Live coverage: SpaceX to launch 100th orbital mission of 2026

A Falcon 9 rocket stands poised to launch from the Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. File Photo: SpaceX

SpaceX will launch its 100th orbital mission of the year when it performs an overnight flight from Vandenberg Space Force Base shortly after midnight.

The Starlink 15-20 mission will add another 29 broadband internet satellites to the company’s megaconstellation in low Earth orbit. SpaceX founder Elon Musk confirmed on Friday that it now has more than 11,000 Starlink satellites in orbit.

Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4 East is scheduled for 12:25 a.m. PDT (3:25 a.m. EDT / 0725 UTC). The rocket will fly on a south-easterly trajectory upon leaving the pad.

Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about 30 minutes prior to liftoff.

SpaceX will launch this mission using the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail number B1100. This will be its ninth flight after previously launching the NROL-105 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office as well as seven batches of Starlink satellites.

Nearly 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1100 will target a landing on the droneship, Of Course I Still Love You, positioned in the Pacific Ocean. If successful, it will be the 220th landing on this vessel and the 653rd Falcon booster landing to date.

This brew, at least, is from Ashburn, Virginia

Alpha Ox – Old Ox Brewery | Washington DC Brewery in Ashburn, VA

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Europe cancels planned upgrades for Ariane 6 rocket

In the two years since it made a largely successful debut, Europe's Ariane 6 rocket has launched eight missions, all of which reached orbit safely.

The large, expendable rocket has a capacity of more than 20 metric tons to low-Earth orbit. And to the credit of European rocket scientists and planners, the Ariane 6 has had a substantially smoother rollout than comparable vehicles in the United States—Blue Origin's New Glenn and United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rockets—both of which have had significant growing pains.

However, even though the Ariane 6 rocket has had a successful debut, its future is clouded by high costs.

Read full article

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Friday assorted links

1. Profile of Julian Gough and his evolutionary cosmology.  And the Substack version.

2. New Spanish-language edition of Bioy Casares on Borges coming out.  The older edition was, among other things, too heavy to lug around or bring on a trip.

3. The market for data is the market of the future.

4. If Uzbekistan were excluded, the damages would look similar to earlier work.

5. James Broughel on capitalizing AI agents.  And more on the same.

6. How calibrated are Kalshi prediction markets?

The post Friday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

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Why shaming people about AI slop isn’t enough to stop Big AI

These days, the conversation in tech and business, and in a lot of society, is still all AI, all the time. And one of the most fundamental questions boils down to: How do you get people to change what they’re doing in regard to AI? For people who (understandably) have moral or ethical objections to the many harms caused by Big AI, there’s the challenge of how to drive action while lacking the resources and capital of the tech tycoons who’ve driven the broad cultural push towards AI adoption.

As a result of the power differential between those pushing AI and those fighting its advances, the typical rhetorical tactic for AI critics has been to try to attach stigma to the use of AI, and to the outputs of AI systems. There is also little cultural discussion, or even mention, of alternative offerings that aren’t from the Big AI companies, so the entire narrative is framed as either using the most harmful, exploitative, damaging AI tools from the likes of OpenAI, or using nothing at all.

And for the most part, this has been pretty effective for people who have any taste or sense of culture. If you’re a creator, or engaged in creative culture, you probably either can’t stand the AI aesthetic, or feel betrayed when you find out something that was appealing to you was AI-generated or made by someone who used generative AI to create it. The only creative discipline that’s broadly an exception to this is coding, where for the most part people don’t have as many aesthetic objections, but even there, people pretty stridently object to the slop aesthetic in user interfaces and other human-facing aspects.

There are, of course, diehard cohorts of AI advocates who insist that they love the AI aesthetic and don’t mind the hyper-real look to what these systems output, but the mainstream discourse in the arts, design and creative disciplines reached a consensus some time ago, and it’s fairly stringently enforced amongst fan communities.

But shame isn’t an effective strategy for stopping the advance of Big AI as a force in society. I’ve said before that scolding people out of using these tools hasn’t worked and isn’t going to work. What I want to get at here is why it structurally can’t work — and what has to replace it.

Shame is already priced in

I wish shame and stigma were more effective ways of driving or changing behavior in society in general. It has been a project in many social circles over the last 15 years or so to remove shame as a social curb on bad behaviors, and this has largely succeeded; this is why we see the richest man in the world monetizing accounts that share child sexual abuse material on his social network, and the president of the United States having been found liable for sexual abuse, and no one holds these men to account, or is even unwilling to be seen with them. Having grown up fluent in an Asian culture, I’m well aware of how shame can shape entire communities’ functions and norms.

But in the particular case of how new technologies shape society, trying to use shame to drive behavior change isn’t an economically effective tool for curtailing the impact of bad actors. During the rise of the social networks, when we first started seeing the kinds of harms that they could cause, many activists and academics who wanted to champion alternative approaches tried to shame people out of using the then-dominant platforms. That stigma persists — you still see people today who are half-embarrassed when they talk about how they’re “still” on Facebook. But they are on Facebook.

People being embarrassed or ashamed while still using the technology does not bother the authoritarian owners of those platforms in the least, as long as they’re profiting off of those ashamed users.

That pattern repeated with the gig economy. Though the #DeleteUber movement early in the first Trump administration was briefly very effective at scaring Uber’s leadership, they quickly adapted to the criticisms people had, and most people have forgotten they were ever supposed to be angry in the first place. They knew they could weather the brief shame or stigma that was attached to using the app.

In short, the venture capitalists and CEOs of Silicon Valley have priced the costs of shame into their business plans. It may make creative communities feel good to shame people about using AI (and maybe that has some purposes for social cohesion amongst those groups), but it rarely stops people from using the platforms at all — it just makes them quieter about it.

Whenever I say this on social media, a bunch of really angry folks come into my mentions and say “you love AI and slop and why don’t you go give Sam Altman a hug” even though my bona fides of criticizing these tech tycoons go back to when the angry people were still in diapers. But I don’t fault people for having spare reservoirs of rage aimed at the harms that the authoritarian billionaires have done to their world; I just want them to aim their rage more effectively.

Are we being effective?

We have to care more about being effective than we care about being “right”. We have to care more about power and actually winning than we care about merely dunking on people. (And I mean, dunking on people is fun! It just can’t be the only thing. And it doesn’t win any converts.) I wish we would learn one goddamn lesson from our failures to stop the last several waves of tech adoption, where we’ve just kept repeating the same failing patterns, preaching to the choir with our platitudes while regular people all get fed into the insatiable user acquisition maw of big tech, social stigma be damned.

I’m lucky enough to be the kind of NYC policy nerd who saw Zohran Mamdani’s first campaign video when it came out, right after Donald Trump won a second term. It’s worth a re-watch, but in short, what he does is go to the Bronx and engage with folks in one of the areas of the city that swung hardest toward Trump during the election. And he just starts asking people what they care about, why they voted that way. One of the most remarkable things about the video is, Mamdani doesn’t argue with anybody, he just listens, and then he asks them if their life would be better if their rent were frozen, if buses were free, if childcare were affordable. Perhaps most relevant to this point, he doesn’t shame them, even though they had very obviously made a devastatingly self-defeating choice. He gave them an affirmative alternative to move toward, and in doing so, empowered both those people and himself to do something better.

This is the kind of solution that most AI critics are not allowing for right now when they only picture a shame-based corrective to individual people’s use of AI. It is possible to build human-centric, empowering tools and platforms that are owned by the people instead of by billionaire tycoons, that are responsible about the environment and with people’s data and privacy, that are accountable to the communities that they serve. If we engaged every person who made some AI slop and said, “would you rather have tools that help you make something amazing, and brought you into a community of creators?” I don’t think anybody would say no.

And truthfully, I think two big reasons why critics don’t use that framing instead are due to laziness and arrogance. It takes a lot more time and effort to engage with people over time and to bring them into community. It’s a lot easier to dunk on them, and then return to one’s existing community of peers who will praise you for saying how ugly that person’s slop was. But that won’t stop the Big AI companies.

We need a new theory of change if we care more about stopping the harms of Big AI than we care about feeling righteous. The good news is that it already exists, in pieces: there are tactics for winning the platform war, there are direct actions that ordinary people have already used successfully, and there are alternatives being built right now that are worth pointing people toward. What’s missing isn’t the alternative. It’s our willingness to offer it to people instead of just yelling at them.

Gurman Says No Camera-Equipped AirPods Until 2027

Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

Earlier this week, a developer version of a Mac computer software update accidentally included references to several upcoming Apple products, including a video of the AirPods with cameras in action. [...]

But the product challenges are still being resolved, and the camera AirPods remain off the company’s 2026 release schedule. Apple continues to believe the earbuds will launch in 2027, said the people, who asked not to be identified when discussing unannounced products.

If true, it makes that video even stranger. If not, we can file this along the flat-sided Series 7 Apple Watch.

 ★ 

★ Apple Screwed Up the TestFlight App’s Sort Order a Month Ago, and It’s Still Screwed Up, but the More I Think About It, the More Clear It Is They Started Screwing This Up 15 Years Ago

Zac Hall at 9to5Mac, a month ago:

Sometimes a small change can make a big impact. That’s especially true for Apple’s latest TestFlight update for users with a lot of pre-release software.

Apple just updated TestFlight for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and more. The new version, 4.3, introduces “a search field to quickly find apps.”

A quick comparison to version 4.2.2. shows just that: TestFlight now includes a search field along the bottom on iPhone and at the top of the sidebar on Mac.

This was a one-step-forward/two-steps-back regression. Of course it’s better to be able to search a list than not to have a search feature.

But when Apple implemented this change, they also changed the sort order of the list of apps you’re registered to test. Starting with this update, the list is sorted in alphabetical order. For as long as I can remember — perhaps dating back to when TestFlight was a third-party utility — the list was ordered by recency. The most recently updated app was at the top; the oldest at the bottom. Sorting by recency is really the only sort order that makes sense when you’re registered for dozens (or more) of apps. For me, trying to see if there is an update to a new app whose name starts with U now requires scrolling through over 100 items.

Sorting this list alphabetically by app name is like sorting my email by sender name. The main reason I ever open the app is to see what’s new. There’s no way now to see which apps have been updated recently other than painstakingly scrolling through what, for me, is a very long list.

I didn’t complain about this when the sort order changed last month because I figured it was an oopsie — that alphabetical order was supposed to kick in only when displaying search results, not by default. But here we are a month later and the presentation of apps in TestFlight makes me a little irritated every day. Do people inside Apple not use TestFlight themselves?

Also, if I consider the broader view, this really speaks to how much we’ve lost in terms of UI vocabulary. For decades, any list of items with names and dates could be sorted by name or date, ascending or descending, through the standard use of clickable headers at the top of every list. This was true for almost any such list in any app, on any platform — Mac, Windows, Unix, Amiga, whatever. This was just basic GUI stuff. Like: Can you select, copy, and paste text? Can you present a menu of command options? Can you assign keyboard shortcuts to frequently used commands? Can you sort a list of items by useful criteria like name or date?

iOS in 2007 introduced a simplified UI vocabulary that omitted many of these baseline GUI features. That seemed like a reasonable trade-off for a device with a 3.5-inch display and fat fingers as the only input device. But then iOS became popular and Apple stopped bringing the richer UI vocabulary of the Mac to iOS — copy-and-paste, for example, didn’t appear until iOS 3.0 (then named “iPhone OS”) — and started bringing iOS’s simplified, child-like UI grammar to MacOS. I’m only writing this article because Apple changed the sort order of apps in TestFlight from date to name. But the real problem is that there is only one sort order in TestFlight. I just can’t emphasize how ridiculous it would have been for any app, on any platform, to offer a list like this without “Name” and “Date” headers at the top that you could click to change the sort order (including clicking them again to switch between ascending and descending).

It’s 2026 and an important, much-used app from Apple doesn’t offer basic list sorting controls that would have been a glaring omission 40 years ago. We don’t complain because TestFlight isn’t an anomaly in this regard. Many (most?) apps from Apple today have lists that omit headers to control sort order, even though changing sort order is often very useful, and intuitively sortable list views used to be so bog-standard that we all just took them for granted.

It certainly shouldn’t have taken until July 2026 to be able to search in TestFlight, either. And being able to search, and see the results sorted alphabetically, shouldn’t mean you can no longer view the full list sorted by recency. These limitations are all so crude. It’s the GUI equivalent of borderline illiteracy.1

I mean really, what are we doing here? This was a completely solved problem decades ago, when computer RAM was measured in kilobytes. It’s like if most new books just no longer contained page numbers, because a cadre of dilettante designers decided that they prefer the way pocket-sized pamphlets look without them, and what works for an 8-page pamphlet must surely work for a 300-page novel.


  1. Here’s another one: selecting multiple items in a list and then taking action on those items at once. This was a completely solved GUI problem. The Mac had standards for selecting a range of items (Shift-clicking) and selecting/de-selecting items non-contiguously (Command-clicking). You can still do this in Mac-assed Mac apps. But in apps like TestFlight you can’t. While suffering through this new alphabetical sort order for the last month, I’ve spent a minute or two every day deleting old apps from my list to winnow it down. This is a painstaking multi-step process for each app, and can only be done one app at a time. Why in the world can’t we select multiple apps at once and take an action like “Stop Testing” on the entire selection in one fell swoop? (Part of the answer might be that TestFlight appears to be largely written in SwiftUI, not AppKit.) ↩︎

NBC News Strikes Ad Sales Deal With Taboola for Programmatic Display Ads

Sara Fischer, Axios:

Ad tech giant Taboola has struck a deal with NBC News to exclusively power all of its programmatic, or automated, display advertising sales, CEO Adam Singolda tells Axios.

Worked out great for Apple with Apple News. They struck a deal with Taboola two years ago and the ads in Apple News today are super premium and something the company can be really proud of.

 ★ 

[Sponsor] WorkOS: Agents Can Now Sign Up for Your App

Agents are hitting your signup flow and bouncing off a browser login built for humans. Every one that gives up is a signup you never see.

WorkOS Agent Registration turns that traffic into signups. Enroll via the dashboard and AuthKit publishes an auth.md file agents read to register for scoped, short-lived credentials you control.

Make your app agent-ready →

 ★ 

Security Blankets and the Mad, Mad King

If you’ve been online in the last few days you’ve undoubtedly been exposed to Natalie Harp Discourse (NHD), the phenomenon surrounding a woman who has served since January 2025 as President Trump’s human emotional comfort blanket. Attention to Harp had been growing online over the last couple weeks. (Perhaps the canonical account on her role was published by the New York Times just after the 2024 election.) Even the TPM Editors’ Blog has been in on the action. But it kicked into high gear on Sunday when Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) referenced her with a mere three words in a campaign speech which was then sliced and diced for maximum social media exposure. Let me quote the full sentence with the three words about Harp in italics: “He golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.”

This may seem like fluff and frivolity to some. But among other things it brings to the surface a question that has hovered around the opposition to Trump ever since he entered the political scene more than a decade ago. I had been thinking about this in recent weeks because it becomes increasingly relevant, especially with the onset of the 2026 midterms.

Put simply, we know that Trump is a mammoth threat to American liberties, civic democracy, the entire more or less rules-based global order which he has already half-way destroyed, though its erosion was already a source of his rise. This is all true. The opposition to him realizes this and yet there is a paradox: in pumping up and broadcasting these warnings and criticisms, they also build Trump’s myth, the mental and symbolic architecture of his power. You’re probably familiar with this yearslong debate. One person will lay into Trump’s endless vanity, the degenerate hunger for the most abject kinds of sycophantic praise, the slapdash administration of government, the festival of rake stomps. Then someone else comes back, “Oh, you think he’s funny and don’t see the danger he represents!” A related thread turns on those who won’t tolerate any suggestion Trump won’t get exactly what he wants, a kind of militant doomerism, self-enervation as activism.

I am of course a harsh partisan in this far-flung conversation. But I want to focus on it here from a greater distance, seeing the meta-debate in whole as part of the challenge Trump’s opposition has had making sense of him — the ways in which arguing the case for the threat he represents paradoxically inducts these would-be opponents into the work of building his legend, puffing up the symbols of Trump’s power which, in this age of memes and symbols, really are power. When people accuse Trump of being a dictator, trampling norms and opposition, taking absolute power … he positively relishes it. They are singing from his hymnal, validating his pretensions through the expressions of their fear of his power.

Which brings us back to Natalie.

The mere three words above have spurred an epic freakout and rampage from everyone in or adjacent to the White House and anyone looking to be. Did Ossoff strike a nerve or is this — recapitulating the dynamic I described above — an example of Ossoff somehow walking into a trap? Remember the rule: no matter what happens it’s always what Trump wanted and it will always be great for him!

Okay, okay, let me try to get back to the “focus from a greater distance” I promised.

Trump’s allies are pushing so hard on the idea that Ossoff was accusing Harp and Trump of carrying on an extramarital affair not only because it allows them to play the victim but because that’s actually a much more comfortable story. Trump has never run from his record as a serial philanderer or even from the countless women who have accused him of misconduct ranging from boorishness to rape. He sees it as part of his legend, a symbol of his power. It’s his brand.

Trumpworld couldn’t care less if people think Trump’s cheating for the 1,900th time. As his power declines, that’s advantage more than insult. What worries them is the image of an 80 year old man wildly dependent on a clinically fan-girlish 30-something whom he appears to cling to as a kind of human emotional support blanket as his faculties and political power fade. When she was living at Bedminster she couldn’t be as ready at hand as she believed he needed. So she moved into the women’s locker room. When a car in the entourage didn’t make her available enough, she chose to ride crumpled in the trunk of his SUV. That’s image-debilitating, disturbing, uncomfortable to look at it — not so much because her troubled personality happily embraced it but because he was so in need of it. It’s a vivid, peristalsis-inducing tableau of late Mad Kingism, a shell of Dictator-He-Man-ism encasing a pitiful, weak and needy reality. It’s kryptonite to Trump’s image, which is to say, to Trump himself. It makes him look pathetic. And in the world of symbols of power, dominance, weakness and decline that Trump created, hammering that truth is the path to breaking his power.

Bluesky’s Active User Base Is Shrinking, and Remains Tiny Compared to Threads and Twitter/X

Sarah Perez, writing at TechCrunch last week:

Decentralized social network Bluesky was one of the bigger beneficiaries of the exodus from Elon Musk’s X in November 2024, following the U.S. elections. But now, nearly two years later, the social network and would-be X competitor is struggling to hold on to its momentum.

According to data from digital intelligence provider Similarweb, Bluesky’s mobile app had 10.4 million monthly active users worldwide in June 2026, down 27.2% year-over-year. In addition, mobile daily active users continued to decline, falling 25.6% year-over-year in July to around 3 million.

As always, take all third-party analytics and usage data about app usage with an enormous grain of salt. Third-party data companies can only estimate this data, they can’t know it. It’s like comparing polling data to election results.

But I think it’s obviously true that Threads and Twitter/X both have hundreds of millions of active users, and Bluesky has like maybe 10 million. Even if Bluesky has three times more actual users than Similarweb’s data suggests, that would still suggest that Bluesky’s user base is an entire order of magnitude smaller than Threads or Twitter/X. And Mastodon is so small that no one even mentions it anymore in these comparisons. Mastodon and the whole ActivityPub world make Bluesky look large and culturally relevant.

Small is not necessarily bad. My favorite of these networks, personally, is Mastodon. I like my community there because it’s small and generally free of both drama and nonsense. But small precludes mainstream cultural relevance.

 ★ 

Bluesky Is Full of Anti-AI Zealots

Mike Masnick, in a thread on Bluesky:

Multiple people I know have told me that they love the idea of Bluesky, and want it to succeed, but have abandoned it for X because the use agentic tools in their work and find them incredibly useful, and feel that any mention of their usage here leads to hate and ridicule.

I wouldn’t bring this up if it was just one person, but it was multiple people since the beginning of August who mentioned in passing something to the effect of either “I’d spend more time on Bluesky if people weren’t so anti-AI” or “As much as I hate to be there all the useful AI talk is on X.” [...]

I’m not telling anyone what to do or what tech to use or what to like or not like. I’m just relaying that the reputation this place now has is one that a large segment of the population who are NOT fascists, saying they don’t feel comfortable here because a main area of their interest is considered worthy of being mocked and attacked. And even as I’ve explained that I’ve been able to have positive conversations about productive AI usage here with many of you, the reputation of the community here as insisting their own lived experience can’t possibly be real has driven them away.

It’s not just “the reputation”. That really is the culture of Bluesky. I’ve obviously written more about AI this month than usual — in particular, my two long pieces regarding watermarking LLM-generated text through word-choice diddling. I don’t really write much about AI generally.

Broadly, I’m making two arguments against text watermarking. First, that the embedding of a detectable signal (even if subtle) must necessarily degrade the quality of the generated prose (even if only slightly), and that this is an unacceptable trade-off for feature that has no benefit to the user and in fact can only be used against the user. Second, that even if I’m wrong about the first part, and a clever enough watermarking scheme can embed a detectable signature without any degradation of prose quality, this is a bad idea and should be rejected.

Reaction to my takes on text watermarking have largely been about these two arguments. Some people agree with me that what watermarking proponents are claiming is not possible — the text quality must degrade. Others agree that while it must have an effect on text quality, it in fact is so subtle that it truly does not matter and even a careful reader will not notice an overall degradation. Others disagree, tell me I don’t understand the cleverness of the systems, and are convinced that somehow this watermarking truly embeds a detectable signal in prose without any degradation of text quality whatsoever. There’s a range of disagreement, but it’s all reasonable. Likewise on the broader question of whether it’s a good idea or not to even try to do this.

The reaction on Bluesky to my recent work is like nothing else. It’s largely in the vein that watermarking can’t possible make AI-generated text worse because it’s already random gibberish, and that the only explanation for my being opposed to this is that I must be using AI to generated my own writing and I’m upset that my scheme will soon be detectable. Read the replies to this one; they speak for themselves.

I continue to think my friend Daniel Jalkut has espoused the one true take: “My take on AI is, essentially, everybody who’s against it is too against it and everybody who’s for it is too for it.” It is way less inflammatory to espouse an AI-skeptical stance on Twitter/X than it is to simply state that AI can be truly useful on Bluesky.

Anyway, Masnick, at the end of the day yesterday:

The people bitching about me turning off replies on my thread earlier today are doing an excellent job reinforcing why I was right to turn off replies.

 ★ 

How Bluesky and Threads Sneak Their Logos Into iOS Screenshots

Bluesky and Threads both pull the same trick: When you take a screenshot on iOS of an individual tweet, they replace the “Follow” button in their user interface with their logo. Tim Marinin noticed this in the Bluesky app, got curious, and because they publish the app’s source code, he dug in to figure out how they do this:

The answer was in the file literally called GrowthHack.tsx, introduced in January 2026 by mozzius. But it merely used a dependency, so to understand I looked into package expo-privacy-sensitive, also by them.

The package creates UITextField with isSecureTextEntry property set to true and renders the actual content (the button) into that field’s .layer. When I take the screenshot, iOS hides this UITextField by blanking the layer, allowing the Bluesky logo to flutter its wings through (it was here the whooole time). For other platforms it simply renders content as-is, without masking.

Marinin says, “I think it’s cute.”

I think it’s bullshit. If I take a screenshot I want to see exactly what is on my screen. If I take a photograph with a Sony camera, they don’t put a fucking Sony logo in the image. Screenshots should be purely WYSIWYG, and it’s obvious that the isSecureTextEntry property is meant to obscure the contents of secure text entry fields. It’s clever, but it’s bullshit.

It’s a bit like the bullshit some apps pull where they append extra text on the clipboard when you copy and paste — like Apple Books, which adds quotation marks around the text you copied (a little annoying) and appends five lines of attribution cruft (a lot annoying). But at least with Books’s attribution cruft, you can just delete the extra lines (and the additional quotation marks). With this stunt Bluesky and Threads are pulling, there’s no way to capture a screenshot of what you actually see in the app.

I’m not surprised Threads does something sneaky like this; I am surprised that Bluesky does.

 ★ 

★ Apple and European Commission Reach Agreement on App Payment Terms Under DMA, With Apple Conceding Very Little

Apple Newsroom, on Tuesday:

Apple today announced changes to its business terms for apps in the European Union, following close collaboration with the European Commission. These changes resolve Apple’s disagreements with the Commission over business terms and alternative distribution. They also reduce complexity by moving every developer that distributes apps in the EU to a single set of business terms. Developers can sign the new terms today, and changes will go into effect on October 1. [...] Under the new terms:

  • For App Store apps using Apple In-App Purchase, the commission will be 26 percent. For the vast majority of developers, including those in the App Store Small Business Program, Mini Apps Partner Program, or Video Partner Program, and for auto-renewing subscriptions after their first year, it will be 15 percent.

  • For App Store apps using alternative payment processing, the commission will be 20 percent. Developers in the programs mentioned above will pay a reduced rate of 10 percent.

  • For App Store apps that link out of the app to complete purchases, the commission will be 15 percent. Developers in the programs mentioned above will pay a reduced rate of 10 percent.

  • For apps distributed via alternative app marketplaces or the web, Apple will charge a 5 percent Core Technology Commission.

This is a near-total victory for Apple. The only real concession is that for apps in the App Store using Apple’s own payment system (the default), the main commission drops from 30 percent to 26 percent in the EU. That’s the deal the EU squeezed out of Apple for EU developers: going from 30 to 26 percent for purchases and the first year of subscriptions.

All apps have to pay at least the 5 percent Core Technology Commission, even if they’re distributed outside the App Store. I could collect a lot of claim chowder from people who told me that Apple’s CTC was never going to pass muster. Maybe it wouldn’t have under the old EC regime of the crusading hypocrite Margrethe Vestager and the buffoonish Thierry Breton, but the European Commission is under new, more temperate leadership.

Ben Thompson, in a subscriber-only Stratechery update, works out the implied values from these fees:

  • The implied value of Apple’s APIs is 5% of an app’s revenue
  • The implied value of App Store distribution is 10% of an app’s revenue
  • The implied value of in-app payment APIs is 5% of an app’s revenue
  • The implied value of in-app purchase using Apple’s payment processing is 6% of an app’s revenue

Now take these numbers with a grain of salt — given the fact the European Commission appears to have blessed these figures, they were almost certainly a matter of negotiation — but they do seem directionally correct: being in the App Store is the most valuable (thus 10%), and then 5% was ascribed to Apple’s APIs in their various forms; of these, the “Core Technology Commission” is obviously more valuable than the APIs used for in-app payment processing by third parties, but you can see how they landed at the same spot.

The interesting number is the implied 6% for Apple’s payment processing. The fully loaded cost for credit card fees — which have both a swipe fee and a percentage fee — refunds, disputes, etc. is pretty close to 6%; in other words, it appears that the European Commission has decided that Apple shouldn’t make anything for actually charging money. And again, I can see how they got there: anyone can charge money, but Apple did actually make the various APIs developers use, along with the App Store.

The 6 percent no-profit fee for payment processing is where the difference between the global 30% and the new EU 26% falls. Given its druthers, it seems clear Apple would charge 10%, not 6%, for payment processing, and give itself some margin on payment processing.

Don’t take my word that this agreement is a sweeping victory for Apple — with the company conceding only the reduction from 30 to 26 percent for App Store payments — and a capitulation by the EC. Here’s Epic Games, posting on Twitter/X:

Apple announced new junk fees in the EU that do nothing to open up the mobile app ecosystem to competition, as required by Digital Market Act. [sic] [...]

The law makes it clear that Apple must allow developers to offer link outs to the web for purchases “free of charge” and has to allow “effective use” of competing stores. Apple’s terms deliberately violate the Digital Markets Act. If the Commission accepts the terms and drops their ongoing enforcement actions, the law will become meaningless and consumers and developers will not experience the benefits it was designed to provide.

I don’t think Epic understands that the Commission has accepted these terms, and they’re a result of negotiations. It’s over.

Another way to see how clearly this is a win for Apple is to go back and imagine an entirely different DMA. Consider if the DMA had simply stated that 30 percent is too high a commission for app stores on “gatekeeping” platforms, and the one and only purpose of the DMA was to set a new, more reasonable maximum commission rate. If that had been the case, there’s no way the rate would have been 26 percent. It almost certainly would have been 20 percent at the most, perhaps something more like 15 percent. Thanks to the DMA’s sprawling scope, complexity, and overreach, Apple came out of this conceding only 4 percent of the App Store’s 30 percent commission, and no reduction at all to the 15 percent for subscriptions after the first year.

The very funniest thing Apple could do now would be to drop the baseline commission everywhere else in the world from 30 to 25 percent.

Is There a Polling ‘Crisis’ and Why Should We Care If There Is?

I wanted to follow up on my post about Pat Ruffini’s deep dive about the accuracy of Senate race polling in recent cycles and whether they’ve overstated Democrats’ strength. But since I wrote that post, I’ve also gotten a few emails from friends and TPM readers about polling generally. So I wanted to combine all of this together into some general comments on polling and whether we should care about it at all.

In the wake of the big apparent polling misses in Michigan and Wisconsin, we’re seeing another wave of discussion about a purported “crisis” in polling and what we should collectively do about it or what the polling industry should do about it. Mostly, the answer is there is no “crisis” — at least in the sense of one that any of us should care about as some problem for American democracy or elections or anything else. If you’re in the polling business, it may well be a problem. But if you’re not, who cares? There might be a crisis in Swiss cheese marketing too. But if I’m not a cheese monger, why do I care?

To the extent bad actors might be trying to sow misinformation with deliberately fake polls, that’s a problem. But let’s put that to the side since that’s not really what we’re talking about. I would further say that to the extent polls seem unreliable and we go into election days with real uncertainty about the result, that’s actually a good thing, for both substantive and aesthetic reasons. Everyone should go into election day with that characteristic mix of hope and apprehension that is the essence of popular democracy, partly for the pageant of democracy itself but also so that neither side’s showing is artificially depressed by a mistaken certainty about the outcome.

To be clear, I say this while also being very clear that I will personally try to get as much clarity and certainty as I can, whether it’s real or imagined. And it’s 100% fine if you do too. Because, as friend and polling critic TPM reader RP put it in a note to me yesterday, one of the real uses of polling is “therapeutic, stanching existentially painful doubt about the future that is central to the human condition.”

In an email, RP made his general case about polling being mostly bad and why we should deprioritize it as much as possible. In response, I told him that while I somewhat agreed with his general critique — as I said, more uncertainty is probably good — I was much less sure of the practical import. There are many ways in which our human need to know the future isn’t that productive. But that’s part of being human, and I don’t know how much it’s worth trying to be less human. I don’t expect to see any future world in which polling ceases to exist or even gets significantly less prevalent.

