China's AI Position

On this day:

1597
Imjin War: Admiral Yi Sun-sin routs the Japanese Navy of 300 ships with only 13 ships at the Battle of Myeongnyang.
1774
The first Continental Congress adjourns in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1775
King George III goes before Parliament to declare the American colonies in rebellion, and authorized a military response to quell the American Revolution.
1776
Benjamin Franklin departs from America for France on a mission to seek French support for the American Revolution.
1881
The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral takes place at Tombstone, Arizona.
1942
World War II: In the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands during the Guadalcanal Campaign, one U.S. aircraft carrier, Hornet, is sunk and another aircraft carrier, Enterprise, is heavily damaged.
1967
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi crowns himself Emperor of Iran and then crowns his wife Farah Empress of Iran.
977
The last natural case of smallpox is discovered in Merca district, Somalia. The WHO and the CDC consider this date the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, the most spectacular success of vaccination.
1999
Britain’s House of Lords votes to end the right of hereditary peers to vote in Britain’s upper chamber of Parliament.
2002
Moscow Theatre Siege: Approximately 50 Chechen terrorists and 150 hostages die when Russian Spetsnaz storm a theater building in Moscow, which had been occupied by the terrorists during a musical performance three days before.

***

The grass isn't always greener on the other side. It’s greener where you water it.--Riley Gaines

***

Neutrinos are elementary particles, meaning they cannot be broken into smaller components, as far as we know. There are three neutrino "flavors": electron, muon and tau. Unlike some other elementary particles, neutrinos have no electric charge. Although they have mass, they are incredibly light—maybe 10 million times lighter than an electron. There are one billion neutrinos for every atom in the universe.

***

In China, individual doctors can set up clinical trials with real patients without approval from a centralized authority like the FDA. This system produced the blockbuster cancer drug Carvykti, as well as a wave of experimental therapies available only in China.

***

"It may be that the Trump administration has pushed too far, but my real worry is that we are losing an equilibrium. Science was never completely independent of politics, of course, but even at the worst of times, funding was decentralized and the culture-war material that dominated the headlines was never more than a tiny fraction of the whole. Like an independent judiciary, independent science has been an American virtue. COVID policy, gender policy, and now the Trump administration’s weaponization of these mistakes may have destroyed that equilibrium.

...we are adopting the loser policies of authoritarian nations, but those policies are the norm elsewhere for a reason. Centralized control of science is the default because it serves the people in power of whatever party. Decentralization is the fragile exception—a historically unusual achievement that is easier to destroy than rebuild."--Tabarrok

***

Gladwell has a new book in which he says that a big problem in the U.S. is that we have too few police. Berlin and Los Angeles are comparable in size. Berlin has 18,000 cops; L.A. has 8,000. Because we have too few cops to get at the root of violent crime before it is even committed, we wind up spending a fortune on prisons instead.

***

China's AI Position

China's spy chief just offered a window into Beijing's priorities confronting AI's biggest risks.

Chen Yixin, China's minister of state security, published an article in China Cyberspace, a journal run by the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country's internet regulator.

In it, Chen identified six major risks AI could pose to Beijing. The first was "regime security."

He wrote that "various hostile forces and malicious individuals abuse generative AI technologies — such as deepfake audio and video, AI-generated images and text, and intelligent online armies — to produce political rumors at low cost and in large quantities."

Those tools can "spread harmful information, incite antagonistic emotions, and wage a war of public opinion and cognitive warfare," posing direct threats to China's political, institutional, and ideological security, he said.

Chen also identified five other major AI risks, including:

-Dangers to China's critical infrastructure, because cyberattacks can be carried out with extreme efficiency, considering the power of models like Mythos.
-The risk of large-scale data leaks, where Chinese AI users and foreign intelligence agencies alike could obtain critical national data, trade secrets, or citizens' personal information.
-An imbalance in technological development caused by monopolies and closed technological systems, as countries can exploit AI's power and fragment supply chains in the name of national security.
-Challenges to social governance that lead to disruptions in public order.
-Fundamental shifts in warfare, as AI-powered precision targeting gives adversaries a major advantage on the battlefield.

