Source: Astral Codex Ten
by Scott Alexander
“Superforecasting is the art/science/sport of predicting the future – for example, who will win elections, which countries will fight wars, when key technologies will be discovered. Over the past few years, it went from an obscure academic subfield to a multibillion dollar industry in the form of prediction markets. More recently, AI superforecasters have come close to the accuracy of top humans, and their performance is rising rapidly. … Either humans have already come close to some fundamental limit on the predictability of world events – in which case AIs will plateau at or slightly above the human level – or the trend line will continue until AIs are far beyond top humans.” (08/03/26)
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/does-forecasting-have-room-at-the
Source: US News & World Report
“A Russian soldier in Crimea opened fire on his colleagues, killing one and wounding another, before turning his weapon on civilians and killing three, an official said on Tuesday. Three other people were wounded, said Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Russian-installed governor of the Sevastopol region. He said the attacker had been arrested. There was no information on the motive for the attacks.” (08/04/26)
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2026-08-04/russian-soldier-kills-colleague-and-three-civilians-in-crimea
Source: The Corbett Report
“Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum.” (08/04/26)
https://corbettreport.com/umberto-ecos-foucaults-pendulum/
Source: Independent Institute
by Phillip W Magness
“Marx’s conception of alienation posits that, under capitalism, workers become alienated from the products of their labor. Instead, the owner of the factory who employs them asserts control over something that was made by another’s hand and sells it for his own profit, depriving their workforce of not only its full economic value but any meaningful stake in how it is sold. Since Marxists view laborers and owners of capital as adversarial parties, alienation also reveals a disparity of economic power through which the latter exerts control over the former and reduces them to subjugation.” (08/03/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/08/03/the-alienation-of-marxists/
Source: Fox News Forum
by Peter St. Onge & EJ Antoni
“Thirty-five years after the Soviet Union collapsed, the Communist bread line is poised for a comeback in the Big Apple, as Mayor Zohran Mamdani announces his government grocery stores will be undercutting real groceries by 30%. Not to worry, socialism will work this time. The announcement came during a press conference on July 27, where Comrade Mamdani promised 30% discounts for ‘essential’ products at his new city-run grocery stores. The problem, of course, is grocery stores are in a razor-thin industry, sporting profit margins of roughly 2%. And that’s with competent management, which New York City government is decidedly not famous for. That means even if the socialists somehow manage to run a grocery as efficiently as Aldi, Walmart or Gristedes, the city will be losing an ungodly amount of money — at least 28 cents on the dollar.” (08/04/26)
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/mamdanis-city-grocery-plan-could-leave-taxpayers-paying-every-banana
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“Oil prices fell to a three-week low on Tuesday as senior US officials raised hopes of a deal with Iran to reopen the key Strait of Hormuz waterway. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent both announced talks had progressed to allow shipments to potentially resume as soon as this week. The cost of a barrel of brent crude, the global benchmark for oil prices, fell by almost 5% to under $80 on the news of supply disruptions potentially being eased. But the failure of previous negotiations in recent months to de-escalate the conflict between the US and Iran has led to a volatile oil market, with drivers ultimately being hit by higher fuel prices at the pumps. On Tuesday, along with the drop in Brent crude, US West Texas Intermediate prices were down more than 5%, to $76 a barrel.” (08/04/26)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpw9v0gnzxwo
Source: Show-Me Institute
by David Stokes
“There is a proposal for a $39 million tax-increment financing (TIF) district in the Midtown area of the City of St. Louis. The forces behind the TIF proposal include the area’s commercial and artistic associations. The backers are claiming that because the redirected taxes will go toward “public” items such as infrastructure improvements for sidewalks, crosswalks, and streets, that this is a responsible use of TIF. They could not be more wrong.” (08/03/26)
https://showmeinstitute.org/article/subsidies/midtown-st-louis-tif-deal-is-as-bad-as-it-gets/
Source: Exiled Policy
by Jason Pye
“Republicans are already treating the DSA as a proxy for the Democratic Party as a whole. Rather than limiting their attacks to the handful of districts where DSA-backed candidates are actually running, Republican campaigns are using those races to argue that the party itself is shifting toward democratic socialism. Whether that message resonates with swing voters remains to be seen, but it is likely to become a recurring theme in competitive House and Senate races this fall. … The same political dynamic cuts both ways. If Republicans intend to portray the Democratic Party through the lens of the DSA, they should expect Democrats to point to Donald Trump and the broader direction of today’s Republican Party.” (08/03/26)
https://exiledpolicy.substack.com/p/emerging-extremes-democrats-and-republicans
Source: Persuasion
by Sam Kahn
“Institutions need to uphold standards. No exceptions.” (08/03/26)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/jason-ardays-fabulism-is-an-institutional
Source: France 24 [French state media]
“More than eight years after Boeing organised the maiden flight of the 737 MAX 7, US authorities announced Monday that they certified the aircraft. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced certification of the smallest version of the single-aisle MAX plane, a process that had been significantly prolonged by new requirements under federal legislation following two fatal MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019. The action, which Boeing and regulators had telegraphed in recent weeks, sent Boeing shares sharply higher. The MAX 7 is Boeing’s first new aircraft to be cleared since the crashes and other problems sent the company into a multi-year slump.” (08/04/26)
https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20260804-faa-certifies-boeing-737-max-7-after-years-of-delays
