“The U.S. has led the world in several innovations in recent decades: the iPhone, Facebook, and artificial intelligence. But when it comes to sunscreen, Americans have been living in the Dark Ages compared with Europe and Asia. That could be changing. This week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) added bemotrizinol (BEMT) to its list of permitted active sunscreen ingredients, updating the list for the first time since 1999, according to National Geographic.” (06/10/26)
“What does a typical day look like? An air raid alert goes off while we’re at work. Just like in any office, we have one designated ‘alarmist’ who monitors all the Telegram channels to figure out exactly which direction the attack is coming from and when it’s expected to reach us. The moment we know a Shahed drone is approaching our office, everyone scrambles toward the exit. We head down to the shelter, wait for the drones to pass, and then we go right back to our workstations. In other words, we’ve adapted to living in absolute chaos. When a specific situation arises — say a café gets bombed or something similar — people help out.” (06/10/26)
“The U.S. is not defending itself or its forces when it launches more attacks on Iran. It is continuing the war of aggression that it began alongside Israel over three months ago.” (06/10/26)
“How can we safeguard the human person in the time of artificial intelligence? Pope Leo XIV offers two broad pathways in his new encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas. Its most persistent warning is that AI is putting too much power into the hands of too few people, especially those who design AI programs and run the AI giants. … the encyclical suggests that ‘one viable path is … to establish social criteria for innovation. Here, every introduction of automation and AI should be accompanied by verifiable measures to protect the employment, retraining and participation of workers.’ … Would the State, which already has immense powers, use these additional powers wisely? Could it?” (06/10/26)
“While I’ve done many debates on immigration, this is the first time that you can figure out the correct side without knowing anything about immigration. The resolution states: ‘Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should complete its mandate to deport all illegal aliens currently residing in the United States’ — and all means all. Which is a crazy view about the enforcement of even the best law imaginable. If we were debating ‘The NYPD should complete its mandate to imprison all murderers currently residing in New York City,’ every person here should still vote nay. How can I say such a thing? This is the basic economics of crime.” (06/10/26)
“‘The Men Who Fear Women.’ That’s the title of Helen Lewis’s latest cover story for The Atlantic. It’s currently making a big splash as she travels the podcast and interview circuit (PBS, The New York Times, NPR) explaining what she calls ‘masculinism,’ a movement that apparently wants to put women back in the kitchen where they belong, having stripped them of all their political rights. … You may remember Helen Lewis from her car-crash interview with Jordan Peterson for GQ, way back in 2018. She was the one who really got up the good professor’s nose, needling and poking and making him look like a sulky teenager sitting atop a huge pile of mess in a fusty, darkened bedroom — the precise demographic Peterson arrived on the scene to rescue from its own retarded development and the scorn of polite society.” (06/11/26)
“Earlier this month, the California-based organization Consumer Watchdog uncovered an incredible scandal involving rideshare company Uber, which we covered on the most recent episode of my podcast Organized Money. The company pleaded to the California legislature last year that its insurance costs had spiked so much that the state needed to decrease required payouts on its mandated uninsured motorist coverage. ‘They literally said 45 cents out of every dollar is going to insurance,’ Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, told me. It turned out that these excessive insurance payments were going to a Hawaii-based company called Aleka that is run by Uber executives. Aleka was raising rates on Uber higher than other insurers, but that money just got transferred into a reserve bank account under Uber’s control.” (06/11/26)
“When Missouri and Kansas agreed to a border war truce in 2019, the agreement was widely celebrated as the end of an expensive and counterproductive competition. After spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars moving jobs back and forth across State Line Road, both states agreed to stop subsidizing the relocation of existing employers within the Kansas City region. The agreement, which consisted of legislation on the Missouri side (which sunset last year) and an executive order from the Kansas side, was a good idea. But I argued at the time that Kansas Governor Laura Kelly’s executive order contained a glaring weakness.” (06/10/26)
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Marie McMullan
“We need to talk about Bama. The University of Alabama delivered a real blow to the student magazine editors, writers, and photographers who staffed Alice and Nineteen Fifty-Six last December. UA shut down these publications, which focused on women and black students, citing a nonbinding memo from then-U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi that warned against the use of ‘unlawful proxies’ for discrimination. What followed was a scene from a student media horror story: Student journalists lost access to their old facilities, and administrators refused to reopen the publications, even after condemnation from student press advocates — including FIRE’s Student Press Freedom Initiative — came flooding in.” (06/10/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Blind submission to authority is the result of propaganda and indoctrination, but it’s also the result of bad parenting. Raising kids who aren’t allowed to say no to you is raising adults who don’t think anyone should be allowed to oppose their rulers. That’s mainly what you’re seeing in the comments section of any viral police brutality video with people defending the cop’s actions and saying the victim should have complied with commands more perfectly. All they’re really saying is ‘Don’t disobey Daddy and you won’t get smacked!’ … Discuss the latest act of war or abuse with someone who’s been trained to reflexively obey authority and you can watch them running calculations trying to find excuses to justify why the powerful are correct in this given instance, even if you’re presenting them with brand new information.” (06/09/26)
