“US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Monday declined to pause a $655.5 million judgment against the Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization over attacks that killed and wounded Americans in Israel during the Second Intifada. Sotomayor rejected the emergency request without providing an explanation and without sending it to the full court. The decision allows the plaintiffs to continue trying to collect the money while the PA and PLO prepare to ask the Supreme Court to review the judgment. … The case was brought by American victims and relatives of victims of shootings and bombings in and around Jerusalem between 2002 and 2004. The attacks killed 33 people and wounded hundreds more.” (08/04/26)
“A major objection by protectionists is that international trade with other countries, especially low-wage countries, will undermine American workers. As a consequence, there will be a ‘giant sucking sound’ (to use Ross Perot’s phrasing) as jobs are pulled from the United States to these countries. From a purely theoretical perspective, there is little reason to think this will happen. Wages are determined by the marginal productivity of workers. Workers across countries are not identical, which is why firms do not necessarily pursue low wage workers. … Standard theory gives us good reason to doubt protectionist claims. But the protectionists present an alternative theory. We can test the empirical claims of the protectionists to see which theory better explains the empirical evidence.” (08/04/26)
“Last week, there was a lot of rumbling out of Washington about a massive escalation against Iran. … But the hand of mercy stayed the whip of calamity, or something. Trump on Sunday said the attack was off following interventions from our Gulf allies, who apparently haven’t been too hot on the idea of Iran wiping out their desalination plants and oil infrastructure in retaliatory strikes. … A remarkable cycle! But perhaps not so very remarkable. People have started to notice that the administration has a propensity for extravagant threats followed by equally extravagant walkbacks, often in concert with the weekly operations of the markets.” (08/04/26)
“Superforecasting is the art/science/sport of predicting the future – for example, who will win elections, which countries will fight wars, when key technologies will be discovered. Over the past few years, it went from an obscure academic subfield to a multibillion dollar industry in the form of prediction markets. More recently, AI superforecasters have come close to the accuracy of top humans, and their performance is rising rapidly. … Either humans have already come close to some fundamental limit on the predictability of world events – in which case AIs will plateau at or slightly above the human level – or the trend line will continue until AIs are far beyond top humans.” (08/03/26)
“A Russian soldier in Crimea opened fire on his colleagues, killing one and wounding another, before turning his weapon on civilians and killing three, an official said on Tuesday. Three other people were wounded, said Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Russian-installed governor of the Sevastopol region. He said the attacker had been arrested. There was no information on the motive for the attacks.” (08/04/26)
