Malice as Policy

A “disaster discount” may be creeping into the U.S. housing market. According to real-estate brokerage Redfin, homes in areas that are vulnerable to floods, wildfires, and extreme heat are rising in value at a slower rate than low-risk properties.

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Trump has suggested that one way to reconstruct the Gaza enclave would be to move the Palestinians from Gaza to Jordan and Egypt. That resettlement “could be temporary or long term.”

That marks a dramatic shift in U.S. policy toward Palestinians. No recent White House has suggested the “long-term” departure of Palestinians from Gaza, which most U.S. presidents have seen as a part of an eventual Palestinian state.

Talking off the top of your head is not always refreshing.

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Barstool's David Portnoy bet $1 million on the Bills to win the Super Bowl.

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A few Biden programs under review: $50 million for contraceptives in Gaza, funding for a transgender opera in Columbia, and funding Peruvian transgender comic books.

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Malice as Policy

Underwater cables are used mostly for internet connection. There are 597 cable systems and 1,712 landings currently active or under construction.  

Worldwide, about 200 undersea cables have been cut or disrupted annually as of 2024, due most frequently to unintentional damage from fishing equipment or the anchors of ships.

But the Europeans believe Russian and Chinese ships are purposefully disrupting underwater cables.

NATO reacted after another underwater data cable was severed in the Baltic Sea. In the alliance’s first coordinated response to the suspected sabotage campaign against critical infrastructure, NATO vessels raced to the site of a damaged fiber-optic cable in Swedish waters on Sunday morning, where a trio of ships carrying Russian cargo, including one recently sanctioned by the U.S., were nearby.

This raises significant questions about international relations. How should nations ostensibly at peace behave? All nations have wide-ranging interfaces, from trade to travel to economics, that overlap and blend, nation to nation. What is one to think about nations that gratuitously interfere with the normal, peaceful, behavior of other nations?

This is more than the usual sophomoric behavior common in American politics. This is equivalent to the well-poisoner, the malignant, destructive disrupter of benign life.

What is it that rewards these people for such behavior? And how should peaceful nations victimized by such economic mutilation respond? Most importantly, how do sensible people living their lives regard their potential relationship with a known well-poisoner?