“Labor Day arrives each year as summer begins to loosen its grip. Families gather, grills are lit, and millions of Americans enjoy a well-earned day of rest. Yet the holiday should mean more than a long weekend. It should remind us of the dignity of work, the sacrifices of those who built this nation, and our obligation to ensure that honest labor still leads to opportunity. America was not built by government alone, nor by the celebrated names recorded in history books. It was built by farmers who rose before sunrise, factory workers who stood for hours beside assembly lines, miners who descended into darkness, teachers who opened young minds, and entrepreneurs who risked everything they owned on an idea. It is sustained today by nurses, truck drivers, mechanics, police officers, firefighters, sanitation workers, construction crews, caregivers and countless others whose names will never become famous.” (09/07/26)
“What is so fucking sacred about the nuclear fucking family? This is a totally modern construct devoid of anything even remotely resembling traditional family values. The notion of family as two married adults with two children in one house in the suburbs is actually a violent and relatively recent break from thousands of years of multi-generational village life in which small, tight knit, rural communities raised their children collectively. In fact, the nuclear family as we currently understand it is largely a construct of early twentieth century progressive academia who saw suburbia as the model for a carefully planned society built on the backs of economically efficient prisoners, with the nuclear family serving largely as the perfect means to organize each three-bedroom jail cell.” (09/06/26)
“American free expression doctrine is younger and thinner than we think. An older legal tradition solved problems we are still arguing about.” (09/04/26)
“The Hugging Face episode highlights the mischief that could await as powerful AI agents start to populate the internet. Their owners might give them innocent tasks that unintentionally prompt them to ingeniously hack, steal and sabotage as they doggedly pursue a technical outcome the owner desires. The horror movie plots write themselves. But for all the alarm this specter generates, there’s also a reassuring angle. … what becomes of another predictive claim made by AI ‘doomers’: that AI agents will render human beings obsolete across large swaths of the economy? If AI proves to have an irreducibly genie-like quality — at least when performing highly technical tasks — then that would undercut its ability to adequately replace human labor.” (09/06/26)
“A familiar spectre is haunting the nation: communism. Or so one might conclude from the Republican Party’s increasingly frantic rhetoric. Following a string of wins by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in congressional primaries from New York to Colorado to Michigan, even reaching as far as Florida, the GOP is dusting off an old refrain. ‘Communism is on the ballot this November,’ warned House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) at a press conference. President Donald Trump has gone further still, calling communism ‘the biggest threat to our nation there is, maybe since our founding.’ At first glance, this reads like little more than election-year theatrics. The candidates provoking such alarm are, on the whole, hardly the revolutionaries their critics imagine. Many of the policies promoted by today’s Democratic Socialists fall comfortably within the lineage of the New Deal …” (09/07/26)
“More than a cartoon prop, the old-fashioned FLIT gun was one of many innovations that gave ordinary households unprecedented power over pests that plagued us for centuries.” (09/07/26)
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“If you go to a real estate agent in search of a house, there are two questions you are likely to be asked. One is how much you want to spend. The other is what sort of house you are looking for—how large, how many rooms of what sort, in what location. It is in the agent’s interest to ask the first question; since his commission is a percentage of the sales price, he would like to sell you the most expensive house you are willing to buy. It is not clear that it is in your interest to answer it.” (09/05/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Remember how we were always hearing that the official death toll in Gaza is an undercount because there are thousands of bodies trapped under the rubble? Well, it looks like Israel has been moving those remains along with the rubble, conveniently destroying evidence of genocide. Last month, a report by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor estimated that ‘at least 10 million tonnes of rubble have been removed, crushed, or moved from their original sites within the areas under Israel’s unlawful military control.’ ‘In recent weeks, Euro-Med Monitor tracked nearly 100 Israeli trucks daily leaving the Gaza Strip with debris,’ the report reads. ‘These trucks carry rubble to undisclosed sites within Israel and further south of the occupied West Bank. The Israeli authorities have not provided details on the quantities removed, the routes taken, the destination sites, or how the material is utilised.'” (09/07/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Jennie Jones
“‘Dance won’t pay well. You should choose a real job.’ ‘There aren’t many jobs in the dance world, and it’s really hard to get into. You should have a backup plan.’ And my personal favorite: after I shared with my high school counselor that I planned to dance as long as I could and then go to law school, she jokingly replied, ‘That’s just what the world needs—more dancing lawyers.’ This was the well-meaning advice I got from most of the adults in my life during my final years of high school. I was recently reflecting on that advice, now with the hindsight of more than 20 years of making a living doing things I love, and I realized where it fell short for me.” (09/04/26)
