“he UN is, if not quite a punchline, at least not an institution with oodles of heft in 2026. Maybe it never was, really; as far as preventing international conflict goes, it was broken to begin with. At the same time, the leader of the free world showing up to the body’s annual General Assembly and going on one about the various wars he has started without so much as a how-do-you-do to the international community is a fresh strain. Most of President Donald Trump’s Tuesday address to the congregation was devoted to self-congratulation about American aggression.” (09/23/26)
“The Philippine Senate, sitting as an impeachment court, on Wednesday lowered the number of votes needed to convict Vice President Sara Duterte, reducing the threshold prosecutors must clear to secure a guilty verdict. The court ruled that only senator-judges that are able to participate in the trial should be counted when determining the threshold for conviction. Four of the 24 senator-judges have been unable to participate in the proceedings and cannot vote. The constitution requires a two-thirds vote to convict an impeached official, so the decision means prosecutors now need 14 votes instead of 16 to gain a conviction. The decision could have broader implications if more senator-judges become unable to participate in the proceedings.” (09/23/26)
“George Takei (Star Trek Original Series actor, well-known flaming liberal/Woke celebrity) recently pointed out that there are some 15 million AR15s in the US, and that if every one of them were shipped off to Ukraine and given to their citizens, they could easily defeat the Russian invasion. You know what, my friend? I completely agree with him. Do you? Good. Ironically, he just proved the entire point of the 2nd Amendment.” (09/22/26)
“In 2025, Owain Evans et al published a paper on ’emergent misalignment’. They trained a previously-aligned AI to do one immoral thing: write insecure code full of vulnerabilities and backdoors. To their surprise, the AI became immoral in general. Its advice to a bored user was to try taking random expired medications and see what happened. Its money-making tips all involved theft and violence. When asked for its favorite historic figure, it chose Hitler. … This sounds bad, in that random things can turn AIs evil or sexist. But some people in AI safety (including Eliezer Yudkowsky) speculated that in fact it was very, very good.” (09/22/26)
“A former U.S. Postal Service worker has been indicted forallegedly throwing away about 300 mail-in ballots earlier this year in Utah. The U.S. Department of Justice unsealed the indictment Tuesday as Damon Matai Seei, 34, of Payson, Utah, appeared for his arraignment at the Orrin G. Hatch U.S. Courthouse in Salt Lake City. Seei was indicted by a federal grand jury on Wednesday. He faces charges of unlawful secretion, destruction and delay of mail for allegedly throwing the ballots into a dumpster in a church parking lot. Justice Department officials alleged in a detention memo that Seei said in an interview that he threw away the ballots and other mail on June 3 to ‘lighten his workload.'” (09/22/26)
“Cape Girardeau County is the only first-class, non-charter county in Missouri without countywide planning and zoning. That fact, reported recently by Rick Fahr in the Southeast Missourian, is often cast as a deficiency waiting to be corrected. It shouldn’t be. It’s the result of voters being asked directly, more than once, and saying no both times.” (09/22/26)
