“The AI alignment problem asks whether the autonomous agents derived from Large Language Models and other AI technologies can reliably internalize the objectives for which they are optimized. The problem is magnified because human objectives are complex and hard to formalize, it is not possible to monitor the internals of the systems, and previous behavior is not necessarily a reliable predictor of how the AI will behave in novel situations. Worries that AIs might find goals that ‘score well’ but don’t match human intent have become a fashionable topic, driven in part by news stories about AI tools behaving in unexpected and disturbing ways, which can be difficult to monitor and reverse. … Human alignment, by comparison, has never been effectively enforced, although significant effort is spent on trying to determine our fellow humans’ motives.” (08/12/26)
“Taylor Swift is enemy No.1 to cash-grabbing Democrats in Rhode Island. They’ve named their new statewide vacation home property tax after her. But from the East Coast to the West Coast, ‘tax the rich’ is the battle cry of radical-left Democrats. They claim that by attacking the rich, including celebs like Swift, they’re saving democracy. Don’t be fooled. Their new forms of taxation — including wealth taxes, mansion taxes and pied-a-terre taxes — are fueled by jealousy and hatred for our free-market system, working people and everything American. You’re their next target.” [editor’s note: In fairness, McCaughey hates “free market systems” at least as much as Bernie Sanders or AOC. She just prefers different targets – TLK] (08/12/26)
Source: Bluegrass Institute
by Caleb O Brown & Dan Canon
“Kentucky’s new license plate camera law is now in effect, and it already looks out of step with the Constitution. Just before it took effect, the U.S. Supreme Court handed the commonwealth a warning its lawmakers cannot afford to ignore. On June 29, the Court ruled in Chatrie v. United States that police conduct a Fourth Amendment search when they obtain a person’s location data — even from a private company, and even for a short window of time. … That case was about cell-phone data. But the reasoning lands squarely on the surveillance network Kentucky’s local governments have spent the last few years building through a single vendor: Flock Safety.” (08/12/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Connor O’Keeffe
“Around two and a half years ago, as the Biden administration was entering what we now know was its final year, the then-president’s re-election campaign was growing frustrated. … In one of the most unsurprising developments in modern American politics, it turned out that people who were struggling to navigate the aftermath of the government’s destructive economic shutdowns and keep up with rising prices did not like being told by establishment-approved economic ‘experts’ that they were essentially stupid if they didn’t understand how excellent the economy actually was. … now, as the midterms approach and he and his party are the ones in charge, the Republicans are faced with the exact same choice the Democrats had been faced with before 2024. And, notably, they have decided to adopt the same strategy that helped torpedo the Democrats last time around.” (08/12/26)
“In a region that’s a flash point for unrest, Turkey has taken a key step toward calming domestic as well as cross-border tensions – and it’s one that could lead to new conceptions of national identity that transcend ethnic or linguistic differences. On Monday, the country’s parliament overwhelmingly voted for a landmark bill aimed at conclusively ending more than 40 years of conflict with its substantial Kurdish ethnic minority. The legislation outlines processes for conditional amnesties and the reintegration of thousands of Kurds, including armed combatants who have lived or operated from strongholds in neighboring Iran, Iraq, and Syria for decades. Turkey’s separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) – designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States, and the European Union – abandoned the goal of full independence a few decades ago. And in May 2025, it announced it would disband and disarm, thus putting the onus on the Turkish government to move the process along.” (08/11/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Man Basharzad
“The mindset that governments must immediately regulate AI may prove more dangerous than AI itself. Markets generally adapt to technological change. When genuine market failures emerge, there is a case for government intervention. But where, exactly, is the market failure in AI today that demands immediate regulation?” (08/12/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Joe Biden’s cancer is moving into the advanced stages, according to the former president’s son Hunter. … I’ve seen a lot of people on social media expressing sadness and grief at the news of Biden’s situation, and I agree it is very sad that this is happening. Joe Biden shouldn’t be sitting at home dying of cancer, he should be sitting in a cell at The Hague dying of cancer. The world is a mess because men like Joe Biden get to die peacefully in their homes of cancer. They live long lives free from consequences for their monstrous actions. They don’t spend their final days rotting in a cage for war crimes. Nobody makes them pay for what they did.” (08/12/26)
