Everyday People

On this day:

1791
The National Constituent Assembly in Paris is dissolved; Parisians hail Maximilien Robespierre and Jérôme Pétion as “incorruptible patriots”.
1882
Thomas Edison’s first commercial hydroelectric power plant (later known as Appleton Edison Light Company) begins operation on the Fox River in Appleton, Wisconsin, United States.
1888
Jack the Ripper kills his third and fourth victims, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes.
1927
Babe Ruth becomes the first baseball player to hit 60 home runs in a season.
1938
At 2:00 am, Britain, France, Germany and Italy sign the Munich Agreement, allowing Germany to occupy the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.

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Nicolas Dufourcq, the head of France’s state investment bank Bpifrance, warned that Europe is becoming “doubly colonized” by Chinese industry and U.S. tech.

***

Speaking at the FutureChina Global Forum 2025, Dalio warned that the excessive spending and spiraling debt by the U.S. government has become “unsustainable” and that the world’s largest economy is facing a major fiscal crisis that will put its monetary order at risk.

He added that all currencies risk losing their appeal as repositories of wealth when global governments appear reluctant to rein in excessive spending and borrowing, making gold and non-fiat currencies more viable stores of value.

Dalio urged investors to diversify their assets with around 10% of their portfolio in gold.

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Russell Wilson needs to keep starting the entire season in order for that 4th-rounder to materialize for the Steelers. And if he plays less than 40% of the snaps, his contract could fall all the way to the 6th round.

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The overwhelming majority of prostitutes are seduced, coerced, or outright trafficked into the flesh trade, but, apparently, Mamdani thinks it only an unusual career path

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Everyday People

When discussing the epidemic of mindless violence against the defenseless, one never hears the possibility of simple stupidity. Craziness and homicidal ideologies are easier targets. But the bell curve is unforgiving. Idiots are everywhere, and many are armed.

Two new news stories:

Philadelphia is planning to raise the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) flag outside City Hall in honor of the regime's founding. This in the city whose mayor cannot spell 'eagles.' The CCP flag has been flown there twice before, in 2017 and 2019.

In other news, the Chicago Teachers Union honored a convicted cop killer on social media Thursday, praising Joanne Chesimard as a “revolutionary fighter” following news of her death in Cuba.

The union’s official X account posted:

"Rest in Power, Rest in Peace, Assata Shakur.

Today we honor the life and legacy of a revolutionary fighter, a fierce writer, a revered elder of Black liberation, and a leader of freedom whose spirit continues to live in our struggle.

Assata refused to be silenced."

A jury convicted Chesimard, before she became Assata Shakur, of first-degree murder in 1977 for shooting New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster during a routine traffic stop on the New Jersey Turnpike.
Two years into her life sentence, Chesimard escaped from Clinton Correctional Facility for Women when armed accomplices broke her out in 1979. She fled to Mexico, then Cuba, where Fidel Castro’s government granted her asylum.

Is it possible these political leaders do not understand the foolishness of publicly honoring murder cults? Is it possible that the people we entrust to educate our children don't see that honoring lightweight homicidal revolutionary groups is a bad idea? Is this proof of alien life? Or just more examples of the success of mainstreaming morons?

Sunday/Another Lazarus

On this day:

48 BC
Pompey the Great is assassinated on the orders of King Ptolemy of Egypt after landing in Egypt.
235
Pope Pontian resigns. He and Hippolytus, church leader of Rome, are exiled to the mines of Sardinia.
935
Saint Wenceslas is murdered by his brother, Boleslaus I of Bohemia.
995
Members of Slavník’s dynasty – Spytimír, Pobraslav, Pořej and Čáslav are murdered by Boleslaus’s son, Boleslaus II the Pious.
1066
William the Bastard (as he was known at the time) invades England beginning the Norman Conquest.
1787
The newly completed United States Constitution is voted on by the U.S. Congress to be sent to the state legislatures for approval.
1918
World War I: The Fifth Battle of Ypres begins.
1919
Race riots begin in Omaha, Nebraska, US.
1928
Sir Alexander Fleming notices a bacteria-killing mold growing in his laboratory, discovering what later became known as penicillin.
1939
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agree on a division of Poland after their invasion during World War II.
1971
The Parliament of the United Kingdom passes the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 banning the medicinal use of cannabis.
2008
SpaceX launches the first-ever private spacecraft, the Falcon 1 into orbit
2009
The military junta leading Guinea, headed by Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, raped, killed and wounded protesters during a protest rally in a stadium called Stade du 28 Septembre.

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Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm but the harm does not interest them. -T.S. Eliot, poet (26 Sep 1888-1965)

***

A Russian aerial bombardment that lasted more than 12 hours has killed at least four people and injured at least 70 others in Ukraine.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said the deaths all occurred in the capital, Kyiv, where many of the projectiles were aimed, and the victims included a 12-year-old girl.

