Sunday/More Than a Milestone

On this day:
1056
After a sudden illness a few days previous, Byzantine Empress Theodora dies without children to succeed the throne, thus ending the Macedonian dynasty.
1803
Lewis and Clark start their expedition to the west by leaving Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at 11 in the morning.
1864
During the American Civil War, Union forces led by General William T. Sherman launch an assault on Atlanta, Georgia.
1888
Mary Ann Nichols is murdered. She is the first of Jack the Ripper’s confirmed victims
1939
Nazi Germany mounts a staged attack on the Gleiwitz radio station, creating an excuse to attack Poland the following day thus starting World War II in Europe.
1997
Diana, Princess of Wales, her companion Dodi Al-Fayed and driver Henri Paul die in a car crash in Paris.

***

Only in politics can 'the larger picture' be very small.

***

The University of Chicago has now borrowed $6.3 billion, more than 70 percent of the value of its endowment. The cost of servicing its debt is now 85 percent of the value of all undergraduate tuition. (This is not normal. No peer institution has a debt-to-asset ratio greater than 26 percent. Perhaps that is one reason why Chicago’s tuition is so high and yet it wants to spend so little on education?)--Cowen

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New British cars may have to be fitted with breathalyser technology and black box-style recorders under Labour plans to align with EU vehicle safety laws.

***

Sunday/More Than a Milestone

We are a people of milestones. Birthday. Coming of age. Wedding. Anniversary. They are surprisingly consistent across cultures, although there are some variations. The Koreans celebrate the arrival of a newborn's first 100 days.

The Navajo, the Diné, believe that newborn babies initially reside in the world of the Diyin Dine’e, the Holy People, before they join their earthly families. The Diyin Dine’e are "the first people" and the subjects of the most important myths and stories in Navajo culture. When a baby is born, the Navajo believe the child lives in two worlds, a kind of spiritual limbo, until the child declares his humanity: the first time the baby laughs.

Western tradition sees the newborn entering the world crying, into the Vale of Tears. The first milestone in a Navajo child's life is when he laughs. No other animal laughs. Joy is what makes him human, which separates him from the beasts and the somber spirit world. The first laugh is seen as a sign of the baby’s desire to leave the spirit world and join his earthly family and community.

So, there's a party, the First Laugh Ceremony (A’wee Chi’deedloh).

Traditionally, the one who first makes the baby laugh is the one who throws the party. where family and friends come to see the baby and, in a sense, be blessed by him, as one recently so close to the spirits.

The guests, through the party-giving surrogate, receive candy, gifts, and salt, once scarce and valuable.

So a newborn is a visitor from the spirit world, who throws off his spiritual trappings to join us. and he announces his arrival not with a cry, but with joy.

 

SatStats

On This Day:
1363
Beginning date of the Battle of Lake Poyang; the forces of two Chinese rebel leaders — Chen Youliang and Zhu Yuanzhang — are pitted against each other in what is one of the largest naval battles in history, during the last decade of the ailing, Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty.
1791
HMS Pandora sinks after having run aground on a reef the previous day.
1813
Creek War – Fort Mims massacre: Creek “Red Sticks” kill over 500 settlers (including over 250 armed militia) in Fort Mims, north of Mobile, Alabama.
1862
American Civil War – Battle of Richmond: Confederates under Edmund Kirby Smith rout Union forces under General Horatio Wright.
1909
Burgess Shale fossils are discovered by Charles Doolittle Walcott.
1918
Fanny Kaplan shoots and seriously injures Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. This, along with the assassination of Bolshevik senior official Moisei Uritsky days earlier, prompts the decree for Red Terror.
1984
STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery takes off on its maiden voyage.

***

Urukagina, the leader of the Sumerian city-state of Girsu/Lagash, led a popular movement that resulted in the reform of the oppressive legal and governmental structure of Sumeria. The oppressive conditions in the city before the reforms is described in the new code preserved in cuneiform on tablets of the period. In this important code is found the first written reference to the concept of liberty (amagi or amargi, literally, “return to the mother”), used in reference to the process of reform.

***

Organic food is neither healthier nor better for the environment; it also uses pesticides. [Scientific American]


***

How is it possible that people are being told to show up at the airport 2.5 to 3 hours before their flight, and that isn’t considered a failure of massive proportions?

***

There have been at least 33 crypto kidnappings around the world this year. The case against William Duplessie and John Woeltz, who are accused of holding Italian tourist Michael Carturan captive in a $75,000 a month Nolita townhouse and torturing him for weeks in an attempt to get the password to his cryptocurrency accounts, would be the first known occurrence in New York.

***

Ten-year-old prodigy WFM Bodhana Sivanandan stunned the nation in the 2025 British Chess Championship in Liverpool, becoming the youngest woman ever to beat a grandmaster and the youngest-ever to earn the Woman International Master title.

***

At least three people have been killed and five injured in a fire blamed on protesters at a regional parliament building in eastern Indonesia.

***

The Dutch are quietly shifting towards a four-day work week

***

SatStats

Federal spending has settled at a new nonemergency height of more than 23% of GDP, far above federal revenue.

*

U.S. births are down 10% and deaths up 25% between 2010 and 2023, according to a new CDC report.

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The U.S. federal government now spends almost $1 trillion a year in interest payments to service the national debt.

*

New European car registrations of Tesla vehicles totaled 8,837 in July, down 40% year-on-year, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association.China's BYD recorded 13,503 new registrations in July, up 225% annually.

*

The Pirates are 39-30 at home, which is a 91-win pace. They're also 19-45 on the road, which is a ghastly 115-loss trend.

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U.S. median age increased from 37.2 in 2010 to 39.1 in 2023, in part because of a growing share of older adults.

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Almost 60% of the volume of options traded are those with one day left to expiry.

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Legalization of online sports betting generates an 8% increase in credit card debt among sports betters.
The poor are disproportionately affected: low-income households spend 32% more on betting than high-income households.

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American baby names trends shifted from family names a century ago to popular names a generation ago to popular endings today. A generation of people named Jason has given way to babies with -son endings: Mason, Jackson, Grayson, and Carson. Today, 48% of the top 500 baby names share only ten endings.


*

Going to the moon was never popular. The only time a majority of Americans supported the Apollo program was right after the Apollo 11 landing, when 53% did.

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Negative TV coverage of gas prices starts when gas hits $3.50 per gallon. Each 50-cent increase in gas prices generates an additional 7.5 percentage points of coverage. Fox News covers gas prices most often.

*

And, finally, It takes twice as long to cook a chicken today compared to 100 years ago because twenty-first-century chickens get less exercise.

What Is Going On?

