Reading archive 2025-08-21

Israeli government official arrested in Nevada in internet crimes against children sting Tom Artiom Alexandrovich was released and returned to Israel after being charged with luring a child for a sex act

Is the U.S. Ready for the Next War?: With global conflicts increasingly shaped by drones and A.I., the American military risks losing its dominance.

There is no ‘Trump doctrine’ in foreign policy. Just chaos

Republicans want to rig the midterm elections. Will they succeed?

A Right-Wing Influencer Tried to Be a Tradwife. It Almost Broke Her.

US Attorney Pirro's office admits grand jury refused ICE interference charges — twice: Federal prosecutors told a judge they had failed twice to secure an indictment against Sidney Lori Reid for allegedly assaulting an FBI agent during an ICE arrest.

Factories from GE to Kraft Heinz lose immigrant workers, stressing those who remain

Ghislaine Maxwell’s transfer to a ‘country club’ prison is outrageous

Trump says he has ‘solved’ 7 conflicts. Here’s what to know about them.: As Trump pushes for a peace deal to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he says he has ended a growing list of conflicts. In some of them, his role remains contested.

Limits of Trump’s diplomacy clear as Moscow balks at Ukraine plan: Moscow has resisted a Putin-Zelensky summit and security guarantees for Ukraine. Trump claims that the Kremlin’s position has changed, leaving analysts puzzled. - "'Some still imagine that, in exchange for land, the Kremlin might accept security guarantees for Ukraine, tolerate the presence of peacekeepers, or even acquiesce to the continued arming of Kyiv,' [Boris Bondarev, a former senior Russian diplomat who resigned over Putin’s Ukraine invasion] wrote. 'This is fantasy. It will not happen.'"

PorNO! How age verification exposed the power of friction in the internet age: Introducing Scrappy theory, a convoluted bastardisation of nudge theory - "The success of this approach reminded me of nudge theory. Without banning porn, the policy initiative has significantly reduced access. Over time, this ought to constrain the industry. But rather than nudging users towards preferred behaviour, this legislation has created a friction that disinclines them from exhibiting non-preferred behaviours. It reminds me of Scrappy-Doo, perpetually imploring the gang to 'lemme at ‘em!', yet constantly being held back. Like Scrappy, feeling the finger on his collar as he raises his fists, British pornophiles have been restricted from destructive behaviours because the incentive to do action A (visit PornHub) is offset by the deterrent of action B (create PornHub account)."

MAGA erupts after Israeli official charged in child sex ring flees U.S.

Reading archive 2025-07-23

In hearing, developer told to rework plans to downsize D.C. grocery store: By early next week, Jair Lynch needs to rethink its request to downsize a grocery store it plans to build in a new Northwest Washington neighborhood.

Pressure heats up on D.C. Council to hold vote on RFK Stadium deal: D.C. lawmakers have said for weeks that they are doing their due diligence on the $3.7 billion dollar deal, and expect to approve it - just not as fast as everyone wants.

The ‘World’s Smartest Man’ Absolutely Hates Me: With an apparent score of 276, YoungHoon Kim claims to have the highest IQ on the planet. Just don’t ask him to prove it.

House Republicans eye restrictions on D.C. traffic safety, abortion and more: The proposed federal spending bill comes as President Donald Trump again publicly muses about taking over the city.

Try these hidden ‘NOPE’ buttons to stop AI content: How to turn off AI in Google and DuckDuckGo web search results -- plus a no-AI nuclear option.

"If he failed, their process failed": Inside the NFLPA meltdown

How strategists think about keeping the peace in the Taiwan Strait: In 1914, the world stumbled into a war that hurt all combatants. Is it on the same path now?

I’m a microplastics researcher. Here’s how I limit the plastic in my life.: Microplastics are everywhere. But there are simple ways to lower your exposure.

Ukraine’s top commander asks Trump to help take the war to Russia: With Trump now open to supplying U.S.-made weapons to Ukraine, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky calls for longer-range missiles and the permission to use them against Russia.

China’s strategy? Let Trump cook.: As President Donald Trump dismantles U.S. soft power and launches trade wars with allies, China is content to sit back and watch. - "'The United States, in their view, is dismantling its alliance relationships and alienating much of the world,' Gewirtz told the Wire China. 'It is dismantling aspects of the U.S. science and technology ecosystem, cutting funding to some of our great universities, and making it very unappealing, if not outright impossible, for foreign talent to come do research in those universities. And it is eliminating arms of U.S. influence around the world, from USAID to Voice of America. China’s view is that the United States is, in a sense, unilaterally disarming.'

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"[Economic historian]Tooze argued that the Americans have 'dropped the ball' here and the consequences will be vast. 'This is the material dethroning of the West as the central driver of world history,' he said. 'This is really what the provincialization of the West really looks like.'"