The barrage - involving nearly 600 drones and several dozen missiles aimed at seven regions of Ukraine - is one of the heaviest in recent months.

***

Inventiveness and focus. These are particularly human qualities that are manifest in the creative human mind.
Does AI allow us to bypass these human qualities?

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Is violence against law officers a good position for a society to hold? Isn't it taking a position against yourself?

***

A Chicago Cub player left the team to attend the Memorial for Kirk, a close personal friend. He was criticized by team announcers over the air. But Sandy Koufax, a proud but non-observant Jew, declined to pitch Game 1 of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur, with the admiration of all.

***

Nato has vowed to upgrade its mission in the Baltic Sea after Denmark’s armed forces said unidentified drones were seen near the country’s military installations overnight.

Nothing is quite as much fun as nuclear provocation.

***

Steeler QB Skyler Thompson, while in Dublin with the team, was attacked and robbed on Friday.

***

Sunday/Another Lazarus

In today's gospel, Christ gives a parable that depicts the death of the beggar Lazarus at the door of an unnamed rich man who has ignored him. When they both die, the rich man goes to hell, Lazarus to heaven. In hell, the rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus back to his five brothers and warn them of the punishment suffered by those who dismiss the plight of their fellows. Abraham, in the parable, refuses, saying,

'If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets,
neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.'"

Biblical irony, yes, and funny, but grimly so. This gospel is traditionally discussed in its parallels to Christ's torture and death. But, isolated, this is a remarkable line, fitting more of Mencken than Christ. Here is another, less rewarding Lazarus than the friend Christ raises from the dead. And there is a head-shaking bitterness about it, as Christ predicts the ineffectiveness of His coming sacrifice. In its indirect praise of the Old Testament, it recalls the God of Lot, annoyed and discouraged by man.

A scary idea.

SatStats

On this day:

1066
William the Conqueror and his army set sail from the mouth of the Somme River, beginning the Norman Conquest of England.
1529
The Siege of Vienna begins when Suleiman I attacks the city.
1540
The Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) receives its charter from Pope Paul III.
1822
Jean-François Champollion announces that he has deciphered the Rosetta stone.
1854
The steamship SS Arctic sinks with 300 people on board. This marks the first great disaster in the Atlantic.

***

Wiki has an interesting snapshot of AI writing.

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“When we repudiate Kant’s discriminatory statements today on the basis of his own ethics and political philosophy, we can justifiably claim to have understood Kant better than he did himself.” --Willaschek

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NPR gibberish: "And for now, most countries are sticking with their commitments to reach the goals in the Paris Agreement, even if this report shows they're not on track to do that. "

***

For the first time in history, we have a pope who is eligible to be president.

***



SatStats

China accounts for more than 30% of global manufacturing, or more than America, Germany, Japan, and South Korea combined. 

*

The lifetime costs of "American Dream," according to Investopedia:

Retirement: $1.6 million
Owning a home: $957,594
Owning a new car: $900,346
Raising two children and paying for college: $876,092
Health care: $414,208
Annual vacations: $180,621
Pets: $39,381
Wedding: $38,200

Add them up, and you have a lifetime cost of $5,043,323.

Freedom isn't free.

*

Trump’s massive tax bill is expected to add $3.4 trillion to the federal deficits over the next decade.

*

The Penguins  are rebuilding and want to go young, yet they remain the oldest team in the NHL. 

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The average American with a bachelor’s degree earns about $2.8 million over a career.

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Norway offers parents 12 months of shared paid leave for birth and an additional year each afterward. It also made kindergarten (similar to a U.S. day care) a statutory right for all children age 1 or older in 2009.

Yet, Norway's fertility rate has dropped drastically from 1.98 in 2009 to 1.44 in 2024, according to official figures. The rate for 2023 (1.40) was the lowest recorded fertility rate in the country.

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About 486,000 people live full-time in an RV, which appears to be more than twice as many as in 2021, according to survey data from the RV Industry Association.

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OpenAI would need an additional $40 billion for each gigawatt of capacity it plans to build.  Ultimately, it plans to build 10 gigawatts of computing power — roughly equivalent to the power needed to run 8 million homes.

*

The Steelers lead the league, giving up at least 300 yards in the last 11 games.

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"The decline in birth rates has been driven primarily by fewer births to women in their teens and early 20s, and these are births that are very often unintended."-- demographer Karen Benjamin Guzzo 

*

Factories in China installed nearly 300,000 new robots last year, more than the rest of the world combined. Indian factories installed 9,100 robots.

