Reading archive 2026-09-01 pt 1

What it’s like to drive a car that runs on sunshine: Test-driving a car coated in solar panels gave me a preview of a future without gas pumps or charging cables.

A Smithsonian museum director departs for the Guggenheim: Melissa Chiu has led the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden since 2014.

Smithsonian, Hirshhorn end ‘Bubble’ project [ed. note: from 2013]

Smithsonian changes course, will put Latino museum in existing building: Regents voted to put the museum in a 145-year-old building instead of constructing a new one, which would require congressional approval.

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?]

Military leaders warn Hegseth against extending Iran war operations: A recent classified assessment advised that prolonged large-scale operations in the Middle East risk weakening U.S. capabilities elsewhere.

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.

Reading archive 2026-08-17

The American Dream comes down to OnlyFans, dodgeball and reality TV: Life, liberty and the pursuit of solvency take a side hustle, as seen on the small screen.

It ‘felt like a Renée Good situation,’ U.S. citizen says after ICE encounter: Video from the Virginia incident, which shows an agent with a gun, has reignited conversations about the aggressiveness of ICE enforcement.

A Wisconsin city spent millions on a grocery store. It didn’t go well.: Madison spent millions to build a supermarket across the street from another one.

Democrats abandon Senate races in deep-red states, boosting independents: Democratic Senate nominees in Nebraska, Idaho and South Dakota dropped out, clearing the way for independents. But Alani Bankhead in Montana declined to join them.

The most common cancer is easy to miss. Here’s what to look for.: One 24-year-old thought her skin cancer was just an acne scar or eczema.

Shooting at VSU leaves 5 injured hours after freshmen welcome event: Police arrested a 19-year-old suspect in the shooting, which occurred around 1:30 a.m. Saturday at Virginia State University.

Navy weighs major warship redesign to match Trump’s preferences: The president wants the new fleet of aircraft carriers to more closely resemble those from World War II. The change could cost billions.

What I learned about the American Dream from Europeans pretending to live in Ohio: The gap between America’s most powerful ideal and the reality of life in the U.S. came into focus watching a few dozen Europeans pretend to be us.

CIA had ‘low confidence’ in Iranian threat before Trump switched planes in Turkey: CIA had doubts about Israeli intelligence on a threat to Trump in Turkey that prompted an extraordinary secret flight.

Why Kansas might elect its first Democratic senator in nearly 100 years: Adam Hamilton wants to bring empathy back to Washington.

Her childhood photo. Thousands of explicit images. One woman’s nightmare.: A Wyoming woman alleges in a federal lawsuit that her stepfather used the Grok chatbot to transform a childhood photo into child sexual abuse material.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Convenient Truth: The Meta CEO has a new message now that his company is losing the AI race.

AOC Knows a Lemon When She Sees One: Francesca Hong’s surprise loss in Wisconsin is a blessing to the Democratic Party.

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.

...

"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."

The Cities That Said Yes to Drugs Policies that gave addicts clean needles and places to use drugs were intended to reduce harm. They created a “zombie apocalypse.”

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 2026-07-28

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.

Reading archive 2026-07-24

A pastor’s lengthy ICE detention leaves his Colorado parishioners torn: Many support President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown but empathize with the man who preached to and led Bible studies with them. - "'When the Trump administration came in and said they were going after criminals, we believed it. And I believe they are, mostly, but this is a glitch,' said the Rev. Ethel LeResche, a deacon at Resurrection, in Greenwood Village, who credits Nalwamba with teaching her to preach via sessions in the parking lot." [ed. note: WRONG]

Metro plans platform screen doors for every Red Line station

Republicans press Smithsonian museum leader in contentious Hill hearings: GOP lawmakers questioned Anthea Hartig on exhibits about gender and sexuality, while Democrats cast the hearings as an assault on independent scholarship. - "Some exchanges highlighted the factual disputes at the heart of the White House report. Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) said he searched the museum for a Declaration of Independence display and could not find one. Hartig said the document appears on a full wall in 'The Price of Freedom,' the museum’s military history exhibit, and in several other places."

5 mosquito-fighting methods that work and 4 that don’t: A mosquito expert shares the bug repellents and solutions for outdoor spaces that she relies on.

Reading archive 2026-07-13

As Trump administration offloads excess federal office space, what takes its place?: Federal real estate officials say the Trump administration’s accelerated push to sell underused federal buildings could reshape Washington and beyond.

D.C.’s highest earners may pay more in taxes under new council proposal: A measure introduced by D.C. Council member Brianne K. Nadeau would add a new tax on investments and other passive income for wealthy residents.

South African protesters go door-to-door forcing immigrants from their homes

Our Oldest Ally: America still needs France. - "American statesmen have always found France an ambivalent ally, but as much because of their own behavior as that of their counterparts. French money underwrote the American Revolution, bankrupting Louis XVI's government and paving the way for their own revolution within a decade of the end of the American war. There were almost as many French troops at Yorktown as Americans, and French-provided weapons, gunpowder, and expertise, not to mention timely French naval power, sealed the American victory. France's reward was vengeance on Great Britain for the defeat of the Seven Years War - and betrayal by Americans willing to cut a separate peace with King George III.

...

"Today's French officials are calmer in their appraisal of the Trump administration than are many of their European counterparts. 'It's because we never really trusted you,' a French diplomat remarked to me with a grin over our breakfast croissants."

Survivors of Iranian attack that killed 6 U.S. troops say generals ignored warnings: The drone strike on Port Shuaiba in Kuwait occurred on the second day of the war. Those who were there say they fear no one will be held accountable. - "But when they arrived in Germany, military medical teams 'had no clue we had injured [personnel] on the flight,' said one of the soldiers. 