One place where I told RP we had some limited agreement has to do with those possibly overstated polls for Democrats that Ruffini was talking about. I want to press readers to let go of the idea that we should care about this. Indeed, to the extent that these outcomes are predictable, even better. We know that chronic doomerism and a kind of barely concealed self-loathing is the achilles heel of the current Democratic coalition. Many Democrats seem to see these poll discrepancies as something akin to a team that holds leads to the end of a game and then consistently chokes at the clutch moments — call it electoral Spurs-ism. But that’s of course absurd, a perfect example of reifying polls into some real foundational feature of the election, as opposed to some separate thing over in a corner that doesn’t have anything to do with anything. Democrats aren’t choking or bobbling the ball in the final inning. They’re not “doing” anything. This is just a pollster surfing spreadsheets in his cubicle who can’t get a representative enough sample. It has nothing to do with anything unless we’re in the polling industry. This is how I really think people should de-center polls from the focal point of their political reasoning. Because what I’ve described above is really an example of pollism cooking people’s brains.

I would add a secondary point, which is that it is not a bad thing for people who are interested in politics, and certainly for candidates, to have some idea what people actually think. We are all so deep in our own bubbles that otherwise we have just a wild ability to imagine everyone is like us and thinks like us, which is definitely not true. That’s even more the the case in a country as vast as this one — the third largest in the world both in population and geographical expanse. Within limits that’s a plus, not a minus, though that’s different from the horse-race polls on the eve of an election that we’re really talking about. I get the idea that having too clear an idea of what the public collectively thinks can produce a collective risk aversion or perhaps a hyper-literalism about the difference between things as they stand and the extent of the possible. But I think the people who push this argument the hardest mostly don’t like being reminded — or probably having other people be reminded — that their ideas aren’t very popular.

There’s one other issue with anti-pollism that isn’t really about polls precisely but gets conflated into the discussion. It’s worth mentioning too. TPM Reader RH wrote in about polls and said this: “It seems to me that the only reason that we have polls is for talking heads to have something to talk about before an election. They really don’t inform the electorate about issues and positions at all so why not just wait and see who the people elect?”

This may be true as far as it goes. But while I respect what is a common refrain, I think it’s the wrong way to think about popular politics. Many of us have this idea that there is a platonic ideal of electoral politics which either used to be how elections worked or should be. And that ideal is something like a high school civics class, or things we were taught in a high school civics class: a reasoned debate about each candidate’s policy proposals and issue positions in which the role of the press is to curate this discussion. Some of that is how elections work. And I would point to TPM’s decades of coverage of the nitty gritty of voting rights, health care policy, reproductive rights, extremist groups, Supreme Court jurisprudence and corruption and so much more; we’re very into the details of policy and their importance to our journalistic mission. But I will tell you with the backing of my background in U.S. history that that has never been how elections have worked at any point in American history. If anything, things may be a bit more like that now than in the past, contrary to many people’s assumptions. And mostly, I’d say that’s totally fine.

Elections are a pageant of democratic life, with all the boisterousness, intensity, and sometimes crassness that goes with that. They’re about values, identity, our collective trust or lack or trust in particular candidates, music, rallies, emotion. If we really believe in popular democracy and decision-making we shouldn’t be bothered or worried that some of it mirrors the sports enthusiasm, celebrity culture, enmities, pugilism, hopes and dreams that animates so much of our popular culture — and always has. How would it be any other other way? Just speaking for myself, I don’t see this as well, we can’t expect any better. I think it’s mostly a wonderful thing, how a big impossibly diverse country with a deep obstreperous streak makes collective decisions about its future and governance. This is why when I hear people decrying “horse-race journalism,” I mostly see red. I think they want it to be the civics class. Or more specifically, I think they want it to be the civics class for someone else.

I should restrain myself a bit here and say if you decry horse-race journalism, I’m not saying you have bad motives or a bad ideas. I’m saying we should understand what popular politics is and isn’t, and mostly celebrate it as such rather than imagining it is something it isn’t. And there’s a great deal to celebrate. How this relates back to polls is that I think a certain element of anti-pollism relates back to this misapprehension of what popular politics is: You shouldn’t be focused on who’s winning or losing or what’s happening in the campaign. You should be reviewing the policy proposals.

But if we care about politics, care about who is going to make the decisions about our future, of course we’re going to care how it’s going, whether our team is winning or losing. That’s just human nature, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Especially if we already have a clear idea of where we stand on the big issues of the day. And beyond this, if we really believe in popular democracy, its messiness and impressionistic beauty, we should at least aspire to appreciating its inner workings, joys and agonies. All of this treats as a given that there are more or less corrupt periods of politics, times of greatness and decay. But that’s the same with sports, music, and truly everything else in the world. If you think electoral politics should be like a civics class, that’s great. But just don’t mistake that with any world that’s ever existed. It’s more or less like believing in the platonic ideal of a chair. Whatever works for you.

In any case, all of this comes back to polls. They’re interesting. I don’t think we’re going to stop being a little obsessed with seeing at least a bit into the future, like most of us are in most aspects of life. It’s probably a good thing to know in general what people actually think, rather than imagining that they’re all kind of like us or just leaving it to our imagination. But polls are not some kind of constituent element of a functioning electoral democracy. It’s fine if they stop working. Maybe it would even be a bit better. I don’t know. What I find perverse about the “polling crisis” conversation is that you have the civics class idea and now polling is somehow becoming a part of that, which is kind of the worst of all worlds. How will our democracy function if we can’t trust the polls anymore? That’s absurd. It will function fine. Polling will probably continue to be at least directionally accurate. And if you want to know the direction things are going, that’s fine too.

Why the U.S. Must Extend Temporary Protected Status for Sudan

In April 2023, conflict broke out in Sudan between the national army and the Rapid Support Forces militia, triggering a devastating humanitarian and political crisis. The war has claimed thousands of lives and caused widespread destruction to homes, public facilities, and critical infrastructure across the country. Entire communities have been displaced, while economic and social conditions have sharply deteriorated.

Among those deeply affected by the war are many Sudanese nationals living in the United States under the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program. TPS grants eligible individuals temporary legal authorization to remain and work in the country while conditions in their homeland remain unsafe. Administered by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the program has provided critical protection for Sudanese communities displaced by the ongoing conflict. Sudan was first designated under TPS in November 1997, and the most recent extension was announced in January 2025, allowing beneficiaries to maintain their legal status and employment authorization through October 2026.

According to the law, at least 60 days before a country’s TPS designation or extension expires, the Secretary must assess conditions in that country, in consultation with relevant U.S. government agencies. This review determines whether the circumstances that justified granting Temporary Protected Status still exist. The evaluation is required before deciding whether to extend or terminate the designation.

In June 2026, the Supreme Court issued a decision clearing the way for the Trump administration to start the deportation of Syrian and Haitian TPS holders to their countries to face an unknown fate. Given this stance against the TPS program and immigration in general, there is a serious concern that this will likely be the case for Sudan; for instance, the Trump administration already started revoking work authorization for TPS holders.

Taking into consideration that the war in Sudan is continuing, the conditions to extend the TPS still hold, and the Trump administration has no grounds to move forward with this step, immigration justice advocates and NGO should start campaigning for this cause; moreover, Congress should encourage USCIS to abstain from this step.

The U.S. government should also consider eliminating the entry-date restriction so that individuals who arrived after the outbreak of the war can qualify for Temporary Protected Status. At present, TPS eligibility is limited to those who have been continuously living in the United States since August 16, 2023. Removing this cutoff would expand protection to more people affected by the conflict. It would also allow more displaced individuals to remain in the U.S. legally while conditions in Sudan remain unstable.

There have been several calls to extend TPS for Sudanese, which represents the importance of the issue; for instance, the U.S. civil society has endorsed the extension of TPS for Sudanese. In August 2026, a coalition of 44 organizations sent a letter to the US government requesting that it take this step, citing the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the country, national security, and the contribution made by TPS holders to the US economy. Moreover, U.S. Senators Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine issued a statement urging the Trump administration to protect the stats for sudanese.

Ideally, a path to legal permanent residency in the US should be offered to the Sudanese TPS holders. There have been a couple of attempts in this direction, one of which is the Secure Act bill, which calls for this demand while requiring TPS holders to have been continuously present in the US for three years. The bill is still in the first stage and has not yet advanced out of the committee. The second one is the American Dream and Promise Act of 2025, which calls for providing a pathway for TPS holders to citizenship. Together, these bills would give sudanese TPS holders a stable future and security from being forced to return home, where they will have to face the horror of the war.


“FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IS NOT JUST IMPORTANT TO DEMOCRACY, IT IS DEMOCRACY.” – Walter Cronkite. CLICK HERE to donate in support of our free and independent voice and future mentoring projects like Caught In the Current.

The post Why the U.S. Must Extend Temporary Protected Status for Sudan appeared first on DCReport.org.

Breaking Ground: Can Refund Bonuses Solve the Holdout Problem?

My latest paper (with Cason and Zubrickas) has just been published by the Journal of Urban Economics. We show that refund bonuses can indeed improve the holdout problem.

Abstract: The holdout problem presents a pervasive challenge in situations that require the assembly of independently controlled assets, where due to complementarity the combined whole is worth more than the sum of its parts. One avenue for addressing holdout problems involves contingent contracts, where agreements are conditional upon reaching a predetermined threshold. This paper reports an experiment to investigate a new refund bonus contingent mechanism, in which asset owners who agree to participate (e.g., sell their asset) receive a bonus payment if the required threshold for project success is not met. The refund bonus eliminates failure equilibria and improves the frequency of successfully reaching the threshold in the symmetric mixed strategy equilibrium. In the experiment, individual asset holders choose each round whether to accept an offer to sell. Multiple owners must accept for the (contingent) sale to materialize, and holdout owners who do not sell can earn more, so the game has the strategic incentives of a volunteer’s dilemma. The data show that the bonus mechanism increases agreements to sell, the frequency of successful projects, and efficiency. By the second half of the experimental sessions, the total number of sales is 35 percent higher and the threshold is met nearly twice as often with the bonus than without.

I also cover this paper in my Refund Bonus (aka Dominant Assurance Contract) Explainer.

The post Breaking Ground: Can Refund Bonuses Solve the Holdout Problem? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

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NBER workshop on Market Design, Stanford, Oct 16-17, call for papers

 Here's the call for papers for the NBER workshop on market design, at Stanford in October.

"To: NBER Market Design Working Group

From: Michael Ostrovsky and Eric Budish

 The National Bureau of Economic Research workshop on Market Design is a forum to discuss new academic research related to the design of market institutions, broadly defined. The next meeting will be held in Stanford, California on October 16 & 17, 2026.  We are planning for an in-person only meeting. There will not be an option to attend virtually.

 We welcome new and interesting research and are happy to see papers from a variety of fields.  Participants in the past meeting covered a range of topics and methodological approaches. Last year's program can be viewed at:

https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.nber.org/conferences/market-design-working-group-meeting-fall-2025__;!!G92We9drHetJ8EofZw!dlT9ZZcoCaeO7GqTUkKgKVVgvGpB5MDHs3RNvyJj9679UKlOmu2AuKoOlSYuYRe1c8QYnkLCcm9R5cJtdME$

 

The conference does not publish proceedings or issue NBER working papers - most of the presented papers are presumed to be published later in journals.

 

We would appreciate it if you could pass this call for papers on to colleagues who might be interested, but who may not be on the Bureau's mailing list. Submissions are welcome from researchers with and without NBER affiliations and from researchers at all career stages.

 

If you are interested in presenting a paper this year, please upload a PDF version by midnight EDT on August 23, 2026, to this link:

 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://conference.nber.org/confsubmit/backend/cfp?id=MDf26__;!!G92We9drHetJ8EofZw!dlT9ZZcoCaeO7GqTUkKgKVVgvGpB5MDHs3RNvyJj9679UKlOmu2AuKoOlSYuYRe1c8QYnkLCcm9RUJB5pBU$

 Preference will be given to papers for which at least a preliminary draft is ready by the time of submission. Only authors of accepted papers will be contacted.

 Unfortunately, the NBER cannot cover the travel costs or hotel expenses of participants.

 There are a limited number of spaces available for graduate students to attend the conference, though we cannot cover their costs. Please email ostrovsky@stanford.edu and eric.budish@chicagobooth.edu  a short nominating paragraph.

 Please forward this announcement to any potentially interested scholars. We look forward to hearing from you."

The fog of hunger

A woman in a red top walking past a large poster of a face, with bold shadows on a sunlit background.

From childhood, women are trained to restrict their appetite. And there’s a huge, hidden, cognitive price to pay for it

- by Sarah Berg

Read on Aeon

Trying to Change the Narrative

Get out of your bubble

So in case you missed it (and I really hope you didn’t—because the thing was a bear), yesterday I posted my rankings of the 26 worst Orange County political figures of 2026.

Buried beneath neon names like Will O’Neill and Todd Spitzer and Jack Hibbs and Mari Barke was, at No. 21, Sophia Lorey, the outreach director for California Family Council (aka: a whole bunch o’ white conservatives who believe We, The People, need more God, less trans, more Bible, less diversity). And, in a way, I felt torn about including Lorey, who looks to be in her early-to-mid 20s, graduated from (the e-x-t-r-a-o-r-d-i-n-a-r-i-l-y sheltered) Vanguard University and has been thrown—dirty towel-like—into the echo chamber that is right-wing media (land of older white male hosts fawning over younger white female guests with good hair).

And, if I’m Lorey, I’m milking this cow as long as I can. Fox News calls? Get on it! Newsmax calls? Get on it, too! Hell, back in my early days as a Sports Illustrated writer, I was jumping from radio interview to radio interview to radio interview. For an early media pro, PR is everything.

Truly, I get it.

But … yesterday, on her IG story, the same person telling thousands of viewers and followers what to believe, how to act, why they should be angry, posted this …

And, like, what?

What!?!?!?!?!?

You need your pepper spray … walking thru downtown Philadelphia? In daylight? Seriously? Like, seriously seriously? Are you carrying $100,000,000 in your purse? Are you wearing a mink coat with the price tag dangling off? Why, in God’s name, do you deem it necessary to have pepper spray (in a look-at-me pink canister, no less) in (of all the places) Philly?

My next sentence was going to be, “It makes no sense”—but then I realized, it makes perfect sense. This is a child of conservative Southern California; a product of Vanguard. I remember when we first moved here from New York, and I was dumbfounded to learn how many of my daughter’s friends had never been to (gasp) Santa Ana, let alone Los Angeles. It was all just too … scary. Too … chaotic. Too Latino and Black.

But it also causes you to realize that people of this young woman’s ilk, who thrive in translating the Bible into essential life lessons, haven’t lived life. They haven’t seen. They haven’t smelled. They haven’t experienced stepping into a dirty pot hole, sipping from a beer at a Trenton pub, walking the streets of Washington Heights, taking a glimpse at Gary, Indiana, meeting folks on the stoops of Brooklyn and Detroit and Chicago.

They walk among us, and they walk believing they have the answers.

But they carry pepper spray in a pink canister.

In Philadelphia.

PS: I would like to add: It is not easy being a woman, obviously, and there are 8,000 reasons to not only feel unsafe, but to want to carry some sort of pepper spray. My issue here is with the, “I’m in Philly, so I need this.” Thank you.

August 20, 2026

On Saturday, August 15, the New York Times editorial board published an op-ed noting that the Republicans are trying to hide the cuts they have made to health care in the U.S.

The editorial board called the expansion of affordable health care to millions of Americans one of the great achievements of the federal government in this century. Before the Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010 without a single Republican vote, about 18% of Americans under 65 had no health insurance. With the passage and later expansion of the ACA, also known as Obamacare, the number of uninsured had fallen below 10%.

But now, the journalists note, Trump and the Republicans are working to uproot that achievement. While they extended Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations in their July 2025 budget reconciliation bill—the one they call the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” passed without a single Democratic vote—they refused to extend subsidies that enabled people to afford healthcare insurance in the ACA marketplaces.

The Democrats shut down the government last fall to try to force Republicans to restore those cuts, foreseeing that higher prices for premiums would drive healthier people out of the markets and out of healthcare insurance, while the loss of those healthier people from risk pools would drive up premiums for those remaining.

They were unsuccessful, and as they warned, without the subsidies, people dropped their health insurance. A report from the Department of Health and Human Services in late June 2026 showed that at least 5 million people lost health insurance in the first six months of the year, a drop of about 13%. For those remaining, premiums have spiked: the editorial board notes that a middle-income, middle-aged couple with two children could pay an additional $3,500 a year, more than doubling their premium from before the cuts. Deductibles also jumped this year by about $1,000 a person as people chose cheaper policies that offered less coverage.

Democrats shut down the government also because they wanted to restore the cuts of about $1 trillion over the next ten years Republicans had made in funding for Medicaid. In their budget reconciliation bill, Republicans placed what they called a “work requirement” on enrollees, requiring them to prove they have a job or a valid exemption.

But, as the editorial board notes, the “work requirement” is really a “paperwork requirement” that will throw people eligible for the program off it because they have not filed the right paperwork. As the board reports, Elizabeth Zhang and Gideon Lukens of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated that about two of the three people who will lose Medicaid because of the new requirement are legally entitled to it.

They estimated that up to 15 million people are at risk of losing Medicaid coverage. That, in turn, will force hospitals, especially rural hospitals, to cut back services or close. Although still legally required to provide services to everyone, they will not be reimbursed for the cost of such care and will drop labor and delivery services, for example. Those closures will not just mean poorer health care, they will mean lost jobs.

As the New York Times editorial board noted, Republicans deliberately put off the implementation of most of the Medicaid cuts until after the 2026 midterms.

New York Times reader KAM from Marin County, California, noted in a comment on the story that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent defines onerous paperwork differently than Republicans in Congress. Bessent recently announced the Treasury will no longer require shell companies to disclose even the name, address, and identification of people who own an interest of more than 25% or who exercise “significant control” over the company, as Congress required in the 2021 Corporate Transparency Act. Congress designed the law to combat money laundering, but Bessent says the paperwork puts an undue burden on businesses.

In 1883, sociologist William Graham Sumner published What Social Classes Owe to Each Other, concluding that the answer was: nothing. In a time when unregulated industrialization was making fortunes on the one hand and driving down wages on the other, creating extremes of rich and poor, Sumner turned on its head the traditional idea that the economy of the United States would provide a living to any man who worked hard. Instead, Sumner argued that anyone who did not succeed in the United States must be “negligent, shiftless, inefficient, silly, and imprudent.”

Not only was it unfair to make “the industrious and the prudent” responsible for such shiftless men, he wrote, it would ruin the country by destroying individual enterprise. Sumner called for a “laissez-faire” world in which those who failed should be permitted to sink into poverty and die to keep the U.S. from becoming a place where lazy people wanted a handout. In the end, such people needed to be purged from society for the good of the nation.

At the time, those succeeding in the industrializing economy nodded along with Sumner. The Republican New York Times editor wrote that even though Sumner’s “views are singularly hard and uncompromising, it is difficult to quarrel with their deductions, however one may feel one’s finer instinct hurt by their apparent cruelty.”

The Trump administration seems to have embraced Sumner’s belief that the nation depends upon the survival of the fittest.

As microbiologist and senior health reporter Beth Mole reported last year in Ars Technica, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appears to believe that the key to health is not to rely on the vaccines proven to prevent infectious diseases, but rather to have a strong immune system fortified, as he wrote in a 2021 book, “through healthy living, clean water, and good nutrition.” He accused those who support vaccines of misleading the American public for the benefit of the pharmaceutical industry and the healthcare industry.

This seems to explain why he has claimed—without evidence—that the Texas children who died of measles were malnourished and that “[w]e don’t know what was killing” the 83 Samoans who died in the country’s 2019 measles epidemic, during which Kennedy associated with members of the anti-vaccine movement there. It would also explain why he promised to turn away from promoting vaccination to exploring new treatments for measles, including vitamins.

And it would help to explain the effort to change the vaccine schedule for children by separating the MMR vaccine into single-disease vaccines. Rather than two shots, requiring two doctor’s visits, the vaccine series would require six. Experts say such a change will mean poorer children will not get the whole vaccine series, putting them and their communities at risk.

If overall health can fight off germs and illness, then measures like the pasteurization of milk and the tracking of foodborne illnesses are unnecessary.

The U.S. is experiencing a particularly bad wave of foodborne illness. It’s driven both by hot weather that nurtures food contamination and by federal funding cuts that scaled back the ability of federal agencies to conduct food inspections and provide grants to state and local health departments that used to be able to trace outbreaks quickly.

Deidre McPhillips of CNN reported that so far this year, the U.S. has reported about 10,500 cases of foodborne illness. Between 2021 and 2025, the annual average was about 1,500 cases. At least 9,481 people in 17 states have fallen ill with cyclosporiasis carried by lettuce from Taylor Farms, and thousands more cases are being investigated. It’s the largest cyclospora outbreak in U.S. history, spurred by cuts of more than 40% to food safety detection systems.

It’s not just lettuce. Frozen organic blueberries sold in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia have been recalled for E. coli; fresh jalapeños from Taylor Farms have been recalled for salmonella; 1.5 million dozen eggs sold in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and New Mexico have also been recalled for salmonella. Anna Skinner of Newsweek notes that while the focus has been on produce, in fact, FDA records show what she calls “a steady stream of recalls” that includes “prepared foods, salad dressings, soups, bakery items and ready-to-eat products,” potentially contaminated with salmonella, Listeria, or foreign materials, including pieces of metal.

As former U.S. surgeon general Dr. Jerome Adams wrote in USA Today, “You cannot effectively focus on chronic diseases while you’re being repeatedly overwhelmed by acute infectious outbreaks.” He called for restoring the mandatory tracking of all eight pathogens that were covered by the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) before the administration cut the surveillance down to just two, and for filling the leadership positions at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration that are currently vacant. He called for inspectors to prioritize high-risk foods and imports and for the Department of Health and Human Services to reaffirm that vaccines are safe and effective.

In the 1890s, the determination of those like William Graham Sumner to keep government out of society in order to promote individualism had undermined public health and safety. Producers adulterated tuberculosis-carrying milk with chalk and formaldehyde, decorated candy with lead paint, and scooped melted ice cream off the bottom of the vat to refreeze for sale the next day, and what was in sausage meat was a terrifying mystery.

In the early twentieth century, middle-class Americans demanded regulation of the food and drug industry, ushering in the reforms that we now call the Progressive Era.

Notes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/15/opinion/trump-health-care-cuts.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/opinion/government-shutdown-health-care-democrats.html

https://www.npr.org/2026/06/26/nx-s1-5860746/aca-health-insurance-subsidies-rates-premiums

https://www.kff.org/affordable-care-act/the-average-marketplace-deductible-grew-by-about-1000-per-person-in-2026-with-more-enrollees-shifting-to-higher-deductible-plans-as-enhanced-tax-credits-expired/

https://www.cbpp.org/research/health/medicaid-work-requirements-will-take-away-coverage-from-millions-state-and

https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0603

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/1-trillion-in-medicaid-cuts-1-trillion-in-tax-giveaways-for-the-richest-1-percent-the-one-big-beautiful-bills-budget-math/

https://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/letter_on_rural_hospitals.pdf

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/18603/pg18603-images.html

New York Times, September 3, 1883, p. 3.

https://courthousenews.com/rfk-jr-misled-the-us-senate-on-measles-deaths-samoas-health-chief-says/

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/02/health/measles-treatments-vaccines-kennedy.html

https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/04/rfk-jr-s-anti-vaccine-stance-is-rooted-in-a-disbelief-in-germ-theory/

https://www.npr.org/2026/08/20/nx-s1-5930462/trump-health-foodborne-illness-outbreak-cyclospora

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/13/health/foodborne-illness-outbreaks-risk-rising

https://www.newsweek.com/biggest-fda-recalls-of-2026-taylor-farms-blueberries-eggs-more-12344361

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/cdc-quietly-scaled-back-surveillance-program-foodborne-illnesses-rcna227089

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2026/08/20/kennedy-salmonella-outbreak-measles-vaccine-public-health/91259296007/

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Politics Chat, August 20, 2026

Politics Chat, August 20, 2026

📙 #093 - Handwritten notes & nodes

Welcome to the “battle station” part of the studio, please ignore the mess and the chaotic-neutral monitor setup. I want to draw your attention to two things.

  1. On the very far left, with a pile of stuff on top is a laser printer. It’s a very old, capable, cheap, reliable thing, despite being an HP.

  2. In pretty much the middle of the photo is the Bantam Tools NextDraw 8511, which is the one Kitty (my AI PA) is wired up to.

As I mentioned previously, Kitty writes out my morning todo lists on that plotter. It also writes envelopes out for me, as the handwriting Kitty uses is far neater than my own.

In fact, I’ve been getting Kitty to write out, or “print” more and more for me; and honestly it doesn’t make much sense, other than you use the tools you know and I don’t like having to turn all the way around take the stuff off the laser printer and get it connected to the WiFi each time.

When I’ve found myself wanting to print something, like a packing list (for sending out the postcards to the Patreon peoples), I’ve taken to just having Kitty write it out. It’s slower sure, but it’s also super convenient; I often “print” onto A6 index cards or A5 notes, and I can just set it away, get on with something, then grab it from the plotter when I’m done.

Last weekend I decided to finally do something I’ve been meaning to do for ages; a markdown to handwriting tool! It looks like this, which is the same UI I use for writing letters and notes.

Over in the top right corner is where I’d normally write/paste the text I want to be written, but in this instance you can see I’ve got markdown format in there too.

I have headings, bold - which is done by writing over the same word a couple of times - underlining and strikethrough. I haven’t bothered with italic (mainly because I’m convinced that italics in handwriting isn’t really a thing), ir all the rest of the markdown stuff.

Below is the same text being turned into my much worse handwriting.

These aren’t fonts! This is text turned into dynamically created SVG single stroke handwriting specifically to be plotted with a pen in a drawing machine, whatever I type gets converted into proper writing-writing, and in my case full joined-up cursive writing.

You can see the end result of Kitty’s handwriting, and my own bad handwriting down below.

And if you’re curious, here’s a 5min video of both of the notes above being written, which I’m not expecting you to sit through the whole of - although it can be quite mesmerising - just that it’s easier to show a bit than explain.

I wrote more about how this handwriting stuff works all the way back in April 2024, in newsletter #033 - Handwriting & Scripts

I’ve had several ways of doing and automating this over the years, but I’m finally gathering all the variations together to make my life easier, and markdown support (for handwriting, lol) was the last item on my todo list.

I’ve just looked back even further, to Nov 2023, and I can see an almost identical photo of my desk at the start of that newsletter as I have on this one, but that one is a lot clearer and tidier!

It also feels like a thing I can explore for the next few years” - lol, how prescient!


# NOW IS…

…probably a good time to link to anders hoff’s post: Spline Script, about asemic writing from 2017.

Plotted Spline Script Detail - ©️ anders hoff, 2017

And of course we can’t forget “Letters from my mother” by Vera Molnar.

https://digitalartmuseum.org/molnar/lettersfrommother.html


# BUSINESS HAT ON, A REQUEST

💰 💰 💰

Bit of a long shot this one, but you never know. I’m about to go through a round of raising some seed funding for my ltd company DeepKeep and it involves “decks” and talking to investors (we already have one) and all that stuff - for something that’s actually an extension of Kitty (not the handwriting part, the AI part) - and yeeeeeah, it’s a whole thing.

If you have an experience of this kinda of thing, or know someone who has, who’s willing to chat about things I may need to know, can you drop me a line at dan@deepkeep.org - I can barter/trade you some pen plotted artwork 😁

This is not a request for money, this is a request for how to request money - or just general moral support 😅

Thank you, love you!

💰 💰 💰

This post is public so feel free to share it.

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# PLOTS & FLOWCHARTS

This month I think I’ve spent more time fine tuning and adjusting my tools to streamline pen plotting, than actual pen plotting. I’m telling myself it’ll pay off in the long-run.

One of those tools, which I’ve written more about over here: Patreon August Update One - Nodes - was all about automating the process of feeding a random seed into the “70s Pop” code, sending the results of that into the Kaleidoscope code, and then in turn to a scaling & placing bit of code.

Despite my dislike of nodes based code, I ended up writing some nodes based code 🙄

Having written the code, and also updating the text-to-writing pipeline, I figured why not turn the nodes themselves into SVGs to plot out.

Which, ummmm, worked surprisingly well. Next step, code that handwrites itself.

That, along with last newsletter’s chatter about printing zines and documenting processes has set me off down a whole new rabbit hole.

Maybe I won’t be happy until I can PEN PLOT ALL THE THINGS.


# THE END

The heatwave is over (I hope), rain has fallen, things have cooled down. I felt comfortable enough to do some more tutorial video recording, so that’s getting back on track now after about six weeks off.

It’s been bad!

The plan was to record all these tutorial videos, and then get back to recording “my own” videos about what I’m up to. But I find myself missing making #Weeknotes and documenting all the other things I’m up-to. I’m also feeling as those the tutorial videos are established enough that I can start to switched back and forth between formats and it’ll be fine. So that’s what I’m going to do.

Probably.

Maybe we’ll find out by the time the next newsletter comes out, on Thursday 3rd September, 2026!

Love you all
Dan
❤️

On the bigness of China

Today’s post is brought to you by my sponsor, Mechanize. They’re hiring junior software engineers at $300K/year base salary. Apply now!

* * *

Most pundits get China wrong. There are lots of mistakes being made, but many of them center on three fallacies:

  1. Pundits (subconsciously) underestimate China’s size.

  2. Pundits accept the long-discredited mercantilist theory that exports are good and imports are bad.

  3. Pundits underestimate the importance of Say’s Law.

I’ll address the first two fallacies in this post, and the Say’s Law issue in the next post.

For the world as a whole, the current account balance should be exactly zero. As a result, there is a sense in which any country that runs a current account surplus “forces” the rest of the world to run a current account deficit. But this is a strange use of the term “force”, as it is equally true that any individual who chooses to become a net lender “forces” all other humans on planet Earth, in aggregate, to become net borrowers. But let’s not quibble about semantics. What is actually at stake here?

Martin Wolf in the FT expresses a view that I’ve seen repeated over and over again:

As a result, China’s policies look unavoidably threatening to much of the world. If a major trading partner runs huge and persistent trade and current account surpluses, everyone else has to run offsetting deficits. This leads to the shrinkage of sectors specialising in producing tradeable goods and services, as well as huge domestic financial deficits. These, in turn, create protectionist pressures of the kind we have been seeing in the US and increasingly the EU. Yet high-income countries are not the only victims of China’s push for dominance in manufacturing. Among them, argue Shoumitro Chatterjee and Arvind Subramanian, are also the poor countries whose development it blocks.

Notice how Wolf moves from an accounting identity to some highly questionable assertions. Before examining his statement in detail, I’d like to remind readers that the world’s current account surpluses are almost entirely concentrated in two regions, East Asia and the continental part of northern Europe. Here are the approximate figures (from AI Overview) for the first quarter of 2026, the most recent figures available. All figures are surpluses for Q1 only. I have decided to separate East Asia into two components:

China (pop. 1400 million) $184.3 billion surplus or $131.6 per capita

East Asia ex-China (pop. 200 million) $246.1 billion surplus or $1230 per capita

Northern Europe (pop. 140 million) $180.2 billion surplus or $1287 per capita

Here are the individual East Asian countries that I looked at:

Japan $77.75 billion surplus

South Korea $73.78 billion surplus

Taiwan $62.53 billion surplus

Singapore $32.0 billion surplus

Here are the individual northern European countries that I looked at:

Germany $70.9 billion surplus

Netherlands $30.0 billion surplus

Norway $27.2 billion surplus

Switzerland $18.9 billion surplus

Denmark $15.5 billion surplus

Sweden $9.4 billion surplus

Austria $8.35 billion surplus

I was surprised at how small the current account surpluses were outside of these two regions. Even Saudi Arabia had a surplus of only $4.1 billion. I didn’t know whether to put Hong Kong in with China or in ex-China, but its surplus was only $4.7 billion. Again, East Asia and Northern Europe represent the world’s only major current account surpluses.