Every Man a King

On this day:

1066: The Battle of Stamford Bridge marks the end of the Viking invasions of England.
1513
Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa reaches what would become known as the Pacific Ocean.
1906
In the presence of the king and before a great crowd, Leonardo Torres Quevedo successfully demonstrates the invention of the Telekino in the port of Bilbao, guiding a boat from the shore, in what is considered the birth of the remote control.
1957
Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, is integrated by the use of United States Army troops.

***

Apple, Oracle, Google, all started in a garage. They could've not have afforded to do this, and all of those companies took advantage of talent they couldn't find in the United States as they grew. I think what this does is hurt innovation long-term. I agree that it's going to push these really talented people into other countries. My attitude about this is if we educate you at MIT or at Harvard any school, we should give you a free ticket to stay here, get married, form a company, and build American businesses here. Why train them and kick them out?--Kevin O'Leary

***

What kind of culture is it where 'rhetoric' can kill? It sounds like a South Park skit.

***

How does an individual decide that a law, passed by a legally elected representative government, is illegal?

***

A Paris court on Thursday sentenced former French President Nicolas Sarkozy to five years in prison after finding him guilty of criminal conspiracy in an alleged scheme to finance his 2007 campaign with funds from Libya.

***

There is a statute of limitations on lying to Congress. Honesty has a shelf life.

***

Russia has turned to its ally North Korea to fill some of its military and labor shortages. Laws prevent women from working dangerous defense jobs--but not foreign women who are being recruited from Asia and Africa.

***


Every Man a King

We have become a society--not just politically but socially--that will be characterized in the future as insincere. In every walk of life, we lie. We lie about why we go to war, why we want to change the medical system, the purpose of taxes, the reasons for ethanol fuel, why we are supporting GM, why we did not support Lehman Brothers, why we have no charter schools, and why some students do badly regardless. And who knows what global temperatures mean now? Or the acid in the ocean? The way we are going, we will outlaw mathematics. And we lie to ourselves: the students with the lowest scores on achievement tests have the highest self-esteem. Political correctness supplants comity.  

And we expect insincerity. No one believes the nation's ubiquitous commercials. Evan a military guy can't answer straight. Nor does it matter. Obama says he won't pursue the torture question, and the next day he says he will. No one blinks. The guy who audited the S&L disaster in the 80s was interviewed in a hearing and was asked to estimate the amount of fraud in each government contract, and he said, "7% off the top and then whatever trickles down at each level." A culture that is completely crippled by lies. It is symbolically fitting that the greatest economic meltdown in history occurs because "no one trusts each other".

Now we have some serious domestic trouble. The leverage of free individuals is showing in its greatest strength: a strange, suicidal form of terrorism. The power of one man with a weapon or an explosive. Personal freedom abuts public safety. We need some help to think about this. And who do we have as a translator?  Who will make things clear? The boy who, for the last decade at least, has been crying "wolf!" Russia, Russia, Russia. The Hunter laptop. 1619. Biden's competence. Fascists. A president whose supporters "take him seriously but not literally."

The Dissemblers-in-Chief. 

We have no honest source of information. A culture without an interstitium, a culture where everyone is on their own.

And people are surprised by the "lone wolf?"

The Merging of Stupid and Madness

On this day:

1780
American Revolution: British Major John André is arrested as a spy by American soldiers exposing Benedict Arnold’s change of sides.
1806
Lewis and Clark return to St. Louis after exploring the Pacific Northwest of the United States.
1821
Tripolitsa, Greece, falls and 30,000 Turks are massacred during the Greek War of Independence.
1857
The Russian warship Lefort capsizes and sinks during a storm in the Gulf of Finland, killing all 826 aboard.

***

The U.S. Secret Service said Tuesday that it "dismantled a network of electronic devices located throughout the New York tristate area that were used to conduct multiple telecommunications-related threats directed towards senior U.S. government officials.

"This protective intelligence investigation led to the discovery of more than 300 co-located SIM servers and 100,000 SIM cards across multiple sites," the Secret Service said in a statement. "In addition to carrying out anonymous telephonic threats, these devices could be used to conduct a wide range of telecommunications attacks. This includes disabling cell phone towers, enabling denial of services attacks and facilitating anonymous, encrypted communication between potential threat actors and criminal enterprises. "

***

Right now, I understand that is Oregon, Ohio State, Texas… Texas Tech because of their oil money. There’s five or six [programs] out there that have unlimited NIL resources. It’s kind of scary for everybody else.”-- Indiana head football coach Curt Cignetti on multi-million NIL deals.
12 of Tech’s 18 transfer additions this cycle are rated as four-star players.The estimate on the money spent on the portal this year for Texas Tech? $28 million..

***

The Merging of Stupid and Madness  

“It was kind of an ultimate protest against the system. There comes a point when the only way you can make a statement is to pick up a gun.” 