Where are the people here? Did you see any concern about the possibility of an aberrant AT causing health risks or damage to real individuals, or is China concerned only about the State and its hierarchy? What do you think that means?

Sunday/The Greatest Commandment

On this day:

1147
Seljuk Turks completely annihilate German crusaders under Conrad III at the Battle of Dorylaeum.
1147
The Portuguese, under Afonso I, and Crusaders from England and Flanders conquer Lisbon after a four-month siege.
1415
The army of Henry V of England defeats the French at the Battle of Agincourt.
1760
George III becomes King of Great Britain.
1854
The Battle of Balaklava during the Crimean War (Charge of the Light Brigade).
1917
Traditionally understood date of the October Revolution, involving the capture of the Winter Palace, Petrograd, Russia. The date refers to the Julian Calendar date, and corresponds with November 7 in the Gregorian calendar.
1944
Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in history, takes place in and around the Philippines between the Imperial Japanese Navy and the U.S. Third and U.S. Seventh Fleets.
1944
Heinrich Himmler orders a crackdown on the Edelweiss Pirates, a loosely organized youth culture in Nazi Germany that had assisted army deserters and others to hide from the Third Reich.
1944
The USS Tang under Richard O'Kane (the top American submarine captain of World War II) is sunk by the ship’s own malfunctioning torpedo.
1962
Cuban missile crisis: Adlai Stevenson shows photos at the UN proving Soviet missiles are installed in Cuba.
1983
Operation Urgent Fury: The United States and its Caribbean allies invade Grenada, six days after Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several of his supporters are executed in a coup d'état.

***

“I'm a liberal in the real sense of the word. The word comes from the Latin which means a free person, as—and this was very much in the minds of Romans when they used the word—contrasted with a slave. And one very simple way of describing true liberalism is to say that everyone has the right to say no.”--mccloskey

***

The Rays traded Lowe, Mangum and Montgomery, won 98 games and captured the American League pennant anyway. Pittsburgh acquired them, received tremendous production from all three, and still couldn't do better than an 82-80 record.

***

Metonymy: noun, Rhetoric 1. a figure of speech that consists of the use of the name of one object or concept for that of another to which it is related, or of which it is a part, as “scepter” for “sovereignty,” or “the bottle” for “strong drink,” or “count heads (or noses)” for “count people.” 1540-50; < Late Latin metōnymia < Greek metōnymía change of name;

***

A Scottish museum has reportedly removed mummies because the individuals hadn't given their consent. A reminder that Kafka's world is self-imposed.

***

Sunday/The Greatest Commandment

In today's gospel, a scribe asks Christ which commandment is greatest. It is interesting because questions usually are aimed at either defeating Christ in an argument or placing Him in opposition to the Law. In this instance, the question is sincere and welcomed.

Christ answers to love God completely. His answer is very close to the Shema, a declaration of faith that every Jew of the time recited twice a day. And every Jew would have given the same answer to the scribe's question. (The first line of the Shema, "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.")

Then Christ does something curious; He goes further and gives the famous second commandment, to love your neighbor as yourself. This question was not asked. He takes a question that every Jew would see as demanding a narrow definition and expands it much further. He then says, "There is no greater commandment than these two," essentially joining the two as one. When the scribe agrees with Him, Christ says, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

What is wonderful here is Christ's acceptance of questioning as not just reasonable but as a way to truth, with faith as a process, a step to understanding.

SatStats

On this day:

1260
The spectacular Cathedral of Chartres is dedicated in the presence of King Louis IX of France; the cathedral is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
1911
Orville Wright remains in the air 9 minutes and 45 seconds in a Wright Glider at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.
1929
“Black Thursday” stock market crash on the New York Stock Exchange.
1944
World War II: The Japanese aircraft carrier Zuikaku, and the battleship Musashi are sunk in the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
1960
Nedelin catastrophe: An R-16 ballistic missile explodes on the launch pad at the Soviet Union’s Baikonur Cosmodrome space facility, killing over 100. Among the dead is Field Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin, whose death is reported to have occurred in a plane crash.
1990
Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti reveals to the Italian parliament the existence of Gladio, the Italian “stay-behind” clandestine paramilitary NATO army, which was implicated in false flag terrorist attacks implicating communists and anarchists as part of the strategy of tension from the late 1960s to early 1980s.
1998
Launch of Deep Space 1 comet/asteroid mission
2002
Police arrest spree killers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, ending the Beltway sniper attacks in the area around Washington, DC.
2008
“Bloody Friday” saw many of the world’s stock exchanges experience the worst declines in their history, with drops of around 10% in most indices.

