'singularly invested in Israel.'"
The MAGA Right Is Only Pretending to Be Censored: The conspiracy theory that persists even though no evidence supports it - "The failure to produce evidence is not for lack of trying. During the Biden administration, MAGA allies and politicians filed multiple lawsuits with the goal of exposing alleged censorship. None has done so. One of them, brought by the Missouri attorney general, made it all the way to the Supreme Court before justices asked for underlying evidence that the government had censored anyone. The answer was no. Another, brought against the Stanford research project by America First Legal - Stephen Miller's team - failed in July, when a judge found the suit had no standing, no jurisdiction, and, after a discovery process requested by the plaintiffs, no evidence. There was no proof, in other words, that the Stanford research had resulted in anyone being censored. Other cases against the Biden administration were simply settled by President Trump's Department of Justice without finding any evidence of 'censorship' either.
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"Belatedly, even some part of the Trump administration appears to have quietly concluded that all of this has gone too far and that maybe, in fact, it would be useful for the U.S. government to understand how hostile governments seek to manipulate the internet. In May, the State Department put out a tender for software developers who could help analyze 'foreign adversarial propaganda' and thus replicate the work once done by the Global Engagement Center. In August, a State Department contractor also posted a job opening for research analysts who can, among other things, "evaluate how foreign governments, state-sponsored organizations, terrorist groups, and other malign actors use social media and digital communications to influence public opinion and targeted audiences."
"As DiResta wrote this week, 'they're hiring people to do the very job they just spent 16 months claiming was a conspiracy.' So much time, energy, and money was wasted pursuing a fiction. Now more time, energy, and money will need to be spent to clean up the damage."
Reading archive 2026-09-03
MLB players on salary cap, CBA talks, potential lockout, more
Trump is set to mark a dangerous first for the labor force: A drop in the number of workers in the economy is uncharted territory. - "Donald Trump is on track to become the first president in a century to oversee a U.S. labor force that will be smaller when he leaves office than when he entered. Since the start of his second term, the number of people in the United States who are either employed or looking for a job has dropped by 1.6 million — and it’s largely because of Trump’s immigration restrictions. Unless those policies change, a shrinking workforce will cause slower economic growth and lead to more expensive public debt."
D.C. sues landlord over broken AC, rodents, other problems at apartments: The owner of the Delta Pearl accumulated nearly 200 code violations for problems such as piled up trash and broken locks, D.C's. attorney general's office alleges. - "In an email to The Washington Post, [building owner Buwa] Binitie acknowledged the “serious” conditions at the Delta Pearl and said unpaid rent and repeated vandalism by residents are partly to blame. Binitie said roughly two-thirds of the building’s residents are behind on their rent, and the property is carrying more than $1.8 million in delinquencies."
Tuesday, September 1, 2026
Reading archive 2026-09-01 pt 1
Smithsonian, Hirshhorn end ‘Bubble’ project [ed. note: from 2013]
Mother, daughter killed in interstate crash with wrong-way driver, police say: The driver was charged with two counts of homicide by motor vehicle while impaired by alcohol. - "Saturday’s crash comes shortly after the Montgomery County Police Department confirmed it would dissolve its unit combating drunken driving and impaired driving, a change set to take place soon. The department said the cut is necessary due to staffing shortages and operations needs."
China's Xi tells Putin that foundations of ties will be stronger
Israel signs $3.5 billion air defense deal with Greece
The devastation of NSA Bahrain is a national security warning - "It’s important to understand that NSA Bahrain is more than just a headquarters. Among its many functions, the installation provides a regional naval operating base for U.S. Navy forces in the Middle East. NSA Bahrain is home to NAVCENT and U.S. Fifth Fleet, along with numerous tenant commands.
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"The idea that the U.S. could not prevent and defend against a predictable attack on a Fleet Headquarters — and our sailors stationed there — is quite startling. It likely is just as alarming to our allies."
Sweden signs French warship order to boost defense
College student steps into traffic, is killed after losing immigration status: Pierre Damas Bel’s family said he took his own life on a busy highway after the Trump administration canceled protections for thousands of Haitian immigrants and ICE officers placed him in an ankle monitor. - "'I know that I’m a pastor and I’m supposed to be forgiving,' he said. 'But right now as I sit with a broken family, I’m crying out to God for righteous judgment in those who made this happen.'"