"Doctors told them that because the soldiers weren’t recorded on the flight’s manifest as medical evacuees, or listed in the military’s casualty-processing database as seriously injured, the hospital could not admit them, several soldiers said."

‘Widow’s Bay’ became a hit the old-fashioned way: Word of mouth, not the algorithm, turned Apple TV's horror-comedy into appointment viewing.

Nvidia Uses The Specter of Huawei to Make Its Chip Exports Case: Before Nvidia won approval to sell more chips to China, it told the U.S. government that Huawei could have enough chips to satisfy global demand. - "'Huawei simply does not pose a competitive threat to Nvidia globally right now,' says McGuire, formerly a national security official who helped design U.S. chip controls. 'Huawei’s chips are nowhere near as good, and it can’t make nearly enough of them.'

"Ironically, he adds, Nvidia has a lead over Huawei largely because of U.S. export controls on semiconductor manufacturing equipment, the lack of which has degraded China’s ability to make AI chips."

Detained by settlers, US Democrat Ro Khanna now faces pro-Israel attacks: Progressive congressman accuses Israeli military of ‘lying’ after settlers held up his van in the occupied West Bank.

Trump talks tough on Iran and Russia. For now.: Trump’s rhetorical reversals are welcome, but it’s hard to know what to make of them.

Left-wing challengers are beating House Democrats. These incumbents could be next.: Democratic incumbents have struggled against democratic socialists in several primaries this year. For other lawmakers, age has become a campaign issue.

Eating this food regularly could lead to greater longevity: Like it hot? Your heart, gut — and even your lifespan — may benefit.

Before Reflecting Pool, algae contractor had troubled project on a trash-infested river: Greenwater Services, owned by a Trump donor, has received two no-bid contracts from the government since the president returned to office.

Sen. Gary Peters backs Haley Stevens as Democrats brace for Michigan Senate fight: Party leaders are rallying around Stevens in a primary they see as crucial to holding the seat.

‘We’re Fighting Satan’: The War to Save Bees From a Hornet Invasion: As yellow-legged hornets spread through South Carolina’s Lowcountry region, threatening the local honey crop, a state team of bee defenders is racing to the rescue.

Reading archive 2026-07-01

DC's fireworks supershow this year could be a smoke-filled mess: Disrupted views are a common part of the DC fireworks show, even before it gets supersized like in 2026.

Two Teens Shot While Attending Gun Violence Prevention Program: The teens were attending their first day of a six-week violence prevention training in Northeast D.C. as part of the city's summer youth employment program.

Virginia law will put speed-limiting devices on reckless drivers' cars: Proponents of intelligent speed assistance device (ISA) laws include the mother of a 5-year-old who was hit and killed in D.C. The District allows them, and they're coming to Maryland.

D.C. unveils sweeping master plan for Commanders stadium and RFK campus

ICE’s arrest of nun heading to church fuels bipartisan backlash in South Texas: The president’s deportation drive has riled border areas that supported him in 2024, and a GOP congresswoman joined Democrats calling for the sister’s release.

There’s a new way to treat sprains and strains. Hint: Ice is out.: If you think you need rest, ice and ibuprofen, think again.

Beyond Denial How Oil Execs Shaped a Landmark Climate Study - "For a generation, people learning how to address global warming were taught the ideas in the 'Wedges' paper. 

"What they didn’t learn was this: 'Wedges' was significantly shaped by the British oil giant BP — one of the single global entities most responsible for causing climate change."

A False Pretense of Judicial Modesty: The Supreme Court is remaking the law while claiming to preserve the status quo. - "When the Court does overrule precedent, it is a big deal, as in yesterday's decision in Trump v Slaughter. The opinion officially overturned Humphrey's Executor, a 90-year-old case. But the separation-of-powers practice formalized in Humphrey's Executor goes back at least 50 years before the Court decided it. Relying on Humphrey's allowed Congress to build the modern federal government, insulating agencies from the whiplash of electoral politics and channeling bipartisanship, expertise, and continuity into technical policy making. These agencies will now be upended in ways their creators never anticipated. 

"Precedent, of course, is not a magical constraint that produces mechanical results. A better way to think of it, as the philosopher Ronald Dworkin put it, is as a 'gravitational pull' on judicial reasoning. Respecting it grounds judges in traditions larger than themselves and guards against overreach. If following Humphrey's Executor served those values faithfully, its overturning reflects the triumph of something else: faddish theories of the moment-here, the theory of the unitary executive-and the hubris of a Court that thinks it knows best. The Court has replaced the gravitational pull of accumulated wisdom with the gravitational pull of itself."

Ukraine’s Plan to Unnerve Putin: Recent drone attacks in the Moscow area reveal a multifaceted strategy.

Reading archive 2026-06-10

A new wave of anti-immigrant violence hits U.K. as riots convulse Belfast: Attackers torched neighborhoods across Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, after a Sudanese asylum seeker was arrested and accused of stabbing a man.

Restaurants add World Cup service charges, fearing tourists won’t tip: Visitors to U.S. host cities may not know about tipping customs, so operators want to ensure that their workers share in the tournament’s financial benefits.

How to let go of things you don’t use and declutter your life: Hanging on to items that you aren’t actively using contributes to a chaotic existence.

Actually, the SAT Was Necessary After All: University of California faculty are in open revolt over the lack of standardized test scores.

