“Around 200 economists work for the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, and roughly 200 more work for the 12 district banks around the country. The new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, could assign some of the Fed economists to assess whether the current valuation of the stock market is consistent with the Fed’s projections for the future growth of GDP and profits. Unless their arithmetic is very different than the stuff the rest of us use, they will have to conclude that stock valuations are not consistent, unless today’s crop of stockholders expect very low future returns. That seems unlikely, but that is the alternative to saying that the market is in a bubble.” (05/27/26)
“The U.S. military has [murdered] another person in its latest strike on a suspected drug-trafficking boat in the Trump administration’s deadly crackdown on alleged narcotics trafficking in international waters. The Tuesday strike was the 58th publicly disclosed by U.S. Southern Command in President Donald Trump’s monthslong campaign, which has now [murdered] at least 194 people.” (05/27/26)
“Unlike concerns about censorship on college campuses, which have received a lot of media attention, when guest speakers are disinvited or shouted down, few people care much about the extent to which school authorities may suppress student speech in a public junior high or high school. The assumption is that due to their age and relative immaturity, most of what they contribute to the marketplace of ideas at their school will have little, if any, value. Furthermore, the primary mission of a school is to educate its students, and student speech can be disruptive or distracting. As such, it may appear to be obvious that teenagers should not be able to exercise the same free speech rights that college students may exercise. However, position strikes me as harder to defend than most people acknowledge.” (05/26/26)
“I’m not saying AI is superintelligent or can decide better than you can. I’m saying that if you — like me — spend an hour or so doing research before voting on local seats, AI can aid that research very effectively. And if you don’t do that research — because you weren’t willing to waste an hour on it before — AI makes it so much faster that you might want to start.” (05/26/26)
“Israel says it has killed Mohammed Odeh, the leader of Hamas’s military wing in Gaza, in an air strike in the northern part of the strip, as a fragile ‘ceasefire’ comes under growing strain. Israeli authorities said on Wednesday that Odeh was killed in an attack the previous day in Gaza City. There was no immediate comment from the Palestinian group. Odeh, a former Hamas intelligence chief, reportedly succeeded Izz al-Din al-Haddad as the head of the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian group, after the latter was killed in an Israeli strike earlier this month, although Hamas did not officially confirm the appointment.” (05/27/26)
“Yesterday, we commemorated those men and women of the United States who lost their lives prematurely in the various wars fought by and in the United States of America. But it is important to remember, and commemorate (mourn) those other than the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines – and their civilian support forces – who died. There is no war, whether declared or not, whether internal or external, that does not have many more casualties. And almost always, in external wars, it is the enemy who suffers the greater number of dead. And the civilians, not the support forces, but the ordinary civilians. Let us also pause to remember those, of whatever nation, with whatever stake in the outcome of the war or whatever the conflict is called.” (05/26/26)
“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. came into office with three ambitious goals: radical transparency, improved national health, and rebuilding trust in America’s public health agencies. More than a year in, it seems he has only one tool for the job — firing people. Lots of them.” (05/26/26)
“A Hyde Park man living in fear because his house had been broken into before opened fire on a home intruder early Tuesday morning, police said. … Officers arrived to find the suspect — later identified as Simeon Pratcher — laying ‘face down’ in one of the home’s bedrooms, police said. … The homeowner told investigators that he was in his living room when he heard someone entering his home. He went to one of his bedrooms and saw an intruder in the doorframe, leading the homeowner to fire two shots, MPD said. No one was struck by the gunfire. The homeowner told MPD that his home had been broken into three times, adding that he felt like he ‘had to protect himself.'” (05/26/26)
