Source: Reason
by Damon Root
“The First Amendment states that the government ‘shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.’ But one prominent conservative [sic] judge, whose name has been mentioned as a potential nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Donald Trump, thinks that protection against government censorship may not apply to noncitizens in the United States. Is the judge right?” (for publication 04/26)
https://reason.com/2026/03/17/yes-the-first-amendment-protects-noncitizens/
Source: Politico
“Iran incursion risks MAGA revolt.” (03/17/26)
https://traffic.megaphone.fm/POLL8615253771.mp3
Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Tim Worstall
“Facebook, the online social network, has more than 2 billion global users. Because those users do not pay for the service, its benefits are hard to measure. We report the results of a series of three non-hypothetical auction experiments where winners are paid to deactivate their Facebook accounts for up to one year. Though the populations sampled and the auction design differ across the experiments, we consistently find the average Facebook user would require more than $1000 to deactivate their account for one year. OK, so the value users gain from Facebook is $1k a year, there are 2 billion of them, that’s two thousand billion, or $2 trillion in value a year. Of which Zucks has 10%, that $200 billion. Pretty good deal for us, really. But that’s not right, not at all. For Zucks’ money is a one off capital sum, the consumer benefit is an annual one.” (03/17/26)
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/entrepreneurial-capitalism-the-greatest-deal-in-all-of-history
Source: Reuters
“An appeal containing fake case citations that misrepresent the law can be dismissed as frivolous, a U.S. federal appeals court panel said in a decision sanctioning two attorneys who submitted filings that bore hallmarks of artificial intelligence ‘hallucinations.’ The Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in its order on Friday that attorneys Van Irion and Russ Egli ‘sullied the reputation of our bar, which now must litigate under the cloud of their conduct.’ The court said it found more than two dozen fake citations and misrepresentations of fact in the appeal, which involved an incident at a fireworks show hosted by the city of Athens, Tennessee. … The two attorneys must reimburse Athens for its legal work on the appeal, and also must individually pay $15,000 each to the appeals court as a punitive sanction, according to the order.” (03/16/26)
https://archive.is/mEdzu
Source: LP Alliance
“Hype Tech: What the World’s Getting Wrong About LLMs.” (03/16/26)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxwM1p3mXEo
Source: The Price of Liberty
by Nathan Barton
“Today, we are bombarded with claims that the lands of the Fifty States (i.e., the United States) are ‘stolen lands.’ And demands that the only option is to give the ‘LandBack.’ (An organization based in South Dakota, demanding that the Black Hills be returned to the ‘Great Sioux Nation’ (a/k/a the Seven Council Fires, consisting of the Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota people.) … Obviously, as lovers of liberty, we understand that going around stealing people’s land is a heinous act …. But we detect just a few problems with the proposed solution of returning hundreds of millions of acres of land to the descendants (and presumably heirs) of millions of people who owned that land from 400 to 150 or so years ago. And forcing more millions of people who live on that land (and think they own it) to go someplace else – where back where they came from or somewhere else.” (03/16/26)
https://thepriceofliberty.org/2026/03/16/history-immigration-and-the-blame-game/
Source: New York Post
by Daniel McCarthy
“Next time your flight’s delayed or canceled, or you’re stuck in an endless TSA line, thank a congressional Democrat. Senate Dems have decided to make a show of their support for lawless immigration by inflicting pain on American travelers. They’ve blocked funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Transportation Security Administration, even though their stunt doesn’t affect the budget of the agency Democrats really want to hurt, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. … It’s bad enough congressional Democrats are taking their anger at immigration enforcement out on American travelers. What’s yet worse is they’re doing it in a time of war. Do we want less secure airports — or unhappy, unpaid agents — at a moment when terrorist attacks are more likely?” [editor’s note: TSA should be abolished. The “you wouldn’t give us what we wanted, so we started a war, now you should because DANGER” con is old and tired – TLK] (03/16/26)
https://nypost.com/2026/03/16/opinion/chuck-schumers-shutdown-gambit-gets-riskier-by-the-day/
Source: BBC News [UK State Media]
“The US Coast Guard and local first responders worked together to rescue a snowmobile operator who became stranded on ice near Mackinac Island, Michigan. An aerial rescue was first attempted but blizzard conditions prevented local or Coast Guard helicopter teams from taking flight. Timelapse video shows the Coast Guard instead cautiously manoeuvring a vessel to the edge of the ice and safely deploying a rescue team. The snowmobiler was experiencing mild hypothermia at the time of the rescue, but was reported to be in stable condition. Officials said the operator had previously been advised by the fire department not to go out due to conditions described as ‘worse than a whiteout.'” (03/17/26)
https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/cev7r8n4mkmo
Source: The Chris Hedges Report
“How the War With Iran Will Trigger a Global Financial Crisis (w/ Yanis Varoufakis).” (03/16/26)
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/how-the-war-with-iran-will-trigger
Source: Astral Codex Ten
by Scott Alexander
“I hate the term ‘hallucinations’ for when AIs say false things. It’s perfectly calculated to mislead the reader — to make them think AIs are crazy, or maybe just have incomprehensible failure modes. AIs say false things for the same reason you do. At least, I did. In school, I would take multiple choice tests. When I didn’t know the answer to a question, I would guess. Schoolchild urban legend said that ‘C’ was the best bet, so I would fill in bubble C. … So the interesting question isn’t why AIs hallucinate: during training, guessing correctly is rewarded, guessing incorrectly isn’t punished, so the rational strategy is to always guess (and increase your chance of being right from 0 to 0.001%). Since AIs in normal consumer use follow the strategies they learned during training, they guess there too.” (03/16/26)
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/shameless-guesses-not-hallucinations
