Source: The Anarchist Experience
“Rich & Riley talk about what Riley’s been up to while gallivanting, and will Utah run out of water if they put in a new data center.” (08/20/26)
https://theanarchistexperience.wordpress.com/2026/08/20/the-anarchist-experience-594/
Source: Law & Liberty
by Harrison Kass
“Portland, Oregon exists in a pretzel-like, seemingly unsustainable juxtaposition to itself. Golden hour moments of pastoral perfection, in the shadow of mountains, at the banks of rivers. Afternoons in coffee shops and art museums and concert halls. The best food in the world. Meth psychotics, stalking the pavement, screaming at the sky. Homeless camps that sprawl. Emergency responders too overworked to respond. The city offers both paragon examples of urban living and seeming proof that western civilization has failed—often within mere blocks of one another. While paradoxical, the conditions on the ground aren’t mysterious, or arbitrary, or altogether externally-driven. The conditions are the logical end-result of explicit policy, a reflection of legislative and executive priorities.” (08/20/26)
https://lawliberty.org/the-price-of-portlands-luxury-beliefs/
Source: SFGate
“Southern California law enforcement officials stumbled upon an abandoned vehicle in the desert containing Lego sets worth nearly $30,000, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department announced Wednesday. According to the Sheriff’s Department’s news release, on Monday around 11:30 p.m., Barstow officials discovered the Lego sets inside an unoccupied van at National Trails Highway and Pioneer Road in Newberry Springs. The van held 123 boxes of stolen McLaren F1 Lego sets, which are valued at about $230 per set. Police with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad confirmed that the sets were taken during a train robbery.” (08/20/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/stolen-lego-california-desert-22396751.php
Source: Brennan Center for Justice
“Let’s Unstick Congress (with Tom Malinowski and Maya Kornberg).” (08/20/26)
Source: CounterPunch
by David S D’Amato
“A system with a small number of massive corporate conglomerates under which 99.9% of us have no substantive power whatsoever can never be one consistent with liberal democracy, the rule of law, or economic freedom. Those who focus their attention myopically on the current regime and the corruption thereof show that they understand neither the nature nor the scale of the social problem, and for this reason they can be of only little help in the struggles to come. Indeed, many are no less custodians of the political and economic status quo, and eagerly defend this system of corporate domination and economic fascism. The formal shape of or label on the structure of ownership and power tells us nothing on its own, our ideological delusions notwithstanding.” (08/20/26)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/08/20/economic-fascism-and-the-megadeal/
Source: The Atlantic
by Olga Khazan
“When some Taylor Swift fans listened to the lyrics of her 2025 song ‘Wi$h Li$t,’ in which she sings about yearning to ‘settle down’ with ‘a couple kids,’ they heard a Republican dog whistle. On social media, they claimed that Swift’s desire for family life was ‘a conservative agenda on a silver platter.’ Swift, an avowed feminist who has endorsed Democratic political candidates, almost certainly did not set out to make ‘tradwife propaganda.’ But her online critics are getting at something real: Having children—particularly lots of children—has become a bit right-coded, as the kids say. Americans and Europeans who identify as leftist or liberal tend to have fewer children than those who identify as conservative or right-leaning.” (08/20/26)
Source: Politico
“Former French Prime Minister François Fillon has been suspended for 10 years from the Légion d’honneur, France’s highest order of merit, after being found guilty of providing his wife with a fake job in which she was paid a salary using taxpayer money. The decision to suspend Fillon was published Thursday morning in the French official gazette. It was approved by President Emmanuel Macron after being recommended by the body tasked with handling disciplinary measures for the Légion d’honneur. The fake jobs scandal emerged during the campaign for the 2017 presidential election and cost Fillon a shot at the presidency, as he was a front-runner in the contest before the allegations emerged.” (08/20/26)
https://www.politico.eu/article/francois-fillon-suspended-highest-french-honor-fake-jobs-scandal/
Source: Cobden Centre
“I [Max Rangeley] talk through some of the complexities with respect to military AI and robotics, then talk through some different theories of consciousness, from neuroscience, physics and other fields, and what they mean for the possibility of machine consciousness.” (08/20/26)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Stavroula Pabst
“After cutting down the DOT&E to a skeleton crew, the Pentagon now wants to remove 25 years worth of its reports from public view.” (08/20/26)
Source: Los Angeles Times
by Jackie Calmes
“It wasn’t so many months ago that Democrats were debating about what their winning message should be for capturing control of Congress in November’s midterm elections and finally putting a needed check on President Trump. Should they stay laser-focused on Trump’s culpability for a laggard economy and American families’ affordability crisis? Or spotlight Trump’s overt and corrupt self-enrichment?
The answer, finally, became obvious to the ditherers: Both. Better late than never, the economy and corruption have merged as Democrats’ two-pronged cudgel against Trump. Midterm elections are, after all, a referendum on the president’s performance; the subservient Republicans on the ballot are simply his proxies.” (08/20/26)