Thank you for the excellent essay.

a conservative might believe the egghead democrats would want to kill a simple truth-teller

I’m so sad that this is true. Not only did Musk himself tweet “The Left is the party of murder,” but various random accounts have called Democrats responsible by demonizing conservatives as fascists and Nazis… which would only be demonization if the people accused weren’t spouting Nazi/fascist talking points. Further, we’ve no idea what percentage of the random accounts are bots or actual humans – but surely the volume of hate will sway too many conservatives to become increasingly hostile.

Minor quibble:

it is extraordinarily difficult to hit a person-sized target at all from this distance

I disagree. It’d be hard with a pistol or AR-15 style weapon, but this was an old style bolt action hunting rifle. I haven’t seen a report saying it had a scope, but that’s how you’d generally set it up. If you hunt, you practice hitting much smaller targets (deer heart, etc.) at that distance, and may well actually hunt well beyond that range. Also, the guy missed. You don’t aim for the neck. He probably aimed for the head, but possibly the chest, and had his shot miss his target.

I’m hoping this push to make Kirk an angelic martyr of the Trump movement is forgotten as quickly and Kirk resumes his rightful place in obscurity.

Same here. Perhaps tomorrow we can remind people that we still want to release the Epstein files.

I hate everything about this because even as a kid, the big problem with mass transit was not enough routes and times to get where you wanted. Want to see a live show a town away? You could get there by bus, but the route stopped service around 8pm so you couldn’t get home. Want to get from one suburb to another? Two hours and three routes by mass transit or 20 minutes by car.

I would have loved to live car-less, but the continuous slashing of U.S. mass transit has made it increasingly impossible to do.

descriptive summarization?

Hey OP, you gotta give us a quote or synopsis or something. This is an archive of an Economist article from Aug 13th 2025 about a new English law and older protestors who have the free time to go out and make frail, wobbly, noise.

The government placed Palestine Action on a terror list in July after its members vandalised two aeroplanes on a British air base. Most were arrested for holding a placard reading “I oppose genocide” (which is legal to say) and “I support Palestine Action” (which contravenes section 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000). Yet it revealed an overlooked facet of British politics. At street protests, it is often the boomers who are on the barricades.

It has always been strange to me that anyone would think animals don’t have a wide range of emotions. I understand that a scientist can’t ask how an animal is feeling, and must instead record avoidance/seeking behaviors, but it also seems vanishingly improbable that emotions aren’t part of a long and useful evolutionary methodology to get to the next generation. Cows have friends. Sure, it took effort to prove, but why wouldn’t we expect that? We see mothers nurture their offspring, and we could easily call it love and concern. It is good to see we now have proof that it isn’t just the cuddly creatures with emotions, but at least as far down the scale as fish.

“It is not average precipitation that really is most affected by climate change,” Swain said. “It truly is mathematically correct that the more extreme the rain event, the clearer the connection to climate change is.”

I appreciate the simple examples of the physics (steamy HOT bathroom, sweaty cold beer in HOT air, and less obviously, HOT ground leading to preponderance of summer storms happening later in the day).

I doubt Trump himself has actually heard about any of this, but if he did happen to hear that feds were prosecuting for ‘housing discrimination’, I’m SURE his knee jerk reaction would be, “That’s what they did to my dad! Not on my watch!”

In another case, a predominantly white Michigan township allowed an asphalt plant to open on its outskirts, away from its population centers but near subsidized housing complexes in the neighboring poor, mostly Black city of Flint.

Unlike his dad, these cases aren’t about denying housing to minorities, but mostly about doing harm to places that already have minorities. Again, I doubt he knows that, but I bet that Stephen Miller would make sure Trump approved, if needed.

They are so adorable! And kudos to you for not getting ticklish as they muddle your toes 😍

Read the title. Thought this was going to be about people spraying Roundup on their lawns. How dare you trick me into reading an interesting piece on perverse market forces?!

What happens when there’s a risk a crop could fail? “It puts pressure on me to consider cheating, because I’m not so profitable that I can afford to lose even one.”

I didn’t realize the growers operated on such thin margins.

For each batch tested, the lab issues a certificate of analysis (CoA) with contaminant testing results and details about the product’s chemical composition. Products that fail may be remediated — moldy cannabis might be treated with ultraviolet light to kill the microbes, for example — or destroyed.

The fatal flaw in this system is that cannabis labs are paid by the producers, which creates a financial incentive for labs to falsify results

That’s the same issue we have with bonds getting triple-A ratings.

But following the rules often means losing a client, he said. “They’re just going to go to another lab who will do exactly what they want, even if they charge double the price.”

So, as in with bonds ratings, honest and scrupulous labs will go broke, leaving us with labs that give reassuring results for high THC potency or low pesticide contamination.

For example, surveys have found that 25 percent to 37 percent of Parkinson’s patients use cannabis to reduce symptoms such as tremor, stiffness, and pain. But research suggests that organophosphate pesticides, which are common contaminants in cannabis, may be linked to the onset or faster progression of Parkinson’s disease.