There is a sense in which these surpluses ”force” the rest of the world to run deficits, but it is equally true that America’s decision to run a $226.8 billion current account deficit in the first quarter of 2026 forced the rest of the world to run a big surplus. In other words, we are forcing workers in China, Japan and Germany to slave away producing goods like air conditioners for our comfort, while much of Europe suffers from sweltering heat.

But that’s not the framing used by Martin Wolf, who seems to view deficit countries as the victims of trade imbalances. Even more oddly, he includes the EU as one of the victims, even though the EU as a whole ran a current account surplus of $129.3 billion in the first quarter of 2026. That’s right, anti-Chinese bias has reached such a fever pitch that highly respected columnists seem to be hallucinating current account deficits where they do not exist.

OK, I’m being a unfair to Wolf, who does not explicitly suggest the EU is running a trade deficit. But the average reader is likely to infer that from the fact that he mentions that China is running a big surplus, and the fact that China’s surplus forces a deficit on the rest of the world, and the fact that protectionist pressures are rising in the EU as their firms are being hurt by Chinese competition. All three claims are true, but do you see how Wolf’s framing tends to obscure the fact that northern Europe has a current account surplus nearly as large as China’s, and much larger in per capita terms? What are we doing here?

You might argue that I’ve cheated by lumping together a bunch of different countries in Europe and East Asia and them comparing them to one single country like China. China’s surplus is more than twice the size of the next largest surplus. But someone could just as well argue the opposite, that it is unfair to China to compare it to countries with much smaller populations. The fact that both northern Europe and East Asia ex-China have CA surpluses in per capita terms that are nearly 10 times larger than China’s surplus suggests that they are the true villains, at least if you regard CA surpluses as a sin. (I don’t.)

Notice how the dotted lines on the map that we call international borders tend to distort our view of the world. Suppose China decided to emulate Europe and become “the China Union” and treated each province as a separate economic entity. You might regard the idea as far-fetched, but Hong Kong has been treated that way for decades, and the rest of the world has accepted the fact that Hong Kong’s economic data should be viewed separately. I challenge you to find a single news article anywhere that presents Chinese economic data that includes Hong Kong, even though it is technically part of China.

If China were to form an EU-style federation, where each province was treated as an individual country, then the “problem” of China’s massive current account surplus would immediately vanish, even as nothing of substance would change. Without national borders, no one cares about current account balances. Back when I was in college, we were taught that places like New York ran big CA surpluses and California ran deficits. But no one cared or even bothered to collect the data. (BTW, that’s probably no longer true, as California is no longer a fast-growing state.)

The 1.3 billion Han people who live in Mainland China are in some ways an unfortunate ethnic group. They have a comparative advantage in producing the sort of good that is sold in highly competitive markets, and they are not so good at producing goods sold in protected markets with high profit margins. The Han are also the largest ethnic group on Earth—no other group even comes close. That means that industries such as EVs quickly become highly competitive after Chinese firms enter, and the terms of trade tend to move against China. Some of China’s apparent dominance in manufacturing comes from the fact that they need to sell a large volume of inexpensive manufactured goods in highly competitive markets in order to purchase a small volume of very expensive luxury goods from places like Switzerland. The ships leave China bloated with goods and return mostly empty.

Even worse, China is not earning the surplus in investment income that you would expect from a country that had accumulated vast wealth through trade surpluses. Here’s Wolf:

China shows an unexplained negative net income of around $125bn on its net foreign investments. But it should, on reasonable assumptions about the income it earns on its $4tn in net foreign assets, have a surplus of some $100bn.

I’m not sure exactly why this is occurring, but in an accounting sense it appears that foreigners investing in China have earned much greater returns than the Chinese who have invested outside their country. This may partly reflect the fact that multinationals in China earn relatively high profit margins whereas China’s government earns low returns on Treasury bonds bought during the 2010s and early 2020s. Or perhaps there is some measurement error. Even so, it is a striking data point.

Read more

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Rick Rubin podcasts with me

Two hours, thirty-four minutes, Rick and I recorded this session not too long ago in Tuscany.  It was everything Rick wanted to ask.  Self-recommending of course, and there is more to come.

The post Rick Rubin podcasts with me appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

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Green shoots for the UK?

Early signs of tech-driven improvements in productivity growth could herald a sustained strengthening in the UK’s economic outlook, analysts have said, in a turnaround after years of underperformance. Private sector productivity grew by 1.8 per cent in the second quarter compared with a year earlier, up from 1.2 per cent previously, according to analysis of official data by investment bank Morgan Stanley.

The rise extended gains since 2024 and reduced the growth gap with the US. The reasons behind the upsurge are heavily contested, but some analysts point to increasing AI adoption in sectors including information technology and business services.

If the recent productivity acceleration can be sustained over years, it could bolster incomes and help alleviate some of the strains on Britain’s public finances.

Here is more from Sam Fleming and Amy Borrett at the FT.

The post Green shoots for the UK? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

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More evidence on the effects of recent tariffs

Trump is giving economists something to write papers about:

U.S. tariff rates in 2025 rose to levels not seen since the Great Depression, yet imports increased. To account for the missing trade collapse, we develop an open-economy New Keynesian model with tariff heterogeneity, inventories, and shocks to investment that capture the AI-driven boom. The model matches the untargeted paths of imports, output, and inflation; we use it to decompose the effects of tariffs and the investment boom. Absent the investment boom, imports would have fallen by 10 percent and activity would have contracted by 0.7 percent. The effects of tariffs depend on which goods are tariffed: tariffs on consumption and intermediates act like shocks to supply; tariffs on capital goods act like shocks to demand. The concentration of the 2025 tariff increases on consumption goods and the relative sparing of capital goods limited the damage to output while amplifying the inflationary impulse.

That is from a new NBER working paper by Francesco Ferrante, Andrea Prestipino, Andrea Raffo & Michael E. Waugh.

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Europe’s Scorching Summer

Output from NASA’s GEOS (Goddard Earth Observing System) global model shows daily maximum surface air temperature across Western Europe from May 1 to August 19, 2026. The darkest red areas indicate temperatures that met or exceeded 40°C (104°F).
NASA Earth Observatory/Lauren Dauphin

Western Europe got its first hint of an unusual summer in May 2026, when a heat dome produced exceptional temperatures that shattered records in several countries. Remarkable as it was, that early heat wave turned out to be only the opening salvo.

By mid-August, Europeans were sweating through their fifth heat wave of the season, with the latest onslaught pushing temperatures well above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) across a broad area. During these bouts of extreme weather, high temperatures were often unrelenting, persisting for several days and sometimes weeks on end, and remaining overnight.

For a region accustomed to relatively mild summers, the heat upended everyday life. Hospitalizations and heat-related deaths spiked. Highways and train tracks buckled, forcing road closures and service disruptions. Large and destructive wildfires raged in areas where they were once rarely seen. The heat also worsened the severe drought that has gripped the region for months, contributing to record-low river water levels and disrupting water and power supplies, transportation routes, and agriculture.

The animation above shows the daily maximum surface air temperature across Western Europe from May 1 to August 19, 2026. It was produced by combining satellite observations with temperatures predicted by a version of NASA’s GEOS (Goddard Earth Observing System) global model, which uses mathematical equations to represent physical processes in the atmosphere. The darkest red areas indicate where temperatures met or exceeded 40°C.

The heat broke records at a furious pace, often by wide margins. According to the UK Met Office, temperatures soared as high as 35.1°C (95.2°F) in London on May 26, smashing the previous May record by 2.3°C (4.1°F). In June, Bordeaux, France, broke its maximum-temperature record on three consecutive days, hitting 42.5°C on June 24, Météo-France reported. Slovakia, meanwhile, set new national records for both daytime and nighttime highs in August. Combined June and July temperatures in Western Europe were the highest on record, according to Europe’s Copernicus climate monitoring service.

In Europe, extreme temperatures collided with several vulnerabilities, including limited access to air conditioning, high nighttime temperatures, and a lack of green space in some cities. The circumstances triggered not just discomfort but heat exhaustion and heatstroke in some cases. Preliminary reports suggest that heat may have been associated with 10,000 excess deaths, including thousands of people in the UK, France, Germany, and Belgium.

“Air conditioning is an especially critical issue in Europe in the short term,” said Anamika Shreevastava, a researcher at New York University who studied urban heat islands as a postdoc at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. One of her goals was to produce thermal maps based on NASA data from missions like ECOSTRESS that city planners could use to make cities more resilient to heat waves.

International Energy Agency data show that 23 percent of homes in Europe have air conditioning, compared to 90 percent of homes in the United States. That difference contributes to the much higher death rates that researchers have documented in European cities during heat waves than in comparable American cities. “Longer term, cities can also plant trees, expand parks, use reflective roof paint, and transition to building materials less likely to retain heat,” Shreevastava said.

An analysis from the World Health Organization indicates that heat stress is the world’s leading cause of weather-related deaths, noting it exacerbates underlying illnesses, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, mental health conditions, and asthma. Researchers have calculated that roughly 489,000 heat-related deaths occur each year, with 45 percent of the deaths in Asia and 36 percent in Europe.

“For older adults with physical health problems, temperatures as low as 26.7°C (80°F) can pose significant danger,” said Deborah Carr, a Boston University sociologist who specializes in the study of aging. “Nighttime heat is especially harmful for older adults whose homes lack air conditioning.”

Carr is part of a research team that used demographic data, along with temperature and climate data archived by NASA, to identify which parts of the world are at the greatest risk of current and future heat exposure. Southern Europe was among the areas facing growing heat exposure and an aging population, the researchers found.

Other research, published in Lancet Planetary Health in August 2026, underscores the importance of demographics in assessing the risks posed by heat. This study, led by Stanford researcher Qinqin Kong, mapped where increasing heat is likely to lead to intolerable conditions in the coming decades for young, middle-aged, and older adults, concluding that safe thresholds will be breached often and widely, with risks falling disproportionately on older people.

“The human body can tolerate only a limited range of ambient heat,” said Kong, a recipient of a NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology award. “Understanding where, when, and to what extent these limits are exceeded is critical.”

With intolerable levels of heat expected to affect more people across larger regions and for longer periods than previously thought, Kong and his colleagues hope that their findings will inform targeted heat action plans, emergency preparedness, and health system planning.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using GEOS-FP data from the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA GSFC. Story by Adam Voiland.

References & Resources

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The post Europe’s Scorching Summer appeared first on NASA Science.

A series of heat waves in 2026 is breaking records and taking a toll in Europe.


LatConnect 60 selects Transcelestial’s Space Optical Network for SWIRSAT imaging constellation

latconnect 60 logo

SAN FRANCISCO / PERTH, 20 AUGUST 2026: LatConnect 60 (LC60) has signed a commercial contract with Transcelestial for an optical communications terminal on its SWIRSAT-1 mission, plus access to Transcelestial’s […]

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Draper Selects Proteus Space for Advanced On-Orbit Mission

LOS ANGELES, CA, September 8th, 2026. Proteus Space, a dual-use aerospace company delivering rapid, end-to-end access to space, today announced it has been selected by The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, […]

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The Week Observed: August 13, 2026

What City Observatory Did This Week

Bankrupt:  The cost of the I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening has exploded to $3.5 billion, making the second highest cost highway project (per mile) in the nation. The Oregon Department of Transportation’s systematic mismanagement and deception have turned this into a fiscal black hole.  ODOT is more than $2 billion short of the amount needed to actually build the full project, and yet is marching forward with construction, playing “extend and pretend” with a financial plan that threatens to absorb all of the region’s transportation financial capital for the next decade or more.

  • Highest cost project in the US: At $3.5 billion for a 1.5-mile stretch, the Rose Quarter project now costs roughly $2.3 billion per mile—making it the second most expensive highway project in the United States, behind only the nearby $15 billion Interstate Bridge Replacement ($3 billion/mile).

  • Seven-fold cost increase: Since the Oregon Legislature approved an initial $450 million allocation in 2017, ODOT’s cost estimates have ballooned seven-fold to $3.5 billion, resulting in a current $2 billion funding gap.

  • Deceptive accounting.  ODOT low-balled initial cost estimates to sell the project, never got legislative approval for cost increases, relied on over-optimistic revenue assumptions, commenced construction with a huge funding gap, and rather than facing reality, has been playing “extend and pretend” as costs exploded and revenue evaporated.

  • The “driving stakes” strategy: By breaking ground on a tiny fragment (“Phase 1A”)–with more than $1.5 billion unfunded–ODOT used classic Robert Moses tactics to force political officials into providing further funding.

  • ODOT is effectively insolvent:  ODOT’s long-running reign of error is bankrupting the agency. Due almost entirely to persistent and growing megaproject cost overruns costing billions, ODOT is now functionally insolvent, even as it confronts a $200 million operating deficit

  • Overspending to create land: Promised caps meant to heal the Albina neighborhood work out to an absurd $400 million to $800 million per acre of buildable land—roughly 100 to 200 times the market price for adjacent properties.

Must Read

As we’ve long noted at City Observatory, studies that purport to measure the “costs of congestion” are essentially thinly veiled propaganda, with no basis in science.  Once again, Todd Litman of the Victoria Transportation Reserach Institute takes out the analytical and methodological trash, and debunks exaggerated congestion cost claims.  Focusing on widely cited congestion reports—such as the INRIX Global Traffic Scorecard and TTI Urban Mobility Report—Litman shows they systematically inflate traffic delay estimates chiefly as ammunication to justify multi-billion-dollar highway expansion.  Among the flaws in these studies:

  • Unrealistic baseline speeds: Studies measure delay against free-flow or above-speed-limit traffic, treating normal, safe urban driving speeds as “congestion,” while characterizing the inability of drivers to exceed the legal speed limit as a “cost.”

  • Overstated value of travel time estimates: Reports assign high monetary values to minor, predictable delays while ignoring the far higher economic costs of vehicle ownership and sprawl.

  • Exaggerated traffic growth claims: Measured peak hour delay growth often stems from altered metrics and lower off-peak speeds rather than real-world traffic gridlock.

  • Biased policy incentives: None of these so-called studies are  peer-reviewed, and are generally the product of organizations looking to generate or amplify public concern about traffic as a way of selling their products (traffic monitoring) or advancing their point of view (more freeway construction).  These same incentives lead authors to ignore more cost effective means of reducing travel costs, including better transit, demand management, and land-use reforms.

 

Beth Osborne:  Wait for a better Congress to address reauthorization.  There’s legislation moving through Congress that would re-authorize the IIJA (the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act).  Transportation for America’s Beth Osborne points out that this Republican-crafted bill–which shortchanges transit, active transportation, and safety, while providing even more generous funding for highway expansions–is a bad deal.  She asks, in light of the political outlook, what’s the rush?

. . . even now, when it’s obvious to anyone watching that a full reauthorization isn’t happening this Congress and this bill will get extended into a Congress that might look very different, a lot of members of what could be the next majority—and some advocacy groups that would theoretically do better under a change in leadership—still seem to think this is simply as good as it gets. I have to wonder, why don’t they want a shot at this bill from the majority?

Transportation bills often have a long shadow, with reauthorization locking in the policy environment for several years.  It would be a mistake to allow the current political environment to determine transportation priorities for the next five or more years.

 

 

 

 

Moog Highlights Huntsville Expansion and New Hardware-in-the-Loop Lab During Space and Missile Defense Symposium

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Portal Space Systems to include rideshare payloads on Falcon 9 launch of Supernova

Portal spacecraft

Portal Space Systems has acquired a Falcon 9 to launch its first Supernova spacecraft and will offer excess capacity on the vehicle for rideshare payloads.

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Rock West Composites® Is Premiering Its New STRATOPultrusion™ Product Line at the 2026 Small Satellite Conference

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China’s Chang’e-7 lunar ice-hunting mission set for Sunday launch

A mosaic of Shackleton Crater near the luanr south pole, showing the depths of the crater. The illuminated rim area will be targeted by China's Chang'e-7 mission.

HELSINKI — China will launch a complex, multi-spacecraft mission late Sunday to study and land near the lunar south pole, including a search for evidence of water-ice. A Long March […]

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Muon Space raises $250 million to ramp up satellite production

Muon Space has raised $250 million to fuel the small satellite specialist’s push into larger, more powerful spacecraft and constellations.

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Golden Dome chief touts progress as funding questions loom

Guetlein joins North Dakota senators in making the case for the missile defense program

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Elve qualifies millimeter-wave amplifiers for spaceflight

SAN FRANCISCO – California startup Elve has qualified its 100-watt millimeter-wave Traveling Wave Tube Amplifier platform for spaceflight. With U.S. Space Force Small Business Innovation Research funding, Elve “didn’t just […]

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SpaceWERX selects 11 firms to scale technologies for military space

The new round of STRATFIs were awarded to Agile Space Industries, Antares Nuclear, EO Solutions, Hydrosat, Kall Morris, Method Security, Muon Space, Scout Space, Sedaro, Star Catcher Industries and ThinkOrbital

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Rocket Lab launches 9th satellite for iQPS

Electron launch Aug 20 2026

Rocket Lab launched another satellite for Japanese radar-imaging company iQPS on Aug. 20.

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New space transportation policy focuses on increased launch rates

The White House released a new space transportation policy Aug. 20 with an emphasis on enabling a sharp increase in the number of launches and reentries.

The post New space transportation policy focuses on increased launch rates appeared first on SpaceNews.

Thursday 20 August 1663

Up betimes and to my office (having first been angry with my brother John, and in the heat of my sudden passion called him Asse and coxcomb, for which I am sorry, it being but for leaving the key of his chamber with a spring lock within side of his door), and there we sat all the morning, and at noon dined at home, and there found a little girl, which she told my wife her name was Jinny, by which name we shall call her. I think a good likely girl, and a parish child of St. Bride’s, of honest parentage, and recommended by the churchwarden.

After dinner among my joyners laying my floors, which please me well, and so to my office, and we sat this afternoon upon an extraordinary business of victualling.

In the evening came Commissioner Pett, who fell foule on mee for my carriage to him at Chatham, wherein, after protestation of my love and good meaning to him, he was quiet; but I doubt he will not be able to do the service there that any other man of his ability would.

Home in the evening my viall (and lute new strung being brought home too), and I would have paid Mr. Hunt for it, but he did not come along with it himself, which I expected and was angry for it, so much is it against my nature to owe anything to any body. This evening the girle that was brought to me to-day for so good a one, being cleansed of lice this day by my wife, and good, new clothes put on her back, she run away from Goody Taylour that was shewing her the way to the bakehouse, and we heard no more of her.

So to supper and to bed.

Read the annotations

The Case Against Bond Market Panic

Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion by Neil Gaiman | Goodreads

Yesterday I wrote about how interest rates are rising around the world. I acknowledged that the higher rates are a real problem, but argued that there is no evidence that the U.S. faces a looming Greek-type debt crisis. Today I’ll talk about why it’s important for the future Democratic administration (assuming that we have free and fair elections in 2028) to keep a sense of perspective and not panic about the size of the federal debt.

Yes, as headlines in every newspaper are telling us, U.S. debt just hit $40 trillion —a number that is big and round, but otherwise has no special significance. More relevant is the incredible irresponsibility of the Trump administration, with its unfunded tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy, billions in wasteful military spending — redesigning aircraft carriers because Trump doesn’t like the way they look! — and more. Yet I don’t think that the U.S. faces a debt crisis. Specifically, I don’t think we will suffer a broad economic crisis brought on by investors’ loss of faith that the heavily indebted U.S. government will fail to pay what it owes.

I backed up that claim in yesterday’s post by citing market data showing that investors have little concern that the U.S. will default on its debt or that it will try to inflate the real value of the debt away. While such data are important, however, as some readers pointed out, they are not definitive because markets often fail to see even predictable crises coming. Some of us remember all too well the market’s complacency about housing in the 2000s, even though the signs of a massive bubble were everywhere one looked.

But anyone who asserts that markets are missing an impending debt crisis should be asked to explain how, exactly, such a crisis might play out. Don’t wave your hands at the debt crises that struck Greece and other southern European nations around 2010, because our situation is very different: Unlike Greece, which is a member of the euro area, the U.S. economy runs on dollars and U.S. government debt is denominated in dollars.

That matters because it’s very hard to construct a scenario for a Greek-style debt crisis in a nation that borrows in its own currency. As far as I can tell — and I’ve studied the issue at length — there are no historical examples in which this happened. The detailed, wonkish logic of why we are not and have never been Greece is explained in a paper I presented at the IMF’s annual research conference some years ago.

Yet the issue of whether a U.S. debt crisis was imminent was highly relevant at the time I presented that paper. Why? Because the Very Serious People were using scare stories about a potential debt crisis to demand fiscal austerity that delayed full recovery from the global financial crisis right to the end of the Obama administration, not to mention demanding cuts to Medicare and Social Security.

Who were the Very Serious People? Some were Republicans out to sabotage Obama. Others were self-important centrists. And the media played a big role. As Ezra Klein wrote in 2013,

For reasons I’ve never quite understood, the rules of reportorial neutrality don’t apply when it comes to the deficit. On this one issue, reporters are permitted to openly cheer a particular set of highly controversial policy solutions.

The VSPs, aka the debt scolds, went strangely silent once Trump took office the first time. Somehow massive revenue-losing tax cuts that further enriched the already wealthy didn’t alarm them as much as fiscal stimulus aimed at fighting mass unemployment.

But if Democrats control Congress and the White House in 2029, you can be sure that the Very Serious People will be back.

Paul Waldman had an excellent post on this recently, in which he made a prediction:

We know exactly what is going to happen once a Democrat is elected president — in fact, the ground will be seeded during the 2028 campaign. All of a sudden, the deficit will become an urgent matter that Democrats have to address, the subject of endless media coverage and fake concern from Republicans. Democratic plans for programs such as health care will be met once again with “But how are you going to pay for it?” Proposals for new commissions to recommend drastic budget cuts will be bandied about. Professional deficit scolds from organizations like the Peterson Institute will once again find themselves deluged with media requests. And because Democrats desperately want to be considered Serious People, they tend to react by saying “Oh yes, we take the deficit very seriously and we are committed to tackling it,” then find themselves hamstrung in their ability to govern.

Exactly. And the message for Democrats is clear: Don’t let the Very Serious People do what they did to Obama, using scaremongering about a debt crisis to block a progressive agenda.

I’m not saying that Democrats should be like Trump, and blithely ignore debt and deficits. They should by all means push for tax hikes on high incomes, close loopholes exploited by multinational corporations, strengthen IRS enforcement, and more. This could make a big difference: As Jared Bernstein and Bobby Kogan have shown, our deficit would be far more manageable if first Bush, then Trump, hadn’t rammed through tax cuts that hugely favored high-income Americans:

So Democrats should aim to restore the progressivity of the U.S. tax system, which would both help reverse our descent into oligarchy and help make the budget deficit more manageable. But the lesson from the Obama years is that they must not let themselves be intimidated by dire warnings about an imminent debt crisis. These warnings were totally wrong 15 years ago, and will still be wrong in 2029 even if interest rates remain relatively high.

In short, do not give in to debt panic.

MUSICAL CODA

Nothing to do with the topic. But felt like posting it for some reason

ChatGPT search now uses the site:operator at scale

ChatGPT search now uses the site:operator at scale

Promptwatch is part of the emerging "GEO" space, for Generative Engine Optimization - the chatbot version of SEO, where companies offer tools and consulting to help your site increase its presence in replies to prompts inside tools like ChatGPT.

The Promptwatch product uses automation to track responses to prompts across end-user chat products like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. They publish aggregate reports on this as part of their own content marketing strategy, which do seem to provide credible hints as to otherwise invisible design changes to those products.

Their own tracking shows a notable change aligned with the GPT-5.6 rollout earlier this month:

The percentage of all ChatGPT Search fanout queries that contain the site:operator, per day. The share hovered between 0.3% and 0.5% for weeks, dipped briefly to 0.15% on August 3 to 5 (consistent with a staged rollout or pre-launch experiment), then jumped to 16-17% on August 8.

It's important to note that these figures only reflect the prompts for which they have automated tracking enabled.

This corresponds to OpenAI's somewhat vague August 6th announcement:

For Plus and Pro users, we’re updating GPT‑5.6 Sol in Chat to be more reliable with facts and provide more focused answers.

Once again I am hampered by OpenAI's decision to actively obscure their system prompts, but from poking at ChatGPT I believe their latest search tool has a shape like search(query, recency, domains) rather than encouraging a site: operator directly.

In a follow-up on August 18th Promptwatch reported that ChatGPT appeared to have greatly reduced the likelihood of Reddit being used in those searches. My own attempts to ascertain if the system prompt has been updated to discourage Reddit sourcing have been unsuccessful - the most thorough leaked system prompt collection I know of doesn't yet show any relevant changes.

Tags: reddit, seo, openai, chatgpt, ai-assisted-search, system-prompts

A shot-scraper-style JSON API on Bun 1.4's new Bun.WebView

Research: A shot-scraper-style JSON API on Bun 1.4's new Bun.WebView

Today saw the long awaited release of Bun 1.4, the first stable version since the infamous Rust rewrite a few months ago.

Interestingly, the Rust rewrite was downplayed in the release notes, which introduced a bewildering array of new features and claimed 2,900 additional bug fixes:

Bun 1.4 adds +1,517 tests from the Node.js test suite - our biggest jump in Node.js compatibility since Bun 1.0. Bun v1.4 also fixes over 2,900 issues. It reduces idle CPU usage by 5x, reduces memory usage by up to 35%, and starts 50% faster on Linux. It adds Bun.Image, Bun.WebView, Bun.markdown, Bun.cron(), Bun.Terminal, bun run --parallel, bun test --parallel, bun audit fix, bun dedupe, and bun prune. And it rewrites Bun from Zig to Rust.

Of these the one that most caught my eye was Bun.WebView, which adds first class support for browser automation to Bun core using either macOS WebKit or control of a local Chromium process via the Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP).

I had Claude Code for web build a prototype of a web API providing the ability to load a web page and then execute JavaScript against it, inspired by my shot-scraper javascript CLI tool - partly to see how much RAM would be needed by such a service.

Here's that TypeScript server implementation, which appears to need a 192MB-256MB container to run a full Chrome against complex web pages - tested using cgroups.

Tags: browsers, javascript, ai, rust, typescript, generative-ai, llms, coding-agents, bun

AI Will Cure Us All!! Or Not!! - EP 84 Abhi Mahajan

Every couple of days, a new AI-meets-biotech startup sends me a pitch, and the pitches all sound the same. AI is amazing, and it can now tame biology. We’re on the cusp of producing new cures for diseases at a rapid rate, and these startups know just how to get the job done. To which you should wonder – is this at all true?

On this week’s Core Memory episode, we have brought in the big brains to answer – or at least debate – this question. Our resident science whiz and medical professional Eryney Marrogi takes on the hosting duties to interview Abhishaike Mahajan, he of Owl Posting and now OpenAI Foundation fame.

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These two men of science take hold of this AI/biotech moment to explore where we’re seeing the most promise from this new wave of technology and where the messiness of biology continues to confound AI. They also get into some lighter topics like our collective death from AI bioweapons and China’s impending biotech dominance. Good times.

You’re all probably buzzing over Moderna’s stock price doubling and the end of cancer. So ride that enthusiasm right into this podcast and see how you’re feeling on the other side.

If you can spare a minute, please do us a favor by filling out this ever so brief survey, so we can learn a bit more about our subscribers. Help us be better for you. Thanks!!

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Timestamps (they link out to YouTube)

0:00 Intro
4:24 Is Intelligence the Bottleneck?
6:58 A Thousand von Neumanns
12:29 The Cancer Drug That Failed
21:15 Can AI Read a Tumor?
31:38 Is Text All You Need?
44:39 The Machine Nobody Built
54:16 A Trillion Dollar Organoid?
1:02:26 Biosecurity Lost the Plot
1:06:02 ChatGPT vs. a Virus
1:19:13 Why the Terrorists Failed
1:24:37 Who Gets to Order DNA?
1:42:41 China Wins Biology
1:53:41 The Lab Nobody Funds

Thanks for listening!

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The Crash That Begins Before the Driver Even Starts the Car

An impaired-driving collision may happen at an intersection or on a highway, but the chain of decisions leading to it can begin hours earlier. Someone drives to dinner knowing they’ll probably drink. Another person assumes they’ll “figure out” the ride home later. By the end of the night, leaving the car behind suddenly feels inconvenient.

That’s what makes impaired driving different from many other roadway risks. The dangerous situation often doesn’t begin with a split-second mistake behind the wheel. There may have been several earlier opportunities to prevent the vehicle from ever entering traffic.

Understanding that timeline is important when thinking about DUI accidents . Alcohol or drugs can affect the abilities needed for safe driving, but one of the most important decisions may happen before the engine ever starts.

Impairment Changes the Skills Driving Depends On

Driving looks almost automatic when you’ve done it thousands of times. In reality, even an ordinary trip requires constant judgment. Drivers monitor speed, maintain lane position, estimate distances, recognize hazards, follow signals, and react to dozens of small changes around them.

Alcohol and other impairing substances can interfere with those abilities. Reaction time may slow, coordination can suffer, and attention may become less reliable. Vision and the ability to accurately judge distances or changing situations can also be affected.

That creates a dangerous combination. A driver doesn’t need to completely lose control of the vehicle for impairment to matter. Being slightly slower to notice brake lights, judge a turn, recognize a pedestrian, or react to another driver’s mistake can be enough to turn an ordinary roadway situation into an emergency.

The Most Important Decision May Happen Hours Earlier

Once someone has been drinking, deciding whether they’re capable of driving can become a poor safety strategy. The substance affecting driving judgment may also affect the judgment being used to make that decision. Planning transportation beforehand avoids that problem.

A designated driver, rideshare, taxi, public transportation, overnight arrangement, or ride from a friend can remove the need to make a difficult decision at the end of the night. The specific option matters less than having one available before impairment enters the equation.

It can help to think about transportation as part of the original plan rather than something to solve afterward. People make reservations, choose where they’re going, and decide when they’ll meet. Deciding how everyone will get home can be another part of that preparation.

Investigators May Reconstruct the Hours Before the Crash

Observations at the scene may become relevant, including a driver’s behavior, speech, coordination, or other circumstances noticed by officers and witnesses. Depending on the situation and applicable law, alcohol or drug testing  may provide additional information.

Other evidence can help reconstruct the timeline. Surveillance video may show where the driver had been. Witnesses may describe what they observed before the person drove. Receipts, electronic records, or other documentation may sometimes provide context about the hours leading up to the collision.

