Source: Perusasion
by Quico Toro

“On paper, Sanae Takaichi is the kind of leader Japanese people ought to hate. Bossy, opinionated, conspicuously unbothered by the rituals of consensus that grease every surface of Japanese official life, she comes across as everything the country’s political culture is designed to sand down. She doesn’t schmooze with captains of industry over kaiseki dinners at fancy Tokyo restaurants. She goes home and reads her briefing papers. She plays drums in a heavy metal band — or used to in college, and still can …. She has opinions about Taiwan and isn’t shy about sharing them, which in the context of Japanese-Chinese diplomacy is roughly equivalent to setting your hair on fire at a funeral. Something for everyone to hate. And so the three months since Takaichi took office have been a bit of a surprise.” (02/12/26)

https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-japanese-love-their-prime-minister

Source: Common Dreams
by Stephen R Weissman

“Former CNN anchor Don Lemon is under federal indictment for participating in a Minnesota protest group’s obstruction of a church service. He is scheduled to be arraigned Friday. News of his prosecution took me back more than five decades to when I was a young university professor in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). At that time, President Mobutu Sese Seko’s government threatened to arrest me for my alleged involvement in student disruptions. In both cases, increasingly authoritarian governments decided to clamp down on independent observers (journalists or others) who sympathized with community activists. To do so, they distorted what actually happened to serve their political interests. Yet, I suspect that the last person President Donald Trump wants to be compared to is a corrupt, fallen, disgraced African dictator.” [editor’s note: He performed as a part of the story, not as a real journalist, and should pay the penalty for violating the rights of the pastor and parishioner, End of story – SAT] [additional editor’s note: I’d chide SAT every time he was wrong, but nobody wants two editors’ notes EVERY time – TLK] (02/12/25)

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/don-lemon-authoritarianism

Source: Astral Codex Ten
by Scott Alexander

“Ajeya Cotra’s Biological Anchors report was the landmark AI timelines forecast of the early 2020s. In many ways, it was incredibly prescient — it nailed the scaling hypothesis, predicted the current AI boom, and introduced concepts like ‘time horizons’ that have entered common parlance. In most cases where its contemporaries challenged it, its assumptions have been borne out, and its challengers proven wrong. But its headline prediction — an AGI timeline centered around the 2050s – no longer seems plausible. The current state of the discussion ranges from late 2020s to 2040s, with more remote dates relegated to those who expect the current paradigm to prove ultimately fruitless — the opposite of Ajeya’s assumptions. Cotra later shortened her own timelines to 2040 (as of 2022) and they are probably even shorter now. So, if its premises were impressively correct, but its conclusion twenty years too late, what went wrong in the middle?” (02/12/26)

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/what-happened-with-bio-anchors

Source: Expression
by Dr. Faraz Harsini

My mom used to call me every Sunday between 8:30 and 8:45 p.m. In 13 years, she has never missed a call. Like most moms, if I don’t respond, she immediately assumes I’m dead. Two weeks ago, her calls stopped coming. The Islamic Republic of Iran has cut all internal and external communications during the ongoing protests. They even jammed Starlink. It’s been radio silence. Not a word, in or out. And in that silence, they’ve been killing people. At least 16,000 in just a few days. … my mom sold her jewelry, her prized Persian rug, even her house to make sure I went to a good school, got into a good university, and got out — to America. What has the Islamic Republic done to this mother (and millions of other families) that she’d rather never see her son again than have him trapped with her?” (02/12/26)

https://expression.fire.org/p/iran-replaced-my-mothers-voice-with

Source: Reason
by Veronique de Rugy

“Your representatives may finally grab the feared ‘third rail’ of U.S. politics. When the Social Security and Medicare trust funds run out in the early 2030s, the law is clear: Benefits must be slashed. That would mean a roughly 24 percent cut to Social Security checks and an 11 percent cut to Medicare benefits. But Congress almost certainly won’t let that happen. The easy, though irresponsible, political path may seem obvious: Change the law, keep benefits whole, and pay by borrowing the money. This way legislators won’t have to cast unpopular votes for spending cuts or tax hikes. This makes sense only if the consequences won’t become clear until much later, after voters have forgotten all about it. What most people are missing is that this time, the consequences may show up quickly.” (02/12/26)

https://reason.com/2026/02/12/politicians-want-to-avoid-reforming-social-security-and-medicare-you-will-pay-the-price/

Source: The American Conservative
by Doug Bandow

“The world’s most important divided nation, Korea, hosts one of the world’s most volatile international confrontations. Renewed conflict there could be as intense as the ongoing Russian–Ukrainian war, potentially drawing in the United States, China, Russia, and Japan. Healing the division that led to the Korean War would be the most obvious way to preempt a military rerun—this time with nuclear weapons. Germany’s experience demonstrates the great benefits of reversing artificial national divisions resulting from, and threatening to restart, conflict. Indeed, German reunification was the single event that most dramatically illustrated the end of the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, the possibility of Korean reunification is looking ever more like an impossible dream.” (02/12/26)

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-promise-and-perils-of-korean-reunification/