Driving in America Is Headlight Hell: Car bulbs don’t have to be this blinding.

Eat More Deer: America is letting good meat go to waste.

Inside the White House Freakout Over the Epstein Files: The president’s top advisers gathered in a series of Situation Room meetings as they struggled to contain a scandal engulfing Donald Trump himself.

Reading archive 2026-06-03

The National Debt’s Unforgiving Math: If you’re not worried about this country’s fiscal outlook, you’re not paying attention.

Condemning a Nazi Tattoo Shouldn’t Be This Hard: Why aren’t more Democrats calling out Graham Platner? - "Platner has a unique personal story, having reinvented himself from high-born prep-school student to blue-collar oyster farmer, and from willing Marine who talked about wanting to go to war to kill people (and who later worked for a military contractor) to a victim of Collins's vote to authorize the Iraq War. Although Platner is by no means the first politician to reshape his personal narrative during a campaign, he is likely the first to attempt an innocent explanation for having had, for 18 years, a tattoo of a Totenkopf, the insignia of the Schutzstaffel, or SS - the most dedicated and fanatical component of the Third Reich, whose members were the architects and executioners of the Final Solution."

The Spanish Exception: The country’s leaders avoided a populist backlash by engineering an economic boom. Now the boom is creating problems of its own. - "The new arrivals injected life into the Spanish economy. By filling labor shortages, they allowed existing businesses to expand to serve more customers, which, in turn, created the need for even more workers. The migrants were also, of course, consumers, who bought goods and services. Many also started their own businesses. Rather than harming native-born workers, the immigration surge seems to have helped them. The unemployment rate for native-born Spaniards has plummeted while incomes have risen by double digits; the poorest workers experienced the largest increase. A report from the Bank of Spain estimates that a quarter of the rise in the country's per capita GDP from 2022 to 2024 could be attributed to immigrants. "I've been writing about Spain for 50 years at this point, and I've never seen its economy perform quite like this," William Chislett, a senior fellow at the Elcano Royal Institute, in Madrid, told me. 'And there's little doubt in my mind that immigration is the most important factor.'" [ed. note: but housing costs skyrocketed]

D.C. Progressives’ Great Socialist Hope: The bitter contest for Washington’s mayor has replicated the Democrats’ central ideological struggle. - "Her second pledge is to build 72,000 homes in five years. While Lewis George is pledging to liberalize zoning laws and reduce permitting times - a nod to the yes-in-my-backyard urbanism that has gained force among wonky D.C. Democrats - her pledge would be extraordinarily difficult for private developers to deliver amid the deep recession that the D.C. housing market is in. House prices peaked in May 2021. Since then, they have fallen 26 percent in inflation-adjusted terms, making investments in new-home construction less likely to pay off. 

"'A couple of years from now, we're looking at almost no housing production going forward,' Emilia Calma, the director of housing studies at the D.C. Policy Center, told me. Calma attributed the problem to high interest rates, high rates of rent nonpayment, and an extremely slow eviction process. D.C. has also just come off an incredible construction boom: From 2019 to 2026, the District added 45,000 new homes. As a result, real rental prices dropped by nearly 11 percent (even as rents rose across the country). Already discouraged developers will not exactly be lured back by the new tenant protections and expanded rent-stabilization laws that Lewis George is proposing."

Democrats Must Learn to Talk Sports: Politicians need as much attention as possible, as frequently as possible, while seeming as relatable as possible. A cheat code exists to hit all three objectives. - "Indeed, the sports world offers fertile terrain for class politics. Progressive Democrats have been trying, with limited success, to convince Americans that billionaires are their true enemy. Well, guess who loves to hate billionaires: aggrieved sports fans. Why not take a break from complaining that billionaires don't pay their fair share of income taxes to focus instead on team owners' obsession with avoiding the luxury tax by trading away their best players? Perhaps AOC could earn some support in Staten Island if she hammered Hal Steinbrenner, the owner of the New York Yankees, for letting Juan Soto go to the crosstown Mets to save on his tax bill."

The Ordinary Miracle of Existing: Being alive at all is the most extraordinary stroke of good luck any of us will ever experience. - "Being alive at all is the most extraordinary stroke of good luck we will ever experience. Yet it is the easiest to overlook, to take for granted. We wake up in the morning, have our coffee, make breakfast, send the kids off to school, go to our jobs, move through our routines, worry about deadlines, check off items on our to-do list. And we forget that beneath all of it lies something profoundly rare: existence itself. The simple fact that we are here, conscious and aware, is so unlikely that it borders on the miraculous. Because we experience that miracle every day, we treat it as ordinary, even guaranteed, mostly unnoticed at all. We postpone joy, assuming there will always be more time. We don't see the beauty in small moments. We simply go about the business of life, without taking a second to notice life itself. In making this comment, I am aware that in the time-driven, frantic pace of our world today, many people do not have the luxury of pausing to take stock of such moments."

Reading archive 2026-05-04

The quest to save Outer Banks homes

Poisonous black rain falls in Russia as Ukraine strikes oil facilities: Residents of Tuapse, on the Black Sea, complained of an inadequate government response and coverup of what they say is a huge environmental and health disaster.

Iran fires on U.S. ships in Strait of Hormuz, in threat to ceasefire: The attacks followed the passage of U.S. warships and merchant vessels through the waterway despite Iran’s threats against attempts to “interfere” in the strait.

The fall of an African nation shows what Putin’s promises are worth: Jihadists are kicking Russia out of Mali. The U.S. should move in.