On this day:1758
The first American Indian Reservation is established at Indian Mills, New Jersey.
1786
Shays’ Rebellion, an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers, begins in response to high debt and tax burdens.
1825
Portugal recognizes the Independence of Brazil.
1831
Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction.
1833
The United Kingdom legislates the abolition of slavery in its empire.
1842
Treaty of Nanking signing ends the First Opium War.
1910
The Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910, also known as the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty, becomes effective, officially starting the period of Japanese rule in Korea.
1911
Ishi, considered the last Native American to make contact with European Americans, emerges from the wilderness of northeastern California.
1915
US Navy salvage divers raise F-4, the first U.S. submarine sunk in accident.
1949
Soviet atomic bomb project: The Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb, known as First Lightning or Joe 1, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan.
1966
The Beatles perform their last concert before paying fans at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.
1970
Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War, East Los Angeles, California. Police riot kills three people, including journalist Ruben Salazar.
1982
The synthetic chemical element Meitnerium, atomic number 109, is first synthesized at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, Germany.
1991
Libero Grassi, an Italian businessman from Palermo is killed by the Mafia after taking a solitary stand against their extortion demands.
1991
Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union suspends all activities of the Soviet Communist Party.
2005
Hurricane Katrina devastates much of the U.S. Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle, killing more than 1,836 and causing over $80 billion in damage.
2007
2007 United States Air Force nuclear weapons incident: six US cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads are flown without proper authorization from Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale Air Force Base.

***

"You're not broke because you don't make enough. You're broke because you give your income to everyone else." --Ramsey

***

A troubled young man sought solace and advice from an AI program, which, apparently, led to his suicide.

Will the machine be held responsible?

***

The burdens of leadership: A Thai court removed suspended Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra from office on Friday, ruling that her controversial phone call with Cambodia’s former leader breached ethics rules, in a move that plunges the kingdom into fresh political turmoil.

You would expect the world's leadership cabal to show better control.

***

So, a white federal employee throws a sandwich at a federal officer and is not indicted in D.C. There is all sorts of debate whether or not this is good for law and order. But, as an aside, what do you think a jury in Peoria would have done if the thrower had been Black?

Is there a slippery slope here? First, a sandwich, then fries and coleslaw, then a leg of lamb?

And whatever happened to the adage that a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich?,

Ham sandwiches don't throw, people do.

***

What Is Going On?

Has the world changed? Is the human population reflecting some new, undiagnosed illness? The evil in the world seems so modern, its violence against children so particularly strange and savage. Has there been a change? Is there something new afoot?

We are the new shark in old, dangerous waters. We have settled into the comfort of reliable old tribal, hierarchical, and religious conflicts. But our violence seems to have become more individual and deranged, less confrontational and more asymmetric. Adult vs. child, armed vs. unarmed, impassioned vs. disinterested. 

Attacks on nightclubs, grade schools, churches. No armed African group worth its salt hasn't attacked and obliterated a nunnery. And don't forget the Heroes of Beslan. These aren't spasms of rage; they are pointed, meticulous, and planned. Many have manifestos, albeit crazy. 

Is it reasonable to wonder what is going on?

Or is that shortsighted? Is this savagery different, just longer and fiercer, beginning, say, with the First War and going through the last century with homicidal social revolutions, and two world wars, and deaths of over 100 million people? 100 million humans murdered over the last 100 years!

Are the attacks on schools just a minor symptom of a greater emerging evil?

Analyzing the Unanalyzable

On this day:
1521
The Ottoman Turks occupy Belgrade.
1862
American Civil War: Second Battle of Bull Run, also known as the Battle of Second Manassas.
1955
Black teenager Emmett Till is murdered in Mississippi, galvanizing the nascent American Civil Rights Movement.
1963
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom: Martin Luther King, Jr. gives his I Have a Dream speech
1968
Riots in Chicago, Illinois, during the Democratic National Convention.
1979
An IRA bomb explodes on the Grand Place in Brussels.
1991
Collapse of the Soviet Union – Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.
1991
Ukraine declares its independence from the Soviet Union.
1996
Charles, Prince of Wales and Diana, Princess of Wales divorce.

***

Denmark publicly apologized on Wednesday to Greenlandic women who were victims of a decades-long involuntary birth control campaign. The birth control campaign came to light in 2022 when records showed that thousands of women and girls as young as 13 had been fitted with intrauterine devices without their knowledge or consent between 1966 and 1991, the year Greenland was given authority over its healthcare system.

***

The Salvadoran man--or the Maryland man--Kilmar Abrego Garcia, is seeking to remain in the United States by renewing his bid for asylum. He wants protection from a rival gang back home.

We are a sanctuary for criminals.
Who will protect us from him?

***

China is the world’s largest booze market. For millennia, liquor has lubricated social gatherings and business deals. Wedding banquets are referred to as “happy alcohol”, while the celebration to mark a child’s first month of life is “full-month alcohol”.
But alcohol sales are down, and a growing number of young Chinese say they’re “disgusted” by their country’s drinking culture. China’s leaders have banned alcohol from official events.

***

Analyzing the Unanalyzable

There has been another group shooting, this time in Minneapolis, in a Catholic church where the parish school children were attending mass. Two children were killed and seventeen injured.

The political and journalistic classes reflexively responded. "Thoughts and prayers." The shooter was a "coward." Were the parents responsible? Guns should be better regulated.

There will be a search for reasons, motives behind a murderous, armed attack on children. All of these reactions imply the killer was just a normal guy distorted by the rigors of life, an average citizen gone wrong. We are supposed to search for a diary, comb through his social media history, and find mitigating circumstances, forks in his developmental path that resulted in this behavior.

But this, like all the others, was not a cruel or senseless act. This was simply madness. This was completely separate from the reflective, thoughtful bonding qualities that separate our species from the other great predators. Even the rogue wolf or elephant is recognized as crazy by his fellows.

But we are free. We revere the bell curve and embrace the outlier. And the outlier bites.

There have been 118 mass shootings in the last 20 years. Gun legislation will do as much as drug legislation because they are not the essential problem. The problem is mental health--in a population of 300,000,000.

But we are cautious with rules, accept the eccentric, and are suspicious of the State. Everyone knows that Simpson killed that poor girl, but an American jury could not convict him. Nor will we start mimicking the Minority Report. and insinuate ourselves into people's lives to intercept the outlier.

Worse, we are basically disinterested. We accept a few dead and injured in our lives to be left alone to do our jobs and live our lives. We have our own standards but, like the post-modern world around us, are unsure we can apply standards to others. We ignore even the basics of education, refuse to demand any criteria of social virtue. Live and let kill.

So, we will continue with the occasional candlelight ceremony and step over the bodies on the sidewalks, with the unspoken understanding that the current attitude and quasi-management is simply a placebo for the practitioners.

An Abundant Assessment

On this day:
479 BC
Greco-Persian Wars: Persian forces led by Mardonius are routed by Pausanias, the Spartan commander of the Greek army in the Battle of Plataea.
410
The sacking of Rome by the Visigoths ends after three days.
1776
The Battle of Long Island: in what is now Brooklyn, New York, British forces under General William Howe defeat Americans under General George Washington.
1793
French counter-revolution: the port of Toulon revolts and admits the British fleet, which lands troops and seizes the port leading to Siege of Toulon.
1859
Petroleum is discovered in Titusville, Pennsylvania leading to the world’s first commercially successful oil well.
1883
The eruption of Krakatoa
1928
The Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawing war is signed by the first 15 nations to do so. Ultimately sixty-one nations will sign it. (Can you imagine?)
1962
The Mariner 2 unmanned space mission is launched to Venus by NASA.
1979
A Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb kills British World War II admiral Louis Mountbatten and three others while they are boating on holiday in Sligo, Republic of Ireland. Shortly after, 18 British Army soldiers are killed in an ambush near Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland


***

CNN devoted an hour of its Sunday show, hosted by Fareed Zakaria, to the topic of isolation, with an emphasis on the role of technology. My one conclusion was that sociology is still as shallow as ever. One disappointment: the wonderful metaphor, "bowling alone," wasn't a metaphor; it was some sociologist's statistical assessment.