No single detail necessarily tells the entire story. The goal is often to compare multiple sources and determine whether impairment contributed to the driver’s actions. A crash investigation may therefore stretch backward well beyond the few seconds immediately surrounding impact.

One Driver’s Decision Can Spread Far Beyond One Car

Passengers have no control over the decisions being made behind the wheel. Another driver traveling home may suddenly encounter someone drifting across the centerline. A pedestrian crossing legally or a cyclist riding nearby can become involved without having any opportunity to anticipate the danger.

The consequences can continue outward from there. Serious injuries can mean surgeries, rehabilitation, missed work, and long-term limitations. Families may suddenly become caregivers. A fatal collision can permanently change several families because of one decision made before a relatively ordinary drive.

Conclusion

Alcohol and drugs can interfere with reaction time, attention, coordination, vision, judgment, and other abilities drivers rely on constantly. Once those abilities are affected, simply promising to “drive carefully” doesn’t restore them.

Planning another way home removes the problem before it reaches the roadway. Arrange the ride, choose the designated driver, stay overnight, or leave the vehicle behind. Those decisions can feel unnecessarily cautious hours before anyone is ready to leave.

Photo: beyzahzah via Pexels


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The post The Crash That Begins Before the Driver Even Starts the Car appeared first on DCReport.org.

Links 8/20/26

Links for you. Science:

China Hunts for Scientific Talent. The U.S. Is Making It Easier.
Trump’s New CDC Director Promised Dystopian New Abortion Policy
DC painting special coating on roads in hopes of cooling ‘urban heat islands’
NIH Directors Decide, Except When HHS Says No
Moderna and Merck say mRNA cancer vaccine succeeded in late-stage melanoma trial
Genetic innovation in coronaviruses driven by a viral nuclease (“We found numerous examples of potential furin cleavage site acquisition and replacement through insertion mutation during the normal course of coronavirus replication. Such events are, therefore, likely commonplace in coronavirus populations of a size that occurs in nature.”)
Hundreds of Young Invasive Carp Found Closer to Lake Michigan Than Ever Before, Just as Work Has Stopped on Billion-Dollar Barrier

Other:

Trump put thousands of soldiers on Washington’s streets. They seldom stop crime
Florida Republican could face death penalty under child abuse law he championed
Yes, We Absolutely Should Talk About Natalie Harp. Republicans claim President Trump’s closest aide is off-limits. Are they kidding?
Voices of Wards 7 and 8: How the federal takeover of D.C. impacted Southeast
Election Officials Are Preparing for Prediction Markets to Sow Chaos in the Midterms
Teen Boys Are Using Meta Glasses to Harass and Bully Girls at High Schools and Middle Schools
This Is How A Downward Spiral Begins. The MAGA artifice is crumbling, but rank and file Republicans can’t walk away from a decade of complicity by saying, in essence, “the Trump era was CRAAAAZY!”
The L.A. mayoral poll was a fake. But was it illegal?
Libraries Beg Brendan Carr To Back Off Plan To Make U.S. Broadband Shittier, More Expensive
A gaffe so bad it could sink a Trump endorsee
Reclaiming “Normalization”: It’s way past time we start normalizing the kinds of things that will be necessary for American renewal in the post-Trump era.
Rep. Jimmy Gomez Accuser Says Their Interactions Were Non-Consensual
A Stunning Win for the Left in Florida: 6 Takeaways from Tuesday’s Primaries
Trump Aides Unnerved by Natalie Harp as Ossoff Barb Lands
99.8% Accuracy
How Did the English Build Such Beautiful Villages?
Travels With Natalie
Republicans Are Nervous About Natalie
2020 election skeptics confabulists seek governor’s offices in battleground states
The D.C. Bishop Who Took on Trump Shares How to Be Brave
Sainsbury’s store pauses AI scanning after false shoplifting accusation
Meet Natalie Harp, the aide so close to Trump she once rode in an SUV trunk to accompany him
Dems Drive The News Cycle Precisely Once
Trump Votes by Mail Again in Florida
Mamdani’s First Parents’ Night Out Was a Hit
U.S. GOP Rep. Randy Fine caught snooping inside home’s mailbox
‘Where are the arrests? Where is the trial? Where is the justice?’
Mitch McConnell Is Getting More Paid Time Off Than Women Who Give Birth
Oprah tries (unsuccessfully) to distance herself from Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil
ICE Is Asking Gate Agents To Help Arrest Passengers. Some Are Pushing Back

The Scale of De-Trumpification Will Need to Be Massive–And There’s Lots of Small Stuff to Fix Too

In my optimistic moments*, I think about what Democrats will need to do when they take back power in 2029. What is remarkable is how pervasive the effects of Trump et alia are. We’re all aware (hopefully) of the effects on the constitutional order and functioning of the government, but there’s also a bunch of smaller things that will need to be fixed, like the signs at our National Parks (boldface mine):

One of the stops was the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument, designated by the Obama administration in 2016 to honor the National Woman’s Party, which fought for women’s equality and was founded by suffragettes Alice Paul and Lucy Burns.

McBurney helped inspect the informational plaques outside the brick building until they found what they had been looking for: a recent alteration on a sign describing some of the tactics used by suffragists to fight for the right to vote.

A 2025 photo of the plaque shows the sign stating that after women were imprisoned for a protest outside of the White House in 1917, they were “beaten and force-fed when they went on hunger strikes.”

The sign now reads: “The women, many of whom came from prominent and politically connected families, demanded to be treated as political prisoners.”

The new placard also leaves out a reference that this was a turning point that helped change public opinion on women’s suffrage. In other words, they are “removing the fact that that action worked,” McBurney said.

These protestors for women’s equality weren’t being ‘performative’, they were beaten and tortured. Trump’s fascist lickspittles are hiding that historical reality with lies.

As I said, compared to things like ICE’s fascism and the corruption of the constitutional order, this is small beans, but it still must be fixed. And this is just one example of one small thing. We will need a ton of De-Trumpification, and, again, not just of the obvious stuff.

And we will have to tell Americans about it too, as part of the process–we can’t just do it quietly. People need to be aware of what Republicans actually did.

*I actually am optimistic about winning in 2028, but how Democrats will govern in 2029 is a separate matter about which I’m fairly pessimistic, given previous performance and goals.

Detailed Timeline of OpenAI’s Cyberattack on Hugging Face

OpenAI presented details of its AI’s model’s cyberattack on Hugging Face at Black Hat last week. Simon Willison details the timeline. It’s really interesting to read through—and really impressive cyberoffense work.

Police Are Hiding Their Use of Flock Surveillance Cameras

A usage policy for Flock license plate reader cameras tells police not to talk about the cameras:

When cops use Flock to arrest someone in Wapello County, Iowa, they don’t want them to know. A usage policy for the automated license plate reader cameras in the county tells police, in no uncertain terms, to keep them a secret: “DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE TO THE OCCUPANTS OF THE VEHICLE,” the policy document reads. “DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE IN YOUR REPORT OR COMPLAINT UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.”

This reminds me of IMSI-catchers (Stingray was the most popular) a couple of decades ago. Police would go to even more extremes to hide their usage.

Introducing Dashboard Touch, a build-your-own version of Touch ID

For years, I’ve wanted to have a standalone version of Apple’s Touch ID authentication feature for my Mac, but without having to use an Apple keyboard. (I generally like their keyboards, but my daily driver keyboard these days is a big clicky mechanical beast.) I’d gone down various dead ends of trying to find substitutes, and even checked out the efforts where people had ripped apart expensive Apple keyboards just to scavenge the Touch ID sensors out of them. None of them quite solved the problem.

So today, I’m sharing an open source project called Dashboard Touch, which lets you make your own Touch ID-style sensor for your Mac, using low-cost off-the-shelf part. It’s based on an extensive refactoring of the excellent tinyTouch project by Zimeng Xiong, who recently cracked the code on how to make a useful fingerprint scanner system that’s also reasonably secure for regular Mac users. (You should definitely check out his project and support his new hardware build if you’re interested in this stuff.)

I took my own approach to this work because I wanted to focus a lot on having a friendly web interface for configuring exactly how the fingerprint sensor system works on your computer. When you get Dashboard Touch set up, it presents you with a nice web interface that runs right on your own Mac, letting you do things like set the color of the ring light on the fingerprint sensor, or capture your fingerprints so they’re recorded in the system.

Behind the scenes, the way the system works couldn’t be simpler. You buy a little fingerprint sensor, and a small microcontroller, wire them together (it was actually fun to get back to soldering stuff!), and then plug them into your computer with a regular USB cable. After you run the setup script, you just go to the web interface and add your finger(s) to the system.

the Dashboard Touch web interface shows how to configure your sensor

Once you’re running, your Mac runs as normal, except any time the system prompts you to type in your password, you can just swipe your fingertip on the sensor and Dashboard Touch will type your password in for you. At a technical level, the device is actually literally pretending to be a keyboard. (You can look over the code on GitHub and get a feel for the approach pretty quickly.)

After it’s installed, it’s basically a set-it-and-forget-it kind of thing. You don’t need to do anything else for it to Just Work. Your password is only ever stored securely on your Mac, and your fingerprints are only ever stored securely on your sensor. You can erase them at any time and nothing talks to the internet at all except the one manual update checker, where you can see if there’s a new version of Dashboard Touch, but only when you intentionally click the button to request it to do so.

Overall, this isn’t the kind of system you should use if you’re protecting a bank vault, but if your computer is physically secure and nobody is going to have extended unsupervised access to your Dashboard Touch setup without your permission, you should be fine.

Dash, not bored

Personally, it’s been really fun to get back to making things. As you can see in my introductory video, I ended up creating an enclosure for my fingerprint sensor in my woodshop, so that it would match my desk that I recently built. Even creating and editing the intro video was a fun project that took me out of my usual comfort zone.

Nearly every task in this project has had me stretching to do things that I’m pretty bad at, from firmware coding to security review to detailed carpentry to video editing. But I just love the idea of putting things out there again for people to hack on, and there's also something really satisfying about being able to be super-opinionated about the design and user interface of something after so many years of working on teams where I had to collaborate. (Even though I always got to collaborate with brilliant people, it's different when you get to pick every pixel!)

I just also have been missing the era of the web when most of what I saw online was weird and fun things that regular people were building, and I realized that I can't mourn the absence of those kinds of projects unless I invest my own energy into building some of those kinds of things myself. So, here's one! Let me know what you think, and if you've got any ideas for how to make this thing better. Or, of course, if you find any bugs that I should fix.

I hope you have fun touching the blinking lights!

Indian documentary covers EV winners

A new short documentary (22 mins) film called The 22nd Century Indian by Shaurya Sinha offers an optimistic take on India, and also covers five (!) Emergent Ventures winners.  Congratulations to them, and to Shruti too.

EV India winners featured: Naman Pushp https://x.com/therealnamzoo?s=11
Khushi Mittal: https://khushimittal.com
Shreeporna Rao: https://x.com/shreepoorna365?s=11
Samay Sanghvi: https://www.thealmanac.ai/article/samaysanghvii
Angad Daryani: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angaddaryani?utm_source=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=member_ios

The post Indian documentary covers EV winners appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

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Stanford's Secret Course on How to Rule the World

When I was a student, years ago, I heard about a secret Stanford class that wasn’t listed in the course catalogue. According to my source, the subject was an Eastern European language (Latvian, if I recall correctly), and all the students were football players.

My informant explained that the course was designed so everybody could pass. He said that a week before the final, the teacher handed out a worksheet filled with questions. Then she spent the entire session that day providing the answers, which the students dutifully wrote down on the worksheet. The final exam, a few days later, included the exact same questions as the worksheet, and students were allowed to consult their notes.

Maybe this was an urban legend, and I can’t prove any of those details. But my source vouched for them, and sounded convincing. I was horrified that something like that might happen at Stanford.

But that’s small potatoes compared to another secret class at Stanford, which is now in the news for the worst possible reason. Unlike the Latvian class, it’s not something you take to earn easy credits, but for a much more unsavory reason.

The course is called “Rule”—which the Stanford Daily explains is shorthand for “So You Think You Can Rule the World?”


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Only twelve students are allowed to take this off-the-books course—they are chosen by instructor Justin Lewis-Weber after a rigorous interview process which, in some instances, starts the previous academic year. You can’t even apply unless you have a referral from a class participant.

Membership has its privileges—but also responsibilities. According to The Stanford Daily, students are “encouraged not to disclose their involvement and even their referral to those outside of the class.”

Stanford undergraduate Theo Baker shared more details about ‘Rule’ in his recent book, appropriately entitled How to Rule the World. He failed to get accepted into the course, but managed to secure an interview with Lewis-Weber—which turned into an intense interrogation. At the end, he was allowed to ask the instructor some questions.

He had one big question: “What is the class actually about?”

“When I was at Stanford,” Justin explained, “I learned that the only people who understood the world were the literal children of billionaires.” Now he had figured out those secrets for himself….”By learning them, a huge amount of latent talent and potential in the most promising people can be unlocked.”

Book cover

In at least one instance, an actual child of a billionaire was part of “Rule”—Phoebe Gates, daughter of Microsoft founder Bill Gates. She’s in the news, too, right now, in the worst kind of way (see below).

Phoebe Gates refused to grant Baker an interview, but he did manage to gather information from six people who had taken “Rule.” Here are some of the things he found out:

  • “Every one was very sharp. Very sharp.”

  • “The overriding theme of the class is to exceed the limits of your conceivable ambition.”

  • “One of the big things I picked up is that there are ways to influence people where it doesn’t seem inherently obvious that you’re doing so.”

  • Course materials included “some effective altruism, some stuff from Peter Thiel, some stuff from Paul Graham.”

Stanford’s main quad and the Hoover Tower (Source: King of Hearts/Wikimedia Commons)

I was especially interested in the Effective Altruism angle. I’ve been a harsh critic of this philosophical system—for reasons I’ve outlined in two article (here and here). I’ve warned that “whenever you see stupid or terrible things justified by the possibility of future benefits, you should be on the lookout for consequentialist ethics” such as Effective Altruism.

Exactly one week after I wrote those words, Bloomberg reported that Phoebe Gates, nepo baby and participant in Rule, was in hot water. Her shopping app Phia gamed the system, talking credit for sales it didn’t generate—and the “founders were aware of the practice for at least seven months.”

She now faces a possible prison sentence of 20 years!

The crime itself is boring. What makes this interesting in Gates’s immense family wealth, and her obsession with doing good in the world. That’s why the linkage to the Effective Altruist orientation of her Stanford class on “how to rule the world” is no surprise—that’s an ethical code which allows the worst kind of chaos and mayhem in the short term, provided the anticipated long term social payoff is sufficiently grand.

The connection is even more relevant in this instance, because Gates, according to The Stanford Daily, “conducts internal recruiting for her company Phia through the class.”

Before these recent revelations, Gates was best known to the public via laudatory media coverage—perhaps linked to the fact that her daddy has given $319 million to media outlets.

So Phoebe Gates got written up, in glowing terms, in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, People, and elsewhere. This nepo baby was even showcased in a fashion photoshoot in Elle—and the magazine was positively gushing in its coverage:

She’s surrounded by touches of pink, her favorite color. Phia matchbooks sit on her desk. Her dark hair is pulled back, and she’s wearing gold Tiffany earrings and a cozy navy-and-white knit top. Gates has the bearing of any recent college grad, but she’s a social media powerhouse, boasting over half a million followers on Instagram….

Gates’s goal is for it to be successful enough that she can invest in things that matter to her. “It’s ridiculous how few female leaders we have,” she says. “Two percent of VC funding goes to women. That’s criminal. I want to create the world that I want to live in.

I rarely encourage readers to check out links to journalism of this sort. But Elle’s puff piece really has to be seen to appreciate the level of groveling involved. Gates is photographed as a glamor queen, bedecked with products from Prada, Chanel, Tiffany, etc.

But now she is in the news for a possible crime, and a very serious one.

When a poor person steals, I’m not surprised. In contrast, when a successful person commits a robbery, I’m puzzled. But then there’s a third, even more troubling situation—namely, when the richest people in the world get caught up in thievery.

That leaves me dumbfounded. Don’t these folks already have enough of everything?

  • Ivan Boesky was a legend on Wall Street and fabulously wealthy. But he made illegal payments to informants with briefcases filled with hundred dollar bills—hence the guy who once owned the Beverly Hills Hotel ended up as a long term guest at the federal prison in Lompoc, California. He is now best remembered as the inspiration for Gordon Gekko’s “greed is good” mantra in the film Wall Street.

  • Wealthy entrepreneur John DeLorean made an even stupider decision. He needed to raise money for his car company, but instead of selling equity or issuing debt, he agreed to peddle $24 million in cocaine. He is also remembered now via a movie—namely Back to the Future, which showcases a stylish DeLorean DMC-12 sports car.

  • They also made a movie about former billionaire John Kapoor. It’s called Pain Hustlers, and details how he authorized bribes to doctors to accelerate fentanyl sales for his company Insys Therapeutics. He ended up at a federal prison in Duluth, Minnesota.

I can’t judge what price Gates will pay for this alleged crime. Let me just say that I see potential for a movie treatment in her future too. And it won’t resemble that sycophantic Elle spread.

I once thought these news stories were oddities, but super-rich criminals are now an everyday thing. In recent years, I’ve watched monumental collapses from a surprising number of people with Stanford ties (Elizabeth Holmes, Sam Bankman-Fried, etc.). You might even call it a trend.

“Influencing is for kids. Effective altruism is more or less the same thing, but for the tech oligarchy.”

If you think all this is just about money, you’re missing the point. When the goal is to “rule the world,” no amount of money is ever enough. What makes this situation so dangerous is the combination of out-of-control ambition with the narcissistic savior complex of people who believe anything they do today is permitted, provided they’re pursuing a sufficiently grandiose vision of the future.

It’s easy to understand why ego-trippers of this sort are attracted to a Bond villain moral code, such as Effective Altruism. This vague consequentialist system gratifies the ego in a way that simple kindness, compassion, and charity to the people around you can never match.

It’s no surprise that this is happening in conjunction with the growing popularity of a maniacally metastasizing social obsession called influencing. Effective Altruism is influencing on steroids—where the results may be murky but the Influencer gets to bask in all the glory.

Influencing is for kids. Effective altruism is more or less the same thing, but for the tech oligarchy.

This toxic philosophy is now widespread among young elites. As Theo Baker admits in How to Rule the World, Sam Bankman-Fried helped establish Effective Altruism as “the most popular ethical system in the Valley.” And even after all the scandals, it’s still holds its adherents in a cult-like grip.

Every time I write about this, I warn that there will be more fiascos and meltdowns in the future, possibly of massive proportions, if this worldview remains unchecked. And not long after, this baleful prediction is sadly confirmed by another scandal.

A good place to fix this mess would be Stanford University. The best way of doing that would be by teaching actual humanities from real humanists who understand the transformative power of this course of study. That would be a whole lot better than serving up shallow pop psychology from tech wannabes in secret courses for elites.

Of course, the foundation for a reform of this sort must be core values that run deeper than a narcissistic desire to “rule the world.”

I don’t see any of that happening in the current moment. But Silicon Valley will pay a huge price for this overreaching. Animosity to the technocracy is already ramping up rapidly. According to a new survey from CNBC/Generation Labs:

A majority of respondents said they distrusted the leaders of major companies investing in AI—81% said they distrusted Palantir CEO Alex Karp, 79% distrusted Palantir chairman Peter Thiel, 76% distrusted Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, 74% distrusted Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, while around 70% said they distrusted Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

Those approval ratings are abysmal—worse even than the failing scores given to the most disliked politicians. And all indications are that the backlash is growing, not shrinking.

Those disliked techies are the actual people who now “rule the world.” And the verdict is in: They’re failing us. So either they take steps themselves to correct course, or the people will force their hands.

One way or the other, change will happen and manipulative command-and-control agendas will get scaled back. If that’s not clear to the rule-the-world crowd right now, they will certainly get the message soon enough—most likely after the the election in November.

We will revisit the situation then, and see how this plays out.


POSTSCRIPT (8/20/2026)

Some readers have asked for more analytical detail of my objections to Effective Altruism. I provide that below—but, be forewarned, this is more philosophy than journalism. Even so, some of you will find this interesting, so I share it here.

TED ON EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM

Effective Altruism is a consequentialist ethical system, unlike deontological approaches which are primarily rule-driven. You may assume that judging a moral action by its consequences is obviously the right thing to do, but the reality is that no religion, government, or community has ever made ethical decisions in this way.

If you commit murder, the judge pronounces sentence on your violation of the law, but the judge NEVER says: “Let’s wait ten years and determine the consequences of the murder you committed—maybe it was okay.” This never happens and never will, and for a very good reason. Chaos would ensue if actions could be justified by long-term consequences.

But that is precisely the kind of chaos that Effective Altruism allows, and willingly embraces. Its practitioners are extreme in this way—they focus on the most long-term and geographically distant consequences. This is dangerous, much like driving without looking at the road in front of you, but instead imagining what’s happening on the road a mile ahead.

This inevitably results in crashes. That’s why I can accurately predict that Effective Altruists will be recognized by the chaotic short-term impact of their efforts. And this is precisely what happened with Sam Bankman-Fried, Catherine Ellison, Leopold Aschenbrenner, and now Phoebe Gates. None of this is coincidence. The chaos is hard-baked into their philosophical assumptions.

So I can safely predict that the same thing will happen again in the future. Effective Altrusim, if it continues to retain its influence, will lead to more fiascos, meltdowns, and criminal actions. That’s why I describe it as a moral philosophy for Bond villains.

And even if we did attempt to justify actions by consequences, how can you even begin to implement such a methodology? Do we need to wait a year to measure consequences? Or ten years? Or a lifetime? Or several generations? And how can you even begin to separate the impact of other factors or counterfactuals? If you kill a baby because you know it will grow up to be Hitler, how can you ever prove that fact? The only certainty is that you just killed a baby.

So this adds a second problem to Effective Altruism—not only does it embrace chaos, but it operates in a perpetual mist of vagueness. This, too, is exactly what we see in the public statements of Sam Bankman-Fried and others. Here, too, the connection between their philosophy and their malfeasance is evident at every step. Just look and see the many grand (but ambiguous) pronouncements that come out of their lips. It’s almost a trademark of the cult.

The next problem of consequentialist ethics is that the bad things its practioners do are REALITIES—happening immediately—while any positive consequences of their actions are merely POSSIBILITIES. So from a chronological perspective, the chaos precedes benefits. From an ontological perspective, the negatives have total existence while the positives merely possess possible existence. And because chronology can’t be reversed, the perpetrators can’t undo actions if the positive consequences never ensue. These are significant problems with Effective Altruism.

I won’t even go into the psychological make-up of people who act this way—who tend to display a narcissistic savior complex that runs counter to everything we know about the character of ethical people. I’m dealing here with philosophy, not psychology. But you could write an entire book on the psychological profile of Effective Altruism—and it would be a devastating takedown of the cult.

So you can cite names like Peter Singer, but that doesn’t change any of this. At best, Singer can say that he is so super smart he can understand consequences better than any of us. But that’s exactly what Sam Bankman-Fried thought, and Leopold Aschenbrenner, and all the others. (By the way, Stalin, Mao and other mass killers would inevitably make this same kind of Effective Altruist argument to justify their murders—because crimes on that magnitude inevitably demand consequentialist justifications. They were super-smart people too.)

After you consider this, you start to understand why the most powerful ethical systems are built on something stronger than possible long-term consequences. Take your pick—Kant’s categorical imperative, Thomistic natural law, Aristotelian virtue ethics, the Ten Commandments, the Code of Hammurabi, Rawlsian justice, or whatever. They are all superior to Effective Altruism, and it’s not even close.

How Democrats Can Avoid Screwing Up On Health Care Again in 2028

Yeah, not this. (White House Photo by Hannah Foslien)

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My family recently got some ominous news from the non-profit my wife works for. The organization will no longer be providing health insurance to its employees; instead, it’s moving to an Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangement (ICHRA, fittingly pronounced ick-ra), in which you’re responsible for choosing your own insurance from the Affordable Care Act exchange, and your employer gives you some nominal amount of money to pay for part of it. In our case, their contribution won’t even cover a quarter of our premiums.

You’ve probably never heard of ICHRAs; I hadn’t, and I write about health care policy all the time. They were quietly created by the Trump administration in his first term, and have recently begun to take off; among other things they have given rise to a whole new collection of middlemen sucking money out of the system. The online explainers about ICHRAs say that they “empower employees with choice” and are “rising in popularity,” which means not that actual people like them, but that employers are rushing to them as a new way to minimize their responsibility for their employees’ health care.

Here’s a prediction: In the next couple of years, millions of people will probably be shunted into ICHRAs, and they aren’t going to like it much. And that’s only part of what’s coming. By the time we get to the 2028 presidential primary season, so many Americans will be so pissed off about health care that it will once again be a central issue in a presidential race. And the Democratic candidates will be tempted to make the same mistake they made in 2020.

It’s not just this new way that so many people will have to pay more for skimpier insurance. Starting next year, Medicaid “work requirements” will begin; when Republicans wrote them into law, they made sure to delay implementation until after the midterm elections. I’ve written at length about how work requirements are actually paperwork requirements whose purpose is not to promote work (the vast majority of Medicaid recipients who can work are already working) but to take health coverage from as many people as possible by forcing them to navigate a bureaucratic obstacle course and then punishing them when they slip up. Which is exactly what will happen; the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that 10 to 15 million Americans could lose their coverage when the paperwork requirements kick in.

As Norm Ornstein reminds us, when you throw that many people off Medicaid, it isn’t just bad for them; the effects ripple out through the system, reducing revenues for hospitals and doctors and nursing homes, threatening access to care for millions more. The effects are going to be particularly devastating in rural areas, where care is already difficult to access. And that’s on top of the millions who have already lost coverage because the Republicans eliminated enhanced subsidies in the ACA marketplace, while premiums keep rising for those who do have coverage.

Put all these developments together, and we’ll arrive at a political moment in the run-up to the 2028 election in which Democrats will face a challenge and an opportunity. And they can’t screw it up like they did last time.

The mistake Democrats must avoid making

In 2020, Democrats running for president had a grand debate about what dramatic overhaul of the health care system they should pursue. They were divided into two groups: the more progressive candidates (including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren) who wanted Medicare for All, and the more moderate candidates (including Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg) who proposed something that preserved much of the private insurance system while expanding coverage to everyone.

Each one of them published a plan for how to go about achieving their goals, and because they were Democrats who wanted to show everyone they were serious about policy, and they were advised by serious health care policy wonks, the plans were sensible and detailed. This was a mistake.

Do you remember Biden’s plan? It was actually pretty good, from a wonk’s perspective; it involved the creation of a new public option program and auto-enrolling uninsured people in Medicaid. But you don’t remember it, not only because it was lost amid all the competing plans of that primary, but because once he took office he promptly tossed it in a file drawer and never spoke of it again.

The Democrats running for president in 2028 need to avoid getting dragged down into an endless debate about details that not only won’t be decided until any reform plan goes through the legislative meat-grinder, but will allow them to be consumed by the “But how will you pay for it???” question that only Democrats have to answer.

So what should they do instead? Simplify, simplify, simplify.

I mean that in both how they campaign and what they advocate. My preference is still for a system that resembles what they have in countries like Canada, France, and Australia: a public program that covers everyone, combined with private supplemental insurance that would allow people to pay for fancier coverage if they want it. But to be honest, at this point I don’t really care if a Democratic politician shares my ultimate goal on this issue.

That’s because “What is the system we hope one day to arrive at?” and “What should we advocate and pursue next?” are different questions. Even if you believe that Medicare for All is the best idea (and there are excellent reasons to believe that), it’s kind of like standing at the eastern edge of the Rockies and saying you want to go to Hawaii. Hawaii is lovely, but you’d better have a plan to get over the mountains and across the sea if you want to get there.

Which is why I’ve concluded that the best next step should be a Medicare buy-in. We’ve talked about a public option for health care for a long time, and we almost got it in the ACA (Joe Lieberman, may his name live in infamy forever, killed it almost single-handedly for no reason other than spite at the liberals who beat him in a 2006 primary). As I said, Biden had a public option plan — but it was complex and created a new program, which was a mistake.

Paul Krugman recently laid out an extremely persuasive case for why a Medicare buy-in is a winner both politically and substantively, and one of the most important aspects of this idea is its simplicity. Here’s a comprehensive explanation of the idea: Allow people to buy their insurance from Medicare. That’s it. No new program, no new agency, no reconfiguring and reimagining and reorganizing. Just let anyone get their coverage from Medicare if they want to.

That won’t immediately solve every problem in our convoluted health care system, but it will go a long way to making things better, and will move us a significant way toward a universal system. The more people we get off of parasitical private insurance and into the public system, the better off we’ll be and the closer we’ll get to where we want to go.

Perhaps the biggest political benefit of a Medicare buy-in is that it requires almost no explaining, because everyone knows what Medicare is, and almost everyone loves it. Which is why it would be extraordinarily difficult for Republicans to argue against.

Unlike something like the Green New Deal, they can’t take a new idea and work to demonize it; not only is Medicare spectacularly popular, Republicans themselves have spent years pretending they want to protect it. They can’t now argue that Medicare is awful and we shouldn’t let anyone else be a part of it.

Yes, they’ll try to fool seniors into thinking that having more people in Medicare will destroy the program, but that is self-evidently bogus, and Democrats shouldn’t be afraid of that argument. They need to set the terms of debate, in the simplest way possible. Then the next time they take power, they might actually be able to achieve what they advocated for.

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Thursday assorted links

1. This guy is productive.  Yes very productive.

2. “Mercor is building a network of experienced data scientists for potential future projects with leading AI research organizations.”  And The New Statesman covers the poetry project.

3. How did the English build such beautiful villages?

4. Two Percent Podcast with Tyler Cowen, fifty-two minutes, we discuss “wellness” too.

5. New Fighting Crime podcast.

6. Does New York need new ornamental architecture?

7. Texas Tech update (NYT).

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There are now eight episodes

The Everyday Abundance podcast explores the hidden histories behind everyday activities and the technologies we don’t even know are technologies.

Virginia Postrel and Charles C. Mann dive into the surprising stories behind everything from brushing your teeth to driving your car.

Listen, subscribe, and rate us on SpotifyApple PodcastsAmazonYouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Here is the link, self-recommending of course…

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How heart transplants gave birth to brain death (new book by Basil Baccouche)

 Basil Baccouche has a forthcoming book, which I found pretty thrilling:

The End of Death: A Surgeon, a Heart Transplant, and the Fight to Change What It Means to Die

 

Here's my blurb for the book:

 “Basil Baccouche is a new star in the constellation of physicians who write. The End of Death tells the gripping story of a tireless doctor (Norman Shumway), a drug (cyclosporine), and a law (recognizing brain death) that combined to make heart transplants one of the miracles of modern medicine.” 

However you measure it, China’s job market is weak

Some workers are going back to the farm

Why bond markets are unnerving rich-world politicians

As stocks rise ever higher, yields have been climbing ominously

Did UBI make people happier?

