“The media theorist Marshall McLuhan became famous in certain circles for insisting that the real importance of a new tool can be found in ‘the medium — that is, all the side-effects, all the unintended patterns and changes.’ He was anticipated in this by Plato, who had Socrates hint in a story that ‘the person who produces an instrument of technology is not the same as the person who can judge whether it helps or harms those who use it.’ If that’s true, then we would expect to find the architects of AI struggling to predict and control the ends it will be made to serve.” (05/01/26)
“To put American traffic deaths in perspective, consider the Miami Marlins. Since 2012, the baseball team has played its home games at the stadium now called LoanDepot Park. The field’s official capacity is 36,742, roughly the number of Americans who die in traffic crashes every year. America loses a baseball stadium’s worth of lives to vehicular accidents every 12 months. For the first time, there’s a way to prevent many, and perhaps most, of those deaths: self-driving cars. But self-driving cars are controversial. Some worry about safety. Others worry about jobs.” (05/01/26)
“Having seen Trump shuffle spasmodically to the Village People’s Y.M.C.A., I think we can rule out dancing as the motivation to construct a $400 million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom where the East Wing of the White House once stood. We can also rule out the most recent reason given for the construction of such a Reichskanzlei, which is that only in a Führerbunker funded by tech bros and Epstein patrons will this president ever feel safe. This leads us back to the original intent of the Trump administration with all its tariffs, foreign wars, Musk budget cuts, and endless boondoggles (like the ‘free’ Qatari airplane): graft and corruption to the sole benefit of Thirty Percenter (normally his take on the vig) Donald J. Trump, proprietor.” (05/01/26)
“Trump wants us to think that tariffs — his favorite word — are paid by exporters; you know, those crafty foreign manufacturers who’ve been exploiting us American naifs from time immemorial. Stop the presses! He’s wrong. To state what should have been known, U.S. tariffs are taxes that American importers of foreign-made goods pay to customs officials at ports of entry. While under unusual market conditions, an American importer might persuade an exporter to lower his price to offset the tariff, this did not happen with most of Trump’s tariffs.” (5/01/26)
“May Day is for the workers. In some beautiful future, every worker will get May Day off. One day. But not yet. For now, it can also serve as a day when you remember the workers who are still working, and think about how you could make their lives better. On my way from Brooklyn to the May Day rally in Washington Square Park yesterday, I saw all the people working who make New York City work. The Mexican construction crew sitting in a line against a concrete wall on my block, covered in dust, taking a break from building the building across the street. The woman selling them lunches out of a big plastic cooler. The woman pulling hot metal trays out of the steam table at the restaurant on the corner.” (05/02/26)
“As Iranians marked the failure of the U.S. military to defeat their country and indeed celebrated a perceived victory, Iran’s parliamentary speaker and head of the negotiating team, Mohammad Ghalibaf, insisted that ‘we are not stronger than the United States in military power.’ Ghalibaf suggested Iran shouldn’t expect to ‘destroy’ the enemy, but instead should translate its battlefield gains into diplomatic leverage. U.S. officials have shown less humility. … Though Iran has been hammered, Ghalibaf may be right to think the Islamic Republic has won diplomatic leverage — and the proud people of Iran whom he chided may be closer to the truth than the boastful Americans. The most obvious source of newfound diplomatic leverage for Iran is its effective control of the Strait of Hormuz, but battlefield outcomes have also made Tehran think it has the advantage in negotiations.” (0501/26)
“The Fifteenth Amendment to the US Constitution provides that ‘the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.’ The right to vote does not imply any guarantee of Pantone Matching System [TM] closeness in skin tone between the candidates elected and the voting majorities in districts. Nor should it. If you’re voting on the basis of skin color, You. Are. A. Racist.” (04/30/26)
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Joseph Solis-Mullen
“For years, the guardians of ‘consumer welfare’ in Washington postured as vigilant sentinels against consolidation in the airline industry, so that when JetBlue sought to acquire Spirit Airlines, the Department of Justice intervened immediately and with all earnest. The argument, we were told, was simple: Spirit, the plucky ultra-low-cost carrier, provided downward pressure on fares. To allow its absorption into a larger competitor would be to deprive consumers, especially cost-conscious ones, of a vital check on airline pricing power. … And so the merger was blocked. Fast forward but a few years, and the narrative collapses under its own weight. Spirit, long operating on razor-thin margins and a business model acutely vulnerable to cost shocks, finds itself in dire financial straits. Suddenly, the same political apparatus that insisted on preserving Spirit as an independent competitor now contemplates, or outright endorses, a $500 million taxpayer-funded rescue.” (04/30/26)
