“December 19th, 2026 … that was the day that I dropped my husband at a federal prison camp in West Virginia and forced myself to drive away. That moment, far more than the FBI raid on our home, was my experience of devastation. We had been living a quiet life, my husband a developer and me a housewife with family responsibilities. Driving away and leaving him behind meant that our life was not just threatened, but torn irreparably apart. It was real and it had happened. The Federal agents screaming at us was an early morning shock, the laser sights on our chests, the drones flying through our front door … it was almost like being in a movie. Driving away from the prison, on the other hand, tore open a gulf and dismembered every aspect of our lives.” (05/13/26)
“The more power we have, the more we fear losing that power. However little we have. If, for example, we enjoy weekends without having to work at a 9-to-5 job, and have our employer tell us otherwise? (… if we want to keep our job.) The idea of losing power over our own schedule and our daily lives causes worry, even fear. How much more those who have much greater power, whether it is the power of wealth or the power of controlling others.” (05/13/26)
“Guns or butter. Butter or guns. Can we have both? If not, which should come first? Consider it one of those chicken-and-egg conundrums of modern society. ‘Guns’ is the stand-in for a well-funded military and ‘butter’ for all the human goods, comforts, and needs of a society. Economists, politicians, and generals have long considered the balance of guns and butter. Wage too many wars, produce too many arms, and there won’t be enough money to keep a nation decently fed and comfortable. Produce too many consumer goods, meet everyone’s needs, and a nation might find itself ill-prepared and vulnerable in the face of a possible attack or even invasion. Everyone from Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has had something to say about the balance of guns and butter (or, more likely, the lack of it).” (05/14/26)
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“Human beings are equipped with pattern recognition software so good that it can find patterns that are not there. That makes sense from an evolutionary point of view. Seeing a hidden tiger that is not actually there is a much less costly mistake than failing to see one that is there, so biasing the software in the direction of more of the first kind of error and fewer of the second, fewer false negatives and more false positives, is good design.” (05/13/26)
“Walgreens closes another store in another crime-ridden Chicago neighborhood, so of course folks get mad at Walgreens. The defeated Chatham store, closing its doors on June 4, suffered a million dollars in losses last year, citing theft rates ‘far above company average’ — according to one astute observer on X. … Local leaders ‘and residents’ are rallying ‘to demand’ that the chain either keep this particular store open or give money to healthcare organizations in the area. Hey, I’d like Walgreens to give me money to help me with stuff too. I wouldn’t think of demanding it though. Or demanding that Walgreens stores operate at a loss.” (05/13/26)
Source: In These Times
by Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg & Ethan Corey
“The Trump administration has doled out billions of taxpayer dollars to corporations tasked with carrying out its mass deportation agenda. Many of these same companies have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to sitting members of Congress, according to an investigation by The Appeal. Using Federal Election Commission records, The Appeal has compiled information on every member of Congress who received campaign contributions from the top contractors for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) either through the company’s Political Action Committee (PAC) or executives during the 2022, 2024 and 2026 election cycles. Over that period, executives at ICE’s biggest contractors donated more than $1.7 million to 168 members of Congress. Palantir CEO Alexander Karp outspent the other executives, donating a total of about $465,000, including nearly $200,000 to Democrats. The Appeal is publishing its findings in a searchable database found below and on a standalone web page.” (05/13/26)
“Whenever a new technology comes down the pike, some people identify themselves as agents who can benefit from it, and others see themselves as victims who will be harmed by it. Agents get excited about how AI will enable them to get work done more easily and quickly. They can generate code, whip out targeted ad campaigns, analyze data, cheat on quizzes, respond to customer inquiries, or eliminate military targets. Victims fear that AI will empower the systems that already constrain or oppress them. They will suffer from software bugs or security vulnerabilities, be inundated with AI slop, get surveilled by governments and corporations, have their relationships infected by mistrust, get lost in labyrinthine bureaucracies, or be eliminated (perhaps erroneously) by an autonomous drone. This distinction helps make sense of the wildly varying responses to AI technologies: Agents generate utopian hype narratives while victims succumb to doomer fears.” (05/13/26)
“At the state and local level, police officers (and government employees in general) are protected from lawsuits by a policy called qualified immunity. The policy isn’t in the Constitution, nor was it ever enacted by Congress. It’s a legal fiction that the U.S. Supreme Court invented from whole cloth. In fact, qualified immunity’s very existence cuts against the clear intent of the Fourteenth Amendment. … We commonly hear that ‘ignorance of the law is no excuse’ — you can’t defend yourself from criminal charges by claiming that you didn’t know that what you did was illegal. Qualified immunity not only provides an excuse for law enforcement officers when they violate someone’s constitutional rights, it’s an incentive for police agencies to keep their officers ignorant of how courts expect officers to treat members of the public.” (04/13/26)
