“In one sense, public backlash to data centers in the United States shouldn’t be surprising: Their construction and deployment have skyrocketed across the country, creating—not to get all goopy on you—a highly visible target for American angst about AI, Big Tech, U.S. politics, the turbulent economy, male-pattern baldness, and surely more. A recent New York Times op-ed captures the mood on the left well: These giant bricks guzzle water, gobble electricity, buzz loudly 24/7, and enrich Silicon Valley billionaires at regular folks’ expense. Opposition, however, isn’t just on the left: You’ll find similar takes from MAGA types on Facebook and NextDoor, and—as I just saw myself when driving outside Raleigh last week—big ‘NO DATA CENTER’ signs along many a rural roadside. Yet most of the common objections to data centers collapse under scrutiny.” (08/06/26)
“One day, the United States seems ready to unleash a Curtis LeMay-style devastating bombing campaign of Iran. The next, it appears trapped in endless haggling with Iranian dissimulators. Of the roughly 150 days since the first strike, about 90 have passed without major military operations. Iran believes time is on its side. The Strait of Hormuz remains disrupted, gas prices are too high, and antiwar House Democrats seem poised to win the midterms and bring Trump’s war to a halt. Trump, by contrast, believes Iran can talk all it wants while sanctions, embargoes, and military pressure steadily weaken the regime. The war has become so politicized in an election year that several basic realities have gone largely unnoticed by the media. First, the cycle of bombing, pausing, negotiating, and bombing again may seem endless. But the confusion obscures the continuing effects of the embargoes, sanctions, blockade, and financial isolation imposed on Iran.” (08/06/26)
“Occasionally, President Trump takes an anti-capitalist rhetorical turn. He apparently supposes his unleashing of an Inner Mamdani will help him through a political rough patch. Or perhaps he is just momentarily confused. The president recently asserted that oil companies are making too much money right now and ‘ought to give back’ some of it to the public. This, although ‘I’m a big free enterprise guy.’ But oil companies don’t owe buyers anything more than the oil they supply. Nor, when prices are low, do buyers owe oil companies or gas stations more money than what they pay.” (08/06/26)
“With wildfires again threatening the American West this summer, Utah has become the latest state helping homeowners in high-risk areas to fortify their properties against drought-driven fire. From 2021 to 2024, the state saw the largest percentage increase in home insurance costs – a 59% hike – of any U.S. state. Yet unlike in Colorado and California, both of which recently enacted stricter rules on insurance companies and tough building codes to ‘harden’ a home from fire, Utah’s plan is more partnership than paternalism. It will first nudge homeowners with information on risks and remedies and only threaten a fee for noncompliance with new codes that aim to ensure a ‘defensible space’ from wildfire. ‘Our goal is to empower homeowners, communities, fire departments, and municipalities to act in reducing their vulnerability to wildfire by giving them the necessary tools to identify and understand their wildfire risk,’ states an official Utah website.” (08/05/26)
“There’s nothing weird or exceptional about an organization making a catastrophic mistake and hiring a liar and a fraud, nor is there anything surprising about such failures being in part due to poor or nonexistent vetting. These kinds of people’s particular skill is inspiring extreme credulousness, and then manipulating people to maintain that credulousness in the face of mountains of disconfirming evidence. They might make use of ideological or identity-based affinity to manipulate you—Bernie Madoff famously defrauded numerous Jewish organizations by playing on precisely those kinds of sentiments—but if that’s not an option they’ll use something else. It’s not a unique feature of politics or academia, nor of left-wing spaces. I mean, look who’s president. The unavoidable moment of reckoning for most organizations, though, comes when it becomes clear that their own mission is being damaged.” (08/06/26)
“On June 8, 1789, James Madison announced the batch of proposed constitutional amendments that would eventually become enshrined as the Bill of Rights. One of Madison’s would-be amendments, however, did not make the final cut, as it failed in the Senate after passing the House of Representatives. Here is what that lost Madisonian amendment to the Constitution would have said: ‘No state shall violate the equal rights of conscience, or the freedom of the press, or the trial by jury in criminal cases.’ Put differently, Madison wanted several parts of the Bill of Rights to apply equally against the federal government and the states. Why? ‘Because it must be admitted, on all hands,’ Madison said, ‘that the state governments are as liable to attack these invaluable privileges as the general [national] government is, and therefore ought to be as cautiously guarded against.'” (08/06/26)
“Only 25 years after the September 11 attacks on the United States, a major political party has fallen in with people who view that attack as deserved and the attackers as righteous. If it were parody, no one would accept it because good parody is based in truth and the truth is this fall of the Democratic Party is not believable. Sure, they’ve expressed sympathies for enemies of the United States before, but always for political advantage only; now they appear to mean it or are so afraid of it they won’t say anything to the contrary. Democrats have gone from being wrong to being an existential threat to the country. I have not seen a single Democrat candidate for office this election cycle praise the United States or even say anything that could be perceived as positive about it. Seriously, have you?” (08/06/26)
“Rio 2016, like many ambitious projects, combined political cronyism and weak market discipline. Ordinary Brazilians are still paying the bill.” (08/06/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Angelo Monaco
“The classic virtue of thrift — once celebrated as a moral cornerstone of self-reliance, discipline, and stewardship — has largely been cast aside by a modern economic system designed to punish it. For centuries, saving was viewed as a quiet duty to one’s family and future, a practice that paired material restraint with ethical responsibility. Today, however, our financial architecture actively undermines this morality. Persistent inflation erodes the purchasing power of uninvested savings, while hyper-financialization and record-low interest rates reduce traditional thrift to a losing strategy. In a culture driven by immediate gratification and an economic engine fueled by perpetual consumer debt, the deliberate act of saving is no longer a protected path to security, but rather a virtue systematically penalized by the very system that once relied on it.” (08/06/26)