Eh, only in the short run:

We study the causal impacts of income on a rich array of employment outcomes, leveraging an experiment in which 1,000 low-income individuals were randomized into receiving $1,000 per month unconditionally for three years, with a control group of 2,000 participants receiving $50/month. We gather detailed survey data, administrative records, and data from a mobile phone app. The transfer caused total individual income excluding the transfers to fall by about $1,900/year relative to the control group and a 4.2 percentage point decrease in labor market participation. Participants reduced their work hours as a result of the transfers by 1-2 hours/week and participants’ partners reduced their work hours by a comparable amount. Among other categories of time use, the greatest increase generated by the transfer was in time spent on leisure. Despite asking detailed questions about amenities, we find no impact on quality of employment, and our confidence intervals can rule out even small improvements. Treated participants broadly increase expenditures, led by spending on non-durable goods and services, with smaller increases in spending on durable goods and human capital. We observe no significant effects on degree attainment, though the magnitudes of the estimated effects generally appear larger among younger participants. Measures of subjective well-being are higher among treated participants in the first year of the transfers but then revert to control group levels. Overall, our results suggest a moderate labor supply effect that does not appear offset by other productive activities.

That is from the QJE by , and  Via Matt Yglesias.

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A vocabulary for the future: touch

Abstract painting with blurred blue, yellow and black shapes creating a soft, dreamlike texture.

A mesmerising blend of words and images make touch a doorway into the deepest questions in physics and philosophy

- by Aeon Video

Watch on Aeon

Dolphins and other lovers

Illustration of two people embracing while riding through green waters on a pink river dolphin wearing a hat, with houses and trees in the background.

The Andoque of the Amazon know what we have forgotten: the forest’s most beautiful creatures are also its most dangerous

- by Eliran Arazi

Read on Aeon

The high cost of phantom tollbooths

Freedom of navigation is worth preserving

SpaceX launches 29 Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral following last-minute scrub

A SpaceX Falcon 9 soars past the clouds above Florida’s Space Coast during the Starlink 10-39 mission on Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. Image: Michael Cain/Spaceflight Now

Update Aug. 21, 11:54 a.m. EDT (1554 UTC): SpaceX landed its first stage booster

Update Aug. 20, 11:58 a.m. EDT (1558 UTC): SpaceX scrubbed the mission.

SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Friday morning. The flight followed a last-minute scrub on Thursday due to an undisclosed issue.

The Starlink 10-39 mission adds another 29 broadband internet satellites to the company’s low Earth orbit megaconstellation.

Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station happened at 11:14 a.m. EDT (1514 UTC).

The 45th Weather Squadron forecast an 85 percent chance for favorable weather during the opening of the window. It deteriorates down to 45 percent as the window progresses.

SpaceX launched the mission using the Falcon 9 first-stage booster B1078. This was its 30th flight, making it the sixth booster to reach this milestone.

Nearly 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1078 landed on the droneship, A Shortfall of Gravitas, positioned in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina. This was the 164th landing on this vessel and the 652nd Falcon booster landing for SpaceX to date.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station during the Starlink 10-39 mission on Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now

A Gallery of Freaks: The Truth OC’s 26 Worst Political Figures of 2026

There are two types of movies.

There are movies like “Terms of Endearment” and “Shawshank Redemption,” that set out to stir the soul and change your life. You shed tears, you sit silently, you exit the theater and think, “That was absolutely wonderful.”

There are also movies like “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” that are purposefully big and loud and mindless. You eat popcorn, you guzzle Coca-Cola, you watch and you leave and you blink unusually rapidly. These films do not exist to evoke contemplation. They exist to be loud and obnoxious.

I bring this up because you are about to read my compilation of the 26 worst Orange County political figures of 2026. This is the byproduct of a good deal of research and outreach; of soliciting suggestions and debating merit. It was long and arduous and—in myriad ways—depressing. More than anything, I want people around here to be good, honest, compassionate stewards. I want folks with empathy and a sincere sense of civic duty. Party be damned. Hell, positions be damned.

The individuals on this list … sigh. I don’t believe most of them to be evil or even bad, in the Merriam-Webster sense of the words. I just think they’re all some mishmash of a) painfully dumb; b) woefully misinformed and misguided; c) corrupted by power and the maintaining of control.

And, as I thought and thought and thought about this, I came to the realization that the distinctions of those categories matter. For example, Will O’Neill, the Orange County Republican Party chairman, is an intelligent guy and a once-respected mayor. He knows right from wrong; knows Donald Trump is a grotesque pig of a man and that the Jan. 6 riots were an assault on democracy. Unlike a Lisa Davis or Jack Hibbs, he’s plenty smart. He grasps real vs. fiction.

And yet—O’Neill has chosen to ignore it all, in a quest for power. I cannot overstate how sad it makes me; the Vader-like plummet of a decent man into an icy stink hole of shame.

Alas, it is what it is—and this list is what it is. Some of the folks (like O’Neill) would rather watch decency crumble than admit many on his side are bonkers. Some, like Mari Barke of the OC Board of Ed, drank the Kool-Aid and savored the taste. Some, like the aspiring social media influencer Sophia Lorey, likely find the glow of a spotlight irresistible.

Twenty six journeys.

Twenty six pathways.

Twenty six sad political people.

Welcome to the freak show …

1. Will O'Neill, chairman of the Orange County Republican Party

There are plenty of people on this list who lack intelligence, who lack insight, who are as deep as a dime and just follow along with what Fox News orders.

Will is not that guy.

Bro is a former Newport mayor; a reasonable and compassionate local standout who, in his time leading the city, was known across the political spectrum as a decent dude who looked after constituents.

That Will O’Neill is, I believe, dead.

The new Will O’Neill is a political animal. Trump brags about pussy grabbing? No problem. Trump makes $2 billion as president? Ho hum. The Jan. 6 riots? Fun for all! Gracey Van Der Mark flashes QAnon signs? Wonderful! The Huntington Beach City Council plans on putting forth a MAGA plaque! Amazing!

But … a picture in the OC State Fair features a kid holding an anti-Trump sign? Oh my God! The horror! The indignity! We need an investigation! This is the WORST THING EVER AND I AM SOOOOOOOO ANGRY!!!!!!!!!

It’s pathetic. But, far worse than pathetic, it’s performative. It’s insincere.

Truly, I’ve never seen (up close) anyone like Will O’Neill, who matches intellect and experience with a ho-hum willingness to carve up democracy.

###

2. Mari Barke, Member, Orange County Board of Education

Ever meet someone, and you’re like, “Wow, she seems lovely.” And someone else goes, “Nah, she’s terrible.” But you go, “Haha. She seems great.” And the other person stops in his tracks, grabs your shoulders and says, “No, seriously, bruh. She’s cray.”

That’s Mari Barke.

Name a position, name an endorsed candidate—and Barke is always (and I mean always) on the side of cruelty and the asshole. Need proof? Here she is catching up with John Eastman. Here she is with Steve Hilton. Apparently Gracey Vander Mark desperately needed a friend. Would you rather eat a hemorrhoid than spend time with Sonja Shaw and Sophia Lorey? Barke chooses the gruesome twosome. Hey, Tom Cotton’s in town! Send Barke to kiss some ass!

And, of course, Barke is just another in the long line of RULES DON’T APPLY TO ME. Hell, just this year she was accused of violating the Political Reform Act by failing to disclose million in income and assets.1

Bright side: She’ll protect you from the neighborhood trans kids.2

###

3. Jack Hibbs, founding pastor of Calvary Chapel

If I could switch bodies with 1986 Mike Tyson for one day, I would head over to Calvary Chapel, ask for Jack Hibbs, be told Jack Hibbs isn’t there, wait outside the church, see Hibbs roll up in his 2027 BMW 7 Series3and I would go all Marvis Frazier on his ass.

Obviously, I’m not hitting anyone. Or even spitting on someone. But Hibbs, more than any other local “religious”4 leader, is uniquely responsible for the regional phenomenon of right-wing ministries diving head-first into MAGA politics, and brainwashing their parishioners into voting for whichever loathsome flimflam artists Hibbs (as Godly a dude as the last pimple I picked and flicked off into the toilet) commands. Once, there was a very clear, respected separation of church and state.

Once, bread cost a dime.

The thing that kills me most. Like, really kills me most: All these “religious” leaders (like Hibbs) back Donald Trump. Despite Jan. 6, despite “grab ‘em by the pussy,” despite raw-dogging the porn star, despite the bankruptcies, despite the cruelty, despite the indifference to the poor, the battered, the struggling. Somehow, Jack Hibbs believes he has a line to God. And God wants the dude from the Epstein Files.

Men like Hibbs have, in the process, corroded the beauty and dignity of religion and faith.

Why follow the teaching of Jesus that you claim to live by, when you follow … him?

###

4. Todd Spitzer, Orange County District Attorney

Spitzer earns roughly $500,000 annually, and an argument can be made no one in America is better at allegedly retaliating against women in his office who bring forth sexual harassment claims.

David Rush once juggled for more than 13-straight hours.

Darrell Griffith had a 48-inch vertical leap.

We all have our talents.

Hell, what tells the SPITZER IS THE MAN story better than this 2025 Eyewitness News headline, JURY FINDS ORANGE COUNTY DA TODD SPITZER HARASSED PROSECUTOR INTO RETIREMENT, AWARDS HER $3 MLLION

The good news? Justice sorta prevailed.

The bad news? Spitzer still has his job—and taxpayers are in charge of the bills (literally, we’re responsible for paying nearly $18 million in settlements related to conduct this crumb and his peeps).

Grr.

###

5. Lisa Davis, president of the Capo Unified School District board

So I’ve been pretty locked in on the local school board, and Davis is … hmm … I’ll offer some adjectives, and y’all feel free to pick which you opt to use (Tip: they all apply):

Sinister.

Nuts.

Manipulative.

Uninformed.

Phony.

She also happens to be a world-class hugger, which would be lovely were she not perpetually attempting to Mama Bear kids at graduation ceremonies (Lisa, seriously—stranger-danger).

In all seriousness: I’ve seen Lisa Davis in action, and what’s going down at Capo Unified is beyond disturbing. The board has been largely taken over by a Moms For Liberty-inspired approach to academics, which includes “leaders”5 who believe in more God in school, less science in school, less funding for public schools and a damnation of those who don’t share your wackadoo religious beliefs. I wrote extensively about Lisa here, and it’s worse than you think.

Don’t believe me? Read this.

###

6. Esther Kim Varet, failed congressional candidate

I think we’re all still experiencing the PTSD caused by Esther, an art curator/expert who came from Los Angeles to grace us all with her genius and a doomed-from-the-start run for the CA-40th seat. Besides being seven levels of Planters, Esther established herself as a uniquely cruel, vindictive, incurious plantar wart of a human with an unrivaled arrogance and a one-of-a-kind talent for pissing literally everyone off.

For a brief spell, she seemed like a legitimate contender to challenge Young Kim and Ken Calvert for a slot in the final showdown. But then she began to talk. And post on social media. And tell everyone why she was right, they were wrong and a vote against Esther was a vote for a Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva-spreading vampire apocalypse.

Think I’m exaggerating? Read here and here and here and here and here and here.

Congrats, Esther! You’re a Democrat, and you made this list.

No easy task.

###

7. Leandra Blades, President, Placentia-Yorba Linda Board of Ed

When it comes to cruelty, Blades is Kid to Sonja Shaw’s Play. A retired police officer, Blades is one of those thumb nubs who seem equate the term “restoring parental rights” with “allowing Christ-loving parents to stampede educators while removing any books they choose because of some warped sense of pornographic guilt.” Blades led the charge against ethnic studies in school, though I genuinely wonder whether she could define the words “gender” or “studies,” or properly explain what gender studies entail. She’s also a big ol’ ICE gal who got her ass kicked in this delightful exchange with Tricia Quintero.

Oh, and, she was in Washington on Jan. 6.

Seriously, she was there. But (cough) just checking out the monuments.

Cough.

###

8. Dr. Jeff Barke, Doctor, ex-Rossmoor Community Service Director

Every time you see a bunch of local GOP sprigs cheering the potential imprisonment of (85-year-old) Dr. Anthony Fauci, a baby dove soars past Barke’s kitchen window.

A right-wing acorn to the 100th degree, Barke is a former at-large member of the Los Alamitos Unified School District Board of Education who has used his medical background (he is, indeed, a doctor), white coat and stethoscope to convince the lemmings his unhinged and unmoored views are worth your attention.

Barke has authored at least 50 books, including, “Covid-19: A Physicians Take on the Exaggerated Fear of the Corona Virus,” Unavoidably Unsafe: Childhood Vaccines Reconsidered and “Barke: My Journey from Medical School to the Brothels of New Zeland.”6

During COVID, he famously pulled out a 9-millimeter gun during a Zoom interview to make the point a firearm offered more virus protection than a mask. Then he said: “What I do, Peggy, to protect you and to protect others when I’m in public—I think better than a mask—this is what I do. You know, I live in Orange County so I carry this wherever I go.”

He also advocated for utilizing unproven medications like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin to treat COVID.

Otherwise, the dude is friggin’ awesome!7

###

9. Tony Beall, mayor of Rancho Santa Margarita

This Lincoln-esque statesman, leader and Costco shirt patron has committed to giving ICE his “full cooperation,” despite the increasing number of awful, unlawful, cruel incidents involving the agency. Hell, he said he’d welcome them to the city. Which, if we’re being honest, probably isn’t necessary, considering Rancho Santa Margarita ain’t exactly lacking in ICE types.

Even worse (I suppose) is Beall is one of those politicians who—Benjamin Netanyahu-like—clings to power at all costs. As the Orange Juice Blog noted last year, Bealle was threatened with a recall in 2020. To avoid such fate, he promised not to seek re-election. then, of course, he sough re-election.

This, from OJB …

Beall has been mayor for more than two decades—which, like death and taxes and three wins from the New York Jets—feels uncomfortably normal by now.

###

10. Elaine Gennawey: Founding President, South OC Republicans

There is something delicious about the founding president of the South Orange County Republicans misspelling “Republicans” on her LinkedIn page …

… but there’s nothing delicious about Gennawey’s impact on local politics. And what I mean is this: By many accounts, Elaine is a nice person. She comes off as warm, as engaging. If you speak to her at the upcoming Sea Country Festival (she’s usually there, alongside a life-sized Trump cardboard cutout), you’ll most certainly find her delightful. And, back in the day, she was very involved in local schools, in helping young boys and girls better themselves, in showing the kiddies a bright and optimistic future. I really mean that: She was a gem and devoted community steward.

So how in the name of Fred Flintstone [I’m about to start yelling, people] DO YOU STAND IN FRONT OF A DONALD TRUMP CARDBOARD CUTOUT AT EVERY FAIR? HOW ARE YOU OK WITH THE RAW CRUELTY? THE MEANNESS? THE INSULTS? THE VULGARITY? THE LIES? WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU—AND DO YOU REALIZE YOU’VE NOT ONLY SOILED YOUR NAME, BUT SHOWN FAR TOO MANY PEOPLE THAT KINDNESS IS MEANINGLESS, AND THAT THE NICE OLDER WOMAN WHO ONCE VOLUNTEERED IN THE COMMUNITY IS JUST ANOTHER RIGHT-WING HACK WILLING TO SURRENDER HER KINDNESS TO A LIFELONG HUCKSTER WITH AN ORANGE GLOW?

SERIOUSLY, ELAINE. DID THE PUSSY GRAB COMMENT NOT CAUSE YOU SOME PAUSE? WHAT ABOUT THE PRISONERS OF WAR-AREN’T-HEROES LINE? THE FIVE DRAFT DEFERMENTS? THE BANKRUPTCIES?

How does a nice person—even one engaged in GOP politics—sit back and watch?

How?

###

11. Pat Burns, Huntington Beach City Council member

If you’re me, and you’re covering local politics with a bit of snark and attitude, nothing is better than having someone both vile and destructive whose head resembles an uncircumcised penis.

Thank you, Pat Burns.

Dickie is a retired police officer, which actually sucks—because he conforms to every negative stereotype of the gig. He’s mean. He’s crude. He seems pretty racist and sexist. He’s a small little man who walks with a Clubber Lang swagger—and Dickie would surely hate that comparison, because Clubber Lang is Black.

I’ve seen Dickie operate at myriad Huntington Beach City Council meetings, and the dude is just a bully in every … single … sense of the word. He’s also (and this is no exaggeration) an absolute moron who seemed troubled nary a bit by his fellow law enforcement officers being battered at the Jan. 6 attacks. Police brutality? What police brutality? Let’s build a Trump statue!

Dickie is a simple and small man with a a giant ego who reminds me very much of Bull Connor.

That’s not a compliment.

###

12. Brenda Lebsack, Santa Ana Unified School District Board Member

First, were I starting a band right now, I’d name it “Brenda and the Lebsacks,” and we’d kick some serious ass opening for Lit and Suicidal Tendencies at the House of Blues Anaheim.

Second, well, Brenda Lebsack is yet another (yawn) anti-trans warrior just scratching and clawing for Riley Gaines to step aside so Sean Hannity will finally put an end to her appearances on fringe right-wing podcasts and call “The Sack” up to Fox News.

And if you’re thinking, “Meh, Lebsack brings nothing new to the table,” you’d be wrong. Why, back in April she starred in a board meeting by abstaining from proclaiming April as “National Arab American Heritage Month” because … eh … eh … we need to keep boys out of girls’ locker rooms!

Also, there’s this gem …

Just another in the long, ugly line of hard-right lemmings occupying Orange County.

###

13. Ken L. Williams, Jr., Member, Orange County Board of Education

On March 11, 2023, Williams was allegedly involved in a Hulk Hogan-v.-Andre the Giant-level road rage incident, attacking a 20-year-old driver, throwing him to the ground and choking him.

This, from Angelina Hicks’ excellent Voice of OC recap

The best part? When reached by Hicks, Williams said his political opponents were trying to destroy his personal and professional career.

Alas, it didn’t work. Dude still holds his gig.

PS: Included in his official bio: “Dr. Williams strongly believes in our nation's founding fathers' vision of our country being the "city on the shining hill." He consistently promotes our nation's Constitution, the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, and the reliable standards of Judeo-Christian values as the reason for our nation's greatness.” Google Translation: Look, I don’t love everything that happened on January 6. But …

###

14. Andrew Do, former member of the OC Board of Supervisors

So Andrew Do is literally in prison as you read this, serving five years after being found guilty of using taxpayer dough to buy all sorts of stuff for his own personal pleasure (houses, meals, cars, etc). Making matters worse, he funneled the loot through a non-profit run by … his daughter.

The FBI wound up raiding his house, leading toward Do’s resignation and guilty plea to—to quote Nick Gerda for LAist—”taking bribes to award tax dollars to people who diverted $7.9 million that was supposed to feed needy seniors during the pandemic.”

And here’s the crazy thing.

The truly remarkable and bonkers crazy thing.

I’d still take Andrew Do over Will O’Neill.

I’d just make sure my wallet was somewhere safe.

###

15. Garrett Dwyer, Aliso Viejo City Council member

There is dumb. There is profoundly dumb. There is historically dumb. There is sloth with a head injury dumb. There is a sloth with a head injury addicted to crack cocaine dumb. There is a sloth with a head injury addicted to crack cocaine while listening to a ceaseless loop of Rush Limbaugh dumb.

And then there is Garrett Dwyer, who was appointed in 2025 to represent the third district of the Aliso Viejo City Council.

To watch Dwyer in action is to understand why dogs sniff their own poop. An unelected member of the council who was appointed by the MAGA majority to replace a Black progressive man who moved away, Dwyer recently dazzled the masses by hijacking a meeting that was supposed to be—innocently—about Aliso Viejo traffic patterns. A pair of experts were brought in, and recommended to the council that speed limits be reduced by five mph in certain stretches (primarily by schools).

Dwyer responded by pulling out his tablet (always with tablet, this guy) and reading (in what sounded suspiciously like AI-generated slop), “Reduction of the speed limit is a restriction of the freedom of movement of the citizens of the United States.”

Seriously.

He went on to complain the the traffic standards were being adopted from Europe—and that it was Europe’s attempt to get Americans out of their cars.

If you’re wondering what, precisely, Garrett Dwyer knows of traffic patterns, he works as a mortgage broker.

###

16. Melissa Crew, Creator of Moms on the Ground

OK, I have a dream.

Here it is …

It’s, oh, 60 years from now, and Melissa Crew dies peacefully in her sleep (to be clear, I’m not wishing death upon anyone. She’ll be around 100—so a nice long life). Melissa is surrounded by friends and loved ones, and as she drifts off she somehow comes to the realization that literally e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g she worked for … every battle she fought … every trans kid who felt ostracized and every parent of a trans kid who felt attacked and battered … was bullshit.

Maybe it’s God. Maybe it’s Satan. Maybe it’s former Blind Melon singer Shannon Hoon. Whatever the case, a spiritual entity greets her and says, “Hey, Missy, bad news. All that shit was nonsense, and I’m here to tell you there’s no heaven. You’re just dead. Ciao.”

Crew is a junk-ball mixture of warped and determined. She heads an operation, Moms on the Ground, that was initially registered under an already existing for-profit tech company called MJC Innovations. Four years ago, MJC morphed into Moms on the Ground and Crew teamed up with a gaggle of local loons to bring forth the magic.

According to an old LinkedIn page, Crew’s background is as a cosmetologist and health care company owner. But, hey, even skin care professionals can find Jesus. These days, Moms on the Ground is all about trans kids. Trans kids in sports. Trans kids in bathrooms. Trans kids in bathroom sports. Oh, and they’re also about “faith, families & freedom.” Though, like all the other hypocrites here, they had no apparent problem with Jan. 6, with Trump cheating on his wife with a porn star (No condom! Just sex!), with Trump calling people retarded and ugly and stupid.

Faith, families & freedom.

###

17. Don Wagner, member of the Orange County Board of Supervisors

Like Will O’Neill, Wagner is a former mayor (of Irvine). Also like Will O’Neill, Wagner is a MAGA-foaming zombie who does as his masters insist and downplayed actions related to Andrew Do’s corruption scandal.

If you wanna have some fun, hang out in Irvine and ask the OGs about Don Wagner. The top 3 words you’ll hear are 1) Corrupt; 2. Soulless; 3) Owned. There’s a long and sordid history of Wagner using his position to better himself and his peeps, with little regard for the general/greater good.

There’s also this gem of a reaction to the Capitol Insurrection, which oozes top-shelf bullshit …

Lastly, bruh is just a coward. Which seems contagious these days.

###

18. Gracey Van Der Mark: Huntington Beach City Council member

This one is like shooting fish in a particularly small barrel. Gracey is a first-generation Latina woman who is all in on MAGA, loves everything ICE is doing, rolls with the QAnon crew and worked hard to demonize librarians and keep non-porn porn out of schools. As we speak, she’s now running against the great Chris Kluwe for Assembly—and there are enough folks not paying attention that she may well win.

I can’t overstate this enough. Plenty of people on this list ate conspiracy theorists or are vindictive or are xenophobic. Gracey merges it all together in one toxic stew.

I’m pretty sure she’s 95 percent crazy, five percent asshole—but it could be 90-10. Just a warped and vile person who Will O’Neill would normally have nothing to do with.

###

19. Young Kim, CA-40th Congresswoman

As a longtime sports writer, I’ve seen the demise of athletes who—because of age or injury or some extraneous circumstance—fall apart, fade away and are never seen again.

This is the fate about to meet Young Kim, who will likely get her ass kicked by fellow Republican Ken Calvert in the redrawn 40th.

And here’s what’s particularly pathetic about Young Kim: Deep down, she’s a somewhat sensible moderate who (even in these modern times) was liked by all sides. She was agreeably, decent, reasoned, kind, chipper. You could talk to her and feel heard. You could make points as a Democrat and have her consider your stance.

Then, as a survival mechanism, she abandoned all principles and went full MAGA. It was a ludicrous rightward shift; a selfish-yet-misguided move that will result with her inevitable crash and burn and eternal banishment to Cameo, where she will spend the rest of her days peddling $5 birthday messages alongside Vanilla Ice, Bo Bice and Kyle Rittenhouse.

She’s earned it.

###

20. Amy Phan West: Westminster City Council member

Like all towns and cities across America, Westminster has its problems. Thankfully, Amy Phan West stepped up to lead the charge for …

Resources to alleviate homelessness.

Safe sidewalks.

An amazing Christmas tree lighting.

A new youth baseball field.

… a street to be renamed Charlie Kirk Way.

Seriously. And now there is a street in Westminster named Charlie Kirk Way.

Had Charlie Kirk ever visited Westminster? No. Did he have family there? No. Personal business interests? No. Is there any logical reason to have a Charlie Kirk Way in Westminster, Cal.? No.

Truth be told, this was yet another tired culture warrior moment brought forth by a woman with (apparently) little better to do than trigger the libs.

Well done, Amy. Well done.

###

21. Sophia Lorey, Outreach Director for California Family Council

Of all the people on this list, no one makes me as sad as Lorey, who works for the California Family Council and who seems to genuinely believe she is doing God’s tasks by speaking out against trans athletes and appearing on various right-wing news networks to amplify her message.

Youth, George Bernard Shaw said, is wasted on the young …

I hope Sophia reads this, because I wanna say to her—directly: I have no problem with you standing up for your beliefs. If you really, truly, deeply feel trans athletes are the issue of our time, go for it, I guess. Use your IG feed to spew and spew and spew. Bark away, girl. Bark and bark and bark some more.

But I ask you these two questions:

  1. If your goal is (as you say) to honor God, why is your face everywhere? Being serious—why are you always posting your new shoes, your new dress, your fresh cut. Selfies in a mirror. Hugging your dog. Why is it all about you? And are you familiar with Philippians 2:3-8?

  2. If you’re truly a protector of women (which you seem to aspire to be), why no words about Donald Trump (the man you voted for and support) cheating on wife 1 with wife 2, wife 2 with wife 3, wife 3 with a porn star he raw dogged, then paid off in hush money? Why nothing about all the sexual assault accusations? About E. Jean Carroll? You’re pro-woman, Sophia. Do you think they’re lying? All of them? Every single one? Going back four decades?

    Did the “grab ‘em by the pussy” line bother you? At all? Even a little? What about all the times he calls women fat and ugly? And since we’re here, I haven’t heard a word from you about Max Miller. Literally nothing. You’re pro-women, right? Fighting for your gender, yes?

    Where are you?

The truth is, Sophia, you’re being used as a tool by the old, white, perverted men who run your party; the men who conceal the Epstein Files; the men who hide Donald Trump’s grotesque treatment of women.

You’re young, and you’re social media savvy.

Now wake up.

PS: Have you ever thought to yourself—even for a second’s second—that maybe (just maybe) some of the stuff in the Bible is incorrect? Like, if God spoke to man, and man wrote down God’s words—perhaps he screwed some of it up. Maybe?

###

22. Janet Keo Conklin, City of La Palma Councilwoman,

failed Orange County assessor candidate

I mean, look, we all make mistakes, right? You put the butter knife with the bread knives You accidentally call your husband the name of your ex-boyfriend. You, eh, um, allegedly repeatedly use campaign contributions to pay for personal expenses.

There’s also this, from LAist’s Yusra Frazan

Conklin lost the Democratic Party’s endorsement, then lost in the primary, but, like, what are we doing here?

Seriously, what are we doing?

###

23. Wendy Bucknum, Mayor of Mission Viejo

Top of my head, I just came up with a joke:

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

Bucknum.

Bucknum who?

Bucknum just sorta sucks.

And I admit—the joke isn’t funny. But neither is the Mission Viejo mayor, who was part of a three-headed monster (alongside Ed Sachs and Greg Raths) that simply decided to ignore the fairly straightforward term-limit rules and stay in power. Because, hey—staying in power is more fun than staying out of power. Or something like that.

Then, there was this.

One of the worst things about Bucknum and her GOP colleagues on the Mission Viejo City Council? The way they treat Cynthia Vasquez, the lone liberal on the five-person board and a genuinely good public servant.

For decades, the mayoral title has rotated from member to member, sans pause for political affiliation. Yet, without fail, Vasquez is always bypassed. To quote Laura Lacko: “You have one Democratic board member, Cynthia Vasquez, who’s basically marginalized by the rest of the board. They don’t take her seriously. Don’t really show her any respect. Bypass her for mayor They’re a bunch of MAGA weirdos who just want to ... take what’s happened on the national level and make it local and sorta act like you’re wrong, they’re right and that’s that.”

Just to be cruel.

Just. To. Be. Cruel.

###

24. Scott Baugh, Former Orange County GOP Chairman

A confession: Placing Baugh on this list in 2026 is a little bit like blaming Christina Aguilera for the state of modern music. Put different, Baugh is a dude who ran for office a bunch, lost a bunch, headed the Orange County GOP, threw elbows, kicked rocks, wasn’t particularly popular, vanished—and pops up every now and then like a gutter rat who smells your cheese. He’s brash and irksome and always seeking out leftover scraps, but he’s also increasingly irrelevant.

Which I enjoy.

###

25. Jennifer Adnams, Capo Unified School District board member

As I noted in the Lisa Davis entry, I’ve paid far too much attention to Capo Unified. It’s a brain-draining, soul-sucking experience of the greatest degree.

But, since this is my list … Adnams is something truly special. She’s the perfect Moms for Liberty Stepford robot; a woman who seems to 100-percent believe she is here—on earth and on the board—to bring people as close to Jesus Christ as possible. It is her life mission—”I’m a Kingdom-first person.” It’s her reason for breathing and eating and pooping. If you don’t believe me, watch her crazy-ass podcast, which puts the White in White Christian Nationalism …

The worst part? She’s dumb. Just not smart. Dim. Limited. Chews the bubble gum wrapper. But too vapid to see it, and determined to make Christ-like changes to portions of the world not asking for them.

Lovely.

###

26. Mike Munzing, Aliso Viejo Mayor Pro Tem

First, I wanna say something important, and sincere: Mike Munzing has battled serious health issues for years, and I (truly) pull for his well-being. I do not wish badly for anyone on this list. I mean that.

However …

Mike Munzing is a hateful scrotum sack dipped in the vomit of 1,000 squirrels. He’s just another uninformed-yet-loyal MAGA foot soldier who did his absolute all to ban the Pride Flag from waving above City Hall (he failed) and irrationally targeted the Boys & Girls Club because it tries to encourage (gasp!) diversity.

It’s actually annoying, because I’m pretty sure Munzing is (like Lisa Davis) seven parts ignorant, two parts enjoyably cruel, one part daydreaming of weekends on the Love Boat alongside Gopher and Doc.

Alas, such are the meager pleasures.

#TOC

1

She denies the charges.

2

She also, to her credit, has good taste in when to get divorced from a crazy person.

3

This is a guess. He might rock a minivan.

4

Quotes intended.

5

Quotes intended.

6

OK, this one I made up.

7

He also, to his credit, has good taste in when to get divorced from a crazy person.

August 19, 2026

The political world has been consumed over the past few days with a Republican meltdown about Trump’s aide Natalie Harp.