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New burdens on commerce, whether income taxes or tariffs, stunt the growth that generates taxable activity in the first place. We will never climb out of the fiscal hole politicians have dug in Washington without a prosperous economy.

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Cybercriminals are utilizing AI to create high-quality fake websites, imitating prominent retailers such as Amazon and PayPal, as well as financial institutions. Some cybersecurity experts worry AI tools will supercharge these scams by enabling criminals with limited technical skills to create nearly perfect fake sites in minutes.--WSJ

***

Oneil Cruz is off concussion protocol. How did they know?

***

Congratulations. You now own a piece of Intel, a failing semiconductor business. Now that we own it, should we legislate against its competitors?

This is a significant mistake.

Sometimes, not having any government philosophy at all can be very bad

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Denmark's foreign minister had the top U.S. diplomat in the country summoned for talks after the main national public broadcaster reported Wednesday that at least three people with connections to President Trump have been carrying out covert influence operations in Greenland.

***

Jay Cutler will serve four days in Williamson County Jail as part of a plea deal following a DUI charge
The former Chicago Bears quarterback has also lost his Tennessee driver's license.

He also had a gun.

***

An Abundant Assessment

From Pino on Abundance, an assessment that just makes you want to say 'Damn!'

"In Abundance, authors Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson clearly state their thesis in the introduction: “To have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of what we need. That’s it.” And that’s the problem. Their thesis doesn’t make sense because they fail to consistently define the word that appears three times in that statement: “we.”

Klein and Thompson see their book as a missive to the American left and an antidote to the “degrowth” ideology that has taken hold in parts of it. Their vision for “abundance liberalism” is more about a shift in focus and emphasis than an entire ideological overhaul for the left. It has spurred debate within the left about whether it presents an opportunity to correct some of the mistakes that cost Kamala Harris the 2024 election or is merely a “neoliberal” wolf in sheep’s clothing.

It is neither. People who are more favorable to free markets may be tempted to applaud left-wing authors, conceding that government isn’t always the answer, but Klein and Thompson still don’t understand the role of individualism and markets in creating the abundance they desire.

…..

They are clear about what they want. Their vision of the future involves a lot of green energy, mass transit, housing construction, and research and development investment. They want vertical farming, lab-grown meat, automated technology, and supersonic airplanes.

Some of this vision sounds attractive to me. Some of it does not. That’s fine, and it’s true of all visions of the future. But they assert that this vision is the future that “we” want. I should be included in “we,” but I am not.

…..

Individuals are the ultimate decision-makers in a society. They are naturally part of groups (families) and often choose to organize themselves into other groups (corporations, governments, religious institutions, etc.) in ways that are healthy and beneficial. But individuals in the end have to choose to show up to work, use their brains to come up with new ideas, and persuade others that those ideas are worth developing.

One reliable way to get other people to do things for you is to allow them to make money from doing it. And there is already a mechanism by which that happens: markets. People get paid for coming up with good ideas and providing goods and services that make other people’s lives better. The development and expansion of markets around the world have delivered more abundance than thousands of years’ worth of human thought possible.

One reason markets work is that they do not need there to be “a single set of answers.” They work with decentralized information spread throughout society that is possessed and used by different individuals. That information condenses into a price, which is a signal to others that informs their decisions. They allow for the appearance of top-down coordination where none exists, and they perform better than attempts at top-down coordination because they incorporate information that top-down planners cannot access.

The answer Klein and Thompson are yearning for is markets. But they are respected American liberals, and respected American liberals can’t run around referencing Adam Smith or F. A. Hayek or Milton Friedman. So they’re just lost, aimlessly writing about stuff they want other people to do for them."

The Kindness Gap

On this day:

55
Roman forces under Julius Caesar invade Great Britain.
1346
Hundred Years’ War: the military supremacy of the English longbow over the French combination of crossbow and armoured knights is established at the Battle of Crécy.
1429
Joan of Arc makes a triumphant entry into Paris.
1768
Captain James Cook sets sail from England on board HMS Endeavour.
1789
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen is approved by the National Constituent Assembly of France.
1883
The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa begins its final, paroxysmal stage.
1920
The 19th amendment to United States Constitution takes effect, giving women the right to vote.
1942
Holocaust in Chortkiav, western Ukraine: At 2.30 am the German Schutzpolizei starts driving Jews out of their houses, divides them into groups of 120, packs them in freight cars and deports 2000 to Belzec death camp. 500 of the sick and children are murdered on the spot.
1999
Russia begins the Second Chechen War in response to the Invasion of Dagestan by the Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade.

***

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can.
—Jane Austen

***
Lenin thought Stalin was "arrogant, brutal, and unkind." This from the man who said you couldn't have a revolution without firing squads.

***

Over $2.4 million in New York City Council member discretionary funding went to organizations that planned and executed the anti-Israel campouts at New York universities in the spring of 2024. 

***

The gerrymandering Politician Protection Plan continues brazenly.
***


For anyone wanting entry-level Tolstoy, his short story “Three Questions” shows how purpose and practice give meaning to life. A young king is preparing for the responsibilities of governing. He seeks to know the best time to begin things, the most important people to engage, the most important things to do. Court advisers, men of science and ideas, offer unsatisfactory answers. His search ultimately takes him to an encounter with a hermit living in the woods, where the king learns the most important time is now, the most necessary person is the one you’re with, and the most important thing is to do him good. This is why we were made.--letter to editor WSJ

***

Willson Contreras had an epic meltdown when he was tossed from the series opener between the Cardinals and Pirates, having to be held back by coaches and inadvertently hitting one with his bat as he crashed out over a called third strike in the bottom of the seventh.

***

The big story on FOX for two days has been Cracker Barrel.

***

Kuang's new book is getting bad reviews.

***

The Pirates claimed utility man Ryan Kreidler off waivers from the Detroit Tigers. In 89 career MLB games, he has slashed just .138/.208/.176 with a 31.8% strikeout rate. He has played shortstop, second base, third base, left field and center field throughout his sterling career.
No doubt the scouting geniuses have discovered a flaw to tweak.

***

Kevin O'Leary and some others paid $12.932 MILLION for the most expensive sports card in the world -- which features patches and autographs from Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.

