“f you had told me at the turn of this century that the two most hotly anticipated cultural events of summer 2026 would be a screen adaptation of Homer and a papal encyclical, I’d have blessed your heart and called you crazy. Yet here we are, and the subjects everyone told me were ‘useless’ in school — philosophy, literature, dead languages — are informing several ferocious disputes over the fate of our civilization. The future looks bright for the humanities!” (05/29/26)
“James Talarico has decided that God isn’t non-binary after all. Anyone who has relied on the Texas senatorial candidate for theological guidance might be experiencing whiplash. Talarico is trying to clean up a series of idiotic statements — including about God’s supposed non-conforming gender — that are vulnerabilities ahead of a competitive race against the scandal-plagued Republican candidate, Ken Paxton. Once upon a time, Talarico, a former Presbyterian seminarian, wanted to make the Bible into a tool of radical gender ideology.” [editor’s note: The irony here is he is correct, in that the concept of “God” as omniscient and omnipotent and All.That.Is (which is the premise of nearly ALL religious paths) implies neither gender nor humanic measurement of such, but “something greater than us” – SAT] (05/30/26)
“The battle over the Save Our Bacon Act is not merely a dispute about pork production or animal welfare standards. It is a constitutional and political struggle over whether states retain meaningful authority to govern agricultural commerce within their own borders — or whether that authority will increasingly be consolidated in Washington at the urging of large corporate interests. At the center of the debate lies a broader question that has shaped American federalism since the founding of the republic: who decides how communities govern themselves?” (05/29/26)
“During his State of the State address in January, Governor Mike Kehoe indicated Missouri is opting into the federal government’s new school choice tax credit program. The program resembles Missouri’s MOScholars program. Taxpayers can receive a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit for donations up to $1,700 annually to a scholarship-granting organization, or SGO, in Missouri. The SGO then distributes scholarships to families in Missouri seeking alternatives to their residentially assigned public schools. For many families, the scholarships will be used to pay private school tuition. But the potential is broader.” (05/29/26)
“In [Auberon] Herbert’s day, as in ours, people took for granted that the state (‘the people’) may properly exercise power over peaceful others (through, say, a parliament) for a variety of purposes. So he asked, ‘Have men any right to this power?’ And again, ‘If they have it, do they possess it for all matters? If not for all matters, for what matters? and in this last case how are we to tell what these matters are?'” (05/29/26)
“On a patch of sidewalk on a busy industrial corridor in Newark, federal agents with rifles, metal batons, flak vests, and balaclavas faced off against unarmed activists with cardboard signs and a bullhorn. Detained workers could be heard on the soccer field behind the prison walls, shouting in Spanish: ‘Libertad!’ (Freedom!) Since May 22, 300 of them are on a work stoppage and hunger strike. Over video chat, one worker told the crowd outside that they had stopped eating and working for as little as $1 an hour (or no pay at all) to demand an improvement in their living conditions. ’But that’s not all we demand,’ he said. ‘We are also doing this to demand freedom. We’re not treated like people. We’re treated like animals.'” (05/29/26)
“[I]n his own erratic way, Trump wants to pacify the Middle East and claim sole credit for that. This is probably why he’s been pushing his improbable proposal that all countries in the greater region — from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan — join the Abraham Accords. Sharing a diplomatic trophy with Brussels, Berlin or London would presumably detract from his achievement.” (05/29/26)
“Once a deal is reached, the Trump administration will apply buckets of lipstick to this pig and insist that it is some sort of strategic victory. Few observers will be convinced, however, and such efforts will just make the president and his coterie of sycophantic advisors look silly. There’s just no credible way to spin this debacle as a success. The more they try to do so, the more delusional they’ll appear. That got me thinking: What if Trump just admitted that he’d made a mistake?” (05/28/26)
“Yes, data centers use a lot of water. Yes, data centers use a lot of electricity. But the builders of those data centers are constantly working to reduce water and electrical requirements because supplying those requirements is costly. Unless there’s some really bizarre change to the historical arc of invention and innovation, we are at the peak, not the low point, of data center resource usage.” (05/28/26)
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“Libertarians differ from left liberals, including Abundance liberals, in their view of rights, positive or negative, but I want to argue policy instead. Most libertarians accept the existence of a government that provides courts, law enforcement, and national defense and collects taxes to pay for them. The policy difference between the generic libertarian and the generic left liberal is what the latter adds to that: a welfare state and government regulation of the economy viewed as a correction to market failures and to the failure of individuals to correctly see their own interest and act on it.” (05/28/26)
