Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Tyler Tone
“Much like the information gleaned from reverse engineering Sega’s copyrighted software, the patterns an AI model learns are not necessarily copyrighted works. Copyright protects an author’s particular expression, not the broader relationships among words, concepts, themes, or writing techniques that readers — or even AI models — may learn and deploy from it.” (07/24/26)
https://www.fire.org/news/training-ai-copyrighted-materials-protected-first-amendment
Source: New York Post
by Rich Lowry
“Was Odysseus, the legendary Greek warrior, actually a wimp? The most trenchant criticisms of Christopher Nolan’s new blockbuster movie ‘The Odyssey’ involve how he portrays the hero of the tale. In the original, Odysseus is a clever, multifaceted hero who comes up with the idea for the Trojan horse and then, after the Greeks win the decade-long war with Troy, embarks on his arduous journey home to Ithaca and his waiting wife Penelope. Now, it’s true that Nolan modernizes Odysseus for a contemporary audience, but what was he supposed to do? If he’d given us the 100% Homeric Odysseus — abducting women, slaughtering unarmed people, sleeping around with nymphs, ordering the execution of housemaids — there’d be little chance that movie-goers would be interested in shelling out to see a 3-hour movie about his adventures and travails.” (07/24/26)
https://nypost.com/2026/07/24/opinion/sorry-haters-christopher-nolans-odysseus-is-no-wimp-but-a-hero-for-our-times/
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“Thousands of Tunisians have rallied in the capital to demand the resignation of President Kais Saied, denouncing worsening living conditions, democratic backsliding and mismanagement of the state. Crowds marched down Habib Bourguiba Avenue in central Tunis on Saturday as the country marked five years since Saied declared a national emergency, suspended parliament and later dissolved it in order to rule by decree. It’s the latest in a run of recent protests opposing crackdowns on dissent, a struggling economy and limits on press freedoms. Saied’s opponents accused him of abusing emergency measures to institute a reversal of Tunisia’s hard-won democratic transition process.” (07/26/26)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/26/tunisians-mark-fifth-year-of-emergency-rule-with-calls-for-saied-to-go
Source: Law & Liberty
by Luke Foster
“Pierre de Beaumarchais is a forgotten hero of the American Revolution—and a victim of the French.” (07/24/26)
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/a-tale-of-two-revolutions/
Source: Caitlin Johnstone
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Basically we’ve got two choices: we either aggressively denormalize Israel or we watch our society become more and more Israeli. We either collectively reject Israel, or we watch western militaries fuse inseparably with the IDF. We either turn support for Israel into political campaign poison, or we watch politicians obliterate our right to criticize Israel while backing increasingly evil Israeli military agendas. We either ferociously oppose our government’s involvement in middle eastern wars, or we watch Israeli leaders grow more and more ecstatic as more and more western blood and treasure flows into the war machine.” (07/25/26)
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2026/07/25/de-normalize-israel/
Source: Fox News
“One of the FBI’s most wanted alleged COVID-19 fraud fugitives has been returned to the United States after authorities captured her in Jamaica. FBI Director Kash Patel told Fox News Digital she had been living under the fake identity ‘Harley Newman’ while evading charges tied to an alleged $32 million pandemic relief fraud scheme. Elaine Angene Escoe, 41, arrived back in South Florida Thursday after Jamaican authorities arrested her after a federal manhunt. Prosecutors allege she helped fraudulently obtain more than $32 million in taxpayer-funded COVID-19 relief funds before fleeing the country after failing to appear in federal court.” (07/25/26)
https://www.foxnews.com/us/exclusive-alleged-32m-covid-19-fraud-fugitive-captured-jamaica-returned-us-fbi-says
Source: Heartland Institute
“Blame Canada! Smoky Skies and Climate Change.” (07/24/26)
https://heartland.org/podcasts/blame-canada-smoky-skies-and-climate-change-the-climate-realism-show-209/
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Jake Scott
“On July 20, Andy Burnham attended Buckingham Palace, where King Charles III invited him to form a government—making him Britain’s seventh prime minister in a decade. Burnham is nicknamed ‘the King of the North,’ inspired by the Game of Thrones series and also speaks to his extremely popular tenure as mayor of Greater Manchester since 2017. As a politician, he reflects all of the establishment’s trusted elements and very little of its baggage. Having served as a minister in Blair’s government and won three landslide re-elections since becoming Manchester’s mayor, Burnham has managed to avoid the scandals associated with the Labour Party of the last two decades while building a prominent personal brand—and has cast a shadow over Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership as a result.” (07/24/26)
https://fee.org/articles/andy-burnham-takes-the-stage/
Source: Liberal Currents
by Alan Elrod
“Complaints about Nolan’s ‘Odyssey’ are mainly complaints about what does and doesn’t count as Western, as manly, and as heroic art. And those complaints are about maintaining a highly circumscribed and prejudiced boundary of American identity downstream of a facile, vulgar conception of the ancient ‘West.’ It’s worth stressing—if, somehow, it hasn’t been stressed enough—that many of America’s right-wing nationalists view the United States as a culmination of a fancifully idealized Western culture. … what matters more here is who is seen as capable of making history. It’s certainly not women, and it’s absolutely not non-whites.” (07/25/26)
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-new-vandals/
Source: The Dispatch
by Kevin D Williamson
“Once again, Mr. ‘Art of the Deal’ underperforms his predecessors.” (07/24/26)
https://thedispatch.com/article/saudi-arabia-nuclear-deal-trump/