***

The Kindness Gap

Bogdan Bezpalko from the Russian Federation’s Council for Interethnic Relations, which astonishingly sounds like a conciliatory and ethnocentric organization, said this:

"What do we want? We want Ukraine, as a state, to cease to exist, for its military potential to be completely destroyed, that the political class that has always turned the Ukrainian state into an anti-Russia, that it, too, disappear. That these people leave, so softly put, somewhere in emigration, or somewhere else, far away. But in any case, so that it would never be possible to create another anti-Russia from Ukraine in the coming decades and centuries. This is our goal. Based on this, we must make our plans, to carry out military construction, to expand, as recently signed, an order of the Russian president, our armed forces. To create art brigades of special power to break through the front. And if there is an opportunity to strike, if there is an opportunity to destroy military potential, destroy it. Let them be a little afraid of us. They relaxed there, playing soccer in Europe. They no longer consider Russia a threat to them in any way, even though they shout about it all the time. In fact, neither in Finland nor in Germany, nor in Italy, does anyone believe that Russia is capable of launching, for example, a nuclear strike. The Americans, in principle, allow it. But Finland, Italy, and Germany are very far away from the United States. A nuclear cloud will not reach New York or Seattle. And if these states are hit with our weapons, as an instrument of pressure on our country, then the Americans will sit down with us and negotiate and divide the world again. Just as they once did, as a result of World War II, as a result of the Tehran-Yalta-Potsdam conferences."

So obliterate a neighbor, nuke a couple of others, and divide up the world. This is a Russian public political figure. Trump probably did great in Alaska.

But there is a lot of horror in the world perpetrated by a lot of horrible people. In Ukraine, Russian bombs, shells, and shrapnel have damaged or destroyed more than 3,790 educational facilities. Russians bombed the maternity hospital in Mariupol March 9, 2022, the Ohmatdyt Children’s Hospital on July 8, 2024, and the maternity hospital in Kharkiv on July 11 of this year.

From the beginning of the war to July 10, the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has documented the deaths of at least 13,580 civilians, including 716 children; and 34,115 civilians have been injured, including 2,173 children.

These statistics are from the World Food Program (hunger, acute hunger, food insecurity, and the like are subjective terms trying to quantify the unquantifiable. They're silly descriptions of significant problems, but they're all we have.):

In Sudan, 2 million people are facing famine or are at risk of famine, and 24.6 million people are facing acute hunger.

In Haiti, 5.7 million people face acute hunger.

In Syria, 9.1 million people are classified as “food insecure,” and “nearly 3 million people are projected to be severely food insecure.”

In Afghanistan, 9.5 million people are severely food insecure.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, 28 million people are facing acute food insecurity, and 4.75 million children under age five are facing or expected to face acute malnutrition. (From National Review)

We haven't responded much, but perhaps we are preoccupied with our efforts to step over the bodies of our fellow citizens lying on the sidewalks. Or, perhaps we have a horror threshold, some emotional 'statutes of limitations,' where at a certain point the horrors of the world just no longer stick and slough off. Tiny Gaza is enough. And we can put away those Free Tibet bumper stickers.

  

Skenes

On this day:
1609
Galileo Galilei demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers.
1835
The New York Sun perpetrates the Great Moon Hoax.
1894
Kitasato Shibasaburō discovers the infectious agent of the bubonic plague and publishes his findings in The Lancet.
1898
700 Greek civilians, 17 British guards and the British Consul of Crete are killed by a Turkish mob in Heraklion, Greece.
1914
World War I: The library of the Catholic University of Leuven is deliberately destroyed by the German Army. Hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable volumes and Gothic and Renaissance manuscripts are lost.
1944
World War II: Paris is liberated by the Allies.
1945
Ten days after World War II ends with Japan announcing its surrender, armed supporters of the Communist Party of China kill Baptist missionary John Birch, regarded by some of the American right as the first victim of the Cold War.
1948
The House Un-American Activities Committee holds first-ever televised congressional hearing: “Confrontation Day” between Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss.

***

An MIT research paper found that 95% of companies have not seen a meaningful return on investment from their generative AI projects.

***

Is economics really "common sense?"

***

Chicago reported 498 homicides between July 2024 and June 2025, 120 fewer than during any 12 months back to June 2016, analysis of police data showed. Only 133 arrests were made. Is that good? Is 500 murders a tolerable number in a free society? Is this just a free society baseline? Is that the best a free society can expect?


***

Uber received more than 400,000 complaints of sexual assault or sexual misconduct in the US against the ride-hailing app’s drivers between 2017 and 2022.
The attacks amounted to one nearly every eight minutes, the New York Times reported, citing unsealed court records.

Those are huge numbers.

But Uber reported 1.2 billion rides in the U.S. in one year in 2022.

***

Skenes

Skenes has been so spectacular that there’s now a reasonable case to be made that the 23-year-old is having the best start to a major-league career of any pitcher in more than a century.

Since joining the Pirates last May, Skenes has been practically untouchable. He leads MLB over that span with a 2.07 ERA, having allowed 66 earned runs in 287 innings. He ranks second in opponent batting average (.198) behind Cincinnati’s Hunter Greene and second in opponent on-base-plus-slugging percentage (.558) behind Detroit’s Tarik Skubal.

Since the start of the live-ball era in 1920, when baseball truly began to resemble the modern game, only one other pitcher went this long into his career with an ERA as low as Skenes’s. That was Vida Blue, who posted a 2.01 ERA over his first 50 starts with the Oakland Athletics from 1969 to 1972.

The game has changed in many ways since Blue burst onto the scene, but one of the most dramatic is how starting pitchers are used now. Blue averaged about 7⅔ innings in his first 50 starts. Skenes is averaging closer to 5⅔ and has yet to throw a nine-inning complete game in MLB. In 1971, Blue had two separate outings in the same month where he lasted 11 innings.

But the object for a pitcher is to prevent runs, and in terms of sheer dominance, it’s hard to argue with what Skenes has done. Again dating back to the start of the live-ball era—105 years ago—only four pitchers have put together consecutive seasons with ERAs under 2.00. They are Hal Newhouser, Sandy Koufax, Greg Maddux and Clayton Kershaw. As soon as Kershaw is eligible, all four will be in the Hall of Fame.

Skenes, whose ERA currently sits at 2.02, has a chance to join that club—in his first two seasons in the major leagues. (Last month, Skenes became the first pitcher ever to begin his career by starting back-to-back All-Star Games.)--from WSJ

Baseball is a hard game, especially when you don't play it well. The Pirates start three position players who hit under .200, one who hits .206, and one who hits .210. They are 25 games out of first place in their weak division--and deserve to be. But Skenes--who does not have a winning record--is fascinating to watch. And he is part of an increasingly fascinating staff. The Pirates lead the league in shutouts pitched. With Skenes, Burrows, Oliviedo (recently reactivated), and Ashcraft, their number one starter at the beginning of last year, Keller, has been bumped down to number five. And the occasionally spectacular Jarad Jones is returning from surgery next year. More, their highly regarded Chandler made his first appearance in relief and looked strong, throwing 100 mph. This staff, on the front end at least, looks good.

Of course, anything can happen. The Pirates are an organization not motivated by quality. And they can do wonders when accidentally encountering talent. The best hitter in college baseball in several years can't hit for them. Their first round pick, Priester, could not pitch a lick for them, but, after being traded, is doing just fine in Milwaukee. And pitchers don't bat.

Nonetheless, struggle is the core of the first three acts of any play and can be fun regardless of the denouement.