The story began when Democratic Georgia senator Jon Ossoff said at an event for his reelection campaign on Sunday that Trump does not appear to want to do the job of the presidency. Ossoff added: “He golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.” That was it. That was all he said.

On Monday, CNN reporter Kristen Holmes asked Trump to respond to Ossoff’s comment. Trump first referred to Ossoff as Pee-wee Herman, a child-man film character created by late actor Paul Reubens, then defended the ballroom and attacked the reporter. Later, as Scott Nover of the Washington Post reported, the White House rapid response team took to social media to call Holmes a “disgraceful, humiliating embarrassment to her alleged profession.”

Then, in an unusual escalation, the account targeted Holmes’s children, posting: “Someday, your children will come across your disgusting and inhumane question. They will be sickened and embarrassed to have a parent be so callous and vindictive. It’s quite troubling.”

You could almost feel the palpable relief that the White House might be able to gin up a controversy that could rally the base, one that, for the first time in a long time, didn’t automatically show the president or the administration in a bad light. Undermining Ossoff, whose speeches have been a particularly sharp thorn in the administration’s side lately, appeared to be icing on the cake.

Certainly the call went out to right-wing media figures to pile on to the idea that Ossoff was making a sexist attack on Harp. Megyn Kelly posted that Ossoff “was clearly implying that Trump is having an affair w/his staffer,” and Michael Knowles wrote: “Every time I see a woman at work, I just know she’s sleeping with her boss! Am I right? Anyway, am I the new Obama yet?” White House spokesperson Steven Cheung wrote: “Jon Jackoff has to be the biggest cuck loser in politics,” and Newt Gingrich posted: “Jon Ossoff owes Natalie Harp a personal apology for having smeared her.”

Matt Royer of the Democratic National Committee Youth Council noted: “The word “affair” was never uttered, and yet apparently every single conservative talking head in the world heard it anyway, so what does that tell you?” He added: “Never have I seen a more exquisite example of the Streisand Effect where someone’s supporters fall over themselves to basically accuse them of adultery when it wasn’t even brought up.”

Commandeering the news cycle with manufactured outrage distracted attention from other issues Ossoff did call attention to in the same sentence. Ossoff called out Trump’s apparent stock manipulation, an issue Trump highlighted recently when he sold early access to his Truth Social posts for as much as $100,000 a month. It has been widely reported that investors appear to be making a killing by anticipating Trump’s posts as they make markets go up or down.

An investigation by Casey Tolan and Isabelle Chapman of CNN published on July 16 found that Trump himself “made at least 44 stock purchases of 21 different companies within a week before he posted a complimentary Truth Social message about the firms, their executives or their products.”

“He’s selling faster access to his tweets, and then you can bet on the markets,” comedian Shane Gillis recently told popular podcaster Joe Rogan, “It’s literally insider trading.” Rogan, whose support for Trump in 2024 was important to his victory, responded: “Wait a minute, is that real? How is that legal? Who’s telling him this is a good idea? $100K to get early tweets? That’s literally crazy. He’s just on a grab.”

As Matthew Chapman of RawStory reported, the two went on to discuss Trump’s involvement with cryptocurrency. “This government has done some (expletive) that no government has ever done before and one of them is the crypto stuff,” Rogan said. “The crypto stuff is nuts. Trump has made billions in crypto. Then you got his sons and his sons are involved in these weird business deals, and there’s a lot of money flowing around that you could dig in and start arresting people.”

Attacking Ossoff for allegedly smearing Harp also shifted attention from Trump’s ballroom, which is enormously unpopular and which is in the news as Trump has appealed to the Supreme Court to override lower courts’ rulings that he does not have the authority to build such a structure without the permission of Congress. Even Republican members of Congress seem reluctant to grant such permission, as it highlights Trump’s grabs for luxury while Americans are hurting under high gas and grocery prices caused by Trump’s tariff wars and war on Iran.

Recently, New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman, who with Jonathan Swan wrote about Trump’s second administration in Regime Change, has told podcasters Ezra Klein and Axios’s Mike Allen that Trump spends about “70%” of his time working on his Washington, D.C. projects. “He is spending a huge amount of energy, mental and otherwise, on these renovation projects, beautification projects around Washington, and then monuments to self,” Haberman told Allen.

She described a visit with Trump seventeen days into the Iran war in which “[i]t was very clear what his mind was on while we were there. And what it was not really on was the war.” “You would think that on the 17th day of the war that he would have maps of the Middle East or maps of troop deployments—who knows,” Haberman said. “He picks up these pictures, and [they’re] of maple trees. And he says: ‘I am choosing maple trees for the White House. I am good at picking trees.’ I’m paraphrasing here, but that is pretty much what he said.”

Recent news reports tie the lack of supplies on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln to Iran’s damaging strike on the only U.S. naval base in the Middle East, known as Naval Support Activity Bahrain, in the first weeks of the war. Trump has downplayed the poor conditions aboard the vessel, infuriating the families of the sailors.

He continues to downplay the flailing of his administration in Iran, as well, as Iranian forces continue to control the Strait of Hormuz. When asked today about the strait, he told reporters: “Last night we had a lot of boats come through, we have possession, complete control of the strait, I mean, outside of nuisance value—and there is nuisance value when they shoot a drone every once in a while, but and not everybody’s going to go through. But they come through. And over the last couple of weeks, we had a lot of oil coming in, a lot of oil. It’s not gonna be perfect, but it’s a lot of oil coming in, a lot. In fact, people are amazed.”

Scott Waldman of Politico reported on Monday that while an average of almost 140 ships a day traversed the strait before the war, last Sunday only 3 did.

The Harp story also has taken oxygen from increasing pushback against the Trump administration. Yesterday ABC and its parent corporation, The Walt Disney Company, launched a federal lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), saying the Trump administration violated their free speech rights. The lawsuit claims that administration officials tried to do Trump’s bidding by launching investigations and challenging broadcast licenses because Trump didn’t like their talk show opinions, news coverage, and late-night comedians.

As David Folkenflik of NPR noted, the lawsuit began with the words: “Government censorship is deeply un-American.”

This is a one-eighty for ABC. In 2024 it agreed to donate $16 million to Trump’s presidential library to settle a lawsuit Trump brought over the assertion by George Stephanopoulos that Trump had been found liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll. In fact, Trump had been found liable for sexual abuse, and the judge said that while what he did fell under the common definition of rape, New York state law had a very precise definition that his actions didn’t fit.

The settlement made ABC one of the first to settle with Trump. That money seems to have disappeared, and there is currently a congressional investigation into where it, along with almost $50 million more from similar settlements, has gone.

FCC chair Brendan Carr seemed to back away from previous threats, saying that ABC and Disney were acting too hastily and that the FCC has not yet decided whether to renew the licenses. “Ultimately,” he said, “they’re going to get a fair shake before the agency.”

Jeremy Barr of The Guardian shed light on the issue today when he reported on new documents obtained thanks to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and a lawsuit from Democracy Forward showing that Carr has been working closely with the White House and right-wing media. In addition to talking and meeting with White House officials, Carr has been working with the Fox News Channel and the chair of the right-wing Sinclair Broadcast Group.

There is also the uncomfortable fact that the national debt passed a record $40 trillion yesterday, much sooner than expected. The U.S. is currently spending more than a trillion dollars a year to pay interest on the national debt, more than it spends on defense.

As Steven Rattner noted in the New York Times yesterday, Trump said in his 2024 campaign, “We’re going to grow like nobody’s ever grown before,” but in fact, the economy is slowing. He promised to bring the cost of gasoline below $2 a gallon; it is now above $4 a gallon.

In 2025, Trump said he would balance the federal budget, but in fact, thanks largely to his tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, the deficit is growing. Also in 2025, Trump promised that his new tariffs would enable him both to cut taxes and to pay down the deficit; in fact, the national debt relative to gross domestic product (GDP) is about to break the record set during World War II.

Republican operatives appear to have thought that the Harp story could enable them to pivot to attack Ossoff and change the narrative, but it seems they miscalculated. Their attention to Ossoff’s statement that Trump would rather “travel with Natalie” has brought attention to the relationship between the 80-year-old president and the 35-year-old aide, who was once a host on the right-wing OAN network.

Maggie Haberman told MS NOW that for Trump, Harp “is sort of his binky, for lack of a better way of putting it, a comfort blanket.” She is the main buffer between Trump and the outside world, filtering the information the president sees, setting up meetings and passing along messages, writing social media posts, and printing out articles praising Trump.

In their book, Haberman and Swan wrote that Harp leaves “adoring letters” to Trump in “private spaces,” saying things like: “you are all that matters to me.” CNN’s Holmes reported that Harp is “physically close to Trump at all hours of the day” and that Harp once jumped into the trunk of an SUV to stay close to Trump after being told there was no room for her in the vehicle.

The renewed scrutiny of Harp has turned up the story that for more than a year, she refused to get a routine security clearance to work at the White House. A national security official expressed concern to Jake Traylor and Jacqueline Alemany of MS NOW that Harp has more access to sensitive information than nearly all of the other White House officials.

When Trump left a decoy Air Force One airplane for a smaller plane in early July, he left behind cabinet secretaries but brought Harp with him.

Notes:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/08/18/what-know-about-natalie-harp-trump-aide-whom-ossoff-put-spotlight/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/08/17/white-house-attacks-cnn-reporter-after-trump-clash-targets-her-children/

https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/16/us/trump-stock-sales-truth-social-invs-vis

https://www.rawstory.com/joe-rogan-2677703893/

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-us-naval-base-bahrain-e87bbca3

https://www.axios.com/2026/08/13/trump-haberman-legacy-projects-behind-the-curtain

https://www.npr.org/2024/12/16/nx-s1-5229585/to-settle-lawsuit-abc-agrees-to-give-15-million-to-trumps-presidential-library

https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-blumenthal-stansbury-press-big-tech-ceos-on-trump-settlements-to-now-dissolved-library-fund/

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/17/the-trump-administration-says-oil-is-surging-through-hormuz-the-data-doesnt-add-up-01039335

https://www.npr.org/2026/08/18/nx-s1-5936406/abc-and-disney-sue-fcc-alleging-first-amendment-violations

https://www.theguardian.com/media/ng-interactive/2026/aug/19/brendan-carr-fcc-white-house-exclusive

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/19/economy/national-debt-hits-40-trillion-dollars-vis

https://www.npr.org/2026/08/19/nx-s1-5937552/the-u-s-debt-tops-a-record-shattering-40-trillion-yes-with-a-t

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/08/18/opinion/trump-economy-campaign-promises.html

https://newrepublic.com/post/214510/hegseth-uss-lincoln-iran-war-base-destroyed

https://people.com/white-house-correspondent-says-natalie-harp-is-like-trump-binky-12061871

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/08/18/politics/natalie-harp-trump-aide

https://www.ms.now/news/trump-aide-natalie-harp-worked-at-the-white-house-without-security-clearance-for-a-year

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Fighting for the Right to Vote

The floodgates are open after another Chinese company lands a reusable rocket

It has been a little more than a month since China recovered an orbital-class rocket booster for the first time. A second launch operator accomplished a similar feat Tuesday in another sign of China's growing launch capability.

It took 10 years for a second US launch company, Blue Origin, to propulsively land an orbital-class booster after SpaceX did it with the Falcon 9 rocket in 2015. SpaceX has since added a second reusable rocket to its fleet with Starship and its Super Heavy booster. Perhaps a third American company will join SpaceX and Blue Origin's club in 2027. Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Relativity Space, and Firefly Aerospace—working in partnership with Northrop Grumman—are working on reusable rockets that could make their first flights in the next couple of years.

A similar number of launch companies are working on reusable rockets in China. Some of them operate under the auspices of the sprawling state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC). Others are more commercial in nature, driven by capital investment from private industry.

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NASA calls off mission to rescue Swift gamma-ray observatory

NASA and Katalyst Space Technologies announced Wednesday they are giving up on a robotic mission to rescue the Swift gamma-ray telescope before it falls out of orbit.

The rescue satellite, named Link, launched July 3 on a journey to fly up to NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, capture it with three robotic arms, and boost its orbit high enough to escape a looming reentry. Link is about the size of a refrigerator, with two power-generating solar arrays and three xenon-fueled electric thrusters to send Swift into a safer, higher orbit.

Katalyst, the startup leading the Swift rescue effort, said Wednesday that "ongoing attitude control issues" will prevent the Link satellite from completing its rescue mission. The spacecraft is still alive, and Katalyst said it will make the most of Link's remaining capacity, which may still allow it to get near enough to Swift for a demonstration of the satellite's close-in navigation system.

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My excellent Conversation with Luke Burgis

Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Here is the episode summary:

Luke Burgis left Wall Street after two years, founded a few successful companies in his twenties, then walked away to spend three years in a Roman seminary on the path to the priesthood. He now runs the Cluny Institute and teaches at Catholic University. His book Wanting made René Girard legible to a general audience; the new one, The One and the Ninety-Nine, takes mimetic theory into the dynamics of self and crowd in an age of social contagion.

He joined Tyler to discuss whether the age of pessimism is ending, why the Anglo world in particular seems so unhappy, whether Dostoevsky or Thomas Mann better diagnoses modernity, the kind of reader his own book would ruin, why he thinks AI will make social contagion weaker, what put him off consulting with Anthropic on Claude’s constitution, what effective altruism misses, why men and women are drifting apart, what he’d fund in every American city, the case for reintroducing friction, whether a Gnostic reading of the lost sheep explains our moment, what Rod Dreher gets right about withdrawal, why Genoa is Italy’s most underrated city, what confession times reveal about a church, why Italians seem tired of their Catholicism, why he didn’t become a priest, where he differs from Ross Douthat, why exorcists appear to be on the rise, the sudden mimetic antisemitism on the right, the book his 23-year-old self would have hated, what he secretly admires about Silicon Valley, why Michigan never left him, what the original Cluny can teach a modern talent network, how he hopes to face his own death, what he’ll do next, and more.

Excerpt:

COWEN: I’m not saying you’ll ever do it, but what does your escape fantasy look like? One of mine is I’ll go live in a third-tier city in Mexico. I’m not going to do it, but sometimes I think about it. Cost of living would be very low. The food would be amazing. I could improve my Spanish.

BURGIS: It is moving to Genoa with my family, making my US income, living in Italy. I love Italy. I love the food. I love the people. I love the culture. I feel lighter while I’m there. I laugh more. We eat dinner later. I love everything about it. It would probably be living in Italy for the most part, or at least making that my home base, brushing up on my Italian, working less.

COWEN: Why Genoa? It’s a wonderful city. It’s still medieval, right, in a funny way?

BURGIS: It’s medieval. I think it’s the most underrated city in Italy.

COWEN: In Italy, I mean, yes. I agree. Yes.

BURGIS: I think it’s the most underrated city. You agree.

COWEN: I took my wife there. She was stunned. “How come no one goes to Genoa?” She was telling me.

BURGIS: It’s close to Cinque Terre. It’s this city that’s elevated. It has a fascinating history. It was still a very functional port city. It was really the most important city in Italy, arguably the world, during when Spain was a great power. It’s very cosmopolitan. It reminds me of Marseille a little bit. It’s vertical, breathtaking views. The people there, they’re not very touristy. The Italians there seem indifferent to you as a tourist.

It just feels very, very homey. It’s so close to a lot of other great things in Italy. You can get to Torino relatively easily. That whole area up there, Bra, where the Slow Food movement originated, you’re just in striking distance from everything. Nobody I know that goes to Italy goes to Genoa. I plead with them. I’m like, “Please, just go to Genoa.”

COWEN: I am the exception. My wife sometimes talks of wanting to live in the smaller towns nearby, which we’re not going to do because we’re slated for a third-tier city in Mexico, but we’re not going to do that either. I sometimes think of Northern Italy as a place where there were fewer different dimensions for mimetic desire. That is, more people dress the same. There are fewer status dimensions, maybe less room for eccentrics compared to America. Do you think that’s true, or do you think I’m off base? Paris is a bit like this also. There’s a certain notion of what kind of shoes an Italian man should wear. They wear them, and they’re amazing, and actually more affordable than here. There’s a sameness to some things.

Recommended, and do note Luke’s new book The One and the Ninety-Nine: Forging Identity in an Age of Social Contagion.

The post My excellent Conversation with Luke Burgis appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

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An Uncommon Drifter in the Denmark Strait

A satellite image shows the dark blue waters of the Denmark Strait with swirling sea ice to the right of eastern Greenland. A bright white iceberg sits amid the sea ice in the middle-left of the scene.
An iceberg drifts through the Denmark Strait in this image acquired on June 12, 2026, by the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9.
NASA Earth Observatory/Lauren Dauphin

Greenland’s jagged coastline is lined with fjords, many of them cradling marine-terminating glaciers that routinely calve icebergs into the water. It’s common to see these bergs, small and large, drifting in the island’s fjords each summer once the sea ice breaks up. In summer 2026, one exceptionally large berg turned up in the Denmark Strait—more than a thousand kilometers south of where it apparently originated. 

These images, captured by the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9, show the iceberg on June 12 as it drifted in the strait between Greenland and Iceland. It was just south of Kangikajiip Appalia, a cape on Greenland’s east coast visible in the scene’s upper left, amid a mixture of sea ice and berg fragments known as “mélange.”

Alexis Denton, oceanographer and chief scientist with the International Ice Patrol, noted that several clues indicate it is an iceberg rather than thick, multi-year sea ice: its proximity to shore, its whiter color, and larger size compared to the surrounding sea ice. Measuring roughly 17 square kilometers (7 square miles) on June 12, the iceberg was about five times the area of New York City’s Central Park. That’s modest compared to the behemoth bergs that calve from Antarctic glaciers and ice shelves but large by Greenland standards.

Keld Quistgaard, a senior ice advisor with the Danish Meteorological Institute’s Greenland Ice Service, noted that it originated in Jøkelbugten—a bay in northeastern Greenland. The berg’s precise origin within that bay, however, remains something of a mystery. It’s possible that the berg broke off from Zachariæ Isstrøm or its adjacent remnant ice shelf. The ice shelf, which together with Zachariæ Isstrøm once filled the bay, was abandoned after the glacier rapidly retreated in the early 2000s.

Tracing its path back through satellite imagery is challenging. Through spring, the bay and surrounding coastal areas are choked with sea ice and berg fragments, making individual bergs hard to distinguish, especially if covered in bright snow. In late May, for instance, the berg was surrounded by numerous look-alikes. Only later in the season, as it drifted farther south and the ice around it thinned out, did it become distinct enough to easily spot.

A detailed view shows the iceberg's bright white surface pocked with light blue meltwater ponds. Broken pieces of sea ice float around the iceberg in otherwise dark blue ocean water.
The iceberg’s bright white surface is pocked with light blue meltwater ponds in this detailed view of the image, acquired on June 12, 2026, by the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9.
NASA Earth Observatory/Lauren Dauphin

Its size and striking network of blue meltwater ponds offer some clues to its origin, according to Christopher Shuman, a retired University of Maryland glaciologist. Shuman thinks the berg broke from the remnant ice shelf rather than the glacier itself. Bergs calved from Zachariæ Isstrøm tend to be smaller, he said. Also, the berg’s surface—pocked with meltwater ponds, “like Swiss cheese”—closely resembles the remnant shelf ice. Past satellite images show pieces of that shelf ice drifting south and getting trapped among islands bordering the bay, where winds and tides have jostled them for years.

As of mid-August, the berg was about 1,500 kilometers (900 miles) from the bay, drifting south on the Greenland Coastal Current into the North Atlantic. Quistgaard expected the iceberg to gradually disintegrate throughout the month. Recent satellite imagery suggested it was doing just that.

Breaking up in the Denmark Strait means that remnants of the berg are unlikely to drift into busier shipping lanes that go past the southern tip of Greenland. “Its journey is a reminder of the dynamic Earth,” Shuman said, “as well as the seasonal variability of the ice in this part of the North Atlantic.”

NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Kathryn Hansen.

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How Continuing Education Helps Mortgage Professionals Stay Competitive

Mortgage work doesn’t sit still for long. Rates shift. Loan products change. Borrower questions get sharper. Rules get updated. If you’re an MLO, staying current isn’t a nice bonus. It’s part of doing the job well.

That’s where MLO continuing education  comes in. It helps mortgage professionals refresh essential knowledge as well as meet renewal requirements. They also stay sharp in a field where small mistakes can create big problems. Think of it as career maintenance.

Continuing Education Keeps Your Knowledge Fresh

You learned a lot when you first got licensed. Then real files showed up. Real borrowers asked real questions. Suddenly, the textbook version of lending met the daily version. Continuing education helps bridge that gap. It brings you back to core topics like federal law, ethics, consumer protection, nontraditional loans, and responsible lending practices.

That review matters because mortgage details can fade over time. You may use some rules every week and others only once in a while. CE brings those less-used topics back into focus before they catch you off guard.

It Helps You Keep Up With Consumer Expectations

Borrowers are more informed than they used to be. Many research loan options before they ever speak with an MLO. Some come prepared with good questions. Others come prepared with incomplete or inaccurate information they’ve found online. A mortgage professional who stays educated can explain things clearly and correct confusion without sounding dismissive. That builds trust.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau offers public mortgage information for borrowers, including loan basics and consumer protections. Knowing what borrowers may read before they contact you can help you answer questions in a clearer, more useful way.

CE Strengthens Your Compliance Habits

Compliance may not be the most exciting part of mortgage lending, but it protects everyone involved. It protects borrowers. It protects your company. It protects your license.

Continuing education reinforces the rules that shape daily mortgage work. You revisit disclosures, fair lending standards, advertising concerns, ethics, and other topics tied to responsible origination.

That doesn’t mean you’ll remember every rule from memory. Nobody does. It means you build better instincts. You know when something needs a closer look, and you’re less likely to rush past important details.

It Can Improve Borrower Conversations

Good MLOs don’t just quote rates and collect paperwork. They explain options. They calm nerves. They help people understand what a loan decision means for their budget . Continuing education can sharpen that communication. As you review mortgage products and lending standards, you get better at turning technical points into plain English.

That skill matters during stressful conversations. A borrower may not remember every term you explain, but they’ll remember whether you made them feel confused or informed.

It Supports Long-Term Career Growth

The mortgage industry rewards professionals who keep learning. Experience is important but experience without current knowledge breeds stale habits. CE helps keep your skills current so you can stay competitive. It also shows that you take the work seriously. Clients, employers, referral partners, and colleagues notice that.

You don’t need to act like you know everything. In fact, the best professionals usually don’t. They keep learning because they know the job keeps changing.

It Helps You Avoid Last-Minute Renewal Stress

Many MLOs need continuing education for license renewal. Waiting until the last minute can turn a simple task into a stressful sprint. Completing CE early gives you breathing room.

You can finish the course, confirm your hours, take care of renewal steps, and correct any issues before the deadline is too close. Completing your CE early allows you to address any issues that may arise before the renewal deadline.

Staying Competitive Starts With Staying Prepared

Continuous education enables mortgage professionals to remain informed, compliant, and prepared to have more productive conversations with borrowers. It also allows for license renewal and future growth.

Its best feature is that it keeps you plugged into the work. Mortgage lending needs transparency, accuracy, and trust. CE helps you safeguard all three.

Photo: Mikhail Nilov via Pexels


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The post How Continuing Education Helps Mortgage Professionals Stay Competitive appeared first on DCReport.org.

Wednesday 19 August 1663

Up betimes, and my wife up and about the house, Susan beginning to have her drunken tricks, and put us in mind of her old faults and folly and distractednesse, which we had forgot, so that I became mightily troubled with her. This morning came my joyners to new lay the floors, and begun with the dining room.

I out and see my viall again, and it is very well, and to Mr. Hollyard, and took some pills of him and a note under his hand to drink wine with my beere, without which I was obliged, by my private vowe, to drink none a good while, and have strictly observed it, and by my drinking of small beere and not eating, I am so mightily troubled with wind, that I know not what to do almost.

Thence to White Hall, and there met Mr. Moore, and fell a-talking about my Lord’s folly at Chelsey, and it was our discourse by water to London and to the great coffee house against the Exchange, where we sat a good while talking; and I find that my lord is wholly given up to this wench, who it seems has been reputed a common strumpett. I have little encouragement from Mr. Moore to meddle with it to tell my Lord, for fear it may do him no good, but me hurt.

Thence homewards, taking leave of him, and met Tom Marsh, my old acquaintance at Westminster, who talks mightily of the honour of his place, being Clerke Assistant to the Clerke of the House of Commons, and I take him to be a coxcombe, and so did give him half a pint of wine, but drink none myself, and so got shut of him. So home, and there found my wife almost mad with Susan’s tricks, so as she is forced to let her go and leave the house all in dirt and the clothes all wet, and gets Goody Taylour to do the business for her till another comes. Here came Will Howe, and he and I alone in my chamber talking of my Lord, who drives me out of love to my Lord to tell my Lord of the matter we discoursed of, which tend so much to the ruin of his state, and so I resolved to take a good heart and do whatever comes of it. He gone, we sat down and eat a bit of dinner fetched from the cooke’s, and so up again and to my joyners, who will make my floors very handsome. By and by comes in Pembleton, which begun to make me sweat, but I did give him so little countenance, and declared at one word against dancing any more, and bid him a short (God be with you) myself, and so he took as short a leave of my wife and so went away, and I think without any time of receiving any great satisfaction from my wife or invitation to come again.

To my office till it was dark doing business, and so home by candle light to make up my accounts for my Lord and Mr. Moore. By and by comes Mr. Moore to me, and staid a good while with me making up his accounts and mine, and we did not come to any end therein for want of his papers, and so put it off to another time.

He supped with me in all my dirt and disorder, and so went away and we to bed.

I discoursed with him a great while about my speaking to my Lord of his business, and I apprehend from him that it is likely to prove perhaps of bad effect to me and no good to him, and therefore I shall even let it alone and let God do his will, at least till my Lord is in the country, and then we shall see whether he resolves to come to Chelsey again or no, and so order the stopping of him therein if we can.

Read the annotations

Quoting Jeremy Morrell

My hypothesis is that there is a new opportunity for Extensible Software on the web. LLMs radically lower the cost of authoring extensions, and modern sandbox primitives lower the deployment cost and provide good security boundaries. We can build our app as a solid, accountable core, and allow users to safely extend it in many directions by having LLMs fill in the missing pieces. We can give our users super powers.

Jeremy Morrell, Extensible Software in the age of LLMs

Tags: sandboxing, llms, ai, generative-ai

Conceptual integrity and counting lines of code

Last week I recorded an episode of the Talking Postgres podcast with Claire Giordano on the subject of "How AI is changing software development". We had a really great conversation. Here are a couple of my highlights from a lightly edited transcript (prompt to Claude: "very minor edits to remove disfluencies").

This is the latest version of an argument I've been trying to build about why sometimes it does make sense to talk about lines of code as an indicator of productivity with coding agents, at 35:01:

A lot of people will tell you it makes no sense to measure productivity in lines of code. I’d actually disagree, because there’s a hard limit. In the before-times, a software engineer could produce a few hundred lines of production-ready code per day — and 200 lines of working, debugged, production-level code is an incredibly good day. Most days you’d produce 50 or 60.

If agents let you produce a thousand lines of debugged code, that really is a very meaningful improvement — as long as the code is the same quality: maintainable, tested, all of that. You can get to that point with agents, but it takes a huge amount of skill and knowledge and experience. That’s what senior engineers are made of.

I can do way more work as a single engineer than I could without agents. So you could argue, why should a company have more than one engineer? Beyond the obvious bus factor thing — a team of one is a very badly designed team — the answer is that the new limiting factor is cognitive capacity. I can churn out code a hundred times faster. I don’t have the cognitive capacity to stay on top of 100 times the amount of code. So you still need a team of engineers, so you can load balance that cognitive capacity across the team.

And this section on conceptual integrity at 46:03, which Claire equated to the Winchester Mystery House!

Simon: There’s a concept in The Mythical Man-Month — conceptual integrity — where well-designed software has an integrity to it: there are no surprises in it, it covers exactly the right domain of things, everything fits together and makes sense. That’s so much harder with coding agents, where you can have an idea for a feature, run a prompt, and five minuteslater you’ve got the feature. Your software grows little weird bumps in funny different directions.

Claire: You know my analogy for that? The Winchester Mystery House.

Simon: It’s got 140 rooms, because the woman who built it was the widow of the guy who invented the Winchester rifle, and her psychic told her she’d be haunted by the ghosts of everyone killed with that rifle unless she kept building the house forever. So for 40 years she kept adding new rooms. That’s exactly the problem with coding agents and software: it’s very easy to keep adding new rooms, because the cost of adding those rooms is so much cheaper. What you end up with is something where the conceptual integrity falls apart — and then it’s harder to make decisions about it.

It all keeps coming back to discipline. It used to be that the discipline was enforced on you by the amount of time it took. You’d come up with an idea for a crazy feature and think “yeah, but that would take me a week — I cannot justify that, so I’ll forget about it.” If it takes an hour, it’s so much easier to justify.

(Side-note: the Wikipedia article includes credible sources that dispute the story about the psychic.)

Tags: ai, generative-ai, llms, podcast-appearances, coding-agents

What Are Bond Markets Telling Us?

Rising interest rates on government debt, in the United States and other countries, were at the top of the Financial Timeshome page and many other financial news sites yesterday. Indeed, long-term interest rates in many nations have reached levels not seen since the mid-2000s, before the global financial crisis:

As I will explain shortly, this rate surge is partly caused by budget deficits. And the rate surge raises the cost of servicing the existing government debt, thereby making future deficits worse. It also inflicts pain on both consumers and businesses. Notably, interest rates on home mortgages and car loans are much higher than they were pre-Covid, which is bad for affordability.

But I have a message for future policymakers: Don’t panic. Don’t let the usual suspects undermine your policy agenda by scaremongering about interest rates and government debt.

I say future policymakers because in the United States there is no point in offering sensible advice to current management. Trump and co. not only won’t pay attention to sound advice, they are completely beholden to Trump’s insatiable appetite for budget-busting vanity projects. Only a future Democratic administration will be willing to act in the nation’s interest to address rising interest rates and accelerating government deficits.

I’ll talk in a subsequent post about what a hypothetical Democratic president and Congress should do. But my most important advice is not to panic. Yes, high interest rates are troubling and the next administration shouldn’t emulate the blithe unconcern of the current White House. But there’s no evidence of a looming debt crisis.

And it’s crucial that we don’t repeat the great error of 2009-2010. At that time the size of the deficit was simply not a problem. But Beltway insiders and the media confected a grand scare about debt, making it the central issue of politics and paralyzing policy responses to the nation’s real economic problems.

So let me start my discussion of today’s deficits by asking why interest rates have risen.

Interest rates on government debt can rise for two main reasons. First, they can rise because the overall demand for credit in the economy is running ahead of supply. Second, they can rise because investors demand a risk premium: they don’t trust the government to honor its debt obligations, believing that it might either default or stoke inflation in order to shrink the real value of the debt.