***

"I am going to teach the South American republics to elect good men!"--Woodrow Wilson

***

Tennis star Serena Williams needed surgery to remove a blood clot from her lungs in 2011, and nearly died from a pulmonary embolism and related complications after she gave birth to her daughter in September 2017.

***

Ms. Chevalier is typical of the intellectuals who Hayek described as being guilty of “constructivist rationalism.” This mouthful of a term applies to those persons who are convinced that if they can think of a concept (details are unnecessary) – if they can describe a concept in words or graphs or equations – then that concept is therefore not only possible to achieve in reality, but achievable in a way that has no unforeseen negative consequences.--rothman

***

Mamdani in DC. A bill would establish a new “Department of Defense Equity Investment Account” in the Treasury and authorize OSC’s director to use that account to make equity investments.

***

During 2025, Boeing churned out 600 commercial airliners from its assembly facilities in Washington state and South Carolina. Many of those planes were sold to foreign airlines and exported. This is tremendous news for the workers at Boeing and for the company’s shareholders. It’s also great for those foreign buyers—airlines can purchase Boeing planes without first needing to develop a local airliner-production industry. They can develop a transportation industry.

Now use that info as a metaphor for the Balance of Trade

***

Bernie Sanders schemes to have government seize 50 percent of the equity of AI firms. Imagine that. Imagine thinking that in America.

***

Biden and Trump administrations previously asked SpaceX to switch Starlink on or off, six former officials say
Biden officials asked SpaceX to cut service tied to Houthis and Hezbollah, former officials say
Trump officials discussed activating Starlink in Iran after 2025 and 2026 strikes, sources say
US reliance on SpaceX raises questions over Musk’s influence on policy decisions--Reuters says

***

Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders have unionized.

***

SatStats

On Oct. 14, 2026, Citizens Against Government Waste released its 2026 edition of Prime Cuts. First published in 1993, when the national debt was $4.4 trillion, its 494 recommendations, drawn from proposals from both Democratic and Republican administrations and members of Congress, and nonpartisan sources, would save $639 billion in the first year and $5.6 trillion over five years.

*

In the salary cap era 112 teams won three games or less over the first 10 games of a season. Only 21 of them made the playoffs.
That is roughly 16 percent.

*

By the dawn of the twentieth century, the U.S. had become almost as large economically as England, Germany and France combined.

*

E-bike injuries have increased almost 800%

*

Congressional Budget Office report projected annual deficits increasing from $1.9 trillion in fiscal 2026 to $3.1 trillion in fiscal 2036. Over these ten years, deficits will average $2.44 trillion a year, adding $24.4 trillion and pushing gross federal debt to $64.6 trillion by fiscal 2036, 61.5 percent more than today.

*

Only 38.4% of students in California public schools showed math proficiency on tests this spring. Only 49.3% met or exceeded state standards in English.

*

In the first half of this year, China’s disciplinary authorities filed roughly 538,000 cases, an average of nearly 90,000 a month, up from about 83,000 a month in 2025. At the top, 36 senior officials at the provincial or ministerial level and above were investigated or disciplined in the first half of this year alone.

*

China's economy is half of America’s GDP, and its debt is 75% of America’s.

*

Shares in the South Korean data-center startup, Elice, plummeted over 30% on their trading debut, signaling renewed investor caution toward artificial-intelligence stocks. Elice had raised the equivalent of $151 million from its IPO.

*

"The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid a 23.1 percent average rate, six times higher than the 3.7 percent average rate paid by the bottom half of taxpayers," the Tax Foundation's Erica York noted in 2024, of 2022 tax data. "The top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97 percent of all federal individual income taxes, while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 3 percent."
The share of taxes paid by wealthy Americans is higher than in most other countries.