What Trump’s ballroom win really says about the Supreme Court: The justices reject a challenge on standing grounds. - "It’s a shame that the separation of powers didn’t work as intended, with Trump and Congress agreeing on what reasonable construction would look like." [ed. note: is this the sentence that convinces me to cancel my subscription?]
The Singular Triumph of Driving Down Peanut Allergies: When pediatricians issued new advice about peanuts, parents listened. Why have vaccine recommendations met with so much more resistance? - "A study published last year found that the rate of peanut allergies in American kids under 3 decreased by 43 percent in the period after the new recommendations were put in place. (The study did not prove that the drop in allergies was caused by the guidelines change, but 'it's a very, very tight association temporally,' a different David Hill, a pediatric allergist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a co-author of the study, told me.)"
We Are Living in the Fantasy World of 13-Year-Old Boys: Many of the tech billionaires who built our world have taken the wrong lessons from their favorite science fiction. - "What one gathers from these misreadings is not so much that science fiction itself is nefarious, but that arrested development might be. Because teenagers are teenagers, their young imaginations tend to overpower their ethics. These particular boys seem to have never moved beyond a misplaced excitement, and came to fetishize the books they had read rather than revisiting them with adult eyes. When Musk sent up a SpaceX rocket in 2018, he put one of his Tesla Roadsters inside it, and in the car he placed a copy of Asimov's Foundation - unironically. Thiel genuinely felt he was promised the fantastic technologies he'd read about as a kid, and once lamented that if inventors had taken them as seriously as he did 'we'd have colonies on the moon, you'd have robots, you'd have flying cars, you'd have cities in the ocean, under the ocean.'"
China Is Flatlining: The country’s “stability” hides a host of problems.
Monday, August 31, 2026
Reading archive 2026-08-31
Tree removals at East Potomac golf course raise alarms
Trump’s bullying has backfired: Might he try persuasion instead?
Months after primary, Lewis George is returning to public stage with D.C. forums: The democratic socialist in line to lead D.C. knows people are pinning their hopes on her. Here’s what she says she’ll do about it. - "Still, he thinks she will have to make some tough choices to get to [72,000 new homes in five years]. 'If you talk to capital right now, they largely don’t want anything to do with D.C. from a housing standpoint,' due in part to the difficulty in collecting rent and having a timely eviction process, he said, adding that making business-friendly changes could upset her base."
The Crisis for Democrats in Michigan: The Senate election presents liberals with a grim choice. - "What's more, El-Sayed has already said that he intends to use his victory as a platform to reshape the party. Him winning could invite a future in which the United States has not just one party that is open to bigots but two."
Saturday, August 29, 2026
Friday, August 28, 2026
Reading archive 2026-08-28
The Supreme Court Isn’t Interested in Facts: In decision after decision, the conservative justices are ignoring the evidentiary record that lower courts have worked hard to establish. - "The damage from the decision occurs at several levels. It includes the slow unraveling of constitutional structure when a rogue executive encroaches on territory assigned to others, in this case Congress and the states; the institutional signaling when the Court blesses that encroachment; the deepening tangle of the Court's election-law jurisprudence, incoherent as doctrine but reliable in outcome, with the Republican appointees' delivering on Republican interests; the diminishing of public trust in the Court; and the shunting of impositions and uncertainties onto the people who run elections and the people who vote in them."
The Wrath of MAGA: The ferocity of the response to Jon Ossoff reveals something deeper about the world of Trump supporters. - "So why did MAGA world respond as it did? One explanation is psychological. In 2016, Trump found a constituency already primed for grievance, and taught it to want more. His supporters have kept themselves in a state of frenzy ever since. They need to be perpetually outraged, aggrieved, and insulted. MAGA world has become addicted to the feeling. It delivers a jolt of adrenaline, it provides a feeling of social belonging, and it gives people a sharpened sense of purpose. They see themselves as warriors in a drama of their own construction. They view their opponents - Democrats, progressives, critics of Trump - as personifications of evil. Inflicting pain on their enemies feels good, really good, and it feels just.