Sunday/Spiritual Effort

On this day:

79
Mount Vesuvius erupts. The cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae are buried in volcanic ash (note: this traditional date has been challenged, and many scholars believe that the event occurred on October 24).
410
The Visigoths under King Alaric I begin to pillage Rome.
1349
Six thousand Jews are killed in Mainz after being blamed for the bubonic plague.
1391
Jews are massacred in Palma de Mallorca.
1456
The printing of the Gutenberg Bible is completed.
1662
The Act of Uniformity requires England to accept the Book of Common Prayer.
1682
William Penn receives the area that is now the state of Delaware, and adds it to his colony of Pennsylvania
1814
British troops invade Washington, D.C. and burn down the White House and several other buildings.
1857
The Panic of 1857 begins, setting off one of the most severe economic crises in United States history.
1929
Second day of the two-day Hebron massacre during the 1929 Palestine riots: Arab attacks on the Jewish community in Hebron in the British Mandate of Palestine, result in the death of 65-68 Jews and the remaining Jews being forced to leave the city.
1949
The treaty creating NATO goes into effect.
1991
Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
1991
Ukraine declares itself independent from the Soviet Union.

***


In an interview, Kevin O'Leary offered five nuggets of wisdom: Stop wasting money, focus your efforts (three goals a day), listen more than you speak (learn when to hold back), have the money talk on the third date (!), and ensure kids learn to fend for themselves.


***

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. — Theodore Roosevelt

***

Statistics lead to generalization and subsetting. Is that unconstitutional?

***

Sunday/Spiritual Effort

Today is the "First will be last" gospel where Christ explains that entrance to heaven is difficult (the door 'narrow') and man must 'strive' to attain entry.

There is a curious observation here. Man may not be interested in murder and pillaging but, apparently, heaven is not attainable by default.

The remarkable St. Teresa of Avila claimed to have regularly conversed with God. One day, she asked why there were so few saints. He answered, "Because men do not desire holiness."

SatStats

On this day:
79
Mount Vesuvius begins stirring, on the feast day of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.
1305
Sir William Wallace is executed for High Treason at Smithfield in London.
1572
Mob violence against Huguenots in Paris – St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre.
1775
King George III declares that the American colonies exist in a state of open and avowed rebellion.
1839
The United Kingdom captures Hong Kong as a base as it prepares for war with Qing China. The ensuing 3-year conflict will later be known as the First Opium War.
1914
World War I: Japan declares war on Germany and bombs Qingdao, China.
1927
Sacco and Vanzetti are executed.
1929
Hebron Massacre during the 1929 Palestine riots: Arab attack on the Jewish community in Hebron in the British Mandate of Palestine, continuing until the next day, resulted in the death of 65-68 Jews and the remaining Jews being forced to leave the city.
1939
World War II: Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression treaty, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In a secret addition to the pact, the Baltic states, Finland, Romania, and Poland are divided between the two nations.
1942
World War II: Beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad.

***

No. 3 Pitt volleyball opened the season with a loss against No. 1 Nebraska.

***

This is from George Will:
"As flaccid as a boned fish, Donald Trump crumpled quicker than even Vladimir Putin probably anticipated. The former KGB agent, currently indicted for war crimes, felt no need to negotiate with the man-child. The president’s thunderous demands — a 50-day deadline, a 10-day deadline, “severe consequences,” a ceasefire before negotiations — all were just noise. 

. . .

When Dwight Eisenhower asked Gen. Georgy Zhukov, the foremost Soviet hero of World War II, how the Red Army cleared minefields, Zhukov replied that it marched through them. Putin has been marinated in lore about that war, and about “the West” trying “to cancel a whole 1,000-year culture, our people.” He is delusional, but serious. 

. . .

Eighty-five summers ago, the United States was saluted by Britain’s prime minister in the House of Commons. On a dark day (June 4, 1940) he anticipated the day when “the New World, with all its power and might, steps forward to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”

Now it is the Old World’s turn to rescue the United States. It needs to be liberated from the chimera that it has no substantial stake in the outcome of high-intensity, state-on-state violence inflicted by a nuclear power obedient to a man who has actual beliefs: crackpot, but real, and menacing."

Old World Europe certainly has a big stake in this. And it's wonderful they are rising to the occasion. My only question is, did they respond to Russia--or to the 'boned fish?'

***

Will one month of a National Guard presence in Washington really solve the problem of crime in D.C.?

***

SatStats

More than half of NYC MTA riders evade their fares, which costs the MTA $315 million annually.

*

Of the 30 cities that reported the most murders to the FBI in 2023, murders are down in 26 of them. We’re seeing a 20% drop in murder, a 10% drop in violent crime, and a 13% drop in property crime. Whereas in 2024 murder fell a lot and auto theft fell a lot, now it’s pretty much that everything is falling a considerable amount.--Asher

*

AI scored a perfect 100 on the medical exam

*

JLL estimates $170bn of assets will require construction lending or permanent financing this year. Between now and 2029, however, global spending on data centres will hit almost $3tn, according to Morgan Stanley analysts. Of that, just $1.4tn is forecast to come from capital expenditure by Big Tech groups, leaving a mammoth $1.5tn of financing required from investors and developers.

*

The UK ultimately lost international power because a very large percentage of its population left for greener and more pleasant lands overseas. However, the scale of emigration was so large that, by the 1980 census counts the US had more people of British descent than the current UK does.

*

Google now spends more on physical capital like data centers ($85 billion / year) than the entire UK defense budget ($79 billion / year).

*

In the U.S. the 2023 child poverty rate was lower than in any year before 2018. By at least one measure, it was at an all-time low in 2022, with 2023 the second-best year ever.

*

In the second quarter of this year, India exported more smartphones to the U.S. market than China did

*

A new Richmond Fed study finds labor productivity in construction has fallen more than 30 percent since 1970. Over the same half-century, overall US productivity doubled.

*

Real median personal income has risen by 50 percent since the 1970s. Hourly wages, adjusted for inflation, are up substantially since the 1990s. And the hourly wages of the bottom third of Americans are up by even more: over 40 percent.

*

The original estimate for the number of jobs in the month of June was 159,724,000. Then, after the revision with better data, it was 159,466,000. That’s a 0.161 percent correction, based on higher-quality information that didn’t exist at the time of the original estimate. This disparity stimulated Trump to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics

*

The WashPo says there are 55 million foreigners with American visas. Plus illegals.
Pew, as of June 2025:
51.9 million immigrants lived in the U.S.
15.4% of all U.S. residents were immigrants, down from a recent historic high of 15.8%.
19% of the U.S. labor force was immigrants, down from 20% and by over 750,000 workers since January.

*

OnlyFans took in $7.2bn from its subscribers in 2024, up from $6.6bn the previous year.