Clyde Barrows? Trotsky?

These are the words of Sara Jane Moore, a doctor's wife, mother of five, who, in 1975, tried to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford. Why? There are explanations. She became interested in the crazy Symbionese Liberation Army. Squeaky Fromm, one of the crazy Manson girls, had just tried to kill Ford. But can you catch crazy?  

You can't get crazy by reading about crazies. Nor can you just sign up. One of the rules of psychology is that crazies do not join groups. A defining characteristic of madness is that they cannot bond. 

Manson might be mesmerizing, but lunatics will not line up shoulder to shoulder with him. Wendy Masako Yoshimura might be interesting and provocative, but...

Yet there they were, lining up, sacrificing for each other, doing horrible things to strangers... just like a real group of normal killers. But, of course, Sara Jane didn't have the one characteristic of normal killers: she had no motive--or, at least, had no good one. She said she was opposed to the Vietnam War, but Ford had nothing to do with the War, and it was already over when Mrs. Moore tried to kill him. And what about one of the victims joining the team? Patty Hearst was a quiet upper-class girl kidnapped and raped by one of these groups, and after a while, she was guarding the bank door with an automatic.

Is this beginning to sound familiar? 

One of the staples of modern thinking is that the bell curve inevitably allows for the festering of a certain number of lunatics who will eventually act to the detriment of the culture. The culture's defense, it is said, is testing and vigilance. But testing and vigilance would not find the staid suburban Sara Jane. Or Hearst. Or Kirk's killer, apparently a good citizen with no real history. 

We might mainstream the peripheral and hope to identify the dangerous outlier. But Mrs. Moore and Kirk's killer point to something new under the sun. These are relatively average people moved to vicious acts by deep passion and righteousness. People who are unbridled by societal constraints once they have come to grips with their virtue. Like Old Testament holy men, they recognize their calling and make the sacrifice. But they sacrifice you.

A culture where the unreasonable bleeds into the irrational.

"There comes a point when the only way you can make a statement is to pick up a gun." That sounds like a culture with a problem.

.

Sunday/Two Masters

 

On this day:

1780
American Revolutionary War: Benedict Arnold gives the British the plans to West Point.
1792
The National Convention declares France a republic and abolishes the monarchy.
1823
Joseph Smith is reportedly visited by the angel Moroni, who told him the location of gold plates, which Smith obtained four years later and partially translated into The Book of Mormon.
2003
The Galileo mission is terminated by sending the probe into Jupiter’s atmosphere, where it is crushed by the pressure at the lower altitudes.

***

This is what power really is: the privilege of ignoring anything you might find distasteful. -Oksana Zabuzhko, writer (b. 19 Sep 1960)

***

During World War II, Norwegians wore paperclips on their clothes to demonstrate their opposition to Nazism and anti-Semitism. By wearing paperclips, Norwegians responded to the ban on wearing badges or brooches bearing the image or initials of the Norwegian king, Haakon VII.

***

Governing by the seat of your pants report: President Donald Trump’s $100,000 fee for H-1B visas sowed mass confusion and panic among top U.S. companies overnight, forcing the White House to clarify the requirements.

***

A cyberattack at a provider of check-in and boarding systems disrupted operations on Saturday at several major European airports including London's Heathrow, the continent's busiest, causing flight delays and cancellations.
The disruption is the latest in a string of hacks targeting governments and companies across the world, hitting sectors from healthcare and defence to retail and autos. A recent breach at luxury carmaker Jaguar Land Rover brought its production to a halt.
Now, if you think these are not just pranks...

***

Israel's military kept up its assault on Gaza City and the wider Gaza Strip on Saturday, dismantling underground shafts and booby-trapped structures in attacks that killed at least 60 Palestinians, according to Gazan health authorities.
The assault came as 10 countries, including Australia, Belgium, Britain, and Canada, are scheduled to formally recognise an independent Palestinian state on Monday, ahead of the annual leaders' gathering at the U.N. General Assembly next week.

***

According to Dave Ramsey, “estimates show that a 65-year-old couple will need about $315,000 for health care costs in retirement. And that doesn’t even include any long-term care costs, which can run an average of around $108,400 a year in a nursing home or $54,000 a year for assisted living.”

***

Sunday/Two Masters

Today's is a difficult gospel, the "a man can not have two masters" gospel. In it, a wasteful steward is told by his master that he is to be fired. He responds by rewriting loans and debts others owe his master to create goodwill among them, so there will be a place for him to go after he is fired. The master, strangely, salutes his efforts as practical and prudent.

