Source: Astral Codex Ten
by Scott Alexander

“Last month, some of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies signed an open letter supporting open-weights AI. Open weights AI is like open-source software, where the creator makes the raw code publicly available for free download. It’s good insofar as it’s the only way an AI can truly be the user’s property, as opposed to something that companies like OpenAI or Anthropic temporarily let you use subject to their corporate guidelines and increasingly-nanny-state-like restrictions. If AI becomes the linchpin of the future, open weights AI feels like the sort of thing that could be the difference between being free yeomen vs. corporate serfs.” (08/05/26)

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-questions-on-open-weights

Source: Persuasion
by Garry Kasparov

“The DSA has moved from a principled pro-democracy stand on world affairs to tankie turpitude. Today’s DSA includes explicitly communist factions. Yet Harrington rejected the brutality of Soviet and Chinese communism and his icons were real social democrats. In 1980, the DSA founder organized a conference attended by West Germany’s Social Democratic Chancellor Willy Brandt, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, and future French President François Mitterrand. In 1990, Mayor David Dinkins (the first DSA-member to serve as mayor of New York—not Zohran Mamdani) hosted Brandt, who was by then president of the Socialist International (an alliance of mainstream social democratic parties), at City Hall. Today’s DSA would regard those men as insufficiently socialist …” (08/05/26)

https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-dsa-is-a-menace

Source: New York Post
by staff

“The specs for Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s magical city-run grocery stores demand the moon, but shoppers will be lucky to find some overripe green cheese. As with most city contracting, the Economic Development Corp.’s official Request For Proposals outlines an implausible wish-list that will deliver less than half what Mamdani promised at more than twice the price. The city wants potential operators of the stores to submit specific financial plans for stocking, staffing and operating five supermarkets — when the city hasn’t built any of the five, nor chosen locations for three. These imaginary stores must be managed under a business plan out of Alice in Wonderland: No deli counter allowed, but they must sell fruit, tuna, bean, chicken, egg and potato salads. The operator should have a pre-existing ‘cost-effective” supply chain, but also source from “local suppliers and small businesses while keeping prices low.'” (08/06/26)

https://nypost.com/2026/08/06/opinion/mamdanis-grocery-store-specs-show-the-idea-is-even-crazier-than-we-thought/

Source: The Atlantic
by Adam Serwer

“The Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on warrantless border searches has previously focused on the illegal movement of goods and people in and out of the country. But a phone is a different kind of container from a car or a piece of luggage, and the high Court has yet to rule on digital searches. EFF rightly argues that device searches are different because only a few possible kinds of contraband can be contained on a phone—including child pornography. Nevertheless, as it stands, border officials anywhere in the country can initiate a manual search of your device simply by stating that they are looking for such digital contraband. That is a legal standard that is easily exploited as a pretext to target someone for reasons that have nothing to do with contraband, digital or otherwise.” (08/05/26)

https://archive.is/dP4Ft

Source: Liberalism.org
by Michael C Munger

“The return of hard populism and bombastic strongmen has raised once again some old questions: Why does populism keep coming back? And why can’t it get anything done for the people? A close look at the institution of individual private property, and the romantic collectivist counterargument for the organic unity of labor ownership, will shed light on why populism is so persistent. To foreshadow the conclusion: Marx understood the problem, but he missed the solution completely.” (08/05/26)

https://www.liberalism.org/p/the-eighteenth-brumaire-and-collective-wrongs