Bethesda bakery owner loses nearly $25,000 in phone spoofing scam, warns other small businesses: Susan Limb says she had no idea a phone number could be spoofed to look exactly like her bank's phone number.

A GOP lawmaker supported an immigration crackdown. Her husband paid a price.: The situation cost Idaho state Sen. Glenneda Zuiderveld and her husband most of their income and highlights an escalating split in the party.

The secret to making chores so fun that you look forward to them: Strategies such as a points system, timed challenges and even “the poop rule” can lend some excitement to mundane tasks such as decluttering or mopping the floor.

An island depends on him to run the ferry. Who will do it after Terry?: Terry Laird, following in the footsteps of his father and uncle, has spent his adult life keeping the people who live on a tiny Chesapeake Bay island connected.

About pain and other ailments: "What wound did ever heal but by degrees?" - Othello (William Shakespeare)

Reading archive 2026-04-29

An ingenious way to sidestep the dismal Senate filibuster: Restrain the president, revive Congress, honor Madisonian principles. What’s not to like? - "Today’s Senate Republicans are mostly oblivious of — or, worse, indifferent about — how they appear. In 2024, they solemnly warned that if they did not win control of the Senate, 2025-2026, Democrats would degrade it by abolishing the filibuster. In 2025, however, Senate Republicans, in lockstep with House Republicans, crammed most of the president’s agenda into a single bill that they passed on a party-line vote using the parliamentary maneuver called “reconciliation,” which prevents a bill from being filibustered."

Colombians are divided over the fate of hippos linked to Pablo Escobar

The great Black GOP exit from Congress: Republicans squandered Trump’s gains with African Americans in 2024.

Alleged gunman at correspondents’ dinner led Christian group in college: Ex-classmates who knew Cole Tomas Allen, 31, at the California Institute of Technology say they were shocked by a message in which he appeared to use biblical teachings to justify violence.

So Nobody Is Going to Pay Taxes Now?: America actually needs a tax base. - "While tinkering with marginal rates, Democrats have threaded deductions, credits, and exemptions into the tax code, engaging in 'submerged' policy making, as Cornell's Suzanne Mettler describes it. Tax expenditures are easier for Congress to pass than spending programs, and they're easier to target at low-income households. Still, Americans don't really understand these policies. Two in three claimants of the home-mortgage-interest deduction say it doesn't do much for them. (The deduction can reduce a family's tax bill by as much as $15,000 a year.) Two in three people with a 529 college savings plan believe that they have never used a government program. The more tax breaks a person receives, the less likely they are to report that Uncle Sam has improved their quality of life, Mettler has found. Yet such initiatives cost the government hundreds of billions of dollars.

...

"Wages for hourly employees have crawled, while the paychecks of investors and executives have soared. At the same time, the wealth of investors and executives has skyrocketed, with the taxman scarcely tapping these fortunes at all. As the law professor Ray Madoff has observed, Amazon has paid Jeff Bezos a salary of roughly $82,000 a year since the late 1990s, 'low enough to make him eligible to claim the child tax credit (which he did!).' From 2014 to 2018, his net worth climbed by $99 billion, just 0.98 percent of which went to public coffers, whereas many middle-class families fork over 25 percent of their earnings. Plus, again, the cost of living has become brutally high. Even households making six figures are struggling to afford child care, rent, groceries, health insurance, summer camp, and student-loan debt."

A Mediocre Public-School Education for Just $40,000 a Pupil: How New York City’s education budget became an untouchable money pit - "As New York City becomes more expensive to live in, fewer families with children live there. The education budget nonetheless continues to go up, hurting taxpayers and diverting funds from other important services. This makes the city even more expensive to live in, and leaves young families even more squeezed, causing even fewer children to live there. The situation stems from the commendable liberal impulse to devote extensive resources to public education. But what's the point of public education without a public to educate?"

Anthropic’s Little Brother: OpenAI is racing to catch up to its greatest rival.

Why Did Trump Pardon the Former Honduran President? Follow the Tech Bros.: With Roger Stone taking a victory lap for having come up with the idea in the first place.

Untangling the Issue of Circling Roots

Physiology and root development of container-grown urban trees in response to root-shaving, root-washing, and root-slicing at planting - "Among the root modifications examined, root-shaving provided the optimal combination of improved root development while minimizing adverse effects to tree stress and crown dieback. Moreover, our results suggest that trees that are historically known to be difficult to transplant as bare-root stock are poor candidates for extreme root disturbance procedures such as root-washing when produced as container-grown trees."

What Would a Fiscal Crisis Look Like? - "Already, the U.S. is facing consequences from excessive debt. Excessive borrowing was a key driver of the recent surge in inflation and subsequent rise in interest rates, and real incomes are lower today than they otherwise would be as a result of the “crowd out” of past investment. Meanwhile, the cost of interest on the debt grew to roughly $1 trillion last year, which is more than the federal government spent on defense and about as much as it spent on Medicare. These high interest payments leave fewer resources for new spending initiatives and tax cuts. And with debt at 100% of GDP, the U.S. has less fiscal space than any time in history in case of another war, pandemic, or recession. A fiscal crisis would substantially worsen most or all of the costs of debt."

Cato Study: Immigrants Reduced Deficits by $14.5 Trillion Since 1994 - "The best way to balance the budget is to reduce spending—particularly on wealthy retirees—but rather than hinder our efforts to control deficits, immigrants are helping."

Global Trade Is Leaving the US Behind: The US’s retreat from the global economy is likely to make America less influential, less resilient, less secure, and poorer over the long term, as economic integration deepens elsewhere and other governments set new standards in trade agreements.

