“Behind the battles over ideas and policy proposals, at its core, democratic politics is about buying votes. Sometimes, vote-buying is overtly a cash for ballots arrangement. But in the United States, votes have more often been purchased with the promise of ‘free’ goods and services, paid for through taxes or, increasingly, by running up debt, and justified by empty verbiage about the public good that the scheme will allegedly promote. That makes President Donald Trump’s promise of $5,000 ‘dividend’ payments to Americans if his party wins the midterms a jarring return to the open corruption of the politics of the past—or of other country’s present experiences.” (09/16/26)
“The family of Charlie Kirk alleges in a newly obtained notice of claim that a ‘series of stunning failures and reckless decisions’ by Utah Valley University led to the conservative activist’s on-campus assassination last year. … The notice, which preserves the family’s statute of limitations so that they can bring a lawsuit over Kirk’s death, cited high-profile incidents as recent examples of political violence …. The notice alleges that the university failed to conduct a “meaningful risk assessment” before approving the outdoor location and did not dedicate enough security resources.” (09/16/26)
“Knowing what’s in your food or whether what you’re about to eat comports with a medically prescribed diet can be difficult. There’s no reason why the government should make it harder. But that’s exactly what the United States Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration are doing when they prohibit companies from conveying information about FODMAP content on food labels. Although not inherently harmful to most people, FODMAPs are a broad category of short-chain carbohydrates and sugar alcohols believed to trigger gastrointestinal symptoms in individuals living with irritable bowel syndrome and possibly several other functional gastrointestinal disorders. … as one US company learned, even if one of the world’s leading FODMAP research facilities tells you your food is low in FODMAPs, this isn’t exactly the kind of thing you can just put on a label in the United States.” (09/16/26)
“The U.K. government plans to update the Online Safety Act to clamp down on so-called ‘doxxing’— publicly sharing private or personal information about a person online without their consent — following the harassment of volunteers at a charity which helps people at sea, Digital Secretary Lisa Nandy said. ‘We’re certainly going to be tightening up the law to make sure that where people’s addresses are being published online, that is an offense, and action has to be taken swiftly,’ Nandy said on BBC Breakfast on Wednesday.” (09/16/26)
“Holly [Mathnerd] warns that social media magnifies tribal hatred. Having written many essays on the horrors of tribalism, I think she is spot on. We can go further. We won’t get to the roots of tribal hatred if we don’t assess cause and effect. Our inner decision to cherish our tribal beast creates the demand to express our hatred on social media. No matter what political or social side we are on, Holly’s observation applies: ‘You cannot defend the individual by changing which collective gets put in the defendant’s chair.'” (09/16/26)
“The number of people aged 100 or older in Japan surpassed a record 100,000 this year, the latest government figures show, underscoring the country’s rapidly aging and declining population. The Health and Welfare Ministry statistics released Tuesday show Japan now has 107,677 centenarians, up 7,914 from the previous year and exceeding the 100,000 mark for the first time. Nearly 88% of them are women.” (09/16/26)
