Source: The Bulwark
by Mona Charen
“For Trump, it wasn’t enough that even the most violent received unconditional pardons. No, now he proposes to enrich them with taxpayer funds. Those deserving of punishment get rewarded. The victimizer becomes the victim. The criminal becomes the patriot.” (05/26/26)
Source: United Press International
“A Spanish national who was aboard the hantavirus-hit cruise ship has tested positive for the virus, Spanish health officials said, apparently increasing the number of confirmed and probable cases linked to the outbreak to 13. The unidentified patient was among the 14 Spanish nationals who disembarked from the vessel in Tenerife, Canary Islands, on the morning of May 10, after the hantavirus cluster was identified earlier that month. Three of the cases have died. Spain’s Ministry of Health said the patient was confirmed positive while in preventive quarantine at Gomez Ulla Hospital in Madrid, where the individual has been under clinical surveillance and isolation since disembarking from the vessel.” (05/26/26)
Source: Antiwar.com
“US Military Says It Bombed Southern Iran, US Backs Israel’s Escalation in Lebanon, and More.” (05/25/26)
Source: Quillette
by Cathy Young
“Outrage over a black Helen of Troy misunderstands the long Western tradition of radically reinventing classical myths.” (05/25/26)
https://quillette.com/2026/05/25/homeric-heresies-christopher-nolan-odyssey-lupita-nyongo/
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“My usual explanation for why I call myself a libertarian instead of a liberal is that after the enemies of liberalism stole its name we needed a new one. In a recent Substack post, however, Matthew Yglesias writes that: ‘while some classical liberals have called the Republican Party home, liberalism has largely been a Democratic Party project.’ His view is that ‘liberals’ in the modern American sense, classical liberals and libertarians are all liberals in the same sense. Is he right?” (05/25/26)
Source: Liberal Currents
by Israel Kolawale
“Rebuilding state capacity is not just about saving money or improving efficiency. It is about reclaiming our collective sovereignty.” [editor’s note: Individual sovereignty is the only real sovereignty – TLK] (05/26/26)
Source: Engadget
“Blue Origin can now make more concrete plans for New Glenn’s next flight after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has cleared the rocket for launch. If you’ll recall, the FAA grounded New Glenn after failing to properly put its payload in orbit during its third mission. Now, in a post on X, the aerospace company announced that the agency approved its report for the flight and accepted the corrective measures it implemented. … the FAA revealed that the final report had identified the direct cause of the mishap ‘”as a cryogenic leak that froze a hydraulic line and led to a thrust anomaly during the second-stage engine burn.'” (05/26/26)
https://www.engadget.com/2180875/blue-origin-new-glenn-faa-clearance/
Source: Lions of Liberty
“The Financialist Kill Chain: 400 Years of Global Looting with E.M. Burlingame.” (05/25/26)
Source: The Reframe
by AR Moxon
“[O]ne way of looking at an audience is ‘anyone who experiences the art.’ This expansive view is, I think, is a vital and true way of defining audience. It’s important to hold the expansive idea of audience in mind, and to be open to it. Another way to think about audience is to say it is the community with whom the artist is in conversation. In this sense, audience moves closer to the artistic intent. It’s not that the art is closed to anyone else; it’s that it is entering an already-existing conversation and speaking into it, and so it exists within that specific conversation in a specific way. Which version of audience is true? I think both are true.” (05/25/26)
https://www.the-reframe.com/are-you-pulling-or-are-you-the-rope
Source: AI Summer
“Sophia Tung on the state of autonomous vehicles.” (05/25/26)
https://www.aisummer.org/p/sophia-tung-on-the-state-of-autonomous