*

Mamdani and the Dreaded NGO

On this day:
565
St. Columba reports seeing a monster in Loch Ness, Scotland.
1485
The Battle of Bosworth Field, the death of Richard III and the end of the House of Plantagenet.
1642
Charles I calls the English Parliament traitors. The English Civil War begins.
1780
James Cook’s ship HMS Resolution returns to England (Cook having been killed on Hawaii during the voyage).
1831
Nat Turner’s slave rebellion commences just after midnight in Southampton, Virginia, leading to the deaths of more than 50 whites and several hundred African Americans who are killed in retaliation for the uprising.
1910
Korea is annexed by Japan with the signing of the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty, beginning a period of Japanese rule of Korea that lasted until the end of World War II.
1922
Michael Collins, Commander-in-Chief of the Irish Free State Army is shot dead during an Anti-Treaty ambush at Béal na mBláth, County Cork, during the Irish Civil War.
1963
American Joe Walker in an X-15 test plane reaches an altitude of 106 km.
1992
FBI HRT sniper Lon Horiuchi shoots and kills Vicki Weaver during an 11-day siege at her home at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

***

The owner of OnlyFans was paid $701m (£523m) in dividends last year

***

I’ll not grant the proposition that an effective means of harming a rival nation is to engage in so-called “dumping.” If the Chinese really are selling goods to Americans at prices below the costs the Chinese incur to supply these goods, they are impoverishing themselves as they enrich us. --Bordeaux

***

Barring death, in 2029, the queen (consort) of Malaysia will be an Ulsterwoman. Her bio reads like she's the queen of the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuanku_Zara_Salim

***

Mamdani and the Dreaded NGO

Zohran Mamdani first reached elected office in 2021. He defeated four-term Democratic incumbent state assemblywoman Aravella Simotas, a 46-year-old former lawyer, City Hall staffer, and Community Planning Board member who belongs to the century-old Greek immigrant community of northwestern Queens. Mamdani, then 29 years old, had been rejected from The Nation’s internship program after graduating from college. He then tried to launch a rap career and worked as a music coordinator on a Disney-produced film directed by his mother, Mira Nair. His sole qualification for public office was his relatively brief time as a housing counselor for Chhaya Community Development Corporation, an organization that works with low- and middle-income South Asian communities in Jackson Heights, in central Queens.

To dismiss this résumé as a multinational trust-fund kid’s laughable excuse for a career is also to misunderstand how power is now organized within Democratic Party verticals in major cities. Groups like Chhaya have become one of the primary instruments of public policy in New York, where social programs are often carried out through the public subsidy of nonprofit private-sector partners—groups with the freedom to be less accountable, more sectarian, and more ideological than government tends to be. In New York City, nonprofits received $20 billion in public money in 2021. Billion. In 2019, Chhaya got $595,000 in government grants, accounting for one-third of the organization’s revenue. This public largesse didn’t mean Mamdani was drawing a large salary at taxpayers’ expense—though, as the son of a renowned historian and a globally famous director, he didn’t really need one. According to the group’s 990 form from 2019, Chayya split $729,000 in nonexecutive compensation between 27 employees.

The public-private trough would prove even more helpful to Mamdani when he entered politics. In New York City, a taxpayer-funded matching program pays candidates eight dollars for every one dollar they raise from city residents whose donations are $250 or lower. This is twice what New York’s public match rate was in 1998, and a generous multiplier by national standards. Actually, by any standards. The taxpayer actually funds the ambitious politician. And this is without regard to his beliefs.

So far, Mamdani’s campaign for mayor has received $2.5 million in private funds and $9.8 million in public funds.

A lot of New Yorkers now have jobs and backgrounds very similar to Mamdani’s. New York is thought of as the sink-or-swim epicenter of American capitalism, but that’s not true anymore. The city is home to more than 600,000 jobs in the nonprofit sector and a roughly equal number of jobs in the government sector. Read that again. Nonprofits now employ nearly 17 percent of the city’s total private-sector workforce. 17%. And nationally, the rate is 10%. How much is lost to the economy when those guys call off sick?

Wage growth in the nonprofit sector healthily outpaced the rest of the private sector statewide in New York between 2017 and 2022, 29.3 to 25.3 percent.

Nonprofit-dominated sectors are also adding jobs at a far higher rate than any other part of the city’s economy. Of 67,000 new jobs added in New York City in the year before May of 2025, 63,800 were in “private education and health services.” During the same period, the city created an anemic 600 jobs in trade, transportation, and utilities and lost 4,900 jobs in manufacturing and construction.

Between 2010 and 2015, the time when leadership of the city shifted from the centrist liberal patrician Michael Bloomberg to the progressive Bill de Blasio, the city added 158,000 total jobs in the nonprofit-heavy health care, education, media, and arts sectors, compared to 58,400 total in traditional outer-borough industries like construction, transportation, wholesale trade, manufacturing, and real estate.

The subsidized classes rose in power as the city’s productive industries faded. New York has gone from about 1 million manufacturing jobs in 1955 to fewer than 45,000 today, with construction and wholesale seeing a similar decline during the same period, from 750,000 to a shade under 500,000 jobs. The NYPD, a longtime source of lower-middle-class employment and social mobility, has gone from 40,000 active officers in 2000 to 34,000 today. The multigenerational working class—the remnant of the city’s mid-to-late-20th-century mix of African Americans, Puerto Ricans, Irish, and Italians—has shrunk in relative size and power. New York’s Black population has contracted this century, from 1.9 million in 2000 to 1.7 million in 2020. Similarly, the city’s Puerto Rican population plunged from 715,000 to 574,000 between 2017 and 2022 alone.

This is culled from a recent Tablet article and is not presented to be particularly critical of Mamdani. The non-profit world might be an occupation of last resort, but it is also a source of highly leveraged political influence, an influence that many underestimate. And this world, unlike most of the world, is not self-correcting; it fosters isolated and peripheral personal notions and projects--like the inept Mandani and his goofy ideas--that we poor working folks will be forced to subsidize, then clean up.

One wonders, with the government shutting down the economy for eighteen months, subsidizing the economy with unsustainable debt, and redoing failed social and economic experiments, how long the beleaguered working culture can do this.

Subverting Democracy in the Name of Democracy

On this day:
1689
The Battle of Dunkeld in Scotland.
1770
James Cook formally claims eastern Australia for Great Britain, naming it New South Wales
1808
Battle of Vimeiro: British and Portuguese forces led by General Arthur Wellesley defeat French force under Major-General Jean-Andoche Junot near the village of Vimeiro, Portugal, the first Anglo-Portuguese victory of the Peninsular War.
1831
Nat Turner leads black slaves and free blacks in a rebellion.
1863
Lawrence, Kansas is destroyed by Confederate guerrillas Quantrill’s Raiders in the Lawrence Massacre.
1879
The Virgin Mary, along with St. Joseph and St. John the Evangelist, reportedly appears at Knock Shrine in Knock, County Mayo, Ireland.
1918
World War I: The Second Battle of the Somme begins.
1942
World War II: a Nazi flag is installed atop the Mount Elbrus.
1942
World War II: the Guadalcanal campaign: American forces defeat an attack by Imperial Japanese Army soldiers in the Battle of the Tenaru
1945
Physicist Harry K. Daghlian, Jr. is fatally irradiated in a criticality incident during an experiment with the Demon core at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
1961
Motown releases what would be its first #1 hit, “Please Mr. Postman” by The Marvelettes.
1963
Xa Loi Pagoda raids: the Army of the Republic of Vietnam Special Forces loyal to Ngo Dinh Nhu, brother of President Ngo Dinh Diem, vandalises Buddhist pagodas across the country, arresting thousands and leaving an estimated hundreds dead.
1968
Soviet Union-dominated Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia, crushing the Prague Spring; on the same day, Nicolae Ceauşescu, leader of Communist Romania, publicly condemns the Soviet maneuver, encouraging the Romanian population to arm itself against possible Soviet reprisals.
1991
Coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev collapses.