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"But there's something else going on as well, at least with one subgroup of Trump supporters. I have in mind people who are not true believers but who, for a variety of reasons, long ago made their peace with Trump. These are people-many radio and television commentators, podcasters, and members of Congress among them-who were dedicated conservatives before Trump came along. They believed character was destiny and virtue mattered; they revered the rule of law, institutions, and norms; they championed free trade and free markets, fiscal responsibility, and a strong Western alliance; and they opposed patrimonialism, corruption, and lawlessness in the presidency.
"They have given up on all of those commitments, and so much more, as the cost of supporting Trump. The cost of speaking out against him, even when they knew better, was simply too high. They wanted to stay in the good graces of those in power. So they broke. And they know they broke.
"This has caused a painful degree of cognitive dissonance within many of them. They want to think better of themselves-and others to think better of them-than their actions warrant. What they see in Ossoff's comments is a chance to signal that they are still who they once were, or at least seemed to be. In this case, they are portraying themselves as enraged at Ossoff's 'misogynistic lies.' His comments are 'repulsive' and 'guttersnipe statements.' The senator from Georgia is a 'disgusting coward' and a 'disgusting pig.' We're told, 'You don't get lower than that.' They are offended that Ossoff is 'punching down' at 'defenseless' women."
Thursday, August 27, 2026
Reading archive 2026-08-27
The Real Reason Trump Wants Economic Sanctions in Iran: The quieter, longer-term strategy could help push the conflict out of the minds of voters ahead of the midterms. - "With few options remaining, the Trump administration has settled into a potentially lengthy campaign of economic pressure, pledging to squeeze Iran until its leaders have no choice but to seriously return to negotiations. But that tack could prove toothless if the U.S. doesn't also punish the nations that still do business with Iran and keep its economy afloat - and Trump has historically shown little willingness to stand up to the likes of China and Russia, or even North Korea, which has a strategic alliance with Tehran."
The Jason Arday Truthers: The concerted effort to airbrush the late fabulist’s life - "Without question, the media coverage of Arday was harsh and high-volume. But much of that volume came from competing outlets breaking fresh news, as more and more of Arday's extraordinary claims crumbled under scrutiny. Some commentators have argued that coverage ought to have stopped after his resignation. I feel differently; the reporting should (and I think would) have stopped if he admitted to the fabulism. But Arday died still maintaining that he had never lied, and his memoir is on sale, untroubled by corrections to anecdotes that now seem enormously implausible.
"Unfortunately, unlike Arday's fabrications, anti-Black racism in Britain is only too real. But you can believe in that without believing in Jason Arday."
Sen. Rand Paul’s Son William Hurled Antisemitic Insults at Rep. Mike Lawler: The younger Paul interrupted Lawler at a Capitol Hill bar to say “Jews” would be to blame if Rep. Thomas Massie loses his primary. - "'Do you think I’m Jewish?' Lawler asked. 'I’m not.'
"'Oh wow, I’m so sorry for calling you a Jew,' Paul said.
"He then continued on a tirade about how Jews were 'anti-American' and how Lawler and his 'Jewish supporters' served Israel more than America. Lawler repeatedly pushed back and engaged with Paul, defending his support of Israel, and told Paul he was being antisemitic."
Wednesday, August 26, 2026
Reading archive 2026-08-26
Canada should be ready to cut electricity, critical minerals, Ontario's premier says
The attack on Putin’s $20 billion pipeline can teach the U.S. about cards: Don’t underestimate countries like Ukraine. The Nord Stream sabotage shows why. - "Nord Stream, the world’s largest offshore pipeline system and Vladimir Putin’s flagship geopolitical project in Europe, took more than two decades to complete and cost nearly $20 billion. In September 2022, a handful of Ukrainians destroyed it with a rented yacht, commercially available diving equipment and four civilian divers armed with makeshift explosives."