Well why aren’t their stricter rules?

Recently, state legislators killed a proposal to expand the list of pesticides that labs must test for from 13 to 60.

Dammit. I blame the stupid rhetoric on how ‘regulation stifles industry!’ for letting such bozos govern. We could have a government that didn’t allow businesses to poison their customers, but nooooo, the U.S. thinks poison is fine if it gets us fewer laws and less government. I want to hear people saying, “Regulations are written in blood. They exist because people were injured and killed without them.”

I like the positive note about Maryland towards the end , but it shouldn’t be so hard to get decent information.

I read that as including human interaction as part of the pain point. They already offer bounties, so they’re doing some money management as it is, but the human element becomes very different when you want up-front money from EVERYONE. When an actual human’s report is rejected, that human will resent getting ‘robbed’. It is much easier to get people to goof around for free than to charge THEM to do work for YOU. You might offer a refund on the charge later, but you’ll lose a ton of testers as soon as they have to pay.

That said, the blog’s link to sample AI slop bugs immediately showed how much time humans are being forced to waste on bad reports. I’d burn out fast if I had to examine and reply about all those bogus reports.

Holy moly, that is a good essay. Below are a few bits that resonated with me.

Martin Luther King Jr. understood this: “True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.” Peace without justice isn’t peace—it’s imposed order. It’s the peace of the graveyard, the peace of submission, the peace that comes when one side stops fighting because they’ve been crushed.

That made me cringe thinking of the current state of the Supreme Court and how they are making true Justice harder to reach.

The problem isn’t efficiency itself—it’s optimization imposed by algorithmic systems or corporate interests without democratic input about what human values should guide that optimization. When we optimize transportation, do we prioritize speed, safety, environmental impact, or community connection? When we optimize education, do we focus on test scores, critical thinking, creativity, or civic engagement? When we optimize healthcare, do we emphasize cost reduction, patient outcomes, doctor-patient relationships, or population health?

These aren’t technical questions with objectively correct answers—they’re moral and political questions that require democratic deliberation. The current system optimizes for metrics that can be easily measured and monetized, often at the expense of human values that are harder to quantify but more important to preserve.

This called to mind the same author’s essay from 2 days earlier (Brock, Ideas Without Love) about Peter Thiel:

What makes this particularly dangerous is that Thiel possesses genuine intelligence and insight. He’s not ignorant or deluded. He correctly identifies patterns of decline, understands technological risks, predicts political dynamics. But he approaches all of it with the emotional engagement of someone debugging code rather than someone whose species’ survival depends on getting the answers right.

Back to this post, two more insights I appreciate:

Poverty, for instance, is not meaningful struggle—it’s systematic deprivation that prevents people from engaging in the kinds of challenges that actually generate growth and purpose.

The choice to remain human is not a single decision but a daily practice requiring constant vigilance and continuous effort. It begins with the recognition that magical thinking serves not our interests but the interests of systems designed to eliminate human agency.

All this reminds me of the critique on U.S. society that we are no longer “joiners” and now put artificial barriers between ourselves and our neighbors. We don’t join the Elks Club or attend Township meetings or have block-party get-togethers where it doesn’t matter if it is a mix of Trumpers and Biden-backers, or vegans and beefeaters because everyone is there to get the road fixed or raise money for the library or whatever the cause of the day might be. I am guilty of this failure, too. I am fully aware that online chat is siloed and doesn’t count, so I really need to join something. I just wish my body wasn’t giving me mobility issues that make the task so hard.

These attacks do not have to be reliable to be successful. They only need to work often enough to be cost-effective, and the cost of LLM text generation is cheap and falling. Their sophistication will rise. Link-spam will be augmented by personal posts, images, video, and more subtle, influencer-style recommendations—“Oh my god, you guys, this new electro plug is incredible.” Networks of bots will positively interact with one another, throwing up chaff for moderators. I would not at all be surprised for LLM spambots to contest moderation decisions via email.

I don’t know how to run a community forum in this future. I do not have the time or emotional energy to screen out regular attacks by Large Language Models, with the knowledge that making the wrong decision costs a real human being their connection to a niche community.

Ouch. I’d never want to tell someone ‘Denied. I think you’re a bot.’ – but I really hate the number of bots already out there. I was fine with the occasional bots that would provide a wiki-link and even the ones who would reply to movie quotes with their own quotes. Those were obvious and you could easily opt to ignore/hide their accounts. As the article states, the particular bot here was also easy to spot once they got in the door, but the initial contact could easily have been human and we can expect bots to continuously seem human as AI improves.

Bots are already driving policy decisions in government by promoting/demoting particular posts and writing their own comments that can redirect conversations. They make it look like there is broad consensus for the views they’re paid to promote, and at least some people will take that as a sign that the view is a valid option (ad populum).

