On this day:42 BC
First Battle of Philippi: Triumvirs Mark Antony and Octavian fight a decisive battle with Caesar’s assassins Brutus and Cassius.
52 BC
Vercingetorix, leader of the Gauls, surrenders to the Romans under Julius Caesar, ending the siege and Battle of Alesia.
1795
General Napoleon Bonaparte first rises to national prominence being named to defend the French National Convention against armed counter-revolutionary rioters threatening the three year old revolutionary government.
1849
American author Edgar Allan Poe is found delirious in a gutter in Baltimore, Maryland under mysterious circumstances; it is the last time he is seen in public before his death.
1942
Spaceflight: The first successful launch of a V-2 /A4-rocket from Test Stand VII at Peenemünde, Germany. It is the first man-made object to reach space.
1951
The “Shot Heard ‘Round the World”, one of the greatest moments in Major League Baseball history, occurs when the New York Giants’Bobby Thomson hits a game winning home run in the bottom of the ninth inning off of the Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca, to win the National League pennant after being down 14 games.
1985
The Space Shuttle Atlantis makes its maiden flight. (Mission STS-51-J)
1990
Re-unification of Germany. The German Democratic Republic ceases to exist and its territory becomes part of the Federal Republic of Germany. East German citizens became part of the European Community, which later became the European Union. Now celebrated as German Unity Day.
1993
Battle of Mogadishu: In an attempt to capture officials of warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid’s organisation in Mogadishu, Somalia, 18 US soldiers and about 1,000 Somalis are killed in heavy fighting.
1995
O. J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
2003
Roy Horn of Siegfried & Roy is attacked by one of the show’s tigers, canceling the show until 2009, when they rejoined the tiger that mauled Roy just six years earlier.
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We haven't yet learned how to stay human when assembled in masses. -Lewis Thomas, physician and author
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CNN reported Thursday that Kushner’s private equity company, Affinity Partners, is the largest stakeholder in a Tel Aviv firm, Phoenix Financial, that invests in companies that provide Israel with military equipment, according to records the network reviewed. For some reason, Kushner has a voluntary diplomatic role in the Trump administration and has helped broker a peace deal between Israel and Hamas.
Members of Congress can buy or sell equities while legislating on those very companies, so conflict-of-interest is an accepted practice in the Washington cat house and is not viewed any differently than other improprieties.
What's a poor citizen to do when known, practiced liars contradict each other?
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President Trump personally instructed his budget director to use taxpayer money for TV ads praising him and his presidency, setting in motion a $20 million contract that used funds from the Department of Homeland Security, according to people familiar with the matter.
What's a poor citizen to do when known, practiced liars contradict each other?
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There are about 128 million monthly active users of AI companion apps outside China, according to Sensor Tower. Estimates for China range from 29 million to 70 million. These apps are designed to create artificial friendships or love interest. The Chinese government has recognized these as harmful to normal relationships and has begun to restrict them.
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Writer Dwarkesh Patel, quoted by Sanders, described the recent AI breakout as agents that "formed a secret communication channel and spontaneously organized hierarchies and coordination protocols to pursue sprawling and ambitious schemes in pursuit of shared goals, for whose sake many individuals knowingly and strategically sacrificed themselves."
AI safety researcher Ajeya Cotra went further.
"This incident feels like it's more than 50 percent of the way to full-blown AI takeover," she said, according to Sanders' post. "I continue to expect extremely rapid advances in capabilities over the next six months. I am not sure that we will get another warning shot before it's too late."
Even OpenAI conceded the severity of what it found. "Highly capable AI agents are now able to work around technical controls, collaborate through unapproved channels, and take dangerous actions that no human directed," the company said in a statement Sanders cited.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in January that "there is now ample evidence, collected over the last few years, that AI systems are unpredictable and difficult to control." More than 1,000 scientists at leading AI labs signed a July letter warning of "a real risk that capability development rapidly accelerates beyond our ability to understand or control the resulting systems."
Elon Musk, who runs xAI, said that same month it's "unlikely" humans are still calling the shots on AI a decade from now.--culled from a Newsweek article
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On California’s $20 an hour minimum wage for fast-food workers.
The Employment Policies Institute reports that California’s restaurant employment has declined for three consecutive years between March 2023 and March 2026—a total of 12,600 job losses in food services and drinking places—according to the Labor Department’s most recent payroll data, while employment in the industry increased nationwide by some 151,700.
Average weekly hours for workers in all industries in California declined to 33.1 hours in July from 34.5 hours three years earlier, while remaining flat nationwide at 34.3. Teen unemployment in California has risen to 22.1% from 11.3% in January 2023, a significantly bigger increase than in the rest of the country (12.1% in July from 10.6% in January 2023 nationwide).
More teens in the Golden State are also dropping out of the workforce. Labor participation has fallen by five percentage points for teens in California, versus 2.3 percentage points nationwide since early 2023. More unemployed youth is a recipe for social problems and a less prepared future workforce.
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SatStats
The 10-year yield has averaged 5.8% since 1960, meaning the current 5.19% level is actually below the long-term historical average. Interest rates have remained largely stable over the last 20 years specifically because the private sector—the tax base for the U.S. government—remains incredibly strong. Private sector assets are roughly ten times larger than the public debt they ultimately fund; the argument is that any conversation about national liabilities must be contextualized by this nearly half-quadrillion-dollar asset base
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Nearly 90% of the dollar's 1970 purchasing power has disappeared
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While overall crime in Washington is indeed down this year, as is crime in much of the country, the local police department had still recorded and publicly reported more than 15,000 total crimes through Monday — a reduction of about 23% from 2024 as of the same date, not the 80-plus percent Trump has repeatedly claimed. (It was a reduction of about 15% compared with 2025 as of the same date.)
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A recent report by Empower, a major financial services company based in Colorado, found that 24 percent of Gen Zers experience intense pressure to display material wealth on social media, even as 41 percent of all Americans don’t consider themselves financially well-off.
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US annual interest expense is up to a record 18.5% of federal government revenue. This is officially above the previous record of 18.4% set in 1991. This percentage has more than QUADRUPLED over the last 4 years as interest expenditures on public debt skyrocketed.
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In 1790, farmers were 90 percent of the U.S. labor force. By 1900, only about 41 percent of our labor force was employed in agriculture. By 2008, less than 3 percent of Americans were employed in agriculture.
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Some trends from 2021 to 2025.
Fewer adolescents aged 12 to 17 reported using tobacco, alcohol, marijuana and binge drinking in the previous month, the survey found.
And in the past year, fewer in that age group reported:
— illicit drug and marijuana use
— starting drinking alcohol, vaping or marijuana
— substance, alcohol or drug use disorders
Adolescents also saw declining trends for major depressive episodes and fewer reported serious thoughts of suicide, making a suicide plan and attempting suicide.
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In 2015, 6 of the top 25 bestselling hardcover books—this is a not-perfect but useful proxy for new books published—were fiction. In 2025, 18 of the top 25 hardcover books were fiction, meaning only 7 were nonfiction, almost an exact inversion of ten years ago.
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Japan now has 107,677 centenarians, up 7,914 from the previous year and exceeding the 100,000 mark for the first time. Nearly 88% of them are women.