More Photos Emerge of Meals on Navy Ships As Pentagon Denies Shortages

This Scammer Used an AI-Generated MAGA Girl to Grift ‘Super Dumb’ Men: A med student says he’s made thousands of dollars selling photos and videos of a young conservative woman he created using generative tools. He’s not alone.

Is the tide turning for Ukraine in war with Russia?: With the EU approving a €90bn loan for Ukraine, a surprise visit from Prince Harry, and data suggesting Russian troops made almost no territorial gains in March – are there reasons for optimism in Kyiv?

Iran caused more extensive damage to U.S. military bases than publicly known: U.S. bases and equipment across the Middle East came under attack — including from an Iranian F-5, despite American air defenses — and repairs could cost billions of dollars.

They Were Michael Jackson's 'Second Family.' Now They Say He Abused Them.: The Cascio siblings are suing Mr. Jackson's estate after standing by him for years as he faced accusations of child molestation.

Farmers are bleeding money under Trump —but are doubling down on their support anyway

Reading archive 2026-04-27

Trump officials hire ‘deportation judges’ with less training, experience: The president is remaking courts to clear a backlog of asylum cases. Hires include an attorney for Jan. 6 rioters and a lawyer who championed Minneapolis ICE raids. - "Asylum rejections more than doubled to 82,371 last fiscal year, which ran from Oct. 1, 2024 to Sept. 30, 2025. The percentage of asylum cases granted by judges plummeted to less than 5 percent in February, compared with 48 percent in the same month in 2024 under Biden, according to TRAC."

Trump steps up a campaign against teaching English to immigrant kids The administration plans to dissolve the office that supports English instruction. - "Regardless of your opinion on illegal immigration, it’s a good idea to help these kids become as proficient in English as possible. Particularly if you support President Donald Trump’s executive order designating English 'the official language of the United States.'" [ed. note: from Jim Geraghty of the National Review]

Mood in Russia turns bleak as war in Ukraine drags on and economy suffers: With the war in its fifth year, talks stalled and sanctions biting deeper, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ratings are falling and citizens are voicing despair.

Idaho lawmakers, deadlocked over ‘rat apocalypse,’ blame city transplants: Lawmakers have spent hours debating a surge in rodents menacing Boise-area gardens and kitchens and threatening agriculture and public health.

Trump’s idea to ‘just buy’ bankrupt Spirit Airlines draws GOP backlash: The president said this week that bailing out the airline would save jobs, but his administration is divided.

The Trump-class battleships are a waste of time and money: The firing of Navy Secretary John Phelan reflects Pentagon tensions. - "It’s unfortunate that the administration is misallocating so many defense resources because U.S. defense needs are urgent — and deserve more funding, if not necessarily 50 percent more."

Democrats are closer than you think to upending the electoral college: The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact going into effect is suddenly plausible.

D.C. aims to counter rise in domestic violence amid spate of high-profile cases: Mayor Muriel Bowser and U.S. Attorney Janine Pirro introduced a bill that would boost penalties as women are more likely to experience domestic abuse in D.C. than in any state. - "Experts point to massive amounts of job loss in the region — D.C. has had the highest unemployment rate in the country for months, according to federal data. Intensifying federal immigration enforcement that has contributed to a climate of fear and stress in immigrant communities has also been a factor, with prevalence of guns in the city making matters worse for those already living with abuse."

Walking near a D.C. school raises the chance of being hit by a car, data shows: A Washington Post analysis of accident data shows pedestrians near schools are 24 percent more likely to be hit than elsewhere in the city. - "'We want safe streets across the District of Columbia,' McDuffie said during a recent interview with the 'Dream City' podcast. 

"But, he said, he would eliminate 'predatory' traffic cameras in some lower-income areas that lead to repetitive fines levied against local residents.'"

‘Michael’ Is a Vain Account of the Man in the Mirror: After an overlooked legal settlement spurred extensive reshoots, the new Michael Jackson biopic’s selective memory adheres to its subject’s self-mythologizing

Theft Is Now Progressive Chic: In some left-wing corners of the commentariat, moral rectitude is out. Flagrant disregard of the social contract is in.

Israel Could Have What It Most Wants in Lebanon: It just has to give up territorial ambitions and work with the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah.

Texans Will Decide if Jesus Was a Lefty: James Talarico is trying to sell a novel brand of Christian politics in a deep-red state.

How Netanyahu Hurt America’s Jews: The Israeli prime minister’s focus is, as always, on himself and his near-term political needs. The plight of American Jews is simply not his concern. - "Beyond Netanyahu's overt interference in American politics, he's also impeded repeated U.S. diplomatic efforts to resolve the Israel-Palestine question. Although Israeli recalcitrance on moving toward a viable two-state solution has often been matched or exceeded by the Palestinian Authority, there is no question that Netanyahu's continued support for expanding settlements in the West Bank and his lack of serious engagement in peace talks have further alienated Democrats. In the past, even when Israeli leaders disagreed with the United States, they would try to avoid open provocations. Bibi, it seems, goes out of his way to frustrate the U.S. Not surprisingly, every Democratic president who has dealt with Netanyahu directly-Clinton, Obama, Biden-appears to loathe him."

The Iran Talks Are Making India Feel Small: Modi styled himself a global leader but can’t seem to get ahead of events in the Middle East.

Reading archive 2026-04-06

Don’t Mess With the Housewives of Ukraine: My interview with a tank maker provoked fury and memes—including from Zelensky.

