Source: Cobden Centre
by Jeremy E Powell

“Ever since the sanctions onto Russia over the invasion of Ukraine, combined with real domestic economic anxieties of the post-pandemic era and declining institutional trust, a handful of libertarians and a mix of anti-war conservatives and the far-left have been announcing that de-dollarization was inevitable, prompted by BRICS’s desire to pursue a gold-backed currency.” (08/13/26)

https://www.cobdencentre.org/2026/08/why-a-brics-gold-standard-is-a-fiction/

Source: Antiwar.com
by Timothy Hopper

“CNN reported this weekend that Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has privately urged senior Trump administration officials to look for an ‘off-ramp’ from the war with Iran. According to three sources familiar with the discussions, Caine has warned that further escalation could backfire and that airpower alone is unlikely to achieve President Donald Trump’s stated objectives. His team declined to discuss confidential conversations, and the White House emphasized that Caine provides the president with options rather than policy prescriptions. That distinction matters. Caine is the president’s senior military adviser, not the official who decides where the war should end. But the report exposes the question Washington can no longer avoid: not whether the United States has enough power to continue fighting, but how much of its future power it should spend on a mission whose political endpoint remains uncertain.” (08/13/26)

https://original.antiwar.com/timothy_hopper/2026/08/12/when-victory-no-longer-justifies-the-iran-war

Source: UnHerd
by Chuck Palahniuk

“Philadelphia, 2019. An Uber is hauling me to the nearest Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, and I ask the driver to name the best parts of Philly. A twenty-something black guy, he says, “I don’t think there are any good parts.” He clocks me in the rearview mirror and asks, ‘Are you the writer?’ The young man pulls out his phone and hits a number, saying, ‘You have to talk to my mom. Her favorite movie is Fight Club.’ … In 1999 the head of publicity at Twentieth Century Fox had told the director, David Fincher, ‘You’ve made a movie with so much male nudity that no man will want to see it, and so much blood that no woman will. You’ve made a movie that’s impossible to market.’ Yet here I am laughing away with a middle-aged mother and her son who both came to love the story.” (08/13/26)

https://archive.is/zEqHM

Source: Washington Post
by Megan McArdle

“Democratic socialist Francesca Hong lost her bid on Tuesday to be the Democratic nominee in Wisconsin’s gubernatorial race, but it’s not progressives who will be most disappointed by her defeat. It’s conservatives who will feel the pain. They spent millions attacking Hong in ads, calling her ‘too liberal,’ but the messaging seemed clearly designed to generate support for her among Democratic voters, based on the GOP theory that she’d be much easier to beat in the general election than moderate David Crowley. It almost worked, even though Hong was, to put it mildly, not a good candidate. Democrats should feel an unpleasant, crawling sensation at the base of their collective spine when they contemplate how close they came to having her on the ticket — not just because she’s a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, but because she has a hard-to-explain history of radical pronouncements.” (08/12/26)

https://archive.is/MxT4M#selection-361.0-379.391

Source: Aaron Ross Powell
by Aaron Ross Powell

“Not every coffee shop needs to be Starbucks to be successful. Not every place you hang out online needs to be Facebook or Instagram to be successful. Not even if it’s social media shaped. And not just because, as I’ve argued, your internet can actually be small, and be healthy being small. But because it’s actually kind of crazy to think that every digital space must be, or be on its way to being, the One Place Everyone Is.” (08/12/26)

https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3msw5yzkkk22o