Christ is always contrasting the material and the spiritual, the worldly and the heavenly. And, of course, the worldly comes in second best. He never dismisses the world; we live in it. He just wants us to put it in perspective and give Caesar what is his and nothing more. The question underlying this is always "Does Caesar have anything, really?"

This is one of those moments where one would love to see Christ's expression as He delivers the parable. He had to be laughing. The master compliments the steward for his plan, because the master knows the plan. Changing the debts will not work. He is not deceived, and the steward's newfound friends will not be friends in the end. Still, the master congratulates the steward for playing by his own rules, the rules of the world. At least he is consistent.

But there is no reward for those proficient only in the world.

SatStats

On this day:

1187
Saladin begins the Siege of Jerusalem.
1378
Cardinal Robert of Geneva, called by some the Butcher of Cesena, is elected as Avignon Pope Clement VII, beginning the Papal schism.
1519
Ferdinand Magellan sets sail from Sanlúcar de Barrameda with about 270 men on his expedition to circumnavigate the globe.
1863
American Civil War: The Battle of Chickamauga ends.
1893
Charles Duryea and his brother road-test the first American-made gasoline-powered automobile.

***

Maurice Hauriou complained in the beginning of this century that the French Revolution “resulted in a perpetual state of revolution, because the mobility of the written law was no longer neutralized by certain customary institutions, and because the forces of change were stronger than those of stability.” All these men realized that of which Madison had been so aware during the critical period of American history, namely, the danger of the democratic legislator’s running amok and showering the world with laws and thus creating a state of legal insecurity.--Dietze

***

Trump may be philosophy-free, but he does not make that up in political smarts. His threats to remove the licenses of some anti-Trump networks make him look authoritarian and grasping. A terrible, unnecessary error.

***

What is the difference between Mamdani's goofy city-owned groceries and Trump's taking a position in Intel and putting the government on Intel's Board?
And is Trump's planned price control of pharmaceutical prices any different from NYC's rent control?

***

The Senate voted Thursday to confirm Kimberly Guilfoyle, the former Mrs. Gavin Newsom, Fox News host and ex-fiancée of Donald Trump Jr. as President Donald Trump's Ambassador to Greece.

***

A UFC fight is planned for the White House.

***

Hayes is out in Cincinnati with his back pain.

***

A pitcher for the Washington Wild Things has been charged with assault after punching a man in a Pittsburgh club last month. The victim suffered a brain bleed.

***

The street demonstrators are beginning to spell "Fascist" correctly.

***

SatStats

A Project Management Graduate Certificate from Harvard Extension School costs $13,760, yet the share of workers with the certificate who advanced in their field was only slightly higher than for similar workers without the credential—a difference of about 3.7 percentage points. Recipients also generally didn’t see pay improve more than they would have.

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ETFs carry annual expenses as low as 0.03%. The typical alternative fund charges annual fees of at least 2%, roughly 70 times more. (Some charge at least 200 times more.) Why is this fund worth 70 times more than an ETF?

*

A 2025 survey found that 49 percent of respondents place themselves on the right of the political spectrum. The proportion identifying with the left stands at 31 percent, while only 19 percent consider themselves centrist.

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A March 2025 survey by the journal Nature of more than 1,600 scientists in the U.S. found that three-quarters have considered leaving the country. Respondents specifically cited the Trump administration’s hostility to scientific research and those who practice it.
Historically, three-quarters of international students who earn a Ph.D. in the U.S. have stayed long-term. America’s ability to retain these workers has been one key to its preeminence in innovation.

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Vitol, the world's largest independent oil trading company, has made more money in the last 3 years ($32 billion total) than during the past 30 years combined. That's ~$71 million each on average for its 450 trader-shareholders.

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About 156,000 Italians left the country last year for Germany, Spain, the UK and elsewhere, a 36.5 per cent increase over the number who emigrated in 2023.

At just under 191,000, the total number of people who left Italy in 2024 — including 35,000 long-term foreign residents, mainly Romanians returning home — was at the highest level in a quarter of a century, according to Italy’s official statistics agency, Istat.

Italy’s population decline is among the most acute in Europe, after decades of plummeting birth rates. At present, about a quarter of Italy’s 59mn people are over the age of 65, while just 12 per cent of the population are children aged 14 and under. The working-age population is forecast to drop by another 5mn people by 2040.

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As of June 30, the total market value of the S&P 500 was $52.5 trillion.

*

One recent analysis from American University found that a 25% cut to public research-and-development spending would eventually reduce U.S. GDP by 3.8% a year—a drop on par with the Great Recession.

*

The cost of desalination has fallen sharply.

*

The world’s largest private capital firms have avoided income taxes on more than $1tn in incentive fees since 2000.

*

Immigrants have started more than half (44 of 87) of America's startup companies valued at $1 billion or more.

