Source: Free Association
by Sheldon Richman

“Self-possession as an existential (if not a moral) matter is self-evident. Only an individual can directly will his actions. No one has access to another’s will, the capacity to act. When we say that an aggressor forces a victim to do something, we don’t mean that the aggressor exercises the victim’s will. We mean the aggressor threatens harm or death if the victim doesn’t act as required. We might still ask why we must speak at all in terms of anyone owning anyone. The answer is at least implicit in Herbert’s essay. To live is to act (purposefully), to pursue objectives aimed at self-preservation, to value, that is, to prefer life to death. Life depends on such things.” (06/19/26)

https://sheldonrichman.substack.com/p/tgif-auberon-herbert-and-individual

Source: Washington Times
by Tim Murtaugh

“The two candidates for U.S. Senate in Georgia could hardly be more different, both in their presentations and their policies. Voters will choose between two very different views of the world in a race that is emerging as emblematic of the larger midterm election clash of the political parties. Republican Mike Collins, who was elected in 2022 to represent Georgia’s 10th Congressional District, was endorsed by President Trump and won a primary runoff this week over former University of Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley. Mr. Collins, a successful businessman who founded a trucking company, speaks with an easy Georgia drawl you can imagine coming from a CB radio on a long-haul 18-wheeler. The incumbent, Democrat Jon Ossoff, is a Hollywood-connected former documentary filmmaker who is scripted and focus-grouped — the sort of glossy politician the online left swoons for.” (06/18/26)

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/jun/18/midterms-shape-favor-republicans-issues/

Source: Astral Codex Ten
by Scott Alexander

“Midjourney is an AI image model. If you’ve ever used Nano Banana or asked GPT to draw you a picture, it’s like that, except from a medium-sized startup instead of a tech giant. Earlier today, they announced a pivot to medical scanners. The new MidJourney Scanner … will be a tank of water surrounded by a ring of ultrasound scanners. The patient goes into the tank, the scanners emit ultrasound from all angles, and then some fancy AI reconstructs the echoes into a 3D picture of the body. The result is ultrasound tomography: the same sort of rich data as a CT or MRI, but done via ultrasound, with no harmful radiation, in twenty seconds. This is cool, and it’s great to be ambitious, but I think the narrative among the SF AI crowd has escaped its basis in the medical facts, so I want to throw a bit of cold water on it.” (06/19/26)

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/preliminary-thoughts-on-the-midjourney

Source: Antiwar.com
by Trita Parsi

“Given the circumstances, President Trump’s decision to strike a deal with Tehran and bring this costly, unnecessary war to an end is the right one. It deserves support, not partisan second-guessing. As Rob Malley – a key member of Barack Obama’s team that negotiated the nuclear deal and later Joe Biden’s lead negotiator with Iran – noted on X, comparing Trump’s memorandum of understanding to Obama’s JCPOA misses the point. What matters is not how the agreement stacks up against past diplomatic achievements, but how it compares to the alternatives before us. And on that score, Malley argued, the MOU is ‘far preferable to any of the alternatives on offer. Period.’ I would go further. To examine the Memorandum of Understanding and ask ‘Was the war worth it?’ is nonsensical. Of course it wasn’t.” (06/19/26)

https://original.antiwar.com/trita-parsi/2026/06/18/trump-the-democrats-and-the-courage-to-end-a-failed-war/

Source: The Realist Review
by Martin Sieff

“It should be cold comfort indeed, but the successive inability of one US administration after another to control Israel and the extraordinary passion with which the leaders of Western Europe, Canada and NATO continue to defy the United States to risk thermonuclear world war with Russia at the whims of Ukrainian junta leader Volodymyr Zelensky are not unprecedented. For the dark, universally unacknowledged world history of the past 120 years is clear: Tails Wag Dogs. Global superpowers and great continent-spanning empires are brought into needless total conflict and utter mutually assured destruction by the machinations, betrayals and petty intrigues of tiny postage stamp states — usually with unacknowledged, disgusting and even genocidal recent political histories.” (06/18/26)

https://therealistreview.substack.com/p/tail-wags-dog