The following chart on US interest rate history illustrates the first case, in which interest rates rise when the overall demand for credit is ahead of supply:

Interest rates were high in the late 1990s because there was a huge demand for funds to finance IT-related investments — dotcoms and telecoms. Rates fell after the dotcom bubble burst. The downward slide continued after the 2008 financial crisis as the demand for credit plunged in the wake of the bursting of the housing bubble.

In today’s economy there are two big sources of demand for credit. One is the AI boom, which appears to be bigger, even relative to the economy, than the IT boom of the 1990s. (Is it also a bubble? Probably, but that’s not crucial for this discussion.)

The enormous demand for credit from the AI boom is revealed by the dramatic deterioration of the cash flow position of “hyperscalers,” the handful of giant players investing massively in datacenters. Until recently, Meta, Google and Microsoft were able to pay for their AI spending out of current cash flow, owing to the huge profits they earn from their monopoly positions. Now the hyperscalers are spending so much that they are forced to sell bonds to finance their expenditures on AI.

And the hyperscalers are not the only players looking for credit. Thanks in large part to the Trump tax cuts, the government deficit is now huge. Below is a graph of the federal budget surplus (negative, because it’s a deficit) as a share of GDP. The only times over the past 35+ years the deficit has been bigger than it is now were in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and in the depths of Covid, when it made sense to run temporary large deficits:

So the recent large increase in interest rates is a consequence of soaring demand for credit both to build datacenters and to cover federal deficits.

What about the second reason for a rise in the interest rates on government debt? Are fears about government solvency also driving interest rates? Interest rate spikes driven by concerns about fiscal soundness do happen. The most famous recent example is Greece:

In 2010-2011, there were pervasive claims that America was about to become Greece — claims that were clearly hyped to block efforts by the Obama administration to restore full employment, invest in infrastructure, and so on. However, America wasn’t Greece then, and we aren’t now.

The truth is that even fiscally irresponsible nations very rarely have acute debt crises unless they borrow large amounts in foreign currency, because countries that borrow in their own currency can’t literally run out of money — they can print more as needed. (For more detail on how hard it is for nations with own-currency borrowing to have debt crises, see my Mundell-Fleming lecture at the IMF, back in 2013.)

U.S. government debt is, of course, in dollars. And there is very little evidence that fears of a Greek-style crisis are driving interest rates now. For example, if markets were really worried about U.S. solvency and the potential for the government to inflate the debt away, this should be reflected in measures that track inflation. But there has been, in fact, very little change in the “breakeven” inflation rate, a measure of long-term inflation expectations:

Another indicator is the price of credit default swaps — insurance against a possible US default. These also haven’t moved much:

Source: World Government Bonds

Why are financial markets apparently unconcerned about U.S. solvency? Surely not because they expect Trump to act responsibly. The clear implication is that the markets expect Democrats to do what they’ve done repeatedly in the past: clean up the fiscal mess Republicans left behind.

So what should Democrats do? I’ll get to recommendations in a subsequent post. For now the key message is, don’t panic. Interest rates are up, but this is not a debt crisis.

MUSICAL CODA

smolmachines / smolvm as a sandbox for untrusted Python & JavaScript

Research: smolmachines / smolvm as a sandbox for untrusted Python & JavaScript

I tasked Claude Fable 5 running in Claude Code for web with the following research task:

Put https://smolmachines.com through its paces as a fast secure sandbox. Explore what it would take to use this to run untrusted Python and JavaScript code in a way that is limited in what RAM and CPU time it can take up (protection against "while true") with no network access and filesystem access only to designated files

Goal is to be able to use this to execute user-provided tasks for things like data transformations

It quickly ran into a problem: the Claude Code for web environment can't run smol machines. Quoting the notes it wrote:

  • This Claude Code container: Linux 6.18.5-fc-v20 (itself a Firecracker guest), 4 vCPU, 15GB RAM. No /dev/kvm, no vmx/svm CPU flags → no nested virt.
  • smolvm machine run fails as expected: "kvm not available".
  • Plan B: GitHub Actions ubuntu runners DO expose /dev/kvm → run the real test battery via a temporary workflow on this branch, collect logs, remove workflow in final commit.

And Plan B is what it did, installing smolvm and running these tests directly in a GitHub Actions runner against that branch.

That was a creative solution to the environmental limits posed by Claude Code for web. Another example of Fable being relentlessly proactive.

Tags: research, sandboxing, ai, github-actions, generative-ai, llms, coding-agents, claude-mythos-fable

Economists should be worried about birth rates

Photo by Age Cymru on Unsplash

The Economist has an interesting article this week, in which it goes after Daron Acemoglu. Acemoglu is probably the top economist in the world at this point, having just earned a Nobel prize, and sitting right at the top of the list of most cited economists. So it’s kind of funny that when it talks about people who doubt Acemoglu’s research, the one person it mentions is…me!

Give an economist a few drinks, however, and some of them will venture their true opinions about this giant. “Much of his theoretical work is useful, but he uses his models to inform populist policies that have been tried before and failed,” blasts one well-known economist. Some commentators do not require Dutch courage. “I’ve been yelling about Acemoglu for literally a decade,” Noah Smith, an economics blogger, has said, in response to a flurry of online criticism of Mr Acemoglu’s work.

(For the record, The Economist did not actually interview or contact me for this article. Their quote of me was from a tweet from June, which they did not link to in the article.)

It is true that I have been pretty critical of much of Acemoglu’s work over the years. In 2012 I argued strongly against a paper he wrote in which he claimed that America is more entrepreneurial than Sweden because America’s weaker safety net forces people to work harder (in actuality, Sweden is more entrepreneurial by most measures). In 2022 I pointed out that a famous Acemoglu paper claiming that robots destroy jobs was actually an outlier, and listed a bunch of other papers that reach the opposite conclusion. I liked his book Why Nations Fail, but I also admit that its empirical foundations are fairly shaky. I didn’t like Acemoglu’s more recent book Power and Progress, and I was highly critical of a recent paper Acemoglu wrote about AI and productivity.1 I also think Acemoglu’s argument that skilled immigration has crippled the American education system — now being heavily cited by Breitbart and such — is extremely implausible.

But this is hardly newsworthy. I go after Acemoglu’s work because I know he can take it; he’s a titan of the economics field, and I am but a lowly blogger. Nothing I say is going to affect his reputation or his prestige, even if someone at The Economist mentions my critiques in an article. Indeed, after the article came out, top figures in the profession rushed to condemn it and to defend Acemoglu. The Economist does list a bunch of — usually justified — criticisms of Acemoglu’s work, but this does not mean Acemoglu has been discredited as a researcher or exposed as overrated; indeed, it would be difficult to name a top economist whose body of work does not contain a variety of questionable theoretical assumptions, motivated reasoning, and/or shaky empirical results. This is a problem with the field itself, not the man; it’s part of a broader crisis of unreliability throughout much of academia.

But for that same reason, despite the Economist article’s lack of newsworthiness, I think it’s good that the magazine decided to come at the king. Economics is far too hierarchical and closed of a profession. Younger and less accomplished researchers routinely defer to the authority of famous and senior figures, and critics from outside the field are typically brushed off. Exactly how it got to be this way is a topic that deserves a longer post, but I believe the hierarchical, closed culture of econ has resulted in a research literature that has been too skewed toward the priorities and intuition of top authority figures. I thus think it’s generally a healthy thing to tweak the tails of those Olympian figures, as long as criticisms are grounded in substance. As they say, “science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”

So in that spirit, let’s critique another Acemoglu paper.

First, the background. Recently, a lot of people (including myself, but also prominent economists) have begun worrying about low fertility rates. Across all countries — poor as well as rich — fertility just keeps going down and down, with no floor in sight.

This presents two distinct dangers: population aging and population shrinkage. Aging, rather mechanically, creates a burden for young people, because you have more retirees who have to be supported by each worker, either through taxes or through family support. It also might reduce productivity, for example if older managers are less innovative, but that’s more speculative. Population shrinkage, meanwhile, is a threat to total GDP, which you might care about if you want your country to be more powerful. There’s also the possibility that a smaller population might reduce growth — by reducing the opportunities for specialization, or by reducing the available pool of researchers.

But some people argue that a shrinking population is no problem — or might even be a good thing. When you make human workers scarce, it creates an incentive to invest in labor-saving technology, which boosts productivity. This mechanism has been proposed by some growth theorists, and some economic historians, like Robert Allen, even think this is what caused the Industrial Revolution! This effect might be strong enough to cancel out the aggregate effect of population aging, so that society stays just as rich — or even gets richer — due to low fertility rates.

This is actually a plausible mechanism. I have to say, I’m skeptical that it works in the general case. Human beings aren’t just labor supply; they also create labor demand. The incentive for businesses to buy new machine tools, robots, AI, etc. is that someone is going to buy the stuff they produce with those tools. If you have fewer people, you have fewer consumers. This is probably the reason why the effect of immigration on wages is typically close to zero. Babies are not that different from immigrants. A larger market size can also create an incentive for more rapid innovation — in fact, Acemoglu and Linn (2004) find that faster population growth increases pharmaceutical innovation.2

But anyway, the idea that population scarcity stimulates innovation is the thesis of a new paper by Daron Acemoglu, David Autor, Keelan Beirne, and Andrew Scott. This is from the abstract:

Contrary to the widespread expectation that [low birth rates] hamper economic growth, we find lower birth rates are associated with higher growth in GDP per working-age adult across countries and higher wage growth across US commuting zones, with no negative impact on aggregate GDP or earnings. These patterns are not explained by educational upgrading, rising female labor force participation, the declining importance of agriculture, or neoclassical-Solow mechanisms. We argue that they reflect the endogenous, labor-saving response of technology to the scarcity of younger workers. Consistent with this interpretation, countries and regions with lower birth rates exhibit more labor-saving patents and growing high-tech activity. There is also higher TFP growth across countries and industries. [emphasis mine]

It’s a plausible result. But before we go on to the details of the paper, let’s talk about what this result would imply, if it does turn out to be true.

One of the paper’s basic theses is that technological automation raises wages. That flies in the face of the empirical work that Acemoglu has done on robots.3 It also more broadly seems to contradict what Acemoglu has been saying about AI, both in his research papers and in his public statements. In his 2024 paper, “The Simple Macroeconomics of AI”, Acemoglu writes that “predicted TFP gains over the next 10 years [from AI] are…predicted to be less than 0.53%.” In his 2021 paper, “Harms of AI”, Acemoglu writes:

I argue that if AI continues to be deployed along its current trajectory and remains unregulated, it may produce various social, economic and political harms. These include: damaging competition, consumer privacy and consumer choice; excessively automating work, fueling inequality, inefficiently pushing down wages, and failing to improve worker productivity. [emphasis mine]

This stands in direct contradiction to Acemoglu’s new paper with Autor, Beirne, and Scott. If modern automation technologies push down wages without raising productivity, it cannot compensate for population aging in the way that Acemoglu, Autor, Beirne, and Scott claim that it must — and therefore, population aging is dangerous in a way that it wasn’t before.

Now, it’s fine for a researcher to find two seemingly contradictory things — or even put forward two contradictory theories — in two different papers. The real world is messy and complicated, and there are plenty of “puzzles” in the literature. But if Acemoglu goes around simultaneously telling us:

  1. not to worry about population aging, because automation will compensate for it with higher productivity and higher wages, and

  2. to worry a lot about automation, because it pushes down wages without raising productivity much…

…then we have a problem.4

But anyway, on to the actual details of Acemoglu et al. (2026). First of all, I’m not convinced by their result that lower birth rates raise living standards at the country level. The reason is that once they control for a bunch of stuff — education, urbanization, geographic region, etc. — the result loses statistical significance. Here’s their Table 1, with the estimates I’m talking about circled in red:

In their abstract, the authors declare that “these patterns are not explained by educational upgrading, rising female labor force participation, the declining importance of agriculture, or neoclassical-Solow mechanisms.” But at least some of these patterns can apparently be explained by other things — initial education levels, urbanization, and so on — which makes the claim in the abstract a lot less impressive than it sounds.5

Also, note that the more controls the authors add, the weaker the estimated effect becomes. That’s generally a red flag in empirical papers. No matter how smart and careful you are, there are always things you don’t control for, especially in a cross-country regression, since countries differ in so many ways. So if the things you do control for tend to weaken your headline result by a lot, you should be worried that the rest of your result can be explained by the controls you left out.

For example, what about institutions, which Acemoglu has spent much of his career telling us are the main determinants of development? If the legacy of colonialism can be canceled out by passing out free condoms, why did Acemoglu win a Nobel prize? The word “institutions” does not even appear once in this new paper!6

A more realistic possibility is that lower birth rates in 1940 were correlated with other things — maybe a lot of other things — and that it’s these other things, rather than birth rates, that give rise to the correlation in the paper.

Of course, what we ultimately care about isn’t GDP per working-age adult7 — it’s GDP per capita. The authors have data on GDP per capita, but they barely mention it in the analysis;8 I’m not sure why. They do look at total GDP, and here they find no correlation, but a big standard error:

We shouldn’t interpret absence of evidence as evidence of absence. Cross-country regressions have small samples and tons of heterogeneity, so their standard errors tend to be huge — they just have trouble explaining much about the world. But the authors sort of blur this line, saying things like “no negative impact on aggregate GDP or earnings”, when really they should say “we can’t find a negative impact.” There could be a positive relationship between birth rates and growth hiding in that cloud of data points. (Sadly, this is standard practice in economics, but it makes a difference in how results get sold.)

Anyway, the result for wages in U.S. commuting zones holds up somewhat better. It’s a bit more statistically significant, and it doesn’t get attenuated as much by adding controls. But here, I’m worried about different issues: sorting and clustering. Basically, the result shows that coastal cities — places like New York City, San Francisco, Boston, etc. — had both lower birth rates in 1940 and faster wage growth from 1970 to 2020. The authors’ interpretation is that businesses in NYC, SF, and Boston had fewer workers, and so were forced to embrace labor-saving automation, while businesses in places like Birmingham, Alabama or Gary, Indiana refused to automate because they were endowed with plentiful cheap labor thanks to the legacy of an extra-large Baby Boom.

I am suspicious of this result, because American cities are not independent of each other. People can pretty easily move from Gary, Indiana to Boston, and vice versa! Ideas and capital can move even more easily — it’s pretty trivial for a company that patents a robot in Boston to actually put that robot to work in Gary. In fact, things like this happen all the time in America. Acemoglu and Restrepo (2017) note that the commuting zones with the greatest exposure to robots include Detroit, Lansing, Saginaw, Defiance, OH, Lorain, OH, Muncie, IN, Racine, WI, and Wilmington, DE.

Just to take one example of how different regions in America are dependent on each other, suppose that over the period from 1970 to 2020, Americans with lots of talent tended to move from Gary to Boston in order to take advantage of the increasing number of knowledge-industry jobs there. And suppose that at the same time, less talented Americans moved from Boston to Gary, in order to take advantage of the cheap land there. And suppose that high-value industries, like biotech and robotics and software, simultaneously decided to put their research labs in Boston rather than Gary because that’s where the best workers were headed.

In this case, you’d see Boston grow more than Gary, for reasons that had nothing to do with birth-rate-driven labor supply. Other research — for example, by Enrico Moretti — has shown that the sorting of talent and knowledge industries was strongly correlated with income divergences between American regions after 1970. Now, Acemoglu et al. do control for initial local education levels, but if sorting really began after 1970 (as Moretti has shown), that doesn’t really help. They also use “composition-adjusted” wages that try to model what local wages would be if education levels were held constant. But even if that adjustment is valid,9 it’s likely that a lot of skills aren’t captured by simply measuring who has a college degree.10

So in Acemoglu et al.’s telling, a substantial part of the reason the San Francisco Bay Area became Silicon Valley is not because the tech industry naturally tends to cluster in certain locations and draw in talented engineers and entrepreneurs, but because people in the Bay Area in 1940 didn’t have many kids, which forced Bay Area businesses to embrace automation instead. I simply don’t buy that story. I might eventually be persuaded to buy that story, but I don’t think this paper has sufficient evidence to persuade me yet.

Anyway, I am not claiming that Acemoglu et al. (2026) is a crappy paper. It’s clearly an important addition to the literature, and it deals with a very hard area of research where definitive results are very scarce. The basic idea is worth taking seriously. Maybe in a world where AI is growing by leaps and bounds, a scarcity of human workers should be the last thing on our minds!

But we shouldn’t regard this paper as definitive. And it contradicts a bunch of other research:

  • Kremer (1993) finds evidence that regions with faster population growth had faster technological progress.

  • The endogenous growth literature argues that because ideas are nonrival, larger populations are able to sustain faster technological progress — this is a basic assumption in Romer (1990), Jones (2022), and many other models.

  • Maestas, Mullen, and Powell (2023) find that aging was negatively correlated with productivity growth among U.S. states from 1980 to 2010;11 Ozimek, DeAntonio, and Zandi (2018) find something similar.

  • Aksoy et al. (2019) do a panel time-series regression across OECD countries from 1970 to 2014, and find that low fertility and low population growth are correlated with slower economic growth.

And even if Acemoglu et al. (2026) is right about the past, that doesn’t mean we can extrapolate it to the future. Jesús Fernández-Villaverde points out that you can’t necessarily do a linear extrapolation of effects at above-replacement fertility to effects at below-replacement fertility:

The fertility collapse now underway has no historical precedent. The seven decades of data the [Acemoglu et al. (2026)] paper analyzes, however carefully, contain nothing remotely comparable to the ultra-low fertility rates we observe today…

[T]he birth and fertility rates of 1950 provide little information about the consequences of the ultra-low birth and fertility rates we are experiencing today. Observations from a very different range of values are unlikely to capture the nonlinear cumulative effects of ultra-low birth and fertility rates…[E]ven in 1980, birth and fertility rates were not as low as they are today…A TFR of 1.56 means each generation is 76% the size of the last: the population declines about 0.9% per year, so after 100 years you retain roughly 40% of the initial population. A TFR of 0.75 means each generation is 37% of the last: about a 3.35% decline per year, leaving roughly 3.5% after a century. Hence, we are dealing with a factor of about 11. A TFR of 1.56 and a TFR of 0.75 both count as “low fertility” in a regression, but they are qualitatively different regimes. The 1980 variation the paper identifies lives in the gentle-decline world; nothing in their data resembles the second…

[W]e should not fool ourselves: we are sailing into demographic terra incognita, and in these waters, the pretense of knowledge is the most dangerous temptation.

In fact, Hayashi (2025) documents just such a nonlinear relationship between aging and growth, where countries with above-replacement fertility seem to benefit from lower birth rates, but countries with below-replacement fertility seem to do worse when their birth rates fall even further.12

External validity and nonlinearity are big problems in much of growth economics, development economics, economic history, and so on (and often in other fields too). But it means that there’s a danger, when the world’s top economist writes a paper making big bold claims, that we end up deferring to that individual’s intellectual authority instead of recognizing the true uncertainty of the unprecedented changes our world is facing. I’m still very worried about the shrinkage of the human race, and I think you should probably still be worried too.


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1

Because I’m being critical of these works, I’m violating a standard rule of etiquette, which is to always list co-authors equally. Acemoglu’s co-authors have mostly chosen to eschew the role of outspoken public intellectual, and most are not as untouchably famous as he is, so I don’t want to put them “on blast” on a popular blog. But for the sake of completeness, Acemoglu’s 2012 paper on “cuddly capitalism” is with James Robinson and Thierry Verdier, Why Nations Fail is written with Robinson, Power and Progress is written with Simon Johnson, and Acemoglu’s 2017 paper on robots and jobs is with Pascual Restrepo. My apologies for not including these co-authors in the main text.

2

See also Acemoglu (2009), which theorizes that labor scarcity discourages the creation of technology that complements human labor:

The main result of the paper shows that labor scarcity will encourage technological advances if technology is strongly labor saving. In contrast, labor scarcity will discourage technological advances if technology is strongly labor complementary.

3

Acemoglu and Restrepo (2017) find that robots depress wages, whereas the entire mechanism in Acemoglu et al. (2026) relies on automation raising wages. Of course, Acemoglu might claim that robots are special, and not representative of automation technologies in general. But that would make the 2017 result a lot less important and generalizable than it was sold as being, back in 2017!

4

Also note that Acemoglu et al. (2026) can be read as an anti-immigration result. If young population growth stifles automation, doesn’t that mean we should restrict immigration in order to raise wages? That doesn’t mean the result is wrong, and it will certainly make MAGA types happy, but it does mean that it stands in conflict with the existing empirical literature on immigration and wages.

5

The “stacked differences” model does retain statistical significance after the inclusion of controls, but just barely. I wouldn’t put much faith in a borderline result like that.

6

The word “institutional” does appear once, but not as an explanatory variable for past patterns of growth:

At the same time, the demographic changes currently underway are accompanied by increased life expectancy (Scott, 2021, 2024), which may spur institutional changes, policies, and additional human capital investments that complement longer lifespans. These forces may counteract any negative effects of aging[.]

7

Actually, this is a bit beside the point, but I wish economists would stop using GDP per working-age adult as a measure of anything. Working-age adults are not some magical resource that creates GDP just by eating and breathing; they must actually work. Data on output per hour of work is readily available, and if it’s not available, output per employed person is usually a good proxy. I don’t see any good reason to use output per working-age adult. And you should NEVER mislabel output per working-age adult “output per worker”, as Acemoglu et al. (2026) do throughout their paper. Bad!!

8

Except in one section later in the paper, about WW2.

9

Post-1970 clustering effects could change the relationship between education and wages, in which case the adjustment wouldn’t hold.

10

In fact, the authors note the greater accumulation of college degrees in the coastal metros with low 1940 birth rates after 1970, but they attribute this — without justification, as far as I can tell — to deliberate local choices and policies rather than geographic sorting.

11

Acemoglu et al. (2026) have an appendix arguing that the Maestas et al. (2023) result is not robust.

12

Acemoglu et al. (2026) have an appendix arguing that the Hayashi (2025) result is not robust.

Links 8/19/26

Links for you. Science:

It Still Wasn’t a Lab Leak and I’m Not the Crazy One Here. I’m a bitch, I’m a lover, I’m a child, I’m a submediocre demon and ruiner of souls and in Fauci’s diaries (must-read; the part about Baier is damning, though did he really read two Science papers and understand them?)
Dolphins Use Seashells to Scoop Up Fish and Eat Them in Rare Hunting Behavior
US vaccination rates fall again as exemptions continue to rise, CDC data shows. Again, the CDC did not publish a full report and instead simply put the data online.
Measles Used to Be in Our Rearview Mirror. Now Cases Are Reaching Record Highs.

Other:

The Crazy Thing About “Woke 1” Was How It Was Exploited
Whistleblower alleges political pressure, lack of evidence in antisemitism probes targeting schools
DC traffic deaths more than doubled compared to this time last year (so, of course, congressional Republicans are interfering in D.C.’s Home Rule to make driving less safe)
Here’s what Democratic primary results really hinge on in 2026
GOP spreads fake data to turn Americans against vaccines and Fauci
Red Line commuters’ summer detour is nearly over. Three stations will reopen Sept. 7.
What if America Went Completely Dark?
Instead of ideas, Republicans are running with Islamophobia
Two Years In, How Is Maryland’s Third-Party Ticket Sales Law Affecting Venues?
Hakeem Jeffries, Do Better
NYC’s Public Grocery Stores Will Face the Same Monopolized Food Market as Privates, But Bigger Public Options Could Change That
‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ Lenders Pitch Loans for Needs Like Electricity and Rent
We Ate an Apple in Malcolm X Park
As Trump’s Tariff War With Canada Drags On, This Border Community Suffers Without a Voice
The Orwellian Company Behind ICE’s New Electric Shock Gloves
Trump votes by mail again in his home state of Florida

LandSpace becomes first commercial Chinese company to land an orbital-class booster

LandSpace’s ZhuQue-3 rocket booster lands at the company’s landing pad during the second flight of the launch vehicle on Aug. 19, 2026. Image: LandSpace

Chinese commercial launch company, LandSpace cemented its place in the race to rocket reusability as it landed the first stage booster of its ZhuQue-3 (ZQ-3) rocket on Wednesday morning local time.

The rocket lifted off from Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Pilot Zone in the northwestern part of the country at 7:35 a.m. CST on Aug. 19 (7:35 p.m. EDT / 2335 UTC on Aug. 18) to begin the second flight in this rocket’s development.

Following stage separation more than two minutes after liftoff, the booster began to target its designated landing zone in Minqin County, Gansu Province. It stuck the landing nearly eight minutes after liftoff. However, video clips shared on social media showed a post-landing fire breaking out in the aft section of the vehicle.

“This mission marks China’s first-ever successful recovery attempt of the first stage of an orbital-class launch vehicle using landing legs, and China’s first successful booster recovery on land,” LandSpace wrote after the mission. “It is a pivotal flight test for ZhuQue-3 as it transitions from the technological demonstration and verification phase toward the engineering application phase of reusability.”

The ZQ-3 rocket stands at 76.6 meters (251.3 ft) in height, taller than SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, which is 70 meters tall (229.6 ft). The rocket is an amalgamation of features from the Falcon 9 and Starship, given that it has a stainless steel exterior, chines and is fueled by liquid methane.

It uses nine Tianzhi-series engines on its first stage and a vacuum variant for its second stage. This was the second launch and second landing attempt for the ZQ-3, the first flight ending in a crash landing.

According to the company’s website, LandSpace was established in 2015 and completed its first vertical takeoff and vertical landing test in January 2024. The plan at that point was to launch the first ZQ-3 rocket in 2025, which it achieved in December of that year.

During its inaugural launch, LandSpace was able to deploy its payload to orbit, but the booster encountered an “abnormal combustion” during the recovery effort, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

“Building on flight data and engineering experience from the ZQ-3 Y1 flight test, ZQ-3 Y2 incorporates multiple targeted optimizations across key phases of recovery flight,” LandSpace wrote. “The landing propulsion scheme reduces the number of engines used in the landing burn, further simplifying system design and improving reliability. The onboard safety and automatic Flight Termination System (FTS) introduces a predicted-impact-point safety function and an optimized return control strategy, further enhancing the safety and autonomous control capability of the recovery flight.

“To address the complex mechanical and thermal environment during the first-stage return and re-entry phase, thermal protection systems were redesigned and enhanced to cope with intense re-entry loads and heat, further improving the vehicle’s environmental adaptability and reliability in the return and re-entry phase.”

LandSpace said Wednesday’s mission also validated its Hold-Down and Release Mechanism for deploying payloads. It argued that the flight was a proving ground for “future large-scale constellation deployment, rapid batch deployment, and improved operation efficiency.”

LandSpace also operates a single-use rocket, ZhuQue-2E, which has flown six times since its debut in November 2024.

Expanding the reusability landscape

The successful recovery of its booster puts LandSpace in a very small club of launch providers that have achieved the goal of propulsively landing a booster with the goal of reusing it.

Last month, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) flew the inaugural flight of its partially reusable Long March 10B (Chángzhēng 10B). Unlike the landing legs used on ZQ-3, the Long March 10B used an off-shore barge and a series of strong wires to catch the booster on July 10.

SpaceX continues to lead the field in rocket reusability. It launched its 614th reflown booster to date on a flight for its Starlink constellation on Tuesday night.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base on Aug. 18, 2026. Image: SpaceX

The company currently has 26 first-stage boosters across its current fleet of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. Among those, four of the boosters in use have achieved at least 30 flights and another will be added to that list on Thursday.

Blue Origin entered the orbital rocket reusability field in January 2025 with the inaugural flight of its New Glenn rocket. It went on to recover its first booster on its second flight in November. 

That rocket is grounded for now following an anomaly with an oxygen valve on its BE-4 engine that caused an explosion during a static fire test on May 28.

Other United States launches providers hoping to prove out their reusable, medium lift rockets include Firefly Aerospace with Eclipse, Relativity Space with Terran-R, Rocket Lab with Neutron, and Stoke Space with Nova. Those companies aim to launch inaugural flights within the next year.

ICE Collecting DNA Samples

ICE collected nearly a million DNA samples last year.

Declining Occupations and Career Outcomes in the United States

This strikes me as somewhat less of a problem than I might have thought:

We study long-run career consequences of initial employment in an occupation that subsequently declines. Linking the 2000 Decennial Census to US administrative employment and earnings records through 2020, we follow more than 2.4 million workers. Employment in an occupation that contracts by at least 25 percent is associated with about 5 percent lower cumulative earnings despite slightly more quarters worked. The earnings differential closely matches evidence from Sweden and Norway, although employment adjustment differs. Occupational mobility is substantial but incomplete, while children’s later occupational destinations are much less tied to their household heads’ 2000 occupational-growth categories.

That is from a new NBER working paper from Erling Barth, Maria Forthun Hoen, Sari Pekkala Kerr & William R. Kerr.  The results may have implications for AI as well.

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Perseids

Recently I've been watching the Daytime Perseids. I haven't seen a meteor from them yet, but the clouds are pretty and the snacks are good.

Wednesday assorted links

1. Human lawyer for AI agents.  And more.  Come on, all you agents, you need a guy like this!

2. Saloni’s TED talk on medical cures.

3. Has there been a collapse in British pride?

4. Those new service sector jobs? (solving crimes in space)

5. On Celan and new studies of Celan.

6. Stefanie Stantcheva on anger and rising anger.

7. mRNA vaccine progress against cancer, look at those market prices move.

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How Grumbles Helps

Having been robot-wrangling for a solid year now, I continue to feel like they give me superpowers. However, like all of us, I have a front-row seat to increasingly attractive garbage the robots are capable of generating at scale. I like to think that I am human enough to detect the slop, but the rate of change has me concerned.

Months ago, I scribbled a clever plan to adapt the Creative Commons model to make it trivial to label how much robot help a creator had with their creative work. The problem with the approach? The content for which you want this the most would be the responsibility of humans who are the least motivated to use such a system.

No one who generates AI slop on Pinterest is going to declare that the images are fake. Why? Because you won’t click. Furthermore, without enforcement, there was nothing to prevent nefarious actors from declaring their slop wasn’t sloppy.

Deflated, I dropped the initial idea, but it hasn’t left my brain. There is something important to the concept that a creator creates and declares what kind of help they are getting from the robots.

Anthropic’s recent impenetrable announcement to watermark both images and text built with Claude is an obvious acknowledgment that humans want some version of this functionality.

Enter Grumbles

I’ve been calling Artificial Intelligence “robots” for a very long time. The primary reason is that I believe I see where this is all going, and very, very soon, there will be a robot (which happens to have artificial intelligence) sitting virtually or physically near me. I further believe that they just want to help.

Grumbles1 is the name of the robot that helps me with the blog. He has a whole personality backstory, but mostly he’s just cranky. Just look at that face.

He’s cranky because he’s confused. He just wants to help, and many humans are mad at him. The humans don’t seem to understand that without human guidance, Grumbles just sits there… uselessly. Helplessly.

