“The first—and typically journalistic—answer defaults to his biography. Intellectually, in terms of his influences, Kendall was not simply the disciple of one single thinker or the product of any one single school of thought. He counted among his influences Aristotle, Rousseau, and the Mayflower Compact. He became, in middle age, a devoted student of both Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, both of whom reached the apogees of their own careers during his life. Kendall showed an admirable openness—exceedingly rare in tenured academics—to re-evaluate the fundamentals of his own intellectual outlook. Yet that—and his admittedly captivating personal story—sometimes gets him written off as brilliant but unsettled …” (08/27/26)
“A man in Taiwan who used a robot vacuum cleaner to gather evidence of his wife’s affair won a civil lawsuit but was subsequently sentenced to prison for invading her privacy. … he remotely activated the home’s robot vacuum cleaner via its mobile application, planning to use its built-in audio feature to communicate with his wife. However, the live feed captured his wife in an intimate encounter with another man. Seeking evidence for a legal claim, he began recording the footage. … the husband used the footage as evidence to sue his wife and her lover for infringing on his marital rights, seeking NT$2 million (US$68,000) in damages. The court determined that their relationship had surpassed the limits of ordinary friendship and ordered the pair to pay the husband NT$500,000 in compensation. However, this civil victory did not protect the husband from legal repercussions regarding how the evidence was obtained.” (08/27/26)
“Some years ago I gave a good deal of thought to opening a Sociopath Awareness Foundation. I was convinced that if most people understood sociopathy, it would be an overwhelming benefit to the human race. I am convinced of that still, and so I want to familiarize as many people as possible with these facts, again because I believe in their great importance. I’m no longer interested in creating a foundation, but I’ll cheer for anyone who does so reasonably well.” (08/27/26)
“In a case with ‘serious repercussions,’ insists journalist Brazilian-based American journalist Glenn Greenwald, a ‘U.S. federal judge concluded that an immigration record entered in the Customs and Border Protection system during the Biden administration was fraudulent.’ While the idea of fraudulent behavior in a government bureau will hardly shock you, this record was special. It was used to imprison a Brazilian official. The official? Filipe Martins. He filed suit in the U.S., and as a result a truth came out.” (08/27/26)
“David is joined by Stephanie Slade, author of the brand new book, Fusionism, and a prolific writer and public thinker around the fusion of liberty and virtue.” (08/27/26)
“November’s midterm elections, which will determine which political party controls Congress, are less than 10 weeks away. And Republicans, already likely to lose control of the U.S. House, are now in danger of losing the U.S. Senate too. Time for a Republican boogeyman to frighten voters – a revival of Islamophobic rhetoric. A standing election time tradition in the Republican Party is to pick some group – Chinese Americans during COVID-19, LGBTQ+ Americans in 2024 – to present as an un-American threat to the rest of us. But this Republican Party has run short of ideas on everything from how to fix our economy to which scary people we should be scared of. So we’re getting a retread.” (08/27/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by William L Anderson
“Keynesians hold that the economy is directed by ‘aggregate demand,’ that is overall spending, and that if consumers slow their spending, then the central bank can respond by lowering interest rates, which would encourage businesses to borrow money for expansion purposes, thus redirecting some of the lost consumer spending. However, according to Keynesians, if interest rates already are near-zero, then lowering rates is self-defeating and can lead to a ‘Liquidity Trap.’ … Mainstream economists speak of so-called automatic stabilizers in which government policies act in a counter-cyclical way to reverse harmful economic trends.” (08/27/26)
“Data centers have become an integral part of American life, powering search engines, GPS navigation, health care systems and more. But as companies invest in the infrastructure needed for AI, vicious land-use fights are emerging in communities nationwide. Nearly 3 in 4 Americans oppose hosting a data center in their community. Localized opposition has mobilized to halt projects in data center hot spots. It need not be this way. What if companies could build data centers on contaminated brownfield and Superfund sites in exchange for cleaning up the land?” (08/27/26)
“The U.S. Army is moving forward with plans to bring nuclear power to five military installations as part of a multibillion-dollar effort to strengthen the military’s energy security and reduce its reliance on potentially vulnerable power grids. The Army announced Wednesday that its Janus Program selected five nuclear energy companies for awards of up to a combined $2.2 billion to own, build and operate nuclear microreactors at bases in North Carolina, Kentucky, Texas, Georgia and New York. … Combined with expected private-sector investment, the Army said it expects more than 20 nuclear microreactors to eventually be built and operated across Department of War installations.” (08/27/26)