The Museum of Self-Indulgence

On this day:

4004BC
The day of creation according to the Irish scholar Archbishop James Ussher, who used Biblical references, astronomical data, and secular history to build a timeline. This was published in 1650 and included in the margins of modern English Bibles, like the King James version, into the 19th Century.
42 BC

Roman Republican civil wars: Second Battle of Philippi – Mark Antony and Octavian decisively defeat Brutus’s army. Brutus commits suicide.
1641
Outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641.
1642
Battle of Edgehill: First major battle of the First English Civil War.
1861
U.S. President Abraham Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus in Washington, D.C., for all military-related cases.
1906
Alberto Santos-Dumont flies an airplane in the first heavier-than-air flight in Europe at Champs de Bagatelle, Paris, France.
1911
First use of aircraft in war: An Italian pilot takes off from Libya to observe Turkish army lines during the Turco-Italian War.
1912
First Balkan War: The Battle of Kumanovo between the Serbian and Ottoman armies begins.
1956
Thousands of Hungarians protest against the government and Soviet occupation. (The Hungarian Revolution is crushed on November 4).
1958
The Springhill Mine Bump – An underground earthquake traps 174 miners in the No. 2 colliery at Springhill, Nova Scotia, the deepest coal mine in North America at the time. By November 1, rescuers from around the world had dug out 100 of the victims, marking the death toll at 74.
1983
Lebanon Civil War: The U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut is hit by a truck bomb, killing 241 U.S. military personnel. A French army barracks in Lebanon is also hit that same morning, killing 58 troops.
2002
Moscow Theatre Siege begins: Chechen terrorists seize the House of Culture theater in Moscow and take approximately 700 theater-goers hostage.

***

If a man can be a woman, there is no such thing as a woman. --Interesting line from Rowling

***

Belling the cat: On Oct. 14, 2026, Citizens Against Government Waste released its 2026 edition of Prime Cuts. First published in 1993, when the national debt was $4.4 trillion, its 494 recommendations, drawn from proposals by both Democratic and Republican administrations, members of Congress, and nonpartisan sources, would save $639 billion in the first year and $5.6 trillion over five years.

***

Researchers say they have found a consistent internal signal that seems to function a little bit like pain does in biological beings inside 25 different AI models. Like pain.

***

Ben Kindel could return to practice as soon as next week after losing consciousness aboard the Pittsburgh Penguins team plane Tuesday, general manager Kyle Dubas said Thursday. The episode has been called 'vasovagal,' a sudden drop in pulse rate and blood pressure, the mechanism of fainting.

***

Is 'The greatest good for the greatest number' meaningful without a definition of 'the good'?

***

The Museum of Self-Indulgence

A provocative question has been raised about the Smithsonian Institution.

The White House Domestic Policy Council (DPC) published a report arguing that the Smithsonian Institution has “adopted an ideological framework that no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance.” More bluntly, the report—titled “Saving America’s Story”—claims the exhibits at the Smithsonian’s flagship National Museum of American History were “prepared by people who don’t want you to love your country.” According to DPC director Vince Haley, “The bottom line is that there’s no national story at the National Museum of American History.”

Washington Post culture critic Philip Kennicott writes that Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch—who recently announced that he’ll retire at year’s end—“has been an enormously consequential leader.” Kennicott elaborates: “Never has the nation more urgently needed to focus on key issues, like climate change and its long history of racial, ethnic and class division,” rather than on “the happy narrative of American exceptionalism.”

In his 2019 book A Fool’s Errand, Bunch criticized a museum profession “awash in whiteness” and expressed his desire “to help Americans grapple with their own culpability in creating a society based on slavery.” He has also said that he wants museums “to make diversity and inclusion so central that it’s no longer talked about,” and that museums should “inspire new generations of activists.” His worldview is particularly evident at the National Museum of American History, where exhibits opened under his watch—and that of Anthea Hartig, the museum’s director for the past seven years—excessively prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion over telling America’s story. The museum now devotes more square footage to displays about lowrider cars and salsa music than to displays about the American Founding.

Is this received well? Is there a correlation between these changes and attendance?

According to the institution’s own statistics, in 2018—the last full pre-Bunch (and pre-Hartig) year—the number of visits to the Smithsonian was 28.5 million. In 2025, it was 14.9 million. In other words, the Smithsonian had barely over half as many visits in 2025 as in 2018.

