Source: BBC News [UK State Media]
“Tech companies such as Apple and Google have been asked [sic] by the UK government to block access to naked images on smartphones and other devices for under-18s. Sir Keir Starmer has told firms to either activate built-in features or update software to prevent children from taking, sending or viewing sexually explicit images on their phones and other devices. Speaking at London Tech Week, the prime minister said: ‘This is not an impossible challenge. These are some of the most innovative companies in the world and I believe they can solve it.’ The government said it will bring forward legislation to force firms to activate the features if they do not comply voluntarily [sic] within three months. This could include fines or, as a last resort, criminal liability for companies which do not comply.” (06/08/26)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly752ydjw6o
Source: Underthrow
by Max Borders
“Friedrich Hayek spent much of his later life thinking about a tension at the heart of civilization. The rules that make large-scale social life possible are often not the ones our evolved instincts would tend to generate on their own. Humans evolved for life in small, familiar groups, but eventually we learned to live within a far more impersonal civilization — one sustained by property, contract, law, and market exchange, and by standards of conduct that no one designed. That order did not arise from a blueprint or command. … That insight still has force, but it leaves a critical question open.” (06/08/26)
https://underthrow.substack.com/p/spheres-within-spheres
Source: The Daily Economy
by Logan Tanibanchachai
“Progressives once embraced minimum wages as a tool to exclude marginal workers from the labor market. Modern advocates have different goals, but the same economic effect.” (06/08/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/early-progressives-understood-what-minimum-wages-do/
Source: Engadget
“The Joy-Con stick drift saga never ends. France’s equivalent of the Federal Trade Commission, Direction Générale de la Concurrence, de la Consommation et de la Répression des Fraudes or DGCCRF for short, hit Nintendo of Europe with a 35 million euro fine, or more than $40 million. The French authority said the fine was for misleading consumers about the stick drift issues found in the Nintendo Switch’s Joy-Cons. … Nintendo has been doing free repairs for Joy-Cons for affected customers since 2019.” [editor’s note: So the “fine” is just a bribe to be allowed to continue doing business, not restitution/compensaation to the buyers of defective products – TLK] (06/08/26)
https://www.engadget.com/2189455/nintendo-will-pay-a-dollar40-million-fine-for-faulty-joy-cons/
Source: EconTalk
“The Self, the Crowd, and Social Contagion (with Luke Burgis).” (06/08/26)
https://www.econtalk.org/the-self-the-crowd-and-social-contagion-with-luke-burgis/
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Matt Fleming
“Forming a state-run bank in California would be a massive undertaking for which the state is woefully unqualified. It’s also a big risk to taxpayers and is totally unnecessary. But lawmakers were pushing forward anyway.” (06/08/26)
https://fee.org/articles/a-public-bank-in-california-would-be-costly-risky-and-unnecessary/
Source: Antiwar.com
by M Reza Behnam
“The human spirit cannot comprehend the reality of tens of thousands of Palestinians entombed beneath mountains of pulverized concrete. The very air of Gaza carries the heavy toxic dust of war and of extinguished lives. To gaze upon the ruins, is to confront not only its physical erasure, but the malign systematic campaign of the Israeli regime to wholly erase Palestinian ethnic, cultural and national identity – the very definition of genocide.” (06/08/26)
https://original.antiwar.com/reza_behnam/2026/06/07/gaza-a-meditation-on-spirit-and-survival/
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by George Ford Smith
“For now, at least, we know what computers can and cannot do. Whatever their limitations, it is clear their development is on an exponential path, and any shortcomings will be short-lived. … The combination of these strengths will be formidable, to say the least. And these strengths will continue to grow exponentially. It’s quite possible this technology could become the exclusive domain of the state, the only organization that ‘legitimately’ acquires its revenue by theft, which it enforces with a vengeance. Despite its elaborate pretensions and propaganda, the state, by its nature, is the enemy of the people, as all criminals are.” (06/08/26)
https://mises.org/mises-wire/were-freaking-doomed-without-freedom-state-rule
Source: ABC News
“A ship laden with 1,700 tons of food and other aid collected in Mexico and Belize has docked in Cuba to help ease the island’s crises. Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel said that the aid was sent by government officials in both countries, as well as supporters and Cubans living abroad. ‘We appreciate the supportive embrace in such difficult times,’ Díaz-Canel wrote in a post on X on Sunday. A U.S. energy blockade that began in late January has halted oil shipments to Cuba, which is experiencing severe blackouts and food shortages.” (06/08/26)
https://abcnews.com/International/wireStory/ship-ferrying-aid-mexico-belize-docks-cuba-crises-133683510
Source: The New Republic
“Trump 250 Rally Takes Humiliating Turn as MAGA Ally Harshly Mocks Him.” (06/08/26)
https://newrepublic.com/article/211464/trump-250-rally-takes-humiliating-turn-maga-ally-harshly-mocks
