“The US health care system includes many employers, each competing for the money that can be made off the services of a nurse. The NHS is the – near – monopsonistic employer of nurses in the United Kingdom. Karl was quite right, the workers get screwed by the single employer. There’s not all that much Marx did get right – and most of what he did was what he cribbed from Smith and Ricardo – but this part, monopoly purchase of labour being bad for workers is one of those few things correct that he independently arrived at.” (09/08/260
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“‘Antisemitism’ watchdog groups are flipping the fuck out about hip hop artist Macklemore saying ‘Free Palestine’ while opening for Ed Sheeran, and the western press are of course helping to spin this ridiculous nonsense as a massive scandal. [extended quote] … Our society is so brainwashed and dystopian that THIS is being framed by the news media as a controversial and incendiary statement. A normal person might assume this is the most obvious and inoffensive thing a celebrity could possibly say about any issue of moral importance, but you’d never know this from the Israel apologists and the headlines in the mainstream press. ‘Controversy swirls following pro-Palestinian comments made by Macklemore at MetLife Stadium before Ed Sheeran concert,’ reads a headline by CBS News. ‘Macklemore faces renewed backlash over ‘Free Palestine’ remarks,’ says USA Today.” (09/08/26)
“What recourse do people have when encryption technology that they thought was pretty good comes up against an AI program capable of impressive mathematical reasoning? In a July blog post, Anthropic disclosed that its researchers, using their Claude Mythos Preview model, had discovered improved ways to attack cryptographic algorithms (the mathematical methods used to keep online data private) — a development with transformative implications for cryptography. The concern here isn’t just about protecting data — it’s also about protecting identities. In the last few decades, society has found sophisticated ways to blur or redact things to protect people’s anonymity. But as it begins to flex its muscles, AI may be able to de-blur them instantly.” (09/08/26)
“Families with young children are potentially eligible for dozens of public benefits to support them during periods of unemployment and to supplement their earnings during periods of employment. Access to these benefits varies depending on earnings, marital status, age of the children, and where families reside. This patchwork across programs and states is so complex that social scientists, advocates, and policymakers often narrow their focus to examine a single program in isolation. While this gives a clear view of the impact of any one program, it risks missing the forest for the trees.” (09/08/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Wanjiru Njoya
“Property rights are defined in many ways. It often happens that academics who are interested in the scope, regulation, or protection of private property rights debate endlessly at cross purposes because they do not share the same definition of property rights in the first place. Some debaters attempt to beat their opponents by initiating a definitional game of ‘gotcha.'” (09/08/260
“Leftists are coming for your kids. They always have been, so that’s not breaking news, but you have to be reminded of this on occasion so no one forgets and everyone can act accordingly. Kids are easy to indoctrinate; easy to convince of stupid things, that lies are truth. If you have kids, you know how this works. I’d never realized how easily you could joke and have everything you say be taken seriously by your kid because they don’t really understand the concept of joking yet. Once they get it, they can still be convinced of just about anything by anyone in a position of authority or someone they’re told to respect. Most adults don’t abuse that position, but liberals do.” [editor’s note: I didn’t know Hunter was a “liberal!” – TLK] (09/08/26)
“The failures of America’s war on terror were rooted in a misdiagnosis of the problem. The Bush administration promoted the idea that the 9/11 hijackers were motivated by their hatred of American values and rejected any notion that U.S. policies contributed to either anti-American sentiment or violent extremism. ‘They’ hated us for who we are, it was argued, not what we do. … While the intent of the American military strategy was to deny terrorist groups safe havens, the practical effect was the opposite. American military interventions destabilized entire regions and created the kind of lawless anarchy in which militant groups proliferated. U.S. interventions also exacerbated anti-American sentiments and allowed militant groups to portray themselves as nationalist defenders fighting an occupying enemy.” (09/08/26)
“Mechanistic interpretability is the science of ‘reading an AI’s mind’. Large language models are ‘grown, not built’. Researchers run training data through a neural network. Eventually this creates a working AI; nobody really knows how. But a neural network is just a set of simulated neurons on a computer. The person with the computer can see the neurons, the connections between them, and which ones activate when the AI answers questions. So it seems like it should be possible to ‘reverse engineer’ the AI. … Unfortunately this is very hard.” (09/08/26)