The Qataris Gave Trump an Airplane. He Crippled Their Country in Return.: The tiny Gulf state is learning that the U.S. president doesn’t always keep his end of the deal. - "To understand this strange deal - so absurdly corrupt that there is nothing analogous in the history of the American executive branch - it's necessary to understand Qatar, the rare country with both the means and the disposition to even contemplate it. The Qataris don't have allies. They have investments. Their investments in American relationships are undoubtedly their most important, and they've provided billions of dollars of diplomatic and military-support services to the U.S. But at the same time they've been providing money to America's defense, they've also provided support to America's enemies.
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"The many U.S. intelligence officers, diplomats, and military veterans I spoke with consistently offered the same appraisal: It would be inaccurate to say that Qatar directly 'supports terrorism,' but the country's money and politics support an environment that helps terrorism and extremism flourish."
Tuesday, August 25, 2026
Monday, August 24, 2026
Reading archive 2026-08-24
To get the national debt under control, start with the retirement state
Why we should stop eating lettuce, cyclospora or not: Lettuce makes us sick, wastes resources and has minimal nutritional value. Why are we still consuming it? - "So, on one side of the ledger we have 1.7 million annual cases of food poisoning, $3.7 billion and 3 billion pounds of rotting lettuce. On the other we have, basically, an excuse to kid yourself into eating blue cheese dressing."
In candid interviews, National Guard members speak out about D.C. deployment - "An estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that the D.C. deployment at its current level costs about $3 million per day. The Pentagon estimates extending the deployment until 2029 will cost an additional $1.4 billion. A total cost estimate by the nonpartisan watchdog Project on Government Oversight for the deployment is around $3.4 billion.
How one billionaire’s crusade against homelessness became Trump’s playbook: Long before Silicon Valley embraced Trump, Joe Lonsdale wanted to remake government and shift the nation’s approach to homelessness. Now, his friends in the White House are listening. - "He uses the term “boldness” so frequently that it might come off as a joke — or to critics, as a caricature of a tech billionaire drunk on his own Kool-Aid.
"But in Lonsdale’s growing influence, detractors see something more insidious: a powerful person interfering far beyond his purview.
"'These guys don’t have interesting ideas; they have little-boy fantasies,' said Paul Barrett, a New York University professor and a former deputy director of the Center for Business and Human Rights at NYU Stern School of Business. 'These tech guys are part of an illiberal tradition that is truly corrosive. … [Lonsdale] wants to create an environment where his mythological meritocratic heroes can thrive and everyone else can go f--- themselves.'"
Friday, August 21, 2026
Reading archive 20226-08-21
More D.C. kindergarteners have vaccine exemptions
Update: NATO’s Operations Continue as Russia Escalates in Romania - "On July 30, a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile crashed in Poland. Days later, an explosive drone carrying Semtex and PETN was discovered at Germany’s Leipzig/Halle Airport, which U.S. intelligence attributed to Russia. Romania has had repeated drone incursions, including three Russian drones shot down in July, another drone shot down by a Spanish F-18 on August 16, and two more incidents today, including the drone carrying an explosive near the Neptun Deep gas project. Three days ago, what is suspected to be a Russian Banderol missile entered Moldova and exploded in a field. And earlier today, Finland reported another suspected Russian aircraft violating its airspace."
CIA staff exodus leaves new retirees waiting months for benefits: The spy agency is swamped by what it calls an “unprecedented number” of retirements as the Trump administration aims to shrink its workforce. - "The CIA has a tradition of treating its retirees well, former officials said. Among the reasons: Angry ex-employees with heads full of secrets are a target for adversary intelligence services. 'We are creating a massive [counterintelligence] risk,' said the official who left last fall."
The ‘Resistance’ Won: The much-derided movement was right about Trump’s nature, and how to defeat him. - "What discredited resistance politics in liberal eyes is that it was closely associated with institutional procedures that were deemed to have ultimately failed to restrain Trump. Mueller's investigation ended anticlimactically. Neither impeachment drew enough Republican support to remove Trump from office. Somewhat similarly, conservatives have sometimes claimed that the Russia investigation and first impeachment helped Trump politically by drawing to his side Republicans who resented the overreach.
"One Republican who doesn't seem to believe either of these arguments is Trump. The president has worked hard to ensure that no such humiliations recur during his second term, by stacking the Justice Department with loyalists, firing inspectors general en masse, purging the armed forces of "woke" officers, and generally eliminating any potential source of independence within the federal government.
