“[T]he American frontier A.I. companies aren’t betting everything on A.G.I. even if it looks like they are. The value of dominating A.I. and getting your models embedded everywhere is enormous even if they are just a ‘normal’ revolutionary technology. The winner doesn’t necessarily take all, but it can take a lot. They aren’t betting everything on A.G.I.—but America might be, in the sense that, if we focus exclusively on giving these companies what they want, their wins might not translate readily into American “wins” in the economic and geopolitical contest with China.” (05/21/26)
“The president, along with his Republican cheerleaders, counts his first-term abrogation of the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as a signature achievement. This week, yet again, he falsely claimed that had he not done so, Iran would have a nuclear weapon. In fact, his action in 2018 taking the United States out of the multinational deal subsequently led to Iran’s rebuilding of its nuclear program, the emboldening of the Iranian hard-liners now in power and the Middle East morass in which the United States is now mired. That quagmire has left Trump seeming desperate for a deal — almost certainly a worse deal than the one Obama struck.” (05/21/26)
“Only a day after President Donald Trump spoke of unity following a gunman’s abhorrent attempt to kill him and members of his administration at the White House Correspondents’ dinner, the president quickly returned to his regularly scheduled programming of berating members of the press that ask him unwanted questions. In a ’60 Minutes’ interview with CBS correspondent Norah O’Donnell taped and aired the day following the assassination attempt, Trump repeated many of his now-tired insults about the press, referring to the media in general as ‘horrible people’, and calling O’Donnell a ‘disgrace’ who should be ‘ashamed’ of herself for raising excerpts of the alleged gunman’s manifesto in a question to the president. At this point, understandably, many of us have simply begun to tune out Trump’s now-frequent diatribes against the press.” (05/21/26)
“An outfit in the United Kingdom called Ofcom, the main enforcer of the U.K.’s Online Safety Act, is requiring social platforms to implement onerous procedures to censor ‘hate,’ including stripping users of anonymity — or face mammoth fines, bans in the U.K., and other draconian penalties. Nobody would object to compelling the removal of content that is clearly criminal. But is that what most so-called ‘hate’ content really is? Of course not. Much of what irks censors and the merely censorious is merely vituperative, and no small part of what gets their goat is nothing other than sharp disagreement with those authorities who decide what ‘hate’ is — that is, the censors themselves.” (05/21/26)
“We’ve seen before that students who frequently attend religious services as well as students who are studying religion are unusually tolerant of controversial speakers, meaning they are willing to let them speak on campus. (We measure left- and right-wing tolerance by whether students say they would allow those controversial speakers on those sides.) This raises a few questions. Are religious people more tolerant? More specifically, which religions’ members tend to be more tolerant?” (05/21/26)
Source: Popular Information
by Rebecca Crosby & Noel Sims
“On Tuesday, Trump said that high gas prices amounted to ‘peanuts.’ But according to The Iran War Energy Cost Tracker at Brown University, the Iran War has caused Americans to spend an additional $43.6 billion on fuel costs so far. For that price, Americans could buy 14.5 billion pounds of peanuts, which is more than twice the amount produced annually in the United States.” (05/21/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by William L Anderson
“Of course, one would expect socialists to hate a business like Buc-ee’s. Socialists claim to hate ‘consumerism’ (whatever that is) and the availability of inexpensive and plentiful goods all the while claiming that consumers are being oppressed by capitalists, who apparently are withholding goods from the market. (No, that doesn’t make sense, but when have socialists ever made sense when describing anything that occurs in the marketplace?) At least some of the arguments against the presence of Buc-ee’s mirror the opposition to construction of data centers, as Connor O’Keeffe recently pointed out why some communities are fighting the location of such operations near their homes. The old canards of ‘traffic and pollution’ are always thrown out any time someone wishes to open a business — especially a large one — in a new locality.” (05/21/26)
“Republicans spent the last four years convincing voters they understood the stakes at the southern border as they fought to return to power. They promised to restore law and order, fund immigration enforcement and end Washington’s habit of turning procedure into an excuse for national decline. But today’s reconciliation fight is exposing an uncomfortable truth: the clock is ticking, and the GOP still must prove it can convert a clear electoral mandate into governing power. The immediate fight is whether Senate Republicans can deliver their reconciliation package, which includes critical funding for ICE, Customs and Border Protection, and the broader infrastructure for enforcement. Even with control of Washington and a public mandate to restore law and order, the path is narrow.” (05/21/26)
