“The Secret Service fatally shot a person who opened fire on officers at a security checkpoint Saturday in an exchange of gunfire that briefly locked down the White House, officials said. The shooting happened shortly after 6 p.m. when a male approached the Secret Service checkpoint at 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, pulled a gun from a bag and opened fire on officers, the Secret Service said in a statement. The officers returned fire and shot the suspect, who was taken to a hospital, where he later died, the Secret Service said. The suspect was identified as 21-year-old Nasire Best of Dundalk, Maryland, the Metropolitan Police Department said Sunday. A bystander was also shot, the Secret Service said Saturday. The victim, a man, sustained a non-life-threatening gunshot wound and remains hospitalized, police said.” (05/23/26)
“Nowadays, any Revolution extolled on campus might best be symbolized not by fife and drum or quill on parchment, but by a raised red fist.” (05/22/26)
“Opposition leader Angus Taylor said a government he led would stop targeting net zero greenhouse emissions. It would increase use of fossil fuels, running coal-fired power generators ‘as long and as hard as possible.’ Mr Taylor wants ‘cheap energy.’ He blamed the renewables push and the energy bureaucracy for high energy prices. The reality is that the impact of high world prices for oil, gas and coal on electricity costs are also relevant. There is a certain irony in Mr Taylor’s rejection of net zero 2050. It was he as Energy and Climate Minister with then Prime Minister Scott Morrison who, in October 2021, first announced Australia’s commitment to net zero. Subsequently, in opposition, the Liberal Party followed its smaller coalition partner, the Nationals, in walking away from net zero 2050.” (05/22/26)
“On an evening at the end of December 2025, a woman in Switzerland opened a grocery-delivery app on her phone. She filled a basket and typed in a delivery address in Brussels — a flat she had visited many times, whose owner could no longer leave Belgium and could no longer pay for anything from within it. She entered her Swiss card at checkout. The payment declined. She tried again. It declined again. The man waiting for the groceries is Jacques Baud, seventy years old, a retired colonel of the Swiss Army and a former officer of the Federal Intelligence Service who had worked in Brussels for NATO. On December 15, 2025, fifteen days before the blocked delivery, the Council of the European Union had placed him on a list.” (05/22/26)
“Senegal’s parliament speaker, El Malick Ndiaye, has announced his resignation, deepening political turmoil in the West African nation two days after the president dismissed the government. Ndiaye, a senior figure in the ruling PASTEF party, said on Sunday his resignation was a personal decision, giving the “higher interest of the nation” as a reason for his departure. President Bassirou Diomaye Faye dismissed Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko on Friday and dissolved the government after months of mounting tension between the two leaders.” (05/25/26)
“Americans now experience war more as an economic abstraction than a human catastrophe. Amid endless debt-financed conflict, have we forgotten war’s tragic cost?” (05/22/26)
“One popular objection to AI concerns is to declare that LLMs can never be AGI. You need a ‘new paradigm.’ Therefore, AGI is so far in the future that it’s not worth worrying about. A common counterargument is to claim that no, LLMs can become AGI. But even without that counterargument, I think the ‘therefore’ fails on its own terms. The key question is: how much of a new paradigm do we need?” (05/22/26)
