Thoughts

On this day:

1794
Branded a traitor during the Reign of Terror by revolutionists, French chemist Antoine Lavoisier, who was also a tax collector with the Ferme Générale, is tried, convicted, and guillotined all on the same day in Paris.
1902
In Martinique, Mount Pelée erupts, destroying the town of Saint-Pierre and killing over 30,000 people. Only a handful of residents survive the blast.
1945
Hundreds of Algerian civilians are killed by French Army soldiers in the Sétif massacre.
1945
World War II: V-E Day, combat ends in Europe. German forces agree in Rheims, France, to an unconditional surrender.
1978
First ascent of Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen, by Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler.

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Thoughts 

The noble human search for knowledge continues.
The Russian site, called Sergiev Posad-6, has been quiet for decades, but it had a notorious Cold War past: It had once been a major research center for biological weapons, with a history of experiments with the viruses that cause smallpox, Ebola, and hemorrhagic fevers.

Satellite imagery— collected by commercial imaging firms Maxar and Planet Labs — shows construction vehicles renovating the old Soviet-era laboratory and breaking ground on 10 new buildings, totaling more than 250,000 square feet, with several of them bearing hallmarks of biological labs designed to handle extremely dangerous pathogens.

A 2023 Compliance Report, prepared by the United States Department of State, alleges that “Russia maintains an offensive [biological weapons] program and is in violation of its obligations under … the [Biological Weapons Convention] (BWC).”

But don't worry. As COVID has shown, you can always count on governments--especially aggressive, paranoid ones with homicidal philosophies--to do the right thing.

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Sausage making, once an artisan’s craft, has become a compliance exercise that perhaps only corporations can realistically manage.--Tabarrok

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 Donald Rumsfeld, who was serving at the time as the secretary of defense under former U.S. President George W. Bush, made a speech on Sept. 10, 2001. It is often referenced as stating that the Defense Department was a center of fraud. This is a misrepresentation.
At the 14:15 mark, Rumsfeld says, “Our financial systems are decades old. Some estimates show we cannot track 2.3 trillion dollars in transactions. We cannot share information from floor to floor in this building. Because it's stored on dozens of different technological systems that are inaccessible or incompatible.”

He was referencing technical deficiencies, not theft.

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Major League Baseball has never been a socialist utopia. But as a result of its wealth-sharing, the financial disparity between the sport’s 30 teams has never been greater, alienating fans and distorting the game. It is a teaching case on socialistic abuse as the whole sacrifices itself to support an inept segment and enrich a favored few.
Is a long work stoppage inevitable?

BTW, I think this might be the worst Pirate lineup and bench I've ever seen.

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President Biden could argue that the lawful-but-unethical pardon precedent is now so deeply established, not least by his predecessor, that granting clemency to his own son could hardly be considered beyond political norms. If you doubt that, consider the pardon granted to Ivanka Trump’s father-in-law, Charles Kushner, who is now on track to enjoy a stint in the ultimate offender rehabilitation program as U.S. ambassador to France.--(someone)

This opinion apparently calls upon the time-honored belief that crime and immorality can be made normal by repetition, essentially grandfathering criminality into the social norm. (This is not to be confused with the equally time-honored defense, "But Billy did it, too, Mom.")

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Progressivism’s challenge to the American legal order arises not from misunderstanding but from a deep-rooted opposition to the Constitution’s original design. The Constitution’s separation of powers and its layered legislative process are deliberate impediments to the rapid societal changes progressives desire. Progressives rally behind the banner of equality and have come to see rights, such as property and even free speech, as pretexts for inequality, because individuals possess varying abilities to wield them. They fear these rights can act like levees holding back the flow of political transformation, empowering citizens to resist the sweeping reforms that progressives advocate.--McGinnis

Worth remembering.

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My analysis reveals a significant change in political beliefs since being incarcerated. There is an increased effect of changing political beliefs for women and people of color incarcerated. The effect reveals that people of color are becoming, either for the first time or further aligned, with the Republican Party since being incarcerated.--a paper

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“I’m not sure I have a full model of how this works, but the situation where nearly 100% of credentialed experts are Democrats seems to me to have made both parties’ epistemics worse than they were 20 years ago.” — from Matt Yglesias.