If we exclude numbers from the National Zoo, which hasn’t been overtaken by DEI—and, unsurprisingly, hasn’t declined in popularity—from this assessment, the Smithsonian lost even more than half of its attendance from 2018 to 2025: visits fell from 26.7 million to 13 million, a 51 percent drop. The National Museum of American History fared worse than Smithsonian museums overall. From 2018 to 2025, its attendance fell from 4.1 million visits to just 1.8 million—a 56 percent decline.

The median American museum lost only 5 percent of its annual attendance from pre- to post-COVID, comparing 2019 to 2025. The Smithsonian’s attendance drop over that same timespan places it in the bottom 10 percent of all museums nationally. 

Is all this just a coincidence?

--most from City Journal

Some UBI Results

On this day:
362
A mysterious fire destroys the Temple of Apollo at Daphne outside Antioch.
1707
Scilly naval disaster: four British Royal Navy ships run aground near the Isles of Scilly because of faulty navigation. Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell and thousands of sailors drown.
1784
Russia founds a colony on Kodiak Island, Alaska.
1797
One thousand meters (3,200 feet) above Paris, André-Jacques Garnerin makes the first recorded parachute jump.
1844
The Great Anticipation: Millerites, followers of William Miller, anticipate the end of the world in conjunction with the Second Advent of Christ. The following day became known as the Great Disappointment.
1877
The Blantyre mining disaster in Scotland kills 207 miners.
1943
World War II: in the Second firestorm raid on Germany, the Royal Air Force conducts an air raid on the town of Kassel, killing 10,000 and rendering 150,000 homeless.
1962
Cuban Missile Crisis: US President John F. Kennedy, after internal counsel from Dwight D. Eisenhower, announces that American reconnaissance planes have discovered Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, and that he has ordered a naval “quarantine” of the Communist nation.
1964
Jean-Paul Sartre is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but turns down the honor.
2008
India launches its first unmanned lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1.

***

"Debt is future consumption brought forward," von Böhm-Bawerk

***

Starlink is having regulatory problems in India. This, from Space Jam:
It’s important to remember here that Starlink is not any ordinary satellite operator: it has massive geopolitical power. It operates the largest LEO constellation with about 11,000 satellites, a scale that’s difficult for its competitors in India to currently match. Starlink and SpaceX are also key parts of the U.S.’s civil and defense space ecosystems, with Starlink playing a key role in the Ukraine conflict. Again, India has multiple interests to balance: consumer choice, local innovation, and its relationship with the U.S. A key challenge for the nation here, therefore, is in taking advantage of Starlink’s technical capabilities while ensuring that the national communications infrastructure isn’t controlled by a single operator.

***

Cameroon’s 92-year-old Paul Biya is no ordinary leader.
Ruling oil-rich Cameroon since 1982, the world’s oldest head of state basically lives at the InterContinental Geneva, where his delegation books out the entire 16th floor.

***

The moon turns red because, as Earth blocks the Sun's rays, any sunlight reaching the moon has to travel along our planet's edge. Most of the light with shorter wavelengths—blue, violet, and green—is scattered away by the atmosphere, leaving only longer wavelengths—the red, orange, and yellow colours —to dimly illuminate the moon.

This process also causes the reds and yellows at sunrise and sunset.

***

Federal authorities on Thursday charged a prominent Virginia Democrat with racketeering and a money laundering conspiracy as part of an alleged public corruption case involving a cannabis business she co-owns. Virginia state Sen. L. Louise Lucas, one of the most powerful Democrats in the state, surrendered to authorities Thursday, the Justice Department spokesperson said.

***

Dubas said the Kindel incident has been diagnosed as a vasovagal episode.

***

Four years after being the #4 draft pick, Termarr Johnson's development has stalled, his prospect stock has plummeted, and a devastating knee injury has made an already uncertain future even more complicated.

***

Europe is worried about its reliance upon American space technology. 98% of the weight launched into space is carried by SpaceX.

***

Some UBI Results

Universal basic income (UBI) is a notion that would provide federal cash for everyone, no strings attached. An annual payout to every citizen--age limits to be determined--to guarantee the basic necessities of life.

