“What is the Healthy User Bias? It’s embarrassingly simple. In observational studies—where researchers merely watch what people do in the real world rather than running an experiment—the people who voluntarily take preventive drugs or pop daily supplements are fundamentally different from those who don’t. No surprise there, right? On average, ‘healthy users’ are wealthier, better educated, and more health-obsessed. They are seriously more obedient when it comes to vaccines (including the Covid vaccine). These sorts of people want to do the best they can within their powers, which includes things that involve some friction: they eat organic kale, jog at dawn, wear seatbelts, don’t smoke, and visit their doctors regularly. They love tests of all kinds. A 2006 meta-analysis quantified the healthy user effect (which they called the healthy adherer effect) across 21 studies. What they found is mind-blowing in its implications.” (09/29/26)
‘Mahmood Mamdani’s research showed why people often don’t behave the way central planners wish they would. His son faces a similar test in New York.” (09/29/260
“In October 2021, an NBC sports reporter misheard a vulgar chant, ‘F— Joe Biden,’ as ‘Let’s go, Brandon’ while interviewing Brandon Brown after a NASCAR race in Alabama. The misunderstanding caught on, and conservatives, including members of Congress in official floor speeches, began to use the line. That Christmas, a mother in Newaygo County, Michigan, bought sweatshirts bearing the phrase for her two sons. When they wore the gifts to class, however, their assistant principal demanded that they change. Refusal to do so — a supposed violation of the dress code’s provision on profanity — risked punishment, including suspension. Good grief.” (09/29/26)
“On Tuesday, September 1, 2026, the United States military struck a home in the town of Kuhestak, in Sirik County, southern Iran, where a wedding was underway, killing four people and wounding more than 50. The youngest victim was 4-year-old Amir Ali Karimi. Asked about the strike, US Vice President JD Vance told reporters: ‘What I can say with 100% confidence is that, unlike the IRGC, the United States never targets civilians in combat. We never will do that. We never have done that.’ … It’s worth remembering that the campaign the United States and Israel waged against Iran … opened with a strike on the office of Iran’s Supreme Leader that killed him along with his daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, and his 14-month-old granddaughter. Roughly an hour or two later, the US struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab with Tomahawk cruise missiles, killing 156 people, including 120 schoolchildren …” (09/29/26)
“The vicissitudes of age lead to entry into a care home in October last year, death occurs in February. Probate granted in early September this year and the house sale set up to go through the day after probate is granted. It does so. That’s 11 months of an empty house. Well, other than children turning up to then visit in the care home etc. That’s a house potentially at risk of seizure by the local council. Is that what is actually desired? That such a thing is even possible? No, leave aside how likely it is as yet – power taken by government is power that will be used by government.” (09/29/26)
“What passes for elections in Russia these days bears little resemblance to any recognizably democratic process. Opposition figures are jailed, exiled, or dead. Remaining candidates are carefully screened. In Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, ballots are cast at gunpoint. Some precincts’ vote tallies are mathematically impossible, and most Russians know that the outcome is predetermined. But in a dictatorship, even a rigged election has meaning. What matters is not the predictable victory declared by the ruling party, United Russia, following the Sept. 18-20 parliamentary elections but the signals that this completely orchestrated piece of political theater sends across Russia and to the world. The first signal is the illusion of legitimacy.” (09/29/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Wanjiru Njoya
“If a judge could rule that state law in one state—or indeed five states—constitutes federal law governing all states, that would also be a recipe for judicial chaos. For example, by Curtis’s reasoning, the Southern states which have now banned abortion would be able to get federal courts to enforce that ban on Massachusetts, a state which permits abortion at any time until birth. One could, following Bass’s own reasoning, argue that the dissenting judges ‘ignored’ the fact that the doctrine of state sovereignty is particularly relevant and important on matters where the law differs between states. Examples abound of matters on which states strongly disagree, and which could similarly test the limits of state sovereignty and the legitimacy of federal intervention.” (09/29/26)
“An update on the campaign to save a political scientist from an authoritarian country from being imprisoned and tortured for attending the Libertarian National Convention.” (09/28/26)
“‘Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser, and subtler. His body will become more harmonized, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical, the forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above these heights, new peaks will rise.’ — Leon Trotsky … Those have got to be among the most idiotic words I have ever read in my life. Any quarter-witted human being, looking at the history of our species, who thinks that man is ‘progressing towards perfection’, that the average ‘human type’ in the future will be an Aristotle, Goethe, or (heaven forbid) a Marx, is … missing something upstairs. And yet, leftists today, in America and around the globe, believe they can bring this ‘perfection’ into existence. … In fact, I see the exact opposite.” (09/29/26)
“Has liberalism run out of steam? After the second election of Donald Trump, it sure felt that way. MAGA was ascendant. A new, muscular, vigorous, cruel energy had taken over America, and it was our task to just adapt ourselves to this fact. Even as resistance to Trump built on the ground, elite liberals felt at sea. Maybe Charlie Kirk was doing politics the right way.” (09/28/26)
