“When Americans repealed Prohibition in 1933, alcohol consumption did not immediately settle into the pattern we recognize today. Consumption rose substantially over the following decades, eventually peaked around 1981 and then declined for more than a decade. … Along the way, Americans learned to live with legal alcohol. Knowledge, customs, and social norms evolved around its responsible use. We learned to distinguish drinking from drunkenness. We came to strongly disapprove of drinking and driving and of drinking on the job. People learned to recognize their own limits, and friends and families learned to recognize when someone’s drinking was becoming a problem. None of those norms required us to conclude that, because alcohol can cause addiction, disease, accidents and death, we should prohibit adults from drinking it. Cannabis may be undergoing a similar period of adjustment.” (08/25/26)
“A few weeks ago, the Labour back-bencher, Paula Baker, was held to have disgraced herself with remarks revealing that she hadn’t much of a clue about the bond market. There have been similar such remarks from Zarah Sultana and Nadia Whittome, other Labour back-benchers. Cue for much chuntering by those claiming to know better. But this is silly. Why should Labour back-benchers turn up knowing all about the bond market? They have recently been hired to a new job with new responsibilities. Like the rest of us, they have to learn on the job. Come to think of it, why should you, the reader of this blog, know such things? You’re all about politicians, polls and programmes. Even the freest market of inclinations are no education in the gobbledegook of bonds, with its weird vocabulary and unintuitive arithmetic. So, here’s the ‘for Dummies’ story.” (08/25/26)
“German investigators uncovered a third drone and suspected military explosives thought to be connected to an attempted attack on Leipzig airport, local media have reported. The drone was discovered in Kabelsketal, just to the west of the airport, along with about 50g (1.8oz) of a suspected military explosive on 14 August, 10 days after the unsuccessful sabotage. Leipzig airport is a cargo and military logistics hub used by Nato and Ukraine’s Antonov Airlines for transporting military supplies. The office of the prosecutor general, which is leading the investigation, declined to comment on Tuesday. But the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said the government would soon provide information about who it believed was behind the drone attacks.” (08/25/26)
“We are told that we have no expectation of privacy on public roads. But is a Flock of a.i.-backed cameras the kind of thing we want spying on us, tracking our every move? While we say that ‘it’s only a conspiracy if they do it in secret,’ what is it when the people who seek to destroy the last vestiges of our privacy demand their own privacy even as they plot against us?” (08/25/26)
“Since the degenerative brain disease known as CTE was first scientifically linked to football about 20 years ago, and as hundreds of former professional football players have been diagnosed with the disease after their deaths, a haunting question has lingered: Just how many NFL players will end up with CTE? New data provides a sobering indication: At least 1 in 4 of all the people who have played in the NFL might expect to end up with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, according to a study of hundreds of cases over a recent six-year period. … Researchers involved in this study, published Tuesday in The BMJ, hope to produce a subsequent paper in the coming months estimating the overall rate of CTE in all NFL players at the time of their death.” (08/25/26)
“A full refund may balance an airline’s books, but it doesn’t make a stranded passenger whole. The difference illustrates one of economics’ most important insights: value is subjective.” (08/25/26)
“OpenAI has banned a cluster of ChatGPT accounts originating in Russia that it said were being used to support a covert online influence campaign to spread misinformation. The company discovered the issue after investigating AI-generated social media posts, which led it to a ‘much broader influence operation,’ OpenAI said in a blog post on Tuesday. The campaign was ‘built around a website containing copied and misattributed academic work, a ‘sovereignty’ index that cast Russia in a favourable light, and efforts to disguise the operators’ Russian origins,’ the company added. It’s the latest incident of pro-Russia actors using AI to spread misinformation. OpenAI does not allow access to its models in Russia, but the company said VPNs were used to disguise location.” (08/25/26)
“Roepke was born near Hanover, Germany, in 1899. He died in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1966. After serving in World War I, he attended the University of Marburg and graduated in 1921, and later became one of the youngest professors in Germany; he served on the Brauns Commission of the Brüning administration to propose policies to deal with the growing unemployment crisis during the early days of the Great Depression. He actively opposed the National Socialists, and when Hitler was inaugurated as chancellor in January 1933, he left Germany, heading first for the Netherlands, and then finally to the University of Istanbul.” (08/25/26)
