Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Edward Hasbrouck
“A military mobilization exercise offers clues about who might be drafted for what sort of conflict (hint: US-China).” (07/08/26)
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/war-draft-selective-service/
Source: Checks & Balances
by Gary J Simson
“Rather than trying to neutralize the partisan results of a politicized appointment process, the Democrats would have done well to focus on depoliticizing the process that produced those partisan results. Court expansion threatens to make the process even more political, and although term limits – the other possible Supreme Court reform featured in a report commissioned by President Biden early in his term – is unlikely to make the process any more political, there’s no reason to expect it to make the process any less. A third possibility, however, holds a great deal of potential in this regard: Change the proportion of senators needed to confirm a Supreme Court nominee from a simple majority to two-thirds.” (07/07/26)
https://chkbal.substack.com/p/a-nonpartisan-cure-for-a-partisan
Source: New York Post
by Ken Girardin
“As temperatures hit 100 degrees last week, New York City’s unconventional mayor did something pretty conventional: He urged people to use less electricity. But when Mayor Zohran Mamdani urged residents to set their air conditioners to 78 degrees (a past practice of both Democrats and Republicans alike), he revealed something far more harmful than the heat index: how much Albany’s policies have driven New York City’s power grid to the point of collapse. Several factors are at play every summer. About 90% of homes today have air conditioning; as recently as the 1980s, most didn’t. Portions of the electric system are extremely old by national standards, and the sheer physics of generating and distributing the appropriate voltage and amperage to every corner of such a dense and diverse cityscape borders on the miraculous.” (07/08/26)
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Jillian C York & Corynne McSherry
“Six years ago—one month into a global pandemic—we argued that the automated moderation processes many platforms were rapidly adopting should be highly transparent, easily appealable, and temporary. We warned that ‘protocols adopted in times of crisis often persist when the crisis is over.’ That warning proved prescient. The use of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) to identify, flag, and moderate content has become the new norm—a permanent feature of how platforms govern speech online. In this two part series, we’re take stock of this new norm, and considering what platforms can and should do to ensure that AI serves online expression rather than stifling it.” (07/07/26)
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/07/part-1-automated-moderation-here-stay
Source: CounterPunch
by Peter Bach
“As I travelled on the London Tube to meet CounterPunch writer and esteemed art historian Stephen Eisenham, I read journalist Owen Matthews suggesting Putin ‘lives in a parallel reality, a sealed bubble of disinformation where all the data he receives confirms the wisdom of his choices.’ It got me wondering what else on leaders and protected bubbles was out there. Did it include Donald Trump? It’s called echo chambers, information cocooning, courtier syndrome. Some political scientists call it the ‘dictator’s dilemma’: rulers depending on information from below, while their own power discourages uncomfortable truths.” (07/08/26)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/07/08/the-dictators-dilemma/
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob
“A few years ago, Seattle imposed what amounted to a $26 an hour minimum wage for persons who deliver food for app-based services like DoorDash. Unfortunately for drivers, they don’t get paid this wage while waiting for the next order they can deliver. Thanks to the new costs, customers say things like ‘I ordered a $12 sandwich. $12 grew to $32! I just deleted the app.’ Drivers say things like ‘Work has become slow because of the new law.’ DoorDash reports 1.7 million fewer orders in Seattle in 2024. The new law took effect in January of that year.” (07/07/26)
https://thisiscommonsense.org/2026/07/07/gigless-in-seattle/
Source: Persuasion
by Sally Satel & Stephen Morse
“School districts and states will argue that they have had to bear the costs of treating a generation of adolescents suffering from the effects of addictive social media use. But there’s a problem: there are real questions about whether social media addiction actually ‘exists’ in a legal sense, and if it does, whether it is the cause of psychological problems or the consequence of them.” (07/08/26)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-law-shouldnt-recognize-social
Source: Independent Institute
by Ella Reed
“Congress recently allowed Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to lapse, now giving them until March 2027 before surveillance authority ends to extend, reform, or completely eliminate the program. If 702 is to be continued, Congress needs to use this eight-month window to revise 702 to meet constitutional standards that protect Americans’ privacy, a standard that each reform attempt thus far has consistently fallen short of.” (07/07/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/07/07/section-702s-lapse-opportunity/
Source: The American Prospect
by David Dayen
“Artificial intelligence firms initially justified their extreme capital investment (the four largest tech companies expect to spend more than $750 billion for AI infrastructure just this year) by saying that the technology would replace all human workers. They’ve since recognized what an unbelievably bad PR pitch that was, and have pivoted to promote a sunnier scenario where ‘we’re going to be able to keep people at the center of everything’, as OpenAI’s Sam Altman said in May. But there’s a sobering reality underneath the rhetorical shift: AI is turning out to be more expensive for businesses than paying their workers. And that could be one of the many triggers that collapses the fragile economic edifice that the dreams of AI are propping up. The news has mostly been relegated to the business pages, but AI firms repriced their product for business customers in recent months.” (07/08/26)
https://prospect.org/2026/07/08/great-ai-repricing-isnt-going-well/
Source: Bet On It
by Bryan Caplan
“I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t extraordinarily arrogant by disposition. Even when I was five years old, I felt like my mom was making glaring mistakes and should take orders from me. And I bluntly told her so! When I started collecting minor accomplishments, my inner sense of self-satisfaction grew stronger and stronger. Now it’s sky high.” (07/07/26)