***

A bullet broke the glass in Andy Reid's practice facility office while the Chiefs' coach was working alone in it last year, The Kansas City Star reported Wednesday night. In all, three gunshots struck the three-story facility that night, sources told the Star.

***

De Blasio packed New York’s rent guidelines board and instructed it to freeze all regulated rents on three occasions, in 2015, 2016, and 2020. Did that help New York's apartment 'affordability crisis?' Is Mamdani just more of the same?

***

Two-time major champion and current world No. 3, Coco Gauff, has fired her coach Matthew Daly, just days before the start of the 2025 US Open.

***

When someone is said to be "giving back to his community," what exactly is he returning?

***

So, during the 'peace talks,' Russia fired over 600 missiles and drones at Ukraine overnight. 

Could we just give Trump the Nobel Peace Prize so some reality can descend on the conditions of this invasion?

***

Subverting Democracy in the Name of Democracy

Voting is but a part of democracy. The Russians have a national vote, too.

The good Mr. Gerry, for whom this disgraceful process is named, was no hack. Born into a wealthy merchant family, Gerry vocally opposed British colonial policy in the 1760s and played an active role in organizing the resistance during the early stages of the American Revolutionary War. Elected to the Second Continental Congress, Gerry signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation. He was one of three men who attended the Constitutional Convention in 1787 but refused to sign the Constitution because it initially did not include a Bill of Rights. After its ratification, he was elected to the first United States Congress, where he actively participated in drafting and passing the Bill of Rights, advocating for individual and state liberties. Gerry was at first opposed to the idea of political parties(wiki). He was the Governor of Massachusetts and was elected Vice President under Madison in 1812. He died in office.

Nor was this practice new. Manipulating voting districts to secure political power existed even before the nation. In 18th-century England, political operatives created “rotten boroughs” with only a few eligible voters, making it easy for politicians to buy votes and win seats. 

After English colonists founded the United States, gerrymandering “began almost immediately,” says Thomas Hunter, a political science professor at the University of West Georgia.

Gerrymandering is a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise certain voters and distort elections. Its intent is to benefit the political class and to spite the voter. Amazingly, it is illegal to do this based on race, but only on race. What honest citizen would want this? And why?

It can only be that the disenfranchised voter is thought to deserve to be.

Voting is a contest of beliefs. One votes to express a belief, with the many beliefs available, you will vote for the superior one. But inherent to the democracy is the belief that you will accept the result of the vote, that the majority may not see your way as the best.

The Americans have a structural advantage; they have a Constitution that limits the power of the state, carefully considered guidelines that channel votes within a confining framework. The American vote is a nuance within that structure.

With gerrymandering, like voting fraud, a thief attempts to distort the system for his own benefit. He always disguises the motive as a need to defeat an evil opponent or philosophy--the 'no effort is too much' argument--but the objective is to benefit the politician and his organization. The voting box is no longer a contest, it is a command.

So, gerrymandering, voter fraud, and court manipulation are all means to subvert the letter and the spirit of America's founding documents for the betterment of a political few. Any abuse is allowed to advance the kingdom of the righteous. And the righteous thief.

And in modern America, it is brandished proudly.

 

 

Shaping Cornerstones

42% of people in line to meet Disney characters are childless adults. This has been incorporated into Disney's business model. It's probably in political campaign modeling, too.

***

Volcanoes have crept into the humanity-contracting solutions to CO2 production. They have become a metaphor for natural CO2 dangers rather than for how unpredictable and adaptive the natural world is.

***

The Russians have criticized the European meeting as without any 'constructive ideas' about Ukraine. Somehow, the goal of a Peace Prize for Trump has swamped the discussion and obscured how bad and dangerous the insincere Russians are.

***

Shaping Cornerstones

Mamdani's goofy plan for the government to take over grocery stores was received with a bitten lip, even by his supporters. Why? No American takes governmental entrepreneurial efforts seriously. Directed commercial efforts invariably fail. It has always been one of the nation's hidden advantages over its authoritarian enemies. Often, it is the kiss of death.

More, government ownership is simply not within the American beliefs. The Constitution begins with statements of citizen rights and government limitations. The statists have always spoken a slightly different language that the Americans don't quite understand.

Against this backdrop, Trump wants the nation to buy 15% of Intel. Intel is in trouble, and the philosophy-free Trump may just want to help.

But Mamdani has good intentions, too. And undermining foundations is never innocuous.

Three Questions

Trailer of a well-reviewed horror movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpThntO9ixc

Three Questions

A few years ago, a poll found that whereas 63 percent of voters said they viewed the Founding Fathers as heroes, among those under thirty, that figure shrank to 39 percent. Meanwhile, fully 31 percent of U.S. voters under 30 said they saw the Founders as “villains.”

"Villains."

Can a culture that does not hold itself in high regard, survive?

*

Fossil fuels are cheap, available, and efficient. Their substitutes are less so. Fossil fuel substitution suggests energy decline, an inevitable energy contraction. There will be a general and widespread self-sacrifice, all for the greater good.

 

Shutting down the world's energy will create circumstances considerably deeper and more serious than can be borne by a stiff upper lip. Production will decline. Living standards will decline. Economies will implode. Agricultural and industrial production will be reduced, sometimes to nothing. People will die. Some cultures will suffer disproportionately.  

What if some resist? Or, worse, what if they see their energy-less neighbors as an opportunity for exploitation? Or revenge? What if some see it to their advantage?

What if some nations see a sliding scale of 'self-sacrifice'?

*

What is more of a threat to the Republic, the Jan. 6 riot, or Packing the Supreme Court?

Question: Education

 

Question: Education

If we should reward success and punish failure, should we increase educational spending in schools that demonstrate success and decrease funding for those schools that do poorly?

Gospel/CRT and Mothers-in-Law

On this day:
1807
Robert Fulton’s North River Steamboat leaves New York City for Albany, New York on the Hudson River, inaugurating the first commercial steamboat service in the world.
1862
American Civil War: Major General J.E.B. Stuart is assigned command of all the cavalry of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.
1862
Indian Wars: The Dakota War of 1862 begins in Minnesota as Lakota warriors attack white settlements along the Minnesota River.
1918
Bolshevik revolutionary leader Moisei Uritsky is assassinated.
1943
World War II: The Royal Air Force begins Operation Hydra, the first air raid of the Operation Crossbow strategic bombing campaign against Germany’s V-weapon programme.
1943
World War II: The U.S. Eighth Air Force suffers the loss of 60 bombers on the Schweinfurt–Regensburg mission.
1943
World War II: The U.S. Seventh Army under General George S. Patton arrives in Messina, Italy, followed several hours later by the British 8th Army under Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery, thus completing the Allied conquest of Sicily.
1950
Hill 303 massacre: American POWs were massacred by North Korean Army.
1970
Venera Program: Venera 7 launched. It will later become the first spacecraft to successfully transmit data from the surface of another planet (Venus).
1998
Monica Lewinsky scandal: US President Bill Clinton admits in taped testimony that he had an “improper physical relationship” with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. On the same day he admits before the nation that he “misled people” about the relationship.
2005
Over 500 bombs are set off by terrorists at 300 locations in 63 out of the 64 districts of Bangladesh
2008
American swimmer Michael Phelps becomes the first person to win eight gold medals in one Olympic Games.