"Trump himself does not seem to think that the investigations that were avidly followed by resistance liberals did nothing to restrain his actions during his first term, or that they helped him shore up partisan support. And the absence of any such processes in his second term has not made Republicans in Congress feel freer to criticize the president. To the contrary, their fealty is more absolute than ever.
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"Like the Republican critics of resistance politics, progressive ones depicted it as substituting legal tactics for electoral victories. Yet the resistance was never limited to cheering on Mueller or hoping to persuade Republicans to convict the president of high crimes and misdemeanors. Resistance themes inspired the Democrats' political message during Trump's first term. And that message landed. Democrats retook the House in the 2018 midterms, despite a hot economy, and then defeated Trump's reelection effort. Joe Biden, a link to a bygone era of civility and bipartisanship, ran in 2020 on a message of restoring the soul of America. He won.
"Once in office, however, Biden ceded his domestic agenda to progressives who believed in Sanders's vision of transformational change. They believed that only overturning the neoliberal order, handing control of domestic policy to neo-Brandeisians and climate hawks, and giving unions almost every policy they demanded would allow Democrats to regain the trust of working-class voters. This theory, not the resistance, failed. Biden's support collapsed within his first year, and Kamala Harris's half-hearted efforts to distance herself from her unpopular boss were too little, too late."
Thursday, August 20, 2026
Reading archive 2026-08-20
The End of the American Middle East: Iran and the Last Gasp of a Failed Order - "The American Middle East is finished. The regional order that has prevailed since 1991 has been one of the many casualties of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. The American and Israeli failure to dislodge the regime in Tehran has proved the bankruptcy of decades of sanctions and violence. The inability of the United States to protect its Gulf allies from Iranian attacks or to keep the Strait of Hormuz open has fatally undermined the core security bargain that justified its network of military bases in the region. And Israel’s increasingly threatening posture and abandonment of any pretense of interest in reaching an accommodation with the Palestinians have ended Washington’s decades-long mission of bringing its Arab allies and Israel together into an enduring security partnership.
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"The Trump administration, contemptuous of democracy and the rule of law at home and abroad, is not going to change that. It is difficult to imagine Trump, who vacillates wildly between strategies, designing a new regional order of any kind. But his successor will have a real chance to break with the status quo and craft a more coherent and more effective Middle East strategy. That starts with renouncing the use of military intervention as a first resort and ending the practice of diplomacy by airstrike. Washington’s priority should be defense, not offense. One way to make that intention clear is to forgo the restoration of damaged or destroyed U.S. military bases across the Gulf and focus instead on investments in intelligence sharing, missile defense systems for Gulf partners, and the preservation of freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz."
The Next Global Economic Crisis Could Be Made in China: How Overcapacity Ends - "China’s remarkable path of economic development over the last several decades has been made possible by a benign international environment in which other countries were eager to accept low-cost manufactured goods in exchange for efficient supply chains and consumer welfare. But that international environment has turned toxic. The political appetite for accepting the deindustrialization and critical dependencies that come with the flood of Chinese imports is finite and shrinking. As these trends continue, protectionism is likely to rise, cutting off Chinese manufacturers’ market access and thereby short-circuiting Beijing’s strategy, introduced in 2020, of 'dual circulation,' which promotes both domestic economic self-sufficiency and continued engagement in international markets."
Wednesday, August 19, 2026
Reading archive 2026-08-19
This little fish anchors the East Coast food web. A fight over it is brewing. Years of half measures and regulatory delays leave Atlantic menhaden potentially at risk. [ed. note: Canadian company with sham "American-owned" fishing fleet catches shit-ton of menhaden for processing in Virginia to ship to southeast Asia as, is destroying the Atlantic ecosystem]
Tuesday, August 18, 2026
Reading archive 2026-08-18
Generative AI Is an Engineering Disaster: A shockingly inefficient trillion-dollar project - "Yet the returns are diminishing. The bigger an AI model is, the less it improves with each added parameter, and so it must be made bigger at a faster rate just to sustain steady progress. I asked a few AI researchers whether they could name any other real-world software that scales so poorly. None of them could think of any. Even outside the world of software, it's hard to find a comparable example, given that economy of scale is the principle that has made light bulbs, cars, and clothing so affordable. By economic and engineering measures, generative AI might be the worst technology ever deployed."