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Chile's fertility rate has plummeted 42 per cent over the past decade, reaching an average of 1.03 births per woman in 2024, according to Chile’s national statistics institute — well below the 2.1 threshold considered necessary to maintain a stable population. The drop leaves Chile’s fertility rate below Japan’s.

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In the first half of 2025, Amazon had more than 10,000 H-1B visas approved, while Microsoft and Meta Platforms each had more than 5,000 approvals. The H-1B program offers 65,000 visas annually to employers bringing in temporary foreign workers in specialized fields, with another 20,000 visas for workers with advanced degrees.

The Lone Wolf

On this day:

14
Tiberius is confirmed as Roman Emperor by the Roman Senate following the natural death of Augustus
324
Constantine the Great decisively defeats Licinius in the Battle of Chrysopolis, establishing Constantine’s sole control over the Roman Empire.
1812
The 1812 Fire of Moscow dies down after destroying more than three-quarters of the city. Napoleon returns from the Petrovsky Palace to the Moscow Kremlin, spared from the fire.
1885
Riots break out in Montreal to protest against compulsory smallpox vaccination.
1895
Daniel David Palmer gives the first chiropractic adjustment.
1944
World War II: The British submarine HMS Tradewind torpedoes Junyō Maru, 5,600 killed.
1975
Patty Hearst is arrested after a year on the FBI Most Wanted List.
2001
First mailing of anthrax letters from Trenton, New Jersey in the 2001 anthrax attacks.

***

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (18 Sep 1709-1784)

***

Is there a difference between competition from across the border and competition from across the street? Is competition from Alaska more or less damaging than competition from Mexico?

***

79% of Democrats believe it is reasonable to remove Trump from office by force.

***

So-called "static pets" such as stones, mango pits, paper boxes, and even toothpaste have become very popular with Chinese youths looking for low-commitment companionship to compensate for their stressful daily lives and careers. However, one such static pet has been seeing massive popularity in the Asian country, “pet yeast”.

***


The Lone Wolf

The Left is rooted in struggle. Conflict. Oppression does not need to be identified; it is assumed. And it must be overcome. A victory cannot be reached through discussion. It can be achieved only through winning. In essence, it views itself as being in the midst of a battle between good and evil, within an ongoing historical process. The battle is inevitable; their victory is inevitable. And, of course, there is no compromise with evil.

In such a struggle, what is allowed? What are the limits we impose upon ourselves in such a Manichean battle? The Marxists, through a poorly understood idea of Darwin and economics, believe the power held in our current, collapsing political entity can be finally defeated only by deracinating it. Those successful people are a subset in the culture, a predatory class or caste arising over centuries, and would spring up from the fertilizer of its predecessors unless they were all destroyed and their fields sown with salt. Killing the Tsar's children was not seen as a slaughter of the innocents; it was a necessary, unavoidable extermination of a genetic and social fault developed over the years.

The Left will always bring these struggles. But something new is in the air. The new revolutionary doesn't have comrades or a creed; he has a personal beef.

First, Kirk. Kirk was an unlikely assassination target in the traditional sense. He seemed more evangelical with strong political corollaries than political with religious overtones. He wasn't elected to anything, had never held an elected position, and, indeed, had diverted such suggestions toward his primary interest: teaching. A campus crusader.

He was certainly prominent, well known among the younger population, less so among the older. His encounters and speeches reveal an opinionated, well-spoken guy with a big mind and an accepting heart--not at all the hateful guy you would expect from his killer's statements and those of his other enemies. But hate is in the mind of the beholder; that's the reason we have laws.

Assassinations are usually attacks on political direction through public figures. They are rare in the U.S., where they are usually personal. Even Booth's murder occurred after the Civil War was decided and was a self-inflicted wound; its results were much more damaging to the South than the North.

With Kirk, as with Mangioni, we may be seeing the rise of the vigilante assassin.

Vigilantism has a pre-Hammurabi feel, the feel of The Feud. The vigilante acts within a justice tradition but outside a formal legal code. He usually acts in response to judicial inaction to a wrong that most people would agree with. It's like a Mafia code, or Sharia court: laws everyone agrees with are enforced by special interests outside the organized legal system. With a vigilante, the laws are more capricious, and the enforcing judge and executioner is often a very small group. Usually one.

Kirk's murder is much like Luigi Mangione's murder of Brian Thompson. Regardless of motive, Mangione's act was strange. He killed a man because he worked for a company that was in an industry Mangioni didn't like. An enemy once removed. 

The Kirk murder is stranger still because Kirk's crimes are hard to glean. He seems like a nice, talented guy. He was opposed to transgender ideology, but how many are? Which of those guys should be killed? And, like Mangioni, the killer will have a limited impact. The movement Kirk created is sizable, robust, and, with his death, energized. And his widow, if her speech after his death is any indication, will be a powerful force in his absence. Personal hatred of a public figure is not what most people think of as a motive for assassination. And many people loved him; don't they get a voice?