There's a history. Thomas Paine, a pamphleteer whose ideas helped spur the American Revolution, proposed a tax plan in which revenues would provide a basic government income. So, too, Martin Luther King, Jr., proposed “guaranteed income” in his book "Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?" published in 1967. In 1962’s "Capitalism and Freedom",  Milton Friedman argued that a “negative income tax”—essentially a UBI—would help overcome a mindset where citizens aren’t inclined to make sacrifices if they don’t believe others will follow suit. Libertarian philosopher Charles Murray believes that guaranteed income would also cut government bureaucracy. He has proposed a $10,000-per-year UBI, as well as basic health insurance, which he says would allow the government to cut Social Security and other redistribution programs.

And a present. AI is looming. How will workers be impacted? In 2023, researchers at OpenAI—a leading artificial intelligence (AI) research organization—and the University of Pennsylvania published a working paper analyzing the impact of the technology on the labor market. Per their analysis, 80% of the U.S. workforce could have at least 10% of their work affected by large language models, a type of AI that can process and generate text. 19% of workers could see 50% or more of their tasks impacted. AI might alleviate the damage. And there's Andrew Yang, always the smartest guy in the room. He estimates UBI, which he enthusiastically endorses, would cost almost $2 trillion and suggests covering those expenses, in part, by shrinking other social programs and imposing a 10% value-added tax (VAT) on businesses. He also proposed ending the cap on Social Security payroll taxes and taxing carbon emissions for his guaranteed income plan.

Comedian Dave Chappelle, a serious guy, thinks UBI would "save my community almost instantly."

UBI activist Conrad Shaw agrees, "You would effectively get rid of extreme poverty immediately."
He says a UBI will help people "start businesses, fix their homes, or invest in sustainable gardens."

Sustainable gardens.

Sam Altman, the guy behind ChatGPT, helped create a test. His big study gave 1,000 low-income people $1,000 per month for three years—no strings attached. What happened?

Not the great things that were promised. After three years of getting $1,000/month, UBI recipients were actually a little deeper in debt than before.

Why? Because they worked less. Their partners did, too.

And the group used more health care.

Some recipients talked about starting businesses, but few actually tried it. Most who said they did start a business waited until the third year of the study—when their free money was about to end.

Some advocates said that working less meant they were enjoying life more. As might be expected, work generally doesn't seem to be a virtue in this group.

But nobody ever said getting $1,000 a month was bad.

No Pawns

On this day:

1096
People’s Crusade: The Turkish army annihilates the People’s Army of the West.
1097
First Crusade: Crusaders led by Godfrey of Bouillon, Bohemund of Taranto, and Raymond IV of Toulouse begin the Siege of Antioch.
1774
First display of the word “Liberty” on a flag, raised by colonists in Taunton, Massachusetts, in defiance of British rule in Colonial America
1805
Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Trafalgar: A British fleet led by Vice Admiral Lord Nelson defeats a combined French and Spanish fleet off the coast of Spain under Admiral Villeneuve. It signals almost the end of French maritime power and leaves Britain’s navy unchallenged until the 20th century.
1854
Florence Nightingale and a staff of 38 nurses are sent to the Crimean War.
1861
American Civil War: Battle of Ball’s Bluff – Union forces under Colonel Edward Baker are defeated by Confederate troops in the second major battle of the war. Baker, a close friend of Abraham Lincoln, is killed in the fighting.
1944
World War II: Battle of Aachen: The city of Aachen falls to American forces after three weeks of fighting, making it the first German city to fall to the Allies.
1944
World War II: The first kamikaze attack: A Japanese plane carrying a 200 kg bomb attacks HMAS Australia off Leyte Island, as the Battle of Leyte Gulf began.

***

"Biographical history, as taught in our public schools, is still largely a history of boneheads: ridiculous kings and queens, paranoid political leaders, compulsive voyagers, ignorant generals, the flotsam and jetsam of historical currents. The men who radically altered history, the great creative scientists and mathematicians, are seldom mentioned if at all." -Martin Gardner, mathematician and writer (21 Oct 1914-2010)

***

Another "No Kings" weekend. A funny aspect of 'No Kings': The hope this would become an international leftist populist movement (without the violence, rape, and murder inherent to revolutionary philosophies) was limited by the fact that many of the target countries really had kings.