***

ESPN will not air Spike Lee's docuseries on Colin Kaepernick, citing 'creative differences'

***

Marathon Fusion says it has discovered a method for turning mercury into gold.

***

They [these leftists] seem to want a regression to the Dark Ages: an unsophisticated economy with no landlords, no insurers, no complex markets. They see complexity in the economy, the reason for which is beyond their comprehension, as parasitic.--Wolfe

***

“Is there anything – ANYTHING – Big Tech won’t do for a quick buck?” Sen. Hawley wrote in a post on X announcing an investigation into the accusation that Meta's AI system flirts with children. 

As shallow and grasping as politicians?

***

Gospel/CRT and Mothers-in-Law

Christ taught a religion of peace and gentleness, empathy and compassion. But it was disruptive and, as such, wrenching and painful. The spiritual elements are in contrast to the very emotional and material gifts that enable success and advancement in the world. Gifts that allowed the species to evolve. Displacing them requires serious effort because the material is more than natural; it is advantageous. 

To rise above the material requires the identification of those currents so basic in us, so helpful in our early development, and to substitute Christ's spirituality. And the foundation stone of that old world--that ancient homo sapien, that Old Testament--is identity. 

Joining is also a rejecting.

We are a product of our ability to see ourselves in a larger context, as a part of a larger group of people: Family, Friends, Community, Tribe, Nation, and Race. That identification creates opponents and strengthens us against them. What is called "xenophobia" by our moderns was, in history, a lifesaver. And now, in our more crowded world, a killer. Christ urges us to remove the old, restrictive mindset of exclusion and embrace a new Testament of inclusion, universal acceptance for all humanity.

A conflict that begins with the self and spreads out to the self's

intimates. An overwriting of a code that is used as a rallying cry.

In today's Gospel, Christ says how hard that evolution will be:

Jesus said to his disciples:
“I have come to set the earth on fire,
and how I wish it were already blazing!
There is a baptism with which I must be baptized,
and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!
Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?
No, I tell you, but rather division.
From now on a household of five will be divided,
three against two and two against three;
a father will be divided against his son
and a son against his father,
a mother against her daughter
and a daughter against her mother,
a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”

Well, at least the first part of it is working.

SatStats

On this day:
1792
Maximilien Robespierre presents the petition of the Commune of Paris to the Legislative Assembly, which demanded the formation of a revolutionary tribunal.
1793
French Revolution: a levée en masse is decreed by the National Convention.
1812
War of 1812: American General William Hull surrenders Fort Detroit without a fight to the British Army.
1819
Seventeen people die and over 600 are injured in cavalry charges at a public meeting at St. Peter’s Field, Manchester, England.
1841
U.S. President John Tyler vetoes a bill which called for the re-establishment of the Second Bank of the United States. Enraged Whig Party members riot outside the White House in the most violent demonstration on White House grounds in U.S. history.
1869
Battle of Acosta Ñu: A Paraguayan battalion made up of children is massacred by the Brazilian Army during the War of the Triple Alliance.
1896
Skookum Jim Mason, George Carmack and Dawson Charlie discover gold in a tributary of the Klondike River in Canada, setting off the Klondike Gold Rush.
1920
Ray Chapman of the Cleveland Indians is hit on the head by a fastball thrown by Carl Mays of the New York Yankees, and dies early the next day. Chapman was the second player to die from injuries sustained in a Major League Baseball game, the first being Doc Powers in 1909.
1929
The 1929 Palestine riots break out in the British Mandate of Palestine between Arabs and Jews and continue until the end of the month. In total, 133 Jews and 116 Arabs are killed.
1942
World War II: The two-person crew of the U.S. naval blimp L-8 disappears without a trace on a routine anti-submarine patrol over the Pacific Ocean. The blimp drifts without her crew and crash-lands in Daly City, California.

*

Yet it is important to realize that the Revolution suddenly and effectively ended the cultural climate that had allowed black slavery, as well as other forms of bondage and unfreedom. With the revolutionary movement, black slavery became excruciatingly conspicuous in a way that it had not been in the older monarchial society with its many calibrations and degrees of unfreedom; and Americans in 1775-1776 began attacking it with a vehemence that was inconceivable earlier.--Wood

*

Intel and the Trump administration are in talks about the U.S. government taking a financial stake in the chip maker.

*

The White House confirmed to Forbes an Axios report that the West Wing created a scorecard rating 553 companies on how strongly they have supported President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” The scorecards also take into account companies’ social media posts, press releases, video testimonials, advertisements, and attendance at White House events, Axios reported.

*

SatStats

Over 26 years, the real (relative) price of Day Care and Preschool has increased by 36%, while Pet Services have gone up by 28%.

*

The fraction of children living with two parents is the highest it’s been since 1991. But there are also fewer teen pregnancies.

*

China alone accounts for almost 1000 hotels that include Vienna in their name, far more than any country, including Austria itself.

*

Over 100,000 accounts are closed each month on Chess.com because of cheating.

*

Young men with a college degree now have the same unemployment rate as young men who didn’t go to college, completely erasing the graduate employment premium.

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The average South African woman weighs more than the average South African man.

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A recent modeling study concluded that the global coronavirus vaccination campaign saved 2.5 million lives from 2020 to 2024, mainly among the elderly.

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6% of job seekers said they’d participated in interview fraud, either posing as someone else or having someone stand in for them, according to a survey by Gartner. The research group predicts that by 2028, one in four job-candidate profiles worldwide will be fake.

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The share of renters who are aged 65 and older has increased 30%, 

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From July 2024 to July 2025, real average hourly earnings increased 1.2 percent, seasonally adjusted. This, combined with a 0.3 percent increase in the average workweek, resulted in a 1.4 percent increase in real average weekly earnings over this period.

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MAID, Canada's euthanasia program, now accounts for about one in 20 deaths in Canada—more than Alzheimer’s and diabetes combined—surpassing countries where assisted dying has been legal for far longer.

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Fertility numbers:

--The UN projects the U.S. fertility rate will remain roughly stable through the end of the century at about 1.6.
--Total fertility rates have declined in every world region since 1950.
--Africa is the only world region where the fertility rate is currently higher than the global replacement-level fertility. Africa’s fertility rate is 4.0 births per woman, falling from 6.5. Europe has the world’s lowest fertility rate at 1.4.

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I am ashamed that I enjoyed this. It has nothing to do with numbers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm6GNHPxNg8