Yes. They do get a voice. This murder has turned a page. The country's reverence for the individual has always caused problems, but one wonders about this new development. This was a capricious, stupid act by a random guy, said to be bright, but whose stupid act carries the day. And his supporters--there are supporters--leaped to the barricades to mute the impact. The killer was in love. He had a difficult childhood. The relationship with his roommate was "tender." Jimmy Kimmel attributed Kirk's assassination to MAGA influence. And 41% of Democrats think that Kirk was killed by a Republican.

Meanwhile, one of Mangioni's supporters has married "his AI."

There is a gulf developing in the country. Fortunately, the one malignant group looks like morons. They will certainly do some weird damage; the twisted individual mind is hard to manage. But maybe this will be self-limited.

In History's Dark Alleyways

 

Is there political division in the country that separates those in favor of murder from ambush from those opposed? Is there really a murder-from-ambush subset?

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Sanity has a significant cultural component. Cannibalism in New Guinea is not the same as in Cleveland.

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So, when did Kirk's opinions and beliefs lose diversity approval and go on the Index? Who makes that Index?

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In History's Dark Alleyways

Perhaps the Internet is not a diversity tool at all. Maybe it is so vast that it allows clusters of people who would otherwise be outliers, but on the large and empty internet sit like desert tribes, isolated and self-contained. Each, in essence, has its own culture, with its own laws, rituals, initiations, and expulsions, underlying faith-based dogmas and unchallenged assumptions. Coming upon it on social media sites is like encountering a new tribe in the jungle, unique and strange.

This implies these groups are isolated and alone in our neutral and unjudging cultural desert. 

Kayapo with automatics.

Sunday/Murder

On this day:

1607
Flight of the Earls from Lough Swilly, Donegal, Ireland
1812
Napoleonic Wars: French grenadiers enter Moscow. The Fire of Moscow begins as soon as Russian troops leave the city.
1847
Mexican-American War: Winfield Scott captures Mexico City.
1901
President of the United States William McKinley dies after an assassination attempt on September 6, and is succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt.
1917
Russia is officially proclaimed a republic.
954
In a top secret nuclear test, a Soviet Tu-4 bomber drops a 40 kiloton atomic weapon just north of Totskoye village, exposing some 45,000 soldiers and 10,000 civilians to nuclear fallout.
1959
The Soviet probe Luna 2 crashes onto the Moon, becoming the first man-made object to reach it.
1960
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is founded.
1994
The Major League Baseball season is canceled because of a strike.

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There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth. -Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (9 Sep 1828-1910)

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The Kirk killer is "romantically tied to a transgender partner."

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Fascist:

Meaning, generally, a source of power and authority.

Origin: 1590s, from Latin fasces "bundle of rods containing an axe with the blade projecting" (plural of fascis "bundle" of wood, etc.), from Proto-Italic *faski- "bundle," perhaps from PIE *bhasko- "band, bundle" (source also of Middle Irish basc "neckband," Welsh baich "load, burden," perhaps also Old English bæst "inner bark of the linden tree"). Carried before a lictor, a superior Roman magistrate, as a symbol of power over life and limb: the sticks symbolized punishment by whipping, the axe-head execution by beheading. Hence in Latin it also meant, figuratively, "high office, supreme power."

From at least 1872 fascio was used in the names of labor and agrarian unions, and in October 1914 a political coalition was formed called the Fascio rivoluzionario d’ azione internazionalista (“revolutionary group for international action”), which advocated Italian participation in World War I on the side of the Allies. Members of this group were first called fascisti in January 1915. Although Mussolini was closely associated with this interventionist movement, it had no direct link with the post-war Fasci di combattimento, and in 1919 the word fascista was already in political circulation. It is, however, to the Fascisti in their 1919 incarnation—who seized power in Italy three years later—that we owe the current customary meanings of our words fascism and fascist.

Hitler and the National Socialists never absorbed their notion as "fascist" as it lacked the international aims of Nazism and its intense racism.

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Sunday/Murder

"Assassin" is derived from an Arabic nickname for the Nizari Ismaili sect in the Middle East during the Crusades, the plural of hashishiyy, from the source of hashish. The group was fanatic, but there is no evidence that the medieval Ismailis used hashish. 

Assassination is a killing, but it is a distinct form of murder; it involves a high-profile victim and is almost always driven by political, ideological, or religious objectives. That is to say, the assassin's motives extend beyond the personal.