***

In his early fantasy baseball shortstop rankings for 2027, CBS Sports' Scott White ranked Griffin fourth overall, behind only Bobby Witt Jr., Elly De La Cruz and C.J. Abrams.

***

 

...“children getting lost in the woods, in a world without human signifiers, without signage or trails, only celestial bodies and natural forms”--from the new translation of Thure Erik Lund’s The Mystery of What Befell in the Ditch

***

Anyone who challenges the notion that campus rape is a widespread phenomenon, or that alleged victims must automatically be believed, supports and upholds “cultures and systems of rape, sexual assault, and violence,” in the words of Columbia Political Review.--City Journal


***

No Pawns

One of the country-and-western axioms of democracy is that 'Freedom Isn't Free.' It also isn't one-sided. A look at the American Revolution, a pivotal event in the Western world, shows that getting rid of oppression wasn't the half of it. 

On July 2, 1776, the Congress voted to declare independence. Two days later, Congress ratified the Declaration. Cornwallis surrendered his entire army at Yorktown on October 19, 1781. The American Revolution officially ended on September 3, 1783. Washington was inaugurated on April 30, 1789, in New York City. It took years to hammer out a constitution that everyone could tolerate.

After the Lee Resolution proposed independence for the American colonies, the Second Continental Congress appointed three committees on June 11, 1776. One of the committees was tasked with determining what form the confederation of the colonies should take. This committee was composed of one representative from each colony. John Dickinson, a delegate from Delaware, was the principal writer.

The Dickinson Draft of the Articles of Confederation named the confederation "the United States of America." After considerable debate and revision, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation on November 15, 1777, establishing a "league of friendship" for the 13 sovereign and independent states. Each state retained "every Power...which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States. The Articles of Confederation also outlined a Congress with representation not based on population – each state would have one vote in Congress. Partisan bickering delayed final ratification until March 1, 1781.

A few years later, the young country was on the brink of collapse. With the states-nee-colonies retaining considerable authority, the central government had insufficient power to regulate commerce. Nor could it tax, set commercial policy, or support a war effort. Congress attempted to function with a depleted treasury, and paper money was flooding the country, creating extraordinary inflation.

The states were on the brink of economic disaster, and the central government had little power to settle quarrels between states. Disputes over territory, war pensions, taxation, and trade threatened to tear the country apart.

In May of 1787, the Constitutional Convention assembled in Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation. They shuttered the windows of the State House (Independence Hall) and swore secrecy so they could speak freely. By mid-June, the delegates had decided to completely redesign the government. After three hot, summer months of highly charged debate, the new Constitution was signed, which remains in effect today.

This is to say, after the stunning success of the Revolution, even the geniuses who engineered it could not create a lasting government structure. Their first effort resulted in unworkable chaos.

Which brings us to the charming street fair known as 'No Kings.' Free government is an oxymoron; it is very hard. Trying to create your own populist movement by opposing something that doesn't exist by dressing up in multicolored unicorn costumes and dancing is benign enough, but only if you truly understand that it is neither serious nor meaningful.

The real lesson of 'No Kings' is that the flamboyant opposition to something that doesn't exist is not even a first step to solving our life-threatening problems.

Saluting the Uniform

On this day:

