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.
...
"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.