Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“My main source of information on the war is the Institute for the Study of War website, which provides detailed daily reports based on satellite evidence of who is doing what where, official statements from both sides, and posts by Russian milbloggers. ISW is openly on the Ukrainian side, reports statements by sources in the Ukrainian military straight, statements from the Russian side more skeptically. … There are three different ways of interpreting the situation with different implications for the future of the war.” (09/14/26)
Source: The American Prospect
by Whitney Curry Wimbish & David Dayen
“The statement from former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon that AI ‘could kill us by the end of the decade’ has triggered the most hostile setting for sound public policy: mass panic. Events since Coxon’s viral comments have only deepened the frenzy. A senior employee at Anthropic, Evan Hubinger, backed Coxon up (‘We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!’) and estimated the chances that AI could cause human extinction at more than 10 percent. Late last week, Anthropic said it had halted ‘several efforts by scientists’ whose research could have developed biological weapons, The New York Times reported; on Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI’s artificial intelligence agents attacked the software service RubyGems two months before they attacked Hugging Face.” (09/15/26)
“Conservative [sic] YouTuber Nick Shirley has taken his anti-fraud crusade to California, but a recently passed law, coined by conservatives as the ‘Stop Nick Shirley Act,’ is threatening to derail him, or so he says. Now Shirley is challenging it in federal court. Shirley outlined his argument in a recent YouTube video, claiming that the legislation is a blatant violation of the First Amendment created in response to him exposing fraud across California. In his suit, he also alleges that it discriminates based on the content and viewpoint of speech and is unconstitutionally ‘overbroad and vague.'” (09/14/26)
“Blake, Lovecraft, and Tolkien – not to mention the original Celtic myths – all share a common theme: a deep ambivalence about technology which finally settles into determined opposition. … I was thinking about all this when trying to figure out why a mob of thousands of people terrorized north Britain in the 1810s while shouting ‘King Ludd! King Ludd!’ And why it took an army bigger than the one Wellington was leading against Napoleon to put them down. And why people regularly accuse me of being associated with them.” (09/14/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“The Constitution called into existence a federal government whose powers were limited to those few powers that are enumerated in the Constitution itself (as well as the powers incidental to carrying its enumerated powers into execution). If a power is not enumerated, it cannot legally be exercised by the president, the Congress, the judiciary, or the national-security establishment. Notice something important: There is no constitutional provision that states ‘In an emergency, U.S. officials shall be vested with whatever powers they deem necessary to address the emergency.'” (09/14/26)
“From food trucks to farmers’ markets and beyond, entrepreneurs — not policymakers — are finding new ways to feed people, create value, and deliver much more than just cheaper food.” (09/14/26)
“One of my least favorite habits in American politics is watching people reach for the Bible to give moral authority to whatever economic views they already hold. Conservatives have spent decades talking about capitalism, private property, and limited government as though they fit naturally within a Christian worldview. Christian progressives do something similar from the other direction, pointing to the concerns Jesus of Nazareth had for the poor and his commands to love one’s neighbor as evidence for a much more redistributive economic order. I’ve never been particularly persuaded by either argument.” (09/14/26)
“Today, polls show that Americans are more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause than to Israel, a dramatic reversal in a short period of time. Demonstrating hostility to the Jewish state has also become a badge of honor among political progressives. … Boycotting Israel, whether on college campuses or elsewhere, is a bad idea in my view. It is not the way to change Israeli policy. … But as bad as the boycott movement is, U.S. House passage of the The Protect Economic and Academic Freedom Act, by a 237-169 vote, was worse.” (09/14/26)
“Everybody says they want freedom, but most people really don’t, mainly because they don’t know what true freedom is. And if they did, they would—and do — reject it. ‘Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom,’ Benjamin Franklin wrote, and most people don’t want to be virtuous. Which is why they prefer socialism. Homo sapiens, as a species, is a group of jungle savages who know very little about history, and especially do not understand historical perspective. In fact, when it comes to history, most humans are incredibly ignorant. Two hundred and fifty years — the life of the American Republic — when compared to the entire span of human history, is not a very long time. And we Americans look at our history very narrowly, and rarely see the whole panorama that history really is.” (09/14/26)
