Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob

“The always-wrong California legislature has unanimously passed — and the state’s always-wrong governor has signed — legislation to compel makers of computer operating systems to verify the owner’s age. The information from Linux, MacOS, Windows, iOS and Android would then be transmitted to the software (‘apps’) running on each respective platform. Reclaim the Net observes that in a ‘different timeline, wiring an age-surveillance layer into the boot sequence of every computing device in California is an idea that would have died in committee.’ AB1043 doesn’t require any upload of government ID or facial scan, just that the user report age when setting up the OS. I am not relieved.” (03/03/26)

https://thisiscommonsense.org/all-your-os-r-belong2us/

Source: Popular Information
by Judd Legum, Rebecca Crosby, & Noel Sims

“On February 28, the United States and Israel began major combat operations in Iran. For some, the consequences of this action were fatal. By Monday, the war had claimed the lives of at least six U.S. soldiers, hundreds of people in Iran, and dozens more in neighboring Gulf states. The bombardment of Iran reportedly destroyed a girls’ primary school, killing about 150 people, the vast majority of them students. A spokesman for the U.S. military said CENTCOM takes the reports seriously and is ‘looking into’ the allegation. For others, the beginning of the war was simply a money-making opportunity. In the hours before the strike, six newly-created accounts on the prediction market Polymarket raked in nearly $1 million by betting that the U.S. would strike Iran by February 28.” (03/03/26)

https://popular.info/p/the-casino-fication-of-war

Source: Common Dreams

“A top Pentagon official attempted to argue during a US Senate hearing on Tuesday that the Trump administration’s illegal war on Iran, which has included a massive bombing campaign and explicit calls from the president to topple and reshape the country’s government, does not constitute ‘interventionism’, ‘regime change’, ‘nation-building’, or ‘endless war’. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) started her questioning of Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s under secretary of defense for policy, by quoting from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s summary of his department’s 2026 National Defense Strategy, under which he said the Pentagon would no longer ‘be distracted by interventionism, endless wars, regime change, and nation-building.'” (03/03/26)

https://www.commondreams.org/news/pentagon-iran-interventionism

Source: The American Conservative
by Rob York

“The capture of Nicolas Maduro in January 2025 and elimination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Iran in theory might have sounded like relatively low-cost endeavors to eliminate pesky U.S. adversaries and Chinese/Russian partners from the Western hemisphere and from the Middle East. By eliminating the person at the top, the theory probably went, the U.S. could deal a decisive blow without having to commit to nation building afterward. Fans of The Sopranos might call it the Phil Leotardo Doctrine, after Tony Soprano’s final antagonist during the show’s run — the boss of the New York crime family who ordered the death of not only Tony, as boss of the New Jersey family, but also his underboss and consigliere. ‘We decapitate, and we do business with whatever’s left,’ Leotardo notoriously declared in the penultimate episode.” (03/03/26)

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/iran-and-the-phil-leotardo-doctrine/

Source: Quillette
by Benny Morris

“The assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei has opened a narrow window for regime change in Tehran.” (03/02/26)

https://quillette.com/2026/03/02/toppling-a-tyrant-iran-ayatollah-khamenei/

Source: Astral Codex Ten
by Scott Alexander

“On Friday, the Pentagon declared AI company Anthropic a ‘supply chain risk,’ a designation never before given to an American company. This unprecedented move was seen as an attempt to punish, maybe destroy the company. How effective was it? Anthropic isn’t publicly traded, so we turn to the prediction markets. … Why have the markets shrugged off this seemingly important event? Partly it’s because Anthropic seems likely to win on appeal. Hegseth has said the government will keep using Anthropic for the next six months (undermining his case that they’re a national security risk) and has signed a substantially similar contract with OpenAI (undermining his case that their contract terms were unworkable). The prediction markets think the courts will be sympathetic …” (03/02/26)

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/mantic-monday-groundhog-day

Source: Center for a Stateless Society
by Cory Massimino

“Many things have been written about Rothbard’s legacy for libertarians more generally, but what about left-libertarians in particular? Rothbard’s legacy? For left-libertarians? Most left-libertarians and most Rothbardians would recoil. Rothbard is usually viewed as either a right-wing villain or right-wing hero. Often, the right-wing classification has merit. But it’s more complicated than that. People mostly overlook Rothbard’s left-wing tendencies. These are most obvious during his brief time on the New Left, but they are not isolated to that period. In the spirit of other ideological audits of canonical libertarian thinkers from a left-libertarian perspective, I offer the following audit of Murray Rothbard.” (03/02/26)

https://c4ss.org/content/61027