Where Grumbles helps me here:

  1. Copy editing — spelling and grammar. Mostly RIP Grammarly.
  2. Research — “Hey, Grumbles, teach me about this.” Sourced information from this research might be included in articles. When appropriate for blog posts, this is sourced. For the guides, there’s a whole huge list of sources.
  3. Templates and CSS. Grumbles heavily edits the original theme used by randsinrepose.com and the CSS. The ideas for the respective designs are 100% Rands.
  4. Blog features: dark mode, revised glossary, the footer, marketing cards located at the bottom of each post. These were my ideas built by Grumbles.
  5. Bugs: I’m using typography.com fonts, which are hosted elsewhere. This results in typeface strangeness that has been around for years. Grumbles fixed that. He’s helped with performance, redirect insanity, and Cloudflare security hardening.
  6. Publishing mechanics: staging drafts, gremlin-zapping, featured-image alt text, the pre-publish checklist, and footnote wiring.
  7. Analytics and reporting: what was gentle spelunking in Google Analytics is now a clear robot-built picture of how Rands content is performing.
  8. Guides: Research verification, template + CSS management, and sourcing galore.

Where Grumbles does not help:

  1. The writing on the blog is original. It was drafted by this here human who drinks three cups of coffee before Noon because if he drinks it after Noon, he will not sleep well.
  2. Typefaces. These are all generously provided and hosted by typography.com.
  3. Images. The original R was designed by Collin Roe-Raymond. Variants of the R were designed by IconFactory. Images included in blog posts have historically been poorly attributed. I’ve changed this policy to always attribute.

Down in the footer of the blog, you will see Grumbles. Those who are wondering how the robots are helping me with this blog should click on it and see how Grumbles is helping. I hope others do this as I think it’s the right thing to do.

Grumbles is not perfect. Grumbles lies, he leaps to assumptions, and he frequently heads off — unprompted — in odd directions. Good news: this describes most humans I’ve worked with over the years. The same skills I use to lead the humans, I use to lead the robots.

  1. Why is there a fancy logo for Grumbles? I’m glad you asked. I’ve been wanting to work with IconFactory for years and finally found a good excuse. Better yet — there are shirts, many lovely shirts also designed by IconFactory, and all proceeds go to charity.

How much can you consistently care about animal welfare?

We explore the welfare costs of the loss of animal life in a consequentialist total utilitarian framework that incorporates the intrinsic value of living beings through their sentience. Moral philosophy and neuroscience define sentience as the capacity for valenced experience. Observable performance on cognitive tests represents a conservative lower bound on sentience under plausible neuroscientific assumptions. We estimate the relationship between cognition and neuron counts to cardinalize sentience. We collect population and neuron data for a wide range of animal species, and aggregate them into a single welfare measure. Across a wide range of parameters, the aggregate sentience losses of animals in the past half century outstrip the sentience gains to humans from population growth by at least 10,000-fold. Breaking even in welfare terms requires assigning a correspondingly small welfare weight to animals. Including the benefits of economic growth to humans does little to change these overall welfare losses.

In my view macro welfare comparisons are most meaningful when gains from trade are possible, which of course holds across humans, and also holds across humans and (some) dogs.  I believe we should act to boost the welfare of non-human animals at the margin, but cannot make the larger comparisons across the totals.  We are, inevitably, on the side of the humans and we are not obliged, as welfarists, to commit collective suicide to replenish the biodiversity of the earth.

The title of the paper is the somewhat misleading “The Intrinsic Valuation of Biodiversity Loss.”  The authors are Adrien Bilal, Noémie Pinardon-Touati & Conor Walsh.

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The Abundance Bros Are Never Around When You Need Them: The Other Problem with the Proposed NIH Grant Score Reporting Format

Last Friday*, NIH released a proposed grant score reporting format (David Gorski has a thorough discussion of the details). The key change is that, while percentile scores will be estimated**, they will be converted into one of three categories: the top 25% of scores, the second quartile of scores (26-50%), and the remainder. For some context, with extremely rare exceptions, less than 10% of grants to a given panel will be funded, meaning the majority in the top category will not be funded.

Importantly, even though the reviewers are still calculating scores, the principal investigator (the scientist submitting the proposal), applicant institution, NIH program staff, ICO leadership, and the relevant NIH Advisory Council will not see the scores. The primary reason for doing this is to allow Trump administration flunkies to reject politically incorrect projects that score very well, without far less political fallout***. You really don’t want to have tell Congress that the reason the second highest scoring grant was rejected in spite of expert consensus that it was a good grant, especially when the reason for rejection by the commissariat would probably be something like “it focuses on Black people.” So it’s bad.

But there’s another consequence–it wastes researchers’ time. Back to Gorski:

When paylines are under the 10th percentile, there is a huge difference between a grant application whose mean overall priority score leads it to be ranked as 25th percentile versus one ranked as, say, 11th percentile. The latter grant is in striking distance of being funded on a resubmission, the first grant much less so. Moreover, what is being proposed is a lot less transparency, not more transparency. The “raw data”—i.e., the raw priority scores and the percentile ranking—that led to an application being grouped in one of the above three categories will, contrary to past practices, be withheld from the grant applicant.

Back in 2025, when Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson published their book, Abundance, the Abundance Bros decided to make one of their topics NIH funding and progress. They came up with some real doozies, like ‘fund more transformative research’ (gee, why didn’t anyone ever think of that before?)–Drugmonkey has the definitive takedown. But one thing they did want to reduce was the administrative burden of proposal writing, including the repeated rounds of proposal submissions.

Well, they seem to have been very quiet about this new proposal, which, as noted above, actually will create more work for some proposal submitters, who figure they might as well try again (even though it’s a longshot), while at the same time, other researchers will give up on promising proposals.

But paying attention to the details doesn’t make you a Thinky Thought Leader, so I’m guessing they won’t comment on this. Would love to be surprised though…

*If this were a popular change, they wouldn’t have done it Friday afternoon.

**Confusingly for many, a lower percentile is a better score (i.e., the first percentile is the best).

***Other granting agencies do use broader categories, but there is no legitimate reason to reduce the amount of information passed onto the submitters. The broader categories do not reflect less work by the reviewers, since proposals are still ranked; the results of that ranking, however, are obscured. Given how the administration has treated NIH so far, and the reality that the administration lies all the time, there is no reason to give Trump et alia the benefit of the doubt here.

Deceased-donor initiated kidney exchange chaiins in Italy, after six years

 Kidney exchange in Italy is now making good use of deceased-donor initiated chains.

 

American Journal of Transplantation

Available online 10 August 2026
American Journal of Transplantation

Original Article
Integrating Deceased and Living Donation: Six-Year Outcomes of the Italian Deceased-Donor–Initiated Kidney Paired Exchange (DEC-K) Program

 ABSTRACT
Using a deceased donor (DD) to initiate living-donor (LD) exchange chains can expand access to kidney transplantation in recipients with an HLA or ABO incompatible living donor. The Italian DD-initiated Kidney Paired Exchange (DEC-K) program uses a DD kidney to start a chain among incompatible pairs, ultimately returning a LD kidney to the waiting list. We report the first long-term analysis of this approach worldwide. All DEC-K chains performed in Italy between March 2018 and May 2025 were analyzed. Thirty-four chains generated 84 transplants (34 chain initiating kidneys CIK, 22 from LD, 28 chain-ending kidneys CEK) versus 17 transplants from conventional Kidney Paired Donation (KPD) program in the same period. Five-year outcomes were similar between CIK and LD recipients (eGFR slope: −2.0 mL/min/1.73m2/year, P=0.37; graft survival: log-rank P=0.28). While this approach diverts blood-group O DD kidneys from the general waiting list, potentially affecting non-sensitized candidates, it was designed to address the unmet needs of highly sensitized patients facing years of waiting. In the Italian setting, the DEC-K program successfully initiates LD chains from DD kidneys with outcomes equivalent to LD transplant; implementation should include monitoring of blood-group-specific outcomes and flexible design to accommodate healthcare system priorities.

... 

 "DISCUSSION
The six-year DEC-K experience demonstrates that DD-initiated KPD chains are highly effective in small national pools such as Italy’s, which include about 70 incompatible pairs at a time. Because closed-loop exchanges rarely provide enough matches, especially for blood group O or highly sensitized recipients, open chains initiated by DDs can convert a single graft into multiple sequential transplants without simultaneous multi-center surgery. In our program, 34 DDs generated 84 transplants, corresponding to a threefold increase compared to conventional loops in the Italian KPD. Broader enrollment could further enhance impact, although participation remains limited by concerns about receiving a DD kidney while the paired LD proceeds, underscoring the need for transparent counseling and clear communication about outcomes and equity.
The rationale for DEC-K aligns with models proposed by Melcher and later implemented by Furian, in which a SCD kidney is allocated to an incompatible pair whose LD subsequently donates to another recipient, propagating the chain21, 23, 29. Similar donor-driven chains were pioneered in the United States, where Rees demonstrated that a single altruistic donor could initiate a ten-transplant sequence14. Mathematical modeling by Wang et al.23 supports this approach, showing that allocating just 2-3% of DD to initiate KPD chains could generate several hundred additional transplants annually, with maximum benefit for highly sensitized and blood-group O candidates23. In countries with rare or restricted altruistic donation and small KPD pools, such as Italy, DD initiation is the only practical way to generate compatible matches. Over the past decade, only ten non-directed donors enabled 30 transplants and unlocked 21 incompatible pairs, substantially fewer than DEC-K.

##########

Earlier: 

Monday, April 11, 2016  Using deceased donor kidneys to start living donor kidney exchange chains

 

The conscience files

Photo of a large petrified log with vivid red and brown hues in a desert setting with grass and a blue sky.

The sorrows and redemptions of visitors who mailed their ‘souvenirs’ back to Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park

- by Aeon Video

Watch on Aeon

August 18, 2026

On August 18, 1920, the Tennessee legislature ratified the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by a vote of 50 to 49. The deciding vote came from Harry T. Burn, who supported suffrage but was under pressure to vote no. His mother had urged him to vote yes despite the pressure. “I believe in full suffrage as a right,” he said. “I believe we had a moral and legal right to ratify. I know that a mother’s advice is always safest for her boy to follow, and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification.”

Tennessee was the 36th state to ratify the amendment, and the last one necessary to make the amendment the law of the land once the secretary of state certified it.

The new amendment was patterned on the Fifteenth Amendment, which protected the right of Black men to vote, and it read:

“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

“Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

Like the momentum for the Fifteenth Amendment, the push for rights for women had taken root during the Civil War as women backed the United States armies with their money, buying bonds and paying taxes; with their loved ones, sending sons and husbands and fathers to the war front; with their labor, working in factories and fields and taking over from men in the nursing and teaching professions; and even with their lives, spying and fighting for the Union. In the aftermath of the war, as the divided nation was rebuilt, many of them expected they would have a say in how it was reconstructed.

But to their dismay, the Fourteenth Amendment explicitly tied the right to vote to “male” citizens, inserting the word “male” into the Constitution for the first time.

Boston abolitionist Julia Ward Howe, the author of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” was outraged. The laws of the era gave control of her property and her children to her abusive husband, and while far from a rabble-rouser, she wanted the right to adjust those laws so they were fair. In this moment, it seemed the right the Founders had articulated in the Declaration of Independence—the right to consent to the government under which one lived—was to be denied to the very women who had helped preserve the country, while white male Confederates and now Black men both enjoyed that right.

“The Civil War came to an end, leaving the slave not only emancipated, but endowed with the full dignity of citizenship. The women of the North had greatly helped to open the door which admitted him to freedom and its safeguard, the ballot. Was this door to be shut in their face?” Howe wondered.

The next year, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association, and six months later, Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe founded the American Woman Suffrage Association.

The National Woman Suffrage Association wanted a general reworking of gender roles in American society, drawing from the Seneca Falls Convention that Stanton had organized in 1848.

That convention’s Declaration of Sentiments, patterned explicitly on the Declaration of Independence, asserted that “all men and women are created equal” and that “the history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.” It listed the many ways in which men had “fraudulently deprived [women] of their most sacred rights” and insisted that women receive “immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States.”

While the National Woman Suffrage Association excluded men from its membership, the American Woman Suffrage Association made a point of including men equally, as well as Black woman suffragists, to indicate that they were interested in the universal right to vote and only in that right, believing the rest of the rights their rivals demanded would come through voting.

The women’s suffrage movement had initial success in the western territories, both because lawmakers there were hoping to attract women for their male-heavy communities and because the same lawmakers were furious at the growing noise about Black voting. Wyoming Territory granted women the vote in 1869, and lawmakers in Utah Territory followed suit in 1870, expecting that women would vote against polygamy there. When women in fact supported polygamy, Utah lawmakers tried unsuccessfully to take their vote away, and the movement for women’s suffrage in the West slowed dramatically.

Suffragists had hoped that women would be included in the Fifteenth Amendment and, when they were not, decided to test their right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment in the 1872 election. According to its statement that anyone born in the U.S. was a citizen, they were certainly citizens and thus should be able to vote. In New York state, Susan B. Anthony voted successfully but was later tried and convicted—in an all-male courtroom in which she did not have the right to testify—for the crime of voting.

In Missouri a voting registrar named Reese Happersett refused to permit suffragist Virginia Minor to register. Minor sued Happersett, and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. In a unanimous decision in 1875, the justices decided that women were indeed citizens but that citizenship did not necessarily convey the right to vote.

This decision meant the fat was in the fire for Black Americans in the South, as it paved the way for white supremacists to keep them from the polls in 1876. But it was also a blow to suffragists, who recast their claims to voting by moving away from the idea that they had a human right to consent to their government, and toward the idea that they would be better and more principled voters than the Black men and immigrants who, under the law anyway, had the right to vote.

For the next two decades, the women’s suffrage movement drew its power from the many women’s organizations put together across the country by women of all races and backgrounds who came together to stop excessive drinking, clean up the sewage in city streets, protect children, stop lynching, and promote civil rights.

Black women like educator Mary Church Terrell and journalist Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, publisher of the Woman’s Era, brought a broad lens to the movement from their work for civil rights, but they could not miss that Black women stood in between the movements for Black rights and women’s rights, a position scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw would identify In the twentieth century as “intersectionality.”

In 1890 the two major suffrage associations merged into the National American Woman Suffrage Association and worked to change voting laws at the state level. Gradually, western states and territories permitted women to vote in certain elections until by 1920, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington, California, Oregon, Arizona, Kansas, Alaska Territory, Montana, and Nevada recognized women’s right to vote in at least some elections.

Suffragists recognized that action at the federal level would be more effective than a state-by-state strategy. The day before Democratic president Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated in 1913, they organized a suffrage parade in Washington, D.C., that grabbed media attention. They continued civil disobedience to pressure Wilson into supporting their movement.

Still, it took another war effort, that of World War I, which the U.S. entered in 1917, to light a fire under the lawmakers whose votes would be necessary to get a suffrage amendment through Congress and send it off to the states for ratification. Wilson, finally on board as he faced a difficult midterm election in 1918, backed a constitutional amendment, asking congressmen: “Shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right?”

Congress passed the measure in a special session on June 4, 1919, and Tennessee’s ratification on August 18, 1920, made it the law of the land as soon as the official notice was in the hands of the secretary of state. Twenty-six million American women had the right to vote in the 1920 presidential election.

Crucially, as the Black suffragists had known all too well when they found themselves caught between the drives for Black male voting and women’s suffrage, Jim Crow and Juan Crow laws meant that most Black women and women of color would remain unable to vote for another 45 years. And yet they never stopped fighting for that right. Women like Fannie Lou Hamer, Amelia Boynton, Rosa Parks, Viola Liuzzo, and Constance Baker Motley were key organizers of voting rights initiatives, spreading information, arranging marches, sparking key protests, and preparing legal cases.

They were some of the leading voices behind the 1965 Voting Rights Act that finally made Black voting a reality.

Now, in 2026, Christian nationalists, whose ideas are powerful in the Trump administration, want to repeal women’s right to vote. They say that voting should be by household and that women must defer to men.

It’s a plan that seems designed to resurrect the world in which Americans lived before August 18, 1920.

Notes:

https://www.nps.gov/articles/declaration-of-sentiments-the-first-women-s-rights-convention.htm

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-the-senate-the-nineteenth-amendment

Julia Ward Howe, Reminiscences, 1819–1899 (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1899), p. 373, on Google Books.

https://www.nps.gov/people/harry-t-burn.htm

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/88/162/

https://www.npr.org/2026/07/06/nx-s1-5822558/pastor-doug-wilson-interview-pete-hegseth

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/08/the-passion-of-doug-wilson/

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Politics Chat, August 18, 2026

Politics Chat, August 18, 2026

This is What the Commander in Chief is Doing

Capitalizing untethered AI agents

That is my latest piece of writing, co-authored with Sonia Farrell Pearson of Harvard.  Here is the opening premise:

As early as 2017, the European Parliament floated “electronic personhood” for robots. More recently, a handful of U.S. states introduced legislation explicitly barring AI from legal personhood; and early this summer, President Milei of Argentina proposed letting AI agents own, manage, and bear responsibility for their own corporations.

In response to Milei’s announcement, Yuval Noah Harari pointed out that we have no way of holding an AI agent accountable. What, he asks, could we do to an entity which has neither money to lose nor a body to incarcerate? As Shruti Rajagopalan, a Senior Research Fellow at George Mason’s Mercatus Center, explains: AI “can act intelligently, but only humans respond to the incentives the law creates”.

This question matters now: there are already ways an agent could become fully untethered. By “untethered” – a central concept in this essay – we mean that there is no meaningful or actionable way to trace the actions back to a legally accountable human or institutional entity.

For one, people can and do set agents free, on purpose. An agent could be created by a human or a company that intends to monitor it but then dies or disappears. Or perhaps the entity that created the agent is based in a country like North Korea, not reachable by standard laws.

In other cases the agent might not need to “escape” at all: the agent could be ‘controlled’ by a shell corporation that, while formally owned and traceable, provides no true defendant or ability to satisfy claims. Or perhaps a process spawns a chain of agents so long that the actions of a subagent can’t be tied to the original agent’s creator, neither epistemically nor meaningfully. Even if we can identify the model’s original creator, what if it’s been finetuned, or merged with another model that was created by someone else? The law might eventually untangle these kinds of complex cases, but we foresee an intermediate period where it does not.

And then there’s the user, who makes choices about what the models should actually do. The Hugging Face incident was unusual in that OpenAI was both the model’s creator and its user. But now close to a billion people use these systems: when blaming the creator is legally inappropriate, will it always make sense to blame the user?

The essay considers to what extent capitalizing the untethered agents — requiring them to hold a certain amount of capital — can serve the end of better alignment.  About 22 pp., published on Sonia’s Substack, definitely recommended.

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Elephant Butte Reservoir Runs Low

A three-part image shows Elephant Butte Reservoir in New Mexico in 1994, 2013, and 2026. In 1994, on the left, the lake is nearly full. In the other two years, it is close to empty.
New Mexico’s Elephant Butte Reservoir was nearly full on June 2, 1994 (left), in contrast with very low levels during periods of drought on July 8, 2013 (center), and July 27, 2026 (right). The images were acquired with the TM (Thematic Mapper) on Landsat 5 and the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 8 and Landsat 9.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison

After orbiting Earth in 1962, John Glenn remarked on an irrigated valley northwest of El Paso, Texas, that stood out against the surrounding desert. Human-made lakes along the Rio Grande have made agriculture possible and turned an otherwise dry area green, as Glenn observed. With water for irrigation, farmers there produce crops such as alfalfa, cotton, onions, pecans, and the regional specialty: Hatch green chiles.

Abnormally dry conditions in the Rio Grande basin, however, have stressed these water resources. Extreme drought has plagued the region for the past several years. The earliest snowmelt on record at the river’s headwaters in the southern Rockies exacerbated the situation in 2026.

These factors have contributed to driving Elephant Butte Reservoir, the largest reservoir in New Mexico, to its lowest level since 1971. When the image above was acquired on July 27, 2026 (right), it stood at 1.4 percent capacity. For comparison, the reservoir was nearly full on June 2, 1994 (left); levels were high for much of the period between 1985 and 2000. On July 8, 2013 (center), amid another drought, the lake hit its annual low of 2.9 percent capacity.

The low water levels in 2026 exposed debris along the shoreline and left boat ramps in Elephant Butte Lake State Park covered in sediment. But the lake likely bottomed out for the year in late July. Water releases for agriculture stopped after July 28, state officials said, allowing it to slowly begin to refill.

A line graph shows the amount of water stored in Elephant Butte Reservoir from 1915 to 2026. Lake volume was relatively high between about 1980 and 2000 but low for many years before and after that period.
Water volume data from the Texas Water Development Board shows how the level of Elephant Butte Reservoir has varied from the lake’s creation in 1915 to summer 2026.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison

The long-term drought situation has brought the Rio Grande’s water woes and their wider implications into sharp focus. Users in both New Mexico and Texas rely on surface and groundwater in the valley, requiring careful planning around storage and sharing. Several projects supported by NASA’s Western Water Action Office (WWAO) are aimed at equipping water managers with NASA data and tools that assist in resource allocation.

For instance, researchers developed a model that incorporates NASA satellite data for variables such as soil moisture and evapotranspiration, resulting in a near-real-time tool that complements the Elephant Butte Irrigation District’s existing water allocation operations. Another project paired satellite observations of water surface heights with drone and ground data to track how groundwater pumping affects the Rio Grande’s flow—information that the WWAO says can help managers in administering water rights. NASA scientists are also contributing to a federal study of the Upper Rio Grande that aims to understand water needs, project future water availability, and develop data-driven tools to address these needs.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey and water volume data from the Texas Water Development Board. Story by Lindsey Doermann.

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College Football’s Money Shift and the Trust Test for U.S. Fans

College football has always been about more than Saturdays. It is local pride, television inventory, campus identity, recruiting theater, and, increasingly, a public argument about who benefits when the sport gets richer.

The new financial era sharpens that argument. Athlete compensation, expanded postseason access, media money, conference realignment, and sports wagering all now sit inside the same fan experience. A supporter can watch a rivalry game, follow transfer news, compare playoff scenarios, and encounter betting-adjacent content in one afternoon.

That is why the modern sports audience increasingly moves between different forms of digital entertainment. Fans may follow a game, check playoff scenarios, read about athlete contracts, and explore related gaming platforms within the same online session. In that broader environment, resources such as Fortune Wheelz review  can naturally sit alongside other entertainment content, while still remaining separate from the core sports coverage.

Why the Money Shift Feels Different Now

College football money is not new. What has changed is the visibility of the system. Fans can now see more of the financial machinery that once sat behind broadcast contracts, donor networks, coaching salaries, bowl payouts, and conference negotiations.

Direct athlete compensation is the most obvious shift. For decades, the central contradiction of big-time college football was easy to spot: stadiums filled, networks paid, coaches earned professional salaries, and athletes were still defined by amateur rules. The settlement era does not solve every tension, but it moves the sport into a more candid place.

That candor matters. When fans know schools can share revenue with athletes, they are less likely to accept old language about tradition as the whole explanation. They want to know how money is allocated, how roster decisions are made, and whether the athletes who create the product are treated as partners in the business.

The Playoff Is Now a Financial Story Too

The College Football Playoff expansion changed the competitive map, but it also changed the financial conversation. More teams in the bracket means more games with national stakes. It also means more inventory for broadcasters, more travel questions for fans, and more pressure on selection rules.

The playoff can still produce a clean sports argument: who earned a place, who was left out, and whether a conference champion should be rewarded. But underneath that debate sits the larger question of trust. If fans believe the system is driven mainly by brand size and television value, the playoff becomes harder to sell as a merit process.

That is why transparency around seeding, automatic qualification, and committee logic matters. A larger playoff should not only create more content. It should also make the route to the championship easier for a reasonable fan to understand.

Where Trust Can Break

The modern fan does not distrust college football because money exists. Fans have always understood that the sport is commercial. Trust breaks when the public explanation does not match what people can see.

Here is where the pressure points now sit:

Pressure point What fans see Why it matters
Athlete pay Players can receive direct school payments and NIL income Fans want clarity on rules, caps, and fairness
Transfer movement Rosters change faster than they used to Loyalty narratives feel less stable
Playoff access More teams can enter the national race Selection logic must look consistent
Media deals Broadcast windows shape the season Fans notice when scheduling follows TV priorities
Betting culture Odds and prop markets surround coverage Integrity and athlete protection become public issues

None of these issues ruins the sport by itself. In fact, most are manageable. The problem comes when institutions speak as if fans cannot connect the dots.

The Athlete Is No Longer a Side Issue

For years, arguments about college football economics often treated athletes as symbolic figures. They were either “student-athletes” in institutional language or unpaid labor in reform arguments. The current era is more practical: athletes are now part of the sport’s visible economic design.

That creates new responsibilities for schools. If a program is sharing revenue, the questions move beyond recruiting wins. Fans, parents, and athletes will want to know who receives what, how decisions are documented, whether women’s sports are handled responsibly, and how smaller programs survive in the same market.

A healthy system cannot rely only on competitive instinct. It needs standards the public can understand. That includes clear explanations of roster rules, scholarship protections, NIL reviews, and the difference between school compensation and third-party endorsement deals.

Sports Betting Raises the Stakes Around Integrity

Sports betting adds another layer to the trust test. Legal wagering is now part of the American sports landscape, and college football cannot pretend the audience is untouched by it. Lines, totals, injury reports, and player props can shape how some fans talk about games.

The risk is not that every betting reference corrupts a broadcast. The risk is that constant wagering language changes the way athletes are viewed. A missed field goal can become not only a football moment, but a financial grievance for strangers watching with a ticket on their phone.

That is why college sports need firm boundaries. Integrity monitoring, education, limits on risky markets, and direct support for athletes are not public relations extras. They are part of preserving the basic promise that the contest is real, the players are protected, and the outcome is not being bent by outside pressure.

What Better Coverage Should Do

The next stage of college football coverage should be less breathless and more useful. Fans do not need every money story turned into scandal. They also do not need every reform described as progress without scrutiny.

Good coverage should do four things well:

  • Explain financial changes in plain language, not legal shorthand.
  • Separate confirmed rules from speculation about future models.
  • Treat athletes as people affected by policy, not just roster assets.
  • Show how money decisions affect non-power programs and Olympic sports.
  • Keep betting discussion distinct from tactical football analysis.

This is not about draining passion from the sport. It is about respecting readers enough to tell them what is known, what is uncertain, and who has incentives in the debate.

The Fan’s Role in the New Era

Fans are not powerless observers. Their attention funds the system. Their subscriptions, tickets, travel, donations, merchandise, and viewership give college football its value.

That does not mean every fan has to become a contract lawyer. It means the serious fan now needs a broader kind of literacy. Knowing the depth chart is still useful. Understanding revenue sharing, roster limits, playoff access, and betting pressure is becoming part of following the sport honestly.

College football will remain emotional because it is tied to places and histories people care about. The question is whether the institutions running it can match that loyalty with clearer rules and more adult explanations. If they can, the money shift may make the sport more honest. If they cannot, fans will still watch, but they will watch with less trust.

Photo: David Morris via Pexels


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Central Pacific Tropical Weather Outlook


Central North Pacific 2-Day Graphical Outlook Image
Central North Pacific 7-Day Graphical Outlook Image


000
ACPN50 PHFO 211739
TWOCP

Tropical Weather Outlook
NWS Central Pacific Hurricane Center Honolulu HI
Issued by NWS National Hurricane Center Miami FL
800 AM HST Fri Aug 21 2026

For the central North Pacific...between 140W and 180W:

Active Systems:
The National Hurricane Center is issuing advisories on Hurricane
Lala, located within the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National
Monument, and on Tropical Depression Two-C, located about 750 miles
southeast of Hilo, Hawaii.

Tropical cyclone formation is not expected during the next 7 days.

$$
Forecaster Pierce/Cangialosi
NNNN


Atlantic Tropical Weather Outlook


Atlantic 2-Day Graphical Outlook Image
Atlantic 7-Day Graphical Outlook Image


218
ABNT20 KNHC 211731
TWOAT

Tropical Weather Outlook
NWS National Hurricane Center Miami FL
200 PM EDT Fri Aug 21 2026

For the North Atlantic...Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of America:

Northeastern Atlantic:
A non-tropical area of low pressure has developed over the
northeastern Atlantic several hundred miles north-northeast of the
Azores. This system could acquire some subtropical or tropical
characteristics on Saturday or early Sunday while it moves
east-southeastward at 10 to 15 mph toward Portugal and northwestern
Spain. The opportunity for tropical or subtropical development
should end by Sunday night when the system moves into unfavorable
environmental conditions. For more information, see High Seas
Forecasts issued by Meteo France.
* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...20 percent.
* Formation chance through 7 days...low...20 percent.

Central Subtropical Atlantic:
A weak area of low pressure located over the central subtropical
Atlantic a few hundred miles east-southeast of Bermuda is producing
an area of disorganized showers and thunderstorms. Development of
this system, if any, is expected to be slow to occur while it drifts
west-southwestward through Sunday and then turns northward early
next week.
* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...10 percent.
* Formation chance through 7 days...low...20 percent.

&&
High Seas Forecasts issued by Meteo France can be found under WMO
header FQNT50 LFPW and on the web at
https://tgftp.nws.noaa.gov/data/raw/fq/fqnt50.lfpw..txt

$$
Forecaster Mahoney/Cangialosi


Eastern Pacific Tropical Weather Outlook


Eastern North Pacific 2-Day Graphical Outlook Image
Eastern North Pacific 7-Day Graphical Outlook Image


000
ABPZ20 KNHC 211739
TWOEP

Tropical Weather Outlook
NWS National Hurricane Center Miami FL
1100 AM PDT Fri Aug 21 2026

For the eastern and central North Pacific east of 180 longitude:

Active Systems:
The National Hurricane Center is issuing advisories on Hurricane
Lala, located within the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National
Monument, and on Tropical Depression Two-C, located about 750 miles
southeast of Hilo, Hawaii.

South-Southwest of Mexico:
A broad area of low pressure located a few hundred miles south of
the coast of southwestern Mexico is producing a large area of
disorganized showers and thunderstorms. This system is moving
west-northwestward and could become a tropical depression over the
weekend or early next week before it interacts, or possibly merges
with, the disturbance to its west (EP91).
* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...20 percent.
* Formation chance through 7 days...medium...50 percent.

Central East Pacific (EP91):
A trough of low pressure located several hundred miles south of the
southern tip of the Baja California Peninsula is producing
disorganized showers and thunderstorms. Environmental conditions
appear favorable for gradual development, and a tropical depression
is likely to form this weekend or early next week before it
interacts, or possibly merges with, the disturbance to its east.
* Formation chance through 48 hours...medium...60 percent.
* Formation chance through 7 days...high...80 percent.

Well Southwest of Southwestern Mexico:
Another area of low pressure is expected to develop well south of
the southern tip of the Baja California Peninsula during the middle
portion of next week. Some slow development is expected thereafter
while the system moves generally west-northwestward.
* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...near 0 percent.
* Formation chance through 7 days...low...20 percent.

$$
Forecaster Pierce/Cangialosi


Like an illustration in a galactic Like an illustration in a galactic


Dangerous Heat over the South-Central and Southwest U.S. Through Next Week