J. D. Vance’s Own Alien Abduction: The vice president has been replaced with a guy who’s just asking questions. - "Watching Vance's media appearances is uniquely painful. He lacks the authentic berserk of Kash Patel, or the pageant-queen polish of Karoline Leavitt, or his boss's unique corkscrew approach to conversation. Like Stephen Miller, Vance desperately wants to be funny and cool. Like Stephen Miller, he is neither. And that's before we get to the awkwardness of knowing that Vance-a Yale Law School graduate-has voluntarily lobotomized himself in the pursuit of power and attention. Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his dignity to be Donald Trump's lackey.
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"The other explanation for this hey-I-wonder approach is that Vance is dealing with the cognitive dissonance between his own self-image as a smart guy and the constant requirement to defend dumb and inconsistent actions by hallucinating that he is not really part of this administration, but instead a mere interested bystander. Vance treats the vice presidency the way that Instagram influencers approach a vacation in the Maldives: It only truly exists when converted into content. In one telling exchange, Vance said that he felt like he had 'made it' when he was satirized on South Park, rather than at his inauguration."
Priced out of D.C., young women found low rent with unlikely roommates
AIPAC has a new target to exert influence over Democrats: The organization’s super PAC poured nearly $2.5 million to boost Melissa Hernandez over Aisha Wahab in a California congressional race. - "AIPAC’s defenders have said the organization has faced unfair and outsize criticism compared to the other special interest groups that have spent on American elections." [ed. note: lol like who?]
The government’s Intel bet was even worse than expected: The equity stake has ballooned into an expansive, risky portfolio. - "The administration’s holdings are growing at breakneck speed. The running tally at the Cato Institute counts 31 government equity deals — spanning companies in steel, critical minerals, semiconductors, nuclear power, rocket motors and quantum computing — enacted by three different federal agencies acting under murky legal authority. The Commerce Department has based more than a dozen semiconductor and quantum computing deals on the Chips and Science Act, which does not expressly authorize federal shareholding. Some of the equity deals appear to have been coerced by the administration — or at least conditioned on the granting of a permit, subsidy or other government privilege. And more stakes are rumored to be on the way. In a single year, Washington went from one position to a diverse and questionable portfolio, with nary a vote from Congress or the American public."
So Far This Year, China Has Wasted Enough Clean Energy to Power Mexico
Monday, August 17, 2026
Reading archive 2026-08-17
Why I Quit the Tenure Track: The insufferable hypocrisy of elite academia - "Wokeness allowed elite higher ed to create a new model of inclusive exclusion: one in which tuition can continue to climb, acceptance rates can continue to plummet, endowments can continue to expand, and adjunct labor can continue to be exploited as long as the demographics of those paying the tuition and those being exploited continued to get browner, Blacker, more LGBTQAIP2+. It also helped nurture the delusion that elite college graduates were being prepared for lives of civic virtue, and that their highly priced education would be deployed in service of the public good. Never mind the fact that, during my time at Bates, roughly a quarter of the school's graduates went on to jobs in tech, finance, or consulting—a startling figure that nonetheless pales in comparison to the nearly half of Harvard and Yale students who end up in these same career tracks.
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"Sandra seemed stuck: Some minority professors supported the requirement, while others, like me, did not. In my observation, woke white academics—who are largely acculturated to defer to the 'lived experience' of their Black and brown students and colleagues—had next to no ability to make decisions when confronted with minorities who disagreed with one another. Encountering 'marginalized' people with opposing views tended to create a kind of cognitive paralysis in some of my white co-workers, and I noticed that, in such cases, they usually followed the recommendation of the most recent minority they'd spoken with about the issue. With my friends, I jokingly called this the 'last Black person I talked to' problem."
Thursday, August 13, 2026
Wednesday, August 12, 2026
Tuesday, August 11, 2026
Monday, August 10, 2026
Reading archive 2026-08-10
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."
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."
Cruise ship helps stranded skiff and crew in Southeast Alaska as Zuckerberg yacht stands by