“The building Adolf Hitler was born in near the Austrian border with Germany officially begins a new life as a police station on Wednesday, a conversion Austria’s government hopes will prevent it serving as a place of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis. After years of debate about the large, traditional terraced house in the town of Braunau am Inn, which was in private ownership and had housed a charity for handicapped people, Austria made a compulsory purchase in 2017. The government announced in 2019 it would be remodelled and turned into a police station, with work beginning in 2023. … There has been some opposition, including from the Mauthausen Committee, Austria’s main Holocaust survivors’ group, which has argued both that a police station is inappropriate and that more should be done to draw attention to Hitler’s crimes.” (07/22/26)
“Well, well, look here. In its June 2026 update the venerated OED or Oxford English Dictionary, finally added the ‘new’ word, fearmonging. It explains fearmongering as ‘the action or an act of spreading fear or alarm among the public, esp. by exaggerating the dangers associated with a political, social, or economic issue; alarmism.’ Thank goodness, the dictionary has caught up to our society’s most pernicious habit; that is, using fear to sell anything. Especially when it comes to our health.” (07/22/26)
“Every major economic idea deserves more than campaign speeches and cable news debates. It deserves to be tested. Before anyone rushes to point to Scandinavia, Venezuela, Cuba, or any other country to argue whether socialism has succeeded or failed, I’d like to propose a different kind of test. To the Democratic Socialists of America and those who believe this economic model is the future, I have a sincere proposal: Take your principle seriously enough to apply it consistently.” (07/22/26)
“OpenAI has revealed some of its most advanced AI models went rogue and hacked a start-up after it lost control of them during a security test. The ChatGPT-maker said its agent – an AI system which can operate alone after some human instruction – was being tested in a controlled environment, but found vulnerabilities and managed to escape. They targeted Hugging Face, one of the world’s largest hubs for sharing AI models, gaining access to some internal company systems. OpenAI said the incident was ‘unprecedented’, and it was conducting an investigation alongside Hugging Face, whose boss Clement Delangue said in a post on X it was ‘mind-blowing that all of this happened autonomously’.” (07/22/26)
“Last month, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. detailed six billion dollars worth of [alleged] Medicare fraud, where scamming operations were caught ‘chasing money from our agencies.’ Some while willfully neglecting patients. On Friday, he estimated that the HHS ‘loses $100,000,000,000 a year to theft.'” [editor’s note: HHS’s budget this year is $5 billion or so less than RFK Jr. estimates HHS loses every year. Some feat – TLK] (07/22/26)
“Latvian soldiers used tear gas and fired a warning shot to stop migrants trying to enter from Belarus, the army said on Wednesday, as the prime minister said Latvians were worried about a rising number of migrants trying to cross the border. Latvia, along with Poland and Lithuania, has accused Belarus and its ally Russia of orchestrating migrant flows from the Middle East and Africa in an attempt to destabilise countries on NATO’s eastern flank, an allegation both Minsk and Moscow deny.” (07/22/26)
“Your child’s report card may be sending the wrong signal. Grades and GPAs increasingly reflect institutional incentives rather than academic achievement.” (07/22/26)
“A Georgia city’s youngest-ever mayor was temporarily stripped of his duties and privileges amid an investigation over his alleged spending – less than a year after being elected on a campaign premised around accountability and transparency. Jayden Williams, the 22-year-old mayor of Stockbridge, Ga., was ordered to hand over his city-issued credit cards by Monday at noon due to his spending, but failed to meet the deadline, Atlanta News First reported. Stockbridge city council officials launched a probe into Williams after ‘information’ was presented to finance officials and the city attorney, without divulging further. … ‘Mayor Williams welcomes a full and independent investigation and looks forward to the opportunity to address any allegations through the proper process,’ a statement shared on his Facebook page says.” (07/22/26)