How the Left Accidentally Bolstered the Nativist Right: By dismissing the distinction between legal and illegal immigration as bogus, advocates signaled that they would not defend it. - "In his book, The Normalization of the Radical Right, the political scientist Vicente Valentim shows that much of the recent rise in radical-right political behavior reflects not a change in what people believe, but a change in what they feel comfortable expressing. When norms weaken, often after radical-right politicians achieve electoral success, privately held views long kept quiet become publicly acceptable. Valentim's work focuses on Europe, but his analysis applies to America too. Over the past two decades, voters with restrictionist views have sorted into the GOP, making those preferences louder within the party. President Trump did not create this constituency, but he recognized and catered to it more than any modern president before him had. Each taboo he shattered around immigration made it easier for him and his supporters to transgress even more.

"And so, in Trump's second term, under Stephen Miller's newfound influence, the obliteration of the legal/illegal distinction has been formalized much more strongly into policy. The result: an administration now openly attacking legal immigration channels, including by targeting asylum and skilled-worker visas and implementing a visa freeze covering 75 countries. Like so much of the Trump agenda, these attacks are not broadly popular-in fact, polling suggests that support for legal immigration has never been higher-but they appeal to a small though intense nativist minority that no longer feels constrained and that makes up an important part of Trump's core coalition."

The Intellectual Right Is Mad at the Mess It’s Made: Conservatives are criticizing influencers for going too far. - "Bookish conservatives are fond of the tale of Buckley banishing the John Birch Society to the fringes. But that's not the whole story. Buckley walked a fine line, publicly criticizing Welch while otherwise trying not to alienate the society's rank and file, the historian Matthew Dallek argues in his 2023 book, Birchers. Buckley's gripes were more about the group's style and its leaders than its ideology. Birchers were widely derided for being racist and conspiratorial. But Buckley, the genteel conservative, was broadly in alignment with some of the group's views, calling white people "the advanced race" in a 1957 editorial in National Review, supporting Jim Crow segregation, and writing a book defending the Red-baiting propagandist Senator Joseph McCarthy."

Hitler’s Edifice Complex: He was obsessed with adding an expensive new wing to the Reich chancellery, part of his grandiose architectural ambitions for the nation’s capital.

Alleged D.C. pipe bomber might adopt debunked conspiracy theory as defense: Prosecutors said Brian Cole Jr.'s attorneys should be held in contempt for revealing the home address of a former Capitol Police officer who was ruled out as the suspect. - "During the first two hours of his FBI interview in December, the 30-year-old Cole denied placing the pipe bombs and said he was a Trump supporter. After being told that lying to federal agents could be charged as an additional crime, Cole admitted that he planted the bombs out of frustration with both parties and 'denied that his actions were directed toward Congress or related to the proceedings scheduled to take place on January 6,' prosecutors said."

MPD arrests 8 juveniles after multiple fights break out in Southwest

DC student hospitalized after group stomps him, steals Louis Vuitton shoes

Chinese firms market Iran war intelligence ‘exposing’ U.S. forces: The private companies — some with ties to the military — are marketing detailed intelligence on movements of U.S. forces, even as Beijing seeks to keep its distance.

Three men charged with murdering D.C. woman who went missing in 2023: Chyna Crawford, 25, is believed to have been kidnapped before she was killed. Authorities say the new indictments bring the total number of suspects to five.

Metrobus slams into D.C. restaurant, injuring 3 people: Photos showed the bus halfway inside the Balkan restaurant Ambar.

Never subsidize a sports stadium. And definitely not like this.: Jacksonville taxpayers are getting fleeced.

Their tiny church is on the cover of JD Vance’s new book. They don’t know him.: The members of a Methodist church in rural Virginia are excited — if a little confused — that the vice president’s memoir of his path to Catholicism has put them in the spotlight.

On the problem of landscape tarp: How carpeting your soil in plastic sheeting became an industry standard—and why it needs to stop.

Reading archive 2026-03-27

How Reverse Game Theory Could Solve The Housing Shortage: Our hardest problems — from housing shortages to climate retreat to democratic trust and technology — aren’t failures of politics; they’re failures of incentives.  "This is the promise of mechanism design: It suggests our hardest problems — from housing shortages to climate retreat to democratic trust and technology — won’t be solved by better attitudes or more flexible positions. They will be solved by better architectures, by structures that treat division not as an obstacle to eliminate but as material to consider when building." [ed. note: mechanism design; Transferable Development Rights]

Where Are All the Campus Protests?: Two years ago, students occupied buildings and colonized the quad. Now the same places are strangely silent.

The Deep Risk That Republican Hawks Overlooked: If the Iran war goes badly, the isolationist, anti-Israel wing of the party is likely to steer the GOP’s future. - "Trump has held [America First and Neocons] in place through personalist rule. Anybody who supports Trump - however disreputable or criminal they might be - can be in the party, nobody in the party can oppose Trump, and the party's platform consists of whatever Trump has said at any given moment, even if it contradicts what he claimed to stand for yesterday. The holdover Republicans who have remained attached to the party's old identity (hawkish, pro-Israel, anti-Russia, opposed to anti-Semitism) have squabbled with its newer entrants. But those disputes could be settled by Trump, who has repeatedly declared, 'I am MAGA.'"

Infamous DC squatter sues homeowner, claims $500K in designer goods are missing

US newspaper circulations 2025: Washington Post print declines 21% in a year: Some 24 out of top 25 US newspapers saw print circulation decline in 2025.

