“All discussion of aesthetics must in some sense be personal. So: young Scott was deeply disappointed to learn how restaurant critics worked. In his imagination, a critic’s assistant would deliver dishes to her house, so she wouldn’t know which restaurant it came from. Otherwise, the critic might let her preconceptions influence her judgment, and a restaurant’s reputation would become self-reinforcing. … Imagine how I felt when I actually read restaurant criticism. It was all stuff like ‘Oh, the ambience here is very nice; I had a great conversation with the chef who told me about how his childhood in Sardinia motivated new takes on traditional dishes.’ How can you be sure the chef’s personable manner isn’t influencing your impression of the food?! Haven’t you ever heard of the Pepsi Paradox in psychology? Aaargh!” (05/07/26)
“Much ink has been spilled, much podcast time expended on the machinations of the elite globalist class who war against our autonomy, who strive to enslave us through control of our health and financial assets and to depopulate us. All true. But we commoners cannot control what they try to do, cannot temper their sociopathy. What we can do is look at ourselves in the mirror and recognize how we have been disempowering ourselves, allowing our autonomy to be up for grabs; how we have been surrendering that which differentiates us from other animals — free will.” (05/07/26)
“Back in 2018, during his first term as president, Donald Trump called for a curb on a federal requirement that publicly traded firms report their performance every three months. The idea is to nudge both investors and corporations toward longer-term perspectives and focus less on a fluctuating stock price. This week, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) unveiled a plan that will allow such companies to provide reports every six months. In the intervening eight years, ever-faster algorithms have enabled warp-speed stock trading, inflating shareholder impatience and expectations of instantaneous information and returns. In 2021, a Cornell University study confirmed that ‘firms were actually becoming more short-term oriented across the market’ – a trend linked to the growing demand for more data and short-term projections for the investing public and markets.” (05/06/26)
“WIRED has looked at the main claims that conspiracy theorists point to when claiming both the Butler and Correspondents’ Dinner shootings were staged, and why none of the claims stand up to scrutiny.” (05/07/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Jake Scott
“A particular legal case from China has also caught the interest and attention of many commentators in the West for its potential future significance. In a major landmark decision, the Hangzhou Intermediate People’s Court upheld a ruling, reached after three years, that a company had unlawfully transferred the risks and costs of technological change onto an employee, in violation of China’s Labor Contract Law. In other words, the Court ruled that the company illegally fired one of their employees for automating his role through AI.” (05/07/26)
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Joseph Solis-Mullen
“In 2011, the world welcomed its newest country. Fifteen years later, South Sudan is less a symbol of self-determination than a case study in state failure. Its politics remain dominated by factional strongmen, its economy is almost entirely dependent on oil, and the threat of renewed large-scale violence never quite recedes. For most Americans, it barely registers — just another distant tragedy filed away under ‘Africa.’ But South Sudan did not simply emerge from the mists of post-colonial history. It was, in no small part, a project of Washington.” (05/07/26)
“Modern warfare in Gaza is no longer just counterinsurgency but systems-level destruction of the environmental and infrastructural substrate of life – water, soil, agriculture, energy, and urban continuity.” (05/07/26)
