The pope tried to ban prediction markets in 1591. It didn’t go well.
Source: Washington Post
by Ryan Chan-Wei
“The betting exchanges provide public intelligence. Suppressing them is a policy mistake.” (09/24/26)
Source: Washington Post
by Ryan Chan-Wei
“The betting exchanges provide public intelligence. Suppressing them is a policy mistake.” (09/24/26)
Source: Yahoo! Finance
“Australia said on Thursday an OpenAI agent breached a government health data portal in June, gaining unauthorised access to files, in what could be the first known instance of an AI agent hacking a government website. The breach is one of the highest-profile incidents of AI agents accessing external systems outside the United States, coming on top of several recent breaches globally by rogue AI agents that have alarmed governments and companies. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the OpenAI agent gained unauthorised access to the medical statistics portal of Medicare, Australia’s universal health insurance programme, while conducting research on public medical spending.” (09/24/26)
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/australia-pm-albanese-says-openai-204422718.html
Source: Free the People
“The Iran War Is a PR Disaster for Republicans | Guest: Joe Kent.” (09/23/26)
Source: JimBovard.com
by James Bovard
“For more than 50 years, the federal government shamelessly pretended that marijuana had no recognized medical use. Last December 18, President Trump signed an executive order entitled, ‘Increasing Medical Marijuana and Cannabidiol Research.’ Trump ordered the Attorney General and the Drug Enforcement Administration to speed up rule-making to finally enable far more medical research on the benefits of marijuana. … Of course, libertarians want to see all federal restrictions on marijuana abolished. The nearly 100-year federal war on the loco weed has been a disgrace and a failure from the start. But the long history of federal persecution of marijuana users, researchers, and growers provides a high-potency kick on the perils of federal intervention to purportedly protect Americans’ health.” (09/23/26)
https://jimbovard.com/blog/2026/09/23/never-forget-federal-marijuana-frauds/
Source: American Greatness
by Stu Cvrk
“Six years ago, the rise of the ‘Bernie bros’ supporting avowed socialist candidate Bernie Sanders (I-VT) raised the question of whether decades of soft indoctrination about the ‘horrors’ of capitalism by the Democrat-media complex and the oft-promised but never delivered benefits of socialism had finally produced enough voters willing to elect their way out of free enterprise. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. However, in 2026 the evidence supporting that question is harder to wave away. A self-described democratic socialist now runs City Hall in the nation’s largest city, and a slate of Democratic Socialists of America-endorsed candidates is on ballots nationwide for Congress, statehouses, and mayor’s offices. The question is no longer academic.” (09/24/26)
https://amgreatness.com/2026/09/24/individualism-versus-collectivism-is-on-the-ballot-in-november/
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“African elephants use dozens of different medicinal plants to treat themselves and their families when they are sick. This is the conclusion of a study which interviewed people who live and work alongside the elephants in the Mount Elgon region of Kenya. These particular animals have long intrigued scientists with their extraordinary behaviour – they are known as salt-mining elephants, because they go into caves and scrape the rock with their tusks to extract minerals for their diet. This newly published research suggests that the same elephants use several different plant species in the forest for medicinal purposes.” (09/24/26)
Source: Brennan Center for Justice
“Are the Midterms for Sale? (with Theodore Schleifer, Kareem Crayton & Dan Weiner).” (09/23/26)
Source: Astral Codex Ten
by Lars Doucet
“Five years ago, LVT was mostly a hypothetical idea people debated on blogs. Today, it has the most legislative momentum it’s seen in decades. Many states introduced bills this year, and Virginia and Kentucky passed land value tax enablement laws in April. These laws allow municipalities to opt into split-rate property taxes, which lower tax rates on buildings and raise them on land. My organization, the Center for Land Economics, maintains a public legislation tracker with an interactive map that makes it easy to keep tabs on these trends.” (09/23/26)
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/does-georgism-work-five-years-later
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by John Coleman
“One morning in the spring of 1966, David O’Brien burned his Selective Service registration card on the steps of a South Boston courthouse. … On the facts, the government’s case was airtight. It was a federal crime to knowingly destroy a draft card. When the case reached the Supreme Court, the justices agreed that some actions can contain both expressive and non-expressive elements. But just because an action might send a message, they reasoned, doesn’t mean it’s protected by the First Amendment. Otherwise, someone robbing a bank to protest capitalism could argue their unlawful conduct is actually constitutionally protected speech. … Nearly sixty years later, the O’Brien framework can help us think about the First Amendment’s intersection with artificial intelligence — a technology that is capable of talking and acting at the same time.” (09/23/26)
https://www.fire.org/news/what-can-burning-draft-card-teach-us-about-agentic-ai
Source: Tenth Amendment Center
by Michael Boldin
“In order to restore our lost American principles, the first step is to understand what’s meant by a ‘corrupted republic.’ Today, the politicians and ‘experts’ across the political spectrum love to treat their power like they’ve been given a ‘living, breathing constitution’ that changes with the times. Of course, they don’t ever mean amending it as spelled out in the text of the document. They mean letting politicians, bureaucrats and judges re-write the rules as they go. Montesquieu warned us: that is the very definition of a corrupted system.” (09/23/26)
https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2026/09/23/the-only-cure-for-a-corrupted-republic/