Education Department headquarters will relocate as part of Trump’s dismantling

What gladiatorial politics will bury in the midterms: Never underestimate the Democrats’ ability to make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse. - "Trump, himself a highly caffeinated creature, has been caffeine for the electorate: a stimulant, who in 2024 upended the axiom that higher voter turnout is better for Democrats. Last spring, David Shor, a data scientist, calculated that if more people had voted, Kamala Harris would have fared even worse. Trump would have won the popular vote by almost five points instead of 1.4 points, and in doing so would have won five states he lost (Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Virginia). The electoral vote outcome would have been 355-183 instead of 312-226."

FBI probe of 2020 election count in Georgia faces crucial court hearing: A federal judge Friday will consider Fulton County’s request for the return of thousands of ballots seized by President Donald Trump’s Justice Department.

House Democrat violated ethics rules, panel finds, putting her seat in jeopardy: The Ethics Committee panel cited a years-long inquiry into whether Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick misused covid pandemic money. She has maintained her innocence. - "The Justice Department brought its charges against Cherfilus-McCormick and several others, including her brother and tax preparer, in November, concluding an investigation that began during the Biden administration."

U.S. uses hundreds of Tomahawk missiles on Iran, alarming some at Pentagon: More than 850 have been fired in just four weeks, people familiar with the matter said, raising concerns about the weapon’s limited supply.

Is The End of NATO Near?: The alliance has been battered by Trump’s threats.

A Turning Point in the Iran War: The president is discovering the high stakes of an escalation that damages energy facilities.

The Countdown to a Ground War: The president wants to avoid a long, messy entanglement, but all of the ground options promise to be just that.

The Immigration Restriction Trump Won’t Try: Focusing enforcement on employers might be the easiest choice in immigration policy—after all the hard ones are made. - "For these reasons, the Democrats proposing employer-focused enforcement all offer the same important caveat: Yes to E-Verify, but only after most of the undocumented people already in the country are given a path to legal status. 'Once we have immigration reform,' Gallego told me, 'and once we have actually legalized' most undocumented immigrants without a criminal record, then strict enforcement of E-Verify is the natural next step. Last August, the New Democrat Coalition, a caucus of 115 congresspeople, released an immigration plan embodying the same logic. It proposes beefing up border security, creating new visa categories and expanding existing ones, giving Dreamers a path to citizenship, and granting legal status to noncriminal undocumented immigrants who arrived more than five years ago and pay a fine."

Welcome to a Multidimensional Economic Disaster: The AI boom wasn’t built for the polycrisis. - "The way the money moves is concerning, but so is the AI industry's underlying business model. At every layer, the technology appears to decrease the value of its assets. The advanced AI chips that make up the majority of the cost of a data center? Their value rapidly decreases as they are superseded by the next generation of chips, meaning that the ultimate backstop for all of the data-center debt - selling the data center itself - is not actually a backstop. The way that AI companies make money when people use their products is also deflationary. OpenAI, Anthropic, and others charge users for using 'tokens,' the components of words processed by their bots. This means that tokens are an industrial commodity akin to, say, crude oil or steel. But unlike other commodities, the cost of each token is rapidly decreasing owing to advancements in AI's capabilities. Kedrosky called this 'a death spiral to zero.' As the value of a token plummets, the value of what data centers can produce also falls.

...

"Even if Iran and the Strait of Hormuz don't directly trigger an AI-driven financial crisis, the odds are decent that another vector could. (Remember tariffs?) Energy prices could stay elevated for years, because the targeted fossil-fuel facilities in the Persian Gulf will take a long time to restore. As the U.S. directs huge amounts of attention and military resources toward Iran, it's easy to imagine China launching an invasion of Taiwan - a scenario that terrifies Silicon Valley, because it would halt the production of chips needed to train frontier models. That's not even considering the single Dutch company that makes the high-tech lithography machines used to print virtually all AI chips, or the German company that makes the mirrors used in those machines. 'There are too many ways for it to fail for it not to fail,' Kedrosky said of the AI industry's web of risk. 'All you can say for sure is this is a fragile and overdetermined system that must break, so it will.'"

OpenAI Is Doing Everything … Poorly: The company’s sudden decision to pull the plug on Sora is a sign of deeper trouble.

What Was Clavicular?: The internet’s most famous looks-maxxer is far more pernicious than he may seem.

Reading archive 2026-02-24

FBI Director Kash Patel defends partying with U.S. Olympic ice hockey team: Videos of Patel celebrating in Italy went viral Sunday night, prompting criticism and questions about his judgment during a critical time for the FBI.

GOP lawmaker quietly questioned ‘disturbing’ East Wing demolition: Rep. Michael Turner, co-chair of the congressional Historic Preservation Caucus, wrote to a top White House aide about his “substantial concerns” as party leaders publicly backed Trump’s decision.

He made a fake ICE deportation tip line. Then a kindergarten teacher called.: A Nashville comedian’s deportation hotline, set up as a joke, has gone viral among viewers who say it shows the “banality of evil personified.”

Ex-ICE instructor testifies that agency slashed officer training, lied to Congress" A former instructor for Immigration and Customs Enforcement told congressional Democrats the agency has cut “vital classes” from mandatory training for recruits.

High-End Construction Really Does Help Everyone: A new rung at the top of the housing ladder permits people lower down to climb up.

Reading archive 2026-02-19

Europe and Canada Are Like the Kids in an Ugly Divorce: Europe and Canada seek “strategic balance” between Washington and Beijing but often just get caught in the middle. - "'We are being bombarded with complaints, grievances, tariffs, more tariffs,' Giles Gherson, president and CEO of the Toronto Region Board of Trade, Canada's largest chamber of commerce, told us. 'As soon as the concessions are made and they're pocketed, new demands show up-and relentlessly.'"

