Source: The Daily Economy
by Santiago Leitón
“Blackstone offer a convenient target for public frustration. But a local push to ‘legalize starter homes’ is doing the less theatrical work of increasing supply.” (08/28/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/housing-scapegoats-are-abundant-starter-homes-are-scarce/
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“For years, Arthur Kermalvezen, the child of a sperm donor, saw possible fathers everywhere he went. ‘I imagined it might be my teacher, the people I saw on the bus… and I was very angry because it’s impossible to live like this’. When, as an adult, he fell in love with Audrey, another sperm donor baby from Paris, the question became even more pressing. Audrey describes the moment they met at a gathering for donor conceived activists in 2010 as ‘love at first sight’ – but was this connection a romantic or genetic attraction? When they were born, there were only two sperm banks in Paris and many men had made multiple donations – so there was a real possibility they could be half-siblings. Before building a life together, Arthur and Audrey needed to know whether they were related. But in France, laws governing genetic testing and donor anonymity made finding the answer extremely difficult.” (08/30/26)
Source: Reason
by JD Tuccille
“Towards the beginning of the 1974 movie Blazing Saddles, Sheriff Bart, confronted by hostile but not especially bright townspeople, takes himself hostage to make his escape. It’s hilarious precisely because it makes no sense. Just as nuts but less funny is the recent confrontation between United States President Donald Trump and Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney in which the Canadian matched the American’s protectionist threats by vowing to force his own people to pay high tariffs on goods imported from the U.S. It’s silver-screen-quality idiocy, but it’s not very entertaining if you understand the advantages of free trade and the pointlessness of holding your own side hostage.” (08/28/26)
Source: Common Dreams
by Jon Hochschartner
“Some years back, I was toying with the idea of writing a book-length history of World War II from the perspective of wild and domesticated animals. I bought a number of relevant texts for research, like The Long Shadows: A Global Environmental History of the Second World War, edited by Simo Laakkonen, Richard P. Tucker, and Timo Vuorisalo. Ultimately, the project was more ambitious than what I was capable of, so I set it aside. Still, I remained interested in the question which, at least partially, inspired my focus on the topic—namely, what would a pro-animal foreign policy, that we could plausibly get politicians to adopt, look like? Recently, I sought to ask various animal activists and thinkers that question. I had hoped to feature a broader range of figures. Nevertheless, I’m very grateful to all of the people who took the time to answer.” (08/30/26)
Source: Pink Flame of Liberty
“Harpole v. Owens – Snow files for MOTION TO DISMISS.” (08/29/26)
Source: Liberal Currents
by Adam Gurri
“[N]early everyone is online now, to some degree. And to be online means that you have, at your disposal, the equivalent of both a printing press and international distribution syndicate at your fingertips. Like the old press, having those things does not guarantee you an audience; and indeed, precisely because these things are available to everyone, the competition for audiences is more fierce than it has ever been. Your odds of casually taking an audience for yourself are quite low. Individual odds aside, in aggregate this does mean that new ‘presses’ are popping up all the time. And given such presses begin their existence as the product of amateurs, they lack the kinds of norms and ethics that might constrain a buttoned up, professionalized operation.” (08/28/26)
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/elites-need-some-emotional-distance-from-social-media/
Source: CNBC
“The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected prediction market platforms’ requests for injunctive relief against the Nevada Gaming Control Board, concluding that sports-related event contracts are not a derivative regulated by the federal government. The court rejected appeals by Kalshi and Crypto.com, two prediction market platforms, to stop Nevada from halting their operations which the state claims are gambling offerings outside of the gaming control board’s framework. The court also ruled against Robinhood’s request for injunctive relief. That firm also features event contracts on its trading platform. Under scrutiny were the platforms’ sports-related event contract offerings, which 44 states argue are nothing more than sports betting. However, the platforms — and their federal regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — claim all event contracts, no matter the topic, are swaps.” (08/28/26)
Source: SFGate
“Authorities in Nepal warned of possible fresh flooding on Sunday and urged residents in flood-affected districts to remain on high alert after water levels rose in the Bhotekoshi River. Flood warning notices were sent to people’s phones early Sunday as rescue crews worked to clear a major highway connecting Kathmandu to one of the areas worst hit by Wednesday’s catastrophic floods, which killed at least 800 people and left more than 3,000 missing in Nepal and Tibet. The latest warnings came after Chinese authorities informed their Nepalese counterparts of increased water flow upstream, according to Dharam Raj Uprety, chief executive of Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority. The Chinese state news agency Xinhua, citing the country’s water resources ministry, said a new lake formed after Wednesday’s floods high in the mountains had largely drained. But Xinhua said the ministry warned that a crater located 5.6 kilometers (3.5 miles) upstream, which held an estimated 1.4 million cubic meters of water, still posed some risk and required close monitoring.” (08/30/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/nepal-warns-of-more-possible-floods-as-22409615.php
Source: The Fifth Column
“Canada Calls Trump’s Bluff.” (08/28/26)
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Joseph Varon
“We practice medicine in a country capable of replacing heart valves through catheters, sequencing a human genome, performing robotic surgery, supporting failing lungs with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, and developing entirely new classes of medications within a few years. Yet I can walk into an American intensive care unit caring for critically ill patients and discover that a basic medicine or fluid I have used for decades is unavailable. … Americans usually think about national security in terms of aircraft carriers, missiles, energy supplies, semiconductor factories, telecommunications infrastructure, and strategic minerals. Medicines belong on that list. A country that cannot reliably supply its population with antibiotics, anesthetics, vasopressors, chemotherapy agents, sterile injectables, IV solutions, and other essential medications has a strategic vulnerability whether policymakers acknowledge it or not.” (08/28/26)
https://brownstone.org/articles/americas-drug-shortage-is-a-national-security-crisis/