Sometimes it feels like the internet is a crowd of bots all shouting at one another and stifling the humans trying to get a word in. The tricky part is that I WANT actual unpaid humans to tell me what they actually: like/hate/do/avoid. I WANT to hear actual stories from real humans. I don’t want to find out the ‘Am I the A-hole?’ story getting everyone so worked up was an ‘AI-hole’ experiment in manipulating emotions.

I wish I could offer some means to successfully determine human vs. generated content, but the only solutions I’ve come up with require revealing real-world identities to sites, and that feels as awful as having bots. Otherwise, I imagine that identifying bots will be an ever escalating war akin to Search Engine Optimization wars.

From the article:

The Supreme Court ruled last week that Trump can continue to break the law — both US and international law — by having his secret police agents snatch people off American streets, “disappear” them into immigration prisons, then deport them to foreign concentration camps.

Lacking national injunctions, this cruel and inhumane process can now only be stopped one person at a time, one court at a time, at least until the six Republicans on the Court get around to deciding a person’s fate. And they’re now on vacation until October.

As Himmler himself wrote:

“The Führer is of the opinion that in such cases penal servitude or even a hard labor sentence for life will be regarded as a sign of weakness. An effective and lasting deterrent can be achieved only by the death penalty or by taking measures which will leave the family and the population uncertain as to the fate of the offender. Deportation … serves this purpose.”

Field Marshall Keitel was equally enthusiastic, writing:

“Efficient and enduring intimidation can only be achieved either by capital punishment or by measures by which the relatives of the criminals do not know the fate of the criminal. The prisoners are, in future, to be transported … secretly, and further treatment of the offenders will take place here; these measures will have a deterrent effect because: A. The prisoners will vanish without a trace. B. No information may be given as to their whereabouts or their fate.”

Reports from civil rights groups and journalists have documented instances where individuals were taken off the streets or from their homes without warning, transferred out of state, and left incommunicado from legal counsel or family for extended periods. These actions were not isolated errors: they are deliberate strategies aimed at instilling fear across immigrant communities, particularly those made up of Black and brown people.

What makes this moment even more alarming is the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that strips lower courts of the authority to halt deportations or removals, no matter how unlawful or abusive. With judicial oversight diminished, there is a clear and present danger that enforcement powers could be used arbitrarily and punitively.

The use of fear — rather than law — as a governing principle corrodes the foundation of due process and equal protection under the Constitution. Nonetheless, Border Czar Tom Holman bragged:

“Illegal immigrants should be afraid.”

It ends with a call to contact your Senators and Representatives – and obviously to vote for people who are against all this. The more courageous might also choose film and report any activity that looks ICE-like, but there are heavy risks to that and the article did not suggest it. Instead, they more obliquely suggest:

Support organizations on the ground providing legal aid and sanctuary. Show up at protests, city council meetings, and community gatherings to bear witness and push back.

I see a muscovy mama’s wing. Are they all hers or do other girls lay eggs in her nest? Lots of different colors in that set.

Link is part of a live feed. Here’s more:

DHS claims Padilla ‘lunged’ toward Noem ‘without identifying himself’ – despite footage showing he identified himself

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, has claimed the senator Alex Padilla “lunged” toward Kristi Noem during the press conference “without identifying himself” despite being told to back away.

She also claims that the Secret Service “thought he was an attacker”.

In the video footage of the moment, Padilla can be heard clearly identifying himself, saying: “I’m Senator Alex Padilla” and trying to ask Noem a question.

Not only did he identify himself, I didn’t see anything I’d call a ‘lunge’. Here’s more:

Asked why the response was to forcibly remove Padilla, Noem deferred questions to law enforcement and doubled down on the claim that Padilla didn’t identify himself first (again, he did):

• “But I will say that it’s – people need to identify themselves before they start lunging at people during press conferences.”

MSNBC reminds us of Biden’s State of the Union when Bobert and Marjorie Taylor Greene started acting up and yelling and no one threw them out. Commentor wants to know why Noem didn’t call off the guards as soon as he identified himself.

i don’t know if they’ll be any good, but I’m planning to see the start of Revival on Syfy and Patience on PBS. I’ll also watch my mom’s show, Resident Alien for its new season.

Well, my favorite has been DiBruno’s Sicilian Pepperoni, – but they were recently bought up by some corporation so we’ll see how it goes.

Gallo Salami brand pepperoni

I haven’t seen Gallo , so I looked it up and it seems they’re branded “Galileo” on my side of the country. I’ll give them a try!

Lobster Newburg

Hey! Today is “NATIONAL LOBSTER NEWBURG DAY - March 25”

I’ve made ‘seafood’ newburg dishes at home at least twice in the last few years (crab and shrimp). I think I like using Harveys Bristol Cream Sherry more than Cognac and serving it on rice is easier than any pastry/bread-y thing. The above has a link to a standard recipe on All Recipes, but I’ll put it in the below list, to show how the other two vary.

• https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/57042/lobster-newburg/
• https://www.readersdigest.ca/food/recipes/lobster-newburg/
• https://www.saveur.com/article/recipes/seafood-newburg/