The Wrecking of the FBI The former FBI official Peter Strzok on how President Donald Trump is destroying U.S. counterintelligence from the inside. - "But they thought they had a deal. Bracket Trump, leave Trump out of the story, and Trump in turn would license them to go on a hunting expedition against all the people they really hated. A long list of liberal icons, people like—people whom they dislike for other reasons who were in the Epstein network. If Trump would just—they would stand back from Trump and he would then deliver to them justice against their ideological and other kinds of opponents. They’re mad, these people, because Trump reneged on that deal. In order to protect himself, he ended up protecting a lot of other people, too, or so people in MAGA world who are excited about this issue believe that this has been taken away from them. And for some of the people who are the loudest influencers, losing the Epstein file, having Donald Trump say, There are no records, there’s nothing to see here, everybody stand down, that’s not just a threat to their belief system. For many of them, it’s a threat to their livelihoods. For a lot of influencers, Epstein was central to their engagement strategies, very lucrative engagement strategies, and they now have the choice: If they accept the Donald Trump edict—if they say, Okay, we’ll stand down, as President Trump says—then what do they do for engagement?

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"This is a chronic—I think, going back to the 9/11 analogy, one of the things that happened after 9/11 was the decision was made to harden cockpit doors. What if somebody, a year and a half or two years before 9/11 said, You know, why don’t we harden the cockpit doors? Why don’t we do that? See how that maybe that would be an improvement. And they did it. We would probably now be studying that hardening of cockpit doors as an example of government waste. Right? 

"Strzok: Yes. 

"Frum: We hardened all the cockpit doors. It cost all this money. No one ever tried it. Nothing ever happened. Why did we ever do that in the first place? What a waste of time and money. Government overregulation hardening cockpit doors. This is the great injustice of government. No one ever knows what’s behind door number two, the thing that didn’t happen, the thing that you prevented."

How to Be More Charismatic, but Not Too Much More: It turns out that being charming has a happy mean.

What to Do With the Most Dangerous Book in America: At a perilous American moment, the Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro explains why he wanted to read The Turner Diaries.

This Is the Presidency John Roberts Has Built: The country is witnessing the creation of an all-powerful institution, and one man is responsible. - "Roberts has all but made at-will removal the president's constitutionally guaranteed prerogative, and his rhetoric goes further yet. His opinions taken together create a dangerously authoritarian and largely ahistorical narrative about the constitutional presidency."

What Trump’s Feud With Jerome Powell Is Really About: The president doesn’t think the Federal Reserve chair is bad at his job. He objects to the job itself. - "The Federal Reserve's assignment is to steward the long-term interests of the U.S. economy even at the occasional expense of short-term pain by balancing the twin objectives of suppressing inflation and managing the unemployment rate. Trump, however, believes that the Fed's objective should be to speed up the economy under Republican administrations and slow it down under Democratic ones. To the extent that the central bank balances unemployment and inflation, he would like to see the pain of high unemployment shifted onto Democratic administrations so that Republican ones can benefit from rapid economic growth."

Reading archive 2025-07-16 pt 2

Another Moderate Republican Opts Out: For the likes of Don Bacon, quitting Congress has become a familiar endgame.

Flattery, Firmness, and Flourishes: World leaders and diplomats quietly swap strategies for managing Trump.

The Biggest Myth About the YIMBY Movement: There’s nothing centrist or conservative about the push to lower housing costs. - "This is what a populist antitrust effort in housing looks like: undoing regulatory capture, breaking up economic gatekeeping, and creating a fairer market. And yet, in a spectacular act of projection, NIMBYs accuse housing advocates of conservatism even as they defend the interests of wealthy landowners protecting their cultural and economic turf. This smear campaign is meant to freeze blue-state efforts to help people struggling to afford a place to live. And if the broader left fails to recognize this NIMBY misinformation for what it is, it might work."

The Trump Administration Is About to Incinerate 500 Tons of Emergency Food: Federal workers warned for months that the high-energy biscuits would go to waste.

Putin Needs to Believe He Can’t Win: The way to get a peace agreement is to change the battlefield.

Reading archive 2025-05-15

D.C. may have dodged deepest Medicaid cut. Officials are still worried.: D.C. officials are cautiously optimistic after a lobbying and public pressure campaign, but they say other Medicaid changes still pose a threat. - "The bill would require states to recertify beneficiaries’ eligibility every six months, causing some D.C. residents to lose their coverage or have gaps in coverage, and would impose work requirements with few details on how tracking and enforcement would work, she said."

After ICE visits, D.C. restaurants fear labor shortage: Last week’s sweep leads to immigrant workers quitting, no-showing or taking time off, restaurant owners say. - "If the White House is genuinely interested in bolstering American businesses, [Geoff] Tracy said, the administration 'could simply implement an E-Verify requirement for all U.S. employers — which would save them from having to do time-intensive I-9 audits.'" [ed. note: Chief Geoff!]

Are seed oils bad for you? Here’s what the evidence actually tells us.: RFK Jr. and his “Make America Healthy Again” supporters argue that they’re toxic, but most studies indicate otherwise. - "But if we take a bird’s-eye view of the body of evidence, it leads to a clear conclusion: Seed oils are more likely to be beneficial than harmful, but the effects are small enough that it probably doesn’t matter very much if you use them or you don’t.