The Americans have a particular flaw. The nation was built with a unique respect for the individual. This revolutionary idea implied that citizens needed to take personal responsibility to manage the risk of disorder that individual freedom could bring. The only other major philosophy of individual worth, Christianity, came with a strict moral code; in American freedom, the individual carried his own. He must maintain the same sense of value for the individual that he demands from his government. How could a nation have easy access to weapons safely? This is taught.

Being willing to judge, then execute a fellow citizen for your vision of the society's betterment, takes Putin-levels of delusion of grandeur. And a unique personal viciousness that is usually ignored. Booth's murder of Lincoln occurred after the South's surrender at Appomattox.

Satstats

On this day:
1541
After three years of exile, John Calvin returns to Geneva to reform the church under a body of doctrine known as Calvinism.
1759
Battle of the Plains of Abraham: British defeat French near Quebec City in the Seven Years’ War, known in the United States as the French and Indian War.
1814
In a turning point in the War of 1812, the British fail to capture Baltimore, Maryland.
1847
Mexican-American War: Six teenage military cadets known as Niños Héroes die defending Chapultepec Castle in the Battle of Chapultepec. American troops under General Winfield Scott capture Mexico City in the Mexican-American War.
1848
Vermont railroad worker Phineas Gage survives a 3 ft-plus iron rod being driven through his head; the reported effects on his behavior and personality stimulate thinking about the nature of the brain and its functions.
1862
American Civil War: Union soldiers find a copy of Robert E. Lee’s battle plans in a field outside Frederick, Maryland. It is the prelude to the Battle of Antietam.
1922
The final act of the Greco-Turkish War, the Great Fire of Smyrna, commences.
1942
World War II: Second day of the Battle of Edson’s Ridge in the Guadalcanal campaign. U.S. Marines successfully defeated attacks by the Imperial Japanese Army with heavy losses for the Japanese forces.
1987
Goiânia accident: A radioactive object is stolen from an abandoned hospital in Goiânia, Brazil, contaminating many people in the following weeks and causing some to die from radiation poisoning.

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Coming to firm grip with fantasy: The 193-member world body approved a nonbinding resolution endorsing the “New York Declaration,” which sets out a phased plan to end the nearly 80-year conflict. The vote was 142-10 with 12 abstentions.
Hours before the vote, Netanyahu said, “There will be no Palestinian state.”

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Freedom is a condition of man, but it is chaotic without discipline, which is taught.

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Psychotics do not bond. There is never an uprising in a madhouse. That said, there was a lot of very serious mad behavior in the 60s and 70s by people who felt they were members of 'revolutionary' groups. The ill-fated Symbionese Liberation Army (which kidnapped Patty Hearst) was led by a genius but manned by psychos. The always intense SDS were less crazy but more vicious. One of Manson's killers was a schizophrenic.
Disordered groups provide a more comfortable environment for whackos. They coexist rather than join.
Curiously, so many of these killers are so shallow and bland. Jackie Kennedy was discouraged that her husband's killer was such a cipher.

Freedom allows the stupid and inept great leverage. And militarized counter-culture movements can look pretty nuts but allow a shetering , shared structure.

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Biden pardoned over 4200 people.

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This Kirk assassination displays some weird behavior, a mix of planning and whimsy.

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Satstats

The dollar has slumped 7% on a trade-weighted basis since January, and had its worst start to a year since 1973.

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India has around 16 judges per million people, compared to over 150 for the US.

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For all the talk of a general fall in births, the drop is overwhelmingly driven by people on the left having fewer kids. By ceding the topic of family and children to the right, progressives risk ushering in a more conservative world.

7:20 AM · Aug 29, 2025

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The share of economics papers that are about or use AI increased 10 times to 5% in 5 years, and the growth is essentially vertical.


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We measure reading for pleasure and reading with children from 2003 to 2023, using a nationally representative sample from the American Time Use Survey (n = 236,270). We found marked declines in the proportion of individuals reading for pleasure daily in the US, with decreases of 3% per year (prevalence ratio = 0.97, 95% confidence interval = 0.97, 0.98, p < 0.001). There were disparities across population groups, with widening gaps for those of Black (vs. White) race, with lower education levels and less annual income.--a paper


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A new Richmond Fed study, “Five Decades of Decline: U.S. Construction Sector Productivity,” finds labor productivity in construction has fallen more than 30 percent since 1970. Over the same half-century, overall US productivity doubled.

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California is the leader in manufacturing, agriculture, new business starts, tech and VC investments, Fortune 500 companies, and the country's top public higher education system.*
In NYC, there are 285 charter schools, with a total of about 150,000 students, about 90 percent of whom are either black or Latino.
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The US currently subsidizes the fossil-fuel industry to the tune of nearly $31bn per year, according to a new analysis.
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There is $1.3 billion worth of bitcoin on Tesla’s balance sheet,