When politics comes to the parenting group chat: A parents’ group tried to establish boundaries for discussion on their WhatsApp chat. It led to a schism. - "What happened in Peanuts, it seems, is not unique. Neighborhood group chats are, in some ways, like all social media, where all roads lead to the proverbial comments section. In 2023, Mother Jones reported on a parent group in liberal Ann Arbor, Michigan, that spiraled out of control after commentary about Gaza. Moderators of that group decided to ban all posts about Israel and Palestine to keep the peace. New York Magazine reported that a parent Facebook group on New York’s Upper East Side 'devolved into panic and infighting' after Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor."

The Atlantic’s essay about measles was gut-wrenching. Some readers feel deceived.: Some critics and physicians said Elizabeth Bruenig’s second-person account of a mother confronting a child’s death from measles felt misleading once they learned the story was reported fiction.

"Enormous structures tend to be built to last. Airport terminals are usually the reverse": Greater effort must be made to retain decommissioned airport terminal buildings, writes Anthony Paletta.

Trump Action Tracker: Documenting the actions, statements, and plans of President Trump and his administration that echo those of authoritarian regimes and may pose a threat to American democracy, since January 2025.

The Cult Deprogrammer Who Needed Deprogramming: For 20 years Rick Ross was in a ‘cult’ of his own. “I’ll tell you what kind of person joins a cult,” he says. “Every kind.”

The man who saves people from the world’s most dangerous cults: ‘Deprogrammer’ Rick Ross shares the lessons learnt from a career spent reuniting families with loved ones lost to destructive sects

I was raised in a cult that groomed me into a chess prodigy. I used it to escape: Danny Rensch was born into a life of indoctrination. But as ‘the Collective’ loosened its grip, he advanced

'Just push us into the sea': The frustration of an area failed by politics - "Pat, 64, says the village has been left to 'disintegrate' and believes the role of the EU was misunderstood. 'Everybody thought the EU was about people coming into the country. They didn't portray what benefits we were having.' 

"Denise sees investment in other nearby towns, like Seaham, and feels aggrieved that it hasn't been replicated in Horden. Her vote lies firmly with Reform UK. Brexit has failed due to the way it's been enacted, she says, and it's time to turn back to Nigel Farage."

A ‘smut renaissance’ has arrived: The success of “Ember and Ice,” starring Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams from “Heated Rivalry,” underscores the growing popularity of audio erotica.

Democrats revive a once-taboo idea: Capping grocery prices: Economists hate the idea of price controls. Democrats are exploring how they can address high food costs that have frustrated voters.

After leaving WHO, Trump officials propose more expensive replacement to duplicate it: HHS proposes spending $2 billion a year to re-create systems the U.S. accessed through the WHO at a fraction of the cost, according to officials briefed on the matter.

Inside the Hidden Network of Resistance in Minneapolis: Waves of federal agents forced countless Minnesota residents into hiding. Countless more responded with a movement unlike any other. A deeper look reveals the heartbeat of resistance—and the soul of the city.

5% of People Detained By ICE Have Violent Convictions, 73% No Convictions

Reading archive 2026-02-11

The New Laser That Can Take Down Aircraft: Russian strikes have forced Ukraine to build high-tech air defense on the cheap.

Dad unlawfully killed daughter in Texas shooting, coroner rules

Nate Silver Is Making This Up as He Goes: Once a principled data journalist, the FiveThirtyEight founder has revealed himself as just another hack spouting off on social media. [ed. note: from 2019]

Jeffrey Epstein Introduced Melania to Donald Trump, New Bombshell FBI Files Claim

Kremlin and Kazakhstan Both Have Kompromat on Trump, Says Ex-KGB Spy Chief: The ex-KGB official and Kazakh spy chief who claimed Donald Trump had been recruited by the KGB on his watch now says that Kazakhstan tried to used kompromat videos to blackmail Trump.

Trump’s family is embroiled in a $500m UAE scandal. We’ve hardly noticed: A crypto startup founded by Trump’s family signed a huge deal with the UAE president’s brother. Where’s the political fallout? - "Two weeks after MGX’s $2bn investment in the Trump family’s crypto firm, the Trump administration allowed the UAE to buy hundreds of thousands of advanced computer chips critical for AI development. The chips are made by US companies, especially Nvidia, and the Biden administration had restricted how many chips certain foreign countries can buy to prevent the technology from being misused. But Trump scrapped those restrictions."

The case for keeping your garden dark at night: Outdoor lighting is having an outsize impact on the flora and fauna that share our habitats.

Inside the Kennedy Center’s scorched-earth Washington National Opera split: How an opera leader plotted a path to leave the legendary arts center after the Trump takeover alienated audiences.

She bounced a $25 check in 2014. ICE tried to deport her.: A Missouri grandma and lawful resident spent months in detention for a decade-old misdemeanor, underscoring the massive scope of the administration’s deportation efforts. - "When Donna was detained, Jim wrote to every member of Missouri’s congressional delegation. He struck out, but then help came from an unexpected place: Rep. Seth Magaziner, a Democrat who represents Rhode Island. Magaziner brought Jim to Washington to speak at a panel on Trump’s immigration crackdown. At the event, Jim was asked why he had voted for Trump. He paused. 'Because I was an idiot,' he answered."

Amtrak’s new trains are arriving soon. Here’s what to expect.: Upgrades mean no more fighting for power with your neighbor or touching icky bathroom handles.