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"I’m on record blaming obesity and disease on processed foods, but trying to find specific ingredients that are harmful is a fool’s errand. It’s the food in total — nutrition-challenged, calorie-dense, ubiquitous, designed to be overeaten — that’s the problem. So, if you’re sautéing your vegetables in canola oil every day, you’re fine. If you’re eating Nacho Cheese Doritos (second ingredient: seed oil) every day, you might not be fine, but the oil isn’t to blame."

Walmart warns it will raise prices within weeks because of tariffs: The retail giant’s operating income increased in its first quarter since the Trump administration started a trade war.

U.S. preparing to relax big-bank capital rules: Current requirements punish holdings of safe assets such as Treasurys, banks say. Regulators will soon propose easing requirements.

Don’t be fooled. This is the calm before the AI storm.: The lull in the artificial intelligence revolution, thanks to cultural lag, is just temporary.

GOP tax bill on track to add more than $2.5 trillion to U.S. deficit: The figure is expected to intensify a national debate over spending and tax levels as President Donald Trump tries to push the legislation through Congress.

A Commanders stadium at RFK will actually cost taxpayers $6 billion

Commanders stadium plan is somehow even worse for DC taxpayers than we thought - "Whatever the final tally, the main takeaway is: Josh Harris gets to pay only $1 a year in rent for a huge tax-free swath of public land, while keeping all revenues from the stadium and other development he builds there, even as the district pays to build everything from parking garages to the stadium’s foundation. And the council — where Ward 3 representative Matthew Frumin has now declared himself “could be for it, could be against it,” leaving the overall body leaning slightly no but with several potential swing votes — only has until July 15 to vote it up or down in one indigestible lump, as the term sheet includes a clause declaring that if the council “materially changes” the terms, then the whole agreement is null and void. Mayor Bowser clearly wants to railroad this thing through before anyone takes a closer look — which makes sense, because on closer look this thing is a dumpster fire."

Silicon Valley Braces for Chaos: The center of the tech universe seems to believe that Trump’s tariff whiplash is nothing compared with what they see coming from AI. - "The tech industry admittedly doesn't 'think very hard about how bad things could get,' Conrad told me. 'Our job is to raise this,' he said, pointing upward to raise the ceiling on how prosperous and enjoyable society can be. 'Your job' - media, banks, elected officials, the East Coast - 'is to protect the floor.'"

Trump’s Real Secretary of State: How the president’s friend and golfing partner Steve Witkoff got one of the hardest jobs on the planet - "Witkoff has faced a precipitous learning curve, though he seems largely unbothered by the long history of American diplomatic failure in the Middle East, in particular. Like Trump, he is very much the transactionalist, and sees Ayatollah Khamenei and Vladimir Putin, among others, not as cruelly Machiavellian authoritarians captured by deeply felt and deeply antagonistic ideologies, but as clever negotiators, like so many real-estate lawyers he once faced in business, looking for the best possible deal. He appeared to interpret Putin's desire to meet with him not as a display of dominance but as a sign of the Russian leader's sincere interest in peace."

The Cynical Republican Plan to Cut Medicaid: Work requirements set up a thicket of paperwork that leads eligible Medicaid recipients to lose their insurance. That’s the point. - "We know how Medicaid work requirements play out because the policy has been tried at the state level. Arkansas, for example, implemented work requirements in 2018. Researchers found that they utterly failed to encourage more employment among the Medicaid population. The work requirements instead forced Medicaid recipients to navigate endless, complex paperwork demands that many of them couldn't understand or keep track of, causing them to lose their Medicaid eligibility. The bulk of the savings came from denying coverage to eligible Americans, not able-bodied adults who don't want to work."

Reading archive 2024-07-14

Opinion A foreign policy that sees the world: I coined the term “progressive realism.” What does it mean? - "The trouble with Biden’s Manichaean mantra begins with the fact that it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. The sanctioning of autocratic and authoritarian nations naturally drives them into closer linkage with one another, reinforcing the Western perception that they represent a monolithic, ideologically motivated threat, a perception that can then lead to more sanctions, still closer linkage, and so on." [ed. note: Biden didn't corner China into supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine; China has done that all on its own. But otherwise a very comepelling read]

Trump rally shooter Thomas Crooks appears to have acted alone, FBI says: A “rudimentary” explosive device was discovered in his car, but agents see no immediate ideology.

‘BlueAnon’ conspiracy theories flood social media after Trump rally shooting: Researchers who track online conspiracies say liberals are increasingly vulnerable to — and generating — QAnon-like bursts of misinformation. [ed. note: also covers Republican conspiracy theories]

Opinion How Stanford can do away with campus antisemitism: Restoring a culture of tolerance at U.S. universities will require confronting painful realities.

As Gambia weighs end to genital-cutting ban, this girl was cut behind mother’s back: The West African country could become the first in the world to overturn a prohibition on female genital mutilation.