1803
The United States Senate ratifies the Louisiana Purchase.
1910
The hull of the RMS Olympic, sister-ship to the ill-fated RMS Titanic, is launched from the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
1917
The Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, in charge of preparation and carrying out the Russian Revolution, holds its first meeting.
1935
The Long March ends.
1941
World War II: Thousands of civilian men and boys in Kragujevac in German-occupied Serbia are killed in the Kragujevac massacre, a reprisal for insurgent attacks in the Gornji Milanovac district that resulted in the deaths of ten German soldiers and the wounding of 26 others.
1943
The German cargo vessel Sinfra is attacked by Allied aircraft at Suda Bay, Crete, and sunk. 2,098 Italian prisoners of war died, most by German gunfire.
1944
Liquid natural gas leaks from storage tanks in Cleveland, then explodes; the explosion and resulting fire level 30 blocks and kill 130.
1947
The House Un-American Activities Committee begins its investigation into Communist infiltration of Hollywood, resulting in a blacklist that prevents some from working in the industry for years.
1951
The “Johnny Bright Incident” occurs in Stillwater, Oklahoma, a
violent on-field assault against African-American football player Johnny Bright by white player Wilbanks Smith during a college game 
1968
Former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy marries Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis.
1973
“Saturday Night Massacre”: President Richard Nixon fires U.S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus after they refuse to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who is finally fired by Robert Bork.
1977
A plane carrying Lynyrd Skynyrd crashes in Mississippi, killing lead singer Ronnie Van Zant and guitarist Steve Gaines along with backup singer Cassie Gaines, the road manager, pilot, and co-pilot.
1981
Two police officers and an armored car guard are killed during an armed robbery in Rockland County, NY, carried out by members of the Black Liberation Army and Weather Underground.
1982
During the UEFA Cup match between FC Spartak Moscow and HFC Haarlem, 66 people are crushed to death in the Luzhniki disaster.
2011
The former leader of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, and his son Moatassem Gaddafi are killed shortly after the battle of Sirte (2011) while in the custody of NTC fighters.

***

Where there is no property, there is no justice.”--Locke

***

Jalen Hurts was originally diagnosed with having a superficial blood clot, according to a team statement released on Oct. 15, which was discovered following an ultrasound in London before the Eagles' Week 5 game against the Jacksonville Jaguars. It was deemed that mobility was important and Hurts could safely play in the game, per the statement. A follow-up ultrasound last Wednesday showed the blood clot had moved, the team said. Hurts was subsequently ruled out of Sunday's Week 6 game against the Carolina Panthers and has since been put on injured reserve.

They let him play.

***

Kimberly Guilfoyle pleaded with three influential men to help save her job as U.S. ambassador to Greece. One was Hegseth. Hegseth.

***

A fascinating story from WSJ.
Bill Gross has dedicated his life to democratizing entrepreneurship. A serial entrepreneur himself, he is the founder of Idealab, which spawned nearly 200 startups, including as many as 10 unicorns.
Now he believes AI is about to supercharge his life’s mission. Speaking today at the Cloudflare conference in San Francisco—and tomorrow at the Masters of Scale Summit in the same city—Gross will demonstrate his new platform, Idealab.ai, which provides free access to more than a million new business ideas designed to address the world’s problems.
Gross trained Idealab.ai on a huge database of journalistic and professional articles, with an eye toward finding problem statements and then proposing business ideas to solve them. He also trained it on a massive amount of patent and other data to identify problems that haven’t yet been addressed.

***

Authorities have identified 43-year-old Brendan Nugent, a local activist and family friend, as the suspect in custody following the deliberate ramming of Australian parliamentarian Helen Haines. She remains in critical condition, with no word yet on the suspect’s motive.

***

Saudis secretly executed a Bangladeshi couple on indecency charges. This new playground image might be tough to maintain.

***

A Russian military satellite has maneuvered to within metres of a US-registered radar satellite believed to provide intelligence to Ukraine, according to space-tracking data reported by The War Zone, a US defence news site.

***

The single greatest act for peace might be if the Nobel Committee would just give Trump the Peace Prize so he can re-ally with Ukraine. Then, next year, the Nobel Committee could give the Peace Prize to itself.

***

Saluting the Uniform

Science wears a sort of armour. Like the university chair, it carries gravity; it earns respect simply by arriving. But science also developed lobotomy and eugenics.

In 1960, Science, one of the world’s leading science journals, published an article with an unambiguous title: "Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026." It predicted that on this future date the human population would approach infinity and effectively annihilate itself.

The outlandish claim drew widespread public attention. More surprisingly — because its underlying research and math seemed sound — it also received careful and sustained scientific attention, like a pronouncement from a prominent family, 

The authors — Heinz von Foerster, an Austrian-American professor and cybernetics expert, and two of his students, Patricia M. Mora and Lawrence W. Amiot — argued that human populations are exceptional and might grow beyond an exponential rate, at an ever-increasing one.

Heinz von Foerster was, at one point in his life, a stage magician. Never overlook presentation.--culled from somewhere